Wishlist of Simple Things for Upcoming Patches

[criZp]

Nerfing partisans, really?

 

[Minou]

Yeah, unit pathing can be bad. When I am playing GOTM or going for a personal record I try to move units one tile at a time so they don't end up going somewhere stupid or walking into barbs in the fog (I swear my sailing Builders always use their last MP to end up next to a barb Quad). But, I was limiting to what (I assume) are simple things to code. Unit bathing must be pretty complex when you factor in all the terrane penalties and traffic jams from other units, but I assume turning off 2g demands from weakling AIs would be (almost) like flipping an on/off switch.

This reminds me of one thing I has wished for since the very first time I played the game - a counter showing how many turns a Trade Route will take to complete! I know that the formula has been figured out, but I don't want to have to open Excel just to figure out if a Trader is going to run 2 or 3 rounds before ending the route. It would be a minor little quality of life thing to have the turns to complete listed in the active trade menu (and shown before you commit to the route) so you can plan things like whether you'll get that Trader back in time for another City State quest or whether the Trader is going to stop for good at your city or wander back out perilously into a war zone next turn.

Speaking of which, I would LOVE if you could just mouse over and see the actual amount of science/culture left on a tech/civic. You can estimate from the bars, but that's pretty imprecise. That's gotta be a simple one to implement and if it was just a mouse-over you would not have to worry about clutter. here are so many turns where I wish I knew the exact amount. Is it worth sacrificing a unit as Gorgo to get some kill culture and finish a Civic this turn? Will Galileo actually complete Rocketry this turn or leave me 2s short? I'm on pace for a civic in 4 turns, but will chopping this Monument get me down to 3?

 

[Minou]

By the way there is a simple way to nerf Recruit Partisans - just don't build a Neighborhood! They often end up being a net negative since the AI seems to favor that mission. You get some housing, but then all of a sudden your improvements are all in flames. Sometimes I enjoy the trick posted here (by Victoria I believe) of using an Apostle with Heathen Conversion to use them to my advantage.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Curious what everyone would like to see in terms of easy to code, quality of experience improvements in the next few patches.

The only thing I want thats easy and would be agree on by most people is pantheon balancing. Combine the growth and border expansion into one pantheon and get rid of the free units. Spread out the GP points among several pantheons.

Increase neighborhood adjacency and remove the 1 building limit.

I don't know if it's simple but i would like a pangea map with islands require entering ocean tiles to get to.

 

[civfan_999]

New things that haven't been mentioned yet:

• When a city that began as a city state revolts and leaves an empire, it shouldn't become a free city, but should revert to its original city state status. It is annoying to have to run a military around the map to liberate free cities to reestablish city states that you would like to send envoys to.
• If possible, prevent military units from being evicted from the city state's territory after a city state is liberated. (More information here https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/liberating-a-city-state-and-having-your-units-evicted.663582/)
• Soothsayers should cause disasters that are the same as if they occurred naturally. Floods and volcanic eruptions caused by soothsayers do not cause fertility, but should at the same rate as a naturally occuring disaster.
• Soothsayers should be able to move in foreign territory when you have open borders or are at war.
• Civs going for a diplomatic victory should spend as much production as necessary to win an aid emergency, but others should not spend nearly as much as they do now.
  • I have seen the combined AIs send 15k to 15k in aid points in a single emergency. Why is Shaka sending 4k+ in aid? Shaka should be spending that production on units! Kristina, sure, it makes sense for her to send 4k+ aid becuase she is going for the diplomatic victory condition.
  • I appreciate that in the last updates the devs changed it so there are fewer aid emergencies. That certainly helps with this issue, but the issue would be better solved if civs going for domination, science, and culture victories just didn't focus sending aid. Those civs should value the favor in a way that they would like to take silver or bronze if they could get it for 50-300 aid (or so), but should not be willing to waste as much production as they do in the hope of winning some favor.

Thoughts on other comments:

1. Eliminate overflow cancelling.

This is huge! I hate that I have to strategize and game how I will use the science from a great person. When you get 250 science per rainforest tile for a total of 1250 (for example), you shouldn't be looking for techs that will minimize the overwrite loss. You should be able to pick any tech you want. Instead I have to look for those that lose the least science.

2. Revert to the original Great Person costs.

I disagree with this one. Previously, all the great people would be gone with eras left to go, which was unappealing. I like that there are still some to earn in the late game. That being said, I would be okay with a balance that just adds more great people. Anything so that my GPPs are still worth something in the last few eras.

3. Modify amenities so each +1 matters.

I like this idea. I love that you now need +3 to be happy. It was too easy before. But I also think the fact that happy goes down to -1 makes it too easy to never fall below content. I would like to see content start at 0 (or even +1), but this idea that every amenity makes a slight change in the boosts is a great one too.

Improve the deal screen so that the player would not have to leave it and go to the reports tab to squint there at the minuscule icons at the bottom, just to confirm what luxuries they actually have and still need.

Great idea. It would be great if there was an info panel on the right side of the trade screen so that you could see things like how many luxury resources you have access to.

Finish coding properly the trade route screens, so that they show actual number of turns to complete for new routes, and turns remaining to completion for existing routes.

YES! I hate that you can't know how many turns are left on your trade routes unless you remember when you started them. The active trade routes should show "turns remaining," not "turns per lap."

Fix trading values, at the moment, essentially all of the trading is an exploit for the benefit of the player. All deals are far too good. 1 g open borders, 1 g joint wars, among other things. Yeah, right.

100% agree.

My boyfriend and I hot seat together once every couple months playing together as a team vs. AI teams. Having recently played/won our first deity game, we have been discussing how we will no longer "abuse the AI" to make the game more difficult. We used to do the following when we wanted an alliance (and again every 30 turns):

1. declare friendship
2. sell open borders for 1-2 gpt
3. suggest and alliance and see what the AI is willing to pay for it, usually getting another 2-25gpt

We have now decided that we will only trade open borders for open borders and will only establish alliances with no sweeteners. I can see situations where the AI would be willing to pay for open borders. For example, in the early game when a scout finds an AI, I will buy open borders to explore (or sometimes the scout gets stuck because borders expanded and you need open borders to get your unit out). However, in most cases, the AI should not be willing to pay cash for borders.

The AI also doesn't not value luxury resources properly. We haven't quite decided what we think they are worth yet, but the value of +1 amenity to 4 cities is definitely not 1-2gpt. Even worse, the AI will often by willing to pay 6-12 gpt for my luxury resources but only charge me 1-2gpt to buy theirs. I have done trades before where the AI will give me 2 luxury resources and 6+gpt for 1 luxury resource. At the very least, the AI should value buying a luxury resource at the same dollar amount as selling one.

Related to this, I would like Neighborhoods to generally be more useful. I'm not entirely sure how to accomplish this, but at the moment I basically never build them unless I can get something largely unrelated out of it (e.g. a boost, a dummy espionage target, points, card gold, etc.)

Really? I build tons of neighborhoods. In the mid game I am just waiting to get to that civic so I can start building. I get housing capped so easily without them. Perhaps you build more farms that I do as I focus more of lumber mills and improving strategic/luxury/bonus resources. I don't build many farms.

 

[robal1991]

My simple wish is this: after releasing 12 updates in 1 year there will be for sure many bugs introduced. I would like them to be fixed in 1 or 2 extra patches after the new frontier ends (for example in June 2021 and September 2021).