Civ6 Overrandomization.

[aieeegrunt]

I hate Spies with a passion. It’s another bit of cartoon ish nonsense. How exactly is a Spy destroying what amounts to an entire region’s industrial infrastructure, or stealing a quarter of my GDP

 

[Leyrann]

I hate Spies with a passion. It’s another bit of cartoon ish nonsense. How exactly is a Spy destroying what amounts to an entire region’s industrial infrastructure, or stealing a quarter of my GDP

Because it's a simplification.

Rather than a hundred spies all diverting a little bit of money, there's one spy diverting a lot of money.

Rather than a hundred spies all hindering a different bit of your industry, there's one spy completely demolishing one bit of industry.

And so on.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Because it's a simplification.

Rather than a hundred spies all diverting a little bit of money, there's one spy diverting a lot of money.

Rather than a hundred spies all hindering a different bit of your industry, there's one spy completely demolishing one bit of industry.

And so on.

Name me one moment from actual history when one or a hundred or a thousand spies did something of the magnitude of say destroying every factory in the Ruhr valley or stealing the contents of Fort Knox

It’s ridiculous

Unlike zombies or heroes it’s clearly meant to be a core part of the game

 

[Leyrann]

Name me one moment from actual history when one or a hundred or a thousand spies did something of the magnitude of say destroying every factory in the Ruhr valley or stealing the contents of Fort Knox

It’s ridiculous

Unlike zombies or heroes it’s clearly meant to be a core part of the game

I take it you didn't get my point.

You're looking at a spy that steals 10 000 000 dollars and say "but that doesn't happen". What I meant to say was that in reality, you don't have one spy doing so, you have a thousand spies stealing 10 000 dollars each.

And so on.

A spy might not destroy the entire Ruhr Valley, but they might introduce a bug in a system that destroy some equipment, or cause another small malfunction. A thousand malfunctions that are individually negligible can easily have an effect comparable to a single destroyed factory.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I take it you didn't get my point.

You're looking at a spy that steals 10 000 000 dollars and say "but that doesn't happen". What I meant to say was that in reality, you don't have one spy doing so, you have a thousand spies stealing 10 000 dollars each.

And so on.

A spy might not destroy the entire Ruhr Valley, but they might introduce a bug in a system that destroy some equipment, or cause another small malfunction. A thousand malfunctions that are individually negligible can easily have an effect comparable to a single destroyed factory.

Again, this literally never happens. It’s even sillier than one spy doing that. It goes from James Bond stupid to Hogan’s Hero’s stupid

 

[Grassland Farm]

This has been a heated thread but I can kinda relate. Especially today after a few ragequits - notably, I've been experimenting with PerfectWorld6 rather than the usual official map of Fractal.

It's not *THAT* bad ultimately but it's a combination of:
- Finding a Second Continent can be extremely easy (turn 1) or nearly impossible, and you need that to beeline the important early civics
- Tribal Village giving you a Builder is a free Inspiration on Craftsmanship and makes a huge difference especially if you have raw Culture output and probably would have "wasted" some Inspirations.
- Want to play around Religion but can't find a Natural Wonder even though your scouting has been amazing? No Eureka for you.
- Somehow cannot find a third citystate even though you've crossed the whole height of the map? No Eureka for the tier1 government type (huge powerspike)
- Want to found a religion but couldn't get enough Era Score (Lack of settling around Natural Wonders/Volcanoes/Flood Plains...)? No +4 great prophet points for you.

Etc, etc. It's the addition of small things that can lead to frustration.
It always sucked to not have Iron in Civ4/5 if you wanted to play Swordsman-something ; now in 6 it can also mean you miss out on two Eurekas... And so on.

Ironically one of my "work arounds" has been to not play Religious civs at all and just focus on settling Eureka-able resources.
Barbs are another can of worms but I find the crazy Barb situations to be extremely rare. Most of the time 1 warrior+slinger can handle ALMOST anything - until the AI decided to, I'm not kidding, spawn three horsemen and a horse archer on turn 20.

(All this above being on Immortal, for reference)

Rant over. It's always been like that but I feel less frustrated by the map randomness on most of my other civ experience (Civ5 Vox Populi ; Civ4 Realism Invictus)

 

[aieeegrunt]

This has been a heated thread but I can kinda relate. Especially today after a few ragequits - notably, I've been experimenting with PerfectWorld6 rather than the usual official map of Fractal.

It's not *THAT* bad ultimately but it's a combination of:
- Finding a Second Continent can be extremely easy (turn 1) or nearly impossible, and you need that to beeline the important early civics
- Tribal Village giving you a Builder is a free Inspiration on Craftsmanship and makes a huge difference especially if you have raw Culture output and probably would have "wasted" some Inspirations.
- Want to play around Religion but can't find a Natural Wonder even though your scouting has been amazing? No Eureka for you.
- Somehow cannot find a third citystate even though you've crossed the whole height of the map? No Eureka for the tier1 government type (huge powerspike)
- Want to found a religion but couldn't get enough Era Score (Lack of settling around Natural Wonders/Volcanoes/Flood Plains...)? No +4 great prophet points for you.

Etc, etc. It's the addition of small things that can lead to frustration.
It always sucked to not have Iron in Civ4/5 if you wanted to play Swordsman-something ; now in 6 it can also mean you miss out on two Eurekas... And so on.

Ironically one of my "work arounds" has been to not play Religious civs at all and just focus on settling Eureka-able resources.
Barbs are another can of worms but I find the crazy Barb situations to be extremely rare. Most of the time 1 warrior+slinger can handle ALMOST anything - until the AI decided to, I'm not kidding, spawn three horsemen and a horse archer on turn 20.

(All this above being on Immortal, for reference)

Rant over. It's always been like that but I feel less frustrated by the map randomness on most of my other civ experience (Civ5 Vox Populi ; Civ4 Realism Invictus)

Because of the snowball effect early advantages compound interest like…well housing prices

Many of the ancient era boosts like finding city states first and getting the free envoy, goody huts etc are basically random. You sent your first scout north and found three city states, two of which were cultural. A goody hut gave you a relic

Congrats you pretty much got Political Philosophy for free

Had you sent that scout south it would have been emptiness and barb nests and it easily would have taken literally 8 times longer to get that absolutly critical first government

This example is from an actual game. By the time the South Polar Barbarian Horde moved on me (are they living off ice and tundra grasses?) I was well prepared and advanced

Had I gone south first it I would have been building warriors or whatever instead and some other civ would have reaped that reward

 

[Leyrann]

This has been a heated thread but I can kinda relate. Especially today after a few ragequits - notably, I've been experimenting with PerfectWorld6 rather than the usual official map of Fractal.

It's not *THAT* bad ultimately but it's a combination of:
- Finding a Second Continent can be extremely easy (turn 1) or nearly impossible, and you need that to beeline the important early civics
- Tribal Village giving you a Builder is a free Inspiration on Craftsmanship and makes a huge difference especially if you have raw Culture output and probably would have "wasted" some Inspirations.
- Want to play around Religion but can't find a Natural Wonder even though your scouting has been amazing? No Eureka for you.
- Somehow cannot find a third citystate even though you've crossed the whole height of the map? No Eureka for the tier1 government type (huge powerspike)
- Want to found a religion but couldn't get enough Era Score (Lack of settling around Natural Wonders/Volcanoes/Flood Plains...)? No +4 great prophet points for you.

Etc, etc. It's the addition of small things that can lead to frustration.
It always sucked to not have Iron in Civ4/5 if you wanted to play Swordsman-something ; now in 6 it can also mean you miss out on two Eurekas... And so on.

Ironically one of my "work arounds" has been to not play Religious civs at all and just focus on settling Eureka-able resources.
Barbs are another can of worms but I find the crazy Barb situations to be extremely rare. Most of the time 1 warrior+slinger can handle ALMOST anything - until the AI decided to, I'm not kidding, spawn three horsemen and a horse archer on turn 20.

(All this above being on Immortal, for reference)

Rant over. It's always been like that but I feel less frustrated by the map randomness on most of my other civ experience (Civ5 Vox Populi ; Civ4 Realism Invictus)

As a whole, this very much sounds like you want to follow along a pre-determined game plan, which very much does not align with Civ 6's design philosophy.

Rather than start the game deciding you want an early religion, simply start playing, and go for an early religion only if you find a natural wonder early. Or, if you're playing a religious civ, just hard research it, make a small sacrifice so that you can play into your strengths better. Things like that.

Play towards the city-state types you find. Learn to recognize as early as turn 15 whether or not you'll manage to get a golden age, and adjust based on that; or even adjust your starting build based on whether or not you want a golden age (more scouts = better chances). If you find many non-coastal (or simply land-spawning) barb camps, pre-emptively build additional units. If you're worried about horseman barbs because there's camps on open land, you could even research Animal Husbandry simply to confirm whether any camps might spawn them; they will do so if there are horses within 4 tiles of the camp.

Personally (and this is on Deity), I start maybe half my games with a plan for victory (though I might change this up sometimes), and the other half of my games I tend to just play around, usually focusing on economy, building the districts that have the best adjacencies, et cetera, and then by turn 100 or something I'll make a decision which victory I want to pursue.

 

[Grassland Farm]

As a whole, this very much sounds like you want to follow along a pre-determined game plan, which very much does not align with Civ 6's design philosophy.

I'll admit it's true. But then again, securing all Eurekas (or close to) is far from impossible. My idea of "playing Religious/wanting to found" usually meant I was playing a religious civ (I've been trying to bruteforce myself into making Gitarja work)

they will do so if there are horses within 4 tiles of the camp.

Solid advice, damn.

Personally (and this is on Deity), I start maybe half my games with a plan for victory (though I might change this up sometimes), and the other half of my games I tend to just play around, usually focusing on economy, building the districts that have the best adjacencies, et cetera, and then by turn 100 or something I'll make a decision which victory I want to pursue.

Yeah relatable. While I do have a fixation on wanting to fulfill Eurekas and unlocking Political Philosophy ASAP, the victory condition remains to be seen for later.
Only exception is that my Gitarja games were to try and see how a Religious victory can be planned for and how it happens (you rarely use Gurus and some Wonders if you're not going for it, and I wanted to play around with new things)

 

[Linklite]

To be honest, I like the idea that you have to play the map. The one grievance I do have is resources though, specifically iron. I tend to find that it's so rare that it's common for me to never build swordsmen or other units thst require it because I don't get access to iron until after they're obsolete. That really sucks for Rome whose UU requires iron to build.

There are other resources that are rare, like aluminium, but they're later in the game when you've had time to expand and you could have used decent units to take cities beforehand - if you don't have access to them, it's because you've chosen not to spread or got really unlucky. Iron is just a crapshoot - either you get lucky, or it takes a significant amount of resources during a period when you'd ideally want to be spending every resource on other things.

I think iron at least should be more widespread.

 

[aieeegrunt]

To be honest, I like the idea that you have to play the map. The one grievance I do have is resources though, specifically iron. I tend to find that it's so rare that it's common for me to never build swordsmen or other units thst require it because I don't get access to iron until after they're obsolete. That really sucks for Rome whose UU requires iron to build.

There are other resources that are rare, like aluminium, but they're later in the game when you've had time to expand and you could have used decent units to take cities beforehand - if you don't have access to them, it's because you've chosen not to spread or got really unlucky. Iron is just a crapshoot - either you get lucky, or it takes a significant amount of resources during a period when you'd ideally want to be spending every resource on other things.

I think iron at least should be more widespread.

It’s even more enfuriating because “iron” as a critical resource shouldn’t even exist

Iron/steel replaced bronze the instant people figured out how to make it because it’s cheap and pretty universally abundant

This dumbass brainbug has been in several iterations of Civ now and it’s even dumber than zombies and vampires because I can at least turn that silliness off

Also a shoutout to the TSL Med map where there are no sources of iron on the entire Italian peninsula, so you can’t make legions till well after you’ve expanded into western europe and/or north of the Alps

Because when I think of Rome. I think of archers and spearmen.

 

[Leyrann]

It’s even more enfuriating because “iron” as a critical resource shouldn’t even exist

Iron/steel replaced bronze the instant people figured out how to make it because it’s cheap and pretty universally abundant

This dumbass brainbug has been in several iterations of Civ now and it’s even dumber than zombies and vampires because I can at least turn that silliness off

Also a shoutout to the TSL Med map where there are no sources of iron on the entire Italian peninsula, so you can’t make legions till well after you’ve expanded into western europe and/or north of the Alps

Because when I think of Rome. I think of archers and spearmen.

You could say the same thing about horses. However, at the end of the day, Civilization VI is not a history simulator. It is a game where you play through history. And sometimes, you have to compromise and depart from history a bit in order to make the game better.

Or did you think America being founded in 4000 BC was historical?

 

[rocksinmypath]

To be honest, I like the idea that you have to play the map. The one grievance I do have is resources though, specifically iron. I tend to find that it's so rare that it's common for me to never build swordsmen or other units thst require it because I don't get access to iron until after they're obsolete. That really sucks for Rome whose UU requires iron to build.

There are other resources that are rare, like aluminium, but they're later in the game when you've had time to expand and you could have used decent units to take cities beforehand - if you don't have access to them, it's because you've chosen not to spread or got really unlucky. Iron is just a crapshoot - either you get lucky, or it takes a significant amount of resources during a period when you'd ideally want to be spending every resource on other things.

I think iron at least should be more widespread.

Ironically, the way the game is designed, it actually doesn't really encourage "playing the map" with respect to late-game strategics. If you know that you'll need plenty of aluminum later in the game, the only reasonable strategy is to blindly expand, as you said. This isn't a map-dependent decision. I think there should be a way to set up outposts (much more lightweight than cities) on unclaimed tiles, which will actually allow players to make more dynamic decisions when it comes to resource acquisitions.

With regards to making iron more common, I don't think this would work with the game currently is, since it'd mean more disruption to district planning. For me, prohibiting district placements on revealed strategics is, hands down, the worst decision the devs made in Civ 6. There are many features in the game I don't like, but most of them, I can at least understand why they're there or I can't really easily think of better alternatives. This restriction is just so obviously problematic because it makes players want to avoid unlocking certain techs because they risk getting (rather severely) punished by the game for doing what the game should be encouraging them to do.

 

[Grassland Farm]

Ironically, the way the game is designed, it actually doesn't really encourage "playing the map" with respect to late-game strategics. If you know that you'll need plenty of aluminum later in the game, the only reasonable strategy is to blindly expand, as you said. This isn't a map-dependent decision. I think there should be a way to set up outposts (much more lightweight than cities) on unclaimed tiles, which will actually allow players to make more dynamic decisions when it comes to resource acquisitions.

With regards to making iron more common, I don't think this would work with the game currently is, since it'd mean more disruption to district planning. For me, prohibiting district placements on revealed strategics is, hands down, the worst decision the devs made in Civ 6. There are many features in the game I don't like, but most of them, I can at least understand why they're there or I can't really easily think of better alternatives. This restriction is just so obviously problematic because it makes players want to avoid unlocking certain techs because they risk getting (rather severely) punished by the game for doing what the game should be encouraging them to do.

Happy is the man who gets zero strategics in his land and thus can build districts peacefully :^)
But yeah I wholeheartedly agree. Hell, placing a district on a revealed strategic would be a loss in most cases. I'd argue losing the 1 science from the iron tile (and likely chance of a good adjacency bonus to an Industrial Zone) is worse than most yield losses you get from placing your usual districts

 

[Leyrann]

Happy is the man who gets zero strategics in his land and thus can build districts peacefully :^)
But yeah I wholeheartedly agree. Hell, placing a district on a revealed strategic would be a loss in most cases. I'd argue losing the 1 science from the iron tile (and likely chance of a good adjacency bonus to an Industrial Zone) is worse than most yield losses you get from placing your usual districts

With the way Civ 6 works, if a strategic resource spawns under a district, you still get the yields and adjacency bonuses. Assuming that would remain, there would be no downside. If it were removed, then yes, it would usually be a bad idea.

You can actually pull this trick with settling. A city center can be placed on a resource just fine, and doesn't remove it (it does remove forest, rainforest and march). If you were to settle a city center on (already-revealed) horses, then placed an Industrial Zone next to it, it'd get the +1 production. In addition, settling on a resource also gives you it's yields. For a strategic resource, the 2 or 3 per turn for your stockpile, for a luxury resource, you get the amenities (or you can sell it off). In the very early game, settling on a luxury resource and selling it to an AI can give you a very early gold boost.

 

[Bibor]

Ironically, the way the game is designed, it actually doesn't really encourage "playing the map" with respect to late-game strategics. If you know that you'll need plenty of aluminum later in the game, the only reasonable strategy is to blindly expand, as you said. This isn't a map-dependent decision. I think there should be a way to set up outposts (much more lightweight than cities) on unclaimed tiles, which will actually allow players to make more dynamic decisions when it comes to resource acquisitions.

I think Vic mentioned it in one post that the first 100 turns are really about land grab (with the aim of getting up to 10 cities), and that the other 100 or so turns are meant to be used to slot-in your victrory type. In this context, Aluminium (yes, it should be Bauxite) is only an issue for a space race, and even then it's probably easier to just power up the damn things instead of using aluminum.

Iron and especially Niter shortages can be troublesome, but at least you can skip these for ranged and/or cavalry units. Small maps can have a real shortage of strategics, shoehorning you into conquering your continent (or equivalent landmass) if you are going for space or conquest.

It all boils down to the fact that the developers of this game don't really play it. Never did. So the nuances of gameplay avoid their attention. Which is a shame.

 

[Leyrann]

In this context, Aluminium (yes, it should be Bauxite) is only an issue for a space race, and even then it's probably easier to just power up the damn things instead of using aluminum.

Not quite true, any planes more advanced than biplanes also use it. Admittedly not very relevant in single-player (unsure about multiplayer).

 

[Linklite]

And helicopters.

 

[reddishrecue]

You could add mobile armored units also.

 

[Grassland Farm]

Not quite true, any planes more advanced than biplanes also use it. Admittedly not very relevant in single-player (unsure about multiplayer).

I am finding, in my current game, Air units to be extremely punishing in the player's hands vs the AI. It just kept its many Cuirassier corps in range of my Biplanes without the need to relocate them, and I pretty much wiped out 7-9 units just with these two biplanes and not taking any damage back

I thought "Deploy" was just to scout the map at first but turns out you can attack from the Deploy-ed position as you please, as if it was an Aerodrome