[GS] Why Sumeria is Still OP

[acluewithout]

Because a fixed production investment into a settler will get you a city that is a new, independent production stream. Putting that same production into military units will let you capture someone else’s city, granting you a new independent production stream, plus every piece of infrastructure that city has ever built. You are literally able to steal your opponent’s turns from the past for yourself.
Add in the fact that the investment into settlers gives you a fixed number of cities but the army can keep capturing forever, mixed in with the fact that you can conquer and build settlers in parallel, and it’s no wonder why people choose war.

It reminds me of a remark I read here about CivBE shorty after release when you could straight up ignore the in game global happiness... “but at that negative level, you cannot build new cities!”
“But youre building cities, and I’m taking them!”

Civ VI is slowly getting better at differentiating captured cities from settled cities, so that captured cities aren't just automatically "as good" or "the same" as cities you settle yourself. e.g. loyalty tied to grievances with original owner, negative grievances with other civs for having a captured city, mechanics tied to "settled" cities instead of "captured" cities (e.g. England's Pax B, Ancestral Hall, Casus Belli that target captured cities), and even negative loyalty for cities with a different religion.

I think more of that would help with the balance between peaceful expansion and military expansion. Not necessarily with the view of punishing military expansion, but at least ensuring there is some sort of long term trade off between peaceful settlement and military conquest.

One other thing to think about settled v conquered cities. The usual argument is that whereas peaceful conquest means you build settlers to get cities, but military conquest you build military to get (already developed) cites plus you keep the military and can use that to capture even more cities, you obviously don't get the yields from the captured city until you actually capture it. I suspect that sometimes you can get new cities online faster by peacefully settling rather than capturing, so you start accruing yields earlier.

...I'm sure the maths of that breaks down at some point, and probably quite quickly - e.g. sure, a settled city may get online faster, but the delay caused by building military gets cancelled out by the fact that captured cities are already developed (so you do accrue the historical production spent on infrastructure), you military can captured more and more cities (whereas a settler can literally only ever get you one more city), and once you've built your army your existing cities can focus on building even more military. But still, I don't think conquest is just "flat out" better than peaceful settlement. It's generally better, mostly because the AI is kinda weak still, but the decision has some nuance.

 

[Ownsya]

Civ VI is slowly getting better at differentiating captured cities from settled cities, so that captured cities aren't just automatically "as good" or "the same" as cities you settle yourself. e.g. loyalty tied to grievances with original owner, negative grievances with other civs for having a captured city, mechanics tied to "settled" cities instead of "captured" cities (e.g. England's Pax B, Ancestral Hall, Casus Belli that target captured cities), and even negative loyalty for cities with a different religion.

I think more of that would help with the balance between peaceful expansion and military expansion. Not necessarily with the view of punishing military expansion, but at least ensuring there is some sort of long term trade off between peaceful settlement and military conquest.

One other thing to think about settled v conquered cities. The usual argument is that whereas peaceful conquest means you build settlers to get cities, but military conquest you build military to get (already developed) cites plus you keep the military and can use that to capture even more cities, you obviously don't get the yields from the captured city until you actually capture it. I suspect that sometimes you can get new cities online faster by peacefully settling rather than capturing, so you start accruing yields earlier.

...I'm sure the maths of that breaks down at some point, and probably quite quickly - e.g. sure, a settled city may get online faster, but the delay caused by building military gets cancelled out by the fact that captured cities are already developed (so you do accrue the historical production spent on infrastructure), you military can captured more and more cities (whereas a settler can literally only ever get you one more city), and once you've built your army your existing cities can focus on building even more military. But still, I don't think conquest is just "flat out" better than peaceful settlement. It's generally better, mostly because the AI is kinda weak still, but the decision has some nuance.

Interesting perspective. Indeed there is some lag after conquest because you also have to get the conquered city out of the occupied state by either wiping the other civ out or making peace with their leader ceding. Yet if you're relatively fast at conquering (as any good player would be), you can capture multiple cities in a short amount of time with a single army. Once you achieve either condition to get the captured cities' loyalty, your yields suddenly explode (multiply) as a function of the number of cities captured. I find it difficult to believe that settling new cities yourself can get you the same benefit.

Complications can arise of course if say you are in a dark age then retaining loyalty becomes out of the question in most cases. Furthermore cities captured from the AI probably won't be as well planned out as cities designed by the player and might not have the districts you desire to begin with. There's also the loss of population that follows when capturing. But still, capturing multiple developed cities for only the cost of an army (as long as the player is good at conquest and efficient) probably far outweighs the downsides.

I've always wondered though, if I don't spend any time on military (beyond eurekas and inspirations) and focus solely on expansion and developing my cities. Assuming I don't get attacked and availability of land is not an issue, would I be better than another civ who expanded through conquest? My cities that I've developed myself have been designed optimally for a specific victory type, his are probably not...

 

[Casualty of war]

There's too much Era Score, Eurekas and Inspirations tied up in military to ignore them, and once you build them you might as well get your Hammers worth. If you don't secure your neighborhood, rest assured your neighbors will get around to you sooner or later.

I should play more Online speed. It sounds like games zip right along.

Sumeria is so phenomenal because it rewards you for and is superior at all the aspects of the acknowledged speed run strategy, clear your continent then win however the mood strikes. If they had to research Wheel before their War Cart shenanigans, they would be much more balanced as a Civ.

 

[acluewithout]

Interesting perspective. Indeed there is some lag after conquest because you also have to get the conquered city out of the occupied state by either wiping the other civ out or making peace with their leader ceding. Yet if you're relatively fast at conquering (as any good player would be), you can capture multiple cities in a short amount of time with a single army. Once you achieve either condition to get the captured cities' loyalty, your yields suddenly explode (multiply) as a function of the number of cities captured. I find it difficult to believe that settling new cities yourself can get you the same benefit.

Complications can arise of course if say you are in a dark age then retaining loyalty becomes out of the question in most cases. Furthermore cities captured from the AI probably won't be as well planned out as cities designed by the player and might not have the districts you desire to begin with. There's also the loss of population that follows when capturing. But still, capturing multiple developed cities for only the cost of an army (as long as the player is good at conquest and efficient) probably far outweighs the downsides.

I've always wondered though, if I don't spend any time on military (beyond eurekas and inspirations) and focus solely on expansion and developing my cities. Assuming I don't get attacked and availability of land is not an issue, would I be better than another civ who expanded through conquest? My cities that I've developed myself have been designed optimally for a specific victory type, his are probably not...

Currently, there is a very high return on investment for capturing cities. Making the AI more challenging, so it takes longer (so longer to even start realising your investment), you need more units to conquer successfully and you lose more units capturing cities (so more expensive) and run a greater risk of failure, would improve the equation significantly, as would make captured cities less valuable than settled cities in the medium turn.

I think the balance is getting better - conquest is harder / more risky, and captured cities are somewhat less profitable / more troublesome - but the balance could be better.

There's too much Era Score,... tied up in military to ignore them.

Bit of a side-track, but I wish Era Score was just a little bit tied to economy. e.g. you got x Era Score every 10 turns that all your Cities are ecstatic or if you have the highest culture or science per turn etc. You'd need to rebalance Era Score thresholds a bit, but I think that would make Era Score less of constant fetch quest and reword good empire management more.

 

[Sostratus]

Currently, there is a very high return on investment for capturing cities. Making the AI more challenging, so it takes longer (so longer to even start realising your investment), you need more units to conquer successfully and you lose more units capturing cities (so more expensive) and run a greater risk of failure, would improve the equation significantly, as would make captured cities less valuable than settled cities in the medium turn.

The loss of Civ’s occupied/puppet system has really driven warfare in civ6. Granted, it was very punitive, but especially the resistance period where citizens straight up wouldn’t do anything (1 turn per pop, which could be reduced via cultural influence) and then having a choice between MASSIVE happiness (amenity) penalty or a moderate happy penalty and yield (science, culture, can’t control production) penalty.

I don’t really mind simplifying the puppet/annex bit since we don’t have a scaling science or social policy cost system, but the loss of a resistance period really just makes warfare so easy.

That, and particularly notable for someone like Sumer- military units in 5 were horrendously expensive to upkeep. I think each unit cost about 4 gold base, but gold was very scarce. So actually fielding an army of war carts would leave you penniless to afford upkeep on libraries and such.

Even if they couldn’t rely on their war cart rush aka the donkey tank spank, the ziggurat alone is enough to make them top tier IMO. Especially with flood fertility, you can get some insane river valleys going pretty early, and +2, +1 Is a bonkers yield for a turn 1 improvement. That’s better than running a scientist specialist, people!

 

[acluewithout]

I don’t really mind simplifying the puppet/annex bit since we don’t have a scaling science or social policy cost system, but the loss of a resistance period really just makes warfare so easy.

I think the link between loyalty and grievances with previous owner is a pretty good mechanism, and sort of achieves similar things. The City is disloyal for a while after the initial conquest (because you still have grievances with the original owner) and then it slowly gets better as grievances decay. But if you have further fights with the original owner, then the people in that City start getting disloyal again.

The big problem with the mechanism is that Cities suffer no such disloyalty provided you just wipe out the previous Civ.

 

[bitula]

I never got why people are so obsessed over conquering stuff in this game. I never do it unless necesary to go to war or when/if I get my uniques online in time for them to do damage.

No, I just did same thing as you. Got my Varus online and sent them to battle. There was no resistance though, so I could have just went with warriors. Only happened with Peter in games after the latest patch so far. Anyway I didnt have any more space to expand. So no. I usually RP and don't make battles for game-meta reasons.