On Unicorns in your backyard, Korea and some other thing.

So you may have noticed a patch and some new DLC came out last week.  Well, I’m finally going to mention a few things about them. 😉

You can find the patch notes here. There’s a few subtle items in there, and a few rather obvious ones.

General Patch notes

Other than the usual UI fixes, this one seems a little odd:

• Unhappiness is now broken down between regular population and population from puppet cities.

I’m guessing that they’re planning a future change to manage puppets vs. annexed vs. own cities.  It’s the only reason to want to split out the puppet population unhappiness, given that it’s the same as per a normal city right now.

Finally, barbs can be killed with ranged units…

• Killing Barbarians inside a City State’s borders with a ranged unit now correctly rewards the player with influence.

Well, they tried.  The following still happens, though it’s a bit of a rarity now.  I still see GGs ‘taking the hill’ on the front line, rather than finding the best unit to ‘cover’ a cluster.  (hint.. just gave you a simple algorithm to use!!)

• Found and corrected a likely cause of having the AI send Great Generals out unescorted to “defend” tiles.
• If attacking over land, add extra emphasis to nearby targets (reduce the chance that the AI will bypass closest cities).

Then there’s the usual ubiquitous statement, but hopefully it meant something.

• Multiple minor bug fixes.

Balance changes

• Pyramids now grant 2 free workers when built instead of 1.

This one seemed a little odd.  The Pyramids got a bad rap on the forums, but realistically, it was a decent wonder.  If you didn’t go Liberty, then this was a simple way to get a ‘policy equivalent’ wonder.  It also comes with a nice GE point that, when combined with another one, easily kicks out a GE in time for the usual Notre Dame or Porcelain Tower pushes.  Two workers free does make it better than a policy, but it seems a little over done.  We’ll have to build it a few times to see if it competes now.

• Brandenburg Gate now gives 15 XP to units built in the city in addition to the Great General.

This one is a definite change for the better.  The Free GG was ‘ok’ but it wasn’t special, given that almost every other wonder was clearly better.  This actually lets you start with 60XP on new units, at a time that it’s useful.  (as opposed to the end of Autocracy)  This is a definite boost to the Russians (Cossacks), Germans (Panzer), Americans (B17) and a minor boost to the Japanese (Zero) and Danes (Ski Infantry).  In theory you could go here before Navigation, but that seems like a bad plan.  Otherwise, this will be a nice wonder now if you’re needing highly experienced units right now.  Oh, and you can still burn the GG for a golden age.

• Taj Mahal now gives 4 Happiness in addition to a Golden Age.

Ah yes, the ‘adding happiness to random wonders’ concept strikes again.  Ok, the Taj was a solid free Golden Age before, but had little to give you after that.  This really means the Persians are getting better, by the simple addition of a few more happiness to their favoured wonders.

• Seaport now gives an additional gold on sea resources and increases naval unit production by 15%.
• Harbor no longer increases naval production by 15%
• Trade Unions now reduce road/railroad maintenance by 33% (up from 20%) and adds 1 gold to Harbors and Seaports.

Ah yes, the usual “shifting things around and hoping the forums stop complaining about your decisions” style of changes. Many people were rather upset about the Seaport after the last patch.  It lost one hammer/sea resource AND went up in hammer costs.  So this change was expected, as it became the ‘forum decided’ change.  Of course, the hammer cost is still too much (by about 50-70 hammers), given the benefits, so that’s the next change, right?  😉

• Aristocracy now gives 1 happiness per 10 citizens in a city in addition to 15% production towards wonders.
• Landed Elite now gives 2 food and 10% growth in the capital (stacks with Tradition Finisher).

Another forum favoured change.  No one liked the change to Landed Elite, as it was, well, useless in most games.  Amusingly, it gave a little less than meritocracy, but didn’t need a trade route, so could be considered better.  But since it was surrounded by other ‘not so great’ policies, Liberty became the sole favourite starting Social Policy tree (aside from OCC or some culture games) and Tradition was never looked at again, given that it now had to compete as a ‘2nd’ tree, rather than the starting tree.

So now Aristocracy, which can no longer be stated to be nerfed from existence now, gets the ‘old’ (one patch is still ‘old’) Landed Elite, and the ‘old’ Landed Elite comes back; but only for the capital.  So now Tradition is a really nice tree for OCC or culture games.  It’s meant for the long game approach and should be used as such.  Sure, Liberty gets you up faster, and that’s big, but it fizzles out as turns go by.  Tradition also works with Liberty or Honour becoming a 2nd or 3rd tree.  It’s an ‘ok’ change, though only when you don’t want a domination, science or diplomatic victory.  Thankfully, you make the culture or OCC decision before you start. 🙂

• Balance tweaks to New World scenario.

As per this one, I haven’t gotten into it very much to make any assertions.  I’ve commented upon the scenarios before, and how they’re changed with the patches.  This was one of the scenarios that was very susceptible to any patch changes.  They may have made some changes to prevent that again, but I’ll have to see.

Unicorns in the backyard

• Multiple out of sync causes found and fixed.
• Add an Invite button on the Staging Room screen for the host.
• Add a network message when force-quitting the game. Should eliminate the tedious wait for a network timeout when a player quits like this.
• Host can now change the game set-up options in the lobby (except DLC) after a group has been gathered.
• Player can now manually save a game while in multiplayer.
• Player can now “un-end” their turn in multiplayer. This includes performing any new actions, like giving a unit a new order, opening a city screen, or clicking on the “Please Wait” button after previously ending their turn.
• Ping times now displayed in the Player List UI (click the player list to expand, exposing the ping times, and then click again to hide them).
• Hot-Seat: City State screens now update properly when switching players.

So I have to wonder if Dennis is kicking himself for that statement.  I know I could have found a dozen or more network and MP game people within the FIVE years it took for MP to be worked upon.  Yes, it’s five years.  They worked on this game for four years (concept to release) and then another one after release.

But maybe Firaxis finally found their unicorn.  More likely, the team knew they could learn the appropriate skills and get the job done.  Either way, it’s a good thing that almost a year after release on a game that MUST live on for a number of years in the MP space before being dropped, they finally managed to correct some initial errors. (see all previous civs and those who are still playing them)

Having an ‘end turn’ prevent you from doing anything was a really bad idea.  It wasn’t even done in any previous iteration of the game, so I’m not sure why they even thought it was a good change.  Otherwise, there’s a number of MP player ‘hate you’ issues that finally got some attention.  That’s nice, but please poach more unicorns and get MP up and running EFFICIENTLY.    Oh, and never fold to the forum requests for animations in MP.  That just leads to more issues, and I’m not sure you’re ready to handle them yet.

Korea DLC

Ok, on to the DLC.  I’ve made my thoughts know on this one a few times in the forums, so I won’t beat the unicorn again here.

It’s a good civ to pick up if you want to play the specialist and settled Great Person game.  Which is great in an OCC or culture game.  They definitely love Tradition and finishing other social policies and wonders that boost ‘specialist’ output.  They’re best in a culture game as their core bonus helps that victory condition the most.  Otherwise, they’ll do ok in other conditions.

The Hwatch’a is mighty.  It’s a nice addition to the game, though I would have preferred it to replace the crossbow instead of the trebuchet.  But with no Iron requirement, you can make these beasts any time and anywhere.

The turtleship, on the other hand, was a bit of a letdown.  One tech more and you’ll have a better unit, hands down.  Sure it fits the ‘tech and turtle’ world view of the Korea they wanted to show.  But in view of other civs and map types, it’s a little less impressive.  Definitely go for the targeting approach since you’ll want to use these ships to defend against other ships, rather than for bombardment.

the DLC scenario (as seen on youtube!) is good for a few hours of fun.  With four different civs, you have to approach the scenario from different perspectives and styles.  Which makes a good lesson on combat and happiness.

There’s also three new wonders added to the main game.  You’d have to pay for them, but the best approach is to get Korea and happen to tack on a little more for the wonders.

I’ve tried out the wonder scenario, and it seems to be a good one.  If you like marathon speed games.

The actual addition of the three wonders to the core game is a bit off though.  The AI seems to love building them, which just gives you more chances at getting the normal wonders.  This ends up with you being able to nab the Great Library more often than not now.

Some other thing

Oh, and if you have the time, go help out with the CFC War Academy.  The community is building a very large offering of strategies and explanations of the game.  It’s going to be a great repository of knowledge once it’s up and running.  So the more the merrier for contributing to it.

edit: go to the Group Memberships page and join the ‘Civ5 War Academy Contributors’ group, then one of the mods will approve you and you can start contributing.