[GS] From a Chopper Game to a Pillager Game

[Lily_Lancer]

One short conclusion for GS. The patch worth 0 score because people build "science" cities and pillage again and again. Pillaging yield 500 science/culture per is ridiculous, reducing this to 300 makes no sense and still imbalanced. (By 300 I mean using double card in late game, in mid game usually 100~200 per with card, means a "science" city with 5 mines can yield 500~1,000 science whenever being re-captured).

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Just a screenshot of how much a pillage yields

 

[Archon_Wing]

Yep, as you said before, it was broken. And it ends up being broken.

 

[Victoria]

There Should be a new Pantheon - God of the Harvest - +50% to pillaging
To get rid of that OP Magnus chop they should change it to a +50% pillage within 10 tiles
Everyone is scared of Gilgamesh and do not attack him so we should double the value of a ziggurat for pillaging

A good player will no longer quickly take cities to stop them flipping, they will pillage all tiles first, take the city, repair everything, let it flip and pillage it again.
We will take every city from a civ but one, give all cities back in peace, then come back to that civ later with a light horse cheap pillage army and do it again. Pillaging markets and pastures pays for another pillaging army.
No longer do we avoid small leaf node techs, we pillage to complete them making pillaging stronger.

We warned them, the current pillage design was decided by a pillock.
It has seriously broken the game.

I do not really bother much with chopping, just pillaging now.

 

[Uberfrog]

Oh dear.

The patch notes weren't exactly specific about what has happened to pillaging. Is this a result of the yields scaling with the era, or is there something else I've missed?

 

[Victoria]

Oh dear.

The patch notes weren't exactly specific about what has happened to pillaging. Is this a result of the yields scaling with the era, or is there something else I've missed?

yields scaling like districts
The perfect scenarios is pillaging a line of Ziggurats with light cav.

 

[TomKQT]

I haven't played GS yet (but I already have it installed), so I cannot speak from my own experience. But if this really is broken/overpowered/unbalanced, just like other stuff in the past, then I really don't understand what is the QA team doing. It always seems like if they were playing a completely different game, because the forum is always full of posts saying how something is really breaking the game for the players (like the unit cycle camera jumping etc.) and the developers simply don't see it (not the complains, but the problem itself).

 

[Victoria]

I haven't played GS yet (but I already have it installed), so I cannot speak from my own experience. But if this really is broken/overpowered/unbalanced, just like other stuff in the past, then I really don't understand what is the QA team doing. It always seems like if they were playing a completely different game, because the forum is always full of posts saying how something is really breaking the game for the players (like the unit cycle camera jumping etc.) and the developers simply don't see it (not the complains, but the problem itself).

I think because the science and culture victories have been expanded they have done this to keep them short for agressive or optimal players. The issue is that you can get more off pillaging than building anything yourself, gold could be a Dom challenge, now when a pillage is giving you 300 gold, why bother?

 

[Karmah]

To be honest ,I don't really understand how they can be taken by surprise by inadequates numbers on a game mechanic. I understand not wanting every single customer whining to drive your roadmap , but they have access in this site to very thorough and argumented analysis backed with maths and spreadsheets. How can they not use more such a valuable ressources , given for free and dedicated to their one product. Business wise it makes no sense.

 

[Uberfrog]

I haven't played GS yet (but I already have it installed), so I cannot speak from my own experience. But if this really is broken/overpowered/unbalanced, just like other stuff in the past, then I really don't understand what is the QA team doing. It always seems like if they were playing a completely different game, because the forum is always full of posts saying how something is really breaking the game for the players (like the unit cycle camera jumping etc.) and the developers simply don't see it (not the complains, but the problem itself).

Normally with things like this (and overflow chopping), I’d say it’s because the QA team seems to just play the game as a regular player would, without trying to find exploits or broken mechanics. This is a bad way to QA but I could at least understand how they missed it.

But this pillaging stuff seems so valuable that even a player engaging in some casual domination will notice it. It really boggles my mind how it made it into the finished game. Conquest and pillage was already richly rewarded, so buffing it makes no sense.

 

[Metecury]

Again, just like with chopping, it is only an issue for competitive multilayer.

No one forces anyone to abuse mechanics or to build their game around pillaging.

 

[Victoria]

Again, just like with chopping, it is only an issue for competitive multilayer.

You forget the forum you are in.
Here peoplethat did not use chop complained about it.

 

[Casworon]

Think it was a change to make Norway better but also to encourage pillage wars.

Maybe the numbers could be halved and then Norway gets an update to allow them increased pillage yields?

Slightly less OP but keeps pillage wars as a tactic.

Maybe also have it so tiles and districts cannot be repaired for 10 turns after taking a city. So there is more of a decision between pillaging and conquering

 

[TomKQT]

Maybe also have it so tiles and districts cannot be repaired for 10 turns after taking a city. So there is more of a decision between pillaging and conquering

Or maybe pillaged improvements (not districts) could be completely destroyed when the city changes owner. So if you pillage a tile and then capture the city, you would have to spend a builder charge to get the improvement back.

 

[Casworon]

That's actually a much better idea. Feels more natural

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Or maybe pillaged improvements (not districts) could be completely destroyed when the city changes owner. So if you pillage a tile and then capture the city, you would have to spend a builder charge to get the improvement back.

A builder charge for 364 science? That's not a bad investment.


I think Civ6 shall do that.
Basically
1: Pillaging an already pillaged tile (even if fixed or removed and built new improvement) yields 0.
2: Pillaging a tile which has some pillaged (even if fixed or removed and built new improvement) tiles within 4 range of that tile yields less (-75% yield maybe)

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

You forget the forum you are in.
Here peoplethat did not use chop complained about it.

The basic time line was:

1. people noticed that chopping materially reduced victory times, and pointed this out in the hopes that the dev team would re-balance the game incentives between chopping and leaving resources intact
2. other people complained that the people in #1 were soulless min-maxers whose posts should be ignored as they didn't play the game the "right way"
3. the dev team boosted chopping by introducing Magnus
4. the dev team promised to nerf chopping in GS
5. on the basis of #4, the people from #2 claimed "Ha! That'll show all those people from #1. Now how are they going to win?"

A builder charge for 364 science? That's not a bad investment.


I think Civ6 shall do that.
Basically
1: Pillaging an already pillaged tile (even if fixed or removed and built new improvement) yields 0.
2: Pillaging a tile which has some pillaged (even if fixed or removed and built new improvement) tiles within 4 range of that tile yields less (-75% yield maybe)

The simplest approach would likely to reduce the scalar, so that pillaging values rise more slowly over time. Won't solve the problem completely, but the dev team wants pillaging to be powerful, so I think some scaling is going to continue to take place. It just doesn't need to be quite so pwerful as currently.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

2. other people complained that the people in #1 were soulless min-maxers whose posts should be ignored as they didn't play the game the "right way"

Thanks for the Laugh... Soulless min-maxers... that's a good one!

To be fair, a few weeks ago @Victoria told me/posted publicly that the new chop was going to be pillage and obviously she was right.
It is she isn't it?
Either way, the user name known as Victoria, used the Oracle to predict this long ago.

My beef is that they make the game the way they make it.
They could of fixed this stuff over 10 years ago.
So I buy every game at just about regular price and every expansion.
This isn't good enough though... I have to make 100 rules to the game to play it the "right" way

The real issue is they won't let the modders have the .dll anyway isn't it?
Wouldn't that help fix the game to a degree?
$31.50 doesn't mean much to me but I do feel a bit robbed with Gathering Storm.

Out of all the Expansions I can think of this one has the worst name.
Gods and Kings --- Cool Name.
Brave New World --- Cool Name.
Beyond the Sword --- Cool Name.
Rise and Fall --- Cool Name.
etc etc.

Gathering Storm doesn't make sense to me and it makes me think of a Storm with a name that starts with S---.

Lastly, I bought Civ VI on the release date with some sort of gift card I had so for me it was free.
I played for a week or two and shelved the game for 8 months.
Came back and played Multiplayer and got Rise and Fall and played Multi Player more and more.
Got sick of the Multi-Player issues after over 15 years of playing.
Shelved the game for a bit more and came back to single player and started to post again on Civfanatics.

Gathering Storm is starting to make me want to shelf the game.
IIRC @Trav'ling Canuck refuses to even buy Gathering Storm... correct?

At least I didn't buy Beyond Earth... I knew that was just a cash grab and didn't like the idea.
I beat them that time saving some cash
So they are up like 20 to 1 on me. (over estimating)

Edit:
Don't mind me.
Just ranting a little bit.
I probably will never quit the game.
Just try to focus on faster finish times to make it more fun for me.
However, to be honest, Gathering Storm has finally pushed me to buy EU4 and learn that difficult game.
I hear that learning the UI is the hardest part.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

IIRC @Trav'ling Canuck refuses to even buy Gathering Storm... correct?

"Refuses" makes it sound like a protest of some sort. It's not. I just didn't feel, based on the marketing pitch from Firaxis, that I would enjoy GS, so I decided to wait until people on this forum had the game and could post their impressions. So far, nothing I've read has led me to want to boot up Civ 6 again. Should that change, then I'll buy GS (and/or the third expansion, or whatever's available at that point in the development cycle).

 

[Victoria]

Either way, the user name known as Victoria, used the Oracle to predict this long ago.

Cannot remember who, @Lily_Lancer was also complaining as was @Trav'ling Canuck , anyone who used the pillage card in the old days to get 100 gold appreciated the stupidity this would bring.
However, I have suggested this may be intentional to allow min/maxxers to still sub200
I’m gonna play Scythia tonight and just have 3 cities and send through waves of horse/corsairs/cavalry to loot every civ again and again on deity coz they will have more cities and more district buildings... mwahahaha