[GS] Does anyone else hate the World Congress?

[Staal]

The pop-ups are annoying, interrupting my train of thought.

The decisions are meaningless and uninteresting.

A modern UN theme before the Modern Era? It is so jarring.

Worst, most painful addition to the game.

EDIT: Wrong sub-forum. Feel free to move.

 

[Victoria]

Some decisions I find very useful, in particular the cheap production for buildings in a district can really boost your game. Comes around the right time too.
The voting for a military emergency is also rather useful. You settle a bait city near them ensuring it does not rebel and then let them surprise capture it... 150 grievances for a surprise war +50 for the city = enough for a military emergency which helps with pillaging. Then there is the -5 loyalty which is not just for the twins, I have found it useful flipping cities as any civ.

Other than that I despise it.
Unknown civs voting from behind a bamboo curtain.
emergencies that are voted on decades if not centuries later
Great people races you have won before you start
The midas emergency where you get your feet wet and everyone covers you with gold despite being filthy rich to start with.
and the voting for dipv is a touch contrived.
Fine with the mechanic, would be nice if there was an "I will not attend" option for those times you cannot be bothered as the screens are annoying in combination with all the diplomacy screens. It is a question of how fast you play I guess, some will love the immersive quality and we must respect that part.

but yes I wonder who loves it.
Shall we suggest it as a vote in the next world congress?
I feel it is OK in the general forum as it is not suggesting new ideas just asking peoples feelings.

 

[Tiger Genocide]

If they never improve it or make it relevant, I hope we are able to remove it via a mod in the future. That said, I hope it is not made stronger than Civ5s WC. That congress could really kick your butt at times, especially if you play with Vox Populi.

 

[SirWill90]

The pop-ups are annoying, interrupting my train of thought.

The decisions are meaningless and uninteresting.

A modern UN theme before the Modern Era? It is so jarring.

Worst, most painful addition to the game.

EDIT: Wrong sub-forum. Feel free to move.

Yes! I find it annoying and pointless. If there were a box that could be checked to disable it without disabling the rest of GS, I would check it. The resolutions end up just being random small bonuses/penalties that make almost no difference or just are super annoying. The ghost votes where it interrupts my play so I can click a meaningless acknowledgment box... wow. The international body that I am a member of and by whose decisions I am bound despite not being in contact with many of the members - that’s a special kind of stupid. It really needs a complete rework, or to be removable in my opinion.

 

[XplosiveLun]

From thematic standpoint, world congress in early age is rather immersion breaking. How could a regional power affect far away nations with paperwork? Still, the only possible explanation is that some nations' decision can affect other nations like establishing Silk Road or Colonization that benefit a wide range of countries.

Besides, I'd like to see a "Holy Roman Empire mechanic" in Civ 6. I think world congress kinda resemble that. What Europa Universalis 4 did is basically a number of semi-independent countries obligated to a slightly stronger country, which in turn protect them and gradually gain more power.

In Civ 6, continents mechanic can be used to represent a collection of geopolitical boundaries between nations. Nations can vote in the local congress to affect things in the continents they inhabit. For example, France, British, and other counties on the European continents on matters of Colonization. They vote under the overseeing of Papal State (the congress) on which countries would get bonus or penalty on oversea colonization. The result would only affect European counties.

While some congress resolution might result in a coalition affecting counties in more than 1 continents. For example, France and Ottoman fears the expansion of von Habsburg and Spain, resulting in major wars.

 

[_ViKinG_]

Im not finding it interesting either. Just vote something because i have to and i dont care about the resolutions. I want WC in the game but it's not fun now. If a civ take a city state for example and a resolution comes up and your able to join alliance and take the city back, the AI cant even take the city from it again

 

[Architect]

Diplomatic Victory is something that could be so much better.

Why are friends and alliances (being a good diplomat) meaningless?

Why do city states have no impact other than a currency?

Following up on Holy Roman Empire mechanic idea why not make the "Congress" something that meets in the middle ages with only the civs and city states you are friends with and/or have met? OR even more interesting have it be a meeting of all your friends, alliances, and suzerains only.

Basically there is no reason that multiple different configurations of world congresses can't meet until some later era when it makes more sense. Right now what we have is just lazy. Its especially annoying when I get told there's a world congress session but I'm not a party to it! So its already kinda there just commit. Bring alliances into the fray in some way making voting blocks more obvious and rewarding the use of diplomacy. You should probably not be able to win a Diplomatic Victory without at least 1 level 3 alliance for example. Maybe as alliance level increases you start to see how your allies will vote and it costs more and favor to vote against them until it becomes impossible to when you are fully allied.

How the WC is in the game in GS and not meshed with the diplomacy system tells me the GS WC is a placeholder and will be a big rework for the next expansion. We can only dream...

 

[WillowBrook]

I can't say I love it, but I certainly don't hate it. I was sceptical when they added victory points for voting for the winning resolution, but now I think that was definitely an improvement.

I feel like I need another six or eight games (which will take me several months) to really be able to form an opinion, by which time there will probably be other significant changes to it....

 

[steveg700]

Well, "hate" is a strong word to use with something so undeserving of strong emotion.

I already have a thread here about the "diplomatic victory dogpile", so I shan't revisit that here specifically except to say it is damnably insipid to lose 3 DV points on a vote where everyone, allies included, gangs up on the leader.

And you don't see any votes coming up on the ballot, even a turn beforehand? Who the hell is proposing these things exactly?

And we have multiple threads about aid requests being ridiculous. But suffice to say, my idea is the only reasonable solution, which is to have events to escrow money into a common emergency fund, and then when an aid request comes up, you're just voting on releasing funds to the target.

But by and large, yeah there are just lots of meaningless votes that don't interest me much. It doesn't help that the AI votes for the most boring option consistently (i.e. voting for no Great Admiral points, voting for City Center buildings to receive production boosts).

 

[Krajzen]

In civ5 world congress was simple, intuitive and elegant. Appears in Renaissance era founded by the first civ which discovered all other civs (logical) as a forum for world powers akin to UN, Holy League, Vienna Congress, Treaty of Westphalia etc. You vote for or against proposition and all of them somewhat resemble real life UN proposals.

New congress is hilarious fail because
it abandoned all forms of intuition, restrsint and realism in mad pursuit of MAXIMIZATION OF FUN AND SPECTACLE!!!

So now it appears immerison-breakingly early (EARLIER! MORE FUN!), ridiculously somehow works with half of participants not even knowing each other (EARLIER MORE FUN! NO TIME TO WAIT FOR EXPLORATION ERA!), and has some crazy mechanics of tv quiz show that can suddenly spawn huge, unavoidable boosts and penalties out of the thin air to keep you EXCITED.

 

[Elhoim]

In civ5 world congress was simple, intuitive and elegant. Appears in Renaissance era founded by the first civ which discovered all other civs (logical) as a forum for world powers akin to UN, Holy League, Vienna Congress, Treaty of Westphalia etc. You vote for or against proposition and all of them somewhat resemble real life UN proposals.

New congress is hilarious fail because
it abandoned all forms of intuition, restrsint and realism in mad pursuit of MAXIMIZATION OF FUN AND SPECTACLE!!!

So now it appears immerison-breakingly early (EARLIER! MORE FUN!), ridiculously somehow works with half of participants not even knowing each other (EARLIER MORE FUN! NO TIME TO WAIT FOR EXPLORATION ERA!), and has some crazy mechanics of tv quiz show that can suddenly spawn huge, unavoidable boosts and penalties out of the thin air to keep you EXCITED.

This. The rules and mechanics are so detached from any plausibility that breaks the engagement of the player.

 

[Staal]

Glad some of you mentioned that. Why would you get a production bonus simply because The People Will It? We demand that it exists, therefore it does, hmm...

 

[shaglio]

The decisions are meaningless and uninteresting.

This isn't always the case. In my current game as Freleanor, I had just finished getting my Theater Squares built when the WC proposed a ban on Great Writers for 30 turns. Well played, AI, well played

 

[racha]

I don't hate it, but there are definite improvements that could be made. One example would be not to bother me when there's a vote that I'm not able to participate in - a notification at the side of the screen would do fine. On a related note, there's a one or two mouse clicks that could be done away with.

It would also be nice if the NPCs weren't Negative Nancies over everything - if there's a luxury vote they *always* vote option B, even if they're sitting on a tonne of duplicates. If there's a diplomatic victory vote, you might as well vote for yourself to lose points because they *will* vote option B and they'll almost certainly vote against you. Weirdly and conversely, they won't vote against a scored competition even if it's obvious the human player is going to win by a light year.

I realise that the NPC decision-making tree isn't exactly the Civ brand's selling point, but a little more strategic "thought" by my adversaries would be nice. Failing that, a little randomness from them; they certainly have no trouble being bi-polar in some other aspects of the game.

 

[SirWill90]

This isn't always the case. In my current game as Freleanor, I had just finished getting my Theater Squares built when the WC proposed a ban on Great Writers for 30 turns. Well played, AI, well played

Yeah, true, and I have seen similar things in my games. But to me, the AI having a confirmed ability to troll the player just for the sake of trolling them is just more reason for me to find something else to spend my limited PC gaming time on. It’s like the joke of Diplomatic Victory... AI will automatically vote against the player, even allies... why even have it. Why design such a mechanic?

The whole WC (as it now exists) is a blight on the game if you ask me - more ways for the AI to make the game arbitrarily annoying. I think it could be salvaged but it would take a lot of changes and in the meantime I hope they give the ability to disable it in GS. Not a realistic hope, I know.

 

[Bitterman]

Yeah is the most annoying thing of the game right now. Not only for me but for my friends also. If they want to improve it the should do something like this:

-It should be founded like in Civ5. Modern era and by the first nation that met everyone. This would also enhance the meaning of the middle-late game with the inclusion of a new mechanic. Right now it makes absolutely 0 sense with civs that you don't know nothing about meeting in a congress and voting things that could affect you (and yet you never meet them though).

-Make it so there is a rotating leader making MEANINGFUL proposals in combination with someone else (maybe the one with the most suzerainities or diplo favour per turn). This also gives compensation for having the most diplo power and turns diplomacy into a weapon which you can use to defend yourself against another kind of agression. Get rid of that Random crap that no one cares about.

-Get rid of meaningless bonuses and proposals with no impact. Make it so you have to carefully think what are you going to vote for and make other AI's care about what you voted, like it was in Civ5. If you lack in diplomacy and mess with the cool guy you should have a problem.

-Bring back those votes of "the religion of the world" and "the ideology of the world" that gave you advantages for having a particular religion or ideology. That thing was capable of building ideological blocks that would eventually go to war with each other.

-Also like I said in another thread: make it so allies have to spend double diplo points to vote against you in the congress when DV is on the board. This is a joke right now for god's shake.

There's so much that could be improved if only they got rid of the RNG crap.

 

[Victoria]

Bring back those votes of "the religion of the world" a

It’s there, I even think it’s called that.

 

[kryat]

Honestly, I don’t completely hate the mechanics. I think they’re fine, but could be refined.

What I hate is the uninspiring UI. There should be more to prominence on the attendees and tool tips to show what they may or may not be considering, to the point that that should have equal space on the screen to the proposals. Civ V’s UI made it feel like you were at a meeting. The UI in VI makes me feel like I’m filling out a ballot.

Other suggestions for improvement:
-Abstaining should be an option
-There should be leading turns to see what the proposals are before voting, so that favor may be bargained for if one wants to vote for the proposals available
-Having a floor leader who sets proposals is good in theory, but would need safeguards against the AI dominating. Maybe whoever comes in with the least greivences?
-CSs should incorporate more strongly

And the more ambitious goal:
There should be the option for multiple congresses that you can propose to form, petition to join, secede from, or be kicked out of. Think how the US or the EU are both simultaneous independent voting bodies. They could even have alternate organizational structures that they could design at time if the founding, like deciding how favor is earned. IE: some might prefer awarding favor for being suzerain, some might prefer based on number of cities, some might prefer based on science output, etc.

 

[Bitterman]

It’s there, I even think it’s called that.

Really? I think I never saw it.

What does it do?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think they should've changed the mechanics a kin to Civ 5.

Top 3 of the world pick 3 proposals, they pick a target and what the proposal is.

The next turn/round/phase, the world votes, if they vote in favor, it passes as proposed, if it however fails, the OPPOSITE happens (i.e option B), so if you picked a -50% reduction in cost, if it fails, it goes to +100% increase in cost.

It allows you to directly influence the world, is less random, and more controlled.