4721

Slightly disappointed that uber-regen cities remain, but there’s so much good stuff in that patch especially in regard to resource rebalancing that I’m quite happy. Oligarchy looks brutal for city defense.

Quite excited too that I can finally try the Mongolians as all I ever play is MP with a couple friends. Might have to finally buy that Babylonian DLC or whatever too.

4722

Why bother to balance a game that doesn’t even have a working AI?

/grumpy old man mode

-Tom

4723

That’s nice. I had fears that any further support on the game was dead after Jon left.

I did notice that there is no mention of Tactical AI improvements, which is rather unfortunate.

4724

Yeah, hearing nothing about the AI is somewhat troublesome.

However, what bothers me even more is that they are appearently still not willing to fix the modding tools. People ought to be able to make their own building graphics and stuff, also unit graphics without using hacks other modders came up with.

I wonder what the reasoning behind all the closed systems in Civ 5 is (after hyping it as the most moddable Civ ever, no less).
I mean, they aren’t exactly bombarding us with nickel and dimeing DLC.

There was the free Mongols, then Babylon (which doesn’t really count either, because it was also a PreOrder bonus, wasn’t it?), and the Spanish and Inca in one go. And a couple of maps, I guess.

Why not just open up the systems to modding and have modders breathe life into the game via new civs and buildings and stuff if you’re not planning on doing so yourself? I don’t get it.

Compared to Civ4 early day modding, Civ5 modding is in a pitiful state.
Cause there’s SO much stuff you just cannot do period.

rezaf

4725

That is a pretty epic patch list, seems like the entire game economy has been drastically reoriented even including a new building no less. As Tom says though, in a single player game like Civ eliminating a dominant strategy (ICS in this case) is only half the battle. If the AI is poor the fact that you can more easily use multiple strategies to roll over them is of little consequence.

Perhaps those minor AI tweaks mentioned will help but it sounds they are more geared toward further explaining the decisions the AI is already taking rather than improving those decisions. There is also no particular mention of tactical AI which is the part that always seems to be described as the weakest with the player able to reasonably reliably score ten kills against the AI for every one death of their own unit of similar power. I’d really get excited if I heard reports of an AI with a weaker army managing to occasionally out maneuver and destroy a stronger competent player controlled army.

Still, it’s good that they are still making significant free patches to the base game in this age of paid for DLC. It sounds like they care about trying to win back their critics.

4726

Normally, I’d say Tom is being too harsh but I have to agree.
Fundamentally, the AI is not able to handle one unit per hex,and without fixing this all of these nice tweaks fall into the nice to have but not really essential category.

Still I think it is a good sign that they are still working on the game. Hey they may even get me to buy an expansion.

4727

The Good

  • Cities must now have three or more tiles in between them (1 more tile than before), unless separated by a sea/coast tile.
    Very desirable.

  • Cities now only get 1 free production and 0 free gold (1 less in both cases)
    It’s worth remembering that Civ Rev gave the city tile no production, so in cities did not get a free extra tile. This helps with the “terrain doesn’t matter” problem of Civ V, since part of that was how good the free city tile was.

  • Trade routes get bonus gold based on population of capital; formula changed a bit so minimal gold received for hooking up very small cities
    This could be good or bad, depending on the specific bonus. The existing setup has the odd effect of making the capital intrinsically less valuable than other cities, since it gets no Railroad or Trade bonuses.

  • Aqueduct added (entirely new building). 40% of Food is carried over after a new Citizen is born.
    The growth-multiplier building moved back to the Classical era, where it matters.

  • Granary gives bonus 1 food for Wheat/Banana Deer; cost reduced
    Makes these resources closer to being important, but not quite there yet. I currently see Banana as a drawback, since it meant I can’t put a trading post on the tile, and improved Banana is just a regular farm.

The Bad
I’m not thrilled that they’re actually reducing the value of many special resources, like Fish, Sugar, Gold, Silver, Gems, and Marble. This makes terrain even less important than it is now.

  • Taper off benefit of excess food when building settlers
  • Bonus production from excess food (used when building settlers) tapers off if excess is 3 or more.
    I don’t know what they were thinking with this. The food = hammers rule exists because building a settler halts city growth, and it was a completely reasonable exchange as a result. High-food cities tend to be low in hammers, so it has two net effects: you’ll build settlers in high-production, low food cities, and let high-food cities grow.
    I guess the main intent is to make it easier to grow vertically (city growth) compared to horizontally (more cities).

The Ugly

  • Golden Ages now provide +20% production per city rather than +1 hammer per tile
    Major, major nerf to Golden Ages. Kills the Taj Majal and Chichen Itza, and emphasizes playing near your Unhappiness limit, which was already the strongest strategy.
4728

It was? I always try to get as many golden ages as possible, as I thought most people did.

4729

It’s absolutely stronger. The increased science/gold/production from expanding faster is far more important than picking up happy-powered golden ages.

Really, if you’re over 10 happiness, build a settler or go conquering. That’s my rule of thumb, anyway, and I rarely get there. My empires tend to hang out under 7 or so happiness for the vast majority of the game.

Nerfs to the Chinese are good. Played a game with them a few weeks ago and the Paper Maker is just silly. Chu-Ko-Nu were absolutely dominant against equivalent era units as well, not least because they rack up experience (and GGs) like nothin’ when you have them firing twice per turn.

4730

Well it’s nice to know the game hasn’t been abandoned by Firaxis. I thought after John’s departure that would be the end of it.

4731

ICS in Civ V is all about keeping happiness at or above zero or at least, not negative. More cities, more sprawl, less happiness, build collosseum, more happiness, more cities, more sprawl, less happiness, build circus, more happiness, more cities, repeat.

4732

Is there room in that grumpy old man boat for me?

Also, other questions, from someone who hasn’t touched the game since a few weeks after release:

  • Are animations still non-functional in multiplayer?
  • Are mods still not allowed/enabled in multiplayer?
4733

If you read the discussions of the top players on Civ Fanatics, it’s all about expanding as fast as possible while eking out one, maybe two Golden Ages for a production boost to a critical wonder. In the early game in particular it often makes sense to go to -5, -6 unhappiness, because the benefits of a Golden Age while your empire is small are minimal. Once your stored Happiness drops to zero, there’s no real penalty for running less than -10. The growth penalty is unimportant since you switch to maximize production at the expense of food, and Settler production doesn’t have a penalty.

In the early game, it’s about science production. The 500 Happiness required for your first Golden Age translates to at least 500 Science that you gave up. As you gain science multiplier buildings like libraries, the ratio becomes worse.

Obviously that’s less of an issue as tech costs rise, but there’s still the hammer cost, which starts getting significant by the third natural Golden Age.

4734

I am astonished at how many people don’t mind the AI issues in this game and are happily playing as if nothing was amiss. Don’t you people know you’re just playing an elaborate but dippy puzzle/RPG game? Firaxis is clearly taking the Civ: Revolution approach: a cool system without a functional computer opponent.

So, yeah, I’ll scooch over and make room for you, K.C. But this is a pretty little boat.

 -Tom
4735

You’re going to need a bigger boat. . . .

4736

Not really. Civ V got put away the first time I rolled over it on normal difficulty. Which was incidently the first game I played through on it. Facebook Civ.

4737

Yeah, I’ll need a ticket to get on the boat, too. I like a lot of the stuff they have done with the game in a mechanical sense, but without a functional AI, there’s no point in playing. I haven’t touched the game in months.

4738

Uhmm. I’ll just stand back her by the stern. Lots of folks on this boat.

4739

The boat doesn’t have that many people because many of us decided to cut our cruises short… All these little balance tweaks are completely beside the point if the AI persists in running archers and siege units into your melee units, or embarking its own powerful melee units into lakes in front of your siege units, or if it sends a flood of 20 pikemen and archers at your city and can’t conquer it because it can’t figure out how to deal with your two crossbowmen defenders, etc. etc. etc.

I still play from time to time, I must admit, but mainly just to see if I can get a better high score.

4740

Miramon, I don’t think you understand our boat. Your seat is right here, next to Ben. By the way, we’re playing Civ IV on this boat and having a grand time.

 -Tom