Exploits?

[mihau]

The exploit using a transport to erase AI cities has been fixed.

Could U say more?

[zilchy]

Could U say more?

When CivA is at war with CivB, it is possible to gift a
unit in a transport to CivA, and then sail the transport to a city of CivB. This results
in the units in the city being destroyed, and the city control going to CivA.

[mihau]

When CivA is at war with CivB, it is possible to gift a
unit in a transport to CivA, and then sail the transport to a city of CivB. This results
in the units in the city being destroyed, and the city control going to CivA.

nice

[microbe]

production bonuses can now be a negative thing (with a 25% bonus you lose the option of whipping axemen for 2 pop @ 30 hammers each, instead you can only do 1 pop for 37 hammers).

I don't get it. You can whip it for 2 pop and get 14 hammers overflow. Why would it be negative?

[dsplaisted]

I don't get it. You can whip it for 2 pop and get 14 hammers overflow. Why would it be negative?

You can't whip it for two pop. With the bonus, whipping would only cost 1 pop. You could whip twice, but that would give you extra unhappy faces, and for longer.

[Blake]

You can still whip things which cost more than 37 hammers - Catapults, Swordsmen, Horse Archers etc... and yes in that case you get 75 hammers total, and that's where the new advantages for micro are - in getting the biggest overflows. Once upon a time overflow was limited to 30 / production_bonuses (ie with a 25% bonus you can get a maximum of 24 overflow in "raw" hammers, with a 100% bonus a maximum of 15 overflow (which was one reason why whipping +100% boosted buildings usually sucked, other than right after they dropped in cost by 1 population), now you can always get up to the full 30 raw hammers overflow.
In short you do a consistent number of raw hammers per population killed and that's the main reason I say that whipping is stronger than before - when production bonuses would always reduce overflow.

[Iustus]

The biggest complaint some people seem to have about Warlords is that they did not add a lot of content (other than the scenarios). They made a few minor tweaks, added the civ unique buildings, and basically tried to fill some missing holes and do some rebalancing. And of course vassal states, which you can turn off.

They also made some minor improvements to the 'Custom Game' options. I am a particular fan of the "No Tribal Villages" checkbox.

Some people, on the other hand, see the small number of changes as a strength. Playing a standard game under warlords can play nearly identically to a pre-warlords game if you want play it that way.

Of course, most of the leader traits were scrambled, so if you have your favorite leader, and like the current traits, you might not be happy with Warlords. I believe there is a mod out there for warlords which restores the old traits to all the old leaders if you absolutely cannot stand those changes but want the rest of warlords.

Cossaks and Redcoats were significantly lowered in power (but not Praetoreans).

I have only played a couple games in Warlords so far, but I am enjoying it. I would love to see one of the upcoming adventures done in Warlords.

-Iustus

[Majromax]

The problem with "making few changes" is that Warlords then isn't so much an expansion pack as a patch we pay for that comes with a goodie bag. I haven't purchased it (yet), but if the initial reports pan out then it looks like Warlords might be an out-and-out better-balanced game, having fixed problems in Civ4 Vanilla.

[microbe]

I think warlords is fine as an expansion if compared to PTW and Conquests.

For single player, what did PTW bring other than new civs and minor new units? At least warlords has great general and vassal state.

I haven't tried the scenarios yet, but compared to Conquests, this doesn't look bad. CIV4 has much more modability than CIV3, and these are the showcases of its technology.

In my opinion expansion packs are where they make money. If you have to ask, they obviously aren't worth the money compared to the vanilla game.