[R&F] Loyalty bonuses

acluewithout

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Some Civs get specific loyalty boosts,

eg England gets bonus loyalty from its Royal Navy Dockyard (+2 on its home continent, +4 on foreign continents), Spain +2 loyalty from Missions next to its City Centre on foreign continents, Persia gets extra loyalty from garrisoned units (I think), Netherlands gets loyalty from trade routes.

What do people think of these bonuses?

They all seem very weak to me. Worse, this seems like a deliberate design choice to make these bonuses fairly weak.
 
... in particular, has anyone tried stacking trade routes to get a loyalty bump from the Dutch ability? Saving up traders to dump into a captured city could be a good way to hold onto rebellious citizens, but I’m guessing the problem is having enough trade routes and or moving that many traders all at once.
 
They all seem very weak to me.
For a start they only affect that cities loyalty (internal loyalty) apart from the dutch trade route which is a little weak. So they do not help in aggressive city flipping but help stop the city being flipped.
Population is by far the strongest loyalty weapon but is capped at 20. The internal loyalty values if you stacked them all up also get to around 20. A civs additional albeit small loyalty does provide the option of perhaps not needing to slot a card in certain loyalty times, gives a civ the ability to settle 1 tile closer to the enemy that other civs and in the case of England does provide the ability to land a city in -20 loyalty areas on foreign continents (but not easily). It provides additional defense against the Mapuche while not completely nerfing their ability.

It is this hard coded 20 max from pop that controls the value of other values. If it was higher then sure they would be weak.
I believe this point is a classic case of people thinking it sounds weak, but if the values were changed you would find people complaining it was impossible to flip the cities or too easy to forward settle.
 
I agree the bonuses are directed at holding cities rather than flipping given how they work.

I don’t find I can really make England’s Dockyards work at all. +4 seems like a big bonus, but I don’t find I can actually get much traction unless I throw tonnes of resources at it - in which case, I’m not sure the district really added much.

I also agree Pop is the biggest factor, with amenities also playing a role. I’ve been wondering whether some growth / food heavy Civs might have interesting strategies around loyalty. (I’m also working on some mods, and didn’t want to muck around with loyalty too much without understanding it better.)

Loyalty produces some weird results. I’ve started targeting cities with chopable resources for capturing or settling, so I can boost loyalty. Jungle is best, because you get some production too. Magnus and Liang are interesting here - you assign them to the captured city for loyalty, then use them for chops (magnus via his super chop, and liang to buy a builder with gold with an extra chop). The mechanic also makes Pyramids even stronger.

I’ve also been wondering if I should be more careful selling all my luxes and losing the loyalty boost from happiness.
 
I don’t find I can really make England’s Dockyards work at all. +4 seems like a big bonus
vs -20 pressure you need all your cards on the table. Settle the city while placing Reyna in there, buying a builder or bringing one with you and chopping in the pop (so settle next to swamp/wheat/cows/rice). You need to survive 5 turns for Reyna to buy in the dockyard or you can chop it in as another option. I did it on the day R&F came out as a test but TBH you should be taking a coastal city and putting a city next to it or at least settling 2 to help each other. You really need to puy a granary and get to 3-4 pop ASAP. your best defence is pop pressure ratio and 4 pop is good.

I’ve also been wondering if I should be more careful selling all my luxes and losing the loyalty boost from happiness.
Its a situational thing. R&F has just encouraged the use of cavalry more because they can get 2-3 cities fast, foot is too slow. If you have a foot army then keeping your lux is a must and may not be enough, take a settler on campaign with you.
For defense if you are losing a loyalty battle that can only be blamed on your unless an early issue on a high level. I've had Indonesia start my capital throbbing at about T15 on diety. Close settling and massive growth of 3 cities early is not easy to deal with when Persia is attacking you from the other direction. I saw no way out and lost to Persia on purpose... I hope it taught that Git girl a lesson.
 
Settle the city while placing Reyna in there, buying a builder or bringing one with you and chopping in the pop (so settle next to swamp/wheat/cows/rice).

Having the ancestral hall and golden hic sunt dracones also helps this.
 
What Age you’re in can clearly be a big factor with loyalty and conquest.

I didn’t like ages initially, but I liked them more once I started using dark ages to consolidate / build units / infrastructure, and then golden ages to war. It helps with loyalty, and also gives the game more rhythm making both Dark Ages and Golden Ages feel more significant.

(As an aside: I really don’t understand people that think Dark Ages need to be more crushing or challenging - to me, the main thing is that they are mechanically different (and that could include being positive), so that they open up new strategies and tactics (gameplay) and feel significant (role play).)

Turning back to loyalty and bonuses, the best way to deal with loyalty seems to be taking a group of cities fast, chopping for growth and or golden ages. Sometimes that’s fun. Sometimes it’s a yawn fest. But either way, those strategies work so well, any Civ related loyalty bonuses seem irrelevant. It’s hard to get excited about settling a city “a few tiles closer” to your enemy...

It feels a bit like Alexander’s immunity from War Weariness. Kind of a cool idea, but usually WW is so irrelevant it’s a kind of nothing bonus.
 
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