[NFP] What I really hope the developers to know.

[Wielki Hegemon]

I get that, and that was the one example where I could think of people really abusing it since you're basically playing a single player game but competing against others, but as pointed out we're probably talking about a pretty small group of players in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe the game should keep some type of "trade log" detailing every trade that was ever made in a game that others could see if they loaded a submitted game file? Not ideal but it might help a little.

And to be honest, if devs were making the game focused on GOTM min-maxers it would be terrible as it comes to sales and mostly very unfun to play

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

I wish Diplo Favor can be unsellable but bribe-able, as a special currency for bribing AI to do things for you (rather than tell them not to do things), like how bribes work in Civ5 - bribe them to vote, to go to war, etc. It is Diplomatic Favor after all.

But that requires a complete reworking of a core mechanism and I don't see it happen in the current development cycle.

This is something I've been hoping for a long time, but coupled with a rehaul of the World Congress. World Congress in civ 6 feels so shallow compared to what you had in civ 5, votes barely feel like they matter unless you're specifically going for Diplo victory. I thought the civ 5 world congress was a fantastic implementation of diplomacy, aside from the snowball aspect it had where winning a few votes got you to the point where you had complete control. I wish civ 6 would take the impact that civ 5 world congress had but use the current diplo favor as voting tool.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I wish Diplo Favor can be unsellable but bribe-able, as a special currency for bribing AI to do things for you (rather than tell them not to do things), like how bribes work in Civ5 - bribe them to vote, to go to war, etc. It is Diplomatic Favor after all.

But that requires a complete reworking of a core mechanism and I don't see it happen in the current development cycle.

This is a good idea. It shouldn't be sellable. Currently a good way to generate gold is to forward settle, and the AI will ask you not to forward settle him again and give you 30 diplo favors, you just sell these favors back and get a lot of gold.

I don't think this strategy is intended by developers to encourage forward settling, but it does encourage that.

I think they boosted deity bonus to 100%/40% already, it's not 80/32 any more.

Interesting. Where's the evidence?

 

[MrRadar]

This is something I've been hoping for a long time, but coupled with a rehaul of the World Congress. World Congress in civ 6 feels so shallow compared to what you had in civ 5, votes barely feel like they matter unless you're specifically going for Diplo victory. I thought the civ 5 world congress was a fantastic implementation of diplomacy, aside from the snowball aspect it had where winning a few votes got you to the point where you had complete control. I wish civ 6 would take the impact that civ 5 world congress had but use the current diplo favor as voting tool.

I agree that something has to be done with DF in Civ6, and removing the possibility to buy or sell it probably would be the first thing to do.

However, as concerns comparison of Congress in 5 and 6, my feelings are completely opposite. I thought Civ 5 congress was the most frustrating implementation in the whole franchise, and in no small part because of its inevitable intrusiveness, made even worse by the most silly voting from the part of the AI. I wrote a few times about it on these forums, and here I go again. There was only one aspect I thought was good - the collaborative projects: World Fair, World Games and such. The rest was annoying garbage. What if I do not want to participate in such congress, who the heck enforces those decisions, why can't I defy some outlandish resolution? At least in 6 it is only temporary, and there are some resolutions that sometimes are quite useful.

However quirky Civ 6 congress may seem or be, I prefer it to 5 congress by a large margin and I don't want the impact of 5 to be brought back, no thanks.

Ideally, world congress membership should not be something that happens inevitably, that should be voluntary and it should bring some perks and obligations. And some possibilities to defy, and some sanctions for defying. But that would be rather tricky to code, I imagine.

 

[gunnergoz]

While Firaxis does read these forums, and others, I doubt they plan a large portion of their game changes around the issues raised here about AI, pathing, game economics or fixing OP or UP civs. We're a minority of the gaming community: some of us (yours truly excluded) know how the game works or doesn't work as well as Firaxis developers do. We're vocal but relatively few. I suspect Firaxis has ways to see what "ordinary" (i.e. mostly non-forum visiting) players like and dislike about the game, and tailor their workload around these issues. In the end, it is always merchandising that beats other motives and the folks at Firaxis want steady jobs and these depend upon sales, sales, sales. And to sell, you have to please the majority, the ordinary casual player who mostly doesn't come here much if at all.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

I agree that something has to be done with DF in Civ6, and removing the possibility to buy or sell it probably would be the first thing to do.

However, as concerns comparison of Congress in 5 and 6, my feelings are completely opposite. I thought Civ 5 congress was the most frustrating implementation in the whole franchise, and in no small part because of its inevitable intrusiveness, made even worse by the most silly voting from the part of the AI. I wrote a few times about it on these forums, and here I go again. There was only one aspect I thought was good - the collaborative projects: World Fair, World Games and such. The rest was annoying garbage. What if I do not want to participate in such congress, who the heck enforces those decisions, why can't I defy some outlandish resolution? At least in 6 it is only temporary, and there are some resolutions that sometimes are quite useful.

However quirky Civ 6 congress may seem or be, I prefer it to 5 congress by a large margin and I don't want the impact of 5 to be brought back, no thanks.

Ideally, world congress membership should not be something that happens inevitably, that should be voluntary and it should bring some perks and obligations. And some possibilities to defy, and some sanctions for defying. But that would be rather tricky to code, I imagine.

I just think World Congress in civ 6 is completely ignorable, and that's a sad state. I really enjoyed how World Ideology and Religion worked in civ 5, and the enormous impact some of the congress decisions made interacting with city states and building wonders like the Forbidden Palace so meaningful in civ 5. Cultural Heritage sites also gave wonder building extra value, science funding and arts funding were such a big deal for the respective victory conditions. I guess you and I just have opposite preferences on this issue, I really want some sort of diplomatic interactions on a global scale that is incredibly meaningful to the game state. You should be able to choose not to participate but it should mean you miss out on something. Right now, I would gladly throw the entire civ 6 world congress in the trash and feel like the game lost nothing interesting.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I just think World Congress in civ 6 is completely ignorable.

Well it is not. It actually decides a lot the strategy, for example, Korea, Poland and Mapuche will be much much better if the -50% prod cost resolution get passed in the 1st congress.

 

[civac]

Resolutions like disallowing certain buildings are gimmicky and absurd. The world congregation should decide large scale diplomatic matters or issues that a single empire can't handle. Organizing a world fair, world games, trade agreements, sanctions for members for aggression (or other transgressions), nuclear weapons ban, large scale terraforming operations in lategame. The only civ game that ever got this right is SMAC. SMAC also allows you to bribe other factions just prior to the vote when the resolution to vote for is already up. You can also threaten or bribe ai factions to vote in your favor prior to the vote being called as an option in the diplo window. This is how this should work. Diplomatic Favor is another gimmicky and absurd mechanic.

 

[kaspergm]

I hate the vote for making a luxury not grant you happiness with a vengeance. Both from a realism viewpoint - why can WC decide that now Spices will not make my people happy?? - and from a gameplay POW - why doe the AI absolutely LOVE to vote to make a luxury not grant hapiness, and why is there NO BLEEPING WAY that the user interface shows me what they are going to vote for? AAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!

 

[Time Tested]

I hate the vote for making a luxury not grant you happiness with a vengeance. Both from a realism viewpoint - why can WC decide that now Spices will not make my people happy?? - and from a gameplay POW - why doe the AI absolutely LOVE to vote to make a luxury not grant hapiness, and why is there NO BLEEPING WAY that the user interface shows me what they are going to vote for? AAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!

From a realism standpoint, I explain it away as a moral issue. Doesn't make a ton of sense for Spices, but say for something like Whales or Tobacco, it's the WC agreeing that people shouldn't kill whales, or that tobacco is harmful or whatever.

From a gameplay/strategy perspective, I don't get why the AI favors that option so much. I mean, it might make sense if they don't have a particular luxury and they are trying to screw someone over who has it. I've actually done that at least once when I had a surplus of amenities/excellent trade deals.

But I'm pretty sure I've seen the AI mostly screw itself over by banning a luxury (either they own it, or they have it coming in from a trade deal). Maybe this was coded in as a weird way for them to push a moral agenda?

 

[FinalDoomsday]

With the AI disabling Luxuries, is it me or do they try to target the player regardless of their attitude to you? I had a declared friend and he kept trying to ban things I was in possesion of. They also like to hit you with the 100% more grievances one, again regardless of how they feel about you.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

From a realism standpoint, I explain it away as a moral issue. Doesn't make a ton of sense for Spices, but say for something like Whales or Tobacco, it's the WC agreeing that people shouldn't kill whales, or that tobacco is harmful or whatever.

So, yes - whales and turtles are the obvious examples, but there's others!
Tobacco is clearly bad and is on the way out.
Wine has been targeted by various temperance movements (esp. in Islam).
Spices occasionally got banned. Jains, for instance, sometimes avoid spices because they make food too exciting.
Coffee also was banned at times, both in the Middle East and the West, because it promoted people sitting around and maybe thinking about writing and reading books. The Catholics in the 1500 debated banning "satanic" coffee.

Of course, many of these movements really had economic strategy behind them...

 

[leandrombraz]

With the AI disabling Luxuries, is it me or do they try to target the player regardless of their attitude to you? I had a declared friend and he kept trying to ban things I was in possesion of. They also like to hit you with the 100% more grievances one, again regardless of how they feel about you.

The AI never targets the player just because he's the player. For the AI, you're just another Civ in the game. If they ever target you, there's a reason for it. In this case, they vote for the luxury they don't own that has the most copies in the world. You can predict exactly what the AI will vote for using the Global Resources Screen. The resources with the most copies will be at the bottom, so just go there and see who owns what. The resource they don't own that is most at the bottom is the one they will vote for. Be careful with resources that have the same amount of copies in the world. In this case, the AI might vote for either of the resources that have the same amount. I have a theory that they always go for the resource with the same amount that is most at the top, but I wasn't able to confirm that yet.

I wasn't able to figure out how the AI choose their target in the Grievances resolution, but this is one of the resolutions where the AI never gives more than one vote, which means that you can outvote them quite easily and choose whatever outcome you like, assuming you've the favors.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

So, yes - whales and turtles are the obvious examples, but there's others!
Tobacco is clearly bad and is on the way out.
Wine has been targeted by various temperance movements (esp. in Islam).
Spices occasionally got banned. Jains, for instance, sometimes avoid spices because they make food too exciting.
Coffee also was banned at times, both in the Middle East and the West, because it promoted people sitting around and maybe thinking about writing and reading books. The Catholics in the 1500 debated banning "satanic" coffee.
Of course, many of these movements really had economic strategy behind them...

Absinthe black PR and later prohibition in Europe was organized and supported by wine producers, that lost their market share ofter bad crops.
As for World Congress, one of its biggest drawbacks is absolute AI RNG. On the one hand, somehow AI will always vote for the city center production boost, and on the other hand, their decisions for some resolutions are unpredictable and random. This makes no space for some fun mind game in predicting which resolution may pass and give you Diplo Victory Points and makes the game just grinding and outbidding AI with Diplo points. There is no fun and satisfaction in it. One of the less rewarding types of win in a game.