Civ VI Funny/Strange Screenshots

[reddishrecue]

Was messing around in firetuner, when I saw this masterpiece.

I thought it was Zulu at first but then I checked again and it was Inca.

 

[reddishrecue]

Um, captain?

Hilarious..

 

[GalleySlave]

Behold, the notorious pirate lair of Lake Trasimene!

(Hey, spear dudes, do you guys know how to dig a canal? No?....)

 

[Leyrann]

View attachment 626509 Behold, the notorious pirate lair of Lake Trasimene!

(Hey, spear dudes, do you guys know how to dig a canal? No?....)

No valid location for a canal anyway, it's all hills.

 

[Vandlys]

No valid location for a canal anyway, it's all hills.

> Panama has entered the chat.

 

[Jeppetto]

I don't think I have ever seen an AI this determined to forward settle me.

(note: still same Spain game from above)

Spoiler :

View attachment 626464

The city indeed seems to be your sore.

 

[GalleySlave]

No valid location for a canal anyway, it's all hills.

Yes, exactly. (In case anyone was wondering, the musketman was only able to reach that tile because it had the Commando promotion.)

As it turned out, the reward from the tribal village behind the outpost was as anticlimactic as could be: 20 faith, when I was rocking 950+ per turn...

 

[Leyrann]

The city indeed seems to be your sore.

It's not too bad, actually. I already had several settlers on the way to the area, and right now it's about to rebel despite a governor in the city because mine just grow so much faster (10 builder charges for free from every city settled is insane!), and while the city is one tile off from what I planned, it's not really consequential.

He's still going to pay for it though. But that's mostly because I want to go for a domination victory and 88 combat strength Conquistadores are going to be insane and I want to see them in action.

 

[kaspergm]

As it turned out, the reward from the tribal village behind the outpost was as anticlimactic as could be: 20 faith, when I was rocking 950+ per turn...

One of my pet peeves: These things really need to scale better. You can get a Eureka for Nuclear Fission from a goody hut, worth what, 500 science? - and you can get 20 faith. I know it's supposed to be random, but couldn't it at least be something like "20 faith *or* 2 turns worth of faith at your current yield", whichever is higher.

 

[Linklite]

One of my pet peeves: These things really need to scale better. You can get a Eureka for Nuclear Fission from a goody hut, worth what, 500 science? - and you can get 20 faith. I know it's supposed to be random, but couldn't it at least be something like "20 faith *or* 2 turns worth of faith at your current yield", whichever is higher.

Incase going to say the same thing. OK, I admit, I wasn't going to give the examples, but I was going to say that they need to scale the rewards. 20 faith can be awesome in the first few turns. Notnso much when you're chasing a science victory while in the Future Era...

 

[uhu]

anticlimactic as could be: 20 faith, when I was rocking 950+ per turn...

I know it's supposed to be random, but couldn't it at least be something like "20 faith *or* 2 turns worth of faith at your current yield", whichever is higher.

they need to scale the rewards. 20 faith can be awesome in the first few turns. Notnso much when you're chasing a science victory while in the Future Era...

I think, sometimes we should be careful about what we ask for. We might get it.

In civ1 those huts were kind of -1, 0 & 1 [Ignoring for a moment the inbetweens]. The worst possible outcome was unleashed 8(!) barbarian cavalry: all attacking on their turn and each of them a fifty-fifty chance to kill the human's entering militia unit (while remaining self completely uninjured). As mathematician Sid knew what he did -- and it was good, balanced and the AIs not at a disadvantage.

Then we players did not like negative outcomes of huts (and additionally wanted units with hitpoints) ... so the -1 disappeared, leaving ~0 & 1

Now we don't like the 0. Or something Too small. Would leave always ~1.

Think about it, do we really _only_ want the 'appropriate' "reward" (plus/minus a not really significant delta)?

 

[kaspergm]

Think about it, do we really _only_ want the 'appropriate' "reward" (plus/minus a not really significant delta)?

I agree with you about not wanting the always "+1", I just don't think offering "Ha ha, you got a reward, except you didn't" is the best way to achieve it. I'm fully for making "You find nothing of interest" come back as an option, and I would also support the negative outcomes - perhaps not in the insta-killing 8 horsemen, which I found extremely not fun, but by for instance turning the goody hut into a barb camp with one or two supporting units would be fine.

Doing something like that would also have the benefit that you could have more huts on map, and even have huts re-appear in empty regions (similar to barb camps), which would be fun because it gives more motivation for exploring, and would have the added benefit of offering some more XP for your recon units.

 

[Jeppetto]

Yes, exactly. (In case anyone was wondering, the musketman was only able to reach that tile because it had the Commando promotion.)

As it turned out, the reward from the tribal village behind the outpost was as anticlimactic as could be: 20 faith, when I was rocking 950+ per turn...

It's because your immediate reaction was "I can't believe it", so it seemed to the locals you lacked faith.

 

[uhu]

@kaspergm: like your suggestions!

Suppose my point was the general trend of the civ-games: many improvements are good from one step to the next ... but a long chain of (in itself) good improvements may lead to bad final results.

Yes, civ1 was brutal: huts mostly positive, but sometimes (over)killing; triremes could enter ocean and discover new land from the beginning, but had there 1:3 risk to sink (perTurn!); without hitpoints (simply the probability from Attack-to-Defense-Value: Phalanx, 1a,2d; Tank, 10a,5d; Battleship,12a,12d) A LOT MORE casualties at war times -- especially the Human player!!! etc. etc.
Yes, civ1 was brutal. It was a dangerous world, full of adventure. There was tension in almost every single action. Life was hard, you could live and die like a knight. Never boring.
Civ6 is much, Much, MUCH more sophisticated & improved (and its beauty cannot compared at all) ... a lot better in many ways, still ... Life is comfy, little perils. And you can live like a butcher.
Ok, totally black&white -- hope, some get my point thought.

(There are videos with Sid talking about numbers, probabilities, fair algorithms & strange expectations of casual players (Heavily depending on who is benefiting ...)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I agree with you about not wanting the always "+1", I just don't think offering "Ha ha, you got a reward, except you didn't" is the best way to achieve it. I'm fully for making "You find nothing of interest" come back as an option, and I would also support the negative outcomes - perhaps not in the insta-killing 8 horsemen, which I found extremely not fun, but by for instance turning the goody hut into a barb camp with one or two supporting units would be fine.

Doing something like that would also have the benefit that you could have more huts on map, and even have huts re-appear in empty regions (similar to barb camps), which would be fun because it gives more motivation for exploring, and would have the added benefit of offering some more XP for your recon units.

Okay here's where I dust off and trot out my old argument:

No Goodie Huts
No Barbarian Camps

Everything is "Settlements" until you contact them. Then you find out whether the Settlement is Hostile, Friendly, or Neutral.
Hostile is similar to the current Barbarian Camp: potentially attacking or raiding, but eventually (ala Barbarian Clans mod) a potential source of Mercenary Units.
Friendly is similar to current Goodie Huts (Tribal Huts), but Permanent in most cases - unless the entire Settlement decides to up stakes and join your Civ, in which case you might get a Worker, Settler, or Population Point(s) in your nearest city and the Settlement is gone.
Neutral gets you nothing right away, but by expending resources and Diplomatic points you might turn them Friendly.

Which brings up the point that none of the Settlement Mods are permanent: the group that was Hostile when first contacted might turn friendly later, or the group that was Friendly to one Civ may be Hostile to another at first contact and the fickle little Settlement populations can always change their little digital minds later.

New Settlements can form after start of game, old Settlements may disappear or wander off or even grow into City States. The point is that the map and the game should be Dynamic and not Static from start of game to as close to the end of the game as we can make it.

 

[uhu]

Everything is "Settlements" until you contact them. Then you find out whether the Settlement is Hostile, Friendly, or Neutral.
[...]
The point is that the map and the game should be Dynamic and not Static from start of game to as close to the end of the game

What you describe is what I would call an adequate implementation (civ6 level) of the original idea. Hostile, Friendly, Neutral correlate to -1, 1, 0. Primitive civ1 had just the static (disappearing) form, but all variations: barbarian cavalry, friendly mercenary legions, gold, techs, empty huts ...

Civ6 suffers from neurotic avoidance of negative outcomes (and beginning avoidance of neutral outcomes). As this thread shows, excessive yields ARE FUN ("yield porn").
But unbalanced. And unhealthy, finally. Without lows there are no highs, etc pp.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Civ6 suffers from neurotic avoidance of negative outcomes (and beginning avoidance of neutral outcomes). As this thread shows, excessive yields ARE FUN ("yield porn").
But unbalanced. And unhealthy, finally. Without lows there are no highs, etc pp.

Gamers don't like negatives thrown at them, as a general rule.
But that doesn't mean that a game without any negative outcomes is either a good or a replayable game - it's boring in a very short time.
Avoiding all negative outcomes, or in-game events with more than an absolute minimal negative outcome, is just bad game design. The fact that they finally started giving us Civ designs with Less Than Optimal All The Time attributes (Mali's negative Production, for instance) shows, I think, that they are aware of this.
It needs to be extended to more general systems in the game, like Barbarian/City State/Settlement interactions, 'Natural' Disasters (which, let's face it, are pretty bland right now - more annoying than disastrous), and anywhere else that the game is boringly positive now.

The trick to adding Negative Events to any game is to:
1. Never make them Game Ending. A natural disaster like the Thera volcano explosion of around 1600 BCE that removes all your farmland and coastal cities is not going to be played twice. A natural disaster that silts up a single harbor, forcing you to relocate Trade Routes to another harbor city, with possible increases in returns from the Trade Routes after a time, will work.
2. Which brings up the most important point: always give the gamer Other Options. IF a Settlement turns out to be Hostile and generates Barbarian Raiders, they may harass you but will not take a city, for instance. Or they are strictly temporary. Or they can be Bought Off. You should never be faced with pure, unalloyed Negative Events, but always have some (desperate!) means of alleviating the worst of it, or even turning it into some kind of advantage - like being able to bribe the Barbarians into attacking someone else. The current Barbarian Clans Mode in Civ VI has, haltingly, implemented some of this already.

 

[Leyrann]

Turn 113 victory (domination) with completely normal settings except for difficulty level (which was Settler), quite proud of this.

I played as the Aztecs so I could get started immediately, zero upkeep 28 strength units with the luxury bonus are quite strong indeed. General strategy was to spam Eagle Warriors, pausing only for a few Encampments. I stole a few Settlers and bought two or so with faith from Monumentality, but other than that I didn't build any, instead living off of captured cities. At some point I simply had so many Eagle Warriors that I didn't need more. I just explored in all directions, the moment I found another civ I'd send all nearby Eagle Warriors there, explore, and declare war the moment I had 2+ (or later on even just one) Eagle Warrior near a city, meaning I would be able to capture it. I researched Iron Working and Apprenticeship back to back, and from that point on I started upgrading Eagle Warriors to Man-At-Arms as my treasury permitted. I had the cheaper upgrades card in permanently, and started to spam Commercial Hubs from turn 70 or something because upkeep was becoming an issue, though I could easily outpace maintenance once I did so.

Also stumbled into the achievement for attacking with the +16 luxury bonus.

EDIT: Bonus points for not losing a single unit all game, lol.

Oh, yeah, and the Game Era was still Classical Era, with 3 turns left.

 

[uhu]

Gamers don't like negatives thrown at them, as a general rule.
But that doesn't mean that a game without any negative outcomes is either a good or a replayable game - it's boring in a very short time.

Yeah, of course I HATED finding barbarians in a hut, too! It ALWAYS happened in a totally wrong moment. The possibility to find something positive was much higher. Still it happened: barbarians.
But it was ALWAYS exciting. Shall I really enter this hut or better not? Sometimes I did just pass a hut in order to explore first more and come back -- will it still be there?

The trick to adding Negative Events to any game is to:
1. Never make them Game Ending.
2. Which brings up the most important point: always give the gamer Other Options.

1. Agree. From an objective point of view even a streak of max bad events did not make a civ1 game ending. Rather the child-ego not having ALL it wanted -- and rage-quitting.
There is a psychological issue. In best case players could actually learn ingame something for their life (continue and you can overcome problems).
Despite the harsh conditions the vast majority of civ1 games were won by the human anyway. Go figure.
2. Absolutely! No worse situations than just being able to suffer. But I doubt, (over)compensating every bad thing will help finally (boring wise).

EDIT: Bonus points for not losing a single unit all game, lol.

domination victory, not losing a single unit ... in a game portraying entire human history. THIS IS THE END OF HISTORY!!

In civ1 two units of the same type with same Attack&Defense Values, eg. Militia 1-1, Cavalry 1-1 or Battleship 12-12, (ignoring modifiers for difficulty, defensive terrain, promotion etc.) had in a fight both the fifty-fifty chance to be killed or win uninjured.
Ie. even the human player had at war times SEVERAL units killed EACH turn. There was a lot of tension about the outcome of each small skirmish. Probably more than in all wars together in above game.
Btw, civ1 was a great & celebrated game, nobody thought something to be fundamentally wrong.

 

[UWHabs]

Gamers don't like negatives thrown at them, as a general rule.
But that doesn't mean that a game without any negative outcomes is either a good or a replayable game - it's boring in a very short time.
Avoiding all negative outcomes, or in-game events with more than an absolute minimal negative outcome, is just bad game design. The fact that they finally started giving us Civ designs with Less Than Optimal All The Time attributes (Mali's negative Production, for instance) shows, I think, that they are aware of this.
It needs to be extended to more general systems in the game, like Barbarian/City State/Settlement interactions, 'Natural' Disasters (which, let's face it, are pretty bland right now - more annoying than disastrous), and anywhere else that the game is boringly positive now.

The trick to adding Negative Events to any game is to:
1. Never make them Game Ending. A natural disaster like the Thera volcano explosion of around 1600 BCE that removes all your farmland and coastal cities is not going to be played twice. A natural disaster that silts up a single harbor, forcing you to relocate Trade Routes to another harbor city, with possible increases in returns from the Trade Routes after a time, will work.
2. Which brings up the most important point: always give the gamer Other Options. IF a Settlement turns out to be Hostile and generates Barbarian Raiders, they may harass you but will not take a city, for instance. Or they are strictly temporary. Or they can be Bought Off. You should never be faced with pure, unalloyed Negative Events, but always have some (desperate!) means of alleviating the worst of it, or even turning it into some kind of advantage - like being able to bribe the Barbarians into attacking someone else. The current Barbarian Clans Mode in Civ VI has, haltingly, implemented some of this already.

The other nice thing to do with bad events is to give them a positive. River floods, wiping out all your farms? Bad. But wiping them out and adding +1 food to the tile yields? Okay, now that's more fun at least. It's still a little too punitive right now because you have to spend a turn each to repair the buildings in a district, and if you get unlucky and have a flood entirely wipe out a settler, honestly that's an instant restart game for me early on. There's still some disasters like hurricanes, droughts, and tornadoes which are basically all bad with no good to them, and very little you can do to prevent them.