Civ 6 Release and Update Discussion Thread

[BRickAstley]

This is a Civ discussion thread, not a politics thread. If you want to talk politics move to the Off Topic subforum or I will move it there.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Sirian:

I'm not actually that hostile to Apolyton/WPC unlike Brain. They are more than good enough for what Firaxis wants (90% of civ players cannot even beat Prince!), they didn't even get the right builds for Civ5 and CivPlayers let dumb things in like the infinite anarchy trick in Civ4 anyway. I am hostile to the idea that he cannot even make an argument when the Frankenstein test group does things publically. You don't stop being fanboys or being bad at Civ in private. And how could such people be good testers? It would be fine you saying these not are acceptable arguments to make, and I'd just wouldn't say anything in the first place, but just ignoring them by calling them "speculation" gives me the .

[Sirian]

Sirian:

I am hostile to the idea that he cannot even make an argument when the Frankenstein test group does things publically. You don't stop being fanboys or being bad at Civ in private.

Two points.

1) Extrapolating from what a few do in public to what the whole did in private is conjecture. My initial point was that conjecture is not fact. I'll take your reply as concession on that point.

2) Your own emphasis on beating Civ single player at high difficulty is SORELY, EGREGIOUSLY misplaced. A game in development does not have finalized rules at the start of development, nor even at the mid point, nor even at release day. The game is a constantly moving target, and for the vast bulk of development time, there is no AI whatsoever. The skillset needed to identify balance problems and flawed design elements before there is an AI or a well-iterated set of rules or even a solid foundation upon which to start building the game does share a few traits with playing a final version of the game, but nowhere near as many as you imply. Identifying is the easiest part. Forging alternatives that are not worse than the disease they are aiming to cure is the difficult part, and pleasing the grognards is not the only concern. Where that fits in with all the other concerns varies from one project to the next. Even if people agree on the problems, if they do not all agree on the solutions, feedback has to be sorted through and decisions made about what to pursue. Not every idea can be tried, and not every idea that is tried can be implemented as imagined, and not every idea that is implemented as imagined works out as expected. (And damned few code half as fast or a quarter as efficiently as Soren Johnson.) Time flies fast: there is never enough, even when things go smoothly. And all of this assumes there are no personality conflicts, differences of vision or goals, budget problems, heavy-handed publishers or marketing departments, incompetence somewhere (anywhere) in the large mix of people who have to get things done well for a game to succeed, and a host of more obscure obstacles you aren't in the ballpark of imagining. (I am also clearly not implying that this is a list of things that happened behind the scenes of Civ5. It is not. It's a list of things that can go wrong in general. The games where that much goes wrong are the ones who come out with 35% approval ratings, in a market where 40% will say positive things no matter what shape the product is in, because they reply based on emotion or imagination, without any understanding of the technicalities of the gameplay.)


- Sirian

[MJW (ya that one)]

Sirian:

I am hostile to the idea that he cannot even make an argument when the Frankenstein test group does things publically. You don't stop being fanboys or being bad at Civ in private.

Two points.

1) Extrapolating from what a few do in public to what the whole did in private is conjecture. My initial point was that conjecture is not fact. I'll take your reply as concession on that point. Super-late edit note worth own post: I wish I pointed out people tend to act much worse in private than public.

2) Your own emphasis on beating Civ single player at high difficulty is SORELY, EGREGIOUSLY misplaced. A game in development does not have finalized rules at the start of development, nor even at the mid point, nor even at release day. The game is a constantly moving target, and for the vast bulk of development time, there is no AI whatsoever. The skillset needed to identify balance problems and flawed design elements before there is an AI or a well-iterated set of rules or even a solid foundation upon which to start building the game does share a few traits with playing a final version of the game, but nowhere near as many as you imply. Identifying is the easiest part. Forging alternatives that are not worse than the disease they are aiming to cure is the difficult part, and pleasing the grognards is not the only concern. Where that fits in with all the other concerns varies from one project to the next. Even if people agree on the problems, if they do not all agree on the solutions, feedback has to be sorted through and decisions made about what to pursue. Not every idea can be tried, and not every idea that is tried can be implemented as imagined, and not every idea that is implemented as imagined works out as expected. (And damned few code half as fast or a quarter as efficiently as Soren Johnson.) Time flies fast: there is never enough, even when things go smoothly. And all of this assumes there are no personality conflicts, differences of vision or goals, budget problems, heavy-handed publishers or marketing departments, incompetence somewhere (anywhere) in the large mix of people who have to get things done well for a game to succeed, and a host of more obscure obstacles you aren't in the ballpark of imagining. (I am also clearly not implying that this is a list of things that happened behind the scenes of Civ5. It is not. It's a list of things that can go wrong in general. The games where that much goes wrong are the ones who come out with 35% approval ratings, in a market where 40% will say positive things no matter what shape the product is in, because they reply based on emotion or imagination, without any understanding of the technicalities of the gameplay.)


- Sirian

1. I don't see what the problem is with conjecture. It's inductive reasoning which can only be very likely to be true at best. But that doesn't matter because one can always be wrong. Super-late edit that's not worth own post: I wished I pointed out that people tend to act much worse in private than public.
 
2. My point about players not being able to beat Prince (Civ5 Prince!) actually supports WPC. They are more than good enough.

[Singaboy]

I have gone back to Civ3 to play AW games on pangaea trying to increase the difficulty up to deity. What a blast. It would be great to see Firaxis come up with a roadmap how they plan to save this train-wreck of a game.

Sure, they can fix the most pressing bugs and hopefully completely rework the UI, but that would still leave us with
- too streamlined tech trees (+Eurekas forcing similar gameplay)
- AI that can't handle 1upt and the micromanagement of districts etc

Maybe, the game will get better (it can't get worse anyway) and I will try again.

[Sirian]

Civ3 AW games are a treat. If anyone here came to Civ late and never played Civ3, there would be issues that would annoy them, but the fun might be worth it anyway.

[yuris125]

GMR guys said they should be able to add Civ6 support. So if/when they do, we might try running a PBEM (although I still don't understand why we have to rely on a 3rd party community-run site for that instead of having native support)

[Sareln]

Looks like there is a patch dropping.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/289070/a...7742411203

[BRickAstley]

Things I see that I would care about/have been mentioned here.

• Added the ability to rename cities.
• Added UI to show the next tile a city will grow to.
• Reduced Warmonger penalties in most instances, and adjusted how this reacts to returning versus keeping a city. The last city conquered from a player now provides a heavy warmonger penalty, even if you have a Casus Belli against this player, because you are wiping out a civilization.
• Units may no longer be deleted when they are damaged.
• Deleting a unit no longer provides gold.
• Units may no longer remove features from tiles that are not owned by that player.
• Adjusted AI victory condition focus to increase their competitiveness in Science and Tourism.
• Adjusted the AI approach to beginning and ending a war based on potential gain and loss.
• Increased AI competitiveness in building a more advanced military.
• Increased AI value of upgrading units.
• Increased AI use of Settler escorts.
• Fixed some production Social Policies, Great People, and Pantheon bonuses that were not applying correctly.
• Fixed Royal Navy Dockyard not getting the right adjacency bonuses.
• Updated to display what cities are getting amenities from each resource.
• ESC now closes the Tech, Civic, and Eureka popups.
• When loading a game, the era blurb will be the current era of the saved game, rather than the starting era of the game.
• Auto Cycle Units is now available in the Options menu.

[Sullla]

First patch looks pretty solid, at least based on the patch notes that Sareln linked to above. Here are some quick highlights:

• Two new maps, both of them Multiplayer-centric in nature. Probably not that useful for our community, but you never know.
• Added the ability to rename cities.
• Added UI to show the next tile a city will grow to.
• Changed Dan Quayle rankings.

• Reduced the effectiveness of cavalry production policies. [This addresses major release version exploit #1.]

• Reduced Warmonger penalties in most instances, and adjusted how this reacts to returning versus keeping a city. The last city conquered from a player now provides a heavy warmonger penalty, even if you have a Casus Belli against this player, because you are wiping out a civilization. [They turned down the warmonger penalty, yay!]

• Increased the number of Great Works of Writing slots in the Amphitheater to 2. [Also badly needed. Silly how there weren't enough slots for the early Great Writers' works.]

• Increased the cost of Religious units and applied additional charges. [Thank you thank you thank you.]

• Units may no longer be deleted when they are damaged.
• Deleting a unit no longer provides gold. [This addresses major release version exploit #2.]

• Units may no longer remove features from tiles that are not owned by that player. [This addresses major release version exploit #3. My three biggest balance gripes all addressed in the first patch. If these fixes work, that's a nice response.]

We'll see if the AI improved at all in the patch. I am satisfied with what I'm seeing on paper though. Sounds like a nice patch, and certainly needed