[R&F] The worst thing about Loyalty...

[Art Morte]

...is this "reserved parking space" feel.

What I mean by that is that your well-established cities can keep the surrounding empty lands all but reserved for you. It's nigh on impossible for new cities of other civilizations to survive the loyalty pressure of somewhat grown cities.

I think in a Civilization game there should be a feeling of urgency to found new cities. "If I don't settle that spot there soon enough, someone else will." With the Loyalty system, situations arise - in some maps at least - where I don't have to worry about settling certain areas fast at all; a couple of my big cities keep those lands reserved for me to settle when I feel like it. If the AI settles there, their cities are just going to instantly flip.

It's early days for RnF and I'm not saying I hate the loyalty system, I'm about three games in and I'm intrigued by it so far. Will have to see what I think of it after many more games. But at this point, I do dislike the way the loyalty of well-established cities can give you powerful control of lands well beyond your borders.

Either there should be more ways to protect new cities's loyalty (at a cost) or maybe make newly found cities immune to loyalty for x number of turns. The idea that a nation sends a colony somewhere and they just instantly replace their identity with something else doesn't feel quite right to me. It should take some time. And I mean in-game time, turns, not willing to entertain the argument "but many decades can pass in a few turns in this game."

 

[Bad Wolf]

Funny that's exactly what I like about it. I like the fact that the AI can't just aggressively forward-settle you like they always do in every other Civ game (including VI pre-R&F) and then you have to deal with warmonger penalties to get rid of them. (Where as in a game with real humans, all of the real humans would completely understand why you were attacking the forward-settler and consider it totally just.) Now they don't even bother, and if they do they lose the city within twenty turns.

Bear in mind it works the same for you.

I'd say the thing I most want are more reliable and effective ways to keep cities loyal. Forward-settling shouldn't be impossible, it should just require some investment. At the moment even with a combination of governors, policies and golden ages, keeping far-away cities loyal can be impossible.

 

[criZp]

that's the point of the system? if you want to make distant colony cities, then you either find fairly empty spots of land, or you use governors and colonial policies to keep the cities in check if next to core cities of another civ.

 

[Victoria]

If the AI settles there, their cities are just going to instantly flip

Either there should be more ways to protect new cities's loyalty (at a cost) or maybe make newly found cities immune to loyalty for x number of turns. The idea that a nation sends a colony somewhere and they just instantly replace their identity with something else doesn't feel quite right to me. I

In the main loyalty thread we have looked at the pressure. If you look at a settling place and it’s not -20 then you simply need a 2 pop city with a governor initially to be fine. Population size and ratio between counts for a lot. A 5:1 ratio is a lot higher than a 5:2. Still looking at all of this but it’s about growing your pop quickly so take a builder with you and chop some wheat or jungle.
It will not instantly flip, you have always at least 5 turns to rectify, settle 2 cities instead on one is another option.

Always remember a smaller city grows faster than a larger depending on terrain of course.

 

[Tech Osen]

I just love looking at the mini map since R&F. All coherent, logical empires, it sooths my ocd. No more patchwork chaos!

 

[FractalAdvocate]

I often feel the opposite, at least early game -- 'I gotta get a city up over there to shore up my loyalty from that civ!'

 

[Setis]

I just finished a game as Japan where I was in the middle of the (pangaea) continent. Australia forward settled me twice, Rome once, and Scythia once. All 4 cities quickly flipped to my empire, and I was still able to ally with them for the whole game.

On another note, Vertical Integration + Japan is ridiculous. Space projects in 2 turns.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Sliders could have worked really good with the loyalty system. You could boost loyalty at the cost of science, culture and money. I know i'm probably in the minority club, but I believe the removal of sliders from the game was a misstep and i miss them.

 

[lionbadger]

The idea that a nation sends a colony somewhere and they just instantly replace their identity with something else doesn't feel quite right to me. It should take some time. And I mean in-game time, turns, not willing to entertain the argument "but many decades can pass in a few turns in this game."

Why would someone found a "new" colony/ city in IRL? often it would be people who don't really like the local ruler/lord and who think next door might be better so a new city settle close to another CIV with strong culture would want to become part of that culture (in which the history of europe where you can move from state to state, ultimately giving rise to need to keep people happy or they leave and the history of the big nightmare empires of asia where you ain't going anywhere diverges a bit)

 

[Grotius]

I just love looking at the mini map since R&F. All coherent, logical empires, it sooths my ocd. No more patchwork chaos!

This! I love that the map looks like a collection of nation-states, not scatterings of cities.

One question: does loyalty scale with difficulty level? That is, do governors always supply the same loyalty bonus at every difficulty level? Do opposing civs always drain loyalty at the same rate?

 

[PhilBowles]

Funny that's exactly what I like about it. I like the fact that the AI can't just aggressively forward-settle you like they always do in every other Civ game (including VI pre-R&F) and then you have to deal with warmonger penalties to get rid of them. (Where as in a game with real humans, all of the real humans would completely understand why you were attacking the forward-settler and consider it totally just.) Now they don't even bother, and if they do they lose the city within twenty turns.

Bear in mind it works the same for you.

I'd say the thing I most want are more reliable and effective ways to keep cities loyal. Forward-settling shouldn't be impossible, it should just require some investment. At the moment even with a combination of governors, policies and golden ages, keeping far-away cities loyal can be impossible.

More ways to keep cities loyal would undermine the Ages system, the point of which is to manage expansion. Forward settling already is possible - done early enough so that your cities can grow, and you can settle later cities behind them to shore them up, and as long as you aren't in a Dark Age, penalties as high as -12 or so can be managed.

This! I love that the map looks like a collection of nation-states, not scatterings of cities.

One question: does loyalty scale with difficulty level? That is, do governors always supply the same loyalty bonus at every difficulty level? Do opposing civs always drain loyalty at the same rate?

The loyalty is the same at all difficulties.

 

[Grotius]

Thanks for that clarification, Phil. I wouldn't mind seeing Loyalty get a bit tougher, on at least some difficulty levels. I imagine it can be modded?

 

[Bad Wolf]

Funny that's exactly what I like about it. I like the fact that the AI can't just aggressively forward-settle you like they always do in every other Civ game (including VI pre-R&F) and then you have to deal with warmonger penalties to get rid of them. (Where as in a game with real humans, all of the real humans would completely understand why you were attacking the forward-settler and consider it totally just.) Now they don't even bother, and if they do they lose the city within twenty turns.

Bear in mind it works the same for you.

I'd say the thing I most want are more reliable and effective ways to keep cities loyal. Forward-settling shouldn't be impossible, it should just require some investment. At the moment even with a combination of governors, policies and golden ages, keeping far-away cities loyal can be impossible.

Ok I'm getting more and more used to the loyalty system and I don't think it's really so bad now.

 

[PhilBowles]

Thanks for that clarification, Phil. I wouldn't mind seeing Loyalty get a bit tougher, on at least some difficulty levels. I imagine it can be modded?

Ended up being tough enough to bring my Chandragupta game to an abrupt end. Dumbarton ended up flipping back, stranding my force attacking Ostia and spawning units to kill them, and with its loyalty pressure removed from my side my other cities started to fall as well. Next game I'll follow my own advice and avoid expanding - militarily or otherwise - in a Dark Age.

 

[Grotius]

Thanks, Phil! I'm sorry about your difficulty in that game, but I'm glad to hear Loyalty can be a real obstacle. I'll keep playing.

 

[PeterChu]

It will not instantly flip, you have always at least 5 turns to rectify, settle 2 cities instead on one is another option.

The loyalty system in the R & F expansion seems to encourage those conquest and/or colonization strategies operating on the area scale, with a cluster of 2 cities or more in mind. Planning conquest or settlement just on one city scale would be hard to overcome the high loyalty barriers. But a well-implemented and swift conquest/colonization strategy on the area scale might be a game changer that can turn the the loyalty barrier to you side. IMHO it makes sense, at least compared with the similar situations in Civ 5 and pre-R & F Civ 6.

 

[Thormodr]

I just love looking at the mini map since R&F. All coherent, logical empires, it sooths my ocd. No more patchwork chaos!

Not as much border gore, yeah.

 

[Victoria]

a well-implemented and swift conquest/colonization strategy on the area scale might be a game changer that can turn the the loyalty barrier to you side. IMHO it makes sense, at least compared with the similar situations in Civ 5 and pre-R & F Civ 6.

Loyalty is stopping me settling a Niter colony to get the damn stuff, anywhere I do it will get me a flipped city unless I can make a deal and as the "you are winning" person its just not going to happen. I guess I just have to hunker down and wait for rockets Alternatively I have the below option which is not pleasant but I'll take Kabul and try

 

[Xmonger]

Haven't seen that problem. Present game is relatively tightly packed with Civs each staking out their own 'islands', much like how real continents work with tight Civ packing (e.g. Europe)

A previous game was more open and I flung out a city to the hinterlands, but due to the spacing didn't feel too much pressure that couldn't be countered with a Governor. Then a rival dropped a city near me which did fall to Loyalty, e.g. mine and I took it It worked because the world was open enough that I could manage the Loyalty vs placement well enough.

So I think it depends a lot on the packing, wide open leaves plenty of options, tight packing removes the easy ability for colonies, but also isn't a problem since you get a tight network of Loyalty. In-between packing it depends. The formula would be some kind of ratio between map size and number of civs. Of course if somebody does want to park right next to you then sure, they're going to have some trouble with that. Just think of the Cuba and the US, they rather live in the shadow of their larger neighbor.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Loyalty is stopping me settling a Niter colony to get the damn stuff, anywhere I do it will get me a flipped city unless I can make a deal and as the "you are winning" person its just not going to happen. I guess I just have to hunker down and wait for rockets Alternatively I have the below option which is not pleasant but I'll take Kabul and try

Funny I had this exact issue; hit the Renaissance and found I had no niter anywhere in my empire, and all of the niter on the map was already claimed except for one single node. Unfortunately it was surrounded by Nubian cities, and I was in a Dark Age. So I had to delay grabbing the stuff until the Industrial Age, which was a Heroic Age for me - which allowed me to just declare a Golden Age war and just take them over completely (one of their cities already had it, meaning I now get two copies, yay!)