So what do you feel is still broken?

[Inhalaattori]

I guess UI is the thing where they could make big improvements pretty easily. Sure they have made it better over the years, but it still could use a lot of improvement.
- The misleading UI when it comes to moving units is probably the most irritating.
- Trade UI should allow you to + or - gold/diplo favor in the main screen without extra click. Its should also have options for +1, +10, +100, -1, -10, -100 etc. to make trade easier/faster.

Other things:
- Recruit Partisans should be made harder and Ai should do it less. It often gets ridiculous.
- Constant or repetitive unnecessary messages from other Ai civs.

Small thing that irritates me is that when enemy spy removes your governor the UI doesnt show when you get him back like it does when you earn a new promotion.

 

[enKage]

In any case, I don't want the AI to backstab non stop, if you want the AI to be agressive just don't make friends.

It is not so simple.
Diplomacy is a part of the game and not using it is not a solution. Especially if 9 of 10 my games is Cree. Alliance for Cree is exploring, granting free maps of the whole world pre t100. Kind of not normal, when I reach cartography lets say t75, meet other continent t80 and before t85 everyone there is my ally.
Literally, making an alliance with recently met civ takes few turns. On deity
I want an alliance with nearby civ to attract routes as it means even more gold for Cree.
I don't want alliance with others, so I do not make more after first alliance for free circumnavigation. And what happens?
Endless visits of every leader asking for friendship. I disagree. So after 2 turns all of them come again. So I denounce them to make them stop. So they come for tribute every 3 turns. Even denounced they don't ttack. So I take a city state to trigger intervention - success, there will be voting! Voting - not passed
The only way to stop it is friendship


Anyway
As I said not using part of the game is not a solution.
It is like solving other problems here:
If you think science is too fast, don't build campuses
If you think there is too much gold, give 100 per turn to every civ
If you think 1ypt causes problems with movement, don't build any units
If you think trade panel is bad, stop using trade
If choping is too poweful, don't chop

 

[Nassim]

It is not so simple.
Diplomacy is a part of the game and not using it is not a solution. Especially if 9 of 10 my games is Cree. Alliance for Cree is exploring, granting free maps of the whole world pre t100. Kind of not normal, when I reach cartography lets say t75, meet other continent t80 and before t85 everyone there is my ally.
Literally, making an alliance with recently met civ takes few turns. On deity
I want an alliance with nearby civ to attract routes as it means even more gold for Cree.
I don't want alliance with others, so I do not make more after first alliance for free circumnavigation. And what happens?
Endless visits of every leader asking for friendship. I disagree. So after 2 turns all of them come again. So I denounce them to make them stop. So they come for tribute every 3 turns. Even denounced they don't ttack. So I take a city state to trigger intervention - success, there will be voting! Voting - not passed
The only way to stop it is friendship


Anyway
As I said not using part of the game is not a solution.
It is like solving other problems here:
If you think science is too fast, don't build campuses
If you think there is too much gold, give 100 per turn to every civ
If you think 1ypt causes problems with movement, don't build any units
If you think trade panel is bad, stop using trade
If choping is too poweful, don't chop

If we are talking about the backstabbing point, I still disagree, the fact that civs don't attack you if you are allied is not a problem, it's the logical effect of said alliance.
A civ attacking you while they are your allies and have no grievance against you would seem to me much more of a broken feature than them respecting your alliance.
So yeah, it's that simple, alliance are in the game as a mechanic for maintaining peace and gaining mutual benefits from trade, complaining that they maintain peace is not like complaining something is too powerful, it's complaining that something fits its intented goal that you don't want to reach. That'd be like complaining that holy sites give great prophet points when all you wanted was faith.

The fact that the AI keeps making stupid or repetitive requests is an all different issue that I agree needs to be adressed.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

But I didn't say that the game should let you be best friends with everyone on the highest difficulty. You don't need people backstabbing you left and right in order to have some wars.

Yes. Yes you do. The player will only declare an advantageous war, and the player will do everything in their power to stop the AI from declaring an advantageous war on the player, thus the only time meaningfully dangerous wars happen is when the player does not want a war to happen.

In the current iteration of Civ 6, I can stop any Civ from backstabbing me not just through friendship, but through simply manipulating modifiers. It is absolutely trivial.

if you want the AI to be agressive just don't make friends.

I feel this is wrong for many reasons. First, the player will likely choose what is advantageous for them, unless they're a roleplayer. Second, you need friendships for alliances, and you need alliances for many reasons. Third, backstabs should be possible during friendship and alliances, because otherwise there would be no point to backstabbing. When an AI that dislike you declares on you that is not a backstab. The word loses all meaning then. Fourth, requiring the player to artificially restrict themselves in their gameplay is not good game design at all. I can also artificially force myself to play with a single city and then claim Civ 6 is a really difficult game. Makes little sense.

I however do agree with you that for some AIs it does not make sense to backstab, since loyalty is part of their persona, and that is totally okay in my eyes. I also sort of like Weraptors idea, but then again it makes backstabs entirely telegraphed with these specific conditions. If backstabs are telegraphed, are they still meaningfully backstabs?

 

[criZp]

Yes. Yes you do. The player will only declare an advantageous war, and the player will do everything in their power to stop the AI from declaring an advantageous war on the player, thus the only time meaningfully dangerous wars happen is when the player does not want a war to happen.

What? You're saying wars don't count as real wars if you considered the possibility that the other guy would attack you?

 

[Jkchart]

The changes to naval melee are very encouraging in the one of unit balance.

however, they should take note of their decision on Galleys to be at 30 strength. This number is “halfway between an ancient and classical unit.”
Clearly they recognize that pure ancient era units with no upgrade do not survive the classical. So let us apply this logic to spear men which have the same issue and would also benefit massively from being at 30 strength.

I would also STRONGLY encourage them to make pikes 45 strength.
Further, now that a number of Renaissance and industrial era units have been added to the game, we should shift modern era base strength to 75 instead of 70. As far as I can tell, this 5 point departure was because there was such a big gap in units.
Basically read the logic behind my balance mod, which is nothing more than more consistently applying the very rules firaxis designed the units with.

That and rethinking certain resource consumption choices on units. Should ironclads require coal, or should they use iron? (No Pre modern unit except them needs fuel.)
Should helicopters be strength 82 if they need aluminum? Should they be buffed to account for how strong planes are, or should they be changed to need oil? Either if fine.
Should infantry need oil, given that tanks are much stronger and also use oil? (I would contend that infantry shouldn’t use it but mech infantry do.)
Shoukd destroyers be the resource free naval unit, or nuclear subs? I would argue for several reasons that naval melee should be the “budget navy.”

Etc. not very hard issues to implement because it’s just table updates that can be done in a hot second. As long as there are consistent rules that lead to consistent roles, I am happy.

Yes to all of this.

 

[Pistol90]

I just saw forest tiles with +40 food, +40 production ... on marathon speed. I cant believe they didnt balance it out. For a year testing nobody played marathon game and saw how broken forest fires are ???!!!

P.S. Also devs cowardness to make game harder and more random is annoying for me. Like EVERY single natural disaster MUST have positive side as well. If forest burns it just burns, it does not get stronger after it regrown --- stop making everything better when its destroyed.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

What? You're saying wars don't count as real wars if you considered the possibility that the other guy would attack you?

There are no possibilities with war in Civ 6, afaik. Maybe someone with good knowledge of the code can enlighten us. There is no dice roll involved to my knowledge. If you were a mathematical genius you could simply look at all the data (mil. strength of both factions, relations, territory) and you could verify with 100% certainty when and why an AI will declare on you. I am not great at maths, yet I have not been surprised by a single war in the last 300 hours of playing Civ. Compare that to Civ 5....

Of course wars are still wars if you see them coming, so there is no disagreement between us there. But they're not really meaningful wars for the player, because you can take every measure to counteract them. And good players will always come out on top if they know all the variables. A degree of randomness really changes that!

 

[FenrisWolf456]

While a lot of the discussion has been interesting, there doesn't seem to be a lot that I would consider broken that's been mentioned. Annoyances, sure, but partisans and demands are functional.

But I do have to agree with pathing, which seems very hit and miss. The number of times I think a unit can go further, only to stop halfway, is nigh uncountable now. I had to look up how to force an end of turn because two units ended up on top of each other trying to reach points that were miscalculated.

And the greater pathing issue is the embarking/disembarking randomness. In my latest game, I had clicked for a unit in water to move to another point in water that was within it's movement range. Instead of remaining in the water, it decides to disembark on the peninsula to the right, rather than the open water to the left, thus ending movement. Then to embark the next turn, ending movement. So a move that should have been one turn became three turns. Or the fetish to jump into the water when land movement is the same distance/time.

I want them back just so that I can get the Betrayal Emergency achievement... Either they're intended to be in the game but don't function, or were in it previously (though I don't recall ever experiencing it) and removed.

They are certainly still in the game. A couple of weeks ago I had triggered one playing Sweden. There was a dearth of desert on my map, and Spain had the only decent patch of it. Problem being, we had been allies for centuries. But hey, I needed the achievement, and better open air museums. So I let the alliance peter out, denounced, and soon went to war. Got my desert city, but also got a Betrayal Emergency called on me. I do believe the achievement goes either way; participate or have one called on you.

Friendship seems a little strong in the game. There should be actions and ways to break friendships early, with appropriate consequences (grievances and betrayal emergencies). At the very least, you should be able to demand that they end wars with other allies or controlled city states. Alliances, I would say are good as they are; there's a lot more politics and law involved with a true alliance, rather than just winking and finger-gunning to Gilgabro across the GC table.

 

[PhilBowles]

I’m not sure iron should even be a strategic resource. It makes up five percent of the earth's crust and is one of the most common elements on earth, right after idiots and episodes of the Simpson's.

In a game where wheat, rice, coffee, bananas etc. are static features of the landscape and can't be planted elsewhere, and horses and cattle are confined to individual hexes long after you discover Animal Husbandry, iron as a resource is a reasonable abstraction. You just need to bear in mind that the resource system in Civ games bears no relation to reality. They exist purely as game constraints.

The other strategics are way too rare. There needs to be more even if it means increasing the cost of some units to compensate. Also going back to tall vs wide you should be able to increase yields by building up infrastructure. It should be expensive enough that just having more oil is better, but cheap enough that it's an option.

I haven't found that. For instance, in my Maya game I had natural access to one or more sources of every strategic resource except uranium within the boundaries of my founded cities, all of which were within 6 tiles of my capital. I do think that was an above average start resource-wise, but most civs aren't going to be confined to an area that restricted. Even with power requirements I think most strategic resources are too generous, particularly since most units that need resources other than aircraft aren't substantially better than ones you can get without them and you don't need to maintain very many melee units. More ranged units should probably have strategic resource requirements - right now it's basically Bombards and Rocket Artillery, and the latter are largely useless since they become redundant as soon as you have bombers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I’m not sure iron should even be a strategic resource. It makes up five percent of the earth's crust and is one of the most common elements on earth, right after idiots and episodes of the Simpson's.

I think every miner you have that's not on a resource should produce iron ore. Maybe make current iron deposits 'rich' iron which gives bone us iron.

The other strategics are way too rare. There needs to be more even if it means increasing the cost of some units to compensate. Also going back to tall vs wide you should be able to increase yields by building up infrastructure. It should be expensive enough that just having more oil is better, but cheap enough that it's an option.

The problem with all the 'strategic' Resources at bottom is that the amount required changes by orders of magnitude during the game depending on what you are trying to build with them.

Iron is a good example. NOBODY in the Ancient to Medieval worlds ever had a shortage of Iron once they knew what to do with it. The Roman Empire had no recorded problem finding enough iron to equip 50 Legions, 250,000 + men, with iron-based weapons and armor. Italy in the 20th century, on the other hand, had to import iron to build a single Battleship. Why? Because it took about 100 - 120 tons of worked iron to equip a Legion, or about 6000 tons to equip the entire Imperial Roman Legionary army. The average Battleship, on the other hand, took 20,000 to 35,000 tons of iron and steel. And while Iron (and Aluminum ore) may be very common, deposits of it concentrated enough and large enough to provide that kind of tonnage are not.

Realistically, there should be serious Resource Problems in the Industrial and later Eras - just ask Germany and Japan about Oil in World War Two, the lack of which effectively strangled both countries' war efforts. BUT putting the 'historical' shortages into the game would make it essentially unplayable. Think about it: you've got a nice little Civ going until the Industrial Era, and then discover that you have no access to Oil or Aluminum and your Iron deposits are insufficient to build modern ships (or railroads: a single kilometer of light weight track takes as much iron ore as equipping two Legions!) and suddenly you change from The Roman Empire to WWII Italy, that hasn't got enough oil to get its fleet to sea all at once nor enough iron industry to build a medium tank. The game is essentially over for you. After 150+ hours of play, that would be the last time you open the game!

Resources need to be completely refigured, but that is not likely to happen until Civ VII, if ever. The difference between 'normal' and 'Industrial Quantities' of Resources, especially mineral resources, needs to be included, ways for the player to increase production of Resources or substitute for them (Little Known Fun Fact: Aluminum was considered a critical resource in WWII by almost everyone, so the British, Germans, and Soviets all designed and built aircraft all or in part out of wood, and some of them, like the British Mosquito fighter-bomber or the Soviet La-5 fighter, were in no way inferior to their metal counterparts), and the possibility for massive and continuous Trade in resources all need to be added to the game.

 

[tedhebert]

As for strategic resources, I'm 100% on the 'not enough on the map' bandwagon. Especially when you just don't want to play wide. In my Maya game, I had to go and settle 2 late badly placed cities to get oil and aluminum. That should be alleviated.

My take: There should be more strategic on the map, but ! They (some of them or all, to see) should have an exploitation limit ! Example: an Iron deposit has a limit of 100 iron mined; At 2 per turn, that means after 50 turns it dries out and the tile reverts to it's standard, non-ressource tile (ex: a hill). AND YOU SHOULD GET A WARNING WHEN IT HAPPENS ... I know, caps... but they're so bad at thinking about this ;-) And for oil, well it's 33 turns at 3 a turn !

 

[FenrisWolf456]

As for strategic resources, I'm 100% on the 'not enough on the map' bandwagon. Especially when you just don't want to play wide. In my Maya game, I had to go and settle 2 late badly placed cities to get oil and aluminum. That should be alleviated.

My take: There should be more strategic on the map, but ! They (some of them or all, to see) should have an exploitation limit ! Example: an Iron deposit has a limit of 100 iron mined; At 2 per turn, that means after 50 turns it dries out and the tile reverts to it's standard, non-ressource tile (ex: a hill). AND YOU SHOULD GET A WARNING WHEN IT HAPPENS ... I know, caps... but they're so bad at thinking about this ;-) And for oil, well it's 33 turns at 3 a turn !

Same with my Maya game, and add in uranium which wasn't on my particular island either. I ended up setting up another 5 cities on a northern tundra landmass to get access to those resources. Normally not too much of an issue, but seem antithetical to civ concept (or any sort of tall play really).

Not sure your solution would really solve the issue, but rather just delay the necessity. Though, it could promote more aggressive play. As your own resources run out, you'll need new sources, which are probably controlled. Or you may be inclined to go to war earlier to secure those additional resources before they get used by your opponents.

 

[UWHabs]

As for strategic resources, I'm 100% on the 'not enough on the map' bandwagon. Especially when you just don't want to play wide. In my Maya game, I had to go and settle 2 late badly placed cities to get oil and aluminum. That should be alleviated.

My take: There should be more strategic on the map, but ! They (some of them or all, to see) should have an exploitation limit ! Example: an Iron deposit has a limit of 100 iron mined; At 2 per turn, that means after 50 turns it dries out and the tile reverts to it's standard, non-ressource tile (ex: a hill). AND YOU SHOULD GET A WARNING WHEN IT HAPPENS ... I know, caps... but they're so bad at thinking about this ;-) And for oil, well it's 33 turns at 3 a turn !

If you're going to have resources run out, you need to also be able to discover new ones or else the map is going to be way too packed in the ancient era. You could bring back the old way where working a tile gave a small chance of discovering a resource on it on any turn, and perhaps late game you could have a "prospector" unit that would be able to search for new oil deposits in the late game.

 

[criZp]

As long as resources only stay relevant for 2 eras, a mechanic about exhausting the supply would not matter much, I think.

 

[Virdrago]

As long as resources only stay relevant for 2 eras, a mechanic about exhausting the supply would not matter much, I think.

Except they stay relevant for 5 or 6. Watching large empires who control a quarter of the world's land attacking you with swordsmen and horsemen in the modern age, because they have no oil or niter anywhere in their part of the world, can be a little immersion breaking. And if their horses or iron suddenly run out... The AI has no idea how to deal with unit upkeep, and I don't like the implementation because of it. For this reason I wouldn't want any resources to disappear, but I do believe there should either be way more strategics at least to help the AI, or there shouldn't be an upkeep.

 

[Sostratus]

As for strategic resources, I'm 100% on the 'not enough on the map' bandwagon. Especially when you just don't want to play wide. In my Maya game, I had to go and settle 2 late badly placed cities to get oil and aluminum. That should be alleviated.

You have a strategic system that has to play nice with a power system and a unit combat system.
You need to balance the idea that different parts of the map have some strategics but not others, with the fact that a player who doesn't have a certain resource needs to have a decent chance at being able to acquire that resource without relying on it.
As an example, if I have no oil, and my neighbor does, there's almost no way for me to get it from him via war. Since the only non oil melee unit, the AT crew, is hard countered by an oil unit. If that oil is at sea, you have to have a coal navy.

This is just a microcosm but it's not as prevalent in the other parts of the game, where you can pursue iron (knights+cuirs) niter (muskets, bombards) and horses (courser/cavalry) along with having resource free pike & shot and ranged units to round it out. So with just 1 of those 3, which you are almost guaranteed to have, you can have at least 1 era to shine in the mid game. I do still think they need a way to make those resources useful once the units are obsolete - I attempted a mod in my signature to get at that, but FXS could come up with something better.

 

[PhilBowles]

You have a strategic system that has to play nice with a power system and a unit combat system.
You need to balance the idea that different parts of the map have some strategics but not others, with the fact that a player who doesn't have a certain resource needs to have a decent chance at being able to acquire that resource without relying on it.
As an example, if I have no oil, and my neighbor does, there's almost no way for me to get it from him via war. Since the only non oil melee unit, the AT crew, is hard countered by an oil unit. If that oil is at sea, you have to have a coal navy.

Strategic resources shouldn't automatically all be available to everyone - there would be no point having them at all if they weren't a constraint (and as above, I don't feel they're enough of one). Diplomacy should be useful for something, and you can trade for resources even though you'll eventually run low and trade for some more. Even if you just trade for enough to build your units and let your stock run down, a unit without supplies of its resource just takes a minor hit to its combat effectiveness as far as I'm aware, so you can do without topping up for a while.

You don't generally see the AI without access to strategic resource units, and the AI loves asking the player for strategic resources - I presume it actually succeeds in trading for them with other AIs.

 

[criZp]

Lacking resources is actually a -20 strength hit and no healing either.

 

[adrifranchise]

Forgive me if this has been said before but one useful trade feature I think that should be implemented is being able to trade strategic resources over a span of time like a 30 turn deal to simulate importing resources you may not have. The bulk trade is nice but is very temporary. Or if they can even include it in alliances where you can get a copy of the strategic resources and/or luxury. That would make diplomacy a lot more intriguing imo