If anyone is interested, the Developer discussion about the Amenities changes is
here.
Anton (I think) discusses the goal as being to stretch out the range of happiness scores more and to make negative Amenities more tough. But there is also discussion around making Amenities harder or more demanding by removing the free starting Amenities, so clearly that was the intention.
I'm happy basically playing with the existing change for now, but
@lockstep 's mod. I also think
@pokiehl 's mod is a good approach, but obviously goes further than the existing design.
Honestly, I feel like every balance change is three steps forward two steps backwards.
- Remove free Amenity, but sort of softball it as discussed above.
- Nerf Envoys, but over nerf Mercantile City State Envoys by making them +1/+2/+3 like the other yields even thought Gold is worth half as much.
- Buff Production / IZs, but don't adequately buff Workshop and make Lumbermills more boring (by losing any adjacency for Rivers).
- Buff Coastal Cities, but introduce this weird Shipyard +1 for unimproved tiles, so you gain a +1 for fish, then lose it when you build a fishing boat, then get it back again when you research Exploration.
- Buff Religious Beliefs, but stop short of really doing more with Religion like late game Reformation Beliefs, more Unit Diversity, more interaction with Loyalty (although the increased integration with Diplomacy is a good change);
- Buff T2 Government Plaza Buildings, but don't touch Audience Chamber which seemingly no one uses (I mean, it's fine, but clearly needs FXS to bring back sexy for the Audience Chamber, if you know what I mean).
- Introduce Policy Cards that can only be used with T3 or T4 Governments ... but don't allow the T3 ones to be used with equivalent T4 Governments (e.g. you can use Arsenal of Democracy with Democracy, but not with Digital Democracy), with the result that T4 Governments can end up a worse choice overall because you lose access to key cards.
- Introduce new disasters, but still no Earthquakes.
- Introduce Zombies, but don't add them into their Gonzo End of the World Game Mode (I mean, I can't really hold that against them, but it does seem like a missed opportunity).
- Cliffs of Dover. I mean, I really didn't care if these got buffed or not. Totally fine as they were. But if they were going to get buffed, the Appeal thing was a very underwhelming way to do it. Just give the Cliffs adjacencies like Ik-Kil or Paititi, or additional GPPs or something if you own a tile like Zhangye Danxia. It's not hard.
- Introduce Natural Wonder Picker, but not a City State Picker or way to exclude specific Civs.
- Rework Soothsayers a little, but don't really tackle the problem that they're kinda boring as implemented and there aren't any other options for messing with disasters in Apocalypse Mode.
- Introduce cool Secret Societies, but they don't seem to be particularly secret or have anything to do with Societies, discovering them is kinda tedious (particularly with the very obtrusive Pop-up triggering four times every game), and the Governor Titles just make an otherwise interesting game mode OP.
- Military still a mess, with lots of problematic unit gaps, AC and their promotions still suck, and Aircraft Carriers being basically useless. Naval units still deeply suck.
- Neighbourhoods, Sewers still basically useless (although, forgivable not reworking these until there's a better w vs t balance overall) . Science Adjacencies, Natural Philosophy and Rationalism-type cards still OP.
I promise I'm not slamming NFP or the Community Updates or FXS, which seems to be flavour of the month with some people lately. I’m sure this is all much harder to do than it looks. But, from the outside looking in, I do think FXS seem to be doing all this awesome work with NFP and the Community Updates, really putting in the time, but then somehow keep ending up at "good, but not great"...
At least a lot of this little stuff can be tweaked with Mods. I still feel like I'm playing Civ VI as intended when I do that, I'm just adding in the tweaks FXS will eventually add themselves.
But it is all getting a bit maddening.
@Sostratus any chance you get join the Firaxis QC/QA team? Maybe you could also get
@Boris Gudenuf to advise on the historical stuff? And then we'll get
@Eagle Pursuit to leak all the details here? ;-)
[Edit: added some additional points e.g. COD.]