Civilization VI

Natus wrote:

How does Surprise War work?

A Suprise War simply means a war was declared without any type of Casus Belli.

robc wrote:
LarryC wrote:
robc wrote:

I think it was just a generic declaration of war, or maybe a surprise war because I don't remember getting denounced. Queen Elizabeth's relation with me was pretty positive. It just seemed kind of random. It was fairly early on in the game though. It's not a good sign that they both declared war and then did nothing to pursue that war.

The AI won't always declare war with an intention to take cities. Or anything. I do that, too on occasion. Especially as Persia. I try to keep a small Civ alive just so I can declare Surprise War on them at my leisure. I'm not actually going to attack them or anything. I just want the domestic bonuses.

What domestic bonuses do you get for declaring war?

The bonus movement Persia gets for declaring Surprise War affects all their units. Useful for moving them around.

Natus wrote:

How does Surprise War work?

There are no preconditions, at the price of massive warmonger score for doing it.

Natus wrote:

How does Surprise War work?

Well, you turn off all the lights and hide, and when the other leader appears, everyone pops up and shouts "SURPRISE!" Then you pants them and post a picture of their butt on Instagram.

BadKen wrote:
Natus wrote:

How does Surprise War work?

Well, you turn off all the lights and hide, and when the other leader appears, everyone pops up and shouts "SURPRISE!" Then you pants them and post a picture of their butt on Instagram.

If only real wars worked this way.

BlackSabre wrote:
BadKen wrote:
Natus wrote:

How does Surprise War work?

Well, you turn off all the lights and hide, and when the other leader appears, everyone pops up and shouts "SURPRISE!" Then you pants them and post a picture of their butt on Instagram.

If only real wars worked this way.

Queue discussion on which world leader had the best butt.

William Howard Taft, end of discussion.

Any kind of early review for us fence-sitters? Seems like a few of the new features are a bit broken, Emergencies for example. Not knowing if others are going to help feels wrong, especially since the examples Ive heard of usually have the AI leaving you hanging. Then there's the AI diplomacy still being schizophrenic.

Worth $30? Worth 30 after patches?

Stayed up til 2 am last night finishing my game as Wilhelmina. I went for a Culture victory on Warchief difficulty, and succeeded. Sadly I wasn’t able to build more than a couple of the Polder improvements, since they have very specific land requirements that weren’t plentiful in my game.

For the majority of the game, everyone left me alone. It made for a nice change of pace, though I was still fairly aggressive with clearing out Barbarian encampments. Those make for very plentiful Era points in the early going. I ended up having three or four Golden Ages in a row, and never had a Dark Age.

The new competing civs in my game were Tamar of Georgia and Shaka of the Zulu. Shaka denounced me a few times but otherwise never bothered me, being locked in mortal combat with Japan and Sumeria for most of the game. Tamar I was mostly friendly with, but some botched spy runs made things awkward between us. She also declared a world emergency against Victoria I declined to participate in.

(Side note - the espionage is so dull. I almost never succeed and on lower difficulties it almost seems a waste of time.)

As I was nearing victory, Tamar and Victoria declared war on me. I kept forgetting to check why exactly, but it didn’t really matter. They were pretty ineffectual despite me being somewhat behind on the tech tree. One of Tamar’s cities rebelled and eventually joined my civ. I conquered another of her cities and decided to keep it since the warmonger penalty was described as “light.” Then, as soon as we declared peace, a world emergency was declared against me, with only Tamar participating. So, we were at war once again. I had to defend the city I had conquered for 30 turns.

Meanwhile, I was still at war with Victoria. She had sent a few units against some of my colonies on another continent, but they weren’t anything I couldn’t handle. However, the city state of Kabul was on that continent. They kept plundering my trade routes, so I decided to go after them. I conquered the city thinking I could free it later. Apparently that’s not the case. A few turns after, a second world emergency was declared against me, with both Tamar and Victoria participating. Again, I had to hold onto Kabul for 30 turns.

Nothing really came of these emergencies except war weariness penalties. It seemed like I couldn’t declare peace against the participants of the emergencies. I can certainly see them being pretty interesting if more civs are involved. As always, the game’s AI in a particular game can make or break the feature. Playing on a lesser difficulty probably neutered things as well. I won the game before either emergency finished.

I got a few notices in the late game that another civ’s city had rebelled and joined another. It was nice to see some dynamism affecting the other civs beyond just wars. There also seemed to be a ton of different Casus Belli options. I’m not sure if they’ve all always been there or they added new ones.

The governors are interesting. The can shore up loyalty in far flung colonies and help further specialize cities with particular districts. I had four appointed in my game, one of whom I ended up fully promoting. I liked the extra set of decisions they introduced.

I’m feeling pretty positive about the expansion, in case it’s not obvious. Everything feels a little “fuller” and the loyalty and era systems made me feel more involved in the mid and late game. I’m no 4Xpert so take my comments with a grain of salt, but I have no regrets picking this up right away.

beanman101283 wrote:

For the majority of the game, everyone left me alone.

Played two games so far (not finished) and both times the enemies have been fairly aggressive. Especially my current one, where Mongolians attacked me very early on - and kept me suppressed quite effectively - for 40 turns, in a 250 turn game. At least I have just removed them from the face of earth 60 turns later.
The AI is still awful at combat though. They really should have taken my capital, but they just cant figure out how to siege down a city.

I have seen 1 emergency so far. One AI got their religion into another AIs main religious city, and we had to get rid of it for 11 turns. I joined in, but the affected AI ended up solving it mostly on his own. Free money!

beanman101283 wrote:

(Side note - the espionage is so dull. I almost never succeed and on lower difficulties it almost seems a waste of time.)

I agree its dull. But fairly strong. I've repeatedly stolen 700 gold from a a city in my current game.
And in combat I saw a tooltip of enemies getting +12 strenght against me due to knowing about my army - which I assume was from spying. Dont think I have ever noticed that one before, but +12 str is crazy.

I like Governors, but there should really be more different ones.
And there should be more Dedication goals to choose from in each era.

Maybe not a great expansion compared to previous Civ expansions. It does feel a bit small in new features. But on the other hand it improves the game, all the features seems positive - though expanding on the features would help - they risk getting repetitive.

Shadout wrote:

I like Governors, but there should really be more different ones.
And there should be more Dedication goals to choose from in each era.

Maybe not a great expansion compared to previous Civ expansions. It does feel a bit small in new features. But on the other hand it improves the game, all the features seems positive - though expanding on the features would help - they risk getting repetitive.

that's the way I'm leaning too, the vanilla versions of the new features are a bit lacklustre but they open really interesting avenues for mods.

Shadout wrote:

And in combat I saw a tooltip of enemies getting +12 strenght against me due to knowing about my army - which I assume was from spying. Dont think I have ever noticed that one before, but +12 str is crazy.

Were they the Mongolians? They get extra combat strength based on the amount of diplomatic visibility they have.

Oh. That was the reason then.

There is no mod for Civ VI that makes it Colonization, is there?

Started a game as the Indonesians, founded my religion, then later realized I'd failed to pick a religious belief that allowed me to train Apostles. Time to start that one over...

You don't need a religious belief to train apostles. You need faith and a tier 2 religious building in your holy site.

I fired up a new game on a small map. Random civilization and I got Arabia.

I only played the base game for a few minutes, but I figured my knowledge of previous versions of the game would make Prince difficulty with Rise & Fall an easy warm up for me.

But it's not, and I'm struggling. In short order I've managed to lead us into a Dark Age, and there are barbarian hordes burning our farms outside our capital. My people are unhappy. I'm behind in the research race. Our nation ranks at or near the bottom on pretty much every metric. I'm already bottled in by the Scots and the Russians. My only trade route got wiped out by marauding barbarians.

Apparently I have much to learn.

After a few years with just toe-dabbling in this version of the game, I'm really enjoying all the changes. I just hit the Renaissance, and I think I have my rhythm partially back, so I'll probably start over soon.

For what it's worth, the diplomacy is less fickle than it was before. And it seems like wars are less likely to wipe someone off the map in one go, in the early game. Having fun.

jbavon wrote:

You don't need a religious belief to train apostles. You need faith and a tier 2 religious building in your holy site.

Right but don’t you need a belief that allows you to construct that building? I was never getting the option to build it.

I don't think it's a belief. It's the Shrine, iirc.

#1 cool thing about the new systems: forward settling is pretty much a thing of the past. Because of the Loyalty mechanic, any AI that forward settles in your area is going to lose any city they put there due to your cities' influence. You can even make it happen faster with the right governor. No need to set picket defenses on your border, stay constantly vigilant for settlers in your area, or declare useless wars to remove a lone city that is blocking your expansion.

My first game with King Tokimune (Sean Bean: M-U-N-E, that spells MOON, laws yes!) went well. Science victory on Prince in 390 turns. Not a spectacular showing, but I was still learning the ropes.

I've started another with the Dutch, but the lay of the land is not great, and my Khmer neighbors are acting fanatical and aggressive. I chased them off with a show of force, but they're blocking early trade, which is not great for the Dutch.

Apostles are important for many core religious mechanics, all religions irrespective of beliefs can purchase one with faith in a city with a Holy District that has a Temple - the tier 2 religious building. The tier 3 religious buildings are the ones you need a specific belief to build, and they aren't required for any core religious units.

beanman101283 wrote:

Right but don’t you need a belief that allows you to construct that building? I was never getting the option to build it.

Nope, you just need the tech for it. It's right after Mysticism, iirc.

Thanks Redwing!

I started a new game around 0900 this morning with the Scythians on King level, and by 1330 I'd taken out my next-door neighbors, the Khmer, who kindly declared war on me two turns before my first *four* cavalry archers hatched. I did a run of six horsemen after that and completely plowed them under. Sooo much fun and the system really has been revived for me. I guess the hiatus was a good reset.

Just my thought on the xpac after one finished game:

I think the game is very polished and an enjoyment to play. They've cleaned up a lot of the game along with the new features which all work well.

However the xpac has not really changed anything in regards to my playstyle. So I'm just doing what I used to do but with more micromanagement due to the added systems. I've already played the game for 600 hours and was pretty burned out on it. The xpac has not changed this feeling.

If you have not played Civ6 all that much yet then the xpac should be good fun.

Ok I was completely confused about how religion works. Ah well.

I'm really enjoying my current game, although both Civ VI and Rise & Fall are brand new to me.

I'm starting to make sense of things with Egypt. I unlocked iron, then built an encampment, then built a solid 4-unit core that had two swordsmen and two archers. They unleashed fire on the barbarian hordes and drove them back into the sea. A builder cleaned up the mess, and finally we could start moving our civilization forward.

At this point I'm still in the back end of the heap of nations, but I'm starting to figure out some of the new game mechanics. I feel like I have a lot to learn, but I'm having fun making mistakes as I piece things together. I think I'm too far behind now to ever catch up, but it'd be nice if I can survive until the end.

I finished my first game. Only played on prince and it was touch and go. Not because I was in any danger, but because Teddy went on a rampage on his continent and got pretty big. I was behind in every category until I was really able to crank up my science production towards the end of the game. I combined that with spying on Teddy to get eureka’s for most of the late technologies I needed to proceed with the space victory. He finally caught me and asked me to stop. I told him too bad and kept right on doing it. I made use of the alliance system quite a bit too to stay very friendly with 3 civs.

There was an early declaration of war on me by 2 civs that didn’t make sense and that was it. It was nice to make alliances and keep the relations strong and not have those civs stab me in the back. That part seemed more logical. I prefer the AI to play like a country might instead of a player who will do anything to win.

It was nice to return to Civ VI with some new features. I do find it less clear to choose what path I’m going to take. But, it does feel different than prior Civs so that is nice. I do think enough time has passed to so I wouldn’t mind a Civ IV based sequel and introduced some new features, updated the look, etc…

Finished first game as well. Felt like there were more barbarian camps to start than I'm used to, but that could just be RNG. Loyalty system was interesting, I never had any issues with it, but kongo completely absorbed egypt and several cities changed hands amongst the AI over the course of the game.

Haven't decided if I like dark/golden/heroic ages or not yet, but the timeline graphic is kinda cool. Overall, I like the changes, but don't find them altering gameplay all that much.

Nearly done with my first Rise & Fall playthrough as a warmongering Genghis Khan. Digging it.

Some thoughts: diplomacy is more transparent, though Alliances look hard to build -- get 80 'alliance points' before AI stabs you in the back?

Amenity is still elusive.

Loyalty provides incentive to take all of a Civ's cities, instead of a strategic few that might sit alongside other civs and leak loyalty. Also, the limit on number of Governors means that wide empires face loyalty challenges.

I lost sight of focused civ-building and instead tried to get the Era scores and go for unique Mongol units & buildings.