Is luck too important?

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I was going through a lot of the complaints towards the game, and I noticed a trend-

Luck of the starting roll seems to be extremely important. Now, luck has always been a factor in all the Civ games, but it seems that here, in VI more than any previous iteration it's taken on a an aspect that it can completely negate any attempt at strategy or thinking, especially on higher difficulties.

No city states nearby? You lose out on those incredibly powerful single envoy bonuses- which DO stack up, in terms of gold, faith, production, etc.

Barbarian camps can pop up almost anywhere and wreak utter havoc with your early game, be it capturing civilians to cutting that trade route you JUST opened where there WASN'T a camp just a turn ago!

Production being so much more important- god help you if you have a low production start.

And the list goes on.

So is that really the case? Or is it just me?

 

[The Economy]

Of course there's luck involved, that's part of the fun! Not everyone receives an optimal starting position, you just carve out your piece of the map as well as you can. It would be boring if every player has the same balanced start on every map.

It's great to start as the underdog and then slowly crawl your way to the top, those are the best and most challenging games.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

Of course there's luck involved, that's part of the fun! Not everyone receives an optimal starting position, you just carve out your piece of the map as well as you can. It would be boring if every player has the same balanced start on every map.

It's great to start as the underdog and then slowly crawl your way to the top, those are the best and most challenging games.

I agree! I do enjoy a bit of luck for it, but it seems in Civ VI in particular luck has become a much STRONGER factor than it has been. Look at the way Great people work- for example. If someone happens to have jumped a few eras, say good bye to quite a few of them! They're locked out! The roll of the dice to me here feels far stronger than it ever has.

 

[greygamer]

If the intention in Civ VI was for players to "... play the map." then you can see why randomness is going to be more pronounced in this instalment. The map is procedurally generated (i.e. random within parameters) and that is the foundation of the game play that follows. Turning off barbarians and tribal villages will make it less so (although you will loose some early eurekas in doing so).
Selecting balanced start can help with reducing impossible starts, although I find that such starts are perhaps a little too helpful.

 

[nzcamel]

Playing the hand you are dealt is part of being a gamer imo. I certainly appreciate there is a wider variety of starts given the map being more important; but I don't see any of this as a negative. To me it's a positive that makes the game more interesting.
I'd also say the introduction of natural wonders in V was a bigger change re lucky starts than anything VI has changed.

 

[shaglio]

This all depends on who you ask.

Some people enjoy the randomness that starting-position-luck and RNG provide. They enjoy trying to adapt to their surroundings and overcoming obstacles that get in their way.

Some people, on the other hand, would rather have consistency and predictability in their games. They would rather rely on implementing their finely-honed strategy to achieve victory and don't want to get tripped up by things beyond their control.

The former would answer "no" to your question while the latter would answer "yes."

 

[Victoria]

I enjoy randomness so would respond maybe, sometimes

 

[blasto]

I'm pretty sure there are places in the game where "odds" are totally broke. I had 3 spy quests fail in row that were 68% likely to succeed.. info window only showed something like a 28% chance to fail and they seem to always fail. I only ever got a spy quest to succeed when its 75% or higher. total BS

 

[JacquesBquick]

agree with statements about some luck having a place, but i would argue being able to settle on a river is TOO important, so luck playing into whether you can settle on a river or not in turn 1 isn't a good thing. now, my idea would not be default all settlers to start on a river, but rather to balance the game such that rivers are not so powerful in comparison to non-river cities.

 

[nzcamel]

This all depends on who you ask.

Some people enjoy the randomness that starting-position-luck and RNG provide. They enjoy trying to adapt to their surroundings and overcoming obstacles that get in their way.

Some people, on the other hand, would rather have consistency and predictability in their games. They would rather rely on implementing their finely-honed strategy to achieve victory and don't want to get tripped up by things beyond their control.

The former would answer "no" to your question while the latter would answer "yes."

I am a strategic player. Absolutely. I don't have many games on my pc which don't feature strategy as a tag. In board gaming I love Euro style games which make luck less of a feature compared to ones own skill.
I do want to win as a result of my choices, and not luck.

Yet at least on a low level I'll always want some randomness in game. It makes it more interesting, and true to life. No one in history dealt without it, so to me it makes sense to have randomness in a history "simulation" such as civ.

You don't want game deciding levels of random; but what is present in VI isn't that. The little -optional lol- random events in IV were at a good level too. Really....if you think you've lost a game because someone else got one of the slightly more favourable random events in IV; you're probably not that competitive.

An average start will set you back more than those little random events. Yet civ isn't (on average) a short game. There is time to over come negatives. It isn't a 15 turn board game!
Each to their own I guess....but some who play a game as alive as civ may be better sticking to something drier and abstract, such as chess.

 

[nzcamel]

agree with statements about some luck having a place, but i would argue being able to settle on a river is TOO important, so luck playing into whether you can settle on a river or not in turn 1 isn't a good thing. now, my idea would not be default all settlers to start on a river, but rather to balance the game such that rivers are not so powerful in comparison to non-river cities.

Everyone starts pretty close to a river. Except the Aussies who start on the coast and don't need rivers.
Rivers as they are in VI are immersive and strategically very important. Why make the game duller by changing that??

 

[Victoria]

agree with statements about some luck having a place, but i would argue being able to settle on a river is TOO important, so luck playing into whether you can settle on a river or not in turn 1 isn't a good thing. now, my idea would not be default all settlers to start on a river, but rather to balance the game such that rivers are not so powerful in comparison to non-river cities.

I have started a deity game on a coast with no river and won fairly easily, its not hugely important, you just use a strategy that keeps your capital low for a while... Pumping out settlers

 

[kaspergm]

I don't mind luck being a factor, but as game currently is, balance with regards to starting conditions is really horrible. Starts with hills+forest+spices are just ridiculously OP, whereas starts with lots of flatlands and stone but no other production suck big time.

 

[Stringer1313]

I agree luck is a greater factor in initial placement, and I appreciate the frustration this can cause; but at the end of the day I don't mind it because it adds more diversity and presents greater challenges.

 

[isau]

I find luck to be a less significant factor in Civ 6 than in Civ 4 or 5. In general I find in Civ 6 most "bad" starts are still worth playing. Less so in Civ 4 and much much less so in Civ 5. For example in Civ 6 even if Barbarians show up the worst they can do is pillage tiles, which are instantly replaced as long as you have a Builder with at least 1 charge. Housing can limit you and production can limit you, but neither as severely as lacking good coastal starts in Civ 5 and the ideal for a 4-city spread.

I agree too much comes down to Production, although IMO this is a problem best solved by examining the Policies that provide +50% and +100% production toward rewards. IMO the existing Policies fail to capitalize on their potential and tend to create production bottlenecks, such as "the Settler building period" and "the unit building period." It's something I plan to address in an upcoming iteration of my Combined Tweaks mod for personal use, wish the game addressed it more directly though. I don't consider it an issue of problems with starting balance but rather with too many systems tying back into Production, when IMO what policies should do is get you around production.

 

[Victoria]

I often restart flatland starts unless on prince. Its just too hard to get going.
Its that missing restart button I call bad luck.

 

[nzcamel]

I find luck to be a less significant factor in Civ 6 than in Civ 4 or 5. In general I find in Civ 6 most "bad" starts are still worth playing. Less so in Civ 4 and much much less so in Civ 5. For example in Civ 6 even if Barbarians show up the worst they can do is pillage tiles, which are instantly replaced as long as you have a Builder with at least 1 charge. Housing can limit you and production can limit you, but neither as severely as lacking good coastal starts in Civ 5 and the ideal for a 4-city spread.

Agreed.

 

[Thorrez]

I think the balance is the best yet for the franchise. I agree with the river starts, but wandering a few turns is not take changing. Sure a close cs is great, but also means less of a chance of an easily rushable AI. No goody hut is civ V culture game breaking and so on.

The main problem is that coasts are to nerfed, sea trade routes are what historically payed for most post flood plains empires. As land routes provide the same trade AND get you the road (which is the real key to this game) it just makes coast useless even on continents. Fix that and you can always wander to a decent river or coast start if you start with neither.

 

[nzcamel]

I think the balance is the best yet for the franchise. I agree with the river starts, but wandering a few turns is not take changing. Sure a close cs is great, but also means less of a chance of an easily rushable AI. No goody hut is civ V culture game breaking and so on.

Yeah, true - add city states to nat wonders and it is V that introduced the bigger variable start issues.

The main problem is that coasts are to nerfed, sea trade routes are what historically payed for most post flood plains empires. As land routes provide the same trade AND get you the road (which is the real key to this game) it just makes coast useless even on continents. Fix that and you can always wander to a decent river or coast start if you start with neither.

I'd like to see sea trade routes get buffed to make them more appealing. I guess part of the issue is that traders can cross both in the same route...they no longer represent a ship or a caravan, as much as they do the process of goods going from point A to B....

 

[Herod]

Luck of the starting roll seems to be extremely important. Now, luck has always been a factor in all the Civ games, but it seems that here, in VI more than any previous iteration it's taken on a an aspect that it can completely negate any attempt at strategy or thinking, especially on higher difficulties.

I think there's less luck involved in VI than in previous versions, in older versions I seem to recall a tank vs spearman melee as an extreme example, was not a 100% guarantee the tank would win (although it was probably 99.99). In VI I believe the tank will always win so zero luck is involved. I haven't played Civ III or IV for years but that's what I remember. Now there's an idea!

Its that missing restart button I call bad luck.

Definitely. You probably know this already but there's a mod which puts the restart button back.