[GS] Punch List for Civ VI

So, the Winter Update thread has basically turned into an unofficial 3XP anticipation thread. Sadly, there are things that FXS need to address, and I think it would be hard to create a punch list from that thread.

So, here’s a thread just focused on small tweaks and bug fixes that need to be addressed. Feel free to add.

• 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.

• Bring back Lumbermill adjacency for Rivers (maybe +1 adjacent to a river after you unlock Mercantilism).

• Rebalance Anti-Cav combat strength.

• Rebalance Infantry v Tanks given both use Oil.

• Walls don’t need a direct buff, but maybe need to be more relevant (eg +% for AC and Seige).

• 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.

• Consolidate a few spy missions. Do we really need separate spy missions for raising Diplo Visibility and increasing spy levels?

• 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% Production, increasing to +10% Production 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.)

• 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).
  
  
• 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).

• One more dedication per Era (ie 5 instead of 4). The current 4 per Era are very repetitive.

• 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.

• Make Mountain Wonders count as mountains for adjacency.

• Increase gold maintenance and or reduce gold yields, and increase happiness and or power demands from the mid game onwards and or make happiness more important. It’s just too easy to earn gold and keep everyone happy, and neither actually does much.
  
  
• 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).

[edit. reworked Aircraft Carriers. Added City States and a few other things.]

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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...

 

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).

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

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.

 

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.