[GS] I hate loyalty more than any other mechanic.

[Linklite]

In terms of the Victories:

Domination I think loyalty makes more interesting, but a bit harder. You have to think more about which order you crack the cities in. On the other hand, you have a whole new method of achieving your goal.

Cultural I think is actually helped. You can gain cities without upsetting anyone which means you can still maintain open borders with them so it doesn't hamper your efforts like an invasion or even indirectly make things more difficult like forward settling would.

Science is helped in a similar manner. OK, war isn't quite as directly problematic, but you can still gain cities while focusing your resources on things other than having a bigger, badder army. It's actually what has happened in my current game - I was a large power (largest in the game, but notnby much) relying on my Hansas to keep me ahead of everyone else. I went into a Golden Age while my neighbour fell into a Dark Age, and I destabilised one of his cities which caused his empire to collapse and be absorbed into mine. I'm now indisputably the superpower in the world racing ahead into an SV while everyone else is languishing back in the medieval era. Not one shot was fired.

Diplomatic is significantly helped. You can, once again, knockout rival civs so long as you're fine with having a free city on your border (their capital). As long as it's not in a really awkward place, you can just leave it be. Or just take the +5 penalty. Alternatively, can you gift it? Gift it to the one civ you're going to leave alive and form a cultural alliance with them.

Religious is made inconvenient. Not being able to set up a missionary and apostle factory where you want is frustrating. It's not a major deal though - you can just send them from far away, which is viable. It's just slower because you have to send them 20 turns or so before they arrive, leaving a lag between when and where the units are arriving and events on the ground. I get around it by sending enough units to convert each civ in one or so turns. It also allows me to bypass the diplomatic consequences of constantly refusing to heed their request to stop converting them.

Score is helped because it's just another way of gaining score.

Generally, loyalty makes it easier to get a Victory. In terms of smaller gameplay, it does increase the challenge a little. However, I'm also.glad to no longer have to deal with random foreign cities in the middle of my empire. Or if I do, it's not for long before the situation resolves itself.

 

[Leyrann]

I get around it by sending enough units to convert each civ in one or so turns. It also allows me to bypass the diplomatic consequences of constantly refusing to heed their request to stop converting them.

I believe these grievances are actually calculated for every time you try to convert their cities after they request you don't do that. Imo, the easiest way around the issue is far more simple: make sure you're declared friend/allied with everyone. It's not that hard to achieve if you put some effort into it (mostly just sending delegations on first turn and gifting open borders), and when an alliance or DoF runs out, they will always accept if you propose to renew it on the very turn it runs out.

 

[Linklite]

[...]when an alliance or DoF runs out, they will always accept if you propose to renew it on the very turn it runs out.

Nah they don't. Quite often they'll reject my proposal to renew friendship ifnwe weren't allies. Most of the time they'll come to me a few turns later and ask for the declaration, but not always. I'd estimate that it's about 50:50 if they'll accept a declaration if I ask the turn it runs out.

 

[Leyrann]

Nah they don't. Quite often they'll reject my proposal to renew friendship ifnwe weren't allies. Most of the time they'll come to me a few turns later and ask for the declaration, but not always. I'd estimate that it's about 50:50 if they'll accept a declaration if I ask the turn it runs out.

Weird, in my experience refusals happen pretty much exclusively if I'm very close to a victory (e.g. sitting at 19 diplo victory points). I play on Deity so that can't be it.

I do have the Better Strategy mod enabled, which seeks to change (and improve) the AI, could that be the cause?

 

[kaspergm]

In regards to taking a city to stage it as a beachhead, it is weird that the city's loyalty is impacted by its pop. A low-pop city will rebel faster than a high-pop, yet those are the citizens of the enemy civ. Higher pop should mean harder to hold, not easier.

I actually think this is an excellent and somewhat overlooked point. An easy(?) fix(?) to the current loyalty system would be to bring back the ethnicity/cultural identity feature of civ-whatever (3? 4?), so that a city’s loyalty will not be directly influenced by population from nearby cities, but will have a big negative hit from foreign citizens in the city itself.

However culture pressure from nearby cities should influence ethnicity/cultural identity over time, so a city of your population isolated next to another civ should have its citizens turn to the other culture over time, which would destabilise it and possibly - if unhappy - cause it to rebel.

This would also allow for some positive side effects like opening for migration - moving population from one city to another to control ethnicity - and bringing back the concept of unhappy/hostile citizens, as well as giving military units bigger impact (each military unit present in or next to city eliminates the effect of one hostile citizen, for instance)

 

[CoconutTank]

I like that idea quite a bit, having each citizen bear its own ethnicity/cultural identity, and not necessarily just for loyalty either.

One problem that comes to mind is if there's some event that expends a citizen (such as starvation or the Janissary deploy cost), would the player have to manually choose which citizen expires? Or would the game do that automatically for the player (and how would the game choose then)?

 

[Civinator]

An easy(?) fix(?) to the current loyalty system would be to bring back the ethnicity/cultural identity feature of civ-whatever (3? 4?), so that a city’s loyalty will not be directly influenced by population from nearby cities, but will have a big negative hit from foreign citizens in the city itself.

That was Civ 3.

 

[steveg700]

While Civ is in the hands of Firaxis, we will not see any kind of deep cultural identity system that players have to delve into. We'll get more whimsical, cartoony, zombie-mode type design. The loyalty system as it is happens to be pretty straightforward, and yet we get these threads treating it as nigh-impossible to navigate. There's a price to broad appeal, it seems.

 

[Depravo]

The problem with loyalty, and several other systems in Civ 6, is that it makes things more of a challenge when you are trying to break into an empire's heartland - which is good - but once you have conquered a critical mass of their cities and their population base is under your control, the rest tend to fall into your lap - including cities that would have been a challenge to have taken, due to their location.

Why a city you captured yesterday, which has not yet been formally ceded, turns on a penny and immediately starts using its influence on your behalf, I don't understand. It's like Russia putting up a mighty struggle in 1941, losing a bunch of cities but clinging on, then Stalingrad culture flipping to Germany in 1942 because Germany held Rostov and Kharkov.

 

[Euterpe]

I literally had to get a mod to turn the feature off. I hate turning off a feature like that as it seems neat in concept, but I could not handle it. I'll never be good or great at a game like this, and this feature is above me.

I remember finding it impossible to have very many Western European nations in a real world map or Europe map scenario with this on. While it's not optimal to play that kind of map with all of the Western European civs present in the game even without it, it's just straight-up impossible with this feature. When playing as France, for example, you're in between England, Germany, and Spain.The loyalty system makes this scenario impossible. When I played this England and France always lost loyalty at the beginning of the game and thus my game ended.

 

[Linklite]

I literally had to get a mod to turn the feature off. I hate turning off a feature like that as it seems neat in concept, but I could not handle it. I'll never be good or great at a game like this, and this feature is above me.

I remember finding it impossible to have very many Western European nations in a real world map or Europe map scenario with this on. While it's not optimal to play that kind of map with all of the Western European civs present in the game even without it, it's just straight-up impossible with this feature. When playing as France, for example, you're in between England, Germany, and Spain.The loyalty system makes this scenario impossible. When I played this England and France always lost loyalty at the beginning of the game and thus my game ended.

To be honest, the feature is designed to prevent that nightmare scenario - a dozen civs with only one city each, only having one ring to build in.

The problem you describe is that of map size - trying to fit nearly half of the game's civs on the smallest continent requires a much larger map than Civ 6 will generate - and the civ choices to be in the game. My workaround is to limit the number of European civs available using the leader pools.

 

[Civinator]

I remember finding it impossible to have very many Western European nations in a real world map or Europe map scenario with this on.

What about using a world map with a massive increased Europe ? The screenshot below shows such a Civ 3 map for the scenario WW2 Global Gold, that also can be used for games starting in Civ 3 era 1. Shown in the screenshot is the part of the minimap marked with a white box.

Spoiler :

 

[aieeegrunt]

I literally had to get a mod to turn the feature off. I hate turning off a feature like that as it seems neat in concept, but I could not handle it. I'll never be good or great at a game like this, and this feature is above me.

I remember finding it impossible to have very many Western European nations in a real world map or Europe map scenario with this on. While it's not optimal to play that kind of map with all of the Western European civs present in the game even without it, it's just straight-up impossible with this feature. When playing as France, for example, you're in between England, Germany, and Spain.The loyalty system makes this scenario impossible. When I played this England and France always lost loyalty at the beginning of the game and thus my game ended.

The solution to these, and many other problems with this game is to play with the Basic Rules. Rise and Fall/Gathering Storm introduced mechanics that were clearly not well tested, and the AI cannot handle at all

 

[Leyrann]

The solution to these, and many other problems with this game is to play with the Basic Rules. Rise and Fall/Gathering Storm introduced mechanics that were clearly not well tested, and the AI cannot handle at all

Interesting that you say this, considering the AI at release was far worse than the AI nowadays.

In fact, their problem was simply that they put too many civs on too small an area. Nothing to do with mechanics or the AI at all. Same would happen if you put ten players so close together.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Interesting that you say this, considering the AI at release was far worse than the AI nowadays.

In fact, their problem was simply that they put too many civs on too small an area. Nothing to do with mechanics or the AI at all. Same would happen if you put ten players so close together.

If your game on the rise of civilization can’t get Europe right, you have serious issues

 

[Linklite]

Interesting that you say this, considering the AI at release was far worse than the AI nowadays.

It's possible that the AI has objectively improved, but the various loads put on it by new mechanics etc has made it worse overall. I lost several of my early games, whereas now I'd have to try to lose...and would struggle to do so. Part of thst is skill, but also that the AI dies after the first part of the game. Back then, the AI would win on CV and gave me a run for my money on SV. One of the significant changes is that I'm now playing the XPs/NFP, whereas back the I was playing vanilla.

 

[Leyrann]

If your game on the rise of civilization can’t get Europe right, you have serious issues

Do you seriously believe that or are you just being negative because you want to be negative?

Either way, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and explain it.

The reason this game cannot get Europe right on a normal-sized earth map is because there is, put simply, a limit to how big you can make a map before you run into issues. These issues can be performance issues, but also the issue that a map becomes so big that only the most dedicated players are willing to go through the enormous slog of conquering all of it for a domination victory, or that there are too many civilizations around for the player to keep track of, which leads to the player not seeing them as individuals, which makes the story of the game much less vibrant, meaning players are less likely to stick with the game.

On top of that, Europe is extremely densely populated by civilizations - Norway, Sweden, Russia, Scotland, England, Gaul, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Rome, Greece, Byzantium, the Ottomans - and then I'm not even counting civs with more than one leader, or the civs that are close enough they may get involved in Europe. At the same time, Europe is relatively small in terms of the world map.

Because of this, it is absolutely unavoidable to have a crazy number of civs concentrated on an extremely small land area. To give an idea, South America has Grand Colombia, the Maya, the Inca, the Mapuche and Brazil, five civs compared to 17 in Europe, on a larger land area. And then we're not even talking about North America's 4 civs.

It's simple game limitations. You cannot have a game that is enjoyable to play and can house every single European civ on it's true start location, unless you completely change game design from Civilization's tile-based design where a single civilization (usually) survives from the start to the end of the game. At which point it is not Civilization anymore. If that's what you want, Paradox has a ton of games that can satisfy your itch, such as Europa Universalis.

Tl;dr: You cannot have a Civilization-style game where you can put every European civ on it's true start location. It's impossible, and that is not an exaggeration or figure of speech.

It's possible that the AI has objectively improved, but the various loads put on it by new mechanics etc has made it worse overall. I lost several of my early games, whereas now I'd have to try to lose...and would struggle to do so. Part of thst is skill, but also that the AI dies after the first part of the game. Back then, the AI would win on CV and gave me a run for my money on SV. One of the significant changes is that I'm now playing the XPs/NFP, whereas back the I was playing vanilla.

Bollocks. You have improved. On release, the AI could not take a walled city. Straight up, it couldn't do so. Ever.

Heck, just my last game I saw an AI a quarter of the way towards a CV (in terms of tourists) in turn 225 or something. Back on release I probably wouldn't have been able to win a victory of my own before they won, it's only because that turn timer is approximately my victory time these days that I wasn't worried.

 

[Linklite]

Bollocks. You have improved. On release, the AI could not take a walled city. Straight up, it couldn't do so. Ever.

Heck, just my last game I saw an AI a quarter of the way towards a CV (in terms of tourists) in turn 225 or something. Back on release I probably wouldn't have been able to win a victory of my own before they won, it's only because that turn timer is approximately my victory time these days that I wasn't worried.

No. While I have improved, the AI has gotten worse. While I still occasionally go to for long games, the AI never gets that far. I've only seen them get to planes ones. On the other hand, when I first started playing, with vanilla on the same difficulty, I actually had a space race. They were doing their space projects and I had to rush mine to stop them fron winning.

I remember playing on the coast as Rome, I had 5 cities and my neighbours declared war on me and took several, and I had a reasonable sized army. As you said, I've improved, so that must have been approaching triple digits for the turn number. That was a regular thing. I don't even bother making armies now, I might make a warrior or two, but I know that once I get passed about 4 cities, they won't ever be likely declare war on me (plus I have gold to rush just in case). The point being that the AI rarely gets into a position to declare war on me, despite me having a really pathetic army and bring prime pickings.

When I was on vanilla, if you invaded, the AI would rush units through, build new ones and generally put up a fight throughout your campaign. Granted, not an amazing one, but the resistance was there. Now, I break their army on the initial attack, if there even is one, and that's it. I'm just conquering cities.

Aieeegrunt now plays vanilla (maybe R+F, correct me if I'm wrong?) because it they find it harder. I tried it, and yes, there was more of a challenge to it. I really like the mechanics of the new stuff and my favourite civs require the XPs so I've had to go back, but it's not just skill improving on my side. Just because the AI wasn't capable of doing a task then doesn't mean it couldn't or hasn't gotten worse since. That's "bollocks[sic]".

By the way, I have lost walled cities. They came along, used their catapults and took it. Just not recently, and I can't remember if it was on vanilla or with the XPs.

 

[rgp151]

In terms of the AI, the more complex the game is, the harder it is for the AI to be successful. That's true in most games. That's why AIs were developed for games like Chess early on, since Chess is actually a simple game with a small set of rules. The more different mechanics you put into the game, the more you inevitably favor the human player.

But one more thing I'll say about loyalty is that there is a few things that I like about non-loyalty play strategically that just don't like about loyalty. I agree with the OP, I just find it less fun to play with loyalty.

#1) Since resources are revealed as you progress, and some resources are very critical, it is often important to be able to drop a Settler on a specific location to grab a resource. This is especially true of Iron and Oil. This also make going after abilities to reveal Iron and Oil important to prioritize. When playing without Loyalty, revealing oil and then going to drop a Settler on it, even if its just going to be a crappy 7 hex city with no room to expand in a desert or tundra, can often be critical. But with Loyalty I instead just end up accepting my fate and dealing with not having oil, since you can't just go grab the resource. I find this far less interesting. It's more like, "You get what you get, so don't try".

#2) As already discussed, establishing beachheads on foreign continents from which to stage further attacks, either for Domination or Religious victory, is much more problematic, especially for Religious victory. It ends up just making the game more tedious IMO. I also liked expanding all over the place for Cultural Victory, and I find that I expand far less in the late game with Loyalty. True, sometimes its not entirely necessary, so you can get by without creating that new city, but I like it more when I can keep pumping out Settlers all game long, butting them right up against other civs, to maximize trade route opportunities and expand my beachfront for Resorts. Now I tend to turtle more in the mid to late game, which IMO is less enjoyable.

Yes, it does put a stop to the cases where the AI would place horrible tiny cities in small open spaces in your empire that would grab land you hadn't planned on needing to defend. That was annoying, when you expect to be able to grow into a certain tile, but there was a single hex with no water available in the middle of your empire and somehow the AI would get a settler in there and then make a 7 or 8 hex city with essentially no resources and almost no value, but it grabbed away tiles you were planning to use, maybe for Wonder placement or something. This happened to me in a recent Vanilla game, where I was planning to place Big Ben, but then the AI, while I wasn't paying attention, grabbed a coastal tile with one single available hex to drop it, and they put a city there that took the coastal river tile next to my Commercial Hub in my capital city with Ruhr Valley, making it impossible for me to build Big Ben there. Their city was garbage. It had literally 3 land tiles and a bunch of open water without resources, maybe like 1 Crabs or something. I was like, "Really?"

But, IMO, here the cure is worse than the disease. Yes, this would have been a non-issue with Loyalty (well actually not entirely since I wouldn't have been able to switch control of the tile, but they probably wouldn't have built the city to begin with), but I'd rather deal with that than the other problems that Loyalty introduces. However, I don't necessarily view Civ as a realistic simulation, but like a game of Chess. I'm not looking for the most realistic mechanics, but rather ones that provide interesting strategic play. I find tile grabbing and "beachheading" to be interesting aspects of play that Loyalty diminishes.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In other words, if you really want to, you can keep almost any city. There is of course the opportunity cost of employing every single one of these tactics, but then, it shouldn't ever get this bad. -20 loyalty pressure from nearby cities really doesn't happen unless you're conquering in a dark age (which is just dumb)

I will point out that you can actually do this successfully, though. Requires taking a few cities near each other in rapid succession, but that's nothing a rolling war machine can't do once you've neutralized enemy units in vicinity and busted walls. In later eras where roads give more movement and you can policy/general even foot infantry up to move speed of 5 in addition to said roads, it's not even particularly onerous to take 3 cities in 3 turns, such that 1st city is now being loyalty pressured by...your other now-captured cities.

Another way to hold cities that would otherwise be hard is via triggering emergency.