I'm Starting to Really hate Loyalty

[sonicmyst]

Without the Loyalty and Ages mechanic, the game would be too easy.

 

[MarigoldRan]

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.

Not if the sea is a pond.

 

[steveg700]

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.

Actually, it's more the opposite. You get crowded by three of four other civ's who, at higher diffs, will have a bunch of units to fan out and explore with before you can crank out a scout. In the ancient era, players are pretty much at the mercy of fate for GA points since it's all about exploration and not their own choices.

So those other civ's find all the goody huts and kill all the barb camps. And if you beelined Writing, you have border issues to contend with, and that's particularly a problem for galley exploration (assuming you're in a position to build a galley). Maybe your scout gets killed or you're forced into a totally defensive posture. Defensive wars are not a good source of GA points.

Having said all that, yes dark ages should be rare and are usually the result of cheaping out on exploration.

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.

Again, such statements presume much about something that's governed by opportunities that may not exist.

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.

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.

This is the long and short of it. It addresses forward-settling.

Of course, I've forward-settled civ's plenty of times and gotten away with it. Governors and garrisons make that possible. You really just have to hold on until you build up some pops in your city.

 

[Bosque]

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..

I have played Civ 6 a lot, enough to be one of those who has gotten all 241 achievements. And I believe I have had a grand total of 2 Dark Ages. I really had to struggle to force my self to get a Dark Age for one of the achievements. In most of my games I get a Golden Age for Classical, use Monumentality for faith buying settlers and expand widely, usually winding up with dozens of cities, and staying in a Golden Age for the rest of the game. So I really can't relate much to the problems of dealing with a Dark Age. I generally play Immortal, but sometimes go to Emperor or Deity depending on how I am feeling.

In my most recent game as England (Victoria), I settled 3 cities on a new continent very near a well developed India in the Industrial Era. Two of the 3 were -20 loyalty spots. But by having a Happy to Ecstatic empire, rush buying monuments and granaries, moving governors into those two cities, choosing policy cards to aid loyalty,.and placing traders in them to go to high growth cities, I was able to grow and avoid loyalty issues within just a few turns.

 

[lotrmith]

Actually, it's more the opposite. You get crowded by three of four other civ's who, at higher diffs, will have a bunch of units to fan out and explore with before you can crank out a scout. In the ancient era, players are pretty much at the mercy of fate for GA points since it's all about exploration and not their own choices.

So those other civ's find all the goody huts and kill all the barb camps. And if you beelined Writing, you have border issues to contend with, and that's particularly a problem for galley exploration (assuming you're in a position to build a galley). Maybe your scout gets killed or you're forced into a totally defensive posture. Defensive wars are not a good source of GA points.

Having said all that, yes dark ages should be rare and are usually the result of cheaping out on exploration.


Again, such statements presume much about something that's governed by opportunities that may not exist.

Sounds like you stack the odds against yourself with high density maps at high difficulties. Not everyone plays 6 civ max city state crowded tiny maps on deity to try to capture enemy settlers.

 

[leandrombraz]

I have played Civ 6 a lot, enough to be one of those who has gotten all 241 achievements. And I believe I have had a grand total of 2 Dark Ages. I really had to struggle to force my self to get a Dark Age for one of the achievements. In most of my games I get a Golden Age for Classical, use Monumentality for faith buying settlers and expand widely, usually winding up with dozens of cities, and staying in a Golden Age for the rest of the game. So I really can't relate much to the problems of dealing with a Dark Age. I generally play Immortal, but sometimes go to Emperor or Deity depending on how I am feeling.

In my most recent game as England (Victoria), I settled 3 cities on a new continent very near a well developed India in the Industrial Era. Two of the 3 were -20 loyalty spots. But by having a Happy to Ecstatic empire, rush buying monuments and granaries, moving governors into those two cities, choosing policy cards to aid loyalty,.and placing traders in them to go to high growth cities, I was able to grow and avoid loyalty issues within just a few turns.

I still didn't get one. Dark Ages just don't happen unless you avoid Era points on purpose, it's way too easy to get points. I think Firaxis should at least increase the penalty for previous Golden Ages considerably, to the point a streak of 2 or 3 Golden Ages pretty much guarantee you gona get a Dark, so Rise & Fall get a bit more Fall and less Rise, because right now it's all Rise and no Fall. They should also increase the penalty for more cities, considering that being aggressive bring in a lot of extra points. Having to deal with at least one Dark Age in a Domination game should be common, which would simulate quite nicely the difficulties of a large Empire through loyalty and create opportunity to use the Dark Age policies.

If you get a streak of Golden Ages, you know what you're doing. You can take a Dark Age, hell you would enjoy getting one to have some change of pace, maybe a bit of a challenge. The game will only get better if they increase that penalty. It would improve the game for "hardcore" players and make no difference for casuals, who doesn't get a streak that easily. It could increase to "impossible" levels with a streak (not actually impossible, just extremely unlike), then decrease once you get a Dark, so it isn't impossible to get an Heroic age and more golden after that.

Just give me one Dark Age per game without the need to hurt myself on purpose to avoid points, it's all I ask.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Do you play on Deity and Seven Seas?

 

[UWHabs]

I still didn't get one. Dark Ages just don't happen unless you avoid Era points on purpose, it's way too easy to get points. I think Firaxis should at least increase the penalty for previous Golden Ages considerably, to the point a streak of 2 or 3 Golden Ages pretty much guarantee you gona get a Dark, so Rise & Fall get a bit more Fall and less Rise, because right now it's all Rise and no Fall. They should also increase the penalty for more cities, considering that being aggressive bring in a lot of extra points. Having to deal with at least one Dark Age in a Domination game should be common, which would simulate quite nicely the difficulties of a large Empire through loyalty and create opportunity to use the Dark Age policies.

If you get a streak of Golden Ages, you know what you're doing. You can take a Dark Age, hell you would enjoy getting one to have some change of pace, maybe a bit of a challenge. The game will only get better if they increase that penalty. It would improve the game for "hardcore" players and make no difference for casuals, who doesn't get a streak that easily. It could increase to "impossible" levels with a streak (not actually impossible, just extremely unlike), then decrease once you get a Dark, so it isn't impossible to get an Heroic age and more golden after that.

Just give me one Dark Age per game without the need to hurt myself on purpose to avoid points, it's all I ask.

The biggest problem is that with the snowball mechanism, if you chain a couple golden ages together, I find that by that point I'm usually so far ahead in the game that the pathetic era score counter is so far behind. Like, in my last game, I won it like a turn or two into a new era, and the last era I went into after 2 straight golden ages I had 240 points where I only needed like 180 for the era.

So yeah, if they set the limits to be so huge that it was crazy hard to chain too many golden ages together, that would be a neat way to handle things. Although then you would get some crazy cases where I would desperately try to avoid a golden age in a specific case if I know that next year I end up going dark. I wonder if sometimes an option for "nah, you know what, I'd rather be in a normal age now" would make sense.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's only a problem with the first age. It seems to end really fast and if you roll a cramped start where you are surrounded, the AI will get to everything before you and there will be no barbs. There could be no City States; etc.

It also is an issue with those God awful lake starts where movement is restricted and you can't even boost sailing.

Of course you could do certain things to avoid a Dark Age, but the concessions you would do to get them are arguably worse than just staying in a Dark Age, lol. Eg. Telling people to settle an early coastal city.

But yeaaaa, I don't think a lot of people know what a bad start really is. I've opened 2 scouts before and still can hit a Dark Age.

 

[Jkchart]

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.

Being able to transfer individual tiles diplomatically (or through war and culture) should be entirely possible. We have LITERALLY had hundreds of conflicts in history over the tiniest pieces of land.

 

[leandrombraz]

It's only a problem with the first age. It seems to end really fast and if you roll a cramped start where you are surrounded, the AI will get to everything before you and there will be no barbs. There could be no City States; etc.

It also is an issue with those God awful lake starts where movement is restricted and you can't even boost sailing.

Of course you could do certain things to avoid a Dark Age, but the concessions you would do to get them are arguably worse than just staying in a Dark Age, lol. Eg. Telling people to settle an early coastal city.

But yeaaaa, I don't think a lot of people know what a bad start really is. I've opened 2 scouts before and still can hit a Dark Age.

I rarely reroll, I think I did it only two or three times counting both Civ V and Civ VI (I been playing since 2013), so trust me, I know what a bad start looks like. It still quite unlikely that you gona get a dark age, it just make golden less likely but normal still hard to miss. The only exception is when barbarian and city state spawn was messed up, a continent without barbarians and CS back when GS came out could give you a dark age, I almost got one back then.

 

[Archon_Wing]

. The only exception is when barbarian and city state spawn was messed up, a continent without barbarians and CS back when GS came out could give you a dark age, I almost got one back then.

I dunno, that happened an awful lot that CS's are clustered together on the opposite side of the world, and still seems to happen.

 

[Jkchart]

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.

This. +1 absolutely. And there should be a way Free Cities can become independent and old civs can be resurrected (with the appropriate tech levels!!!) as well.

 

[steveg700]

Sounds like you stack the odds against yourself with high density maps at high difficulties. Not everyone plays 6 civ max city state crowded tiny maps on deity to try to capture enemy settlers.

Not at all. Standard sized maps with standard number of civ's and CS's. If you're one of the people scaling maps or civ's to provide more elbow room, then you are the outlier who has stacked the odds in your favor.

 

[lotrmith]

Not at all. Standard sized maps with standard number of civ's and CS's. If you're one of the people scaling maps or civ's to provide more elbow room, then you are the outlier who has stacked the odds in your favor.

Under standard start settings (balanced, correct # of civs to map size) I have never once felt like I had no room to explore and thus have never once had difficulty scoring enough exploration related era points to not end up in Classical dark age.

And apparently, neither have many other posters here.

 

[steveg700]

Under standard start settings (balanced, correct # of civs to map size) I have never once felt like I had no room to explore and thus have never once had difficulty scoring enough exploration related era points to end up in Classical dark age.

Bully for you!

As I've already noted, my peevish friend, it should be an infrequent development, but the conditions under which it can happen should also be easy to understand. Barb camps are the biggest source of GA points, and if you don't get to'em, then the next biggest would probably be getting a +3 holy site or campus, or a suzerian, which isn't a given either. Of course, a civ with ancient-era uniques is in great shape. Most everything else are the sundry +1's largely derived from happenstance encounters.

 

[lotrmith]

Bully for you!

As I've already noted, my peevish friend, it should be an infrequent development, but the conditions under which it can happen should also be easy to understand. Barb camps are the biggest source of GA points, and if you don't get to'em, then the next biggest would probably be getting a +3 holy site or campus, or a suzerian, which isn't a given either. Of course, a civ with ancient-era uniques is in great shape. Most everything else are the sundry +1's largely derived from happenstance encounters.

Seems to me the conditions are either artificial or anecdotal in most cases.

 

[UWHabs]

And you can conquer civs while in a dark age too, it just takes extra effort. Basically, if you send in a governor and keep a unit in the captured city, worst case you're at around -10 or -15 per turn, meaning you have about 3-4 turns to capture the next city before the current one flips. It's tough, but it can mean that you basically should siege a city to get it to 1 health, and then already be starting your attack on the next city before you take the first one.

Or you capture the city, but abandon it and let it revolt, and then have to go back in and capture it again. I've definitely had conquests where I purposefully let a city revolt, knowing that I can come back to it later once I've gotten 1 or 2 nearby cities. Not easy, but can be done.

 

[steveg700]

Seems to me the conditions are either artificial or anecdotal in most cases.

Well, all related experiences are anecdotal evidence to other people. That doesn't inherently validate dismissiveness. And being in tight proximity with other civ's with more units to explore and kill barbs with is hardly an artificially-conceived circumstance.

Usually, you can score the needed points all the same because you'll run into enough +1's, but as has been said a couple times now, it's pretty heavily reliant on exogenous factors that every now and then may not go a player's way. Seems that's why the OP saw fit to vent.

 

[lotrmith]

Your 'every now and then' (under normal cirucmstances ) is so rare most people can't remember it ever happening to them.