September Update Thread

[lotrmith]

Why should anyone bother? The AI cannot win a religious victory. It's not even designed to try. It just spams apostles to convert cities and attacks other apostles when it encounters during these attempts. It has no offensive or defensive strategy, insomuch as there's not much of one.


The thing is, everyone will just vote with their gut. We have right here articulated problems with the religious victory condition, and sure enough we still get responses s that dismisses those well-articulated issues out-of-hand, like Scaramanga.


You don't need a religious victory to have a religion focus, any more than you need an economic victory to justify a civ's gold focus, or a production victory to justify a production focus (and to anyone who feels the urge to point out that a science victory is a production victory, you're rather making my point). Same goes for Theocracy.

It's fine to argue about a premise, but the execution falls way short of being meaningful as a victory condition.


There's that, but there's way more than that to send back to the drawing board. We can talk about all kinds of things that add depth to military combat that is positive before we start getting to the AI not building planes or marching forward with lone catapults. There's surrounding to siege it, pillaging, modifiers like terrain and flanking, encampments, using spies to create unrest, etc. You have some management to do with strategic resources and creating choke points and manufacturing a casus beli. You know about all waging war (lots more than I do). There's at least the veneer of a a series on integrated systems.

With RV, there's just not much to excel at that would distinguish a good strategy from a bad one. There's not much reason why religious victory between civ's with equal faith infrastructure shouldn't be a stalemate. We don't need to bother with Scaramanga's delicate balancing act. I can't fault the AI for spamming units if that's all they can really do. If someone's hassling my civ, I just park inquisitors and damaged apostles in the city until they leave or I am ready to make another surge. I can flip my cities back tout de suite.

If your main beef with RV is that the AI is bad at executing a strategy for it then I think that applies to all victory conditions.

It has been my experience that victory conditions exist solely for the player, and the AI is just there to serve either as obstacles or supporting cast for the gameplay experience the player has on their way to victory.

 

[Ferocitus]

I've watched the whole series, but to be complete, you don't go to most of Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Harappa (modern Indus Valley) or the Hwang-Ho valley for the scenery either, or the water unless you want it along with the occasional massive and destructive flooding ('Flood Myths' apparently common to all areas) - yet that's where us humans appear to have set up shop first.
Personally, I think it's because of a built-in Disaster-Seeking mechanism in the human psyche - that would also explain our election choices in Too Many countries and instances . . .

But, seriously, it actually points up two things:
1. There are a lot more variables than just Water and Food Supply for permanent large-scale settlement, and some of them are not at all obvious (my sister has her PhD in Population Geography, and can go on for hours on this subject: I'm trying to figure out how to simplify it all down to Game Terms for me and thee, but obviously, have not succeeded!)

These two papers, published a couple of days ago, will give her even more to talk about.
And they're not without relevance to Civvers arguments about anciient civs too!

The first paper increases the number of sequenced genomes of ancient populations by about 25%, so it is a significant addition to the body of knowledge.

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6457/eaat7487

An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/...m/retrieve/pii/S0092867419309675?showall=true

 

[bbbt]

Lots. But right now I'm waiting to see what the Firaxiods will do with the Maori Start mechanism, which appears to me to beg for a land-based version to cover early nomadic/pastoral starts.

I could see them making some sort of 'nomadic start' civ (Atilla the Hun for example) that can't settle cities, only capture them (or more likely can't settle cities until they capture their first city and make it their capital). Some sort of mechanism for production in that period (harvesting/chopping?) to raise an army. I could see them making something that was unique and interesting to play, and likely woefully unbalanced for multiplayer.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

These two papers, published a couple of days ago, will give her even more to talk about.
And they're not without relevance to Civvers arguments about anciient civs too!

The first paper increases the number of sequenced genomes of ancient populations by about 25%, so it is a significant addition to the body of knowledge.

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6457/eaat7487

An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30967-5?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867419309675?showall=true

The flood of DNA studies is making a mockery of everything we thought we knew about the spread of ancient cultures, people, technologies, and the technology of DNA studies keeps advancing faster than I, at least, can keep up with it.
For us in Game Terms, though, one thing that comes out both from these two cited papers and from the earlier study of the Yamnaya Cultural diffusion into Europe is that 'Farmers' were just about as mobile as 'Pastoralists' if you ignore the Time Factor. That is, agriculture did not spread into South Asia or Europe because they learned to farm from the earlier Anatolians/Middle Easterners, but because people migrated who knew how to farm. That means, you can be sure, that they also brought culture and religious influences along with their DNA and farming knowledge.
This makes a Diffusion/Spread of culture (Civics), Tech, Religion, etc. mechanism really important in the early game to avoid the game degenerating into Fantasy, and also makes contact with other Civs/cultures, technologies really important to Keep Up: being isolated means to fall behind, which is real bad for a competitive game.
A possible Game Mechanism might be to have population points arrive from other Civs/Cultures/City States and you can only have as many Farms as you have such points, until some kind of 'critical mass' is reached. That would also neatly show the relatively slow conversion from pastoral to agricultural - you can't just plunk down and start a city because one family showed up from Nineveh with a plow ox: you need enough of them to feed the city adequately, and until then they will be farming villages, probably trading the farmed foods with the rest of you who are trading back the products of your herds.

It also means that the 'nomad start' discussed here and apparently the norm for the new 4x Humankind may need some 'tweaking': farmers, with reason, were 'nomads' too, over time with as much geographical mobility as the 'standard' horse-riding pastoralist.

It's an exciting time to be either a Historian or an Archeologist . . .

 

[Winged Hussar]

I've been away from this game for a while. Was "import .tmx map" always an option in World Builder, or did they add it recently as a prelude to the September update? Are there any good guides about how to make civ tmx maps?

 

[Elhoim]

Well civ 6 is a game which is done for 4 players maps.

Yeah, that's my feeling as well, that it's a game balanced around small maps, 4-6 players, quick speed. You change anything, severe cracks start to appear.

If your main beef with RV is that the AI is bad at executing a strategy for it then I think that applies to all victory conditions.

It has been my experience that victory conditions exist solely for the player, and the AI is just there to serve either as obstacles or supporting cast for the gameplay experience the player has on their way to victory.

I think the main issue is that they designed religion's victory condition around apostle spam. If you have Yerevan, you won. Make 3-4 debaters, send some gurus, and the AI can do nothing about it. It's kinda integrated with other systems, but they don't do much for the victory.

Culture is worse. Tourism is just a bucket to fill. You disable the victory and everything related to tourism is worthless.

 

[Victoria]

You disable the victory and everything related to tourism is worthless.

Refuted already more than once.
A theatre gives great culture
A wonder is more that touristy
A resort gives great gold
Tourism is just 1 of the outputs “everything related to tourism is worthless” is a touch polarised

 

[bite]

To whom it may concern, Firaxis is advertising the position of full-time writer with historical and research knowledge. I think that was Pete Murray's job.

Anyway, *cough* @Zaarin *cough*

... wonders if they would let someone do that remotely ...

 

[bite]

The link for those interested - https://firaxis.com/careers/

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The recently updated a build called pdreview. They removed manifests for all the DLC, but kept updated the manifests for the two expansions.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

The recently updated a build called pdreview. They removed manifests for all the DLC, but kept updated the manifests for the two expansions.

I was literally just about to post on here asking you what pdreview is.

 

[Gedemon]

I've been away from this game for a while. Was "import .tmx map" always an option in World Builder, or did they add it recently as a prelude to the September update? Are there any good guides about how to make civ tmx maps?

It's here since a few patches, IIRC the documentation (in the sdk installation folder) was updated with a guide at the same time.

You'll need Tiled (a free external map maker) to create the map that can be imported in the WB.

Never tried it myself.

 

[Elhoim]

Refuted already more than once.
A theatre gives great culture
A wonder is more that touristy
A resort gives great gold
Tourism is just 1 of the outputs “everything related to tourism is worthless” is a touch polarised

I agree, what I meant is that the tourism yield is worthless. Sure, things that give tourism give something else, but tourism itself is only worth for the victory. I wonder why they didn't keep the levels from Civ V, in which Tourism gave bonus science from trade routes, better spionage and easier conquering. The system is practically screaming "Give something related to loyalty!".

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I was literally just about to post on here asking you what pdreview is.

I assume it's for some kind of internal milestone review.

PD probably stands for "Product Development".

 

[Scaramanga]

I agree, what I meant is that the tourism yield is worthless. Sure, things that give tourism give something else, but tourism itself is only worth for the victory. I wonder why they didn't keep the levels from Civ V, in which Tourism gave bonus science from trade routes, better spionage and easier conquering. The system is practically screaming "Give something related to loyalty!".

Well, the cake is a lie.

 

[Kwami]

Yeah, that's my feeling as well, that it's a game balanced around small maps, 4-6 players, quick speed. You change anything, severe cracks start to appear.

But 4 players and quick speed aren't even default settings. Surely, the game is balanced for 6-8 players (small to standard) and standard speed.

 

[steveg700]

Impossible, you can listen to other people too much, but you cannot do fun wrong when it is SP.

"Apparently, I do fun wrong" is a facetious comment, suffice to say. A person can enjoy something and it still be problematic on the whole. That enjoyment doesn't negate the criticism, and the criticism need not negate the enjoyment. A lot of folks enjoyed chop-card and pillage exploits, they still should have been fixed.

They really should remake RV, not get rid of it.... I would remove religious combat altogether and instead do a system similar to loyalty (change apostles to great people rather than just generic units you can buy, who can give their religion an advantage in passive spread). Buff passive spread by at least 5x and nerf missionary spread. Make it such that things like tourism, trade routes, diplo modifiers/grievances play a role in how strong the pressure is... make it more strategic.

As of now RV just feels like domination, except the units move on a different layer.

Well, it's domination, but half-baked, inchoate. If I reduce an apostle to 1% health, and he steps inside a city with a holy site next to it...Oh well, he got away. Now, someone wants to say "well, a military unit can do that", but that's what the rams and artillery are for. More to the point, the RV pretty much requires eliminating a civ's ability to flip its cities back.

I keep bringing this example up because it really seems like something that would have come up in playtesting, and the response was to just have the AI religious units oblige the player by impelling themselves against the player like rabid lemmings. That 1% apostle will probably just walk out next turn and get thrashed.

I like theological combat. A victory condition is better off with both strategic and tactical components. There just needs to be more to it than spawning apostles that randomly draw a promotion from a pool, making a player until they get the Debater or Proselytizer that they can use as a tool, rather than than the Chaplin or Heathen Converter that's essentially three lemons.

Forget everything else, the fact that there's nothing to visually distinguish different promotions is a pretty serious failing of the system. Imagine playing a chess game where all the pieces are uniform, only distinguishable by picking them up and looking under their bases. Now, imagine that these pieces disappear in and out of view. We don't need a little "1" indicator on them. They all have 1's.

To my thinking, it would have been better to design the game with the assumption that quality apostles will be few in number and require curation. That is to say, the costs escalate to a point where spamming just isn't the solution. Provide each apostle type with a mechanism for recharging health and spreads. It ought to be possible to run apostles to ground.

 

[Ferocitus]

The flood of DNA studies is making a mockery of everything we thought we knew about the spread of ancient cultures, people, technologies, and the technology of DNA studies keeps advancing faster than I, at least, can keep up with it..

Yes, they certainly do. Those arguing for a Civ6 start a lot earlier than 4000BC would be well-advised to read up on the "hybrids" inhabiting Europe (as one example location).

It's an exciting time to be either a Historian or an Archeologist . . .

Archaeology without applied mathematics is just philosophy with shovels.

 

[Scaramanga]

"Apparently, I do fun wrong" is a facetious comment, suffice to say. A person can enjoy something and it still be problematic on the whole. That enjoyment doesn't negate the criticism, and the criticism need not negate the enjoyment. A lot of folks enjoyed chop-card and pillage exploits, they still should have been fixed.


Well, it's domination, but half-baked, inchoate. If I reduce an apostle to 1% health, and he steps inside a city with a holy site next to it...Oh well, he got away. Now, someone wants to say "well, a military unit can do that", but that's what the rams and artillery are for. More to the point, the RV pretty much requires eliminating a civ's ability to flip its cities back.

I keep bringing this example up because it really seems like something that would have come up in playtesting, and the response was to just have the AI religious units oblige the player by impelling themselves against the player like rabid lemmings. That 1% apostle will probably just walk out next turn and get thrashed.

I like theological combat. A victory condition is better off with both strategic and tactical components. There just needs to be more to it than spawning apostles that randomly draw a promotion from a pool, making a player until they get the Debater or Proselytizer that they can use as a tool, rather than than the Chaplin or Heathen Converter that's essentially three lemons.

Forget everything else, the fact that there's nothing to visually distinguish different promotions is a pretty serious failing of the system. Imagine playing a chess game where all the pieces are uniform, only distinguishable by picking them up and looking under their bases. Now, imagine that these pieces disappear in and out of view. We don't need a little "1" indicator on them. They all have 1's.

To my thinking, it would have been better to design the game with the assumption that quality apostles will be few in number and require curation. That is to say, the costs escalate to a point where spamming just isn't the solution. Provide each apostle type with a mechanism for recharging health and spreads. It ought to be possible to run apostles to ground.

I guess people are not going to be satisfied until there are religious machine gun units etc.

Military units are certainly not distinguishable based on their promotions, like a horseman with Coursers and a horseman with Caparison, although units can be renamed, maybe Apostles can too.

I find Chaplain and Heathen Conversion to be an attempt to integrate the religious system into the other systems, which seems to be wanted. I enjoyed getting 5 barbarian quadriremes from one Apostle charge and upgrading them into frigates.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I guess people are not going to be satisfied until there are religious machine gun units etc

Exchanging Canons for Cannons?