[R&F] How do I keep cities early on? Loyalty's an annoying mechanic.

[InDubioProReo]

I've been trying to get into Civ 6 recently, and as someone with 1700 hours on Civ V that I enjoyed a lot, loyalty is really pissing me off to new heights.

I'm playing on Emperor difficulty, and I like taking cities early. And the cities are not like miles away, it's within 8-9 tiles range. But the stupid loyalty mechanic keeps screwing me up. It feels like whatever I do, I keep losing loyalty. +2 garrison card, Amani, her promotions. Making peace, having my capital nearby. It just does not matter. I feel like early conquest is impossible. I cannot keep the cities.

Can someone please help me understand this so I don't just uninstall this game immediately? Thank you.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Try buying your early units with the AI's gold and build settlers instead (to forward settle the AI). You could also beeline horsemanship, build horses, siege city. Move to next city quickly with 4-movement horses, siege, conquer, etc...

Hope this helps. It usually works for me.

Edit: Not sure if you're familiar with the term "siege." It's really important for conquering in a timely manner to avoid loyalty revolts. Stops your horses from making extra attacks (and taking damage) vs. city garrison.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/need-help-understanding-what-puts-cities-under-siege.627174/

 

[InDubioProReo]

Try buying your early units with the AI's gold and build settlers instead (to forward settle the AI). You could also beeline horsemanship, build horses, siege city. Move to next city quickly with 4-movement horses, siege, conquer, etc...

Hope this helps. It usually works for me.

Edit: Not sure if you're familiar with the term "siege." It's really important for conquering in a timely manner to avoid loyalty revolts. Stops your horses from making extra attacks (and taking damage) vs. city garrison.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/need-help-understanding-what-puts-cities-under-siege.627174/

Thank you for the tips. I think I am getting the hang of this, slowly. This time I forward settled my closest neighbour with Amani and then proceeded to conquer. 3 Spearman, 2 Warriors, 1 Varu, 5 archers. I wiped Congo out, settled 2 more cities and then proceeded to spam Holy Site Prayers and Apostles. I won at t240-ish, not sure how good as a time it is.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Thank you for the tips. I think I am getting the hang of this, slowly. This time I forward settled my closest neighbour with Amani and then proceeded to conquer. 3 Spearman, 2 Warriors, 1 Varu, 5 archers. I wiped Congo out, settled 2 more cities and then proceeded to spam Holy Site Prayers and Apostles. I won at t240-ish, not sure how good as a time it is.

Glad to hear you worked through the loyalty issues. You might also think on keeping enough gold on hand for a builder (or two) in order to chop population for loyalty during a prolonged engagement. If you want to gauge your finish times, I'd recommend Games of the Month.

Cheers!

 

[pkaem]

Try buying your early units with the AI's gold and build settlers instead (to forward settle the AI). You could also beeline horsemanship, build horses, siege city. Move to next city quickly with 4-movement horses, siege, conquer, etc...

Hope this helps. It usually works for me.

Edit: Not sure if you're familiar with the term "siege." It's really important for conquering in a timely manner to avoid loyalty revolts. Stops your horses from making extra attacks (and taking damage) vs. city garrison.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/need-help-understanding-what-puts-cities-under-siege.627174/

Hey, sorry off topic but are you "BabarianHunter" found on youtube?

 

[kaltorak]

IMO loyalty was done the wrong way.
I loved culture flips in civ4. It was awesome to focus on culture and be able to capture cities that way. So when I heard about loyalty I was happy, thinking it would be similar. But it wasnt, it was the opposite actually.

Civ6 already encourages either going full peacefull or full aggresive too much.They want you to focus on a victory condition, and stick to it. What I loved to do was a midpoint, not focusing on war, but capturing a few good cities, bc of key resources or good yields. With loyalty, they disencouraged this even more. Now capturing just one or 2 cities is heavily penalized, They want you to either not capture anything, or to capture all the cities. Otherwise, they will probably flip.

This goes in line with the tendency of making the game more into a chess game and less into an empire simulator game. They think if I attack an opponent it is bc I want to destroy him and be closer to winning the game. They dont even think that I just want to add a specific city to my empire, not wipe out a rival.

So to sum up, yeah, it had potential to be a cool system, but it just adds annoyance to the game.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Hey, sorry off topic but are you "BabarianHunter" found on youtube?

Yep.
Edit: I could go on and on about those games but don't want to pollute the CivFanatic boards with my livestreaming activities.

 

[Victoria]

Civ6 already encourages either going full peacefull or full aggresive too much.

I feel it is designed to be about right.
Ancient and classical battles galore with civs being wiped out... just go for it war, that is what you are supposed to do.
Then as time drifts on loyalty flattens the borders out.

 

[pkaem]

Yep.
Edit: I could go on and on about those games but don't want to pollute the CivFanatic boards with my livestreaming activities.

I found you while searching for some Civ VI deity games, definetly some of the better materials. I'll watch out for a GS game. Live streams aren't really a thing for me, I like it better on demand, when I'm not at work and spouse is buisy

E: ok, missed the fact that there is an inca game already. Just not as playlist.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I found you while searching for some Civ VI deity games, definetly some of the better materials. I'll watch out for a GS game. Live streams aren't really a thing for me, I like it better on demand, when I'm not at work and spouse is buisy

E: ok, missed the fact that there is an inca game already. Just not as playlist.

Thanks! PS, thanks for the heads up. Playlist created .

 

[kaltorak]

I feel it is designed to be about right.
Ancient and classical battles galore with civs being wiped out... just go for it war, that is what you are supposed to do.
Then as time drifts on loyalty flattens the borders out.

Not sure (due to my english) if you are agreeing that this is the case on civ6 or that this is how it should be bc of real life.
If you mean it is like it should be, I disagree. No matter how real it is, it makes it less fun. I like expansion wars, not wipe out wars. Well, I like both, but you are encouraged to do only the later.