Neglected features

[bonafide11]

In my constant complaining about the disconnect between tourism and any gameplay value, notably loyalty, I thought of another feature that is probably neglected even more that I often even forget exists: appeal. I never pay attention to a tile's appeal, and other than for national parks, which I don't usually build, I'm not sure what it does or if there's a purpose for it. Does anyone actually pay attention to appeal, or does everyone else ignore it too?

Besides tourism and appeal, what other features seem neglected and forgotten about in the game that need to be more involved with the actual gameplay?

 

[UWHabs]

Appeal comes in for parks and seaside resorts, and obviously neighbourhoods (although I rarely build them). But yeah, it's the sort of thing that there for 90% of the game and you can safely ignore it.

My vote would be for citizens (specialists). They give boring, flat yields, never grow, and are virtually always worse than simply working tiles except in very specific cases.

 

[Deggial]

I would vote for 'specialists' as well.

Appeal is at least important sometimes (I do build neighborhoods), but I never ever assigned a specialist since I switched from Civ5.

Which is a shame, especially in GS, as the introduction of the world congress competitions would make generating more GP points (for a cost) a useful endeavor. Unfortunately, specialists don't do this any more.

 

[bonafide11]

Appeal comes in for parks and seaside resorts, and obviously neighbourhoods (although I rarely build them). But yeah, it's the sort of thing that there for 90% of the game and you can safely ignore it.

My vote would be for citizens (specialists). They give boring, flat yields, never grow, and are virtually always worse than simply working tiles except in very specific cases.

Specialists are a good point. I forget they even exist, and they were very important in Civ IV and Civ V.

 

[Leucarum]

Appeal is a very civ-specific mechanism, for the likes of Australia especially, (but also civs like Mapuche) you definitely do want to pay attention to it... But either you care about it a lot or barely at all... Which actually I think is ok. Civs exploring underused mechanics opens up new ways to play!

 

[AmazonQueen]

Appeal is worth considering if you get the Earth Goddess pantheon.
Specialists are a case of how the mighty are fallen.
Massively important in Civ IV and V, now seem like a leftover they forgot to get rid of.

 

[Phoenix1595]

Appeal is worth considering if you get the Earth Goddess pantheon.

If faith is the name of your game, then you can’t ignore appeal, as it is crucial to Earth Goddess. Earth Goddess is one of the most powerful pantheons in the game, since it can amass huge amounts of faith early in the game, and continue to snowball as your territory grows.

Also, appeal matters if you want to maximize your returns for building neighborhoods, regardless if you care about culture/faith or not.

 

[Starwars]

My vote is also for specialists. Was always a fun system in my opinion, now it just sucks.

 

[Midgardsormr]

Support units. Only the Battering Ram is worth building.

 

[Deggial]

Support units. Only the Battering Ram is worth building.

With this one I have to disagree at least how I do play in my games (wich probably is suboptimal).

Anyway, balloons and later drones are crucial for the usefulness of (unprompted) artillery. And while the game might be decided already, the speed gain (also for healing) of those trucks is a very nice benefit if I want to wrap up the map.

AA support units are obviously still useless due to the AI's reluctance to use air units - which has become better with GS, but is still not on a Civ5 threat level. If Firaxis is ever willing to tackle this issue, AA support units might become quite valuable as well.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Support units. Only the Battering Ram is worth building.

No, generally the Support Units have some value -
Except the Siege Tower, which I have not only never built, I've never seen the AI build either. Most useless single unit in the game.

 

[Midgardsormr]

Ah, I forgot about the drones and balloons. Yes, those are worthwhile. I never build Medics or Convoys, though. The only time I use them is when they've been upgraded from Rams. I'd rather heal by pillaging my enemy than hanging around by a Medic.

 

[Krajzen]

One thing I never understood about tourism in civ6 and civ5 because here it also failed in this regard.

Why doesnt tourism provide MONEY!

Come on, this is the very reason countries propagate it so much
No, not "loyalty", this is actually ridiculous, as if revolutions could be caused by hotels.
No, not "cultural influence" (I mean thats great perk but still secondary).

Tourism is powerful boost to economy and great source of money. That's the primary reason why we wanna foreigners to come to our country. Tourism is primarily an economic enterprise.
As much as I loved cultural systems in BNW, the more I think on this subject the weirder it seems to me for them to implement tourism without any economic gains.

Ans before anybody says "oh well they're probably miniscule" - no, there is a ton of countries which have like 10-20% of their entire GDP generated by tourism industry!

 

[Uberfrog]

My vote would be for citizens (specialists). They give boring, flat yields, never grow, and are virtually always worse than simply working tiles except in very specific cases.

Yeah, specialists might as well not exist in Civ 6.

For a game about building cities, Civ has always had a confusing approach to their citizens. Urban life is characterised by not having to live off the land, so it seems silly that we send all our citizens out into the fields and mines. I'd like to see a future civ game have a system where cities have specialist citizens by default (as you have in Sid Meier's Colonization), who are supported by food and goods produced in the countryside.

 

[Tomice]

Great that you brought it up:

• I always thought that Australia's appeal bonus for districts should have been the general rule, not the exception. Inspiring locations boost religion, culture, and science - logical! Appeal would naturally be important.
• If specialists gave great people points, tall would be much more viable and the strategies more variable.
• Additional uses for tourism sound great, too!

I really hope they'll take care of some loose ties in future patches or expansions (though that's obviously harder to sell than feature bloat)

 

[Onii-chan]

Specialists need to be buffed soooo bad lol. I can't believe they've still never tuned them in any patch or expansion or anything. There is absolutely no logical reason why they don't give great person points. It seems so obvious that they should to me

At least appeal has some instances where it's relevant (national parks, neighbourhoods, earth goddess) but specialists in civ 6 have never been anything more than somewhere to place citizens once a city has gotten so big there are no more tiles to work

 

[UWHabs]

Specialists need to be buffed soooo bad lol. I can't believe they've still never tuned them in any patch or expansion or anything. There is absolutely no logical reason why they don't give great person points. It seems so obvious that they should to me

At least appeal has some instances where it's relevant (national parks, neighbourhoods, earth goddess) but specialists in civ 6 have never been anything more than somewhere to place citizens once a city has gotten so big there are no more tiles to work

Personally, I think I would almost rather it be required that each building needs one "citizen" slot to function. This would be a great equalizer to me, in that it means you can't just have a pop-1 city build a district and then buy a library/uni/research lab. Basically, to work those 3 buildings, you need 3 pop, plus however many citizens in the fields to feed them. You'd have to rebalance (since there'd obviously be no point to taking a citizen off a mine to be in a workshop), but it would both bring them back to being relevant and be a huge boost to tall cities, since they're the only ones with enough pop to actually work all their districts.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Personally, I think I would almost rather it be required that each building needs one "citizen" slot to function. This would be a great equalizer to me, in that it means you can't just have a pop-1 city build a district and then buy a library/uni/research lab. Basically, to work those 3 buildings, you need 3 pop, plus however many citizens in the fields to feed them. You'd have to rebalance (since there'd obviously be no point to taking a citizen off a mine to be in a workshop), but it would both bring them back to being relevant and be a huge boost to tall cities, since they're the only ones with enough pop to actually work all their districts.

Generally I don't think you should benefit from a tile or building unless you have some population working it, so no stockpiling a strategic resource unless you're working it, no GPP or science unless there is somebody in your university etc.

 

[Victoria]

In my constant complaining about the disconnect between tourism and any gameplay value, n

Tourism, is not an object, it is an end result. Tourism does not create culture but culture can create tourism. It is the output purely used to measure for a victory. One could argue money is an output but that is it.

Why doesnt tourism provide MONEY!

Well seaside resorts are tacky modern tourist things that do provide money as well as tourism. Note the tourism DOES NOT make money, the resort does.
Does a museum make money? Nope, any profit goes to maintenance and specialists
Does Big Ben or Stonehenge or Pammukale or Great Zimbabwe make money? No (ignoring the historical great aim ability and the natural Big Ben gold.) bottom line is all profit from the wonder goes to maintaining the wonder.
Ski resorts, golf courses, etc make a little money but it goes to those that run it, not the government.
You could even argue seaside resorts should not but it is fine they do. It matters very little at that stage of the game, you are swimming in gold anyway.
Culture costs, that is the bottom line and any tourists typically go to the maintenance of that culture.
The relic is the object that outputs faith and tourism. Tourism is an end result.
Now coming from a poorish first world country (New Zealand) tourism is a big thing and creates money for the economy. It is very important to balance all the money going out of the country. However that money does not come from individual objects but instead by tourists being in the country generall spending into the economy.
If you want to argue that tourism gives gold it should be calculated overall from your total tourism but I guess you are not wrong it is missing... I just think it is not needed.

 

[acluewithout]

@Krajzen

Gold is already too easy to get. You get it from other Civs through trade (including from diplomacy), from trade routes, from commercial city states, from envoys (via cards), from other cards, from districts and buildings, from neighbourhoods, ... good grief, you can practically pick it up from the ground (oh wait, you can, from camps and plantations ... and you can pick it up from ocean).

I agree tourism is fine as just an output.

Tourism also doesn't even really represent tourism, no more than housing represents actual houses. Tourism represents cultural force or dominance, and I don't think that should just let you mint gold.

I'm maybe okay with tourism doing more at some point, but I'd prefer if that was done as part of a third expansion and the whole thing could be thought through so it was balanced and strategically interesting. Just tacking on "gold from tourism" or "diplomatic favour" from tourism is just the wrong approach.

For now, I really like the elegance of "tourism doesn't do anything; but the things that give you tourism do".