[NFP] What Civs could be adjusted?

[Hogimus]

In the New Frontiers Pass announcement, Amanda said that the developers were looking to "make adjustments" based on player feedback, and Anton said they were looking forward to having a "conversation" with players. In that spirit, I thought people could share which Civs they think could still use some adjustment, and what kinda of changes they think they could use.

I can think of a few, but I'll start with Canada. Personally, I think they're a middle of the pack Civ, but to some they are mediocre and others the worst in the game. One way to fix that would be to improve their tundra bonuses enough that it's more than just an acceptable place to settle. Maybe their improvements could be immune to blizzards and/or forest fires like Egypts are to floods. Currently, there strongest bonus is probably their immunity to surprise wars, which against the AI makes them immune to all DoW, but this does nothing for them in multiplayer. Perhaps something about it could be changed to address this.

 

[Inhalaattori]

I dont think we have extremely bad Civs anymore after India, Norway and Georgia have been buffed. Spain, Khmer, Mapuche and Poland come to mind first when thinking about weaker Civs. Im not saying they are weak, but they are not great in most games. They can be situationally good. For example Khmer can be great IF you get certain religious beliefs that work with your Civ/leader abilities - but that is a big IF. Also Spain and Mapuche can be situationally good, but it takes a lot of work to make their abilities work. Spain for example doesnt have anything to help them get a religion. Spain bonuses should be streamlined in some way and they could use small buff for their early game. Also their Mission UI is too complicated IMO.

After the recent buffs Canada is a decent Civ. Russia already has the blizzard immunity and firaxis is not going to give the same ability to two civs. Canada is not the first Civ that comes to mind when thinking about buffs.

(Off-topic: I think bigger balance issues are religion related. For example Earth Goddess is strongest Pantheon pretty much always just like Choral music is almost always the best follower belief.)

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I've found the "Civilizations Expanded" Mod to be exactly what I want to see in more, and improved, better thought out traits. It is really well done and makes the game much more fun to play!

 

[Hogimus]

I dont think we have extremely bad Civs anymore after India, Norway and Georgia have been buffed. Spain, Khmer, Mapuche and Poland come to mind first when thinking about weaker Civs. Im not saying they are weak, but they are not great in most games. They can be situationally good. For example Khmer can be great IF you get certain religious beliefs that work with your Civ/leader abilities - but that is a big IF. Also Spain and Mapuche can be situationally good, but it takes a lot of work to make their abilities work. Spain for example doesnt have anything to help them get a religion. Spain bonuses should be streamlined in some way and they could use small buff for their early game. Also their Mission UI is too complicated IMO.

After the recent buffs Canada is a decent Civ. Russia already has the blizzard immunity and firaxis is not going to give the same ability to two civs. Canada is not the first Civ that comes to mind when thinking about buffs.

(Off-topic: I think bigger balance issues are religion related. For example Earth Goddess is strongest Pantheon pretty much always just like Choral music is almost always the best follower belief.)

That's a good list of Civs that could have their abilities expanded, and ones that have been bad that are now better. I do think Georgia could still use some love because of their need to go for a religion with uniques that don't come until later like Spain. I agree that Canada is in a pretty good spot. Russia's units are immune to blizzards, like Japan's units are immune to hurricanes. I was suggesting Canada's immunity be to improvements, like Egypt's are to floods.

 

[UWHabs]

It's also important to me that civs don't have to be balanced, but they all need to be fun to play. So as mentioned, civs like Spain or Georgia have bonuses if you have founded a religion, but no bonuses to founding a religion, so anything you could give them to help at that would help. Even something simple for Georgia like giving them +50% production to holy sites if you built them on a hill would just give them a hint of a bonus towards founding a religion to truly make use of their civ's bonuses.

 

[Drivingrevilo]

Even something simple for Georgia like giving them +50% production to holy sites if you built them on a hill

I like this suggestion: it synchronises clearly with an existing facet (strong hill start bias), and offers a very usable but not OP solution to Georgia’s early game woes.

In a similar vein, maybe Spain could get some sort of +50% production bonus to a district (or two?). The main problem with Spain is finding the time (and district slots) in the early game to build all the districts they need: Holy Sites for religion, Campuses & Encampments for military, Harbours for navies & trade, and Theatre Squares for Theocracy/Fleets/Corps.

A simple buff for Philip would be +50% to even one of these districts - most powerfully Holy Site, but I think that too on-the-nose. Maybe +50% for Harbours, since that’s the one element of Spain’s style that most commonly gets left by the wayside? Especially in light of their historical importance as a naval & colonial power. More complicated buffs might be +50% to x districts on foreign continents, or +50% to y districts if the city already has Spain’s religion as a majority - I dunno, just brainstorming. Both aren’t too much like ‘wham - here’s a outright buff for you’, since they at least require some sort of planning to initiate but, once in place, offer potential for a powerful early game reward.

 

[agonistes]

It's also important to me that civs don't have to be balanced, but they all need to be fun to play. So as mentioned, civs like Spain or Georgia have bonuses if you have founded a religion, but no bonuses to founding a religion, so anything you could give them to help at that would help. Even something simple for Georgia like giving them +50% production to holy sites if you built them on a hill would just give them a hint of a bonus towards founding a religion to truly make use of their civ's bonuses.

That’s a good one for Georgia. Plus give them -5 combat to enemy units with 3 hexes of a wall.

Scythia ui should give + loyalty too. Its ui just sucks.

Egypt ui should have additional +1 culture next to river, +1 faith on desert. Uu should have +5 combat in desert.

England keeps redcoats, but starts with embark for settlers, earlier ocean travel, and + loyalty in coastal cities.

Peter’s trait is awful. How about just a flat +1 culture and science to each route to a civ from the same culture group, or flat +1 culture and science to the first trade route to each different civ?

French ui should get additional +1 food or .5 housing.

 

[bengalryan9]

Personally, I think two civs come to mind:

1) Mapuche - the combat bonus vs golden age is good, if situational, but the rest of their kit is pretty lackluster. I wasn't super impressed with their UI and the loyalty stuff they can do doesn't account for much. If they didn't have a mountain starting bias they'd be more widely regarded as weak IMO.

2) France - I've seen a few people say they might be the weakest in the game. It's really hard to get them to maximize their bonuses in my experience.

I'll also mention a few civs that aren't necessarily bad, but are very boring to play: America, Zulu, and Scotland.

I also think Canada and Khmer are fine where they are even though they almost always come up in these threads. Khmer has a very interesting playstyle with relics, and I think there are some really interesting things you can do with Canada. So while neither are powerhouses, they're both fun and interesting to me.

I almost wonder if instead of having a thread like this, would it be better to focus on particular facets of certain civs that could be adjusted? There are some good civs with some pretty bad/worthless bonuses that could be tweaked (example: China's crouching tigers).

 

[Sostratus]

Well, the first thing is I think they should decide (and ideally hint at this) what they themselves consider to be an example of a well balanced civ. Or a range that they like. They have ideally already done this.

Phase one:
Many objects in civ6 have bonuses that are symbolically/algebraically balanced on their face, so if you knew nothing about civ they would look balanced. Example: several religious building beliefs unlock buildings that grant +3 faith, +2 additional yield as faith/science/hammers/food. Or many tier1 district buildings originally giving +2 yield/+1 GPP. However, in practice these buildings are not equal, because the underlying yields are worth different amounts.

Let's abstract that a level to civilization abilities as the object and game systems as the class that have bonuses. At a meta level, religion is weak. Tech is strong. Civs with otherwise equal boosts to religion and tech will result in the tech civs being stronger than the religion civs.
-I think religion generally, holy sites specifically, are weaker than other things. If you don't pursue religion, there's no reason to make a holy site. Problem right there.
-Trade route abilities are also, for the most part, pretty weak. Whether this is due to a fear of infinite scaling or something else, peter, philip, and Cleo's trade route abilities are all a bit... mediocre to weak.
-UUs that you cannot upgrade into is another class of bonuses that is pretty eh. They could fix this - it could get messy because several UUs would upgrade from the same unit but they are all different classes... They might have an easier time making a new "special unit upgrades" table that says "Unit: Unit X | Upgrades From: Unit Y | if you have the trait: CivtraitZ" because they possess all 6 infinity source codes in their firaxite gauntlet. A snap of their fingers, really...

One things have been nudged at the system level, then they should attempt phase 2, where the civs themselves get some balance.
France's UA is a good example because +20% on some wonders is not very impactful nor game changing. Recall that getting +50% to a district type is common, and players build a lot more of any district than industrial+ wonders. Even england's +20% to IZ buildings is probably better: a workshop, factory, and coal plant cost 825 hammers all together. The Eiffel tower costs 1,620. Literally 2 british IZs slightly edges france building the eiffel tower in terms of production savings, and those savings start in the middle ages.
So france, in this example, is a good example of a civ where having decided on an acceptable standard of power for a civ, they might be able to say "okay, this is below where it needs to be. Can we solve this by improving the numerical bonus, or does it need something qualitative?" (Example: boosting the french wonder bonus to say, +40%, vs making their museums auto-theme when full.)

 

[UWHabs]

It's an interesting point - I have assumed they don't want to give too large a bonus to wonders, why the policy cards are only +15%, and stuff like France and Egypt's bonuses are only in that same 15-20% range. But then you give China the ability to build an ancient wonder for a virtually fixed cost. It's like they adhere to their rules almost always except when they break them.

Another example is that most civs only really have district production bonuses. Japan gets a few extra cheap districts, Egypt gets a bonus along rivers, Nubia if they have their UI nearby. But then Hungary gets a +50% bonus to districts *and* buildings (in specific cases). Or that some unique districts have +2 great people points of their type (RNDY, Lavra), whereas others (Hansa, Acropolis, etc...) give the same as the base district.

I also feel like they tried fairly hard early on to not give 2 civs the same UD, but obviously once the expansions started coming out, they did start to. However, they never really went back and fixed up the Khmer who have a unique aqueduct in literally every respect, except that it's not actually a unique district. I think I like the Khmer more than some others on the boards, but whenever I play them, they're just screaming to have a half priced unique Baray that, while not a massive boost in reality, would just let them flow *so* much better as a civ.

 

[Aurelesk]

For Spain, I have some mixed feelings about it:

• Earlier Fleets and Armadas are not that great if you can't produce them directly with the Seaport (so Fleets/Armadas are 200%/300% cost instead of 150%/225%), because Armadas feel as twice as powerful than the regular unit but at thrice the cost doing it manually. You end up just to form Armadas around the highly promoted, if you did have done some naval warfare previously. But I am not a great at war: I may underestimate the power of early Armadas: feel free to argue the point and teach me more.
• Continental system is an hasardous system. Having a civilization hoping for a foreign land be nearby is dubious. You either find it early enough and colonise it to enjoy the better internal trade / better mission (a spammable up to 4 Faith/Science, 2 Loyalty, 1 Food/Production improvement on foreign continent), or you miss to do that.
• The Mission is unlocked at Exploration which is a late Renaissance leaf civic. If Spain is supposed to be a religious imperialist, isn't Theocracy better with faith cost reduction and additionnal straight? Plus, Merchant Republic is neither a Trade governement, nor an Exploration governement but more a "city betterment" governement (I don't feel "city betterment" is the best word to describe it, but I came out to not find a fitting word. I really need to improve my vocabulary in english).
• You can't do a formation with a religious unit anymore: using the Conquistador fully, even if very effective, is kind of a pain. I am not against for some quality of life improvement!
• Spain has no bonus toward founding its own religion. It should have something: the leader bonus and the unique unit is around this theme.

If I have to modify the Spanish, I think I will give different bonus between home continent and the foreign continent so you will be happy in both case scenario and don't feel to bad if you can only settle a single continent. I will also make them able to build Fleets and Armadas at the start without the Seaport, give rhe Mission some home bonus, and that's probably it. For example:

Treasure Fleet: (Spanish ability)
+50% Production toward Harbor, and +2 Gold when built on your home continent. May form Fleets and Armadas with Mercantilism, instead of Nationalism and Mobilization, and may produce them without the Seaport building. Trade Routes between cities on different continents gain +1 Food and +1 Production for domestic Trade Routes, and +6 Gold for international Trade Routes.

Mission: (Spanish infrastructure)
Unlocked at Theology
• 2 Faith

• 1 Science for every adjacent Campus and Holy Site.
• 1 Science (home continent) or +2 Loyalty (foreign continent) if built next to a City Center.
• 2 Faith, 1 Food and 1 Production (foreign continent) (requires Exploration).​

• 2 Science (requires Cultural Heritage)

El Escorial: (Philip II bonus)
+50% Production toward Holy Site Prayers project, which triple the religious pressure while doing it instead of doubling it. All units receive +4 Combat Strength against civilizations following a different Religion. Inquisitors have one extra use of their Remove Heresy ability. Inquisitors eliminate 100% presence of other Religions.

Optional: You can know do a formation with a Religious unit.



For France, I don't where to start. Basicly, the civilization bonuses are rather weak but with fun leaders:
• Grand Tour: the bonus Production is kind of weak. It works for half the wonders available (including: the governement wonders, Kilwa, Ruhr, Oxford), but do not include the "late-game" wonders like the Eiffel Tower (isn't that ironic?). Since the last wonders are in the Atomic era, which is 7th era out of 9 (so not that late-game anymore), why not letting France have the bonus for all the wonder starting the medieval era? (it is just 7 extra wonders). Furthermore, most wonders are Production-traps, meaning you better use the production for something else, even if you get double Tourism from it. Maybe Tourism from wonders should be reworked too, so it will be a real new path to achieve Tourism victory. Or change the ability to make wonder more valuable (increase the yields in the city?).
• Château: This is a special case. The Culture yield is great, spammable, abusable and all... But you need a river, and those rivers are valuable. You are going to settle on it, put a Commercial Hub on it, and more district around to enjoy adjacencies, put Aqueduc / Dam on it... ending by not having enough place to put Château. Plus: it is highly dependant on adjacent wonders. Like the Mission, it is unlocked way too late, and should be available earlier (like: Castle technolgy but with lesser yield, that it will recover at Humanism). I think the Château needs to change for a some sort of less powerful cultural Mekewap: a some sort of Housing, Food/Gold and Culture improvement, while not having bonus from adjacent wonders anymore. Also: we should be able to build it next to luxury ressource.
• Garde Impériale: The unit is not bad, but out of the path. I am assuming the developpers are going to balance the units and give them trait to make them more typical. For me, I guess the Melee units line will have 1 unit per era, and we will get the Rifleman, so the Garde Impériale will be a replacement and in the Melee line, so the problem fixes itself (the real problem is the upgrading cost of obsolete unit is too cheap, and become way too cheaper with the 50% card). I am also guessing Anti-cavalry unit having an anti-pillage anti-plunder aura for defense purposes (like Bireme / Mandekalu), and probably get 2 turns of defense instantly / better healing of some sort for example. I am also "expecting" the heavy cavalry to need 2 different sorts of strategic ressource to justify their excess power.
• Leaders: Catherine ability is really powerful as a catch-up mechanic and preventing the enemies to win the game. Stealing the great work of cultural, catching by stealing eureka and sabotage the rocket, instantly have +9 CS with listening post, siphoning all the gold... And it is a lot of fun. Eleonor is weaker in comparaison because it need a lot of set-up or being extremely lucky to make use of her ability, but sure it is fun to peacefully annex a whole country.

So France probably need a better ability and the Château to be more flexible / reworked into a new purpose.

 

[clapyourhands]

It's not a Civ VI update until England gets reworked. /s

But I agree on Khmer, Spain, and Poland being inconsistent and underwhelming if the stars don't align the right way. They can be really fun, but other civs are just as enjoyable to play without such early investment. It's been said in the thread many times already, but it seems more indicative of a problem with Civ VI religion than any individual civ. Still, if there aren't any plans to rework the faith system as whole, some band-aid adjustments would be nice.

 

[The googles do nothing]

My interpretation is this is about if civ's still have abilities that very rarely come in to play on any map type. Pangea almost needs to be removed from the conversation because it exaggerates some abilities and nearly eliminates others.

I would like to see version related abilities added to old civs. America's home continent combat bonus should really be replaced by more loyalty, resources, power...

Oh, and just make the Chateau a one-per-city district. +2 Housing, Theater Squares get +2 adjacency, Commercial Hubs get +2 adjacency.

 

[AntSou]

Also Spain and Mapuche can be situationally good, but it takes a lot of work to make their abilities work. Spain for example doesnt have anything to help them get a religion. Spain bonuses should be streamlined in some way and they could use small buff for their early game. Also their Mission UI is too complicated IMO.

As someone who really enjoys playing with Spain and establish colonies everywhere, I agree that they could do with a boost to religion early on. It's just not fun to play with them if you fail to found a religion in the first place.

But I disagree that the Mission or anything else is complicated.

I do think it's weird that the description "+2 Loyalty per turn for cities outside their home continent if they have a Mission adjacent to the City Center" is part of the Civ's ability rather than part of the description of the Improvement itself. I would change that.

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure the Leader's ability is bugged. You get the +4 Strength bonus no matter what. Your religion has been eradicated? +4 Strength bonus. Your religion is dominant over another Civ? You still get +4 Strength bonus. You failed to found a religion? +4 Strength bonus.

 

[Sostratus]

Earlier Fleets and Armadas are not that great if you can't produce them directly with the Seaport (so Fleets/Armadas are 200%/300% cost instead of 150%/225%), because Armadas feel as twice as powerful than the regular unit but at thrice the cost doing it manually. You end up just to form Armadas around the highly promoted, if you did have done some naval warfare previously. But I am not a great at war: I may underestimate the power of early Armadas: feel free to argue the point and teach me more

Corps and Armies are extraordinarily efficient; the strength factor applies on offense and defense, so in RTS terms you could think of a unit having 100HP and hitting for 10 damage; a corps having 150 and 15, and armies having 200 and 20. This essentially makes them 2.25x and 4x as good as a base unit for 2x and 3x the cost. But it's more than that, because the additional survivability factor is huge tactically because units can heal- it means you can eat a few more hits from that city, or kill an enemy before disengaging and still healing up, etc.
Now, naval units aren't as good, and being able to natively produce the formations like Zulu would be a nice touch. And there are only 2 naval units until the renaissance, which adds 3. I digress: being able to spit out caravel and privateer armadas from your ports would be terrifying. You're basically making resource free super frigates.

Trade Routes between cities on different continents gain +1 Food and +1 Production for domestic Trade Routes, and +6 Gold for international Trade Routes.

The problem with this ability is that it is weak domestically - given all the work of setting up shop overseas (what they intend, finding a a border next to you is luck) for +1 food and prod? But internationally, there's little reason to do any colonizing at all: It's basically +6 gold for running a trade route over the ocean to someone else. Making it more powerful, but requiring it to start on a foreign continent, or having the domestic routes give boosts to both cities, would be a nice touch.

Continental system is an hasardous system. Having a civilization hoping for a foreign land be nearby is dubious.

It's become dubious because of loyalty. You cannot reasonably colonize an inhabited continent now without resorting either extreme loyalty stacking methods, warfare (still difficult) or wholesale genocide to remove the pressure altogether. It's nice that we have continents in game, I love it; but the whole "colonization" in practice has not been supported as new features were added. (Example: there's no incentive to do the work of taking some far off country vs a neighbor, in practical terms. The existing card support is not enough- give me double amenities from foreign luxes, more strategics if extracted off continent, an real way to deal with that loyalty, etc.)

 

[AntSou]

It's become dubious because of loyalty. You cannot reasonably colonize an inhabited continent now without resorting either extreme loyalty stacking methods, warfare (still difficult) or wholesale genocide to remove the pressure altogether. It's nice that we have continents in game, I love it; but the whole "colonization" in practice has not been supported as new features were added.

I don't have much issue with loyalty playing as Spain. The +2 Loyalty from Missions helps a lot. Your ease of access to continents also allows you better management of luxuries so you get the +6 from high happiness. Then there's your religious units which further remove pressure from nearby cities. And all that food from Missions and the extra from trade routes means your colonies grow pretty fast, so in the end you can effectively grow before the enemy can put enough pressure on you. Worst case scenario there's Victor.

Of course I'm not going to settle on -20 spots. But the amount of land with low loyalty pressure is considerable when playing as Spain. That has been my experience.

 

[criZp]

China's dynastic cycles could be reworked to focus on the ages mechanic, the current +10% tech/civic-boost in very generic.

 

[bengalryan9]

Oh, and just make the Chateau a one-per-city district. +2 Housing, Theater Squares get +2 adjacency, Commercial Hubs get +2 adjacency.

I agree Chateaus would work better as one-per-city. I always thought chateau's should have a slot for great art and provide extra tourism over the base yield of whatever is put in it (+50%, maybe?). Theoretically you could then put one in all of your cities and mostly focus on archaeological museums in your theater squares. It would also work well with Eleanor's Court of Love, making it even easier to put pressure on your neighbors.

China's dynastic cycles could be reworked to focus on the ages mechanic, the current +10% tech/civic-boost in very generic.

It is generic, but it is also effective and China is already really strong. The only change I'd make to China is something to make Crouching Tigers more than just a "build one for era score" kind of unit. I think you could do that without making them OP.

 

[Aurelesk]

Corps and Armies are extraordinarily efficient; the strength factor applies on offense and defense, so in RTS terms you could think of a unit having 100HP and hitting for 10 damage; a corps having 150 and 15, and armies having 200 and 20. This essentially makes them 2.25x and 4x as good as a base unit for 2x and 3x the cost. But it's more than that, because the additional survivability factor is huge tactically because units can heal- it means you can eat a few more hits from that city, or kill an enemy before disengaging and still healing up, etc.

I don't know. That was I thinking, and I made some simulations. I am starting to think differently. I may be wrong, but let me show you an example. Let's oppose 2 teams:
Team A: 1 unit of 150 HP and 15 Attack.
Team B: 2 units of 100 HP and 10 Attack.

Let's translate 15 Attack into 1.5 dmg/sec, and 10 Attack into 1 dmg/sec.
Team A needs 67 seconds (100/1.5) to kill one unit from Team B. During those 67 seconds, each units dealt 67 damages each, so 134 damage total. The lone unit in Team A has 16 HP left. If the combat continue, Team A will loose in 16 seconds, and will deal 24 damages, meaning Team B wins with 1 unit left with 76 HP.

In this scenario, the merged unit seems to be less powerful than the 2 units. I may did a huge mistake by trying to grab the subject, but I do not see where am I wrong.

I agree Chateaus would work better as one-per-city.

This seems unlikely:

1. One achievement (Loire Valley?) need you to build 5 Châteaux in a single city with the Wine luxury ressource.
2. The whole Loire Valley is a bunch of Château next to each other on the same river, so I guess they drew their inspiration from this fact.

I am all for 1 powerful tile improvement. So far, they are far from interesting (looking at you the Golf course: even spammable you will just a worthless tile just here to trigger the godly Scottish Enlightment).

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

I've found the "Civilizations Expanded" Mod to be exactly what I want to see in more, and improved, better thought out traits. It is really well done and makes the game much more fun to play!

I will second the "Civilizations Expanded" Mod. It really breathes fresh air into the game. I was surprised to see it buffed Canada and even removed the protection from surprise DOWs. Unfortunately, I was quickly wiped off the map by Nubian nonsense.

As to the topic at hand, one Civ comes to mind: Korea, King of Science, King of Boredom. There is little interesting about Korea. Build Seowons and win. The Leader Bonus is so dull it's pitiful. While really good at science, I never enjoy playing as this particular one-trick pony.