Do you like the agenda system (poll)?

[bbbt]

So I've read a number of complaints about diplomacy and the agenda system in Civ 6. I'm curious whether people generally like it but think it could use some refinement, or basically want a do over on it.

 

[Victoria]

Wow, that result surprised me... and pleased me.

I think a lot of the complaints have come before people had a really good look at it.

 

[Arent11]

So I've read a number of complaints about diplomacy and the agenda system in Civ 6. I'm curious whether people generally like it but think it could use some refinement, or basically want a do over on it.

Wow, that result surprised me... and pleased me.
I think a lot of the complaints have come before people had a really good look at it.

I don't like it.

Reason: KISS principle. The aim here is obviously to give the leaders a certain "personality" & make them more lifelike. However, this is much better shown through game mechanics/ai behavior itself. For example, let Aztecs be agressive, build lots of units and encampments, routinely demand gold, cities, luxuries, threaten everyone. Let egypt be peaceful, flattering, build wonders & defense.

Simply make them contact you for "banters". Aztecs could repeatedly contact you and demand this and that or simply joke about how weak your military is. Egypt could contact you to offer luxuries or just flirt with you for no reason whatsoever. There are a lot of ways to show personality in a meaningful way without implementing additonal game mechanics.

If you want to show personality, do it through ai that follows a certain strategy.

 

[Turrdy]

i find it a little shallow and recurring. i get denounced or messaged for the same things over and over again ("it's good having a large income, isn't it?" followed by "I see you don't have any gold on your bank account, you poor bastard" after spending the earned money, happens every 10 turns or so )
I'd love if they added 3 or 4 or even more hidden agendas with different levels of importance.
And primary agendas become kinda dull too after the first few games...

 

[Victoria]

Reason: KISS principle.

i find it a little shallow and recurring

I think if you only had the single leader agendas is would be much shallower and duller. the fact they mix the unknown secondary agendas in gives an unknown flavor and more variety. Sure the agendas statements get samey but they are coming out of different civs mouths.
Its all a bit pointless if you play dom steamroller of course but I play the immersion game as well and I find it fine.

 

[Arent11]

Sure the agendas statements get samey

I have no problems with repetition. In fact, I think Norway should always love their ships (Maybe even in... that... way), but I don't want to be declared war just because I'm a landpower & don't even have access to water. They should just build ships, love their ships, explore the world & joke about you landrats. No reason to get iffy if they can't even reach me. It makes them less ~fun & more ~work.

 

[LastSword]

You know, there was a nice post here about ''Why flavours are bad'' after civ5 was released. So, those agendas are basically diplomatic flavours (like deceptive, friendly, etc. in civ5).
What I personally dislike is differentiating single player and multiplayer. Does human player have agenda? I wonder how useful diplomatic visibility/France is in MP.
On the other hand, I am aware most casuals prefer for AI leaders to be constant/familiar/predictable. In civ5 we had ''random personalities'' option that was ok at best.

The issues:
~Pre-Game forced linearity
~Single-Player mechanism
~Constant

I would like for Agenda to be chosen at one point based on game situation + a bit randomness (standard). It has a little sense to have Agendas from the beginning of game anyway (things should settle at first).
Human player should choose Agenda as well. But why? Well, there should be some (minor or not) internal bonus for fulfilling agenda. It has even some political aspect, you are a leader promising stuff to your subjects: "We will have the greatest amount of luxuries in the universe!".
Following "luxury" example, Agenda would be obviously 100% fulfilled if you have greater amount of luxuries than any of other civs. What is more, the penalty for every other civ with greater amount of luxuries at peace should be greater than if you were at war with/denouncing such civ or if such civ is unmet yet. It would give more reasoning to be at bad relation (angry) against civ breaking your agenda. Obviously It should never be a decisive factor to declare war for AI.
With penalties for not fulfilling agenda, there would be some sense to mess with other players' agendas in MP.

Where is the place for familiar AI leader? Well, there can be coded favour towards certain agendas, but still AI leader should abandon it if the situation/map is tragic for it.

At last, I think Agendas should be able to be changed during a game. You choose "luxury one", but there is this little sneaky leader on other continent that collected all the luxuries. You choose another Agenda (facing penalty upon changing).

Obvious issue is a need for quite a decent list of balanced agendas. Though, I think I am gonna handle it if nothing is gonna be changed. Will see once beta is over.


I find Agendas/Flavours following a bad direction to create leader personalities. Civ5 was more subtle, yet you could easily recognize repeating behaviour from certain leader. In general, I would prefer AI behaviour based more on a situation than "look, I am X leader, I do Y stuff".

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

In the current mod that I am working on, I have added a 2nd minor agenda for each Civ (it's a single entry to change). So far it seems to make the game even better than just the 1 major 1 minor.

 

[Victoria]

In the current mod that I am working on, I have added a 2nd minor agenda for each Civ (it's a single entry to change). So far it seems to make the game even better than just the 1 major 1 minor.

Just be careful, those secondary agendas have a major impact on the aggressiveness of civs... as in it reduces more than it increases so double secondaries may lead you to having a more peaceful game with less units being built.
You could consider this better or worse depending on point of view.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

The aim here is obviously to give the leaders a certain "personality" & make them more lifelike.

I disagree here. I don't see the primary role of agendas in added immersion. Instead they are a solid game mechanism to give players the ability to influence AI opinion of a players' civ.

Agendas add a separate layer of goals to achieve. If I value my relations with Norway, I will maintain a reasonable navy for little more reason than that it pleases Harald a lot. Kongo is likely to be the first Civ to spread my religion because there is diplomatic benefit in doing so without much of a downside.

AI leaders often have agendas that conflict with my strategies. This makes conflict with for instance Germany and Brasilia a predictable development of the game. Secondary agendas are good because they prevent things from becoming too stale. I'd prefer a bit more randomness, though. Leaders could have a pool of agendas each and get assigned one at random upon game start. Perhaps we could even have an advanced spy mission to change a leader's secondary agenda.

Agendas also help some civs to play their strengths. Since the Aztecs thrive on a great variety of luxuries, having a bad attitude towards players with new luxuries will drive Aztecs towards conquest against a player with luxuries that will further boost their armies. As a player I know, that to remain on good terms, I need to trade them my luxuries.

Often agendas can also dictate diplomatic relations to a large degree for most of the game. In had a game with Victoria on my home continent and she had the civilized secret agenda. Because my army was all over the planet, erradicating barbarians wherever they arose, relations with England were always excellent and stable for the entire game. Agendas did a lot to make AI leaders much less moody and erratic than in Civ V.

Some agendas indeed need some finetuning like Harald. He shouldn't dislike you for having no fleet if you are landlocked. But I would rather just change the flavor, not the mechanic. So instead of mocking your non-existant fleet, he'd scold you for not securing sea access for your civ.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I like the idea of them, but I think the diplomatic penalty of them should be scaled back on certain leaders. It makes sense for Gandhi to despise warmongers and for Montezuma to hate anyone who has luxuries he doesn't, but it makes less sense for Pedro to go on a denouncing spree simply because the player has a few more great people than he does. Or for the Kongo to hate you simply because your religion isn't present in his empire. I think the opinion impact for both complying and not complying with leader agendas should vary on a case by case basis.

 

[Arent11]

Agendas add a separate layer of goals to achieve. If I value my relations with Norway, I will maintain a reasonable navy for little more reason than that it pleases Harald a lot. Kongo is likely to be the first Civ to spread my religion because there is diplomatic benefit in doing so without much of a downside.

I understand that, but I would prefer they would make the endgame more challenging. People shouldn't dislike me just because I have a small navy, they should team up on me because I'm about to win the game. I would like to see endgame alliances against me, evil conspiracies to stab me in the back, massive espionage to keep me down.

 

[Victoria]

At the end of the day negative diplomacy from agendas is -6 in most cases.... not a big deal

 

[Kyro]

I dislike how the Agenda system is masqueraded as a diplomatic tool when it is essentially designed as a source of conflict generation.

This is very apparent from the absurdity of many agendas in the game. "Don't build Wonders! Don't get luxuries! Don't exist on the continent I'm expanding too! Don't be peaceful! Don't be friends with city states!" I could go on and on but really, do any of these look like they can be used to maintain relations? They might as well state "Don't try to win the game" as one of the agendas.

Sure -6 isn't exactly a lot but there is more than one agenda and very often you will be at odds with hidden agendas as well.

In addition given the proximity of starting locations you will very likely be guaranteed a "you settled near them" no matter where you choose to settle and that's essentially the favorite trigger point for AI to decide to declare war. Who cares about being friends far away?

Oh wait who cares about being friends at all? There's essentially very little benefit from being friends with any Civ that's not a city state.

 

[isau]

I like the historical agendas for the most part, but do not agree with the implementation of the negative sides of several of them.

For example, Pedro getting upset and starting wars because someone else has more Great People. Saladin starting wars of religion. Etc. I think it's fine for some leaders to be able to go negative on their agendas. but there should be at least some who are generally agreeable. We don't need them all to be balanced around a +6 -6 pairing. It would be enough to have some that can only trend positive and others that only trend negative.

The random agendas are a nice start but I wish they boiled down to more than just "build a lot of whatever yield." Generally speaking there isn't a lot you can do to accomodate any of the Yield based agendas. Now, if the agendas operated more like requests instead of just measurements of yields I think they'd work better. "Likes people who control at least one Natural Wonder. Loves people who gift cities with at least one natural wonder." Etc. And once again not every trait needs to have a +6 -6 pairing. It's fine to just be +6 or just -6. Having both can make the leaders feel bipolar, again particularly for the yield-based agendas.

 

[Victoria]

This is very apparent from the absurdity of many agendas in the game.

Well there was a thread a while ago to suggest alternates... it seems what they came up with fitted in with the game quite well. I rarely build wonders so Qin often likes me. I often have a small army so Cleo does not.

 

[stormerne]

I dislike how the Agenda system is masqueraded a diplomatic tool when it is essentially designed as a source of conflict generation.

The reason diplomacy exists in the world - and in Civ - is to resolve conflicts and potential conflicts. It's a tool to get one's way while still allowing others to at least think they're getting their way. Since nations, on the whole, don't fall in line with the "Why can't we all get along?" ethos, we have diplomacy. And one major area of conflict that diplomacy can help resolve is agendas.

I don't see for a minute how agendas are masquerading as a diplomatic tool. Of course they're there to create conflict. Diplomacy allows you to measure the depth of that conflict and gives you opportunities to offset, exacerbate or otherwise manipulate it. It's up to you whether you take those opportunities.

Things you can't change, you work around. Agendas merely represent things you can't change in people, rather than in a landscape, and diplomacy is a tool you use to work around them, just like builders are a tool to work with the landscape.

Civilization is not primarily a war game. But would you have it be an anodyne city builder instead?

 

[Kyro]

The reason diplomacy exists in the world - and in Civ - is to resolve conflicts and potential conflicts. It's a tool to get one's way while still allowing others to at least think they're getting their way. Since nations, on the whole, don't fall in line with the "Why can't we all get along?" ethos, we have diplomacy. And one major area of conflict that diplomacy can help resolve is agendas.

I don't see for a minute how agendas are masquerading as a diplomatic tool. Of course they're there to create conflict. Diplomacy allows you to measure the depth of that conflict and gives you opportunities to offset, exacerbate or otherwise manipulate it. It's up to you whether you take those opportunities.

Things you can't change, you work around. Agendas merely represent things you can't change in people, rather than in a landscape, and diplomacy is a tool you use to work around them, just like builders are a tool to work with the landscape.

Civilization is not primarily a war game. But would you have it be an anodyne city builder instead?

I'm sorry but I beg to differ.

The fact that agendas are classified under the term "Diplomacy" directly implies a system that exists for the purposes of "Diplomacy". And as quoted from dictionary.com, Diplomacy for all intentions and purposes refers to:

noun
1.
the conduct by government officials of negotiations and other relations between nations.
2.
the art or science of conducting such negotiations.
3.
skill in managing negotiations, handling people, etc., so that there is little or no ill will; tact:

Conduct and Negotiation so that ill will is avoided.

How many agendas in the game leave room for negotiations?

As it stands it would be better for them to separate agendas from Diplomacy because they are essentially non-negotiable and reclassify them as a conflict meter of sorts.

You know people often misunderstand me when I say Civilization isn't a War Game. I'm not against War in Civ 6. I'm against War Bias. Civ 6 has a very pro-conflict stance that encourages war. I hope it reverts back to a neutral stance where we are free to choose our path without being handicapped for doing so.

Oh and, there are many players in this game who prefer to see their plans unfold with skill rather than adapt to uncontrollable events and circumstances. You are entitled to your stance on "adaptability" but so am I to my stance on "optimal play". You may choose to go around the mountain but I choose to drill through it. The game should facilitate both options, and damned is anyone against that possibility. In the end it's about there being a freedom of choice.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

Most agendas will generate likes or dislikes based on your choices. It's just another value to consider when making up your strategy.

You may be inclined to collect plenty of Great Writers/Artists/Musicians to gear up for your culture win. But if you know, Pedro is in the game, be prepared for some hate. If you are not geared to take a beating from Brazil, perhaps you are better off to adjust to a strategy which uses less Great People e.g. use Archaeologists instead of Artists.

The Aztecs are an excellent example for a negotiation-focused agenda. Normally you'd be inclined to get one of as many luxuries as you can get your hands on. But if you don't want to be sacrificed to their gods, better collect two of each and share the spare.

Share a continent with America? Well you better count them in if you plan any wars close to home.

In general, Ai agendas demand that you adjust your strategy and that's a good thing.

 

[Karmah]

Iwas enthusiastic about it before I tried it. I still think it is a nice addition to SP, except that I don't like the implementation. It got better, it used to make me feel I was part of an asylum, now I just feel like playing with angry teenagers. It got better yeah