Civ 6 Release and Update Discussion Thread

[yuris125]

I just got RoP Raped by the AI and that's gonna be the last time I play this game for awhile. You can literally sign OB, move all of your units into their territory, surround all their cities, and then you can declare war and take all their cities on the same turn.

This has to be a (yet another) bug. You definitely get bounced out of other player's territory if OB expires. I guess war declaration doesn't count as ending OB agreement? But if you get a city in a peace treaty and have units in it territory, your units will get bounced out of it. Great testing

Frankly, if it wasn't Firaxis and the game wan't called Civilization, the game in its current state would've been branded "early access". That's how rough it is at the moment. Pretty much every area of the game feel unfinished, from the very foundation (district cost scaling, strategic AI), through mechanics implications of which were not fully understood (gold for disbanding units, the worst roads in all Civ games), all the way to clear oversights, of which there's a scary amount (why in the world can't I sort the trade routes as I could in Civ5? or see the full list of full trade routes available? why is there no list of my current deals, or no notification when a deal expires? why do I have to open each AI's diplo page to see their relationships with other AIs, can't we have at least a list like we had in Civ5? Why do notifications appearing in the middle of the screen have to take so much space? and does it have to be that many? When someone declares war on someone, do we need to receive three notification (two in the middle, "x declared war on y" and "y was targeted by a declaration of war by x" and a war dec notification on the side)? And that's not even touching the city screen. The list goes on and on and on)

I don't regret pre-ordering, I did have fun with the three games I finished, but now that I'm trying to play optimally, the above issues begin to stand out. Plus the fact that district costs are locked in as soon as it's placed means that a) you have to check every city every turn and place the next district as soon as its size allows, and b) the game encourages you to switch research without finishing techs unless you need them immediately. This is Civ3 level of mindless micromanagement

This release is just as bad as Civ5 release in terms of game quality. There's only two good things to say. First, unlike Civ5, the game does have a solid foundation, and there's hope it will become the game it deserved to be in a couple of years. Second, they did manage to fix CTDs, at least it runs well and doesn't add to annoyances by crashing

[Borsche]

I will say that I'm not certain if the player does or doesn't get kicked out of enemy territory once war is declared, but I know that the AI didn't get kicked out when it declared war on me after having OB so I don't see any reason for that not to apply to the player. If you think about it, it makes sense in the same way that it worked in Civ3: you no longer have OB so you don't have RoP, but you're at war so there's no reason to get kicked out. I'll have to test it.

Almost the bigger complaint about the whole thing is that there's absolutely no reason to sign OB in the first place (other than in the extreme early game for scouting) (and maybe for religion but I haven't really messed around with that mechanic much so I'm not sure. It seems like I'm getting flooded with apostles regardless of OB). As soon as you do, your whole territory gets flooded with units and makes it completely impossible to improve any tiles or move your own units. You can run trade routes to other civs without having OB (even if they're insanely hostile to you) so even from that perspective there's no benefit.

As an aside can anyone tell me when other cities benefit from trade routes? There's a little box that shows what the other city would receive from you establishing the trade route, but it's always empty.

Lastly, I definitely agree that external trade routes need to be buffed and internal routes need to be nerfed (or one or the other)

[yuris125]

Having OB is an instant +3 diplo modifier, so if you want to maintain good relationships, OB is worthwhile. Definitely more worthwhile than in 5

There are certain policies which give benefits to trade route recipients (can't say which ones off the bat though). As far as I can tell, that's the only way

[Sirian]

Having OB is an instant +3 diplo modifier, so if you want to maintain good relationships, OB is worthwhile. Definitely more worthwhile than in 5

There are certain policies which give benefits to trade route recipients (can't say which ones off the bat though). As far as I can tell, that's the only way

If it's true that the AIs floor your territory with units and block up your roads (you can't even build alternate routes!) and tiles you want to improve, and they delay founding of new cities because your settlers have to dodge around them... If they block up choke points inside your territory... +3 to something isn't going to matter.

Why should player even care about good relations anyway? Just-- because? ... I don't buy it. There's a massive lean to warmongering by the AIs early and a lean against it later. I haven't seen any hint that player actions affect things much. The new "trend" in what's cool in what eras seems to be decisive (or very close to it).

There isn't even a diplomatic victory type any more.


- Sirian

[yuris125]

Declaration of friendship in Civ6 equals to enforced peace. So after you build a few early Warriors and handle the barbs, you can sign friendships with everyone and not invest into military for a while. Whether it's worth having AI's units interfere with your tile improvements is a question for the player. I personally didn't have problems with that, unless they send hordes of Apostles, which don't need OB to enter your territory anyway

Nevertheless, I do think that your friendly opponent being able to interfere with your unit movement and tile improvements is the biggest problem of 1upt

[Gazglum]

Another bug with 1upt comes when your units are enforced into the same tile. I had a city under siege from all directions, with a garrisoned archer. I built a swordsman to attack out, figuring that the swordsman + archer would be able to clear one of the hexes. But after the swordsman spawned, neither unit was able to take an action before moving away from each other, and they weren't able to move away because there was nowhere to move to. In the end I had to delete one of them.

I would put that down as a bug, except I am not sure what the correct solution would actually be in 1upt. Probably to spawn the swordsman on the nearest availabe tile outside the siege?

[Borsche]

Having OB is an instant +3 diplo modifier, so if you want to maintain good relationships, OB is worthwhile. Definitely more worthwhile than in 5

There are certain policies which give benefits to trade route recipients (can't say which ones off the bat though). As far as I can tell, that's the only way

If it's true that the AIs floor your territory with units and block up your roads (you can't even build alternate routes!) and tiles you want to improve, and they delay founding of new cities because your settlers have to dodge around them... If they block up choke points inside your territory... +3 to something isn't going to matter.

Why should player even care about good relations anyway? Just-- because? ... I don't buy it. There's a massive lean to warmongering by the AIs early and a lean against it later. I haven't seen any hint that player actions affect things much. The new "trend" in what's cool in what eras seems to be decisive (or very close to it).

There isn't even a diplomatic victory type any more.


- Sirian

Having played up to Immortal, it's abundantly obvious that you just ignore AI diplo. The only thing you have to make sure of is that you have units by your other borders right if you want to declare war. Once the early war thing goes away (where you don't get penalized for early wars), the AI will denounce you as soon as you declare war, and typically declare on you 5 turns later. This isn't an issue since you'll run circles around the military AI. As far as I can tell, it's just easier to let everyone hate you and declare war as you want because there's nothing you really get from good relations anyway. 

Immortal is kind of a weird difficulty. The AI will zoom ahead in tech, but they won't actually have many more techs than you. Top AI usually led me by about 4 techs even when they were in the industrial and I was in classical, so I'm assuming there's something that they just beeline (though I couldn't really figure out where their tech lead was, because I was missing early techs like fishing and the one that lets you build shrines because I didn't need them). 

Someone floated the idea that the AI is scripted at the start of the game and I definitely have to agree at this point. The AI will ALWAYS declare war on you. This will definitely catch new and unprepared players off guard, and I'm sure anyone that thinks the game is difficult probably got rushed on King or something. It is easy to get caught between Barbs, War Carts, and a second civ. But as long as you build a couple slingers, prioritize archery, and get a couple of warriors/spears (bronze working is a good tech to prioritize) you'll be fine. It's not like you really need another settler or builder anyway - the extra infra helps but you'll still tech at a fairly constant rate (especially thanks to the OP eureka bonuses. cute concept, poor execution.)

[Borsche]

Another bug with 1upt comes when your units are enforced into the same tile. I had a city under siege from all directions, with a garrisoned archer. I built a swordsman to attack out, figuring that the swordsman + archer would be able to clear one of the hexes. But after the swordsman spawned, neither unit was able to take an action before moving away from each other, and they weren't able to move away because there was nowhere to move to. In the end I had to delete one of them.

I would put that down as a bug, except I am not sure what the correct solution would actually be in 1upt. Probably to spawn the swordsman on the nearest availabe tile outside the siege?

1UPT in this form needs to go. It's a failed experiment and has no place in Civ. If they wanted to cut down on managing stacks (which was still infinitely easier than managing carpets), they could do a hybrid system kinda like moo where you lock units together into an army, and have them all add their attack value together and attack as a single unit. You could even factor in unit advantages (an army consisting of swords and archers will get cut down by an army of horsemen, but adding a bunch of spears to the army will help). 

I'm hoping that the modding tools allow for 1UPT to be removed. What's even crazier is that a lot of the attempts by Civ5 to force 1UPT to work (lower yields, resource requirements) are now basically gone. We're now in a situation where it's very easy to have like 30 horsemen by T100, which is completely unmanageable. (it won't even destroy your econ because of the crazy unit maintenance card that will pay for all your stuff)

[pindicator]

I'm starting to wonder is playing Always War is optimal. Open Borders aren't needed to have the AI flood your cities with missionaries. And the AI is so inept at war that they are hardly an inconvenience. Maybe the first 100 turns are helped by peace to get your snowball rolling, but once missionaries start showing up then I don't see any point to peaceful relations -- only drawbacks and tedium.

Edit: I could be wrong about open borders and I could have just had a bug or unclear interaction. I took peace after a war with Japan, where he offered me open borders and gold. Since open borders weren't on my side I assumed this was only one directional, but perhaps it wasn't the case.

[picklepikkl]

Eh, every now and then you can get a resource trade for some more amenities, since your 2nd-nth copies are useless.

(I will say this: the amenity system setup is poorly documented and confusing, particularly the fact that only four of your cities will ever benefit from a given lux, but does seem to work by the numbers; I was never facing massive riots nor was it trivial to make my cities Ecstatic. I didn't try going super-wide, though, but probably if you do that it behooves you to use Zoos and Stadiums strategically.)