[GS] It's Been a Few Weeks, GS Thoughts?

[Hammurabbit]

I think GS strengthen what's already was strong (map features, flavourful civs, buildings/wonders/other content) and didn't really solve what's weak (pacing, AI, stagnating games).

However it did address a few weak spots for example with grievances and the new resource system. I did add a lot more content in the late game, but from my opinion it didnt solve the stagnation issue.

 

[craney1987]

To me there are more things that have made the game easier than challenging, which is something I dislike.

But....

I just find it fun to play. It's just fun godammit

 

[Gregolution]

I'm loving it. But then this is the first Civ I've put more than 20 hours into, none of them have ever stuck before. It's a brand new fresh world of juicy gaming to get stuck into and it's an absolute delight.

TBH, joining these forums and reading some of the posts I feel like it's bringing me off my gaming high a bit. So many complaints about various features that I don't see at all, but that's obviously because I don't know the game well enough. If I'd come from hundreds or thousands of hours of Civ over the last decade or 2 I guess I'd be able to be more critical.

I hope they address the concerns you pros have and end up happy with this iteration of the series but personally, I'm enjoying it very very much.

 

[Disgustipated]

BH, joining these forums and reading some of the posts I feel like it's bringing me off my gaming high a bit. So many complaints about various features that I don't see at all, but that's obviously because I don't know the game well enough. If I'd come from hundreds or thousands of hours of Civ over the last decade or 2 I guess I'd be able to be more critical.

I hope they address the concerns you pros have and end up happy with this iteration of the series but personally, I'm enjoying it very very much

Gamers gotta gripe. I'm enjoying the hell out of this expansion. My Netherlands game turned out well, though once I slotted in International Space Agency I pulled away from the Inca big time, I almost doubled my science output. I enjoyed watching the massive world wars with Canada nuking Greece over and over. I was friends with everyone and didn't get involved.

I don't mind the trade pop ups too much, but they are slightly annoying. I use them to negotiate trades for luxuries. And the make this deal work button is working despite an above comment. I often have to remove stuff I'm not willing to trade. I use these pop ups as the time to negotiate for luxuries so I don't have to do it on my turn. At one point I was rejecting everything, but then my luxuries/amenities got low and I hit a dark age and had trouble with a border city that kept flipping. So I would rather use these pop ups as an opportunity to negotiate for more luxuries. Unfortunately there's still no easy way to check which luxuries you have when in the trade screen, I try to go from memory.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I voted "good". I haven't played as much of it as I would like, but I've had enough time for the initial hype to cool down a bit. It's a good expansion and definitely better than R&F, which for me only had one really successful innovation (loyalty).

Things GS got right: disasters (there's definite room for expansion and improvement, but I get that they wanted to start small and see how the playerbase took to it. I want earthquakes and tsunamis!), putting emergencies into the World Congress system, Civ design (this is the biggest win for me, I love all of the ones I've tried so far), Hall of Fame, better unit upgrade paths, canals, dams

Things I like the idea of but major improvements are needed: diplomatic victory, the grievance system (I hated the warmonger points system but at least it was a lot clearer to see how you would be affected), the World Congress in general (still not convinced about the voting system but I like it more than V's version), the production queue, climate change (needs to be more impactful and less easy to plan for), power (too easy to go without given how useless level 3 buildings are - an amenity cost for not having cities powered after a certain point would make sense?)

Things that are a bit of a dud: the Future Era (I like the randomisation but not if it means that most of techs are essentially useless - I'd like a lot more exciting things to be unlocked), the new Science Victory (it's the same but it takes longer. Ugh.)

Other things I'd like them to do include increasing the cooldown on AI offering you trades so you don't get spammed with "oh hi, I see you have 1 favour, please can I have it?" requests...

 

[Abaxial]

I love the names on the map, but GS is partly an improvement because it fixes things that were broken before; the grievances are much better than what went before.

Disasters are good, but the global warming is a puzzle. What is it intended to achieve, game-wise? Preventing large standing armies because of the emissions? I don't see that in terms of gameplay it improves things, and in terms of what it is supposed to represent, it is hardly adequate. Partly because the Civ VI world doesn't really have climate as such. There is more to global warming than just flooding a few tiles and melting some ice packs. The snow terrain should be melting, the tundra unfreezing, and the deserts expanding. When you have a band across the equator that is all desert, THAT is global warming.

 

[Stilgar08]

THE GOOD

• It's a lot of fun. That's the baseline of the whole thing to me. One more turn is definitely back!
• AI feels much more engaged to me. Had WWs recently due to different alliance blocks and AI actually killed some of my units, allies help and actually attack cities of other AIs. CS changes suzerain every other day, obviously Envoys waited in the curtains (can't be a coincident, happened VERY often in my games). Not perfect of course but much better.
• Map is AWESOME!
• The late game is much more interesting now.
• Disasters are implemented good. Not a gamebreaker if you get hit, but setbacks can occur. The balance here seems fine.
• A lot of the New Systems are either excellent or in a state to become excellent. This is true for old and New systems: grievances (thank God), Ressources (much much better), Governors (better although to me still a bit detached from the rest), WC (I'm not fed up yet but would like to know more about the rules concerning ties and so on. And it can be build upon), Climate change (balance and Timing, but good in General), Ages (this needs some work)...
• Some districts generally feel more feasible to build, EG harbors and encampments.
• Ohh, and since so many people SEEM to be in favor of including earthquakes and tsunamis I'd like to state that I strongly feel it's right to not have it included. Tsunamis would especially hurt coastal cities and they're having enough of downsides...
• I actually have not such a big problem with AI trading proposals, but...

THE BAD

• ... It's not the proposals that are off, it's the trade "rating" of the AI. Decent Deal proposals would be awesome! If AI is close to win CV how and why can you just buy out their great works? Same goes for resource trades - benefit/cost ratio is totally wacky.
• And how on earth could this trade bug with 1g get through QA before Release? Annoying as hell!
• Pace is out of the window. Industrial era usually 1000AD when just playing around, even earlier if you focus? C'mon! Epic feels far too fast!
• GA is a given early. Every (EVERY!) Dark Age is followed by a Heroic Age. AI that is; DA almost never happens to me...
• DA almost never happens to me...
  
• Balance in general is alarmingly out of track. Nothing you couldn't adjust but build times, importance of gold, pillaging power, certain civs, Rock Bands, some policy cards... *phew*
• Climate change - longer duration, higher impact please. And even a clarification which storm is influenced by it to what degree could help.

STRANGE DEVELOPMENT concerning my own playstyle

• I need to focus much more in order to efficiently win. There's much to do, always quite a few options on the table. That's great, since you "play" more and calculate less (well, me at least)
• I settle less cities since I build more other stuff inbetween... (a bit)
• Does anyone else tends to build far more farms than pre GS or is it just me? I focus more on housing and happiness Level, too. I have no idea, why?
• Governor decisions got harder and I move them around more frequently (esp. Magnus and Victor).

My 2cents what could be done

• Lower Eureka bonusses - 30% or 25% - still nothing to sniff upon but lower impact
• Due to the mountain distribution lower adjacency Bonus to Campus from them (0,75 or 0,5) - would still be good.
• Same for holy sites?
• Nerf pillaging and respective policy card...
• Raise culture and tourism needs for CV, maybe raise costs of civics in general too...
• Gold is King. Fine. But production should be prince at least.

• A bit off topic: And if anyone has decent mods concerning diplomatic relations I'd love to get a pm. What I'm looking for is something like this relationship wheel from a Civ5-mod (can't remember the name, but that was great). I love @Aristos extension mod EDR, it's the best I could find so far. But I feel I need some graphical help and only the info I'm allowed to see not sure if that's the case... So many infos almost feel like cheating...

 

[bonafide11]

I'm enjoying it, but it doesn't seem to have made a drastic change in the game. If you enjoyed Civ VI before, you'll enjoy it more now, but if you didn't like it then, you won't like it now. There are some nice changes made, and the new Civs are pretty fun, but climate change and natural disasters aren't as big of factors as I had expected, and some things, like World Congress, fall pretty flat and I don't even see the point in having them. I would be a little disappointed if this was the final expansion for Civ VI because the game still doesn't feel complete to me.

 

[Aldor]

I enjoy GS mostly. The new maps are very nice. The disasters make the world feel alive. I'm not sure about the new civs yet, haven't played them all yet
Two things I would like to see corrected/changed immediately:
- the barbarian spawn, it just completely changes the game if you don't have to pay attention to barbs (while if you start on the "bad" continent, you will sometimes want to pull your hair out)
- the world congress meeting even if you haven't met anyone - that's just silly.

 

[bonafide11]

I enjoy GS mostly. The new maps are very nice. The disasters make the world feel alive. I'm not sure about the new civs yet, haven't played them all yet
Two things I would like to see corrected/changed immediately:
- the barbarian spawn, it just completely changes the game if you don't have to pay attention to barbs (while if you start on the "bad" continent, you will sometimes want to pull your hair out)
- the world congress meeting even if you haven't met anyone - that's just silly.

Oh yeah, the barbarian spawn is ridiculous now. What were they thinking? In my first game I played, I had to double check to make sure barbs were even on because there was not a single barbarian sighting on my continent. Then my second game as soon as one tile went dark, it turned into a barb camp. It makes a huge difference in the difficulty of the game. They need to change this in the first patch and hopefully that patch comes very soon.

World Congress is just silly altogether. I haven't really found any fun from it yet.

 

[Aristos]

@Stilgar08 : EDR only shows information that is available in-game somewhere in the maremagnum of clicks and windows... I took good care of the non-cheating policy because I don't like to have more information than intended.

As for the Civ 5 mod, you are talking about Global Relations (also from moi, and with the same non-cheat spirit). I am tinkering with that code base to port it to civ 6, just need some more spare time to do it. OTOH, are you making full use of the EDR CTRL+MouseOver function to see other leaders relations?

 

[Abaxial]

I get very frequent barbarian spawns, and I wonder if it is to do with the mod Extended Initial View, which lets you see more of the area around you at the start of a game.

 

[Greasy Dave]

The whole expansion is toothless. It has nice ideas but does nothing with them.
Global warming? Ignore it and win easily.
The world congress? Ignore all votes and how they turn out and still win no problem. Trade away all your favour and it makes no difference, you still win

The more minor features are quite good.
Disasters are good...because i cant ignore them.
Grievances make the diplo mechanism more transparent. Unfortunately the ai balance means i can piss off everyone and win easily.
I like power and the way resources work...but again power and resources are fantastically easy to get, theres an inifinte supply of them and they have no strategic impact on the game. Play with power, play without power...you will still win

Compared to r and f this xp is very poor. It looks nice. Sounds nice. Has nice shiney things to build. But brings nothing much to the game that makes any strategic impact

 

[supersleepygrumpybear]

GS is an incremental improvement over R&F, and I find myself enjoying the game more overall than I did in R&F. Overall, I think GS makes CivVI feel like a more complete game but...

But... and it's a big but... the game is full of exploits (again). Sure, production overflow isn't a thing, but yields from pillaging is definitely a thing now. Natural disasters can be easily mitigated and aren't balanced (blizzards don't give any yields, but dust storms seemingly give hefty amounts of food and production). The governors are buffed, but it's still better to promote every governor than fully promote one. Global Warming is crazy, but I actually think it's from deforestation, which will cause CO2 to spike in the game from the modifier. My current hypothesis is that deforestation is not a straightforward system. So even if all the players only cut a minimum amount of forests (10%), the deforestation modifier will still increase and cause CO2 spikes from 20% to 50%.

Although none of this hinders my enjoyment of the game. Firaxis is a somewhat old-fashioned video game company that still releases expansions and focuses on PC first, so I understand that just making a full $30 dollar expansion is a greater risk than releasing five $10 DLCs like other 4X games do.

My main gripe with CivVI right now is the linear feeling of playing the game. Even when I play casually on lower difficulties with a healthy heaping of mods, I still usually play the game with a general, straight-forward strategy. Especially mid to late game when everyone, including the AI, start to turtle, doesn't have a new building or district are worth building/buying, and almost every victory type can be won by spamming next turn.

The expansion is worth it, for anyone reading this and is on the fence. Although, unless you're a hardcore fan, it'll probably be better to wait for a sale either later this year or next year after a couple patches help to rebalance some of these systems

 

[The Kingmaker]

Linear, yes. I feel like I always research the techs and civics in the same order. Especially the civics.

Same units too, some I always build, some I don’t ever bother.

Different playstyles need to be incentivized.

 

[Disgustipated]

Especially the civics

This clearly for me depends on my victory method. Conservation and the one after it I go for early if I'm going cultural victory. For science victory I skip it until late (when it's required for some future era civics).

 

[Aristos]

But... and it's a big but... the game is full of exploits (again).

Civ 6 can clearly now be categorized as a 3X+X game, not a 4X game.

eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXploit some more. No need to eXterminate. Most of those scurrilous eXploits are either blatant bugs or gross design oversights (i.e. buy and sell 1 strat resource to any AI for infinite gold).

Will they fix them? Of course! Just make sure you sit while you wait...

(and now watch the legion of apologists jump on me and tell me "then don't use them!"... well yeah, I don't, but some of them are unavoidable, can only "not use them" by not playing ).

 

[acluewithout]

Civ VI is in great shape post GS. All of the mechanics are fantastic. Yes, even the World Congress.

The game just needs a couple of robust patches to improve some gameplay and balance issues and, beyond that, there a few areas where the game still needs to be fleshed out via a third expansion (#onemoreexpansion) and or dlc (mostly stuff from RnF). But even with that, it’s now a really great game.

The only real “problem” Civ has now is that it’s still too easy. But hopefully that’ll get better at some point. Link.

 

[berlin88]

I am now currently playing my first game of Gathering Storm, and it has been interesting to say the least.

I am doing an 8 player continents map as Australia against 7 AI civs. The AI civs are Canada, Scythia, America, Germany, Hungary, Norway and Scotland. Aside from Scotland settling one of its forward cities in a spot where I wanted to place a city, the game was going reasonably well until the year 1800 or so.

Around the year 1800, things quickly went south, when disaster struck. First, I got hit by flooding that damaged several districts / farms and cost me 3 musketeers and 1 worker, then tornados ripped through two additional cities and damaged multiple industrial and scientific districts. To make matters even worse, I then had Norway declare war on me, while also getting a notification that a hurricane is approaching my coastal city of Sydney. Talk about bad luck, three cities get hit hard by natural disasters and then Norway declares war on me. I have to repair all the damaged districts, while also trying to building more units to fend off Norway's attack. The only good news, is that Scythia and Scotland declared war on Norway and may come to my aid.

My general city approach, is to build the capital city and then surround it by 6 additional cities, each spaced 4-6 tiles from the capital city. That has generally served me well in most games, but with the addition of natural disasters in Gathering Storm, I may have to rethink this approach. In my current game, I was only able to build 5 additional cities, as Scotland blocked me from building the 6th city.

 

[Loderingo]

Finally finished my first game as Dido on Immortal with a diplo victory (I went on holiday in the middle). Had an Inland Sea map and was rolling in gold.

My overall impression is that it is much better than R&F and adds a lot to the game. That said I still think Firaxis suffer from Nice Developer Syndrome...

I'd like to see them offer 2 settings for disasters - one for frequency and another for severity. I'd like the option that at highest severity a volcano could completely destroy a city or district and even fill in a sea tile (see Kilauea in Hawaii).

I think the resources are a great addition but again could be made more challenging. For example, by having some resources like oil less evenly distributed (e.g. concentrated in the desert). It would also be good to have some resource sources run out - that way it might force civs into going to war for resources like in real life.

I think that climate change is a great addition but it is easy to mitigate as you know where the submerging tiles will be when you settle your cities. I also don't understand why the flood barriers seem to vary in cost so much.

I quite like the new world congress - one thing that annoyed me is that the scored competitions should be visible in the same place as emergencies and aid requests.

The power feature seems interesting but you don't really need it.

Looking forward to the first patches.