City loyalty flipped

[Sykes179]

Haven't played for a while. Early in the game (T30ish on quick) my recently founded second city flipped to a free city. I thought that's odd, I hadn't even noticed it was losing loyalty. I checked back and indeed it hadn't. Full loyalty and rising if only fractionally. Fron that to free city in a turn. No warning. Nothing.

Only my capitol and two city states on the island. No other cities visible although the boundry of an empire was just visible at the extent of the fog of war. I know AI cities seem to project hideous loyalty penalties for settling cities which mine never seem to do to the AI in return! When I settled the city there was no loyalty penalty.

I had just entered a dark age but that never did that to a city before. Is this a recent change? Flip a city in a turn with no warning or visible means of external influence. Anyay I just quit the game.

Playing on deity, quick speed, archipelago, small map.

 

[Vandlys]

Did you switch on Dramatic Ages and enter into a dark age?

Edit: I see you did indeed enter into a dark age. If you switched on Dramatic Ages the game worked as it should.

 

[Sykes179]

So if you enter into a dark age you randomly lose a previously loyal city? I just wswitched on the new features to see what they're like but if they are there just to make random things happen to make the game 'interesting' then I won't bother. I'd rather they work to make the game more realistic and cut out some of the obvious exploits.

 

[AntSou]

So if you enter into a dark age you randomly lose a previously loyal city? I just wswitched on the new features to see what they're like but if they are there just to make random things happen to make the game 'interesting' then I won't bother. I'd rather they work to make the game more realistic and cut out some of the obvious exploits.

Yeah I guess you should read the description next time.

The flipping isn't random, it affects your least loyal cities.

 

[Banazir864]

So if you enter into a dark age you randomly lose a previously loyal city? I just wswitched on the new features to see what they're like but if they are there just to make random things happen to make the game 'interesting' then I won't bother. I'd rather they work to make the game more realistic and cut out some of the obvious exploits.

One of the main features of Dramatic Ages is to make Dark Ages more damaging by causing your least loyal cities to flip to free upon entering a Dark Age (this was likely in response to complaints by fans that, in the normal game, Dark Ages aren’t harmful enough and are arguably better than Normal Ages). It’s not random—it’s punishment for getting a Dark Age. If you don’t like it, you probably shouldn’t enable Dramatic Ages (that’s presumably why they made it an optional game mode instead of having it be an update to the normal game).

IMO, you might want to get to know the game modes one at a time to see if you like them, since playing with them all at once can be a bit chaotic just due to all of the features. While I’m sure some people play with all of them, and they are compatible with each other, I think they’re probably better experienced individually, at least until you’re familiar with them and know whether you like one. Again, there’s a reason the devs made them optional.

 

[Sykes179]

I've disabled it. It's just daft

 

[HiRezAudio]

I've disabled it. It's just daft

For this reason I will never use it either - and even worse, the AI never loses close to as many.
If you are on one of the higher levels it's much, much worse - you can lose a third of your empire whilst the AI loses Sweet fanny adams

 

[E.man]

Just getting back into Civ and new to VI so I'm experimenting with features.
This is just silly. Whole city goes missing for spurious reason. Prob going to start again. Waste of time.

No only that but the AI pumps out improvements and units that the city never could.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

For this reason I will never use it either - and even worse, the AI never loses close to as many.
If you are on one of the higher levels it's much, much worse - you can lose a third of your empire whilst the AI loses Sweet fanny adams

Golden Ages are easier to get but you can try to delay expansion if you fear a Dark Age.
I mostly Warmonger anyways.
I haven't played any Modes for a long time though.
Kinda feel like messing with that Mode now.

Just getting back into Civ and new to VI so I'm experimenting with features.
This is just silly. Whole city goes missing for spurious reason. Prob going to start again. Waste of time.

No only that but the AI pumps out improvements and units that the city never could.

Nothing wrong with that since you can pillage all of those improvements.

 

[MrRadar]

Kinda feel like messing with that Mode now.

Just keep in mind that Dramatic Ages mode has a few severely bugged policy cards, like Culture Industry or Pretorian Guard, that can result in negative production. CI bug is even described in the Civ wiki, PG bug occurs when you have it slotted when you capture or build an Encampment, then if you unslot it later, Encampment buildings get -2 production modifier, even if you build them later. One of the most sloppily coded modes.

 

[Thormodr]

I have watched AI empires absolutely disintegrate with dramatic ages on. Like a chain reaction of rebellion. It's glorious.

I don't always play with it enabled but it is an interesting option.

 

[MrRadar]

I have watched AI empires absolutely disintegrate with dramatic ages on. Like a chain reaction of rebellion. It's glorious.

First couple of times I thought it was fun as well. But then it grew old.
The only way for the AI to regain lost cities is through loyalty flips. But AI will rather die out than send some units to retake those free cities by force. It is as if AI lacks proper code to even recognize the Free Cities as a threat or target.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The basic game has far fewer bugs and dumb mechanics like this

 

[SirWill90]

Glad to have seen this thread, confirms that I don't need to bother with Dramatic Ages. I am not one of the players who loves things to be made more difficult by further increasing the AI's bonuses and my penalties and that's all that is going on here it seems.

But to each their own, that's why the devs gave us all these options!

 

[E.man]

First couple of times I thought it was fun as well. But then it grew old.
The only way for the AI to regain lost cities is through loyalty flips. But AI will rather die out than send some units to retake those free cities by force. It is as if AI lacks proper code to even recognize the Free Cities as a threat or target.

Sending the troops in was the only obvious way I could see of fixing It. Not the game I was playing and stuffs the rest of the strategy.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Glad to have seen this thread, confirms that I don't need to bother with Dramatic Ages. I am not one of the players who loves things to be made more difficult by further increasing the AI's bonuses and my penalties and that's all that is going on here it seems.

But to each their own, that's why the devs gave us all these options!

It might make certain situations more difficult but overall I think most players agree it makes the game easier.

 

[UWHabs]

It might make certain situations more difficult but overall I think most players agree it makes the game easier.

Yeah, the AI can't handle losing a few cities, and especially if you have a few AI near each other who both go dark at the same time, the uber loyalty pressure from free cities often causes empires to continue to lose cities, often disappearing completely and ending up with an entire continent for the free city empire.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

But AI will rather die out than send some units to retake those free cities by force. It is as if AI lacks proper code to even recognize the Free Cities as a threat or target.

This is a problem in general with the AI.
The AI suffers from incredibly poor scripting in civ 6 when it comes to aggressive behaviour, and it can be abused by the player.

The AI generally only looks at the relative difference of each side's army value before deciding to be aggressive, and plays way too nice if that condition isn't met.
That's why you see the AI being super bloodthirsty and aggressive against players in the early game on Deity, because your army value of 20 (one warrior) is about 4-5 times lower than the AI (who tends to have a combined combat strength of at least 5 warriors, 100).
If you get 1-2 more warriors and the AI doesnt build more military however, they will quickly become neutral, even friendly if you get roughly the same number.
However, the AI doesnt really seem to look at the actual strength of that army, and seems to treat 4 warriors roughly equal to one modern armour, seeing as they sum up to the same army value.
The exploiting then comes down to just artificially getting that number up.
You can have 15 warriors (300 army value) in the industrial Era, and the AI will usually not bother you because it thinks you are relatively powerful, even if it could mow you down instantly with some cuirassiers and field cannons.
Similarly, you can bait the AI into declaring a surprise war against you if you combined army value is low.
For instance, I had Rome (1100 army value) declaring war on me as Indonesia (400 army value).
The problem was, his units consisted of a metric crapton of Legionnaires and Catapults, whereas I had a few Tank armies and Battleship armadas. Those units of mine absolutely steamrolled him and his crappy cities, and if his AI had been any competent, it wouldnt have used that raw number as the basis to declare war on me as it would obviously be suicide.

Same seems to hold true for city states and free cities.
If they dont have much in the way of units the AI will often try to attack, but if they get to a certain threshold of army value the AI just sits back and plays nice instead.
Which is incidentally what happens to free cities - if 2 cities flip independent, they tend to spawn enough of the most technologically advanced units, of which the combined army value is higher than the threshold for which the AI will usually attack, so instead it sits back.
Same reason the different AIs often dont attack each other, as they tend to keep a lot of useless (unupgraded) military units around which artificially inflates their army value.

 

[civac]

It seems this is partially a problem with the army score calculation. However, the AI should not just look at current army score difference. It should also consider a massive military buildup if it wants to attack someone.

 

[MrRadar]

Same seems to hold true for city states and free cities.

I think, in the case of the Free Cities there must be something else. AI does not need to declare war on Free Cities, the only state is already perpetual war. It's identifying the closest Free City as a target and mounting an assault operation what is needed on the part of the AI, yet it seems that AI is completely oblivious of Free Cities, just can't see them. They clash with their units, but not with city centres.
AI is capable to DoW and mount vicious assaults on City States where they lost Suzerainty, destroy quite respectable forces of the City State, destroy its walls and capture it in quite a number of cases. But I have yet to see an AI that mounts an assault on a Free City.