[NFP] What existing mechanics need more work or should be fleshed out more?

[civfan_999]

I suspect it’s not really a return to civ5 tall that people would enjoy, as much as just wanting some way to keep investing in & specializing their cities beyond building 1 district for each yield.
The gameplay consequence is that the only thing you can invest in to grow your empire’s power, is more settlers.
Which is why I mentioned the city center - but in general the “city” is a pretty underdeveloped concept in civ6. They currently are a container to hold ownership of districts and tile yields, but they themselves don’t have much character beyond that.

I definitely don't want a return to 5. I'm simply suggesting this element was more balanced in 5 and is less so in 6. You can fix it in a completely different way if you wanted. But it was better with trade offs rather than wide>tall every time.

 

[earlofbrigand]

It takes so long to produce units that many civs are still going to war with club men (warriors) in the Renaissance era. Tick box options can cure this quite easily.. longer tech trees or quicker unit production relative to other variables.

I also think that difficulty levels predicated on better AI (rather than AI bonuses) would be of use. An app store chess app can beat a grandmaster these days. Chess is obviously more complex than Civ, so this should be do-able. At higher levels the AI should be able to optimise district placement and other variables based on a speedy calculation or two.

 

[civfan_999]

It takes so long to produce units that many civs are still going to war with club men (warriors) in the Renaissance era. Tick box options can cure this quite easily.. longer tech trees or quicker unit production relative to other variables.

I also think that difficulty levels predicated on better AI (rather than AI bonuses) would be of use. An app store chess app can beat a grandmaster these days. Chess is obviously more complex than Civ, so this should be do-able. At higher levels the AI should be able to optimise district placement and other variables based on a speedy calculation or two.

This (above) would certainly be the dream. I ran on the assumption this would be too hard when I made my suggestion on another thread (below).

I'd like to see them change the way they think about difficulty settings. I understand the struggle of writing better AI code to make them not suck at combat, but there can be improvements even to the current structure where basically some difficulties buff and others nerf the AI. Buff them a little at a time instead of a ton of buffs from the beginning of the game.

The current difficulty settings give the AI a lot of perks from day one so that you spend the first few eras playing catch up. This makes it difficult to secure early game wonders and still gets you to that cross over point where once you have passed them, you can leave them in your dust. I would recommend giving the AI extra things each era rather than a lot of extras all at once at the beginning. For example, instead of starting them off with 5 civs and 5 techs (I might have those numbers a bit off), they could start the game with 1-2 civs/techs and get 1-2 additional civs/techs each time a new world era begins. That way, instead of us being behind early game and pushing to catch up, the AI wouldn’t be quite as strong in the ancient era, but would be better able to keep pace with an experienced human player throughout the game.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

1. Early game Civics tree needs reworked. I would like a second Civic option at the beginning of the game. There are LOTS of technology options but only ONE civic? Super boring. Frankly, I think there could just be more civics overall and especially at the beginning of the game. I also find Political Philosophy to be odd in that you unlock all three government from one civic, which makes branching out the military/religious civics have to wait until political philosophy is unlocked.

2. Grievance system needs to be more nuanced. Simply taking over an enemy capital shouldn't cause auto-denounce from every other civ. There are civs who currently dislike that civ, who have been at war with that civ but yet denounce me for doing the same? I guess they could be denouncing me because I robbed the option from them, but really there should be an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' type modifier.

3. Aqueducts/Water. This should be an improvement that can be placed on top of other improvements (like a road for example) and can go any distance you are willing to build it. Doesn't make sense as a district. OR leave it as a district but give it a series of buildings (sewers can be one of them), water treatment, etc This leads to water in general. I think there should be 'wider' rivers. where there are specific points to ford until cities/units could build an actual bridge on it (could be something for engineers/military engineers or a brand new unit), I also think that water and the size of the river should be related to how much food nearby tiles can produce. Larger rivers would also produce much more hydro-electric power, which could be regional. I would also like to see irrigation be represented either by either a district or improvement.

4. Spy Operations. Spy operations needs an overhaul plain and simple. Recruit partisans needs to be much more nuanced, should be tied to loyalty/happiness and should be a unique 'partisan' unit. Gain sources and diplomatic visibility could be rolled into one operation.

5. I totally agree with more dynamic buildings. I like mutually exclusive options like the govt district has. I know other districts have one or two of these type options, but I would like to see more.
Example: Encampment Tier 1 - Barracks, Stable, Siege Workshop; Tier 2 - Armory, Citadel(adds Defense, but has very high production cost), Parade Grounds (adds +1 amenity/+1 loyalty); Military Academy, Flak Tower (air defense), Underground Bunker (stockpiles resources, reduces population loss from nuclear bombs, and military unit station here does not take damage from nuclear bombs).

 

[Nizou]

The World Congress is an irritation.

City States need more work - proper alliances, guarantees and potential vassalisation should be on the cards. The Guarantee is something that would work well - free envoys in return for being called to war if they are attacked.

I agree, World Congress is good for the idea but is just a big pain due to the absence of brain for AIs, and lack of interesting proposals (as in Civ4).
Be Suzerain should automatically triggers a Defensive pacts. How many times i saw AIs or even my allies to rool on my CS without be able to punish them for that

 

[Aurelesk]

Well, I would love to see some Military cards that allow to prevent to be stuck if you don't have the luck to have Iron, Horses, Niter... For example:

• +1 Iron per turn for each Barrack
• +1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal and +1 CO2 for each Lumber Mill. -2 Production to Lumber Mills.
• +1 Oil and +1 CO2 for each Farm. -2 Food to Farms.
• +1 Aluminum and +1 CO2 for each Mine. -2 Production to Mines.

 

[Buktu]

[...]

I also think that difficulty levels predicated on better AI (rather than AI bonuses) would be of use. An app store chess app can beat a grandmaster these days. Chess is obviously more complex than Civ, so this should be do-able. At higher levels the AI should be able to optimise district placement and other variables based on a speedy calculation or two.

Chess is obviously more complexe than civ? It is the other way around!

Chess has a very small "map" compared to any civ map since the smallest civ map "Duell" is 44*26=1144 tiles while a chessboard has 64 squares. Also in chess you have a limited number of pieces and can never build any more (a pawn can simply be promoted but it will not an extra piece to the game).
Also there are very few rules compared to civ including a clear victory condition while you have 6 different victroy types in civ. This makes chess a turn based fighting game while civ is a 4x game with way more elements than just fighting. E.g. you can build nothing else then warriors in civ from turn one and try to go for domination. You will be outteched very soon by other players in this case though and your warriors will become quite inefficent. Also you will need to find an opponent to fight him at first. Because unlike chess you have limited visibility in civ.
In chess you take one move per turn in civ you can take at least one move per unit, city (you could build something different every turn) and so many more things. Like buy stuff, initiate a diplomatic action, switch gouvernments and so on. You can combine them together which creates even more possible scenarios for the end of a turn.


A chess AI will always calculate any possible move for x turns in advance. If you could have maximum possibilites for every piece there would be 137 moves to calculate for a turn. You will NEVER have this amount though since your pieces will not be at the optimal square for maximum possibilites for the whole game, squares will be blocked by other pieces and limit the moves you can make, pieces have already left the board or you simply have to react to a check. This leads to way less than 100 possibilites for every move. Also since you can see everything your opponent does and where his pieces are you can have perfect calculations considering all of his moves too.
In Civ you will have alot more possibilites per turn very soon. Let's say you settle your first city right away. In general you have to decide what to build right away. Iirc you can decide between 5 options (monument, builder, scout, warrior, slinger). Then you can work one out of 6 tiles. Also you can take different ways to move your warrior, let's say you start with some mountains next to it and can just make 4 different moves. All together you can have 5*6*4=120 different possible ends of Turn 1 with just one city! This number is even higher than any number you can realistically get in chess. And it will quickly rise even higher once you have more units, population, tiles or cities. Unlike in chess you won't have knowledge about everything your opponent does. Also there can be more than one other civ so you need to calculate even more for more opponents. And even if you play with two civs you will have babarians and city states who have to consider. Tribal villages add another rng element you can't really calculate and so on.

All things considered you can see that it chess has way less elements than civ with way less "units" and "tiles" than any civ game making it way less complex and way easier to calculate.

 

[civfan_999]

Well, I would love to see some Military cards that allow to prevent to be stuck if you don't have the luck to have Iron, Horses, Niter... For example:

• +1 Iron per turn for each Barrack
• +1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal and +1 CO2 for each Lumber Mill. -2 Production to Lumber Mills.
• +1 Oil and +1 CO2 for each Farm. -2 Food to Farms.
• +1 Aluminum and +1 CO2 for each Mine. -2 Production to Mines.

I don't know about those specific ones, but I 100% agree there needs to be cards.

+1 aluminum per mine would probably be too OP. And why do lumber mills make coal and farms make oil?

I like the first 3. Maybe these instead:

• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal per turn for each Armory
• +1 Oil per turn for each Armory
• +1 Aluminum per turn for each Armory

All as separate cards, so your armorys can become extremely valuable, producing strategic resources, but it would take up a lot of policy slots, so it reality, you would only be using one or two at any given time.

 

[Buktu]

I don't know about those specific ones, but I 100% agree there needs to be cards.

+1 aluminum per mine would probably be too OP. And why do lumber mills make coal and farms make oil?

I like the first 3. Maybe these instead:

• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal per turn for each Armory
• +1 Oil per turn for each Armory
• +1 Aluminum per turn for each Armory

All as separate cards, so your armorys can become extremely valuable, producing strategic resources, but it would take up a lot of policy slots, so it reality, you would only be using one or two at any given time.

Maybe you can combine 2 of them together (with the exception of uranium) since there are kind of similar cards for improved strategics already. Also add all strategics and let them scale to later buildings.

• Iron and Horses - barracks provide iron, stables horses
  
• Niter and Coal - armories provide both
  
• Aluminum and Oil - military academies provide both
  
• Uranium - nuclear power plants provide it

 

[civfan_999]

• Iron and Horses - barracks provide iron, stables horses

• Niter and Coal - armories provide both

• Aluminum and Oil - military academies provide both

• Uranium - nuclear power plants provide it

I forgot about military academies. I support aluminum and oil cards for that higher level while leaving niter and coal with armories. Good call.

I don't think uranium should come from nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants use uranium, so that would basically just make plants free to run without giving you any extra for nukes or death robots. Maybe uranium from research labs? Not sure that makes much sense either.

• +1 Iron per turn for each Barrack
• +1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal per turn for each Armory
• +1 Oil per turn for each military academy
• +1 Aluminum per turn for each military academy
• +1 Uranium per turn for each ?? military academies / research lab / something else ??

 

[Buktu]

I forgot about military academies. I support aluminum and oil cards for that higher level while leaving niter and coal with armories. Good call.

I don't think uranium should come from nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants use uranium, so that would basically just make plants free to run without giving you any extra for nukes or death robots. Maybe uranium from research labs? Not sure that makes much sense either.

• +1 Iron per turn for each Barrack
• +1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal per turn for each Armory
• +1 Oil per turn for each military academy
• +1 Aluminum per turn for each military academy
• +1 Uranium per turn for each ?? military academies / research lab / something else ??

Nuclear power plants use uranium that's right but (some of them, depending on their type) they also produce plutonium you can use to build nuclear bombs. Also (it might not be too realistic but) if you manage to get yourself renewable energy the power plant won't use uranium any longer. Maybe it's worth considering the card to give +2 though since GDRs upkeeps are quite expensive anyway.

So:

• 1 iron for each barracks 1 horse for each stable
• 1 niter and 1 coal for each armory
• 1 oil and 1 aluminum for each military academy
• 1 (maybe 2) uranium for each nuclear powerplant

Other ideas for uranium might be a city project unlocked by a nuclear power plant/military academy/research lab in the city. Something like: "Generates 1 uranium per turn while running and an additional 5 when finished". This keeps the city from producing units instead of using a card slot.

Maybe you can also/instead add a new district to the game. It should be limited to 1 per civ and generate 2 or 3 uranium per turn. As usual you can build 3 buildings which add another 2 or 3 uranium per turn each. Maybe 2 as base and another one if you have a specialist.

 

[darkace77450]

I’ve suggested elsewhere having new Governors that unlock mid to late game linked to certain T2 to T3 Governors. So, you might have a Colonialism Themed Governor unlock with Merchant Republic, and Communist, Fascist and Democratic Themed Governors unlock at the T3 Governments.

I saw it when catching up with the NFP thread shortly after making my post ITT. It's an interesting idea and one I'd like to see explored, but I doubt the mixed reception to governors has the developers eager to do so.

 

[Aurelesk]

I don't know about those specific ones, but I 100% agree there needs to be cards.

+1 aluminum per mine would probably be too OP. And why do lumber mills make coal and farms make oil?

Well, you can make Coal out of Wood (see: Charcoal) and some bio-Ethanol (from crops) can be used as fuel (Farms → Oil). Aluminium is rather "everywhere" is reality, just not at high concentration.

It can be not limited to Encampment building. For exemple, an end-game policy already gives Power and Aluminum from Spaceport. If you really want to be only on district and building, then it can be something like this:

• 1 Iron per turn for each Barrack.
• 1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• 1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• 1 Coal per trun for each Military Academy (probable the weakest link here)
• 1 Oil per turn for each Aerodrome (or Hangar?)
• 1 Aluminium per turn for each Spaceport (or Airport?)

I rather want make Uranium rare, but maybe give a policy to make Nuclear Powerplant attractive. For example: a policy like "Nuclear enrichment: Nuclear Powerplant do not consume Uranium to generate Power".

 

[Sostratus]

I don't know about those specific ones, but I 100% agree there needs to be cards.

In order to preserve the strategic balance of the game, I find the best solution is to offer a card granting a fixed amount of resource income in exchange for a fixed downside.
The goal is to allow that minimal level of access, not grant a limitless generation opportunity.
In this case something like “+5 <resource> Per turn, but -20 gold” or what have you.

I think the best long term solution to our stockpile system is to have an actual “world market system” where players can buy resources easily, if at high cost. Currently you can’t even buy resource income. It shouldn’t take an individual diplomatic deal to Import oil if it needs to be really integrated with the game economy.

A policy card or a building (like civ5’s recycling plant) is the next best solution and also the easiest.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Aluminium is rather "everywhere" is reality, just not at high concentration.

I would make resource generating buildings the 3rd tier of IZ and move the power buildings to there own district. The limitation on aluminum power for processing it which goes along nicely with powered buildings.

 

[acluewithout]

snip

I really hope FXS don’t just leave Governors as, and do expand the concept a little more.

Governors are hugely impactful early game, and really do open up lots of different strategies. But then they very quickly become almost irrelevant, particularly as past a certain point I have enough Gov tittles to have all the good Governors / Promotions (whereas early game you really have to spend hose titles wisely).

Having some unique Governors tied to Civs is a great way to add some variation, but that approach currently suffers from having only one Civ that has that Mechanic (although a few modded leaders also have this great effect). It also doesn’t make sense to have this Mechanic for every Civ either, it can only ever be a few otherwise it’s too unwieldy and won’t be unique for certain Civs, so ultimately this approach can only provide some much additional interest.

Really, the biggest limitation of the Governors system is that you basically have the same seven governors for every Civ, every game, from turn 1. The game really needs some way to expand the roster as the game progresses, otherwise Governors will always be sort of redundant for anything other than the early game.

Governments have a slightly different problem. Like Governors, I think Governments also become a bit redundant past the early game. Unlike Governors, this is not because more options don’t open up as the game progresses - fundamentally, you do keep unlocking new and better Governments all the way through the game. Instead, the problem is that the later tier Governments just aren’t appreciably different to the early Governments, so it feels very much just “more of the same”.

FXS have made an effort to make T3 and T4 Govs feel more distinct from earlier governments by giving each of them unique policy cards and going a bit more out there with T4 abilities and card distributions. But, to my mind, they just haven’t really gone far enough. The need to unlock something more, eg as I’ve suggested before, perhaps unique governors, wonders, units and or buildings.

snip

snip

I’m not a huge fan of having a card that just solves the resource problems, even if it does have a great cost. It just undermines any tension from Resources, because you can just buy your way out of jail and there is no way for anyone to disrupt your resources.

That said, I do think having some more centralised source for some resources would be good, just so you don’t have to buy / sell from each Civ individually. Really, it’s kind of just a UI function that’s needed - some way to say I want xx oil, and you get offers from all the Civs at once, and then you buy from whoever you think has the best deal.

I’d also like to see the ability to buy resources from City States without being Suzerain. Sort of like a Levy option for resources, you click a button on the City State Screen, and you pay x gold as a lump sum to get y resource per turn for 20 turns. You wouldn’t need Suzerain, but would need at least three envoys, not be at war, and maybe not be denounced by the City States Suzerain (and the CS would have to have the relevant resource too).

Alternatively, perhaps you can generate resources through trade routes provided the destination has the resource and the origin city has a certain district / building, eg Commercial Hub + Stock Exchange (maybe rename Stock Exchange to Commodities Exchange). You’d then at least need to make infrastructure investments, and you’d be vulnerable to your trade routes being disrupted.

 

[civfan_999]

In this case something like “+5 <resource> Per turn, but -20 gold” or what have you.

I think the best long term solution to our stockpile system is to have an actual “world market system” where players can buy resources easily, if at high cost. Currently you can’t even buy resource income. It shouldn’t take an individual diplomatic deal to Import oil if it needs to be really integrated with the game economy.

I like this idea. I think that is probably too cheap, but definitely access to free market good at a competitive price would be good.

Maybe the price is dynamic and based on the size of stock piles. For example, at the beginning of the game, when you develop horses or niter first, the AI wants to buy them from you, but by mid game, no one needs horses anymore. So horses have value early game, but are basically useless later as everyone has full stockpiles.

It would be cool to develop a system on a sliding scale of "if the average stockpile is 0% across all players, the price is $100/resource" to "if the average stockpile price is 100% across all players, the price is $1/resource." Then you could go to the "world market" and buy as much as you want at that price. But rare resources would be expensive. And likely whatever you settle on as the price for my sliding scale, uranium should be 5X or 10X the cost because you can make nukes with it and the world should be wary of selling it too cheap.

 

[darkace77450]

One last tweak I think the game could use is the option to buy tiles from and sell them to neighboring Civs.

 

[civfan_999]

One last tweak I think the game could use is the option to buy tiles from and sell them to neighboring Civs.

I think this could be too easily abused, because the AI wouldn't properly value the land. Especially undeveloped tiles (which they would think about as is, but you would think about as what they could be) or cases where you just discovered a tile has aluminium on it, but the AI is behind on tech and doesn't yet know the value of that tile.

 

[MrRadar]

Well, I would love to see some Military cards that allow to prevent to be stuck if you don't have the luck to have Iron, Horses, Niter... For example:

• +1 Iron per turn for each Barrack
• +1 Horse per turn for each Stable
• +1 Niter per turn for each Armory
• +1 Coal and +1 CO2 for each Lumber Mill. -2 Production to Lumber Mills.
• +1 Oil and +1 CO2 for each Farm. -2 Food to Farms.
• +1 Aluminum and +1 CO2 for each Mine. -2 Production to Mines.

Why do you guys always want some magic tricks to conjure something from thin air? You can try trading with the AI, use Magnus's Black Marketeer ability. There are some escape routes, try to find and use them. All this magic generation just defeats the whole purpose of strategic resources, why then have them at all?

I’m not a huge fan of having a card that just solves the resource problems, even if it does have a great cost. It just undermines any tension from Resources, because you can just buy your way out of jail and there is no way for anyone to disrupt your resources.

Exactly, couldn't agree more.

That said, I do think having some more centralised source for some resources would be good, just so you don’t have to buy / sell from each Civ individually. Really, it’s kind of just a UI function that’s needed - some way to say I want xx oil, and you get offers from all the Civs at once, and then you buy from whoever you think has the best deal.

I’d also like to see the ability to buy resources from City States without being Suzerain. Sort of like a Levy option for resources, you click a button on the City State Screen, and you pay x gold as a lump sum to get y resource per turn for 20 turns. You wouldn’t need Suzerain, but would need at least three envoys, not be at war, and maybe not be denounced by the City States Suzerain (and the CS would have to have the relevant resource too).

Alternatively, perhaps you can generate resources through trade routes provided the destination has the resource and the origin city has a certain district / building, eg Commercial Hub + Stock Exchange (maybe rename Stock Exchange to Commodities Exchange). You’d then at least need to make infrastructure investments, and you’d be vulnerable to your trade routes being disrupted.

That sounds much more like it. If FXS fleshed out diplomacy and trading options and, for once, they made a decent diplomacy and trade UI, maintaining relations with AI would become much more important and that game of horse trading would be so much more engaging.