Inconsistent Rules & The Endgame is Absolutely Atrocious!

[King Phaedron]

Late Game, End Game, After Game, what an Atrocious mess!

1) For starters, whose bright idea was it to replace the Civ5 Gold Focus / Faith Focus with "City Projects" That complete in literally 2 turns flat?! That person needs to be fired from the development team! I wish that cities would just leave me alone, I wish that half of them were puppets!

I find this ironic and utterly backwards because Civ6 revolves around having a lot of cities, whereas Civ5 encouraged a playstyle with much fewer cities, even had a one city challenge mode. Civ6 is the game that actually needs that Focus, where you can set a produce extra gold, faith, or science, and it will just keep doing that unless you tell it to stop. I've got them all producing Modern Tank Armies and Missle Cruisers Armada's just so that they leave me alone!

2) No 2nd, 3rd place victories etc: What's the point of one more turn? I finished one victory, why can't I go for several more? Why can't I win the Science, and see if another civ can get second place winning Culture? Or why can't I win Science and then takeover the world?

3) My Historic Timeline has about 1000 entries of "Your Bomber or Death Robot overcame great odds" because literally every unit ever made in the endgame is a either a Modern Tank Army, a Nuclear Submarine Armada, or a Modern AT Army. I bet this bright idea came from the same develop who needs to be fired! Here's a thought, how about disabling Era score in the future era?!

4) Inconsistent Rules: How many times do I wind up with a unit with moves remaining, that I am actively doing something with, and the option to "Skip Turn" mysteriously disappears? A LOT! I have to put the unit to sleep and then sometimes wind up forgeting about him.

5) Inconsistent Rules: When units at war move into one hex of a city center or encampment, they cannot escape, but they CAN Attack or take action. Not so with Rock Bands. If they move into the Zone of Control, the turn ends, making it impossible to flip cities if you are at war with the target.

6) Pitiful Navigation: How many times have I had a builder out in the coast, and then command him to go back on land, the path is saying he will go into the city and make it back on land in one turn, but what he actually does is NOT follow the designated path and instead tries to go through a tiny one tile island and what takes 1 turn if I manually guide him, winds up taking 3! Therefore the Auto Movement tool cannot be trusted, I have to move every unit one space at a time, sometimes even one tile at a hex!

7) Inaccurate Path Projections: I never move anything if it takes more then 1 turn. Quite often, the game tells me I can move somewhere in one turn, but when I get there it's actually saying he'll move there on turn 2. If that's the case, don't freakin show me the path as if he can do it in one turn! This is why I can't play Civ6 Multiplayer, the confusing movement system constantly cheats and lies to me!

8) Is the turn ending or not: Again, I never move anything using the unreliable guided movement system. Another reason for this is because I typically quick save at the end of a turn, only to find out that a dozen units are still needing orders! While there is no practical solution for this, it would be nice to have a counter available telling me the number of units that are still going to need orders each turn.

9) The AI practically worships the player: When you capture a capital and it rebels and becomes a free city, it never returns to the empire around it. That would make things too hard for the casual warmonger. "Wah, I captured that capital and they got it back, now I have to do it again. This game sucks! Wah" The AI NEVER attempts to recover his free cities either. I wouldn't want him to do it right away, but as with attacking a nearby city state, you know they are just going to take back in 30 turns. This has to do with the way the game is coded, because while being hostile, AI cannot actually declare war on Free Cities, and thus even with a tank next to a free city with 0 hp and walls, it will not take it.

Me and Japan were both in a war with Georgia, and I weakened her cities to nothing, but the Japanese tanks standing next to her cities didn't bother to capture anything. It was an emergency because Japan conquered Hong Kong, and the cities Japan Should've taken were right next to Hong Kong!

No matter how long you wait until the future, the AI will NEVER, EVER, Nuke your cities or attack you with bombers. NEVER! I'm seen Australia attack my Death Robots with Biplanes in the Information Era, but that's it. The only attacks they will make are defensive suicides.

I took the Capital of Rome and he had a bunch of Modern AT Armies. Did they try to take the capital back, NO! They all commited suicide attacking a nearby Encampment! How is there are any challenge at all when the AI is this stupid?

.... That's it for now. I've got about a dozen more complaints, but right now this is all I can remember.

 

[AriochIV]

Late game is always a grind in this style of game, but I agree that Civ VI is worse than most in this respect.

 

[oSiyeza]

You hit the nail in the head with the 1), 2), and 9) points.

The navigation and path making have problems, but is not game breaking for me.

Instead, I hate in different degrees: the WC, the religious combat, the lack of diplomatic options, the omision of pupet cities, the card like system of policies, every unit with charges with exception of the builders, the autolenses, the lack of end game replay, the hundred of pointless systems that all do the same (small bonus in some number), everything regarding the diplomatic favour, the permanent favor penalty that removes half the diplomacy for non pacifists, the fact that you can ignore 90% of the game systems and you will notice no difference, the lack of cool spy missions, the bad UI, the pacifist AI being incapable and unwilling to do domination, the repair mechanics, the positive disaster effects, the soothsayer... and finally, the fact that each new content seems more careless and lackluster than the previous one as firaxis prepares to close the game, the lack of mod support, the still not functional world builder ....

I have played and I own all civ content from 1 to 6. And I still enjoy plenty of things in this one, but I doubt I will buy 7.

 

[leandrombraz]

1) city projects aren't a problem on itself. The idea to have a project that give you something both while you're producing it and when you finish it is interesting. The problem is that there isn't an option to repeat it indefinitely, so it doesn't fulfill the same function that gold/faith focus did. In practice, city projects is a new mechanic, while there isn't anything that replaces Civ V's gold/faith focus, there's nothing that fulfill that role. However, you can use the queue to repeat projects a few times and change focus to avoid production, so it takes longer. Eventually the queue will run out of projects, but depending on that city's production, you can forget that it exists for a long time.
Civ VI was clearly designed by people that like to micromanage and that have little love for any kind of automation. It's actually consistent with the game design that you can't just ignore a city forever. There's very little in Civ VI that you can automate.

9) The way the AI target cities needs a serious overhaul. I have been noticing how much that weakens the AI. In my current game, Norway have been throwing units at a City-State for at least 60 turns. for most part of these 60 turns, I was an easy target, right next to him. I had barely any military and my cities had no walls, including coastal cities, which Norway should love. The AI just can't see that I'm a better target for conquest, stop targeting the CS, declare peace with them and go after me. It was a whole game just sending units into their death. In a previous game, I had a similar situation where the AI was at war with a Civ that had cities without walls and damaged, but it insisted in trying to get a walled CS next to it. The AI can't reassess their targets and change strategy. Once it set to take a city, that's it. Unless peace happens, it will just keep sending units there.

The Norway game:

Keep going buddy. You might damage that CS walls once in another 60 turns.

 

[oSiyeza]

1) city projects aren't a problem on itself. The idea to have a project that give you something both while you're producing it and when you finish it is interesting. The problem is that there isn't an option to repeat it indefinitely, so it doesn't fulfill the same function that gold/faith focus did. In practice, city projects is a new mechanic, while there isn't anything that replaces Civ V's gold/faith focus, there's nothing that fulfill that role. However, you can use the queue to repeat projects a few times and change focus to avoid production, so it takes longer. Eventually the queue will run out of projects, but depending on that city's production, you can forget that it exists for a long time.
Civ VI was clearly designed by people that like to micromanage and that have little love for any kind of automation. It's actually consistent with the game design that you can't just ignore a city forever. There's very little in Civ VI that you can automate.

9) The way the AI target cities needs a serious overhaul. I have been noticing how much that weakens the AI. In my current game, Norway have been throwing units at a City-State for at least 60 turns. for most part of these 60 turns, I was an easy target, right next to him. I had barely any military and my cities had no walls, including coastal cities, which Norway should love. The AI just can't see that I'm a better target for conquest, stop targeting the CS, declare peace with them and go after me. It was a whole game just sending units into their death. In a previous game, I had a similar situation where the AI was at war with a Civ that had cities without walls and damaged, but it insisted in trying to get a walled CS next to it. The AI can't reassess their targets and change strategy. Once it set to take a city, that's it. Unless peace happens, it will just keep sending units there.

The Norway game:
View attachment 566949

Keep going buddy. You might damage that CS walls once in another 60 turns.

Agree with the AI targeting of cities. I have been saying it for years...

Also, while you are right and it is consistent with the game design, that does not make it good design. In fact making you repeat boring tasks hundrends of times for the only reason of keeping you busy is a terrible design.

No wonder people wants tall play with less cities and thinks late game is boring when all you have to do are these tasks...

Why make an engaging diplomacy or a competent AI, when you can keep the player clicking on the same button over and over again?

The worst offender here are the repair mechanics, second only to the religious combat, and then the lack of focus options in cities, the lack of vassal or puppet cities...

Gold medal for worst elements of the game together with the world congress...