[R&F] Rise and Fall encourages Wars

[pgm123]

It feels a bit premature to have this complaint because we're missing so many details and they're still working on balancing. But a couple questions:

1. Does every time you conquer a city give you GA points or only the first time?
2. Warlord's throne is nice, but the other abilities look nice too. If I'm on a spread out map, I'm not always going to find the Warlord's throne useful, but I might like Ancestral Hall.

 

[UWHabs]

I think it's a little early to be writing off entire strategies based on a few pieces of information. I mean, for all we know, they'll change the balance on a lot of those cards, or significantly alter chop yields, before or after release.

We don't know how the era points are awarded. I mean, nobody "captured" a city in the demo, so we don't know if you get points for that. We don't know how the points limits are calculated - it wouldn't shock me if the number of era points you need for the next era scaled based on your civ size, so that larger empires need more points to get a golden age. There's just too much that we don't know and that might change to write it off as saying that conquering is the only strategy. As mentioned, a permanent settler bonus and a free builder in new cities could mean that an ICS/sprawl makes the most sense. Still too much unknown.

 

[Temppu]

One new feature nerfing ultimate warmongering that has been neglected in this thread are the buffed Alliances. If, say, a Research Alliance could become very powerful, limiting warmongering so that the Alliance is not broken could end up better strategy.

 

[Victoria]

there is also flip n pillage to consider. I can create a city full of mines, let it flip and then pillage it for loads of science, get it in a peace deal, repair the mines and let it flip again. 6 mines and 3 pastures is not unreasonable. With double pillage 300 science and gold, very nice

They are adding a lot more complexity to the game so getting the balance right will be harder and we have seen how hard it is for them to get it right now. I can see conquering all around me as lily said being key. Then play flip n pillage with the outer cities.

Loyalty has its own rewards, just not sure they will be always as intended.

 

[Kyro]

I don't know about you, but +50% production towards settlers and a free builder in all newly settled cities sounds pretty enticing to me. Being someone who prefers smaller, taller empires I'll be opting for +4 housing and +1 amenity in every city containing a governor, though, so I'd say all three buildings offer something that strengthens one play style or another.

Yeah it is enticing but bonus production for every city scales better with time and is far more in line with building, wonders, economic growth etc. than warmongering.

Growing stronger and more productive over time is one key trait of many non-warmongering players and that advantage is now in the opposite hands.

 

[Sascha77]

From a gameplay perspective, the entire game emphasizes war.

Not just from a gameplay-POV. It also doesn't help that the AI is so dumb that it needs insane buffs on high difficulties. And with those buffs, I don't see how you could possibly win a game on, say, Deity without wiping multiple civs off the map.

And sadly, once you choose to go aggro, it's pretty hard to return to a more peaceful style of play - simply because the AI will eternally hate aggressive players.


Getting back to the original post: I'll withhold judgment until I've actually played R&F. Like they said during the stream: They're still tweaking all sorts of aspects of the game, so who knows at this point what the finished product will look like?


E.

 

[bbbt]

In Civ4 and Civ5, peaceful Science Victory are faster than not peaceful ones.

But in Civ6, they're at least 20 turns behind, so there's no reason of playing peacefully.

I'm surprised that Rise and Fall enhances this gap and encourage wars, instead of reduces it.

? Unless it's a giant map, I think domination has always been the fastest victory type.

Edit: Oh sorry, now I get that you are are talking about a peaceful Science victory versus conquest-fueled Science victory.

 

[Tech Osen]

But also cause Loyalty issues in conqurred cities, making keeping them much harder.



But there are even bigger bonuses for peaceful play, including tall play with governors, etc.



And it shouldn't. Civ5 had too much emphasis on defense and this was exploited by players as very little force was enough to repel any conquest. In Civ6 that's balanced.

Overall I think we know too little about R&F to speak about this. Moreover, the version we see if far from final balance.

City conquest feels in no way balanced to me. It's too easy to conquer a well established city in one or two turns. Especially once you have bombers, cities should have automaticly AA guns.

 

[Sascha77]

City conquest feels in no way balanced to me. It's too easy to conquer a well established city in one or two turns. Especially once you have bombers, cities should have automaticly AA guns.

Why?
That's like saying "as soon as a Civ builds tanks, other Civs should automatically get AT-guns".
It wouldn't make much sense from either a gameplay-POV (instantly making brand-new tech less powerful) or from a historical POV. Advanced technology has always played important roles in the way conflicts played out. From the first cavemen who used obsidian blades to slice open their fellow, obsidian-less cavemen to more modern Civs who had superior metals to make swords or armor from to European soldiers of the colonial era who could mow down whole armies of indigenous people thanks to their machine-guns.


E.

 

[Tech Osen]

Why?
That's like saying "as soon as a Civ builds tanks, other Civs should automatically get AT-guns".
It wouldn't make much sense from either a gameplay-POV (instantly making brand-new tech less powerful) or from a historical POV. Advanced technology has always played important roles in the way conflicts played out. From the first cavemen who used obsidian blades to slice open their fellow, obsidian-less cavemen to more modern Civs who had superior metals to make swords or armor from to European soldiers of the colonial era who could mow down whole armies of indigenous people thanks to their machine-guns.


E.

I mean once the civ has researched the necessary tech to build AAs of course.

 

[kryat]

Another thing we don’t know yet is how the targets for era points are determined. It’s possible that if it’s based on city count, playing too wide too fast could make it hard to avoid dark ages.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

there is also flip n pillage to consider. I can create a city full of mines, let it flip and then pillage it for loads of science, get it in a peace deal, repair the mines and let it flip again. 6 mines and 3 pastures is not unreasonable. With double pillage 300 science and gold, very nice

They are adding a lot more complexity to the game so getting the balance right will be harder and we have seen how hard it is for them to get it right now. I can see conquering all around me as lily said being key. Then play flip n pillage with the outer cities.

Loyalty has its own rewards, just not sure they will be always as intended.

Very interesting idea. Having city flipped may even not be a bad thing. Especially when you can do that operation on multiple cities.

One new feature nerfing ultimate warmongering that has been neglected in this thread are the buffed Alliances. If, say, a Research Alliance could become very powerful, limiting warmongering so that the Alliance is not broken could end up better strategy.

Not sure what this will be like. But as released the final version shall be "bonus when researching the same tech", but since human player always being eras more advanced, I don't see any point this benefit useful.

The same as the new mechanism of "researching tech/civics more advanced than current world era cost 20% more", this just increase your cost since nobody will wait 40 turns(it seems that 25T is the minimal length of an era in quick speed, so standard may be 40T) to pass through an era. We're actually researching at 10~15T/era speed.

 

[Arent11]

Currently conquest and domination is too strong in C6, every proper victory contains mass wars.

For Rise and Fall, this is not balanced, but add more power to wars.

We don't know enough about the loyalty mechanics yet. I actually expect conquest to be much less advantageous than settling your own cities in Rise & Fall.
But I could be wrong.

 

[bbbt]

there is also flip n pillage to consider. I can create a city full of mines, let it flip and then pillage it for loads of science, get it in a peace deal, repair the mines and let it flip again. 6 mines and 3 pastures is not unreasonable. With double pillage 300 science and gold, very nice

If they haven't coded warlords throne to be a once per city bonus, you could also just keep getting the production bonuses with a capture city > cede city > capture city cycle.

And it shouldn't. Civ5 had too much emphasis on defense and this was exploited by players as very little force was enough to repel any conquest. In Civ6 that's balanced.

That seems easy enough to solve just by extending the AI/human level bonus to combat also to city defense.

Edit: Actually do they do that already? I.e. do deity AI cities have a +5 defense like the units do?

 

[Sascha77]

We don't know enough about the loyalty mechanics yet. I actually expect conquest to be much less advantageous than settling your own cities in Rise & Fall.
But I could be wrong.

When they showed and discussed loyalty last night, I was reminded of cultural city-flipping in Civ IV. I loved that mechanic, even though it usually took quite a bit longer than simply rolling in with a stack of doom and grabbing the city. From what I've seen in the stream, I'm pretty confident loyalty will work along similar lines as the culture-flip - probably a bit more sophisticated and detailed, but I love the idea of being able to grab another Civ's city without having to go to war.

Question is (and perhaps I missed this): How do "Free Cities" work exactly? They did mention you could take them back by force. Does this mean that a Civ with an up-to-date, medium-sized army could simply counter your peaceful attempts of taking over their city by marching a few units in to crush the "rebellion" in that city? Can you "pacify" such a city by simply marching in or do you have to go to war with the Civ that undermined the city's loyalty? Would taking back a city by force incur warmonger-penalties or some other form of AI-aggro? And how would these penalties work if an AI Civ is influencing a player's city? I mean... not that the AI has to worry about the player getting pi$$ed off at them ...

S.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

That seems easy enough to solve just by extending the AI/human level bonus to combat also to city defense.

Edit: Actually do they do that already? I.e. do deity AI cities have a +5 defense like the units do?

They are currently +4, like units.

I think changing it to +14 may be more balanced, for +4, cities are still too easy to take.

Also, partially because the units are too cheap. It's time to malus the -50% upgrade cost card, as well as those +50%/100% unit production cards.

Reducing the bonus of chopping to 50% is also a good idea.

 

[Bechhold]

I'll be satisfied if the Devs manage to have the AI blast the other AI for warmongering, breaking of promises and so forth. But I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Candido Rondon]

If cities generated their own internal Loyalty (or had some sort of minimum threshold of Loyalty from their owner) rather than just the loyalty pressures from adjacent empires, this would be a potent weapon against big, sprawling empires. But if Loyalty is only a question of the Loyalty points from Civ A and those from Civ B, then it would be smarter to just wipe out adjacent players and be an even bigger warmonger.

 

[Victoria]

They are currently +4, like units

CS do not get this +4 difficulty bonus so possibly free cities will not.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

If cities generated their own internal Loyalty (or had some sort of minimum threshold of Loyalty from their owner) rather than just the loyalty pressures from adjacent empires, this would be a potent weapon against big, sprawling empires. But if Loyalty is only a question of the Loyalty points from Civ A and those from Civ B, then it would be smarter to just wipe out adjacent players and be an even bigger warmonger.

If you look at the stream, it seems that loyalty act like another version of religious pressure.

By the way, I see a card "Garrison unit provide +2 loyalty", I think +2 may be enough for a separated city to maintain loyal if you have eliminated all adjacent Civs. So at least loyalty will not be a problem if you wipe out other civs.