[GS] What aspects of the game do you feel are the most "overpowered?"

[Sostratus]

I'm not talking about civ uniques. I'm referring to core game mechanics or design decisions that pull playstyles in a certain way.

I was thinking about the various policy cards while reading the Monarchy thread. I know a lot of people recently have been feeling that there's too much science and the game advances too fast. And I thought, "you know, so much of this fast game pacing meta relies upon cheap unit upgrades and the +100% from buildings cards."

Having cheap unit upgrades immensely swings things in favor of building units early, and not really needing to devote a big economy to supporting a modern military. The insane science of Rationalism effectively cements the card into many builds.

What aspect of civ6 do you feel pushes the meta into a certain direction? Why? Is it too central to civ6 the way it's implemented, or could it be changed without undoing the core elements of the game? As an example, the unit upgrade discount cards could be nerfed or removed, without really changing how the game fundamentally plays.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Early CS bonuses, and really any early culture/faith makes such a big difference.

Personally, I'd actually remove the free envoy for meeting a CS, and replace it with like 25 gold and era score.

CS"s in general make a huge difference, but you can't make them useless either or they just get captured.

Pillaging is still way too strong for its own good.

 

[Leucarum]

I honestly think I'd prefer the game without chopping. I got used to the fact that it's the biggest part of deity catchup but it feels dirty.

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus What you said.

I’m not sure there is too much that is over powered, really. Like, Frigates are still strong, but they totally deserve to be. Gilgabro is crazy strong, but that’s his whole shtick, and I love him for it.

So. I think the Professional Army Card is too strong. There shouldn’t be any gold discount for upgrades. And I think Science from Science City States is too strong. In terms of balance, they both seem like low hanging fruit for fixing.

I think Campuses unlock too early and or are too easy to Spam early in the game. I’m not sure that’s the same as Campuses being too strong though. But if you tweaked a few other things, maybe Campuses would be fine.

I don’t think chopping is OP or science generally, although both are certainly strong. I think Coloseum and Pyramids are strong Wonders, but that’s fine by me.

I thought Rams were OP for a long time, as were Horses and Knights. They’re not any more, and are a heap more fun as a result. I found Legions too powerful and it put me off playing Rome. They’re much better balanced now.

And I think Melee units don’t deserve to be such a big deal. I’m not saying they’re too strong. They’re just ahistorical and we only have them because they’re a holdover from Civ 1. Instead of making them the fulcrum for combat units, I think Spears and Pike should have been the focus early game with everything balanced around them. If we had “Melee” units at all, they should represent a sort of specialist Seige unit. But that’s not the same as saying Melee are OP. And that’s also a very personal view, and I would actually suggest anyone rebalance the game that way.

I don’t actually think there’s a lot in Civ now that is OP. It’s more a problem of how some things fit together and a few things being chronically underpowered for their cost.

 

[Minou]

Chopping
Pillaging (was fine before, the terrible, now slightly less bad)
Upgrading units (not that terrible in itself but later units cost so much it is ALWAYS better to build the first generation then upgrade rather than hard build)
AI paying too much gold for stuff (especially DF), at least on high difficulty (they run out of gold on lower levels)
Too easy to get Friendship with AI and then renew the turn it expires, thus never worrying about being attacked by many neighbors.



I think the game would be much more enjoyable if costs including scaling of districts were greatly reduced across the board and chopping was just a flat 20 (ramping to 50 with a 10h bonus at techs like Machinery, Apprenticeship, Replaceable Parts and Industrialization). When I play seriously I rarely build more than 3 mines, which sucks!

 

[Sostratus]

Early CS bonuses, and really any early culture/faith makes such a big difference.

Personally, I'd actually remove the free envoy for meeting a CS, and replace it with like 25 gold and era score.

I think V had gold for meeting them first.
Getting 50% more science on turn 4 or what have you is pretty strong.
I think the key the CS value is the unique suze bonuses. Do you think the per building boosts would be better served if some how limited - perhaps in some cases (gold, faith, science, culture) as a scaling, but lump sum, amount? (Like civ5's culture CS.) Or do you feel that perhaps it can stay but should be capped? Usually things aren't that wild unless I get 2 of the same type early on. A +6 science library is extremely fast tech rate. Only need 6 envoys in the right places!

I honestly think I'd prefer the game without chopping. I got used to the fact that it's the biggest part of deity catchup but it feels dirty.

Chopping has been in civ for a long time now, and I really like that we can remove bonus resources. Otherwise district and wonder placement would be impossible. But the shift in 6 is that you chop in one turn now. Before it took like 5-10. So that aspect has really made it an "on demand" thing. Do you thin it's a matter of chop value being to high as opposed to the fact that we can chop at all? Certainly on deity you're going to be a little hemmed in to strats to catch up asap. On EG emperor chopping is useful but not a vital partof the game like it was when we had overflow exploit and full power Magnus.

I’m not sure there is too much that is over powered, really.

It was hard to put a good word on the title. Like in civ5, 4 city tall was so strong it was game defining. And we have campus spam as so strong it essentially creeps into any playstyle. (Literally any victory path is easier if you spam campuses.) So I guess that's what I mean by overpowered - denying alternatives any oxygen. Like Goddess of the Harvest.

And I think Melee units don’t deserve to be such a big deal.

They are kinda the "protagonists" of units in this game. With Plot armour and weapons to defeat the evil anticavalry villains!

 

[acluewithout]

[Melee] are kinda the "protagonists" of units in this game. With Plot armour and weapons to defeat the evil anticavalry villains!

Love it. That’s exactly what I mean.

This is probably a topic for another thread. But yeah, Melee are exactly like protagonist, particularly given you start with one. But to me that’s what Civ gets totally wrong. Your protagonists should be scouts, traders, guys with pointy sticks, and later on diplomats.

It was hard to put a good word on the title. Like in civ5, 4 city tall was so strong it was game defining. And we have campus spam as so strong it essentially creeps into any playstyle. (Literally any victory path is easier if you spam campuses.) So I guess that's what I mean by overpowered - denying alternatives any oxygen. Like Goddess of the Harvest.

Got it. Yeah, there’s probably not much of that left in the game that’s a big problem. Needing science for everything is not a problem per se, but it is just because you can get so much, so early, so fast.

Upgrading with Gold is definitely like that - you just don’t build units after the ancient era. Science from Blue City States is also like that - there’s no point putting envoys in any other colours.

Chopping is not like that. It’s very strong, but it’s up to the player how efficiently they want to play. I’m not saying it could use a nerf - the way it endless ratchets up with tech and civic progress is a problem - but getting rid of GotH and improving late game production has made chopping more balanced overall IMO.

 

[Leucarum]

Chopping has been in civ for a long time now, and I really like that we can remove bonus resources. Otherwise district and wonder placement would be impossible. But the shift in 6 is that you chop in one turn now. Before it took like 5-10. So that aspect has really made it an "on demand" thing. Do you thin it's a matter of chop value being to high as opposed to the fact that we can chop at all? Certainly on deity you're going to be a little hemmed in to strats to catch up asap. On EG emperor chopping is useful but not a vital partof the game like it was when we had overflow exploit and full power Magnus.

Yeah I think the scale of it is the biggest issue. It kind of undermines the importance of production and purchase mechanics. I recognize that there are a lot of good things about the mechanic - it is nice (essential on deity) to have an alternative mechanism to rush out key infrastructure, but it would be nicer if there was more variety to the catchup phase.

On deity it feels like the phases go from a very interesting setup (where you make the critical decisions about how to play and establish the territory/infrastructure you'll need), to a somewhat samey implementation (chop chop chop) and then a long drag till victory. A bit more variety in the implementation phase, and maybe making it drag out a fair bit longer would make the mid to late game more fun.

Maybe move Reyna and Moshka's district purchase options down the tree but at the same time move Magnus' chop bonus from an automatic to the middle of his tree. That way super-chopping wouldn't be such a simple investment and you'd have a better possibility to buy buildings/districts with faith or gold if that's what your empire ended up being good at

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

1. Buildings and districts generating yields without a population allocated to working them. Results in food being undervalued as a yield as it's easier to avoid the amenity / housing / food expense associated with growing large cities and instead convert luxuries into gold.

2. Military units costing less to upgrade than to build from scratch. Carrying forward the historical XP of existing units is enough of a benefit to upgrading, it doesn't need to be cheaper, too. The current system overweights the value of units constructed in the ancient era.

3. The first two citizens of each city being amenity-needs free. This ability should apply to the Palace, not every city. Small cities already offer a benefit in the form of additional territory = additional resources and 1 Pop = district versus 4 Pop for a district in a large city. They don't also need to be easier to maintain than the same population in an existing city.

4. Trade route capacity being based on the number of cities you have rather than the amount of population you have, combined with the asymmetric benefit of trade to the initiating city compared to the target city. Undervalues the effort to make large cities, overvalues the benefit of taking everybody else's cities (except one: ideal situation is you own all the cities in the world except one, and all of your cities trade with that one other city, generating a crazy amount of science, gold, faith and culture, while that one other city gets only the value of one trade route coming back to you).

5. Settler costs escalating as you build more of them. Penalizes peaceful expansion versus conquest, especially under the current system where one settler can create only one city but one army can conquer all the cities.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

Culture is vastly more valuable than science early on and until you reach democracy.

 

[Sostratus]

1. Buildings and districts generating yields without a population allocated to working them. Results in food being undervalued as a yield as it's easier to avoid the amenity / housing / food expense associated with growing large cities and instead convert luxuries into gold.

It's a tricky thing to balance. On the one hand i really like district adjacency - I think this mechanic is the best one they added. I also appreciate the simplicity of flat yield buildings, but I know that they are a bit busted - at least the science/culture realm. I would much rather those buildings revert to +per pop effects. It would be a very dull game to scrap adjacency, but I think most buildings would be better focused around boosting their specialist type slots + ulterior effects instead of "FLAT YIELD."
Gold+production districts work a lot better with food because you still work land to get more. it's the that causes problems because like you said, where before those things were tied to pop and thus food, now it's a fire and forget.

2. Military units costing less to upgrade than to build from scratch. Carrying forward the historical XP of existing units is enough of a benefit to upgrading, it doesn't need to be cheaper, too. The current system overweights the value of units constructed in the ancient era

Yes 100x. It just sucks out the need to temper campus/theater spam with hard production or gold generation when upgrades are so cheap. Military production has a lot of powerful effects that get shunted because it will never be better to build a tank than upgrade a cuirassier.

3. The first two citizens of each city being amenity-needs free. This ability should apply to the Palace, not every city. Small cities already offer a benefit in the form of additional territory = additional resources and 1 Pop = district versus 4 Pop for a district in a large city. They don't also need to be easier to maintain than the same population in an existing city.

i feel like I've been screaming about this for a long time. If they took away the free amenity per city, it would be a huge wide balance change without actually punishing you for going wide. (Currently the amenity rewards your expansion.) Such an easy tweak to make.

4. Trade route capacity being based on the number of cities you have rather than the amount of population you have, combined with the asymmetric benefit of trade to the initiating city compared to the target city. Undervalues the effort to make large cities, overvalues the benefit of taking everybody else's cities (except one: ideal situation is you own all the cities in the world except one, and all of your cities trade with that one other city, generating a crazy amount of science, gold, faith and culture, while that one other city gets only the value of one trade route coming back to you).

Without the city connection to capital mechanic, or trading post improvements, to make money, if you cap trade routes by tech like civ5 you'll have problems. I get the asymmetry - in civ5 you wouldn't send profitable routes because the enemy would get more gold than you! CivBE had a trade depot mechanism that granted a route, and then extra based on pop. While that led to micromanagement apocalypse, perhaps one could incorporate a similar concept to limit the number of routes you can send out of the city and the efficacy of the route. (but not increase the total route cap.) IE, a size 20 city can support more trade route out of it than a size 5, and the size 20 city gets bonuses to its routes to put it on equal or even superior footing to a collection of small cities.

5. Settler costs escalating as you build more of them. Penalizes peaceful expansion versus conquest, especially under the current system where one settler can create only one city but one army can conquer all the cities.

It grinds my gears too, but expansion by any means is powerful and I get the need to brake it. What's your feeling on the 1 pop cost of settlers?

 

[acluewithout]

1. Buildings and districts generating yields without a population allocated to working them. Results in food being undervalued as a yield as it's easier to avoid the amenity / housing / food expense associated with growing large cities and instead convert luxuries into gold.

2. Military units costing less to upgrade than to build from scratch. Carrying forward the historical XP of existing units is enough of a benefit to upgrading, it doesn't need to be cheaper, too. The current system overweights the value of units constructed in the ancient era.

3. The first two citizens of each city being amenity-needs free. This ability should apply to the Palace, not every city. Small cities already offer a benefit in the form of additional territory = additional resources and 1 Pop = district versus 4 Pop for a district in a large city. They don't also need to be easier to maintain than the same population in an existing city.

4. Trade route capacity being based on the number of cities you have rather than the amount of population you have, combined with the asymmetric benefit of trade to the initiating city compared to the target city. Undervalues the effort to make large cities, overvalues the benefit of taking everybody else's cities (except one: ideal situation is you own all the cities in the world except one, and all of your cities trade with that one other city, generating a crazy amount of science, gold, faith and culture, while that one other city gets only the value of one trade route coming back to you).

5. Settler costs escalating as you build more of them. Penalizes peaceful expansion versus conquest, especially under the current system where one settler can create only one city but one army can conquer all the cities.

It's a tricky thing to balance. On the one hand i really like district adjacency - I think this mechanic is the best one they added. I also appreciate the simplicity of flat yield buildings, but I know that they are a bit busted - at least the science/culture realm. I would much rather those buildings revert to +per pop effects. It would be a very dull game to scrap adjacency, but I think most buildings would be better focused around boosting their specialist type slots + ulterior effects instead of "FLAT YIELD."
Gold+production districts work a lot better with food because you still work land to get more. it's the that causes problems because like you said, where before those things were tied to pop and thus food, now it's a fire and forget.


Yes 100x. It just sucks out the need to temper campus/theater spam with hard production or gold generation when upgrades are so cheap. Military production has a lot of powerful effects that get shunted because it will never be better to build a tank than upgrade a cuirassier.


i feel like I've been screaming about this for a long time. If they took away the free amenity per city, it would be a huge wide balance change without actually punishing you for going wide. (Currently the amenity rewards your expansion.) Such an easy tweak to make.


Without the city connection to capital mechanic, or trading post improvements, to make money, if you cap trade routes by tech like civ5 you'll have problems. I get the asymmetry - in civ5 you wouldn't send profitable routes because the enemy would get more gold than you! CivBE had a trade depot mechanism that granted a route, and then extra based on pop. While that led to micromanagement apocalypse, perhaps one could incorporate a similar concept to limit the number of routes you can send out of the city and the efficacy of the route. (but not increase the total route cap.) IE, a size 20 city can support more trade route out of it than a size 5, and the size 20 city gets bonuses to its routes to put it on equal or even superior footing to a collection of small cities.


It grinds my gears too, but expansion by any means is powerful and I get the need to brake it. What's your feeling on the 1 pop cost of settlers?

Pretty much agree with both of you. I'd maybe side with Sostratus in Trade though.

Getting rid of the free amenity for new Cities would be really interesting. If you had three Cities, you'd actually want the Fourth to maximise your Luxes. If you had a Zoo etc, you'd want to fill up all the City spots within 6 tiles. Amenities from Garrisoned units would be more important too.

 

[Sostratus]

Getting rid of the free amenity for new Cities would be really interesting. If you had three Cities, you'd actually want the Fourth to maximise your Luxes. If you had a Zoo etc, you'd want to fill up all the City spots within 6 tiles. Amenities from Garrisoned units would be more important too.

I don't think I would mind having an early incentive saying "hey... you need to settle more luxes fast. That might be the only citrus on this half of the continent." And nudging players {expansionists and warmongers alike} to need to build up Entertainment complexes, shell out $$ for luxes in trade deals, or take cards and perks that require giving a useful benefit (like the Audience chamber instead of the ancestral hall, or slotting civil prestige) just to keep things under control. When I build AC it's because I want the housing for some reason. Not once have I ever cared about the amenity point.

I think zoos and stadiums are very well timed with unlocking right around when you start hitting the struggle point. But early on you might build one EC for the Colosseum, if that.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I would much rather those buildings revert to +per pop effects. It would be a very dull game to scrap adjacency, but I think most buildings would be better focused around boosting their specialist type slots + ulterior effects instead of "FLAT YIELD."

There's a lot of fun things you could do with bonuses to terrain features that would help differentiate cities around the map in place of building flat yields.

District adjacency bonuses feel forced and unnatural to me, but I don't necessarily disagree with them as a game mechanic, as they can be fun. I'd just limit them to being a bonus to specialists working in that district.

Without the city connection to capital mechanic, or trading post improvements, to make money, if you cap trade routes by tech like civ5 you'll have problems. I get the asymmetry - in civ5 you wouldn't send profitable routes because the enemy would get more gold than you! CivBE had a trade depot mechanism that granted a route, and then extra based on pop. While that led to micromanagement apocalypse, perhaps one could incorporate a similar concept to limit the number of routes you can send out of the city and the efficacy of the route. (but not increase the total route cap.) IE, a size 20 city can support more trade route out of it than a size 5, and the size 20 city gets bonuses to its routes to put it on equal or even superior footing to a collection of small cities.

I agree the trade route limit by tech tree from Civ 5 was also suboptimal, as it worked the other way: every empire got the same number of trade routes, again divorced from the size of their population.

Honestly, I think the various disjointed trade mechanics could use a rethink. Some of the complexities that are ripe for a rethink include:​

• Leaders can make trades of stuff that happen instantaneously off map regardless of whether you have a physical connection between the two empires and without risk of interception. Trader units travel on map and are limited by distance, subject to interception, etc. Alliances result in another form of trade that happens automatically, can't be intercepted, etc. There's two systems too many here.​
• Trade between cities takes place by means of a Trader unit that only side creates. To avoid the Civ 5 concern you reference, Civ 6 went too far the other way, turning them into Spies, not Traders, sneaking into enemy cities and making off with their scientific and cultural knowledge, and a pocketful of gold and silver (=Faith) to boot.​
• Closed borders keep out civilian units of other civs, but not Traders. Again, maybe they're really Spies not Traders? (Mind you, the binary aspect of closed : open borders is another bugbear of mine. This should evolve over time, but not as early as it happens in Civ 6).​

In the interim, I think the game fails to incentivize creating attractive trading hubs for other civs to send their traders to and fails to balance trade opportunities to different empire building strategies. Two changes would help, I think:
1. Give the target city 50% or even 25% of the trade yields gained by the initiating city.
2. Give each empire the ability to build 1 Trader for every 8 population (on an empire wide basis, not per city). Convert commercial hubs into a district and buildings that give bonuses to trade routes operating into and out of that city (and possibly do something related to this for harbours).

It grinds my gears too, but expansion by any means is powerful and I get the need to brake it. What's your feeling on the 1 pop cost of settlers?

One Settler creates 2 population when it founds a new city, so costing the generating city 1 population seems fair (even cheap).

fyi I think the escalating settler cost is the least problematic of the items I mentioned, and mostly causes problems because of related issues. Fix some of the other issues and then you can balance settler costs around them. ​

 

[iammaxhailme]

chopping, warmongering, luck with goody huts (find a relic on like turn 3? game changer!), luck with finding certain city states first...

 

[Sostratus]

In the interim, I think the game fails to incentivize creating attractive trading hubs for other civs to send their traders to and fails to balance trade opportunities to different empire building strategies. Two changes would help, I think:
1. Give the target city 50% or even 25% of the trade yields gained by the initiating city.
2. Give each empire the ability to build 1 Trader for every 8 population (on an empire wide basis, not per city). Convert commercial hubs into a district and buildings that give bonuses to trade routes operating into and out of that city (and possibly do something related to this for harbours).

I see what you are getting at and i too, want a trade system that has this characteristic. I'm not sure the perfect answer but, i think civ6 has the pieces there to do it. (Like suppose trading posts generated 2 for the sender and 1 every time a caravan pass through at one. Then you want to send your trade route as far as you can, but the act of passing through a neutral state still benefits that third party, but never more than you. Etc.)

One Settler creates 2 population when it founds a new city, so costing the generating city 1 population seems fair (even cheap).

Well, at least we don't have a dozen social policies boosting the city tile itself like in civ5. I do like the one pop cost more than halting food growth. (Although I'd love to see a way to use food income to help produce military units at certain points in the game; very feudal levy flavor.)

 

[S1AL]

City State bonus stacking. Upgrade discount cards at Mercenaries. Policies that double District Adjacency. Ancestral Hall.

 

[kryat]

How would you feel if adjacencies weren’t the yield directly, but instead were a kind of multiplier of the yield generated in the city? I.e, a +2 turns into a +20%.

 

[S1AL]

District Adjacency is heavily under-developed. The policy issue is entirely separate, and is largely due to how spawn-reliant some districts are, or the absolutely absurd numbers that some civs can easily generate. Australian campuses are the easy example.

I really like the idea of districts as a 2D city planning element, but there's so so so much more that could have been done to make it interesting.

 

[Ziad]

Campus building yields need to be halved.
CS building bonuses need to be halved.
Doubling adjacency and building bonus cards.
Number of cities.

Too many yield multipliers, and despite loving wide settlement play, I would like more drawbacks. Better micro is always fun.