The First Civ6 Lurker Thread

[unaghy]

Sullla wrote: "TheArchduke researched Mysticism civic after he picked up his government, then put the free envoy in Yerevan. Whaaaaaat? I can't understand why someone would want to drop an envoy in here for +2 faith instead of in Cultural city-state Vilnius for +2 culture. It makes no sense at all."

It makes sense to me and I´m surpised that he is underestimating this move. Even he himself has stated few lines back that "Yerevan is now up to 5 warriors, sheesh. That brings it up to 100 power in military scoring, higher than any of the players in this game. Beware the city states!".

HOW SURPRISED HE WOULD BE AFTER OPENING NEXT SAVE WITH DOW ON HIM AND LEVYED YEREVAN MILITARY KNOCKING ON HIS UNDEFENDED CAPITAL!?

Unfortunatelly, TheAchduke did not use Diplomatic league to get additional envoy, as then single envoy would grant him suzerain status.

Btw. this is also major reason, not yet mentioned, why you dont keep city state in your backlines if you dont plan to maintain suzarain status.

As far as I understand suzerain mechanics, it doesn't kick in until three envoys are invested.

Yes, 3 envoys. However by using Diplomatic league, first envoy counts as 2 and then he could get 3rd one by finishing quest or researching Mysticism or other civic giving envoy. Also, in that case he shoud hold his money and not buying montain/copper tiles. I believe base costs to levy city state military is 150g, which is not that much. Without building single military unit, he could do major damage to him, getting back his money through pillaging and maybe even capturing city in process.

As I wrote its not going to happen, but it would be great tactical move that neither player was mentioning and may not be prepared for. Sullla´s comment of not getting the point why TheArchduke dropped envoys there may have been in his favor, if he was about to do this move. Of course I would personally put all envoys same turn when I would like to levy its military, not in advance, as it could warn him about my intentions. Additionally I would launch fake attack few turns earlier on his double river city in order to draw attention of his existing units.

How easy its to plan attack when one knows what both are doing

[Molach]

So...can city states work in a PBEM or just write them off as a SP thing?

[rho21]

I think they add a potentially interesting additional factor and certainly wouldn't want to rule them out on the evidence of this game. I really like that they get defensively stronger with more envoys, and that they reward early scouting. Shenanigans with surprise suzerainty (or loss thereof) might be problematic but it's tough to say.
The only obvious negatives are the luck factor of which types of city state you have near you, and the luck of what their suzerain bonuses are. There are several approaches to balancing both of these provided you have a map editor. This seems a reasonable assumption, as I'm pretty sure MP isn't going to get off the ground with the existing selection of unbalanced or balanced but highly constrained map scripts.

[unaghy]

I think they add a potentially interesting additional factor and certainly wouldn't want to rule them out on the evidence of this game. I really like that they get defensively stronger with more envoys, and that they reward early scouting. Shenanigans with surprise suzerainty (or loss thereof) might be problematic but it's tough to say.
The only obvious negatives are the luck factor of which types of city state you have near you, and the luck of what their suzerain bonuses are. There are several approaches to balancing both of these provided you have a map editor. This seems a reasonable assumption, as I'm pretty sure MP isn't going to get off the ground with the existing selection of unbalanced or balanced but highly constrained map scripts.

I dont see this as big problem - dont forget, that mostly player would need one envoy to invest to remove suzerain status, if he tracks envoyes spent by other players. I dont know what will happen with military units already levyed by player however. Does he loose controll immediatelly or he can simply keep using them until 30 turns runs out?

Additionally, you can limit number of city states in the game, so you may allow 1 city state per player for example.

[kjn]

I think the idea of the city states is good, as some sort of intermediate between the barbarians and the player empires, but the devil is always in the details.

This is going to become rather philosophical, but to me the current line of Civilization (starting with Revolutions) has gone from the player building things to the player receiving things. Adopt the right civic policy and a magical settler appears. Settle a city by the sea and Sailing is magically researched by half. Be first to encounter a city state and magically double your research early game.

It's just not about tile management any longer, or balancing tech with expansion.

It might be fun for the casual gamer, but it seems like a nightmare for the planning or deliberate gamer. It also doesn't help that the UI to me looks both bland and cluttered.

[Dark Savant]

This is going to become rather philosophical, but to me the current line of Civilization (starting with Revolutions) has gone from the player building things to the player receiving things. Adopt the right civic policy and a magical settler appears. Settle a city by the sea and Sailing is magically researched by half. Be first to encounter a city state and magically double your research early game.

I'm not sure about "has gone"; your ideal game sounds like higher-difficulty Civ 4 and not many other Civ games.  You can get a free settler/city or other valuable item with fairly high probability in any other Civ game.

In fact, you can base entire early-game strategies just around grabbing free goodies in Civ 2/SMAC/Civ 3/Civ 5, and Civ 4 at lower difficulty levels.  (Civ 1 isn't like that at high difficulty, but only because of its unusual rules.)

In higher-difficulty Civ 4, this only really makes a difference if you get something like Mathematics or Metal Casting as a free tech from a hut, which is rare and can't be counted on.

[kjn]

I'm not sure about "has gone"; your ideal game sounds like higher-difficulty Civ 4 and not many other Civ games.  You can get a free settler/city or other valuable item with fairly high probability in any other Civ game.

Oh, I'm only bouncing between Prince and Monarch in single-play. Also note that in Civ 4 you can turn off the goody huts, ie they are very much an adjunct to gameplay (in spite of abuses like T-Hawk's G-Minor 99).

There's another thing. Civ 4 is largely deterministic. You know that on turn X a tile will be gained. Here on T62 Sullla had the border expansion happen, but it picked up a different tile than previously reported.

Now, I think you can choose whatever mechanism you want as a gameplay choice, but here the game reports that tile X will be picked up on turn Z, but instead picks tile Y while reporting up to the actual pick happens that X will be chosen.

[Dark Savant]

I'm not sure about "has gone"; your ideal game sounds like higher-difficulty Civ 4 and not many other Civ games.  You can get a free settler/city or other valuable item with fairly high probability in any other Civ game.

Oh, I'm only bouncing between Prince and Monarch in single-play. Also note that in Civ 4 you can turn off the goody huts, ie they are very much an adjunct to gameplay (in spite of abuses like T-Hawk's G-Minor 99).

There's another thing. Civ 4 is largely deterministic. You know that on turn X a tile will be gained. Here on T62 Sullla had the border expansion happen, but it picked up a different tile than previously reported.

Now, I think you can choose whatever mechanism you want as a gameplay choice, but here the game reports that tile X will be picked up on turn Z, but instead picks tile Y while reporting up to the actual pick happens that X will be chosen.

Civ 4 Prince is high enough difficulty for what I'm saying -- that's high enough that you can't pop a worker from a hut.  You have a reasonable chance of stumbling into better than a worker in any of Civ 1/2/3/5, or SMAC, at any difficulty level -- which means Civ 4 at any real difficulty is actually the oddball of the series in this department.  (Civ 3 requires that you be Expansionistic for this to pay off at higher difficulty, which shouldn't be a surprise.)  And what's more, you can plan entire early games around this -- just not in Civ 4 at Noble or higher difficulty.

People have been expecting cool stuff to just fall from the sky in Civ for longer than some of the people reading this have been alive.  You can turn this off starting in Civ 2, but it's not the default in any Civ game, and people generally do not anyway.  The most egregious case is SMAC, where there isn't much stopping you from effectively popping the entire tech tree and every single Secret Project (SMAC's Wonder equivalent; you do this by popping supply crawlers worth more than the cost of the SP, and rushing each SP with one).  And I don't think you can reasonably argue that it's historically an adjunct to gameplay -- Civ 3 Expansionistic is designed around it; there's also Civ 5 Shoshone, or Civ 1/2 AI reliance upon huts for expansion, or to a lesser extent a Civ 4 Hunting start (which are awful in MP with huts turned off).

And it's not clear that this specific Civ 6 example you mention has anything to do with determinism -- from Sulla's writing, this sounds more like the interface being unclear than anything else.  It seems not really different from Civ reporting that your build will be complete in X turns, but it actually finishes faster because your city grew and gained a hammer tile.  Circumstances changing affects which tile the Civ 5 (and, apparently, Civ 6) tile picker will auto-select.

It's true this could all be documented better (which is where the above analogy isn't perfect, since the Civ 5/6 tile picker works in mysterious ways), but Civ has always been a hideous conglomeration of ad-hoc rules.  What we're seeing here may well demonstrate Civ 4 having relatively few ad-hoc rules gotchas, though it's still got a fairly serious case of it.  (Imperialistic gives +50% to settler production ... but it only affects hammers, not food ... and food overflow gets divided when it logically shouldn't be ... and the +50% bonus does apply to slave-rushing and chop-rushing ... but not cash-rushing.  Wait, what?)

[unaghy]

This is going to become rather philosophical, but to me the current line of Civilization (starting with Revolutions) has gone from the player building things to the player receiving things. Adopt the right civic policy and a magical settler appears. Settle a city by the sea and Sailing is magically researched by half. Be first to encounter a city state and magically double your research early game.

Its not for free though - you need to sacrifice other benefits in order to adopt policy giving you discount on certain tech. Also you need to plan properly in order to get benefit from it, otherwise you pay penalty in another areas.

In Civ 6 it is always about trade-offs. Without proper planning and micromanagement (average player) you will simply just balance different aspects of your game play. It requires real master mind in order to actually get nett benefit in long run. Additionally, if you pursue certain strategy, then you are actually willingly paying penalty somewhere else in order to achieve your goals.

I consider Sullla´s report as first complex try of how to play game in the best way against human opponents.
The fact, that most of brilliant strategies based on Civ 6 mechanics are still to be revealed, is very exciting and looking forward to read about them.

[RFS-81]

This is going to become rather philosophical, but to me the current line of Civilization (starting with Revolutions) has gone from the player building things to the player receiving things. Adopt the right civic policy and a magical settler appears. Settle a city by the sea and Sailing is magically researched by half.

I agree with unaghy about the policies, so I'll just add something about the Eurekas/Inspirations that cut your research costs in half:
I'm not really sure if I like them, but since they are always the same, you can plan to make them happen (with a few exceptions, like Foreign Trade). For me, they feel like a result of my actions, not something that I just get for free. Regarding your example, note that settling a city on the cost is often not a good move, since ocean tile yields are so weak and you can add a harbor later on, so there's definitely a cost there.

But I do agree that city state bonuses are too strong in the early game. I think that the free envoys for the first player to encounter a city state should be removed.