[R&F] Should be England be "Un-Nerfed"?

[Victoria]

I always contended that Pax was the one and only key point about Vic. It made her different and it did not make her strong.
Firaxis clearly documented that you gained troops from taken cities and to say otherwise in the patch notes is apalling.

It's clear the city flipping on a foreign continent allowed abuse but this knee jerk reaction without due care to one of the more unique civs is poor.

I played half a game after the patch and lost interest. no idea why but I suspect Pax is it, regardless time to move on. I enjoyed her while she was fun
gonna give EU a go.

 

[rjg85]

I really think the trade route stacking should return, or something similar. Victorian Britain absolutely dominated world trade. For periods in the 19th century Britain controlled more international trade than the rest of the world put together. Naval power and trade are pretty much the defining characteristics of the British empire.

How is that reflected in the game?

A slightly faster-to-build harbour and an anachronistic naval unit. Great...

 

[Duuk]

You'd think Victoria's UA would have been a special war/production/movement or something bonus to do with a colonial war. It's such an obvious connection and potential use for Redcoats, too.

LA: The British Raj: Unit Production +100% for 10 turns and naval movement +2 after declaring a colonial war.

Give the RND back trade route stacking.

Take away the silly "can capture ships" from Sea Dogs, give them "Can Always Plunder Trade Routes of non-allies".

 

[Jewelrunna]

You'd think Victoria's UA would have been a special war/production/movement or something bonus to do with a colonial war. It's such an obvious connection and potential use for Redcoats, too.

LA: The British Raj: Unit Production +100% for 10 turns and naval movement +2 after declaring a colonial war.

Give the RND back trade route stacking.

Take away the silly "can capture ships" from Sea Dogs, give them "Can Always Plunder Trade Routes of non-allies".

You’re not wrong, but I’m really not a fan of these “declare war, get movement/strength/production” bonuses. There’s too many of them and they’re not all that interesting. Pax Britannica in its original form was unique, powerful, and fun to play with.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

You’re not wrong, but I’m really not a fan of these “declare war, get movement/strength/production” bonuses. There’s too many of them and they’re not all that interesting. Pax Britannica in its original form was unique, powerful, and fun to play with.

In the context of a Civ game, PaxBritannica in it's original form also did a great job of giving you the chance to recreate the global British empire. Show up on someone's shore with a trio of frigates and a Redcoat. Boom, you have two Redcoats. Take the next city along their shore and now you have three. Rinse and repeat until you have an empire stretching across the globe.

If the AI ever got to the point where it was a mid-game threat, it would also have made Victoria a dangerous opponent. She and Chandragupta would be the ying and yang of who yo wanted to be close to.

 

[Pietato]

You'd think Victoria's UA would have been a special war/production/movement or something bonus to do with a colonial war. It's such an obvious connection and potential use for Redcoats, too.

LA: The British Raj: Unit Production +100% for 10 turns and naval movement +2 after declaring a colonial war.

Give the RND back trade route stacking.

Take away the silly "can capture ships" from Sea Dogs, give them "Can Always Plunder Trade Routes of non-allies".

The conditions for a colonial war would make this very weak.

 

[acluewithout]

One of the things I really liked about Pax Britannica was that it could be used in both a warmonger or peaceful way.

The warmonger angle is obvious of course, but does allow for some variations. e.g. you can just attack a city in the normal way (melee, ranged etc), and get a free unit to help continue the fight and hold the city. You could also take a coastal city with only naval units (ranged and melee), and then sort of convert your navy into melee units via the free unit. Lastly, you could build Settlers (cheaper than Redcoats), and then drop down your settler near your enemy and press the attack with your free melee unit. I would often war with only horsemen or cavalry, and get my melee units exclusively from Pax B.

But Pax B is useful peacefully too. Sometimes I would settle a city with no intention of warring. The free unit would then be responsible for clearing barbs, or would provide 'security' from other Civs attacking until I could get walls up or otherwise reinforce. The free units garrisoned in my cities could also be leveraged via policy cards to give amenities (and now loyalty).

I'm sure a colonial war type power would have its own interesting strategies, but I'd still really miss the flexibility Pax B provides. Indeed, I think my own suggestion of buying / upgrading melee at a discount is a real compromise and is not as good (fun) as Pax B in Vanilla.

 

[Leathaface]

I don't get people ranking England around the same level as Norway or Spain. Their archeological museum proving 6 slots that automatically theme is powerful in winning a culture victory.

 

[acluewithout]

Yes, the BM is good. But: it comes very late; it and its archeologists are very production heavy; it’s certainly not enough by itself to win a culture victory (not that that’s a bad thing as such); and it only helps with one victory type, so by itself doesn’t make England very flexible.

Really, my favourite part of the BM is just not having to deal with the admin of theming.

 

[Katakanja]

I don't get people ranking England around the same level as Norway or Spain. Their archeological museum proving 6 slots that automatically theme is powerful in winning a culture victory.

The best part is that the bug that grants archeological museums built in captured English cities the full 6 slots even when you are playing as someone else is still in the game. As far as I'm concerned that means England is now more useful for culture victories when it's your closest neighbour, rather than actually bothering to play as them yourself - you let them settle their first three or four cities and then seize them to use as your main tourism spamming cities.

 

[Victoria]

I would rather have a half price theatre than a BM but they are handy. There is 2 key things to them

1. Get them as early as you can because the auto theming means your culture/ tourism gets higher faster. Getting them late removes most of this value but you are guaranteed to theme everything so that’s great too.

2. The double slots mean you do not need so many, half as many at least but with autontheming I would put a BM at 2.5 . It also means you only need half as many expensive archaeologists.

Regardless, the price of the district and the value of writers, earlier means museums are not that strong, or required.

The Pax is the real strength and fun part about England.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

The Pax is the real strength and fun part about England.

The Pax was the real strength; it's "intended" version is a joke. The snowball effect of conquering cities was very unique to England and is gone along with the extra trade route of the RND. Unfortunate, I have little desire to play England anymore. It feels like an overall lacking civilization. The Redcoats are nice but expensive to produce and "nerfed' with Pax being gutted. The British Museum certainly helps with culture but takes a long time to come into play. And the RND is just underwhelming. Bonus adjacency and +4 loyalty a turn do not compensate for the lost trade route.

At this point, England feels like a hot mess and if it pops up on Random, I'll just restart.

 

[Victoria]

I have little desire to play England

I only really played England, CBA now.

 

[isau]

What if you could use the RNDY to airlift units? I would mod it in if the airlift stuff was more open to modding.

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

I'd honestly rather they just bring back the RNDY trade route. It's not like England is a crazy powerful civ in this game anyway; in fact they seem like one of the worst. So why not buff them? Also a trade focus just makes perfect sense for England thematically.

The infinite free units pre-patch just felt cheesy to me.

 

[isau]

You could make the RNDY only give the free trade route if the RNDY city is on a second continent. Very doable with the current set of Modifiers and Requirements.

 

[acluewithout]

... I have little desire to play England anymore. It feels like an overall lacking civilization. ... England feels like a hot mess and if it pops up on Random, I'll just restart.

I can't see myself playing Civ until England gets fixed. It was my go to Civ. I was initially very excited about playing England with the new R&F rules, particularly alliances (which I thought would synergise well with England's extra trade routes) and loyalty (which I thought would make settling on foreign continents and domination harder, and so create more challenge). But everything has just gone more and more sideways. Excitement has gone from disappointment, to exasperation, to apathy.

I had some plans to explore Norway and Japan more. But somehow England getting so utterly neutered has just put me off the whole thing, particularly when it's apparent that R&F is going to have quite a few more months of tweaking / adjusting.

I'm sure England will be tweaked again. My concern now is that either it'll just be at the edges, and England will then be left slightly stronger than it is now, but still very weak and - more importantly - bereft of interesting gameplay; or the changes will miss the point of what makes England so much fun in Vanilla - e.g. England gets a flat bonus to international trade routes (like say Egypt, Poland, Russia), when what was fun was that their trade routes were the same as everyone else's, they just got a few more of them.

Side note: I mean, I think England's buffs to loyalty in R&F were actually pretty daft. Why does a harbour give you more loyalty? Sure, England's Navy probably inspires loyalty - but the harbours?? And the buff doesn't even look to make that much of a difference really. The real problem is not how difficult settling on foreign continents is - it's that there's not that much upside to justify the cost, and so colonization is just not incentivised that much.

My hope is maybe we get an alternate leader for England, maybe as part of a DLC, and this gives Firaxis an opportunity to re-fresh England and Victoria more generally. But I think that's hardly likely.

You could make the RNDY only give the free trade route if the RNDY city is on a second continent. Very doable with the current set of Modifiers and Requirements.

That would work - I like it.

I'd suggested earlier maybe +1 trade route for having at least one RND on each different continent. So, if you had three RNDs on your home (A) continent, and then two on B continent and and one on C continent, you'd get +3 trade routes.

My thinking was: (1) being able to get an extra trade route for a RND on your home continent would make the RND a bit more consistently useful in the early game, (2) getting essentially one trade route per additional continent would encourage very wide expansion, and (3) it still wouldn't be too many extra trade routes overall (or, if that was really a problem, maybe there would be a hard cap of 3 or 4 extra trade routes total).

But even with a few extra trade routes, I'd still very much want Pax Britannia either un-nerfed or otherwise fixed.

 

[blackbutterfly]

The double slots mean you do not need so many, half as many at least but with autontheming I would put a BM at 2.5 . It also means you only need half as many expensive archaeologists.

Did you notice archaeologists built at a BM can excavate up to 6 artefacts now (since Mar '18 patch)?

 

[Victoria]

Did you notice archaeologists built at a BM can excavate up to 6 artefacts now (since Mar '18 patch)?

Sure that’s why I said you only need half as many archaeologists. However I thought you always could get 6 with one, pretty sure I used to do this before March but whatever, the thing I am not going to do is build 2 archaeologists for 1 BM. They are rather expensive.

 

[PeterChu]

You always get 6 charges with one archaeologist from the very beginning of the Civ 6. Yes, I can confirm that. But it is quite possible for England to have many coastal cities, so not a big buff IMHO.