Civ VI Discussion

[VoxRationis]

So have people seen the preview videos? Played it somehow? What do people think of the upcoming Civilization game?

I personally like how the districts system enshrines in mechanics the urban sprawl that was present in graphics only in Civ V. However, I'm concerned that it will result in the "build tall" strategy being more geographically limited than it was before, as the space requirement for a good city is increased. I do like what I've seen of the new "encampment" district being a secondary defense point, though, and that is a point in the "build tall" strategy's favor. In Civ V, having wide culture borders often meant that you were powerless to defend most of your cities' territory, since the defense range of your cities was static. The strongest defensive geography required building cities as close to one another as possible.

[AdmiralCheez]

I do like that large cities can expand beyond one tile, something that bothered me in older games. I am a little concerned that the different district types will all end up looking the same (like, every science district has the same art asset, every industry, etc.). For something that's supposed to make cities look more organic, nothing would kill that faster than having repetitive districts all over the map.

[GAAD]

The first time I saw the district system, my first thought was "Sweet Kiia, they're ripping off Endless Legend!"

They're not quite, as in EL districts are also responsible for resource collection, but it definitely seems inspired.

Anyway, I might buy it, but I'll wait until all the DLC comes out. Plus, I don't want to get burned like with CivBE.

[anjxed]

Well my first thought is, Sean Bean will not die in this clip.

It really looks nice. Almost the same as Civ 5 but with tweaks.

[LibraryOgre]

My hope is that they ditch the BC/AD year numbering system. How many times have you had Catholicism founded in 1500 BC? I used to like the Ice Age start just to get rid of that.

[Hunter Noventa]

I've been watching some of the pre-release gameplay and I'm fairly excited about it. I was a little worried at first about the changes to research, how you'd need a coastal city before you could effectively research sailing, etc, but it's just a boost, not a requirement, which is nice.

I do hope there's at least some variety in the way districts look, but at the very least you won't be building every district in every city, since a lot of the districts key off of terrain features. Like, Holy Sites seem to benefit from mountains, you're not going to build one for a city with no mountains nearby, which will cute down some on the repetition.

I'm quite excited really.

[VoxRationis]

My hope is that they ditch the BC/AD year numbering system. How many times have you had Catholicism founded in 1500 BC? I used to like the Ice Age start just to get rid of that.

I like it myself; it provides a nice little "ghost" to race against in terms of tech.


I've been watching some of the pre-release gameplay and I'm fairly excited about it. I was a little worried at first about the changes to research, how you'd need a coastal city before you could effectively research sailing, etc, but it's just a boost, not a requirement, which is nice.

I'm quite excited really.
I like how the research boosts reflect the effect circumstances have on the invention of technology. I am worried that it'll make bad start locations worse for a civ (if the resources and circumstances around you don't allow rapid advancement along the route that suits your civilization), but that's not a huge issue if the start bias is well-done.

[Siosilvar]

My hope is that they ditch the BC/AD year numbering system. How many times have you had Catholicism founded in 1500 BC? I used to like the Ice Age start just to get rid of that.

Not gonna happen. At this point it's one of the series's sacred cows to start in 4000 BC.

Then again, I would have thought the same thing about the square grid and unit stacks, and Civ 5 blew both of those out of the water.

[Hunter Noventa]

I like it myself; it provides a nice little "ghost" to race against in terms of tech.


I like how the research boosts reflect the effect circumstances have on the invention of technology. I am worried that it'll make bad start locations worse for a civ (if the resources and circumstances around you don't allow rapid advancement along the route that suits your civilization), but that's not a huge issue if the start bias is well-done.

That's true, if you're a civilization that benefits greatly from ocean access, and you're landlocked, that'll be a problem. But that's something that's always been a factor in civilization.

What might be nice is if some of the boosts had some kind of secondary versions, easier to get requirements that provide a lesser boost,but you only get the greater boost of the two. Like say, if settling a city on a coast boosts a particular tech by 50%, settling on a lake or river could boost it by 25%. If you settle on a river first, and then the coast later, you still only get the 25% boost.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I quite like how different the civs feel now - their bonuses are all powerful and yet quite different. Will make playing with different civs feel a lot different than they used to in the past, I think. For example: Rome gives free roads to new cities, whilst Russia has cities start with 12 hexes, rather than the usual 6.

As to the looks of the districts? Meh, after a while you are sufficiently zoomed out that you'd be hard pressed to see the individual buildings. I do like that the districts are colour-coded (science: blue roofs; faith: white walls; etc.), meaning you can tell at a glance what the city has. Another great innovation: cities not adjacent to a coast can simply build a shipyard in said coast to be able to build ships.

Edit:
Re: starting positions: I suspect that civilizations with strong terrain bonuses will start in that terrain (Russia has a bonus for Tundra, it'd be silly if you were dropped in the equator)

Grey Wolf

[Hunter Noventa]

Edit:
Re: starting positions: I suspect that civilizations with strong terrain bonuses will start in that terrain (Russia has a bonus for Tundra, it'd be silly if you were dropped in the equator)

Grey Wolf

That's like to be weighted towards it, yes. Russia wont' start inthe tundra 100% of the time, no, but 60% of the time they'll be right in it, 20% of the time it'll be easy to get their second city into it, and 20% of the time they won't have it at all. Weighted RNG is still RNG, and that's what makes playing 4x Games INTERESTING.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That's like to be weighted towards it, yes. Russia wont' start inthe tundra 100% of the time, no, but 60% of the time they'll be right in it, 20% of the time it'll be easy to get their second city into it, and 20% of the time they won't have it at all. Weighted RNG is still RNG, and that's what makes playing 4x Games INTERESTING.

[citation needed], especially on those 60/20/20 percentages. Also, that's not what I find interesting, or even INTERESTING, about 4x games.

GW

[factotum]

From everything I've seen this looks like it's going to be the most "complete" Civ game at launch we've had in a while. Civ 5, and to a lesser extent Civ 4, were not great at launch but later became much better--this one looks like it might actually be worth getting straight out of the gates. I like the updated UI and the district system, and I'm interested to see how the split between science research and civics research works out.

[VoxRationis]

From everything I've seen this looks like it's going to be the most "complete" Civ game at launch we've had in a while. Civ 5, and to a lesser extent Civ 4, were not great at launch but later became much better--this one looks like it might actually be worth getting straight out of the gates. I like the updated UI and the district system, and I'm interested to see how the split between science research and civics research works out.


That split was due a long time ago. Having things like "Drama and Poetry" linked behind purely material technologies was ridiculous. You couldn't imitate cultures with advanced material culture but little social organization, or the reverse. I also like the "card"-style policies, since it allows for a culture that actually changes and evolves, rather than just adding (mutually contradictory) social policies.

[moossabi]

All in all the game looks good (although I won't get it at release and just wait until the holiday season rolls around), but the wonders (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Wonder_(Civ6)) seem less worth building than they were in civ 5. The policies (IMO) are better than in civ 5, and there's actually some ideological conflict potential from the get-go.

However, and this may just be me being a conspiracy theorist, it's rather odd that so far nobody has recorded (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/City-state_(Civ6)) encountering Venice or Sydney as a city state. This is interesting because both were ideal candidates for the system (Venice probably being one of the most famous city states in history), and yet they were intentionally left out. Maybe this means that they'll be some of the initial 1-civ DLC packs? :smallconfused:

It'd be cool to have an Australian civ in the game (since many have been requesting it for a while), and Venice was really unique and fun to play back in Civ 5 so they'd be fairly cool with the more extreme civ abilities. Thoughts?

(Then again, maybe they were cut because there are wonders based on them and it'd be really weird to have Rome build the Sydney Opera house when Sydney was a thousand miles away)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

(Then again, maybe they were cut because there are wonders based on them and it'd be really weird to have Rome build the Sydney Opera house when Sydney was a thousand miles away)

Hasn't stopped them from throwing in Oxford University, even though I'd be surprised if Oxford isn't one of England's pre-defined city names.

GW

[moossabi]

Hasn't stopped them from throwing in Oxford University, even though I'd be surprised if Oxford isn't one of England's pre-defined city names.

GW

Makes sense.

Also, I just realized that the Sydney Opera house and the city state itself were both present in 5, so my 'of course' doesn't actually hold up at all.

[Hunter Noventa]

[citation needed], especially on those 60/20/20 percentages. Also, that's not what I find interesting, or even INTERESTING, about 4x games.

GW

Oh I was just pulling numbers out of thin air as an example of the rough proportions you might see, not trying to provide exact data. And that's fine that it's not the part that engages you. I personally enjoy trying to adapt to different scenarios that don't necessarily play to the strengths of whatever Civilization I'm controlling.

I know that some Civ games have had a setting where it tries to place civilizations near their contemporaries (i.e. placing Greece, Egypt and Rome in the same area), but I don't recall if there's ever been one to encourage appropriate terrain for starts. It wouldn't be a bad setting to have mind you, but I'd like to be able to turn it on or off at me leisure.

[factotum]

I know that some Civ games have had a setting where it tries to place civilizations near their contemporaries (i.e. placing Greece, Egypt and Rome in the same area), but I don't recall if there's ever been one to encourage appropriate terrain for starts.

Civ 5 already has that--civilizations have a terrain preference which is taken into account when the game places your first settler at the beginning; so, you're more likely to be near a desert when playing Arabia, and almost certain to be coastal when playing England or Carthage.

[Alcibiades]

Yeah, terrain bias was a major thing in Civ V, to the extent that communities who play a lot of multiplayer and have tier lists consider coastal and tundra start biases a con for a civ because those tiles are usually worth less. (Desert is a gamble because of petra)

[Hunter Noventa]

Civ 5 already has that--civilizations have a terrain preference which is taken into account when the game places your first settler at the beginning; so, you're more likely to be near a desert when playing Arabia, and almost certain to be coastal when playing England or Carthage.

Ah that would do it.

I might be thinking of a 'Culturally Appropriate Stating Location' setting that might have been in Civ IV or one of the mods for that I played.

[VoxRationis]

From what I've seen thus far, I can note another change which I like—the removal of the diplomatic victory and the World Congress, which was a whole pile of ridiculousness. The entire affair came down in effect to how well one could bribe city-states, and no good reason was ever given for why the other nations would pay any heed to the workings of so obviously rigged a system. Membership in and obedience to the World Congress was obligatory, regardless of previous isolationism, which also made no sense—and to add insult to injury, most of the World Congress' time was spent trying to ban your luxury goods for no reason except spite. I have no reservations in seeing that feature removed.

[Hunter Noventa]

From what I've seen thus far, I can note another change which I like—the removal of the diplomatic victory and the World Congress, which was a whole pile of ridiculousness. The entire affair came down in effect to how well one could bribe city-states, and no good reason was ever given for why the other nations would pay any heed to the workings of so obviously rigged a system. Membership in and obedience to the World Congress was obligatory, regardless of previous isolationism, which also made no sense—and to add insult to injury, most of the World Congress' time was spent trying to ban your luxury goods for no reason except spite. I have no reservations in seeing that feature removed.

Yeah I'm certainly not going to complain about that. I never liked the Diplomatic victories or Religious victories, and usually turn them off.

The other awful thing about the World Congress, at least in V, was that if you controlled it, you HAD to propose something. There was no option for 'No I don't want to do any of this stuff.'

[VoxRationis]

The other awful thing about the World Congress, at least in V, was that if you controlled it, you HAD to propose something. There was no option for 'No I don't want to do any of this stuff.'

Good point; I had forgotten about that. Leading, of course, to situations where you vote against your own proposal, because it was against your interests.

[moossabi]

Another Greek leader announced (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syS-SFtr-44&t=0s), but with the City-State bonuses replaced by the Aztecs' ability from 5.

[VoxRationis]

Seems kind of a strange ability to accord the Greeks (I thought it worked well for the Aztecs), but it's good that we're seeing alternate leaders. I hope they release an alternate Egyptian leader soon. Cleopatra is an awful choice.

[Hunter Noventa]

Seems kind of a strange ability to accord the Greeks (I thought it worked well for the Aztecs), but it's good that we're seeing alternate leaders. I hope they release an alternate Egyptian leader soon. Cleopatra is an awful choice.

I'm rather glad to have multiple leaders again, that was something missing from V I feel.

I just hope VI is as mod-friendly as V was.

[moossabi]

Seems kind of a strange ability to accord the Greeks (I thought it worked well for the Aztecs), but it's good that we're seeing alternate leaders. I hope they release an alternate Egyptian leader soon. Cleopatra is an awful choice.

Well, the Spartans were historically a warrior culture and gained honor through battle. Here it's represented with culture upon victory over your opponent, which fits Sparta pretty well IMO.

Cleopatra is probably the most recognizable Egyptian leader that isn't Tutankhamen (who would make a far worse choice since all he did was die with a bunch of stuff in his tomb), so technically it's an alright pick. Then again, maybe they were trying to dodge backlashofthesortwhichimnotsureisappropriatetotalk aboutonthisforumTM, which would actually explain a lot of the more bizarre choices (we need Napoleon back!).

[VoxRationis]

Well, the Spartans were historically a warrior culture and gained honor through battle. Here it's represented with culture upon victory over your opponent, which fits Sparta pretty well IMO.

Cleopatra is probably the most recognizable Egyptian leader that isn't Tutankhamen (who would make a far worse choice since all he did was die with a bunch of stuff in his tomb), so technically it's an alright pick. Then again, maybe they were trying to dodge backlashofthesortwhichimnotsureisappropriatetotalk aboutonthisforumTM, which would actually explain a lot of the more bizarre choices (we need Napoleon back!).

All Cleopatra did was back the wrong side in a Roman civil war and get her country annexed for her trouble. She wasn't even Egyptian. Rameses II, Thuthmose, or Hatshepshut would be more appropriate.

[moossabi]

All Cleopatra did was back the wrong side in a Roman civil war and get her country annexed for her trouble. She wasn't even Egyptian. Rameses II, Thuthmose, or Hatshepshut would be more appropriate.

Actually yeah, Hatshepsut would've been better. I fully support your analysis.

[Ashen Lilies]

We had Ramses in Civ V, and it's possible that we might get him again as an alternate leader in an expansion or leaderpack of some sort.

When they revealed the initial round of leaders (Teddy Roosevelt, Cleopatra, Victoria) they said that they wanted to include some leaders with exaggerated personalities and myths that would make for more appealing characters to encounter, even if they weren't necessarily the most representative and historically significant leaders of their Civ. They've really gone hard on the character animation and writing this time around to really reinforce that the AI Civs are lead by people with expressive personalities that are going to inform their goals, rather than just purely playing to their mechanical strengths.

Teddy himself is a good example of this. He's a less 'obvious' choice than Washington or Lincoln, and while he's considered to be a great president with plenty of achievements, especially the Panama Canal and his conservation work, it's pretty apparent that the real reason he's the face of America this time around is because he's a walking meme of exaggerated masculinity and boisterous attitude that the animators and writers can exploit to give a character to the Civ overall. He's the President most in line, persona-wise, with the FREEDOM memes and pictures of bald eagles and explosions, compared to the much more stately and 'boring' personas of Washington (though the popularity of Hamilton might end up changing the narrative over how we perceive the Founding Fathers somewhat) and Lincoln.

Cleopatra is one of, if not the most well known figures in Egyptian history, who's instantly recognizable to pretty much anyone thanks to about a billion movies and pop culture references. She also has a very well established myth around being a seductress and a snake that allows the animators and writers to have fun with her character and give the Civ a distinctive flavor and agenda that the player can anticipate and work off of, rather than just "this ******* is going to crush me with wonders".

Besides, it's not even like Cleopatra is the worst offender in this game of being a leader whose myth overshadows their reality. *points at Gilgamesh*

Personally, if there's a leader I want to see in the future, it'd be someone like Ashoka, or another Indian leader to break the Gandhi monopoly. I like the Nuclear Gandhi memes as much as anybody, but really. :smalltongue:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Looks pretty interesting. They've decentralized the tech tree, which feels like a good move, with culture having its own tech tree instead of policies like in Civ V, and policies having a completely different mechanic, which also fits pretty well. Overall, definitely an improvement over Civ V. On the downsides, barbarians seem to be nucking futs, and movement is somewhat worsened for the scouts because they don't get to move through any terrain for a cost of one, making early explorations more difficult.

Of course, not every leader has been announced, but the fact that Greece has two of them, with different abilities, seems very interesting. The Spartan leader gives culture bonuses for killing things, which is good for early culture grinding against barbarians, whereas the other is more for a long-term build and hold play style. Roosevelt as the first released American leader makes sense, since he's a very bombastic over-the-top personality which you can really sell to the player as a character within the game. I would be very surprised if the next one wasn't Ulysses Grant or Washington, a more militaristic leader. Maybe Washington then give the bonus in rough terrain, or giving skirmishers the ability to auto-retreat if they get damaged?

Definitely something to look at. With Master of Orion coming out, the X4 genre is being very well represented this season.

[factotum]

On the downsides, barbarians seem to be nucking futs

Of course, not every leader has been announced

They've announced 19 of the leaders, I think? Not sure how many more there are going to be. As for barbarians, I think the problem is that they work somewhat differently than they did in earlier games--basically, camps send out scouts, and if a scout encounters one of your cities they return to base. If they get back in one piece then the camp will spawn several units to attack the city found by the scout. So, if you want less trouble with barbarians you need to be prepared to take out those scouts when they appear.

(Incidentally, that kind of counters your complaint about scout movement, because if the scouts moved like in Civ 5 you'd have little hope of catching them with early game units).

[Ashen Lilies]

The nineteen that have currently been announced are all that are going to be included in the base release of the game (with the Aztecs disabled for the first 90 days for non-preorders).

There were some leaks that included two extra leaders who might be part of some early DLC or were further ahead in development for a later DLC, those being

Isabella I, an alternate leader for Spain, and Jadwiga of Poland.

[Winter_Wolf]

The nineteen that have currently been announced are all that are going to be included in the base release of the game (with the Aztecs disabled for the first 90 days for non-preorders).

There were some leaks that included two extra leaders who might be part of some early DLC or were further ahead in development for a later DLC, those being

Isabella I, an alternate leader for Spain, and Jadwiga of Poland.

So if I'm reading that right, they are basically trying to extort pre-orders by withholding a base game civ (Aztecs) for three months after the official release? Am I reading that right? I like the series and all that, but that's pretty much grounds for me to be done with the series, because that's somehow worse than release day DLC in my book.

[Ashen Lilies]

That's exactly right. Pre-orders get 3 months of 'early access' to the Aztec civ.

[Kish]

Like...every situation where one player has access to different content than another...it's entirely in how you look at it. It is true that "you get the Aztecs 90 days later" highlights "this is entirely our deliberately giving preorderers something you don't get without preordering" in a way that making the Aztecs a preorder bonus forever (which non-preorderers never get), or making them a DLC (that only people who paid extra for ever got) wouldn't, but without the highlighting, it would still be the case.

[Winter_Wolf]

I'm still not sure if I'm getting it. Does that mean three months after initial release they lift that wait time so if you buy it at say day 91, it's irrelevant, or is it a 90 day waiting period after date of purchase regardless of having bought it after it's been out for a while?

At this point it's mostly just a matter of curiosity since I'm pretty sure I don't even meet minimum specs let alone playable spec, and my next upgrade is probably a few years away.

Frankly I'd rather they made it either preorder exclusive or a DLC, but I'm probably in the minority on that.

[Ashen Lilies]

It's the first. Aztecs will be available to pre-orders for the first 90 days after release on October 21st, and available to everyone afterwards.

I tend to not get games until the price drops + they go on their first summer or Christmas sale on Steam, so assuming the earliest I get this game during 2017's Summer Sale, this has literally 0 effect on me.

[VoxRationis]

So if I'm reading that right, they are basically trying to extort pre-orders by withholding a base game civ (Aztecs) for three months after the official release? Am I reading that right? I like the series and all that, but that's pretty much grounds for me to be done with the series, because that's somehow worse than release day DLC in my book.

You don't think 19 other civs, in a game with a notorious time-sink tendency per game, will occupy you sufficiently for 90 days? If you have any patience whatsoever, the Aztecs are free. That's far less egregious than asking for more money for something you've already made.

[moossabi]

Maybe they're trying to give new players a 'head start' in learning the game before they toss the Aztecs in. If they're focusing on big personalities, then odds are civ 4 Montezuma is back with a vengeance. New players would be killed off super early.

(I know that this isn't the case; just a funny justification that I came up with)

[factotum]

You don't think 19 other civs, in a game with a notorious time-sink tendency per game, will occupy you sufficiently for 90 days? If you have any patience whatsoever, the Aztecs are free. That's far less egregious than asking for more money for something you've already made.

And at least they're not making the Aztecs permanently locked as a pre-order bonus, or forcing you to buy them as DLC if you don't pre-order--plenty of other game companies would (and have) done stuff like that, so as far as pre-order bonuses go, this one is pretty weaksauce.

[Cikomyr]

So Civ VI decided to rip off EU and have a Casus Belli system?

I like it.

[moossabi]

So Civ VI decided to rip off EU and have a Casus Belli system?

I like it.

A Casus Belli system has historical relevance and resolves AI issues from the last game while bringing in a new mechanic to warfare. It's not there because EU had it, it's there because history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casus_belli#Historical_examples) had it and it works for Civ.

[Cikomyr]

A Casus Belli system has historical relevance and resolves AI issues from the last game while bringing in a new mechanic to warfare. It's not there because EU had it, it's there because history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casus_belli#Historical_examples) had it and it works for Civ.

I know.
But i dont care. They ripped off a concept that is great and thematically fits. And also solves a little bit of problem regarding warmongering.

But it's FINE. They added their own twist to it. And the genre is all the better for it :)

[moossabi]

I know.
But I don't care. They ripped off a concept that is great and thematically fits. And also solves a little bit of problem regarding warmongering.

But it's FINE. They added their own twist to it. And the genre is all the better for it :)

Ummmmmmmmmmm.......

No. It isn't ripping it off.

By the logic that you're using the Elder Scrolls series is ripping of the Legend of Zelda because a sword can be wielded. Two games use the system because it's historically relevant. Not because the other used it. If one game using the same concept as another game constitutes as ripping off than every single video game to date is ripping off Pong because there's a user interface.

I get that you think that it's fine, but calling it a ripoff makes no sense whatsoever.

[Cikomyr]

There is *one* series of game that uses this concept. Its EU and CK. One.

Now there is two.

Its a rip off. Come back to me when you find a time where only one video game used swords.

[VoxRationis]

But EU and CK didn't invent the concept. They just utilized it. And speaking as someone who has played neither, Civ V made the need for a casus belli system painfully obvious during normal play—no cross-series inspiration needed.

[moossabi]

There is *one* series of game that uses this concept. Its EU and CK. One.

Now there is two.

Its a rip off. Come back to me when you find a time where only one video game used swords.

So your counterargument is based on the proposition that the more something is used the less it becomes a ripoff?

[Kish]

I think his counterargument is that it is so only there because of the EU game, and anyone who claims otherwise needs to prove that he's wrong.

[Cikomyr]

I think his counterargument is that it is so only there because of the EU game, and anyone who claims otherwise needs to prove that he's wrong.

EU and CK really, really worked the concept over the past decade. Tweaking and perfecting it. That, and the whole warmongering ("Bad Boys Points") were spearheaded by the niche Grand Strategy.

Now. I am really happy. REALLY happy to see it in CivVI. I cant wait to play the game. But lets also admit that CivVI is using the benefit of more than 15 years of system refinement that Paradox went through.

[Binks]

That, and the whole warmongering ("Bad Boys Points") were spearheaded by the niche Grand Strategy.
Civ V had a warmongering penalty system back in 2010. Previous versions of Civ have attempted to penalize going to war without good reason through various means. Civ VI's extension of this is not some brand new thing being added to the series, it's taking a concept that has been worked and revised through multiple versions and putting it in the new entry. It's a fresh coat of paint on the system to try and refine it.

If you want to decide that it's a ripoff of something that wasn't even new in the games you're talking about that's fine, but please don't pretend like Civ has never before tried a system for penalizing people who declare wars without reason, because that's just factually inaccurate.

[Kish]

Cikomyr, I'm sure if you could point to actual indications that they ripped off the complete Casus Belli system from EU, other people would stop responding like you're apparently under the impression EU invented the concept of Casus Belli. But...instead of doing so, you're apparently under the impression that EU invented the concept of Casus Belli. You should consider the possibility that people aren't "admitting" what you want them to because of a lack of evidence for it.

[Cikomyr]

Cikomyr, I'm sure if you could point to actual indications that they ripped off the complete Casus Belli system from EU, other people would stop responding like you're apparently under the impression EU invented the concept of Casus Belli. But...instead of doing so, you're apparently under the impression that EU invented the concept of Casus Belli. You should consider the possibility that people aren't "admitting" what you want them to because of a lack of evidence for it.

They did not invented the concept Casus Belli. That's ridiculous.

However. They did were the ones who implemented the concept in strategy video games. Or as far as i know, at least the best implementation there currently is. Maybe some other games had it, but i never heard of it.

Civilization V had a warmongering penalty in 2010? Oh man thats cute. Europa Universalis had it at least since EU3 in 2007. Was it in EU2? But then, i remember having huge wars in GalCiv 2 when i kept conquering minor civs, and that was in 2006. I really dont remember if Civ4 had warmongering as a generic penalty...


My point is thus: the Paradox games are the ones who push certain concepts further ahead. Civilization merely builds on top of these progresses, and mainstream it. The fact that these are game design element that i love only makes me appreciate Civilization more. I am a huge fan of the series.

I will give props to Civ tho. The religious system CivV innovated was the best i ever seen before. I dont remember any game that had such a nice.. err.. customizable progressive bekief system. If someone can point me to another game where religion is developed so organically, I'd be happy! ^_^

Discussing the history of applied video game concepts is always a fun interest of mine. Going back to the original point: i 100% understand that Civ6 casus belli system might turn out much, much different than EU. Like i said, its a cool historical concept that might prove a solution to Civ's historical problem of dealing with warmongering.

I am wondering how accessible to newcomers this new game will be. So far, it looks like its having almost all of the complexities of a fully-expansioned CivV, and you add Casus Belli, Districts and lots of other new elements.

Man. Watching TotalBiscuit's game. Cant wait to play it.

[moossabi]

They did not invent the concept of Casus Belli. That's ridiculous.

However, they were the ones who first implemented the concept in strategy video games. Or they were at least the best implementation there currently is (as far as i know). Maybe some other games had it, but I've never heard of them.

Civilization V had a warmongering penalty in 2010? Oh man, that's cute. Europa Universalis had it at least since EU3 in 2007 (or was it in EU2?). But then again, I remember having huge wars in GalCiv 2 when I kept conquering minor civs, and that was in 2006.* I really dont remember if Civ4 had warmongering as a generic penalty...

My point is thus: the Paradox games are the ones who push certain concepts further ahead. Civilization merely builds on top of these progresses, and mainstreams it. The fact that this is a game design element that I love only makes me appreciate Civilization more, since I'm a huge fan of the series.

I will give props to Civ though: the religious system that Civ 5 created was the best that I have ever seen before. I don't remember any game that had such a progressively customizable belief system. If someone can point me to another game where religion is developed so organically, I'd be happy! ^_^

Discussing the history of applied video game concepts is always a fun interest of mine. Going back to the original point: I understand 100% that Civ 6's Casus Belli system might turn out much, much different than EU's. Like I said, it's a cool historical concept that might prove a solution to Civ's historical problem of dealing with warmongering.

I am wondering how accessible to newcomers this new game will be. So far, it looks like it's coming with almost all of the complexities of a fully-expansioned Civ 5, while adding Casus Belli, Districts and lots of other new elements.

Man, watching TotalBiscuit's game, and I can't wait to play it.

In the first sentence you yourself have outlined how your accusation doesn't work. Paradox did not invent the concept, historical empires did. It was inevitable that a game about history whose focus was war and the evolution thereof would implement that system; it just so happens that Paradox beat Firaxis to the punch. If Civilization were to clone the exact same system with minimal tweaks, your argument would be valid and I would stand behind it. But as is, it just falls flat. We'll probably have to wait for release to do a full compare/contrast of EU's/Civ6's systems, so honestly I don't think that this argument really needs to happen (actually, the whole thing is my fault, so... uh... sorry for making this such a heated thing).

*I'm not sure how that contributes to the argument, but the game sounds fun and I'll probably look into it.

[Flickerdart]

In terms of the civilization bonuses...I realize that the role of selectable features based on your situation is occupied by policies, but it's never quite jived with me that you could, for example, start as Japan, lack access to Iron, and yet have the knowledge of the deadly Samurai unit. Or get +1 to ship range despite being landlocked for the entire game. Civilization traits should logically be born out of the terrain that civilization encounters, not be set at the beginning.

As for Casus Belli, I don't think Civ really needed that. What it needed was a way for wars to stop before total curbstomp - making the AI surrender without having to burn its capital to the ground, or having it accept your surrender without wiping you off the face of the planet first. There are lots of existing mechanics in other games that work well for this - CKII's war goals make sense for its time period, Endless Space's cold war status before diplomacy is established works well for early-stage civilizations. A few more holes could be filled in (for example, non-conquest CBs that don't let you capture things, for more modern conflicts).

Or at least make it easier to recapture cities without getting back a smouldering wreck.

[Cikomyr]

*I'm not sure how that contributes to the argument, but the game sounds fun and I'll probably look into it.

I was just trying to remember who had the Warmonger penalty first. When it became "a thing", ya know.

GalCiv2 was great. I am not sure how well the game has aged. Or maybe its me who has aged. Either way, i was utterly bored with GalCiv 3

[VoxRationis]

As for Casus Belli, I don't think Civ really needed that. What it needed was a way for wars to stop before total curbstomp - making the AI surrender without having to burn its capital to the ground, or having it accept your surrender without wiping you off the face of the planet first. There are lots of existing mechanics in other games that work well for this - CKII's war goals make sense for its time period, Endless Space's cold war status before diplomacy is established works well for early-stage civilizations. A few more holes could be filled in (for example, non-conquest CBs that don't let you capture things, for more modern conflicts).

Or at least make it easier to recapture cities without getting back a smouldering wreck.

It's definitely true that (in V at least; I'm not sure in previous editions) the war diplomacy was best suited to total war, rather than the limited conflicts typical of many periods of history. Which was a shame, because civs like the Aztecs would benefit very much from the ability to have endemic low-level conflict with non-barbarian neighbors. Still, I think the casus belli system was well overdue, since in V the AI felt quite uninhibited in listing various things you did (settling near them, grabbing wonders they wanted, etc.) as a reason for war, but the international community did not recognize your aggression as justified when the AI did those same things.

[factotum]

In terms of the civilization bonuses...I realize that the role of selectable features based on your situation is occupied by policies, but it's never quite jived with me that you could, for example, start as Japan, lack access to Iron, and yet have the knowledge of the deadly Samurai unit. Or get +1 to ship range despite being landlocked for the entire game. Civilization traits should logically be born out of the terrain that civilization encounters, not be set at the beginning.

Well, Civ (at least Civ5) does it the other way round--you choose a civ and the game then picks a starting location for you that will hopefully go with your strengths. So, a civ with +1 to ship range will usually start next to the ocean. It can get this wrong--for example, it might start you on a large lake rather than the ocean--but it's usually pretty good.

[Cikomyr]

It would certainly be interesting if Civilization bonuses and characteristics were organically shaped like Religion. So a civ with lots of Barbarian aggression or who has done lots of Warfare would be more likely to develop warlike traits.

But that would remove the uniqueness of bonuses and traits, which is one of Civilization's most marked trait. Sometimes its cool to play Rome and have Roman stuff.

I guess a game mod could do it? Just make all bonuses as selectable as you establish yourself?

[Cikomyr]

Wait. While watching TotalBiscuit stream. There is something i noticed.

Trade routes piggyback each others.

His northernmost cities could not reach his southern cities for a while in trade. Until he decided to send a trade route to a city at the geographical centre of his empire.

And then, next thing he knows, there is a massive available route that allows him to reach previously impossible locations.

Anyone else seen something like that?

[moossabi]

Wait. While watching TotalBiscuit stream. There is something i noticed.

Trade routes piggyback each others.

His northernmost cities could not reach his southern cities for a while in trade. Until he decided to send a trade route to a city at the geographical centre of his empire.

And then, next thing he knows, there is a massive available route that allows him to reach previously impossible locations.

Anyone else seen something like that?

Maybe he researched a tech/got a policy/built a building that increased his range? :smallconfused:

[Hunter Noventa]

Maybe he researched a tech/got a policy/built a building that increased his range? :smallconfused:

We do know that traders build roads along their routes, and that the roads themselves are upgraded with tech. Perhaps roads themselves increase your trade range. Some technologies might do it too, that was definitely a thing in Civ V.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Wait. While watching TotalBiscuit stream. There is something i noticed.

Trade routes piggyback each others.

His northernmost cities could not reach his southern cities for a while in trade. Until he decided to send a trade route to a city at the geographical centre of his empire.

And then, next thing he knows, there is a massive available route that allows him to reach previously impossible locations.

Anyone else seen something like that?

If trade range is determined by maximum number of turns to travel to the destination city (which is a logical way to measure it - certainly better than a flat "as the crow flies" number of hexes measure), yes, it would make sense that having a trade route to a mid-point city will increase the range of any future caravans traveling on the same road.

That the trade routes piggyback is a given: it's part of Rome's special ability to get extra gold for every city the caravan goes through, which means that it is best if you have roads going from city to city, rather than have each route create a brand new road.

Grey Wolf

[Cikomyr]

Ohhh.. i think he upgraded to Industrial Roads... Thatd make sense..

[Narkis]

Wait. While watching TotalBiscuit stream. There is something i noticed.

Trade routes piggyback each others.

His northernmost cities could not reach his southern cities for a while in trade. Until he decided to send a trade route to a city at the geographical centre of his empire.

And then, next thing he knows, there is a massive available route that allows him to reach previously impossible locations.

Anyone else seen something like that?

I think that a trading post is created automatically on a trading route's destination, and then each route that passes through that city gets extra gold and range so they piggyback indirectly. But don't quote me on that.

[Rodin]

Well, I lost my first game in record time. After meeting my first two Civs, the Vikings and the Americans, I was quite happily peacefully expanding my culture and allying with the Americans, who thanked me for being so peaceful.

Then the Vikings declared unprovoked war upon me. Okay, rough start when we're still in Cavemen with clubs mode. Then, the Americans declared war on me for being so violent.

Um.

With two Civs in a Pincer formation around me declaring war simultaneously, I had no chance. Overrun by swarms of Warrior units before I even made it to the second tier of military units, and while I still only had two cities.


Admittedly, I haven't played a Civ game extensively since about Civilization 3, but...was I just fantastically unlucky, or do I need to go balls-to-the-wall military just to stop from getting overrun in the early turns? It seemed like the game was expecting me to have a heavily developed military in the Stone Age.

[moossabi]

Well, I lost my first game in record time. After meeting my first two Civs, the Vikings and the Americans, I was quite happily peacefully expanding my culture and allying with the Americans, who thanked me for being so peaceful.

Then the Vikings declared unprovoked war upon me. Okay, rough start when we're still in Cavemen with clubs mode. Then, the Americans declared war on me for being so violent.

Um.

With two Civs in a Pincer formation around me declaring war simultaneously, I had no chance. Overrun by swarms of Warrior units before I even made it to the second tier of military units, and while I still only had two cities.


Admittedly, I haven't played a Civ game extensively since about Civilization 3, but...was I just fantastically unlucky, or do I need to go balls-to-the-wall military just to stop from getting overrun in the early turns? It seemed like the game was expecting me to have a heavily developed military in the Stone Age.

What difficulty level were you on?

[Rodin]

What difficulty level were you on?

Whatever the game starts you off with, I just started up a new game and realized only after I started that I hadn't seen the option for it. I'm sure it was offered but I hadn't seen it.

I didn't go in and select Deity difficulty or anything like that, I think my standard playing level is around Warlord level. I don't think I've ever been blown away in the Stone Age like that before.

[factotum]

Well, cities can't defend themselves anymore (unless you build Walls or an Encampment) so it seems likely that we're back to more like the Civ3 state of affairs, where you need to have defensive units in every city. My build order in Civ3 was always a Warrior or Spearman first to defend the city, and only then would I start thinking about anything else.

Also, you really should have seen the Viking declaration of war coming--they're an aggressive civ with powerful early-game units. Bit more puzzled about the Americans joining in, though, because their agenda is supposed to be that they hate civs who start wars on their home continent, so they should really have been ticked off at the Vikings, not you? Unless you'd been bullying city-states or something...

[mythmonster2]

The AI definitely seems super-aggressive early on. I saw a civ get eliminated ~turn 40 and wars breaking out throughout the Classical Age. That, combined with barbarians being a menace means you'll really want to prioritize getting an early military, even if you are focusing culture.

I'm having fun with VI, but I'm noticing a few UI changes that baffle me. I can't find any way to tell which tiles my city is expanding to, and I can't find how to queue production (though science/civics work just fine). There also doesn't seem to be any sort of breakdown as to what exactly is costing you money and how much; it's just split up into "Units" and "Cities". Also can't find out how much food a city needs to grow, which might be useful because you can harvest resources now. The UI just seems a lot less transparent now. It's possible that I was too used to EUI for Civ5, though, and have forgotten if the vanilla UI included all this information.

[factotum]

Certainly the pre-release streams I watched suggested that there isn't any way to queue production in a city--guess they didn't get around to putting that in before it went gold.

[Rodin]

Well, cities can't defend themselves anymore (unless you build Walls or an Encampment) so it seems likely that we're back to more like the Civ3 state of affairs, where you need to have defensive units in every city. My build order in Civ3 was always a Warrior or Spearman first to defend the city, and only then would I start thinking about anything else.

Also, you really should have seen the Viking declaration of war coming--they're an aggressive civ with powerful early-game units. Bit more puzzled about the Americans joining in, though, because their agenda is supposed to be that they hate civs who start wars on their home continent, so they should really have been ticked off at the Vikings, not you? Unless you'd been bullying city-states or something...

I did actually have a small military. I wasn't aware that cities were able to defend themselves at one point (Civ V, I'm guessing?), so I had a Warrior unit in my second city, as well as a Warrior and a Slinger in my capital in addition to a Scout unit that was searching for tribal villages. If only the Vikings had attacked, I would have been fine - it was just the combination of two Civilizations declaring war on me on literally the same turn that did me in.

I'm going to put that down to a really bad starting location, I think.

Oh, and one important thing that surprised me - Spearmen are actually worse then cavemen with clubs, because they're a specialized anti-cavalry unit. If you get attacked extremely early on like I did, it's better to not bother with them as they're both more expensive and weaker than caveman spam, and their specialty doesn't matter because cavalry units don't exist yet.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh, and one important thing that surprised me - Spearmen are actually worse then cavemen with clubs, because they're a specialized anti-cavalry unit. If you get attacked extremely early on like I did, it's better to not bother with them as they're both more expensive and weaker than caveman spam, and their specialty doesn't matter because cavalry units don't exist yet.

Correct, anti-calvary units like spearmen have a -10 against melee type units like the caveman warrior.

That 10 points, however, makes less and less of a difference as the absolute values go up, because it is a flat number rather than a percentage. It also means warriors are absolutely crushing early game against barbarians because they almost invariably have spearmen guarding their bases. It's a shame calvary units don't get a bonus against Melee to make the triangle complete. Might almost make them worth bothering with at some point. As it is, both spearmen and horsemen are pretty pointless. Stick with your clubs until you can tech up to swords. There's also a spearman promotion that negates the type bonus from Melee, so you can spend a promotion to not suck.

Also, something that came back from Civ III: gunpowder units require Niter, which an interesting change of pace. In Civ V, musketmen didn't have required resources, so if you got no iron anywhere, you might be able to dive for muskets. It's also another resource to juggle around, and has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the game after you get out of muskets and into rifles, and out of bombards into artillery.

[VoxRationis]

Am I looking at this right? I don't have a copy of the game, so I'm inferring this from the let's plays I've seen. Do crossbowmen upgrade to field cannon, instead of the Gatling gun, as in Civ V? Do field cannon retain their full range? The range decrease from the Gatling gun "upgrade" always irritated me in V.

[Sholos]

Correct, anti-calvary units like spearmen have a -10 against melee type units like the caveman warrior.

That 10 points, however, makes less and less of a difference as the absolute values go up, because it is a flat number rather than a percentage. It also means warriors are absolutely crushing early game against barbarians because they almost invariably have spearmen guarding their bases. It's a shame calvary units don't get a bonus against Melee to make the triangle complete. Might almost make them worth bothering with at some point. As it is, both spearmen and horsemen are pretty pointless. Stick with your clubs until you can tech up to swords. There's also a spearman promotion that negates the type bonus from Melee, so you can spend a promotion to not suck.

Also, something that came back from Civ III: gunpowder units require Niter, which an interesting change of pace. In Civ V, musketmen didn't have required resources, so if you got no iron anywhere, you might be able to dive for muskets. It's also another resource to juggle around, and has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the game after you get out of muskets and into rifles, and out of bombards into artillery.

I believe the combat strengths are logarithmic, so the +10 is actually important the whole game.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Am I looking at this right? I don't have a copy of the game, so I'm inferring this from the let's plays I've seen. Do crossbowmen upgrade to field cannon, instead of the Gatling gun, as in Civ V? Do field cannon retain their full range? The range decrease from the Gatling gun "upgrade" always irritated me in V.

Yea, but don't worry, in the Modern era, they upgrade to Machine Guns which still only have a range of 1.

In Civ V, however, if you take the English and build (or upgrade into) Longbowmen, they keep the +1 range, for a total range of 2 as Gatling Guns. Not too shabby, actually. Too bad the rest of England's abilities are so sub-par.

Not sure how Civ VI handles upgrades from unique units with unique abilities.

[Binks]

Got 2 games under my belt now and I am really enjoying Civ VI. However I am apparently terrible at it :smalltongue:. Best ranking I've achieved thus far, against Prince level AIs, is all the way down at Nero. Still trying to wrap my head around all the district planning stuff, though it doesn't honestly seem all that impactful unless you're playing Japan. 1-3 extra production is good, but not game changing when the buildings are giving 3+ to several cities.

Biggest thing I have learned so far is to always put my industrial districts as centralized as possible. The +production applying to all of my cities for each district I can put near the center gets impressive pretty quickly. The Nero game I ended up with a +20 something bonus in my capital from its Industrial center and two others, one 5sq away and the other 9sq with a +3 range bonus. Really helped power out the space race projects.

Anyone know how the team multiplayer works? Probably going to be playing a game coop with someone else tomorrow, so curious if it's the standard 'share tech' of Civs past, and if Civics fit in that shared box now, or if they changed it up somehow.

[factotum]

I had a similar situation to Rodin in my game, where Germany and India declared war on me in the same turn. However, I don't think I ever saw a single German unit before he asked for peace a few turns later (I think Greece declared war on him shortly after, which might explain that), and I just shot India's Varus with my archers until he gave up as well. Oddly enough, India then became friendly enough to become my ally not long afterward, so I still don't understand why he declared in the first place!

I've also come to the conclusion that housing doesn't make much difference. I have a city that has so much food it's managed to grow to size 13 despite only having 9 housing--they maybe ought to introduce some sort of penalty for that beyond reducing the city's growth rate! I have six cities (including one I took from the Aztecs because they forward settled an area I had my eye on) and am leading on science, despite only having one campus district and a science per turn in the mid-60s--they've definitely rebalanced that quite heavily from Civ5, where you'd have no chance if your science wasn't in the high hundreds by midgame.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, having just recently played through Civ V again (and remembering why it was merely.. okay, in my opinion), how does VI compare to IV and V? (IV being the best of the rest in my opinon; V has some good ideas and a better interface with regard to the dropdown prompt column, but a lot of it leaves me a bit cold.)

[Tono]

Ghandi declares war on you whenever anyone declares one. At least as far as I can tell. And Greece gets pissy if you are friendly to any city-state they want. Which is all of them.

Honestly after a couple of games, I really hate playing with either Ghandi or America. Feels like I am being punished for fighting anyone.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The computer AI is rather... umm... well, it's dumb. Even on the higher level difficulties, it will do stupid things like unescorted settlers into unconquered areas, unescorted builders, and very poor tile placement. To compensate for the fact that the AI is dumb as bricks, it gets cheat codes. So imagine playing a kid that never actually beat the game without cheat codes, and now you are playing him with those cheat codes enabled for him.

[factotum]

The AI does do some cool things that it never did in earlier games, though--for instance, I caught a Japanese spy loitering around my city, and Hojo immediately offered a deal where he'd give me two luxuries and some gold for 30 turns in exchange for not putting his spy up against the nearest wall. Guess he really liked the guy! OK, it's a very simple piece of AI coding to include something like that, but it's a nice bit of attention to detail.

[Cikomyr]

Well.. I need a Pixel Shader 5.0 to play that game.

2011 video card only has 4.1

I'll go cry in a corner

[factotum]

2011 video card only has 4.1


What particular 2011 video card are we talking about? I mean, the state of the art has moved on a bit in five years, it might not be that expensive to get a replacement that will work.

[Cikomyr]

I have a laptop

Kind of hard to upgrade. Its an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 350M

[Winter_Wolf]

I have a laptop

Kind of hard to upgrade. Its an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 350M

Ouch. If it makes you feel better, I have a 610m, and it's apparently worse than your 350m across the board.

Make some room in the corner, man.

[Cikomyr]

Ouch. If it makes you feel better, I have a 610m, and it's apparently worse than your 350m across the board.

Make some room in the corner, man.

Owning a house is xpensive.. :smallfrown:

[factotum]

Well, finished my first game. Standard map, standard turns, Rome, Prince difficulty, achieved science victory on turn 492. I actually had all the techs researched to *achieve* that victory about a hundred turns earlier, but you have to produce a LOT of expensive stuff and I only had one Spaceport--by the time I realised what a slog it was going to be to finish things up it was too late to get a spaceport building in my second city. (Unlike earlier Civ games you can't just build spaceship components anywhere, they have to be in a spaceport district).

At one point it looked like I might get a culture victory before I finished building all the space missions, but Kongo had the good fortune to spawn on the other continent with only 2 neighbours (I had 4) and proceeded to destroy one of those, leaving him with about three times as many cities as I did. I still somehow managed to have higher culture and tourism than him, but it made the gains in the culture victory race very slow.

[Cikomyr]

Well. Just purchased myself a sweet new PC.

Ill wait for delivery, and get playin' !!

[Winter_Wolf]

Well. Just purchased myself a sweet new PC.

Ill wait for delivery, and get playin' !!

See, you say that and provide no details. How're we to live vicariously through you or envy your new computer without details?

Yes, I'm nosy as all get out.

[moossabi]

Played my first game on chieftain difficulty on Saturday. Misc thoughts/highlights are below:

For some reason, nobody wanted my envoys early in the game
Greece's Wildcard bonus and Acropolises are great
They need WAAY more great writer buildings; I've got a bunch of them running around unable to do anything. I'm hoping for a mod to fix this
The AI could be less aggressive; Kongo declared war on me for no reason and soon after Spain and America followed suit without using Casus Belli. I took one of Kongo's cities and then we had peace. America and Spain did basically nothing.
America didn't expand at all until Spain stuck its second city right next to them (Madrid being a bajillion miles to the north)
I had extremely high faith and culture, and yet when Hojo came up to me his complint was that I had a large army and no culture to match it (because 4 pikemen is a large army apparently) while Kongo sits south of my border with 50 of their overpowered swordsmen replacers)
No renaming cities sucks, but I can tolerate it
Bad starts are now even more annoying than ever (in a hotseat game with a friend I ended up on a cliff face with no freshwater and mountains blocking places to build districts and wonders)
Venice is missing, making my conspiracy theories about DLC distracting me from the current game and theorizing about how Venice will be done (Suzerain bonuses at 1 envoy that you have regardless of losing Suzerain status, calling it now)
Love the districts if the start is good enough
Haven't really declared war (although Kongo is becoming too much of a nuisance to tolerate any longer), so I can't judge the Casus Belli system
Despite the nitpicks above, I'm really enjoying the game and can't wait for the modding community to get their hands on it.

[Cikomyr]

See, you say that and provide no details. How're we to live vicariously through you or envy your new computer without details?

Yes, I'm nosy as all get out.

;-)



Alienware Aurora R5 Base

- 8GB (2X4GB) DDR4 2133MHz SDRAM Memory
- 256GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
- NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 950 with 2GB GDDR5
- Dell Wireless 1820 Card (802.11AC Dual-Band Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.1)
- Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
- 850W PSU Air Cooled Chassis
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 Processor (4-Cores, 6MB Cache, Turbo Boost 2.0, up to 3.3GHz)

[Vitruviansquid]

Been playing this game on King difficulty (Prince rapidly proved incredibly easy, I'll see if I need to move up further after a few weekends of play).

Happiness has been replaced by "Amenities." After your third citizen, every 2 citizens in a city makes the city require another Amenity or it starts getting unhappiness modifiers, and can eventually revolt. An instance of a luxury resource now gives 1 Amenity to the 4 cities that need it most. Cities can optionally build an Entertainment District to increase its amenities without exploiting luxury resources. What does this all mean?

Settling the hell out of everything is back. So long as your cities don't increase too rapidly in population (and they won't), you won't paralyze your growth by settling too fast. It is also worth it to have multiple instances of luxury resources if you plan to have an empire with more than 4 cities (which you should). By the time your cities are actually starved over the distribution of luxury goods amenities, you will have also unlocked the ability to generate your own amenities from the entertainment district. Or you could trade for them. Or you could conquer for them. There are any number of advantages that settling early and often will net you to offset a lack of amenities.

The existence of districts with bonuses that get distributed not only to its parent city but to all cities within 6 tiles (that is, the entertainment and industrial districts, as far as I know) means that your cities should actually strive to be fairly close to a few central points where you'll have those districts. There is much to un-learn from Civ 4 and Civ 5 if you've played those games before.

Another thing I've noticed is... holy crap, a nation or barbarian camp that is gearing up for early game war will gear up for war so fast, it'll make your head spin. I now always make a second warrior off the bat because a single warrior with the Discipline policy can just barely defeat the spearmen sitting on a barbarian camp. So sometimes it takes 2 warriors and other times, you need the two warriors are needed just to fend off the barbarian invasion. Barbarian camps must have some kind of production surge after they've sat around awhile, because "ripe" camps will generation armies of 3-4 warriors, slingers, horse archers, and horsemen when they come at you. A nation can also flood you with 5-7 warriors in an insanely quick time, likely if they have the Agoge policy and you don't. That said, the AI is still sloppy about upgrading units or using upgraded units, so the winning strategy is to gain a convenient and powerful tech early, and then make a few of those units that can fend off the AI's hordes. Playing as Cleopatra, I try to tech up to Wheel early on to make a Maryannu Chariot Archer, which can pretty much hold against infinite AI warriors along with my 2 starter warriors.

As far as the leaders... Queen Tomyris is crazy strong with her ability to heal when killing units and create double cavalry. Especially if you have a more elite army, Queen Tomyris can use 2-3 units to hold out infinitely against an invasion or infinitely attack a stronger army if you play your cards right. Otherwise, I've been mostly playing Cleopatra ever since I noticed the AI kind of underbuilds wonders (perhaps the implementation of terrain requirements for wonders make them a bit more exclusive). I tried playing Catherine de Medici, but the constant intel updates actually get kind of annoying. I suspect Qin Shi Huang is actually extremely good at teching, but haven't actually tried him because I noticed I stop keeping pace with the Eurekas and Inspirations at about the early Medieval era. Was never much interested in building a long Great Wall, either.

edit:

As for great writer buildings... I think the point was never to allow someone to get all the great writers. Each Amphitheatre holds 1 great writing, and your palace might hold 1 unless you have a relic or something to put in there. You should aim to nab 2-3 Great Writers at max (for 4-6 cities) and then let other civs have their share. By the time you tech up into other tourism buildings, you should be going for great artists and such.

[factotum]

Re: amenities: I should modify my earlier statement about housing not being too important since I've learned a bit more since then. Basically, your cities can only grow up to their housing cap + 5--at that point their growth stops entirely, no matter how much food they have available. It's also somewhat harder to get hold of housing than it is to get amenities, at least before you unlock Neighbourhoods (which are a relatively late-game tech). I think my cities were more often housing-limited than amenity-limited, although this was playing on Prince difficulty and I don't know if the calculations change at higher difficulty levels.

[Corlindale]

After a few false start where I was embarassingly crushed by barbarians, I finally got a good game going with Pericles.

I really like the game so far. There's a lot of new stuff to process (especially since I never really played V, so IV is my reference point for everything), but fortunately most of it is introduced somewhat gradually.

I've always played Civ like a pacifist as much as possible and it seems like there's a lot more to actually do when not fighting in VI compared to earlier instalments (where the pacifist playstyle could sometimes turn into "press enter to win") . The game is full of "quests" (city state quests, boost quests and "make civ x not hate me" quests) and sub-systems, so you are always working on all kinds of stuff at the same time.

My only gripe is that the AI leaders can seem a bit touchy at times. I like that they have agendas, but I think it's a little much that Kongo immediately gets angry with me when I found a religion because I haven't spread it to them. At least give me just a little time to do so before getting so upset!

[huttj509]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

Best I can figure (from one more turn) is that norway got a religious victory (which with me not founding a religion I had no way to fight, unless), but that REALLY needs to be front and center on the loss screen. X won through Y victory type.

[Cespenar]

Turns out barbarians are pretty useful. The Greeks suddenly declared war on me because something something city-states. 3 hoplites, 2 warriors and 1 chariot appear almost next to my capital.

Fortunately, because of the never-ending barbarian raids, I had trained around 4 warriors and 2 archers just to defend my trade routes and cities.

Cue some mean butt-whooping.

[Cikomyr]

I like that now, everyone needs a minimal amount of military to be even remotely viable. Dont arm up? Get wiped out.

[Vitruviansquid]

Hasn't that always been true unless tou're playing on a potato level difficulty? Barbs and empires will pounce on you so fast if you forget your military since Civ 4. I only say 4 because it's been so long since I've played 3.

[Hunter Noventa]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

Best I can figure (from one more turn) is that norway got a religious victory (which with me not founding a religion I had no way to fight, unless), but that REALLY needs to be front and center on the loss screen. X won through Y victory type.

Religious victories are always kind of like that, the AI is a lot better at them for some reason, basically unless you're gearing up for it yourself, just turn it off.


Hasn't that always been true unless tou're playing on a potato level difficulty? Barbs and empires will pounce on you so fast if you forget your military since Civ 4. I only say 4 because it's been so long since I've played 3.

For the most part in previous Civs, you could get by with just a few units in each city (or a garrison, in the case of V), and a few roamers to pick off barbs. It feels like you need a lot more military here. I've yet to finish my first game, and I'm certainly not going to win, but I'm enjoying it, even if I'm kind of stuck between two bigger empires.

[factotum]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

There are quite a few instances where the UI doesn't give you enough information--for instance, Pericles pops up and tells you, "That city is ours. I suggest you don't interfere." Er, *which* city, Pericles? I'm suzerain of four city-states and have envoys in another three, I'm not going to individually check all of them to see which ones you're also targeting to help figure out why you're getting narked!

[Hunter Noventa]

There are quite a few instances where the UI doesn't give you enough information--for instance, Pericles pops up and tells you, "That city is ours. I suggest you don't interfere." Er, *which* city, Pericles? I'm suzerain of four city-states and have envoys in another three, I'm not going to individually check all of them to see which ones you're also targeting to help figure out why you're getting narked!

Yeah it's kind of annoying when a leader pops up and says something leaving you with no clue what he's talking about without going to the diplomatic screen to try and suss it out.

Hopefully patches and mods will improve the UI, but so far that's been the worst part of the experience, otherwise it's a good game.

[moossabi]

I think that Gandhi's hidden agenda is always nuke-happy.

At least he won't declare wars this time around. :smalltongue:

[Blue Ghost]

I've been hearing good things about this game, which makes me want to get it. I've also been hearing a lot of complaints about the AI. How bad is it, from your experience?

[Vitruviansquid]

I dislike that the AI fights by throwing a huge knot of low tech soldiers at you, which isn't how a human player would fight. Besides that, I have seen nothing egregious from the AI on Prince and King difficulties.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've been hearing good things about this game, which makes me want to get it. I've also been hearing a lot of complaints about the AI. How bad is it, from your experience?

On lower difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted.

On higher difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted, so he started using cheat codes instead.

[VoxRationis]

On lower difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted.

On higher difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted, so he started using cheat codes instead.


Isn't that what the AI did in V?

[Kish]

Never known a strategy game where it isn't what happened. They have yet to produce AI that can actually approach the level of a human player; "at higher levels cheat like mad to make up for it" is how it's done, in every strategy game I can think of.

[Vitruviansquid]

King difficulty.

Spawned as Cleopatra and I had a good starting location with plenty of rivers to settle.

The last game I got out-settled by Sumeria and Norway and only got to have 3 cities, so this game, I was determined to keep up with the insane land grab at the beginning of the game. My build order for my first city was Warrior, Builder, then Settler, then another Settler.

In their wanderings, my warriors find Philip II... and then Montezuma. From the first time I realized I was on the same continent with Spain and Montezuma, I knew there would be some horrible grudge match going down. It's okay, though. I'm not fazed. I'm going to do what Cleopatra's good at, and find me a big, strong man to protect me while I build Wonders on the Nile (not making a jab at women, this is the actual recommended strategy for Cleopatra)...

Philip II turned out not to be that man, as he assaulted my second city with about 4 warriors in a surprise war before I could get my 3rd military unit online. Fighting around the city was intense, but he asks for peace when I churn out more warriors and a slinger (who turned out to be useless). Turned out Monty was crazy mad that Philip II had some luxuries that he didn't, and so declared war on Philip II. Shortly after the Spanish second wave warriors retreated, the Eagle Warriors arrived and captured both Madrid and Seville, knocking Spain out of the game.

Great. So now I was sharing a continent with only 1 other civilization, and it was an infamous warmonger that already doubled its size by annihilating an enemy most a-historically. My reaction is to finish Bronze working, and then colonize to seize 2 Iron deposits. When Montezuma inevitably declared war on me, he showed up with about double the Eagle Warriors as the earlier Spanish had Warriors. Fortunately, the push came from Madrid in the south, against which most of my military was already stationed, and I was about 3 turns from finishing Ironworking. The tide of Eagle Warriors get pushed back by 3 squads of veteran warriors upgraded into swordsmen. The fighting on my southern border was intense, but the creation of 2 Maryannu Chariot Archers from my core cities rapidly turns the tide. We pave the ground with corpses as my charioteers steadily catch and kill the Aztec infantry in the rout.

Now I'm on the offense, and I show no mercy. I take Madrid and Seville, and of course I keep them for myself rather than liberating them for the treacherous Spanish. Then I roll into the Aztec heartland and take Tenochtitlan after a long and bloody siege. From the fighting, two of my swordsmen squads reach level 2 and receive their customized names, "Ramses' Roughnecks" and "The Big Khopesh Boys." Montezuma's only strong when he's big and has many different luxuries, so I let him live with one small remote city.

It is now the Renaissance, and I haven't looked around for the other continent. My player score is about double the next highest for an unmet player, and Montezuma is no threat at all any longer. I'm just trying to grab plenty of great people and build up a large number of cultural objects and wonders for an eventual cultural victory.

Right now, I'm actually of peeved that King difficulty gets so easy after the early game. It feels like the only challenge this mode offers is barbarians and surprise wars in the early game, and then the game gets stale again. I'm probably going to try Emperor for my next game, and hopefully it doesn't make starting out impossible, but keeps the game interesting as time goes on.

On the strategy side, I'm also finding Iteru less and less useful the more I play Cleopatra. The hexes next to rivers are in *very* high demand for being good farmland, possibly containing resources, and there are far fewer than you might think. The rules on where you can build wonders also means many simply cannot be put on a river. Or perhaps I should've planned better. I think Catherine de Medici might be better for Wonders, even if she can only get started on wonders during the Medieval age. She has a bigger bonus and you don't lose out on building river tiles because you had to use them for your wonders. If only my screen wasn't covered with 4 secrets from the court ball every time I hit end turn on her. >_>

[VoxRationis]

King difficulty.

Spawned as Cleopatra and I had a good starting location with plenty of rivers to settle.

The last game I got out-settled by Sumeria and Norway and only got to have 3 cities, so this game, I was determined to keep up with the insane land grab at the beginning of the game. My build order for my first city was Warrior, Builder, then Settler, then another Settler.

In their wanderings, my warriors find Philip II... and then Montezuma. From the first time I realized I was on the same continent with Spain and Montezuma, I knew there would be some horrible grudge match going down. It's okay, though. I'm not fazed. I'm going to do what Cleopatra's good at, and find me a big, strong man to protect me while I build Wonders on the Nile (not making a jab at women, this is the actual recommended strategy for Cleopatra)...

Philip II turned out not to be that man, as he assaulted my second city with about 4 warriors in a surprise war before I could get my 3rd military unit online. Fighting around the city was intense, but he asks for peace when I churn out more warriors and a slinger (who turned out to be useless). Turned out Monty was crazy mad that Philip II had some luxuries that he didn't, and so declared war on Philip II. Shortly after the Spanish second wave warriors retreated, the Eagle Warriors arrived and captured both Madrid and Seville, knocking Spain out of the game.

Great. So now I was sharing a continent with only 1 other civilization, and it was an infamous warmonger that already doubled its size by annihilating an enemy most a-historically. My reaction is to finish Bronze working, and then colonize to seize 2 Iron deposits. When Montezuma inevitably declared war on me, he showed up with about double the Eagle Warriors as the earlier Spanish had Warriors. Fortunately, the push came from Madrid in the south, against which most of my military was already stationed, and I was about 3 turns from finishing Ironworking. The tide of Eagle Warriors get pushed back by 3 squads of veteran warriors upgraded into swordsmen. The fighting on my southern border was intense, but the creation of 2 Maryannu Chariot Archers from my core cities rapidly turns the tide. We pave the ground with corpses as my charioteers steadily catch and kill the Aztec infantry in the rout.

Now I'm on the offense, and I show no mercy. I take Madrid and Seville, and of course I keep them for myself rather than liberating them for the treacherous Spanish. Then I roll into the Aztec heartland and take Tenochtitlan after a long and bloody siege. From the fighting, two of my swordsmen squads reach level 2 and receive their customized names, "Ramses' Roughnecks" and "The Big Khopesh Boys." Montezuma's only strong when he's big and has many different luxuries, so I let him live with one small remote city.

It is now the Renaissance, and I haven't looked around for the other continent. My player score is about double the next highest for an unmet player, and Montezuma is no threat at all any longer. I'm just trying to grab plenty of great people and build up a large number of cultural objects and wonders for an eventual cultural victory.

Right now, I'm actually of peeved that King difficulty gets so easy after the early game. It feels like the only challenge this mode offers is barbarians and surprise wars in the early game, and then the game gets stale again. I'm probably going to try Emperor for my next game, and hopefully it doesn't make starting out impossible, but keeps the game interesting as time goes on.

On the strategy side, I'm also finding Iteru less and less useful the more I play Cleopatra. The hexes next to rivers are in *very* high demand for being good farmland, possibly containing resources, and there are far fewer than you might think. The rules on where you can build wonders also means many simply cannot be put on a river. Or perhaps I should've planned better. I think Catherine de Medici might be better for Wonders, even if she can only get started on wonders during the Medieval age. She has a bigger bonus and you don't lose out on building river tiles because you had to use them for your wonders. If only my screen wasn't covered with 4 secrets from the court ball every time I hit end turn on her. >_>

Yes, it's rather a strange ability, considering that the Egyptians typically built their tombs and whatnot upland of the river, reserving riverside areas for farming.

Speaking of chariots, when I've seen LPs of Civ VI, I see references to a "Heavy Chariot" unit. Is there a "Light Chariot" unit? A chariot archer (besides the Egyptian unique unit)? Also, how does the Maryannu work with regards to its promotions? Does it get promoted to a ranged unit or to a heavy cavalry unit?

[Vitruviansquid]

The Maryannu chariot archer is Egypt's unique unit, replacing the Heavy Chariot. It promotes and upgrades like an archer (upgrades into crossbowman) while the Heavy Chariots promote and upgrade as heavy cavalry (into Knights).

[Narkis]

Isn't that what the AI did in V?

It's very similar to the AI in V, certainly. They both suck in pretty much the same ways. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the same codebase. Disappointed, but not surprised.

[Gauntlet]

It's very similar to the AI in V, certainly. They both suck in pretty much the same ways. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the same codebase. Disappointed, but not surprised.

From what I've been seeing on a few discussions of the AI on CivFanatics, they at least look like they're moddable which good at least.

[VoxRationis]

I realized one small, nitpicky thing that irritates me with VI: like in Gods & Kings, religion is obligatory. You can opt not to found one, but one will then be provided for you by an AI civ, and worse, that now makes them directly closer to a victory condition. There's no room for the areligious or atheistic in Civ, it would seem. I would have appreciated a mechanic where just as culture resists tourism, so science or some other factor resists religious conversion.

[thirsting]

-- nitpicky thing --

You could just refluff the ingame religion mechanics to be something else, like "Philosophy", in your head. That helped me tolerate the 'obligatory' religion stuff in CivV.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I realized one small, nitpicky thing that irritates me with VI: like in Gods & Kings, religion is obligatory. You can opt not to found one, but one will then be provided for you by an AI civ, and worse, that now makes them directly closer to a victory condition. There's no room for the areligious or atheistic in Civ, it would seem. I would have appreciated a mechanic where just as culture resists tourism, so science or some other factor resists religious conversion.

Found 'Secular Humanism' as a religion. Done.

[Cikomyr]

I think his point is that you dont have a mean to actively resist religious influence if you dont have a religion of your own.

Except off course killing all the apostled and missionaries

[Kish]

So wait, you can found a religion named whatever you want?

[Maryring]

My Civ V games involved epic religious battles between Taco Tuesdays and Touhouism. :smallbiggrin:

[Cikomyr]

So wait, you can found a religion named whatever you want?

In Civ V, i once had:

- Aztec fascist civilization founding the Camarilla religion.
- Arab Civilization with lots of Spice founding Muadib's jihad
- Ethiopian Militant democracy founding Jediism

Have fun with it kid. The game is waaaay more entertaining if you roleplay a little bit and find your story as you play.

Funniest i had was the Vampire Aztecs infiltrating all the world's City-states, with a stationned battleship practicing constant gunboat Diplomacy.

[factotum]

I realized one small, nitpicky thing that irritates me with VI: like in Gods & Kings, religion is obligatory. You can opt not to found one, but one will then be provided for you by an AI civ, and worse, that now makes them directly closer to a victory condition.

An AI going full-on religion will be able to easily crush any pathetic religion you could come up with--when they have +250 faith per turn and you have +50, they can simply swamp you with apostles until your religion is dead and buried. Your best bet to defend against religion is to make sure there are at least two major religions in the world so they can't easily destroy each other--there's no necessity for either of those religions to be yours.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

An AI going full-on religion will be able to easily crush any pathetic religion you could come up with--when they have +250 faith per turn and you have +50, they can simply swamp you with apostles until your religion is dead and buried. Your best bet to defend against religion is to make sure there are at least two major religions in the world so they can't easily destroy each other--there's no necessity for either of those religions to be yours.

Actually, there's a much easier way: declare an inquisition!

Killing a Missionary not only gives your religion +250 in a ten tile radius(!), but it also gives their religion a -250. Kill off a couple of them and his plan backfires. Killing an apostle is even better, although you have to gang up on it with multiple inquisitors in your turf to pull it off.

Fortunately, inquisitors are like 80 faith, quick and cheap.

[Vitruviansquid]

If religion's a pain for you, you can always play as Mvemba or Saladin. The former gets bonuses for foreign religions and the latter is guaranteed the ability to start a religion.

[Kish]

...okay, two people implied an answer but neither actually gave one, so let me try again.

I'm not asking about Civilization V. In Civilization VI, can you name a religion whatever you want?

[Vitruviansquid]

Yes. Yes you can.

[huttj509]

...okay, two people implied an answer but neither actually gave one, so let me try again.

I'm not asking about Civilization V. In Civilization VI, can you name a religion whatever you want?

Yup, my first civ 6 game was won via the worldwide domination of Pastafarianism.

[Vitruviansquid]

Playing Hojo Tokimune this time on Emperor difficulty, and I must say, the AI is satisfying at warfare now.

China did indeed declare a surprise war on me with a horde of warriors during my expansion phase. The first *real* war, however, saw me fighting his spearmen, chariots, warriors, and catapults.

Samurai are a great unit for being a unique intermediate between Swordsmen and Musketmen. It gives you a brief power spike for which other civilizations simply have no answer because they don't have a unit existing in the same slot.

[Hunter Noventa]

Played some more of my first game last night, excluding the game from Windows Defender REALLY sped up the loading time.

Egypt has been hemmed in by China for centuries, and I weathered a war they declared on me. But I'm getting up to where I'll be able to go to war with them, as I've got Artillery rolling out now and while they're ahead with tech, the AI isn't very good about upgrading their units in this game, which is a little sad.

But normally I struggle to even survive at Prince difficulty, so to be actually doing okay is kind of a nice change of pace. If only I could find some coal to target.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

In Civilization VI, can you name a religion whatever you want?

Yes, as well as being able to select its icon. You also mix-and-match its characteristics from a list of options, and once established you can further customize it.

GW

[Hunter Noventa]

My game has religious victory off, so I see peter running around pumping my cities full of religion to no real effect. I've never been fond of the Religious/Diplomatic victories, they're a bit too hard to control. Especially in Civ V where the opinion of City States matters, and if you don't start with enough around you you'll always be behind at the World Congress.

[Vitruviansquid]

Alright, boys and girls, the game's been out long enough. It's high time this thread got embroiled in some page-long arguments about strategy. Here's some observations I've made about the game at Emperor difficulty, on Small and Continents.

- I'm finding this to be a fairly powerful build order. Warrior off the bat for exploration, then a Builder to jack up your first city's productivity, and two settlers after that. Your warriors must range out and make sure there are no barbarian camps close by your civilization. It is a slight gamble to do this with 2 warriors, and you may have the odd game where you don't find every barb camp, which means you NEED the Discipline policy as soon as you can get it so that each of your warriors has a good chance to solo a barbarian camp. By the time you settle your second city, you will be severely under-powered and over-wealthy in the AI's eyes. So at least one of your neighbors will probably try to fight a Surprise War against you with like 4-5 warriors. Don't panic. Stay in a defensive position at your city that's under attack. Exploit the inability of the enemy to fight your units inside of a city, and eventually you'll get the AI off your back. Train another military unit if you have to, as long as it's not a Slinger. Slingers are too fragile and easy to lose, even after taking their shot at enemy Warriors. Slingers are bad. Don't use them. The only reason to have a Slinger is to try and get a kill to get your Archery tech, and then train archers for your Machinery tech, and then train Crossbowmen to get that other tech. Instead, just research Archery raw. Getting a slinger is spending vital early game production on a *gamble* to get a few turns of teching.

- Fight and win a war in the Classical Era. You cannot compete later without taking a boost from somebody else, especially as this same process is definitely going on in another continent. I say do this in the Classical Era because you don't want to fight the AI when it's Warriors vs. Warriors, because they're going to outnumber you. In Classical, however, the counters triangle is still being developed, and you will have units that stomp all over the AI's warriors. When Medieval Era begins, the AI will have caught up to the counter triangle and may be able to fight you off. Swordsmen defeat everything but Horsemen, and your enemies aren't going to have Horsemen, so I suggest using them. Archers can't take walled cities, but can also stomp all over other warriors in concert with your own warriors.

- Unless you actually get bonuses on having a religion and it's part of your plan, I say don't even play that game. Just take a good pantheon bonus and bum off someone else's religion when they come to convert you. Yes, I know. It feels bad that you can't prevent someone else's religious victory this way, but there is always another civ out there to counter the spread of any single religion. But you are still getting a good chunk of benefit while putting in no investment whatsoever. Remember that every Holy Site you have, that's one other resource you're not getting from another district. What's faith actually going to get you? A few Great People, and those religious buildings that come after temples. Sure, Meeting Houses and Gurdwaras (and equivalents) are pretty sweet, but that's pretty much the only benefit you're getting from Faith besides the instruments to accumulate more Faith.

- I'm not a fan of the Aqueduct. I don't even see the point. It's a district that gives you +2 housing unless you don't have water. Settle places with water to begin with, obviously. Other districts pretty much all give +1 already, ON TOP OF their other bonuses. Encampments and Campuses will end up with at least +2 Housing if you follow up with their other buildings. Of course, Neighborhoods will come later that give +5 or +6 (not in all locations, but come on, if you have a city anywhere that can't get at least a +5 neighborhood, I will be incredulous). As long as you don't forget workers and building other, better districts, you should be tided over on housing until Neighborhoods become a thing. When you get Neighborhoods, Aqueducts become totally pointless anyways.

- I'm also not a big fan of gold. Tiles that provide Gold don't provide nearly enough to outweigh tiles that provide other things. However, Commercial Hubs are insane value because the trade capacity increase can be worth more than any single building you make, especially if Egypt is out there. I don't know about Harbors, unless you're actually using a strategy dependent on a good navy. Never played Norway or England *shrug*.

[Hunter Noventa]

- I'm not a fan of the Aqueduct. I don't even see the point. It's a district that gives you +2 housing unless you don't have water. Settle places with water to begin with, obviously. Other districts pretty much all give +1 already, ON TOP OF their other bonuses. Encampments and Campuses will end up with at least +2 Housing if you follow up with their other buildings. Of course, Neighborhoods will come later that give +5 or +6 (not in all locations, but come on, if you have a city anywhere that can't get at least a +5 neighborhood, I will be incredulous). As long as you don't forget workers and building other, better districts, you should be tided over on housing until Neighborhoods become a thing. When you get Neighborhoods, Aqueducts become totally pointless anyways.

- I'm also not a big fan of gold. Tiles that provide Gold don't provide nearly enough to outweigh tiles that provide other things. However, Commercial Hubs are insane value because the trade capacity increase can be worth more than any single building you make, especially if Egypt is out there. I don't know about Harbors, unless you're actually using a strategy dependent on a good navy. Never played Norway or England *shrug*.

Even with being founded on a river, my capital needed the Aqueduct to keep up in housing. Though, replacing the Aqueduct with a Neighborhood might be viable if you have enough of a boost.

Gold is useful because you can use it to instantly buy things like Builders, Traders and military units much faster than you could build them if you get caught off guard. It can ALSO be used to buy Great People.

Harbors are probably more useful on water-heavy maps, but they also provide an adjacency bonus for Industrial Districts, I think.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Alright, boys and girls, the game's been out long enough. It's high time this thread got embroiled in some page-long arguments about strategy. Here's some observations I've made about the game at Emperor difficulty, on Small and Continents.

- I'm finding this to be a fairly powerful build order. Warrior off the bat for exploration, then a Builder to jack up your first city's productivity, and two settlers after that. Your warriors must range out and make sure there are no barbarian camps close by your civilization. It is a slight gamble to do this with 2 warriors, and you may have the odd game where you don't find every barb camp, which means you NEED the Discipline policy as soon as you can get it so that each of your warriors has a good chance to solo a barbarian camp. By the time you settle your second city, you will be severely under-powered and over-wealthy in the AI's eyes. So at least one of your neighbors will probably try to fight a Surprise War against you with like 4-5 warriors. Don't panic. Stay in a defensive position at your city that's under attack. Exploit the inability of the enemy to fight your units inside of a city, and eventually you'll get the AI off your back. Train another military unit if you have to, as long as it's not a Slinger. Slingers are too fragile and easy to lose, even after taking their shot at enemy Warriors. Slingers are bad. Don't use them. The only reason to have a Slinger is to try and get a kill to get your Archery tech, and then train archers for your Machinery tech, and then train Crossbowmen to get that other tech. Instead, just research Archery raw. Getting a slinger is spending vital early game production on a *gamble* to get a few turns of teching.Here I'd slightly disagree with you. The combination of Warrior/Slinger is a very powerful one in the earliest stages of the game. Letting the slinger get a kill shaves a few turns off of Archery, which you are going to need anyway. Scouts are also useful in scouting and getting goodie huts that can offer significant advantages. I do agree, though, the first thing out of your new city should be a Warrior, bar none. Then either Slinger or Scout, depending on how active barbarians are around you, then another Warrior. Unless you've got some really necessary resources local to you, a builder can be secondary. You'll want enough of a military to protect it before building it anyway.

Another early thing to consider, once you have your second city down, is a Trader to put a road through.


- Fight and win a war in the Classical Era. You cannot compete later without taking a boost from somebody else, especially as this same process is definitely going on in another continent. I say do this in the Classical Era because you don't want to fight the AI when it's Warriors vs. Warriors, because they're going to outnumber you. In Classical, however, the counters triangle is still being developed, and you will have units that stomp all over the AI's warriors. When Medieval Era begins, the AI will have caught up to the counter triangle and may be able to fight you off. Swordsmen defeat everything but Horsemen, and your enemies aren't going to have Horsemen, so I suggest using them. Archers can't take walled cities, but can also stomp all over other warriors in concert with your own warriors.You may want to fight in the Classical era, but the AI isn't going to give you that option. The moment your second city is down, they're going to mob you. If you want to delay until the Classical era for your second city... well, that's up to you, but I think it would be more painful in the long run. Having 2-3 military units, including one ranged unit, is going to be sufficient to beat off the first attack. Having something like a battering ram or siege tower is going to be useful in conquering the would-be tyrant. Catapults are actually not necessary.


- Unless you actually get bonuses on having a religion and it's part of your plan, I say don't even play that game. Just take a good pantheon bonus and bum off someone else's religion when they come to convert you. Yes, I know. It feels bad that you can't prevent someone else's religious victory this way, but there is always another civ out there to counter the spread of any single religion. But you are still getting a good chunk of benefit while putting in no investment whatsoever. Remember that every Holy Site you have, that's one other resource you're not getting from another district. What's faith actually going to get you? A few Great People, and those religious buildings that come after temples. Sure, Meeting Houses and Gurdwaras (and equivalents) are pretty sweet, but that's pretty much the only benefit you're getting from Faith besides the instruments to accumulate more Faith.Depends on what kind of religion modifiers you can get your hands on. You can get some rediculously powerful abilities if you play your cards right. For example:

Papal Primacy. Type bonuses from city-states are 50% more. Production city states give more production, culture city states give you more culture. You get the point. More of the same. This works very well if you plan on going the Suzarain route.

Stewardship. Academic districts produce more science. More science is more better.

Lay Ministry. You've got at least one holy district, so immediately get more faith production. Plus when you start cranking out Theater districts for the culture boost, they also produce more culture. Culture is HUGE in this game. Think of it as 'alternate science' for purposes of advancing down the culture tech tree.

Holy Order. The apostles used to beef up your religion are now 30% cheaper. Not sure if this is worth it or not, but it will get your religious groove on faster.

Itinerant Preachers. One I almost always get. Bigger range for religion spread means more cities are simultaneously in range, meaning faster spread of religion without needing Missionaries.

Scripture: Combo with the previous for the lulz and insane religion creep.

Feed The World. Need more food? This does that. Basically it makes holy sites into food production sites.

Jesuit Education. Need a quick boost to your science or culture? Spend faith to do that. Really handy when building up a new city.

Religious Community. Holy sites now act like an Aqueduct in addition to their regularly scheduled abilities. Not too shabby.

Wat. Need more science? Holy Sites can now do that for you.

Pagoda. More housing is more better.

Meeting House. More production is more better.

And you can get up to FOUR items, if you get enough apostles out. So yes, build your religion right, and your holy sites basically do things other than just generate faith.


- I'm not a fan of the Aqueduct. I don't even see the point. It's a district that gives you +2 housing unless you don't have water. Settle places with water to begin with, obviously. Other districts pretty much all give +1 already, ON TOP OF their other bonuses. Encampments and Campuses will end up with at least +2 Housing if you follow up with their other buildings. Of course, Neighborhoods will come later that give +5 or +6 (not in all locations, but come on, if you have a city anywhere that can't get at least a +5 neighborhood, I will be incredulous). As long as you don't forget workers and building other, better districts, you should be tided over on housing until Neighborhoods become a thing. When you get Neighborhoods, Aqueducts become totally pointless anyways.The Aqueduct is designed so that you can be one tile away from fresh water to grab a strategic resource and not be excessively punished by it. Basically, if the aqueduct is adjacent to fresh water, then your city gets the housing bonus for adjacent to fresh water. This gives you more flexibility and more options. Also, IIRC, Aqueduct can pull fresh water from Mountains, so if you're wanting that amazing Science/Faith place with a ton of mountains, you don't need a river nearby, an Aqueduct can do the job for you.


- I'm also not a big fan of gold. Tiles that provide Gold don't provide nearly enough to outweigh tiles that provide other things. However, Commercial Hubs are insane value because the trade capacity increase can be worth more than any single building you make, especially if Egypt is out there. I don't know about Harbors, unless you're actually using a strategy dependent on a good navy. Never played Norway or England *shrug*.

Harbors are amazing if used correctly. First off, they let you exploit things like fish or crabs or whales without actually being a coastal city, as long as you are only one or two tiles off the coast. They also grant a bunch of cash, but more importantly, can also get science out of citizens. The Lighthouse is bonus food and bonus housing, so it is worth building. The Shipyard, however, is where things get interesting. All that adjacency cash bonus? is now bonus production as well. You're welcome. The Seaport is more gold, more food, more housing, and ships are built faster.

In addition, Harbors give a fairly major adjacency bonus to Commercial districts, +2 gold for Commerce when adjacent to a Harbor.

[Vitruviansquid]

Even with being founded on a river, my capital needed the Aqueduct to keep up in housing. Though, replacing the Aqueduct with a Neighborhood might be viable if you have enough of a boost.

You needed housing, but did you really need an aqueduct to achieve it? Any other district would've added another population. With some of these districts, there's another building you can put on top of it to to add yet another housing. Universities are expensive, but are a Library and University really going to take longer to build than it takes you to grow an additional population? An Encampment gets the Barracks or Stable even faster, but of course, encampments aren't necessary in every city. Were you really out of space to supplement your housing with a builder? If you were China, a Builder can make 4 improvements, giving you 2 housing. If you have Serfdom and weren't China, a Builder can make 5 improvements, giving you 2.5 housing. Even if you weren't China, didn't have Serfdom, and didn't want to use Ilkum for some reason, was that aqueduct actually cheaper than just making 2 builders raw?


Gold is useful because you can use it to instantly buy things like Builders, Traders and military units much faster than you could build them if you get caught off guard. It can ALSO be used to buy Great People.

I'm not saying to be poor. Being poor is one step away from being wrecked. You need to have *some* gold generation to afford an army and your other buildings. And it is, of course, good to have flexibility to purchase things when you're in a jam or to upgrade your veterans. I'm just saying the target is to have enough money to keep pace with your maintenance costs. Anything you do with money could've been done far more efficiently with something else. It takes something ridiculous like 4 gold to match 1 productivity if you buy something. If you're buying a military unit, you're really taking something like 6 gold per production on infantry or 8 gold per production on cavalry, because you shouldn't be producing military units without a military policy to boost that unit type.


Harbors are probably more useful on water-heavy maps, but they also provide an adjacency bonus for Industrial Districts, I think.

I suppose some experimentation is in order.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Another thing that is a callback from earlier days... city spam is back in a MAJOR way. Things like Factories which give their bonuses in a 6 tile radius, lack of penalties for spamming cities (no science/culture nerf for getting more cities), religion creep (both to prevent influence from foreign religion and to act as a secure base to spread religion from), and defensive purposes (easier to respond to attack in a more compact country) make settler spam a very viable tactic again. Civ V punished us for doing this by making culture and science more expensive. Civ VI has no such penalty.

This means that whomever tries to invade you when you expand is going to need to be taken over entirely. War to the knife, no mercy for the invaders.

Think in trios. When planning out your city tiles, think of your districts as being set up in trios, where each have two other districts adjacent to them. Same with farms. This also goes for cities as well. You want a strong trio of cities who are all taking maximum advantage of their mutual factories and zoos. But always be thinking in terms of threes, when placing stuff on tiles in this game.

[Silfir]

Another thing that is a callback from earlier days... city spam is back in a MAJOR way. Things like Factories which give their bonuses in a 6 tile radius, lack of penalties for spamming cities (no science/culture nerf for getting more cities), religion creep (both to prevent influence from foreign religion and to act as a secure base to spread religion from), and defensive purposes (easier to respond to attack in a more compact country) make settler spam a very viable tactic again. Civ V punished us for doing this by making culture and science more expensive. Civ VI has no such penalty.

Well, if that isn't the best piece of news I've heard about the game, I don't know what is!

[Vitruviansquid]

Here I'd slightly disagree with you. The combination of Warrior/Slinger is a very powerful one in the earliest stages of the game. Letting the slinger get a kill shaves a few turns off of Archery, which you are going to need anyway. Scouts are also useful in scouting and getting goodie huts that can offer significant advantages. I do agree, though, the first thing out of your new city should be a Warrior, bar none. Then either Slinger or Scout, depending on how active barbarians are around you, then another Warrior. Unless you've got some really necessary resources local to you, a builder can be secondary. You'll want enough of a military to protect it before building it anyway.

Another early thing to consider, once you have your second city down, is a Trader to put a road through.

You may want to fight in the Classical era, but the AI isn't going to give you that option. The moment your second city is down, they're going to mob you. If you want to delay until the Classical era for your second city... well, that's up to you, but I think it would be more painful in the long run. Having 2-3 military units, including one ranged unit, is going to be sufficient to beat off the first attack. Having something like a battering ram or siege tower is going to be useful in conquering the would-be tyrant. Catapults are actually not necessary.

No, you put down your second city as soon as you can after you get the settler. The AI will indeed mob you, but the build order is still strong enough to fight it off with your initial warrior and your extra warrior. The Classical Era war should, if it goes the same way as my games, be the second war you fight.

If you are having more success with Slingers against barbarians, a Slinger will be better than a second warrior for this defense. Cheaper too.

I didn't mention anything about needing catapults, so I don't know where you're getting that. Even a Siege tower may not be completely necessary for your Classical Era war if the enemy's cities aren't all hulked up with walls.


Depends on what kind of religion modifiers you can get your hands on. You can get some rediculously powerful abilities if you play your cards right. For example:

Papal Primacy. Type bonuses from city-states are 50% more. Production city states give more production, culture city states give you more culture. You get the point. More of the same. This works very well if you plan on going the Suzarain route.

Stewardship. Academic districts produce more science. More science is more better.

Lay Ministry. You've got at least one holy district, so immediately get more faith production. Plus when you start cranking out Theater districts for the culture boost, they also produce more culture. Culture is HUGE in this game. Think of it as 'alternate science' for purposes of advancing down the culture tech tree.

Holy Order. The apostles used to beef up your religion are now 30% cheaper. Not sure if this is worth it or not, but it will get your religious groove on faster.

Itinerant Preachers. One I almost always get. Bigger range for religion spread means more cities are simultaneously in range, meaning faster spread of religion without needing Missionaries.

Scripture: Combo with the previous for the lulz and insane religion creep.

Feed The World. Need more food? This does that. Basically it makes holy sites into food production sites.

Jesuit Education. Need a quick boost to your science or culture? Spend faith to do that. Really handy when building up a new city.

Religious Community. Holy sites now act like an Aqueduct in addition to their regularly scheduled abilities. Not too shabby.

Wat. Need more science? Holy Sites can now do that for you.

Pagoda. More housing is more better.

Meeting House. More production is more better.

And you can get up to FOUR items, if you get enough apostles out. So yes, build your religion right, and your holy sites basically do things other than just generate faith.

I'm not saying Religion doesn't do anything for you. But it is both an investment and a gamble, so you are looking at opportunity cost here with the possibility that you don't even get a payoff. And you don't compare having your own religion to nothing. You want to compare having your religion to having a random AI-generated religion, which is a significant step up from nothing. It may not be ideal, but almost anything the AI religion gives you can be leveraged.

See, the problem with most of these perks from religions is that they are not adding on something extra. They merely give you the illusion of it by asking you to spend Faith, but you are building up your Faith just like someone would build up production or money or science or culture.

Take Jesuit Education. If you had faith lying around that you wouldn't be using otherwise, it looks like "free" campuses and theatre squares. But you only had faith lying around because you put resources into getting them. You could have instead put the resources into obtaining production or food that will allow you to also make said districts faster in a more conventional way instead.

Since you will very likely have some faith lying around for some reason, like from Holy Sites in conquered cities, it is indeed a good idea to have a way to spend your faith. I acknowledged that already. However, you don't need much. Just like one building possibility to do it. There's always Great People too, if you're lacking an outlet for your Faith.

Some of these abilities are actually very bad. Lay Ministry and Stewardship would cap you out at +2 things of bonus per city, and they don't even get enhanced by any policies (to my knowledge). Since Gold is worth less and more easily obtained than other things like Science, Culture, Production, and Food, Stewardship is very bad.

But I am not saying that Religion is useless or counterproductive. I am saying that creating a religion is not a good enough deal that you'd want to do it if the deal wasn't somehow sweetened by your civilization's traits. If you're Hojo Tokimune, great. Go ahead and build your cheap Holy Sites. If you're Philip II, great, make your religion to improve your military. If you're someone like Pericles, you need to make your investments elsewhere.


The Aqueduct is designed so that you can be one tile away from fresh water to grab a strategic resource and not be excessively punished by it. Basically, if the aqueduct is adjacent to fresh water, then your city gets the housing bonus for adjacent to fresh water. This gives you more flexibility and more options. Also, IIRC, Aqueduct can pull fresh water from Mountains, so if you're wanting that amazing Science/Faith place with a ton of mountains, you don't need a river nearby, an Aqueduct can do the job for you.

If all your problem was being one tile away from fresh water, you could've settled by the water and then purchased the tile with gold, no?

Though I suppose if there was just no water to be found anywhere close to a site, the Aqueduct has a purpose.



Harbors are amazing if used correctly. First off, they let you exploit things like fish or crabs or whales without actually being a coastal city, as long as you are only one or two tiles off the coast. They also grant a bunch of cash, but more importantly, can also get science out of citizens. The Lighthouse is bonus food and bonus housing, so it is worth building. The Shipyard, however, is where things get interesting. All that adjacency cash bonus? is now bonus production as well. You're welcome. The Seaport is more gold, more food, more housing, and ships are built faster.

In addition, Harbors give a fairly major adjacency bonus to Commercial districts, +2 gold for Commerce when adjacent to a Harbor.

I'm fairly certain you can exploit crabs without your city being on the actual coast, so long as it was in your borders?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

If all your problem was being one tile away from fresh water, you could've settled by the water and then purchased the tile with gold, no?

Though I suppose if there was just no water to be found anywhere close to a site, the Aqueduct has a purpose.No. Here's the scenario:

There's several resources in a three tile area... from one off of the river. Several of them would be inaccessible if it were on the river as opposed to one tile over, so you put it one tile over, then drop an aqueduct down between the city and the river tile. Done. It also lets you get water from a mountain, also done.

It gives you more flexibility as to where you put a town. You don't have to put it on a river, you can put it a tile away from a river and still be able to do a good job.


I'm fairly certain you can exploit crabs without your city being on the actual coast, so long as it was in your borders?
Harbor has adjacency bonus to sea resources. I believe one of the buildings also gives you a bonus to sea-based trade routes.

[factotum]

Things like Factories which give their bonuses in a 6 tile radius

There aren't actually all that many of those, are there? Off the top of the my head, the only ones I can think of are the Factory (+production), Zoo (+amenities), and the Colosseum wonder (+amenities and +culture). Are there any others?

[huttj509]

"Don't worry about a religious AI victory, there'll be another AI to fight them."

Bupkiss. I lost due to religion as mentioned a page or 2 back. If you don't got a religion, all you can do is aggressively kill any missionary, because as soon as one gets a foothold in your city, you can't remove it. And if that religion is the one that took over the other continent, and other civs on your continent? You'll hit a defeat screen with no clue what happened.

[Cespenar]

So, how do I prevent a friendly neighbor expanding into the gaps in my territory (sometimes creating genuine enclaves) and then chastising me for moving troops "too close" to her border?

I'm trying to play it peaceful and friendly but the game doesn't seem to look positively at that approach.

[huttj509]

Is there a way to tweak starting city density? I tried making a huge map with only 6 civs in it, and 4 civs were right next to me.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

So, how do I prevent a friendly neighbor expanding into the gaps in my territory (sometimes creating genuine enclaves) and then chastising me for moving troops "too close" to her border?

There are various ways, none of which are fool-proof:
1) Don't grant open borders to friendly neighbours
2) Make the gaps too small to settle in - you can't settle next to a border
3) Guess were they want to settle, and put a scout there.

As to the troop thing, it might be a good way to get brownie points: get them to complain, move your troops two squares way from their border, and then get a pat for keeping your promise. That said, they do need to patch that a bit: if the troops are within your borders, the AI needs to accept "these are my defensive troops, they have a right to be there" as an answer - or at least count troops within your border as half measure towards that event, or something, because it gets a little silly.

Grey Wolf

[Hunter Noventa]

There are various ways, none of which are fool-proof:
1) Don't grant open borders to friendly neighbours
2) Make the gaps too small to settle in - you can't settle next to a border
3) Guess were they want to settle, and put a scout there.

As to the troop thing, it might be a good way to get brownie points: get them to complain, move your troops two squares way from their border, and then get a pat for keeping your promise. That said, they do need to patch that a bit: if the troops are within your borders, the AI needs to accept "these are my defensive troops, they have a right to be there" as an answer - or at least count troops within your border as half measure towards that event, or something, because it gets a little silly.

Grey Wolf

Agreed on the troop thing. I've got a number of troops on my border with China, partially because I saw them building up troops, and then because they actually declared a surprise war on me for having too many Wonders. I beat them back, and they still complain about me being there, in my territory. I'm quite tempted to go after them soon, if only to get their city next to mine that has a campus literally entirely surrounded my mountains.

[VoxRationis]

Regarding aqueducts:
-They allow a housing boost before a lot of other housing boosts come online.
-They allow mountains to be a source of fresh water, thus allowing cities founded in areas without lakes or rivers to grow larger. (I think this is probably their biggest source of utility.)

Regarding troops: And once again, the AI chides you for something that they do quite freely.

[factotum]

That said, they do need to patch that a bit: if the troops are within your borders, the AI needs to accept "these are my defensive troops, they have a right to be there" as an answer - or at least count troops within your border as half measure towards that event, or something, because it gets a little silly.


The problem there is that a large cluster of troops on the border can still be an attacking force even if they're inside your territory, particularly in cases where the border with your neighbour is very close (or even contiguous). If they patched the Civ6 AI to ignore them it would make building up an invasion force without interference trivially easy.

[Vitruviansquid]

So, how do I prevent a friendly neighbor expanding into the gaps in my territory (sometimes creating genuine enclaves) and then chastising me for moving troops "too close" to her border?

I'm trying to play it peaceful and friendly but the game doesn't seem to look positively at that approach.

There is an option under "Discuss" in the diplomacy screen to ask an AI not to settle near you. I've never used it and am not sure it works.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The problem there is that a large cluster of troops on the border can still be an attacking force even if they're inside your territory, particularly in cases where the border with your neighbour is very close (or even contiguous). If they patched the Civ6 AI to ignore them it would make building up an invasion force without interference trivially easy.

Yes, I am aware - thus my alternative "weight them down". If you pile ten troops at the border, it's ok for the AI to compalin. But keeping a spearman and an archer inside your own border should not cause the AI to tell you to pull them back or else, while I could understand the AI if it complained if those same two troops were wandering outside near their borders.

GW

[Hunter Noventa]

Yes, I am aware - thus my alternative "weight them down". If you pile ten troops at the border, it's ok for the AI to compalin. But keeping a spearman and an archer inside your own border should not cause the AI to tell you to pull them back or else, while I could understand the AI if it complained if those same two troops were wandering outside near their borders.

GW

Yeah this would make sense. I think they also mostly ignore recon units, at least early in the game, but I'd have to play again to be certain.

I think they might have to do some tweaking when it comes to Great People, since while you can technically 'pass' on them, that makes it easier for the AI to get them and therefore almost always to your detriment. The issue I had was I got Charles Darwin, and he could only do his special Great Person action near a natural wonder. Problem was the only one I'd found for a lot of the game was deep in China's territory, so he sat around for centuries until my exploration revealed one he could get to.

Some kind of lesser, alternate and generic action for a Great Person to take if you can't make use of, or for some reason don't want to make use of, their own action. perhaps that evolves with the era. Anything from a temporary boost in a relevant resource, revelation of barbarian camps, to revealing a new strategic resource in your borders or something.

[VoxRationis]

There is an option under "Discuss" in the diplomacy screen to ask an AI not to settle near you. I've never used it and am not sure it works.

"Diplomacy" in Civilization seems to boil down to how passive-aggressive v. actually aggressive the AI is to the player, which is what made the diplomatic victory so irritating in V. I think the agendas have only made things worse: now each AI has some weird, arbitrary thing they will denounce you for not being on top of.

[Vitruviansquid]

"Diplomacy" in Civilization seems to boil down to how passive-aggressive v. actually aggressive the AI is to the player, which is what made the diplomatic victory so irritating in V. I think the agendas have only made things worse: now each AI has some weird, arbitrary thing they will denounce you for not being on top of.

It's not at all arbitrary.

Each civ has its agenda and its hidden agenda *on top of* also trying to win the game. Some agendas exist because they help the civ in question win the game. Mvemba a Nzinga, for instance, needs to get foreign religions to become powerful, so of course he's going to be upset if you try to deny him religions. Qin Shi Huang exists to get wonders, so he doesn't appreciate competition. Other agendas exist to drive the AI to war against enemies against whom it would be profitable to war. Montezuma hates people for having luxuries in order to go to war with them and seize the luxuries for his bonuses. But if you're open to attack, or you go after their city-states, or whatever, or get warmonger penalties, they'll all still have a problem with that.

Denunciation does not mean the civilization is going to have a permanent poor relationship with you. It means the civilization thinks it may want to go to war with you after 5 turns. Receiving a denunciation can, but does not necessarily mean, that you did something the civilization doesn't like. Sometimes, it's just being an ******* opportunist.

[Cespenar]

There are various ways, none of which are fool-proof:
1) Don't grant open borders to friendly neighbours
2) Make the gaps too small to settle in - you can't settle next to a border
3) Guess were they want to settle, and put a scout there.

As to the troop thing, it might be a good way to get brownie points: get them to complain, move your troops two squares way from their border, and then get a pat for keeping your promise. That said, they do need to patch that a bit: if the troops are within your borders, the AI needs to accept "these are my defensive troops, they have a right to be there" as an answer - or at least count troops within your border as half measure towards that event, or something, because it gets a little silly.

Grey Wolf

Eh, legit ways, but still not fool-proof as you have said. I wish Civ 3's cultural takeover thing were back. This way there's just no penalty throwing a colony inside people's businesses.

[factotum]

I think they might have to do some tweaking when it comes to Great People, since while you can technically 'pass' on them, that makes it easier for the AI to get them and therefore almost always to your detriment.

It depends on what the Great Person's unique bonus is. If a GP you've earned has a bonus that really doesn't help you at all then you're better off passing, letting an AI grab them, and hoping that the replacement you earn suits your needs better. Claiming the Great Person just to stop the AI getting it is cutting off your nose to spite your face, IMHO.

[Wardog]

That said, they do need to patch that a bit: if the troops are within your borders, the AI needs to accept "these are my defensive troops, they have a right to be there" as an answer - or at least count troops within your border as half measure towards that event, or something, because it gets a little silly.

Grey Wolf


Agreed on the troop thing. I've got a number of troops on my border with China, partially because I saw them building up troops, and then because they actually declared a surprise war on me for having too many Wonders. I beat them back, and they still complain about me being there, in my territory. I'm quite tempted to go after them soon, if only to get their city next to mine that has a campus literally entirely surrounded my mountains.

To be fair, there are multiple real-life examples of countries getting upset with their neighbours for stationing troops near the border. Sometimes even to the point of attacking them for it. And being completely hypocritical about it has plenty of real-life precedence as well.

[kraftcheese]

To be fair, there are multiple real-life examples of countries getting upset with their neighbours for stationing troops near the border. Sometimes even to the point of attacking them for it. And being completely hypocritical about it has plenty of real-life precedence as well.
I'll second this; it makes sense that a civ would get pissy that you don't trust them imo.

What I really wanna do on my next run is try a seafaring civ, maybe on an islands map? I've just never bothered with ships in the 3 games I've played so far (all continental).

[Maryring]

To be fair, there are multiple real-life examples of countries getting upset with their neighbours for stationing troops near the border. Sometimes even to the point of attacking them for it. And being completely hypocritical about it has plenty of real-life precedence as well.

The bigget problem with Civ is that the AI is wholly and completely bastard. It's whiny, petulant, selfish, irrational and generally constantly reminds me that I'm playing against a stupid idiot who's only in the game because they cheat. Whining about border controls is just yet another item on a very long list of hypocrisies that the game commits.

[Foxtail]

So far, I'm quite liking it. The AI has been a bit ridiculous at times, but when haven't they been in civ? I love the new district system, it makes it feel like your city is actually expanding, and makes what tiles you prioritize to work more important.

So far I've won religious as Russia, Domination as Scythia, and Cultural as Greece. Relgious certainly seemed the easiest, but also pretty underwhelming, it was basically just spamming apostles constantly.

It still needs some balancing for sure, there are gold exploits and weird production exploits with cavalry, just to name a few, but overall, I quite like it, and I think I'll be playing it for a good while.

[VoxRationis]

The bigget problem with Civ is that the AI is wholly and completely bastard. It's whiny, petulant, selfish, irrational and generally constantly reminds me that I'm playing against a stupid idiot who's only in the game because they cheat. Whining about border controls is just yet another item on a very long list of hypocrisies that the game commits.

This sums up my problems with the AI in Civ. The AI knows that it's playing a game with specific victory conditions, and that only one player can win. Moreover, it wants to stop you in particular from winning. Consequently, it acts in ways which are irrational for a simulation of diplomacy and statecraft—it plays against you rather than for itself. The worst part of it is that the diplomatic tools provided for the AI are more numerous than those for the player (e.g., not being able to complain about AI troops near your borders while the AI jumps down your throat with protests about your troops), creating asymmetries which feel frustrating.

[Kish]

I was going to say that the game, as a game, would be weirdly unbalanced against the AIs if you were the only one who was allowed to actually try to win it. Then you mentioned that the player can't do the same "I demand you get away from my borders" thing the AIs often do: yeah, that's bad design.

[Maryring]

This sums up my problems with the AI in Civ. The AI knows that it's playing a game with specific victory conditions, and that only one player can win. Moreover, it wants to stop you in particular from winning. Consequently, it acts in ways which are irrational for a simulation of diplomacy and statecraft—it plays against you rather than for itself. The worst part of it is that the diplomatic tools provided for the AI are more numerous than those for the player (e.g., not being able to complain about AI troops near your borders while the AI jumps down your throat with protests about your troops), creating asymmetries which feel frustrating.

Pretty much.


I was going to say that the game, as a game, would be weirdly unbalanced against the AIs if you were the only one who was allowed to actually try to win it. Then you mentioned that the player can't do the same "I demand you get away from my borders" thing the AIs often do: yeah, that's bad design.

As argued before, the problem isn't that the AI is playing to win. I do want the AI to play to win. The problem is that the AI isn't playing to win. It's playing to make you lose. It's the real life equivalent of someone complaining loudly at you that you're too good at the game, since the game knows that the only real way it can win is by making you quit in disgust.

And I'm only being slightly hyperbolic. But yeah, I far prefer playing Civ with friends. The diplomacy feels organic and natural since real people are actively trying to empower themselves to win. If someone is stationing troops near the border, they'll take steps to prevent a potential incursion, rather than break up the flow of the game with a temper tantrum.

[factotum]

The problem is that the AI isn't playing to win. It's playing to make you lose.

Really? Did I imagine all those occasions where the AI denounced each other or started wars with each other? Heck, Kongo wiped out Japan in my game, and since they were on an entirely different continent I'm struggling to see how that was entirely done to spite *me*, as you seem to think.

[Cespenar]

Another AI story:

I'm allied with Scythia for centuries, we have never warred before, and our relation is as max'd as it can be. Then one day, our alliance expires (?), as does our friendship agreement. I re-propose friendship, to no avail. The turn after, she declares war on me, along with Arabia from a continent away.

[Maryring]

Really? Did I imagine all those occasions where the AI denounced each other or started wars with each other? Heck, Kongo wiped out Japan in my game, and since they were on an entirely different continent I'm struggling to see how that was entirely done to spite *me*, as you seem to think.

The only thing imaginary here is you thinking that's a good argument when it's entirely irrelevant to what's discussed here. We're not talking about the AI specifically being out to spite the player, but the AI being a raging hypocrite that focuses on bringing others down by being annoying, rather than building itself up and playing well.

[Kornaki]

So I'm in this weird state where me and a couple of my city state friends are at war with a city state, and when I end my turn it tells me that me and my allies have made peace with my enemy, and I can't declare a new war for ten turns. Is this one of my other city states making peace and since I'm their suzerain it's forced on me too? If anybody understands why this is happening, and can tell me how to stop it in particular, it would be really helpful.

[VoxRationis]

Does anyone else have a problem with the Sumerian war-cart? I saw a video reviewing Sumeria, and I'm not sure if it represents a current state of the civilization, but the war-cart seems ridiculous as a unit. Stronger and faster than its replacement, with no resource or gold cost, no weakness to spearmen, and no technology prerequisite? That seems really... not broken, per se, as I'm not sure how it will work out in full play (since one's early-game production is a scarce commodity), but off. I especially don't like how a clunky, solid-wheeled cart is faster than the chariot proper. I would much rather have it be slower, but available earlier (and possibly ignoring spearmen counters). Heck, it might even have a place as an extra, no-generic-counterpart unit (akin to Japanese samurai, if I remember correctly) that upgrades into a normal chariot for cheap.

[Wardog]

I was going to say that the game, as a game, would be weirdly unbalanced against the AIs if you were the only one who was allowed to actually try to win it.

I think that could easily be solved with a game-setup option as to whether the AI plays according to ''realistic'' goals (based on what is good for the civ, or its leader), or ''gamist'' rules (trying to undermine the player's or other AI's ability to meet their victory conditions).

For example, on ''realistic'' mode, an AI might try to win by making the best civilization it can and so getting the highest civilization score. In ''gamist'' mode, the AI would do that, while also trying to degrade your civilization score.

[Sholos]

So my friend and I ran into an interesting situation the other night. Turns out if you convert an AI's holy city to your religion, they'll still spam missionaries and help spread your religion. Especially Spain... It's kind of a weird fault that I hope they patch out, since it just makes no sense for the AI to help you win like that. Especially Spain...

[factotum]

Stronger and faster than its replacement, with no resource or gold cost, no weakness to spearmen, and no technology prerequisite?

The war cart gets 30 melee strength for a production cost of 55, while a regular Warrior is strength 20 for cost 40. So, while the war cart is unquestionably the strongest early game unit, it's not *so* much stronger that it's an issue, IMHO. Because of the change to the way movement works in Civ6*, having movement 3 isn't actually as much of an advantage as you might think--it only really comes into play if you're crossing dead flat terrain with no rivers or forests, which doesn't happen all that often!

* The change I mean is that, in Civ 5, you could always move one square even if you had a fraction of the required movement points available. In Civ 6 you can't, so if you're moving through hills, forests etc. you can still only move 1 hex even with a movement 3 unit--you'll use up 2 points to move the first hex, and then don't have 2 available to move the next one.

[VoxRationis]

The war cart gets 30 melee strength for a production cost of 55, while a regular Warrior is strength 20 for cost 40. So, while the war cart is unquestionably the strongest early game unit, it's not *so* much stronger that it's an issue, IMHO. Because of the change to the way movement works in Civ6*, having movement 3 isn't actually as much of an advantage as you might think--it only really comes into play if you're crossing dead flat terrain with no rivers or forests, which doesn't happen all that often!

* The change I mean is that, in Civ 5, you could always move one square even if you had a fraction of the required movement points available. In Civ 6 you can't, so if you're moving through hills, forests etc. you can still only move 1 hex even with a movement 3 unit--you'll use up 2 points to move the first hex, and then don't have 2 available to move the next one.

It's not that the strength is especially high—it's that every aspect of the war-cart is superior to the heavy chariot, in spite of the fact that it's supposed to be an early, clunky, primitive version of such a device.

Also, the 3 movement helps when you have to move through alternating open/rough terrain.

[Vitruviansquid]

The hideous thing about the war-cart is how much more useful it is in the hands of the AI than the player.

The AI can just churn out units in the early game at a pace far exceeding anything even remotely possible for the player. The tide only begins to turn toward the player once the player's had a chance to implement intelligent strategies to get ahead.

So when the AI gets its hands on Gilgamesh, they swarm the early game with war-carts that are stronger than anything the typical player civilization can field until Swordsmen or Horsemen. Even if you were lucky enough to have something to fend off war-carts, like American spearmen, Aztec chariots, Greek Hoplites (which don't really beat War carts until you have your second Hoplite) earlier than 2 techs and acquiring 1 strategic resource, there's still a fairly good chance AI Gilgamesh will attack you with War-carts before even that's online.

[factotum]

It's not that the strength is especially high—it's that every aspect of the war-cart is superior to the heavy chariot, in spite of the fact that it's supposed to be an early, clunky, primitive version of such a device.

I would just put that down to game balance issues. It wouldn't be very nice if a civ's unique unit were actually *weaker* than the regular one, would it?

[VoxRationis]

I would just put that down to game balance issues. It wouldn't be very nice if a civ's unique unit were actually *weaker* than the regular one, would it?

But it's already available earlier than the regular one, and has no maintenance or resource cost—a definite advantage in comparison to the regular unit. And Civ V at least was willing to give unique units a trade-off. The Byzantine cataphract was hardier and lacked some of the weaknesses of cavalry units, but it was slower than the horseman it replaced. It would be an acceptable boost to Sumeria's power by itself to field chariot forces from the start of the game—there's certainly no need to make them better in every way as well. Besides, since it is available from the start, it could be viewed as the slinger is to the archer—an early-game way of accessing a particular soldier line—and just upgrade into the heavy chariot for cheap.

[Cespenar]

So, turns out Emperor is very different than King, and the reason is this: many difficulty bonuses are linear, but at Emperor, the AIs start with 2 settlers, 3 warriors and 1 builder, instead of just 1 settler and 2 warriors in King. This, on top of the other bonuses, end in a veritable snowball issue. 2 settlers instead of 1 is pretty much a 100% production bonus in early game, while 3 warriors mean that they can almost instantly attack and conquer a city state. One AI got to Industrial age at around ~600 AD, suffice it to say.

It can still definitely be won, but requires you to not get attacked early to early-mid.

So far, King seems like the most reasonable difficulty to me.

[Maryring]

I've been fiddling around a bit with the religion game in Civ VI and... I honestly feel that it's a lot weaker. Mostly because the opportunity cost for getting religion is so incredibly high. Holy sites get a boon from mountains, which makes it directly compete with campuses for placement. And once you do build a holy site and wait around forever to get a prophet, you're still left with some rather subpar bonuses. You're mostly only going to get faith, so unless you're going for a religious victory you're not gonna get any huge advantages. Ultimately it seems the only reason you'd want to get a faith is so that you can protect yourself from other religions.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I've been fiddling around a bit with the religion game in Civ VI and... I honestly feel that it's a lot weaker. Mostly because the opportunity cost for getting religion is so incredibly high. Holy sites get a boon from mountains, which makes it directly compete with campuses for placement. And once you do build a holy site and wait around forever to get a prophet, you're still left with some rather subpar bonuses. You're mostly only going to get faith, so unless you're going for a religious victory you're not gonna get any huge advantages. Ultimately it seems the only reason you'd want to get a faith is so that you can protect yourself from other religions.

Not quite. First, you can also use an early policy (God King?) to accrue the necessary faith that you can be in the running for a religion. And while, yes, it "competes" with campuses for mountains, if you have any mountains at all, you'll probably be able to place both - one might have just a smidge less adjacency bonus, but that's not the end of the world.

As to faith, it can be used to purchase units and great people, which can be a powerful tool. If you are a war monger, being able to somewhat control the neighbours' religion can help provide allies to gang up on your targets. Yes, some of these things can be accomplished with other processes, but faith can be started really early on and controlling the religion allows you to more easily provide multipliers that work for you.

It also helps to pick a civ that naturally gets bonuses, of course. Russia's faith in tundra tiles & lavras are quite impressive when it comes to boosting the cultural victory, because you can and should be able to dominate the acquisition of great artists of various classes.

Grey Wolf

[Maryring]

It also competes in that you've only got a scant few districts you can place in the early game, and when you want to have room for your campus, commerce and construction districts you're gonna run out of people to man the districts pretty soon. Unless you're Germany. Also, God King can help you acquire a pantheon, but it can't help you acquire a great person. While you could theoretically use the faith to buy said Great Person, you'll still need a Holy Site to spend him on. And if you don't get GP points, it's unlikely that you'll get enough faith to buy the great person anyway before they're all taken.

I also find Gold to be far better for getting Great Persons than Faith. Gold is easier to get and is more flexible in value than faith.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

It also competes in that you've only got a scant few districts you can place in the early game, and when you want to have room for your campus, commerce and construction districts you're gonna run out of people to man the districts pretty soon. Unless you're Germany. Also, God King can help you acquire a pantheon, but it can't help you acquire a great person. While you could theoretically use the faith to buy said Great Person, you'll still need a Holy Site to spend him on. And if you don't get GP points, it's unlikely that you'll get enough faith to buy the great person anyway before they're all taken.

I also find Gold to be far better for getting Great Persons than Faith. Gold is easier to get and is more flexible in value than faith.

With the right religion boons, you can get science, gold, and faith all from your Holy Site. And faith purchasing is in addition to, not instead of, gold purchasing. So you can purchase while you purchase.

And once you get your Great Priest, you just need to build Apostles to further advance your religion. You get up to three additional benefits to add to your religion that way. Much better use than using them for religious combat or conversion.

Holy Sites also get side bonus with forests, which can be beneficial to you mid-late game as production facilities.

[Vitruviansquid]

There's a lot of advice that becomes less or more relevant depending on your difficulty level, especially regarding time-sensitive issues like wonders and great people. Would be nice if people included their difficulty when giving this type of advice.

[Maryring]

With the right religion boons, you can get science, gold, and faith all from your Holy Site. And faith purchasing is in addition to, not instead of, gold purchasing. So you can purchase while you purchase.

And once you get your Great Priest, you just need to build Apostles to further advance your religion. You get up to three additional benefits to add to your religion that way. Much better use than using them for religious combat or conversion.

Holy Sites also get side bonus with forests, which can be beneficial to you mid-late game as production facilities.

Or I could get even more science from Campuses and tech faster. Faith helps with religious victory and... nothing else. I'd rather just pick up a small religion and then just plant an apostle on the holy site to defend against foreign faiths so I don't lose rather than put any serious investment into faith.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Or I could get even more science from Campuses and tech faster. Faith helps with religious victory and... nothing else. I'd rather just pick up a small religion and then just plant an apostle on the holy site to defend against foreign faiths so I don't lose rather than put any serious investment into faith.

Actually incorrect in Civ VI.

Unlike every single previous offering, teching up is actually not something to focus anymore. Remember, you've got the two-tiered research system now with Culture every bit as important as Science, and the science tech tree far shorter than it used to be. Combined with Eureka moments, and focusing science is actually sub-optimal.

Faith, on the other hand, is used in damn near everything. You can faith buy Great People, which is HUGE for getting some pretty big permanent bonuses, depending on the person, and also critical in doing the culture/tourism victory. With the right government, or religion, you can faith-purchase units to counter-spam if you get jumped while low on units. Regardless of what victory condition you want, Faith can help you get there.

[Maryring]

No, what you focus on is production. And that's my point. Holy Sites provide Faith in return for locking up a district. You build Holy Sites instead of industrial zone for production, or commercial zone for trade routes that give more production, or techs that boost your production even more.

It's such an enormous opportunity cost. A ten citizen city has room for four districts, and that really should be Industrial, Commerce, Campus and Theater. Build a Holy Site and it takes the place of one of those. God forbid if you need to build a Harbour or Encampment somewhere.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

No, what you focus on is production. And that's my point. Holy Sites provide Faith in return for locking up a district. You build Holy Sites instead of industrial zone for production, or commercial zone for trade routes that give more production, or techs that boost your production even more. Or you could buy units with Faith, buy Great People with faith, buy special buildings with Faith... yanno, production things.


It's such an enormous opportunity cost. A ten citizen city has room for four districts, and that really should be Industrial, Commerce, Campus and Theater. Build a Holy Site and it takes the place of one of those. God forbid if you need to build a Harbour or Encampment somewhere.

I very strongly disagree with this. Any given city will have a vastly different type of district setup depending on what they are doing. Someone with no mines isn't going to have a very good industrial complex, for example, whereas a place with the ability to drop a district next to like three mines would make an amazing Industrial zone. They're strong, yes, but it's not something that you absolutely MUST have in every city. Next, Commerce, while okay, is also not 'an automatic natural' for any given city, depending on what you are doing with that city. Campuses are secondary, at best.

Also, you fail to realize how amazing the construction bonuses you get from Encampments. Granted, Industrial is still better late game once you get the absolutely insane Factories to boost everyone in the area, but Encampments are by NO means 'worthless' as you imply. For that matter, I'd absolutely build a Harbor over a Campus any day of the week, especially with adjacency with Commerce.

What districts you build in a given city is going to vary WILDLY depending on what kind of adjacency bonuses and what your ultimate goals are going to be. Holy Sites are an excellent choice to slide in, especially in a culture-heavy or science-heavy city, since they work so well together.

[Maryring]

I'm not stating that encampments or harbours are worthless. Quite the contrary. It's not something you'd build in every city, but it's there where it's needed. Seriously. I just spent so much time stressing the value of Commerce for giving another trade route. Why would I then dismiss a Harbour that does exactly the same thing?

Anyway, Industrial goes in every city. Even if you can't get adjacency bonuses. It's the only way you're gonna get to squeeze out any proper production to build anything else since it improves trade routes. Commerce too because it grants you another trading route and internal trading routes are fantastic. Even before I get any trade route boosting policies I'm churning out 5+ prod and food from those trade routes. Faith purchases only work if you acquire some specific faiths. Don't have Jesuit education? Then enjoy spending your faith on missionaries.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Anyway, Industrial goes in every city. Even if you can't get adjacency bonuses. It's the only way you're gonna get to squeeze out any proper production to build anything else since it improves trade routes. Commerce too because it grants you another trading route and internal trading routes are fantastic. Even before I get any trade route boosting policies I'm churning out 5+ prod and food from those trade routes. Faith purchases only work if you acquire some specific faiths. Don't have Jesuit education? Then enjoy spending your faith on missionaries.

Then take the Theocratic government and buy military units with Faith. You can afford to skimp on keeping a standing military, then when someone attacks you, suddenly drop three or four more military units down and proceed to curbstomp, going as far into their territory as possible before war weariness starts to kick in.

And you are vastly underestimating the value of Great People. Some of the production guys have some amazing permanent bonuses.

I'd also argue against Industrial in EVERY city. Some of them, absolutely, but not necessarily all of them. Typically, I have a triad of cities to do massive production in, each one having overlapping Factory bonuses. If I'm going Science victory, these three are also the ones that spam out the spaceports and the components for putting people on Mars. However, without that overlapping bonus, you lose most of the amazing punch that industrial zones get, and causes them to be very lackluster.

[Seerow]

Hey all, my Google fu is failing me, I have a couple questions about the game.

First, is there a team coop mode? Like if I wanted to team up with a friend against a team of AIs, is that a thing in this game?

Second, is there a nonrealtime multiplayer mode? Like if I have friends with differing schedules could we set up an online game where basically we take one turn a day on days where we can't all get on at the same time? (I realize this would be super slow pace, but it is a consideration)

[factotum]

Maryring, why are you talking about 10 pop cities? If your cities are stuck on that low a population then you have a problem somewhere. I had a city that was surrounded by mountains, but it was still size 14 when it ran out of ability to grow any further, and it was by far the smallest city in my empire. (Needless to say, it had both a holy site and a campus for those sweet bonuses, but I certainly didn't waste my time building an industrial zone there). Realistically, you need to specialise your cities, not have them all doing the same thing.

Seerow, there's no official co-op mode built into the game, but there's nothing stopping you having a regular multiplayer game with you, your friend, and a bunch of AIs, and then co-operate with your friend to stomp the rest. You'd have to agree between yourselves who would actually win the game, though. Don't know about the second question, sorry.

[Maryring]

I'm talking about 10 pop because that's where you start to notice a slowdown. You're not getting your fifth district until pop 14, so until then you're stuck with what you've got. So until then, you're choosing Holy Sites over any other district. And I value Industrial, Commerce, Campus, Theater, Harbour and Encampments far more since they provide a specialized boon, rather than another pseudo-currency attached. I mean, you argue yourself that specialisation is important. Holy Sites are not specialized for anything but faith generation, and faith is like commerce but less flexible.

Also, while connection bonuses are nice, they're nowhere near as important as city state bonuses. Those district bonuses apply to all districts of a type you've got after all.

And districts produce the always important great person points. Holy Sites stop producing prophet points after you get your prophet. But industrial or commerce areas continue to produce a steady stream of points that also makes the purchase of these great people even cheaper, if not free as long as you can afford the wait.

[Cespenar]

Maryring, why are you talking about 10 pop cities? If your cities are stuck on that low a population then you have a problem somewhere. I had a city that was surrounded by mountains, but it was still size 14 when it ran out of ability to grow any further, and it was by far the smallest city in my empire. (Needless to say, it had both a holy site and a campus for those sweet bonuses, but I certainly didn't waste my time building an industrial zone there). Realistically, you need to specialise your cities, not have them all doing the same thing.

You can very well have a plethora of close-knit 10-pop cities and still have pretty good production/science/whatever. Unless you're talking strictly Immortal and Deity, or late game.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'm talking about 10 pop because that's where you start to notice a slowdown. You're not getting your fifth district until pop 14, so until then you're stuck with what you've got. So until then, you're choosing Holy Sites over any other district. And I value Industrial, Commerce, Campus, Theater, Harbour and Encampments far more since they provide a specialized boon, rather than another pseudo-currency attached. I mean, you argue yourself that specialisation is important. Holy Sites are not specialized for anything but faith generation, and faith is like commerce but less flexible.

Also, while connection bonuses are nice, they're nowhere near as important as city state bonuses. Those district bonuses apply to all districts of a type you've got after all.

And districts produce the always important great person points. Holy Sites stop producing prophet points after you get your prophet. But industrial or commerce areas continue to produce a steady stream of points that also makes the purchase of these great people even cheaper, if not free as long as you can afford the wait.
I think we look at the game in fundamentally different ways. I prefer a more organic playstyle, where I don't lock myself into any specific tactic and prefer to take maximum advantage of what I have available to me. You prefer a more rigid build order, where you 'need' certain districts build in every single city. I find this to be significantly sub-optimal, depending on how each particular game plays out, but YMMV.

Personally, I find Holy Sites to be quite universally valuable in virtually every play style, it is extremely flexible and doesn't lock you into any given strategy. You *can* use it to do a religious victory, but it will benefit and support any victory condition you want. Want to take over the world? Theocracy and buy units with faith. Want to do a science victory? Take Wat as an additional bonus, and also synergy bonuses with Jesuit. Want a cultural victory? Buy up Great Artists/Writers/etc with faith to rack up huge tourism bonuses.

I think the primary problem I have is that you keep using absolutes when talking about your districts, which is where I think we disagree the most. Not every city needs any given district. Even useful districts like Industry or Commerce aren't necessarily a 'given' on every single city. And that, I think, is our biggest difference. You seem adamant in having specific districts everywhere, I find this to be a huge waste. Why bother with an Industrial district in a city you don't plan on doing much production in? That's a HUGE waste of resources.

[mythmonster2]

Why bother with an Industrial district in a city you don't plan on doing much production in? That's a HUGE waste of resources.

Basically every city does need production, if only to build other districts. I can't think of a single city type that wouldn't want an industrial district.

[Nadevoc]

Is it possible to lose to a civilization you've never met?

I just clicked next turn, then suddenly the whole 'you lose, your civilization crumbles to dust, blah blah blah' screen. I did the One More Turn thing, and none of the civs I'd met were close on anything. But I was playing Continents and I'm fairly certain there was a continent I hadn't discovered yet.

But I don't feel like you can manage any of the victories without meeting all the other civs - certainly not without meeting a huge civilization like mine which spanned two continents (and in fact completely controlled one, since I was the only civilization to spawn there)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Basically every city does need production, if only to build other districts. I can't think of a single city type that wouldn't want an industrial district.

Mmmm... nope. Not in the least. I've got quite a few cities that don't have Industrial districts. You only really need an industrial district in locations where they can hit multiple cities with their Factories. If that isn't possible... then there's no point to an Industrial district. There's PLENTY of other ways to increase production without an industrial district.

[factotum]

Is it possible to lose to a civilization you've never met?

Yes? Why would it not be? If you look at the victory conditions panel I'm pretty sure it shows *all* civs, even ones you haven't met, so you can check there to see if someone was getting close.

[Nadevoc]

Yes? Why would it not be? If you look at the victory conditions panel I'm pretty sure it shows *all* civs, even ones you haven't met, so you can check there to see if someone was getting close.

No one was close any of the victory conditions in the panel, though.

EDIT:

And which victory condition can you even get without meeting everyone?

Science victory involves launching satellites, so they should have met me through that (plus I find it doubtful anyone could have been that far ahead in science).

Domination victory would require meeting me.

Religious victory would require me to have seen their religion at some point, right?

Score victory/turn limit were off (and it was turn 307 on Standard speed, and I'm pretty sure that's not where it clips).

Not entirely sure how culture victory works, but it would seem really odd for me to be able to lose to culture victory without ever meeting the victor.

[factotum]

Pretty sure that *is* possible for culture victory (since it's literally just comparing numbers--their tourism against your culture), but you're right, it does sound odd if no-one was anywhere near you on the victory board.

[Maryring]

Yeah. Culture's the only one I can see it being. Culture is all about having more external tourism than everyone else has internal tourism. All the others require that there's been some interaction, or that the end of turns has been reached. So possible, but seems odd unless you didn't do anything cultural despite having such a huge empire.

The game really should let you know who won with what at least. -w-


Basically every city does need production, if only to build other districts. I can't think of a single city type that wouldn't want an industrial district.

Exactly. You get production from mineable and quarriable resources, which grant proximity boon to industry, and pastures and deer, which don't. (Unless you're Germany, but the Hansa's this game's version of the Mayan Pyramid from the previous game)

This means that all cities can eke out proximity bonuses for industry. If you can't eke out a proximity bonus, then you're gonna need the industrial zone even more since it'll be responsible for most of your production outside of trade routes. And production is used for everything. Every city wants an industrial district. Most also want a commercial one because Trade Routes are still incredibly strong.

Especially because districts don't start spreading out their boons until you reach modernish ages. Tier 3 buildings are the only ones that spread their effect around. Except for amenity buildings. But we're not discussing those.

---

And to go to another topic altogether. What do people think of scouts. Do people still build em? Back in Civ V, they were almost always my first purchase. But with how movement is changed so that you require full movement to enter difficult terrain, and Scouts no longer start with freedom of movement and no longer gain increased beenfit from goodie huts, I feel like warriors/slingers make for better scouts than the scouts.

[Vitruviansquid]

On the topic of industrial districts. +4 would be a fairly attractive placement bonus, right? Well consider you can get +4 twice or even thrice spread around other cities if you placed your industrial district wisely. If the +4 is attractive as a district placement bonus, it doesn't become less attractive as a proximity bonus from factories, no? This is why Industrial districts are so strong.

On the topic of Scouts - I never build scouts. The way I see it, here are your three explory options for the early game:

Scout
Warrior
Slinger

Scouts are *about* as costly as a warrior or slinger. They are better at exploring by... I would say... maybe 20% than a warrior or slinger, because the movement system makes 3 moves into 2 moves very often. But they don't kill barbarians to defend you. They can't enter areas with thick barbarian presence, since they won't ever be stronger than any barbarian units, even with Discipline. Since they don't kill barbarians, they are not helping you get Eureka on Archery, Military Tradition, and Bronzeworking.

The tradeoff is between Slingers and Warriors. Slingers are precarious to use and I haven't had success with them against barbarian encampments, because you never know when spearmen will come out and assault you the turn after being shot at. But Slingers get you a Eureka to Archery, and Archers are almost mandatory if not for defense then for the Eureka on Machinery, and then the Eureka on the next tech requiring crossbowmen. Slingers are also pretty good at defending a city if the AI tries a warrior rush, too.

I personally favor Warriors because the best protection against barbarians is being able to reliably suppress and defeat their outposts, which warriors can do with Discipline. If you were using Scouts to collect friendly tribal villages, consider that their inability to collect barbarian outposts weighs against them in terms of material profitability.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Has anyone actually ever used the spearmen (or upgrades to such)? Because honestly... they really suck. They used to be a solid defensive unit. Now they are ONLY useful against horses (they get a penalty against regular melee), and even then, they have difficulties meeting tech-equivalent horses. Just use Melee supported by Ranged. Works much better. It's an interesting idea, but it needs a lot of refinement. I suspect we'll see heavy calvary having a bonus against melee, despite the fact that it really doesn't work out that way IRL, for the rock/paper/scissors completion.

Scouts are darn near worthless for anti-barbarian, which is your key threat early-game. However, if you can get one out and manage to level it up, Ambush gives it a +20 strength, which is pretty huge, and the upgrade to the Scout is the Ranger, with the melee attack of 45 and ranged of 60. When you crank in Ambush bonus, you get melee attack of 65, which is only 5 less than the Infantry's 70, and the ranged attack of 80 (albeit range 1, like the Slinger, but at least with quite a bit of punch to it and the melee strength to back it up to avoid getting roflstomped) is actually superior.

Of course, that means building one or more scouts, and grinding up the leveling until it gets Ambush, which is probably not gonna happen.

The upgrade system in general is something that just... it's an amazing idea, but poor execution. There's very little way to get any of the higher end promotions unless you are constantly warring, in which case the War Weariness is going to cripple your growth.

[Vitruviansquid]

I never really use spearmen either, unless I am Greek and have Hoplites.

Spearmen will do better against shooting units than Warriors due to extra base strength, and of course they will beat cavalry. Without Spearmen, there is no unit that fends off Heavy Chariots or Horsemen on time (Swordsmen come close to being able to fend off Horsemen, but do technically come later and are weaker from having fewer movement). The problem is that the AI, for some reason, pretty much always skips these units while they remain relevant. I have seen masses of AI Warriors until Crossbowmen show up. I rarely, if ever, see the AI use either Horsemen or Swordsmen, possibly because it is not great at exploiting strategic resourcse.

[Maryring]

Scout being good if it gets a third level of experience would be nifty if it actually got exploration xp at a steady clip. As is though, five xp for every goodie hut, where most units will be finding two or maybe three huts at best, really isn't going to cut it. So yeah, glad to see others share my experience that the scout's not worth it.

Regarding Spearmen, I've used them once. Against an enemy Saladin that did nothing but spam horses upon horses upon horses upon holy war. They were decent because the enemy was all units that spearmen were strong against, but even so they still felt incredibly weak. I mean, a spearman may be cheaper, but when the boon only makes a spearman able to have the same strength as a horseman, and where the horseman has an advantage of much higher base strength AND movement, I really feel like the spearman needs a boost.

[Vitruviansquid]

Should we really say spearmen are cheaper than horsemen?

You can use Maneuver to boost horsemen production by 100% or Agoge to boost spearmen production by only 50%.

I'm pretty certain you'll actually be getting horsemen faster if you consider the policy possibilities and hold everything else equal.

[Aeson]

Should we really say spearmen are cheaper than horsemen?

You can use Maneuver to boost horsemen production by 100% or Agoge to boost spearmen production by only 50%.

I'm pretty certain you'll actually be getting horsemen faster if you consider the policy possibilities and hold everything else equal.
Assuming that you either don't have any other production bonuses in effect or that these production bonuses stack multiplicatively with any other production bonuses which are in effect, and that the base cost of a unit of spearmen is 65 production while the base cost of a unit of horsemen is 80 production, then spearmen produced under the Agoge policy are more expensive in real production (43 1/3 real production required) than horsemen produced under the Maneuver policy (40 real production required).

If other production bonuses are in play and stack in some manner other than [total production output] = ([base output] + sum([flat bonus]m, m= 1:M)) * product(1 + [percentile bonus]n, n = 1:N), then things might be a little different.

[Maryring]

Should we really say spearmen are cheaper than horsemen?

You can use Maneuver to boost horsemen production by 100% or Agoge to boost spearmen production by only 50%.

I'm pretty certain you'll actually be getting horsemen faster if you consider the policy possibilities and hold everything else equal.

I didn't even consider that. And with how incredibly valuable military policy production boosts are, you'd be a fool not to use them when you can.

So yeah. Spearmen and their ilk need a buff.

And speaking of other weird stuff. In order to get Inspiration for humanism, you need to earn a Great Artist. In order to have a place to put great artist works, you need Humanism for the museums it gives you.

Getting the same inspiration is unfeasible for another reason too. The first Great Artist requires 240 GA points on Standard Speed. But every theater district only provides one GA point. The game really seems to want to push you to buy your first GA with faith or cash.

[VoxRationis]

The upgrade system in general is something that just... it's an amazing idea, but poor execution. There's very little way to get any of the higher end promotions unless you are constantly warring, in which case the War Weariness is going to cripple your growth.

Yeah, I miss the bonus-XP-upon-spawning barracks from Civ V. Faster-leveling units are nice, but kind of miss the point.

On an unrelated note, I find the constant switching of social policies to be kind of amusing. "In 1866, Cleopatra outlawed serfdom. Then she reinstated it in 1892. Then she abolished it in 1893. Then she reinstated it again in 1902..."

[factotum]

With regard to the usefulness of scouts, does anyone have any idea why they removed the "no movement penalty for tile" thing they had in Civ5? That made them extremely useful despite their weak combat ability, because they were simply faster than any other equivalent tech unit over rough terrain. In Civ6 a scout moving through hills or forests (with no promotions) manages the same 1 tile per turn movement rate that a Warrior does, which is slightly ridiculous IMHO.

[Cespenar]

When they do get the promotion, though, they become pretty fast.

I dunno, I use them in a similar way to the AI. Scout moves around, opens the fog of war and finds barbarian camps, and my slingers move in to kill them. The AI is pretty horrible against ranged units, so you can take out a Spearman with a Slinger in most of the situations without a Warrior to help.

[VoxRationis]

With regard to the usefulness of scouts, does anyone have any idea why they removed the "no movement penalty for tile" thing they had in Civ5? That made them extremely useful despite their weak combat ability, because they were simply faster than any other equivalent tech unit over rough terrain. In Civ6 a scout moving through hills or forests (with no promotions) manages the same 1 tile per turn movement rate that a Warrior does, which is slightly ridiculous IMHO.

It might be part of the whole micro-intensive design philosophy they've got going on this time. Scouts can pick up the first promotion pretty quickly (and thereafter move quickly), but you have to actually control them to get it. This forces you to spend time on a turn-by-turn basis trying to make the scout better, just like the research boost system makes you adapt your strategies over time in order to get boosts at the optimal times.

[moossabi]

I just realized that Florence and Milan are also not in the game, which makes me even more convinced of my DLC Venice theory from a few pages back.

Maybe this means that they'll be in some kind of Italian States civilization, which sounds like it would be interesting.

Also, any word from the devs on when we'll be able to rename cities?

[Maryring]

Seems to be a break in the game. If a civ gets destroyed and you liberate and recreate their capital, then if you try to make a deal with them later the deal screen does not show up and it becomes impossible to advance to the next turn.

In other news, I'm reminded of how much I loathe the AI. First Egypt declares war on a city state I'm Suzerain of, so I declare war to free the city state, which causes England to declare war on me. I fight through England until I get to Kyoto to liberate that, at which point Greece denounces and then declares war on me. A war of expansion, but still. At this point I've decided that everyone dies. :smallsigh:

[5ColouredWalker]

Not a fan of culture, but I really think one of the Religous choices is a bit more powerful than others with Feed the World.

Food is the big cap, it decides how many districts I can build, how many tiles I can work, etc etc, and Feed the World gives me food enough to get a district more than I would otherwise get, while making low food areas more useful. One of my favourite towns in one game was one set on a bunch of tundra hills with a large amount of snow to the north. Snow is completely useless, it does nothing.


So you lose absolutely nothing when you cover it with wonders and districts :smallbiggrin: And, then having a Feed the World holy site means I can have more than a handful of people there, unless I make that location the start of all my internal trade routes... Which I did anyway for the extra production.

Edit:
I also thought, unlike 5, the game would take longer to get depressingly easy since there was no 3 range artillary. Then they gave me artillary corps and spotter balloons... I might need to actively avoid doing a domination victory for myself.

[factotum]

Food is the big cap, it decides how many districts I can build, how many tiles I can work, etc etc,

I found housing to be a bigger problem in most cases--there are so many ways to get food in Civ6 that it's rarely a problem unless you built your city in tundra or desert.

[Maryring]

I found housing to be a bigger problem in most cases--there are so many ways to get food in Civ6 that it's rarely a problem unless you built your city in tundra or desert.

This. Housing is the big limiter in the early game, and until you get Neighbourhoods, your cities are limited to around 15 citizens unless you go crazy with farms.

Not that it changes much. Feed the world is so much more powerful a belief than other beliefs. But hopefully they'll take the time to balance faiths at some point.

[VoxRationis]

I'm not liking war weariness as a mechanic. It seems odd that a game which abolished global happiness instituted a global modifier to happiness. It also feels artificial because it's dependent (as far as I know) on how long a war goes, and not, say, unit losses or the amount of production dedicated to the war effort. A purely nominal war waged by a foe across the entire map for a hundred turns is more damaging to happiness than a ten-turn war that leaves the homeland pillaged and slaughters units on both sides.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Trios of farms are powerful in the mid and extremely powerful in the late game due to adjacency bonuses with each other.

[5ColouredWalker]

I've been enjoying Island Plates recently, and I decided to say 'Stuff it' and go an Island Plate legendary start on Marathon... There's a total of 12 land tiles on my island, I guess I'm going to be starting with the techs for boats at the start instead of after having won a continent this time.

[factotum]

It also feels artificial because it's dependent (as far as I know) on how long a war goes, and not, say, unit losses or the amount of production dedicated to the war effort.

I'm pretty sure unit losses etc. have an effect--you'd have to compare a losing war over 10 turns with a winning one over the same time period to determine it, rather than a 100 turn war against a 10 turn one, though.

[Sholos]

What's really fun is when you have war declared on you and then your city that's near the war immediately devolves into super-unhappy status and spawns 3 AT Crews and an artillery... Yeah, I'm not happy with the war weariness mechanic.

[factotum]

What's really fun is when you have war declared on you and then your city that's near the war immediately devolves into super-unhappy status and spawns 3 AT Crews and an artillery...

Of course, if you happen to have an apostle with the appropriate promotion, you can immediately turn those barbarians into extra armies. I saw someone get 3 cavalry and a Field Cannon using that tactic.

[moossabi]

Of course, if you happen to have an apostle with the appropriate promotion, you can immediately turn those barbarians into extra armies. I saw someone get 3 cavalry and a Field Cannon using that tactic.

It becomes even easier when you have the citystate that lets you choose the promotion.

[Binks]

Only time I've ever suffered from a Civ VI war (thus far) was when a distant ai declared war on me, sent 3 units into my artillery shells, then refused to negotiate peace for a huge swath of time. I didn't have the army to actually mount an offensive on them, and by the time I realized my war weariness was spiraling out of control it was too late, I had swarms of barbarians rising up in my lands, pillaging my luxury resource improvements, and compounding the problem. Couldn't get the AI to accept even a lopsided (in their favor) peace and my home turf was being torn apart by rebels who had decided that I was the bad guy for having war declared on me and defending myself...

I tried the -25% war weariness policy, but it was too little too late, as I lost ~6 amenities from luxuries getting pillaged, already had a min -4 war weariness in my cities, and had been floating around 2-3 positive amenities before the war began. I ended up losing that game because the cost of being at war and being unable to get the AI to accept peace set me back too far to even have a hope of catching up.

It's kind of ridiculous that the threat in a war doesn't come from the AI units (which are almost always incompetent and weak, I play on difficulty 5 or below) but from the barbarians that will spawn unless you can negotiate peace with someone who refuses offers in their favor because you haven't sieged their city yet.

[Maryring]

So what's everyone's wish-list of small things you hope the game will patch in, or at least get mods developed for once they make modding more open?

Personally I'm hoping for:
A mapbuilder.
Rebalancing passive religious pressure. As is, it seems pretty nonexistent.
A restart button that reseeds the map, in case of utterly imbalanced starts.
Moving the +2 Great Artist Social Policy to somewhere before Humanism.
If the AI suicides their Apostles into my own religious unit, make them realise that and not get mad at me for spreading my religion to their lands. Especially if the attack happens in my own lands.
Ability to choose number of religions in a game, or at least make it dependant on number of players, rather than size of map.
Same with city states.
Greater transparency. Did you know that district cost increases linearly with each tech/civic (not age, individual techs/civic) you acquire? Me neither. And would it kill the game to show how border expansion's doing and where it'll go?
And lastly. Remember my settings when I create a game. Why do you even have a "reset to default" button if you're gonna reset to default every time I want to make a new game?

[5ColouredWalker]

Greater transparency. Did you know that district cost increases linearly with each tech/civic (not age, individual techs/civic) you acquire? Me neither. And would it kill the game to show how border expansion's doing and where it'll go?

Workers also get a cost boost for each one you get. (Not each one you make, get. If you wanted to buy one on the opposite end of your empire but just captured one, too bad, you now get to wait another turn.)

[VoxRationis]

I really don't understand the rationale behind increasing costs for successive units. It seems spiteful and arbitrary. Why in the world would there be a reverse economy of scale on these things?

Edit: Also, has anyone made use of rangers? I haven't seen them employed in various Let's Plays but I think it would be kind of fun (if less than optimal) to employ a defensive military force of right-hand-upgraded rangers. Attack and disappear into the woods, that sort of thing.

[Vitruviansquid]

Workers probably cost more the more you get because the power of improvements scale up as time goes on. It's probably also because the game wants you to be able to create workers within a reasonable time frame in the early game without also letting you churn them out by the turn in the mid and late game.

Districts, on the other hand, I don't think should scale in cost. It should be enough to make each progressive district building cost more, and they already do. District scaling just makes it prohibitively expensive to get districts later on for fledgeling cities.

Interestingly, I have not seen War Weariness and Warmongering work like some in this thread have described it. I have never gotten war weariness or Warmongering penalties in defensive wars, (unless I go out and turn them into offensive wars). I have had Egypt declare war against me, sent waves of spearmen and chariots which I crushed, and then sued for peace. I have had numerous nations sue for peace after I destroyed enough of their military units without threatening their cities. I wonder if War weariness explosions like those described are happening because you did something earlier to gain war weariness, then had peace for awhile, and the war weariness penalty stays marked in the background to be re-applied when you enter a state of war, to prevent you from declaring rapid series of wars. So it looks like you had war declared upon you and then received an insane amount of war weariness for no reason.

[mythmonster2]

And the first patch is out! (http://steamcommunity.com/games/289070/announcements/detail/646658987742411203) Looks like we've got some decent UI changes, less warmonger penalties (unless you wholly wipe a civ out), new map types, fixing some exploits (Scythia horseman economy), and maybe the AI will actually build modern armies now.

[5ColouredWalker]

Eh, they still get 2 for one and 50 healing from the looks of things, so they're still broken as f***. That said, I welcome these fixes, I was wondering why Island Plates seemed to have so few mountains on new world.

[factotum]

"Reduced border incursion warnings if the troops are within their own borders." That there on its own is a very welcome change--it always struck me as ridiculous that another civ would warn me about troop buildup on a shared border when I only had 2 units there and they were both on my side!

[Maryring]

Seems that certain districts gave more of a boost than intended. Holy Sites used to give two food, now they only give one. This... does cut a bit into the value of trade routes. And makes it even more vital to push for industrial districts in all cities, since you can no longer get as strong a boost through trade routes.

Seems like a good patch though. I like it.

[moossabi]

I'm unable to clear out a citrus resource for the Eiffel Tower.

The game is now 100% unplayable.

[VoxRationis]

Does anyone else feel like there should be some way of changing districts from one form to another? It seems kind of odd that a city is required to be so unchanging through history. It's certainly the case that industrial neighborhoods have become residential in many real-life cities, and mechanically, I could see cause for getting rid of a holy site or encampment that outlives its role.

[5ColouredWalker]

I'm unable to clear out a citrus resource for the Eiffel Tower.

The game is now 100% unplayable.

You need to have the right techs, but I can't imagine you getting so far without learning to clear jungles.

Is that tile owned by the city you want to build it? If not, you need to go into citizen management, and use swap to give it to that city. I learned this trying to put a Campus in the middle of a ring of jungles.


As for changing districts, yea, that'd be nice. But it seems like the only way to do that would be to raze the city at the moment.

[moossabi]

You need to have the right techs, but I can't imagine you getting so far without learning to clear jungles.

Is that tile owned by the city you want to build it? If not, you need to go into citizen management, and use swap to give it to that city. I learned this trying to put a Campus in the middle of a ring of jungles.

I can clear jungles; there's a citrus resource in the way though.

I definitely own the tile. I've owned it since the start of the game.

[5ColouredWalker]

I can clear jungles; there's a citrus resource in the way though.

I definitely own the tile. I've owned it since the start of the game.

No, not you.
Your city, is that tile associated with that city you want to build the wonder with, or another? Can you assign a population to it from that cities' management screen?

If no, then you need to swap it. If yes, then it's bug.

[moossabi]

No, not you.
Your city, is that tile associated with that city you want to build the wonder with, or another? Can you assign a population to it from that cities' management screen?

If no, then you need to swap it. If yes, then it's bug.

Yes, my capital owns that tile.

[5ColouredWalker]

Welp, bug then. You might be able to harvest the citris and turn the tile into a standard jungle, then you should be able to build it.

Or, double check Big Ben's building requirements, more modern wonders have stricter requirements which that tile might not meet.

[moossabi]

Welp, bug then. You might be able to harvest the citris and turn the tile into a standard jungle, then you should be able to build it.

Or, double check Big Ben's building requirements, more modern wonders have stricter requirements which that tile might not meet.

A) Eiffel Tower, not Big Ben.

B) There's no jungle involved. It's on flat land adjacent to my capital and I've cleared the improvement that used to be there.

[factotum]

Have you also cleared the resource, though? I think that's a separate action a builder can do rather than building a plantation or whatever.

[Maryring]

Does anyone else feel like there should be some way of changing districts from one form to another? It seems kind of odd that a city is required to be so unchanging through history. It's certainly the case that industrial neighborhoods have become residential in many real-life cities, and mechanically, I could see cause for getting rid of a holy site or encampment that outlives its role.

Or at the very least you should be able to cancel construction of a district to move it. You make a misclick when you place a city and that's it. You're stuck with whatever mistake you made unless you reload.

[GungHo]

I'm unable to clear out a citrus resource for the Eiffel Tower.

The game is now 100% unplayable.

You don't remember your history. Gustav Eiffel nearly brought the Belle Epoque to a close when his hubris destroyed the last grapefruit tree in Europe. In response, Wilhelm II and the rest of the Triple Alliance began militarizing dirigibles with hopes of dropping citrus all over the French countryside. This led to alliances between France, Russia, and Britain, who feared the Lime Tide. It all culminated when Ferdinand's artichokes were foully spritzed with a lemon scented atomizer and then all the world was at war.

[moossabi]

Have you also cleared the resource, though? I think that's a separate action a builder can do rather than building a plantation or whatever.

The clear button isn't coming up.

[factotum]

OK, I just completed my second game--got a cultural victory as China this time. Chose Shuffle for map type and I think it gave me an archipelago, but I was lucky enough to start on a fairly large island so was able to get 5 cities down before having to sail anywhere. Even without any campus districts I was way ahead of everyone else from the get-go--I think my closest competitor in science had 40 techs to my 55 at the end of the game, and I'd completed the civic tech tree and done about 6 repeats of Globalisation.

The wars, though...that was ridiculous. According to the Replay graph at the end I had war declared on me 34 times during the course of the game (it was a Huge map with 11 other civs). Wouldn't have minded so much but Cleopatra, who was actually my friend (I was even allied to her at one point), was one of the main culprits! I expect the people who hate me to constantly declare war on me, but it gets annoying when my friends do it too. They really need to fix that.

So, won two games at Prince difficulty, guess I need to dial it up a bit for the next game!

[VoxRationis]

Brazil's unique unit irritates me. Not only is it kind of odd for the civ as a whole (it doesn't have anything to do with jungles, it doesn't generate great people points or work with happiness mechanics), but it is needlessly much better than the generic version, as well as being available earlier in all likelihood. It irritates me that Britain, the shining historical example of a maritime empire and the people who actually built the Minas Geraes ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minas_Geraes-class_battleship#Bidding_and_construction), has no unique naval unit, while Brazil does. That said, I am amused by the idea of a science-lite, culture-heavy Brazilian timing push on naval maps.

[5ColouredWalker]

It irritates me that Britain, the shining historical example of a maritime empire and the people who actually built the Minas Geraes ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minas_Geraes-class_battleship#Bidding_and_construction), has no unique naval unit

Sea Dog (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_Dog_(Civ6)), unlocked by Merchantilism instead of the Priateer.

[VoxRationis]

Well, I stand corrected. Still, it bothers me that the people who built Dreadnought get no credit for it, while the people who ordered a couple from them get a unique unit of that type.

[factotum]

This is the problem with having only one generic "battleship" unit. In the real world, a Minaes Geraes class battleship wouldn't have lasted half an hour in a fight against the Bismarck, Yamato, or other WW2 battleship, and why would you expect them to considering there's 30-odd years of technological development in between the two designs? However, in the game a battleship is a battleship, so once they made the decision to make Brazil's unique unit one, it had to be better than other battleships or there was no point in even having it there.

[Maryring]

They really should've just reused a unique infantry for Brazil, and yes, had it focus on Brazil and not being a generic better unit. Bonus Great Person Points, or Bonus Production towards Carnivals for combat victories for example.

[VoxRationis]

This is the problem with having only one generic "battleship" unit. In the real world, a Minaes Geraes class battleship wouldn't have lasted half an hour in a fight against the Bismarck, Yamato, or other WW2 battleship, and why would you expect them to considering there's 30-odd years of technological development in between the two designs? However, in the game a battleship is a battleship, so once they made the decision to make Brazil's unique unit one, it had to be better than other battleships or there was no point in even having it there.

True. That said, I think the fact that the Minas Geraes are available through culture rather than science is a good difference to start with. The unit doesn't necessarily have to be that different if the means of acquiring it is different. Maybe make it gold-buy only, with a significant discount vs. a battleship.

[Maryring]

Good grief, the jump from King to Emperor is insane. King is incredibly easy to the point that I never struggle. On Emperor, I somehow end up behind in every metric despite having twice as many cities as my opponent. And I really have to wonder how my opponent can be ahead of me in culture when he has far fewer great works.

[Rockphed]

Good grief, the jump from King to Emperor is insane. King is incredibly easy to the point that I never struggle. On Emperor, I somehow end up behind in every metric despite having twice as many cities as my opponent. And I really have to wonder how my opponent can be ahead of me in culture when he has far fewer great works.

At some point, all strategy games throw their hands up and just have the AI cheat.