Promotions

[ProMeTheus112]

The first time I saw promotions in Civ 4, I didn't like the idea because I thought it was cumbersome extra management to do (and there were so many different promotions), plus I thought it takes away from the legibility of the battle field, don't know how strong each thing is exactly, can't predict what's gonna happen unless you take time to figure out who is healing punching what.. (for enemy units especially). After a few games though I disliked them less.

What are the main advantages to promotions in civ?
I'm thinking that they are a reward for fighting against someone, because in a FFA, if you fight someone, you lose stuff and they lose stuff, so that you're both screwing each other relative to everybody else, and that would mean its usually best not to fight. In Civ though, you can take cities, so of course thats a huge prize reward for fighting (if successful), but if you're just defending, you're still just penalized from having been attacked (if you won't strike back cause you have a peaceful strategy or anyway not a big military). So that helps with this, that's good.

Now are there too many promotions? Why not just a strength bonus promotion that you don't need to pick? What do you think of the promotion system in civ 6 so far relative to other civ games?

 

[gfeier]

Works for me. It rewards veteran units and makes them worth upgrading. Unless they're Civ V pikemen. I hated the upgrade to lancers.

 

[Mort_Q]

Choices. The promotions offer choices. One could argue how meaningful they are, but choices, and the consequences of said choices, is the heart of Civ.

 

[isau]

I just wish there was a promotion tree or something so you could see where any given path was going.

 

[Ryika]

Promotions reward being careful and protecting ones experienced core units. And they allow you to specialize units towards whatever role they need to fulfill if done right.

Beyond Earth only had the "Gain 10% Combat Strength, or Insta Heal"-choice and in general people seemed to think of it as a negative thing. Of course Beyond Earth had the excuse of outsourcing many of the upgrades into Affinity Upgrades, but that took away the ability to specialize specific units.

Overall I think the Civ 5 Promotion System was good, with just some balance issues and some issues with changing unit types that need to be resolved.

 

[King Jason]

Personally I've always thought promotions shouldn't be in the game - they seem to benefit a human player way more than an A.I.

Atrocious combat A.I. aside, Humans are better equipped to evaluate the weight of a promoted unit and take appropriate actions to ensure it's continued survival. The A.I. just can't do this. To say nothing of the fact that Humans are better at evaluating the promotional needs of their situation, overall. Without adding in a handicap, such as A.I. receiving more experience per combat, I just don't see how promotions are a fair mechanic.

 

[Ryika]

AIs get more production, pay less maintenance and don't have to deal with the Unit cap. That more than makes up for that if units are balance in a way that you can't just barricade yourself and snipe away whole armies.

It's also a non-argument in my opinion - literally every element of the game is better when used by the player. Taking away what is generally considered to be a nice addition just because the Ai can't handle it as well is not something that should ever be done.

 

[King Jason]

It's also a non-argument in my opinion - literally every element of the game is better when used by the player. Taking away what is generally considered to be a nice addition just because the Ai can't handle it as well is not something that should ever be done.

Isn't that the theorized logic behind the diplo-victory removal?

I'm not saying it should be removed. I'm saying it should have never been added. Semantics maybe, but different enough; I'd never expect promotions to be removed from the civ franchise at this point. They just need to design ways to make sure it benefits the A.I. From civ5 to civ6 they already made a great change in not making the A.I. have to decide between healing it's units or promoting them. I think that's hugely beneficial to the A.I.

I also think tighter promotion trees benefit the A.I. as well - and it seems civ6 maye be on track here as well.

 

[Ryika]

Is it? Don't see a reason to think so.

But if it is, then they've forgotten to remove the other Victories, because human players are clearly better at them as well.

 

[Jaybe]

Personally I've always thought promotions shouldn't be in the game - they seem to benefit a human player way more than an A.I.

Atrocious combat A.I. aside, Humans are better equipped to evaluate the weight of a promoted unit and take appropriate actions to ensure it's continued survival. The A.I. just can't do this. To say nothing of the fact that Humans are better at evaluating the promotional needs of their situation, overall. Without adding in a handicap, such as A.I. receiving more experience per combat, I just don't see how promotions are a fair mechanic.

HA! Simple Solution(s): Player's promotions are assigned randomly, with potential weight towards how it was earned (e.g., through offensive or defensive combat); you get no choice. AI civs are given defensive promotions before others.

 

[King Jason]

Also Ryika, the idea that "everything is better in the hands of a player" isn't exactly a counter because there are very clearly systems that exacerbate the difference in benefit between a human opponent and an A.I. opponent.

I think shifting to 1upt combat is a great highlight of this as in previous games both players (human and A.I.) could just shuffle their STOD toward each other and smash them against one another. This is an oversimplification, obviously, but things like bonus production, less maintenance and such are way more beneficial to the a.i. in this situation since it's almost literally a battlefield where one civ's production is pitted against another.

With the tactical depth of 1upt - civ5's A.I. at least, just couldn't compete in a meaningful way. This, as many in the community agree, is not a good thing, and is precisely why there's an entire demographic of people against 1upt. That said, the solution doesn't need to be remove the feature - but that is certainly an option, and I think it allows the argument of "The A.I. sucks at it" to indeed be a valid one to rethink certain mechanics.

 

[Ryika]

The people who are against 1upt are a tiny fraction of all people, most people are fine with it and civ V is the most played, most successful Civ game so far.

1upt and promotions actually have very much in common, you're right, namely that they heavily favor the player in Civ V, to a level that makes them questionable. The solution however is of course not to remove them, but to adapt the rules to something that the AI can handle.

Decreasing the power level of promotions overall and removing some of the insanely strong ones, replacing them with situational stuff, is a good way of keeping the system itself intact and engaging while simultaneously closing the gap between player and AI to something more reasonable.