[R&F] So...How's R&F?

[Animist7]

Yet, getting Golden Ages and Heroic Ages seems like it is barely a benefit.

I guess it depends. In my latest game as England I was boxed in by France, America and an annoying inland sea to the point where we're in the Medieval Era and I've only managed to settle two cities including my capital. The only reason I've now got six cities is because I made it to a Heroic Age while America went into a Dark Age. (And also my Suzerain Brussels knocked the stripes off Washington while Teddy was trying to take London - almost succeeding, I might add - and I was able to send in a lone horseman to take Washington when it had just a sliver of health left. But the rest were all loyalty flips!).

 

[Zuizgond]

Anyone would think this site was called CivFanatics or something

So you can't be a civ fan and dislike R&F? such objectivity...

 

[blackcatatonic]

So you can't be a civ fan and dislike R&F? such objectivity...

Not at all. But I would have thought it obvious that people who like Civ VI already (enough to post on a forum called "CivFanatics") would naturally be more likely to enjoy the expansion pack than the Steam community. Not guaranteed to enjoy it, sure, but enough to account for the difference.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

I would suspect that individuals who choose to post on a rather analytical fan forum have little overlap with those confused/irate that a $20 DLC pack from 2016 does not include a $30 expansion from 2018.

 

[raen]

For me this expansion should be a DLC, since for me doesnt feel like an expansion, has only some new features, and many of them you only "feel" much later in game.

 

[pgm123]

Aren't most people on Steam whining because they have to buy it and it hasn't been graciously gifted to them?

About half are people who say the game won't load for them. About a quarter are complaining that the game isn't included or that Firaxis has become EA or something. Some say that the AI is dumb or that the game doesn't offer enough features to be considered an expansion.

 

[Kataklysm]

I'll have to give it more time, i'm just about to finish my first game with the Dutch (standard speed, Emperor).

Speaking only of this game, it's been rather boring: I've always stayed in 'Normal ages', never clinching a Golden one nor falling under in a Dark one. Same with the Historic Moments, they seem rather random tbh. Loyalty has played almost no role at all in my game, all my cities stayed at max loyalty so far. Found the Governors rather easy to use and either provided OP bonuses (Magnus) or almost useless or very specific.Built a few Government district buildings, which force you to stick with a playstyle, which is not a bad idea. Not a big fan of the 'Water Parks, Ferris wheel and Shopping Mall yaaaaaay' type of buildings tbh, but for some reason they make sense. On top of that, no emergency triggered yet, nor special Alliance concluded (they all hate my face too much).

Soooo things went a bit awkward, as I was slowly but surely cruising towards science victory. Then, Emergency ! Poundmaker conquered Carthage and we are asked to liberate it from him. I should have said no, but I accepted. What an error. We ended up being only 2 accepting (weak England and me). Poundmaker is allied with Rome and Egypt (my neighbors, also allied to each other). So I end up in a war with the 3 main powers, teaming up with the weakest civ, trying to capture a CS which is in the middle of another continent. My ships are being sunk one after the other, Cree tanks invade as I struggle to keep enemy corps at bay on the other flank. I manage to make Carthage a free city, I think because of my spy mission to lower its loyalty to the Cree, which end the Emergency in our favor. But then Poundmaker demands an outrageous amount of gpt (200+) to make peace. I'm soooo much in horsehocky.

 

[King Rad]

But the Food Market is nuts. There is no circumstance where anyone is spending 465 production on 3 food a turn.

I haven't had it in my current game, but I have had games where I would actually do this. Major production city on tundra with lots of hills, but almost no food production, which by limiting growth also limits districts. I could have built this in about 4 turns in that city, and then have enjoyed the additional growth allowing the production of more districts and related buildings - especially when there were times I did projects because basically I had nothing else I could build except for units and I didn't want/need to increase those. Of course, that was in vanilla, and I really have no idea how the other new features would have played into that specific situation; and it requires a very specific situation to be of any significant benefit. But I have occasionally encountered those situations. I also play my games all the way through and don't try for the fastest victory condition or necessarily even maximize the victory condition for the civ I'm playing [I play each civ - still have two more of the original dlc to finish before moving on to the new civs in R&F

 

[Thormodr]

I built the food market in my Petra City. Needed some more food because I had slowly had been removing farms to build more wonders and districts. +3 food is nothing to sneeze at and it only took a couple of turns.

Should have the cost reduced a bit, though. It’s a wee bit expensive.

 

[steveg700]

Not sure what's going on in the games where people are having trouble with barbarians. In all the games I've ever started, I've only ever had real trouble with barbs (like, more than just getting a couple things pillaged) in maybe one or two games, and those were just generally bad starts. When the barb scout sees your cities (or an opponent's cities) and gets the exclamation point over its head, you know to either kill that scout before it can report back to the camp (which is when the horsemen etc start spawning for invasion) or to prepare for the incoming invasion with slingers, warriors and/or spearmen. If you can build walls already, add that into the mix. Just stop whatever else you're doing and devote a few turns to that. If you've got a city state between you and the camp you generally don't even have to worry about it; only once in a game of mine has a city state been completely overrun with barbarians to the point they start spilling over into my territory.

I'd say that your suggested build-up constitutes more stopping-whatever-else-you're-doing than a few turns worth of time-sink. As for killing the scout, people always go on about that as if it were a fait accompli. How do you kill a three-movement unit when you have warriors and slingers, unless you're just lucky enough to have a unit positioned between them and the camp? The scout will get away more likely than not.

The insane geyser of barbarians is something that is problematic to A) higher-difficulty games, because the number/frequency of the eruption is scaled to the difficulty of the game, B) the early game when walls and archers haven't arrived on the scene, and C) when the camp is close to a city. I have a thread you can go look at for a screenshot of what I'm talking about.

Of course, it goes without saying that higher difficulty games should pose greater difficulties, but a high-diff game should still feel strategic, not subject to random whimsy to determine who gets their civilization off the ground and who is bogged down for twenty or so turns just trying to keep their heads above water. Every camp shouldn't spawn three units immediately and then another unit every turn, especially since the actual rate at which camps spawn is also difficulty-based. So, some sort of additional-balancing factor is warranted. For instance, the proximity to a civilization could impact the spawning, with farther camps getting stronger spawns than those just a few tiles from a city. And maybe if they're spawning resource-dependent units, the spawn is tamped down a little as well. That seems sensible to me.

Last night in an Emperor game, I had Germany settling on top of me (we should note that sort of thing is still happening, btw), and a barb camp spawning on top of us went a long way towards handing me their empire. Germany, not willing to wait for archers, declared a surprise war with a retinue of warriors and slingers. Unfortunately, they came southeast rather than southwest and ran smack-dab into the dreaded horsey encampment. They definitely had the numbers on me, so it was a great help to have them chopping each other down. Cologne and Archen fell to sieges by two archers, two warriors, and a scout. Ran off with a warrior and a settler into the ether, the latter of which I eventually picked up as a red unit wandering around another nearby encampment. Ridiculous, really. And for some reason, Germany never did bother to research/build archers. A single one in Achen probably would saved the capital from my mediocre onslaught.

 

[Haig]

Having more fun than I've had with vanilla 6, or full Civs 4 and 6. (Rhye's mod for Civ 4 is same level fun I think).

I love how the actions feel like having consequences more and the Alliances matter.

Also stuff like Era points makes every turn have some interesting things going on.

Battle AI has surpassed Civ 5 already, they seem to have lots of corps and armies and in my game they sure take walled cities.
In Civ 4 AI is more effective though but I guess stacks are much easier to use for it.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Funny how the rating on steam over the past week is around 50% and on this site it's closed to 90% favorable.

I'm sure if other sites could rate it, it might be worse.

 

[PhilBowles]

Battle AI has surpassed Civ 5 already, they seem to have lots of corps and armies and in my game they sure take walled cities.
In Civ 4 AI is more effective though but I guess stacks are much easier to use for it.

I'm never sure how early people who say this abandoned Civ V - the battle AI is still worse in most respects than Civ V's was with Gods & Kings, when the 100 HP combat system was first introduced. It was intrinsically more difficult to capture cities in Civ V than Civ VI due to the mechanics (always walled, higher defence and city attack power at early game stages), but the AI did it much more frequently, and yes it has genuine problems with walled cities in Civ VI. It can take them, but not with any frequency. The AI uses many more ranged units but still rarely makes sufficient artillery, and appears never to use bombers - in Civ V it used the former liberally and the latter infrequently but effectively.

In my current game I've been disappointed that several situations that should have been frightening just aren't because the AI simply mills about not doing anything. I was taken completely by surprise when Saladin landed a cavalry army and a few cavalry units on my main island - none of my cities were walled as I wasn't expecting a naval attack. He could have taken Toronto, but instead the army wandered off for a bit while the others suicided against the city, and when it finally came back it just wandered around not doing anything (not even pillaging as it moved from Toronto towards The Hague and back again several times). I held off a Korean attack on Leiden that should have been overwhelming because the cavalry just got bored and went away despite the city's health being reduced to almost 0 by Hwachas, and this was before I got a wall up. I only lost the city because Antananarivo got aggressive.

Later, after Gorgo became suzerain of Tana and Seondok captured it, I recaptured it in an emergency and the remaining Korean forces just milled around dumbly near a city with health in the red while my frigates shot them to pieces over the course of several turns.

 

[Xmonger]

Most/all the professional/nonprofessional negative reviews I've seen aren't entirely rational. The negative player reviews are of the 'won't load because I have stale DLC' variety. Many pro reviews have been complaints about features that they obviously didn't understand (hence they gave it poor review). Take this IGN review, which was mostly positive to be fair

"The Loyalty system, though, has proved to be a downer in my experience thus far, despite sounding great on paper. In a best-case scenario you can use it to take over a neighboring nation’s cities through cultural pressure, generated primarily by high-population cities, which finally allows the pacifist global domination through just being the coolest nation around. That’s something Civ players have dreamed of since the beginning. In reality, though, it’ll work against you harder than it works for you.

Loyalty can work against you more than it works for you.

In one of my early games I had my first colony turn against me within a few turns because it was too close to another civilization, which was apparently extremely enticing. This makes the early-game land grab much more conservative by necessity, since a mistake like that is effectively game-ending. It’s not all bad, since the dinky city the AI founds on that one hex of your continent that you didn’t control will probably become yours quickly, but it definitely cramped my style of sealing off encroaching rival settlements."
​

What he's missing is that the Loyalty system is to city placement as the District system is to City growth. Loyalty is an extension of Districts, and one that other players have a shot at. That's the whole point and what makes it exciting. Sure early game you want to be careful and conservative with placement, but in one game I flung out a Settler in some raw territory to take a risk. Another Civ planted a Colony next to me, then I countered with my Amani Governer and some Ameneties. By and by the other Civ's city fell to me, heh heh ... that was beautiful.

Anyhow a system that gives you more upside potential will also give you more downside, I guess some people just want a game where everything always their way.

 

[earlc]

I'd say that your suggested build-up constitutes more stopping-whatever-else-you're-doing than a few turns worth of time-sink. As for killing the scout, people always go on about that as if it were a fait accompli. How do you kill a three-movement unit when you have warriors and slingers, unless you're just lucky enough to have a unit positioned between them and the camp? The scout will get away more likely than not.

The insane geyser of barbarians is something that is problematic to A) higher-difficulty games, because the number/frequency of the eruption is scaled to the difficulty of the game, B) the early game when walls and archers haven't arrived on the scene, and C) when the camp is close to a city. I have a thread you can go look at for a screenshot of what I'm talking about.

Of course, it goes without saying that higher difficulty games should pose greater difficulties, but a high-diff game should still feel strategic, not subject to random whimsy to determine who gets their civilization off the ground and who is bogged down for twenty or so turns just trying to keep their heads above water. Every camp shouldn't spawn three units immediately and then another unit every turn, especially since the actual rate at which camps spawn is also difficulty-based. So, some sort of additional-balancing factor is warranted. For instance, the proximity to a civilization could impact the spawning, with farther camps getting stronger spawns than those just a few tiles from a city. And maybe if they're spawning resource-dependent units, the spawn is tamped down a little as well. That seems sensible to me.

Last night in an Emperor game, I had Germany settling on top of me (we should note that sort of thing is still happening, btw), and a barb camp spawning on top of us went a long way towards handing me their empire. Germany, not willing to wait for archers, declared a surprise war with a retinue of warriors and slingers. Unfortunately, they came southeast rather than southwest and ran smack-dab into the dreaded horsey encampment. They definitely had the numbers on me, so it was a great help to have them chopping each other down. Cologne and Archen fell to sieges by two archers, two warriors, and a scout. Ran off with a warrior and a settler into the ether, the latter of which I eventually picked up as a red unit wandering around another nearby encampment. Ridiculous, really. And for some reason, Germany never did bother to research/build archers. A single one in Achen probably would saved the capital from my mediocre onslaught.

It's like we're playing two different games. I play higher difficulties as well, emperor to deity. Haven't played a deity game since the xpack so I don't know if the difficulty significantly ramps up now - actually I just checked Victoria's post, looks like its the same from chieftain to emperor, then immortal to deity; so the only other change would be the enemy attack bonus.

Nabbing that scout is easier than you make it sound. They don't typically beeline back to their camps after coming into your view. If you can get a hit on it and maybe even strategically place your melee unit so the ZOC keeps the scout from making a dash (if it even would) you'll probably kill it easily. That's unless the camp is right next to your borders I guess (which has never happened to me with anything other than an easily-dispatched set of warriors and slingers).

Maybe it could use some tweaking if people are having a problem with it though. You can set the number of turns before a barb scout spawns in the game creation screen, but unless it's just a matter of personal play style, players shouldn't have to do that.

I personally like the threat of horsemen storming your borders before you have the chance to research horseback riding though. Adds some excitement.

 

[Ferocitus]

I still miss Civ 5's world congress, but who knows.

Can't say I miss it all. It could have been done much better.

Still, I find myself really enjoying this expansion. I had a really hard time getting into Civ VI after playing V.

Civ V is now the cuneiform version of Civ.

 

[trashcat]

Can't say I miss it all. It could have been done much better.



Civ V is now the cuneiform version of Civ.

I think you are right there. I think I enjoyed the idea of the World Congress and a diplomatic victory option but it could have been implemented a little better. In games at Prince it was fairly easy to just horde all of the votes.

 

[Animist7]

I think you are right there. I think I enjoyed the idea of the World Congress and a diplomatic victory option but it could have been implemented a little better. In games at Prince it was fairly easy to just horde all of the votes.

We could still have a World Congress without a diplomatic victory. Things like having a world ideology or world religion that boosted tourism / religion or boosting great scientists versus artists can still have an impact on the game and impact other victory conditions without being a condition unto itself. Sanctions, nuclear non-proliferation and such also had impacts on the game and really made the world feel alive with votes being traded and each civ trying to make its voice heard on the world stage.

I agree the diplo victory was too easy to rig but, I dunno, I think we can have the World Congress back in full rather than just the emergency system.

 

[isau]

For me the best thing about this expansion is a sense of urgency, which was lacking in the Vanilla version. Many times I come to the close of an era and am just 1 or 2 points away from dodging a Dark Age. It can be really nail biting trying to score those last points, and cause me to play in ways I'd otherwise never think to--like settling a city on desert or tundra to grab that one extra era score point.

There is a bit of cheese here and there. You get an era point for killing a corps (ie stacked units) with a single unit, which kind of encourages you not to create corps and armies. But overall it's pretty well done, and for me at leas does change the gameplay a lot.

 

[trashcat]

For me the best thing about this expansion is a sense of urgency, which was lacking in the Vanilla version. Many times I come to the close of an era and am just 1 or 2 points away from dodging a Dark Age. It can be really nail biting trying to score those last points, and cause me to play in ways I'd otherwise never think to--like settling a city on desert or tundra to grab that one extra era score point.

There is a bit of cheese here and there. You get an era point for killing a corps (ie stacked units) with a single unit, which kind of encourages you not to create corps and armies. But overall it's pretty well done, and for me at leas does change the gameplay a lot.

I like that as well. You are always on the lookout for era score. It has made me a better player honestly as I look for ways to trigger boosts, explore early and try my best to get those rewards. It does make things seem a little "game-y" at times but it's also more fun now.