Civ VI Discussion

[Winter_Wolf]

Well. Just purchased myself a sweet new PC.

Ill wait for delivery, and get playin' !!

See, you say that and provide no details. How're we to live vicariously through you or envy your new computer without details?

Yes, I'm nosy as all get out.

[moossabi]

Played my first game on chieftain difficulty on Saturday. Misc thoughts/highlights are below:

• For some reason, nobody wanted my envoys early in the game
• Greece's Wildcard bonus and Acropolises are great
• They need WAAY more great writer buildings; I've got a bunch of them running around unable to do anything. I'm hoping for a mod to fix this
• The AI could be less aggressive; Kongo declared war on me for no reason and soon after Spain and America followed suit without using Casus Belli. I took one of Kongo's cities and then we had peace. America and Spain did basically nothing.
• America didn't expand at all until Spain stuck its second city right next to them (Madrid being a bajillion miles to the north)
• I had extremely high faith and culture, and yet when Hojo came up to me his complint was that I had a large army and no culture to match it (because 4 pikemen is a large army apparently) while Kongo sits south of my border with 50 of their overpowered swordsmen replacers)
• No renaming cities sucks, but I can tolerate it
• Bad starts are now even more annoying than ever (in a hotseat game with a friend I ended up on a cliff face with no freshwater and mountains blocking places to build districts and wonders)
• Venice is missing, making my conspiracy theories about DLC distracting me from the current game and theorizing about how Venice will be done (Suzerain bonuses at 1 envoy that you have regardless of losing Suzerain status, calling it now)
• Love the districts if the start is good enough
• Haven't really declared war (although Kongo is becoming too much of a nuisance to tolerate any longer), so I can't judge the Casus Belli system
• Despite the nitpicks above, I'm really enjoying the game and can't wait for the modding community to get their hands on it.

[Cikomyr]

See, you say that and provide no details. How're we to live vicariously through you or envy your new computer without details?

Yes, I'm nosy as all get out.

;-)

Spoiler: I really didnt think the details would interest anyone

Show

Alienware Aurora R5 Base

- 8GB (2X4GB) DDR4 2133MHz SDRAM Memory
- 256GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
- NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 950 with 2GB GDDR5
- Dell Wireless 1820 Card (802.11AC Dual-Band Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.1)
- Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
- 850W PSU Air Cooled Chassis
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 Processor (4-Cores, 6MB Cache, Turbo Boost 2.0, up to 3.3GHz)

[Vitruviansquid]

Been playing this game on King difficulty (Prince rapidly proved incredibly easy, I'll see if I need to move up further after a few weekends of play).

Happiness has been replaced by "Amenities." After your third citizen, every 2 citizens in a city makes the city require another Amenity or it starts getting unhappiness modifiers, and can eventually revolt. An instance of a luxury resource now gives 1 Amenity to the 4 cities that need it most. Cities can optionally build an Entertainment District to increase its amenities without exploiting luxury resources. What does this all mean?

Settling the hell out of everything is back. So long as your cities don't increase too rapidly in population (and they won't), you won't paralyze your growth by settling too fast. It is also worth it to have multiple instances of luxury resources if you plan to have an empire with more than 4 cities (which you should). By the time your cities are actually starved over the distribution of luxury goods amenities, you will have also unlocked the ability to generate your own amenities from the entertainment district. Or you could trade for them. Or you could conquer for them. There are any number of advantages that settling early and often will net you to offset a lack of amenities.

The existence of districts with bonuses that get distributed not only to its parent city but to all cities within 6 tiles (that is, the entertainment and industrial districts, as far as I know) means that your cities should actually strive to be fairly close to a few central points where you'll have those districts. There is much to un-learn from Civ 4 and Civ 5 if you've played those games before.

Another thing I've noticed is... holy crap, a nation or barbarian camp that is gearing up for early game war will gear up for war so fast, it'll make your head spin. I now always make a second warrior off the bat because a single warrior with the Discipline policy can just barely defeat the spearmen sitting on a barbarian camp. So sometimes it takes 2 warriors and other times, you need the two warriors are needed just to fend off the barbarian invasion. Barbarian camps must have some kind of production surge after they've sat around awhile, because "ripe" camps will generation armies of 3-4 warriors, slingers, horse archers, and horsemen when they come at you. A nation can also flood you with 5-7 warriors in an insanely quick time, likely if they have the Agoge policy and you don't. That said, the AI is still sloppy about upgrading units or using upgraded units, so the winning strategy is to gain a convenient and powerful tech early, and then make a few of those units that can fend off the AI's hordes. Playing as Cleopatra, I try to tech up to Wheel early on to make a Maryannu Chariot Archer, which can pretty much hold against infinite AI warriors along with my 2 starter warriors.

As far as the leaders... Queen Tomyris is crazy strong with her ability to heal when killing units and create double cavalry. Especially if you have a more elite army, Queen Tomyris can use 2-3 units to hold out infinitely against an invasion or infinitely attack a stronger army if you play your cards right. Otherwise, I've been mostly playing Cleopatra ever since I noticed the AI kind of underbuilds wonders (perhaps the implementation of terrain requirements for wonders make them a bit more exclusive). I tried playing Catherine de Medici, but the constant intel updates actually get kind of annoying. I suspect Qin Shi Huang is actually extremely good at teching, but haven't actually tried him because I noticed I stop keeping pace with the Eurekas and Inspirations at about the early Medieval era. Was never much interested in building a long Great Wall, either.

edit:

As for great writer buildings... I think the point was never to allow someone to get all the great writers. Each Amphitheatre holds 1 great writing, and your palace might hold 1 unless you have a relic or something to put in there. You should aim to nab 2-3 Great Writers at max (for 4-6 cities) and then let other civs have their share. By the time you tech up into other tourism buildings, you should be going for great artists and such.

[factotum]

Re: amenities: I should modify my earlier statement about housing not being too important since I've learned a bit more since then. Basically, your cities can only grow up to their housing cap + 5--at that point their growth stops entirely, no matter how much food they have available. It's also somewhat harder to get hold of housing than it is to get amenities, at least before you unlock Neighbourhoods (which are a relatively late-game tech). I think my cities were more often housing-limited than amenity-limited, although this was playing on Prince difficulty and I don't know if the calculations change at higher difficulty levels.

[Corlindale]

After a few false start where I was embarassingly crushed by barbarians, I finally got a good game going with Pericles.

I really like the game so far. There's a lot of new stuff to process (especially since I never really played V, so IV is my reference point for everything), but fortunately most of it is introduced somewhat gradually.

I've always played Civ like a pacifist as much as possible and it seems like there's a lot more to actually do when not fighting in VI compared to earlier instalments (where the pacifist playstyle could sometimes turn into "press enter to win") . The game is full of "quests" (city state quests, boost quests and "make civ x not hate me" quests) and sub-systems, so you are always working on all kinds of stuff at the same time.

My only gripe is that the AI leaders can seem a bit touchy at times. I like that they have agendas, but I think it's a little much that Kongo immediately gets angry with me when I found a religion because I haven't spread it to them. At least give me just a little time to do so before getting so upset!

[huttj509]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

Best I can figure (from one more turn) is that norway got a religious victory (which with me not founding a religion I had no way to fight, unless), but that REALLY needs to be front and center on the loss screen. X won through Y victory type.

[Cespenar]

Turns out barbarians are pretty useful. The Greeks suddenly declared war on me because something something city-states. 3 hoplites, 2 warriors and 1 chariot appear almost next to my capital.

Fortunately, because of the never-ending barbarian raids, I had trained around 4 warriors and 2 archers just to defend my trade routes and cities.

Cue some mean butt-whooping.

[Cikomyr]

I like that now, everyone needs a minimal amount of military to be even remotely viable. Dont arm up? Get wiped out.

[Vitruviansquid]

Hasn't that always been true unless tou're playing on a potato level difficulty? Barbs and empires will pounce on you so fast if you forget your military since Civ 4. I only say 4 because it's been so long since I've played 3.

[Hunter Noventa]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

Best I can figure (from one more turn) is that norway got a religious victory (which with me not founding a religion I had no way to fight, unless), but that REALLY needs to be front and center on the loss screen. X won through Y victory type.

Religious victories are always kind of like that, the AI is a lot better at them for some reason, basically unless you're gearing up for it yourself, just turn it off.

Hasn't that always been true unless tou're playing on a potato level difficulty? Barbs and empires will pounce on you so fast if you forget your military since Civ 4. I only say 4 because it's been so long since I've played 3.

For the most part in previous Civs, you could get by with just a few units in each city (or a garrison, in the case of V), and a few roamers to pick off barbs. It feels like you need a lot more military here. I've yet to finish my first game, and I'm certainly not going to win, but I'm enjoying it, even if I'm kind of stuck between two bigger empires.

[factotum]

So, um, I think I found something the UI needs to be clearer on.

I hit next turn, suddenly defeat screen.

The screen doesn't say WHY i lost.

There are quite a few instances where the UI doesn't give you enough information--for instance, Pericles pops up and tells you, "That city is ours. I suggest you don't interfere." Er, *which* city, Pericles? I'm suzerain of four city-states and have envoys in another three, I'm not going to individually check all of them to see which ones you're also targeting to help figure out why you're getting narked!

[Hunter Noventa]

There are quite a few instances where the UI doesn't give you enough information--for instance, Pericles pops up and tells you, "That city is ours. I suggest you don't interfere." Er, *which* city, Pericles? I'm suzerain of four city-states and have envoys in another three, I'm not going to individually check all of them to see which ones you're also targeting to help figure out why you're getting narked!

Yeah it's kind of annoying when a leader pops up and says something leaving you with no clue what he's talking about without going to the diplomatic screen to try and suss it out.

Hopefully patches and mods will improve the UI, but so far that's been the worst part of the experience, otherwise it's a good game.

[moossabi]

I think that Gandhi's hidden agenda is always nuke-happy.

At least he won't declare wars this time around.

[Blue Ghost]

I've been hearing good things about this game, which makes me want to get it. I've also been hearing a lot of complaints about the AI. How bad is it, from your experience?

[Vitruviansquid]

I dislike that the AI fights by throwing a huge knot of low tech soldiers at you, which isn't how a human player would fight. Besides that, I have seen nothing egregious from the AI on Prince and King difficulties.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've been hearing good things about this game, which makes me want to get it. I've also been hearing a lot of complaints about the AI. How bad is it, from your experience?

On lower difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted.

On higher difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted, so he started using cheat codes instead.

[VoxRationis]

On lower difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted.

On higher difficulties? Like an immature kid who never bothered to learn the mechanics, and doesn't understand a lot of the concepts we take for granted, so he started using cheat codes instead.

Isn't that what the AI did in V?

[Kish]

Never known a strategy game where it isn't what happened. They have yet to produce AI that can actually approach the level of a human player; "at higher levels cheat like mad to make up for it" is how it's done, in every strategy game I can think of.

[Vitruviansquid]

King difficulty.

Spawned as Cleopatra and I had a good starting location with plenty of rivers to settle.

The last game I got out-settled by Sumeria and Norway and only got to have 3 cities, so this game, I was determined to keep up with the insane land grab at the beginning of the game. My build order for my first city was Warrior, Builder, then Settler, then another Settler.

In their wanderings, my warriors find Philip II... and then Montezuma. From the first time I realized I was on the same continent with Spain and Montezuma, I knew there would be some horrible grudge match going down. It's okay, though. I'm not fazed. I'm going to do what Cleopatra's good at, and find me a big, strong man to protect me while I build Wonders on the Nile (not making a jab at women, this is the actual recommended strategy for Cleopatra)...

Philip II turned out not to be that man, as he assaulted my second city with about 4 warriors in a surprise war before I could get my 3rd military unit online. Fighting around the city was intense, but he asks for peace when I churn out more warriors and a slinger (who turned out to be useless). Turned out Monty was crazy mad that Philip II had some luxuries that he didn't, and so declared war on Philip II. Shortly after the Spanish second wave warriors retreated, the Eagle Warriors arrived and captured both Madrid and Seville, knocking Spain out of the game.

Great. So now I was sharing a continent with only 1 other civilization, and it was an infamous warmonger that already doubled its size by annihilating an enemy most a-historically. My reaction is to finish Bronze working, and then colonize to seize 2 Iron deposits. When Montezuma inevitably declared war on me, he showed up with about double the Eagle Warriors as the earlier Spanish had Warriors. Fortunately, the push came from Madrid in the south, against which most of my military was already stationed, and I was about 3 turns from finishing Ironworking. The tide of Eagle Warriors get pushed back by 3 squads of veteran warriors upgraded into swordsmen. The fighting on my southern border was intense, but the creation of 2 Maryannu Chariot Archers from my core cities rapidly turns the tide. We pave the ground with corpses as my charioteers steadily catch and kill the Aztec infantry in the rout.

Now I'm on the offense, and I show no mercy. I take Madrid and Seville, and of course I keep them for myself rather than liberating them for the treacherous Spanish. Then I roll into the Aztec heartland and take Tenochtitlan after a long and bloody siege. From the fighting, two of my swordsmen squads reach level 2 and receive their customized names, "Ramses' Roughnecks" and "The Big Khopesh Boys." Montezuma's only strong when he's big and has many different luxuries, so I let him live with one small remote city.

It is now the Renaissance, and I haven't looked around for the other continent. My player score is about double the next highest for an unmet player, and Montezuma is no threat at all any longer. I'm just trying to grab plenty of great people and build up a large number of cultural objects and wonders for an eventual cultural victory.

Right now, I'm actually of peeved that King difficulty gets so easy after the early game. It feels like the only challenge this mode offers is barbarians and surprise wars in the early game, and then the game gets stale again. I'm probably going to try Emperor for my next game, and hopefully it doesn't make starting out impossible, but keeps the game interesting as time goes on.

On the strategy side, I'm also finding Iteru less and less useful the more I play Cleopatra. The hexes next to rivers are in *very* high demand for being good farmland, possibly containing resources, and there are far fewer than you might think. The rules on where you can build wonders also means many simply cannot be put on a river. Or perhaps I should've planned better. I think Catherine de Medici might be better for Wonders, even if she can only get started on wonders during the Medieval age. She has a bigger bonus and you don't lose out on building river tiles because you had to use them for your wonders. If only my screen wasn't covered with 4 secrets from the court ball every time I hit end turn on her. >_>

[VoxRationis]

King difficulty.

Spawned as Cleopatra and I had a good starting location with plenty of rivers to settle.

The last game I got out-settled by Sumeria and Norway and only got to have 3 cities, so this game, I was determined to keep up with the insane land grab at the beginning of the game. My build order for my first city was Warrior, Builder, then Settler, then another Settler.

In their wanderings, my warriors find Philip II... and then Montezuma. From the first time I realized I was on the same continent with Spain and Montezuma, I knew there would be some horrible grudge match going down. It's okay, though. I'm not fazed. I'm going to do what Cleopatra's good at, and find me a big, strong man to protect me while I build Wonders on the Nile (not making a jab at women, this is the actual recommended strategy for Cleopatra)...

Philip II turned out not to be that man, as he assaulted my second city with about 4 warriors in a surprise war before I could get my 3rd military unit online. Fighting around the city was intense, but he asks for peace when I churn out more warriors and a slinger (who turned out to be useless). Turned out Monty was crazy mad that Philip II had some luxuries that he didn't, and so declared war on Philip II. Shortly after the Spanish second wave warriors retreated, the Eagle Warriors arrived and captured both Madrid and Seville, knocking Spain out of the game.

Great. So now I was sharing a continent with only 1 other civilization, and it was an infamous warmonger that already doubled its size by annihilating an enemy most a-historically. My reaction is to finish Bronze working, and then colonize to seize 2 Iron deposits. When Montezuma inevitably declared war on me, he showed up with about double the Eagle Warriors as the earlier Spanish had Warriors. Fortunately, the push came from Madrid in the south, against which most of my military was already stationed, and I was about 3 turns from finishing Ironworking. The tide of Eagle Warriors get pushed back by 3 squads of veteran warriors upgraded into swordsmen. The fighting on my southern border was intense, but the creation of 2 Maryannu Chariot Archers from my core cities rapidly turns the tide. We pave the ground with corpses as my charioteers steadily catch and kill the Aztec infantry in the rout.

Now I'm on the offense, and I show no mercy. I take Madrid and Seville, and of course I keep them for myself rather than liberating them for the treacherous Spanish. Then I roll into the Aztec heartland and take Tenochtitlan after a long and bloody siege. From the fighting, two of my swordsmen squads reach level 2 and receive their customized names, "Ramses' Roughnecks" and "The Big Khopesh Boys." Montezuma's only strong when he's big and has many different luxuries, so I let him live with one small remote city.

It is now the Renaissance, and I haven't looked around for the other continent. My player score is about double the next highest for an unmet player, and Montezuma is no threat at all any longer. I'm just trying to grab plenty of great people and build up a large number of cultural objects and wonders for an eventual cultural victory.

Right now, I'm actually of peeved that King difficulty gets so easy after the early game. It feels like the only challenge this mode offers is barbarians and surprise wars in the early game, and then the game gets stale again. I'm probably going to try Emperor for my next game, and hopefully it doesn't make starting out impossible, but keeps the game interesting as time goes on.

On the strategy side, I'm also finding Iteru less and less useful the more I play Cleopatra. The hexes next to rivers are in *very* high demand for being good farmland, possibly containing resources, and there are far fewer than you might think. The rules on where you can build wonders also means many simply cannot be put on a river. Or perhaps I should've planned better. I think Catherine de Medici might be better for Wonders, even if she can only get started on wonders during the Medieval age. She has a bigger bonus and you don't lose out on building river tiles because you had to use them for your wonders. If only my screen wasn't covered with 4 secrets from the court ball every time I hit end turn on her. >_>

Yes, it's rather a strange ability, considering that the Egyptians typically built their tombs and whatnot upland of the river, reserving riverside areas for farming.

Speaking of chariots, when I've seen LPs of Civ VI, I see references to a "Heavy Chariot" unit. Is there a "Light Chariot" unit? A chariot archer (besides the Egyptian unique unit)? Also, how does the Maryannu work with regards to its promotions? Does it get promoted to a ranged unit or to a heavy cavalry unit?

[Vitruviansquid]

The Maryannu chariot archer is Egypt's unique unit, replacing the Heavy Chariot. It promotes and upgrades like an archer (upgrades into crossbowman) while the Heavy Chariots promote and upgrade as heavy cavalry (into Knights).

[Narkis]

Isn't that what the AI did in V?

It's very similar to the AI in V, certainly. They both suck in pretty much the same ways. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the same codebase. Disappointed, but not surprised.

[Gauntlet]

It's very similar to the AI in V, certainly. They both suck in pretty much the same ways. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the same codebase. Disappointed, but not surprised.

From what I've been seeing on a few discussions of the AI on CivFanatics, they at least look like they're moddable which good at least.

[VoxRationis]

I realized one small, nitpicky thing that irritates me with VI: like in Gods & Kings, religion is obligatory. You can opt not to found one, but one will then be provided for you by an AI civ, and worse, that now makes them directly closer to a victory condition. There's no room for the areligious or atheistic in Civ, it would seem. I would have appreciated a mechanic where just as culture resists tourism, so science or some other factor resists religious conversion.

[thirsting]

-- nitpicky thing --

You could just refluff the ingame religion mechanics to be something else, like "Philosophy", in your head. That helped me tolerate the 'obligatory' religion stuff in CivV.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I realized one small, nitpicky thing that irritates me with VI: like in Gods & Kings, religion is obligatory. You can opt not to found one, but one will then be provided for you by an AI civ, and worse, that now makes them directly closer to a victory condition. There's no room for the areligious or atheistic in Civ, it would seem. I would have appreciated a mechanic where just as culture resists tourism, so science or some other factor resists religious conversion.

Found 'Secular Humanism' as a religion. Done.

[Cikomyr]

I think his point is that you dont have a mean to actively resist religious influence if you dont have a religion of your own.

Except off course killing all the apostled and missionaries

[Kish]

So wait, you can found a religion named whatever you want?

[Maryring]

My Civ V games involved epic religious battles between Taco Tuesdays and Touhouism.