acluewithout
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2017
- Messages
- 3,496
For better or worse, Civ is a game made out of interlocking game systems rather than huge overarching mechanics. But there really are just too many diplomatic systems and currencies even for a game like Civ.
Let’s count shall we? Well, for a start, Envoys (which in turn is made up of influence and “suzerain”), Diplomatic Modifiers (which includes delegations and embassies), Diplomatic status (including friendly, unfriendly etc., but also open borders), Diplomatic Visibility, Alliance points, Warmonger points, weariness. You can can also add in Spy Capacity and Governor Titles which are more or less related. You can also add in loyalty (including era score, Religion, pop), and tourism which are also more or less related. Then with GS, we have diplomatic favour, grievances and diplomatic victory points. Oh yeah, there’s also some sort of Cede Mechanic - whatever that does.
It’s confusing. But worse than that, it becomes very rigid. No matter what you do, you will always have a Governor (unless you deliberately don’t spend titles) and you’ll always have envoys. And various systems don’t interact - both alliances and envoys get me diplomatic favour, but I don’t really ever choose between them, I just have both. And this has been discussed to death before, but tourism doesn’t really interact with any diplomatic systems, neither loyalty nor alliance points nor anything else.
Does anyone else find these various different systems sort of maddening?
If we get a third expansion, I think this stuff needs to get reworked. Not massively, but at least a little. In particular, Envoys (including influence), Governor titles and Spy Capacity seem particularly ripe to be collapsed into just one currency. And loyalty and tourism are just crying out for some sort of link, so that cultural power directly affects the map (something like how Civ 5 did it with Ideologies).
FXS do seem like they’re tidying up the diplomatic game to some extent. Grievances seems like it could well be the best feature of GS (they should really think about putting Grievances into the base game to boost sales, given how many people complain about warmonger penalties). Having Alliances, Envoys, Government Tiers and other “events” create diplomatic favour does make all those systems a bit more integrated. And being able to buy diplomatic favour sort of links the whole diplomacy thing into the core yields of the game - gold, faith and hammers and economy in general. But it could all be a lot better.
Let’s count shall we? Well, for a start, Envoys (which in turn is made up of influence and “suzerain”), Diplomatic Modifiers (which includes delegations and embassies), Diplomatic status (including friendly, unfriendly etc., but also open borders), Diplomatic Visibility, Alliance points, Warmonger points, weariness. You can can also add in Spy Capacity and Governor Titles which are more or less related. You can also add in loyalty (including era score, Religion, pop), and tourism which are also more or less related. Then with GS, we have diplomatic favour, grievances and diplomatic victory points. Oh yeah, there’s also some sort of Cede Mechanic - whatever that does.
It’s confusing. But worse than that, it becomes very rigid. No matter what you do, you will always have a Governor (unless you deliberately don’t spend titles) and you’ll always have envoys. And various systems don’t interact - both alliances and envoys get me diplomatic favour, but I don’t really ever choose between them, I just have both. And this has been discussed to death before, but tourism doesn’t really interact with any diplomatic systems, neither loyalty nor alliance points nor anything else.
Does anyone else find these various different systems sort of maddening?
If we get a third expansion, I think this stuff needs to get reworked. Not massively, but at least a little. In particular, Envoys (including influence), Governor titles and Spy Capacity seem particularly ripe to be collapsed into just one currency. And loyalty and tourism are just crying out for some sort of link, so that cultural power directly affects the map (something like how Civ 5 did it with Ideologies).
FXS do seem like they’re tidying up the diplomatic game to some extent. Grievances seems like it could well be the best feature of GS (they should really think about putting Grievances into the base game to boost sales, given how many people complain about warmonger penalties). Having Alliances, Envoys, Government Tiers and other “events” create diplomatic favour does make all those systems a bit more integrated. And being able to buy diplomatic favour sort of links the whole diplomacy thing into the core yields of the game - gold, faith and hammers and economy in general. But it could all be a lot better.
Last edited: