1907

In the good news department. I bumped the game up to Emperor and played Gorgo and lost twice. Once to the Japanese and once to Perciles (I guess it was Greek civil war). I don’t mean me losing like I had a bad start and restarted, (I do that a lot.). I mean the AI did warrior rush marched up to my capital and took me out ended in an actual defeat screen, something I haven’t seen in a decade or more of civ!.

Normally, I build scout, slinger and then granary or monument or builder, but this game since I get culture for killing units I actually build 2 slingers, and rushed build a couple other units. So I was building more military than I normally would.

I guess the next time I notice a pack of warrior approaching my borders, its time to bring my troops home and build more. I also I am pretty sure the AI starts with a settler at the Emperor level (they had 2 cities by the time I had scout, and slinger built, so maybe the higher levels will be challenging, if I have to build a military to defend myself.

1908

I’m kind of curious what will happen now that my religion is effectively eliminated. I started next to Ghandi, who converted all but one of my cities with a seemingly endless supply of many-armed apostles. My turtle-worshippers are a majority nowhere, so I can’t build any Omnian missionaries or inquisitors of my own.

Ghandi himself is no longer an issue since I crushed him in retaliation for repeatedly breaking his promises not to convert my loyal believers.

I’m guessing I’ll have to adopt the new faith, if only to defend against whoever next makes a play for a religious victory. But I’d love to see a few disciples of my own appear in my one city that doesn’t have a majority religion. I’m guessing that won’t happen, though.

1909

On Emperor, they start with three warriors. So it’s not really a warrior rush so much as what they start with.

1910

The day/night cycle should progress over several turns. That’s how it works for me, anyway.

1911

Yup, me too. I’m not looking for a tough as nails AI, I’d rather have one that plays reasonably within the same restrictions as me. I can not stand massive production cheats.

These are the things that are going to keep me from the game. I can forgive certain things easier than others. But this specific set of issues would make the game untenable for me. Getting a relations penalty for joining a war that you asked me to? That is rage quite material for me.

To bang the drum I’ve beat elsewhere: look at Paradox. If your diplomacy isn’t at least 80% as good as theirs, I’m out.

1912

Extra warriors, a settler, and a builder is what they start with. It can be a little bit much when the game decides to be silly and start 2+ civs right on top of you at the start of the game, but it does show that in this iteration, the AI knows how to take a city if it has sufficient forces to do so. It could use a lot of improvements still, but it’s better than Civ5 was.

1913

The game is definitely most fun early on, much like Civ V and really I think most other games in the series. Later on not only does the tedious AI slow down the progress of turns, but because you are so closely interfaced with the other nations their every dumb action becomes painfully clear.

I really don’t understand how it’s possible for AI to slow down game turns at this late date. My CPU must be close to a million times more powerful than the one I was using for Civ II, say, and the AI is no smarter now than it was then. No matter how complicated the game systems, bookkeeping for it is mere arithmetic, no doubt considerably less than a million arithmetic operations per turn, which is to say something like a thousandth of a second in pure math, all told. And pathing is the same complexity problem it’s always been, with the same number of units, too, pretty much. Meanwhile the AI logic for diplomacy and so on is so mechanical it can easily be captured in a compiled rule-based system or for that matter in spaghetti-code, both of which should take no noticeable time to run.

Of course with animations turned on and everything in a single thread there is a huge enforced delay there, but with them turned off I think the entire AI turn should be over in less than a second.

1914

Yeah, you want to stay away from this one, at least 1.0. The diplomatic AI is really bad, especially when you’re used to EU4. And I don’t mean bad as in it performs poorly, I mean that its completely nonsensical most of the times.

I’ve had similar things as Olaf where an AI asks me to join a joint war with him. I agree, only to have the AI hate me because I’m such a mean warmonger. I’ve also had Teddy Roosevelt, who is supposed to hate warmongers on his continent, tell me I had left him no choice and declare war on me, because two other civs (of different continents, at that) declared war on me while I was minding my business. He didn’t get mad at the foreigners attacking his continent, he got mad at the victim that he’s supposed to protect.

That’s not to mention the wars that serve no purpose. It’s the start of the game, there’s land aplenty for everyone to settle cities, yet Pedro of Brazil declares war on you right out the gates. Why do this? Put the resources towards a settler and expand, especially for a country like Brazil that is geared towards a Cultural victory? In the 30+ turns it takes them to march over to my city, I’ve built up defenses and easily fend them off. IMO, the AI should not be declaring war unless it is advantageous for it to do so, or at least in-character (Montezuma, for example).

It’s also got the age-old problem in the franchise of the AI suffering from multiple personality disorder. You’ll be best buds for centuries, declaring friendship, having lucrative trade routes with each other, and exchanging luxuries. Then I’m assuming the AI does a quick strength comparison or something and decides it might win a war, so it attacks only to have it’s inferior forces utterly annihilated.

A lot of people handwaive it off with a “it’s a board game!” but that just doesn’t hold water for me, a lot of these decisions are just poor decisions. And there’s no reason that Civs geared for Cultural victories and the like should be instigating wars with distant nations when they could be peacefully expanding and building wonders.

All in all, it’s a little frustrating that they lifted diplomatic concepts from EU4, like warmonger penalties and having a casus belli reducing those impacts. But none of it matters in the least with how randomly the AI behaves. In my experience, being a warmonger will cause civs to Denounce me, but they always attack me anyway so what does it really matter?

1915

Agreed - it is very fun early on. I enjoy how much more they’ve given the player to ‘do’ or ‘decide’ with the array of not just research and civics but modifying government programs. It seems like more civs than not have some unique features that are available in the very early stages too which lends to more uniqueness or variety.

For me the fun continues well into the mid-game. Government choices really open up and mean something and I’m finding some well positioned districts and/or wonders are game changers and it’s fun to plan it out just so. It’s not until the ‘modern era’ late game that it starts to slog for me.

For something different I’m trying the second-slowest setting and second-largest map. I am loving the early game so much I just don’t want it to end. I’m sure I’ll go to slowest and largest before much longer.

Something that bugs me - not sure if it has been brought up. Some of the screens are really wonky to get out of. Also, on that far right border you get alerted turn to turn about units having upgrades or so-and-so declaring peace. To get them off the screen you right-click but if you also have a unit selected and don’t catch it in time you’ve now also set your unit’s path to the hex under that alert. Annoys.

1916

Yeah, in my experience the AI utterly ignores warmonger penalties itself, and always goes for the surprise attack. Of course it’s not much of a surprise when there are all these pathetic little units trickling your way for 10 turns. It’s like Yamamoto decided Pearl Harbor was no good and decided to attack Topeka instead half the time.

1917

I sure hope these AI complaints are making back to firaxis. At its core, Civ 6 is a great game; It is just that the terrible AI kills it. I really hope they will a serious effort into drastically improving it. Ill agree with the sentiment that the diplomatic AI makes no sense whatsoever. Also, the whole denouncing thing is just nuts. I think every AI constantly denounces every other AI in the game. They do so for the most trivial of things, like a different form of government. This is just wildly unrealistic. I had a friendly AI turn on me because I moved from a merchant republic to a democracy for being a different government. That just makes no sense at all.

1918

Is there a link to where they said this? I find it an interesting statement. The season pass/deluxe edition only mentions map and civilization/leader DLC, so that would be great, as I’ve always found the Civilization games became a bit Frankensteinian after two expansion packs (especially Brave New World for Civ 5). I’d love it if they would stick with the ruleset and improve/iterate on that over the course of some patches and then expand the content, rather than bolt on new systems that might or might not work.

1919

I speculate the designers like having lots of things “happen” so as to hit their stated goal of giving players decisions in every turn. Having the diplomatic AI fibrillate and go insane does indeed force more decisions, and makes the game feel like more things are happening. After all a civ sitting back and just building stuff in its own territory is a boring civ from the designer point of view, which is presumably why it never happens. Conceivably this is also why the AI feels forced to move every unit every turn no matter what is or isn’t happening. Because it makes the game world look superficially more alive. But of course this is just plain stupid. Just click the next turn button if nothing important is happening and move it all right along, rather than deliberately doing stupid stuff to make things look “dynamic”.

1920

If one of their goals was to make the player a decision every turn, then they have totally failed on that. Right now, in my 2nd game, I am just hitting next turn until my rocket pieces get made. Then Ill do that again for a while until I win the science victory. There is absolutely nothing for me to do until I win.

I think the only victory mode that would allow any kind of decision of consequence every turn would be the domination victory. What is worse? Hitting next turn with nothing to do for a 100+ turns or the slog of taking everyone out?

1921

Well as always in games the dev focus is on the early part more than the late. So there are more substantive decisions early on. If the game is winnable at all that’s a victory of sorts, compared to say Beyond Earth with its ludicrous and punitive 50 turn delay on half the victory conditions :)

But yeah, they really should have a new definition of the “domination” victory which can kick in at any time based on “you’re obviously going to win.” Personally I tend to quit in the middle-game when this becomes obvious, but it would be more satisfying for the game to acknowledge it.

1922

Yep, but the idea would be to play the early and mid game and then start a new one. :) The goal would be to play until the outcome is no longer in doubt or the situation no longer interesting.

Currently there’s no “Hall of Fame” screen, as far as I can tell, so the only rewards for victory are Steam Achievements plus whatever sense of accomplishment comes from winning a multi-day game. And one can achieve Steam achievements in quick small-map games if one really wants.

Today I’m going to try the random start that the “Realms Beyond” adventure-creator sent me. It’s sort of like a Civfanatics “Game of the Month,” except that instead of everyone playing the same civ, the organizers send different players different starting civs and positions.

1923

Sorry, none that I have off-hand. I may have inferred more from it than was intended, but early in the publicity run people were asking about “big” expansions and whether stuff like espionage was going to be included from the get-go. They said that everything was going to be included - aside from “small stuff” (my term) - with the release. Of course, they could have just meant everything in Civ V.

1924

During a live-stream, I do recall Ed Beach saying they’d add some diplomatic features. I thought I heard him saying they might add a diplomatic victory. But maybe I misinterpreted what he said.

1925

The thing that I was missing the most was some of my old Civ friends. In particular the one’s with affinity for early game cavalry combat. Your Huns, your Mongols, and my personal favorites, the Shoshone (who I always rename Comanche).

Enter the Scythians. Now THIS is an OP civilzation; at least for early game consideration. Their unique build, a Kurgan (not THE Kurgan), is only so-so. But their other three unique abilities are Godlike in their synergy.

+5 to combat against a wounded enemy. It’s good from any unit, melee or ranged.

Heal unit up to 50pts when finishing off an enemy (decisive victory). Again, good whether attacking unit was melee or ranged.

Special unit for the civ is called the Saka Horse Archer. It unlocks with the early Classical tech - Horseback Riding and replaces the first Light Cavalry unit, the Horseman. It only has 15 melee attack (vs. 35 melee standard Horseman) but it has a short ranged attack (1 hex) of 25. Standard 4 moves/turn. In and of itself this isn’t a gamechanger BUT every time a city builds a Saka Horse Archer (or, later, any Light Cavalry type unit) a second unit is created for free.

This is huge and I’m quite enjoying roaming the grasslands and the plains of my current game with my Sakas. Further synergy includes getting the ‘civic’ Conscription to reduce gold cost of supporting so many units and also the one that gives +100% production to Ancient or Classical Light or Heavy Cavalry units. Bigly yuge! Believe me.

In researching what I was seeing further I found another way that the Scythians appear OP; it involves building Saka units (2 for 1) and selling them off and taking the gold. They can nerf that last part for all care but just keep giving my my Scythian Saka goodness!

1926

I may be missing something, but man the civics are a few interesting choices and a bunch of “pick this if you are role-playing or something, because it sure ain’t anywhere in sniffing distance of optimal.”

Conscription is definitely one of the heavy hitters. Later on it matters less when 30g/turn isn’t a ton, but you need to keep a decent army around in this game and the money is yuge.

Scythians sound fun! I’ll definitely check them out.