What do you think would spice up the game around the Modern era?

[Chekko]

In most of my games unless I focus on a Domination Victory the game is just a "Next Turn" click fest. All my cities are nice and have all their improvements. I'm doing well and my military units are just fortified around my borders. I hit next turn, probably move my Great Person who just spawned onto a District, queue up some more buildings in those cities that wait for production, tell my anti-spying spy to redo his mission and click on next Turn again. And again.

Should politics be more of a thing in this age? Should some mechanics with the AI become more complex in this age?.

 

[679x]

I still have the same problem, though it was worse prior to Gathering Storm and the updates since.

Right now, my favourite part of the later eras is prepping land to maximize appeal for seaside resorts and parks, as well as figuring out the best arrangement to get the maximum amount of tourism out of my territory. It's probably part of why I enjoy playing Canada so much. I also like to use large maps and settle as many cities as I can, even if they're on little islands in the middle of the ocean, and see how much I can develop them. If you want a new way to play right now, i.e. before a hypothetical patch addressing these issues, try playing a game as Canada or Bull Moose Teddy and focus on the land management aspect, and go wide if it helps. Remember: wider = more space for national parks!

That being said, I definitely think the diplomacy options are lacking in Civ 6. More nuanced global politics and more advanced emergencies or scored competitions could be an easy fix, but I would support something like colonial mechanics or perhaps more 'personality' behind city-states and especially free cities. What if free cities weren't just an intermediate step between flipping enemy cities through loyalty? What if you could support their continued independence, either from their former rulers or from anyone, to gain their favour? What if you could become their ally in war and trade, always with the possibility that they join your empire outright? Maybe conquered or flipped cities that have remained under the control of a new ruler for a while could retain some of their former 'identity', and other civs can try to provoke a sort of movement in those cities to try to get them to fight for independence?

There are so many ideas on these forums for new mechanics, but it can also be tough to determine whether they're addressing a problem. I think that is relevant because we've already had two expansions and are in a phase where we are getting new content, but it's mostly content that works in a certain optional game mode, rather than a core or fundamental change meant to be in all games, like the loyalty mechanics of R&F or the natural disasters of GS. I think that in order to get new content akin to what we've seen in the two expansions, which could possibly encompass further development of politics/diplomacy mechanics or something else, the content has to address some sort of issue in the core game, whether it's a stale lategame, lackluster AI, or something else.

 

[Sostratus]

IN my opinion the modern era, or perhaps what we shall call "the late game" has two competing things going on.
1) It's near the end of the game and as a game, victory must be in sight
2) The game is in part a simulation, and you need to maintain some degree of that throughout all stages of the game.

With GS they addressed some of point 1. We got several game ending mechanisms, things to help get you to victory; rock bands, future era cards, the GDR for domination, etc.
However, the new power system and railroads, which partly point to #2, didn't really get integrated enough into how your empire runs. What's fun about Civ6 on the internal front is building and planning districts, improvements, and wonders. This puzzle largely dries up after the industrial because everything is placed, you just get more yields. There's no ability to change what has already been placed. There is no facet except more yields.
Yes, there is renewable power, and some water based improvements, but flood barriers solve Co2. And seasteads come in the future era, very late.

When we look at various proposals around corporations, for example, we see a problem in search of a solution: why would I want to go secure resources just to get more yields? There is no shortage of yields. Contrast to civ5's ideologies - several game systems were reworked so that ideological play was critical to securing a victory, be it tourism, science, domination, etc. So you need existing game rules either be changed or taken into account so that the solution to late game tedium, which targets #2, is compliant with the need for #1.
There is no reason, for example, that one could not rebalance things so that the late game gold or amenity situation was very difficult, and the penalties for failing here severe, and then create a corporation or ideology system that adds a degree of gameplay into solving those problems. You need the Chimera before introducing Bellerophon.

Personally, I would probably figure out how to add enough infrastructure/empire management changes and content that make the modern+ eras give the same type of challenge but in a new way, to keep me busy tweaking, planning, and improving my empire until the rockets launch to alpha centauri. Sitting around and piling up science just to unlock that last spaceship tech is extremely un fun.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Currently, there is a strange way to spice up the late game: the Theocracy different government bug.

If you choose Theocracy as your final 2nd tier government (that is, you gain the Theocracy legacy card), then the moment you switch to any 3rd tier government, a -20 modifier of "you have different government" will show up in every other AI that have or had Theocracy, and they will instantly hate you or denounce you for not having Theocracy anymore. And if you reach the 4th tier government it will turn to a massive -40.

On the other hand, the -20 different government modifier never seem to apply to Monarchy or Merchant Republic. If you choose Merchant Republic and switch to a 3rd tier, other Merchant Republic civs will generally keep their pace and move on.

This bug will happen in any difficulty, and also seems to apply to AI; if it is an AI that choose Theocracy and then switch to 3rd tier, every other Theocratic AI will instant hate that AI as well. As a result, in every game where the majority of AIs adopted Theocracy, the late game would basically turn into a semi-1984 situation, every civ hate each other, keeps denouncing each other and DoW each other.

I have experienced Theocracy late games in which not a single AI was friendly towards more than one other AI (including Gilgamesh, who was only friendly towards me and hate everyone else), all the AIs diplomatic panels was full of red faces, and every major border was full of troops fighting each other. In games like these I could only maintain less than 3 Alliances since other civ began to denounce me as well, and I always turned to Scientific Victory in order to get out this hate-filled planet as quickly as possible.

TL,DR: Politics can be a thing in late game and it will havoc the entire international community. I don't know if make every late game like this will make the late game more fun, but it surely makes the late game far more intense.

 

[Smity2k1]

IMO if the AI handled navy and aircraft well it would keep things more interesting.

 

[The googles do nothing]

One fun thing about the late game in Civ2 was Democracy was the most powerful governement you could not declare war on other civs. (Something like that, it's been awhile).

I've thought that world congress should have been been Civ Congress. Early game you control the vote but factions who get votes would arise. THe stronger your military the more votes they get, get a religion they get votes.