[GS] Gathering Storm General Discussion Thread

A few thoughts about the changes to resources and IZs:

Although we haven’t seen any indications that resources are finite, that would totally be in line with the overall environmental impact philosophy of GS. I don’t think we can rule it out yet. If true, the accumulation bonus cards might also mean that you deplete the sources faster. I sort of miss the days of AoE where your villagers would, one by one, strip mine all the gold out each pocket on the map. I could see this returning for some types of resources, because I think the devs like the idea of making you come to terms with a barren earth if you are aggressive at resource exploitation.

Even with infinite resources though there also is a certain truth in an earlier post about once a unit dies that took a resource to build, that resource is gone forever. Let’s pretend you accumulate 2 horse per turn and it takes 20 to build a horseman. You build your pony and it dies in battle. That’s no longer just turns of production disappearing into the void, but also turns of accumulation. That’s 10 turns you’ll never get back. It’s also a clever limiter in production speed. It will now take at least N turns to accumulate enough resources to build your unit in the first place. Additionally, that new policy card for faster accumulation could make the difference between 2 horsemen out in 40 turns, or 4 out in the same time. BUT, it also means running that card and not using a different card. Classic policy trade-off. Who knows, accumulation might become the new bottleneck instead of production. That would definitely make chopping less valuable.

There’s also some major changes coming to IZs that make them more valuable. We’ve seen several indications that there will be significant choices to make in industrial era and later. I am very curious what the coal plants do. It stands to reason that coal or nuclear plants will cost some strategic resources in per turn upkeep. With this in mind, there should be a massive benefit to using them, given the immense cost. We don’t know yet, but I would expect far more benefit than +3 production in nearby cities.
 
Canals must be the largest black hole for wasted dev resources. AI and modding tools would give a far greater payoffs.

I guess this is in line of crowd pleasers.
 
Canals must be the largest black hole for wasted dev resources. AI and modding tools would give a far greater payoffs.

I guess this is in line of crowd pleasers.
Is this the civ version of "pet battles will cost us another raid-tier!11"?
 
If there’s one thing I know about Kristina, it’s that she’s nobody’s waifu.

I just read about her, she's quite an interesting character, a European leader trying to learn Arabic and Hebrew? That doesn't seem very common to me. Overall I can see why Firaxis would pick her for Sweden, though I don't know much about their history to know if they have other stronger female leaders.

About canals, I'm still a bit puzzled though that the stream didn't have any of them being built. I'm very curious to see if the AI will use them, also if you can intentionally pillage them as a defensive move.
 
Interesting how people call Kristina a waifu, yet it is said about her that she had a deep voice, dressed and behaved like a man and she also looked somewhat masculine.
 
Yeah, Canals are the sort of things that are not really needed a lot, but when you want them, would be really nice to have. My current game I could use them in one spot since I have an inland lake with a 2-tile land stretch to the coast, so if I had a Canal I could have had a couple more cities able to build out a navy. Not necessary, but would have been nice.

Only because Civ VI equalizes land trade routes and water trade routes for some reason. Civ V had it right in that trade routes over water were much much more lucrative just due to the simple fact that a boat can move massive quantities of goods far cheaper and faster than pack animals or carts ever could. Heck, shipping is still a massive industry now. The standard container and container ship and super tankers led to an economic boom not just in American but Japan as well.
 
Interesting how people call Kristina a waifu, yet it is said about her that she had a deep voice, dressed and behaved like a man and she also looked somewhat masculine.
Eleanor looked more masculine than her. :p
P.S. Nobody beats Wilhelmina.
 
Are we certain that Eleanor is a combo leader that can be England OR France? I know the leak suggests that, but it still strikes me as somewhat... difficult. As in "Day 1 Civ6 GS bug report: In my game I am fighting a two front war against Eleanor of England and Eleanor of France wtf Firaxis!"
 
Are we certain that Eleanor is a combo leader that can be England OR France? I know the leak suggests that, but it still strikes me as somewhat... difficult. As in "Day 1 Civ6 GS bug report: In my game I am fighting a two front war against Eleanor of England and Eleanor of France wtf Firaxis!"

There aren't two Eleanors. Just one moving back and forth very quickly …

(just like the Olsen "twins").
 
Are we certain that Eleanor is a combo leader that can be England OR France? I know the leak suggests that, but it still strikes me as somewhat... difficult. As in "Day 1 Civ6 GS bug report: In my game I am fighting a two front war against Eleanor of England and Eleanor of France wtf Firaxis!"

Exactly my problem with this scheme with regards to Eleanor. Why just make her a leader of France only?
 
I think it is a very interesting idea to use a leader for multiple civs and would like to see it implemented more. Maybe we could get some leaders who had pu’s over others? Eleanor being a double leader would also alleviate the glaring lack of multiple leaders per civ. I mean why implement that if you’re only going to add 2 maybe now 3/4 of those leaders..?
 
I think it is a very interesting idea to use a leader for multiple civs and would like to see it implemented more. Maybe we could get some leaders who had pu’s over others? Eleanor being a double leader would also alleviate the glaring lack of multiple leaders per civ. I mean why implement that if you’re only going to add 2 maybe now 3/4 of those leaders..?

If this is true, then you coudl apply it to at least one other leader. Alexander, who has in the past led Greece in Civ xD
 
If this is true, then you coudl apply it to at least one other leader. Alexander, who has in the past led Greece in Civ xD
I'm a fan of Alexander leading the "Booted from Civ Mascot Status" civ. Gandhi can be co-leader. :mischief:
 
A few thoughts about the changes to resources and IZs:

Although we haven’t seen any indications that resources are finite, that would totally be in line with the overall environmental impact philosophy of GS. I don’t think we can rule it out yet. If true, the accumulation bonus cards might also mean that you deplete the sources faster. I sort of miss the days of AoE where your villagers would, one by one, strip mine all the gold out each pocket on the map. I could see this returning for some types of resources, because I think the devs like the idea of making you come to terms with a barren earth if you are aggressive at resource exploitation.

To really make Resource Depletion work, some of the Resources, at least, should be Dynamic: they don't all appear at the same time. Throughout history there have been discoveries of new Resources that spawned sudden changes in a country or civilization's course: Potosi silver for the Spanish, Laurion silver for Athens, Gold Rushes in the USA, Australia, etc. New discoveries are still being made, and a great deal of technological effort goes into continuing that trend. At the very least, there should be a chance of mineral resources appearing as new 'deposits' on the map, or old 'depleted' resources re-appearing when new Technology makes it possible to get at minerals that were out of reach before - deep mining techniques in the early Industrial Era, for instance, or the Open Pit Mechanized Earthmovers available in the Modern/Atomic Eras.
With more care and work, 'natural' resources could also be Renewable. There's no reason Horses, Sheep, Cattle could not be raised on any suitable Tile when you have the proper Animal Husbandry/Domestication/Genetic Engineering(selective breeding - a very old technology) Technologies and Techniques. The same can be said of plant resources: Cotton started as a natural resource in only two places: India and South America, but has been spread world-wide. Same for Silk, Tea, Coffee, Tobacco, Wheat, etc. Limitations are that no matter how technologically advanced you are, some terrain/climate simply won't grow some plants efficiently, and that a Single Resource diet, no matter how efficient, is not good for your population, so planting Rice or Wheat on every available Tile to maximize Food Yields just doesn't work.

Even with infinite resources though there also is a certain truth in an earlier post about once a unit dies that took a resource to build, that resource is gone forever. Let’s pretend you accumulate 2 horse per turn and it takes 20 to build a horseman. You build your pony and it dies in battle. That’s no longer just turns of production disappearing into the void, but also turns of accumulation. That’s 10 turns you’ll never get back. It’s also a clever limiter in production speed. It will now take at least N turns to accumulate enough resources to build your unit in the first place. Additionally, that new policy card for faster accumulation could make the difference between 2 horsemen out in 40 turns, or 4 out in the same time. BUT, it also means running that card and not using a different card. Classic policy trade-off. Who knows, accumulation might become the new bottleneck instead of production. That would definitely make chopping less valuable..

The last thing the game needs is anything that makes Production more difficult: it is already the Bottleneck in the late game. In 1600 hours of playing (I'm a Glutton for punishment!) I have yet to build any air unit at all - takes just too much time and effort for the return on Production investment.

[/QUOTE]There’s also some major changes coming to IZs that make them more valuable. We’ve seen several indications that there will be significant choices to make in industrial era and later. I am very curious what the coal plants do. It stands to reason that coal or nuclear plants will cost some strategic resources in per turn upkeep. With this in mind, there should be a massive benefit to using them, given the immense cost. We don’t know yet, but I would expect far more benefit than +3 production in nearby cities.[/QUOTE]

This is long, long overdue - see comment above. There was a whole Thread going on what changes were needed to really reproduce the effects of the Industrial Revolution in the game, and I hope this indicates that someone at Firaxis read that Thread.
One thing that came up, and bears repeating, is that Railroads were not just a better road, but a massive change in how goods and people could be moved, and an Order of Magnitude change in how fast and how much could be moved. They should usher in massive changes in Trade volume and gold, City growth, and Productivity. We'll see.
 
@Boris Gudenuf, I really like the idea of renewable system and discoverable luxuries. I think you’re right that that would make the game more dynamic. My point with the bottleneck wasn’t that production would be the issue. Rather it was that we may find ourselves in positions where we have the production, but have to wait for strategic resources to sufficiently stockpile. It will be interesting to see how that plays out for aluminum or uranium. I wouldn’t expect late game units to cost absurd amounts of strategic resources to build though. They’ll probably be about equivalent in resource cost as horsemen or swordsmen, which looks to be ~5-20 turns to stockpile enough resources for one unit with one mine.

You’re absolutely right that finding production in the late game is challenging. That’s why I usually end up buying aircraft.
 
Regarding leaders for multiple civs, I would argue that, instead of creating one or two special cases, they should simply rework the civ/leader selection system so that you can choose your civ and leader independently of one another. By default, you'd only have the historical combinations available, but as an advanced setup option, you could use any civ with any leader. This would allow you to create a practically unlimited number of unique factions (40 leaders times 40 civs would mean 1600 possible combinations) and give you the option of either building distinct synergies or finding ways to make less obvious combinations work. The current system, where civ abilities and leader abilities are nominally distinguished but mechanically inseparable in all but a handful of cases, feels like a huge waste of gameplay potential.

While I still think such a change is unlikely, I do think that if the developers were going to make it, creating a leader with two default civs would be good way of introducing it (and adding flexibility to the civ color system would be another important step).
 
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