Why Firaxis? Why do you feel compelled to hinder players?

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I could re-roll a game over and over again until I get what I want. I could find some third party software and hack the set up. The thing is I paid for the game and all of its expansions so I am entitled to play the game I want to play.

Be our guest and go ahead to do whatever you want to make your experience better for you, literally no one cares how you play your game. Just also no one wants to read a whiny post that is of no use to anyone whatsoever.

 

[Ziad]

An experience like Civ6 involves both proactive and reactive gameplay. The former is supporting a player's vision while the latter is throwing curveballs at the player along the way. It's about standing the test if time not coasting through it.

If you only want proactive gameplay, you should look into sandbox mods or even other games but all of them typically have randomness and arbitrary limitations in them to some degree.

 

[Disgustipated]

It's funny, because it seems to me Firaxis is purposely hindering the AI.

There are many aggressive things the AI could be doing that they aren't doing. The biggest one is taking cities.

City states don't really have that fear, they can and did take one of my cities yesterday, they don't seem to be hindered in the same way AI civs are.

 

[Jkchart]

It's funny, because it seems to me Firaxis is purposely hindering the AI.

There are many aggressive things the AI could be doing that they aren't doing. The biggest one is taking cities.

City states don't really have that fear, they can and did take one of my cities yesterday, they don't seem to be hindered in the same way AI civs are.

I was definitely terrified when I saw a CS approach one of my cities with battering rams and an army

 

[FenrisWolf456]

It's funny, because it seems to me Firaxis is purposely hindering the AI.

There are many aggressive things the AI could be doing that they aren't doing. The biggest one is taking cities.

City states don't really have that fear, they can and did take one of my cities yesterday, they don't seem to be hindered in the same way AI civs are.

Would have to agree. The AI does seem very hesitant in taking cities. But I had a game recently where Antioch came in with trebuchets and pretty efficiently took out one of my border cities and burn it to the ground. Though this is likely something deep in the coding. City States don't work the warmongering/grievance system, so they don't care about any repercussions; and they unfortunately never keep the cities they take, so there's no decision-making on their part on the worth of a city. (So would love it if City States would, even if just very rarely, keep a city they take)

I think it all comes down to the design philosophy. The AI isn't so much there to all be rivals for winning, but more to act as impediments to your own game. They're all pace cars that you have to keep up with or react to in some regard. If you fall too far behind, then yes, you'll get stomped in some form. But if you keep up or surpass, then you'll be the eventual winner. And this all works pretty well for the most part, other than that the AI seems to not really be able to compete militarily beyond the first couple of eras.

I would really like to know what causes the hesitancy, because I have seen the AI be really effective. One game I had the Netherlands come in and smash down my capital while I was busy with wars to the far south of my empire. That was pretty smart play; they saw my capital was relatively defenseless and took advantage of that fact. Of course I came back, retook my capital, and then proceeded to grind their empire to dust (and to be fair, they offered a fair amount of resistance, considering). So I would like to see a bit more of that aggressiveness, where the AI is willing to give the player at least a black eye or two rather than just flail their hands about annoyingly.

 

[Janskey]

To me, it seems like they're trying to keep the idea that the AI is playing to lose, as explained by Soren Johnson in this GDC talk (there's zounds of great GDC videos on YouTube for those interested in game development - I'm not a dev, but sometimes I like to know why they chose to do as they did):

Spoiler :

While it's highly unlikely that there's true randomness in the game (vs. pseudo), I haven't seen any hints of malicious attacks towards the player. I haven't actually calculated the probability of getting a certain distribution of city states and tested it with enough statistical power to prove anything, so I could be wrong. ( Also, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9 )

 

[DCGolliher]

My favorite improvement to Civ is the increase of viable pathways and the variety of possibilities for a game. But, with anything ‘random’, there is the CHANCE of getting ‘similar’ results. [Hell, several years ago I actually had a couple of games where, [you’re going to laugh], I theorized that the devs had actually FIXED the AI].

So, when a relative newcomer to the game has his overall impression of the game skewed by some disappointing results and reports HIS observations—thumbs up to the 20 of you who responded to him with encouragement.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear he stuck around long enough to GET this encouragement, because of three people’s insulting comments.

I’ll admit I’m very thin-skinned and that, despite following the Forum, I stopped posting in here a long time ago, because I didn’t feel welcomed.

I think things have gotten better in here--but IMHO, I think the 1st post of the guy who DID get deleted, should have also gotten deleted—along with the one calling it a, “Whiny post”, and the one saying, “I can’t believe people actually post stuff like this is public”.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Having
1. the ability to choose City-States in your game
and/or
2. a "Balanced City States" option where the numbers of each type are balanced

would both definitely be good options to add

 

[CPWimmer]

Having
1. the ability to choose City-States in your game
and/or
2. a "Balanced City States" option where the numbers of each type are balanced

would both definitely be good options to add

I wonder if someone can create a Mod for this.

 

[steveg700]

I know it's all "random", but there is certainly a bias to hinder a player by things that can be chalked up to as being random. Whether it is sticking an enemy snug up against the on a huge map and low number of civs, denying the player a specific resource that the player's civ benefits greatly from (such as cattle for Australia), world wonders that the plater would really benefit one will not be in the game or they will be on the other side of the map most of the time, but the thing that bothers me the most: what City States are in the game. I play a game with Freleanor and out of 24 city states there was one cultural one. I play with Greece and I got 2 cultural ones. I just quit a game playing Russia after finding ZERO religious city states out of 24 ZERO. Well I had only found 22 of the 24 city states so the last 2 could have been religious, but that doesn't matter.

There is some randomness to it and it is possible so where it looks like the hindering is taking place, but it is taking place. At least be honest and admit that you are doing this on purpose, but there is no way it's actually random.

• "There is certainly a bias to hinder a player." -- Proof? You can suspect things based off of anecdotal evidence, but certainty is easily countered by everyone else's own anecdotal evidence.
• "Sticking an enemy up against the on a huge map" -- This happens to all civ's, not just player, irrespective of map size. IME it seems that lowering the number of civ's does not result in them being spread out. Rather, it just creates a hole on the map where a capital would be, which leaves the neighboring civ's beau coup space. You just won't be that civ consistently.
• "Denying a the player a specific resource that the player's civ benefits greatly from" -- Civ's have a terrain bias, player and AI alike that generally steer them towards their strengths.
• "World wonders that the plater would really benefit one will not be in the game or they will be on the other side of the map most of the time" -- This one really shows the a lack of thought. From what I can parse, this is about natural wonders, not world wonders. Completely random, with no player bias. Most natural wonders are no great shakes anyway.
• "What City-States are in the game" -- Just sounds like tough luck to me, not something tilted against the player.
• "At least be honest and admit that you are doing this on purpose, but there is no way it's actually random" -- If anything, Firaxis should own up to making the game to easy on the player.

The only thing that feels tilted against the player in a gratuitous sort of way is what seems to be a tendency for hostile units to favor the player over AI units to which they would be hostile, with barbarians being the most common case. This is based on numerous situations where it seemed the barbarians were ignoring adjacent AI units and nearby AI cities to come after, even to the extent of missing out on easy kills. That's just speculative though. Not sure how the AI actually chooses from multiple targets of opportunity.

 

[Tabarnak]

In my first 3 games as Scotland i was astonished about not having more than 1 or 2 different lux for like 7-8 cities. How can i leverage his bonus if i ''always'' get only few luxuries?

Then my last 2 games...bang! Many many luxs around, i became a science whore in no time.

It's called RNG. You have to play a substantial number of games to see it. Sometimes you get unlucky and sometimes you get THE LAND.

 

[Disgustipated]

he only thing that feels tilted against the player in a gratuitous sort of way is what seems to be a tendency for hostile units to favor the player over AI units to which they would be hostile, with barbarians being the most common case. This is based on numerous situations where it seemed the barbarians were ignoring adjacent AI units and nearby AI cities to come after, even to the extent of missing out on easy kills. That's just speculative though. Not sure how the AI actually chooses from multiple targets of opportunity

They choose the weakest target, not the human. It seems like they target us, but it's because we usually have the weakest units since we (or at least me) often explores with scouts where as the ai usually stupidly explores with regular military units(often leaving their empire undefended). But I have had games where they go after ai scouts and leave my stronger military units alone.

 

[Browd]

And even on a scout-to-scout basis, on higher difficulties the AI gets combat bonuses that mean the human scout is usually the weakest scout in sight.

 

[local_hero]

Didn't know this and I have also thought that barbarians target the human player instead of the AI when possible. Consider myself quite knowledgable about Civ6 rules and mechanics, but always something new to learn.

 

[steveg700]

Thing is, I've seen barbs ignore a wounded scout to chase after a healthy scout, or an archer, or warrior. And a related behavior is their choice of which city to harass. They've traveled farther to come to mine.

Again though, this is all just personal perception, which can be subject to flaws in both attention to detail and recollection over time, so I take my own passive observations with a grain of salt unless I take a moment to document them in some way.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I like to have Auckland in my games, soo FIretuner to the rescue.

Generate game. Check if Auckland is in via tuner (just look at the civ list). If not, restart. repeat.

Note: if you're after achievements, this won't work, as enabling FT, turns off achievements. Choose wisely young padawan.

 

[Infixo]

Note: if you're after achievements, this won't work, as enabling FT, turns off achievements. Choose wisely young padawan.

Achivements are disabled when you connect with the firetuner. So, you should generate the game, save it, check with FT, if ok then Disconnect FT and reload the game.

 

[Socrates99]

If not having a certain CS's bonus is game breaking why not just mod it in universally and change that CS? Like with Auckland you could just change the base yield of coastal tiles and either keep the CS as is or change it.

Seems less annoying that the rerolling thing.

 

[NukeAJS]

I get some situations like playing as Australia and having zero or very few pastures nearby. It feels good to get that culture bomb and have it snag 5 tiles (three on the 3rd ring) in addition to a brand new luxury. So, I can at least understand that a tiny, tiny bit.

As for not getting the city-states you want, I always thought of them as strictly icing on the cake. Sometimes you get good one of the right type, other times good ones of the wrong type, and still bad ones of a bad type. But maybe the better way of looking at it would be even if they aren't useful for you, they might be useful for others. Therefore, taking them away by conquering or making yourself suzerain actually does benefit you by hurting other players. Civ6 is absolutely not a zero sum game so ANYTHING that hurts other players very often will directly or indirectly benefit you.

Wonders are probably easier to demonstrate. If someone's going for a cultural victory and you are going for a science victory, you're probably going to get the steel technology before them and you'll probably easily finish the Eiffel Tower before they even get the tech. It's also very useful to take away from Australia as this because makes almost all of their districts better.

Is it as satisfying as positively impacting yourself? Probably not. But it's still important nonetheless.