Great general stacking.

[CPL_Yoshi]

The only one counter is to mass building units and invade the guy who's trying to accumulate 2 ggs.

Just to be clear are we speaking about generals that affect classical units or the generals that affect the medieval era units? Because if we look at the ones that ggs that affect medieval units, there are 6 generals that can do so. My argument was for the medieval+ units having two +5 bonuses from great generals. With competent players, you'll never get 2 classical ggs. But it is very likely that you will get 2 ggs that affect medieval era units if you've gotten one of the classicals.

As I previously stated, there are only 3 classical great generals, and it can be quite RNG-based on getting the first 3 classical generals. A bad start will deny you from even having the chance to get one of those early great generals. The way I see it, as a neighbor civ who did not receive one of the classical great generals, you have one of 3 options.

1. If you went for a rush towards an encampment and the great general projects. You'd be maybe 1-2 turns off from getting one of those great generals. You'll hit 40-45 great general points after about 3 projects. And if you'd like to rush for one of the medieval great generals, that's another 30-35 great general points. Early on you'll only receive about 12-13 great general points per project, probably a couple more projects and you'd get the great general. And depending on your production, you would be investing anywhere from 2-4 turns of production for each project. This could mean you'd have invested 4-8 additional turns just to have a great general for medieval units that you won't have access to until turn 45-55 depending on gold reserve (ability to upgrade to knights for 90 gold each, or crossbows for 100 gold, assuming you haven't completed mercenary civic), or you'd have to hard build them which would take around 6+ turns depending on production in cities, policy cards, etc.

2. Knowing that you won't get the classical great general, you could just mass build your units and try for an early push before he is able to successfully use his classical units/great general. Sheer numbers can overpower, but if the player with the classical gg is playing correctly, he'll have a similar number of units and with the +5 bonus, he should be able to successfully defend.

3. Mass settle and hope that you don't get attacked early on. Build up a massive army while settling as best you can to deter them from attacking you with the two ggs. This does make things harder as well. Mass setting does require a longer buildup, cities need time to grow, increase in settler costs, and the time to require to move settlers does take much more effort than rushing another civ who has higher pop cities, worked tiles, and sometimes districts.

For the amount of production and time it takes to obtain 2 GG's that affect medieval units, it's quite difficult for me to find a viable strategy that would take an equal amount of effort to counter.

@empresskiova I do like your proposed ideas, but without someone who would be willing to create a mod, we don't really have an option to balance numbers. Changes like that would require much thought and theorycrafting. It would most likely just pave a way for another more optimal strategy. Finding that right balance is something is near impossible. I'd be like balancing a plate on a needle.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Details behind all mechanics should be written under a guide. There is too much details to write them down in a single post. Using 50% cards combined with chopping for overflow is one good way to accelerate production, for example(i like using the 30% builders/50% ranged units combo before philo). For some reason i almost never see this approach even when i'm watching top streamers...

I think many people do not realize how the overflow is applied, namely that chopping into 50% unit boost overflow can allow you to apply policy production into non-policy build items.

Overflow has always been a little...non-intuitive in civ games, and its changes have been pretty convoluted/inconsistent from a design perspective over time.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

I think many people do not realize how the overflow is applied, namely that chopping into 50% unit boost overflow can allow you to apply policy production into non-policy build items.

I think we can safely assume that this game really needs some extensive work on defining game mechanics. Without a clear cut definition on every game mechanic out there, how are players to know what is a game mechanic and what is an exploit?

To name a few that we believe are exploits:

1. Trading a city with a damaged wall. Especially in a team game, you could easily let an enemy attack your city and trade it to a teammate before your walls go down. It would heal up those walls immediately. I know they patched this with the city health but they did forget to cover city walls.
   
   
2. Macedon use of the "wonder heal" mechanic when taking a city. You take a city, and before you choose the option to keep or raze it, you begin building a wonder, then after, when you choose to keep the city, you'll instantly heal all your units.
   
   
3. Denying anyone of a certain great person or pantheon if you continually withhold it, neither passing or accepting. You could potentially deny a pantheon from anyone who had yet to get it before you, and same for a great person.
   
   
4. Instantly canceling trade routes. You could cancel your trade routes, mid-route and it would kick that trade route back to the city of origin. You do lose an extra turn of the benefits to that trade route, but when you only wanted that trade route for, say production boost when building a wonder, you could easily send all your trader to that city, and upon completion, immediately cancel that trade route when the wonder is finished. You can also use it to deny it from getting stolen by any other player or barbarian.
   

There a good number of "mechanics" out there that are either loosely defined or not even explained at all. With Civ being such a strategic game, how are any players supposed to take full advantage of ways to play the game when they don't even know how things work?

 

[Tabarnak]

We need a guide! A supreme leader ...nah...just a guide lol

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@Tabarnak What kind of guide would you be looking for? I might be able to write one up eventually. It's just going to take a bit of time to work out all of the numbers.

 

[Victoria]

how are any players supposed to take full advantage of ways to play the game when they don't even know how things work?

Yes we only just discovered how towers and rams work here.... and those points above are scary

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes we only just discovered how towers and rams work here.... and those points above are scary

Trading cities has been a broken design aspect of team play (and vindictive FFA play) in MP games for decades, stopped only by the "always war" settings blocking negotiations or MP house rules. It's disappointing, but not exactly a surprise, to see it be an issue yet again in civ 6.

The only one I didn't know about was Macedon, since this game's broken UI/state of hidden rules/performance push me to be unwilling to purchase DLC.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@TheMeInTeam there are definitely way more mechanics or exploits that are out there. I can PM them to you if you'd like. Some of them I'd rather keep quiet as I'm still testing things out at the moment.

I would really love it if after the next upcoming patch, the dev team could work on more accurately defining mechanics in the game. I don't always want to label things exploits or mechanics simply because I don't even know if it was intended or not.

For example, the great person/pantheon exploit/mechanic. Is it a mechanic or exploit to constantly force the game to give you the option to recruit or pass a great person each turn. And since the game will always give you the option first, nobody else will even have the chance to pick another great person of that type.

 

[agonistes]

Hey,

A bit late to the party, but I will do my best to explain the reason that we do ban Great General stacking, @TheMeInTeam. So I do agree that the term, "exploit" is quite often used in an incorrect manner. There are cases when it can be disputed on, of course, but in the case of Great General stacking, the term "exploit" is incorrect. There are quite a few exploits available in this game, but that is another topic completely. But back to the question of "do I believe that great general stacking further causes an imbalance in the game?" And to that I would have to say yes.

In the current state of the "meta" on our server, we often see a very cookie-cutter start. Usually, we see 1-2 scouts, then a settler or builder. Once those are completed, most players will have beelined towards bronzeworking. Then comes the encampment district. Once that's finished, you'll see the encampment projects at work. Often by the time you already see one Great general point in at least 3 other players, it's already too late. You'll lose out on the great general. All of this is often dependent on land and city state first meets. It can be quite a "luck" based event on who receives the great general.




I agree. Most situations, if the players all understand in going to rush great generals, nobody would be getting 2 great generals in the classical era, unless you were extremely lucky (bronzeworking goody hut, first meet on a city state, great land, being Japan, etc). However, this should more likely apply to the next set of great generals, the medieval-renaissance great generals.

Let's take a 6-man free for all game, for example. General stacking is allowed. The first 3 great generals (classical-medieval) are taken. Everyone went for the first 3, but those that didn't are out of luck. But by allowing great general stacking, do we force those who weren't going for a great general to now continue rushing for a medieval-renaissance great general, solely for the purpose of denying the other 3 of another great general. Doing this would further put the other 3 behind, forcing them to work projects for an additional 45 Great General points. (30 for Classical-Medieval and 75 for Medieval-Renaissance). It would give nobody a chance at even coming close to winning the game if we were to further punish someone with a less than optimal start.

A +10 bonus on knights and crossbowmen are going to demolish anyone in the game. Maybe until Cavalry of field cannons would someone stand a chance, but the amount of science required to get to that point comes another 20 turns or more later on.

This game does have the potential for being a great strategic game, but by allowing "luck" and spawn starts to dictate the outcome of the early game wars, we create a very one-dimensional playstyle and a very stale meta. The multiplayer meta I see is definitely quite domination focused with trying to go wide as quickly and successfully as possible. It's just going to further reinforce that playstyle without giving anyone an option for a different strategy. Maybe someone would be able to create some sort of strategy to counter great general stacking, but I highly doubt we'd see it in the near future.

I, myself, am a big fan in the whole design of "rock, paper, scissors" and giving players an option to in some way counter great general stacking would lead me to agree that they shouldn't be a ban, but in this moment, there really isn't an option. Other than the "Defender of Faith" belief (+10 to units in friendly territory following your religion), of course. But even then, there is a huge problem with this. Civs like Russia and Japan have the ability to always, without a doubt, get this first. If they were in the game, nobody would even remotely have the ability to defend against +10 knights and crossbows without forcing them to put 2 times the effort into a gg that won't affect them until turns 40+.

I'd like to hear your opinion, and discuss this more. Please let me know what you think @TheMeInTeam.

Thanks,
CPL_Yoshi

Great post. And nice acknowledgement @TheMeInTeam .

First thing I thought of was defenders of the faith.

If everyone is attempting a gg stack spam, I see that as possibly opening doors for the guy who isn't.

When I get home, I'm gonna hot seat a few ideas I have, and have 1 guy vs 3 gg spammers.

What settings? And what civs are banned?

And how are civs chosen? Can 3 people be Germany?

 

[Tabarnak]

To name a few that we believe are exploits:

1. Trading a city with a damaged wall. Especially in a team game, you could easily let an enemy attack your city and trade it to a teammate before your walls go down. It would heal up those walls immediately. I know they patched this with the city health but they did forget to cover city walls.
   
   
2. Macedon use of the "wonder heal" mechanic when taking a city. You take a city, and before you choose the option to keep or raze it, you begin building a wonder, then after, when you choose to keep the city, you'll instantly heal all your units.
   
   
3. Denying anyone of a certain great person or pantheon if you continually withhold it, neither passing or accepting. You could potentially deny a pantheon from anyone who had yet to get it before you, and same for a great person.
   
   
4. Instantly canceling trade routes. You could cancel your trade routes, mid-route and it would kick that trade route back to the city of origin. You do lose an extra turn of the benefits to that trade route, but when you only wanted that trade route for, say production boost when building a wonder, you could easily send all your trader to that city, and upon completion, immediately cancel that trade route when the wonder is finished. You can also use it to deny it from getting stolen by any other player or barbarian.

There a good number of "mechanics" out there that are either loosely defined or not even explained at all. With Civ being such a strategic game, how are any players supposed to take full advantage of ways to play the game when they don't even know how things work?

These are definitively exploits(intended or not). Didn't know about #4 actually...

@Tabarnak What kind of guide would you be looking for? I might be able to write one up eventually. It's just going to take a bit of time to work out all of the numbers.

1 internal guide for exploits and 1 general guide for the meta game.

The general guide can include the pros/cons of focusing on certain things like religion, great generals, expansion, etc. We can add situations like what to do when neighbor do x or y, etc. And, of course, the mechanics behind hammers and growth, expecially the hammer overflow.

I made a fast testing yesterday single player and at one moment(class era, turn 25-30) i had the idea to build an encampment. It said 7 turns for completion. I had the 30% builder and 50% ranged card. I built a worker(2 turns), put down to 1 turn my archer from completion for a total of 3 turns , then i chopped a forest(archer spawned at that moment). My encampment went down to 3 turns.

So instead of using 7 turns to complete the encampment i decided to build a worker(with 2 charges left after chop), an archer(for overflow) and finally the encampment(with overflow), all of this in 6 turns! Overflow is a beast.

For more lulz, if u can, use worker to repeat a chop with 1 turn from completion from another archer(can be any ranged or melee unit after all). Put hammers again in encampment. The turn after your district is finished you then realize that you can finish a gg project in a single turn!

 

[empresskiova]

@CPL_Yoshi Eh, Banhammer Balancing also makes players look for the next best tactic anyway, so numerically balancing the game isn't gonna change the meta anymore than that. No disagreement on the severe theorycrafting aspect of it all, all changes need to be thoroughly reviewed.

Also, I wasn't aware that chops and overflows benefitted from policy cards. That's bonkers. lol.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@agonistes while I agree that defender of faith would be a great option, I did say that Russia and Japan can usually get the option to pick defender of faith. It's not quite fair for the other civs rarely have the chance to compete. Only one person can get defender of faith, and it feels quite unfair to have such a strong religious buff available when there is a high chance that Japan or Russia will always get it.

Also, if you didn't know 2 or more civs can get defender of the faith if each civ is in the religion screen to pick the founder belief at the same time. Another "exploit" I presume.

We tend to let our players in that game decide on most of the game settings usually voted on a majority. The host of the game does have some power. You may see a host that may not want to play an island plate map. And that is totally fine by us.

We do not choose to ban civs outright, but that power is given to the players in that game. We do allow players to choose the way they civs are choosen, either by pick or by draft. We have a bot that takes in the civs that we're banned and will randomly assign 2 or 3 civs to each player based on the slot in the game lobby.

Our full list of rules are in the discord, if you want to come check us out, please do so. https://www.discord.gg/uBEpu3u

@Tabarnak I'll get working on both of those guides and I'll be sure to include a few people in that conversation fo the internal one. The hammer overflow is an extremely strong tactic if properly done. I've used it myself with horsemen right before cavalry. With the policy card, a couple chops, and some time, I was able to is that to 1 turn a campus I had placed down extremely early on in the game.


@empresskiova, and I agree with you. But trying to ban things is the best we can do at the moment. It's definitely nowhere near perfect.

 

[Victoria]

One slight advantage of considering ones naval capabilities is you always have a 100% overflow to hand which is rather nice.

Chopping is the one thing that keeps pace with district costs so placing districts when you have less tech/civics then spamming a few tech civics before you chop the placements in, especially after feudalism is strong.

Chopping has been used innstrength from the start and talked about a lot so I imagine Firaxis accept it as part of the game.

Overflows are just inconsistent though, gorgos culture does not overflow at all. It only applies to the civic card in place.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@CPL_Yoshi Eh, Banhammer Balancing also makes players look for the next best tactic anyway, so numerically balancing the game isn't gonna change the meta anymore than that. No disagreement on the severe theorycrafting aspect of it all, all changes need to be thoroughly reviewed.

Also, I wasn't aware that chops and overflows benefitted from policy cards. That's bonkers. lol.

There are some things that centralize the game more than "next best". Think evasion-stacking in pokemon games, pre-nerf FAMAS in CoD Black Ops 1, hypothetical combo in smash bros that can permanently juggle. When removing these things, play centers around next-best in meta, but usually that has more counter-play for the most egregious balance issues. Importantly, if the competitive scene wants to stop seeing one of these they'll ban it. Sometimes the conclusion doesn't match the evidence, but we have pretty good reasoning wrt the topic of this thread.

there are definitely way more mechanics or exploits that are out there. I can PM them to you if you'd like. Some of them I'd rather keep quiet as I'm still testing things out at the moment.

I was just talking about it in terms of which ones I recognized. I'm not looking to utilize new exploits in this game; it's too frustrating for me to play it very often. I would definitely suggest bug rep them though; in the long run they don't do the competitive scene any favors, nor does trivializing game resources tend to lend itself to SP depth. Breaking game can be fun but more so as a diversion.

These are definitively exploits(intended or not). Didn't know about #4 actually...

Whether something is "exploit" or not is not worth discussing. It matters more if it harms the competitiveness of the game. Most of those block in-game resources that should be available according to the rules, but the trade route one is debatable.

Overflows are just inconsistent though, gorgos culture does not overflow at all. It only applies to the civic card in place.

Overflow has been inconsistent and buggy since at least civ 4, but quite possibly longer...