Loyalty rework and Free Cities to City State

[AntSou]

1. I think the Loyalty system requires rework. Loyalty should be harder to maintain and expanding wide too quickly too soon should come with penalties (more like Civ IV than Civ V).

2. We need population to be divided by culture, similar to what we had in Civ IV, and there should be a cultural map similar to the religious map. I understand you might be worried about the purging potential, so either don't add a purging mechanic to the game, or make it abstract like you did with Inquisition (e.g. Great Artists can convert pops to one's culture, for instance. Spies can convert pops through propaganda missions).

Cities which have been under a culture for longer should be harder to Pacify. Offer the player different options to accomplish this. Military: by having more military units within two tiles of the City; Economically, by having lower taxes (yields halved for a 25% boost to loyalty, for instance. Policy Card.) and Culturally (already explained).

3. Civics, Policies, Governor and Government Type should have a more relevant impact on Loyalty and force greater opportunity costs on the player (that is, tougher decisions to make);

4. Free Cities shouldn't be so willing to immediately convert to other Civs. They should remain in the Free City state for about 5 turns. The amount of pressure required should be much greater, and much harder to achieve, especially early game.

5. The most likely outcome after the Anarchic Free City state should be for it to convert randomly to one of the City States in Civ 6. Games still start with a capped amount of City States, but now this number can actually increase.

Such spawning city states would cause the phenomenon of buffer states to occur naturally in Civ 6.

Edit: I just realised I posted this in the wrong forum section. Sorry about that.

 

[Pistol90]

I am calling for those ideas from moment RiseAndFall was announced. They introduce something really complicated from real world and simplify it to the point of not being interested.

 

[kaspergm]

I agree on points 2 and 4 and 5.

Point 4 and 5 in particular. That is probably one of the most disappointing implementations of any game feature they've done. I'd go even futher than you say here. It should be harder to keep loyalty up in a "colony" city if you don't provide enough happiness. A city should be able to break free if happiness is low, even if no other city is in near vicinity providing pressure. A city that goes free should work as its own identity, almost like a city state. The fact that it just works like a barbarian city that's free to claim is extremely disappointing.

I also agree that policies in general has too little impact on loyalty. The +2 or so you can normally get from a policy card in most cases is insignificant to overcome the loyalty issues of a slipping city. Sure, there are marginal cases where it will buy you time, but if you have loyalty issues, the policies are not your first or second place to look for a solution, and that's a bit disappointing.

 

[acluewithout]

I dont think Colonial Cities need to be harder to manage without at least giving them way more value / upside first.

The loyalty policy cards are actually very powerful. No, they don't solve your loyalty problems. But they can give you the extra precious time you need to properly fix those problems.