September Update Thread

[oSiyeza]

The AI constantly surprise wars me and takes out other civs. I play on King.

I play on king too. Do you play on a specific map size?

 

[leandrombraz]

It may well be that taking cities have small differences in war, or alliance conditions. Does it take into account, liked, disliked, denounced, trading and other diplomacy status? I really think it does not. If it has, the effect surely is not noticeable, even in those extremes.

It is fairly weird, that when taking city states, or sending AID, these effects certainly do not working at all, if they exist.

It didn't use to take into account relationship when the game launched but they added that in a patch, the March 2017 patch to be specific:

• Adjusted Warmonger penalties for Diplomatic status:
  • When applying a warmonger diplomatic penalty for EITHER declaring war or capturing a city, reduce that penalty if you are enemies with the target of that warmongering as follows:
    • -20% warmongering if this is against a player you have denounced
    • -40% warmongering if this is against a player you are at war with
  • NOTE: This is not used in situations where you are fighting a Joint War against the target power or when Sumeria joins as ally in war (in both those cases the penalty is still zero).
  • EXAMPLE: Macedon is at war with Persia. If India goes to war with Persia sometime in the middle of this Macedonian/Persian War and captures a Persian city, Macedon will reduce its warmonger penalty against India by 40%.
• Adjusted Warmonger penalties for City Population:
  • When applying a warmonger diplomatic penalty for capturing a city, reduce that penalty if the city is smaller than the average city in the game as follows:
    • If the city's population after conquest is below the average population of all the cities in the game, reduce the warmonger penalty by the percentage that city's population is below the average.
  • EXAMPLE: Persepolis is conquered and its population after conquest is 6. But the average size of a city in the game is 8. So this city is 2 / 8 = 25% below the size of the average city in the game. Therefore the warmonger penalty is reduced by 25%.

AFAIK Grievances still use the same mechanic. It's based on the relationship that Civ have with your enemy, not the relationship it have with you, so declaring war and conquering cities from someone that is denounced or that is at war with other Civs will give you less grievances/warmongering than attacking someone that have good relationship with everyone. There's also separate modifiers like having an enemy in common. If you invite everyone to a war, it'll reduce drastically the impact that war will have in your relationships.

I may have not fully analyzed all what happened in every game I played. However, I can point that I never found myself in the receiving end of a Surprise war. Or backstabed from a civ I had no grievances against. I can say that I never seen the AI doing this. In this end, I'm am unsure If this is good or a bad thing. It is probably good mostly, since most of the time an unpredictable attack would be quite frustrating. However, in many cases I find myself being the only civ, with military agency in the status of the game. And I think different civs should have different behavior in this regard, as a part of their hidden agenda.

An also never in my games an AI wiped any civilization. I know it is possible, but I would guess very specific conditions need to happen, with a civ falling way behind, in early ages, and when there are no grievances against other major civs. I also have never seen a domination Victory from the AI go past conquering a single capital. Most of the time, no civ gets to conquer any capital. Though I guess is probably possible. As far as I know, the AI designer of the game, (though this is based in an old video) has never seen an AI domination victory in hundreds of AI battle royal monitored plays. I also never have seen an AI having significant grievances from warmongering.

Granted, I play mostly on a couple of maps and sizes. And only completed or almost completed 20 games of so. That means, roughly I have faced 150 AI civs. But is still disappointing.

Also it is truth that while the AI uses the strength of the player to value if they are an easy target and will in some cases take unprotected cities. The overall behavior of the AI I would say still quite innocent in this regard. It factors grievances more than it should, and expansion opportunities less than it should. I don't think they take into account the military strength in the specific area. Another component I do dislike, is the abrupt difference from early to middle ages to later ones. Modern ages were ages flooded with military conflicts in reality, where war technology suffered the biggest explosion in history, something that the military units in civ reflect. But is something that the AI rarely puts to use. due its reluctance to be at war in late ages.

When did you start playing Civ VI? The current AI is the most pacific the game had so far IMO. Alliance is broken, once you got an Ally, you got an ally for life unless you forget to renew the alliance for some turns. It's ridiculously easy to befriend everyone and the AI doesn't declare as much joint wars as it used to, which felt random back in the day. There was also a time where the AI would turn on you if you was winning, that was right after Rise & Fall. Good luck keeping your Allies in late game back then. The AI does declare surprise wars now but it's really easy to shield yourself from such moves, a decent defense is enough to discourage the AI from declaring war, assuming there still anyone who isn't your friend/ally and can declare war on you.
Notice that the leaders agenda affect their behavior, not as much as I think it should but it does. Chandragupta, for example, will declare war on a neighbor, even if he has good relationship. If he is your neighbor and he doesn't declare war on someone else, brace yourself, war is coming.

The AI certainly take into account city defense, garrisons and units nearby, if it have vision over the area. Another thing the AI just can't resist is to declare war when you have a unit in range of their units that they can kill. If you see an army moving towards your city and you send that one archer in range of said army, the war will start right there and you can say goodbye to your archer.

 

[Gedemon]

"ROYALE_ACHIEVEMENT"

MP related maybe ?

(edit : source)

 

[The Kingmaker]

"ROYALE_ACHIEVEMENT"

MP related maybe ?

(edit : source)

You may be on to something. “Royale” could be the “exciting new MP mode.”

 

[bbbt]

You may be on to something. “Royale” could be the “exciting new MP mode.”

Battle Royale i.e. last Civ standing?

 

[Gedemon]

there was also the "capture the King" mode back in the days.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Battle Royale i.e. last Civ standing?

Isn't that how it pretty much works anyway, if you turn off all Victories except domination?

Maybe it's an mp game with ALL the civs.

 

[Gedemon]

Isn't that how it pretty much works anyway, if you turn off all Victories except domination?

Add the shrinking playing area, and in the case of GS I can see that tied to game mechanisms with more and more catastrophic natural events spawning on the borders of the map, slowly moving to the center.

 

[leandrombraz]

Maybe they will use the rising sea levels mechanic to do a shrinking area. It might be a game that start near when the sea level start rising or it might be programmed to get there faster, then you get truly catastrophic climate change levels, where way more tiles than in a normal game are flooded, maybe with more than 3 levels of flood. That's the only way I can imagine a shrinking area in Civ VI. That or they will just nuke where the circle closes and it will be impossible to clean.

 

[Timothy001]

Just noticed there are 5 locked achievements.

 

[Cerilis]

Uh, when do they do the achievement thing usually in the patching process? @Eagle Pursuit

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Uh, when do they do the achievement thing usually in the patching process? @Eagle Pursuit

They've never actually done achievements without a DLC or expansion to go with them. If we look at DLC as the closest proxy, it was hours to days before release.

 

[WillowBrook]

And I go from seven achievements left to twelve. With five unknown. Hmm...

Any sign of a livestream this week? I seem to recall they've typically been on Tuesday or Thursday, but usually announced a day or so in advance?

 

[SolInvictus]

They've never actually done achievements without a DLC or expansion to go with them. If we look at DLC as the closest proxy, it was hours to days before release.

They didn't add new achievements with the last round of new map types?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

And I go from seven achievements left to twelve. With five unknown. Hmm...

Any sign of a livestream this week? I seem to recall they've typically been on Tuesday or Thursday, but usually announced a day or so in advance?

I'm envisioning a scenario where the livestream is announced tomorrow for Wednesday and the patch comes on Thursday.

@SolInvictus No. They did not add achievements with the previous patch, even though it had maps. I assume these new achievements are for the new MP mode they hyped but neglected to describe. It would make for a good livestream, perhaps.

 

[The Kingmaker]

So either this is a change in policy or there’s content coming with the patch.

Don’t know if royale mode will be considered significant enough to be “new content.”

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I'm envisioning a scenario where the livestream is announced tomorrow for Wednesday and the patch comes on Thursday.

Either that, or I could see a livestream announcement on Wednesday for one happening on Thursday and the patch being released on Tuesday of next week since the last two major updates were also on Tuesdays.

 

[leandrombraz]

I'll bet on the livestream and the patch release happening on the same day, which will be Thursday. Also, we'll finally get Ed Beach to open the Civilopedia once more and it will be glorious.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I'll bet on the livestream and the patch release happening on the same day

I suppose there's always a first, but looking at my notes that's never happened before.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

MP exclusive achievements on the way.. which possibly means SP wouldn't get any, right?
I somehow doubt they could skip a few more features for SP while adding those newest MP assets.

BATTLE_ROYALE naming convention proves that MP concept has particular gameplay (Mystery related too?) systems though, AFAIC.