The loyalty system ... oh my God

[jsteele14]

While I do love the loyalty concept, it does seem too sensitive. I entered a golden age near a civ that entered a dark age and I have swallowed up half the civilization without doing anything. That seems a little too punitive.

 

[Brian LeClaire]

There aren't many instances of cities being successful, but there are countless instances where a city rebelled and military had to be sent in to re-conquer it. I think that's where there's a bit of disconnect for you. You're not thinking of those instances where there had to be a brutal military reprisal. The Bar Kokhba Revolt established an independent Israel for two years (for much of the province). It had to be put down with force.



What difficulty are you playing on? I haven't experienced anything like what you describe, but I went down a difficulty to practice.

There are SOME examples of it in history yes, Boxer rebellion etc but you can't count them pretty much on one hand-ish. But for it to happen so often is silly. Now, the real point I'm making is that either I SUPER don't understand it or it's not working as intended because I've seen it work the other way too. I've seen a civ place a city at the far side of a civ on a whole different continent than they were on and have FULL loyalty throughout the time it's been there. I've been playing on King with the R&F, I usually play on emperor.
Notice the Cree city at the southern part of the screen shot. You'll have ot check the mini map to see where the rest of their cities are but they are not only on a whole different continent, they're on the complete opposite side of the continent from the rest of their cities with the Mapuche capitol right in between them. Why is that city not having loyalty issues?? IDK lol

 

[PhilBowles]

While I do love the loyalty concept, it does seem too sensitive. I entered a golden age near a civ that entered a dark age and I have swallowed up half the civilization without doing anything. That seems a little too punitive.

That's AI behaviour at fault more than the system. As the human player in a similar situation that won't happen because the tools exist to mitigate the effects of loyalty pressure. The AI rarely maintains ecstatic cities and doesn't strategically hold or place governors in cities at risk. It doesn't use Amani for anything other than city states.

One other tool for forward settling, incidentally, is cultural alliance - I wrote off a spot in my game near the Great Barrier Reef since it was on the other side of Macedon, but once Alexander was friendly enough with me it occurred to me I could just use a cultural alliance to neutralise his loyalty pressure. Unfortunately, while my settler was en route Tamar moved in to the same area (costing me the only way I had to make up the three points I still needed to avoid an Industrial Dark Age to boot).

There are SOME examples of it in history yes, Boxer rebellion etc but you can't count them pretty much on one hand-ish. But for it to happen so often is silly. Now, the real point I'm making is that either I SUPER don't understand it or it's not working as intended because I've seen it work the other way too. I've seen a civ place a city at the far side of a civ on a whole different continent than they were on and have FULL loyalty throughout the time it's been there. I've been playing on King with the R&F, I usually play on emperor.
Notice the Cree city at the southern part of the screen shot. You'll have ot check the mini map to see where the rest of their cities are but they are not only on a whole different continent, they're on the complete opposite side of the continent from the rest of their cities with the Mapuche capitol right in between them. Why is that city not having loyalty issues?? IDK lol

What's their relationship with the Cree? If they have a cultural alliance that could explain it, though I don't credit the AI with being able to plan that far ahead. Also, what age are they in and what about the Cree?

 

[pgm123]

There are SOME examples of it in history yes, Boxer rebellion etc but you can't count them pretty much on one hand-ish. But for it to happen so often is silly.

I can think of dozens of examples during the Hundred Years War alone, including cities that rebelled, were re-taken, and then rebelled again. I'm sure the English found it silly, but it happened often.

Now, the real point I'm making is that either I SUPER don't understand it or it's not working as intended because I've seen it work the other way too. I've seen a civ place a city at the far side of a civ on a whole different continent than they were on and have FULL loyalty throughout the time it's been there. I've been playing on King with the R&F, I usually play on emperor.

I think it is working as intended. The idea is for cities to apply pressure as opposed to making it just about distance. It gives you multiple ways of dealing with loyalty. But the main factor seems to be population.

Notice the Cree city at the southern part of the screen shot. You'll have ot check the mini map to see where the rest of their cities are but they are not only on a whole different continent, they're on the complete opposite side of the continent from the rest of their cities with the Mapuche capitol right in between them. Why is that city not having loyalty issues?? IDK lol

It's not all that much smaller than the Mapuche cities and a pretty decent distance away.

 

[Ozisl]

Back in Civ 5, my favorite gameplan was with Austria and the ability to annex city-states. I was hoping for a similar option here, but... it just seems lackluster. I was hoping for, well, more fluid cultural borders. We already have religious shift, it seems too pegged to military expansion. I was looking for something more... dynamic. The cities I capture and push loyalty on hard have almost no impact on the surroundings. Don't know what to do.

 

[Ferocitus]

When they were designing the expansion, did they try play testing it?

Un-nuanced rubbish.

So you basically cannot keep any city that you capture or build that's too far away and close to another civ.

Yes, it will be subject to pressure from civs closer than your sphere of influence.
That's a very good thing IMO.

This is horrible.

For your previous style of play, perhaps. I'm happy because it adds
even more complexity to the game.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Or provide all Palaces the same loyalty defence that City States receive. Maybe add it to the Government Plaza, too, so it can apply to two cities. Just to help small civs stay afloat. It's not like small, distinct groups don't form fierce internal loyalty when surrounded by large groups of "others".

Flipping a capital shouldn't be easy, but it should be possible. Maybe liberated cities should get a grace period where they're 100% loyal for the first 5-10 turns after liberation. That would give them enough time to establish a govrnor and the liberator enough time to gove them another city.

Notice the Cree city at the southern part of the screen shot. You'll have ot check the mini map to see where the rest of their cities are but they are not only on a whole different continent, they're on the complete opposite side of the continent from the rest of their cities with the Mapuche capitol right in between them. Why is that city not having loyalty issues?? IDK lol

I think it is working as intended. The idea is for cities to apply pressure as opposed to making it just about distance. It gives you multiple ways of dealing with loyalty. But the main factor seems to be population.

It's not all that much smaller than the Mapuche cities and a pretty decent distance away.

Yes, it's population and distance. Loyalty pressure drops by 10% per tile. There is only one Mapuche city within 10 tiles of the Cree city and it's 8 tiles away. Barring any age modifiers, the Cree city only gets 2,2 pressure from the Mapuche which is easily overcome by the local population.

 

[AriochIV]

The net effect of Loyalty seems to be to make warmongering penalties worse; you either have to take a substantial number of enemy cities or raze them. It makes limited war (of the kind which the diplomatic system seems designed to encourage) almost completely impractical. If you just want that one city? Tough. You won't be able to keep it.

It does make offensive military operations slightly more difficult... but not enough to make up for the total strategic and tactical military incompetence of the AI.

 

[TomKQT]

The net effect of Loyalty seems to be to make warmongering penalties worse; you either have to take a substantial number of enemy cities or raze them. It makes limited war (of the kind which the diplomatic system seems designed to encourage) almost completely impractical. If you just want that one city? Tough. You won't be able to keep it.

But at the same time it kinda makes sense. If an enemy captures just one city of a big empire, it is logical that the city wants to go back
I don't generally like when people say that something is realistic or not in a game (realism is realism, gameplay is gameplay). But in this case I think realism meets gameplay quite well, because this system add something interesting to the gameplay.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

While I do love the loyalty concept, it does seem too sensitive. I entered a golden age near a civ that entered a dark age and I have swallowed up half the civilization without doing anything. That seems a little too punitive.

Interesting, I've had the opposite so far: despite being in a golden age and despite both neighbours being in dark ages, I'm yet to flip a single city because they've both assigned governors to any cities that begin to have trouble. I haven't aggressively tried to flip any cities yet though.

 

[acluewithout]

The loyalty system seems to capture some things well, but other things very badly. I see much tweaking ahead...

A few things I don’t think the current system captures well:

1. A garrisoned unit improves loyalty. But other than that, stationing more military doesn’t further reduce the chance of rebellion. Surely if you fill a city with troops, the chances of rebellion go down?

2. I get losing cities should hurt an empire’s overall loyalty. But the game doesn’t allow civs to hang on with one or two cities. That doesn’t seem very historical - eg the Roman Empire ultimately lost most of its territory - including Rome - but you could say the civilisation itself did surivive after moving it’s capit to Constantinople.

3. Captured cities should surely always have some loyalty problems, not just if they have supporting neighbours. No doubt this is a huge simplification, and I don’t I don’t understand all the nuances, but Catalonia and Tibet haven’t given up claims for independence just because there isn’t a nearby Catalan or Tibet State (for example). If you capture all of a civs cities - and wipe that civ out - I would expect more loyalty problems in those cities, not less!

4. Likewise, having a different religion in your capital than in one of your cities should surely also create loyalty problems?

5. Distant colonies should surely also have loyalty problems, even if there isn’t a nearby civ to influence them. For example, the US, Australia, Canada etc. didn’t become independent because they were attracted to joining some other civilization...

On a separate note, I think loyalty difficulty (and minimum era scores) should either be something you adjust or which varies depending on difficulty. I suspect I’d tend towards harder for both than many casual players; likewise, many casual players would no doubt like to turn these right down (just like some people turn off barbarians).

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Religion would get a much needed boost if it was tied to loyalty as well.

 

[mr_siika]

So my citizens have an effect on the loyality of a close "enemy" city. But do the citizens of my cities (in range) count as a whole or is it the actual location of the citizens (where they "work") that matters? So does moving the citizens closer to the border mean more pressure?
And when does the pressure update? Right away or next turn? Does anyone know?

 

[3 EMS]

There are SOME examples of it in history yes, Boxer rebellion etc but you can't count them pretty much on one hand-ish. But for it to happen so often is silly. Now, the real point I'm making is that either I SUPER don't understand it or it's not working as intended because I've seen it work the other way too. I've seen a civ place a city at the far side of a civ on a whole different continent than they were on and have FULL loyalty throughout the time it's been there. I've been playing on King with the R&F, I usually play on emperor.
Notice the Cree city at the southern part of the screen shot. You'll have ot check the mini map to see where the rest of their cities are but they are not only on a whole different continent, they're on the complete opposite side of the continent from the rest of their cities with the Mapuche capitol right in between them. Why is that city not having loyalty issues?? IDK lol

How long has it been there? If you look at the settler map. Don't know why not the loyalty map. The settler map shows the loyalty of individual tiles and you will see that there are individual tiles or pockets of tiles that aren't necessarily getting pressured. Seems that loyalty can drop off pretty fast sometimes too.

 

[jesperben]

I don't like how I can't send a settler half way across the map for a whole bunch of luxuries/resources or an awesome city location

I have done this with succes (on King, Wilhelmina), I was early in discovery and quick in settling on some big Barbarian islands.

 

[TomKQT]

1. A garrisoned unit improves loyalty. But other than that, stationing more military doesn’t further reduce the chance of rebellion. Surely if you fill a city with troops, the chances of rebellion go down?

There doesn't have to be a strong connection. I think the troops would not affect the chance of starting a rebellion, but rather would affect how easily the city would deal with it.

2. I get losing cities should hurt an empire’s overall loyalty. But the game doesn’t allow civs to hang on with one or two cities. That doesn’t seem very historical - eg the Roman Empire ultimately lost most of its territory - including Rome - but you could say the civilisation itself did surivive after moving it’s capit to Constantinople.

I agree. But it would be probably hard to make this working in the game somehow.

4. Likewise, having a different religion in your capital than in one of your cities should surely also create loyalty problems?

Religion in my opinion should have some connection to loyalty, yea. I think it's a missed opportunity.

5. Distant colonies should surely also have loyalty problems, even if there isn’t a nearby civ to influence them. For example, the US, Australia, Canada etc. didn’t become independent because they were attracted to joining some other civilization...

That would make sense, but it would make the game harder. I think I'm rather against this idea - gameplay wins over realism here for me.

 

[Tech Osen]

I think the nay sayers mostly need to get used to the new system. Yesterday's game I conquered a Kongo city right next to his capital. It was pretty close to my empire though with a narrow sea in between. Kongo also had 5-6 big cities near. At work so can't post a screenshot.
Anyway, conquering the rest took some time but that city didn't drop loyalty once. I adapted my civics and moved my governors in and near that city, it worked better than I had hoped for actually. Once I had another city and his capital the rest started flipping.

 

[Shadeseraph]

Played a game on immortal yesterday. Won by Scientific victory, but did my fair share of warmongering, and I didn't do any razing (hard to overcome the warmongering penalty for razing in Immortal+). Also played a quick emperor game with Scythians where I went for early conquest victory.

TBH, loyalty wasn't such a big problem for the most part. With a governor and a unit in the city you can generally protect your newly acquired city for long enough to capture the other cities nearby, and once you get a few they protect each other from loyalty losses forever unless they are too close to the enemy's capital.

The one real point at which it starts to become a problem is if you are in a dark age and the other side is in a golden age. At that point keeping cities is real hard. Wouldn't do much warmongering then, unless I can ensure I can wipe the other civilization in a very short period. In my Immortal game I had a lot of issues keeping a couple cities I stole from Peter, not the least because that was fairly late in the game, so wittling down the defenses of any city took a lot of time, even with 3 ranged units at level 3-4 and a tank.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

So my citizens have an effect on the loyality of a close "enemy" city. But do the citizens of my cities (in range) count as a whole or is it the actual location of the citizens (where they "work") that matters? So does moving the citizens closer to the border mean more pressure?
And when does the pressure update? Right away or next turn? Does anyone know?

It doesn't matter what tiles your citizens are working, it's just population and distance between the city centers.

 

[Duckfromstatefarm]

Taking cities in Rise and Fall isn't a problem for me, for the first few games it was but since Loyalty is all about pressure from citizens, I was able to utilize that by settling cities as close as possible without too much Loyalty penalties and back them up with strong cities behind the new cities. I also try to limit the number of Directions of the loyalty pressure is coming from along with removing the strongest sources of loyalty pressure.