Question re Civ6 YouTubers

[joyodongo]

I like the idea of Civ6 YouTube playthroughs but ... I'm really disappointed.
Moderator Action: Snip They all play deity and they usually get "prince-or-below" level maps. I don't know if there's a mod for having extra-good starting locations or what, but I almost never get these starts on emperor, let alone deity ...
I found specially pathetic when one guy titled a video "Worst start ever" or something like that and whining for what I found a quite normal start for a standard deity game; light-years from being the worst I've "suffered", of course I thought he had forgotten to load the chieftain-level-start-mod.
Maybe I'm wrong and you all have another perception, but ...
Moderator Action: Snip

Moderator Action: Please don't defame other people on this site, post edited to retain spirit of it --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[8housesofelixir]

They all play deity and they usually get "prince-or-below" level maps. I don't know if there's a mod for having extra-good starting locations or what, but I almost never get these starts on emperor, let alone deity ...

There is no shame in restarting and trying to roll a good map. Many Civ youtubers do restarting in order to create enjoyable content.

I found specially pathetic when this "Potato" guy titled a video "Worst start ever" or something like that and whining for what I found a quite normal start for a standard deity game......By the way, if you can recommend a "honest" youtuber, I'll be very thankful.

Just want to point out that clickbait is a common thing on Youtube, and "clickbait" doesn't always equal to "bad content".

 

[Kwami]

The maps and spawns are the same at every difficulty level. You can prove this to yourself by starting two games with identical setups, except for the difficulty level.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think it's cherrypicking the best situations/map RNG.

 

[Kwami]

I don't think it's cheating, rather I think it's cherrypicking the best situations/map RNG.

Sometimes. You can watch Potato and many of the other YouTube players live when they stream on YouTube or Twitch. Sometimes, they reroll for a good map. Other times, they just play with whatever comes up.

The reality is that if you can win a game at deity level, then you can win most games at deity level. You might still get killed in an early war now and then, but otherwise, just about any game is winnable.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Strategy on random maps is very different from those on good maps. For example, Golden Classical is very very hard to achieve on a random modeless map.

 

[Abaxial]

I always reroll if the map I get at first doesn't look like it will be fun to play.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

As others have stated, rerolling maps isn't a thing to be ashamed of. I do this all the time whenever I spawn in non-Tundra as Canada.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I probably spent more time rerolling than actually playing... well, not really, but sometimes it feels like it.

 

[UWHabs]

As others have stated, rerolling maps isn't a thing to be ashamed of. I do this all the time whenever I spawn in non-Tundra as Canada.

Yeah, if I'm dedicating 2 or 4 or 20 hours or whatever to a game, I want to make sure it's going to be fun. Sometimes I reroll a map if it's too good, other times I just don't want to play a game where my capital doesn't have any tile better than a plains hill in its starting radius.

For a youtuber, they're presumably using it to make money, so they can do what they want. I'm sure they all have plenty of times where they filmed a 20-30 minute clip, and then scrapped it all because it wouldn't make for exciting content. Getting steamrolled by an AI and dying within 30 turns makes for a very short "series" to watch.

 

[Equilin]

Rerolling good starts is common in every game with some start RNG. Speedruns in particular is rife with rerolls (cuz when skills are equal, better map is the deciding factor for better finish times) and I don't really see the Civ community having a problem with it.

 

[Linklite]

You have to bear in mind that civs are designed with the full range of randomised maps in mind, not just the cream of the crop. Rerolling until you get a favourable start is just an inefficient way of turning down the difficulty or thumbing the scale.

And if you want to do that, that's absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with wanting to make the game easier for yourself. It becomes a problem when you present it as anything other than that, just as there's nothing wrong with playing Settler but pretending that it's King, or using cheats to get free gold while pretending that you didn't.

YouTubers rerolling to get a fascinating and strange start (like a 7 tile island, for instance) or something is fine. If the purpose of the video is to show how super duper awesome at the game on Deity they are and they're not being clear that they rerolled 50 times to get that 10 yield of everything per tile start, then that's cheating and it's no different to changing the difficulty without telling you.

It's all about purpose and intent. I don't really watch YTers, I looked at this thread to get an impression of what others get from it, so maybe they are being honest about it. But I do think rerolling is one of those cheats that people use so often than people have stopped thinking about it as cheating. I remember asking for help getting x amount of cities in y amount of turns and the answers was basically, it's easy if you are any good at the game, but then described how ti do it with a start that took me 10 rerolls to get. Personally, I think the standard should be to accept what you're given, and if you have to reroll, then that's tipping the scales in a similar way to turning down the difficulty. Nothing to be chastised about, but something you need to be honest about.

Just some thoughts on the rerolling phenomenon.

 

[InsidiousMage]

It's all about purpose and intent. I don't really watch YTers, I looked at this thread to get an impression of what others get from it, so maybe they are being honest about it. But I do think rerolling is one of those cheats that people use so often than people have stopped thinking about it as cheating.

Youtube, and streaming in general, is entertainment and playing bad starts isn't necessarily going to be entertaining. The few I've watched are generally trend towards "interesting" starts rather than good starts. Yeah, sometimes they do just reroll a bad start but again, they are entertainers, not athletes or something.

You have to bear in mind that civs are designed with the full range of randomised maps in mind, not just the cream of the crop. Rerolling until you get a favourable start is just an inefficient way of turning down the difficulty or thumbing the scale.

Personally, I think the standard should be to accept what you're given, and if you have to reroll, then that's tipping the scales in a similar way to turning down the difficulty. Nothing to be chastised about, but something you need to be honest about.

Playing for fun isn't cheating, even on higher difficulties. Sure sometimes the challenge is the fun, its why higher difficulty levels exist, but I doubt that most people are going have fun playing a no production start or starting in the middle of a desert as Russia. Yes, challenge is part of all games but how people define what they want to be challenging is on them.

 

[Starwars]

I do find that Civ VI is a bit more "encouraging" in terms of re-rolls though. Games of this kind obviously have some randomization in their nature, but in Civ VI there's a really big gap between a crappy start and a good start. To the point where I feel like the starting bias of some leaders is more of a special bonus than the civ's actual bonus.
Some tiles are just so much objectively better than others.

And playing a game where you don't have much production just makes for a pretty slow and boring game. Especially if you're up there in difficulty.

And since Civ as a whole has gone in the direction of really trying to provide unique civs to play with, that naturally leads to people wanting to play to those strengths. Hence, it may not feel superfun to play Norway when you're spawned in the middle of a landmass, or Genghis when there's not a neighbour in site (always seem to happen to me for some reason when it comes to playing Mongolia).

 

[Linklite]

Youtube, and streaming in general, is entertainment and playing bad starts isn't necessarily going to be entertaining. The few I've watched are generally trend towards "interesting" starts rather than good starts. Yeah, sometimes they do just reroll a bad start but again, they are entertainers, not athletes or something.




Playing for fun isn't cheating, even on higher difficulties. Sure sometimes the challenge is the fun, its why higher difficulty levels exist, but I doubt that most people are going have fun playing a no production start or starting in the middle of a desert as Russia. Yes, challenge is part of all games but how people define what they want to be challenging is on them.

And that's why you have different difficulty levels as well. But would you not raise an eyebrow if I showed a video of me beating Deity OCC if it then transpired that I'd changed the difficulty to Settler without saying? I mean, Deity is probably something I wouldn't enjoy either (never tried it, but I have little doubt that I wouldn't), but I don't then pretend otherwise. As I said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with playing on Settler, or resolving to get the perfect start, or using mods to give you the Death Star. It's different when you present it differently, and poor starts are as much part of the game as Deity AIs having three settlers to start with, or dealing with a Barb camp just to the east of your starting position. No shame in rerolling, but it's still modifying the game to give you the edge, and that's something should be mentioned.

In terms of personal gaming, think of it like this. The game is designed and balanced around you using whatever start you are given. For me, that usually means a 2f1p tile to start on. Maybe 1 in 10 is 2f2p and is designed as a brilliant. People on that thread insisted that you reroll until you get 2f2p as standard, of course that makes things easier - your first new city gets settled twice as quickly, which makes the whole beginning of the game massively easier...but that was intended as a nice once-in-a-while great start, not as a standard. So then they complain that the fun part,the beginning, is over too quickly...rerolling is fine, but that's not how it was intended and built around, so of course its going to be easy. I cantcomplain the game is too easy if I'm not playing it on hard mode.

 

[InsidiousMage]

And that's why you have different difficulty levels as well. But would you not raise an eyebrow if I showed a video of me beating Deity OCC if it then transpired that I'd changed the difficulty to Settler without saying? I mean, Deity is probably something I wouldn't enjoy either (never tried it, but I have little doubt that I wouldn't), but I don't then pretend otherwise. As I said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with playing on Settler, or resolving to get the perfect start, or using mods to give you the Death Star. It's different when you present it differently, and poor starts are as much part of the game as Deity AIs having three settlers to start with, or dealing with a Barb camp just to the east of your starting position. No shame in rerolling, but it's still modifying the game to give you the edge, and that's something should be mentioned.

As I said, I don't watch a lot of let's plays and streams but I have never, ever encountered anything like you are describing or even heard about anything like that. The "worst" thing I've seen is someone modding in a flatland tile for a Spaceport in an OCC Ethiopia game but I don't particular care because it's entertainment, not a Guinness Book of World Records challenge. Here is an example of Deity player rerolling if you are curious though.

rerolling is fine, but that's not how it was intended and built around, so of course its going to be easy.

There is literally a reroll button in the pause menu, it's an intentional feature of the game.

 

[DrCron]

I personally don't edit the full games, and I start recording at the game setup screen, so I play with whatever I randomly get. Unless, of course, I want to record a specific type of game, but in these cases I make it clear in the video that I will reroll the map until I get the setup I want to show to the viewer. Otherwise I prefer showing strategies that will work every time, disregarding the starting location.

However, I understand why other (more popular) youtubers go for the good map intentionally. It's easier to get impressive, unusual results (deity victories on roughly 150 turns for example) if you get a good start. And those impressive results will get you more views.

 

[Deadly Dog]

I haven't watched a lot of youtubers but I was very disappointed in Spiffing Brit, who did a really neat thing early on with NFP and won a DV settling no cities as Kupe. It was indeed possible (for a while) with both Apocalypse mode and SS mode enabled, but the way SB did it was to mod the game and not admit it. So he took a lot of randomness out that made the experiment more of a sure thing.

To me, if a youTuber is going to show a particular strategy, then I'd prefer they re-roll to find a good example so that demonstration is clear, and they should explain they did this

 

[Kotofei]

Try Inquisitive Otter, who uses the map builder to set up stuff like Mali snow starts.

Most Youtubers are pretty open about their starts. Anyway there's really no need to cheat. If you understand the ins and outs of the mechanics and AI behavior, Deity's not that hard.

 

[Deggial]

@Linklite :
And what about map selection?
Do you always and only play “Shuffle” in order to prevent difficulty-reducing maps, if you play as a certain civ?
Do you deliberately choose “Archipelago” when playing as Ethiopia or have you caught yourself clicking on “Highlands”?

Personally, I’d rather burn in hell than playing a “Seven Seas” map as Victoria or a arid map as Vietnam.