3052

I don’t either, really, but the problem I’ve had in the last couple iterations of Civ is that the AI does. Stupid war declarations from across the continents where armies never show up. Or endless hordes of horsemen that your handful of archers has to spent literally ages whittling down because the AI is too incompetent to figure out how to do anything effectively with them.

I’d be all for a Civ game that was all about civilization building, economics, etc but the AI just keeps screaming “LOOK HOW BAD I AM AT THIS GAME!!” while it limply slaps at me.

3053

I had an emergency. I was attacked by the city-state of Jerusalem. So I defeated their invading forces, and then proceeded to attack and capture Jerusalem. After that Germany declared an emergency to relieve Jerusalem. The problem for them was there was no obvious route for them to come their aid, so after the 25 turns or whatever it was they failed. Is there a way to determine who started a war? At one point I ended up in a war with 4 other nations and I’m not sure what set it off (can a partner in an economic alliance drag you into a war?). Other than that I was involved in only 1 other war, and in the case of the 2 wars involving nations only 1 nation was ever anywhere near my borders.

3054

Declarations of war:

I read on Civ Fanatics that if a single AI declares war on you, that’s when you worry. They actually planned for it.

When it’s a joint attack, don’t worry, because it’s often because one bribed the other and they don’t really commit to it.

3055

I think the new loyalty system may actually bring me back to this. From what I can tell, it finally means that sweeping your army through the inferior AI military… no longer results in a massive civilization and an easy, though tedious, win.

If the above is true, and there’s a bunch of other neat features, I could be on board. Comments?

3056

Interesting. You’d think at least the briber would have planned for it, but I guess not.

3057

Joint declarations of war remain one of the weakest points in the game. I think they are there for entertainment purposes – the idea being that the AI civs need to do things to outrage you, so you are motivated to defeat them. And I understand that viewpoint, I found a lot of earlier Civ games weak in that area. But as implemented, it’s a mess. Not only do you rarely get much of an offensive from either enemy, but once ten turns expire and you kill off their straggling units, both of them will offer enormous piles of loot to obtain peace. I find this one of the main reasons that games get out of hand and I get such a lead that I lose interest and end up starting a new game.

On the other hand, single AI threats have gotten a little better. They will approach with a bunch of units and surround your territory, threatening attack. It appears to me that if you put a credible number of units of your own in sight, they are likely to back off, otherwise, they usually declare war. If you are truly unprepared, they might even take your city, but much more often they simply cause you to divert production away from more valuable things to defending yourself, so even if they eventually pay war reparations, it’s a net loss for you.

3058

This matches with my experience from my last game. The Persians were next door to me and started to move units in a rather suspicious buildup. I did not have a strong military and started building the next level of walls for my vulnerable cities and bought some extra crossbowmen with my stash of cash. Sure enough, I got a surprise war declared and it was touch and go for a while whether I would lose my captitol. In contrast, some time later Montezuma got upset and declared a joint war with Tomyris against me. I don’t think there was any actual land battle. I think I did some bombardment from a frigate and that was the whole war.

3059

The loyalty system does sound interesting. But the rest of the mechanics with Golden Ages an Dark Ages seem like throwing out more stuff to chase after in turns of guiding your production and activities. It sounds like more stuff to get in the way of doing what you want.

3060

True but almost every game for me ends up being:

Play and expand peacefully or through minor skirmishes.
Find a time to attack and grow; which era typically depends on leveraging the unique unit.
Once I have a bunch more cities, decide on which victory I feel like this time.
The year 1900 comes around and it’s pretty clear I’ll get there eventually, but it’s too tedius per turn, so I quit and start again.

And I enjoy this, really it’s a great formula except I never end up playing late game, even though part of me wants to.

Does the loyalty system change this formula? Does it really encourage of even force smaller late game Civs? I’ll read another couple reviews.

3061

I will say that I was disappointed when the Kurgan turned out to be a building and not the guy from the Highlander.

3062

Dude, I wish there was a heart button I could press for this post.

3064

How hard can it be to mod?

3065

71,000 people playing civ 6 now…yes, yes I know its a free weekend but still, thats pretty damn impressive

game is far from dead

3066

does anyone remember if and how the science cost per technology depends on map size or number of cities? if it doesn’t depend on either then research should go faster on larger maps, is that what happens?

3067

Population contributes less to science in VI than it did in V, but going wide is still the ideal for generating it. That said, the decision to go wide has new considerations in VI, so it’s not always a straight-forward path to success.

3068

Supposedly the science rate per pop has been nerfed a bit, hasn’t it? Also, I hadn’t realized that Eurekas and Inspiration rewards were recently reduced from 50% to 40%, which I think is better. In general, I’m seeing slower science progression in my games, which I think is a good thing. I’d still like it slower; perhaps I’ll try a Marathon game for that.

The Loyalty system, plus the new Government District and Governors system, all seem to make going tall more viable. Which suits me fine. I love having city-flipping back! Forward-settling by the AI is now potentially a good thing for the player, as the city may flip. I do wish there were more Governors to pick from; right now the decisions seem too obvious. I’d like more difficult trade-off decisions, too, like those in the Dark Ages but for all ages. There’s one in the Gov’t District: an improvement that gives you +4 housing and other benefits, but costs you 2 loyalty per turn in any city that lacks a governor. I’d like more choices that have benefits and drawbacks.

The UI annoys me more than I remember from launch. It’s so darn cluttered. Tooltips appear too slowly, and it’s sometimes hard to decipher what’s on the map. There are some minor improvements: you can disable auto-selecting of next unit, and there are more hotkeys. (Plus I used Auto Hotkeys to enable WASD.) I haven’t ever tried CQUI, but when it’s updated for R&F, I’m immediately going to install it.

On the other hand, I’m seeing some AI improvements. I don’t really care much about combat AI, as I prefer to play peacefully, but I’ve seen it take walled cities (sometimes!) now, even later in the game. It now (sometimes) finishes off my units rather than letting them escape. It now (sometimes) focuses fire. I worry more about my neighbors than I used to. Barbarians are stronger (though not really smarter). Some players report capturing AI cities that have actually made intelligent decisions about where to build districts – in one case even buying the best tile for a district with good adjacency bonuses. The diplomatic AI has been less annoying than usual – though still occasionally annoying. None of this will satisfy those who want an AI that’s an order of magnitude stronger, but I do think it’s improved noticeably.

3069

thanks. even leaving population aside more cities means more libraries. i get that loalty can be an issue but so far its been manageable

3070

There’s an option to reduce or eliminate that.

3071

Ah, thanks, I see it now. Good!

3072

How are people using their governors? My first game I tried to rotate them around from City to City to use special powers in different ways but I ended up having the wrong guys in the wrong place and wasting a lot of time with them in transit. So this game so far I’ve left them where they are which makes things simpler. They seem like it potentially interesting addition to the game but maybe not fully polished yet, it would be nice to see some more variation or perhaps 1 Civ specific choiceper Civ.
On a different topic as someone else posted , the emergency mechanic is kind of weird, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game to parachute in money rewards like that.