Some random obervations from the streams

[Silverdawn]

But even professional journalists didn't raise their voice stating how bad AI or balance is. I didn't even hear a lot of complaining from youtubers either. None, now that I think of it... If you have please provide proof or examples.
It's a prebuild with only 10civs, prince solely (prince being level 4 out of 8 according to gamestar) and quick and standard speed. This to me feels like a build already a few weeks old, don't you think?

Because it is an incomplete preview build, you aren't going to get game reviewers coming down harshly on AI, etc. They will save those comments (if they decide to make them) for the "final" build at launch. You will see comments like they are interested to see how the AI evolves from now until then.

When looking at the Main Menu, the Prince difficulty has a value of "3" and the icon appears to be half full suggesting there are 6 levels:
https://www.twitch.tv/quill18/v/92031528?t=34m24s

 

[phryxolydian]

Well, you hardly need to play any game to have an opinion about it if you've watched someone else play it. And if you've watched several different people play it then you can definitely make an opinion about it. But P-LEASE about the professional journalists comment. Just no.

 

[Stilgar08]

Well, you hardly need to play any game to have an opinion about it if you've watched someone else play it. And if you've watched several different people play it then you can definitely make an opinion about it. But P-LEASE about the professional journalists comment. Just no.

Ok, fine by me. Keep on running, if you need to... just no fits. Indeed.

 

[phryxolydian]

Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree that you will have a much deeper understanding of game mechanics and all that by playing yourself, no question. But, some things you can point out without playing yourself.

And by the "just no" about journalists I meant that, if I'd go by what professional journalists said, I'd be buying Madonna records or whatever (no offense to people who like her music).

 

[Acken]

Concerns about the game from the various let's play I've seen :

-Some bad AI behavior. Buggy agendas etc. The AI seem to develop relatively well but is really weak militarily. A better prioritization of army vs economy is necessary to make both the AI more-apt at defense and more threatening on offense. Army sent for attacking should also feature a minimum of 8 units similar to civ5 Prince armies AI logic. Turning up the weights of unit production for attacking armies and defensive forces should be an easy task.
This is the kind of stuff that is done in the code, therefore I hope either Firaxis does it itself and/or make it available to us.

-Ranged vs Melee is as bad as in civ5. This is mostly due to the wrong approach at fixing the issue as already said multiple times. Nerfing range units defense is not the solution. Range units OPness come from their ability to not take damage when attacking, the number of tiles a units can hit allowing focus fire and OP promotions. Logistics doesn't seem to exist in Civ6 so that is a good thing but their main issue is how much damage they make. This need to be toned down to make range units more of a support unit than a glasscanon damage dealer.

-Settlers should not be allowed to be captured.

-Eurekas (once again as expected) too much of a reward. Or they are too easy to complete. Players with barely any experience are hitting some pretty fast finishing time because of it. Also it seems reasonable to think the AI cannot hit the eurekas with the same efficiency. This creates a further divide between AI and Humans. Droping it down to 33 or 25% seems more acceptable and still worth it to pursue.

-Wide empires may need a toning down in efficiency. Definitely keep the ability to make one and conquest be rewarding. However it appears the snowballing is pretty severe, making it the only efficient playstyle. It also once again make human players eclipse any AI (or humans in multiplayer) not able to get an early advantage in city numbers. There are a few reasons :
Little penalities and science scaling with population. More production to hit multiple eurekas. A lot of things just scale really efficiently with empire size. Not to the degree of civ beyond earth but way more than is healthy. Civ is a long game and the winner should not be decided by who gets the most cities in the first 100 turns.

 

[Haggbart]

Disagree with couple of things:

- Problem with upgrades might be gold, Marb actually had enough gold to improve his units himself only because AI was offering him sick peace deals (giving him a ton of money). Most of the game all his positive income was from deals.
- I didn't watch Quill, but I find it weird. Marb was again tons of weird stuff just to get Eurekas. It definitely didn't seem that he could get that much by coincidence.
- What's the deal with legacy bonuses? Marb never got over 5% in anything. They seem really marginal to me (which is ok).
- You're the first one to complain about slow escalation of settlers/builders/districts cost I guess However, it seemed well balanced to me. Builders were scaled really slowly, settlers little bit more, and districts seem to take reasonable time in good production cities. In new/small cities they take a lot of time, but that's kind of a point I guess. And you can always speed it up by trade routes/chopping.
- Don't get that goody hut issue. I can see it all the time, and it has sound associated with it. Both you and me are apparently shouting on people for not taking them, so if we can see it, they can to. Maybe some people just need to get used on things. Honestly, all these youtubers are pretty bad in details (which is perfectly fine, since they don't want to be boring).

Real issues are imo capturing settlers, deals offered by AI which are sometimes totally off, and AI not building army.

- Gold might have something to do with AI not upgrading, but city state units are also obsolete a lot of the time. So there seem to be something else as well.
- You should watch the Quill Rome-video, I would say he was caught by surprise by nearly 50% of eureka boosts in early/mid game. A lot of that could be avoided by tuning them a bit. But I think they must be nerfed on a general level to give less of a % boost. That was my first reaction when I heard about them, and that is my view after watching quite a few LPs. Also that would make the tech pace of the game better IMHO.
- The government legacy bonuses: I misunderstood a bit, because oligoarchy give 1% extra combat experience pr 5 turns (pr 2,5 turns for America) I was thinking the same was true for autocracy/classic republic. However if we take classic republic the great people boost with America is 1 % pr 7,5 turn (as opposed to normal pr 15 turns), so in 225 turns you end up with 45% bonus to great people. Which is good, because you give up later governments with more policy slots. So, my bad.
- I'm not complaining about the escalating cost as such, I'm just saying it's not enough to avoid spamming of cities. I hoped some of the youtubers would really try to prove this, but that they didn't is not really evidence that it's well balanced.
- The goody huts is not a big complaint of mine, but it was so annoying that the pillaged tiles in some of the LPs didn't get fixed because the players didn't spot them. And I do think the pillaged fishing boat tile was kinda hard to spot, I didn't notice it before he moused over it. This is really not a big issue, but it is very easy to fix.

 

[Haggbart]

It is always amazing to me how thoroughly this community is at raising concerns without playing a single minute themselves. I wonder how many of you actually played the pre - version (please raise your hand).

There are a few issues, I agree. But even professional journalists didn't raise their voice stating how bad AI or balance is. I didn't even hear a lot of complaining from youtubers either. None, now that I think of it... If you have please provide proof or examples.
It's a prebuild with only 10civs, prince solely (prince being level 4 out of 8 according to gamestar) and quick and standard speed. This to me feels like a build already a few weeks old, don't you think?
If a feature or a mechanic is OP they might have the time to correct it.
Writing Bull is a slow player and on standard speed the feel of techspeed looks alright to me. I'm playing epic later, that's for sure...
Unguarded settlers is a problem but solvable IMO. I may be disappointed on Oct. 21st, and moan right here, but I'll preserve my verdict for the time after I played myself.
But I doubt it ;p

This post really mix two seperate questions.
1. Is it possible to have valid opinions about game mechanics without playing the game?
2. Is the version we get to see on the LPs the same we will get in under three weeks?

On nr 1: Yes I think you can have valid opinion on a turn based strategy game if you know the rules. I think we have most pieces of the jigsaw on the current build, and as such can make some qualified judgement on it. I remember before CiV came out, a lot of concerns were voiced on the forums by people who never played the game while "professional journalists" gave it a metacritic score of 90. Of course CiV today is a great game, but it was badly balanced at launch.

On nr 2: Hopefully not. And I'm sure Firaxis are continuing to process feedback, including from this forum. For all we know the issues I raised in the OP are fixed, but are you seriously suggesting not making any posts about game mechanics before the game is launched and we know for sure? This is not a "verdict", and that's why I named the thread "random observations from the streams".

 

[MyOtherName]

I'm surprised by the comments that eurekas are too easy to get -- I had the impression that getting them is supposed to be the norm, not the exception. i.e. balance-wise, they're not meant as a reward for doing the sorts of things that give eurekas, but a penalty for civs not doing such things.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It seems like district cost increase by 1 hammer each turn.

Project seems to have a ratio of one GPP per 4 production.

Wood give about 70 production if chopped, pretty big boost in the early game.

Mission (Spain UI) get +2 science then culture heritage is developed.

 

[Stringer1313]

I think the issue of whether Eurekas should be toned down is secondary -- that's a balance issue which will work itself out over time. I think the Eurekas themselves should be more difficult / interesting, and shouldn't be something you easily stumble upon. They should function as interesting quests that make the game, well, more interesting. I can see the first few eurekas being quite easy but they need to be made harder much more quickly.

 

[Lucius_]

I definitely see some issues, most have been covered here in this thread and others, like AI with no military, unguarded settlers, settler sniping. I know this could be related to difficulty level, but it seems like some of these players are just randomly doing whatever and doing just fine. I'm not seeing a lot of strategy and it doesn't seem to really matter.

Edit: So far I haven't seen anything like a demographics screen, perhaps that's with victory conditions? More importantly I have not seen the Economic Overview screen. Please, please tell me this still exists. It's invaluable to see your cities production/science/culture/gold side by side on a single screen.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

I definitely see some issues, most have been covered here in this thread and others, like AI with no military, unguarded settlers, settler sniping. I know this could be related to difficulty level, but it seems like some of these players are just randomly doing whatever and doing just fine. I'm not seeing a lot of strategy and it doesn't seem to really matter.

Edit: So far I haven't seen anything like a demographics screen, perhaps that's with victory conditions? More importantly I have not seen the Economic Overview screen. Please, please tell me this still exists. It's invaluable to see your cities production/science/culture/gold side by side on a single screen.

Yep this bothers me to. There are some stats if you hover over victory conditions, but we haven't seen any economic overview, which is pretty useful when you want to find out which city is best in production, etc.

But I am also disappointed by youtubers, none of them did a quick overview of all icons on UI. I'd definitely do it to make sure what is available.

 

[spfun]

Eureka and Inspiration can be gamed with current implementation. By researching half of tech then researching something else while you wait for eureka moment. That's going to lead to constant tech/civic switching and maintenance for efficiency. Not great design, perhaps its time to lock techs/civics.

 

[Silverdawn]

Eureka and Inspiration can be gamed with current implementation. By researching half of tech then researching something else while you wait for eureka moment. That's going to lead to constant tech/civic switching and maintenance for efficiency. Not great design, perhaps its time to lock techs/civics.

That doesn't sound like gaming. It sounds like making a choice when you want techs and civics to complete. It is just the opposite case of favoring researching tech and civics that you had already boosted.

 

[spfun]

It will become a chore as its clearly the best option most of the time to research half of a tech/civic and wait for the boost.

 

[narmox]

Here's my own observation, about user experience (not quite UI):

* Player gets a new tech or civic
* Before player gets the popup about getting the new tech or civic, player gets the advisor popup explaining that player can now do X or Y
* Player is a bit confused about the advisor popup, not knowing that they just got the tech or civic allowing such thing...

This should be reversed, the advisor should popup after the tech or civic popup. This probably shares some code with the other advisor popups however which do popup as soon as the event happens, ie when walking into a ZOC or when building the first ranged unit. These are fine, because there's no popup involved to announce a new tech...

 

[Louis XXIV]

It will become a chore as its clearly the best option most of the time to research half of a tech/civic and wait for the boost.

Only if you don't need the tech soon when the boost isn't reasonable available.

It reminds me of Civ4 where you could research one path to get a tech or both paths to a tech to get that tech cheaper. Sometimes it was better to beeline, other times it wasn't.

 

[Silverdawn]

It may be the best but it may not be the most practical. You can hear in the livestreams, people weighing whether they expect they'll get the boost anytime soon before deciding to research something. Having a bunch of half-finished techs waiting for boosts is not likely efficient.

 

[phryxolydian]

-Eurekas (once again as expected) too much of a reward. Or they are too easy to complete. Players with barely any experience are hitting some pretty fast finishing time because of it. Also it seems reasonable to think the AI cannot hit the eurekas with the same efficiency. This creates a further divide between AI and Humans. Droping it down to 33 or 25% seems more acceptable and still worth it to pursue.

People keep saying the eurekas are too easy/should be less and all that and I agree but, few point out the human/AI aspect of this whole thing. While being a great mechanic on paper, I agree this division is going to be much more evident. We'll have to see just how good the AI is at getting these or how much they prioritize getting the eureka boosts in their coding I guess.

Also, because CS quests include getting x eureka, maybe the quest should end after the first civ (AI or human) gets it? Or maybe give 2 envoys to the first and 1 to the 2nd and that's it?

 

[Lucius_]

People keep saying the eurekas are too easy/should be less and all that and I agree but, few point out the human/AI aspect of this whole thing. While being a great mechanic on paper, I agree this division is going to be much more evident. We'll have to see just how good the AI is at getting these or how much they prioritize getting the eureka boosts in their coding I guess.

Also, because CS quests include getting x eureka, maybe the quest should end after the first civ (AI or human) gets it? Or maybe give 2 envoys to the first and 1 to the 2nd and that's it?

I do not believe city state quests are competitive. I believe in one livestream there was a quest to build an Acropolis, specifically, which only the player, Greece, could do as it is their unique district.