What should be changed in a next patch - your opinions

[Krajzen]

Self-explaining title. However I mean mostly stuff other than obvious "fix bugs"

My contribution: I think the next patch should improve AI in this regard
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-patch-ai-walled-city-attack-experiment-results.642123/

...with all that being said, however, this test still shows that AI:
1) Ofers peace on unfavorable terms despite being one turn from total victory - it should either offer status quo or demand tribute from human (if it really doesn't want this city) or just take the city earlier!
2) Casually and pointlessly sends units who shouldn't be here into city range where they die from city attacks - it should either decisively attack the city with major force of several units or don't attack at all, not send lonely suicidal units pointlessly.

And those aspects should be reported as bugs @Gort, could you?

I think we can all agree that regardless of whether AI wants to take this city or not, it shouldn't offer unfavorable peace deals or waste units in its range of fire, just invade it en masse or not.

 

[Villager720]

I’d like a general production cost decrease to almost everything in game, honestly.

I feel like culture and science blaze past wonders/buildings/units. Especially regarding UU and the changes to strategic resources. Assuming you start with the resources needed, it can still take many turns to even make your UUs in their intended age.

 

[Jewman]

My quick fix list:

• rational barbarian spawn rates, so that its not one game no barbarians next game never-ending camp spawns.
• pillage yields reduced. pillaging improvements over strategic resources grants you lump sums of the resource rather than raw yields.
• The automatic switching over of strategic resources to building a resource-dependent unit when you were building an inferior non-resource dependent troop because you had not stockpiled enough of that specific resource. For example, I'm building a catapult because I do not have enough niter to build a bombard, when I stockpile 20 niter, my city automatically queues a bombard instead and consumes the niter immediately. A prompt before consuming the strategic resource would suffice. I also suspect this is also hampering the AI but I'm not sure.
• Hide flooding risk from settler lens until later, so that you are more surprised by your flood barrier needs.

 

[Starwars]

1) Make it so that you can decomission power plants. Not change to another fueltype, just shut them down period if you wish.

2) Tweak the climate change so that it occurs slower, over a longer period of time but have the effects (the tiles lost I mean) be more brutal once you get to the lower levels. The flood barrier production costs feel out of whack at the moment with how fast you progress through the climate change levels.

 

[acluewithout]

• Nerf pillaging.
• Nerf barbarian spawn rates.
• Consume 1 resource to heal a unit.
• Nerf Hungary and Maori a little. (Sorry guys)
• Give Factories the adjacency bonus rather than Power Plants.
• Gain diplomatic favour per turn by having colonial cities (maybe tied to a policy card) and or from having nuclear weapons (again, maybe tied to a policy card).
• Remove “recruit” partisans Spy Mission, or instead make it apply only to Cities conquered from another Civ rather than being tied Neighbourhoods.
• Give Georgia a bonus for each level of walls or a bonus for building walls.
• Fix the England RND bug, see link. Ideally, the RND provides +1 movement to naval units built or upgraded in this city. Also, RND should give +25% to building naval units or land melee units in cities on a foreign continent.
• Thunderbolt of the north gives +50% production to both naval and land Melee units, but only in coastal cities.
• Buff France’s UI, eg additional culture and tourism during golden ages.

 

[PhilBowles]

Same as ever:

1. Random map size option implemented
2. AI capable of using air power and nuclear weapons offensively.
3. Further reduce AI desire to attack city states early in the game. This has improved, so is possible, but now that it carries grievances it can be actively bad for an AI by generating 'warmonger penalties'.
4. Efforts to increase difficulty on the highest settings, whether by prompting AIs to beeline victory conditions as soon as they have the prerequisites or adding yield modifiers that scale with difficulty so that the player spends progressively more/AI spends less for everything at higher levels.

Additional issues introduced by Gathering Storm:

- Yields from pillaging start too high and scale too quickly. I like the idea that they scale, but the values need attention. This too could be adjusted with difficulty, with yields falling at higher difficulties.
- AI dealmaking appears to have got worse. In particular AIs are too keen to trade for Great Works/relics, even if not apparently going for a cultural victory (but conversely will also give relics away too cheaply).
- Increase the priority at least some AIs give alliances and suzerainty, as the AI appears to have difficulty generating diplomatic favour in most cases.
- Add further climate change levels after 7 or reduce the speed at which it scales, as it ends too early. Ideally, add negative fertility or other downsides to tiles with climate worsening so that it affects non-coastal empires.
- Do another balance pass on governors. Pingala's science and culture boosts are too high for the game stage at which they become available, while most of the others still lack attractive promotion trees. Of all of them I think only Reyna and possibly Liang are well-balanced.
- Some of the less effective existing Wonders don't seem to have been looked at and still need attention, such as the Taj Mahal.

Too soon for me to have many thoughts about what tweaks need to be made to the new systems, but my instinct is that grievances decay too quickly. The disaster levels may need attention - I've liked 3, which may be too many for some players, but as there are only 4 levels I suspect the default level 2 may be a little low for the average player to get a good idea of the system. I'm also concerned that rock bands are too effective at allowing players who have neglected culture to catch up for a culture victory. At the very least they should have a building requirement - probably Broadcast Tower - so that they're only available to civs already heavily focused on culture, perhaps with a limitation on numbers similar to archaeologists.

UI tweaks

- Add a marker in the spy menu showing which districts in potential target cities are presently pillaged (perhaps by crossing or greying them out).
- After all this time, fix the Tourism tooltip so that it says something more informative about how this resource is generated than "[value] from cities".
- Add tooltip explanations for diplomatic score competitions ["X from training athletes, Y from Stadiums, Z from water parks", "X from gifts, Y from sending aid", or "+X [each GP type] points"

 

[Takfloyd]

1: World Congress overhaul - change the voting system, implement a rotating chairman to select voting topics(which can be bid for with diplomatic favor), do not have the World Congress convene in the middle ages before the players have even met eachother.

2: Slow down science/culture rate. This has been a no-brainer since the launch of VANILLA, and yet eras still rush by while production lags behind.

3: Trade AI and trade screen still need a complete overhaul. It's baffling that nothing has been done about this after several years. I put a certain amount of gold per turn in the AI's box, ask "what do you want for this", and the AI removes the GPT from his side of the table, puts 1 gold on my side, and asks "what about this"? I'd half assume this is supposed to be some sort of joke if I didn't know better. And that's not even getting into all the wasted screen space in the diplomacy screen while important information is hidden in an ever-increasing amount of separate tabs.

4: Fix strategic resource unit requirements. They often make no sense whatsoever. Why do only 2 of the game's 6 horse-mounted units require horses? Why does infantry require oil in the industrial age? Why do planes use ALUMINIUM AS FUEL? Please Firaxis, apply some real-life logic here. And some game balance logic as well - Cuirassiers and Cavalry have the exact same costs and requirements even though Cuirassiers are stronger, because ???

I would add fixing the war AI, but we all know that will never happen, especially not in a mere patch.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Eleanor should be buffed a little. Her UA is pretty difficult to pull off (I'm currently trying it and it's immensely tedious to set up the Theatre Squares in every border city). I wouldn't mind if her ability worked on World Wonders as well.

It works well enough on Small maps, but on Large (which I play), she's definitely not better than D-tier based on what I've played so far.

EDIT:

AND YES: BOOST PRODUCTION SO IT CAN KEEP PACE WITH SCIENCE/CULTURE FOR HEAVENS SAKE.

 

[Lord Lakely]

oh and FIX that Mali production nerf. AI Mali is absolutely helpless.

 

[Takfloyd]

The fact that the modern era usually starts around 1000 AD tells you that it's science/culture that needs a nerf, not production that needs a boost.

 

[PhilBowles]

1: World Congress overhaul - change the voting system, implement a rotating chairman to select voting topics(which can be bid for with diplomatic favor), do not have the World Congress convene in the middle ages before the players have even met eachother.

I doubt they'll do a full overhaul soon, and it seems premature to suggest one despite issues with the system. I think a patch should be focused on things that are objectively not working as intended or are causing balance issues, rather than "change this mechanic I don't like". I do agree that starting the Congress when every civ has met every other would be good, but it would probably cause issues with the emergency system.

3: Trade AI and trade screen still need a complete overhaul. It's baffling that nothing has been done about this after several years. I put a certain amount of gold per turn in the AI's box, ask "what do you want for this", and the AI removes the GPT from his side of the table, puts 1 gold on my side, and asks "what about this"? I'd half assume this is supposed to be some sort of joke if I didn't know better. And that's not even getting into all the wasted screen space in the diplomacy screen while important information is hidden in an ever-increasing amount of separate tabs.

One thing they could probably implement reasonably easily would be a button 'Revert to original deal' so that if a deal changes and one side rejects it, but you want to accept/offer the original deal again, you can switch back to the original suggestion with a single click.

4: Fix strategic resource unit requirements. They often make no sense whatsoever. Why do only 2 of the game's 6 horse-mounted units require horses? Why does infantry require oil in the industrial age? Why do planes use ALUMINIUM AS FUEL?

I can at least rationalise the latter as needing a regular source of aluminium for maintenance. But that still leaves the planes flying on solar power.

Practically though, this isn't a real issue - it's a mechanical concession to the way the game's tier system works and aluminium is a higher tier resource than oil. Knights are iron-tier units rather than horse-tier etc.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Simple and Comprehensive:

Test the D****d mechanics and numbers and values and how they interact with each other before you try to sell what is supposed to be a finished game.

Blind Playtesting is a Game Design technique that dates back to at least the late 1960s, and Civ VI is a textbook example of what happens when you don't bother with it: lots of really good ideas and concepts that together add up to a Steaming Pile, not a decent game.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Make global warming flooding way more severe, but also not start until later

Give the dutch a discount to flood barriers, and/or let polders go on flooded river tiles

 

[_ViKinG_]

Make the AI build more units. And make them better on diety so they can wipe me out off the map if im weak. like they can in civ v. Now they can maybe take one city but i gain it back because off loaylty. Hm boring

 

[playshogi]

Undo. Some games I can undo all the way back to turn 1. What does Firaxis have against undo?

Autosave at end of turn. That way, if you forget to change policies, you don't have to replay the whole turn on reload.

Opposite of this: ironman mode. Make going back impossible!

 

[Engeez]

Make the AI build more units. And make them better on diety so they can wipe me out off the map if im weak. like they can in civ v. Now they can maybe take one city buy i gain it back because off loaylty. Hm boring

This is what I want BADLY.

 

[Takfloyd]

Practically though, this isn't a real issue - it's a mechanical concession to the way the game's tier system works and aluminium is a higher tier resource than oil. Knights are iron-tier units rather than horse-tier etc.

There is no tier system. Modern armor runs on oil despite coming two eras after aluminium-using planes. Cavalry used to require horses despite coming after the knight, and heavy chariots don't require anything. There's no real rhyme or logic to this, just some guy at Firaxis plopping in random requirements and no one calling him out on it.

I would make planes be build from a lump sum of aluminium, but require oil for upkeep. Likewise, make ironclads and battleships be built from a lump sum of iron but use coal for upkeep. Make knights require both horses and iron, and the later cavalry units both horses and niter. Changes like this would keep resources relevant for longer, which they already are in real life. Iron didn't go obsolete after the middle ages! And neither did horses for that matter.

These changes are so obvious, and the precedent is already in the older Civ games. Civ IV for example had perfect resource requirements, with some units even having alternatives such as running modern warships on oil or uranium.

 

[aguliondew]

1. Make diplomatic victory better, you can get any other victory faster than a diplomatic victory their should be a way to increase your progress instead of waiting for events.
2. Increase the scale of disasters, some disaster should have bigger/wider impacts.
3. Make changes to global warming, Its to easy to max out global warming before you get any of the techs to fix/delay it, also increase the scaling of it to make it have a bigger impact on cities near flood areas..

 

[Seek]

I'd like to see the climate change penalties greatly expanded so floods, hurricanes, and droughts (or maybe just all disasters) become much more frequent, damaging, and less likely to grant bonus yields. Climate change affects, y'know, the whole climate - it's not just rising sea levels - and thus doesn't just affect people on the coasts. The game should reflect that, and also it should be a potential threat to all players.

 

[Engeez]

My wishlist:

1) Deity AI produces obscene amounts of units.

2) Have AI be able to properly use Aircraft, nukes, warrior monks, siege units and builders.

3) Just like in Civ 5, for every Civ you meet, get an extra 5% boost to techs and civics your opponent has discovered but you haven’t.