Spring Patch Info

[TheBlueKing]

Maybe we should make a poll here and ask all members if they would like to see Firaxis communicating with us more or not? Maybe then Firaxis will decide to spend more time on communication with their users?

Right now it seems like they are afraid of direct communication with users.

 

[kb27787]

I couldn't disagree more.

The last thing this game needs is for diplomacy to be reduced to The Sims-style input-output. Wars are overwhelmingly about opportunity, not diplomatic penalties. I am not a fan of the AI being forced to play in a way entirely at odds with the human player. The AI shouldn't declare war arbitrarily, of course not, but if it sees a weaker enemy and some land/resources it wants to acquire, it should plan an invasion and follow through accordingly. They also shouldn't declare war just because someone was mean to them, with no tangible war gains.

Warmonger penalties are already high enough. The problem is that the bonuses of diplomatic relations are almost always insufficient to dissuade you from accruing the penalties. That is not solved by nerfing war into oblivion. Making anyone who dabbles in war into a pariah just forces them to remain a warmonger for the rest of the game.

Well, if diplomatic relations are insufficient to dissuade a warmonger, do we have any other alternative? Otherwise, just turn this game into starcraft or something already, as the best way to play is to always just destroy everyone on the map (and being a pariah is not bad at all since those AI will hate you anyway regardless of if you're nice or not nice). The thing is diplo is bugged? (or intended?) I do not know. But supposedly once you conquer a large portion of land, even though you've liberated enough CS to make warmongering penalty non-existent on the diplomacy screen, AI at friendly (+30) still will not accept friendship after eras of alliance and eventually they will do joint war against you (sometimes suicidally too, despite your army being way more promoted/advanced the AI has a horrible algorithm for calculating military strength).

 

[WillowBrook]

Well, the patch delay has given me the chance to see how much I can get out of Magnus chop overflows. Nothing spectacular so far, but I haven't really tried to abuse it before, something different to think about.

 

[kb27787]

Sounds like you want to turn this game into Brave New World. I disagree with almost everything except #1. I'm not sure why they went away from aggressive and passive civs. As it is, any civ at any time can declare war on you. There are no good guys or "bad" guys. Makes me wonder if they did this for politically correct reasons and didn't want to offend any groups of people. It's just strange having leaders like Shaka and Genghis be nice guys, and they usually are in my games. #1 I completely agree with.
I have my hunches about political correctness in this game, and I feel it's why they won't make certain leaders like Shaka aggressive. I also feel it's why American and England suck in this game.


#2 just isn't realistic from a historical point of view. Wars were very lucrative for everyone all the way up until WW1 and WW2, it was only then it became too economically draining to wage offensive war. Empires like Rome and many other benefited greatly from war, it didn't hurt them at all. War should only become punishing in the atomic era in my honest opinion. Even in the atomic and information eras, you should still be able to wage war if you have objectives you can quickly attain, but long drawn out wars should be very punishing both on offense and defense.

I hated #3 in BNW. It forced me to play the game peacefully. Once I had an embargo on me and my economy was falling apart and units disbanding. War was just too punishing in that game, which made playing the warmongering civs less fun. I felt like the game was telling me to play a certain way, but why give us warmongering civs if you don't want us to use them? Pass on this one.

#4 I'm okay with after a certain point (the atomic age I mentioned a couple paragraphs up).

Well, in the case of #2, we should bring back the standing army tax from BNW As of now, because warring gives you whole, free, cities with no cost of increasing the production of your next settler, and basically free districts, it should be balanced somehow not for historical accuracy, but for game balance purposes. (city states is another aspect with needs balancing... too often not enough CS around because AI conquers them making leaders like Tamar and Pericles non-relevant... BNW did a pretty amazing job with CS as CS were TOUGH to crack back then, and if they conquered CS somehow the world hated them).

 

[Karmah]

I got a very similar response from Steam about flying bombers in War Thunder.

omg but bomber suxx you noob

 

[historix69]

Well, in the case of #2, we should bring back the standing army tax from BNW As of now, because warring gives you whole, free, cities with no cost of increasing the production of your next settler, and basically free districts, it should be balanced somehow not for historical accuracy, but for game balance purposes. (city states is another aspect with needs balancing... too often not enough CS around because AI conquers them making leaders like Tamar and Pericles non-relevant... BNW did a pretty amazing job with CS as CS were TOUGH to crack back then, and if they conquered CS somehow the world hated them).

In Civ 5 all CS were linked like being one nation while in Civ 6 all CS count separate and have separate AI slots. Conquering a few CS in Civ 5 could turn into a permanent war with all CS worldwide.

 

[Roy P Cat]

Perhaps the patch is delayed while Firaxis runs the code through a spell check.

 

[Ondolindë]

Perhaps the patch is delayed while Firaxis runs the code through a spell check.

I certainly hope so. It would be terribly embarrassing.

 

[Xur]

To firaxis defense. If you follow the developers on twitter and be constructive (dont have facebook but should be same). Sarah/Ed/Pete. You can communicate with them easely. I’ve scored new information multiple times about content R&F and once date next live stream unannouncement. It is true that they are super sensitive on releasing fixed dates. And a lot of new info is very scripted.

I’m not that angry about knowing exact dates as i’m sure the devs cant be certain if they would make it themselves. And thus get burned. What i’m worried about is them not really communicating about major flaws of the game. Just visit the comment section on social media and the same issues keep repeating themselves since launch.

Maybe I'm old, but I like that Paradox has a forum where they answer stuff at random and they have a blog. I get a feeling for where their games are going without them promosing anything. It is easy for everyone to find information on an official forum, unlike random employee twitters. I don't care for 2K Firaxis facebook/twitter answers that resemble marketing more than actual community work... and I'm not gonna stalk employees for answers either. Make a good game with a good AI and you don't need any marketing.

I don't care about getting a date for the patch. I just dont understand why this video was made at all. It would make sense if it was accompanied with full patchnotes or the patch. But the video alone just annoys me. It's like too little butter over too much bread. Much ado about nothing... etc.

Random rant from an annoyed random nerd.

 

[stealth_nsk]

War weariness (internal penalties) is a good alternative to Warmonger penalties (external ones) and it could work even in multiplayer. The tricky thing is to implement them right.

Anyway, Civ6 diplomacy is already about warmonger penalties, so we unlikely to see war restrictions based on ear weariness at least before Civ7.

 

[acluewithout]

Do captured cities suffer any loyalty penalties, particularly after hostilities are over?

They really should if they don’t. If not a permanent penalty, then one that lasts x number of turns based on the original population. That would crimp conquest, by creating the possibility that captured territory may not be worth the effort to hold.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I loved an idea I heard where unit maintenance costs should increase if they're in enemy territory, maybe even as much as +100%. This would punish warmongering and would also be realistic. If you're planning a war you need to make sure to save up some cash first, because war is expensive. We could even see extended wars bankrupt countries and force them to sue for peace/withdraw.

 

[acluewithout]

Civ (sort of) already captures this with different healing rates for different territory.

 

[Trengilly]

Civ (sort of) already captures this with different healing rates for different territory.

Except you usually can heal faster in enemy territory because you can pillage farms.

Do captured cities suffer any loyalty penalties, particularly after hostilities are over?

Yes they start with reduced loyalty and that in turn reduces yields. But to avoid loyalty flipping you want to capture cities as quickly as possible and then they quickly recover in a few turns.

 

[kaspergm]

Well, in the case of #2, we should bring back the standing army tax from BNW As of now, because warring gives you whole, free, cities with no cost of increasing the production of your next settler, and basically free districts, it should be balanced somehow not for historical accuracy, but for game balance purposes. (city states is another aspect with needs balancing... too often not enough CS around because AI conquers them making leaders like Tamar and Pericles non-relevant... BNW did a pretty amazing job with CS as CS were TOUGH to crack back then, and if they conquered CS somehow the world hated them).

I think warmongering is an absolutely horrible mechanism for controlling warring, in terms of gameplay. And I do think warring should be controlled, because it's currently way too easy to go on a conquering spree, it just shouldn't be by some stupid "everybody hates you for just the slightest warmongering" mechanism - which not only is bad because it kills a lot of joy for games where you do some limited early-game warmongering (which really should be the norm if we want any kind of realism), but also because it fails its larger purpose, because diplomatic relationships become worthless if you intend to do full-scale domination.

I think the loyalty mechanism is a step in the right direction, even if it isn't well implemented yet. Generally, taking and holding foreign cities is way too easy. There should be much more emphasis on leaving a powerful garrison there, particularly in large cities - an newly captured undefended city should have very large change of spawning rebels or loosing massive loyalty, conversely posting a garrison should give a significant loyalty boost. In general, capturing a city should spawn a number of rebel units belonging to the former owner, to make it more difficult to hold the city, and to give the AI some help in controlling further advance. Razing cities should carry significant penalties, not just in terms of external diplomacy, but also in terms of internal relations, both happiness in your own cities (depending on era, government and casus belli), and a flat loyalty penalty in all cities belonging to the previous owner of the razed city. Finally, I think happiness should have a much more significant effect on rebels spawning, in your own lands and in enemy lands. I can run unhappy cities for prolonged periods of time, yet the number of times I have had rebel units spawning can be counted on one hand.

These things alone may not be enough, but it would generally push the game in a better direction imo. As things are currently, a big problem with the game is that once you break the initial defenses of the opponent, you can pretty much run him over more or less unopposed.

 

[historix69]

Do captured cities suffer any loyalty penalties, particularly after hostilities are over?

They really should if they don’t. If not a permanent penalty, then one that lasts x number of turns based on the original population. That would crimp conquest, by creating the possibility that captured territory may not be worth the effort to hold.

If captured cities become too useless, players will raze cities and settle them anew.
Please keep in mind that you need to control the capitals of all other civs for a Domination Victory and some people like to play with 30+ civs. If it is too difficult or costly to occupy cities, the game may become too limited.

 

[Hammurabbit]

Although it was far from perfect, I kind of liked the "puppet" cities in Civ V. You won the city in war, but it was not completely part of your empire and it took time and/or money to integrate it.

 

[acluewithout]

If captured cities become too useless, players will raze cities and settle them anew.
Please keep in mind that you need to control the capitals of all other civs for a Domination Victory and some people like to play with 30+ civs. If it is too difficult or costly to occupy cities, the game may become too limited.

Fair call. Maybe hold over loyalty issues could scale with era, just like warmonger penalties do.

I think there are two problems with warmonger though. First, after you build your army, you don’t really have to invest any further to hold cities. That’s why warmongering is so powerful: why build settlers when you can build an army? Having an empire through conquest should require additional investment to hold it together.

Second, it’s hard to stop capturing other civ’s cities, because come the mid and late game there’s still not much else to do. I think having new free cities randomly spawn would help, because then civs could fight each other over those cities. I think some sort of vassaling would also help, because at least it would give you another option than conquest.

I don’t think nerfing war is really the answer. A better AI would obviously help. But beyond that, war just needs to create more opportunity cost: either by forcing you to spend blood and treasure holding onto your cities, and by giving you other options that compete with conquest.

 

[Abaxial]

I think warmongering is an absolutely horrible mechanism for controlling warring, in terms of gameplay. And I do think warring should be controlled, because it's currently way too easy to go on a conquering spree

That's simply because the way the game is at present, with the AI not very smart at handling its armed forces, going for a domination victory is an easy course. But then so is winning a cultural victory, so much so that it's easy to win by culture accidentally when you were meaning to get some other victory. And actually, a religious victory is not hard once you work out how to do it, so there are times when I've converted everyone before I managed to conquer them.

What it boils down to is that Civ VI is not difficult to win, so the question is not really whether X is "too easy" so much as "is it fun". I don't think that constantly getting messages "they think you're a warmonger" is fun, so it's a bad mechanic. Sometimes it's true, if you are aiming for domination, but sometimes a war is just a case of a pre-emptive defensive strike.

 

[RohirrimElf]

Maybe I'm old, but I like that Paradox has a forum where they answer stuff at random and they have a blog. I get a feeling for where their games are going without them promosing anything. It is easy for everyone to find information on an official forum, unlike random employee twitters. I don't care for 2K Firaxis facebook/twitter answers that resemble marketing more than actual community work... and I'm not gonna stalk employees for answers either. Make a good game with a good AI and you don't need any marketing.

I don't care about getting a date for the patch. I just dont understand why this video was made at all. It would make sense if it was accompanied with full patchnotes or the patch. But the video alone just annoys me. It's like too little butter over too much bread. Much ado about nothing... etc.

Random rant from an annoyed random nerd.

I’ve just praised paradox for their style of cummunicating and long term support couple of pages back it is a big reason why i’m stearing more away from the civ franchise each year into paradox heaven