Ever since the release of the Rise and Fall DLC, adding in the new loyalty system, I feel like the loyalty system is making an existing problem even worse. As you can see in the screen shot, I am completely surrounded by 4 Civs [ Zulu, Greece, Arabia, and Nubia ] to my SW, S, SE, NE, and E. All to my north and NW is desert. To the west is the coast. To the north, there are 2 city-states. I have no room to do anything. I can forcefully squeeze together a couple of cities, but I hate doing this when playing against the AI, because by late game, food and housing become an issue. I like to, as much as possible, maximize the amount of tiles I can get with each city. Obviously, that's not always possible... But, because of the loyalty mechanic, and because the game places civ start locations so close together, it's completely taking all the fun of this game away. I've seen threads where people say to edit certain files to fix starting distances, but that always always ends up making things worse [ often, civs will not be placed at all, even with only adding 1 or 2 to the start distance. This screen shot is from me playing on a Huge Pangea Map, 15 city states, and only 9 civs (I even removed 2 and this still happened). Hell, I've done HUGE maps with onl 2 civs just to test it, and sure enough they were all next to me. I've had several games where I'd launch the Earth Satellite (reveals map), only to see huge, wide open spaces with no one there - because all the civs are crammed together. This is ridiculous. And so much open water on a pangea map - WHY? You could easily fit a whole medium sized continent in the open waters on a pangea map! I shouldn't have to declare war on 1 or 2 of my neighbors right off the bat and suffer massive warmonger penalties for 300 - 500 turns because the game puts everyone so friggin' close together. I had to do that last game to Korea, who started 8 tiles away from me and joint warred me by turn 40 with Sumeria. Because I captured her ONLY city, I suffered warmonger penalties all the way up until I began training Modern Era tanks. You shouldn't get warmonger penalties if you are hit with a DOW - at all. I also shouldn't have to restart over, and over, and over. A lot of times, I have great 1st city start locations - but everything falls apart once I start exploring, and realize I am completely boxed in. If I don't rush and throw out a few settlers ASAP, they ALWAYS seem to place their first city in my direction (as you can see Arabia did). In this screen shot, Greece dropped a city to the east of Athens, but you can't see that from the screen shot.
Btw, the new loyalty mechanic makes certain civs like England and Norway a bit more useless than before. Both were good at dropping cities far away (especially England with the free unit on different continent). Getting a city close enough to culture bomb is even harder than before, and sometimes useless - if the AI drops a city too close, it will revolt and join you - making a culture bomb on them pointless.
I love the new DLC and the mechanics, but the starting placement is still terrible, and the loyalty mechanic compounds this issue, while making some civ abilities a bit useless or underwhelming.
Btw, the new loyalty mechanic makes certain civs like England and Norway a bit more useless than before. Both were good at dropping cities far away (especially England with the free unit on different continent). Getting a city close enough to culture bomb is even harder than before, and sometimes useless - if the AI drops a city too close, it will revolt and join you - making a culture bomb on them pointless.
I love the new DLC and the mechanics, but the starting placement is still terrible, and the loyalty mechanic compounds this issue, while making some civ abilities a bit useless or underwhelming.
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