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I had a neighboring city with so few tiles that when it flipped to free cities, one of their units spawned in my territory. I thought "aw gently caress," but when the next turn came around and the city had registered it was going to flip to me, the unit despawned and the remaining units left me alone. I have no idea what mechanically led to that, but anecdotally, free cities leave me alone if I'm the one they'll flip to and I leave their territory alone.
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Oct 5, 2020 12:57
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:The total "lol" random aspect civ6 is migrating to doesn't seem fun at all. Basically as long as you don't go into dark ages, it's fine domestically in your empire. But when your random AI neighbors go into dark ages they spawn an unending amount of era-parity units without production or resource costs and those spawned units just attack you exclusively? Why is this considered good game design and not just admitting that Firaxis created a game their AI can't play? I dig it, honestly. The alternative is, what? Grind out another culture win but with a marginally different playstyle based on an expansion Civ's powers? Been there, done that. Dramatic ages keep things interesting and really imbue a game with a story. A crazy, crazy story.
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Oct 5, 2020 13:16
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Marmaduke! posted:No, it's designed to go against the player. If you do the partisan spy mission in an enemy neighborhood the barbarian troops that spawn will attack your own territory if it's at all possible, even they're already deep in territory that they could butcher Thats not true Many times I had partisans spawn in my territory that just decided to go and attack a neighbor civ or even a city state
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Oct 5, 2020 13:34
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:The total "lol" random aspect civ6 is migrating to doesn't seem fun at all. Basically as long as you don't go into dark ages, it's fine domestically in your empire. But when your random AI neighbors go into dark ages they spawn an unending amount of era-parity units without production or resource costs and those spawned units just attack you exclusively? Why is this considered good game design and not just admitting that Firaxis created a game their AI can't play? Obligatory reminder that these modes are meant to be toggled on/off in various combinations to provide a catered experience.
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Oct 5, 2020 14:24
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Elias_Maluco posted:Thats not true That's so weird! So the AI Barbs could make odd decisions on who to attack even when it happens to the human player as well. Every time it's happened in my territory they just attack my stuff (in particular beelining for trade routes), but it has been a while for me.
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Oct 5, 2020 18:43
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Elias_Maluco posted:Thats not true I have also seen this happen, I think they liked the idea of beating up on the France than trying to deal with the half dozen tanks I had nearby They will generally stay in my territory, but I've seen them go after neighbors if they spawned in a border city
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Oct 5, 2020 18:47
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Rimusutera posted:Obligatory reminder that these modes are meant to be toggled on/off in various combinations to provide a catered experience. It's more endemic of how they've designed the game. The fact that dramatic ages are a thing is fine. It's the spawning barbarians with era-appropriate units for free that I dislike. Basically AI players are rewarded for hitting dark ages with free units. I don't even have a problem with free units for the AI, but that is not a thing with any other mechanic in the games (except starting difficulty), and it's triggered by the AI being lovely at managing it's empire, a failure of AI to engage with the games mechanics.
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Oct 6, 2020 00:36
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Chad Sexington posted:I dig it, honestly. The alternative is, what? Grind out another culture win but with a marginally different playstyle based on an expansion Civ's powers? Been there, done that. I just need to tailor my play style. I usually go for science or culture and I'm not used to maintaining a huge army early in the game, but you sort of have to have one in place if you hit a dark age, or you're just done.
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Oct 6, 2020 00:58
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:It's more endemic of how they've designed the game. The fact that dramatic ages are a thing is fine. It's the spawning barbarians with era-appropriate units for free that I dislike. Basically AI players are rewarded for hitting dark ages with free units. I don't even have a problem with free units for the AI, but that is not a thing with any other mechanic in the games (except starting difficulty), and it's triggered by the AI being lovely at managing it's empire, a failure of AI to engage with the games mechanics. There's two things going on here. On one hand you're using a confirmation bias of perceiving the Barbs/Free City units etc attacking you exclusively; they definitely do fight the AI civs as well, you're just not likely paying attention or taking note of it. On the other you're using the Dramatic Ages mode to make sweeping generalizations about the design of the game and overstate problems; this is supposed to be a wonkier, closer to originally designed before they toned it down to the balanced. version of the Ages mechanic. Its meant to hit you harder, its meant to come out of left field, its also supposed to throw a wrench at the AI too. You get hit hard if the AI being in a Golden Age while you get slammed with a Dark Age too. How is the AI getting a Dark Age not engaging with the mechanics? There's unique policy cards. There's normally an advantage to succeeding to get a Golden Age post Dark Age too Would you want the AI to never get a Dark Age, especially in this mode?
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Oct 6, 2020 01:40
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I don't mind the effects of the dark and golden ages in the new mode, but I think there should still be a middle ground between "you're kicking rear end, good job!" and "lol what empire? barb printer go brrr." I feel like I'm set up for a long, annoying game if I don't prepare to retake one of my cities by the end of the first era just in case I'm a point shy.
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Oct 6, 2020 10:55
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SaturdayKnight posted:I gotta say, the dramatic ages mode makes the game much more dramatic. Playing as Arabia, my Egyptian neighbor had a really rough dark age and lost literally their entire empire to free cities, which then proceeded to spawn endless cavalrymen and cannons to chuck directly into my empire without a real declaration of war. Their cities for some reason went up to absolutely bonkers defensive numbers, so it took forever to put down my insane anarchy neighbor who did nothing but pillage my countryside. It was an interesting game for sure. ate poo poo on live tv posted:The total "lol" random aspect civ6 is migrating to doesn't seem fun at all. Basically as long as you don't go into dark ages, it's fine domestically in your empire. But when your random AI neighbors go into dark ages they spawn an unending amount of era-parity units without production or resource costs and those spawned units just attack you exclusively? Why is this considered good game design and not just admitting that Firaxis created a game their AI can't play? I'm not interested in any of the new game modes either but replying to a post talking about AI Egypt literally being destroyed by free cities to claim that free cities exclusively attack human players, and that losing cities to a dark age is actually a reward for the AI, is pretty bonkers.
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Oct 6, 2020 12:06
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Organic Lube User posted:I don't mind the effects of the dark and golden ages in the new mode, but I think there should still be a middle ground between "you're kicking rear end, good job!" and "lol what empire? barb printer go brrr." I feel like I'm set up for a long, annoying game if I don't prepare to retake one of my cities by the end of the first era just in case I'm a point shy. The lack of middle ground is the beauty and the tension of it! You're 10 turns out from the end of the age and you have to make a decision: can you grind out that era score in the time remaining or should you set to work preparing to kill the free cities barbs and recapture your city? Both are fun in my experience. I've hit a golden age with a turn to spare and the relief was palpable. I've also held off settling a city to see which cities of mine would flip in a Dark Age. In both cases I felt smart and powerful, which is part of the joy of the game IMO. Chad Sexington fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Oct 6, 2020 |
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Oct 6, 2020 13:53
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I don't think it should happen until medieval era at the earliest. It completely changes the focus of the game when your empire basically dissolves because you didn't get quite enough research boosts. If there was some sort of in-game justification for the city losses it might not annoy me so much, but it just seems completely arbitrary and unjustified. I was playing a game with Trajan as my neighbor, and when the ancient era ended he lost his second city. Apparently he was already up to swordsmen tech, though, because the city just started spawning archers and swordsmen while I just had some spearmen. Then he declared a surprise war on me.
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Oct 6, 2020 14:26
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The middle between "you're kicking rear end!" and "lol what empire" is turning it off. Preparing contingencies is adjusting your behavior to a new circumstance, its good practice and means the mode is actually impacting gameplay like it should.Staltran posted:I'm not interested in any of the new game modes either but replying to a post talking about AI Egypt literally being destroyed by free cities to claim that free cities exclusively attack human players, and that losing cities to a dark age is actually a reward for the AI, is pretty bonkers. To their credit they're saying the Free Cities exclusively attack the player, to a post that describes the Free City units attacking that player heavily, not that the Free Cities exclusively spawn from the player while replying to to a post describing Free Cities spawning from an AI.
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Oct 6, 2020 14:56
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Rimusutera posted:To their credit they're saying the Free Cities exclusively attack the player, to a post that describes the Free City units attacking that player heavily, not that the Free Cities exclusively spawn from the player while replying to to a post describing Free Cities spawning from an AI. If Free Cities exclusively attack the player, how did the AI Egypt lose their whole empire? I suppose it could have been loyalty pressure, which I didn't consider before, but it seems a lot more likely the free cities attacked Egypt too.
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Oct 6, 2020 16:57
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Staltran posted:If Free Cities exclusively attack the player, how did the AI Egypt lose their whole empire? I suppose it could have been loyalty pressure, which I didn't consider before, but it seems a lot more likely the free cities attacked Egypt too. From entering a Dark Age  Free Cities spawn enmasse and apply loyalty pressure which could combine with pressure from other Civs. Also the description was general and possibly hyperbolic enough that "literally their entire empire" could just mean "most of it" but that's up the original poster to clarify. Regardless, Nothing that was said directly states the Free City units took the remaining Egyptian cities directly and you're just making assumptions.
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Oct 6, 2020 17:06
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I have the opposite issue where I farm the poo poo out of free cities for plunder (hey thanks for repairing that library again) and a near infinite supply of workers
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Oct 6, 2020 17:14
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Staltran posted:If Free Cities exclusively attack the player, how did the AI Egypt lose their whole empire? I suppose it could have been loyalty pressure, which I didn't consider before, but it seems a lot more likely the free cities attacked Egypt too. Loyalty. Egypt bit the dust entirely to loyalty pressure. Their last 2 cities never took any damage and had no pillaged tiles, so it seems unlikely that the free cities attacked those cities. In fairness though, those cities lasted maybe 15 turns after the dark age broke Egypt to little bits, and Egypt had no other neighbor except me. Phoenicia was the other neighbor and there was a hell of a lot of space between them. Egypt/Anarchy Egypt wouldn’t have been trying to get to them while I was literally right there. I can’t definitively state those free cities only had it out for me because, well, nobody but me was nearby to take the brunt of the attack. It made sense in that game that they would be going after me, because I had between spies and cultists been blowing their empire to shreds via loyalty so I would imagine those people would’ve been mad at me. From a purely game design perspective it doesn’t really bother me that the human player gets singled out because I’ve seen the AI do utter dumb poo poo in wars against other AI that they’ve also done to me, like getting a city to zero health and then just  not take the city. In a different game Spain and America went to war and America literally bulldozed Spain but they took exclusively cities deep in Spanish territory they would never be able to hold because of the massive surrounding loyalty pressure and eventually peaced out having wasted their entire army on nothing. Starting at the edge and working inward would’ve been game over for Spain, but the AI didn’t do that.E: for clarity, Egypt had like 7 cities, dark age hit, 5 cities went rogue, the last two were too small to continue existing and Cleopatra was removed from the game. I had been intentionally messing with loyalty levels in their largest cities before the dark age hit them to see if I could influence which cities went rogue and it appears that if you drop a cities loyalty before the dark age hits, it counts as a “disloyal city” even though the surrounding pressure means it would just go back up to 100 in 3 turns. SaturdayKnight fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Oct 6, 2020 |
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Oct 6, 2020 17:52
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The Glumslinger posted:I have the opposite issue where I farm the poo poo out of free cities for plunder (hey thanks for repairing that library again) and a near infinite supply of workers They do fart out builders at a pretty good clip.
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Oct 6, 2020 21:22
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Staltran posted:If Free Cities exclusively attack the player, how did the AI Egypt lose their whole empire? I suppose it could have been loyalty pressure, which I didn't consider before, but it seems a lot more likely the free cities attacked Egypt too. I had to liberate Meroe just so I could later get the achievement for conquering it in a formal war 
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Oct 7, 2020 04:18
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Albino Squirrel posted:The free cities put loyalty pressure on surrounding cities. I saw a 3 city Nubia, alone in their desert, lose two cities to a dark age and then saw their capital loyalty flip like 10 turns later. My favorite is when you conquer a city that was a previous empire's capital and allow the empire to rejoin. ESPECIALLY when they are ages behind everyone else. AND MORE ESPECIALLY when they decide to start poo poo with you
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Oct 7, 2020 05:04
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Dramatic ages is such a fun game mode but it should work like civil wars did in civ 2 All I remember is at some point in that game I made a bunch of battleships or something similar on the easiest difficulty and conquered one civ’s capital and it caused their empire to split in two and a NEW civ appeared and introduced itself. It was awesome. Let feee cities form civilizations across former borders! For a brighter tomorrow free of Canada’s inability to gain era score!!
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Oct 8, 2020 06:23
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Tom Tucker posted:All I remember is at some point in that game I made a bunch of battleships or something similar on the easiest difficulty and conquered one civ’s capital and it caused their empire to split in two and a NEW civ appeared and introduced itself. It was awesome. You could do that in Civ 4 even, and it was possible if the game errored in the right way, that you could create a new nation led by Sid Meier himself as an 'emergency catch' civilization. I did it ... once, when I was playing with max nations, and was spawning new nations as overseas vassals when he showed up.
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Oct 8, 2020 06:56
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Yeah, I don't think I'd mind dramatic ages as much if the way free cities functioned were changed. They should be able to meet certain thresholds to create entirely new city-states or even nations. And while we're at it, let's make city-states not suck anymore. They're basically just pokemon right now.
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Oct 8, 2020 10:14
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Tjhats my biggest wish for Civ 6: make city states more than loot boxes you invest points in to get treasures. Let we have some diplomacy with them, some interactions, let them have some agency. Even in Civ 5 they were more interactive: even if by the end of the day gold was the way to get them on your side, there was other ways to influence them. The envoy system is a step back, imo And make something interesting with independent cities, and maybe barbarian camps in later ages I know Im on the minority here but I would have preferred another DLC/expansion that developed aspects of the normal game, like city states, other than the wacky hilarious new game modes we got on frontier pass
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Oct 8, 2020 11:48
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Tom Tucker posted:Dramatic ages is such a fun game mode but it should work like civil wars did in civ 2 A new civ appeared? Which one? Organic Lube User posted:Yeah, I don't think I'd mind dramatic ages as much if the way free cities functioned were changed. They should be able to meet certain thresholds to create entirely new city-states or even nations. I haven't played dramatic ages (haven't bought the pass yet), but what don't you like about them? Do they basically function as city states, minus the envoys and associated bonuses? Do they engage in offensive warfare with anyone, or purely defensive? I'm not sure how they could made CSs not suck in that regard, coming from GS. Maybe put envoy/suzerainty limits on them based on some calculation of your output of science/production/etc? Suzerainty bonuses certainly need to be rethought - some of them are situationally useful (Babylon, Hattusa), some are always useful (Mohenjo Daro, Zanzibar), and some are all but useless (Nazca, Carthage). Maybe have CSs of the same type go to war if they're within a certain proximity? Have militaristic ones attack anyone nearby unless that civ has an envoy?
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Oct 8, 2020 12:01
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City states is just a clicker game. I always turn them off.
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Oct 8, 2020 13:19
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Shooting Blanks posted:I haven't played dramatic ages (haven't bought the pass yet), but what don't you like about them? Do they basically function as city states, minus the envoys and associated bonuses? Do they engage in offensive warfare with anyone, or purely defensive? They just act like any other city that you lose to loyalty pressure, attacking anyone nearby. The difference is they exert loyalty pressure so if there's a clump of them it can be hard to hold any one city without capping them all. Also they generate frequent builders for some reason.
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Oct 8, 2020 13:46
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The map should start with a bunch of free citys scattered around like city states you can take over or use envoys to claim and bring into your territory (recruit with religion or culture too?) Other civs don't get mad if you take them either.
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Oct 8, 2020 16:56
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GodFish posted:The map should start with a bunch of free citys scattered around like city states you can take over or use envoys to claim and bring into your territory (recruit with religion or culture too?) Other civs don't get mad if you take them either. It would be a really interesting mechanic to have all CSs join whatever civ has suzerainty at the beginning of a certain age (maybe Industrial? I'm not sure) that is immune to loyalty pressure. It would very much shake up how you consider friendships/alliances, because while you could just conquer city states near your territory but far from home, starting those wars would also force other civs to consider attacking yours. I guess it would make it a far more binary game of "be friends with everyone, have CSs wherever" or "play domination, only care about CSs near you or easy to defend." Probably a half baked idea, but with some thought it might shake up the game.
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Oct 8, 2020 17:14
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I feel like I wind up with suzerainty over most, if not all city states most games anyway, regardless of how I play. And the AI seems mostly just to conquer them. I'd welcome anything to kind of change up that status quo or force more meaningful decisions. Like maybe there should be more opportunity costs for envoys... maybe they could also be used to prop up flagging loyalty in cities you hold instead of being used for city states?
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Oct 8, 2020 17:24
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With city states, I get suzerainty of ones closest to my nearest neighbours, then declare war on the neighbours and watch the city states wreck them. I'm sure they also wipe out capital cities if they manage to conquer one. Also saves on the diplomacy penalties for taking down their last city.
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Oct 8, 2020 18:17
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Free Cities becoming City States in and of themselves after a time is probably the most interesting idea, but its difficult to implement that when every City State is meant to have unique abilities.
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Oct 8, 2020 18:24
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ellspurs posted:With city states, I get suzerainty of ones closest to my nearest neighbours, then declare war on the neighbours and watch the city states wreck them. I'm sure they also wipe out capital cities if they manage to conquer one. Also saves on the diplomacy penalties for taking down their last city. That never happes in my games My ally CS usually just sit on their butts and attack the enemy only if they happen to pass inside or very near their land At least the same also happens when Im attacked and the enemy has CS near me
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Oct 8, 2020 18:26
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My attempts to run Gaul games without skewing the map gen in their favour has been repeatedly dissatisfying. Keep ending up too boxed in and unable to expand without relying on an early Gaestea push and those can actually sputter pretty flat at times. They've really good potential from everything Ive seen but man am I just not getting the RNG in my favour lately, beyond frustrating my usual pickyness.
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Oct 8, 2020 21:39
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Shooting Blanks posted:A new civ appeared? Which one? Not new like a civ that couldn't appear any other way, just new in the sense of "new in this particular game". Back in Civ 2 the civs had fixed colours and you couldn't get two civs with the same colour (so The Celts and the Romans were both white, for example, so no game could have both civs). When a nation fell into civil war, the new civ would be a civ from one of the currently unused colours (so a civil war in Spain could create Mongolia, for example). If all the colours were taken, civil wars couldn't happen.
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Oct 8, 2020 21:58
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Rimusutera posted:My attempts to run Gaul games without skewing the map gen in their favour has been repeatedly dissatisfying. Keep ending up too boxed in and unable to expand without relying on an early Gaestea push and those can actually sputter pretty flat at times. Have you tried the new Highland map?
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Oct 10, 2020 00:11
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Who is the best civ to play as if I want to build tall with fewer cities? Building settlers is time I could be spending making wonders dammit. Frederick and Peter have been my go to guys so far but I'm wondering if theres an obvious one I'm missing
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Oct 12, 2020 18:11
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showbiz_liz posted:Have you tried the new Highland map? No, I'm aware it exists and have been avoiding it for the time being. Danaru posted:Who is the best civ to play as if I want to build tall with fewer cities? Building settlers is time I could be spending making wonders dammit. Insert here my past rant against using the dichotomy of "tall versus wide" in 6, but otherwise Khmer. Khmer fucks. Rimusutera fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 12, 2020 |
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Oct 12, 2020 18:39
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Danaru posted:Who is the best civ to play as if I want to build tall with fewer cities? Building settlers is time I could be spending making wonders dammit. The best civ to play if you don't want to build a lot of cities is any civ on a smaller map than you're currently playing on. Also, there's no reason to build settlers when you can buy them.
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Oct 12, 2020 18:47
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