Suggestions for improvement (and non-bug related nuisances)

[AntSou]

I would rather this thread not be used for suggestions that overhaul the game (like new Civs and game mechanics). Instead, use it for the small things that you encounter that you feel should be handled differently. I'll keep coming across them as I play so it's probably better to bundle them all together in the same thread.
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- Cities need to indicate when there's a food shortage without requiring the player to enter the city in order to uncover this information:

The information regarding food shortages should be visible in the two UI elements below:

1.

2.

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I don't think there's an indicator for low stability as well. That's probably another thing that should be displayed here.

 

[Duuk]

Other empires need to be referred to using their Persona Name. No more "Rome has done this" when 2 turns ago they were Zhou. This way, over the next year, we'll all get used to personas and things like, "Dammit Lucy spawned next to me!" will become a thing.

To couple with this, AI Persona needs to have a random option where it will select any of the random personas rather than making you pick who you face every time.

 

[AntSou]

Yep, I immediately missed the option to select random personas when setting up the game.

I agree with your first suggestion as well. It should probably mention both the persona and civ. E.g. "Egyptians (Lucy) have a war support of..." It is occasionally disorienting. The colour coding helps a bit.

In addition to that, when mousing over the Persona icons in the pic below I should probably get info regarding their past Civs:

Right now I don't know where this info is located, if at all.

 

[Tonny]

I'd like to have the possibility to add sticky notes on the map. Many times when I see a sanctuary I forget that it was there when it goes fogged again.

 

[Krajzen]

Other empires need to be referred to using their Persona Name. No more "Rome has done this" when 2 turns ago they were Zhou. This way, over the next year, we'll all get used to personas and things like, "Dammit Lucy spawned next to me!" will become a thing.

To couple with this, AI Persona needs to have a random option where it will select any of the random personas rather than making you pick who you face every time.

Yep, I immediately missed the option to select random personas when setting up the game.

I agree with your first suggestion as well. It should probably mention both the persona and civ. E.g. "Egyptians (Lucy) have a war support of..." It is occasionally disorienting. The colour coding helps a bit.

In addition to that, when mousing over the Persona icons in the pic below I should probably get info regarding their past Civs:
View attachment 605908

Right now I don't know where this info is located, if at all.

1) The game desperately needs more clarity regarding who is where, diplomacy is VERY disorienting for me. Both persona and the current culture should be mentioned all the time over every player's icon, and there should be a place where you can see cultures past incarnations easily (the best idea is mentioned by you: by mousing over the icon on the main game screen). Honestly, the cultures changing is so important thing, that I'd love an optional special notification just for that event, inclusing camera going to the place where did that happen, so I can remember...
2) One thing that is really necessary as well is a Diplomacy Overview where you can see all cultures relations with each other! The combination of unclear identity of opponents, combined with unclear relations with each other, leads to the complete lack of understanding for me what is happening in global politics.
3) Another thing that I'd love to see is some sort of rankings of cultures (yields, military units, number of territories etc) so I can compare the state of my empire with theirs - right now I have no idea on what areas I am doing right or wrong.

 

[pokiehl]

Totally agree about the Food and Stability indicators. Starving citizens sneak up on me all the time.

I also hope they add team multiplayer soon.

 

[Jkchart]

I'd like to have the possibility to add sticky notes on the map. Many times when I see a sanctuary I forget that it was there when it goes fogged again.

There actually are markers but in my experience they are rather unintuitive and difficult to find

Agree with lots of the suggestions here! Gonna have some of my own later.

 

[Taefin]

Also, I think trees should appear as more than a sketch on the ground given that they are so important to battle. Especially when gunners show up, they are one of e most salient pieces of information. Also not sure about the balance between gunners and non-gunners ranged EU. It’s so powerful not to be constrained by LoS.

 

[Krajzen]

1) The game desperately needs more clarity regarding who is where, diplomacy is VERY disorienting for me. Both persona and the current culture should be mentioned all the time over every player's icon, and there should be a place where you can see cultures past incarnations easily (the best idea is mentioned by you: by mousing over the icon on the main game screen). Honestly, the cultures changing is so important thing, that I'd love an optional special notification just for that event, inclusing camera going to the place where did that happen, so I can remember...
2) One thing that is really necessary as well is a Diplomacy Overview where you can see all cultures relations with each other! The combination of unclear identity of opponents, combined with unclear relations with each other, leads to the complete lack of understanding for me what is happening in global politics.
3) Another thing that I'd love to see is some sort of rankings of cultures (yields, military units, number of territories etc) so I can compare the state of my empire with theirs - right now I have no idea on what areas I am doing right or wrong.

I have an idea now which would help A LOT with those UI/clarity/coherence issues as well as feeling of 'player opponents have no identity, I feel I face cosplayers or colors instead of cultures' which is a problem for some people.

Each faction should be named and referred to after a mix of its current and most recent past culture, such as for example:
Egyptian Empire
Greeko - Egyptian Empire
Umayyad Greek Kingdom
Spanish Umayyad Kingdom
Germano - Spanish Republic
Sino - German Republic

You get the idea. Then you put those combined names everywhere, on this grey zoomed out overview of empires, in diplomacy screens, in notifications, and the entire gameplay becomes so much more coherent and easier to follow than 'wait who the hell are Mayans, what happened to Celts, where are Teutons, who is Lucy, who again is this diplomatic screen guy' etc.
If it is a controversial idea, and some people like using avatar names instead, then please just let that be an option.

I don't thing naming combinations would be too difficult to program, or too awkward in practice. The only awkwardness could come from dynasty names mix ("Ottoman - Umayyad Caliphate") but I'd honestly accept that, and you could always solve that also by some slight deviation such as referring to Ottomans as 'Turks' in this case or whatever.

But the current situation when you face anonymous colours and random avatars, and you are constantly confused what culture is where and whom it evolve from, is a huge UI problem, very confusing.

In fact, this ties with the much bigger problem which transcends beyond 'minor issues thread' into 'Very Big Problem thread' but I'm only going to formulate it in a separate thread after playing the game much more...

 

[Taefin]

Each faction should be named and referred to after a mix of its current and most recent past culture,

Totally agree! Perhaps at 4 starts you drop the previous empire so that there is a sense of transition from era to era.

 

[Guynemer]

Desperately needs a randomize option not just for AIs, but a reasonable one for the map as well. I randomized every element of the map, and ended up with a world that was entirely land except for a 2-3 tile strip of water at both poles.

Just a variety of map scripts like Civ has would be welcome.

 

[Taefin]

Also why does the post war interface still just give you a list of territories that you can pick from to take off your opponent, rather than pick those territories off the map. There are icons that pop up on the map in that interface, but they do not seem to do anything.

 

[AntSou]

UI Request: Right Clicking on an Infrastructure in the construction panel highlights every tile in that city that will be affected by it (E.g. Lumber Yard below).

The visual highlight could look like the one that shows up when you're placing down a district, but for every tile affected:

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It's not always clear which tiles are what (something that should probably be addressed in the grayscale map, which I actually like quite a lot even though it seems to be a bit unpopular), and highlighting it in this way would be immensely helpful, without requiring me to move back and forth or mouse over every tile to confirm it's indeed forest and not just some trees hanging about.

 

[MrRadar]

How do you feel about the victory flag tile present on a tactical combat map at sea?

I think it should go. While for the land combat you could justify your HQ or command centre being there, for sea battles it becomes rather difficult to imagine Admiral Nelson commanding the fleet from an HQ rowboat parked in the middle of nowhere. And then, the last remaining enemy ship, just managing to stay above water by some miracle, slides in on the last round, captures Nelson and calls dibs on the greatest victory ever against four of your ships.

I think, sea battles in the middle of the ocean could do without any special victory tiles.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think a lot of the "Who Am I Facing?" confusion could be alleviated by adding a Mini-Map to the game. That way, at a glance you could see who is where, how big they are, and by zooming into it during End-of-War negotiations, which territories are 'up for grabs' and where they are. Trying to remember which Outposted territory is the one I want from the negotiations is a pure pain in the Cerebrum right now.

 

[Krajzen]

Multiplicative yields snowball completely out of control at some point (at least for some jackpot lucky runaway civs) and make instant buying everything a certainty. This is the greatest balance issue of a game. All mechanics are trivialized by the point you have hundreds of income per turn, which can be reached ridiculously easily. You can buy all minor peoples, all outposts, all buildings and units, have infinite army, events completely cease to matter as their yield effects are miniscule compared to your yield income, resource licenses are laughably cheap, battlefields are overcrowded by hordes of soldiers who trump tactics... There has to be a massive cut to this hyperinflation of yields and runaway players.

Some ideas how to deal with that:

- Just straight radically trim down a ton of modifiers and multiplications, so I don't have 10,000 influence in the early medieval era, this is ridiculous compared to how low costs and event modifiers are in comparision. Actually I'd prefer in general if numbers weren't so high in general, it's much easier to comprehend the strategy game that deals with hundreds instead of dozens of thousands.
- Increase the cost of newly unlocked buildings much more.
- Introduce some soft/hard caps on the population density of a single city based on technological era (you know, like the fact than there was no preindustrial city with a pop above 1m, and very few were above 100k), such as exponentially increasing cost of every new citizen, or even introducing overpopulation penalties.
- Introduce some sort of soft/hard caps on the amount of production/yields in general you can store in a single city, for example because of 'administrative efficiency', 'logistics' or whatever, so you don't get so many yields so quickly and so reliably and without risk or cost. Especially from attached territories. For example, imagine if you had to improve transport and bureaucracy to bring goods from attached territories to a central city.
- Introduce a corruption mechanic or whatever which disproportionally hits larger, more powerful empires.
- Or an 'arrogance' or 'decadence' modifiers/event chains which make catching up to a fame leader a possibility.
- Make stability more of a not entirely predictable, unstable phenomenon that is harder to control the bigger the empire is.
- Introduce some soft limit on how many infrastructures can a city have, because of not enough people to run them all or whatever.
- Either make armies cost more (for example exponentially, like civ5) or go further into the manpower limitations so battlefields are less overcrowded and runaways have less of an ability to drown everyone in a swarm of 1 turn recruit miniscule cost units.
- Make resources more expensive to buy and less explosive in their global effects
- Make attached territories have some drive towards autonomy, separatism, even a desire to turn into the city themselves, so your empire has some internal politics and divides - the more of them the bigger it is
- Make religion and cultural influence not so completely dependent of the size of an empire, so the biggest religion and culture covers the world with no chance to stop them

There are many ways to shut down the horror of yield hyperinflation and extreme runaway players.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I would rather this thread not be used for suggestions that overhaul the game (like new Civs and game mechanics). Instead, use it for the small things that you encounter that you feel should be handled differently. I'll keep coming across them as I play so it's probably better to bundle them all together in the same thread.
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- Cities need to indicate when there's a food shortage without requiring the player to enter the city in order to uncover this information:


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I don't think there's an indicator for low stability as well. That's probably another thing that should be displayed here.

I disagree, since losing population is a normal thing, your population grows, slightly over shoots, and then drops... and gains,,, and drops, etc.
There should be something for a large food shortfall (20% or more... where losing one pop won't fix the issue)

There probably should be something for Stability, though... once the target is low it will lead to continuous problems.


As for the "Who am I facing"
Civ (Persona) sounds good [and I really like the ________ -________ empire idea]

Having a minimap would be good.

Also, Territories should be named by the civ that outposted them, using some "minor city" names... that they retain when joined to a major city (if they become a major city, then they change to a major city name)

- Or an 'arrogance' or 'decadence' modifiers/event chains which make catching up to a fame leader a possibility.

I think this is key... HK gets too much of the snowballing 4X, when its victory condition (fame that you can't lose, and is worth just as much in the early game as the late game) doesn't need it.
I would really like to see

You continuously accumulate "decadence" based on the size of your empire... this leads to all sorts of penalties. (combat strength, stability, influence, IMS.. not food probably)... enough so that building layer upon layer of decadence will lead to your empire collapsing

When you transition from one Era to the next, you lose some of that decadence... depending on how many stars you have... less stars=less decadence carried into the next era

Then, make sure that the thresholds for getting stars are based on how much you gained, not how much you Have... if you start the era as a single region city you only need to get 1+N territories for your first expansion star, if you start as a 20 territory empire you need 20+N territories for your first expansion star.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I'd like to have the possibility to add sticky notes on the map. Many times when I see a sanctuary I forget that it was there when it goes fogged again.

There actually are markers but in my experience they are rather unintuitive and difficult to find

Agree with lots of the suggestions here! Gonna have some of my own later.

I would simply like to have Civ6's map tacks for Humankind Honestly, even if not adjusted at all I see related or even identic items for most of the icons...and it would be so useful for planning your cities (yes, I'm aware that it's not happening...but maybe when the modding tools are there someone will remember... )

Humankind has its very own marker system, yes...but it has a different purpose (telling other players about your plans/desires) and its severe limitation is that you can only mark tiles which are owned by other civs, which renders it completely useless for pre-planning in your own lands.

 

[Elhoim]

There are many ways to shut down the horror of yield hyperinflation and extreme runaway players.

Yes, but I think first of all it boils down to number of districts (no matter if in one city or several), as many of the bonuses are applied on them. And this comes down to stability sources. I think that the game would pace itself much better by first normalizing and controlling the stability flow, which in turn would keep the numbers of districts, and hence yields, from snowballing. There are many ways to tackle this, especially taking into account not locking the player into "low stability mode", but also not giving infinite sources.

To try out the stability as the source of the snowball, I tested in the Earth Map reducing the luxuries to 25, thus limiting the stability from them to 100 stability max (not taking manufactory into account), and also keeping their bonuses on yields lower as well, and the game had a much better pace up to turn 200+.

I have some extra ideas and theories, but in general I prefer to test them first, probably once the mod tools are out. Plus the devs might come up with better ideas. Also, they are in a hard position in which they need to try to satisfy several demographics, so I don't envy them. What we might find a nice, fun challenge, others would see them as limits to the freedom of building their cities as they please.

 

[Siptah]

I have some extra ideas and theories, but in general I prefer to test them first, probably once the mod tools are out. Plus the devs might come up with better ideas. Also, they are in a hard position in which they need to try to satisfy several demographics, so I don't envy them. What we might find a nice, fun challenge, others would see them as limits to the freedom of building their cities as they please.

I think the current stability mechanics could be kept with a "builder mode" similar to the "peace mode" for people that prefer it that way. "Normal" game should definitely change though.