[GS] Sweden Livestream Discussion Thread

[Tobizi]

That was very irritating for me as well. I don't even get, why Eastern Orthodoxy won.
Didn't they say, in case of ties, the person who put the highest % of their Diplomatic Favour wins!? So as Kupe and Harald have not much favor left (53+17=70) their amount was higher than the amount of Laurier and Peter (favor left 36+36=72), because their input was 10 favor each.
Maybe there was a kind of invisible addition for Protestantism, i.e. 2 votes for outcome A minus 3 votes for outcome B!?
The more I think about it the more I'm confused...

 

[Elhoim]

I think it works best this way, as you need to take into account what the other players will vote. While the implementation is a little strange, you have to think it as two rounds of voting:

- First the world congress asks which direction this resolution should go (A or B). Everyone votes A or B. If you voted the losing proposition, you are not allowed to participate in the next round.
- The second round asks which should be the target of the resolution.

They made the UI so that you do it all in a single action, which makes it a bit strange, but the 2 voting rounds system is perfect.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

It will be interesting to get hit with the "no border growth" resolution. It sounds like a wonderful invitation to take my neighbor's land.

 

[Ituralde]

I think it works best this way, as you need to take into account what the other players will vote. While the implementation is a little strange, you have to think it as two rounds of voting:

- First the world congress asks which direction this resolution should go (A or B). Everyone votes A or B. If you voted the losing proposition, you are not allowed to participate in the next round.
- The second round asks which should be the target of the resolution.

They made the UI so that you do it all in a single action, which makes it a bit strange, but the 2 voting rounds system is perfect.

Don't get me wrong. I like the 2 voting rounds as well.

I would have preferred it though, if you could vote in the second round every time.

Also their terminology with "PASSED" and "FAILED" makes no sense when there's two rounds. I hope they can get the UI a bit more clear/cohesive. But juding from the UI in Civ VI in general, I am not very hopeful.

 

[pgm123]

The Stave Church is...well, probably the worst part of Norway's powers. The extra production from sea resources is good, but it should have been available earlier, and not from a tier 2 Holy site building.

I think another issue is that you're probably not building a t2 Holy Site building unless you're going for a religion and planning on spreading it. But Norway isn't exactly a religious victory civ.

 

[Josephias]

Don't get me wrong. I like the 2 voting rounds as well.

I would have preferred it though, if you could vote in the second round every time.

Also their terminology with "PASSED" and "FAILED" makes no sense when there's two rounds. I hope they can get the UI a bit more clear/cohesive. But juding from the UI in Civ VI in general, I am not very hopeful.

Yes, the UI (specifically WC) is messy as hell.

Nevertheless, just to add the reminder you will be refunded your vote cost if you don’t go to the second round (that is, if instead of A, B wins or vice-versa), and 50% if your outcome also does not is the final one for the second round.

Also, i think the first vote was free, wasn’t it? This coud solve the Eastern Ortodox controversy, as for both sides the effort made is 0%

 

[Ziad]

I think another issue is that you're probably not building a t2 Holy Site building unless you're going for a religion and planning on spreading it. But Norway isn't exactly a religious victory civ.

Faith and Religion are severely underrated around here. The former can be used as a currency for many things, and the latter can be designed to supplement your gameplay. Given Norway's inclination towards warfare, Faith/Religion can pretty much be used to both support that strategy or complement your more civil pursuits.

The meta is really shifting in GS, so people should start looking into how things may play out differently, including the value of yields and districts. Examples are the new pillaging system, the Encampment supply chain, removal of chopping multipliers, and sea trade route bonuses.

 

[pgm123]

So I was hoping there would be some discussion about the first World Congress, specificylly the outcome of the World Religion vote.

View attachment 515262

It says that "World Religion" passed with Outcome A and the Elected Target "Eastern Orthodoxy".

Behind we see that Outcome A got 7 votes and Outcome B 3.

Now let's tally up the individual votes for the elected targets that are listed below:

Outcome B: 3 Votes for Elected Target "Protestantism" (Kristina)
Outcome A: 2 Votes for Elected Target "Protestantism" (Kupe, Harald)
Outcome A: 2 Votes for Elected Target "Eastern Orthodoxy" (Laurier, Peter)
Outcome A: 1 Vote for Elected Target "Islam" (Mansa Musa)
Outcome A: 1 Vote for Elected Target "Shinto" (Inca)
Outcome A: 1 Vote for Elected Target "Catholicism" (Hungary)

So the way I listed these, already reveals that I'm of the opinion that Outcome B should have won.
But it seems that first the Outcome votes are tallied up and then the Elected Targets are tallied up.

This changes the way you should vote significantly. Look at the Mercenary Example:

Outcome A: +100% cost for the Elected Target (Faith, Production, Money)
Outcome B: -50% cost for the Elected Target (Faith, Production, Money)

I know that my opponent has a lot of Faith and I want to prevent him from getting Outcome A (Faith).
In fact I want to hurt him with Outcome B: -50% (Faith). I pour 5 Votes into it costing me a lot of favour.

But the rest of the Congress votes for Outcome A: (Production) with 4 votes and my opponent votes Outcome A (Faith) with two votes. So even though I was hell bent on preventing it, my voting Outcome B had nothing to do with the failure of the proposal.

Even worse, imagine the AIs would have voted for Outcome A: (Production) with 3 votes and Outcome A: (Faith) with three votes and the tie would have gone to Outcome A: (Faith).

So if you want to prevent someone from getting Outcome A: (Faith) it makes more sense to vote Outcome A: (somehting else) to prevent him from getting it, than if you vote Outcome B.

Am I the only one that finds this counter-intuitive?
I like that they wanted to give us a lot of options with the World Congress, but I fear they might have overshot the target a little bit. With the religion thing alone there are 10 proposals, when you have 5 religions. That's often more possible proposals than civs, who are voting/proposing.

You are not really voting on issues, you are putting things forward, and whoever puts something forward the most, wins. Unless it's from a different sub-category (Outcome A or Outcome B) then you're out of luck. The system is just really messy and hard to understand. I like the World Congress, but I find the implementation to be needlessly confusing.

What are your oppinions on the voting mechanism?

I do find it counter-intuitive. I didn't even understand it until you explained it. That said, I think the system is fine once you're used to it. Calculating the vote refunds will matter. I think Ed said you get a full refund if you vote for B and A wins, but a half refund if you vote for A and A wins, but a different target.

I think it's best to think of it as a two-tiered vote (these exist in some referendums). It wouldn't make any sense to pick the end result based on a tiny minority (the three votes in your example). Instead it asks "Do you like A or B?" If A wins, what would you pick? If B wins, what would you pick?

 

[Uberfrog]

I can see why they want to make it so each round of the World Congress is decisive, but the World Religion and Mercenary Company motions suffer from having too many variables to vote for. You choose not only to act for or against a particular religion, but also which religion. You choose not only to increase or decrease the cost of military units, but also which currency to affect.

I feel this is going to lead to many unsatisfying and confusing outcomes.

 

[Ituralde]

Yes, the UI (specifically WC) is messy as hell.

Nevertheless, just to add the reminder you will be refunded your vote cost if you don’t go to the second round (that is, if instead of A, B wins or vice-versa), and 50% if your outcome also does not is the final one for the second round.

Also, i think the first vote was free, wasn’t it? This coud solve the Eastern Ortodox controversy, as for both sides the effort made is 0%

That's how I understood the Eastern Orthodoxy thing as well. Everybody used their free votes, so nobody invested Favour, so there was no tie-breaker. The game then decided it through random luck, would be my best guess.

Luck will be a major factor in getting the otucomes you desire here as well. You have to hope that agendas push the AI to declare openly whether they're leaning towards Outcome A or B. Then you can select a Target from that category, which suits you. Then you have to learn the hard way, whether the AIs tend to go for Outcome A or B in general. I fear that in you first playthrough you will lock yourself out of the second round, because you chose the wrong Outcome. Ed Beach said, that there is no way to get hints how the AI will vote before you cast your own vote, so you're stuck at guessing.

I can understand why they chose to refund your Favour, otherwise the World Congress would become very frustrating very fast.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think another issue is that you're probably not building a t2 Holy Site building unless you're going for a religion and planning on spreading it. But Norway isn't exactly a religious victory civ.

Holy site buildings are very cheap compared to the buildings of other districts, yes you do not get great people Points but in terms of cost for what they give they are very decent and also some religions may make them even stronger.

Faith is also quite useful for Culture due to stuff such as national parks and can also be used for stuff such as purchasing units.

 

[Elhoim]

That's how I understood the Eastern Orthodoxy thing as well. Everybody used their free votes, so nobody invested Favour, so there was no tie-breaker. The game then decided it through random luck, would be my best guess.

I think it gave it to the civs with more favor in store.

 

[bbbt]

It does seem like it should be two different rounds. I understand they don't want nominate and then vote on since they always want something to succeed. But maybe top 2 vote getters (which options go to the floor for a vote!) on every resolution (i.e. with the target included), refund everyone who didn't vote on one of those two, and then final vote between those two for each resolution? Given that it's immediate and between turns it could have several rounds that then have an affect the next turn.

 

[Alexadamz]

Well, they are fixing the production overflow exploit, so that will certainly be considered a negative for Norway.

When you talk about Norway being garbage, I assume you mean in terms of power, as it seems many like to play as it, in spite of its relative weakness. That said, I don't think it has been that weak since the last couple of buffs, if you play on a water map. The Longship is a pretty good UU for early exploration, raiding, and popping goodie huts. The production bonus for melee ships is nice and synergistic with the Longship, as is the ability to use those for coastal raiding/pillaging. Early exploration is nice, although that ability is vastly overshadowed by the Maori in GS.

The Berserker is a bit cheaper than it used to be, and the melee line got a general buff when Commando was changed to give an extra movement point. It still suffers from having to be hard built, but Berserkers are hard hitting, very mobile units in coastal territory, especially thanks to free embarkation and disembarkation. Now that pillaging is going to be more powerful, it might finally be a pretty nice unit, even if it is nowhere near top tier.

The Stave Church is...well, probably the worst part of Norway's powers. The extra production from sea resources is good, but it should have been available earlier, and not from a tier 2 Holy site building.

Overall, Norway has a set of bonuses which are "pretty good", but it requires that you are playing on the right map type. I would put Norway in the mid to low tier in terms of overall power.

I don't like Norway that much because I am a more peaceful player, but even if I were warmonger I wanted more than what we have now for them - what will be somewhat more underwhelming with Maori in game. As Norway is the Viking era civ this time, I wanted it to have a historically related ability with them and an unique gameplay for it. Their embarked units, or only the Longship UU, could be able to use floodplains as canals, allowing them to go inland and pillage there, like the vikings did in real life. It would be harder to adjust mechanics to make Norway his rivers as paths, as rivers are just borders between 2 or more tiles, but as we are getting canals I guess they could make an easy adjustment to make Norway UU able to cross lowland tiles, floodable areas, for the purpose of reflecting their river raids.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think it gave it to the civs with more favor in store.

I thought they said that tiebreakers go to the civ that spent a larger portion of their favor to vote the way they did. So for example, my crummy civ that spent five out of my seven favor points on something would beat a tiebreaker who invested five favor but has a ton to spare.

 

[UWHabs]

It does seem like it should be two different rounds. I understand they don't want nominate and then vote on since they always want something to succeed. But maybe top 2 vote getters (which options go to the floor for a vote!) on every resolution (i.e. with the target included), refund everyone who didn't vote on one of those two, and then final vote between those two for each resolution? Given that it's immediate and between turns it could have several rounds that then have an affect the next turn.

Yeah, it will take some getting used to. But I agree with the above point mentioned - if you absolutely want to stay away from "A-Protestantism", your best vote is to pour a lot of favour into "A-anything else" unless if you think you have enough to swing things completely.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Yeah, it will take some getting used to. But I agree with the above point mentioned - if you absolutely want to stay away from "A-Protestantism", your best vote is to pour a lot of favour into "A-anything else" unless if you think you have enough to swing things completely.

As I suggested earlier, it's a guessing game. It's possible a couple of votes added to B could keep any A from happening. On the other hand, if most of the AI are going to vote for A, then you need to have more votes than any other civ to avoid the sub-A you want.

It'll really come into play when the votes for Diplomatic Victory Points come up. What are the AI going to do? Will they all vote to add a point to themselves? If so, you can safely vote for yourself and throw as many favours as you can in the hopes that you win. Or are they going to vote to subtract a point from someone? In which case you better vote B and throw your votes into making sure someone else loses the point, not you.

It would be less of a guessing game if you received more information about what the AI is likely to do based on your diplomatic visibility. To be fair, then, the AI would have to vote after the player and get the same information based on it's diplomatic visibility. More challenging, the AI would have to be able to figure out what to do with this information. Plus there's a circle there: player sees that Cleopatra is going to vote A, Cleopatra sees the player voted B so changes her vote, etc.

Bottom line is the more information you get, the more the congress is tilted in the player's favour. The less information you get, the more it will feel like throwing darts.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Hmm, this seems to me a bit like Cultural Victory Screen in its original state. I hope they hammer some more things out before release.

 

[Disgustipated]

I feel this is going to lead to many unsatisfying and confusing outcomes.

I worry about this as well. Perhaps the congress effects should apply to all religions. I can see games on huge maps with many religions your vote getting drowned out. What you vote is almost meaningless then. I don't see an easy solution to this.

 

[Potworny]

'Wow, I've never had Pachacuti with the Enviromentalist agenda, every time I play against him he's like:

I LIKE... TREES...

CHOPPED UP INTO LITTLE PIECES AND BURNING AT MY FURNACES"

Definitely a highlight. Pete's doing great.