I'm Starting to Really hate Loyalty

[ChocolateShake]

I think military units should have a strong loyalty bonus by default. If you're occupying the city center, and the pop is at say 2-3 or below, I don't think there should be any risk of rebellion. Maybe each military unit within the 1-tile radius of the city center provides +2 loyalty by default.

Maybe that could be adjusted based on religion, and possibly cultural influence as well.

A military unit dynamic like that could also be used locally - maybe if you're getting a lot of loyalty pressure, you have to place lots of military units around your city to keep it from flipping.

I think the Civ 3 system was interesting, where cultural influence was the key factor, as far as I remember. Each tile had a percentage of influence attributed to each empire that was culturally pressuring it, and I recall citizens had nationalities too. I hope they re-examine that for future iterations of loyalty, maybe it's trickier to do that today due to more media coverage/greater chances of misinterpretation.

 

[lotrmith]

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.

Settle on Coast. Build a galleon. You're practically guaranteed to get out of Dark Age threshold.

 

[MarigoldRan]

1. Sailing tech. Waste of time.
2. Galley. Waste of time.

 

[MrRadar]

1. Sailing tech. Waste of time.
2. Galley. Waste of time.

How about more settlers then?

 

[lotrmith]

1. Sailing tech. Waste of time.
2. Galley. Waste of time.

You're talking about Seven Seas?

 

[pokiehl]

If anything I wish Loyalty were more impactful.

 

[SharTeel]

Yeah, let's remove a mechanic because sometimes the map forces you to play differently.
Loyalty is fine as it is

 

[Leucarum]

I like that loyalty limits warmongering somewhat. If anything I'd like the loyalty penalty from grievances to be stronger.

It's a mechanic that usually isn't huge but when it's impactful it's really impactful. My current game just looks like it's going to be one of those. After playing defence against Alexander through 4 wars, he just entered a dark age and 3 of his cities are about to flip. Muahahaha!

 

[King of Prussia]

my biggest issue with loyalty is how much it hampers colonizing. Unless there is no one around, those islands/continents not of your own are a pain to keep. in the mid to late game, there could be enough pressure from far enough away to make it not possible.

 

[Sostratus]

It does a good job on the forward settling and warmonger front.
But they totally need to tie free cities to player factions so that someone rebelling from France doesn't spawn some tanks and drive them right over to kongo to burn down villages. I mean, what??? IE, anyone who revolts from you is now your "antifaction;" they will fight you and your allies and leave others alone. Spy spawned rebels go into these "antifactions" too

I do wish they could tweak the system by making "disloyalty" a generic, independent stat. Right now if a city is revolting from you it's because someone else is putting pressure on it. That almost always means that a city which goes "free city" will flip to the neighbor. They don't and usually can't remain free. But having the only source of negative loyalty come form other civs means you can never use it for internal mechanics like:
-You've settled a city out on the frontier wilderness. They aren't very happy about the constant barb raids and the King's refusal to help them. They become a free city.
-You've critically mismanaged your amenities or power or whatever. A big province in the middle of your empire is ready to secede because they'd prefer to not be living in the literal dark, thank you very much.
-Your neighbor has had some bureaucratic snafus and allowed a few border towns to go free. Now, that free state is starting to put pressure on your border towns to revolt and join La Causa Libre!

You just need to separate loyalty and disloyalty. Think of it as a circle where each major civ has loyalty that can pull a city to their side. Disloyalty pulls them to the center, the Free City zone.

Then you can start splitting things out as what causes a city to become a free city and what causes them to go actively to a major civ.

 

[MarigoldRan]

You're talking about Seven Seas?

Depends on how large and well connected the "sea" is.

 

[MarigoldRan]

How about more settlers then?

That's what I prefer. But doesn't provide era score. Hence the Dark Age.

 

[lotrmith]

Depends on how large and well connected the "sea" is.

The sheer amount of coastal tiles, connected at any level (and also excellent for canals) make naval superiority paramount. This is true even on Small Continents. Are we playing the same game? Navy is only a side factor and sailing tech a 'waste of time' on Pangea and maybe Continents. But even on Continents if you ignore Navy and get complacent, any civ close to the coast may find themselves suddenly in trouble.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

My problem with loyalty is the game seems to fudge things and change the rules super secretly. I had the game lock growth on a city that had 5 surplus food as if it decided to take my city regardless of what I did.

 

[lotrmith]

My problem with loyalty is the game seems to fudge things and change the rules super secretly. I had the game lock growth on a city that had 5 surplus food as if it decided to take my city regardless of what I did.

• Unrest (1-25): no Population growth, -100% to all yields.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Loyalty_(Civ6)

 

[Abaxial]

Last two games I played had the situation where a neighbour started losing loyalty due to pressure from another neighbour. Two cities revolted, and I could march in quickly and capture the free cities. Two conquests and no grievances!

 

[Medopu]

As a concept, loyalty is great but I would further develop loyalty to make this mechanic more organic and less gamey.


There needs to be an autonomy system, yielding you less gold per city in less loyal cities. Most autonomous cities would also dictate their own production and yield you very small amounts of gold. Think of puppet states in civ 5.

To make things more difficult, low amenities, religion, grievances, opponent players governors, opponent trade routes and wonders should also have a significant negative impact.

And just because a distant location has no loyalty pressure from other opponents, doesn’t automatically make that city fully autonomous and loyal to your capital. It would have to be highly autonomous in order to remain loyal without any special intervention from the player.


I would also try introducing loyalty play in tier 2 governments.


Monarchy could act as a defensive loyalty mechanic, making a good loyalty buff for cities with walls or something along similar lines.

Merchant republic could be an offensive trade-route focused loyalty-flipping government

Theocracy could be a mix of those two, revolving around strengthening/flipping the loyalty with religion.


There is still one glaring issue that I currently cannot find any good solution for. If you’re a warmongerer and conquer the biggest most developed city, you never run into any loyalty problems unless there are similarly developed enemy cities nearby. This is counter-intuitive and doesn’t make any sense, because currently, the loyalty depends too much on population and too little on distance and other factors.

If England took Paris in 100-years-war, the populations in other occupied regions should not become instantly loyal.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

People seem to have forgotten how bad the AI were for forward settling before loyalty was introduced.

I was getting very frustrated at how the AI nations' cities were just a jumbled up mess.

Loyalty solved that problem at a stroke.

 

[Leucarum]

People seem to have forgotten how bad the AI were for forward settling before loyalty was introduced.

I was getting very frustrated at how the AI nations' cities were just a jumbled up mess.

Loyalty solved that problem at a stroke.

Having played a bit of the original civ on the switch lately while commuting this is definitely one of the worst things about the base game.

 

[Tech Osen]

1. Sailing tech. Waste of time.
2. Galley. Waste of time.

So you hate dark ages to the point that you start a thread about it here but techs that would prevent said dark age are a waste of time... Regardless: what's the rush? A lot of people find gaming itself to be a giant waste of time.