[GS] Two weeks out, thoughts wishlist of changes

[I_137]

I originally posted this over on reddit but several people pointed out that the community over here enjoys analyzing and tearing apart things like this. I've had an additional week to brainstorm and collect feedback so I've made a huge update and would like to share my general concerns.

Overall I love Gathering Storm but there are a few things I'd really loved to have seen, some design choices that leave me scratching my head, and some stuff from vanilla and R&F that I really feel like should have been improved by now. The proposed fixes are meant to be examples, but I'm nowhere near a good enough player to claim there aren't better solutions. Please rip this apart or propose your own solutions...

I want to make it clear that I'm an immortal level player and I can count my deity wins on two hands, so I'm not purporting to appreciate how to balance the game or the civs, just expressing my disappointment with systems that I think could have been more meaningful or more fun. I do have very few thoughts on things that seem inappropriately balanced but I've saved those for the end.

That being said....

Production Thoughts
Production is so valuable that there is almost never any point to building anything other than Mines on hills. The later game opens up a slew of more production options with solar farms and windmills but overall even their usefulness is diminished by how accessible and how good mines on hills are.

Possible Fix: Mines only over strategic or bonus resources. /u/JNR13 on reddit did a great writeup on why this is probably a good idea, so I won't spend time here re-stating what s/he said.

Specialist Thoughts
Specialists are pretty worthless right now because their value is locked at two of an appropriate yield. Almost any workable tile gives more yields than that. Good game features usually have players make meaningful decisions between interesting choices. Right now the flow chart for specialists is "Is literally every workable tile already being worked? --> If yes, then set a specialist."

Proposed Fix: Make specialists actually special!

• +1 Production per specialist
• +1 appropriate GPP per specialist
• Specialists yields rescaled to give +2,+3,+4 (total of +2,+5,+9). This also provides incentives to build the tier 2 and 3 buildings in districts, and makes tall cities slightly more viable. This means that the first spec gives you +1 production, +1 GPP, and +2 yield, which makes him more valuable than any unimproved tile. The second spec gives you +1 production, +1 GPP, and +3 yield, which makes him as valuable as any improvement through modern era. The third spec gives +1 production, +1 GPP, and +4 yield, which is better than almost any improvement in the game, which seems appropriate given the incredible prod cost of tier3 buildings.
  

Religion Thoughts
Religion is pretty underwhelming and the most ignorable part of the game after climate change, unless you decide early on to go for a religious victory. Otherwise it's something you need to be vaguely aware of but don't really need to participate in.

Religion gets boring really fast. All the changes to religions are done by the time Medieval era hits, meaning even if you're going for a Religious Victory it gets really stale really fast as you're locked into the cycle of build apostle->hope for good promotion->send apostle->rinse and repeat. Religion also does not meaningfully impact the other victory paths. Domination gives you more cities which helps with everything. Tech helps you with everything, even diplomacy. Culture helps with domination, gives you envoys, unlocks wonders, and DV points. In contrast, while certain beliefs may align with certain other victory paths, this is almost completely out of your control and unchanging after the Classical Era.

Also, and this is less of a problem and more room for improvement, but Gathering Storm added whole new gameplay elements that do not interact with Religion at all despite religion's historical ties to exactly those gameplay elements.

Proposed Fixes:

• Make Great Prophets useful throughout the whole game: Expand list of great prophets to also include historically great philosophers and theologians. Beliefs now evangelized by Great Prophets instead of Apostles, meaning Great Prophet points are no longer completely useless after all religions founded. Great Prophets can be activated by Founding a Religion (if a slot is still available) or by Evangelizing a Belief, which lets you select a belief for the majority religion of that city. This means even if you can't attain a religious victory you have an incentive to build holy sites and craft the beliefs of whatever is the majority religion in your empire. It also means that spreading your Religion to other civilizations runs the risk of losing control over its beliefs, which is a real thing that happens in real life
• Make religious growth useful throughout the whole game: Remove the cap on beliefs evangelized, however, players must still build their religions evenly (i.e. you can't pick a 2nd Founder belief until you have 1 each of Founder, Follower, Worship, and Enhancer).
• New Pantheons: There is so much room for decent pantheons, especially ones related to the disasters. Some examples specific to Gathering Storm's theme:
  1. Heart of Sky (Pantheon): +20 faith per improvement or district damaged or destroyed by a hurricane or tornado.
  2. Volcano God (Pantheon): Volcanic Soil tiles yield +2 Culture
• New Beliefs: Again, there is so much room for good new beliefs. Some examples specific to Gathering Storm's theme:
  1. Eschatology (Enhancer Belief): Volcanic eruptions in cities following this religion give a burst of religious pressure
  2. Relief Society (Enhancer Belief): Winning the Send Aid competition automatically converts and causes a large religious burst in the target city.
  3. Secret Societies (Founder Belief): +2 Diplomatic Favor per foreign capital following this religion.
  4. Living Prophets (Founder Belief): +2 Great Prophet Points per turn as long as at least 1 city follows this religion
  5. Children of the Flood (Follower Belief): Farms built on flood plains provide an additional +0.5 Housing, which increases to +1 if they are damaged by an unmitigated flood.
  6. Mother of Invention (Follower Belief): Droughts and hurricanes provide a Eureka moment to a random technology
  7. Lords of the Red Land (Founder Belief): Civilian units are immune to sand storms. Being damaged by a sandstorm gives military units +10 to combat strength permanently
  8. Barisaa (Worship Belief): +3 Faith; +1 Faith per adjacent woods or rainforest
  9. Mithraeum (Worship Belief): +3 Faith, +2 culture
  10. Teocali (Worship Belief): +3 Faith, +2 amenities while at war.
  11. Vasati (Worship Belief): +3 Faith, +1 Great Prophet Point
      

Climate Change Thoughts
The Climate Change system is interesting but for the most part pretty ignorable. To the extent it impacts the game, it's unavoidable, and to the extent that it's avoidable, it doesn't impact the game. Instead of having to make real interesting decisions and feel the meaningful impact, it's sort of just a to-do list. Tornado happens? Have to repair some plots. Built on a river? Should probably build a dam. Some tiles might sink? You could build flood barriers but it's not like coastal districts were that good anyway. The solution is to simplify the climate change system, make the ramifications of poor environmental choices really material and provide accessible methods and incentives for avoiding climate change (and accessible rewards and punishments for failing to do so).

Proposed Fixes:

• Simplify Climate Change into fewer and more meaningful phases. Phase is determined by the total global output, and net output can be negative.
  1. Phase 1: initial world conditions, where natural disasters are possible and modified only by the global intensity scaler.
  2. Phase 2: floods, storms and droughts become more likely, and all ocean tiles yield 1 less food. 10% polar melt.
  3. Phase 3: floods, storms and droughts increase in frequency and intensity. Sea levels rise and submerge some coastal tiles. 45% polar melt. All Improved Luxury resources produce 1 fewer amenity. All unimproved Citrus, Cocoa, Coffee, Furs, Ivory, Olives, Truffles, Turtles, and Whales are destroyed.
  4. Phase 4 (which you should only see at the endgame if you haven't managed to avoid it): floods, storms, and droughts are rampant and intense. Almost all original coastal tiles are submerged. 80% polar melt. Improved Luxury Resources yield 2 fewer amenities each. All unimproved Bananas, Cattle, Crabs, Deer, Fish, Rice, Sheep, Wheat, Horses, Citrus, Cocoa, Coffee, Cotton, Pearls, Tea, Tobacco, and Wine are destroyed.
  Going back a phase reduces the disaster frequency, and the number of amenities from each improved resource, but does not restore submerged tiles, destroyed resources, or polar ice. Adjusting the "disaster intensity" setting also scales the thresholds required to meet each of these phases.
• More buildings/projects/improvements to reduce carbon: Right now carbon is only ever monotonically increasing, save for the carbon recapture project. It's kind of silly that the best way to eliminate carbon in the game is to tech as fast as possible to Global Warming Mitigation and build as many industrial zones as possible to recapture carbon. There should be projects and civics along the way that open up recycling centers, cleanup projects, improvements to convert quarries to landfills, etc.
• Woods and rainforests should reduce carbon, not just slow it down: As it stands, planting woods and keeping rainforests will slow your carbon output (related to % deforestation) but even if your empire commits to covering every single tile with woods, you can't be net neutral. Instead, woods should actually net eliminate carbon output, and rainforests should eliminate double this amount. This way eco-minded civs can control their carbon output by planting woods and preserving rainforests.
  

Resource Thoughts
Strategic resources become critical and then obsolete with incredible pace, even on Standard or longer speeds. The criticality is nice, especially the pre-industrial rush for iron, but it's weird to keep accumulating resources that are never used or interesting. Having different systems for horses and iron is also pretty wonky. Likewise, the game's handling of Uranium isn't very consistent with reality, but beyond that, it's just not fun or interesting. Right now you build a nuclear plant and every X turns you need to recommission it or risk a disaster. It feels just like a "oh one more thing for your checklist" solution.

Proposed Fixes:

• Make strategic resources consistent: Presumably a cavalry unit that's running around your empire for 100 years worth of turns isn't riding the same horse the entire time. A swordsman battalion isn't going into battle with the same beat up equipment for fifteen combats. All military units should have an up-front cost to build and a cost to maintain. 20 iron + 1 per turn isn't unreasonable for a Swordsman. 20 niter + 1 per turn isn't unreasonable for a Musketman, for example.
• Resources should become obsolete less quickly: Later units could require earlier resources to build (but not maintain). It's too complicated to have a big list of resources to maintain each unit but at the very least they could be a part of their up-front cost. An ironclad, for example, currently costs 1 coal to build and 1 coal per turn to maintain. Making this 20 iron + 1 coal to build and just 1 coal per turn to maintain makes sense and gives older strategic resources a purpose in the post-Medieval era, and prevents you from spamming out 4 ironclad the turn you unlock Steampower (or god forbid you're playing Brazil and start pumping out 4 Minas the turn you get Nationalism). Knights and Cavalry currently require only Iron but could cost Horses and Iron to build and only Iron to maintain. Likewise, even though GDRs require Uranium to power, they could easily cost 40 iron + 40 aluminum off the bat. You get the idea.
• Equestranautical Renaissance: Once you've teched enough that there is nothing to build requiring Horses (or like once the world hits the atomic age), they should probably just be converted into a Luxury resource. Pastures built on Horses give +1 appeal to surrounding tiles, useful for attracting Neighborhoods filled with crazy teenage equestrians and soccer moms.
• Make Uranium management interesting and meaningful: Everything that consumes uranium per turn, whether power plants or units, produces a new Strategic Resource per turn: Nuclear Waste. It has a cap just like all the other resources, and when you hit your cap, there is a risk of Bad Things happening each turn you're at cap. Also, Magnus’s Black Marketeer should not apply to nuclear weapons.
• Ways of managing Nuclear Waste could include:
  1. Nuclear Power Plants each add to your total waste cap
  2. Military Engineers can convert salt mine improvements into Nuclear Waste Storage improvements (+ nuclear waste capacity, -appeal to tiles within certain radius).
  3. Military Engineers can improve adjacent mountains with Nuclear Waste Storage improvements (+ nuclear waste capacity, -appeal to tiles within certain radius)
  4. New Industrial Zone project (unlocked with Nuclear Fusion or some future era tech): "Convert Nuclear Waste" consumes X nuclear waste and gives 20% of X back as Uranium
  5. New Industrial Zone projects (unlocked with Nuclear Fusion and Manhattan Project/Project Ivy): Decommission Nuclear Weapon/Decommission Thermonuclear Weapon, destroys a weapon and returns half of Uranium cost of that weapon
  6. You can trade Nuclear Waste away to civs with extra capacity and even pay them to take it off your hands. Or if they want it bad enough to convert and fuel their GDRs, they can pay you.
  7. Molten Salt Reactor: New building that consumes Nuclear Waste if available, then Uranium if Waste is Depleted.
  8. "Quick while no one is looking," - Military engineers can dump uranium waste into ocean tiles or onto other civ's land. Dumping in another civ's borders is an act of war like attacking or nuking. Generates crapton of grievances and CO2 damage, as you can imagine.
• Bad Things that could happen once you hit capacity:
  1. Each Nuclear Plant has a risk of catastrophic failure
  2. Each Nuclear Waste Storage has a risk of catastrophic failure
  3. Units that consume Uranium risk damage to themselves and adjacent units

Military/War/Grievance/Diplomacy Thoughts
Everything about the language and context of Diplomacy, from the WC events all the way through the quote on the Diplomatic Victory screen, are ostensibly about keeping peace. It's weird then that, aside from emergency events which don't even trigger much of the time, there is no real diplomatic penalty for being a warmongering civ. It makes it harder to form alliances, but most of your DF will come from city states, governments, and contests instead of Alliances until the lategame, anyway. Additionally, the grievance system is a huge improvement over R&F but still ends up feeling like a bookkeeping item with no tangible consequences.

Beyond that, we could use some more interesting reasons to go to war, consistent with the themes of diplomacy and climate change! Second, and maybe more interestingly, is that Diplomacy is presented in Civ 6 as a mechanism for peaceful civs to win the game.

Proposed Fixes:

• Give warmongering a real diplomatic cost, and grievances a real tangible value: Each War should have an associated DF cost, say 150 for Surprise War, 100 for Formal War, etc. This cost should be reduced by the number of grievances you have against a player. Don't have enough Favor? You can still declare war, but your DF balance can go negative. So if Surprise War costs 150 Favor, and you have 100 Grievances against Phillip II for converting your cities, it would only cost you 50 DF to Declare War. If you only had 25 favor, you'd have -25 after declaring. Having negative Favor could have all sorts of consequences: not being allowed to vote in WC, grievances against you being doubled, international trade routes to your cities don't give you yields, etc. I'm not good enough to know what a balanced penalty is, but the idea is that warmongering should have a literal cost to your empire, if only in diplomatic terms. As it stands you can be well on your way to domination victory but still somehow have all the Favor in the world.
• Alternative/additional solution: persistent diplomatic cost for war: If having an upfront DF cost for war doesn't seem reasonable, maybe it could work like the opposite of Alliances. Alliances give you DF per turn per alliance level. Maybe being at war with a civ should cost you 1 DF per turn. Maybe Wars could even "level up" the same way, costing more each level but giving unique benefits to both civs?
• New casi belli examples:
  1. New Casus Belli: Environmental War, unlocked by Environmentalism, granted against a civ whose CO2 damage is 2x yours. Grievances reduced by 50%
  2. New Casus Belli: Fallout Prevention War, unlocked by Cold War, granted when a civ uses nuclear weapons. can only be granted to civs that have never used nuclear weapons. grievances reduced by 75%. Players who declare a Fallout Prevention War cannot use nuclear weapons for the duration of the war.
  3. New Casus Belli: NIMBY, unlocked by Cold War, granted against a civ that builds a waste storage facility near your borders.
  4. New Casus Belli: War of Diplomatic Sovereignty, unlocked by Ideology, granted against a civ who votes opposite you in a World Congress resolution, and whose votes alone add up to more than all the votes of the your side. Grievances halved. May only be declared as Joint War.
  5. New Casus Belli: War of Global Conspiracy: unlocked by Smart Power Doctrine, granted against a civ who wins a World Congress resolution despite being the only civ to vote for his side. Grievances reduced by 75%. May only be declared as a Joint War.
     

Civics/Policy Thoughts
Civics for the most part seem pretty well-implemented, but not without problems. There is almost always an optimal set of policy cards, often contradictory. And again, a lot of room for new stuff that reflects the theme and synergizes with the other elements.

Proposed Fixes:

• Make certain policy cards mutually exclusive or maybe even exclusive to certain government types Should you be able to have Conscription as well Professional Army? Meritocracy as well as Serfdom? Wars of Religion and Simultaneum?
• Further enforce theme through civic changes/additions: Some examples:
  1. Updated civic: Cultural Heritage: Builders can now Restore Rainforest, which allows them to set up rainforests on any plains or plains (hills) adjacent to any existing rainforest tiles
  2. New diplomatic policy: Biodiversity Initiative, unlocked by Global Warming Mitigation, +0.1 diplomatic favor and +1 science per rainforest or old growth woods
  3. New wildcard policy: Strategic Interests, unlocked by Nuclear Fusion, gain twice as much Uranium from converting Nuclear Waste
  4. New military policy: Global Zero, unlocked by Globalization, gain full cost of weapon when decommissioning a WMD
     

Gossip Thoughts
The gossip system does a horrible job of communicating information. It occupies the most important visual real estate in the game and contributes next to nothing meaningful.

Proposed Fix: So how do we display interesting news and information in a way that doesn't disrupt the primary content? The same way every news network in the world does:

1. The single most important thing is PRIORITIZE. The most important stuff, that materially affects gameplay (declarations of war, starting to build wonders) should either (a) come first and be prominent or (b) be completely moved to the circle-alerts on the right anyway. It's crazy that "gossip" consumes more space, and on the main screen, than actual material changes to gameplay.
2. Drop the name and the flavor text. No one cares if Bob or Mehmet or Jose is the one delivering the news. It literally communicates no information other than "hey we had an intern scrape a list of names from this country!"
3. Make it a translucent scrolling up-to-down feed on the right. New info pops in at the top and scrolls down. Look at Bloomberg TV HD or CNBC HD, where there is a dedicated scrolling bar on the right that just gives interesting news information.
4. Allow players to collapse this into a scrolling ticker along the bottom or hide it completely.
5. Consolidate related stories. If three civs go to war with 5 other civs, you don't need 15 different announcements. "INCA, AZTEC, AND FRANCE DECLARE FORMAL WAR AGAINST ENGLAND, BRAZIL, AND BRUSSELS." or even " "INCA DECLARES SURPRISE WAR AGAINST SCOTLAND! AZTEC, FRANCE, AND BRUSSELS JOIN CONFLICT."
6. Any information important enough to literally take over the primary gameplay window needs to be present and accessible somewhere else in the game. If it's important enough to have a popup tell me that England is trading with Arabia, I should be able to go to England or Arabia's diplomacy screens and see there trade partners clearly and visually. Likewise, if it's important enough to have a popup tell me that Robert the Bruce is building the Pyramids in Sterling, then the diplomacy page should have that information prominently available, too.
   

Other Thoughts/Balance Changes

• It's a standing item but it deserves mention, the AI could always use improvement. GS feels like a huge step up from R&F and there's still room to grow in this regard.
• Nerf Earth Goddess pantheon or convert to a Follower Belief. It's the best pantheon by an order of magnitude. Every other pantheon doesn't even come close. You can get +40/50 faith per turn by medieval era. It's the only pantheon that regularly sees anything close to that yield output. A lot of times I decide whether or not to go for a RV based on whether or not I lock down this one pantheon.
• Rock bands are stupidly powerful. Two rock bands with the Indie promotion can flip your capital in one turn. A rock band with Album Cover Art and Pop Star can produce effectively thousands of gold per turn, which is likely more than all your other income from all other sources combined. Cut Pop Star down to 10% from 50%, make Indie 50% of current loyalty instead of absolute.
• Mods fill in this hole quite nicely but there really needs to be better report screens and understanding of where your income is coming from, and what changes policies and such will have on your current empire. It's silly that mousing over a policy can't tell you what the immediate impact to all your yields would be.

 

[acluewithout]

Making Goddess of Harvest a Follower Belief is a really interesting idea. You’d have speed players either rushing Religion or trying to converted by whichever religion has it.

Specialists are fine as they are. And really, the last thing the game needs now are even more yield buffs. Specialists just arent the focus of the game anymore.

If anything, I’d leave Specialists as is, but give them yield buffs via Civics Tree (a bit like how tech improves Improvements) or a +1 yield buff after you unlock your second tier government (Encampment, Harbour, CH and IZ specialists only) and additional +1 for third and fourth tier governments (all Specialists Types).