well with this thread I can say that I wont be downloading the 1.04 patch.

no reason to take an incrediblely fun game and make it lame.


I just dont understand the trade good nerf. Why the hell was it needed?

It was needed because I could use tradegoods to beat
masochistic in my sleep. Seriously, it was no
challange, the game is actually fun again.

Look, there are two sides here.

Tradegoods are harder to build(for both you and the
AI), so in this respect your still on level ground.

Tradegoods are not worth as much in trade(for both you
and the AI), so if the AI beats you to a tradegoods
its pretty trivial to get it from him.

To make up for the great cost in building, the
effects have been increased.

The only real nerf is that you cant rush build a trade
good and then trade it to 7 civs for 30 techs(which is
what many were doing to beat masochistic)

Tradegoods are still an integrel part of the game,
using them to avoid having to research anything is
no longer an integrel part of the game, as it should
be.

The game is actually a bitch now on higher levels rather
then being a cake walk.

I don't mind this nerf, I never rely on trade goods to get my techs or money anyway. Perhaps they should be worth a bit more than a few hundred BC though. It seems strange the AI will spend ~40 turns building a trade good and then sell it for 200.

Even assuming that's true, where does the oxymoron not occur to you of having trade goods that are positively useless for trade? They cost way too much to build anymore for the benefit except for a very few of them. Much like your removal of the PQ bonuses to Galactic Understanding and Near Omnipotence, this was nothing more than an emasculation of something in the game with nothing given to counterbalance it. You have become very nerf happy with taking everything good away from many things in the game while leaving them obscenely expensive for no good reason than you don't want to take the time to actually balance things.

Well, imo, those should be called um.. 'some more wonders' or something then, not trade goods. LOL

imo, a trade good is something you make that you had to work harder to get, but the benefit (other than the one it gives), is that you can trade it to other civs.

Maybe they can make additional 'trade goods' in the expansion that are indeed trade goods, not tradable wonders. No one in their right mind would even bother:

1. Trading a good away to another civ to give them the hefty bonus, if you are getting jack squat out of the deal

or

2. Buy a trade good for so many credits, techs etc. that it simply isn't worth it.

Therefore, it fails to be a trade good at all. It is a new wonder of sorts. One that I suppose if you were incredibly desperate, you could trade to get it if you had to have it.

I don't disagree with the nerfing though, I could easily rush build trade goods, being the only one with most of the decent ones. I've not played the new version yet, been to busy.. but I have a feeling I won't be using that strat any longer.

fleabitfox

Some of us, experienced players, were not having any trouble with the game being too easy. The trade value is completely out of proportion with the cost and benefit of the item - why call them "trade goods" at all? Other ways to fix the problem include making them non-purchasable (though this makes more sense for wonders than trade goods) during construction, or massively scaling up the purchase cost the less complete they are (more than is already the case, I mean). A tech that costs umpteen turns and research points is now worth much more than the equivalent production value of a trade good. Set the trade goods back and increase the trade value of high-end techs. Early trade goods then help in the early game, and are less effective later in the game. This fits too because (say) a 40% increase in diplomacy isn't as big a deal when you are already at +175%.

Here's where I see this getting silly. As you adjust sliders away from 1/3:1/3:1/3, a certain amount of inefficiency seems to set in - my net might be +20 at balanced sliders, but -50 at 30/20/50 (I just made the values up). I'm already penalized with selecting "nothing" for social/mil production, and penalized for shifting my economy away from balance. Now one of the major items of value in social production is gone. Mil production is defaulted to constructors for me (you can never have too many!), most social projects have value but my most productive planets build stuff out too quickly unless I set social low. Grr. I can see that I am not doing this well, and I can't think of how to put this clearly. Summary - if trade goods need tweaking, that is fine. Wholesale nerfing, at this stage in the game's release, was not needed or desirable.

Scott

~SDC~

After my first game on 1.04 (all AI set to Bright), trade goods continued to be valued by the AI at approximately the same as 1.03...maybe a bit lower, but not nearly as substantially as described here. Of course, as usual, with the new release the AI becomes trickier and more intelligent, leading to a losing game even with a fair start...oh well. :notsure: So, it would appear to me anyway that the "trade good nerf" is more pronounced as one goes up in difficulty.

Sounds like people are out of their comfort zone at the higher levels. Isn't it better that a maso game should be almost impossible to win, and so a real achievement. A crippling game (say) 25% possible and so on. So you should require different tactics for different levels and a dose of luck at the higher levels. And trade goods can still be traded at the higher levels.

It almost seems like we should have two GalCivs - one for Staffa and others who thought maso was a cakewalk, and one for the rest of us, in which maso is, well, really hard. Or maybe yet another difficulty level in which the Staffa crowd has these nerfs, etc, that they want, yet people can still play on maso as it was and still have a challenge. I haven't played 1.04, and i have never played maso (intelligent is just right for me, so far), but it seems like what 1% of the really good galcivers want is dynamically opposite to what the other 99% want, and both groups end up unhappy. I guess for now the rest of us just won't play on maso. (it seems mostly impossible)

I am not sure I agree or disagree with any of the arguements herein. Staffa's make the most sense, if the trade good thing really made it too easy on maso, that's not right. I guess the other side of the coin is those who expect maso to be somehow easily winable (like it was before). That's not right either. I'm sure there is a happy medium somewhere.

Brad and others please keep in mind: in a democracy only the most vocal group (minority or majority) ends up swaying opinion. I guess what I am trying to say is that there are alot of opinions here but they may not necessarily be that of the majority. Time will tell.

Maybe I'm just a dummy but I never thought the pre-1.04 value of trade goods was that off. It helped merely to have a chance at surviving on the highest difficulty level. I have never been able to make such a huge haul with trading trade goods. It seemed the minors would give me more in techs but they were never as far along as the majors so even trading goods for techs to the minors I was still behind, most of the time way behind. The majors I could never get anything that really moved me to where I needed to be to ensure survival - heading to battleship or dreadnaught. Without getting something that advanced me down those tracks, I just couldn't give the trade goods to the majors. And I almost always rush bought diplo translators so it wasn't for lack of diplomacy that I couldn't pull it off. Now with 1.04, I don't see the point of having diplo translators. The one game I played, I had them and still got crushed by 2181 after not being able to pay 1500+ tribute demands.



~SDC~

I'm with Code Monkey: make the AI handle it better, don't just "nerf" everything that humans come up with to win.

~SDC~

At the risk of getting kicked off GalCiv, WTF cares if it is easy for you? It isn't easy for the rest of us. If it was easy for you to "beat masochistic in my sleep" it is because you have figured out a way to beat the game.
Not WIN the game, but BEAT it. You found a loophole.
I'm sorry, I'm not wasting my time on another Civ 3 "the game isn't any good unless it's hard to beat"
BULLSHIT
The game is good if it is FUN TO PLAY. Regularly losing, having all your good strategies killed off with every new release, and poorly thought out ways to fix a loophole in the game that make it hard to win for normal people are NOT FUN TO PLAY.
I'm sorry if you power gamers think I'm a loser, but I want to be able to WIN the damn game, and have fun doing it! NOT be stuck in a god damned cold war of attrition for half the game, WHICH IS NO FUN.
Make a choice Brad. Make a game for the common gamer, who wants a challenge but also wants to be able to beat the AI regularly at normal difficulty levels (ie, no AI bonueses), and make it a commercial success, or make it for the "lets see if we can break the game" power gamer who isn't happy unless the game is hard to win, and end up with another Civ 3.
I can beat the AI at 1.3A. But the game is such a pain in the ass to play that it's lost the "one more turn" effect I had at 1.1 and 1.2, or Civ 1 and 2, or MOO 1 and 2, or MoM.
To be honest, I've considered reloading back to 1.2. Unfortunately, 1.2 was too easy to win. But I doubt I'll bother to download 1.4.
PLEASE don't kill this game to cater to the demands of the power-gamer. FUCK the power gamer. "Is it fun to play" is more important than "I've found a way to exploit a loophole; fix it so we can't win"
Fix the loopholes by all means, but please be careful not to ruin the average player's enjoyment in the prcess.
I mean, really. Pissing on the constructors and the trade goods just cuz you can't figure out a way to code the AI to use them effectively? That's laziness, Brad. Not innovation.

Keith, not the most diplomatic message, but it's exactly what's been wrong with many of the changes since 1.02.

Brad makes posts about how insignificant the score mongers are, and then changes the entire game around what that "insignificant" group of players are doing.

Well, maybe Im out of line here.... but I think that maso skill level is supposed to be extremely difficult. If people are crying about how tough the game is, then maybe they shouldnt play it at the hardest skill level. I mean, if its supposed to be the absolute hardest skill level I dont think it should be win-able by everyone.

...That is all.
[Message Edited]

Fine, then limit all the nerfs to Masochistic and higher.

~SDC~

xiahou and others, the point isn't really that the game is hard, it's that a major game mechanic has been changed to dodge what some people think is a "cheese" tactic. As was somewhat untactfully stated above, these changes are being made to block people that have found ways to _beat_ the game mechanics, not _win_ the game. There are only so many unique things to build in the game, now about 1/4 of them have had their value trashed. Ah, I'm not really as worked up about it as I may sound. A lot of this comes back to, I don't know, expectations I guess. This game has hands down the best AI of any game I've played. I'm peeved because some of the nerfing that has happened over the last few versions has had the feel of quick loophole closing rather than well thought out game balancing/AI tweaking, and the loopholes have been ones that I've not been using.

~SDC~
[Message Edited]

I've found that playing on challenging, whenever I buy a trade good from a minor race every ai in the game already has that trade good. Techs are the same way for the most part. Only the strongest race will hold back techs for itsself. Also, ai's only propose trades to a human on rare occasions.

Personally, I think that the AI's gang up on the human too much. I only play on the lower difficulty levels as well. The game would be a lot more fun if the human could play with the ai's more instead of always being against them.

.
[Message Edited]

Frogboy is going to probably hate me for this post, but I'm not the brown-nosing type and never have been. I hope that by writing this, that I'll be the voice of reason and pray to god this gets addressed on the next build. The problem is, I'm one of those people who are in the top 50 on the metaverse, so I guess that means my words dont count (you said as much about the top metaverse scorers Frogboy)

I have to wonder if the Galciv crew has done any firm research on games with an online presence like Warcraft, Diablo, Everquest, Asheron's Call and the like. Galactic Civilizations is similar to the above in that there is an online community, a multiplayer like atmosphere (people competing against one another via metaverse), and frequently updated.

This last point needs to be address because I think the Galciv knows precious little about how/when is prudent to make updates to the game. Everquest learned this the hard way when a couple nerfs they put in play spawned a HUGE outcry among the game populace. After a while, they got better and learned an important lesson. You don't nerf things in the game unless you absolutely have to. You don't do nerfs lightly.

The problem here is that the Galciv is clearly talking out of both sides of the proverbial mouth. On one hand, they clearly said that they will not cater to the needs of the few dozen (or more liberally, the 1000) out of the 50000 people that have Galciv. The problem is the trade good nerf affects the casual gamers by making the goods largely useless as a Trade good. So what is the point of a trade good if you can't effectively trade it? If there was such a huge problem, the solution would've been just to make them more expensive to rush. It would make it alot more painful to rush buy those things and therefore more difficult for someone hoard those goods.
I thought the galciv team wasn't going to "obsess" over what this minority is doing, but it would seem they are obsessing on this.

Nerfs are so of the lazy programmers way out of a hole they dug themselves into in the first place. The problem being that the AI doesn't seem to know how to rush buy trade goods themselves. I don't see whats so hard about getting the AI to do this. I don't see why the AI doesn't attempt to parlay the trade goods they do get to get more from the player. Besides, isn't it enough that the AI somehow gets some incredible economic bonus for the top two levels?

It seems to me that the Galciv team has precious little concept of the consequences behind nerfing items, because lets face it...most player hate them. I understand with the +15 PQ one, but then there was the nerfs from the upper tier of techs, the battle hammer nerf, trade good nerf. I'm begginning to wonder what's next? Starfighters? Corvettes?

Hell, what's the point of trading in diplomacy if the AI generally won't trade except under extreme conditions? So what if I used my techs to trade up technologies. Unless if I'm not mistaken, its near impossible to keep up with the AI otherwise. And if you can't wheel and deal for technologies, you're going to fall behind the curve and the game becomes impossible to beat without the use of cheese tactics.

I can't help but wonder if this nerf was even thought through, much less playtested effectively. I would've tried just making the trade goods more expensive. If there are still problems, then address them afterwards. But dont go nerfing everything in sight just because of a perceived problem.

But alas....I'm a top 50 metaverse player and my opinion doesn't count (again, the Galciv team said as much...not me)

SeanB.

Id just like to point out that as one of those silly
little people that is being blamed for this.

My idea was to make tradegoods unbuyable, not to nerf
their trade value

It wasn't playtested at all. I'm on Drengin.net and have been playing with the 1.04 betas for some time (as you can see from my Metaverse record). The trade good nerf was just tacked onto the release version without ever having been tried at all. It's a total kludge without reason or balance based upon the behavior of a select few.

As you say, they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. I've seen Brad repeatedly say how they aren't going to spend time to stop a tiny few people from "ruining" the game for themselves, and then we get this change. A change that will only slow down the "ruiners," but stands a good chance of just plain ruining the game for a lot more people than it fixed it for.

I don't suppose there's anyone out there who was bright enough to archive the 1.04b3 patch files?, I'd kill to have those back right now because the released 1.04 is about as much fun as poking straight pins in my leg.

Actually, I like the devaluing in trade goods. I think they've been changed from overvalued to fairly valued.

Now, if you lease a trade good and immediately sell it to each AI, you get back your lease downpayment plus a little extra. Before, you were getting back way more than your lease downpayment. So, the developers either had to decrease the trade value of trade goods, or make the AIs also use this exploit.

Before, it was a clearcut decision to rush-lease a trade good as soon as it became available. Now, it isn't as clearcut. In fact, I'm not even sure if Diplomatic Translators are worth it anymore.

Even at Normal difficulty, it shouldn't be possible for the human player to build every single trade good and wonder. That isn't the point of the game.

The only remaining flaw is to have the AI do a better job of dynamically adjusting the trade good value based on game state. Aphrodesiac now seems to be nearly worthless on tiny maps.

Why is this nerfed on *NORMAL* settings, anyway?

~SDC~
[Message Edited]

I didnt think it was nerfed at normal, I thought just
at intelligent and above?

It would be great to play with the computer, but at some point you're in a competition with them to win. The exception to this might be allies of course.



~SDC~