George Sand Beta

Feedback on the George Sands update after approximately 100 hours of testing. Every test has been done on normal game speed, Humankind difficulty, 10 players, huge random map with 30-40% landmass. Most playthroughs are with no mods installed, some are with the ENDLESS official mod.

• Added new stackable Neolithic Legacy Traits, one for each Era Star. 

  • While this at first felt like a great addition, it has turned out to be the opposite. When playing against the AI the Player gets a huge advantage.
    Growth star: choose between +1 food or +1 money per population in a city or outpost.
    Knowledge star: choose between +1 industry or +1 science per population in city or outpost
    Hunter star: Choose between +1 combat strength on a unit or +1 Influence per population on a city or outpost.
    
    First of all, the AI tends to go from the Neolithic to the ancient era as soon as they have 1 star. In one multi-player game, I tested what they shift with. It comes out that 6 of 9 have chosen +1 food and 3 of 9 have chosen +1 industry. Zero AIs had more than one star. When I play I can have all 3 stars around turn 9-14, this gives me a major advantage over the AI. Also, the bonuses are not “balanced”. When choosing between +1 food or +1 money, this should be an easy choice. As these bonuses both apply to cities and outposts alike, then the money is way more powerful than food (the same is true for the +1 science/+1 influence). Now by choosing this, my outposts suddenly contribute to my empire. These changes have made things a lot easier on the Humankind level, I had only one choice IF I got all my knowledge stars. Lastly, the +1 influence from Hunter Star vastly overshines all the other bonuses. With this bonus, I can still have a good influence gain even when my cities are strained in stability or worse
    
    Suggestions to balancing.
    Go back to one choice BUT only if you have all 3 stars. Still being able to choose between all 6 options
    Or
    Growth star: +1 food or industry on capital
    Knowledge star: +1 money or science on capital
    Hunter star: +1 influence or +25 experience in creating units in the capital.
    I even suggest that the influence is a +1 faith instead

• Added a random AI Personas selection in the lobby slots when starting a new game based on your last world Difficulty Level. 

  • The change that (probably) nobody asked for. I usually set up my AI’s with certain strengths like +20% science, industry or +30% fame. If I want it random then I press the random button. Please keep it so that the game remembers my earlier choices.

• Added the possibility to buy more things with Influence in Outposts such as Train Stations and Airports. 

  • I like this one. Now I can use my outpost for something useful

• Added an option to use non-exclusive Cultures during a game, meaning no more Culture rush. 

  • Very good addition to multiplayer, BUT also gives us the possibility to exclude certain cultures or have just the amount of cultures as there are players.
    The culture rush is one of Humankinds USPs and something you can win or lose the game on. There's something special in considering if I have to wait 3 turns to get my last star or shift now before someone else takes the culture I want.

• Reworked the way Public Ceremonies work to make them more interesting by adding a big resource bonus. 

  • Love the idea, but I don't like that the resource cost increases every time I have used the ceremony. I suggest that this increase is removed, and maybe a cooldown should be added.

• Added adjacency bonus on Holy Sites.

  • Like this one, it is a matter of playstyle whether one wants to use it or not. 

• Added a setting option to set the density of Natural Wonders on the map

  • When on abundant game tend to crash on when generating a new map. Also, natural wonders seem to be placed in clusters, making them more spread out. Possibly give us an option to choose how many natural wonders we want in the game. Also, the possibility to rule some out. (Whakaari Volcano comes to mind here)

• Added a setting option to change the map ratio. 

  • I would rather have an option for a super huge map or something. Different ratios don't feel like they add anything to the game

• Balanced the Transcendence Legacy Trait to make them more interesting by adding an Affinity bonus in addition to the existing Fame bonus. 

  • No this is not a balance, it breaks the game. The transcendence legacy was VERY strong before these changes, now it is completely overpowered depending on which affinity you have. To put it simply why would I ever want to choose to do anything but transcend if I play the Babylonians? Their EQ is one of the best through all eras, so why not keep it that culture just because of that? I get a +5% science bonus, which is a lot taken in comparison to the French +10% science LT. This game is won on Fame, so anything that boosts Fame is powerful. Also, the bonuses for the different affinities are ridiculously unbalanced, the diplomatic bonus compared to builder or science is way underpowered. (and don’t even get me started on how Diplomatic is a useless affinity) 

• Culture balance 

  • A lot have been changed some have been forgotten. Aesthete's action “cultural blitz” is still way too overpowered. For 30 money is not unseen to have between 270-580 influence in one go(ancient era). This means that by turn 20 the player can usually have 3 cities and a wonder claimed, by turn 30 they will probably have a 4th city running. No need to say that cities are your major factor in getting Fame.

  • Diplomatic affinity. Need a major rework. DMZ is way too underpowered compared to other affinity actions. Getting Diplomat stars is a pain on a huge map

  • Changes to Zhou EQ: Good but should be changed to something like +3 science and +2 influence near mountains

  • Nazca is forgotten: They need more to their LT than double up on natural wonders, even on abundant wonders it is not worth taking. EU and EQ are not making up for like you see with the Romans. Also with the option to completely remove natural wonders, that brings this LT totally out of context.

  • Polynesians: LT gets more or less obsolete when 3- 3-masted sails are researched, also their EQ and EU lacking behind.

  • Achaemenid Persians: LT +2 City cap is very strong, should be reduced to +1 City cap (which is still strong)

  • Bulgarians: LT is hard to get, and not worth it compared to just winning. EQ changes is nice though.

Thank you for your time if you have read all I have written. There's still more, but that will be at another time. Fame collecting seems to have changed in the Bonny patch, and it is now hard to catch up on a player that is in the lead.

Over the holidays, I had the chance to play a few games with the Sand beta. I generally play long/slow games on large-ish maps, so it usually takes me several days to finish a game. Started on Metropolis and have been slowly cranking up the difficulty - just now getting started on an Empire game.

re Neolithic Legacy Trait overhaul, I really like the increased incentive in grabbing all the era stars and how it ramps up the tension between grabbing that ideal Ancient Era culture vs. waiting and getting a 2x or 3x Legacy Trait. But as already pointed out, the AI desperately needs to give collecting these stars/traits more weight as I frequently steamrolled my continental neighbors in the Classical or even Ancient Era. They FEEL a bit too powerful, but I wonder if some of that is just because the AI isn't pursuing them at all.

I really like the non-exclusive cultures option. More for experimenting and testing purposes than for "real" games. 

I confess, I rarely used Public Ceremonies (PCs) before - usually it was when I could see that a city was (or would soon be) struggling with food, stability, etc. Or occasionally the military one if I had a city dedicated to pumping out armies. The new versions *did* have me using them more often - and often not the PCs I used to favor. I found myself usually using the updated versions to help reach an Era Star goal or "rush" a Wonder. I am actually in favor of keeping some kind of increasing use cost, but maybe that is just my naivete showing itself.  

dragora wrote:

 Ceremonies should always be viable options for spending the Industry, it increases the strategic depth.

Do they? I can see an ever-increasing cost eventually eliminating any given PC as a viable option if used too often - leaving you with fewer tools in your city's toolchest. But I feel like this would actually *enhance* the strategic depth of the game as they effectively are a limited resource that you have to discern when to use. I guess my fear would be that without some type of cost bump or other disincentive, they'd just be another thing to mindlessly add to the build queue every 20-ish turns. If the current cost increase is too onerous, would a cost "reset" at the start of each Era be a good compromise? I guess I don't have enough experience with fast-paced games or PCs to know how often you'd be using them per Era. Splitdome recommended implementing a cooldown.

As far as the Transcendence mechanic, I actually suggested similar changes in the last feedback survey they sent. So no complaints here. :) So far, I've only Transcended one era, but that's more often than I had before.

And yes, the Diplomatic Affinity still needs some tinkering if not big changes. Diplomat stars are usually the hardest to gain, especially if not a Diplomatic Civ (and sometimes even then). I'm not even sure if it's possible for Diplomat stars to 'spill over' like the other categories do if you're extremely efficient in a given era - I've just never collected that much leverage in a single era. I wish there were more options for more passive leverage gain. e.g., having a diplomat/spy unit in an opponent's embassy generates +1 leverage per turn or a Public Ceremony that allowed a city to collect leverage based on foreign trade routes passing through it. Civics that enhanced leverage collection might be helpful as well. e.g., unlock a Justice-oriented civic that allows you to choose between an option that adds an extra +5 leverage when collecting a leverage drop or an option that adds an additional fame multiplier to Diplomat stars (like Cultural Repect does with Influence). As for the Diplomatic Affinity itself, a slight tweaking of the DMZ would be welcome - I find it fairly effective at leverage collection, but wish it was better at triggering actual trespassing debuffs with health damage. It is one of very few active affinity actions that you can have in use EVERY turn.

On a tangential note, the Han's new science boost from Paper turned them into (old) Zhou 2.0 for my first game. I had an ideal setup with lots of mountainous, river-filled territories and was able to build ~15 Paper Mills - each one generating +30 science by the time I advanced to the Medieval Era.

glenjen75 wrote:

As far as the Transcendence mechanic, I actually suggested similar changes in the last feedback survey they sent. So no complaints here. :) So far, I've only Transcended one era, but that's more often than I had before

The new way of Transcendence legacy is presented as 

• Balanced the Transcendence Legacy Trait to make them more interesting by adding an Affinity bonus in addition to the existing Fame bonus. 

My point is that the new stuff they added is not a "balance". When playing a single-player game it does not matter, that much because I tend to accumulate more Fame than the computer anyway. On the other hand when playing in a multiplayer game against real persons of "equal" strength then does it make a huge difference!

Usually, a player gets between 3000-5000 fame in an era. All three stars of one type are equal to 600 fame. Now it is not unusual to get 7 times 3 stars per era, and that means 420 bonus fame per era. So if you transcend once the ancient to classical that's between 1500-2500 bonus Fame.

I like to meet with 3-4 of my friends and play the game, and we are on equal levels of game experience. Everybody knows that a large-scale war between two players will make it easy for a 3rd part to conquer them both when the war is over, so wars a usually held to skirmishes until Contempoary era. Now the problem is that it is hard to get +1500 Fame from deeds, wonders, and other stuff. This was balanced by that the Trancendacy LT was only +10% Fame gain, and you was missing out on everything else.

With the rework, the strong affinities like Science, Builder, and Agarian become even stronger, and the very weak affinity Diplomatic gets a laugh and a half.

dragora wrote:

• Culture balance 

  • A lot have been changed some have been forgotten. Aesthete's action “cultural blitz” is still way too overpowered. For 30 money is not unseen to have between 270-580 influence in one go(ancient era). This means that by turn 20 the player can usually have 3 cities and a wonder claimed, by turn 30 they will probably have a 4th city running. No need to say that cities are your major factor in getting Fame.

Another thing that is extremely map size dependent. On the Medium map with max amount of players there is no space to found a 3rd city, you generally have 1 city with 4 Territories or 2 cities with 3 and 2 Territories each until you take a city from someone else. Cultural Blitz is only good for getting an access to a Wonder there.

This is the good thing about Humankind, the difficulty is not just in the "Difficulty"-slider it will also be manipulated by map size and players. With those settings you describe Medium Map (I assume that is what's called normal in the settings) max players 10? and blitz speed?
When I play with those settings and choose an Aesthete culture, then by turn 15 I have usually founded 4 cities and conquered a 5th. Being able to pump my influence with 390 points every 2nd round, makes it even possible for me to have a 6th city without worrying about losing influence.

Question:  I'm playing this update preview now, and while I believe Envoys usually have a base CS of 18, this one has a base of twice that....35.  In this same game, AI prowlers also have a much higher base CS than I would expect.  In this George Sand Beta, are existing units now gaining CS each era?

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Russian LT: add -25% outpost attachment cost

It doesn't work, in game it doesn't show this bonus