How about changing the loyalty system?

[Itiseye]

What do you think of the current loyalty system..?

I think it sucks. To some extent at least in it’s current form, although it’s not bad in essence. As I understand it now negative loyalty only can be battled by building government districts.(or can you build more than one) but that takes too much turns for starting cities.. (and to too small extent by having a garrison in the right circumstances) it’s almost impossible to colonize to the outskirts of the empty space there is.. I have this a lot.. I think loyalty should be built by more building(s) and perhaps some other factors such as garrisoned units or improvements, governors, government form. perhaps It should be linked or equalized with a happiness system like in earlier civ versions.. I lose too many cities or so many that it doesn’t add to build or conquer as many cities as possible..

I play gathering storm on king level btw.. and it’s just my … cents

 

[Malexander]

I do not like the loyalty system. I think it restricts too much where you can expand your civilization. There is also not much logic in this as you settle the area with your own population.

It could serve some use in diplomatic relations, if loyalty is low the AI would agree more easily to deals that are not in their favor and it could make espionage missions succeed more easily.

 

[Henri Christophe]

I also don't like loyalty system. I hope it can be abolished on civ7, it make my global conquest so much harder. Some gameplay I don't even be strong enought to really conquer a city of the enemy, because every 5 turns he becomes back to be a free city with 2 advanced soldiers (more advanced then my soldiers).
I know every civilization have some method to counter the quickly growing of an empire , civ 5 had the hapiness system and civ 6 have this loyality. I hope civ7 can have neither of they and allow us, warmonger, to freely dominate the world.

 

[Naokaukodem]

and perhaps some other factors such as garrisoned units or improvements, governors

Garrisoned units and governors do imrpove loyalty. As well as monuments.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Loyalty is a good idea executed horribly. I think the fact that you nearly can't forward settle people to disrupt their plans/ cause them issues is just not fun from a game perspective and not even that historically accurate. It also makes colonial play nearly impossible which in turn makes the mid to late game more restricted since you can't go and settle "new" lands. I think they'll need to have some new mechanic in Civ VII ot replace loyalty but it really needs to be updated.

I think that the best way to go about loyalty would be to allow players to settle anywhere they want but to make that city' production and growth (And by extension all other yields) diminished. Players could get around that by putting domestic trade routes in the city or by spending gold to improve to a point where the city could aptly function but the loss of the city shouldn't be a possibility. And the negative trade off is that the empire as a whole would take longer to research techs and generate cultural advances/GPP from these cities. To utilize that we'd ned a global system of empire stability/ cohesion (Possibly related to culture/ governments) which'll be tough. I don't think Civ V's happiness would be something any better to go back to.

And from here we could get to my big idea of being able to "denote" cities-particularly as you go through the tech tree. In the mid-game, you could be able to settle a "colony" which doesn't cause the empire-wide negative effects, but doesn't give you many yields or allow for easy development; perhaps it could take more population to build more districts or something. Around the same time, you should be able to denote a city (Most likely a conquered/gifted one) as a "vassal" which has similar effects. Not only does this partially solve the loyalty issues but it could make empire building more dynamic as in one game, you may be able to just have a bunch of tightly-connected major cities but in another, geography such as mountains or inland seas could necessitate a more confederation-like group of vassal states. And policies that you adopt could give benefits to both. There are a lot of options to fix this without having to implement awkward immortal governors that can only be in a few of your cities so Firaxis should really trial a few systems before they bake it into the next game. But yeah long story short, loyalty is just not fun to play around and hinders a lot of types of play.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Just delete it from the game. Mechanics that restrict the ways that you can play for no reason are just terrible mechanics.

 

[rocksinmypath]

Loyalty feels like a hacked up deterrent to playing wide that is necessary only because other aspects of the game are broken. I think the solution to the wide/tall imbalance lies with how the costs of a new city relates to the benefits it provides. Right now, all of the costs of founding a new city are incurred before the city is founded, when you obtain a new settler and bring it to the new city location. After this point, the city costs you practically nothing and you gain a lot of things for free. For a start, you get six tiles, which, unless they're particularly bad, will allow your city to grow in population without even spending anything extra to improve the tiles. In some instances, you also gain things that you absolutely should not. When you settle a city between two bodies of water, the city centre acts as a canal, even if you don't know what a canal is, yet. If you have the Steel tech, your city gets free walls and defense. If you choose to found a new city far from your existing cities and close to someone else's, the city should be difficult to defend militaristically, not ideologically. The imperative to defend your new city implies that it will continue to incur costs long after it's established.

But, of course, this wouldn't really work in Civ 6 because of how interactions with the AI works. There's an obvious exploit of befriending whoever you want to settle close to before you do. Sure, settling too close to an AI player will lower their opinion of you, and when they complain and you continue to ignore them, you'll rack up grievances, but those things go away over time. More importantly, you have 30 turns to think about how you'll deal with the AI player if they choose to attack you for settling too close to them, and more often than not, you can just renew your friendship when it expires. The friendship mechanism, in turn, needs to be as rigid as it is, because the AI, especially on higher difficulties, chooses to make the game "interesting" by being unreasonably aggressive in the early game. The friendship mechanism allows you to turn off this nonsense if you so wish.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Loyalty should have a much greater range than currently, but have less strenght. It should take into account the porosity of the terrain, i.e if your second city for example is separated by waters, mountains, desert, jungle, wood, a lot of hills with no road from your capital, it should rebel after some time. The new owner should be a brand new civ, not a no-name "rebel city". If your second city for example is closer to a existing civ with equal porosity, then it should rebel slowly directly to this civ, or, again, create a new one dependant on some fators. (depending on the relative distances and porosity)

Anyway, I think new cities should be built in the queue of existing ones. Range ? 7 tiles max. This would do for better organical growth with no forward settlings, except if you explicity want to create a settler that will travel and form a colony.

Colonies should, in theory, be more or less temporary, as they would eventually become new civs or join existing ones. Their purpose would be opportunist : for example, they could generate triple gold since their creation, and making harbors and commercial hubs in them would make for the most logical moves. Or something that have some strenght and give you actual short-terms benefits.

 

[civviefan]

L actually really like the loyalty system and think it has been implemented well. Always scope for more integration but I would like it to remain

 

[GeneralZIft]

Loyalty should have a much greater range than currently, but have less strenght. It should take into account the porosity of the terrain, i.e if your second city for example is separated by waters, mountains, desert, jungle, wood, a lot of hills with no road from your capital, it should rebel after some time. The new owner should be a brand new civ, not a no-name "rebel city". If your second city for example is closer to a existing civ with equal porosity, then it should rebel slowly directly to this civ, or, again, create a new one dependant on some fators. (depending on the relative distances and porosity)

Anyway, I think new cities should be built in the queue of existing ones. Range ? 7 tiles max. This would do for better organical growth with no forward settlings, except if you explicity want to create a settler that will travel and form a colony.

Colonies should, in theory, be more or less temporary, as they would eventually become new civs or join existing ones. Their purpose would be opportunist : for example, they could generate triple gold since their creation, and making harbors and commercial hubs in them would make for the most logical moves. Or something that have some strenght and give you actual short-terms benefits.

This is the worst idea I've ever read in my life. Sounds even more restrictive than the current loyalty system.
Why do people want their games to play in only one way and they hate being open to variety and just want it to be realistic.

Like "yeah guys you can settle colonies but they'll leave you and become a new Civ, so every game you'll be basically stuck with the land you've got and expanding is already difficult because of loyalty but now we've made sure no fun is allowed at all"

The truth is they designed Civ 6 in some god awful way to make it very slow and roleplay heavy. Then they get annoyed that people abuse how badly the game is designed by spamming Cities and playing wide. So they add arbitrary settling restrictions so you're forced to play in one way.
Pathetic design to be honest, and Civ 6's Rise and Fall was one of the worst DLCs for this reason, alongside "Era Score" implementation which is even more arbitrary.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You could also create colonies to have a trade partner. But they would be more production costy, not to mention the time to travel where you want to settle.

And this makes for 2 ways of expanding, the new "classical" one, directly from the city queue, and the old "classical" one, with colonies.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I don't expect anything to change for Civ 6 so my hope for Civ VII is that loyalty does not return. Instead I do like the idea about establishing certain cities outside of the range of your capital as colonies, or taking over cities of others. These cities like mentioned above can be more profitable, but as a result have to work harder to keep them happy.

However, instead of making forcing them to only be temporary I think they should get access to declare their own war against you for independence if their needs are not met. If they are successful then they can be a separate civ.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I don't expect anything to change for Civ 6 so my hope for Civ VII is that loyalty does not return. Instead I do like the idea about establishing certain cities outside of the range of your capital as colonies, or taking over cities of others. These cities like mentioned above can be more profitable, but as a result have to work harder to keep them happy.

However, instead of making forcing them to only be temporary I think they should get access to declare their own war against you for independence if their needs are not met. If they are successful then they can be a separate civ.

Agreed. Loyalty was one of the many uber-linear decisions made for Civ VI that tried (And IMO failed) to curb the wide playstyle's dominance. I think Firaxis just really disliked Civ V's happiness so they changed it too quickly without realizing how to balance anything...given the choice between the two I think happiness worked better gameplay-wise than the confusing mess of amenities and loyalty. Both something better than both (And balanced) is sorely needed...

I think giving settler's the open to found colonies should be a no brainer as it would allow people to quickly settle/occupy land and actually keep it. It also opens up a lot of options for eventual independence if things go sour which'll be interesting (And could be a great dlc lol).

I also think we should get he ability to gain a puppet/vassal somehow. This was one system from V that I don't understand why they threw out...really useful in war and could make it easier to hold onto cities....and it just adds more variety into the game.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Agreed. Loyalty was one of the many uber-linear decisions made for Civ VI that tried (And IMO failed) to curb the wide playstyle's dominance. I think Firaxis just really disliked Civ V's happiness so they changed it too quickly without realizing how to balance anything...given the choice between the two I think happiness worked better gameplay-wise than the confusing mess of amenities and loyalty. Both something better than both (And balanced) is sorely needed...

Well I still wouldn't mind keeping the current amenity system. I think each city having their own amenities/happiness is still a lot better than global happiness.

 

[Henri Christophe]

L actually really like the loyalty system and think it has been implemented well. Always scope for more integration but I would like it to remain

You are a point outside the line, because loyality sucks that much. Okay it's possible to win, but make the game much more harder (and make almost impossible in some situations) Because when we are weak in a high difficulty level, as deity, is very though to just caught one city, and it's become a free city in few turns with a very very very 2 advanced units.
I think the hapiness system of Civ5 is way easier to a domination victory then this loyality system of civ6. Because when we are very unhappness in civ5, it's just spawn some barbarians who can be easily killed by the city center ranged attack. This barbarian will destroy some infrastructure but as the workers in civ5 is imortal it isn't a great problem at all.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Well I still wouldn't mind keeping the current amenity system. I think each city having their own amenities/happiness is still a lot better than global happiness.

While I agree that it works better im theory, I think the UI for cities on the map needs to change a bit then-I never check amenities or even think about them unless I'm trying to figure out why my cities are lacking yields lol. And in general the whole system feels like it doesn't ever matter in games. Global happiness sucked balls at times but at least it was implemented properly and actually had an impact on games.

I think the issue is less with city-level amenities but rather in how amenities as a whole were implemented. IMO, we didn't need a whole district slot for the EC and WP. I think amenities could have been gained from just building up the city (+1 from districts+aqudcuts+etc.). That way it further de-incentivizes small cities and wide play as your cities would be unhappy and not grow without spending the money/builders on getting them up to speed. And how luxuries were implemented into the game were the worst part of amenities and trivialized both luxuries and multiple copies especially in the late game. M&C tried to fix this but I just think they really need to change how amen

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think the issue is less with city-level amenities but rather in how amenities as a whole were implemented. IMO, we didn't need a whole district slot for the EC and WP. I think amenities could have been gained from just building up the city (+1 from districts+aqudcuts+etc.). That way it further de-incentivizes small cities and wide play as your cities would be unhappy and not grow without spending the money/builders on getting them up to speed. And how luxuries were implemented into the game were the worst part of amenities and trivialized both luxuries and multiple copies especially in the late game. M&C tried to fix this but I just think they really need to change how amen

I think instead of the products in M&C granting ridiculous amounts of tourism, they should have also provided amenities to the cities they were being housed. I mean if their basic forms provided it, why shouldn't the finished product?
That is one way that amenities could be moved around to cities that needed them.

 

[Sostratus]

I think the system should be folded into amenities or happiness.

There should only be one system that leads to "this city is about to revolt/flip." It's not a total criticism of loyalty; the devs did a good job with it, but I don't like when things take the "paradox games" approach of adding more systems when we can expand/rework an existing one. You could keep virtually everything we have now and simply attach an amenity modifier for "social unrest" and get the same result instead of city flip at -100.

At the end of the day, the point of this sort of system is to impose a restraint on the player. I don't have any problems with the solution to "disloyalty" being "it simply costs a lot more to maintain this region." Not necessarily in terms of gold, but also in opportunity costs of stationing military units or governors or what have you that cannot be used elsewhere. And as mentioned already, i really hated how it just killed colonies. I think game systems that can allow colonies should be actively sought. It is civilization, after all, and we do love our empires.

 

[Naokaukodem]

i really hated how it just killed colonies. I think game systems that can allow colonies should be actively sought. It is civilization, after all, and we do love our empires.

Well, colonies in reality are meant to become independent/merge into new states. Thing is, you should be able to get MASSIVE benefits from them, in a more or less short period of time. And don't forget that in my system, some colonies could stay yours a long time, provided you have fast access to them, it being by high porosity land vs. low porosity in the other side (where another civ is, I'm thinking about mountains ranges, lakes or even big rivers, or hills, forest/jungle, deserts... the possibilities are numerous for creating a "natural craddle for your civ"), not talking about roads that would dramatically improve the porosity with your colonies, basically making no resistance vs. even high porosity lands. So I think the trade routes roads system of Civ6 would quite be nice as to decide where to send your traders. In that perspective, if you put enough work/attention to your colonies, they wouldn't even be "colonies" so to speak, they would just be part of your empire permanently.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Well, colonies in reality are meant to become independent/merge into new states. Thing is, you should be able to get MASSIVE benefits from them, in a more or less short period of time. And don't forget that in my system, some colonies could stay yours a long time, provided you have fast access to them, it being by high porosity land vs. low porosity in the other side (where another civ is, I'm thinking about mountains ranges, lakes or even big rivers, or hills, forest/jungle, deserts... the possibilities are numerous for creating a "natural craddle for your civ"), not talking about roads that would dramatically improve the porosity with your colonies, basically making no resistance vs. even high porosity lands. So I think the trade routes roads system of Civ6 would quite be nice as to decide where to send your traders. In that perspective, if you put enough work/attention to your colonies, they wouldn't even be "colonies" so to speak, they would just be part of your empire permanently.

Just because it's "realistic" for colonies to separate from the Civilization, does not mean it is a good idea to FORCE the player to lose colonies with this loyalty system.
It's restrictive and unnecessary.
There's better ways to solve wide play.