I'm Starting to Really hate Loyalty

[MarigoldRan]

Like loyalty mechanics should be disabled in the first 100 turns. Only kicks in later. The issue right now is if your start sucks and you end up in a Dark Age, you can't conquer anyone due to loyalty pressure.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I find the Loyalty mechanic to be too mild. It's not a useful, 'peaceful' alternative to old fashioned, blood-and-fire conquest. It could have been a good way to represent the various methods of peaceful expansion - marriages, annexations, political intrigue, purchases of land - but it isn't. It's not clear to me what the devs meant the system to be, do, or model, but it's never been an important or compelling part of any game I've played, so far.

 

[BenitoChavez]

I think it is fine as is. A dark age is supposed to be a difficult time in your empire and the loyalty mechanic is the only thing that really reflects that. If you take that away what is left? A dimly lit screen and some situationally beneficial policy cards? That isn't very dark agey.

It's not clear to me what the devs meant the system to be, do, or model, but it's never been an important or compelling part of any game I've played, so far.

It's meant to limit warmongering. Trying to conquer cities far away from your empire requires planning around the loyalty mechanic or else you wont be able to hold onto any city. It also helps city placement mirror real life. Imagine if China decided to make a city right in the middle of the United States. Back before loyalty was introduced, you could do that. I suggest playing as Lautaro and Eleanor and making use of their abilities that affect loyalty. Those have been some of my most fun games.

 

[Elhoim]

Definitely fine. If anything, it's too mild like many things in this game.

 

[Tech Osen]

Like loyalty mechanics should be disabled in the first 100 turns. Only kicks in later. The issue right now is if your start sucks and you end up in a Dark Age, you can't conquer anyone due to loyalty pressure.

Well, deal with it or start over. I don't really get complaints like this, you want to be absolutely sure you win at turn 1? Then what's the point of playing? The randomness in the first couple of ages is often the most interesting part of the game for me.

 

[lotrmith]

Like loyalty mechanics should be disabled in the first 100 turns. Only kicks in later. The issue right now is if your start sucks and you end up in a Dark Age, you can't conquer anyone due to loyalty pressure.

How can your start possibly suck so bad that you get a dark age? You'd have to be on a barb-less, state-less, hut-less island all alone. Even then if you just built a galley you'd probably get out of dark age territory.

Also difficulty in conquering is precisely the purpose of Loyalty.

 

[kb27787]

You can... you just need to raze stuff rather than keep it.

Warmongering is already so overpowered that I find it strange one would complain.
If anything I would slap a combat/healing penalty to the attacker when fighting in a region where his loyalty pressure would be negative.

 

[kaspergm]

Of all the features in the game, I think this is one of the few that on an overall level works as it should. I might want it to be more punishing on internal level when cities have unhappiness, and I might want it to be a bit more forgiving when doing conquest, but overall, it's not in a bad shape.

 

[MrRadar]

If anything I would slap a combat/healing penalty to the attacker when fighting in a region where his loyalty pressure would be negative.

That sounds very interesting. Although, if it worked both ways, it would be even easier for the player to destroy any AI invading force.

 

[leandrombraz]

One of the main things that loyalty try to accomplish is to force Civs to expand organically, instead of settling all over the place with huge gaps between cities, aka forward settling. Disabling it in early game would go against the very reason loyalty exist in the first place.

Start the game with a scout, look for goody huts ,major civs, City-States, natural wonders. Build military early and hunt for barbarian outposts. Build a district with good adjacency if you got a good spot for it. It's impossible to get a dark age if you do that, and I'm not exaggerating, the chance of that happening is so low it's not even relevant. You're likely to get golden and pretty much guaranteed to get at least normal. If you're getting dark classical (or in any era, really), you're either doing it on purpose or doing something terribly wrong, like not even trying to figure out how to get era points and avoid a dark age.

As long as you settle your cities in a 9 tiles range of each other and invest on growth, loyalty isn't an issue. You can settle even in -20 loyalty tiles and still keep the city. If you gonna conquer or settle far of your cities, conquer/settle at least two cities in a 9 tiles range, so they can influence each other. Don't do that on a dark age, stick close to your own cities if you somehow manage to get one.

You can... you just need to raze stuff rather than keep it.

Razing is counterproductive as far as loyalty goes and the laziest way to "deal" with loyalty (you're not really dealing with it, you're running from the problem). You're deleting a source of loyalty and feeding a chain reaction where razing one city force you to raze the next because you never have loyalty. The main source of loyalty is population, from both the city itself and its neighbors, deleting the very thing that give you what you need doesn't make any sense. Instead of razing, conquer efficiently, plan your timing so a city don't stay for too long without getting influence from a neighbor. Conquer cities with high population first if possible, take down the capital soon if possible (pay attention on where is their second most populated city since it will become their new capital. Consider how that will affect you). Razing cities is never, ever something you should do to deal with loyalty, unless you actually want that city gone for whatever reason.

 

[Caprikel]

I like loyalty, but I do feel that the way it's implemented seems strange. When I first heard that they were adding loyalty, I was very excited since I thought it would be a way for large scale rebellions to occur, and act as a way to limit wide play by making cities harder to keep loyal without keeping them happy.
As it is now, cities never rebel unless you're near another player, and it effectively only acts as a way for cities to exchange from one player to another.
It really feels weird that your citizens in a specific city would want to join another empire, rather than being independent, just because there is a high population city from another empire nearby.
While it does make sense that an independent city could be won over to another civilization, it's just too easy.

Right now, loyalty effectively just functions as a way to limit forward settling, limit warmongering, and allow for peaceful conquest. I consider those all to be good things, and as such prefer loyalty existing over no loyalty, but I still feel there's a lot of wasted potential for the mechanic.
I personally think it should also act as a way to limit rapid expansion, and make maintaining a large empire more difficult/rewarding. In real life, the biggest threats to large empires often came from within rather than outside. Maintaining the loyalty of your people should be more difficult the larger and more disconnected your empire is.

As for how to implement that, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps a modifier could be added that lowers loyalty generation the more cities your have. Also reintroduce the Capital connection system that Civ V had that has your cities benefit from being connected to the capital through roads or harbor. Having your cities connected connected to the capital should help the loyalty of your citizens to your empire.

Honestly I could write essays worth of content on this, but I should probably stop here for now.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think it is fine as is. A dark age is supposed to be a difficult time in your empire and the loyalty mechanic is the only thing that really reflects that. If you take that away what is left? A dimly lit screen and some situationally beneficial policy cards? That isn't very dark agey.

Dark Ages are also too mild, but that's a different thread.

It's meant to limit warmongering. Trying to conquer cities far away from your empire requires planning around the loyalty mechanic or else you wont be able to hold onto any city. It also helps city placement mirror real life. Imagine if China decided to make a city right in the middle of the United States. Back before loyalty was introduced, you could do that. I suggest playing as Lautaro and Eleanor and making use of their abilities that affect loyalty. Those have been some of my most fun games.

True, the non-contiguous, crazy-quilt placement of cities has been solved. That was aggravating as [bleep].

Still, I think there's a place in the game for some way to move borders and take territory other than total war. When I first read about Loyalty, I thought that was what they were going for, but perhaps I was wrong, perhaps it was never meant to be or do that.

 

[Ovidious]

I sometimes try to get a dark age just so I can slingshot to a golden age and get the extra "picks" when the new era starts. I love it when I can pick three out of the four choices instead of the usual one. But the 0.5 instead of 1.5 loyalty does hurt for a bit.

 

[Pietato]

What an absolutely terrible idea, which would run completely counter to the purpose of loyalty. If anything, loyalty needs to be expanded to work on individual tiles and borders.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I sometimes try to get a dark age just so I can slingshot to a golden age and get the extra "picks" when the new era starts. I love it when I can pick three out of the four choices instead of the usual one. But the 0.5 instead of 1.5 loyalty does hurt for a bit.

Same here. I like some of the Dark Age policy cards, too.

Maybe it's a function of how I lay out my cities, but I rarely have any problems with Loyalty, even in a Dark Age. Nothing that a Governor, a policy card, or a rush-purchased Monument can't handle, anyway. And I've never been able to use Loyalty the other way, to deliberately flip a city. It's so much easier, faster, and more reliable to just declare war and take it by force of arms.

I hadn't thought about the foreign wars issue. I usually run riot over my home continent early in the game and then settle down to whichever VC I'm going for. After I put together a contiguous nation of N cities that has me in position to win, by the time I might think about casting my greedy gaze overseas, there's nothing to be gained by doing it. So the fact that Loyalty makes imperial ambitions a little more complicated doesn't really come up (for me). Again, I don't know if that's working as intended, or if it points to a problem that has nothing to do with Loyalty, per se, or is just a quirk of how I play. My games always stagnate long before any colonial wars would occur.

 

[_ViKinG_]

I play with loalty off because it's annoying to play with.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Tundra starts as Japan with a big lake to the south of you pretty much guarantees a dark age.

 

[kaspergm]

What an absolutely terrible idea, which would run completely counter to the purpose of loyalty. If anything, loyalty needs to be expanded to work on individual tiles and borders.

I soooooo want the cultural borders from Civ4 to come back, with the only exception that I want an option to say "no thank you" to stealing a hex from my neighbour.

 

[lotrmith]

Tundra starts as Japan with a big lake to the south of you pretty much guarantees a dark age.

I disagree. The threshold for Dark Age in Classical Era is so low, all you have to do is explore a little. Barb camps, goodie huts, and meeting city-states / civs all net you fast, easy points.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Seven Seas map greatly increases chances of dark age. One neighbor close by, bounded by tundra and lakes and mountains. No exploration at all.

On the old Pangea maps it was easy to avoid Dark Age. Not so on Seven Seas.