Civ6 June Update Video

[AriochIV]

Was this video edited by a teenager with ADHD? Holy cow, that was annoying.

 

[Amrunril]

I'm also disappointed this patch doesn't address any larger issues. I get that it's the first (or second, depending on how you count) in a series, but in my mind that's exactly why they should be making major changes now. Major reworks to systems like religious combat, loyalty, tourism, great person generation or naval vs. land combat could greatly improve the game, but such large changes are never going to work perfectly when first implemented- they require iterative balance changes, and there's no better time to start that process than when you already have a year of follow up patches scheduled.

I'll also join the ranks of those puzzled by the focus on the Red Death minigame. City and empire building with ongoing tech and cultural progress are what make civ games civ games, and I really don't see much appeal in a scenario without that.

On a smaller note, the change to the warrior monks policy seems quite random. If you're going to be conquering cities (which is presumably the point of taking a belief that provides a military unit), you don't need to take individual times with culture bombs. What the belief needs to be viable is for warrior monks to actually be a viable unit. The new work ethic belief does seem do open up a lot of interesting strategies, though it does exacerbate the issue of civs with few holy sites not having much reason to care which religions are spreading in their lands.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Was this video edited by a teenager with ADHD? Holy cow, that was annoying.

eh, it was just something different to do.

 

[thecrazyscot]

They play the game but not seriously or aggressively. Definitely not at a high level either.

One thing I like about Capcom is that when they balance Street Fighter 5, they work with many professional players and guys that play at Capcom Cup. They even have high level players on their own staff. Now Civ doesn't have pro players to my knowledge, but there are many that are waaay better than Carl or whoever else they have in that office. Why do they not pay or even ask for feedback from elite players? I think the answer is obvious. They are just filthy casuals. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but they clearly have zero interest in high levels of play. Nothing wrong with being super casual about a game, but it is good to have the opposite types on staff to help bridge gaps as well. They also tend to cater more to builder types and take less interest in war mechanics as well. At least they have a decent excuse for that, because most players are not into that aspect of the game.

I actually think they are done with the game, gameplay and mechanics wise. I think they were done when Gathering Storm was released. There are issues we have talked about since this game has come out originally and they refuse to fix or address. If they haven't fixed it in 3 years, they are not going to fix it tomorrow. I hope I am not too old when a Vox Populi can be made for Civ6. In fact, I have a bad feeling they will never release that source code, to avoid looking amateur. Don't believe me? Look at Bethesda and similar companies. They all got big fat and huge from their previous game's mod scenes. The games themselves are bugridden like crazy but mods could always fix it. Now they want to fully control mods behind paywalls and storefronts. Who thinks Firaxis is beyond that? Corporate America is nothing but copycats. If one company does it, they will all start doing it.

The problem with "elite play" is that it ultimately comes down to min-maxing everything, and when everything is balanced for elite matches you just can't have very interesting or unique abilities, because everything has to be insanely finely balanced. How many civs are in this game? There's no point in having more than a handful of factions because either they are all essentially the same, or they are all fairly unique but tuned to each other. This is why StarCraft has only 3 factions, because balancing a lot of unique factions really just isn't feasible.

I like underdog civs. I like op civs. I like the crazy situations that can result from a bunch of systems that aren't necessarily perfectly balanced against each other. Don't get me wrong, I also like how they continue to tweak and improve certain strategies, but I am grateful that finely tuned elite play is not their focus.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm also disappointed this patch doesn't address any larger issues. I get that it's the first (or second, depending on how you count) in a series, but in my mind that's exactly why they should be making major changes now. Major reworks to systems like religious combat, loyalty, tourism, great person generation or naval vs. land combat could greatly improve the game, but such large changes are never going to work perfectly when first implemented- they require iterative balance changes, and there's no better time to start that process than when you already have a year of follow up patches scheduled.

I'll also join the ranks of those puzzled by the focus on the Red Death minigame. City and empire building with ongoing tech and cultural progress are what make civ games civ games, and I really don't see much appeal in a scenario without that.

On a smaller note, the change to the warrior monks policy seems quite random. If you're going to be conquering cities (which is presumably the point of taking a belief that provides a military unit), you don't need to take individual times with culture bombs. What the belief needs to be viable is for warrior monks to actually be a viable unit. The new work ethic belief does seem do open up a lot of interesting strategies, though it does exacerbate the issue of civs with few holy sites not having much reason to care which religions are spreading in their lands.

If they were going to make major changes, I would have expected them in the previous patch, so was a little disappointed that that didn't address any of them. Although given half of this video talked about changes that went into the May patch, part of me wonders if they re-adjusted schedules to make sure exploit fixes went into the May patch where they had originally intended them in the June one. I know I saw a comment saying that Sarah had recorded the first look videos back in pre-lockdown days, and while it's obvious these videos were shot post-lockdown, it's possible they had it all written up before they changed schedules.

I don't mind warrior monks having a non-war bonus. In some ways it will help balance it a little, so that you can have some bonus from the warrior monks belief after you're done using the unit. But agreed that a better balance would be to make the unit itself more balanced. It will be interesting to see the full list of belief changes, though, since we still haven't seen the actual new beliefs that they're adding.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I do want to point out something that I think is going over most people's head.

We are getting TWELVE updates. Twelve patches, released practically every month. With a new DLC every other mod.

So who knows what they have in store, this is actually quite exciting.

Which is why I fear of coming off too heavy-handed, but again, if there's something you want to see added to the game to improve it, now's the time to be vocal about it. This is in all likelihood Civ VI's last ride.

 

[criZp]

I do want to point out something that I think is going over most people's head.

We are getting TWELVE updates. Twelve patches, released practically every month. With a new DLC every other mod.

So who knows what they have in store, this is actually quite exciting.

If this update is setting a precedent it's rather un-exciting

 

[Arianrhod]

Going for a religion, while not necessary, can be immensely helpful, and allows an alternate path to victory for someone who is behind in science or culture or military might.

Which would be great if religion wasn't the most likely explanation for why they're behind in science/culture/might in the first place. The bonuses gained by religion are usually less than the bonuses you'd get by just focusing on your end-goal in the first place unless you're going for RV, and even that's just Dom without the few things that make Dom tolerable.

I don't play on deity, but on the more mid-range difficulty settings it's not hard to get a religion, and those are the difficulty levels the game is balanced for anyways.

If something isn't good on higher difficulties (and I don't even strictly mean deity here), it's not necessarily going to be better on lower difficulties; it just won't hurt you as badly. If anything, the game should be balanced around higher difficulty levels -- not because they're "more valid" or anything like that, but because they're where every little small change would theoretically make a difference -- which puts anything that actually needs a balance change in the spotlight.

This isn't to say everything needs to be top-tier. That much is obviously not possible. But something should at least be reasonably useful; if it isn't, either the difficulty setting or the feature is broken, and should be adjusted. Adding a bunch of stuff without heeding this isn't "adding content", it's just adding random bloat.

Also, I don't know what everyone was expecting from these patches lol... Every time a patch is announced people seem disappointed that it's not a full DLC worth of content. Better set expectations now... These are not going to be huge patches...Firaxis does not usually do monthly patches/content releases, and so this is a change for them which means there will be an adjustment period, and the increased pace means the patches are just not going to be that big, particularly since the real focus will always be on the paid releases.

The problem is that none of my concerns were addressed with the last DLC, either, aside from very specifically "the Maya are not in the game, please fix." First impressions are very important. We've been able to get our first impressions of both "DLC" and "free updates". Neither addresses most of the concerns I (and probably others) have with the game; considering this, would it not make more sense to voice concerns now rather than after the last update? If we wait to see what all of the various patches contain, only for none of it to actually matter, it'll already be too late to talk about how mechanics like RV and WC are borderline unsalvageable concepts, how certain unit gaps destroy any vestige of a "checks and balances" system that military combat attempts, how certain civs and the AI in general border on useless... or how they refuse to let the players take matters into their own hands by giving them the source code to fix it themselves, as was clearly necessary with their last game.

I'm not generally a hard person to please. My standards, as evidenced by the fact that I'm here at all, are fairly low. I don't even expect most of my issues to be addressed, and I'm fine with that. But I'd at least appreciate an actual attempt instead of just dumping in random side stuff like zombies, aliens, and soothsayers in the hopes that we forget about other concerns. Changing a few random beliefs around... is only barely that. It's like trying to fix a corrupt political machine by replacing every other DMV employee.

 

[Xandinho]

Religious changes are nice. But honestly, I have zero interest in Red Death. I particularly prefer that they spend effort on the main game.
I'm not a fan of legendary, fantastic or science fiction stuff in a historical based game.

 

[Jewelrunna]

They play the game but not seriously or aggressively. Definitely not at a high level either.

One thing I like about Capcom is that when they balance Street Fighter 5, they work with many professional players and guys that play at Capcom Cup. They even have high level players on their own staff. Now Civ doesn't have pro players to my knowledge, but there are many that are waaay better than Carl or whoever else they have in that office. Why do they not pay or even ask for feedback from elite players? I think the answer is obvious. They are just filthy casuals. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but they clearly have zero interest in high levels of play. Nothing wrong with being super casual about a game, but it is good to have the opposite types on staff to help bridge gaps as well. They also tend to cater more to builder types and take less interest in war mechanics as well. At least they have a decent excuse for that, because most players are not into that aspect of the game.

I actually think they are done with the game, gameplay and mechanics wise. I think they were done when Gathering Storm was released. There are issues we have talked about since this game has come out originally and they refuse to fix or address. If they haven't fixed it in 3 years, they are not going to fix it tomorrow. I hope I am not too old when a Vox Populi can be made for Civ6. In fact, I have a bad feeling they will never release that source code, to avoid looking amateur. Don't believe me? Look at Bethesda and similar companies. They all got big fat and huge from their previous game's mod scenes. The games themselves are bugridden like crazy but mods could always fix it. Now they want to fully control mods behind paywalls and storefronts. Who thinks Firaxis is beyond that? Corporate America is nothing but copycats. If one company does it, they will all start doing it.

I think you're sadly on point with everything here.

The thing is, I'm not even really asking for huge changes to the game's systems. I think, by in large, Civ VI's systems work very well. I mean, religion could use some overhaul, but that's really the only one that stands out as poorly designed to me.

The only things I really wanna see from Civ VI are threefold. One, give players an incentive to build tall. It's hard to grow your city to be super populous, but you don't get any rewards for doing so. Improve specialists, and maybe add some scaling modifiers to pop, like for every citizen you get a little more science and culture, maybe production, and add exponential multipliers for reaching a certain pop milestone (like your citizens give more of each value at 10, 15, 20 pop etc.). Two, improve the unit tree. I have no idea why they decided to add more horse units out of all the units they could've added. Buff anti-cav units and add Longswordsmen and Riflemen. Maybe add more unique modern units, like Marines & Paratroopers in the modern era. Give and if you really wanna add more cavalry units, drop one in the Renaissance Era. The unit progression tree is severely outdated and a remnant of vanilla Civ VI's unit-tree philosophy (have the dominant class of each tech era alternate). Now, there's no reason to just have cavalry be the clear choice in every era. Plus, some of those unique units that don't have an analog in their era (Khevsur & Samurai in Medieval, Garde Imperiale & Redcoats in Industrial) would be much, much better if they replaced a unit that could be upgraded into. Third, and this is the most minor one, add some extra flavor to certain techs. Some techs are just pretty barren in the Medieval through Renaissance era, Rifling and Astronomy being the most glaring examples. Just adding something like a city-center building or a tile improvement buff to those techs would make them so much more valuable to tech, and just subjectively feel better once you tech them. Like you've been rewarded more researching a technology.

Notice how none of those ideas I'm posing fundamentally change the game's systems as they stand. They're really minor additions or buffs to improve the ones that already exist.

EDIT: Ooo, tack on an espionage overhaul as well. Stealing Great Works doesn't work properly, and the Recruit Partisans mission is straight up broken in the hands of the AI. That should be straight up removed from the game, because it's not fun to play with at all.

 

[tedhebert]

yeah to the fixes and to the exploits crushing

big huge BLEH to red death ! MP only features... anyways

 

[Pfeffersack]

For those asking - there's nothing stopping someone from porting the Red Death assets into the main game, as Red Death is free for everyone to begin with I don't see any issues with it from a technical stand point of view.

Actually, I wonder why the devs don't make use of that as well. I never played RD, but I was curious enough to start it in SP, just to see if the units looks any different. And my impression is that some would nicely fit as unique late-game barbarian units for example. The could be used to solve the annoyance many player here have with the rebel spawned by espionage operations - those operation could spawn a special barbarian unit, which uses a RD unit graphic. And has more fitting abilities and stats.

---

In regard to the update vid, I think it is rather unfortunate to describe roughly half of the time things delivered already in the May update. I don't have a problem which showcasing that stuff now after this update is out for weeks, but it shouldn't be done in a vid called "June Patch". Just causes confusion

Nice changes on beliefs and exploit closing is good - but I hope that is not everything. If, than the May update was the bigger and more important one of the both in my book.

 

[oSiyeza]

The problem with "elite play" is that it ultimately comes down to min-maxing everything, and when everything is balanced for elite matches you just can't have very interesting or unique abilities, because everything has to be insanely finely balanced. How many civs are in this game? There's no point in having more than a handful of factions because either they are all essentially the same, or they are all fairly unique but tuned to each other. This is why StarCraft has only 3 factions, because balancing a lot of unique factions really just isn't feasible.

I like underdog civs. I like op civs. I like the crazy situations that can result from a bunch of systems that aren't necessarily perfectly balanced against each other. Don't get me wrong, I also like how they continue to tweak and improve certain strategies, but I am grateful that finely tuned elite play is not their focus.

Just to clarify, I dont think the problems with the game have anything to do with elite players, or minmax gamestyles.

The biggest problems with the game are related with tedious systems, lack of polish, lack of agency and lack of fun with a lot of the mechanics of the game. That affects everyone and really hurts the experience for the average, the dedicated and the casual player, regardless their style of play.

 

[Jewelrunna]

Just to clarify, I dont think the problems with the game have anything to do with elite players, or minmax gamestyles.

The biggest problems with the game are related with tedious systems, lack of polish, lack of agency and lack of fun with a lot of the mechanics of the game. That affects everyone and really hurts the experience for the average, the dedicated and the casual player, regardless their style of play.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Kwami]

yeah to the fixes and to the exploits crushing

big huge BLEH to red death ! MP only features... anyways

I haven't tried it, but they did add some AI to Red Death recently. It might be viable as a single-player scenario now.

 

[darkace77450]

As someone who occasionally uses Pagodas with Religious Communities to turn my Holy Sites into early Neighborhoods, I was sad to see it changed from Housing to Diplomatic Favor. Then I saw that they rolled it into the Gurdwara, so that's even better!

Edit: Just realized that Religious Communities has been changed from Housing to Gold, so RIP Holy Site Neighborhoods.

PS - The change to Work Ethic is going to much better for the early game (where it matters most), but a late game nerf for those of us who grow our cities to populations of 20+.

 

[Kwami]

And I think all the talk about balancing around higher difficulties and getting pro players to help out really misses the point. No Civilization game has ever been balanced around high-level play and for good reason. The game is mostly single-player and designed to provide variety. If everything is tightly balanced around high-level pro players, then a lot of fun options go away because they aren't powerful enough or they're too slow or whatever. I, for one, don't want to see that. I like that Maya and Mansa Musa and Fire Goddess can exist, even if they aren't the best.

And if you really think that religion is totally broken and needs a complete redesign, then I suggest posting about it on the suggestion forum and waiting until Civ VII.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Pagodas now get +1 DF each?

Say hello to your new Diplomatic powerhouses, Arabia and Russia.

 

[Xandinho]

Pagoda is probably now the most powerful of the places of worship. There is no problem with Pagoda being so powerful, but I think others should get some buff. Cathedral remains quite useless.

 

[durfal]

The Video was fun to watch (loved the cat), but confusing at the same time.
Mostly because, between the bloopers I tried to figure out the new updates and couldn't find any until half way the video.
But since I don't care for scenario's, the Red Death changes don't do anything for me. But it is nice for the players who do like it.
Played Red Death once in hot seat mode to get some achievements but that's that.
Models looked cool though, but unless someone mods them into the game or some alien invasion mode, I will never see/use them.

The few religious updates are nice but I personal felt a bit meh after watching it. Came here to see if I missed something that got lost in translation after me being confused half the time during the video.
And having the details together is nice to see.

Overall, great that we get updates and they are still actively working to add new stuff and keep tweaking things to make the game better, which makes me happy.
For me personally though the video itself got me more excited than the actually changes they announced.