[NFP] June update speculation and wish list

[acluewithout]

What do people think the next update patch will focus on? What should it focus on?

I really don’t know what FXS will patch. The patch we just had focused heavily on bug fixes, so hopefully the next patch will address balance much more. I’m also hoping patches will have some new content, eg things like units. The Nihang via a Lahore city state which was part of the patch we just had gives me some reason for hope there.

I think there’s a lot of areas FXS should address, but there are three I would put front and centre. Military Units, Religious Beliefs and Dedications.

Military Units

Combat and military has gotten a lot better since Vanilla came out. But I do think the Military side has three pretty big problems (you know, other than AI competence).

First, unit gaps. No Medieval Seige or Melee makes Medieval war almost impossible against walled cities. The lack of Industrial Melee is also a problem. There is also a lack of future units (so weird there’s really only the GDR), but given how few games get that far it’s more of a flavour problem then a serious gameplay issue.

Second, unit balance generally. Basically, FXS need to tweak Anti-Cav promotions and then just copy @Sostratus ’s balance mod.

Third, and lastly, resource use for late game units. Helicopters using Aluminium is rubbish. I’m okay with Infantry using Oil, but then what is there use case versus Tanks that also use Oil?

Religion

I hear a lot of complaints about Religion in Civ VI. But you know what, it’s a perfectly good game system. Yes, it’s very much just an alternative combat system, and Religious Victories are basically a variation of a Dom Victory, but that’s a perfectly okay approach. Indeed, it’s probably a good idea to have another combat layer via Religion, so there’s another way to fight with other Civs without actually going to war.

I also get some people don’t like great prophet rush. But honesty, get over it. Think of it a bit like grabbing an early Wonder. The GP rush adds a lot to the game - there’s interesting strategic choices about whether to chase a religion or not; interesting tactical decisions about how best to do it; and the dynamic between the haves / not haves with Religion is pretty cool.

I think the real issue though is the Beliefs. A lot aren’t very impactful, and almost all aren’t very dynamic or exciting, particularly when you start comparing them to Pantheons.

• More Unique Units. Some of the tedium with Religion is that there is just such a small set of units, and they don’t vary by Religion. Everyone has Apostles. Everyone has Missionaries. I really really think FXS should have more Unique Religious Units that unlock through beliefs, like the Monk does. Maybe start by linking Gurus to some belief (maybe feed the world?), and then add a few more. Make some useful for Religious Combat, some useful for Military Combat. Maybe a unique Settler unit called a Pilgrim. You get the idea. Ideally, there should be a unique unit loosely inspired by each major world religion. And also, and this is the important bit, make sure the belief that gives the unit also has some other benefit, so that even if you can’t leverage the unit there’s still some benefit to the belief.

• Other unlocks. Let other stuff unlock via beliefs as well. Maybe Unique Improvements. There’s plenty of Religious Improvements via City States. But why not have similar things to say Monasteries unlock via Beliefs.

• Improve Monks. Make Monks better. For starters, give the Monk Belief some additional bonus (eg Holy Sites add more defence to Cities or whatever), so that if you can’t use Monks then at least you get some benefit from the beliefs. But also just make Monks better. They suck, which is a real buzz kill given how few good religious units there are anyway. They original idea that you build them early then keep them relevant via promotions doesn’t work in practice. Instead, make their base strength scale based on something, eg civics unlocked, number of cities with holy sites following your Religion. Whatever.

• Improve T3 Religious Buildings. T3 Religious buildings are incredibly weak. I mean, have a look at the Meeting Mouse. Jesus, +2 Production? At that point in the game?
  
  
• More Religious related policies. Religion and Politics have always been closely interwoven, but Civ just doesn’t seem to capture any of that. There really needs to be just a smattering of policies that leverage Religion more. Maybe something that lets you buff loyalty and or increases taxes in Cities with your Religion.

Dedications

I know this is a bit random, but I’d really like to see a fifth dedication added for each era. I’ve been picking from between the same four dedications for like 18 months and it’s crazy tedious. It’s particularly depressing with heroic ages, because you’re really only just choosing to just drop one Dedication. And let’s face it, there’s usually more than one Dedication each era that’s basically useless.

 

[Sostratus]

I think the real issue though is the Beliefs. A lot aren’t very impactful,

I often ignore religion in any game where I don't found one, no matter how zealous my neighbors are. The key reason is that throwing together a random selection of any beliefs results in a religion that is completely orthogonal (doesn't affect) my empire. It's great that a couple beliefs affect holy sites, but there's almost nothing for just a normal city. If there was, then even as someone not going for RV, I might care about who my people are praying to.

And then I might actually research the tech for temples and build holy sites.

 

[acluewithout]

snip

Agreed.

I often build Holy Sites, and particularly like the +2 amenities / housing river pantheon to get the most out of Holy Sites. And yet, while really appreciate the Faith, the Religion bit I just ignore. Indeed, I often inadvertently recruit a Great Prophet, and usually just sit on it and only Found a Religion for Era Score.

I really think more Unique Religious Units and Unique Improvements via Beliefs would improve how Religion plays, because players would have tangible benefits to getting a Religion (whether via founding one or spread).

 

[Haig]

In the announcement video they say that months between DLC give us balance patches, scenarios, map scripts and more.

My hope for balancing:

Strenght nerf for ranged units and especially cities ranged attacks!The AI is nowadays much better in defending and shooting, but on attack the player can many times play turkey shoot.
Especially cities can snipe them too hard.

Make infantry cost no oil

A new Industrial melee unit(like acluewithout said) that cost no strategic resources.
Like rifleman that unlocks with Nationalism civic.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I like the ideas in the OP. I would love for them to do more with religion. Top of my list is to bring back some form of the 'Reformation' mechanic that Civ V had, which let you add new beliefs. In keeping with the sense of Reformation, I think it should give you the opportunity to change one of your beliefs to something else. What I'd really love to see would be an acknowledgement of the fact that religions changed and evolved over time, often borrowing from other faiths their adherents came into contact with. What if you could merge your religion with a neighbour's in some way, as a counter to Religious war? Not fully merge both religions but what if you could change your religion so that it reflected and incorporated some of these new beliefs coming into your territory - at the expense of some of your existing beliefs, of course, otherwise it'd get a bit crazy with all the bonuses you could have active at once.

Might be hoping for a bit too much within the scope of Civ VI (and the NFP especially) there, but religion remains one of the biggest areas where I think opportunities were missed. When I noticed how few of the new Civs in GS interacted with religion in a meaningful way, and how we still had Byzantium and Ethiopia missing, my big hope was that a revamped religion system would be one of the cornerstones of a third expansion. While this likely won't happen now, I remain hopeful that one of the updates - whether a DLC or one of the free updates - will jazz religion up a bit in some way.

 

[Haig]

I wish missionaries and apostles had an Auto-spread function, like auto-explore for scouts, but for the religious units to walk around and preach without me controlling each unit.

 

[kaspergm]

Military Units
(...)
First, unit gaps. No Medieval Seige or Melee makes Medieval war almost impossible against walled cities. The lack of Industrial Melee is also a problem. There is also a lack of future units (so weird there’s really only the GDR), but given how few games get that far it’s more of a flavour problem then a serious gameplay issue.

(...)

Third, and lastly, resource use (...)

I agree a lot with the problem with unit gaps, but there is a linked issue with resources that needs to be fixed: The fact that if you start without, say, Iron, there's no way to get any Iron, is an issue if we start adding more units to fill some of the gaps.

I use the mod that adds Longswordsmen, Trebuchets and Riflemen to fill the gaps you mention (I think it's called Steel and Thunder), and I can say from experience that if you start with Iron and your neighbor has none, rushing for Longswordsmen leaves him completely defenseless. Crossbows may help to an extent, but even those are fairly easily countered ones you start leveling up those Longswords. Similar for starts without Nitre and Riflemen. On the other hand, if you start without strategic resources, you are forced to turtle and hope that your neighbor does not decide to DoW you, because the only alternative you have which doesn't cost strategics - namely pikes - are not only subpar in CS, they are also hard countered by melee units.

So what I'm suggesting is we need to have some buildings that can make these resources. They could fit nicely into either the Industrial Zone (my pick) or the Encampment. So basically what I suggest is:

• Add a Furnace building as an alternative to the Workshop, that unlocks at Apprenticeship or Military Engineering, that grants a number of Iron (2?) each turn.
• Add a Powder Mill building as an alternative to the Workshop of Factory, that unlocks at Military Science, and grants a number of Nitre each turn.
• Add a Refinery building as an alternative to the Workshop or Factory, that unlocks at Plastics, and grants a number of Oil each turn.
• Add an Electrolysis Plant as an alternative to the Workshop or Factory, that unlocks at Electricity(?) or Synthetic Materials, and grants a number of Aluminum each turn.

This would add some sort of catch-up mechanism for civs that start without the proper resource, but which only comes about an era later, so you still get the early-start advantage from having the resource.

 

[AntSou]

The problem with adding more global units is that it reduces the effectiveness of unique units. These units are supposed to be reliable for a couple of eras. If you fill the gaps with more global units the uniques become unreliable and boring even on standard speed.

I like the Steel mod for Epic speed games, but I felt it wasn't so fun in Standard speed.

 

[Mudokon Pop]

I'd like to see religion develop more organically - some religions are very open to adopting new ideas, others are more rigid. In real life, beliefs & philosophies often crossed religious divides. Founding a belief could make that belief freely available to everyone - or alternatively that belief could spread to other religions only by influence once founded, ie weaker religions could end up being highly influenced by the culturally powerful ones.

Upon founding a religion - I think players should have to pick a Class of religion to found - and develop their religion from there.

Polytheism - imagine if players could adopt new gods into their pantheon. Each city could have their own patron deity to specialise that city - like Athena adding a defensive boost to a city for example. Secondary traits could be added by building a another temple for another deity - all this temple building takes time however. A Great Person could maybe merge two deities together - like the historical Isis-Aphrodite. This could be a good way of dealing with cities that you conquer - incorporating foreign gods into your pantheon - making the captured cities less rebellious.

Monotheism could specialise things on an empire-wide scale - at the expense of local specialisation. Former deities could be re-adapted as patron saints nerfing the boost but retaining some benefit or making your religion easier to spread to 'pagan' cities. Monotheism could heavily boost city loyalty as well as boosting relations with other civs of the same faith. A downside to monotheism - if one Civ adopts a belief, other civs will feel pressure to adopt that belief too (beliefs aren't limited to one player). It's harder for one empire to make a monotheistic religion entirely to suit their own needs but there would be policies and buildings that can help with this. A Monotheistic faith's influence could wane with different players adopting conflicting beliefs such as Christianity. Schisms and Reforms may follow.

Philosophical religions (for lack of a better term) could be geared more towards the Civic Tree progress and/or happiness perhaps. A philosophical religion's influence could benefit from different players adopting different beliefs rather than being weakened. Some religions can be highly syncretic after all. I haven't really fleshed this idea out too much yet.

Animism or Totemism could gain eurekas towards beliefs based on their natural environments. I don't know what else could be done but such religions could be very snycretic also.

 

[Sostratus]

The problem with adding more global units is that it reduces the effectiveness of unique units. These units are supposed to be reliable for a couple of eras. If you fill the gaps with more global units the uniques become unreliable and boring even on standard speed.

I like the Steel mod for Epic speed games, but I felt it wasn't so fun in Standard speed.

Two things- one, units having enough “time to shine” is a symptom of game pacing over anything else. They could increase tech costs in certain places if they wanted.

Second, I used to see this argument a lot, but it’s not exactly true when you separate it out from the pacing issue.
One reason Samurai and Berserkers are not very impactful is that we cannot upgrade into them. But let’s ignore that.
A unique unit has some combat value. That value strictly rises if the unit has an option to be upgraded. (You can always choose not to upgrade them.) Let us consider the impi. Would the impi be superior if we remove pike and shot from the game? Of course not! It would be trash! Why? Because unit lines with gaps in an era still have to fight lines with upgrades! And due to combat strength scaling, they cannot compete! We would know that having to wait until AT crews to upgrade would mean other units that upgrade sooner are more worth building, and not invest in impi.
I don’t think civ6 has great pacing for the first 5 eras, and particularly the medieval and industrial could be slowed down a touch.
But having a rifleman, trebuchet, and “long sword” would make several civs’ UUs viable (since we can upgrade into them.) plus, it would allow OTHER units in that era in several cases to be less constrained, namely cavalry and cuirassiers, since there would not be such a concern about running over the renaissance units that still have to fight.

 

[Sostratus]

So what I'm suggesting is we need to have some buildings that can make these resources.

I very much agree with the problems you outline.

One easy solution for FXS instead of going through the struggle of making new buildings, is to add a set of cards that grant you a small fixed income of the resource, perhaps using some of the upkeep mechanics in the plague scenario so it’s something like
“Synthetic Oil Industry”: get 4 oil per turn, but pay 20 gold upkeep.
You may not need as much iron or niter because they are stockpile resources, but yeah conceptually the same thing could work.

I know that buffing pikes to 45 does make a “resourceless” plan of Xbow and pike defense workable, and technically you should have horses OR iron to use for units. Although knights and cuirassiers break that and just make iron the end all be all.

 

[Francel]

I always welcome new wonders to build. I keep thinking a wonder that allows selection of an additional religious belief(non-building) would be fun. Might lead to cool synergies.

 

[oSiyeza]

Religion has many problems. The prophet rush, Is weird, but I dont really care.

Religion should be more nuanced and deep. For example you should be able to have an official religion without the need to create one. You should be able to ask another nation to accept your religion as official. You should be able to build your beliefs over time, developing an ideology. Or convert to an existing ideology if you want to. In other words, religion should be less focussed on religious combat and more in politics.

The religious combat idea is also weird in itself. Since it is a game concept, that is totally based on fantasy. There is not such a thing as real religious combat. A war of religion is just a war where the winner impose his beliefs on the survivors...

Anyway, I will split my ideas in 3 separated lines. Religion, religious combat, and the last one an oddball about how I think the soothsayer should be integrated with the religious units.

Religious system:

• Split open borders in three separate diplomatic levels. Open Sea Borders (no more blocking ships passing near the coast), Open Land military borders, And Open Land Civil borders (allows trade routes; allows civil units including religious ones to cross borders; increases the effect of tourism, culture and religious influence between these borders).

• Great Theologians. Great person type with special abilities and also would act as strong religious unit if not consumed. Always generate a relic when killed.

• New World Congress proposals and Policies for religion (in its own category, not necesarily a specific slot, but at least you should be able to see the religious cards when searching).

• Project. Proclaim state religion: Converts your capital to a religion currently in your empire, with less influence from other religions and increased influence to outside for a while.

• The religion of the capital, will be the official religion of the civ. The majoritarian religion of the civ is the one with more followers. If they are different, both count in diplomacy.

• Diplomatic option to suggest or demand a country to proclaim a state religion.

• Option in City states you are a suzerain of to proclaim a state religion.

Religious combat:

• Replace the charge system for a cool down, or a mechanic to spend faith when casting faith ability (or both). Charge bonus would turn into cheaper uses or faster cool downs.

• Rework religious promotions, so they get applied with experience obtained at theological combat or using religious abilities.

• Religious units should have support roles, like the Soothsayer, with promotions (there is already a medic one).

• Allow escort formations of religious units with military units.

• Spread on regular combat. Have a small spread effect when a military unit is defeated if you have an adjacent religious unit.

• Influence on spread. Increase the religious influence of a city, if a religious unit of the same faith is stationed in its holy site. Reduce the religious influence of a city, if a religious unit of a different faith is stationed in its holy site.

• Disable the religious lenses by default. And showcase the holy-sites where the unit can heal when selecting a religious unit.

• Allow religious units to heal in holy sites of the same religion in foreign lands.

• Add a modern visual replacement for religious units, though the current ones are not as bad as the soothsayer. This is not important, but would add variety.

• Add a modern visual replacement for religious combat. That is, in modern times after the discovery of humanism religious combat should stop being about thunder and lightning. A faster animation without lightning will do. Being more fast, this will make less tedious the religious combat. It will also increase immersion and additionally illustrate how modernity has replaced mysticism, and modern religion is a matter of spirituality not of who is casting more thunders.

The soothsayer as a religious unit:

• Allow soothsayer to work as a religious unit, so you can normally fight it with a religious unit.

• Replace the charge system for a cool down, or a mechanic to spend faith when casting a disaster. Charge bonus would turn into cheaper uses or faster cool downs.

• Add a modern replacement for soothsayer. Is not ok to have a unit in a weird wooden charriot in the atomic era. Suggestion. A plain old modern chthulu-like cultist that could also have more mobility.

• Allow escort formations with the soothsayer (correct me if you can already do this).

And a bonus:

• Add the Esoteric Order of Dagon as a Game religion!.

 

[kaspergm]

Religion has many problems. The prophet rush, Is weird, but I dont really care.

Religion should be more nuanced and deep. For example you should be able to have an official religion without the need to create one. You should be able to ask another nation to accept your religion as official. You should be able to build your beliefs over time, developing an ideology. Or convert to an existing ideology if you want to. In other words, religion should be less focussed on religious combat and more in politics.

The religious combat idea is also weird in itself. Since it is a game concept, that is totally based on fantasy. There is not such a thing as real religious combat. A war of religion is just a war where the winner impose his beliefs on the survivors...

The idea of a State Religion concept was already in demand in Civ5, and I'm very disappointed it did not make it into Civ6.

The whole idea of religious combat was not necessarily bad, but it's pretty evident by now that it's not a whole lot of fun, not to mention the fact that the AI wasting literally tens of thousands of faith over the course of a game on buying Apostles only to send them on either suicide or at best futile conversion missions into enemy lands is pretty detrimental to the AI's overall performance.

What we need in the future is probably a much more dynamic pressure system, where you can make different actions to increase the "prestige" of your religion, i.e. cause more pressure against other religions, a bit like how ideological pressure in Civ5 cause a demand to opt for a specific ideology, in the same way religious pressure should create a demand in your civ for a specific religion.

Stuff like that would also add some more incentive to be early founder, because converting your own people to a newly founded religion if they had been happily following another religion should actually cause some discontent (not like in Civ6, where every city with a holy site just automatically converts when you found your religion).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I fall in the camp that I don't think we need more universal combat units as well.
I think the major gaps have been filled with the expansions.
As what to do about some of the UU's being not being upgradable from previous ones, I'm sure there could be other ways around it if the production is the problem.

I'm all on board with requiring UUs to be purchased rather than production. Some unique units that could easily be purchased with faith include the Samurai, Khevsur, Berserkers, Varu and Domrey as all of these Civs have some sort of religious bonuses.
I don't think the Redcoat needs anything because you get a free one when conquering.

 

[Casworon]

I would also like to see the religious beliefs given a look over the same as the pantheons did. I dont think we are going to be seeing any major changes to the mechanics, Civ VI is very far into its lifecycle at this stage. At the moment going religion is more useful for the faith income from building holy sites than the actual religion.

A reworking of the score victory to be something along the lines of having double the score of the player in second place I would like. Allowing it too step forward into relevancy and something to aim for rather than being the 'ran out of time' option. Also providing a 'Balanced Victory' for players who just want to have fun building a great empire rather than thinking about how to min/max the other victories.

On the topic of filling in the unit gaps, I personally would like this. Infact I would like to see all the 'unique units' incorporated into the standard unit lines so they all can be upgraded into. Making many of them much easier to use. I am wondering though if this might be too large an expectation for the patches.

Rebalancing the beliefs and maybe a minor reworking of score victory is number changing. New units need art, animation etc. Though we did get the Guru in a patch if I remember correctly.

Very much looking forward to seeing what we are going to get though.

Oh and a minor change I want to mention. Make the settler lens for the Maya show all the tiles that are within six tiles of the capital. They have no use for the lens at the moment since they dont use water, and it would save having to count the tiles every time.

Oh and do something about aid requests for apocalypse mode. Maybe giving them a cool down? Or only give one diplomatic victory point? At the moment apocalypse mode is very diplomatic victory slanted due to the amount of aid requests being fired off from all the natural disasters. I wouldn't go so far to rename apocalypse mode diplomatic victory mode but it gets close

 

[berlin88]

Here is my short wish list for fixes:

1. Give us the ability to harvest / remove luxury / strategic resources. I hate it, when these things block my ability to place districts.

2. Make it slightly easier to make peace with Macedon early in the game.

In my current game, Alexander declared war on me very early in the game, and for the last 50+ turns or so, I have had to spend almost all my production on units, to fend off the constant attacks from Macedon and its city state allies. No matter how many Macedonian units I destroy, Alexander won't agree to a peace deal. I even razed a city, and Macedon still refuses to make peace. I would simply conquer Alexander's Capital, but I don't have a strong enough army for that yet, since I have yet to get any siege weapons beyond archers. This has hindered my ability to make settlers, builders and districts, because I have to keep constantly pumping out new units.

 

[Avenger237]

1. Show what luxuries each civ is currently importing on the trading screen to make deals easier; right now we can only tell that the AI already has imported a luxury once we propose a deal and they only offer 1 gold for it

2. Declaration of war against a CS which you are suzerain also results in a declaration of war against you (even for allies)

3. Pacing; (I play emperor) Science appears to be generated too quickly (esp. if you start close to a Scientific CS) or production is too low, so you often have no chance to use units before they become obsolete

4. Economic victory

5. Tone down the recruit partisan spy mission

 

[Zaarin]

Monotheism could specialise things on an empire-wide scale - at the expense of local specialisation.

I know you're aiming for game features, which I realize has to make compromises, but this isn't really a reflection of history. Just look at all the local varieties of Christianity even before the Protestant Reformation (and even more so after it).

 

[bengalryan9]

I wish religious victory was more than just "produce as many apostles as you can with the highest combat strength you can". It's just so dull, especially on higher difficulty levels when the AI will spawn ungodly amounts of apostles you have to fight off.

I sometimes think it might be interesting if there was a maximum number of apostles each religion could have active at a time, scaling with map size. The game could then be more about strategically deciding where to send these apostles to spread the word (preferably without "religious combat" all together). If you have three, do you send all three out to different civilizations to try to spread their religion individually potentially leaving your own cities open to conversion, or do you send two to one neighbor and leave the other at home to keep your own citizens in line? Planting an apostle unit in a city somewhere slowly increase the spread of the religion outwards from that spot, but other nearby apostles can limit their effectiveness. Maybe tie your ability to see enemy apostles to your diplomatic visibility with different civs ("our trader reports hearing rumors of someone spreading word of Catholicism in Cleveland"). Heck, maybe different apostles spawn in different eras and have different power levels to make it even more dynamic.

Who knows, maybe this is similar to whatever Secret Societies ends up being. I think that would be really cool.