So what do you feel is still broken?

For those who have to endure the +10 directed against them, an era is certainly a long time.

I don't know how well you made use of the ability in that one game, but I also don't think it needs to take twenty games to know something broken is happening. Inconsistently broken is still broken. It's back to the issue of lopsidedness being conflated with balance, which is apparently a tough conceptual nut to crack.

 

For me Its really just the way the ai handles things or well fails to handles things. I like to play domination only game or well use to. I get annoyed how nobody does anything. The ai can't take several walled cites at a time so it ends up just being a war where they throw units at each other kill a few then declare peace. Im pretty sure the ai can't win in a domination only game. I remember when civ 6 was first coming out, they did an ai only battle and they showed and said that the ai can't win at domination yet and here we are how many years since release and still it can't win at it. I'm happy to see new additions to the game but if the ai can't handle the base game I'm not really thrilled in the end because I know when I'm playing a game its going to be survive the first 50 to 75 turns and pick a victory and poof there ya go a win.

 

THIS! The diplomatic Victory suffers from this as well as civs like Georgia/Greece.

 

Is the permanent -18 with a civ for occupying one of their cities broken? It seems it should decay, at least. If not just be gotten rid of, as you get grievances when they cede a city to you. It seems to disappear if you liberate one of their cities, not sure if there are other triggers. At best, it's poorly implemented.

 

It's removed when you give a city to them, any city, it doesn't need to be one you conquered.

This penalty is definitely a bad idea that should have been removed a looong time ago. It doesn't make any sense and it's misleading for people that doesn't know about it. Someone who is careful about grievances while taking a city, will just feel like the system doesn't work, since the AI will hate them for occupying cities anyway. I honestly don't understand why it still exist. It should either be removed or replaced for something that at least is intuitive.

 

Seems sensible to me. Why would any nation stop being cross about you taking one of their Cities?

The Mechanic also makes peaceful expansion more tactical, because if the AI settles a location before you it’s not as simple as just capturing that City.

 

For me, the problem with this penalty isn't as much that it exists, but how unintuitive it is. There's a whole system in the game telling you that it's okay to take a city after the AI declared war on you, for example, but when you do so, you find yourself with a -18 penalty and no explanation of what exactly that is and how to get rid of it. The option to ask the AI to cede cities gives the idea that the AI shouldn't be complaining about occupied cities, reason why people often thinks that cede remove that penalty, but there's no relation whatsoever. There's a disconnection between the occupied status, which is removed when you make peace, and the penalty that is described by the same term. The city isn't considered occupied anymore, but you still being penalized because of occupation (?). The loyalty penalty from grievances has the same issue, being presented as a penalty from occupation. To learn how to remove this penalty, you need to stumble on the fact it's removed by giving a city back or find out about it in a forum. Once you know how to do it, the penalty encourages you to do shenanigans to get rid of it, which just feels out of place. Loyalty made it worse, since the AI can't tell the difference between a city that they can keep and one they can't, so you can give a city to the AI that you know will flip back to you.

I don't mind if a such a penalty exists, but Firaxis really needs to take some time to refine how it's presented to the player, to consider exactly what this penalty is supposed to be and what is its role in the game. The way it is, it isn't working and it hurts the grievances system badly, since players that aren't familiarized with the penalty end up blaming grievances for their diplomatic shortcomes, even though grievances isn't affecting them. It's a similar situation to the cede mechanic before GS. It was a misleading piece of useless garbage, into they made it mandatory in GS. The mechanic still the same, but it makes sense now, it fits in the game. The occupation penalty just need some adjustment to make sense, to fit. If they can't do that, then it would be better if they just remove it.

 

But if that's the reason, it shouldn't just totally disappear if you liberate or gift them a city unrelated to your ownership of one of their cities.

I can understand a permanent negative diplo for owning another civ's city, but (1) it should be smaller or decay to a smaller number than 18, (2) it shouldn't totally disappear for actions unrelated to that city, and (3) it should be modable (at least, I haven't found any mods that can change it or anything in resources put together for modders that indicates it can be changed).

 

Completely agree Diplomacy (including Diplo Modifiers) are not described well.

I don’t really disagree, but it sort of doesn’t bother me that much. I’m okay with the size of the penalty and that the penalty doesn’t really degrade. I just play on the basis that if I’m taking someone’s cities then diplomacy is going to be harder with them. Not impossible, just harder.

Re gifting cities back, the game is going to just have these sorts of exports, and it’s a decision people need to make whether they exploit them or not. You can actually counter the negative modifier without giving back unrelated cities, as in have enough positive modifiers to offset the negative, it just takes a lot of work and some luck. Or you can just accept they’re not going to like you, and just enjoy having periodic fights with them etc. That can be fun too.

Ultimately, I think most problems with Diplomacy boil down to it being poorly explained.

 

The problem is that, the same as the permanent favor modifier for taking capitals. It contradicts the main mechanics in the game, the core of the design, and the developers themselves. Diplomacy was designed and is presented as a dinamic process that takes context into account and tries to reflect how real diplomacy works. So penalties in relationship take eras and other factors into account, will fade overtime depending on future relationships, and consider other complex factors such as trade, agendas or religion.

Then, I think they saw that some systems could be abused and instead of balancing the existing mechanics properly, they decided to just patch the problem with a fixed penalty that discouraged the playstyle they didn't want, even if it does not make sense or results in other unfair situations.

Since nuance is hard to find anyway, those changes will get the support from many of the people that actually wanted to end the exploits.

I think this is just another example of not using or having the time and care needed to fix something. The result may work, but it is just a patch that does not really fit the game, and that also makes the game more rigid than it should.

 

Definitely think that the penalty shouldn't apply when the capital city flips to you due to loyalty pressure.

 

That for sure, I also think that conquering two capitals should not leave you out of the WC for the rest of the game, it should scale a bit better. And the penalty should apply when razing the capital, not only for occupying it. Also could take into account who declared war, and should definitely take into account the age; a permanent diplomatic penalty, for warmongering in a time before diplomacy and grievances does not make sense at all. Also, does the AI know that taking a capital in early game (the only time they want to do this) will ruin their economy for the rest of the game given how much they value DF?. But you know you solve one problem and create half a dozen of other problems when making things fast without really thinking about it.

 

You can't raze capitals so it has to tied to occupying them.

 

Mod behavior, my bad. Now at least that makes sense. However, thinking about it. Should not the penalty apply for wiping out a civilization instead, or at least in addition? If the idea is to not abuse the DV by having too much DF after wipping out your neighbours, why tie the system to the capital?.

You can abuse it anyway by only leaving them with their capital. But should you get no penalty for wiping out a civ that lost the capital, if you take a capital from a player that conquered it makes any ingame sense that the original conquerer is inmediately forgiven and you take the penalty, even if the original civ does not exist?. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

This is just me, but why is wrong to assume that if you conquer half the planet you will have more diplomatic power? I get it everyone should hate you, except diplomacy does not work like this, but if you are trying to balance the game why not making favor be just like the inverse of grievances with one sigle mechanic, that takes context properly into account.

DF should be just an expression of the diplomatic relationships, not a weird coin with some separated rules. Just make grievances for military occupation of foreign capitals fade much slower or not fade at all, but so you can still have positive DF if you manage to have good relationships with your neighbours despite this.

Im probably overthinking it at this point, the thing is how is that Fxs seems to have dedicated less time than me to think about it?

 

There are mods out there that cut that stuff out.

 

Name, please?

 

Deal Blocker 2 could be what you are looking for:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2140355660

 

I couldn't agree more with this. Although I am of the CiV mindset that we should be able to denounce a friend that is being a bad actor, or in the case of massive aggression towards a CS DoW them immediately. This could be resolved by possibly reworking the Protectorate Casus Belli. Still I do like being able to back stab as it has happened in history and could add some fun to a Domination victory especially when enacting the Prisoners Dilemma.

 

Yeah I agree completely with this. Having a friend/ally attack your CS is beyond obnoxious, and mainly because there's nothing you can do about it besides passive unit-blocking (and most times, by the time you realize what's happening its too late to get units there for this anyways). Its completely nonsensical that there is no option to at least ask for a promise to not attack your CS, like you can do about converting your cities or settling near you. And you should absolutely be able to DoW an ally, especially for attacking your city-state: make it carry significant grievances, and/or make other civs unwilling to ally with you in the future, or whatever other penalties they want to attach to it, but it should be possible.

 

There’s no point in fixing bugs or AI issues if they’re going to add more content. First add all the content and then make the balance changes.

I suspect (rather hope) that a combat based DLC or pack will be released. I think there’s probably a bit more they can do there.