Fall patch discussion thread

[isau]

I don't know if this is a pre-patch issue or not, but one thing I've noticed is that the AI is causing its Settlers to pace back and forth instead of walking to a position. I used the Reveal All cheat to watch how the AI handles its Settlers, and it seems to be struggling extremely hard with narrow terrain. Settlers will walk back and forth in place or just sit in the capital for turn after turn doing nothing.

To push things even further, I experimented with a mod that gave every single Civ the "Expansionist" trait that Trajan has. It worked... sort of. Everyone built lots of Settlers. But the Settlers often didn't get where they needed to go. As long as at least one Settler is out there, the AI won't build another. So they just hang and never expand. This definitely needs another look.

On the plus side, I'll release a mod tomorrow with the Expanionist for Everyone trick. It does at least make the game somewhat better, in that AIs who aren't tricked by terrain do expand.

 

[aguliondew]

I just realized that you can not sell the extra great aritist/writers/musicians back .

 

[spfun]

1) The AI spams joint wars now. Every game post patch I'm in a constant state of defensive war. ( As i like playing with 5-6 cities only, I don't take there cities ) This is worse than release version.
2) AI doesn't escort settlers better now - This patch note is false
3) I haven't seen much improvement with the AI, one game they sent over an inquisitor and just sit it in my land for 10 turns while I grew frustrated i couldn't improve the tile until it moved... In an immortal game Spain managed to have around 400 tourism by the end of the game which I haven't seen before. America had early cavalry one game... Still along way to go. IMO the AI in civ6 is worse than it was in vanilla civ5, at least there the game was easier to play for the AI. It didn't need as huge bonuses to play...
4) I finally used some planes and noticed the animations are the same awfully long flying animations as they did in civ 5, something i complained about to no end! Luckily the animations are terrible in Civ 6 so i have them turned off after the first few games. ( I liked civ5 animations, had them on for like 1k hours! )

 

[Marlowe65]

These terrible tech quotes, just kill my vibe.

Agreed. I thought the quotes in Civ IV were far more atmospheric. Though maybe it was just Leonard Nimoy. While I have nothing against Boromir or Ned Stark, I've loved Mr. Spock since I met him in September 1966, a week before my thirteenth birthday.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Played another post-patch game. After reading that Great Generals bonus stack (???), I had to try it out as Rome. Sure enough, they do, and with 2 classical era great generals you can conquer an entire map with 4-move, 54-strength legions. Kinda fun.

Anyway, in my first post-patch game, I had a pretty isolated start and didn't observe the AI too much. In this game I observed closely, and I regret to say that the patch has clearly not fixed the main AI behavior problems.

--The AI still doesn't protect its settlers. The patch claims it's better, but I was seeing unescorted settlers all over the place. Firaxis, the game has an escort feature! Program the AI to escort settlers 100% of the time. If there's no unit available to escort a settler, the settler should wait inside the city until there is. There is no reason for AI settlers to ever venture out alone.
--The AI still sometimes refuses to expand. Norway sat at one city! A Deity AI that can't get to two cities! This might have had something to do with Norway failing to clear a barb camp that was literally four tiles away from their capital, and thus being flooded with barbarian horse units. Just sad.
--The AI still doesn't always maintain a modern military. The last AI I had to conquer was Russia. It was about 100 BC or so by the time my Legions got there. They encountered... one knight and about five or six warriors. This should never happen on Deity! Arabia and Japan were able to pose bigger challenges by very quickly teching to Mamelukes and Samurai respectively. (Arabia had Mamelukes before I had Legions, even though I beelined Iron Working from the start!) But if there's no unique unit, the AI doesn't seem to bother.

The only thing I can say the patch has definitely fixed is city-state militaries. Those look much better. But the AI civs are still a mess, I'm sorry to say.

 

[Japper007]

Played to a religious victory on Diety, the AI is still dumb as a brick sadly.

AI still doesnt expand, at all, nor does it build any of the useful districts (it does build a lot of Holy Sites and Encampments though). So it ends up with a handful of cities without any yields. You can give the AI massive yield boosts, but even a 100% bonus on nothing... is nothing.
It's tactical skill is still pathetic, I wiped Russia with 3 slingers and a warrior. Then I spent the rest of the game watching England ineffectually smash units into Brazil, gaining one city in 100+ turns, and this was with her having Redcoats and him still at ancient/classical units.

On the brighter side; the religious game is much improved. But because the units are now stronger but more expensive the AI has gotten worse at defending itself. Had 4 Diety civs fully converted before 1200...

 

[GhostSalsa]

Settlers settlers settlers. Why don't they just make AI settlers behave as combat units when attacked. There's no step-on mechanic in civ that doesn't lead to self-destructive AI behavior so there's no step-on mechanic that should be in the game.

 

[BlackWizard]

Played 10 turns of a new game as Rome on emperor/fractal/standard. Here's what I noticed.

1) Started next to China, he proceeds to give me a free 2nd city with an unescorted settler... This only happens with the bonus settlers given to the AI on higher difficulties.
2) The border expansion info covers up the tile too much, it also changed to a different tile mid way through expanding...
3) Ghandi whom I hadn't met is unhappy I DoW China. ( the turn after I met him he told me this )
4) Turning off auto unit cycle makes me click unit has orders each turn when I just have the starting warrior. Nothings selected initially each turn.
5) My starting location had no luxuries of any kind in its radius, which is a first for me in 250 hours.

When I start a new game in DX12 It didn't center on my settler and warrior but at the edge of my screen( most of my screen is fog ) also noticed what seemed like worse performance so I went back to the default.

AI gets extra settler only on deity not on Emperor Moderator Action: <snip>

Moderator Action: If you can't post in a respectful manner, don't post.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

I'm happy with the update, many steps in the right direction.

 

[Onii-chan]

AI gets extra settler only on deity not on Emperor you ******* *****

AI gets an extra settler on Emperor and Immortal, 2 extra settlers on Deity. This isn't Civ V, sorry

Though if you use the "Smoother Difficulty" mod, then it'll be true again (and replaced with higher resource yield bonuses instead)

 

[Sascha77]

So far I haven't seen anything in terms of economy that would scale with difficulty in VI. Or are there discounts to unit/building upkeep on the lower levels? I admit I haven't examined gold flow that closely. If not, then it means the system has been designed for the average low difficulty player to be able to handle the upkeep, which makes it way too easy for more skilled players. Deity AI will also have a lot more gold to trade you, to make it even easier.

I haven't done the math, so I'm purely stating my observations:

In Civ V I can easily run a deficit in the early to mid game - before I get things like markets, city-connections, a wonder like Machu Picchu or certain policies online. Especially if I decide to/am forced to build lots of military.

In VI I haven't seen my income dip into the red *once* so far.


S.

 

[Tech Osen]

I saw a few instances with escorted settlers but kindda the other way around. Military units going to war with a settler attached...

 

[Sascha77]

Nearly forgot:

The AI does seem to be less likely to declare war super early or to declare pointless early wars (like one turn after they discovered you when they are half a world away from you and have no units within range of your cities).

I've started multiple games to see if the early aggro was still a thing, but so far I haven't been declared upon once.

AI relations still seem messed up or are displayed incorrectly. In my recent game my relation with Gandhi had four "bullet-points", three of them positive, one negative. The overall value was something like +7 or +8 and he was still listed as "unfriendly" for some reason.

S.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I haven't done the math, so I'm purely stating my observations:

In Civ V I can easily run a deficit in the early to mid game - before I get things like markets, city-connections, a wonder like Machu Picchu or certain policies online. Especially if I decide to/am forced to build lots of military.

In VI I haven't seen my income dip into the red *once* so far.


S.

Managing early gold is definitely not a challenge in Civ VI. The early game units as well as the cities themselves are all maintenance free. You'd have to really try to run out of money. And if you ever did start running a deficit, that awesome -1 maintenance cost per unit policy comes very early.

Personally, I'd like to see them add 1 maintenance back to warriors and slingers and reintroduce mild city maintenance. That would make the early game a bit more tense economically. I'd also nerf the maintenance reduction cards.

 

[narmox]

AI relations still seem messed up or are displayed incorrectly. In my recent game my relation with Gandhi had four "bullet-points", three of them positive, one negative. The overall value was something like +7 or +8 and he was still listed as "unfriendly" for some reason.

Remember that the displayed values are per-turn modifiers and not absolute values, so he could still be unfriendly with a +20 though that would reach neutral/friendly much faster than +8. How much faster? No idea, I'm sure some people did the math, but most of the numbers are hidden by default so it's hard to say...

 

[Victoria]

I got lost more joint declarations of war against me last night.
I suspect this is to do with buffing their eagerness to win but it may just be my bad.

 

[elitetroops]

In Civ V I can easily run a deficit in the early to mid game - before I get things like markets, city-connections, a wonder like Machu Picchu or certain policies online. Especially if I decide to/am forced to build lots of military.

In VI I haven't seen my income dip into the red *once* so far.

Yes, this is exactly the problem. In Civ IV if I go heavy on early expansion I can even run a deficit at 0% science slider, then I have to work out other ways to pay for everything and to keep the science slider up. This is a big factor in making the game challenging.

It seems difficulty doesn't have much of an effect at all on your own empire in Civ VI. Difficulty only adds some more units to the AI, gives them a combat bonus against you and give them some production modifiers. I think difficulty should apply to many more areas. Apart from what was already there in Civ IV (higher upkeep, higher tech costs and so on) it would fit very well to add a difficulty multiplier to district cost increase. On the lower levels district cost increase shouldn't be as steep as it is now. The current rate, max out at 600, is good for deity. On settler difficulty it should probably max out at 300 or something like that. Keep chop yields increasing at the same rate for all difficulties, even if district cost increases slower on lower difficulties, otherwise you only nerf lower difficulties.

Maybe even some eurekas could scale with difficulty? All those that require you have some kind of improvement, a certain amount of units of a specific type and so on could require you have more of them on deity. If the early eurekas required 2 pastures, 2 farms on resources, 2 mines on resources, 2 quarries and maybe 5 or 6 mines for Apprenticeship, then they wouldn't all be automatic, like they often are now. Craftmanship requiring 4 or 5 improvements would also lead to a lot of interesting decisions.

AI should definitely get a massive combat bonus against barbarians. I really don't want to see a deity AI struggling with barbs.

 

[Sascha77]

AI should definitely get a massive combat bonus against barbarians. I really don't want to see a deity AI struggling with barbs.

Good point.

Although I wonder how much this is down to the AI-leaders and how much to the barb's behavior and their "rule-set".

- barb camps spawn super early (I guess on turn 0?) and they can pop up just a few tiles from your cities.
- plus they can spawn units at an insane rate.
- barbs are much less "docile" than in Civ V where the occupying unit would practically always stay within the camp and not move out towards your approaching units to engage them. In VI they nearly always leave the camp to go after my ranged units (which is actually pretty scary when you're still on slingers).

So if you're unlucky, you can get a barb camp spawning one "top of the line" unit for three or four turns in a row and all that just three or four tiles from your capital (it has happened to me.. should've taken a screenshot ).

After that happened to me and nearly ruined my game, I understood why I had also seen AI leaders get suppressed by constant waves of barbarians. This suppression happened quite often in my games, especially to AI leaders that were isolated on an island.

Personally, I'd like to see them add 1 maintenance back to warriors and slingers and reintroduce mild city maintenance. That would make the early game a bit more tense economically. I'd also nerf the maintenance reduction cards.

Yup. It would also require a bit more finesse than simply plopping down one city after the other. If ICS was reined in by, say, city maintenance based on distance or overall city count, it would offer an alternative path and sort of re-introduce the "tall"-option.

And why not? With districts I could easily see getting an incentive to go tall rather than wide... perhaps link the number of available districts to your overall number of cities or increase cost of district-construction with every new city you found (sort of like how policy-cost went up in Civ V for every new city you founded).

Adding alternative strategies to the game can only be good. As it is now, the only viable strategy against the ICS-crazy AI is to "out-settle" them and grab land quicker than they can.



S.

 

[RealHuhn]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it already but trade routes got nerfed.
Harbor and IZ only give +1 production, holy site and theatre only +1 food ... instead of +2.

Also, I've run into a strange problem.
In late medieval, Gilgamesh declared war against me. After ~10-15 turns, my capital's war weariness increased quite rapidly up to +9 a few turns later (only in my cap, the rest of my cities didn't bother).
I pushed him back and conquered one of his cities. I got a warmonger (diplo) penalty of +9 across the board !! This is definitely new. After that, my capital went back to zero!!! Makes no sense.
And it got worse. Sumeria only had 4 cities and I conquered all of them. In the patch notes, it said you receive a heavy penalty for wiping out a civ. Ok, it increased to +32 which was to be expected I guess. But on the next turn or few turns later (not sure), the heavy penalty was applied a 2nd time to +64 !!! For a war that was declared against me. I had several friends in this game but obviously, diplomacy was ruined for the rest of the game.

The AI on Immortal didn't update their units at all. It was even worse than before. I was fighting slingers (!!!) and archers with tanks.

Overall, this patch just feels very buggy to me.

 

[Browd]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it already but trade routes got nerfed.
Harbor and IZ only give +1 production, holy site and theatre only +1 food ... instead of +2.

Presumably that change corrects the bug reported here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-reason-trade-routes-are-so-strong.604074/