State of the game for a returning player

[Bork of Boletaria]

Hey y'all, returning player here wondering what the current state of the game is. I haven't been following the game's development for a long while now and I'm wondering how some things have changed or if they've ever been addressed. Last time I played was pre-Gathering Storm for reference.

AI

• Does the AI use planes now? They were finally building the occasional fighter last time I played, but not many. I don't think they ever patrolled or did air sweeps either.
• Can they actually put up a fight against walled cities? Have they gotten better about not just dancing their units around waiting to be shot?
• Do allied civs still attack city states under your protection with no consequences?
• Can you still see allied spies operating in your own cities?

Game Mechanics

• Can districts be placed over strategic resources? One of the most annoying things in the game is planning out districts just to discover iron or niter halfway through developing a city and have it ruin all your planned adjacency bonuses.
• Does Tourism have any use at all besides winning? In Civ 5 you could pressure another civ's ideology, which could be useful for other victory types (or at least fun). But unless I'm misremembering in Civ6 tourism doesn't give you a single benefit until you've gotten enough to win, and therefore end, the game.
• Are there enough great people to go around? Or has the pacing of great people through the eras been adjusted? It always bothered me that they would run out so quickly leading to unlocking great people several eras ahead of the actual game era.
• Do apostles still have a limited amount of promotions? Has this ever been addressed? Is it actually intended that at some point you run out of promotions for new apostles?
• Do carriers get promotions for air operations? Pretty minor grievance but it stinks if they still only get xp for getting attacked.

Balance

• Is there actually a choice to governors now or are you still basically playing "wrong" if you're not using magnus to chop down every last tree and sitting Pingala in your capital the entire game? Some governors are (were?) just way better than others and too strong in general I thought.
• Lastly, and this is definitely the most opinionated question, is the pacing better? I personally always felt like production was way behind tech progression. As a whole tech progression felt too fast, which has always seemed like a tough balance to get right in the series. You seem to quickly reach a point in which you're getting new techs ever 3 or 4 turns, which leads to things like researching the next upgrades for units before you've even managed to build many, let alone march them to an enemy.

Anyway, that turned out to be a longer list than I expected. Would love to know what y'all think of how the game has changed with the last two expansions, for better or worse. I also realize that in a couple of weeks another patch will be coming out which could change some of these answers, oh well!

 

[HiRezAudio]

Some good questions. I'll try to answer with my admittedly limited knowledge:

• 1 - Does the AI use planes now? They were finally building the occasional fighter last time I played, but not many. I don't think they ever patrolled or did air sweeps either.
• 2 - Can they actually put up a fight against walled cities? Have they gotten better about not just dancing their units around waiting to be shot?
• 3 - Do allied civs still attack city states under your protection with no consequences?
• 4 - Can you still see allied spies operating in your own cities?

1 - Sometimes - in a recent game I was actually confronted with enemy Jet Bombers! Never yet seen a patrol or an air sweep though
2 - Nope.
3 - Oh yes. All the time. Do something about it, and you get denounced left, right & centre plus take one of their cities and you can almost guarantee a military emergency against you.
4 - No.

• 1 - Can districts be placed over strategic resources? One of the most annoying things in the game is planning out districts just to discover iron or niter halfway through developing a city and have it ruin all your planned adjacency bonuses.
• 2 - Does Tourism have any use at all besides winning? In Civ 5 you could pressure another civ's ideology, which could be useful for other victory types (or at least fun). But unless I'm misremembering in Civ6 tourism doesn't give you a single benefit until you've gotten enough to win, and therefore end, the game.
• 3 - Are there enough great people to go around? Or has the pacing of great people through the eras been adjusted? It always bothered me that they would run out so quickly leading to unlocking great people several eras ahead of the actual game era.
• 4 - Do apostles still have a limited amount of promotions? Has this ever been addressed? Is it actually intended that at some point you run out of promotions for new apostles?
• 5 - Do carriers get promotions for air operations? Pretty minor grievance but it stinks if they still only get xp for getting attacked.

1 - Yes, assuming the resource has not yet been revealed yet. Otherwise, no - unless it is a resource that can be harvested.
2 - None that I have ever found, no.
3 - The eras are still far, far too fast and all GP that are unclaimed at the turn of an era disappear forever. Claimed or not.
4 - No idea on this one, as I never, ever go for a religion or build Apostles. All my faith gets spent on National Parks and settlers/builders with the right era dedication.
5 - Not as far as I am aware, but again the only time I ever build carriers is to accompany a fleet invasion of another continent. They are pretty useless in any other case really

• 1 - Is there actually a choice to governors now or are you still basically playing "wrong" if you're not using magnus to chop down every last tree and sitting Pingala in your capital the entire game? Some governors are (were?) just way better than others and too strong in general I thought.
• 2 - Lastly, and this is definitely the most opinionated question, is the pacing better? I personally always felt like production was way behind tech progression. As a whole tech progression felt too fast, which has always seemed like a tough balance to get right in the series. You seem to quickly reach a point in which you're getting new techs ever 3 or 4 turns, which leads to things like researching the next upgrades for units before you've even managed to build many, let alone march them to an enemy.

1 - This is very much a matter of the way you play & the level you are playing on. Personally, I find that Pingala is absolutely necessary if playing on Deity otherwise you can easily fall too far behind. That said, I also often now use Victor early on if I am either close to one of the Angry Boys or planning an early push as the combat bonus plus the extra shots make putting him in the Unit Production city with both walls/encampment an absolute boon for wars in the early game, and capturing those extra cities combined with the guaranteed promotion after 2 more promotions helps me catch up faster simply by taking cities. These days, I sometimes use Magnus with the settler promotion in combination with the Ancestral Hall Gov. Plaza building, but if I am honest it is rare these days for that combo to be as effective as the Victor/Pingala combo.
2 - No. The eras fly past way, way too quickly at higher levels (because, I think, of the AI 80% boost on Deity) and I often find I am in the Renaissance period by 500AD - a full 1,000 years too soon. The only way to get better pacing is to slow the whole game down in terms of speed.

 

[Bork of Boletaria]

Some good questions. I'll try to answer with my admittedly limited knowledge ...

Thanks for taking the time to answer! All great information. Disappointing to see that some of these things have never been addressed, but ultimately not too surprising either . Oh well.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Does the AI use planes now? They were finally building the occasional fighter last time I played, but not many. I don't think they ever patrolled or did air sweeps either.

Negligible to nonexistent

Can they actually put up a fight against walled cities? Have they gotten better about not just dancing their units around waiting to be shot?

They've gotten better sometimes, but not against Medieval or better walls.

Do allied civs still attack city states under your protection with no consequences?

Yes and it's terrible.

Can you still see allied spies operating in your own cities?

Allies can not spy on you anymore.

• Can districts be placed over strategic resources? One of the most annoying things in the game is planning out districts just to discover iron or niter halfway through developing a city and have it ruin all your planned adjacency bonuses.

• Does Tourism have any use at all besides winning? In Civ 5 you could pressure another civ's ideology, which could be useful for other victory types (or at least fun). But unless I'm misremembering in Civ6 tourism doesn't give you a single benefit until you've gotten enough to win, and therefore end, the game.

No to both.

Are there enough great people to go around? Or has the pacing of great people through the eras been adjusted? It always bothered me that they would run out so quickly leading to unlocking great people several eras ahead of the actual game era.

It's actually the opposite effect now. A lot of late game great people can't even be reached due to the massive cost increase for beyond era GPs. If you're able to use Sagan, you've probably screwed up.

• Do apostles still have a limited amount of promotions? Has this ever been addressed? Is it actually intended that at some point you run out of promotions for new apostles?

• Do carriers get promotions for air operations? Pretty minor grievance but it stinks if they still only get xp for getting attacked.

Unchanged.

Balance

• Is there actually a choice to governors now or are you still basically playing "wrong" if you're not using magnus to chop down every last tree and sitting Pingala in your capital the entire game? Some governors are (were?) just way better than others and too strong in general I thought.
• Lastly, and this is definitely the most opinionated question, is the pacing better? I personally always felt like production was way behind tech progression. As a whole tech progression felt too fast, which has always seemed like a tough balance to get right in the series. You seem to quickly reach a point in which you're getting new techs ever 3 or 4 turns, which leads to things like researching the next upgrades for units before you've even managed to build many, let alone march them to an enemy.

Gathering Storm is a little better at it, but not by much. Magnus and Pingala are still supreme, and the game is a bit longer now thanks to the techs and civics having a future era. This does make wonders like Maracana and Amundsen-Scott relevant though.

If you're curious, you may check out Gathering Storm for the disasters and world congress. I would not get NFP unless you are satisifed with GS, as it's really just a bunch of gimmicks upon gimmicks and has no real change towards gameplay. (But you may like the civs)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Is there actually a choice to governors now or are you still basically playing "wrong" if you're not using magnus to chop down every last tree and sitting Pingala in your capital the entire game? Some governors are (were?) just way better than others and too strong in general I thought.

Starting with GS chopping isn't necessarily useful for every civ/leader. First of all chopping helps increases CO2 for the climate change mechanic and makes it easier for the coastal areas to flood in GS.

Some civs like Maori get bonuses for unimproved features and the new Bull Moose Teddy gives culture to unimproved woods.

Also recently announced Vietnam needs woods for their bonuses.

 

[AntSou]

Is there actually a choice to governors now or are you still basically playing "wrong" if you're not using magnus to chop down every last tree and sitting Pingala in your capital the entire game? Some governors are (were?) just way better than others and too strong in general I thought.

On this point, Reyna is getting boosted by the new Preserve district in the next DLC.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Wow, if those were the concerns that you had to make you leave, I'm sorry but there's been little progress in just about any area of that. There have been numerous improvements in quite a few areas, but going down your list, not much has changed there.

When I first read the OP topic, the one contribution I wanted to make was that yields are insane now! I was just thinking the other day, reminiscing about the days when I got so excited because "I have industrialization now and all my grass/hill mines make 2F/4P!!!" Now it's commonplace for obscene tile yields like 2F/4P/1C/2G/3f in the classical era. Not to mention ley lines getting 18S/4P/8C12G/1F... each... Vampire Castles sending 20 food and 30 hammers back to your capital.,,

 

[Bork of Boletaria]

Wow, if those were the concerns that you had to make you leave, I'm sorry but there's been little progress in just about any area of that. There have been numerous improvements in quite a few areas, but going down your list, not much has changed there.

When I first read the OP topic, the one contribution I wanted to make was that yields are insane now! I was just thinking the other day, reminiscing about the days when I got so excited because "I have industrialization now and all my grass/hill mines make 2F/4P!!!" Now it's commonplace for obscene tile yields like 2F/4P/1C/2G/3f in the classical era. Not to mention ley lines getting 18S/4P/8C12G/1F... each... Vampire Castles sending 20 food and 30 hammers back to your capital.,,

I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying these concerns made me leave, I didn't one day throw my hands up in the air and shout at the heavens or anything just spent my time playing other games instead... but I'm definitely disappointed to see it never really got fixed either. Making AI "smarter" can be hard so I understand that issue, but some of these are really baffling (at least to me). Like why do apostle promotions run out? Was it ever even confirmed if that's intended or not? Good to hear that maybe governors are better though. I certainly don't expect perfect balance from a game like, in fact I'm not sure I even want perfect balance. But the governors in particular felt waaay off to me.

To your other point about yields I wondered about that too actually. The game already felt so fast most of the time and I assumed some of those changes I had seen just make things faster.

Thanks again for all the replies folks!

 

[ShakaKhan]

I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying these concerns made me leave, I didn't one day throw my hands up in the air and shout at the heavens or anything just spent my time playing other games instead... but I'm definitely disappointed to see it never really got fixed either. Making AI "smarter" can be hard so I understand that issue, but some of these are really baffling (at least to me). Like why do apostle promotions run out? Was it ever even confirmed if that's intended or not? Good to hear that maybe governors are better though. I certainly don't expect perfect balance from a game like, in fact I'm not sure I even want perfect balance. But the governors in particular felt waaay off to me.

To your other point about yields I wondered about that too actually. The game already felt so fast most of the time and I assumed some of those changes I had seen just make things faster.

Thanks again for all the replies folks!

Interesting. I never suspected the "throw my hands up in the air" response, after all, this is Civ. I was actually in a similar boat as you - while I didn't stray from the franchise, I was extremely skeptical about whether some of the new additions to the game would be beneficial, or as I feared would "ruin everything!" It turned out they didn't - this is a better game now. I played on outdated versions for quite a while under the false pretense that updating to current would undermine some, many, mechanics. Which only leaves me as both wrong and drastically behind.

As for your initial main concern - "is pacing better?" - I'd have to say that this is the most problematic concern of not just this game but the entire franchise: there are some strategies that circulate around getting a particular pantheon (in the ancient era) with a particular civ that more-or-less guarantees victory within the first 20 minutes of gameplay - and then the game needs to go on for 5 hours before victory is achieved.

 

[HiRezAudio]

Starting with GS chopping isn't necessarily useful for every civ/leader. First of all chopping helps increases CO2 for the climate change mechanic and makes it easier for the coastal areas to flood in GS.

Which only goes to show how completely screwed up that mechanic is, as the net contribution of trees is....Zero.
They tie up some CO2, but so do Motorways, Dual Carriageways, Bypasses and all things made of tarmac. (although you can ride a bicycle on them if it makes you feel better, of course)

 

[Manol0]

The difference between pre-frontier pass updates and after is chaotic in terms of AI according to my playstyle at least. Before the frontier pass I was beating AI science victory(my fav vic type) with 5-6 cities with a little effort. Now I even struggle in Immortal with 12-15 cities. Although I still beat deity; I need certain factors to be conducive to me like my spawn ; like how busy the AI will be with wars; the city-states bonuses; the RNG etc. The only still very easy victory to get is the Diplomatic as I won a couple of Deity games with 5-6 cities.