[R&F] What have we learnt?

[acluewithout]

One of the ways you balance the overall game - and make in game decisions more interesting - is to put only the most powerful units/buildings/governments/wonders on leaf techs.

Anything that's not on a leaf tech, you're going to research anyway. So an investment in a leaf tech automatically slows you down. To compensate, there should be something really special you get for that investment.

Right now, the only thing I'd argue is handled sort of that way is Merchant Republic, although even it isn't really powerful enough to delay your march on a Tier 3 government.

Also, don't put a Unique Unit on a leaf tech unless there's some really compelling circumstances for why you want to encourage that civ to take what is, by design, intended to be an optional path.

Well, I certainly agree leaf techs should be worth the effort.

I don’t mind the idea of leaf techs. But I think the implementation is a bit patchy. Irrigation is a good one. Military Tactics is a bad one. Not sure about the Merchant Republic one.

I’ve been wondering for ages how Military Tactics could be made a better leaf tech. My current thoughts are that the tech could give you: +1 promotion for all land and sea melee (that would have a bad synergy for medieval UUs though), one off bonus for GGs and GAs; reduced unit maintenance (and so maybe get rid of the conscription card); or unlock ranged attacks for walled cities (rather than just getting a ranged Attack for having walls). Another option would be to just make it a civic, so you’d then get Pikes in the Civics tree.

 

[Victoria]

Leaf techs are OK for things that a civ did not need to discover (like Merchant republic) ... but harbors? Pikeman? in game people do not bother with these techs while in real life everyone knew. Just get rid of them... or better swap something good like knights with Military tactics. After all anyone could carry a stick but knights were really a leaf node.
battering ram... leaf node

 

[Sostratus]

I don’t mind the idea of leaf techs. But I think the implementation is a bit patchy.

It's an interesting concept for a tech tree. On the one hand, why include leaf techs at all? If something isn't important enough to be part of the 'tree' of technology through the ages, why even include it? On the other hand, there are a ton of things that go into making a tech tree, and in real life there are many examples of civilizations putting the 'flourishes' on their tech path. Virtually everyone had to master stone fortifications (castle like structures) but not everyone turned that into star forts.

I'd be happier if they ditch the cost schedule where each column of the tree gets more expensive and just say, each era has these core techs, which are expensive, and a few leaf techs for the 'extras,' which are usually cheaper based on usefulness. A classical 'siege works' leaf tech to pick up siege towers and catapults might only cost 60% of a normal tech. Getting all the flutes and flourishes of a specific victory path (particularly early offense) is gonna cost extra, pal. Obviously likewise for civics, although that tree is a little better about handling this stuff.

After all anyone could carry a stick but knights were really a leaf node.

I cannot agree with this enough. Justice for pikemen!

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus Getting the tech tree right and balancing leaf techs must be hard.

No leaf techs, and everyone’s empire will feel identical and there aren’t many hard research decisions. To many, and the reality is everyone will just ignore most of the leaf techs, forcing everyone to ignore them really, this also creating very linear games. I think the current balance is okay, but could be better.

If there is ever a Civ 7 (god, I hope there isn’t - I’d rather they just keep expanding and refining what they have), they should think about a more open ended model where you just pick between certain techs every era. I think other 4X games have systems along those lines. It’d be tricky to do though without losing a lot of what is good about the current tech trees (which is a lot).

 

[acluewithout]

...so ... Civ of the Week for RnF is at an end (final Civ was Russia), and so I thought I'd bump this thread.

Anyone have any thoughts?

BTW, you can find all the Civs here: The Full Monty, Cree, Gilgabro, Greece, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock (Harold) the Third, Nubia, EgyptClassical: Kongo, Point Break, Price of Persia, Rome, Sythia, Medieval: China, Georgia, India, Japan, Khmer, Mongolia, Poland, Zulu; Renaissance: Indonesia, Netherlands, Spain, Mapuche, Korea; Industrial & Modern: Team America, Germany, Scotland, Australia, Brazil, Russia

 

[BarbarianHunter]

...so ... Civ of the Week for RnF is at an end (final Civ was Russia), and so I thought I'd bump this thread.

Anyone have any thoughts?

You saved the best for last ?

 

[The googles do nothing]

Sometimes I think devs are expecting us to balance the game via mods or altering the text files. Are there any major balancing mods people have played? How are they? I used to alter game files in the past, haven't done so in a long time (kind of a pain going back to stock game).

The Better Balance Mod by the CPL. It was designed for Multiplayer but works for SP. It's well done but it's balanced for MP so it wasn't designed to make civs better in they ways people are describing in this thread.

 

[The googles do nothing]

One thing i've learned from reading this site is one person's complaint is another person favorite feature. Battering Rams for instance.

To many, and the reality is everyone will just ignore most of the leaf techs,

I think being able to ignore parts of the tech tree is a just fine with some people. I've read that Frigates should be harder to get. Following the Navel part of the tree has such a high opportunity cost it seem like that some would like a way to just totally ignore the Navel part of the tree.

 

[Sostratus]

We have at least found out they are finally tweaking the tech tree's layout, which is very good. Hopefully they won't need another 2 years to make any remaining tweaks to it

And they seem to be willing to do some touch ups on a vanilla/r&f civs. Which is great.
But, we all have to collectively remember that most of the team seems to play on King level or lower (Carl, the lord of QA, appears to play emperor. A gentleman and a scholar!) So they may well see civs like spain and georgia and think, "hey, these guys work fine, no issues here."

They seem to also have (as far as we know) introduced the power mechanic for late game yields but otherwise left the IZ, and late game production, un touched. In fact, factory+power plant has been nerfed by 1 point if you build a coal plant!
When they removed aura stacking in vanilla post release they should have really come up with a better way to make the IZ shine than leave it a crippled district. Campus buildings give more science than an IZ. Building a factory in a city with coverage is a total waste right now. As you laid out in the OP, yeah this hurts a lot of civs from realizing their potential. At least give me a +100% IZ building production card like other districts get.

We also are seeing some potential unit cost and power tweaks - YAY - so the jury is out on whether anti cav will finally be okay. My biggest fear is that the current state of anticav is forcing them to implement the new units certain ways. For example, pike strength being so low has implications for what they can do with knights and coursers. Pike and shot are strength 55, 65 vs cav - is it random that they happen to show off the cuirassier as strength 64? But several industrial mounted units have 65+ strength- so why care now? I just worry that vanilla balance mistakes are going to propagate into the GS content.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I personally think the "weak" civs are fine at a glance. They get bonuses that are largely insiginificant but they aren't helpless. Any Civ can win Civilization 6. It's just that the bonuses of weaker Civs are largely circumstantial, rendering them irrelevant in most cases. In case of England and Georgia, specifically, their bonuses are also difficult to gauge. England is very competent if they start on the edge of a continent. Georgia is guaranteed a GA bonus every Era since the medieval. They require a specific context in order to be good and that's whhy their bonuses are considered "weak", for good reason.

As for the revamps, i'm happy England is getting a boost. No sure if Workshop of the World is good, but Pax Britannica now gives Trade Route Capacity which is an awesome boost imo. I hope China and Egypt get buffed as well (Dynastic Cycle is a boring and pretty dreadful ability imo, and Egypt's bonuses are immensely flavourless as well). Norway's UA should also be tweaked because Maori get the same boosts (but better ones). Otherwise, I think the remaining Civs should stay the same.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

Leaf techs are not ok at all unless they contain must have stuff like irrigation,knights end game content etc.

Coastal cities are still very bad with a lot more to lose with the new mechanics coming in. just a trade route bonus is simply not enough. consider the world population and where they live and have lived throughout history. at the moment i dont want any coastal cities if possible. it should not be that hard to give some significant bonuses to offset the loss of workable tiles , like offshore fisheries or even fishing trawlers going to resources outside of your area of control. sea barbarians ( pirates) is also now possible. or another idea is to move faster on sea , at least till you get to modern ages. after all you can sleep and still continue sailing, kinda hard to do on land till modern transportation. why not give a huge trade bonus in modern times to harbors/seaports. most of the commerce on earth moves through seas.

Religion should play a role in loyalty as it was throughout history.

Losing wonders just because someone finished one turn before doesnt make sense at all. just give less bonuses but give at least something.

I dont believe it make financial sense for the developpers to try to balance change a lot of times since there is no esports or sponsors or events for this game. starcraft has a huge esports scene with significant sponsors ( also balancing a couple of races against 40+ civs? ) . also since this is by design a snowbally game , the early civ bonuses will always be a little bit better and thus preferred in multiplayer.

I am ok with some districts being weaker than others , or some buildings , just make their great people better and the players can decide if it is worth it or not. i dont think anyone would be bad mouthing IZ if the great engineers could finish the wonders by themselves?

 

[Disgustipated]

We have at least found out they are finally tweaking the tech tree's layout, which is very good

I like to use real tech tree mod on occasion. Tech tree tweaks do look improved for GS, however. I just feel they are too afraid to put top half techs requiring bottom half techs to research. Something real tech tree mod does, and I find it has a smoother gameplay this way. Only downside is you can't do any crazy beelines and alternate strategies, which is why I think Firaxis went the way they did with the tech tree.

Coastal cities are still very bad with a lot more to lose with the new mechanics coming in.

I still settle them, just an old habit from Civ4 and other civ games. And I find them aesthetically pleasing, but yeah they kind of suck. But it should be noted that sea trade routes will be more lucrative. A great move. And we haven't seen a close up how much more lucrative they can be. I suspect they are waiting for the Phoenicia reveal before showing that (though it's possible the Mali one had some overseas routes, I wasn't paying that close attention).

Religion should play a role in loyalty as it was throughout history.

Loyalty is affected by religion currently, or do you mean it should play a wider role? I'm okay with it as is, I see why they didn't put too big a role because there aren't enough religions for everyone.

I'll put my win times here. It's more appropriate in this thread than the Russia thread. I did learn I played Japan really badly. I actually played them again last week, but didn't include them on the scores since it was a large map and with some mods. I did much better (though went for science victory). Placing cities closer together helped. I don't remember what happened, but it's possible I didn't decide to go for culture victory until much later in the game. Persia I felt I could have done better as well. And some civs like Rome I should have just went domination. They are a good civ, but very generalized and not strong on any victory type.

For some reason I can't find my Nubia save. They aren't included. I may have accidentally deleted them. Sorry Nubia. Actually I can probably redownload from the Nubia civ of the week thread.
edit: I see why I didn't finish my Nubia game. It was a bad week, my brother passed away.

All games played on King to keep things fairly even and ensure victory, standard size maps, and epic game speed. Most maps are continents, even my Norway one LOL. But I did notice I went fractal on more than I thought I did. The exception is Indonesia which is played on a large map, I didn't realize this earlier. I played large because I did play archipelago as they really should only play that map type LOL.

Science
1: Scotland 382
2: Korea 394 and 399 (I played them twice in an effort to try to get faster)
3: Netherlands 408
4: Brazil: 416
5: Germany: 419
6: Arabia 436
7: China 451


Cultural
1: Greece (Pericles) 347
2: Russia: 351
3: Australia: 361
4: Kongo: 373
5: America: 375
6: Spain: 378
7: Poland: 381
8: Brazil: 384 (for some reason I thought this was higher in another thread discussing Brazil, my mistake)
9: Khmer: 384
10: Mapuche: 397
11: Persia: 403 (I did not use their UI as well as I should have I feel like)
12: Indonesia: 405
13: Aztec 426
14: France: 426
15: Cree 432
16: Romans 438
17: England: 446
18: Sumeria 453
19: Norway 464
20: Japan 500 (I feel like I could have done this much better, I played them poorly)
21: Egypt 505
22: India (Gandhi) 528


Domination victory:
1: Macedon: 273
2: India (Chandragupta): 294
3: Mongolia: 316
4: Zulu 354

Religious victory:
1: Russia: 276
2: Georgia: 278
3: Scythia: 289
4: Indonesia: 410

 

[Sostratus]

I am ok with some districts being weaker than others , or some buildings , just make their great people better and the players can decide if it is worth it or not.

I think the IZ weakness in particular ties in because it's the production district and late game everything costs too much, so people really notice it. I think campuses are a touch too good and i would knock them down slightly, but the other districts are okay. IZs just have the weird rules where factory and plant are aura only, there's no boosting cards for them, etc. One might even think the factory/plant are fine as buildings.

But if the devs removed the rationalism card, does anyone think that wouldn't devastate the campus?

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I think the IZ weakness in particular ties in because it's the production district and late game everything costs too much, so people really notice it. I

On the Hungary/Canal livstream, Ed suggested to Carl that he could get to canals faster by building 3 Workshops for the boost.

I don't know about the rest of the team, but it therefore seems the boss still thinks about building 3 IZs, even when all (most?) the cities in your empire are within range of a single central IZ.

It's therefore not at all clear that the dev team sees the IZ as weak under the current rules. Or if they do, the boss may not share their view. That would also explain the power system yields we've seen to date with GS.

 

[Sostratus]

On the Hungary/Canal livstream, Ed suggested to Carl that he could get to canals faster by building 3 Workshops for the boost.

If workshops didn't cost so much I would understand. All the following buildings yield a flat 2. Market yields 3 and barracks gives 1. The terrain yield system (lux/bonus resources) further suggests that the relative gold value output of these buildings is not equal.
Shrine - 65 - 6
Library - 80 - 6
Barracks - 80 - 2
Market - 105 - 3
Lighthouse - 105 - 3
Arena - 150 - X
Amphitheater - 150 - 6
Workshop - 175 - 4
So basically, according to the game itself, the workshop is a terrible deal.

I think from a game perspective, if you zoom out, Ed is thinking correctly. "If you upgrade 3 brown cog tiles, you get half off canals!" This makes sense. Its thematic.
It just breaks down because of how the costs are balanced as a pure function of the tech tree.

 

[Victoria]

But if the devs removed the rationalism card, does anyone think that wouldn't devastate the campus?

I think straight buffing of prod values would be better, maybe reducing the cost as you say.
To me a workshop +4 prod, factory +10 power plant +20 would be better, everyone can build them so why not? At least +3 +7 +15
We have enough trouble fitting districts in as it is and the amount of prod returned for these districts in a world where production increases tenfold during the game is too low IMO.
Will only build an IZ for inspiration ATM

 

[Sostratus]

Will only build an IZ for inspiration ATM

I would be interested to see if Ed Beach or Anton feels that people should be building IZs at the rate they build ECs. ECs produce amenities which are basically a regional resource (since the luxury amenities will float around anyways if you have at least a handful of cities.)
Having an IZ half local/half aura is just so hard for me to figure out how to balance. Thanks to the new niche of power plants, I would rather keep plants regional and transfer the aura to them, and make factories a strictly local thing, maybe they give 4+6 if powered. That's enough to hopefully incentivize players to build a new IZ if they want more hammers. That's really where I think the issue is - if you want more hammers, players will build a mine but not an IZ. Lots of people don't run the IZ card either. There was even people in some civ of the week threads that weren't even running it as germany. Buddy, if I had a card that was "+5-10 production in every city," surely you'd run that?!

 

[acluewithout]

One thing from Civ of the Week for me is that some Civs are just ... kind of boring.

I've been playing Netherlands based on CotW. The thread on them got me really interested (I'm a sucker for colonialism Civs). But ... yeah, their power level is fine, but they are really boring.

I think specifically for the Netherlands the problem is the Harbour Bonus. They're sort of incentivised to build Harbours over Commercial Hubs given CHs don't benefit from the extra river adjacency for them. The culture bomb make their Harbour better (I guess) and synergise with the Polder (more places to build it). And Netherlands should be building Harbours so it's more like a Naval Civs seeing as it doesn't otherwise get many naval bonuses beyond its UU. But... it doesn't work, because the Harbour buff actually isn't that good. So, you're not incentivised to build Harbours, so you're not a Naval Civ ... and so on. So, you just end up a kind lame almost Japan bit of extra adjacency Civ. I think maybe Netherlands need a better buff for their Harbour - keep the culture bomb, but given (I don't know) extra Great Merchants via Harbours. Just something fun.

The other thing is that from CotW is that there are a lot of Civs that use faith. Good grief. FXS really want us to use faith.

The other other thing is that generally UIs seem more powerful that UD and UBs. I'd felt in Vanilla that Civs with unique districts were generally the strongest ... better districts and their district is half price. But I think after at least RnF that improvements are generally stronger. Maybe because build chargers are easier to get.

I would be interested to see if Ed Beach or Anton feels that people should be building IZs at the rate they build ECs. ECs produce amenities which are basically a regional resource (since the luxury amenities will float around anyways if you have at least a handful of cities.)
Having an IZ half local/half aura is just so hard for me to figure out how to balance. Thanks to the new niche of power plants, I would rather keep plants regional and transfer the aura to them, and make factories a strictly local thing, maybe they give 4+6 if powered. That's enough to hopefully incentivize players to build a new IZ if they want more hammers. That's really where I think the issue is - if you want more hammers, players will build a mine but not an IZ. Lots of people don't run the IZ card either. There was even people in some civ of the week threads that weren't even running it as germany. Buddy, if I had a card that was "+5-10 production in every city," surely you'd run that?!

The IZ and Workshop are awful simply because they give you so few hammers for what it costs to build them. The IZ needs to just give a few more hammers (like +5 to +7) and the Workshop need some to give some other perk (I've suggested +1 housing before).

The Factory and Powerplant are rubbish for a totally different reason. By the time they come around, I don't need regional hammer boosts, because I don't need hammers in that many cities - just hammers is a few core cities, then everyone else needs to give me gold, faith, science, culture and GPP.

GS looks like it won't fix the first problem (IZ and Workshop). But the new power mechanic might actually be good because it may actually boost late game yields.