Is luck too important?

[HF22]

To someone who finds victory the only pursuit in the game and the process unimportant of course you would find Luck in that sense irrelevant. You don't even care about Wonders in fact and Luck does have a huge impact on those on Deity.

If you play in Multiplayer the difference due to luck will become disgusting.

Look, I'm not telling you had to have fun. Just that an idiosyncratic way of playing a game is an unhelpful standard against which to measure a games characteristics in a group discussion.

And if I played MP, I suspect I'd just get crushed regardless of luck. I haven't been doing GOTM or anything, and doing enough to beat deity SP leaves plenty of room for lazy play.

 

[Kyro]

@Victoria

I respect your ability to continue playing after losing something as coveted as Petra to the opponent. That kind of sting usually haunts me for the entire game and I would rather just start a new game. Or I would just raze the offending City and build that wonder again.

 

[Victoria]

That kind of sting also tends to make you want to go and waste them... but it is hollow revenge because it is just an AI. Keep on track with your aims and win regardless of Perta and you feel better for it IMO... ty for the respect but its just an attitude thingy

 

[Kyro]

Look, I'm not telling you had to have fun. Just that an idiosyncratic way of playing a game is an unhelpful standard against which to measure a games characteristics in a group discussion.

And if I played MP, I suspect I'd just get crushed regardless of luck. I haven't been doing GOTM or anything, and doing enough to beat deity SP leaves plenty of room for lazy play.

Well I already told you I'm measuring the potency of luck in the game based on the potential difference it can make in any game and that is completely unrelated to how I play.

If it is enough to get the Devs to make a function called "fair starts" and balanced maps it can be safely assumed that it does have a significant impact on the game.

Given the amount of things many players consider significant that the devs didn't pay attention to; the fact that they did to this area already sheds light on the amount of influence it can have on games.

It's not just me who thinks Luck can make a huge difference. Even the developers do.

 

[Horizons]

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

I miss the 'small touches' from previous Civs like the option to regenerate the map on turn 1 (without having to quit and go through setup again), demographics screen, 4000BC autosave kept etc lol.

 

[Felis Renidens]

I like a game where I can play mostly peaceful (unless someone declares war on me), build most wonders, have a religion and luck won't matter much. That's why I play on warlord and used to play on chieftain. The higher the difficulty the more I would expect setbacks and failures. I don't like them so I play at a difficulty level in which they are rare. The fact that a perfect game is even possible at a high difficulty (even with luck) means that the game is not really challenging.

 

[Victoria]

I like a game where I can play mostly peaceful (unless someone declares war on me), build most wonders, have a religion and luck won't matter much. That's why I play on warlord and used to play on chieftain. The higher the difficulty the more I would expect setbacks and failures. I don't like them so I play at a difficulty level in which they are rare. The fact that a perfect game is even possible at a high difficulty (even with luck) means that the game is not really challenging.

It can be done at Deity but is difficult and people will declare against you. Even at Emp its hard but doable. As you get better you will find Prince is fine for a peaceful. There are plenty of peaceful payers out there. The main thing is keeping some decent sized Army and up to date... it limits people declaring war against you. Politics is also key.

 

[Kyro]

I like a game where I can play mostly peaceful (unless someone declares war on me), build most wonders, have a religion and luck won't matter much. That's why I play on warlord and used to play on chieftain. The higher the difficulty the more I would expect setbacks and failures. I don't like them so I play at a difficulty level in which they are rare. The fact that a perfect game is even possible at a high difficulty (even with luck) means that the game is not really challenging.

I would not directly equate the presence of setbacks and failures to the term "challenging".

Professional atheletes make amazing feats seem easy to the viewer but that doesn't make any of the feats insignificant.

A "perfect" game against AI should be possible for players with the right skills and that should not be dependent on luck.

 

[Victoria]

A "perfect" game against AI should be possible for players with the right skills and that should not be dependent on luck.

I have played both Chess and Bridge, both games some would argue do not have luck but even they have luck. Less but it is there.
A perfect game is when you play without mistakes despite luck.. that is the key. last nights game I finished at turn 250 but it should have been around 200 and I believe 20 turns were down to bad luck and 30 turns were down to bad play.

So here is a question.... I tried to build Perta and lost it with a coupe of turns to go... would you call that bad luck or bad play... think about it.. My belief (and I respect you thinking differently) is I made a decision based on what my chances were and my choice did not pay off.... Luck or bad play... or good play?

 

[Kyro]

@Victoria

If you did everything right and still lost Petra it is luck because you have already done all you can and the game's just not fair to you that way because AI has +80% production for wonders on Deity. Honestly I don't think any amount of skill is going to grab an early game wonder if the AI decides to build it on Deity. That's just how Luck dependent it is. Stonehenge is outright impossible unless AI don't spawn with stone.

I don't play Immortal so I can't comment on that but Petra is very buildable on Emperor if you aim to build it before turn 90.

Edit: From experience who you pick for opponents matters a lot. Gilgamesh and Cleopatra tend to build it if they can so I generally avoid them if I really want Petra on Deity.

I also avoid sharing Embassies and Open Borders at all costs because AI tends to build Wonders you are building just to mess with you if they can see it.

 

[Victoria]

lol, you really think they troll you? I use every political trick to get the right friendships going including changing governments and deleting units. One of the powerful ones is the denouncing of a common enemy, it is by no means useless.

As it happens neither gilga or clea were in it which is why I decided to go for it. I got damn close and I could have even started building it 5 turns earlier but I do not save and restore like that. I prefer to just muck in and learn.
It was a calculated risk It was in my view a mixture of the two, skill and luck. This is how you win at bridge at high levels, how much you take a gamble as to where that 9 sits.

 

[Felis Renidens]

In some fields athletes can chose between more difficult (and potentially more rewarding) feats - at a greater risk of failure and they sometimes fumble. But that's where the similarity ends. But it doesn't matter because the game isn't a competition on how many wonders can you build against an AI with a production bonus. You play it this way. I would just play it to pass a weekend and see how well I can do on an easy difficulty (So the AI will usually get some early wonders and some that I don't care about). Others have different challenges.

 

[Kyro]

@Victoria
I've tested it 3 times so far and they've done it without fail. A tiny sample size I know but it's enough to make me take precaution. You can try it if you're game for some experimentation. In a City very near to an opponent that is not friendly, prefably near bordering or bordering, build a wonder they have access to in plain sight. You should see the same Wonder being built in one of their cities if not the very one next to yours.

 

[Victoria]

Cool @Kyro ... how about you post a thread asking others what they think and publishing your results there. It deserves a thread and others may say yeah

 

[Kyro]

Cool @Kyro ... how about you post a thread asking others what they think and publishing your results there. It deserves a thread and others may say yeah

I might try a few more games to test it and get some screenshots first. Previous times was against Sumeria, Germany and Greece but I think China might be a better target.

 

[PeteBDawg]

Personally I think a lot of the pain with a lot of what's in this thread could be fixed by adjusting how the tech tree works. The way eras work (and great people along with that in a few ways) probably needs to be tweaked, and the way boosts work hurts strategic flexibility in a few ways, for example:

• Rewarding strict build orders more than they already would be rewarded
• Making production generate too much science and culture (in the form of building units and buildings for boosts)
• Especially in the early game, boosts that push you toward large-scale strategic choices have very different levels of difficulty and especially chance related to them (for example, you don't have too much control over whether you meet another civ early or three city states or find a natural wonder, but you do have control over whether you build a slinger, and that's easy, and building a city on the coast is a pretty huge endeavor related to those other two things) - it would be cool if as the techs progressed the degree of control over them was more in parallel - like the first-level tech boost is going to be pretty random regardless, and that will put you on a path to a tech boost you can control)

So it's not so much that there's too much luck, it's that some early advantages are easy to convert into all other kinds of early advantages, and other kinds of early advantages are not, and the times when something is luck and when it's not could be adjusted to make the strategic options feel more balanced or bad starts feel more flexible.

 

[Victoria]

Adjusting strategy and making decision not based purely on science is in fact how real generals and other great people work. And they often have to overcome harsh situations, I have no issue with this being reflected in the game. The ability for us to choose our level of difficulty and our starting pisition through restarts allows for us to overcome easier.

I am fine, I do not always win, thems the breaks is how I look at it, at least I hold my head up and say I did it to the best of my ability.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

@Eliminator_Sr

You missed the point of why I said Sugar and Spice are overpowered, Which is to have a larger population faster so as to work more production. To that end those Luxuries are very potent. You also missed the point of how subtle values in the early game have cascading effects in the game. I've already explained twice why +2 isn't a small value early on and I'm not doing it again.

A Sugar/Spice start in peaceful games can mean a difference of 3 early World Wonders on Emperor difficulty, or just one on Deity. That's from experience and trust me I have restarted entire games at least a hundred times thus far.

@Kyro

Oh I understand your point I just disagree with you, but you clearly don't want to hear any alternate viewpoints. The only early wonder I usually want to build is pyramids so that doesn't really matter in most of my games (and if I wanted to build more I could still focus on production and chop them in rather than waiting on my cities to grow). I never said the +2 was a small value - I just said that it isn't game breaking.

 

[Kyro]

@Kyro

Oh I understand your point I just disagree with you, but you clearly don't want to hear any alternate viewpoints. The only early wonder I usually want to build is pyramids so that doesn't really matter in most of my games (and if I wanted to build more I could still focus on production and chop them in rather than waiting on my cities to grow). I never said the +2 was a small value - I just said that it isn't game breaking.

Nope you don't get it. I'm saying the only reason why the food is powerful is because it can help you focus on production, which is what you're essentially saying, working for production. Growing a population faster for the sake of production beats just working on production alone. Having forests to chop is luck too by the way. If you have to build a worker to chop wood then you're not really getting too much of an advantage anyway. Unless you buy the forest tile in a later era of course. Come on I wondermonger every game. You really think I don't know a thing or two about production or how to get them faster?

I don't have to accept alternative viewpoints when they're just factually wrong. At least my experimentation in the game tells me that for sure. Yes I'm saying you're wrong, but I don't mean it in a condescending way.

Game breaking. Overpowered. Too important. They're all the same to me. It can mean the difference between an enjoyable experience and not. That potential itself is game breaking to me. You're right I use it liberally but where I come from if you want something to change you have to make huge signs so it moves up the queue of priorities. If you're contending on my choice of words then I can only apologize.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

@Kyro

Lol - I'm not daft. I understand what you are saying - you can work extra tiles with extra food faster. My point is that I can usually grow my cities to size 4 pretty easily and quickly without sugar and spices and switch back and forth between production and food as needed. There are plenty of options for food in Civ6 and arguably less options for gold and production early which IMO make other luxes more valuable. I look at luck as an opportunity to learn strategies - you can argue many things are lucky in this game but a big part of strategy games is taking advantage of whatever luck happens to come your way and conversely limiting the damage when things are less than ideal. Sometimes I'll pop two relics from goodie huts early and then go for a culture win. Other times I'll miss a wonder by one turn and have to change my strategy.