[GS] Improving Civ6's Strategic Depth...

[GrumboMumbo]

I think Civ 6 is currently lacking in strategic depth, and I am determined to tackle this.

The inspirations/eurekas make the game formulaic. Every game ends up treading the same ground because it is always optimal to manage boosts and focus on doing the same tasks in a very similar order. Boosts being 40% of the tech tree is too large a number to ignore. The game becomes more about ticking lots of small checkboxes instead of making more meaningful broad brushstrokes that lead to grand strategy.

Tall vs Wide debate. So I've already seen this argued plenty from both sides. Personally I don't take a particular side, but I do enjoy having a diversity of different strategies in which to adopt in any given game. In Civ5 tall was 'tradition' (pun intended) but it wasn't the only optimal strategy available. The way I currently see it, (and I really want to be proved wrong here) in Civ 6 early expansion (as many cities as possible) is always the most optimal play. There are many reasons for this which I'm sure everyone is already aware of, but I will list them anyway;

- no science/culture penalty for multiple cities
- all district buildings have flat yields/some great people also amplify flat yields
- no GPPs for specialists
- buildings/wonders with area effects (benefits multiple close cities)
- wonders and districts take up tile space which is needed for larger cities
- inspirations/eureka's are easier to fulfil with a wide empire

Now there are some minor reasons to build tall (Pingala/Oxford Uni/Rhur Valley) but these bonuses are far too few to compete with the overwhelming reasons to go as wide as possible. Don't get me wrong, I don't want there to be penalties for having multiple cities (I think this is what Civ5 did wrong), but if so there needs to be sufficient incentives to having larger cities as well.

The 40% District discounts (and to a lesser extent district adjacency bonuses and policy cards) adds a huge amount of complexity and micromanagement to the game, but adds very little or nothing to the strategic depth of the game.

So to sum up, a lot of the mechanics in the game lead to overly mathematical solutions with less room for grand strategy. With this being said, here are some possible solutions to the issues above:

1. Reduce inspiration/eureka boosts from 40% down to 20%

2. Add/Change Government plaza buildings;
E.g. Central Science Laboratory - Cities with a governor give 25% science to the city
Research Camps - Libraries in your empire give +1 Science
(think wide vs tall)

Something similar could be made for Culture/Faith/Gold based Government plaza buildings

(this would also make up for the science/culture lost from reducing eureka boosts) Obviously this would need balancing, but I am sure that could be resolved.

3. Add/Change some policy cards to give some value to larger cities
e.g. 50% science to Cities over 30 pop (or just increase Rationalism's bonus 50% science to 30 pop instead of 10 pop cities)

Again same goes for culture/faith/gold etc
Maybe there could be a policy card that adds +1 Faith per population, and another that increases % of faith in a city (think tall combos)

4. Wonders should be built in Districts instead of on an individual tile (one of the main advantages of having centralised production is building wonders) e.g. Great Library is now built in the Campus itself. (some wonders could remain on single tiles where it suits better.)

5. Add GPPs to specialists

6. Remove the 40% District discounts and the cumulative cost increase as tech/civics are researched. Instead have district costs increase by a small percentage for every District in you empire. First district you build is base cost. District 2 has 1% increase. District 20 has 20% increase etc (maybe this value could be slightly higher, this figure is off the top of my head)

 

[Linklite]

I'm not sure putting Eureka/Inspiration boosts down to 20% will help, I don't go for half of them anyway. Maybe I should, but most of the time, by the time I've gotten to do the boost requirement, I've already reached the tech/civic and done it. It's possible I'm not you're target demographic though, I I try building what I need first and only if I get a spare chance (or its potluck as to whether you get them anyway, like meeting another civ).

I don't think I've ever had a city with 30+ pop. Probably in large part because I never focus on food in trade routes, being cautious as I am (if that route gets plundered...). I'm not sure how feasible it is to insist on such a high number for certain benefits. 20+ maybe?

Wonders in Districts could be interesting and with the 1-District-per-3 pop that could really incentivise tall vs wide.

I'm not sure how 6. will help?

One thought I've had amenities. One of the main restrictions I have on tall cities is that I can only deal with amenities internally through the ED and its limited additions like the Arena etc. After that I have to rely on Luxuries which are also limited in number and I personally prefer to have as a liquid reserve in case a city runs over. In late game on DV at least, Tall is very dangerous because theres little you can do to alleviate an Amenities shortage once the Ed's are done apart from Luxuries which can be spread very thin and are limited in supply as well. Perhaps if they extended the number of additions you can build or if the ED could be repeated, I'd be more comfortable going tall.

Another thought is space. You can currently build upto 3 tiles out, then get an additional 2 tiles of dead space. Perhaps instead you can build on those additional 2 tiles, but at the cost of increase production/gold, perhaps you have to get a civic/tech or a card to do so as well. At the moment it's far better to densely pack many small cities rather than get a few large cities partly due to space waste and partly because I want to dedicate space to productive Districts. By the time I start thinking I need a ND, I have little space to build other Districts so they are largely moot in that regard.

Maybe have a min pop for certain Districts or additions? Like, you can't get a Stock Exchange until the city has 15 pop (if theres only 2,000 people in your town, you wouldn't have the same support for one than if the city was a giant 5 million), or 20 pop before you can bet a Space Port (to get enough scientists and engineers to be able to get the advances) etc.

Perhaps have a bonus for a city that diminishes as it gets further away from the capital. That way you're encouraged to have a few larger cities nearby than to have a few small cities dotted here there and everywhere.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

They did already reduce the tech boosts from 50% to 40% a while ago, so it's clearly something that has been a balance concern before. It's definitely a min-max type thing, and I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea (me included) but I just can't ignore such a large hit of free science/culture. It just annoys me that it's always the most optimal path to hit as many boosts as possible (changing techs half way when needed) which becomes a whack-a-mole mini game. Personally I just don't think it is a very good game mechanic, but it seems far to ingrained to remove completely, so reducing it is the only thing I could think.

Possibly 30 pop is too high, usually when the game is coming to an end I get over 30 pop cities, so wouldn't be much time to benefit. I think your suggestion of 20 pop is reasonable. Or maybe it should just scale over time, so for every 10 pop, you get an extra 50% science bonus. 10 pop = 50% / 20 pop = 100% / 30 pop = 150% and so on...

Yeah point 6. doesn't really help at improving depth of strategy, but it just takes out another min/max mechanic that doesn't make much sense

I agree with you on the Amenities for tall cities, that is actually something I forgot about, but when you start to receive negative amenities from War Weariness, your large cities take the hit first, and those are the cities you care most about not taking a hit on % yields. There should be a way to manage where your amenities are distributed, it's just another reason to not have larger sized cities, just lots of exactly 10 pop cities so the WW gets spread out evenly and you don't notice it. I really don't like being pigeon holed down a certain path of most optimal play, I want it to be diverse strategy.

I feel like a lot of the time people praise civ6 for getting rid of the Happiness mechanic from civ5, when really it's still there, just less noticeable and now split up between housing and amenities. Also the way amenities are distributed makes 8 or 12 cities an optimal amount to have, again favouring a set number of cities. Although the happiness system in civ5 was frustrating to manage if you couldn't plan ahead of time, it did give more flexibility to how you played, as the 4 global happiness from luxuries could be utilised by 1 city or lots of cities. And you could build local happiness buildings within your cities to manage the load. It just wasn't explained well enough (or at all) in the UI.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like playing civ6 is like playing Noughts & Crosses (tic tac toe) and civ5 is like playing Chess. Maybe that is why a lot of the competitive streamer civ players never liked civ6? But I do think that can be turned on it's head with a few changes.

I like your suggestion about District additions and the pop requirements, I will have to think on that for a bit.

 

[Linklite]

Something I'd been thinking about for a while but forgot to mention are the tech/civic trees. They are pretty...restricting. In the sense that they are tall rather than wide. The way it is set out, makes it feel like you basically have to research almost everything in set blocks and you just get to vary slightly on the order that research is done in those blocks rather than getting to carve a path through and making real choices.

Perhaps if they made the branches wider or even separate trees. For example they might have a nautical tree for dealing with shipbuilding etc, a resource tree for extracting resources, a trade tree etc. Not everything would have to be researched in order to be an effective civ and you have to prioritise to match the needs (you could just research everything, but that would slow your progress down because you won't have the most upto date techs, so it's a tradeoff). If you're mostly a naval power, then your tech will mostly be about shipbuilding, if you're an air power, it will be all the aircraft tech, etc. At the moment it feels like I just research everything in a wave and don't feel the need/don't have the opportunity to specialise, which would help make the game more strategic. It would also make each game feel more unique too as well as make extra opportunities to make the civs unique (eg a naval power like Britain or Norway could have +30% research speed on the naval tech tree, or something.

To be honest, this is the first Civ I've played. I'm enjoying it a lot, but that doesn't meant here aren't things to polish