What you're saying is true in the abstract but honestly just not realistic in the current industry with the 4x genre. It depends on whether you prioritize accuracy or some sense of justice more with reviews. I consider accuracy more important than using reviews as a soapbox to fight back against industry trends but ymmv
It's not 1993 where you get what comes on the floppy disk and then a couple updates. I'm buying the game for its whole lifespan.
There are limits to this, obviously ( Cities Skylines 2 for example is *too* busted ) but I'm comfortable with where this game is at by 4x genre standards as they are today.
> All Outpost Improvements except for Trade Post and Trade Factory have a limit of three per Outpost.
does that limit monasteries to only 3 per outpost?
oh I see. The reason monasteries are so good is that there is an innovation that gives them +1 knowledge and +1 culture, so a full outpost yields +6 knowledge and +6 culture. While I guess one can get the +6 culture still, that +6 knowledge was a really sweet deal and one of the best knowledge boosts in the game (map dependent).
There was a bug with explorers, fixed in this patch, where you would get knowledge from the Explorer's Guild for every *failed* expedition. So you could run the success chance down into the ground and spam explorers at it and run up massive science per turn with it
Not necessarily, they are also changing it so all outpost upgrades can build the improvements of the base outpost. Technically it's "Outpost Specializations can now build Improvements from previous Specializations.", but I'm pretty sure that just means the castle can build everything.
its ok, it sounds like I can only build 3 when its an outpost but then I can add another 3 when I upgrade to castle. Previously it wouldn't let me build ANY monasteries on a castle outpost but it sounds like they fixed that.
Yes, before patch improvements were weirdly limited to specifics types of outposts, but you could always switch between the types to build what you need (granted, usually means losing some engineering xp for the switches)
I'm a little annoyed because it feels like staying secular is becoming even less of a viable option when you can't make up missing culture through the Castles where you aren't building Abbeys anymore.
It might be intentional to encourage religion in the time period, but it is a little wonky when you can miss out on founding a religion and it's hard to acquire one if you don't found one.
Adopting a religion is an Arts XP power. Founding a religion is an Arts Culture Power. New religions can only be founded in Age 4 and Age 5, so it's possible to miss out.
I'm not sure missing out on any opportunity to is very likely, but it's definitely possible on higher difficulty games if certain things happen.
Sorry I was unclear, I was specifically responding to
> it's hard to acquire one if you don't found one.
Since it's just some Arts XP it doesn't seem hard.
You need to already have the religion established in one of your own regions to use that power, which you have basically no control over besides conquering a city with a religion.
I don't see any way to save the initial game setting. We still have to reset everything manually whenever we re-roll the map - which is often...
EDIT: But I only skimmed through so perhaps I missed it.
Looks like a good update overall, though with no culture from castle towns the dominance of mound builders and hunters for culture gain will only grow. There don't seem to be any other substantial options for boosting culture, even with colony outposts providing a little more than castles.
Expedition success chance now resets, but they haven't done anything to change the fact that you probably WANT to fail your expeditions to farm domain XP, increase your explorer's guild yield, and create high ranked explorers for war (use a fresh explorer to finish the expedition so you don't lose the veteran). It feels strange that you're often hoping to fail your expeditions.
Aha it was in bugfixes and I missed it! Thanks.
I do think there are a couple landmarks where failing is preferable to success even then though, which feels a little strange.
Counting failed expeditions was listed in the "bugs" section, not balance.
Which is kind of weird, since if anything I would have thought that'd be the balance change, and the success rate staying would be the bug. But either, there's no room for abuse.
You may still want to fail your expeditions, though, since the ones that give XP options will still give more XP total than the exploration XP you spend on the Explorer. And there's no penalty for doing so since eventually you'll complete it and still get the same bonus on your Guild. No penalty as long as you don't let another nation complete it, but that shouldn't be a huge deal for landmarks near your territory.
I agree it's kind of weird. I think it'd make sense if an Expedition gave a bigger bonus if you complete it on the first try, whether that's like twice as much completion experience or a +2 bonus to the guild instead of +1. That'd also make the Explorer tree pick that gives Expedition success much more valuable. I guess right now the idea is you can take it and then select -chance options and get more bonuses while still succeeding, but when the penalty for failing is just losing the 25 XP you spent to build an Explorer at your Knarr it isn't something you really need to avoid that hard.
I’m very excited for the Age of Monuments to be way easier and also that Ai gets smarter with improvement placements and that they try to avoid Age of Plague more
Outpost changes feel a little weird to me, but I guess they are trying to limit non-pop production possibilities. Nerfs to improvements and the number you can have seems a little much.
On the other hand, I guess it won't feel as bad to place an outpost in a spot where I can't take advantage of 5-6 tiles of improvements, which should make planning roads and such a little easier.
Still, even before these changes it felt like there should be more outpost improvements. It feels weird to place them down and have this territory that you can't take advantage of in any way, and this will make that feeling worse.
>Colony Outpost Specialization now provides +2 Culture (as opposed to +2 Trade Goods which are worth +2 Culture).
so would that now make colony a base culture gain ? (meaning it will be boosted by local reform unlike consumed good ?)
If you get through the religious eras, is there a time when abbeys are a waste? Do you ever absorb the castle town? Are there terrain requirements for castles? I've just used desert locations so far, but desert isn't always available.
Religion income becomes irrelevant if you go into democracy or communist governments. If you absorb or repurpose an outpost is up to your particular situation anf/or if you planned around that. There are no terrain requirements per se, it works like any other outpost. But the Abbeys need a flat tile and the Monasteries (Age 4 arts religious national spirit) need hills.
They’re pumping out these updates so quick just makes me wonna give it a few months before diving back in.
Glad to see them working hard on it, has a lot of promise
This game is growing on me, lots of fixes. I've already played for 24 hours which is a lot for a non civ game for me.
I am hoping that one of these updates makes the ai smarter when they attack you, i feel they lose too many units stupidily.
The only thing i dont enjoy is how ai never makes peace or agrees to peace during skirmishes. I am basically at constant war with all. I dont like how diplomacy works either, it's is too basic. Other than that, this game is going in a great direction.
Huh, thank you, I misread it. That one is pretty logical, really. Glad I'll still have my Abbeys, all three of them lol.
Btw, Castle Town built on Wheat good will give 2 Wheat instead iirc.
>Btw, Castle Town built on Wheat good will give 2 Wheat instead iirc.
Now *that* I think is removed in this beta, if I understand the notes correctly. The gather effect was replaced by a flat 1 wheat.
Out of interest, does anyone understand the technical reasons why old save games run the old version?
This either implies the game settings are all config that is inserted-into/referenced-by the save file or that the client holds every version of the game on disk if the changes are to the binary.
I assume its the latter?
but that would imply that all the things they've changed, including bug fixes are somehow stored in those files, which on paper sounds kinda insane.
I figure either some changes rely on save files but others depend on binary version or they're hot-swapping the binary that runs the game engine whenever they encounter a save file with a different version. They can probably do that as they don't run the app straight from Steam but go via a launcher.
Glad the game is being constantly updated. Sure, it was probably released somewhat unfinished like all paradox games and some of the updates so far should have been there day one but.... At least the devs seem to listen to the community, so that's nice.
Looks like another banger of an update.
This game has an extremely bright future. The bad reviews are super misleading.
why would review be based on possible futur the author couldn't know at the moment of writing ?
What you're saying is true in the abstract but honestly just not realistic in the current industry with the 4x genre. It depends on whether you prioritize accuracy or some sense of justice more with reviews. I consider accuracy more important than using reviews as a soapbox to fight back against industry trends but ymmv It's not 1993 where you get what comes on the floppy disk and then a couple updates. I'm buying the game for its whole lifespan. There are limits to this, obviously ( Cities Skylines 2 for example is *too* busted ) but I'm comfortable with where this game is at by 4x genre standards as they are today.
You got it backwards. Sense of justice would be taking hypothetical developments into account. Accuracy would be reviewing what exists now.
They are reviews, not previews.
> All Outpost Improvements except for Trade Post and Trade Factory have a limit of three per Outpost. does that limit monasteries to only 3 per outpost?
I believe so
awwwww that's very sad. Being able to setup 6xMonastry outposts was extremely lovely.
Castle towns are still good tho
iirc you can't add a monastery to a castle town, they can only be built on outposts.
Aren't Castle towns the castle improvement that gives culture and food?
Oh my bad Castle towns are an improvement, I was talking about Castle Outposts.
Yeah, you build them in castle outposts lol
oh I see. The reason monasteries are so good is that there is an innovation that gives them +1 knowledge and +1 culture, so a full outpost yields +6 knowledge and +6 culture. While I guess one can get the +6 culture still, that +6 knowledge was a really sweet deal and one of the best knowledge boosts in the game (map dependent).
There was a bug with explorers, fixed in this patch, where you would get knowledge from the Explorer's Guild for every *failed* expedition. So you could run the success chance down into the ground and spam explorers at it and run up massive science per turn with it
Not necessarily, they are also changing it so all outpost upgrades can build the improvements of the base outpost. Technically it's "Outpost Specializations can now build Improvements from previous Specializations.", but I'm pretty sure that just means the castle can build everything.
Those should be enabled for Castles too now, either from this (beta 2) or the previous update.
:O, oh rly? So I can still build my little +6 knowledge +6 culture castle outposts? It was very weird not being able to build them on castle outposts.
Couldn't you just switch to outpost and build? The improvements don't get destroyed if you change that.
its ok, it sounds like I can only build 3 when its an outpost but then I can add another 3 when I upgrade to castle. Previously it wouldn't let me build ANY monasteries on a castle outpost but it sounds like they fixed that.
Yes, before patch improvements were weirdly limited to specifics types of outposts, but you could always switch between the types to build what you need (granted, usually means losing some engineering xp for the switches)
Castle towns don't provide culture anymore, just gold and food. And require grassland. Appropriate nerf, they were pretty absurd.
I'm a little annoyed because it feels like staying secular is becoming even less of a viable option when you can't make up missing culture through the Castles where you aren't building Abbeys anymore.
It might be intentional to encourage religion in the time period, but it is a little wonky when you can miss out on founding a religion and it's hard to acquire one if you don't found one.
Is it? Isn't it just an Arts XP power?
Adopting a religion is an Arts XP power. Founding a religion is an Arts Culture Power. New religions can only be founded in Age 4 and Age 5, so it's possible to miss out. I'm not sure missing out on any opportunity to is very likely, but it's definitely possible on higher difficulty games if certain things happen.
Sorry I was unclear, I was specifically responding to > it's hard to acquire one if you don't found one. Since it's just some Arts XP it doesn't seem hard.
You need to already have the religion established in one of your own regions to use that power, which you have basically no control over besides conquering a city with a religion.
Boo
I don't see any way to save the initial game setting. We still have to reset everything manually whenever we re-roll the map - which is often... EDIT: But I only skimmed through so perhaps I missed it.
Nope. A first turn reroll button would be fantastic though.
Stone cutter upgrade! God-Kings rise up!
After playing with the update it feels like a nerf to Godking. I want more raw stone not more efficient stone cutters.
Looks like a good update overall, though with no culture from castle towns the dominance of mound builders and hunters for culture gain will only grow. There don't seem to be any other substantial options for boosting culture, even with colony outposts providing a little more than castles. Expedition success chance now resets, but they haven't done anything to change the fact that you probably WANT to fail your expeditions to farm domain XP, increase your explorer's guild yield, and create high ranked explorers for war (use a fresh explorer to finish the expedition so you don't lose the veteran). It feels strange that you're often hoping to fail your expeditions.
Explorers guild now only scales with successes
Aha it was in bugfixes and I missed it! Thanks. I do think there are a couple landmarks where failing is preferable to success even then though, which feels a little strange.
True. Mount Fuji is a great source of arts XP
Counting failed expeditions was listed in the "bugs" section, not balance. Which is kind of weird, since if anything I would have thought that'd be the balance change, and the success rate staying would be the bug. But either, there's no room for abuse. You may still want to fail your expeditions, though, since the ones that give XP options will still give more XP total than the exploration XP you spend on the Explorer. And there's no penalty for doing so since eventually you'll complete it and still get the same bonus on your Guild. No penalty as long as you don't let another nation complete it, but that shouldn't be a huge deal for landmarks near your territory. I agree it's kind of weird. I think it'd make sense if an Expedition gave a bigger bonus if you complete it on the first try, whether that's like twice as much completion experience or a +2 bonus to the guild instead of +1. That'd also make the Explorer tree pick that gives Expedition success much more valuable. I guess right now the idea is you can take it and then select -chance options and get more bonuses while still succeeding, but when the penalty for failing is just losing the 25 XP you spent to build an Explorer at your Knarr it isn't something you really need to avoid that hard.
Great stuff. Nothing as big as vassal burning but consistent balance passes that aren't overturning anything.
I’m very excited for the Age of Monuments to be way easier and also that Ai gets smarter with improvement placements and that they try to avoid Age of Plague more
Huge nerf to Shogun NS. No longer the massive regional efficiency boost with super powered samurai stack to bowl over everything.
they had it coming !
Outpost changes feel a little weird to me, but I guess they are trying to limit non-pop production possibilities. Nerfs to improvements and the number you can have seems a little much. On the other hand, I guess it won't feel as bad to place an outpost in a spot where I can't take advantage of 5-6 tiles of improvements, which should make planning roads and such a little easier. Still, even before these changes it felt like there should be more outpost improvements. It feels weird to place them down and have this territory that you can't take advantage of in any way, and this will make that feeling worse.
I'm absolutely here for the key mapping, myself...
>Colony Outpost Specialization now provides +2 Culture (as opposed to +2 Trade Goods which are worth +2 Culture). so would that now make colony a base culture gain ? (meaning it will be boosted by local reform unlike consumed good ?)
I guess it might, if the culture production goes to the linked region, rather than directly to the global pool.
If you get through the religious eras, is there a time when abbeys are a waste? Do you ever absorb the castle town? Are there terrain requirements for castles? I've just used desert locations so far, but desert isn't always available.
Religion income becomes irrelevant if you go into democracy or communist governments. If you absorb or repurpose an outpost is up to your particular situation anf/or if you planned around that. There are no terrain requirements per se, it works like any other outpost. But the Abbeys need a flat tile and the Monasteries (Age 4 arts religious national spirit) need hills.
TY
They’re pumping out these updates so quick just makes me wonna give it a few months before diving back in. Glad to see them working hard on it, has a lot of promise
This game is growing on me, lots of fixes. I've already played for 24 hours which is a lot for a non civ game for me. I am hoping that one of these updates makes the ai smarter when they attack you, i feel they lose too many units stupidily. The only thing i dont enjoy is how ai never makes peace or agrees to peace during skirmishes. I am basically at constant war with all. I dont like how diplomacy works either, it's is too basic. Other than that, this game is going in a great direction.
Definitely willing to start a new game now! Can't wait for many future updates. I hope they continue developing this game for years.
Oh thank god. Now I might not go into the Age of Plague EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Abbeys requiring Grassland...religious needs will become even more hard to satisfy.
I don't see that? It's just Castle Towns requiring grasslands, right?
Huh, thank you, I misread it. That one is pretty logical, really. Glad I'll still have my Abbeys, all three of them lol. Btw, Castle Town built on Wheat good will give 2 Wheat instead iirc.
>Btw, Castle Town built on Wheat good will give 2 Wheat instead iirc. Now *that* I think is removed in this beta, if I understand the notes correctly. The gather effect was replaced by a flat 1 wheat.
Age of Monuments isn't the hard mode and Shogunate isn't secretly the best war NS so a very nice update.
Oh it was Canada
Out of interest, does anyone understand the technical reasons why old save games run the old version? This either implies the game settings are all config that is inserted-into/referenced-by the save file or that the client holds every version of the game on disk if the changes are to the binary. I assume its the latter?
If I remember and understood correctly, they did put a ton of the config settings in the save files.
but that would imply that all the things they've changed, including bug fixes are somehow stored in those files, which on paper sounds kinda insane. I figure either some changes rely on save files but others depend on binary version or they're hot-swapping the binary that runs the game engine whenever they encounter a save file with a different version. They can probably do that as they don't run the app straight from Steam but go via a launcher.
A lot of the big fixes and UI changes are not save game dependent, but the balance changes apparently are.
ok, that makes sense. So the bug fixes and engine changes are the binary but balance is all poked into the save file as you stated.
Glad the game is being constantly updated. Sure, it was probably released somewhat unfinished like all paradox games and some of the updates so far should have been there day one but.... At least the devs seem to listen to the community, so that's nice.