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chaosapiant posted:Couldn't the same be said for the entire game? The player doesn't control anything the AI does, spies included. The entire game is built around empire building and disaster mitigation. I don't mean natural disasters either. I mean the idea is to progress your Civ to a "winning point" in the game while mitigating all the other factors that try to make you lose. That's the conflict and what makes the game interesting. You've got natural disasters, barbarians, city states, other Civs and myriad other little things all of which the player does not control directly. We can influence some of it. But I think that's the fun. Spies just add another layer to this. It could be argued that the layer doesn't add enough to be worth the trouble, but for the most part I subscribe to the belief that more options, however limited, are usually better. There's a difference between making decisions that leaves you vulnerable to invasion by an AI, and the choices you have available to you in order to counter that invasion, and a random dice roll resulting in one of your improvements being destroyed. Though you don't 'control the AI' (and 'control' isn't my point), you have many choices for dealing with them, and many of these choices are the result of choices you made earlier in the game. There's play and counterplay for war, diplomacy, the victory conditions. What are you choices for the whack-a-mole nature of spies? You can run counter-espionage missions, and some other options, but all these really end up doing is changing the likelyhood of them happening - it's not adequant counterplay. Likewise, what are your options after an improvement is destroyed or production is sabotaged? Well, nothing really. You just replace the improvement or start from square one. If you get invaded by the AI and lose a city, it is because you made choices that resulted in you not having adequate defense for that city. Your choices in the aftermath also change depending on the situation. You have counterplay. If a spy blows up your production, its because they got a lucky diceroll, and your option here (short of declaring war) is to just resume play. It's the same thing with the natural disasters. Its just things happening to the player and, while some might thinks that this would result in gameplay that measures how the player can react to unexpected situations, it's not meaningful if the reaction is always the same.
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Feb 28, 2019 19:22
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chaosapiant posted:Speaking of Civ 4, I miss the way workers "worked" in that game. I miss having road spaghetti, different poo poo to build like cottages and forts and what not. It allowed every turn to have "more" to do that could also be meaningful. Workers/Builders are so streamlined now that I imagine in another game or two they'll be gone completely. I'm not sure if I really like workers/builders at all. It honestly feels like unnecessary micro. I feel like I'd prefer a system more in line with Call to Power where you basically just selected improvements and placed them onto a tile and they cost gold + turns for them to be completed. Something similar, maybe applying citizens within a city to 'work' a tile until they create an improvement over the span of X turns.
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Feb 28, 2019 19:38
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Frankly it would make sense if working a tile just automatically improved it, maybe after a few turns. Because, like, what exactly are you doing to those fish, without fishing boats?
Clarste fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 19:41
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Clarste posted:Frankly it would make sense if working a tile just automatically improved it, maybe after a few turns. Because, like, what exactly are you doing to those fish, without fishing boats? I assume you are fishing from the shore. Similarly, for other resources before improvements. You are gathering enough of the thing to get the base tile yield boost, but not enough to get a full boost that comes with specialized infrastructure, which must be built (e.g., mines, stables, plantations, etc.).
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Feb 28, 2019 19:59
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Call to power's infrastructure budget system was cool and good and is what civ should do. No more builders, just click and improve. A big problem I'm having in civ6 is not noticing that pillaged fishery for 100 turns, or not noticing I never actually built a mine on that iron deposit. The maps are big, the graphics push style over clarity, and there isn't even a way to automate builders to fix things.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:01
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Borsche69 posted:There's a difference between making decisions that leaves you vulnerable to invasion by an AI, and the choices you have available to you in order to counter that invasion, and a random dice roll resulting in one of your improvements being destroyed. I see your point regarding how to handle the situations. Is there a casus belli for espionage? If so, then at least that could be a fun element. Let a Civ spy on you so you can declare war with less penalty. Otherwise, just either have enough gold to buy a builder in a pinch to fix pillaged/destroyed tiles, or keep a few on hand. While it’s true you can’t necessarily stop the AI from doing sillydumb poo poo, you can mitigate and often use it to your advantage. To me, that bit of push and pull is what’s exciting.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:18
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got a giant death robot and it's about the most fun i've had in this game full on pacific rim (job)
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Feb 28, 2019 20:29
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I do miss worker automation. After I do all the "real" resources manually, I'd love to be able to go back to the automation of previous games, where I can just build over any improvements that the AI put in and not have it overwrite those, but that it would overwrite its own. I do like workers more than Call to Power, because they can be captured and because of the odd mechanisms that lets you spend their charges on other things.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:40
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Kanfy posted:Unless you played FFH2 and Tasunke rode a thousand horsemen into your capital city out of nowhere using your own roads thanks to the Raiders trait. Better to cover every tile in your empire with forest as the Ljosalfar. I think they even got movement bonus in woodlands, so if your cities were connected to the trade network through lying on the coast or on rivers, you didn't need roads.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:42
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Dragongem posted:Curious question - how long do multiplayer games usually take? I'm sort of interested, but it's rare for me to have more than 2-3 hours available in one chunk of time. Banlist multiplayer games have usually that time spam or less. At he start there's a bid battle royale where usually some survive, then someone decided that they need to catch up with he leader usually by preying on their neighbors. Then it's clear who wins usually, if that's not the case then you get into he epic games.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:59
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I just saw something I never expected. My city state allies ganged up on a person I was at war with on another continent (joint war declaration). They basically took out Pedro's defences on a costal city, and I steamrolled in and took it. Don't think they are programmed to conquer, but hilarious none the less. He was already screwed from having his capital taken, but still.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:00
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Sedge and Bee posted:I just saw something I never expected. My city state allies ganged up on a person I was at war with on another continent (joint war declaration). They basically took out Pedro's defences on a costal city, and I steamrolled in and took it. Don't think they are programmed to conquer, but hilarious none the less. He was already screwed from having his capital taken, but still. City states will absolutely raze a player's city like this. It's hilarious when it happens in MP.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:01
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chaosapiant posted:Couldn't the same be said for the entire game? The player doesn't control anything the AI does, spies included. The entire game is built around empire building and disaster mitigation. I don't mean natural disasters either. I mean the idea is to progress your Civ to a "winning point" in the game while mitigating all the other factors that try to make you lose. That's the conflict and what makes the game interesting. You've got natural disasters, barbarians, city states, other Civs and myriad other little things all of which the player does not control directly. We can influence some of it. But I think that's the fun. Spies just add another layer to this. It could be argued that the layer doesn't add enough to be worth the trouble, but for the most part I subscribe to the belief that more options, however limited, are usually better. Essentially spies are too much faff for too little reward. Everything else is a lot more binary but all I'm really getting out of spies is a tech boost maybe (although I'm rarely behind) or stopping the AI stealing my gold. It's not exciting.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:41
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Speaking of spies, there was a small change no one's mentioned where spies on a listening post will give +2 visibility if they're a secret agent or above. If anyone's forgotten, you get +3 combat strength on all units per visibility you have over your opponents, so you could either play as de Medici and level up your free, early spy for an easier +9 strength against someone specific or play as Genghis Khan, level the spy up and get +18 strength if you also send them a trade route. Granted, Khan probably doesn't work as well in multiplayer where no one is going to want you to send them trade routes for that extra visibility, leaving you on equal ground on the visibility front.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:55
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The problem with spies is there isn't a "front" for them. If an army comes rolling across your border, you go and face it. But if a spy blows up a fishery on some island, it's just annoying to replace. Overall it doesn't actually hurt you that much, but it is a pain to fix. It would be a similar level of frustration is instead of an army having to travel, they just appeared in the middle of your empire and started pillaging stuff. Yea you can fight them off, but its way more engaging to head them off at the pass, as it were.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:59
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I like the level of detail for spies when I'm doing offensive stuff, but I wish it was a lot easier to just tell it to keep defending [CITY] until I tell you do something else
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Feb 28, 2019 22:03
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My only real problem with spies as it is now is that every spy operation is treated as being the same diplomatically. Like yeah siphoning funds or stealing a tech boost would be a relatively minor diplomatic incident but recruiting partisans and blowing up dams are full on acts of war. At least in BE if you detonated a nuke in someone's city and got caught they would automatically declare war on you because you just detonated a loving nuke in their city
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Feb 28, 2019 22:08
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The Glumslinger posted:I like the level of detail for spies when I'm doing offensive stuff, but I wish it was a lot easier to just tell it to keep defending [CITY] until I tell you do something else Yeah this would be a good change
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Feb 28, 2019 22:10
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Bluff Buster posted:Speaking of spies, there was a small change no one's mentioned where spies on a listening post will give +2 visibility if they're a secret agent or above. If anyone's forgotten, you get +3 combat strength on all units per visibility you have over your opponents, so you could either play as de Medici and level up your free, early spy for an easier +9 strength against someone specific or play as Genghis Khan, level the spy up and get +18 strength if you also send them a trade route. Is visibility uncapped? I assumed it doesn't go above 4 (Top Secret), so you could only have +12 at most (+9 if they have Printing Press). Though that's still a huge advantage, at +10 strength difference you do 44 damage on average and take 20 on average.
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Feb 28, 2019 22:10
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Staltran posted:Is visibility uncapped? I assumed it doesn't go above 4 (Top Secret), so you could only have +12 at most (+9 if they have Printing Press). Though that's still a huge advantage, at +10 strength difference you do 44 damage on average and take 20 on average. I couldn't find any information on whether visibility is capped, but I know that Mongolia's visibility bonus is doubled thanks to its trait, so assuming it's capped you could still get up to +24 as Mongolia, although that assumes opponents are doing nothing whatsoever. Still, if you're at war against someone, there are only 3 ways for non-Mongolian civs/non-de Medici leaders to have visibility on the opponent: 1) Printing press tech (+1 visibility) 2) Spy on listening post (+1, +2 if spy is secret agent) (This doesn't stack with multiple spies) 3) Great Merchant Mary Katherine Goddard (+1) If someone here with multiplayer experience can tell me how spies tend to fit in their games, I'd be curious to know.
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Feb 28, 2019 23:13
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Bluff Buster posted:
I've only played a few PYDT games with other goons but it was in one of those that I discovered that "recruit partisans" was a thing. Until that moment I had only used spies to siphon gold or defend my spaceports against the AI but being on the receiving end when suddenly 4-5 modern armors and artillery spawn around your capital was something else. In the end they were more of a nuisance than anything else since I was already making a final push on the last remaining player but ever since I tend to remember to build spies more often. My take on spying in MP is that they are an excellent tool to mess with other players. And now with dams to blow up... 
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Feb 28, 2019 23:35
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Ulvino posted:I've only played a few PYDT games with other goons but it was in one of those that I discovered that "recruit partisans" was a thing. Until that moment I had only used spies to siphon gold or defend my spaceports against the AI but being on the receiving end when suddenly 4-5 modern armors and artillery spawn around your capital was something else. In the end they were more of a nuisance than anything else since I was already making a final push on the last remaining player but ever since I tend to remember to build spies more often. I did the same to someone in another game. Neighborhoods are not your friend when you place them no where near another district. I try avoiding them in MP games if at all possible because of just how nasty partisan attacks are. You really don’t have a defense until you counterspy it, and if half your empire is being spammed.. rip. I tend to use spies to steal massive chunks of gold, or steal great works primarily otherwise, only counterspy when I have a lot of enemy spy activity, or one of my spies got both of the stay at home and buff everyone promotions.. It is very rare you’ll get a perfect, or sometimes even good spy that is worth more than a single activity or staying at home to not risk a capture. Your spies are only as good as their promotions are, which is the real problem as that is all rng. You get a spy that gets the option to reduce mission timer by 25%, +4 to escape, and +2 levels to activity and they will make you swim in great works / gold / enemy tears from partisans spawning every three turns.
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Mar 1, 2019 00:05
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I could be misremembering, but I think if your spy is ready for a promotion and you instead complete another mission with him, you reroll what promotions you can take. If it's right, it's still a bit risky because the success of your spies depends largely on their level, even with weaker promotions.
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Mar 1, 2019 00:11
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Keep an apostle near your neighbourhoods, with the heathen conversion ability, and you can turn spy uprisings into a free army, which is always nice.
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Mar 1, 2019 01:46
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Honestly I tend to play on medium difficulties (mostly King) and tend to play peacefully so I don't mind the uprisings too much because they force me to actually maintain an army and do things with it. Still counterspy though because it always seems to spawn whatever your strongest land unit is aside from GDR's and they still take a couple turns to get rid of usually. Like I said though it's just a bit weird that it doesn't generate any more grievance than a spy laundering money in my commercial district considering spawning partisans actively results in significant death and property damage
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Mar 1, 2019 02:23
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Also was playing on an island plates Map, and climate change has absolutely wrecked the Netherlands. So it's bad, but it definitely hits some maps worse than others
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Mar 1, 2019 02:24
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The fact that you can't buy flood barriers has hosed me more than once actually because once climate change gets going it advances like every 9 turns so if you have a city with floodable tiles and lovely production it can be really hard to keep up with it.
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Mar 1, 2019 02:26
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I'm just resigned to that fact that climate change will always max out inevitably so either put myself in a position to rush the computers tech or work around the tiles that will flood.
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Mar 1, 2019 03:23
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It's also fun that if I do manage to get my flood barriers up before the coastal tiles start disappearing, I couldn't give less of a gently caress about climate change. I can deal with the increase in disasters and all my land is staying where it is so DRILL BABY DRILL.
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Mar 1, 2019 03:26
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Roger Explosion posted:It's also fun that if I do manage to get my flood barriers up before the coastal tiles start disappearing, I couldn't give less of a gently caress about climate change. I can deal with the increase in disasters and all my land is staying where it is so DRILL BABY DRILL. That's what I did last game, it's great cause it softened a bunch of the AIs up, but glorious Hungary and her levied armies were safe behind their walls. In fact I rushed computers (way ahead of the normal point, just as people were starting to get oil tech), then started building as many oil consuming units as possible just to hurry it along. It's pretty great if you plan it. Early campuses and making friends with the scientific city-states.
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Mar 1, 2019 04:00
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Baronjutter posted:Call to power's infrastructure budget system was cool and good and is what civ should do. No more builders, just click and improve. This gets me a lot too. Disasters compound it even more and if one of your dumbfuck allies decides to park a military unit on your busted mine then you have to wait for them to move. chaosapiant posted:Speaking of Civ 4, I miss the way workers "worked" in that game. I miss having road spaghetti, different poo poo to build like cottages and forts and what not. It allowed every turn to have "more" to do that could also be meaningful. Workers/Builders are so streamlined now that I imagine in another game or two they'll be gone completely. Speaking of roads, another thing I don't like in this is that a lot of districts and wonders will make it so you can't see if there is a road on that tile. It looks bad visually because it appears that your roads start and stop randomly and especially bad in terms of design because you can't see at a glance what is one of the more important pieces of the map's geography.
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Mar 1, 2019 04:24
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I think roads are automatically built on any district. so the roads feed into it.
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Mar 1, 2019 05:14
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Every time I start a game with the Maori, i land in what looks like a good place, then find out its filled with city states and the exact opposite direction I went is an amazing untouched land. I would not be surprised if real elevation appears in Civ7.
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Mar 1, 2019 05:18
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Playing as Eleanor is pretty great. Favorite moment so far is stealing Persia's capital instantly with a Rock Band with the Indie promotion. Who needs armies when I can take cities with the power of rock?
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Mar 1, 2019 06:04
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Kooriken posted:Playing as Eleanor is pretty great. Favorite moment so far is stealing Persia's capital instantly with a Rock Band with the Indie promotion. Who needs armies when I can take cities with the power of rock? This post just killed any remaining desire I had to try the expac. Thank you.
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Mar 1, 2019 06:12
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:The problem with spies is there isn't a "front" for them. If an army comes rolling across your border, you go and face it. But if a spy blows up a fishery on some island, it's just annoying to replace. Overall it doesn't actually hurt you that much, but it is a pain to fix. This is a fun comparison to make since, as people have mentioned, one of the spy actions is to make an army just appear and start pillaging stuff. It's a bad mechanic.
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Mar 1, 2019 07:12
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Ok these Rock Bands can get kinda nuts. I have a lucky one who got +2 levels on Wonders and half gold from tourism in concerts, it's just been going and going for like 10 turns now performing a concert every turn in the wonder-spamming AI lands and each concert earns me 7k-9k gold and it keeps going up.
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Mar 1, 2019 07:27
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Rock Bands are kind of crazy in terms of RNG. I've noticed that the chance of retiring drops when they earn a promotion, going as low as 12.5%, meaning that a single rock band on a streak is usually enough to brute force your way to a culture victory. I'm also quite fond of spies for peaceful expansion. With cryptography and a quartermaster your high-level spies will hit a 90% success rate pretty easy, and you can drop most neighboring cities to 0 loyalty with repeat applications of the Neutralize Governor and Foment Unrest actions. Gobblecoque posted:Speaking of roads, another thing I don't like in this is that a lot of districts and wonders will make it so you can't see if there is a road on that tile. It looks bad visually because it appears that your roads start and stop randomly and especially bad in terms of design because you can't see at a glance what is one of the more important pieces of the map's geography. All wonders and districts automatically have a road built when you start construction. You sometimes see those single-tile roundabouts if you get beaten to a wonder or if a city changes leaders while building a district. One of my main beefs with the game is that the designers put visual clarity ahead of aesthetics, but also made some really weird-rear end choices in what counts as visual clarity.
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Mar 1, 2019 07:52
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:All wonders and districts automatically have a road built when you start construction. You sometimes see those single-tile roundabouts if you get beaten to a wonder or if a city changes leaders while building a district. Incidentally, railroads are not automatically built, and if you want railroads in your district (and city!) tiles you need to build them manually, though there's no visual indicator for a railroad in a district or city (though you can barely make out the connection on the edge).
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Mar 1, 2019 08:28
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Way too dumb to figure it out on my own but if I want to just play really tall with 2-3 cities who should I pick? Inca and Kongo but who else? Is it housing that typically gates tall?
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Mar 1, 2019 08:37
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