[R&F] Alliance, worthwhile or a hinderance?

[Thormodr]

You just know that will be the game where Tamar doesn't bother to found a religion!

Well, that would be an instant restart. Lol.

Chances are pretty high she will, though.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Well, that would be an instant restart. Lol.

Chances are pretty high she will, though.

The game won't be too different from a RV game yourself, just wipe out all other Civs and adopt her religion shall be the best way.

Also, the most reliable way is to wipe out others before they found a religion so that they won't compete with your sincere abstract girlfriend

 

[pgm123]

Economic alliance: Is "Tributary" suzerain? I think the city-state bonus may be interesting, the only question is that AI will not always suzerain city states of your favor.

You are the Suzerain of the City State. The City State is your Tributary.

 

[Goliht]

Yeh it seems standard for Civ now, that you get alot fo Carrot and Stick mechanics, Alliance looks great on paper.. but given how seemly impossible getting even to friends with any Ai for any length of time is, the ability to ever make an alliance becomes a moot issue and therefore everything about them useless.

You'll almost never have friends in Civ 6, because the Traits system breaks the Ai and forces it to continually denounce you. For every little possible reason.

Then there's the trade caravan aspect of it, you have so few caravans until later in the game, that you are unable to really alter the opinion of Civs until the point where they utterly hate you and everyone else due to the traits system, that it doesn't matter how much trade you push to them, they'll often goto war or joint war against you, just to stop you getting money from trading, even though you're trading with them and increasing their economy and income.

So again, kinda pointless. It's like they've made an expansion which basically has alot of nice paintings on walls, in a building you'll only ever visit once.

Seems to me that what we really need is the ability to send diplomates to other Civs as well as city states and be able to directly affect their attitude, this would open up the game to being more alliance friendly.

 

[Wingednosering]

I think you're all missing the point a bit. Yes, storytelling is nice. Yes, most min/maxers won't want this.

You're forgetting about multiplayer. This has huge implications on multiplayer games.

 

[pgm123]

Yeh it seems standard for Civ now, that you get alot fo Carrot and Stick mechanics, Alliance looks great on paper.. but given how seemly impossible getting even to friends with any Ai for any length of time is, the ability to ever make an alliance becomes a moot issue and therefore everything about them useless.

It is not hard to become friends with the AI if it's something you actually want. You have to make tradeoffs to achieve it, though, so it's not necessarily worth it for everyone.

 

[ChocolateShake]

I think you're all missing the point a bit. Yes, storytelling is nice. Yes, most min/maxers won't want this.

You're forgetting about multiplayer. This has huge implications on multiplayer games.

Won't most multiplayer games now descend into hordes of Impis fighting hordes of Keshigs?

I see what you mean though, maybe it's time to look into multiplayer a bit.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I think you're all missing the point a bit. Yes, storytelling is nice. Yes, most min/maxers won't want this.

You're forgetting about multiplayer. This has huge implications on multiplayer games.

In MP games alliance might be banned, facing 2 opponents with a +5 strength against him is unfair to the 3rd player.

 

[Sagax]

This is what I was afraid of about some forms of alliances. If you are clearly leading, there is no real incentive to forming the ones that share yields. If you are that ahead and on your way to victory, then allying with weaker civs is a waste of effort, while allying with a close enough civ just makes them leech off your yields and stay on par with you - while in truth you should try to get ahead and widen the gap.

At the end of the day, the game objectives are all “selfish”. I am more of a roleplayer myself, but I am not going to let AI have an easy ride. Especially when I know that they are programmed to be selfish as well.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Ah, the problems of discussing mechanics when the opponents rolling over and dying is a given.

As long as the AI is incapable of defending itself, none of this matters if you play exploitatively.

 

[Wingednosering]

This is what I was afraid of about some forms of alliances. If you are clearly leading, there is no real incentive to forming the ones that share yields. If you are that ahead and on your way to victory, then allying with weaker civs is a waste of effort, while allying with a close enough civ just makes them leech off your yields and stay on par with you - while in truth you should try to get ahead and widen the gap.

At the end of the day, the game objectives are all “selfish”. I am more of a roleplayer myself, but I am not going to let AI have an easy ride. Especially when I know that they are programmed to be selfish as well.

Honestly, it depends on the situation. If you're a cultural powerhouse and actually have an AI competing with you for the victory (unlikely), a cultural alliance with a low culture nation would actually be great, because you're increasing both your resistance to the runaway AI and theirs. Plus, the loyalty block and trade route bonuses to allies means you're more likely to get a cultural alliance with a neighbour, which means you might have already 'conquered' their culture, but the runaway AI across the map hasn't yet. It all works together pretty well, actually.

A military alliance increases production, but that could be used to finish a spaceport or the SV projects. You don't have to use them for their most obvious purpose and yes, you need to carefully pick and choose who to ally with. If they were so good, you just had to ally with everybody, that would be even worse.

 

[Thormodr]

The game won't be too different from a RV game yourself, just wipe out all other Civs and adopt her religion shall be the best way.

Also, the most reliable way is to wipe out others before they found a religion so that they won't compete with your sincere abstract girlfriend

Well, if I am going to help Georgia to a Religious Victory, maybe I won’t do it through warmongering as that is likely to rack up major warmongering points. Then Georgia would hate me. What’s the point, then?

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Well, if I am going to help Georgia to a Religious Victory, maybe I won’t do it through warmongering as that is likely to rack up major warmongering points. Then Georgia would hate me. What’s the point, then?

Whether or not your girlfriend hate you do not the matter, as long as you have a city which believes in her religion you can buy missionaries to help her win.

If she is too slow to spread her religion(This may be the case since abstract girlfriends are always too slow. ) you can just take her capital to help her. A little hate just adds interest, and is always the best way to reach your goal, if you have one.

 

[Trengilly]

Level 2 Alliances now automatically provide defensive pacts. Defensive pacts are no longer a separate thing.

 

[Thormodr]

Whether or not your girlfriend hate you do not the matter, as long as you have a city which believes in her religion you can buy missionaries to help her win.

If she is too slow to spread her religion(This may be the case since abstract girlfriends are always too slow. ) you can just take her capital to help her. A little hate just adds interest, and is always the best way to reach your goal, if you have one.

Bah! You are no fun.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The criticism in the initial post is countered by one glaring argument

Don't make an alliance of the same type as your victory condition. A cultural alliance may well be a hindrance if you are going for a tourism victory by giving your ally a huge boost in domestic tourist. So don't do that. However, if you're going for a science/religious victory you may have been ignoring your culture, at which point a cultural alliance could provide a handy way to speed up unlocking civics at very little cost to yourself, simply by hijacking another civs cultural output. The same can be said for the other alliances, a military alliance helps peaceful players defend themselves, a religious alliance is useful if you want to keep your own religion safe in your cities but aren't too keen on pushing it to others, etc...

It seems that these alliances can be used as a catch up mechanism for your secondary goals. What's wrong with that?

There's nothing wrong. Actually that's great. We just want more

 

[pgm123]

The criticism in the initial post is countered by one glaring argument

Don't make an alliance of the same type as your victory condition. A cultural alliance may well be a hindrance if you are going for a tourism victory by giving your ally a huge boost in domestic tourist. So don't do that.

With one caveat: if you're second in culture, you could ally with someone who is far behind. That might help you catch up to the person in first. I had a lazy game as France recently where I played particularly passively, so was a good bit behind Pericles. I was allied with everyone in the game except Montezuma (and also Greece, by choice). I could easily form a cultural alliance with either Australia or Germany. Neither would have got enough of a boost for me to care about them, but it might help me against Greece--at least long enough to get the tourism cards later in the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't see why playing a game for roleplaying purposes is suddenly mutually exclusive with recognizing when an alliance may be a bad deal.

Indeed, an argument could be made that historical leaders would actively avoid engaging in deals they know are bad. Since this conclusion is a lot more black and white in civ than reality, you can make a legit case that role play should similarly reject these bad deals.

As long as the AI is incapable of defending itself, none of this matters if you play exploitatively.

And let's not forget what each x represents in 4x

 

[Archon_Wing]

And let's not forget what each x represents in 4x

Yea, but given what happened, it turns into Exterminate, Exterminate, Exterminate, and Exterminate.

I don't even explore a good deal as long as I find something to conquer. Though at least I pay more attention to the map than in Civ 5. You don't need much of the map to put 3 cities!