External vs. internal conflicts in Civ6

Prester John 2

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One thing I dislike in Civ6 is that almost all military conflicts are between civs whereas in history much conflict happened within civs/states: contestations of succession, breakup of larger states into smaller ones, peasant and slave revolts, confessional wars. Think of the succession (Diadochi) wars after the death of Alexander, or the multiple civil wars and uprisings in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. Major wars between great powers where not that frequent compared to internal wars. Sure, civs has the possibility of civil uprisings in the late part of the game (spies instigating barbarian units to appear) and if you experience severe dissatisfaction but this is fairly minor. How do you think this could better be represented in Civ6 and possibly Civ7? Is it only me who sees this as a problem?
 
Is the Dramatic Ages game mode not what you are asking for here?
Loyalty in civ is just a cheap mock by population. It doesn't reflect underlying problems in pre-nationalist empires.

Civ city building is more like that for a modern country, a Greek city-state or like British empire's colonies, where the trust level within the government is almost 100%.

In Diadochi, giving command to a general could mean entire army rebel and finish you off - that's exactly how Seleucid was started. Checks and balances were everywhere in big empires and it wasn't pure paranoia. Even crown princes had turned against their own fathers.
 
One thing I dislike in Civ6 is that almost all military conflicts are between civs whereas in history much conflict happened within civs/states: contestations of succession, breakup of larger states into smaller ones, peasant and slave revolts, confessional wars. Think of the succession (Diadochi) wars after the death of Alexander, or the multiple civil wars and uprisings in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. Major wars between great powers where not that frequent compared to internal wars. Sure, civs has the possibility of civil uprisings in the late part of the game (spies instigating barbarian units to appear) and if you experience severe dissatisfaction but this is fairly minor. How do you think this could better be represented in Civ6 and possibly Civ7? Is it only me who sees this as a problem?
Technically, that is what Independent Cities (Rise and Fall) was meant to portray, but the mechanic is a bit under-developed IMHO. It's yet another area I hope they improve on and deepen in Civ7.
 
I'm interested in knowing what a civil war would look like what with immortal leaders in the game. Sure, for civs with alternate leaders you could have something like Gorgo vs Pericles, but what about, say, Scotland? Robert the Bruce in a yellow tabard vs Robert the Bruce in a blue one?

Yes, immortal leaders are part of the problem. I don't even think that complete breakups into separate civs need to happen (as in civ2 when someone conquered your capital) but I would replace the loyalty mechanic with a stability mechanic where when your empire reaches a certain size it becomes more instable; or if your population encompasses different former civs. When your stability level is too low certain cities or clusters of cities can break away and become either independent or return to their previous civ. That way even you have conquered half the globe you still need an army in the inside of your empire to possibly quell resistance. You could also have rebellious armies of four to five units appear in the countryside and go around pillaging.
 
There is a nice mod which blends Dramatic Ages with normal play. You can have a normal age as usual, but if you get a dark age, you can lose one or more cities to rebellion. Since rebel cities have a military, you may have to fight them. Or they may switch back to your control after a while.
 
There is a nice mod which blends Dramatic Ages with normal play. You can have a normal age as usual, but if you get a dark age, you can lose one or more cities to rebellion. Since rebel cities have a military, you may have to fight them. Or they may switch back to your control after a while.

How is this different from Dramatic Ages?
 
Dramatic Ages used to be an irk to me particularly when the cities rebel no matter how strong your loyalty was with them but now, with practice, Dramatic Ages has gotten easier and stopped being an irk. Now, I see it as an advantage or a opportunity to take cities from other civilizations who are suffering from this.
 
Civ started as a motorcycle. No matter how many wheels or stuff you put on it, it will never become a car. At least this holds true for up to VI.

If you want this kind of depth that you mention, play paradox games. Civ games have other goals.

This is no attempt to diminish civ, it’s just not that type of game
 
I'm interested in knowing what a civil war would look like what with immortal leaders in the game. Sure, for civs with alternate leaders you could have something like Gorgo vs Pericles, but what about, say, Scotland? Robert the Bruce in a yellow tabard vs Robert the Bruce in a blue one?
I think the simplest solution is just add a directional prefix or a governmental title and change the leader's clothing color
 
In Dramatiic Ages it is impossible to have a normal age.
There is a mod that fixes this FYI - I use it BUT the AI is still bad at dealing with it. I played a TSL map and all of Western Europe collapsed into darkness by the dawn of the medieval era. Scythia grew massive and Norway clung to their cities in the north but no AI was capable of penetrating the dark, dark continent of rebellious Europe.
 
I would love to see some new system that applies the Loyalty concept from Civ 6 but also picked the borders friction and nationalities % from Civ 4. That was a nice touch. Also, I don't think immortal leaders are necessarily the problem here, as they can work the system around 'factions' (CS type) instead of a civ.

would be dope free cities on Civ6 have some threshold to become a new random civ/leader from the game pool. there's a mod for this?
 
No I don't see the problem, sorry.

I guess whatever internal conflicts which leads to "free cities" can be left up to the player's imagination anyway.

Technically, that is what Independent Cities (Rise and Fall) was meant to portray, but the mechanic is a bit under-developed IMHO. It's yet another area I hope they improve on and deepen in Civ7.

Yeah, I think there's some good potential here, even in dramatic ages mode. But where the game falls apart is that they don't explore the concepts, and it's too easy to "game" the system.

For example, if I am invading a civ, maybe the first city I capture from them you have loyalty troubles. But generally speaking, when you push in and capture their big capital city, that entire population immediately becomes loyal to you and pushes their loyalty on the neighboring cities. For me, most of my conquests is basically shuffling around governors until I capture enough of another civ that I stop caring about that anymore. IMO it needs to be a LOT longer after conquest that you gain loyalty. I mean, even a lot of internal conflicts in modern times are based on historical conquests. Quebec has "loyalty" problems in some respects because they were "captured" by the English 200 years ago. Similar with Catalan or Scottish independence movements, in many ways. I mean, obviously there's a million other factors, and it's not like Barcelona is breaking away to become a free city from the Spanish empire, but in civ terms, those are areas where you should need to perhaps have a governor stationed to prevent things.

Now, granted, everything in civ is abstractions, but I think some things to consider for the next version if they really want to represent this more:
-cities when captured should not be loyal to the new civ, and should continue to "fight" for their independence. If you wipe out a civ, you should need a governor stationed in their empire for like 50 turns after conquest to prevent rebellion.
-There should be perhaps more levels of rebellion and loyalty. Right now it's a little too much to basically be either 0% or 100%. Perhaps cities should be spawning partisans before fully flipping loyalty
-Larger empires should have penalties applied, and be forced to manage loyalty more. Again, not like "OMG my cities flip independent" every 40 turns, but like if war weariness gave even more negatives to loyalty as well as just happiness, maybe you should run into cases where if you stay in a long drawn-out war you really start having to manage problems both at home and abroad.
-It should also be harder to snowball era score. While I don't think it needs to be as strict as "after a golden age you should go into a dark age", the game rewards you too much for being ahead. Like my last game, once you start getting in the lead and conquering, it's just too easy to get more era score for wiping out civs, being the first to the next era, completing districts, etc... that most games I overshoot the era score needed by a ton. And then you get another golden age, with more bonuses, which makes you even more likely to continue and get more score, and get another golden age, etc... And since golden ages give you even further bonuses to loyalty, that also continues the cycle. If you make it exceedingly difficulty to chain too many golden ages together, I think that could at least simulate a little bit of internal conflict for civs that get a little too high and mighty

Again, I don't want my empire collapsing when you get too big, but I always feel too much of the trouble with civ is that I can have a big empire with an army that's spending 500 years wandering the globe wiping out everyone in existence, and everyone back home is busy building wonders, upgrading libraries, building sewer systems, and only barely needing to worry about the war. Like, even in Carl and Ed's stream, once Carl got his walls up, and had a few archers and swordsmen around that he felt safe, he was right back to trying to build wonders and infrastructure, despite his empire being at siege. Sure, at some point you should be able to turn back and continue growing, but in the game, especially once you have a little cushion, it's so easy to simply never worry again about your homeland, and be all too calm.
 
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