Civilization 6

[joxer]

For god's sakes...
I'm seriously gonna write to Firaxis. One exploit I could understand, noone is perfect. But this is retarded.

 

[Kordanor]

Well, exploits are one thing.
But these exploits are some things which you even use by "accident" sometimes.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

I am playing in multiplayer with a friend most of the time (played 40h+ yet) and we are testing out things, researching some stuff, theorycrafting about others and making some houserules for ourselves. E.g. Scythia is banned, snapshotting and selling is not allowed.

I would really like to see a hotfix but as I think I mentioned before Firaxis was always incredibly slow with these things.

They are not the conditions to determine any kind of exploits. Civ 6 is designed for MU and full PvP.

The current conditions are FFA, with its consequences: the winner is the player who gets himself accepted as the winner.

At the moment, no civ is powerful enough to win against all the others.

After watching streams, players do not win by abusing these features(and others) They only managed to force a coalition of players against them. The other players agreed to get one of them to win. Winning one against 5 is not possible. Winning 2 against 4 is not either.

As ultimately, the winner is one player the others aggrees on, telling exploits,imbalances etc is very hard.

Another point is this regulation only works when no player quits. This is the big challenge for Firaxis: gluing players until the end of the game.

 

[Kordanor]

I am normally playing with 1 or 2 other players and we play until one of us gives up.

But the imbalance of factions is huge. As mentioned we banned Scythia as she is just much, much stronger than everyone else. No matter what. Second to that is Sumer as the warcarts are extremely good for early rush, and if you are unlucky with barbarians to fend them off. I already had multiple games where one of the players (and this happened to me a few times) were crushed by barb horseman between turn 15 and 30 (normal / quick speed, not playing "online" which is 100% boost and probably a different case alltogether).

 

[ChienAboyeur]

How many AI controlled civs?

The game is not designed to be play with any AI (except barbarians)

Players who play Scythia, chop trees, sell units, spam cavalry units etc do not win because they provoke a coalition against them.
You cant win in this game 1 vs 5, 2 vs 4. When the five other players have decided you lose, you lose.

To win in this game, you must cajole and backstab in the same session. Bullying the way up does not work.

 

[joxer]

In this MMO pvp backstabbing is most probably a must. I have to agree on AI controlled civilizations, these shouldn't be on multiplayer maps as they won't exploit anything but are basically free towns to add to your "empire".

Sooner or later exploits will get addressed so using actual boni instead of exploit will be more important, I believe these "cheat" sheets might be handy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/591jn8/civilization_vi_wonderdistrict_cheat_sheet/
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58i4eh/civilization_vi_district_cheat_sheet_v30_just/

Didn't analyze those pics so there might still be some uncalculated stuff or things I don't do in exactly the same way. An example I do the same way is placing the holy site 2 moves from my town center as shown on the second pic - with such positioning I can easily stop retarded clerics with a pair of mine (a cleric regains health while standing on holy site). Of course, if I forget to disable crappy religion win option when starting a new game.

 

[Kordanor]

It's at least as important to build some of your districts in a way, so that they include other cities within 6 tiles. The factory from the industrial district, the Colloseum Wonder (which is somewhat op itself) and some buildings in the entertainment district count for multiple cities.

We found some more issues:
1. Embarked units are basically broken. The keep their full melee strength when in water which is higher than the strength of ships. While the don't attack back, you bascically cannot stop them adequatly with a naval power. That's even more problematic as embarked units are faster than the ships themselves…

2. The Trading AI is broken. Like in Civ 5 it's extremely easy to let an AI declare war on anyone. If you ask an AI, the will deny it. If you ask them what they want, they say that there isn't a way. Then you just give them some gold per turn and they agree on declaring war. In our latest game I even made a deal with the AI that I bought one of their major cities.
Death by sellout…probably realistic but shouldn't be in the game imho.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Focusing on the technical side is missing the point.

Civ 6 is not about technical skills. It is not about understanding the mechanics and getting the most out of them.

Civ 6 is about social skills. It is about negotiating the path up to victory.

In a technical game, a player can win without the agreement of his opponent. Depending on his skills, a player can manage 1 vs 5, or 2 vs 6.

Civ 6 does not offer the opportunity (more exactly, it belongs to the late game)

In a game of 6, when five players gang up on one, that one is finished. It is not based on technical skills. The game simply does not allow to fend for oneself if the others are aggressive.

A game of civ 6 is won by showing an acceptable face during the early and mid game, neither too strong or too weak. Never be threatening to the whole.

The technical side is involved in one moment: in jointed operations. That is the moment when the winner side is competiting. A player must understand thegame better to be able to make more of the victory.

Then in the late game, a player might grow powerful enough to dismiss the constraints put by others. You win 1 vs 5 in the late game.

If there is an issue with balance, it is in the late game.

A civ 6 game starts with a situation when the abuses of a minority (one or two players in a group of 6) can be regulated by the majority.

It builds up in the situation the abuse of one can no longer be regulated by the majority.

The transition is ensured by social skills: get the others to do what benefits yourself the most. It is not possible to win by flying solo.

A player with excellent technical skills and mediocre social skills will be beaten by a player with good social skills and poor technical skills.

Civ 6 is that: a social skill based game.

I have to agree on AI controlled civilizations, these shouldn't be on multiplayer maps as they won't exploit anything but are basically free towns to add to your "empire".

That was stated in an early post: when AI is involved, the winner is determined by being the most able at farming the AI.

A game like LoL includes the feature: players officially and openly compete over farming the AI. It is a fully built in feature.

Civ 6 does not. Civ 6 is conceived to be full PvP.

 

[joxer]

This is not LoL nor is social skill based game, currently this is plain and simple exploit based game.

A new one:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/discussions/0/312265256995971756/#c312265256996404115

i made a post of the Army selling turning a profit 2 days ago glad to see your thread is picking up steam yea when you sell in a army you get more money back then it costs to buy 3 units. a ARMY HELICOPTER sells for 7.5 and to buy 3 helicopters you ned 3.9k

You make an army by combining three units into one.

Being a game of exploits, it's also a game of easy pokemon collecting.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=785037280

Set up a game, pick any civ of your choice, set it to custom turn limit, turn it to 1, set difficulty to deity or difficulty of your choice. Start the game, found your city, end turn and bam, you just won on deity by doing nothing, enjoy!

Apparently you get pokemon for all rulers, all map sizes, map types and all starting era modes.

 

[Kordanor]

I think Chien just plays the game differently. It's neither the right or wrong way to play. But it's not the only one.

But by the argument that people balance themselves out you can just throw any balancing over board.

What he is refering to is a board game of Risk for example. But if you played Risk Evolution/ Legacy it doesn't become that simple anymore. As a good and experienced player who put a lot of time in planning I was able to build a situation of advantage by accumulating bonuses and having some good strategies that the other players rarely won even if they "allied". And "allied" is relative in Civ as well as in Risk. As in the end only one player can win. And stopping the one "overpowered" player can mean the certain loss of another player. Like in Risk Legacy when you got some Bonuses in Australia, start there and the "best" way to stop is if another player places himself next to the boarder so that the Australian player cannot expand. Yes, he limits the chances of this player. But he automatically lost for sure as he is the one truly gimped in that case.

That said, from what I know people also play Civ in Duals or in 2v2 and 3v3 teams (well not active in Civ 6 yet, but you can activate it in the files). And in these cases balancing becomes even more cruicial.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Of course there are right or wrong ways to play.

Civ 6 is not designed for SP. It is designed for MU full PvP competition.

In a competitive environment, there are right and wrong ways to do. It is determined by competition. Competition removes options. You cant do as you want in a competition.

The ways to compete in Civ6 are social skill based.
A civ 6 game starts with no player able to impose their will on all the others to end with a player able to impose her will on all the others.

In a civ 6 game, if five out of six players decide they get rid of the sixth player in the early stage of the session, no technical knowledge of civ 6 will help the targeted player. The only way out is by talking them out of the idea (social skill)

In the late game, the situation is different: if the sixth player is the stronger, the alliance of the five others can not put him down.

The technical side of the thing would prevail if from the start of the game, one player could resist the five others. It is not the case.

The winner is the one who manages the transition from the early to the late game the best, who convince the others to let him grow in the strongest force of the board. It is based on social skills.

 

[Kordanor]

Ok, I'll give up arguing with you. If you believe that Civ 6 is a game designed for competitive social skills, then so be it.

 

[Wisdom]

Ok, I'll give up arguing with you. If you believe that Civ 6 is a game designed for competitive social skills, then so be it.

Hes not terribly incorrect, hes just blinded by any other possibilities. Of course any PvP 5vs1 is going to be horribly skewed and the "1" has little chance.

 

[Kordanor]

After a long match today we found that War Weariness is broken and gets stuck at -6 to -7. And it doesn't become better after the war ended. Apparently you can fix this issue by restarting and reloading the game. Which of course isn't a great option in MP games.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Ok, I'll give up arguing with you. If you believe that Civ 6 is a game designed for competitive social skills, then so be it.

Games are played. They tell what they tell. If players manage to produce other ways to win, the belief will be changed.

Players who think this or that is an imbalance, they can show it by applying it.

Players who abuse the strength of their faction only mark themselves as a target for a coalition effort.

Hes not terribly incorrect, hes just blinded by any other possibilities. Of course any PvP 5vs1 is going to be horribly skewed and the "1" has little chance.

In the early and mid game. In the late game, the winner must be able to win a 1 vs 5.

This is when other players concede: when they realize that even a concerted effort from them wont be enough to curb the domination attempt.

The moment exists in the late game. It does not exist in the early/mid game.

There is no other possibilities.

The Civ 6 board provides the capacity to thwart any attempt for domination until it no longer does.

 

[joxer]

After a long match today we found that War Weariness is broken and gets stuck at -6 to -7. And it doesn't become better after the war ended. Apparently you can fix this issue by restarting and reloading the game. Which of course isn't a great option in MP games.

I've noticed another thing, if you conquer some settlement with a wonder, that wonder's bonus doesn't work! The only cure is not to keep the settlement but raze it and rebuild the wonder somewhere else.
Not sure if you keep the bonus when you get a settlement as a peace treaty gift.

Not sure about this, but there is a wonder that says your towns +15% on border expansion. It definetly works for the settlement you build it in. But I didn't get the feeling it works in other settlements.

There is a third thing I cannot understand. You make a settlement. Idiotic AI sometimes places your one person on a point with 1 food and gold or culture although there is 2 food / 2 production combo or even 3 food (marshlike). I mean I want my new settlement to grow a few people as fast as possible!

 

[Kordanor]

There is a third thing I cannot understand. You make a settlement. Idiotic AI sometimes places your one person on a point with 1 food and gold or culture although there is 2 food / 2 production combo or even 3 food (marshlike). I mean I want my new settlement to grow a few people as fast as possible!

Yeah, it makes no sense. But the Logic behind it is that all yields are equal. So it prefers 1 food + 3 gold over 3 food. Even though the common gold ratio is 1 to 4.

You need to be especially careful with new cities and luxury resources which give gold and culture. If you let them assign it automaticaly it will screw your city.

Btw: You can click on the yield icons in the "city screen" (the bottom one where the total amount of yields are shown" You can set a food and production focus and this should work for most cases.

 

[joxer]

I know how to assign them manually don't worry.
I don't let the game do the automatic before it reaches population of 3 and sometimes even after that I have to micromanage.

For example two settlements cca 6 hexes distance and in between are commerce, campus and industry, bloody game will never fill them automatically unless your population goes past 20, where you lose bonus cash/production/research to both settlements! I mean what use I have from someone automatically set to 1food/1production tile - I'm getting more than that from a mere trader already!
I'm not saying an AI could always follow my wishes, but there should be some common logic coded in.

 

[Kordanor]

Just to avoid any misunderstandings: I was talking about the focus, not the manual placement. But of course placing them manually is the safest way - if you remember checking now and then.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

But by the argument that people balance themselves out you can just throw any balancing over board.

No. Only the balancing players do not like. This is what is happening by the way.

Players might select two ways of balancing: internal self regulation and external self regulation.

Internal self regulation: this is the one devs went for as it demands a high level of interaction between players.

No civ starts powerful enough to prevail over all the other civs. This means that the group of players can enforce any code of conduct they see fit by punishing any misbehaviour.
This is an active approach, players keep a watch on each other and crossings of a line is met by a collective response (involving all or some of the other players) to put the misbehaving player back in line.

It is intense, players must be involved and committed. They must keep an eye on the board to notice any dodgy behaviour. Players' plans are dictated by the board.

External self regulation: house rules, flavour mods etc
This is the one players wish for. The exclusion of any misbehaviour is guaranteed by an external rule that players had agreed on.
It is a passive approach. It released players from watching one over the other as the rules are not enforced internally.

This gives different outcomes.

A civ 6 game might last six hours. For the sake of the balance of power, a group must end the game with as many players as it started with.

By the 3rd hour, a player who is abusive might have taken an advantage over
a neighbouring player.

When the player is aggressed, depending on the regulation, the outcome is different.



In an internal regulation, the victim puts in the tray the possibility he might leave if the abuse is too violent.
If other players try to double cross him too harshly, (the agression serves everyone except the victim as it makes one competitor weaker), the player can threaten to leave (then harming the balance of power)
The victim must be restored in a acceptable state of power.

One example of external regulation is the house rule "no quitter" Players agree that no one quits no matter what. They do not want wto work to achieve that necessary condition internally so they outsource the enforcement of it.

A player might manage to abuse the other house rules and get an advantage early.
This time, though, the victim is left with no bargaining chip. Once he is put out of the race, he must endure the seven remaining hours for the sake of a rule that do not serve him. He cant bargain any restoration in power and the other players' main interest falls down to keep him in the game minimally.