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

Freaky

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 4, 2021
Messages
61
Location
Israel
Hi, I'm new to Civ6, but after 5 games. I can beat it on Deity with no struggle. I still don't know some of the basic mechanics, and have only played a few games, so I'd still like to try all the leaders, but the game is so easy that I wouldn't have fun stomping Deity repeatedly :( Artificial "difficulty" like giving the AI even bigger starting starting bonuses, always hating the player, x10 multipliers, etc. are cheap and un-fun ways of improving the computer civs. Civ5 was similar, but the AI wasn't nearly as stupid as Civ5. I <3 <3 <3 the Vox Populi overhaul that made Civ5 2 levels harder, and made the different civs ways more varied, interesting, and balanced. Civ6 has so much interesting stuff, and neat mechanical additions, so I'd really hate to just drop it after a few games. Is there something similar for Civ6 that can bring some challenge and life back into this game for me?

1) Opponents are *way* too easy to conquer. Even the warmongers.
- Fixing production scaling (see below) would help a lot
- Make the AI build about 4x the military
- Make the AI a bit smarter in tactics
- Make the AI plot proper wars they can gain and snowball from, but just slam their units into their closest neighbor's walls and hurt them both
2) The game is over by Renaissance. If you survive the early game, you've either conquered 2+ neighbors, or you build a small defensive army, and the AI is too scared to attack you
- Mostly fixed by fixing them being too squishy
- Make opponents actively team up against whoever's winning, like in Civ4
- Existing catch-up mechanics help
3) Tech scales way faster than production. I focus massively on builders/chopping/production improvements, and even my capitol will never build the majority of buildings. On top of that, unique units are often obsolete by the time they reach your enemy's cities, and almost always obsolete by the end of a war.
- Playing Epic speed can help with unique units, but doesn't help city progress
- New cities should start with free population and/or buildings, starting in the Medieval era and getting bigger bonuses
- On top of better settled cities, production as a whole should be about 1.5-2x what it is now compared to science/civic progress. I suggest keeping the production costs, but slowing science/civic progress down to 50-65% what it is now. I don't need a new tech every 5 turns, and this would solve UU problems, and
4) Balancing problems
- Some civs are totally insane, and some stink. Too much to say in one place.

Some background for those who are interested:

I'm a long time Civ fan, wasn't interested in 1-3 when I was a kid, but 4 was awesome but insanely hard. I didn't like the Stacks of Doom, so even though Civ5 was easier, beating Deity was still a challenge at first, and the combat made it more enjoyable for me. Vox Populi made it the ultimate Civ game in my opinion.

First game, I played Chieftain as Pericles to learn the basics and accidentally won a Diplomatic victory after being 2+ eras ahead of the AI. 2nd game as Gilgamesh, I played Immortal and roflstomped my 2 nearest neighbors with the all-mighty War Carts. 3rd game, I played on Deity with the same strategy and half-conquered 2 opponents while failing to keep loyalty and unable to do anything about their new walls, and then Cyrus back-doored my capital. I had to actually learn how walls and loyalty worked then. After some basic understanding, I played as Cyrus, got some iron, a battering ram, and 6 Immortals, and conquered 2-3 opponents in the Classical-Medieval eras, then with 20+ cities, the rest of the domination was inevitable. Did the same with Montezuma and Gorgo. Eagle Warriors gave me like 50 builders, which is insane, and they stayed relevant without upgrading all through ancient -> classical -> medieval, where the game is either won or lost anyway. Hoplites are 40CS ancient-era cheap swordsmen w 1 maintenance. Beeline brozenworking, build 2, then declare war. Send in another 2-4 hoplites, 2-3 archers, and a battering ram, and you have all the military strength you'll need until the Reneissance era. Their promotion tree stinks, and so do their upgraded versions, so you can throw them away once gunpowder gets into the mix, but the game is over by then since you own > 1/2 of the total cities.
 
First of all, you may have been a bit lucky. Deity games can go seriously wrong with a bit of bad luck.

The Vox Populi level of challenge is unreachable with CIV6 (modding tools are lacking in comparison)
Things you can try:
Late Game AI interesting attempt for better scaling of AI advantages (don't start at Deity though, it gets seriously out of control)
Real Strategy helps the AI (a bit)
Use Quick Pace - if you go epic, you exaggerate your (tactical) advantages. And this very useful mod lets you adjust (slow down) tech pacing.

The AI just sucks at taking cities, no one has been able to solve this yet.
 
First of all, you may have been a bit lucky. Deity games can go seriously wrong with a bit of bad luck.

The Vox Populi level of challenge is unreachable with CIV6 (modding tools are lacking in comparison)
Things you can try:
Late Game AI interesting attempt for better scaling of AI advantages (don't start at Deity though, it gets seriously out of control)
Real Strategy helps the AI (a bit)
Use Quick Pace - if you go epic, you exaggerate your (tactical) advantages. And this very useful mod lets you adjust (slow down) tech pacing.

The AI just sucks at taking cities, no one has been able to solve this yet.
Awesome, thanks! I saw a few tech-pace mods, but wasn't sure which ones were good/bad or out of date. Have you compared Real Strategy vs. AI+?
 
Real Strategy was built on AI+, and it's still supported by @Infixo , one of the best modders around - I'd go with that.

Most pacing mods go overboard, IMO. It just needs a little adjustment.
 
Real Strategy was built on AI+, and it's still supported by @Infixo , one of the best modders around - I'd go with that.

Most pacing mods go overboard, IMO. It just needs a little adjustment.
Thanks! A lot of the comments in pacing mods say they're in the ancient era still on like turn 300, lol. That's a bit much.
 
Why do we need balance? As long as Civs are interesting to play who cares if some are more difficult than others?
I think Firaxis did a better job in Civ6 than in Civ5, but if you know the difference between Civ5 and Civ5 VP, then you can get what I'd love to see with this. Different + powerful (War Cart, Hanza) is fun and interesting. Samey + viable (Hwacha) is uninteresting. Different + garbage (Crouching Tiger) is not fun.
 
Samey + viable (Hwacha) is uninteresting. Different + garbage (Crouching Tiger) is not fun.
Hwacha comes an era early with a civ that researches insanely fast so that's really interesting. Crouching tigers work well with the Great Wall tile improvement, again interesting and fun.
 
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If you enjoy conquest and expansion, Civ 6 is probably going to be incredibly easy for you, I'm afraid. The meta is to conquer your neighbors, and the AI is extremely bad at warfare. If you're decent at tactics, you're unlikely to even lose any units in most games.

VP is awesome, and I would have loved to see a similar overhaul for Civ 6.
 
Hwacha comes an era early with a civ that researches insanely fast so that's really interesting. Crouching tigers work well with the Great Wall tile improvement, again interesting.
Oh true about the Hwacha coming in early, that's interesting. Crouching tiger seems good for that situation, which makes it interesting, but not good for anything else, which would leave me wanting the base unit instead
 
@Freaky if you don't want to go through the trouble of trial and error in regards to pacing mods, I suggest p0kiehl's Extended Eras.

Thanks, I decided to fiddle with pacing mods and I'm using 1.5x costs plus 20% per era scaling, which is really nice. Gives everyone time to build districts and wonders, and AI has bigger standing armies and can out up some resistance by producing more units during war. That combined with Real Strategy, it actually feels like a fair fight. Last game, Shaka got Xbows and turtled up inside his last city and behind it, so I had to decide between leaving him there with one city or losing 4+ units taking it
 
The AI just sucks at taking cities, no one has been able to solve this yet.
Idk... the City States aren't bad at it ;) well.... razing them anyway :mischief:
 
Mostly I play marathon speed, huge world with maxed number of civs and city states. There is not much space for cities, you just grab 1-2 more and you're done with expansion. If you roll bad starting position (no trees, low production), it's quite challenging - and if 2 civs jump on you in open terrain you lose. Anyway, once you get done with your neighbours, the rest of the World can be a bit ahead in techs and you have to figure out how to bite them (sometimes diplomacy, sometimes sneaky raid). I like it mostly because the units are not obsolete, even if you travel half of the huge map. Also... you can try to win different types of victories,
 
- Make opponents actively team up against whoever's winning, like in Civ4
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.
 
Yep, that would really help. Current game, I conquered my neighbor. My new neighbor on that side doesn't like me for some reason, and calls for a resolution to liberate my dead neighbor's old city. We just started the classical era and I have like 16 cities. Nobody joins him... In fact, on his other border is Montezuma with over 1,000 military strength, who declares war on him instead, and Babylon befriended me instead of attacking me with his Industrial era military. Maybe they just don't see me as a big threat yet? It's definitely better with Real Strategy now though.
 
- Make opponents actively team up against whoever's winning, like in Civ4
That's not how it worked in Civ4, Civ5 maybe??

What did happen in Civ4 was various blocs would form based around religion or a strong Civ vassaling neighbours, that certainly helped the late game dynamics.
 
If you enjoy conquest and expansion, Civ 6 is probably going to be incredibly easy for you, I'm afraid. The meta is to conquer your neighbors, and the AI is extremely bad at warfare. If you're decent at tactics, you're unlikely to even lose any units in most games.

VP is awesome, and I would have loved to see a similar overhaul for Civ 6.

You will never see VP though because Firaxis REFUSE to release dll code.
 
You will never see VP though because Firaxis REFUSE to release dll code
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.
 
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