Any way to make Civ6 harder in a balanced way (like Vox Populi)?

[aieeegrunt]

This should be the most important feature. But still not enough. Alliances should also unlock techs or boosts together, or share a percentage of allies' points.

Why? Because after conquering several civilizations, player would always end up with ten times more science and culture points than everyone else, and diplomacy becomes a joke. Any military strength AI has becomes nullified at this point (and the calculation of strength value is all wrong).

It has to be every civilizations' top priority to prevent anyone from becoming too big, and they should form real alliances that make them much stronger together, and then it'd also become player's priority to attempt to join an alliance by gaining favors from other civilizations. Allies would be picked strategically, and probably kick those left behind (with nothing to contribute) and conquer its territory together.

Maybe even share victory conditions, or disable them, e.g. a (true) military alliance disables domination.

The 2nd German Reich is a textbook example of how these things often went down in reality.

Germany unifies, becomes the big player in Europe in science, economics, and military power. You ended up with an anti-German coalition comprising countries who had previously been enemies for centuries quickly forming

Hilariously, one of Civ6’s few anti-snowball mechanics; where someone declares war on you, you take their ciry, and suddenly everyone has grievances against you, is sadly one players complain about a lot

It’s literally the Alsace Lorraine mechanic.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

That's not the reason, even though it's a big one.

The actual Reason is that even if a VP-like Mod for Civ6 is indeed possible (if to the same degree as VP is up for debate), it's too much work without the DLL, but not impossible.

What the DLL would offer is:
- better ways to mod the AI
- more optimized code, because we wouldn't have to rely on big workarounds that may take lots of processing time
- tools to mod the hardcoded stuff, which currently require recoding from scratch, which is possible but time consuming
- the possibility to fix some Bugs/Exploits that we can't fix without the DLL

All in all, from my Experience and Knowledge as a Civ6 Modder, I don't think it would be an Exaggeration to say that with the tools that are available to us, we could still make a Civ 6 equivalent of the Civ V VP/Community Patch Mod that is at least 80% as effective. It would just require Effort and Motivation. Both of which are hardly talked about when talking about big overhaul Mods, but of the DLL. Which of course would be a great thing to have that would facilitate a lot of things, but only useful and necessary for ~10% of things.

What we actually need are the lua API, and more lua tools, especially tools to mod the AI.

Better explanation than my simple missing dll statement. Either way, it's a big disappointment. Let's hope with all this talk of AI taking over the world we can first get an AI for Civ VII that can play a computer game.

 

[KayAU]

Better explanation than my simple missing dll statement. Either way, it's a big disappointment. Let's hope with all this talk of AI taking over the world we can first get an AI for Civ VII that can play a computer game.

Exactly this. Sometimes, when one asks for better AI, you get pushback from people who think one or more of the following:

• It is too hard/expensive to make
• We are asking for a super powerful AI which would play Civ on a level equivalent to how a good chess computer plays chess
• It would make the game unenjoyable because the AI would win almost every time

...but I think a lot of us just want what you said: an AI that can actually play the game. Looking at Vox Populi, the AI is not actually super powerful, in my opinion. Playing on a balanced or slightly disadvantaged level, I can still beat it pretty easily even though I am not playing optimally. But the AI feels like it is there, It acts rationally, and competes with me in every arena. It knows how to move its troops around, and it has an idea about the number of troops it needs to do what it wants. It tries to gain control of good terrain and resources. It tries to ally with city states. It has an idea which World Congress resolutions are good and bad for it, tries to get its way, and gets angry if I am acting against its interest. It understands when it's at a disadvantage, and it exploits it when it is not. This is the kind of basic competence I am looking for in a Civ AI. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to know how to play the game.