The patch is over 140 MB!? Must be all the extra cows!
I am having rather positive experience with today’s patch.
Turn time is shorter. AI is more aggressive.
Still waiting for the animation in MP mode tho.
Just finished my first full game (single player) with the new patch. Very happy with the changes – I had already used a mod for wider city spacing, but I also really like how technologies and buildings now enhance the appropriate bonus resources. That and the new aqueduct provided some very decent city growth – a couple were almost size 30 by 2030.
Chain denouncements did not happen, either; and the turns are much faster. Looks like they finally fixed that annoying problem with city states holding up AI turns in the late game. The only bug I didn’t have a chance to test (due to archipelago map) was the road to city state thing.
Some of the new changes with the policies are quite good, as well. More “interesting choices” to be made there, when dealing with the first two trees.
It does feel more fun (and appropriate) to have your city suddenly get a boost of food when you finish the Granary, or extra production from the Stable based on the Sheep/Cattle/Horse around your city. The interplay between resources and techs and buildings give more mini-carrots along the way, for getting certain techs or buildings developed.
Yeah, this is actually my first Civ5 game where I built stables in my cities. Extra XP for a few horsies, who cares. But that new production bonus…
Golden Ages no longer give extra production hammers per tile. Now it’s just an overall production percentage bonus.
Yeah, it helps to read the patch notes sometimes. :)
Rywill
4889
About halfway through a game and it’s some nice improvements so far, but I haven’t seen enough to know whether they made any appreciable steps with the tactical AI (I know that wasn’t the focus here, though). Unlike Tom, I think the game is f – I mean, playable – even with the broken AI. You just play on a difficulty level where the AI gets enough stuff to challenge you. Pretend you’re Napoleon or Rommel, sitting there going “Is every other general in the world an idiot compared to me? I guess so.” I’d like better tactical AI, it’s my #1 wish list item and would have been a better upgrade than this balance patch, but I’m still playing Civ V regularly and having a good time with it. You just have to play on a difficulty level high enough to give you a run for it.
That said, the balance stuff in this patch is quite good. There are more interesting choices to be made regarding buildings now – different cities will definitely need different buildings in them if you want to maximize your chances of winning, making the “Choose Production” button exponentially more interesting. "Regular’ (non-luxury, non-strategic) special terrains have gone from being nearly meaningless to being somewhat important again. The joy (and reward) of finding an ideal city placement is back.
Choices regarding first-half policies are also a lot more interesting and varied now, which is great. It makes for a really nice parallel development system that lets you play the game in very different ways. With some very nice bonuses out there, you have an interesting choice each time, and now you face a real choice about trading off culture production for other things, and expanding cities (and annexing vs puppeting) carries more weight.
All in all, thumbs up. I would have preferred awesome tactical AI, but if I can’t have that, this is a nice substitute.
Definitely agreed. I don’t play the game for the tactical combat, and that end of things is easily self balancing anyway – just beat the AI up a little bit, and accept peace as soon as it is offered. Beat it, but don’t abuse it.
I’m much more interested in the balancing changes, especially as I think doing a good job with the tactical AI will prove difficult given post-release constraints.
The only thing I’m really missing is the goddamn hotseat mode!
The Liberty policies are bangin’, now. Free units? I’m there.
Rywill
4892
Even which one to take is an interesting choice, now. Sometimes you will want to take the settler first and worker second, sometimes the other way around, depending on your game situation. A lot of the new stuff is like that, stuff where one choice isn’t always better, and either way involves a painful tradeoff. Which is exactly how it should be. I really like the fact that buildings for cities are now a much more interesting choice. If you’re not looking at your special resources before making each building choice, you’re probably giving up some win.
Yeah, the early culture choices are much improved, as there are some interesting choices to make now. Some unbalancing ancient and classical age features were removed, too, and I think (not entirely sure) that some early wonders are harder to build too; possibly I just have lower population early on now due to no bonus from tradition. I had been relying on the great library to jump to iron working, using cash to build settlers, and that seems not to be such a great idea anymore; so instead I can use liberty, which I had generally ignored in the past. I also used to build the pyramids every game, since the AI never seemed to want to build them at all for some reason, but now it seems it’s an AI goal, so I had to do without the worker bonus this time.
However, I played a game on Emperor and despite a slow start still had no trouble crushing everyone on a small pangaea world. It’s actually even easier to dominate now that the cities have stopped being placed in overlapping fire zones. Also, please stop routing settlers, archers, siege weapons and great leaders in front of my combat units when you’re at war with me. The AI seems actually to have lost any understanding of ZOC it once had, so it often tries to move fragile or high-movement units like horsemen directly adjacent to my hostile units and gets stuck when it loses its moves due to ZOC. Also, this dumb AI strategy of coping with losing a war by spawning a bunch of settlers has to go. I mean to say, it’s fine to do that after losing a war, but it’s idiotic to crank settlers while the AI is in the process of losing. Try cranking combat units instead…
The Polynesians are out… and they do have the Cargo Cult ability! :)
Special Ability: “Wayfinding”
Can embark and move over oceans immediately. +1 sight when embarked. +10% combat strength bonus if withing 2 tiles of a Moai.
(Polynesia also has a unique boat graphic when embarked.)
Unique Unit: “Maori Warrior”
cost: 40, moves: 2, strength: 6
Replaces the warrior.
An ancient era unit which strikes fear into nearby enemies making them less effective in combat. (Enemy units get -10% strength. Similar to the effect of great generals except it’s the opposite and negatively impacts enemies. The promotion is called, “Haka War Dance.”)
Unique Improvement: “Moai”
yields: +1 culture
Can only be built on the coast. If built next to another Moai it provides +1 culture. After Flight is researched, it also provides +1 gold.
(Yes, it can receive more than a single +1 culture from an adjacent Moai. I tested it with three of them and the middle yielded +3 culture. Also, I don’t think it’s mentioned, but this improvement requires the Construction tech.) ]
From the forum: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?105380-Polynesia-is-here!&p=1356321#post1356321
rezaf
4895
I read over at CivFanatics that the unit model editor, one of the very few things in the modding tools that was actually working, has been broken by the patch.
Appearently, only utter idiots are working at Firaxis that have no clue about what they’re doing.
Well, that, or Firaxis intentionally wants to keep the Civ5 system closed for graphical modifications.
Take your pick.
When I look at their current stance regarding modding, I have my doubts if there will ever be a Civ5 SDK release.
rezaf
Since when was the unit model editor working? I thought there was still no way to edit meshes, only textures. Not that I care much about graphical mods in Civ5 anyway, there’s little chance any of them would reach the quality of the shipped assets.
rezaf
4897
Somebody found a way to make the unit editor work.
You had to use some workarounds, but there already were a few converted Civ4 units.
I don’t get your “I don’t care” stance, it’s exactly the kind of behavior Firaxis is banking on when it comes to modding (or the AI).
And why are you feeling custom Civ4 models didn’t come close to the original models Civ4 shipped with?
rezaf
The Civ5 models are quite a bit more detailed than those in Civ4, and have a great consistent style. Stuff like converted Civ4 units is exactly what I don’t want.
I do like the ability to tweak the game rules and I still want the C++ SDK, but that’s to correct defects in game balance (now fixed) and AI. Should Firaxis ever fix the AI on its own, I won’t care about the C++ SDK either.
Ultimately I don’t feel the urge to alter a game just because I can, and certainly not in terms of visual appearance. I make my own games when I want to get creative.
Me neither. However; Civ4 Battle for Arrakis. Fall from Heaven. To name but a few…
Aint you the awesome elite creator dude.
Not hardly, and I don’t mean to imply any differences in quality. There’s certainly a ton of high-quality work invested in Fall from Heaven, to state the obvious. I just don’t like to change a game too far from what it was intended to be, it seems more… appropriate to do your own thing. I think Civ5 has a great deal of artistic integrity, and I’d like to leave that intact.
