[GS] Punch List for Civ VI

[acluewithout]

This is a thread listing out small (or reasonably small?) balance changes and tweaks people would like to see implemented eg via NFP community updates. My thoughts below (which I update from time to time).

Feel free to add your own suggestions or comment.

• Aircraft Carriers: these should work like GDRs, i.e. upgrades / promotions through the Tech Tree and can’t form Fleets or Armardas. See this mod as an example.

• Bring back Lumbermill adjacency for Rivers (maybe +1 adjacent to a river after you unlock Square Rigging, rather than +1 at Steel).

• Rebalance Anti-Cav combat strength and rework their promotions. Specifically, lose Echelon and instead give AC a Tier 1 Promotion +10 Defence v Ranged (or v City Attacks), replace Redeploy with Hold the Line, and make the Capstone / Tier 4 Promotion “Fortitude - no negative Combat Strength from injuries”. AC got some good tweaks and all units got rebalanced. So, hopefully this is all good now.

• Rebalance Infantry v Tanks given both use Oil.

• Walls don’t need a direct buff, but maybe need to be more relevant. Specifically, I’d like to see Medieval and Renaissance Walls give +% for AC and Seige, which would buff Walls but also help AC better fill the niche as “cheap no resource units you can mass produce”.

• Fix England not getting a free unit / trade route if you capture a city on a new continent before you settle a city.

• Democracy, Communism and Facism exclusive cards should be useable with equivalent Tier 4 Governments (losing access to those cards are a big reason not to take Tier 4 governments).

• Get Rid of Recruit Partisans Spy Mission. It’s just another reason not to build Neighbourhoods. [Well, this got tweaked, but not in a great way. I guess I’ll just treat this one as closed.]

• Consolidate a few spy missions. Do we really need separate spy missions for raising Diplo Visibility and increasing spy levels? Better yet, let us send Spies to Capital Cities as Ambassadors, and then rework and split missions between Spies and Ambassadors.

• [NEW] Let Spies be placed in Ally Cities. However, if you do, you have an increased chance of your missions failing / Spies being caught, you get huge relationship modifiers and grievances if you’re caught, and you can’t run certain missions (eg sabotage Dam, Sabotage Industrial Zone, Sabotage Spaceport).

• Let Military Engineers place roads without a charge (maybe costing one iron or one horse).

• Give Cities linked to capital city by rail a bonus (Railways just aren’t relevant as they are). e.g. +5% Growth, increasing to +10% Growth after you research Electricity.

• Religious Beliefs need a rebalance similar to Pantheons. (Personally, I’d like to see more UUs unlock from Religious beliefs (i.e. more than just Monks), and maybe a few more beliefs that work with Loyalty.) [Looks like this one got actioned, more or less.]
  
  
• [NEW] Religion and Loyalty. Could Religious Beliefs have a bit more interaction with Loyalty? The current +3/-3 Loyalty is fine, but there’s room for more. eg Religious Colonization - additionally grants Cities on Foreign Continents following this Religion +2 Loyalty. Scripture - additionally grants Cities following this Religion +2 Loyalty if they have a Tier 3 Religious Building.
  
  
• [NEW] Monks and Nihang. Monks and Nihang should have a base Melee strength based on your strongest Melee Unit (the same as Vampires and City Strength). Monks need that so they stop being irrelevant late game; Nihang need that so they stop being OP.
  
  
• [NEW] Gurus and Conquistadors. Can these instead be unique units tied to specific Beliefs? That would mean three Religious Unique Units. Conquistadors would be tricky, because you wouldn’t want them turning up eg Classical Era. But if they still required Niter, and or also required a specific Civic or Building to build, it would be fine. You’d have to give Spain some other UU, eg Tercio.

• [NEW] Reformation Beliefs. Can we get back Reformation Beliefs from Civ 5? So, if you founded a Religion, there would be a fifth set of beliefs, but you could only get them after you’d unlocked a certain Civic (eg Reformed Church). They could then do cool things like letting you use Spies to spread Religion, or give you other ways to manipulate Loyalty.

• Maybe rebalance Banks and Stock Exchanges - they just don’t seem particularly relevant given how much gold there is in the game (eg maybe Banks provide gold based on how many luxes there are in your empire; maybe Stock Exchanges produces gold based on how many total trade routes you have). [Stock Exchanges got buffed a little by Corporations mode, but they’re still pretty awful.]

• [NEW] Rebalance and expand buildings. Get rid of flat yields generally, and make buildings more situational. eg Market gives Luxes +1 Gold, Library gives +1 Science to Plantations and Reefs, University and Archaeology Museum / Art Gallery gives +2 Science / Culture respectively but additional +2 in a Golden Age.

• [NEW] Buff Industrial Zone T1 and T2 Buildings. eg Workshop - additionally provides +1 Production to Camps and Pastures in this City; Factory - increase bonuses to +4 (+8 when powered).

• [NEW] Audience Chamber. Make the +3 Housing and +1 Amenities apply to the City that has the AC and any City with a Governor (ie so you’ve got a few more Governor titles to spread around given your Gov Plaza City automatically gets the bonus).

• Rebalance Culture and Science City State bonuses. There is just too much Culture and Science in the game, and it's part of the reason the game flies by. My suggestion is that Cultural and Science City States no longer give yields per City, but instead only provide additional Culture and Science to your Capital or City with Government Plaza. Either that, or just make the bonus much smaller, e.g. +% for Cultural or Science buildings. [Looks like the Diplomatic Quarter has taken care of this one. Awesome.]
  
  
• Reduce Science Adjacencies. There is just way, way too much Science in the game. My suggestion is reduce Mountain and Reef Adjacencies to +0.5 and get rid of Jungle Adjacencies altogether. You could then maybe add +0.5 Adjacency for Neighbourhoods (slight buff to Neighbourhoods, and won't overpower Campuses because Neighbourhoods come so late).

• [NEW] Envoys. Post June 2020 envoy changes were good but hit Mercantile and Faith CS a bit hard. Perhaps they could be buffed back to 2/2/4. [sorted.]

• One more dedication per Era (ie 5 instead of 4). The current 4 per Era are very repetitive. [NEW] Also, add the Era Overflow Mechanic from Dramatic Ages Mode into the base game.

• Maybe get rid of England’s free Melee unit and free ships (it can capture ships with a Sea Dog anyway). Instead, just give England a flat +% building Melee and Naval Units in Cities with a RND on a foreign continent. Maybe increase pollution from English factories.

• Give the Cree a free starting Recon unit. Their Recon unit is more expensive, which makes the slower to get our Recon units early game. Giving them a free Recon would offset that, and be an interesting (and not OP) tweak.

• Rework Sumeria’s LA. It’s quite confusing to use in practice. Sumerian are still a mess post April 2021 update. But at least they’re a better mess.

• Make Mountain Wonders count as mountains for adjacency.

• [NEW] Amenities. August Amenities changes are good, but a bit off. Make “Content” 0-2 (not -1 to 2) and buff the bonuses from Ecstatic. Buff Arena, eg provides +1 Culture and +2 Gold if City is at full Loyalty. Monarchy additionally provides +1 Amenities to all Cities per Camp. Colonial Offices Policy Card additionally provides some Amenities bonus (maybe +1 Amenity with a Governor or a Harbour / Commercial Hub). So glad FXS rolled back this change, making Amenities a lot more meaningful. Now, if we could just get them to roll back the Spy v Allies changes...

• Increase happiness and or power demands from the mid game onwards and or make happiness more important. It’s just too easy to keep everyone happy, and neither happiness nor power actually does much. [August Update has sort of tweaked Amenities requirements, which is very cool. I still think happiness requirements need to ratchet up a bit mid game onwards, but still a good change getting rid of the free amenity for each City.]
  
  
• Give Mines more of a Negative, because at the reason there's no reason not to just spam hill mines. Maybe give Cities a + or - Happiness based on how many Appealing and Unappealing Tiles they have, capped at +/- 2. Mines already reduce Appeal, so that would give them a bit of a negative, and it would also just make Appeal a bit more useful overall. If that was combined with a general rebalancing of Maintenance, Happiness and Power (see above) then it really shouldn't be too powerful overall. [I think Appeal is mostly balanced okay these days, meaning Mines are maybe about right powerwise. If I was going to nerf mines at all, maybe just remove their adjacencies for the IZ.]
  
  
• Make Food a bit less Local, e.g. Internal Trade Routes just provide +1 Food, but if you build a Granary, then Trade Routes to that City provide +1 Food per Improved Food Resource (or, instead, +0.5 per Farm).

• [NEW] Rework Natural Philosophy (and Aesthetics). eg +50% Campus Adjacencies in Cities with a Governor and +50% for Cities with a Library. (Equivalent changes for Theatre Square.)

• [NEW] Rework Rationalism (and Grand Opera). eg +1% Science per Campus Adjacency and +1% per Population if City has University and a Governor (Max 15%). (Equivalent changes for Theatres Square Buildings.) These cards got reworked a bit. Not ideal, but ok.

[edit. see below.]

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Increase late-game tech and civic costs. The current situation is that when we enter future these techs and civics always cost 1 turn, so there's really no severe differences regarding to the randomization of the tech/civic trees.

Make boost conditions for tech/civics vary for each game instead of always being the same.

Balance on aircrafts, maybe limit the maximal damage they can deal like in Civ 4. Also add adj bonus to aerodromes. (maybe +1 production for each adj district?) Also move the aircraft+50% card to mass media.

 

[Dotsworthy]

A few things I would like:

Rebalance AI's trade offers to the player to join an ongoing war so that they are enticing to the player instead of only benefiting the AI.

Tweak amenities to make them more impactful to the player, particularly if you don't have enough.

Give cities an amenities penalty if they do not have power by the modern era.

Rework map generation so that natural wonders such as Mount Vesuvius are not completely surrounded by other mountains.

Rework AI's relationship score so that it is calculated at the start of a turn and not at the end. This would allow them to make more rational decisions regarding whether to renew/accept friendships and allow delegations and stop the player softlocking them into being friends forever.

 

[Isengardtom]

Have the AI prioritise Walls a bit more, especially on higher difficulty

 

[Pietato]

Get Rid of Recruit Partisans Spy Mission. It’s just another reason not to build Neighbourhoods.

Nah, this mission is hilarious. They just need to make Neighbourhoods better.

 

[leonardomalk]

I’d like for a rework in how specialists work, and tie it up with the yield of the tile the district is placed on. On Petra cities that grow huge I end up building few districts due to not wanting to lose on the yields...

 

[acluewithout]

Thought I'd add a few additional thoughts I've had or discussed with people over the past few weeks. You know, in the unlikely event anyone strays into the Ideas Forum and then reads this thread.

Specifically:

• Aircraft Carriers: these should work like GDRs, i.e. upgrades / promotions through the Tech Tree and can’t form Fleets or Armardas. Maybe give ACs a passive buff for adjacent units, but like a Great Admiral.
  
  
• Rebalance Culture and Science City State bonuses. There is just too much Culture and Science in the game, and it's part of the reason the game flies by. My suggestion is that Cultural and Science City States no longer give yields per City, but instead only provide additional Culture and Science to your Capital or City with Government Plaza. Either that, or just make the bonus much smaller, e.g. +% for Cultural or Science buildings.
  
  
• Reduce Science Adjacencies. There is just way, way too much Science in the game. My suggestion is reduce Mountain and Reef Adjacencies to +0.5 and get rid of Jungle Adjacencies altogether. You could then maybe add +0.5 Adjacency for Neighbourhoods (slight buff to Neighbourhoods, and won't overpower Campuses because Neighbourhoods come so late).
  
  
• Give Mines more of a Negative, because at the reason there's no reason not to just spam hill mines. Maybe give Cities a + or - Happiness based on how many Appealing and Unappealing Tiles they have, capped at +/- 2. Mines already reduce Appeal, so that would give them a bit of a negative, and it would also just make Appeal a bit more useful overall. If that was combined with a general rebalancing of Maintenance, Happiness and Power (see above) then it really shouldn't be too powerful overall.
  
  
• Make Food a bit less Local, e.g. Internal Trade Routes just provide +1 Food, but if you build a Granary, then Trade Routes to that City provide +1 Food per Improved Food Resource (or, instead, +0.5 per Farm).

 

[nauberry]

I'd like to add a small fix to Sumeria. The AI spams ziggurats on every single tile, so it might be worth to change the Ziggurat so that it can not be adjacent to another ziggurat. For balancing, it could recieve better yields if next to a campus or a cultural district, such as the Persian UI.

 

[Sostratus]

A pair of things that haven't been touched on already:
-Adjust valid terrains table for the polder so that any land tile counts. That means you, mountains.
Currently, the load screen text for the polder states "three passable land tiles," but mountainous natural wonders count. Furthermore, the valid polderable tiles are rare as it is, and the random interplay with mountains can be extremely aggravating. Alternatively, allow any lake tile to be valid.
This isn't a very complex change; come to think of it, i should probably do it myself.

-consider remapping a few tech connections between the upper and lower halves of the tree between the renaissance and modern eras.
They are just too split - siege tactics/ballistics/military science/rifling/steel/refining/combustion live in their own little bubble.

This top/bottom issue of connectedness is present throughout the whole tree, for funny results (you can learn metal casting without bronze or iron working; you can build a spaceport without knowing the wheel!) But it's really only that chunk of the tree where you can skate along without having to dip down until you get partway into the atomic era.

-strongly consider giving scythia +2 extraction rate on horses instead of free light cav; OR have cheaper light cav horse costs. Just takes an abusive ability and converts it into something that feels like it fits with GS.

 

[Mik1984]

Civs, religions and pantheons require rebalancing. There are excellent mods like better balanced game already available that do the "needful". It would be nice if a lot of these things were incorporated into base game.
Better trading screen, better espionage screen, more lenses, all these things should be incorporated into base game.

Incorporating stuff from almost must-have mods into base game is very useful, as all mods are compatible with base game, however not necessarily with each other, and that is an important reason why having must-have modifications added into base game is a non-negligible benefit.

That is why a lot of AI upgrades from mods like Real Strategy could also be considered for incorporation into base game.

There is one extra thing I would like to see in the game:

Allow for manually forcing traders to use either land or sea routes, if both are possible. You can force the trader to use sea route, if you do not want him to tread on land through potentially barbarian infested zone, you can force the trader to do a land route in order to establish a road. It becomes sometimes ridiculously hard to establish roads after your traders get the ability to embark.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Leader screen trading - AI will trade 1 for 1 resources over and over, but ask for 10 and they ask for 10 plus a heap of gold.
Non-naval units can put costal cities in siege. This might be fixed - it's hard to test.

It would be really nice to have a UI tip in the leader icons when a cause belli is available, and if the 'make peace' option is available.
I would love a Pangea + islands map type

-strongly consider giving scythia +2 extraction rate on horses instead of free light cav; OR have cheaper light cav horse costs. Just takes an abusive ability and converts it into something that feels like it fits with GS.

Make the free light cav require the era appropriate encampment building (stable, armory, military academy). The main issue for me that it's an ability that can be beelined before anyone else get units built.

 

[Mik1984]

Few more things:

Allow Suzerains a way to build canals in vassal city states, if appropriate technology is available.

Allow building of Canals outside of 3 hex city radius, as long as within the cultural borders of the city.

Add an ice-busting project, similar to building a canal, that breaks up frozen ice pack to make a tile navigable.

Do not allow settling a city adjacent to existing city borders, all 7 core hexes of a new city must be unowned for settling to be permitted.Get rid of the island exception rule. Building cities within 3 tiles should be always banned, even on two separate land

Somewhat discourage AI from setting cities 4 tiles away from other players cities. This decision does not usually end well for AI, as these cities often end up flipped, even if the dangerous loyalty pressure is not present at the moment of building that city. AI cannot judge that in advance sufficiently well, so it should simply be discouraged from such locations of new cities. Just make AI to disfavor the 4 tiles away from other players city locations in favor of other locations that put at least 5 tiles of distance.


Allow Suzerains and Allies to enter city center and encampment tiles, overstacking on city center/encampment with an existing allied/vassal unit is allowed, just like when producing a unit while having a unit already residing in city center, in such situation, your unit has no combat effects and is lost if city/encampment tile is lost. However your unit can boost the defense of an allied city center/encampment, if no overstacking with allied/vassal unit is happening. Allow stacking between suzerains and allies of non-combat and support units. Allow your non-combat units to move freely throughout your territory, non-hostile military units no longer prevent entry to the tile to non-combat units inside your territory. So your non-combat units can always stack with your allies and vassals, and with all non-hostile units inside your own borders.

Declaring a surprise war on an enemy you have open borders with expels all your units from that territory. Expelled units lose all movement points for that turn when being expelled.

 

[acluewithout]

Added / tweaked a few ideas. See below.

• Rebalance Anti-Cav combat strength and rework their promotions. Specifically, lose Echelon and instead give AC a Tier 1 Promotion +10 Defence v Ranged (or v City Attacks), replace Redeploy with Hold the Line, and make the Capstone / Tier 4 Promotion “Fortitude - no negative CS from injuries”.

• Walls don’t need a direct buff, but maybe need to be more relevant. Specifically, I’d like to see +% for AC and Seige, which would buff Walls but also help AC better fill the niche as “cheap no resource units you can mass produce”.

• Religious Beliefs need a rebalance similar to Pantheons. (Personally, I’d like to see more UUs unlock from Religious beliefs (i.e. more than just Monks), and maybe a few more beliefs that work with Loyalty.) Looks like this one got actioned already. I’d still like to see some more Unique Religious Units linked to Beliefs (like the Monk), just so we have more unit variety.

• Rework Rationalism and similar cards, as these currently just push you to lots of Pop 10 Cities. Perhaps make them +1% per Pop for Cities with Universities (or equivalent buildings). Maybe also buff Specialists.

 

[Sirsquier]

Add more minor techs and civics to the tree and slow down the game timer. 5 years per turn seems too fast. How about a month per turn? With minor techs and civics the whole game would be slowed down. (Example, between bronze and iron working maybe a tech which grants +0.25 production for every mine adjacent to the city center and another which increases gold from mines. IDK two or three mini techs or civics between each tech or civic.)

Yeah the timer is so annoying. It takes ten years to get from Rome to Paris???

 

[civfan_999]

Get Rid of Recruit Partisans Spy Mission. It’s just another reason not to build Neighbourhoods.

Disagree. This is one of the spy missions that the AI actually uses and it makes you have some defensive military at home while you are playing offensively. I've had turns where two recruit partisan missions finish and all the sudden there are four tanks in the middle of my empire with insane movement on my railroads running around pillaging my stuff. The fact that I can't deal with them quickly is my punishment for not having troops at home while I'm trying to conquer the world.

I read a very interesting suggestion on this in another thread. It was about changing the success of this mission based on amenities and housing. So if you are +3 amenities and +2 housing, it would be impossible to recruit partisans. Meanwhile, if, for example, you have 25/22 housing and +0 or negative amenities, the mission becomes easy to pull off. I really liked this idea. It would make you focus more on housing. I know that once my cities get over ~20 population, I usually stop caring about developing housing and just let them live in slums. The only punishment is slower growth, but the cities are already so big. This would be a cool way to punish that choice.

Taken to the extreme, there could be a % chance per turn of partisans even without spy missions once you get bad enough. Maybe -1 housing and -1 amenities or lower? Or -2 housing with any level of amenities? You have to keep your people happy and give them access to housing or they revolt. The punishment could be even worse in this scenario if you lost a population that revolted and turned into two partisan barbs. I would LOVE to see this feature. It would be a very fun addition.

 

[civfan_999]

Another one - fix planes! They are so OP. Insane range, no damage when attacking cities, very strong. Sometimes the AI builds fighters or anti-air. And death robots certainly are a pain in the ass for planes. But with rocket artillery attached to drones that can shoot from 4-5 tiles away and jet bombers that can shoot from 10-12 tiles away, the AI cities don't stand a change. I just hit them from probably farther away than they can even see my units for 1-3 turns and then run in a helicopter or tank to take the city. It isn't challenging.

 

[Buktu]

Another one - fix planes! They are so OP. Insane range, no damage when attacking cities, very strong. Sometimes the AI builds fighters or anti-air. And death robots certainly are a pain in the ass for planes. But with rocket artillery attached to drones that can shoot from 4-5 tiles away and jet bombers that can shoot from 10-12 tiles away, the AI cities don't stand a change. I just hit them from probably farther away than they can even see my units for 1-3 turns and then run in a helicopter or tank to take the city. It isn't challenging.

I disagree to this one. I mean planes are quite strong, yes. But no damage when attacking cities is the same for any other ranged unit - except for planes getting hit and damaged by anti air stuff like mobile sams. And as you said death robots are super annoying when they get the anti air promotion. The real problems here is the AI beeing bad at war most of the time. Try to fight a human in any mp on an equal tech level, it will be way harder I promise.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I'd like to add a small fix to Sumeria. The AI spams ziggurats on every single tile, so it might be worth to change the Ziggurat so that it can not be adjacent to another ziggurat. For balancing, it could recieve better yields if next to a campus or a cultural district, such as the Persian UI.

Frankly the Ziggurat should just be a building in the city center. It should replace the monument. Does same thing as monument but also provides +2 faith and +2 science.

 

[The Kingmaker]

Ceremonial Burial as an alternative to Code of Laws as starting civic. As it is, I research the same path every time. The civics tree needs diversification at the start to make multiple play styles viable.

 

[Sirsquier]

Flesh out both science and culture trees and slow down the damn calendar. Five years per turn on Marathon. Why, that makes no sense. The years per turn should be less as you lower the speed.