Things that still irk me

ShakaKhan

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I was going to post this a week ago, then thought, "Nah, we've kind of been there, done that." Then thought,
Did get a bunch of likes when I pointed out that we're kind of at that point with the game where we've just run out of things to say, and I do have some opinions that haven't come up yet" As the internal dialogue continued debating, I read the thread "dreaming of one more patch" https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/dreaming-of-one-more-patch.673868 and decided to go ahead with it.

There's the obvious things that we've mentioned as a collective a hundred times - monopoly tourism, monopoly mode AI not improving resources, Hermetic Order in general, the AI at just about everything, naval warfare, and on and on... But what are the things that YOU noticed, maybe haven't come up here, that just don't sit right with you? Here's my list:

-builders can embark well before scouts: I understand that it's necessary for builders to embark to be able to improve sea resources, but this creates the situation where builders have a major scouting advantage over the unit class designed to do so. Sure, galleys are better at it, but mean making a whole new unit, and when you can see a border edge across a coast tile, it's way easier to just embark a builder for a quick meet.

-you can improve a tile this turn, but not the next turn: not just improvements, you could build wonders or even districts on a certain tile, and maybe that tile would have great adjacency, so you decide you're going to make that district when you reach the next "divisible by 3 plus 1" level and then whoops! there's a niter. You settle a city for the primary reason of getting that +7 campus and then whoops! there's an iron. Never a better reason to save-scum in my opinion; place the district, get the iron per turn and have that luscious campus. This could be a great city to send my trade routes from and it actually has a tile that can make Great Zimbabwe, so you settle it and find a strategic resource on the one tile that qualifies for the wonder. And while it's only temporary as opposed to discovering a strategic resource which is permanent, unlocking Natural History is the most annoying turn in the game as so many tiles that I've planned and pinned this and that to go there now have to wait for a city to make a theater square(which is a low priority district unless you're going for that victory condition), get the 1st and expensive 2nd tier building in it, and make an archeologist AND wait for him to get there.

-that gun is a melee weapon?: the beginning of the game makes sense, with swordsman being melee units and archers being ranged units. But from the time you hit gunpowder on, every single unit uses a weapon that is designed to strike the opponent from a distance, and for the sole sake of mechanics consistency (or laziness), some units are considered "ranged" while other units that use ranged attacks are considered "melee." An infantry is a melee unit while a machine gun (which is operated by an "infantry" unit) is considered "ranged." This gets even more ridiculous with naval units - there is a looooong list of differences between a battleship and a destroyer, none of which are that a destroyer extends a weapon from its limbs to make direct contact with its target. This also marginalizes the advent of gunpowder - it's not as bad as it was in Civ5, where a musketman is weaker than a knight, but still - the advent of gunpowder is one of the most, if not THE MOST, important and revolutionary changes in warfare, and should be reflected in this game by making a paradigm-shifting effect on how military units are considered and utilized - if military force A has the ability to use gunpowder weapons and military force B does not, then military force A wins - there are a few exceptions to this in our world's history (which could be accounted for in those instances by having greater advantages through unit promotions), but they are few and far between, so it really seems that there should be a dramatic shift in game mechanics which would also emphasize the military importance of being able to use this method of warfare. On a similar note...

-infantry... cost... oil... AND PER TURN!- Ah! I've just conceded that if I want to win by domination to plan on doing so with line infantry (and other units at the top of their class before resource-consuming units become a thing.) With early resources, if you have only 1 source of horses that means you can only make one horse-requiring unit every 10 turns, which makes sense. But later on, if you have only one source of oil, you can make only 3 oil-requiring units PERIOD. The game worked well before they incorporated resource-consuming units, and then they make it screwy by adding this element. And if each unit requires one resource per turn, then each source should produce more than 3 per turn of that resource, at least 5, I think 10 is appropriate - I have this one vein of coal or oil so I can make just 10 units that consume it, If I want more I can settle to get more of the resource. And the infantry unit in particular I have problems with - 1.) obviously the military personnel aren't drinking the oil and it's for the jeeps that are transporting them, so shouldn't they have a MUCH higher movement rate than men on foot weighed down by heavy armor? 2.) If the infantry are positioned at the battlefront, they don't need the vehicles to move them around and consequently wouldn't be consuming oil.

-Roads: a classic case of "it ain't broke but they fixed it anyway," roads were fine in previous civ games but they decided to change from workers to builder (not a bad move there) which made it necessary to reevaluate the construction and effects of roads... or did it? Builders now instantly make an improvement at the cost of a charge instead of being able to make unlimited improvements but taking longer and longer to make based on their sophistication, with roads being the quickest and things like oil rigs being the most turn-consuming. So they moved the construction of roads from a builder/worker function to a trade route function. But I have quite a few problems with the current implementation - 1.) roads are made but are nearly useless until late in the game - a road on a flat terrain with no feature serves NO PURPOSE until several eras into the game. 2.) A road over a hill or featured tile does allow the unit to move to that tile and still have MP remaining but whoops! an attack takes a full MP now instead of being able to attack if you have any little fraction of an MP remaining, so having a road there allows you to move and "skip turn" instead of moving and ending the turn for the unit - no difference except annoyance. 3.) By having the roads be made by a unit, you can create and customize your civilization's movement network instead of having uncontrollable trader units create the most direct path from city to city. 4.) I hear your counter-argument that roads can be made by military engineers, but this unit has probably the worst hammer:benefit return ratio, and I wouldn't delay a district, wonder, unit, or any other production queue to make one. Occasionally, I'll make a single military engineer to get the two forts boost, but otherwise I disregard them completely. 5.) Instead, how about traders don't magically poop out roads, but instead a builder can make it but for ZERO charges at the cost of being locked into the build for 3 or 5 turns? You would then need to either allocate one of your military units to guard it, or risk losing it to a rival civ or even barbs. IMO, that would be better.
 
I guess a lot of those things are theme rather than mechanics so I can see why they would be annoying.

The one I most agree with here is the late game upkeep costs for units... I think they need to be more plentiful for sure. They are rare enough that the fact that those same resources are needed to run power plants can really turn the late game into a drag.

The only one I really don't agree with is roads. I don't want to spend that much time micro managing them! Traders might have a mind if their own but it is nice not to be endlessly selecting build road all game...

I'm on board and wish you could just build districts on top of strategies after they had been found too... Sometimes a perfect city layout just goes... Poof... And is gone.
 
-Roads: a classic case of "it ain't broke but they fixed it anyway," (...) 3.) By having the roads be made by a unit, you can create and customize your civilization's movement network instead of having uncontrollable trader units create the most direct path from city to city.
I agree with pretty much everything you say, but this is definitely my favorite pet peeve. I just hate everything about the new road system. I can't count the number of times I have thrown a fit at my computer screen because the trader decides to circumvent a city that's almost but not directly on the line between A and B, or this one is my most hated part: City A and B are both on the coast, so trader decides to go over water. And you don't even have the option to force him to go over land instead. So there's no way you can make a road between the two cities until you unlock military engineers, which, as you say, have a horrible return ratio of being able to build two road segment before they die, which is ridiculously bad ROI.

I've modded my game so that builders can build roads for one charge, which is still frustrating, but at least saves the most infuriating situations, but there are many better solutions, for instance:
- If they stick to traders, let us select the path they choose, if nothing else whether they go land or sea, and whether they stop through towns on the way.
- They could go with builders with or w/o charge consumption (a road could use a partial charge for balance), or with a time cooldown as you say.
- Roads could be a city project. "Build road to X", takes an amount of production based on the distance between the cities.
 
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I understand that most would prefer it to be in the base game, but iirc there is a mod that allows builders to build roads.
 
My "irk" with roads are that I can build a Military Engineer, and he can build unlimited railroads at the cost of iron+coal, yet he can technically only build 2 roads. Umm, huh? I honestly like a lot of the current road system - it leads to more randomness, less road spam, and has lots of parts that make sense. But yeah, the lack of any cheap or simple "I just want to connect to this other city" without completely redesigning your trade network is a pain.

I do agree as well on the embark issues. I also personally feel that embarked land units should have a "sight" of 0, meaning that they can embark whenever legally allowed to, but will never reveal units in adjacent tiles, and cannot move into the fog of war. Thus, you can move your builder into the water to improve a fish tile, but you still need a Galley to actually explore the coastlines. It would also mean that you need a coast or harbor to actually expand out - it still feels weird to me that I can literally float my army into the dark across an ocean without really any repercussions.

For resources, it also annoys me that even later in the game, you can't do anything about the resource tiles. Like, I know this terrain has iron deposits or Orange groves, but please can I just remove them and expand my city there? Or place a dam or windmill or whatever on the tile?
 
I honestly like a lot of the current road system - it leads to more randomness, less road spam ...
That is the exact opposite of what I experience. I will often have roads criss-crossing in random and completely illogical ways through my empire, often having multiple roads going parallel to each other, etc.
 
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- Roads could be a city project. "Build road to X", takes an amount of production based on the distance between the cities.

Another lesson from Call to Power 2 that they refused to learn, probably because of arrogance. In CTP2, all infrastructure was built by using a resource called Public Works, which would be an adjustable portion of Production (with a slider, oh the horror!) to be pooled until used. No workers, no builders, no BS, only empire management. Worked like a charm. Every infra would have a cost in Public Works units according to complexity (and even terrain, roads on flat land would be cheaper than on hills for example).

Good ideas like this are not adopted usually when there is a monopoly that thinks it will stay alone forever. Thankfully, that changed now. We shall see if now the lessons are learned faster. ;)
 
I really enjoyed PW in Call to Power. :)

Yes, competition is good. Hopefully, Civ VII will benefit.
 
-builders can embark well before scouts: I understand that it's necessary for builders to embark to be able to improve sea resources, but this creates the situation where builders have a major scouting advantage over the unit class designed to do so. Sure, galleys are better at it, but mean making a whole new unit, and when you can see a border edge across a coast tile, it's way easier to just embark a builder for a quick meet.
Never really thought of this before. I guess it would make sense if recon units would be able to embark after researching Sailing as well, but if not to me it's not the biggest thing in the world.

-that gun is a melee weapon?: the beginning of the game makes sense, with swordsman being melee units and archers being ranged units. But from the time you hit gunpowder on, every single unit uses a weapon that is designed to strike the opponent from a distance, and for the sole sake of mechanics consistency (or laziness), some units are considered "ranged" while other units that use ranged attacks are considered "melee." An infantry is a melee unit while a machine gun (which is operated by an "infantry" unit) is considered "ranged." This gets even more ridiculous with naval units - there is a looooong list of differences between a battleship and a destroyer, none of which are that a destroyer extends a weapon from its limbs to make direct contact with its target. This also marginalizes the advent of gunpowder - it's not as bad as it was in Civ5, where a musketman is weaker than a knight, but still - the advent of gunpowder is one of the most, if not THE MOST, important and revolutionary changes in warfare, and should be reflected in this game by making a paradigm-shifting effect on how military units are considered and utilized - if military force A has the ability to use gunpowder weapons and military force B does not, then military force A wins - there are a few exceptions to this in our world's history (which could be accounted for in those instances by having greater advantages through unit promotions), but they are few and far between, so it really seems that there should be a dramatic shift in game mechanics which would also emphasize the military importance of being able to use this method of warfare. On a similar note...
That's because melee class usually equals=regular infantry. To me it's not that big of a deal either.

I think if the class was renamed "Infantry class" instead of "melee class" it would sound clearer. The Infantry unit could appropriate be named Modern Infantry. :)
 
It's hard to take these "wish list" threads serious anymore. Everyone wants to point out the things they would like to see changed in the game.
I do agree that the game still lacks a patch but I don't get why we even bother to talk about all these small insignificant things, when the core problem of the game is still how the AI acts throughout the game.
I think these threads are drowning the core issue of civ 6 and I'm seriously dreading the AI in Civ 7 will be a copy/paste work from civ 6. AI coding is difficult and expensive to get right in a game like civilization so if the fan base isn't careful we may get cheesed out when it comes to improved AI in the next iteration. Meanwhile, people are talking about individual opinions they like to have adressed in the "next patch".
We need to accept Civ 6 doesn't really have much more in the bag now and we can only hope Civ 7 will be improved in many ways.
 
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It's hard to take these "wish list" threads serious anymore. Everyone wants to point out the things they would like to see changed in the game.
I do agree that the game still lacks a patch but I don't get why we even bother to talk about all these small insignificant things, when the core problem of the game is still how the AI acts throughout the game.
I think these threads are drowning the core issue of civ 6 and I'm seriously dreading the AI in Civ 7 will be a copy/paste work from civ 6. AI coding is difficult and expensive to get right in a game like civilization so if the fan base isn't careful we may get cheesed out when it comes to improved AI in the next iteration. Meanwhile, people are talking about individual opinions they like to have adressed in the "next patch".
We need to accept Civ 6 doesn't really have much more in the bag now and we can only hope Civ 7 will be improved in many ways.

Completely agree except for one thing: amateur coders in their spare time have taken the civ 5 AI to the skies (Vox Populi). If they can, it suggests that the problem of Civ AI coding is not difficulty but skillset. No matter how much some people try to defend Firaxis in this aspect, it is hard to argue against a living counter example: Vox Populi and their AI coders (for free and in their spare time).

I don't think any future Civ iteration will improve in this key aspect, unless a serious designer with a SP-first mentality and excellent AI coding skills (Yes, @Soren Johnson ) comes back to the franchise, and I don't see that happening. Expect more meaningless bells, whistles and petting dogs, and much less AI challenge.
 
It would be an improvement if, say, infantry only used oil per turn when they're actually doing something. If they're garrisoned or fortified somewhere, not fighting, their consumption of oil should cease or at least be reduced.
 
- If they stick to traders, let us select the path they choose, if nothing else whether they go land or so, and whether they stop through towns on the way.
This!!! There are often places where i want to have an aesthetically pleasing or useful-for-crossing-rough-terrain but also way out-of-the-way road that I'd be totally willing to eat a penalty to a trade route in order to make but sadly that isn't an option in base game. What I'll do instead is use the cheat map editor mod to draw my own roads to pretend that it works the way i want it to. Once they're drawn the trader is much more likely to follow along em to complete a route, and then once the trade route is sent I can delete the roads I drew so the trader is still making them as it goes.
Would be really cool if it just allowed you to draw your own roads so I didn't have to cheat it in with a mod tho. Even if its something you have to use builders for, as long as its 0 charge cost I'd happily take it.
 
I'd like the ability to automatically escort traders with naval units. When I played England recently I had ships to spare, and it was tedious moving naval units manually turn after turn to kind of sort of "escort" them. Well, I'm new at this, so maybe I'm missing something.
 
The entire modern era is an afterthought... no highways/public transport, railroads are lame. At least there's climate change apocalypse and GDRs.
 
What I'll do instead is use the cheat map editor mod to draw my own roads to pretend that it works the way i want it to

Seems like we could easily just up the charges for the military engineer to 100. The downside to this is the AI will just put tunnels everywhere. I swear the AI is obsessed with those things.
 
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