Ok, I've messed around a lot this last weekend with the new patch, enough to give some feedback on the changes:
- PQ population and tile invasion bugs were (thankfully) fixed. It now makes sense to capture and hold enemy worlds again.
- Tech trading, wow. I only played on suicidal, and tech trading is next to useless now. This is probably a good thing - although the AI seems to trade with each other as often as it always did. Maybe they are just researching REALLY fast. Turning it off seems to hurt the AI more than the player at this point.
- Research treaties. These do seem to work now, but now that I am paying attention to the research screen I have noticed discrepencies. When I was on the research tab trying to decide what to research, I looked at my numbers of what I was producing vs what I was getting in treaties. My number seemed low. I went to all of my worlds and added up the produced research beakers - then went back to the research screen, it was off by about 35% (listed value of produced research too low). I decided to put 100% into research on my economy slider to see if that was making a difference (and I always run at 100% production), again added up the beakers and checked the tab. The total had changed, but still misreported MY total produced research by about 35%. Is it not taking into account bonus research points on the top of the research tab screen? Am I going crazy?
- Combat. I, for one am very happy with the defense changes. I have seen the AI effectively use matching defense, and that is really important. Thanks for listening. At the same time, I must agree with other posters on these message boards. I had never noticed before because AI defense numbers were generally lower, but high NON-matching defense feels way too effective. I've had problems getting hard numbers because the game is harder in general.
Also, starbase combat in general is producing weird results. They must be operating under several different rules, but I don't know what they are. No matter how high the attack, even with three kinds of damage, they can only destroy one ship per round. I had one starbase that seemed to go invincible for a while, for no apparant reason. It proceeded to happily (and slowly) chew through several enemy fleets. I have almost never used starbase combat at any level in this game, learning a long time ago that they were not worthwhile in combat, so this observation may not have to do with any changes made in the patch, but just starbase combat in DA in general.
Economic treaties. For some reason, my economic treaty is never worth anything anymore. I couldn't even SELL it for 100bc (AI offered 84bc). That doesn't seem right, it would only take a few weeks for my treaty to be worth that to the AI. It still gives the ++ on the diplomacy screen, so I have been giving it away. But does free money really have so little value to the AI?
Relations. Well, this has been the biggest change, and it is really making the game harder, although not how I expected. It is very hard to keep 9 empires at warm or higher relations with you, although I have managed a pretty steady 6, only giving me 2-3 civs in the neutral or lower to worry about going to war with. No, the reason this made the game harder is because the AI is going to war against other AIs more often. Used to be I was the main power when it came to conquering territory, which I could do on my timeline. Now, with the AIs are ALWAYS starting wars with each other, one or two civs always seem to conquer too fast giving them more of a territory advantage than I can overcome early. The trick to victory has always been expansion, and the AI used to be a little too docile to be good at it. Now that they are expanding against each other, it is hard to establish your own empire as "the power" after the first couple of wars.
Over all a great patch. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I like that the hardest difficulty got a lot harder, at least for my play style. I was just kind of messing around for certain goals, but I've lost my first three suicidal games under the 1.5x patch. That was a pleasant surprise, I haven't lost a game on suicidal in months. Good job Stardock!
