3957

The new leaders:

3958

I am terribly disappointed that the leader of the Gauls is not Vitalstatistix.

3959

The gall of Firaxis.

3960

I’ve got to give this latest DLC a “meh.”

One of the civs and the new game mode are built upon things I consider weak foundations.

The dramatic mode makes everything either a dark age or a golden age, nothing in between. Which might be interesting if the ages weren’t such a subpar part of the game. It’s the rule, not the exception when a stretch where I am doing great… produces a dark age. Because the points are given for things that are just plain weird. And not out in the open to see, for strategic planning. The best thing about these ages is that they really do not matter all that much. So this new game mode makes sure they do matter, but having cities rebel in dark ages. Not my cup of tea at all.

And Byzantium has some very interesting mechanics, but they are all based on the religious part of the game. Which would be nice, if the religious part of the game did not involve putting up with tear-inducing tedium.

Gaul strikes me better, it has potential for providing some fun. It is a production and culture powerhouse, if played strategically. However, you will crash and burn if you do not manually control which tiles are worked in your cities, because the extra culture and production early on results in the auto-tile-assignment skimping on food, to the point your cities grow very slowly. I’m not crazy about the additional micro, but worse than that, it means that Gaul is likely to be a particularly weak AI opponent.

(Although it appears to me that a couple of the really weak AI opponents got tuneups a couple updates back, particularly Indonesia.)

3961

I can’t argue with any of that. I really liked the secret society stuff and the randomized techs. This release seems a bit of a letdown. My impression is the Computer Players are a bit more aggressive in the early game, but that could just be my limited impression.

3962

I think so too. I also think that the barbarians are better, at least sporadically.

3963

I knew there was a mod that addresses your issue with the era score, the Real Era tracker - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1699006932

I have been modding Civ VI via workshop and I think some of the gameplay changes are making it a little more inline with what I want in the game. I’ll comment more at a later date when I really thrash them out.

3964

I’ve been having problems when I use more than 1 ui mod. What are some recommended sets that play well together?

3965

This one should do the trick.

3966

Thanks! Next time I’ll try just running that.

3967

that mod on its own helps plenty and it hasnt causes any issues, thanks again for the suggestion.

3968

You’re welcome! Glad you like it!

3969

Thanks, I will check it out. I think that the whole feature is conceptually weak, but it would be nice if at least it was properly visible, and maybe this mod will do it.

(The other feature I feel very sorry about is governors. It was a great idea, but why have they left it so uninspired and sterile?)

3970

I find Governors to be busy work that the game doesn’t need each turn because of their implementation only giving certain bonuses to the city they are in. Honestly, I’d much rather see Civ wide bonuses for their level ups (eg: all builders get +1 charge) balanced against mutually exlusive decisions. Or do away with policy cards being dictated by Government and have the Governer promotions influence how many policy cards I can get.

3971

Never really thought about it, but yeah, it might be that as long as governors are limited to their own city, there are limited the interesting possibilities are limited.

3972

Are the governors still insanely unbalanced with Magnus (or whichever one got the double forest chop bonus) being crazy broken?

3973

Nope, Magnus got patched. He only gives 50% of yield now from harvesting a resource.

3974

Oddly, I think my biggest frustration with the game currently is the map generation. I’m finding that even if I set it as an “old” earth the map always seems to discourage roaming, or much choice in direction of development. Mountain ranges are the main thing, but also large deserts and bodies of water. I find it typical to start hemmed in on three sides by deserts, water, and mountains… with the fourth direction allowing just the proper amount of space before it, too is hemmed in.

I think this is a change they made during updates, maybe to address complaints about close neighbors and poor AI. You can’t roll over your neighbors in the early game if you can’t get to them. :)

Travel is invariably through snaking paths through or around mountains, which would be fine for a novelty, but gets really old as the standard.

A couple times I got very nice maps, then realized I had accidentally left the difficulty on the default (prince?). So I think that this obnoxious mapping thing is an undocumented aspect of higher difficulty levels.

3975

I think that’s why I love playing on the largest maps, with big islands/continents, then hope for a good balance of civs spread out enough that we’re not right on top of one another. I have more problems with civs fighting for space than managing exploration and growth on the land around me.

3976

Pirates!