Effects of 1.21f changes?

[Aeson]

* Added "Abandon City" to right-click menu.

This is the change that jumped out at me. I wonder if the "Abandon City" option forms a Settler, or if the city just disappears? If you get a Settler, city building will become the most efficient way to clear Jungle...

* Draft anger and hurrying unhappiness reduced to 20 turns.

Makes pop rushing more viable again. At least until the other pop rushing change...

* Fixed bug with how shields were calculated for population hurrying. The first citizen is now worth 20 shields instead of 40 shields, just like all the other citizens.

Definitely the change they should have made in the first place. Makes Chariots even more attractive, and the Religious trait less so.

That they call it a "bug"...

[Arrian]

Hmm, I also noticed that "abandon city" button. My guess is you get the # of workers you'd get if you had razed a city of that size... but it's just that, a guess.

I think I like the poprush changes. Religious is still a great trait, you just have to wait 10 turns before poprushing a temple now... and, well, a new city often needs 10 turns to hit size 2. So I think it works out fine for me.

How about the corruption changes (courthouses/police stations/wltkd)? I don't think it will have a major effect, in that it seems the optimal number of cities is really the big factor by the time you're in a democracy with ch's and ps's everywhere. I like it, though. I was ok with corruption as it was, so a relatively minor change is fine by me.

How about the vague notation about changing AI tech trading? I wonder what that boils down to. That should effect strategy.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Tech trading definitely could be the big one. They weren't very clear on if it had changed at all in the default settings, or just added an option to change it. Hopefully it is back to near 1.16f levels by default.

[Harovan]

I think the same. There's a lot of fine-tuning in the patch, with techtrading, corruption etc., and we will only know what and how much has changed, when we play it. I will finish my GOTM6 today (and tomorrow if needed) and start a new huge 1.21f game on Friday. I think, Sunday evening I will know more.

[Dominae]

A few comments:

1. As I mentioned in my post on the General forum, the disband city option might change the early land grab. With a few spare Settlers (I know, who has any of those in the early game!) you could discourage the AI from settling certain areas by putting your own cities there, wait a bit for them to back off, then uproot your city and place it wherever you want to. I think this will be very important on "tight" maps.

2. Will the increased effect of We Love the * Day mean that it will be strategically important to try and make your cities celebrate? I think this would be cool, because it would put a greater focus on Luxuries and Luxury resources (Arrian would be pleased!).

3. I agree that the AI tech trading change/fix/whatever is very vague. I hope it means that doing your own research on Emperor and Deity is actually viable. On a related note, tech devaluation hasn't been changed (meaning it's up to the AI to trade tech "fairly").


Dominae

[dunk]

I can't wait to use that Corruption adjuster in the editor. Yay, we'll be able to set it ourselves. WOO HOO!

[Arrian]

Clearly, the map size changes will effect strategy, in that certain strategies work better on certain size maps. Since "large" is now much closer to "standard" and "huge" is the old "large," I would say Expanionist and Industrious are weakened a bit. Still, 160x160 is a really big map, so those traits will remain strong on huge maps.

No tweak to "commercial" in the changes. I guess they're ok with it being largely useless.

[Herr David]

* Editor: Added new unit abilities to allow bombarding to be
lethal against land and/or sea units.
* Added HOME and END keyboard support to scrollbars.
* Editor: Added a corruption slider to difficulty level page.
It defaults to 100% for all difficulty levels.
* Added "Abandon City" to right-click menu.
* Compressed saved games.

The little things that make the most sense :-)
I wonder why it took them so long to figure out...

[lockstep]

Fixed bug involving extra movement costs if the unit can't advance after combat.

This should make blitz units and especially armies more valuable.

E.g. an army loaded with 3 cavalry units should now always be able to attack 3 times per turn (if it has enough hitpoints left after the first two attacks).

[Dominae]

This is speculation (and so doesn't belong on a strategy a thread...), but I don't think you'll get anything back when using the "right-click to disband" city option. It's too obviously exploitable. Also, the city may have to have a pop of 1 (because, as I think chiefpaco mentioned, "conquer and disband" would always be better than "raze"). Basically, disbanding a city will be just like disbanding any other unit, except there will be no Shield bonus (since it couldn't be used anywhere).

Just a couple of thoughts I had during my nap this afternoon.



Dominae

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, I think the Restart Players feature will make the game certainly more enjoyable for me personally. I always found the end of the game rather lonely when more than half of the old faces were cleared off the map. The plus side is now I can keep those old faces around as little one or two-city vassal states that will never threaten me ever. Plus, in the Diplomatic Victory game, you can make all those mini-civs your buddies and use their votes to sway victory in your direction... I mean, how can you lose? If you give them Gunpowder while you're building the Space Ship, who cares really? But THEY will love you for it!

As for this new bombard kill feature, I think several of the immediate consequences will be a dramatic reduction of the effectiveness of the navy. The navy in Civ3 has been almost invaluable as opposed to Civ2 where you could go a whole game without building a single military ship. The AI has shown to be completely incompetent when it comes to effective use of artillery, BUT they DO bombard enemy ships from the shore. They also like to hit enemy armies outside their cities, so that my tilt things in the AI's favor, which is always good from a military stand point. I don't know whether this "killer bombard" feature applies to artillery fortified in a city that fires on an attacker before the attacker engages a defensive unit. If so, then it only increases the AI's ability to fight back.

On the other hand... this feature will also allow the player to potentially kill most defenders with artillery and bombers without ever jeopardizing their troops, so it may swing things back in the other direction then and give the player a huge advantage.

[Coracle]

Nobody asked for a "Bombard Kill" for all units - ONLY for warships.

If Firaxis is allowing that for even infantry units they got it wrong.

A little anti-aircraft for ships would be nice, too.

[romelus]

who said no one asked? i would like to see more effective bombardment period. now artillery and air units are to be feared instead of being treated as annoyances, like they are supposed to.

now if the AI learns to bomb cities instead of roads...

[Harovan]

Although the ability to kill with bombarding is included now, it's still an option that can be turned on and off. I guess it will be disabled by default, what means I won't use it anyway.

[vulture]

corruption chanegs

Arrian wrote:

How about the corruption changes (courthouses/police stations/wltkd)? I don't think it will have a major effect, in that it seems the optimal number of cities is really the big factor by the time you're in a democracy with ch's and ps's everywhere. I like it, though. I was ok with corruption as it was, so a relatively minor change is fine by me.

Perhaps the courthouse / police station / WLTKD bonus also has some effect on the corruption due to number of cities. Not that we'll know until we get the patch (and Alexman does his funky stuff again...). Whatever changes they made, the standard game will surely still have 95% corrupt cities if you build to many of them - that after all is the way they chose to try and minimise the 'having more cities is always better' effect. And since some cities will be maximally corrupt no matter what you do (aside from using the editor...), some people will continue to complain.

I agree with Arrian though. Once you know what to expect from corruption, it's not really annoying. You just try and find strategies that work within this corruption model.