2710

Isn’t Soren busy with At The Gates?

2711

You’re thinking of Jon Shafer.

2712

Endless Space 2 is shaping up really nicely, so far.

2713

My bad…:(

2714

It seems like At the Gates could use Soren’s help too…

2715

And now I’m sad again.

2716

EU IV will have new DLC soon. Did that help :-)

2717

You know me so well ;)

2718

I think @inactive_user makes good points but I also agree with you that it’s important to add new mechanics to keep the game fresh. I’d say half the fun I had with Civ 6 (and it hasn’t been lot) is figuring out where to put cities to build the best wonders and districts. It was by far my favorite part the Chick parabola for this game. I’ve even figured out how to build a national park twice (once was pure luck the other was 1000 years of planning)

However, I dare says it is a virtually impossible task for the computer to figure out. I can’t even imagine the city placement algorithm which figures out. If I move the city two hexes and give up this great luxury resource today, then in a thousand years I can build a Zimbabwe cattle wonder. So Firaxis needs to figure out a reasonable way of adding this features, in a way that AI can cope with even if it means some flavor of AI cheating. One of the side benefits the Wonder placement is as player I have a very good sense, of what Wonders the AI could possibly be building.

I think many of the things with VI can be fixed, district scaling, missionary spam. Although, I have my doubts that 1UPT can ever be fixed.

RTS is my least favorite genre of strategy game, but I thought Offworld Trading Company was as good as could ask for in the genre. Civ IV is also favorite version, so another shout out to @SorenJohnson, please make a turn-based 4x game.

2719

Spring update this week:

[BALANCE CHANGES]

  • Harbors now give a major adjacency bonus with the City Center, +1 Food to all Coast tiles when the Lighthouse is built, and +2 Gold to all Coast tiles when the Seaport is built.
  • Australia now gets +1 for Charming/+3 for Breathtaking on the four affected districts (had been +2/+4) to compensate for the Harbor boost above
  • Royal Navy Dockyard now always provides +1 Trade Route capacity, even if the city already has a Commercial Hub. This makes it more useful, even when England builds it on its home continent.
  • Added “Future Civic” to the end of the Civics Tree, a repeatable Civic to research and add to the player score.
  • Bomber units are now more effective against cities.
  • Swordsman are now reduced to 36 combat strength.
  • Damages now remain on City and Encampments when a city is traded.
  • Siege units with bonus movement (e.g. from Great Generals or Persian surprise war) can still shoot after moving as long as they still have 2 MP.
  • Adjusted Warmonger penalties for Diplomatic status:
  • When applying a warmonger diplomatic penalty for EITHER declaring war or capturing a city, reduce that penalty if you are enemies with the target of that warmongering as follows:
  • -20% warmongering if this is against a player you have denounced
  • -40% warmongering if this is against a player you are at war with
  • NOTE: This is not used in situations where you are fighting a Joint War against the target power or when Sumeria joins as ally in war (in both those cases the penalty is still zero).
  • EXAMPLE: Macedon is at war with Persia. If India goes to war with Persia sometime in the middle of this Macedonian/Persian War and captures a Persian city, Macedon will reduce its warmonger penalty against India by 40%.
  • Adjusted Warmonger penalties for City Population:
  • When applying a warmonger diplomatic penalty for capturing a city, reduce that penalty if the city is smaller than the average city in the game as follows:
  • If the city’s population after conquest is below the average population of all the cities in the game, reduce the warmonger penalty by the percentage that city’s population is below the average.
  • EXAMPLE: Persepolis is conquered and its population after conquest is 6. But the average size of a city in the game is 8. So this city is 2 / 8 = 25% below the size of the average city in the game. Therefore the warmonger penalty is reduced by 25%.

[AI TUNING]

  • Improved coordination for multiple attacking units.
  • Ranged units better understand how to capture civilian units.
  • AI should now generally accept embassies when neutral, and reject when unfriendly.
  • When asking an AI to equalize a deal that has elements on both sides of the deal, it will consider a gold-only change before looking at other possibilities.
  • Increased AI’s desire to repair pillaged Districts and Buildings.
  • Minor civs will no longer go after policies that give them extra influence they can never use.
  • Made it easier to meet the positive side of the environmentalist agenda
  • AI will now build multiple Neighborhoods.

[BUG FIXES]

  • The Great Works tooltip in the deal now shows extended information.
  • Melee units can no longer attack embarked units.
  • Pillaged improvements no longer provide Pantheon bonuses.
  • Fixed double-counting of Appeal from Improvements.
  • Fixed broken gossip message about Seaside Resorts that made them always mention a “lost city”.
  • John Curtin is now referred to as “Prime Minister” and not “President” in the Outback Tycoon scenario.
  • Fixed an issue where previously constructed buildings were not showing up properly on the Production Chooser.
  • The World Tracker now keeps its open/closed state between turns.
  • Additional bug fixes.

[MULTIPLAYER]

  • Updating Global Thermonuclear War scenario’s Proxy War victory condition to support team play.
  • Expanded internet games list to show results from additional regions
  • Games list was frequently not showing all available games due to UI bug.

[MISC]

  • Added more civs to the True Start Location Earth map.
  • Separated war/peace notifications into major civs vs. city-state.
  • Added additional information to Defeat/Victory screens, so players will be clearer on why they have lost the game.
  • Added “special ability” stars to techs and civics that unlock new functionality.
  • Added invasion warnings to Poland scenario
  • Added new Capabilities data base table to disable select game systems for scenarios and mods.
  • ARX functionality updates for scenarios.
  • Added text labels differentiating Official and Community content in the Lobby screen.

[ADDITONAL CONTENT]

In Game

  • Fixed issues in the Additional Content menu with mods that contained very long strings.
  • The “ImportFiles” modding action now works as a Frontend action.
  • The “UpdateIcons” action now supports SQL files in addition to XML files.
  • Multiple files can now be specified in the “AddGameplayScripts” Ingame action.
  • Added a “DoNothing” Frontend action and Ingame action. This action is useful as a placeholder or as a container that includes other actions.
  • The localization database is now written out to the cache folder.
  • Development Tools
  • The SDK launcher will now close after the user has clicked on an application to launch.
  • ModBuddy will no longer display a ‘Parameter “escapedValue” cannot be null.’ error when the Development Assets are not installed.
  • Added SQL syntax coloring to ModBuddy.
2720

Spring 2017 Update and new DLC (2 civs, 2 Wonders, and 1 Scenario; free to Deluxe Edition owners, $8.99 otherwise) just dropped.

2721

I’m surprised how little buzz there has been about this.

Australia was a great addition, and now Macedon and Persia seem to be as well. These two add some pretty effective warmongers, while Australia is perfectly positioned to benefit from peaceful play amidst warring civs.

My sense is that the gameplay keeps getting better. I could write many pages on things that Civ VI should really do to be the best possible game, but nonetheless, the last three games I have played have been tense affairs that kept my interest most of the way. (And I think that that is one of the secrets to enjoying the game – play the early ages, and then, if you get a safe and secure lead later on, declare victory and start a new game. If you are compulsive and feel you have to play another 60 turns to see the victory screen, you are going to get a bad taste.)

But after all these months, every time I start to play something else, this game calls me back. And does so without any substantial gameplay mods.

2722

Got my first win on King last night. As Cleopatra, I beat out Tokimune for a science victory. I was behind going into the Information Age, so I had to disrupt his space ports with spies, wage a war of distraction on his southern cities, and use trade routes to beef up my space project production. I usually play far more casually, so it was a nice “change of pace” to have to play the game as intended.

I’ll likely pick up the Alexander/Cyrus DLC, as that region/era is my jam, historically speaking.

2723

It’s mostly because the game isn’t very good, I suspect ;)

2724

Yep. I still bought in and picked up the game, but Firaxis’ complete indifference to AI is costing them ongoing DLC sales, as least for this particular customer. It makes it hard for me to conjure any enthusiasm for playing new Civs, let alone spend money to get them.

2725

I finished a game as Australia. It was fun to build the Sydney Opera House… in Canberra! This was the first time I deliberately tried for a cultural victory. I wound up creating 3 national parks. Because my starting position put me on an isolated small land mass in the Arctic, I wound up with an early city of mostly tundra and useless snow. But managed to build the Eiffel Tower there which resulted in a boost of appeal to unused nearby hexes which allowed my first national park. I also ran across Uluru pretty much as far away from me as possible, but the land around it was not settled. As Australia, I felt compelled to lay claim to it so I sent a settler along with a naturalist on a long journey to found a city there. It wasn’t a clear victory as India was getting close to a science victory so I founded a 3rd national park on some god-forsaken tundra land in the Antarctic.

2726

Sounds a lot like my experience. It’s not that tactical war AI is suddenly good, but somehow the AI civs are holding their own better. For a long time when the game came out, I had to play on Emperor to get enough resistance to make it compelling. Now I am playing down a level on King, and getting better resistance. Also, and this may just be my luck or my choice of civs, I am not starting totally hemmed in. As a method of creating competition, I find that that interferes with my enjoyment of the game more than a cheating AI does. (although I guess the kind of cheating matters)

2727

The patch notes had quite a few AI adjustments and fixes, didn’t that help at all? I haven’t had time to jump in thanks to Battle Brothers and Dark Souls 3 DLC.

2728

I don’t know, honestly. Given how much work the AI needs and their track record going back to the previous title, I’m… skeptical. I don’t really have any confidence in that department, so I’m hoping the modders get access to the AI code some day and make it competent, like they eventually did with Civ5.

Would love to hear about it if the AI is significantly improved, though!

2729

If I hear about major AI improvements, I’ll come back to this and see if it’s worth playing again.

That’s what it will take to get me to buy any Firaxis game ever again. Civ 6 was the last straw.