[GS] There are just too many diplomatic currencies

[Casworon]

I also think there are too many disconnected systems now. I think the main advantage of BNW over Civ VI is that in BNW all the features seemed to weave together. For example tourism reducing population loss on city capture etc etv.

In civ VI now we just have tonnes of different systems that seem to all be disconnected from each other. I like how faith has slowly become a useful currency even if you are not going for religion. But i would like to see some more of the currencies scraped and have the mechanics integrated with each other a bit more. I think it will offer more choices and make the game feel more dynamic rather than lesson

For example having governor titles, envoys and spy titles all mixed together into a single currency sounds brilliant to me and will offer lots of choices. At this stage it would require a massive rework of the game and i feel that if they did make another expansion. It would just be the addition of even more mechanics that are barley integrated with those already existing

 

[Krajzen]

In my opinion civ6 already came dangerously closely to feature bloat and too many currencies of all kinds, and if third expansion arrives it should really focus on systems not relying on yet another mana points currency.

 

[Duuk]

Interesting question: Does anyone know if "cede" works yet?

 

[ChocolateShake]

I think it's fine as long as you're able to clearly track the currencies you want to use for victory/your game-play style. I haven't used alliances much in Rise and Fall, but I expect that's my own fault - I'm pretty lazy However it could also be a sign that there are too many things to keep track of. I'm not sure how often the AI proposes alliance types, I'd go for that as a solution in case it isn't just due to my laziness.

Having different systems can help make the game fresh - I can play one game focusing just on making tons of gold and looking for favor, and another looking to pump up tons of faith and science, and another focusing on culture and tourism. That helps keep things varied. They just need to make sure the player is actively aware of the key systems and hinting towards the more subtle ones. I'm waiting for GS to start up again and see how well they've managed this aspect.

 

[Disgustipated]

Doesn't seem like that many until you spell it out like that. But the game still seems simple to me. I don't know. I've always been afraid to try EU4 because I fear it's complexity. Civ has always been just about right for me.

What would be the simplest civ game? Civ5 vanilla I guess. Civ2 didn't seem that complex ( I never played Civ1 so can't judge), though you wouldn't know that by the size of the manual (which I still have).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think it's fine as long as you're able to clearly track the currencies you want to use for victory/your game-play style. I haven't used alliances much in Rise and Fall, but I expect that's my own fault - I'm pretty lazy However it could also be a sign that there are too many things to keep track of. I'm not sure how often the AI proposes alliance types, I'd go for that as a solution in case it isn't just due to my laziness.

Having different systems can help make the game fresh - I can play one game focusing just on making tons of gold and looking for favor, and another looking to pump up tons of faith and science, and another focusing on culture and tourism. That helps keep things varied. They just need to make sure the player is actively aware of the key systems and hinting towards the more subtle ones. I'm waiting for GS to start up again and see how well they've managed this aspect.

But what if there was one unified currency, Influence maybe, that you would gather for diplomacy or for getting city/states or for loyalty or buying governros etc.. That would be one system instead of several, sure, but then there's be an added decision making process of what to do with it. More "streamlined" but not simpler, if that makes sense. I don't know if it would work or not but I don't see why not. Not in Civ6 of course though.

 

[Alexadamz]

But what if there was one unified currency, Influence maybe, that you would gather for diplomacy or for getting city/states or for loyalty or buying governros etc.. That would be one system instead of several, sure, but then there's be an added decision making process of what to do with it. More "streamlined" but not simpler, if that makes sense. I don't know if it would work or not but I don't see why not. Not in Civ6 of course though.

I wouldn't put the governors in the same pot as everything, but I guess the others could be mixed up together. That way you would still have a choice, between getting more influence towards city-states or saving the currency to invest on world congress. Governors I would rather let them appart, as they are an mostly internal feature - besides Ibrahim and Amani, but I guess they work differently as the other diplomatic features in game. Another way to have loyalty would be nice, as you could spend diplomatic currency to pump one of your cities' loyalty, which adds more critical choices for players and make loyalty a less passive mechanism. The grievances system I think it was a good addition to the game from GS, at least from what we have seen: it makes warring to have more checks and balances, and adds some complexity, but makes things clearer how the diplomatic reation from other leaders acts towards you and your play.

 

[The googles do nothing]

In contrast, you can’t really ignore governors or envoys. I mean, you can, but there’s no benefit to having unspent titles or envoys.

I think I see what you mean now. Having a lot of diplomatic currencies means you don't have to choose which benefit you want just which 'sub-benefit'. I think that the counter argument is that the wider variety of benefits you have the more like players will always pick one 'optimal' benefit and not use a lot of the mechanics of the game. I always get benefit from governors. City State envoys benefits are extremely variable because you are competing for benefits and can completely loose the the benefit if the city state is captured.

 

[pokiehl]

I am happy with these changes. They show the team is really expanding existing systems in thoughtful and fun ways.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I really like this idea, because I'd always prefer a game with fewer but deeper mechanics than one that splays itself conceptually and ends up tripping over its own feet.

Particularly the idea to unite envoys, governors, and spies is great. Call them "agency" points, given that they are all government agents.

Tourism and loyalty would be difficult to unite into one currency, they are really two opposing currencies. One measuring your value and cultural dominance over other civs. The other measuring the value and cultural dominance of other civs over you. They should definitely be very closely related but I don't think they need to be consolidated.

I do like the way they have made faith more than just religion based. Faith could also be merged with amenities in another version.

Faith conceptually has been occupying a weird middle ground between loyalty and amenities, but it really only exists separate of everything as a competing currency to gold. And I like the idea of having two or three basic opposing currencies in the game. Given that the only things besides money that can sway people are political power and religious fervor, I think faith is the much less controversial currency of the two. The devs paint a very idyllic form of civilization and spending "power" feels a bit too tyrannical.

And when we get corporations, those will also occupy a weird middle ground between faith, amenities, and production. So, I don't know. But I do agree that faith and amenities, even if they remain separate, should interact directly, maybe have early amenities that can be purchased with faith, and entertainment complex buildings that can generate faith.

 

[WillowBrook]

The number of systems currently is fine for me. I would appreciate a bit more transparency regarding things like (1) why suddenly no one whose been my ally for ages will renew friendships and then some time later everyone loves me again despite no significant change in relationship modifiers, or (2) why civs that have been happy to buy luxuries for 7 gpt suddenly demand them for 1 gold (not gpt). If the new diplo systems add more transparency, I will be happy; I'm not yet convinced we need simplification.

 

[returnofbabylon]

I'm personally not a fan of uniting envoys, governor titles, and spies into one currency, at least not in the way they're in the game currently. I wouldn't mind if there were some type of trade-off that existed between them, so that a player could potentially focus on being particularly strong at one at the expense of the other 2; however I think it should be possible to play an especially diplomatic game where your civilization is strong in all 3, as well as an especially undiplomatic one where your civilization is weak in all 3. Right now there isn't enough variation from game to game with respect to any of them.

To me, the issue isn't that we have too many diplomatic currencies, but that these diplomatic currencies' current implementations aren't all that interesting. Let's take envoys, since that's actually the most interesting of the 3. If I want to play a game that maximizes my envoys, what should I do?

1. Explore aggressively to try to be the first civ to meet as many city-states as possible.
2. Build the Apadana, then spam wonders in the capital.
3. Build Kilwa Kisiwani.
4. Complete as many city-state quests as possible.
5. Adopt the next tier of government as soon as possible.
6. Run Monarchy as T2 government.
7. Rush the civics that award envoys.
8. Run the Charismatic Leader policy card, then the Gunboat Diplomacy policy card.
9. Run the Diplomatic League policy card until you have an envoy at every city-state.
10. Play as Greece, and build an Acropolis in every city as soon as possible. (I'd say play as Georgia and convert all the city-states to your religion, but as we all know, no list for optimizing anything in Civ VI includes "play as Georgia.")

At first glance, that looks like a bunch of ways for the player to actively impact the number of envoys they get! But let's look a little closer.

1. On lower difficulties, I'm going to explore as much as possible regardless of my envoy strategy, or lack thereof. If I'm playing on Deity, I won't be able to focus on exploration either way.
2. Again, on lower difficulties I'll often build the Apadana and a bunch of wonders in my capital either way. On Deity, I'm not getting the Apadana.
3. See #2, but with Kilwa.
4. Most city-state quests fall into either things I'm going to do anyway (Build a Campus, Send a Trade Route) or things I won't do just to get an envoy even if I really want one (Recruit a Great General, Religious Conversion when I haven't founded a religion).
5. I'm getting my next government ASAP every game no matter my strategy.
6. Hey look, a legitimate decision with trade-offs that can increase envoys. Neat!
7. I suppose you can shave a few turns off acquiring envoys if you really focus on the relevant civics, but it won't change the total number available.
8. Given that you get a diplomatic slot in the early game with only Charismatic Leader and Diplomatic League available to fill it, you're going to be doing some of this no matter what.
9. See #8.
10. Certainly changes up the envoy game; also inherently irrelevant to the vast majority of games.

In the end, my experience is that I play basically two kinds of games in Civ VI with respect to envoys: games at lower difficulty, where I'm basically always suzerain of all of the city-states, even the ones I don't really want, and games at higher difficulty, where, to the extent the city-states don't all get conquered, I have trouble maintaining suzerainty of a city-state even if I focus on doing so. Spies and governor titles, which have even fewer ways for the human player to impact their total number, suffer from the same problem but worse.

I don't think the solution to this is to combine envoys with spies and governor titles, but flesh out city-state diplomacy so it's actually engaging. Getting envoys from liberating a city-state is great. It would be even better if I could get them by defending a city-state before it gets conquered. Or by gifting the city-state units. Or by using my builder chargers to improve its lands. Or by having a trade route or sharing a religion (there's no reason this should be limited to a couple city-states in a specific era.) For that matter, I don't understand why city-state diplomacy is limited to essentially a snapshot of the number of envoys at a particular moment; I've been allied with my neighbor Hattusa for 5 millennia, and they desert me overnight because some other civ from across an ocean stuck an Amani in there? How amazing at diplomacy is she supposed to be?!

For someone who already thinks the game is too complicated, envoys could still be safely ignored if they make changes like these; for someone who wants to pay attention to city-state diplomacy, there might actually be real, substantive differences depending on strategy. Everybody wins.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm personally not a fan of uniting envoys, governor titles, and spies into one currency, at least not in the way they're in the game currently. I wouldn't mind if there were some type of trade-off that existed between them, so that a player could potentially focus on being particularly strong at one at the expense of the other 2; however I think it should be possible to play an especially diplomatic game where your civilization is strong in all 3, as well as an especially undiplomatic one where your civilization is weak in all 3. Right now there isn't enough variation from game to game with respect to any of them.

To me, the issue isn't that we have too many diplomatic currencies, but that these diplomatic currencies' current implementations aren't all that interesting. Let's take envoys, since that's actually the most interesting of the 3. If I want to play a game that maximizes my envoys, what should I do?

1. Explore aggressively to try to be the first civ to meet as many city-states as possible.
2. Build the Apadana, then spam wonders in the capital.
3. Build Kilwa Kisiwani.
4. Complete as many city-state quests as possible.
5. Adopt the next tier of government as soon as possible.
6. Run Monarchy as T2 government.
7. Rush the civics that award envoys.
8. Run the Charismatic Leader policy card, then the Gunboat Diplomacy policy card.
9. Run the Diplomatic League policy card until you have an envoy at every city-state.
10. Play as Greece, and build an Acropolis in every city as soon as possible. (I'd say play as Georgia and convert all the city-states to your religion, but as we all know, no list for optimizing anything in Civ VI includes "play as Georgia.")

At first glance, that looks like a bunch of ways for the player to actively impact the number of envoys they get! But let's look a little closer.

1. On lower difficulties, I'm going to explore as much as possible regardless of my envoy strategy, or lack thereof. If I'm playing on Deity, I won't be able to focus on exploration either way.
2. Again, on lower difficulties I'll often build the Apadana and a bunch of wonders in my capital either way. On Deity, I'm not getting the Apadana.
3. See #2, but with Kilwa.
4. Most city-state quests fall into either things I'm going to do anyway (Build a Campus, Send a Trade Route) or things I won't do just to get an envoy even if I really want one (Recruit a Great General, Religious Conversion when I haven't founded a religion).
5. I'm getting my next government ASAP every game no matter my strategy.
6. Hey look, a legitimate decision with trade-offs that can increase envoys. Neat!
7. I suppose you can shave a few turns off acquiring envoys if you really focus on the relevant civics, but it won't change the total number available.
8. Given that you get a diplomatic slot in the early game with only Charismatic Leader and Diplomatic League available to fill it, you're going to be doing some of this no matter what.
9. See #8.
10. Certainly changes up the envoy game; also inherently irrelevant to the vast majority of games.

In the end, my experience is that I play basically two kinds of games in Civ VI with respect to envoys: games at lower difficulty, where I'm basically always suzerain of all of the city-states, even the ones I don't really want, and games at higher difficulty, where, to the extent the city-states don't all get conquered, I have trouble maintaining suzerainty of a city-state even if I focus on doing so. Spies and governor titles, which have even fewer ways for the human player to impact their total number, suffer from the same problem but worse.

I don't think the solution to this is to combine envoys with spies and governor titles, but flesh out city-state diplomacy so it's actually engaging. Getting envoys from liberating a city-state is great. It would be even better if I could get them by defending a city-state before it gets conquered. Or by gifting the city-state units. Or by using my builder chargers to improve its lands. Or by having a trade route or sharing a religion (there's no reason this should be limited to a couple city-states in a specific era.) For that matter, I don't understand why city-state diplomacy is limited to essentially a snapshot of the number of envoys at a particular moment; I've been allied with my neighbor Hattusa for 5 millennia, and they desert me overnight because some other civ from across an ocean stuck an Amani in there? How amazing at diplomacy is she supposed to be?!

For someone who already thinks the game is too complicated, envoys could still be safely ignored if they make changes like these; for someone who wants to pay attention to city-state diplomacy, there might actually be real, substantive differences depending on strategy. Everybody wins.

Envoys could probably use an upgrade where you have to actively pursue them to keep them. For example, say the city-state quests were not simply "they give you a quest, and stays until you complete it", but instead, if every era, the quest reset. If you fail the quest, you lose an envoy. If you succeed, then you gain the envoy. In that case, it definitely matters a lot more if you failed quests. Or as you mentioned, perhaps there should be more history to city-states. Maybe whoever is suzerain of each city-state for the most turns each era gets a free envoy, or gets some other bonus. It definitely would also be nice if city-states could call world congress resolutions when they get attacked, not just when they get captured. Would certainly be more convenient to try to protect them before they get beaten.

Alternately, if you have the current system where you continuously gain envoys, it feels like the limits to stay friends/suzerain are too fixed. Perhaps every era or two, the limits should increase. So in the ancient era it's 1/3/6 for bonuses. Maybe medieval it should shift to 1/4/8, then modern it goes to 1/5/10, and info era up to 1/6/12 (or maybe it should start at 1/2/4, then go to 2/4/8, 3/6/12, 4,8,16, etc...), Basically, if you're going to continue to give them out like candy, it should be tougher to actually use them, which would also give you tougher decisions. As you said, too often I either just get to my 6 per city-state and then ignore anything after that, or I suzerain everything even the ones I don't want. If the limits kept rising, then you do have to actually have to keep putting envoys to stay allied, even if they've never met anyone else in the world.

Part of the theory behind combining envoys with governors and/or spies is that you would then have some decisions. So if you play a game without envoys, you put all those points towards governors and spies. You want to ally everyone? Then you have to give up at least one of the others. Obviously you would have to balance things out a little more, you probably can't be giving out 3 governor promotions on those later civics, but there is a sense of logic in combining all of the various diplomatic-focused "yields" together, and then each game you decide how to balance them.

 

[sonicmyst]

I am fine with all the currencies in the game. Remember that there are civs tied up to different currencies. If we have fewer currencies then I see civs being too similar to one another.

For me more currencies = diversity. And also more choices.

 

[steveg700]

Nope, I am a mechanic... however I find is saddening.
I think the complexity is showing through with the quality of the livestreamers. unless you live eat and breathe civ you will struggle with the nuances all of these things introduce. Miss a conversation on the forum and you miss an OP exploit.

Did anyone else notice on the Mali livestream (around 4:30) that Pete was stating insistently that he always went after Divine Spark as his pantheon, preferring it over Desert Folklore, because he would rather get the extra Great Merchant points than the bonus faith?

Guess he didn't notice in all those playthroughs that Divine Spark doesn't grant GM points.

While all the complexity may be too much for casual players (like Firaxis employees), it's a whole lot more overwhelming for the AI's capacity-based logic, so it's probably a wash. Helps Civ continue to get all those 9.0 and 9.5 reviews from sites like IGN as well, because to the casual player (which in Civ terms means putting in under two hundred hours or so), every instance of erratic gameplay by the AI winds up being attributed to its depth, not its imperfections. They don't understand why the friendly civ just went postal on them after giving them a pile of gold, and then marched a catapult up to their gates to be destoryed, but they can attribute it all to the game moving in mysterious ways.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the Governor, Envoy and Spy systems all work very well in their own spheres. The link between all three and the Civics tree is particularly well done, and is very satisfying. I wouldn’t want any changes which actually undermined those core systems.

But I do think it’d be a bit more rewarding having a common currency, and perhaps even then allowing that currency to have other uses too. Or, at least make the existing currencies more fungible (*).

It’d be great being able to allocate Envoys to existing Civs and making that the vehicle for visability rather than delegations and embassies. It’d be great to skip having Governors (so it felt more special when you did have them). And yeah, you should have games where you’re nailing it and getting all the Governors and all the Suzerains. Likewise, you should have shockers where you get none and are just struggling.

Two small tweaks I’d like with City States is (1) just a few more diplatic options - you know, beyond just “Levy” and “Declare War”, and (2) city states having some sort of agenda, with their city state quests theming around that agenda (because currently the city state quests are just way too random). And as I’ve said, I wish you could have more than one Diplomat so you could potentially really lean into grabbing City States.

(*) Okay, so the currencies are a little bit fungible already. Envoys can only be used on City States. But Governor titles can be trade for Envoys by promoting Amani, and Spies can be by running spy missions in City States. And Govenors titles can also sort of be swapped for spy capacity in that Victor or Amani (I forget which) has some espionage promotions. So, it’s not quite as bad as my OP suggested.

 

[MonkeyPaw]

Diplomacy could use some streamlining, but I'd put Spies under "Intelligence" (which I would include Scouts to be part of.)

 

[acluewithout]

Actually, thinking about it a bit more, you really don’t need to make everything linked to one currency to make it a bit flexible. You could just lean into the existing mechanics.

e.g.

• Envoys. Keep Envoys and City State system. But allow Envoys to also be assigned to Civilisations. These then replace delegations and embassies. More envoys with Civs would give you more diplomatic visibility and maybe provide other perks via diplomacy cards (eg faster greivance decay, -/+ loyalty, +/- tourism, extra science or culture if the Civ is ahead of you) or alliances (maybe ally trade yields depend on envoys or envoys speed up earning alliance points). You could even make this a bit more double edged, by having Envoys allocated to Civilizations boosting the receiving Civ in some way.

• Spies. Basically, just keep the existing spy system, but have Envoys in other Civs boost your Spies’ effectiveness. And or require extra spy capacity to be purchased with Envoys and or just depend on how many Envoys you have deployed. Actually, linking Spy capacity and effectiveness to Envoys would be really interesting, because the capturing a City State or reducing another Civ’s Envoys could potentially neutralise another Civs Spying ability; equally, putting Diplomats in City States etc. or liberating City States would boost your Spy capacity and abilities.

• Governors. Just allow players to select the Diplomat Governor more than once, so you’re presented with a choice between more “Governors” that actually boost your Cities or more “Diplomats” that let you influence either other Civs or City States. The Diplomat(s) might have to be toned down a little bit as a result.

Or to put it another way, make Envoys are more general currency, and make Governor selection and use less rigid.

I know I say this a lot guys, but I really hope we get a Third Expansion that reworks some of this stuff. Just seems like there’s a lot of good stuff in Vanilla and RnF that needs a little more love and development.

So, on a separate note, does anyone like how Great Admirals and some of the Naval Civics give you Envoys? It’s not a big deal, but I like how this makes more Naval focused Civs sort of also more diplomacy focused, and even more so now Suzerains give you Diplomatic Favour.

 

[isau]

I dont agree that all these things are "currencies."

Diplo tokens/envoys are the main way to interact with City States. So, while they are arguably a currency, they're a locked one with just one, very streamlined purpose. I think this system is a huge improvement over spending gold to gain favor in Civ 5.

I wouldn't use the word currency to describe governors. The governor system is just a skill promotion system for cities similar to the promotion tree you can get for units. You can't trade governor points away or do anything other than spend them.

Modifiers from interactions with other civs aren't actually currencies at all but just descriptors.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I am fine with all the currencies in the game. Remember that there are civs tied up to different currencies. If we have fewer currencies then I see civs being too similar to one another.

For me more currencies = diversity. And also more choices.

Not necessarily. Civs could still get cheaper/better/different spies/envoys/governors/etc even if they're all recruited from a common bucket instead of different buckets as they are now.

For me, streamlined game systems offer the potential for more and more interesting choices. Right now if I earn a Governor Promotion, my only choice is what governor to spend it on? I don't have to decide would I rather have a spy? an envoy? etc.

The only good reason I see for the current system is that it may help the AI, which doesn't deal with extra choices as well as the player does.