Which policy cards "break" the game?

[antimony]

A lot of the strategic choices in Civ VI are about timing tech progression, production and policies to get the most efficient outcomes. In principle, policy cards should add meaningful choices to the game, but some of them arguably reduce the number of viable options, and would be serious candidates for a balance patch.

In that category, I wouldn't personally consider policy cards that are used at one moment in every game (e.g. Colonization), or even those that are so good they could be run every turn they're available (e.g. triangular trade, logistics). These policies may be boring/obvious, but they don't fundamentally alter the balance of the game.

I would consider the following policies "game-breaking", and am curious to hear your thoughts and other suggestions for this list:

1. Meritocracy: Together with monuments in the early game, meritocracy can provide enough culture for any non-cultural victory, essentially making the theatre district redundant. Having two advancement trees (tech and civic) is a potentially great design feature if players can decide which one to prioritize. For example, a culture-heavy player would have weaker units, but could produce them cheaper and turn them into corps faster with the right civics; they could also use their early spies to steal tech from the tech-heavy opponents. With meritocracy, you can spam cities with campuses and commercial hubs, zoom through both trees and bypass this potential tradeoff.

2. Professional Army: A fundamental tradeoff of Civ games should be that rushing units is more expensive than hard-building them. In Civ VI, most yields of gold are about 2 times the corresponding production yields (e.g. city states, improvements), yet unit purchase cost is 4 times the production cost. Upgrades with this policy are so cheap that, for example, you could buy a heavy chariot for 260 gold and upgrade it to knight for 90, effectively buying a knight for 350 gold, less than 2 times the production cost (180).

Basically, the game compensates for another balance weakness (units are too expensive to produce for the pace of the mid-late game) by making gold more efficient than production, meaning there is absolutely no opporunity cost in rushing units.

 

[unpossible251]

Second tactic you've mentioned is definitely a game... hmmm. Abuser, maybe not breaker. I faith purchased a pile of catapaults a few turns before bombards got online, then gold upgraded them. You can do that with pretty much everything actually, faith purchase cheap units of any type before they get obsolete, then gold upgrade when necessary. With conscription you can keep them hanging around for very low maintenance, then get a freakishly dangerous army upgraded when u need.

I'd say the thing about policy cards divides between people who do their best to shuffle a lot, to maximise serfdom or machiavellianism for example. Compare that with people who just want to slot in something like triangular trade, liberalism, and just sit back.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I don't think Meritocracy is broken; more like theater districts are trash if you're not going for a culture victory. The adjacency bonuses are horrific and come at the expense of more useful districts. So what do you want to do late game with them? Go into an out of way tree to get more culture by spending culture? Or And honestly, I would build an encampment over a theater district-- the only one more useless is the entertainment one and that still has some use if you make big conquests.

I mean, even in a culture victory, science is still more important early on because of the need to get to computers and radio and the point of the theater squares is to hold your works. Generating culture is just a nice side effect.

Tourism is useless outside of a cultural victory too. Even if that policy didn't exist, I still wouldn't build many theater districts since inspiration and other sources tend to be enough for the most part. Science is just more important since it actually gives you stronger units and buildings

Overall though, I don't really think Civics being powerful is necessarily a problem. If they weren't, there wouldn't be any reason to bother with culture at all. They have to be broken, I would argue.

I would pick on Rationalism, since it really seems so much more powerful than other science boosting options.

I'd say the thing about policy cards divides between people who do their best to shuffle a lot, to maximise serfdom or machiavellianism for example. Compare that with people who just want to slot in something like triangular trade, liberalism, and just sit back.

I agree with this too, since cards that aren't actively being used aren't useful, regardless of how powerful it is.

 

[The_Quasar]

I don't think Meritocracy is broken; more like theater districts are trash if you're not going for a culture victory. The adjacency bonuses are horrific and come at the expense of more useful districts. So what do you want to do late game with them? Go into an out of way tree to get more culture by spending culture? Or And honestly, I would build an encampment over a theater district-- the only one more useless is the entertainment one and that still has some use if you make big conquests.

I mean, even in a culture victory, science is still more important early on because of the need to get to computers and radio and the point of the theater squares is to hold your works. Generating culture is just a nice side effect.

Tourism is useless outside of a cultural victory too. Even if that policy didn't exist, I still wouldn't build many theater districts since inspiration and other sources tend to be enough for the most part. Science is just more important since it actually gives you stronger units and buildings

Overall though, I don't really think Civics being powerful is necessarily a problem. If they weren't, there wouldn't be any reason to bother with culture at all. They have to be broken, I would argue.

I would pick on Rationalism, since it really seems so much more powerful than other science boosting options.

I agree with this too, since cards that aren't actively being used aren't useful, regardless of how powerful it is.

Nicely put. I agree with this.

If the trading of cultural stuff (imho a serious bug), or Meritocracy (imho, not really a problem) offends you, switch off the cultural victory type. Problem solved.

I would say there is now no really stand out way to win, the options being better balanced than in the past (excluding the trading bug). So I can see progress there. There will, no doubt, be many improvements to come, which will make the game better, as there was in previous versions. After all, IV and V were both almost unplayable on release, and both turned out to be very good games. VI is still relatively new in comparison.

 

[masda_gib]

Meritocracy isn't that breaking because you have to keep the card to gain its effects. You give up a card slot for culture.

Professional Army on the other hand is one of those one-shot needs-timing cards so it is much more abusable.

 

[Siptah]

Public Transport can easily be abused in larger empires to generate large amounts of money. Just slot it in for one turn and place a neighborhood in every city. I think it should be changed to mark the neighborhood that replaces a farm, but only generate money once it is completed. Even if you haven't the policy active any more.

Colonial Taxes seems bugged and often gives much more money than expected. If that breaks the game, however, is another question.

Retainers can break your game if you rely on it and don't watch out since it just runs out without being replaced by something. I use it in many games and sometimes I forget about that. Not that I get rebellions in such a case, but it hurts.

 

[Aldor]

I think it was "Collectivism", the card that gives +5 food to each internal traderoute. A similar powerful card is "E-Commerce" which gives +5 prod and +10 gold to external traderoutes.
Both come quite late but can really give you a huge boost if you have many cities and trade routes.

 

[PYITE]

Public Transport can easily be abused in larger empires to generate large amounts of money. Just slot it in for one turn and place a neighborhood in every city. I think it should be changed to mark the neighborhood that replaces a farm, but only generate money once it is completed. Even if you haven't the policy active any more.

Colonial Taxes seems bugged and often gives much more money than expected. If that breaks the game, however, is another question.

Retainers can break your game if you rely on it and don't watch out since it just runs out without being replaced by something. I use it in many games and sometimes I forget about that. Not that I get rebellions in such a case, but it hurts.

I agree that public transport shouldn't yield gold until the neighborhood is finished, it's absurd as is.

Colonial Taxes - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/colonial-taxes.620777/#post-14834483

The card says 25% but is actually 35%

I'm not a fan of all the one on one off cards like +2 charge workers and the like because they give huge benefits to micromanagement, something that the AI is incapable of maximizing.

Professional army needs a nerf or to be moved back and era or 2. Prebuild ancient/classic units with %50 production card and then upgrade with %50 upgrade discount is probably the most OP tactic in the game. Chariots to Knights is the worst offender. You only need 1 iron and don't even need to build a single encampment.

 

[Amrunril]

I agree that professional army is Highly Problematic. Once you've researched the appropriate civic, there's rarely any reason to upgrade units without it, which is a huge contributor to upgrades being too efficient (upgrades should be a useful way of keeping experienced units up to date, but building a knight and upgrading it to a tank, for instance, shouldn't be more resource efficient than simply building a tank). For other policies, the difference between game-breaking and merely overpowered is largely definitional, but I do think that strong generic policies like Meritocracy and Urban Planning need to be looked at. I'm less bothered by policies like Colonialism. Even if everyone is going to run them at some point, when to do so and for how long remain interesting strategic choices.

I'll conclude by putting in a brief plug for the first thread in my signature, which doesn't focus on specific policies but does include some bigger picture ideas for making policy choice more interesting.

 

[kaspergm]

Professional Army is just stupid. Unless they make some mechanism where swapping the same card in and out has some drawbacks, this card needs to be changed. This card saves you huge amounts of money at pretty much zero opportunity cost, which is quite obviously poor balancing.

 

[bbbt]

I'd personally vote for dropping professional army entirely and instead make unit upgrades cheaper the more experience a unit has.

 

[unpossible251]

I'd personally vote for dropping professional army entirely and instead make unit upgrades cheaper the more experience a unit has.

yeah, policies are a good idea overall, but theres not a lot of fun to be had in the military deck, and probably too many slots. a few great cards, a few that synergise well with a particular civ, one or two that are downright cheats, and a lot of crappy ones.

 

[Atwork]

Professional Army is just stupid. Unless they make some mechanism where swapping the same card in and out has some drawbacks, this card needs to be changed. This card saves you huge amounts of money at pretty much zero opportunity cost, which is quite obviously poor balancing.

The opportunity cost is that you're swapping this card in, whereas another card has to be swapped out. In addition, after you've completed your unit upgrades, you're stuck with the card until your next civic discovery, unless you pay the money to change polices, which depending on the circumstances may or may not be worth it or possible.

Bottom line: I think the power of the card is situational. I've had games when I was rich with gold and didn't even bother with the card. I've had other games when I was not nearly as wealthy and I may have been doomed without the card allowing me to modernize at critical moments. My feeling about all the policy cards is that whether they are over or under powered is relative to the situation, the particular game, and the individual play styles.

Personally, of all the cards that I seem to plan around the most, is the card that gives builders extra builds. When I drop that card, it means I'm pumping out workers and expecting to get all the improvements completed that I'll need for a good long time.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'd personally vote for dropping professional army entirely and instead make unit upgrades cheaper the more experience a unit has.

I'm not a fan of getting better experienced units cheaper upgrades, though there is some logic to it. Problem is it rewards warmongers even more, and they get so much advantage already. But I do think cheaper upgrades would be nice. Because upgrades really do get kind of outrageous without professional army. So as they are now, I don't want Firaxis to get rid of PA. So hopefully they don't see this thread. I'd be okay with PA giving a 35 or 30% discount though.

And don't be dissing Meritocracy either. It's so hard to get culture to expand borders in this game. Slow border expansion is one of my major gripes in this game.

 

[stinkubus]

The game is over once I slot Agoge, so I guess that one is OP too

 

[ShakaKhan]

Retainers can break your game if you rely on it and don't watch out since it just runs out without being replaced by something.

Agree, and this is why I instead NEVER use this card. I was actually going to make a post about exactly this - it becomes obsolete and then... nothing. Every other card becomes obsolete when an upgraded version becomes available-
-caravansaries becomes triangular trade
-CH adjacency and HB adjacency obsolete when one card does both
-as above- CMP and IZ adjacency
-extra housing and extra amenity cards obsolete with New Deal
-wonders of era-X obsoletes when card for wonders of era-Y becomes available.

And so on. The only other card that obsoletes without replacement/enhancement is the +1 hammer per city, but that one seems to become obsolete when you "outgrow" it. But retainers disappears and there's no substitute. It seems that this wasn't really an oversight, more that they had a card that replaced it, figured it was out of balance, and then just threw it out and forgot to balance it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I hate how New Deal obsoletes Liberalism. It's more of a sidegrade, and in some cases the lost of income kinda sucks, plus the more stringent requirement of requiring 3 districts can be trouble in peripheral cities that were never meant to build that much infrastructure. By the point you get here, building more districts (that's why you want more pop right) is probably not going to pay off by the time the game ends, and nor will housing since housing is plentiful by this time. So I don't care about housing, but rather the amenities that I was going for in its predecessors.

Not to mention it's a great way of accidentally growing into unhappiness. I mean it's nice if you have a small empire or maybe. So it's enough for me to stay Communist until near the end when gold doesn't matter.

 

[Disgustipated]

Retainers does get replaced by something, just not something useful. I do get the prompt to fill my policy card slot just fine. The policy that replaces it is -25% war weariness. Which isn't particularly useful unless you are in a war.

 

[stinkubus]

The only time you should need Retainers is to combat war weariness

 

[Disgustipated]

Yeah but how can you go to war when all your units are acting as a garrison. I simply don't build enough to do both. I mostly use it after my early warmongering before I have all my luxeries hooked up, and before I've built any entertainment districts. It's just a good card to use in monarchy.