Which ones of the mechanics implemented by Firaxis was bad ?

Naokaukodem

Millenary King
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Messages
4,267
And how should we fix them ?

As to me, the worst mechanic and most disappointing one was loyalty. Because the expansion it was introduced by, I mean the name of this expansion (Rise & Fall), was a lie : it was not near close to what had to be expected for such a title.

I would fix it by making "revolutions", "collapses", or whatever you want to call it, the normal course of a game, without the player to suffer from them too much, and in some cases, profit from them. (gov, policies, religion, tenets, etc. changes) When you think about it, being able to change the tenets of your pantheon or religion would be massively profitable : it happens often that you need something early (in my case most of the cases : one additionnal food from a camp, and nevermind if there's only one) but not so much later. It's even better with religious tenets : once you are rich, you can switch from Tithe to something else, science focused for example)

That's how I would play with the basics as we have them in Civ, and Civ6 in particular. But nothing prevents to add more things to change in Civ7.

See my signature !

Another thing I don't like too much, is builders. You have to build them, which can take long accasionnally, you have to move them, you have to click them. It would be better to build things up directly in the city screen. Or go back to the old Civs workers, when you have an approximatively constant work force and they improve things regularly on the basis of their number / what you really work.

I like that idea though. In theory. But in practice, that's another freeze factor from me : either I build too much (especially with public works) either I neglect them and feel I need too many in too few time. It makes me think a little about National College and other national wonders in Civ5.
 
Biggest disappointment for me was Adjacency Bonuses.

It created this extremely awkward game mechanic where I was planning district placements in the ancient era, and placements of cities ended up revolving around cities that could actually be **** but have that ONE spot with 5 mountains surrounding a tile, or two reefs, or whatever just to get that amazing campus. It also produced an annoying habit of people posting that amazing +10 Industrial Zone all over reddit (my own fault for using that site, what else did I expect).

How to fix it? Remove it... simple... Districts gaining bonuses based on adjacencies is weird. If bonuses are to take place they should be more mild, and based on the environment surrounding the city/settlement itself.

There are other problems associated with how they unpacked the city, but to me adjacencies were the worst.
 
First and foremost.. Rigid unit class systems, coupled with Panzer General style 1UPT. Class systems in Civ6 doesn't really reflect actual unit orgaizations much especially when it comes to gunpowder era. Musketeers NEVER has been organized as a whole regiment BEFORE 1700s, i.e. before flintlocks and socket bayonets, deploying them in dense formations were a taboo because musketry these men had access to were all matchlocks, with lit chords an ancillary supply. it could accidentially set off propeller charges either stored by a soldier or anyone next to him. also their ROF was low. they were generally deployed with the most common melee troops-pikemen, in the same block of formation!
There's more to elaborate, and @Boris Gudenuf could say more.
 
Era score. I just don't like the mentality behind the game saying I should suffer because I'm not meeting some goal that it thinks is important.
It's sort of the same problem I have with the stars system in Humankind.

Especially as era score and golden/dark ages were utterly disconnected from any sort of actual prosperity of a civilization and its relative power in comparision to other civs, they felt artificial and arbitrary.
 
Quite a lot of them - since their design principle wasn‘t aimed at balance, but at showing a new shiny thing. That leads to a lot of disjointed things that just pile up on each other and sometimes duplicate stuff. So that‘s a basic thing to improve on next time, don‘t just blindly develop stuff, but think of the big picture.

An example - and the one thing I would focus on here - is to not hide special playstyle in Civilizations. Yes, it can be cool to make something unique, but then you restrict it to that very same civilization. And as there are around 50 of them, you‘re likely not going to see it very often. I‘m not talking about gamebreaking redesigns like Babylon, but more basic ones like the Mapuches ability to decrease loyalty by pillaging. The Maoris water start would be somewhere in the middle. I‘m guess I‘m saying I want my civs to be less unique?
 
Quite a lot of them
This. Firaxis had a lot of good ideas, but the implementation was bad (or middling at best) more often than not.

I‘m guess I‘m saying I want my civs to be less unique?
I disagree on this, though. There need to be straightforward civs like Rome for learning the game, but I enjoy there also being unique civs that break the mold of the game. (I hate Babylon, though. Port Lime's redesign was a huge improvement over Firaxis' boneheaded design.)
 
I disagree on this, though. There need to be straightforward civs like Rome for learning the game, but I enjoy there also being unique civs that break the mold of the game. (I hate Babylon, though. Port Lime's redesign was a huge improvement over Firaxis' boneheaded design.)

That‘s why I put a ? - the conclusion didn‘t come naturally at all. I‘m guessing I‘m just saying that most of the cool effects should be available to anyone in one form or another, but some civs should just excel at them in different ways. For example: Everybody should be able to raid coasts like the Vikings, but the „Norse Civ“ should just be able to do it earlier and longer.
 
Maybe they are an attempt to give small Empires a leg up the way National Wonders were supposed to in earlier games.
 
There need to be straightforward civs like Rome for learning the game
playing as rome isn't making the game easier than setting the difficulty to the lowest. or at least playing on easiest should make it possible to keep up even if playing very suboptimal.

thinking about it, renaming the difficulties to stuff like "beginner, experienced, veteran" etc. might be better than the current "baby, baby 2, baby 3"...
 
Rome could be the basis civilization, but it could also be one with a lot more special units and buildings. So not a gimmicky special civ, just an overpowered one.

As for Governors, I feel like they were an experiment how they could have done the whole "culture/government/civic" side as well. After all, they are basically the Civ5 Social Policy Trees, but they can move around on the map and given silly names because that's fashionable. I like the idea, but here I think they were too specialized - i.e. too many promotions, too big effects and just one of each. Conflate them with Great People, have something in between and I think you've got something. Of course, this specialization could also be done differently. It was worth a try though.
 
playing as rome isn't making the game easier than setting the difficulty to the lowest. or at least playing on easiest should make it possible to keep up even if playing very suboptimal.

thinking about it, renaming the difficulties to stuff like "beginner, experienced, veteran" etc. might be better than the current "baby, baby 2, baby 3"...
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. You don't play your first game with the Maori; you start by playing a civ that plays the game according to the game's default rules and then play the civs that break the rules. Difficulty is irrelevant.
 
- Amenities/Luxuries System: Short Answer: it's useless. Long Answer: Another Mechanic that could have been implemented better. With the poor AI Decision making you can acquire enough Luxuries to keep ypur Citizens smiling even if you go Warmonger and keep all the conquered Cities (even Housing and Appeal are better implemented and more important, eventhough they are much (more or less) simpler!!). You basically make sure to have some access to some Luxuries and the Game will automatically distribute the Amenities between your Cities, no matter if the City with the Luxury is connected with a Road to the Target of the Amenity share or if the City is on the other side of the Ocean. I mean, there are Trading Posts and Trade Routes have already a network that expands how far a Trade/Resource can go, why not make use of that? that alone would have made Luxuries something way more interesting and worth putting some thought on when sending a Trader to a City. And concerning the latter...

- The Trade Route System and Diplomacy Trade: I'm not a Fan of the Trade Route System in Civ6 at all. If it added at least Fun and Interesting Gameplay (being really important) I would have been OK with it being Gamey, but the first it isn't and the latter makes it even less interesting for me. Especially since it's disconnected from Resources/Amenties, apart from +x Yield from y different resources in a City kind of modifiers (good, but not good enough and what it could be). Trade Routes should be much more interesting and an important and vital Tool for keeping your People from Starvation and what not. And cutting it out from resource Trade, which is handled seperately by the Game as a Diplomacy Action, is also another bad design choice for me. Diplomacy Trade on it's own is fine and good, and having strategic resources to be traded directly with a Leader adds some more interesting diplomacy choices, but including Luxury Resources in that Pot just took the rest from Trade Routes.

- The Loyalty System: where should I begin?!... Ok, admittedly, this One isn't realy Bad, but it's neither realy good. It adds some Fun Gameplay elements into the Game, but it's also immersion breaking and often just a noisance with the poor AI settlements. I certaily don't want it back in Civ 7, only of improved and set the pressure to come internally not externally.

- Some Not-Honorable Mentions: MicRoligion - I agree with the general consensus here on Era Score - Agendas - Espionage and World Congress (Oh Boy, I hate these latter 2!!)

As for how we should fix them, I'm trying to fix some of them in my Mod, I'm not sure how it will go out, but what could go wrong with something that has already gone down that Route lol.
As for Governors, I feel like they were an experiment how they could have done the whole "culture/government/civic" side as well. After all, they are basically the Civ5 Social Policy Trees, but they can move around on the map and given silly names because that's fashionable. I like the idea, but here I think they were too specialized - i.e. too many promotions, too big effects and just one of each. Conflate them with Great People, have something in between and I think you've got something. Of course, this specialization could also be done differently. It was worth a try though.
I also thought of that, actually while I was thinking to use non-assignable Governors to make an Ideologies Mechanic Mod with them. The Idea to make them as the substitute for Social Policies isn't bad, actually really good, and tbh, when Firaxis announced Secret Societies, I was expecting some form of that. Well, it's not really far from it tbh, but it's another one of the underutilised Systems that could have been improved on with DLCs and Expansions. But I like it anyway, and I hope Governors make a return in Civ7, on Release in the Base Game.
 
Diplomatic victory was just half-baked. There were the seeds of good ideas in there but it wasn't brought to completion.

Maybe a poll would be interesting?

Playing vanilla again when the switch version came out made me appreciate just how many annoyances loyalty fixed. So I have to say that since then it's become one of my favourite mechanics in the game. Could it have been done differently or better, sure. Is it a big quality of life improvement, yes.

The era system I have mixed feelings on. Monumentality is a bit too much of a game changer, and I think could stand to be toned down. It makes scoring a golden age at the right time quite an important tactic. But not necessarily one which is good for the game?

I probably don't move my governors around as much as I should but I don't find it to be quite as much micro as the religion spread system.
 
Tech Scaling on district costs/ harvest yields- This is more "under the hood" than a lot of other suggestions, but it does make a big difference with regard to game balance and strategic incentives. I'd much rather have cities founded late in the game able to get districts established quickly, and massive production from late game chops is a mechanic I could do without.

Theological Combat- This is a theoretically major mechanic balanced such that it should almost never happen if all civs approach it rationally. Even if this weren't an issue, though, adding large numbers of religious units to the map requires a huge amount of micromanagement without adding a comparable level of strategic depth.

These both strike me as mechanics that make the game actively worse. As for mechanics that add something valuable but could be executed a lot better:

World Congress and Tourism/Ideological Pressure- I think these were well executed in Civ V (except for city state votes being all about cash), and I think Civ VI would be better if it stuck closer to those implementations.

Governors- A good idea in general, but some of the benefits (tile improvements, chopping yields, district purchases) add way too high a ratio of micromanagement to interesting strategic decision making.

Loyalty- This revolves too strongly around city proximity and would be more interesting if other factors played comparably important roles.

Civ/Leader Distinction- If this were programed as a system of genuinely interchangeable elements, rather than a handful of individual variants, it would allow an essentially unlimited number of playable factions.
 
I found just about all of them terrible gameplaywise, with th added bonus of the AI being unable to utilize them


Era score. I just don't like the mentality behind the game saying I should suffer because I'm not meeting some goal that it thinks is important.
It's sort of the same problem I have with the stars system in Humankind.

Especially as era score and golden/dark ages were utterly disconnected from any sort of actual prosperity of a civilization and its relative power in comparision to other civs, they felt artificial and arbitrary.

In a game full of gamey board game minimaxing nonsense this was easily the worst one. I was doing all sorts of really dumb things either disconnected from or actually contrary to the basic Civilization concept of growing a nation. Building ships I had no need for or intention of using. Deliberatly delaying completing things to not “waste” points.

It took me completely out of the experience and slapped me in the face with the fact that I was playing a game.

It’s amazing how much more fun the Base game is with all this crap gone
 
This. Firaxis had a lot of good ideas, but the implementation was bad (or middling at best) more often than not.


I disagree on this, though. There need to be straightforward civs like Rome for learning the game, but I enjoy there also being unique civs that break the mold of the game. (I hate Babylon, though. Port Lime's redesign was a huge improvement over Firaxis' boneheaded design.)

My issue with Civ 6 was the overinflation of key abilities per trait.

Look at the trait in Civ 5.

Spain: Double yields from Natural Wonders (1), Earn Gold for discovering Natural Wonders (2).

- two simple, abilities (and that's not counting the unique units) that are easy to memorize and adapt to, as opposed to:

in Civ 6:

May form Fleets and Armadas earlier (1), Trade Route recieve +3 Gold, +2 Faith, +1 Production (2). Trade Routes between multiple continents recieve triple these numbers (3), Cities not on your original Capital continent recieve +25% Production towards Districts (4), and a Builder when founded (5).

and that's just Spain's ability, and not even mentioning Phillips.

I think if they streamline and simplify the bonuses (like Humankind did in fairness), the game becomes easier to 1. Balance, 2. Manage.

I honestly can recall 90% of the abilities in Civ 5 vs Civ 6, where i often have to remind myself.

I don't mind the Leader and Civilization abilities.
 
Back
Top Bottom