Early Game Defence.

[stroypa]

The barbs now send out scout units and then if they get back they spawn right near your border. They're also apparently smarter. The new early era diplomacy has also been more switched towards war, we still don't know too much about how exactly this works but I imagine the AI will be more aggressive in the early stages.

In V unless you have a known warmonger right on your doorstep or you have a few barb camps close by you can usually afford to put defence on the back burner and prioritise other things in the early game. You can often get away with leaving your cities and workers undefended too whilst your warrior(s) help explore a fair way away.

Now I think defence will be much more important and interesting. The barbs certainly seem buffed, which is nice because they were a bit rubbish in V. Pillaged tiles will have more of an impact too because workers aka builders are now finite and having to repair a tile, and certainly 2 or 3 or even more, is a much bigger waste of your resources than it was before.

If Firaxis have deliberately chosen to make the early game more of a defensive challenge, and I certainly think there's reason to believe they have, we can probably expect other things too. Maybe city bombardment damage or range has been nerfed for example.

It should be much more interesting now and this is one of the things that really excites me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In Civ5 units were quite expensive, because cheaper units = more units = too much clutter with 1UPT. With introduction of corps/armies and support units, the problem was reduced, so it looks like developers were able to do military units a bit cheaper relatively.

Also, we know cities don't have bombardment until they build walls.

 

[cakes]

i'm not sure that the ai will be more aggressive but diplomacy is just limited to war/peace, meaning they will go to war to resolve disputes but it doesn't mean they are more likely to go to war because they are more willing to, only that their options are limited

 

[Acken]

Early threats from the AI is one of the first thing I've made sure of in my mod. I'm very happy if civ6 follows this route. In a game with so much military stuff you shouldn't be able to go through theages with 4 archers.

 

[Thormodr]

Hopefully that the Barbs will be dangerous enough that it will put a check on rapid expansion and wonder spamming and will force players to build a credible defence. That and Egypt keeping players honest.

 

[MIS]

Seems to me you might only need a few slingers. Should be able to take a barb scout out pretty easily. There are "Eurekas" for a) killing a unit with a slinger b) taking out a barb camp and c) building 2 galleys, that we know about. There may well be other that encourage defense, that improves other aspects.