[R&F] Do you still like R&F?

[acluewithout]

I think it's a shame the global happiness system got the bad rap it did, because the core idea behind the system is excellent.

Your empire requires a certain level of happiness before you can expand in Civ 5. It doesn't matter whether you're talking expanding "wide" (new city) or "tall" (bigger city), either way expansion is dependent on the happiness of your empire. If you expand before you have the happiness, you get into trouble.

In a way it still exists in Civ 6 through empire wide luxuries feeding into local amenities. Unfortunately, since yields have been tilted towards unworked buildings in Civ 6, the easiest way to manage the happiness system in Civ 6 is just to skip it, keep your pop low, and sell all of your luxuries, the gold from which grows your empire a lot faster than the people it would make happy ever could.

Rather than global happiness, I’d like:

- Each city to have a more complex loyalty profile, so cities have different +/- loyalty based on your government, religion etc. That way, keeping your empire together requires you to balance different competiting interests within your empire.

- Cities to be more interdependent, eg so the food available in your empire isn’t purely determined on a city by city basis, like maybe cities with lots of food boost food in other cities. That way, losing cities would have an impact beyond just losing “one city”.

 

[MooFreaky]

Honestly I don't feel loyalty adds enough to the game. Seeing cities flip in GS live plays is still weird to me. It seems to happen far too often. Are there any real world instances of this happening? Crimea is the main one that comes to mind.

Yes, lots. I've got an old post of mine I've dug up and will paste in here with some examples.

When Persia was growing in the pre-Greek/Persian wars the border nations would have cities flip back and forth as influence waxed and waned. Areas would be conquered or subjugated, then flip right back out and have to be re-conquered or flip back once Persian influence was established.

The first Greco-Persian War saw Greek influence cause revolts on the Western Persian border. This caused a military response to recapture. When Persia invaded Greece, many of the nations/regions along the way flipped without a fight as Persian influence grew stronger in their regions. I mean all of Macedonia flipped to the Persian side, then at the end of the second war once Persian influence left the region those cities flipped right on back (again without conquest).

Alexander's conquests needed constant military intervention as conquered cities flipped (or attempted flipping) back. It wasn't until the successor states became powerful that stability in the region became a thing. Even then cities on the borders of these successor states flipped between the various rivals.

When Rome conquered Spain they didn't invest heavily in the region (in a commercial, develop the cities kind of way) and cities flipped constantly. Areas where there was heavy Roman influence (the southern coast) stayed loyal, but regions in the centre, north and west flipped back and forth with regularity. This went on for a couple of centuries. The Romans would occassionally sweep into places, be all like "ROMA!", think that was everything done and dusted, then it all flipped back again.

Caesar's conquest of Gaul saw many dozens of cities kill their Roman garrisons and flip, requiring a re-conquest. Again, the further from the Roman border the more this happened. It wasn't until these cities were crushed, their populations stripped away and the Romans really set up shop with determination in the region that it became stable (and even then the borders rebelled).

Roman borderlands had flips with regularity across their Empire. Illyria flipped and left Roman control, needing to be retaken. The whole East flipped to Palmyra, then was like "Oops, our bad" and flipped back once the Aurelian decided to exert Roman influence again. Cities in Gaul flipped between Rome and the Gallic Empire once that became a thing. Cities flipped between Eastern and Western Roman Empires. Alexandria flipped (and was duly punished) a few times. The whole of the Roman Border with Persia saw flips back and forth with hilarious regularity. Armenia would bounce between the two Empires, and much of this was political influence rather than military (though military intervention happened, only for the state to go back to flipping from other influences).

Once the Muslims began invading there were flips back and forth between them and the various places they invaded. Spain (again) had flips between nations, as did anywhere there was a border.

During the Crusades cities flipped between the Crusader States and the Muslims.

The Three Kingdom in China period saw cities flip ad nauseam between factions. The locals would run the garrisons out and declare allegiance to someone else.

Even in more modern times. WW2 had uprisings all over the place. The Liberation of Paris was the resistance rising up and kicking out the Germans. The Slovaks rebelled against the Nazis. etc etc etc

It is a very common thing throughout all of history, and it was almost always areas that were on the border where influence was lower and neighbouring factions could provide influence of their own. There is absolutely it can be counted on one hand, it has happened thousands of times throughout history. It's just that these types of things don't get covered unless you've studied it closer it gets glossed over in the general narrative like "Rome conquered the Mediterranean and held it for centuries". The current setup is a solid representation on this. Obviously it doesn't have the intricacies of real world rebellions, uprisings and such but the basics are right. The more peripheral a city the more vulnerable it is. The more influence a neighbour has in the region, the harder it is to keep your peripheral cities in line. If you don't focus enough attention in such an area (ie build more cities, assign you governors etc) then you will have problems.

But this is not due to "pressure" of nearby cities. If we were talking about the loyalty mechanism & pressure of nearby cities, Switzerland would have long ago been absorbed by the EU. In the real world, things work very different.

well Civ4 wasn't perfect either. Back to the Switzerland example, Switzerland isn't potentially gaining cities because of high culture. I would argue Italy has much higher culture (in Civ terms) than Switzerland. Switzerland is coveted because they are a pretty awesome place to live, have a good economy, don't suffer from corruption and crippling debt Italy suffers from. I would live there if I could. The situation is too complex to be modeled in civ terms. Neither population pressure or culture correctly models people wanting to "flip". I actually think unhappiness would be the biggest factor in reality. Unhappiness in the loyalty mechanism is an issue in Civ6, but far less than population pressure. I would rather see negative amenities and low gold production (this should be a loyalty mechanic) have a higher impact than population.

Civilization cannot possibly reflect the complexity of reality when it comes to the loyalty of people and cities to country/ruler/empire. And happiness, corruption, cultural pull all have an impact. Though individually not that much, so simply picking one doesn't work very well. They all play a part, but simply having an unhappy city rise up isn't enough, as there were MANY unhappy cities throughout history who either stayed loyal or cities that were happy but flipped to an empire they really didn't want to simply because of the influence they exerted through their military or power.
I think the existing system is a reasonable representation, because neighbouring cities are a solid indicator of military power and the influence being exerted in other ways (eg Rome held significant influence over its neighbouring regions through trade, political posturing, etc. So the border cities were always the most susceptible to "flipping"). I would love to see it expanded to reflect increased/decreased potency based on factors such as happiness, local military presence, cultural difference between the cities in question etc. Heck I'd even like to see cities (not all, but some whether it is determined by over a certain size, or the top x% largest cities) get a random number generated on creation and that number be added to their chance to flip. Some cities were notorious for rebellions or loyalty for no apparent reason beyond they saw themselves as too good to be part of an Empire, or too close to their Empire to betray them. Alexandria being one of the most notorious, but Antioch has also been prone. And many others. While some have always seemed to stay loyal through thick and thin. Sure it's a RNG but it gives some extra life to the game world.

 

[Ferocitus]

I hate this, an expansion with just Magnus moving around, and chop chop chop.

You can scum save, too. Doesn't mean you have to play that way.

 

[orasis]

I like it but I think loyalty/ages are little too easy on the players, human and AI. Dark ages are not that big of a deal and they should be.

How often has a dark age even effected your game?

 

[Vizurok]

I like it but I think loyalty/ages are little to easy on the players, human and AI. Dark ages are not that big of a deal and they should be.

How often has a dark age even effected your game?

Well, the loyalty drop has caused me some serious problems in certain games. I mean, it's situational, but you might not be able to hold riskily settled cities and conquest (especially in the early ages) will be a pain in the ass with cities flipping within 3 turns.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I'm surprised to see that people dislike the Ages system. It's not perfect (dark ages not dark enough, dedications not varied / exciting enough) but as a first pass it is pretty good, I love the way it gives structure to the eras and pacing to the game, in that sense I think it has been a triumph. I hope they keep the idea and build on it in future Civ games, I'd particularly like to see each era become more distinct, e.g. the Renaissance era as the age of exploration, industrial era as a proper age of industrialisation, that sort of thing.

 

[Ferocitus]

I love it to bits - it makes Civs < 6 feel like sparse, toy games to me.

However, I'd have nothing to do with Civ6/R&F if weren't for the largest, stable maps that Gedemon's Terra series can handle, and for the fact that I can play against 20-25 other civs.

At marathon speeds on those large maps the civs have room to establish themselves and the number of opponents means AI stupidity isn't the fatal flaw in the game as it can be on small maps over short times and against a small number of opponents. Human inadequacies, concentration and memory lapses (like forgetting to promote a governor, grab a useful great person, etc etc), also come into play over a long game.

The 2nd best part? Nobody I know (family members with 2,000-5,000 hours) blows hard about their consistent success. None has ever claimed the game is too easy. Of course, you have to be fair in counting AI success, e.g. your restart for a better location (unless it's a ludicrous position), is a win for the AI. A reload because of your own stupidity is a win for the AI, etc etc. Like "touch move" in chess.

And the best part of all: thousands of hours of fun and and not one moment when I wished for anything from earlier versions. They're dead to me.

As for Civ6/R&F on small maps - it's a dog. The sooner the code is opened up to some of the really talented modders, the better the game will become!

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Another thing I hate is the age system. The system is good, the problem is that it does not match with the real game progress.

I'm surprised to see that people dislike the Ages system. It's not perfect (dark ages not dark enough, dedications not varied / exciting enough) but as a first pass it is pretty good, I love the way it gives structure to the eras and pacing to the game, in that sense I think it has been a triumph. I hope they keep the idea and build on it in future Civ games, I'd particularly like to see each era become more distinct, e.g. the Renaissance era as the age of exploration, industrial era as a proper age of industrialisation, that sort of thing.

When you research Cold War, you look around and say "hey, this is Medieval era." Why am I doing this?

Idealogy and cold war at Medieval era doesn't make any sense. The system is broken.

 

[TomKQT]

You can scum save, too. Doesn't mean you have to play that way.

Of course you don't have to move Magnus around before each chop. But if you don't (at least before a significant number of chops), then you really are not using him.
And the same principle goes for most governors. Either you micromanage them like crazy (which is boring), or you just passively leave them in one city and they are doing nothing most of the time (or just a few of their bonuses apply). What's the point of a governor that provides +50% chop bonuses if you don't move him to cities where you are going to chop? What's the point of a governor that provides faster industrial zone building time if you have him in a city where all the buildings already are done?
I hate how some of the bonuses are extremely specific. Should at least be not +20 % production toward one specific district buildings, but +10% production towards all district buildings. Or something like that.

 

[mitsho]

I'm surprised to see that people dislike the Ages system. It's not perfect (dark ages not dark enough, dedications not varied / exciting enough) but as a first pass it is pretty good, I love the way it gives structure to the eras and pacing to the game, in that sense I think it has been a triumph. I hope they keep the idea and build on it in future Civ games, I'd particularly like to see each era become more distinct, e.g. the Renaissance era as the age of exploration, industrial era as a proper age of industrialisation, that sort of thing.

In a sense, that means we are back at the civ III system of the tech tree being a closed off box for each era. There, they argued that they need to open it up so that the game truly feels like a continuous timeline. It‘s funny how we now want to go back there to preconceived ideas how an era should feel/be played. But I do think it‘s the right direction and the solution to the early game > late game problem: the late game should feel like a different game and you can only achieve this with hard cuts. I.e. a vamped up era-system.

I love it to bits - it makes Civs < 6 feel like sparse, toy games to me.

However, I'd have nothing to do with Civ6/R&F if weren't for the largest, stable maps that Gedemon's Terra series can handle, and for the fact that I can play against 20-25 other civs.

At marathon speeds on those large maps the civs have room to establish themselves and the number of opponents means AI stupidity isn't the fatal flaw in the game as it can be on small maps over short times and against a small number of opponents. Human inadequacies, concentration and memory lapses (like forgetting to promote a governor, grab a useful great person, etc etc), also come into play over a long game.

The 2nd best part? Nobody I know (family members with 2,000-5,000 hours) blows hard about their consistent success. None has ever claimed the game is too easy. Of course, you have to be fair in counting AI success, e.g. your restart for a better location (unless it's a ludicrous position), is a win for the AI. A reload because of your own stupidity is a win for the AI, etc etc. Like "touch move" in chess.

And the best part of all: thousands of hours of fun and and not one moment when I wished for anything from earlier versions. They're dead to me.

As for Civ6/R&F on small maps - it's a dog. The sooner the code is opened up to some of the really talented modders, the better the game will become!

I do agree with you that smaller maps and faster speeds don‘t let the game shine, as it is designed to give its civs room and so on. But: How do you even manage to play such a long game? How long does it take you to finish such a game. Doesn‘t it get boring at one point? What are your turn times? Because I only play on small ones as otherwise I don‘t remember what the situation was when I get back to a game a few weeks later. (And since later starts don‘t work well enough for me, I would never see anything past feudalism ...)

 

[Ferocitus]

In a sense, that means we are back at the civ III system of the tech tree being a closed off box for each era. There, they argued that they need to open it up so that the game truly feels like a continuous timeline. It‘s funny how we now want to go back there to preconceived ideas how an era should feel/be played. But I do think it‘s the right direction and the solution to the early game > late game problem: the late game should feel like a different game and you can only achieve this with hard cuts. I.e. a vamped up era-system.



I do agree with you that smaller maps and faster speeds don‘t let the game shine, as it is designed to give its civs room and so on. But: How do you even manage to play such a long game? How long does it take you to finish such a game. Doesn‘t it get boring at one point? What are your turn times? Because I only play on small ones as otherwise I don‘t remember what the situation was when I get back to a game a few weeks later. (And since later starts don‘t work well enough for me, I would never see anything past feudalism ...)

Because I play Civ on one computer, work on another while watching videos/lectures on another.
I can finish a game in 4 days. Or give and up and award the AI's a win.

I haven't been bored since I was 5 years old. If the game bored me I would stop.

Turn times at the end of the game can be around 2 minutes.

If you can't remember what you were doing in the game because of long interruptions and give up, or it causes you to lose, then chalk up a win for the AIs: you simply were not up to the task.
Or that type of game does not suit you, the time you have available, or many other reasons. In that case, bad luck! Try another game that suits you better instead of battling with a dog.

When you research Cold War, you look around and say "hey, this is Medieval era." Why am I doing this?

Idealogy and cold war at Medieval era doesn't make any sense. The system is broken.

IMO that's meaningless criticism without referring to level, map size, number of opponents etc etc.

For entry level players, those situations don't happen, or extremely rarely.

Being able to get those advances way "ahead" of time is an indication you're doing well, or playing at too low a level.
In any case, it's not a historical simulator, so what's the big deal about getting advances earlier than they actually occurred?

 

[Lily_Lancer]

For entry level players, those situations don't happen, or extremely rarely.

For me that situation always happen.Ideology and Cold War is always a Medieval or Renaissance thing, and Globalization and Nanotechnology are always a Renaissance thing. No matter of map size, difficulty, starting location, civ used, etc.

I think a game shall not only be balanced for "entry level players". In industrial era the only thibg I can research is future tech or future civic, and that always happen, with 100% probability if I doesn't end my game before Industrial. The age system is certainly a broken one.

Yes getting ahead in some games may be fun. But always having Medieval Ideology and Renaissance nuclear submarine is not. This is just ridiculous.

 

[TomKQT]

I'm surprised to see that people dislike the Ages system. It's not perfect (dark ages not dark enough, dedications not varied / exciting enough) but as a first pass it is pretty good, I love the way it gives structure to the eras and pacing to the game, in that sense I think it has been a triumph. I hope they keep the idea and build on it in future Civ games, I'd particularly like to see each era become more distinct, e.g. the Renaissance era as the age of exploration, industrial era as a proper age of industrialisation, that sort of thing.

I would say that my problem with the R&F system of eras (*) is that it feels too disconnected from me. It's not really clear when and especially WHY is there going to be an era change. Why should I even care if I don't have a direct control over it? In vanilla I perfectly knew that as soon as I research a technology from a new era, I am in that era - this made sense to me. But that also wasn't perfect because I often tried to "cheat" the system a bit by delaying new era until I get as many city state quests as possible...

(*) besides the fact that the era score is very unpredictable, doesn't fully represent how well are you doing, and dark/normal/golden ages feel very much the same

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I would say that my problem with the R&F system of eras (*) is that it feels too disconnected from me. It's not really clear when and especially WHY is there going to be an era change. Why should I even care if I don't have a direct control over it? In vanilla I perfectly knew that as soon as I research a technology from a new era, I am in that era - this made sense to me. But that also wasn't perfect because I often tried to "cheat" the system a bit by delaying new era until I get as many city state quests as possible...

(*) besides the fact that the era score is very unpredictable, doesn't fully represent how well are you doing, and dark/normal/golden ages feel very much the same

In R & F the global "era" is only a turn timer which advances every 40 turns. It is nothing related to your real progress.

 

[Victoria]

R&F appears to have made the AI’s ability to win before T300 impossible.
When you get to T100 amd think it is a rubbish game because you only have 50 science, then find you are coming second in science you realise just how slow civs are now in getting science because the pop growth strategy the AI uses has been nerfed.
You still occasionally get a civ forward settle you and that is like a free gift. You can even let a civ take a city of your because it will flip back. Emergencies are a RND gift horse of large proportions. Governors... Magnus is OMG while the AI uses Amani. Sure the AI can fight a little better but that was cunningly counteracted with other such nerfs as mentioned

If you feel at all pleased you won the game,you are fooling yourself... if you loose a game, apart from on deity, the cause of losing is not being careful enough. R&F should be renamed to ROFL

 

[Ferocitus]

For me that situation always happen.Ideology and Cold War is always a Medieval or Renaissance thing, and Globalization and Nanotechnology are always a Renaissance thing. No matter of map size, difficulty, starting location, civ used, etc.

I think a game shall not only be balanced for "entry level players". In industrial era the only thibg I can research is future tech or future civic, and that always happen, with 100% probability if I doesn't end my game before Industrial. The age system is certainly a broken one.

Yes getting ahead in some games may be fun. But always having Medieval Ideology and Renaissance nuclear submarine is not. This is just ridiculous.

So, if a low-level player at Deity gets those techs/inspirations exactly when they occurred in history, when should a top Deity-level player get them?
If the best Deity-level player gets them at their exact historic time, when should the lowest level players get them?

 

[Siptah]

I'm surprised to see that people dislike the Ages system. It's not perfect (dark ages not dark enough, dedications not varied / exciting enough) but as a first pass it is pretty good, I love the way it gives structure to the eras and pacing to the game, in that sense I think it has been a triumph. I hope they keep the idea and build on it in future Civ games, I'd particularly like to see each era become more distinct, e.g. the Renaissance era as the age of exploration, industrial era as a proper age of industrialisation, that sort of thing.

I like the idea of the Ages system per se. I don‘t like three things of the implementations:

• normal and golden ages are too easy to achieve. It‘s a really rare to get a dark age, except if you do it on purpose.
• How the era score is accumulated feels often „gamey“ and unreasonable to me. Why not fix the in-game score and assign golden ages according to this already implemented and far more universal score? You could add another sub-pool for things like historical moments to the score.
• There‘s a strange feeling when I get a dark or golden age for what has already happened in the era before. This can easily lead to golden ages that aren‘t that golden and dark ages in which a civ thrives. I don‘t know how to solve this though. EU4 has a better system for golden ages, but it wouldn‘t work in civ with its shorter eras, and one does not need to copy stuff all the time.

 

[TomKQT]

• How the era score is accumulated feels often „gamey“ and unreasonable to me. Why not fix the in-game score and assign golden ages according to this already implemented and far more universal score? You could add another sub-pool for things like historical moments to the score.
• There‘s a strange feeling when I get a dark or golden age for what has already happened in the era before. This can easily lead to golden ages that aren‘t that golden and dark ages in which a civ thrives. I don‘t know how to solve this though. EU4 has a better system for golden ages, but it wouldn‘t work in civ with its shorter eras, and one does not need to copy stuff all the time.

Yea, maybe there should be points for common things that represent how well you really are doing. Something like points for every new city, every new population, every new technology.... Hell, maybe even every battle won (of course there would have to be a scale). Plus those special bonuses for special actions like we have now.

 

[nzcamel]

I think it's a shame the global happiness system got the bad rap it did, because the core idea behind the system is excellent.

Your empire requires a certain level of happiness before you can expand in Civ 5. It doesn't matter whether you're talking expanding "wide" (new city) or "tall" (bigger city), either way expansion is dependent on the happiness of your empire. If you expand before you have the happiness, you get into trouble.

In a way it still exists in Civ 6 through empire wide luxuries feeding into local amenities. Unfortunately, since yields have been tilted towards unworked buildings in Civ 6, the easiest way to manage the happiness system in Civ 6 is just to skip it, keep your pop low, and sell all of your luxuries, the gold from which grows your empire a lot faster than the people it would make happy ever could.

It broke immersion too much. My people shouldn't be revolting cos we conquered another city, for most of the game. They'd be revolting if I lost too many cities - that makes sense. Yet that way they get happier!?

Neither IV nor VI have it perfect; but they both leave global happiness for dead.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

In a sense, that means we are back at the civ III system of the tech tree being a closed off box for each era. There, they argued that they need to open it up so that the game truly feels like a continuous timeline. It‘s funny how we now want to go back there to preconceived ideas how an era should feel/be played. But I do think it‘s the right direction and the solution to the early game > late game problem: the late game should feel like a different game and you can only achieve this with hard cuts. I.e. a vamped up era-system.

Interesting! My first Civ experience was IV (unless you count me not understanding how to play the original when I was a child), so I wasn't aware that's how it used to work. I like the tech tree being a continuous timeline but I definitely think they could give each era a unique flavour with the era system.