Questions/Rant about Loyalty

[kaltorak]

When I heard about the loyalty system, I was very happy. I loved how culture worked in civ4, beeing able to flip cities, needing to defend against it. It was fun, but they removed it in civ5.

Loyalty sounded that it was going to do just that. But in my experience, not only did it fail, but it failed in both oposite ways.

1. I played a peaceful game. Without attacking and without taking any cities while defending. I never was close to even starting to convert a city. I never was close to even having a little trouble with loyalty defense.
This game was as if loyalty didnt exist. Didn't like it.

2. I played a war game. I had room to build 8 cities and then waited until I was able to build shakas special unit to start attacking. I captured a frontier city. It was closer to their cities than mines, but not by much, all my cities were pretty close. As soon as I captured it it told me that it would flip because of loyalty. So I:

• Put a governor on it
• Adopted the civic that gives loyalty with garrisoned units
• Put the governor with the loyalty bonus to friendly nearby cities on a city nearby

With all this, the city still said it was going to flip. Ok, IMO, 1 or 2 of this steps should have been more than enough, I was quite surprised that even the 3 actions didnt fix the loyalty problem on a frontier city (not another continent, not far inside their territory, not far from my cities... nothing, just the obvious first city to capture)

So I did one more thing, I captured the closest enemy city quick. And still, 3 turns after that, the city still flipped.
Ok, here I stopped playing. It's not hard, its just a bullfeathers feature.

So, I did 4 (FOUR!) things to stop a captured city from flipping. A city that was almost as close to my cities than to the enemy ones. And that was still not enough?? So what the hell else was tehre to do? What can you do if you can't do one or more of those 4 things I did to improve its loyalty? What if I want to capture a city on another continent, or further away from my cities??

IMO, one of those 4 things I did should have been enough, considerint the position of the city. Then, if it would be further away, in another continent, closer to their capital, or other more difficult things, I should have needed to add the other methods too.

But as it is right now, I don't get why all that I did wasnt enough. I dont even know what other options to increase loyalty there were besides what I did.

 

[Magil]

You probably had a much lower population in your nearby cities than in theirs. Or they were in a better age than you.

 

[bbbt]

The big thing as mentioned is you need to pay attention to the relative ages - i.e. if you are in a dark age and you are attacking someone in a golden age, its going to be near impossible to keep their cities.

 

[liv]

If they flip it is not the end of the world. Just keep going till you have taken enough cities to have pressure and then take them back.
It is good to have a fair amount of military so that you can attack three cities pretty much at once and then loyalty will be much less of an issue.
Just have to plan around it a bit.
I am a warmongerer and loyalty has not really stopped me at all.

 

[nzcamel]

When I heard about the loyalty system, I was very happy. I loved how culture worked in civ4, beeing able to flip cities, needing to defend against it. It was fun, but they removed it in civ5.

Loyalty sounded that it was going to do just that. But in my experience, not only did it fail, but it failed in both oposite ways.

Loyalties quite a bit more nuanced than culture flipping cities in IV was. You have more control and it reaches further...but the population factor is quite huge as Magil touched on; which does allow Civs to build right up next to another empire, if they plan it well enough, and not lose any loyalty. In my last game England did just that to me, and I was surprised that her cities weren't flipping like Sumer's had earlier (Gilgi was more reckless!); but gradually I built up pressure over the centuries and finally cracked her, and plenty of cities flipped one by one to me.
I think the loyalty system is looking great

 

[Timodelphia]

I think it would be a great improvement if CULTURE and RELIGION played a part in the loyalty system.

 

[chrimwinster]

I agree with Kaltorak, the loyalty is massively flawed. At the moment I find Civ6 with the expansion unplayable. I normally play Emperor but even on King it seems to unforgiving. Civ 4 had it working well but this '5 turns till flip' is just to extreme. I have always enjoyed spreading out my cities like the Greeks and Venetians.
Sad but as with the Civ 3 years I may be on a long break from my favourite game.

 

[Frostburn]

I like the concept but it needs to be tweaked. It seems too extreme.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

As things stand now, the most impactful ways to manage Loyalty seem to be:

1. If at peace, bring a builder and chop all sources of food. As population rises, negative loyalty from nearby foreign cities drops exponentially, not linearly.
2. If at war, ignore the city after you've captured it and drive on to the next enemy city. You can mop up free cities later, once the war is over.
3. Don't be in a dark age when you're expanding. You can still do it if managed correctly, but it's a lot tougher, and you may need to be less ambitious about how far from your existing cities you spread.

Overall, this seems to be in line with what the developers wanted to achieve. Thanks to Loyalty, the difference between a dark age and a golden age is primarily the difference in how easy it is to expand close to a neighbour. The Loyalty and Ages systems were clearly designed with each other in mind. And then in addition, straight war rushes are slowed as it takes a little longer to consolidate your holdings (although this may not work exactly as intended given that you're not really slowed down as long as you wipe out all enemy cities). I'm not sure the "chop a city loyal" approach was thought through, but then I'm not sure the developers have really paid much attention to chopping in general when play balancing.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I don't feel like it does. You need to invest a lot of resources in maintaining your new cities, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It complicates early-game conquest/steamrolling, but that's generally a good thing imo.

Capturing your enemy's largest cities helps in cooling down the loyalty timer. So does establishing Amani in a nearby city or city state.

 

[Onii-chan]

I have not really had issues with this honestly. As long as you're not trying to go on the aggressive when you're in a dark age or your nearby cities have way lower population than the nearby enemy cities then just sending a governor there is generally enough to equalize the pressure

 

[Frostburn]

As things stand now, the most impactful ways to manage Loyalty seem to be:

1. If at peace, bring a builder and chop all sources of food. As population rises, negative loyalty from nearby foreign cities drops exponentially, not linearly.
2. If at war, ignore the city after you've captured it and drive on to the next enemy city. You can mop up free cities later, once the war is over.
3. Don't be in a dark age when you're expanding. You can still do it if managed correctly, but it's a lot tougher, and you may need to be less ambitious about how far from your existing cities you spread.

Overall, this seems to be in line with what the developers wanted to achieve. Thanks to Loyalty, the difference between a dark age and a golden age is primarily the difference in how easy it is to expand close to a neighbour. The Loyalty and Ages systems were clearly designed with each other in mind. And then in addition, straight war rushes are slowed as it takes a little longer to consolidate your holdings (although this may not work exactly as intended given that you're not really slowed down as long as you wipe out all enemy cities). I'm not sure the "chop a city loyal" approach was thought through, but then I'm not sure the developers have really paid much attention to chopping in general when play balancing.

Point #2 bothers me a little bit. You shouldn't have to conquer a city/cities twice by default just because of loyalty. It makes war and capturing cities way more tedious and time consuming. In OP's example they took all the available precautions for maintaining loyalty and were still not able to keep a city for more than a few turns. It shouldn't be literally impossible to hold a city after capturing in any circumstances, but those circumstances are happening now where if you want a city- you'll have to capture it, lose it, and then capture it again by default.

I think they should add a feature to buy loyalty with gold. 1) Its realistic. If you're giving your people gold, they will be more loyal. 2) It would make it so that as long as you have a fat gold stockpile, it won't be impossible in some cases to hold onto a city after capturing it. That would make it so that it would still behoove you to take cities that will have less foreign loyalty pressure, but also make it possible to actually hold certain cities after conquering provided your economy is strong

For the most part I like the feature, but just think the values need to be tweaked. Perhaps less weight on the city population- that would be a good start. Also, some of the mechanisms to increase loyalty should be increased. For example; Netherlands +1 loyalty from trade routes is pretty useless. Even the +5 from Royal Navy Dockyard seems a bit too low.

What do you guys think?

 

[nzcamel]

Point #2 bothers me a little bit. You shouldn't have to conquer a city/cities twice by default just because of loyalty. It makes war and capturing cities way more tedious and time consuming. In OP's example they took all the available precautions for maintaining loyalty and were still not able to keep a city for more than a few turns.

Why not? The general consensus here is that warmongering is OP/optimal; so anything as well designed as this that makes other play styles more attractive is all good in my book.

I think they should add a feature to buy loyalty with gold. 1) Its realistic. If you're giving your people gold, they will be more loyal. 2) It would make it so that as long as you have a fat gold stockpile, it won't be impossible in some cases to hold onto a city after capturing it. That would make it so that it would still behoove you to take cities that will have less foreign loyalty pressure, but also make it possible to actually hold certain cities after conquering provided your economy is strong

Yeah, it probably is realistic; but then that undermines what they're trying to achieve. I think the OP needs to give the system a better shake. It will be trying at times...but that is good.

 

[orasis]

Population, age and possibly religious pressure, matter. Personally I like the system... sometimes it creates some pretty funny moments.

 

[Koot Katmandu]

I play on emperor. I still have a lot to learn. But I have learned, if there are big cities close to the one you want, you will probably not be able to hold it. In a recent game France dropped a city on my boarder. I only had two cities and she had 4. I took the city, but could see it would flip in about 15 turns even after I put a governor in it. I started to go for the closest city but then thought why not go for the big pop city Paris? Paris was a lot further about 10 tiles, but there was nothing between my army and it. I took Pairs the big loyalty generator and the rest of her cities were mine easily.

I sometimes take cities I know I can not keep just to weaken the AI. Use it as a base to pillage further in and weaken them and stomp the units they send at you. Do this to a couple cities and they will offer you very nice peace treaties.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Point #2 bothers me a little bit. You shouldn't have to conquer a city/cities twice by default just because of loyalty. It makes war and capturing cities way more tedious and time consuming. In OP's example they took all the available precautions for maintaining loyalty and were still not able to keep a city for more than a few turns. It shouldn't be literally impossible to hold a city after capturing in any circumstances, but those circumstances are happening now where if you want a city- you'll have to capture it, lose it, and then capture it again by default.

I think they should add a feature to buy loyalty with gold. 1) Its realistic. If you're giving your people gold, they will be more loyal. 2) It would make it so that as long as you have a fat gold stockpile, it won't be impossible in some cases to hold onto a city after capturing it. That would make it so that it would still behoove you to take cities that will have less foreign loyalty pressure, but also make it possible to actually hold certain cities after conquering provided your economy is strong

For the most part I like the feature, but just think the values need to be tweaked. Perhaps less weight on the city population- that would be a good start. Also, some of the mechanisms to increase loyalty should be increased. For example; Netherlands +1 loyalty from trade routes is pretty useless. Even the +5 from Royal Navy Dockyard seems a bit too low.

What do you guys think?

I definitely agree the Loyalty system could benefit from changes, but then I view it as a first cut at a brand new mechanism, and so always expected refinement to the system as the game evolves.

I also agree about point #2, because it bothers me, too. It encourages total war over limited war, and total war is already too powerful to my mind and the one most in need of nerfing, which the loyalty system as it stands currently doesn't do.

I don't agree, however, that facing a situation where you cannot manage loyalty in a conquered city without having the city rebel means that the loyalty system is broken. I think of it this way: if I can manage loyalty in any situation I face, then it's not really a useful game system. The whole point of it should be to set up situations where I need to adapt my strategy, because I know that if I take this city, I can't hold it. So should I take it anyway, and manage the consequences? or target a different city that I know I can hold? or choose some third approach?

 

[Frostburn]

Why not? The general consensus here is that warmongering is OP/optimal; so anything as well designed as this that makes other play styles more attractive is all good in my book.

I agree that early aggression was too strong, and am happy they were consciously taking a look at that- But capturing and recapturing a free city by default in many cases boring. I think there are too many circumstances where there is literally nothing you can do to prevent a capped city from flipping.

A better way to nerf warmongering would be to; Increase maintenance of military units, make walls stronger, make city attacks stronger, etc. Make cities harder to capture instead of making a player cap easy cities twice.

It's a fine line though. You don't want to make it too easy to keep cities or else what is the point? I think maybe it's just currently too skewed towards relative population at the moment

 

[xjzorbtpwqimay]

As population rises, negative loyalty from nearby foreign cities drops exponentially, not linearly.

Exponential and not linear? Isn't the function that determines how the loyalty of a city varies with the city's own population (I.e. at a distance of zero) assuming a constant pressure p from other factors something like: f(x) = p + 10x - 10? Because this function absolutely is linear. Have we since leaned that this formula isn't quite correct?

 

[Art Morte]

Military units should give more loyalty bonus (or protection) to a city than just the "+2 if garrison" card. It doesn't make sense that a city you've just captured and have an army around it is just going to flip out of your control.

In my opinion, a city should not be able to become a free city if it's got a unit in it and, say, two units adjacent to it. If it reaches 0 loyalty, make it stop growth and, say, 50% production and yields penalty.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Exponential and not linear? Isn't the function that determines how the loyalty of a city varies with the city's own population (I.e. at a distance of zero) assuming a constant pressure p from other factors something like: f(x) = p + 10x - 10? Because this function absolutely is linear. Have we since leaned that this formula isn't quite correct?

You can see this thread for what we know, what we guess, and what we don't yet have a clue about: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/loyalty-and-taking-cities.628210/

What we can say for sure, from the data available, is that Population Loyalty is not Internal Loyalty - Foreign Pressure, i.e. it is not linear.

What it appears to be is:

if Foreign Loyalty > Internal Loyalty, Population Loyalty = -10 x ((Foreign Loyalty/Internal Loyalty) -1)
else Population Loyalty = 10 x ((Internal Loyalty/Foreign Loyalty) -1)

where Foreign Loyalty = N x M x Pop x (10 - Distance)
and Internal Loyalty = N x M x Pop x 10
N = 2 for Capital and 1 for other Cities
M = 1.5 for Golden/Heroic Age, 1 for normal age, 0.5 for Dark Age

Whether nearby cities of yours add to Internal Loyalty (suspected) or subtract from Foreign Loyalty, we haven't gathered the data for, last I looked.

Also, the above formula is a pretty good fit for observed data, but is often off by 0.1, especially when cities are at a range of 9, so the above isn't exactly right.

EDIT: also Population Loyalty is capped at a range of -20 to +20

EDIT #2: would help if I transcribe the formulas correctly. Should never have tried that by memory.