EPISTLES

Patch 1.16f First Impressions

December 10, 2001

As I have been playing the second Tournament game from Apolyton this week, I have delayed getting the new patch until that game was completed (and it dragged on a little bit, but more about that in the spot report under Chronicles). Now that I have completed that game, I have downloaded the patch, read up on the changes, and tried my hand at a new game.

I have seen only enough to form first impressions, but they are significant enough to warrant comment. This patch is simply HUGE in its effect, changing a wide number of things, the largest no doubt being upgrades to the AI. I've been slow to write reports about my second, third, and now fourth completed games, as I've been so wrapped up in playing, it was just more urgent to play another turn, then another, then another, than to stop to write about it. :) However, the most striking thing I discovered was the sheer IMbalance in the AI in regard to the trading value of technology. The AI would sell tech for gold on the cheap, and how. This imbalance was so strong, so glaring, as to literally make any strategy other than gold accumulation in the early game, followed by buying your way into tech parity on the cheap in the middle game, then using your gold surplus to forge ahead and take a commanding tech lead in the middle game, never to look back, undesirable. I'm the kind of player who likes variety, and I can and will make deliberately weak choices in some situations to vary the flavor of my gameplay. However, this "Minimal Science, Buy Your Way In" move was just SO strong, I found it irrepressibly tempting. It was of particular use in the ancient era.

The patch has corrected this imbalance, or at least moved in that direction. Gone is buying tech from the AIs on the cheap. They are now stingy with their tech. What is not yet clear to me is whether this is only in regard to gold (which would be appropriate, IMO) or whether it's an across-the-board stinginess that still leaves buying tech for gold as a clearly superior option to trading tech for tech. Time will tell. However, clearly, the game has now opened back up for me in the ancient era, with doing my own research now back into the mix as a top strategic priority, rather than the losing move it was in the release version's ancient era. Regardless of whether the imbalance between tech value and gold value has been corrected within the AI (and it may have been), certainly the imbalance between the cost to you of doing your own research vs the cost to you of buying tech for gold, has been improved, perhaps even fixed.

And that is just the beginning of the patch changes. A number of other factors have also changed, including bug fixes, adjustments to corruption, to some units, to some improvements, and yet more AI tweaks and changes.

While the tactical details of worker and unit management, city placement, etc, appear unchanged, on the macro level of strategic planning, everything I've learned over the first five weeks has been rendered suddenly obsolete. Where I had moved up to being COMFORTABLE on Emperor difficulty, and not intending to go back from there, I will in fact now be moving back to Monarch until I figure out how to play this new version. I'm actually quite excited, as my impression is that the patch has closed the worst of the game's loopholes, and certainly seems to have taken a large step in the direction of fine tuning the gameplay balance. I can't say much more until I've played more, but certainly much of what I've already written in regard to advice (some not yet posted to the Library here) needs to be re-evaluated.

So back I go to play, to explore, to relearn. I'll comment more on the new patch as I learn more.

- Sirian

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