Civilization VI - Rise and Fall Expansion Coming February 8

[RandV]

Ok so the barbarians are better at combat than the actual AI is. Just won a King-difficulty cultural victory with Russia. Spent a lot of time at war but never was seriously challenged. Gorgo managed to kill one archer in like 300 AD but that was it. Barbarians on the other hand...killed probably a half dozen units, pillaged my land, actually sieged a city.

You know something's fishy when barbarians spawning out of the arctic wastes attack your city strategically and effectively with musketmen, crossbowman, and knights (all the most up to date units), and then Cleopatra attacks you ineptly with spearmen, warriors, archers and horseman...

Personally barbarians have never given me much of a problem here... maybe I'm more hard wired to it because in Civ V I'd usually start with one policy in honour and then spend the early game hunting down every barbarians I could find.

But anyways, my theory is they were trying to make the AI Civ's more human like by take a higher degree of preservation with their units. I would think for the most of us we don't just throw units away. If one is almost dead we pull it back to get healed, preserving the promotions and the hammers it took to build it. I feel like the AI is trying to do this too, but they don't quite have a few other key human parts down (getting a good surround), so they just end up being overly tentative and ineffective.

Meanwhile the barbarian AI doesn't seem to have the same inhibitions, they're actually even more aggressive & suicidal than in Civ V. And because they will attack you in the early game while you're weak and every unit is an investment, or maybe later in your isolated foreign outpost, they become much more of a threat.

 

[Prairie Habs]

Fall patch came out a couple days ago. Lots of re balancing and a few fixes for bugs.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/civilization-6-patch-notes-reveal-what-the-major-u/1100-6445554/

Fall 2016 Update Patch Notes:

[NEW]

Maps
Added a balanced six player map.
Added a balanced four player map.
‘Cavalry and Cannonades’ Scenario Added
Combat scenario with reduced unit maintenance costs and no strategic resource requirement for units.
Larger starting army and additional starting techs.
Time limit: 50 turns.
Goal: Possess the largest territory.
DX12 Support
Complete Logitech ARX Support

[GAMEPLAY UPDATES]

Added additional notifications.
Added a "time defeat" for running out of time. This is always disabled if a Score Victory is available.
Added additional Hotkey support (next unit, next city).
Added the ability to rename cities.
Added UI to show the next tile a city will grow to.
Added a visual cue for Barbarian Scouts that are alerted to your city.
Changed Dan Quayle rankings.

[BALANCE CHANGES]

Added prerequisite project (Manhattan Project) for Operation Ivy.
Added Metal Casting as a prerequisite for Economics tech.
Adjusted religious pressure when a religion is first founded to give them more resilience and convert the city.
Adjusted relationship decay rates.
Reduced the effectiveness of cavalry production policies.
Reduced Warmonger penalties in most instances, and adjusted how this reacts to returning versus keeping a city. The last city conquered from a player now provides a heavy warmonger penalty, even if you have a Casus Belli against this player, because you are wiping out a civilization.
Reduced border incursion warnings if the troops are within their own borders.
Increased the number of Great Works of Writing slots in the Amphitheater to 2.
Increased Counterspy operation time.
Increased the cost of Religious units and applied additional charges.
Units may no longer be deleted when they are damaged.
Deleting a unit no longer provides gold.
Updated Island Plates map to have more hills and mountains.
Units may no longer remove features from tiles that are not owned by that player.
Fallout now prevents resource harvesting.
Barbarian camps must spawn further away from low-difficulty players’ cities.

[AI TUNING]

Adjusted AI victory condition focus to increase their competitiveness in Science and Tourism.
Adjusted AI understanding of declared friendship.
Adjusted the AI approach to beginning and ending a war based on potential gain and loss.
Increased AI competitiveness in building a more advanced military.
Increased AI usage of Inquisitors. Especially Phillip.
Increased AI value of upgrading units.
Increased AI use of Settler escorts.
Tuned AI usage of units that cannot move and shoot, like Catapults.
Tuned AI city and unit build planning.
Improved the ability of city-states to maintain a strong military.

[BUG FIXES]

Fixed some production Social Policies, Great People, and Pantheon bonuses that were not applying correctly.
Fixed Royal Navy Dockyard not getting the right adjacency bonuses.
Fixed some issues with how the Great Wall was built by players and AI, including proper connection to mountains and removing other players’ Great Walls as potential connection points.
Fixed a unit cycling error with formations.
Fixed a bug where the first military levy that expired would return all levied units (including those levied from other city-states) to that city-state. Now it should only return the levied units that actually originally belonged to the one city-state.
Fixed several issues when Airstrips and Aerodromes are occupied, including forced rebasing of enemy units and UI updates.
Fixed an exploit that allowed ranged and bombard units to gain experience when attacking a district with 0 hit points.
Fixed an issue with wonders when transferring city ownership – conquering a city with a wonder would not track that wonder, and could lead to problems when attempting to use Gustave Eiffel.
Fixed an issue where the Settler lens would not always show the right information to the player.
Fixed an issue where AI would counter gold changes with the change desired, rather than the total amount of gold desired.
Fixed an issue where the Tutorial intro and outro videos would appear off-center in certain resolutions.
Fixed some crashes with units.
Fixed an issue where multiple leaders of the same civilization would frequently show up in a game.
Fixed an issue where Trade Route yields were doubling in some instances.
Units in formations now break formation before teleporting between cities.
The achievement "For Queen and Country" was unlocking too frequently.
AI with neutral relationships should accept delegations barring exceptional circumstances.
Can no longer declare a Joint War if it is invalid for either party.
Save game files should no longer be case sensitive.
Certain wonders were sending extra notifications.
Players will no longer receive any warmongering penalties from a joint war partner for actions in that joint war.
Liberating a civilization back to life will now bring them back into the game properly.
Observation Balloon range bonus was being incorrectly applied when stacked.
Text and grammar fixes.

[VISUALS]

Buildings on snow will now have snow on them.
Added an Industrial Barbarian Encampment.
Added a ranger tower to National Parks.
Fixed some issues with buildings not culling around other world items properly.
Fixed an issue with some Districts not showing properly.
Miscellaneous polish applied to multiple improvements, districts, and buildings.

[MULTIPLAYER]

Turn timers are always disabled on the first turn of a new game. This happens regardless of the advanced start or turn timer type selected.
Allow multiplayer lobby's private game status to be toggled once the lobby has been created.
Cap the max players to 12.
Added LAN player name option to options screen.

[UI]

Added the number of specialists working a tile.
Added some additional icons for espionage, promotions, etc.
Added additional Civilopedia shortcuts, including right clicking a unit portrait.
Added the signature to the diplomacy action view/deal view so that we can differentiate between duplicate players. Also added multiplayer screenname in diplomacy.
Added Trade Route yields to the Reports screen.
Added City Center to the City Breakdown panel.
Added rewards and consequences to mission completed popups.
Updated the leader-chooser when beginning a new game.
Updated the end game Victory screen.
Updated the multiplayer staging room.
Updated city banners.
Updated Espionage mission chooser flow.
Updated to display what cities are getting amenities from each resource.
Changed resource icon backings to reflect the type of resource it is.
Auto-scroll to the first Great Person that can be claimed.
Improved search functionality in the Civilopedia.
Removed Barbarian data from player replay graphs.
ESC now closes the Tech, Civic, and Eureka popups.
When loading a game, the era blurb will be the current era of the saved game, rather than the starting era of the game.

[AUDIO]

Added some missing mouseover sounds.
Fixed the Oracle quote.
Fixed an issue where the Advisor voice was not playing in some languages.
Fixed compatibility issues with some sound cards, especially those set to high playback rates.

[MISC]

Added a setup option "No Duplicate Leaders" that is enabled by default. This option prevents multiple players from selecting the same leader.
Updated leader screen to support enabling/disabling bloom according to the 'Enable Bloom' graphics option.
Plot Tooltip Delay is now available in the Options menu.
Auto Cycle Units is now available in the Options menu.
Benchmark updates.
Credits updated.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Good to know there's at least one patch out before Christmas (when I'll be getting it). I find myself wondering if my current game as the Mongols will be my last ever Civ5 game....

 

[Novacane]

Are these big changes/stuff people wanted to see?

 

[Loopy0ne]

Are these big changes/stuff people wanted to see?

I am mostly concerned with AI tweaks, it is too easy (even on King). My next game is going to have to be Emperor.

The rest of the game is pretty great considering how young it is.

 

[Bjorn Le]

I am mostly concerned with AI tweaks, it is too easy (even on King). My next game is going to have to be Emperor.

The rest of the game is pretty great considering how young it is.

King is too easy, Emperor is too ********. Russia reaches industrial era in 100 BC in my last game (I'm still in medieval) but they're only five techs ahead of me...which might not mean much but it means they have machine gun city defences (after they quickly hit modem a few dozen turns later) therefore their cities are next to impossible to take until I get artillery.

 

[RandV]

King is too easy, Emperor is too ********. Russia reaches industrial era in 100 BC in my last game (I'm still in medieval) but they're only five techs ahead of me...which might not mean much but it means they have machine gun city defences (after they quickly hit modem a few dozen turns later) therefore their cities are next to impossible to take until I get artillery.

I think the patch may have made some adjustments here, I haven't really noticed because I've always been playing with a modded tech tree, but in the base game the tech tree is kind of wonky because it allows some ridiculous beelining. You can basically ignore half the tech tree, so it's possibly to advance really far ahead in the era's. Even with a modded tech tree, I can still see the AI jump really far ahead, like playing on Emperor seeing someone complete the Big Ben while I'm still in the medieval era.

I've found this is all rather misleading though, and have moved on to playing Immortal and still find it pretty easy. While the AI can get off to a huge lead they can stagnate mid game. Settle more cities than them, focus on getting up smart industrial zones, and if you share borders improve your defense with a well placed military encampment.

There's two big flaws in the AI's game, first they don't build many districts, second the military AI is really tentative rendering it practically ineffective. So even with their advantage and they're not much of a threat, then stick to your expansion and district building and eventually you'll shoot past them.

...Kind of disappointing really. On Civ V I always stuck with Emperor difficulty, so if I'm finding even Immortal difficulty easy here that's a huge flaw in the system.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

I finished off a game in progress last night, so it was started and ~75% through before the time the patch kicked in and I definitely noticed a lot of the changes. So far, so good...though I'll have to give it a full game to really see how deep the changes go.

At the very least there seemed to be some semblance of self-preservation from the AI.

 

[Hunter Gathers]

I just hope they make it so the AI doesn't get so pissed so easily. It's kind of obnoxious to be condemned all the time just for being a stronger power.

 

[SeidoN]

trading is funny


Russia offers me Open Borders for Open Borders. I add in his Iron and ask what he wants. he wants 30 gold per turn and 1 gold up front. I counter with 200 gold up front and 1 gold per turn, he re-counters with 1 gold up front and 1 per turn.

the ****?

 

[Commander Clueless]

trading is funny


Russia offers me Open Borders for Open Borders. I add in his Iron and ask what he wants. he wants 30 gold per turn and 1 gold up front. I counter with 200 gold up front and 1 gold per turn, he re-counters with 1 gold up front and 1 per turn.

the ****?

Peter doesn't know how to haggle.



Boom, Family Guy reference!

 

[Big McLargehuge]

I just hope they make it so the AI doesn't get so pissed so easily. It's kind of obnoxious to be condemned all the time just for being a stronger power.

On the bright side they seemed to have scaled back the penalty for just, you know, existing near another civilization. After loading up my saved game with the new patch I never heard a peep from France or Kongo threatening me for just being their neighbors and Norway didn't declare a fourth useless war against me without a shot being fired (I had no navy to speak of as Russia on a Pangaea map and they were clear on the other side of the map). That isn't to say it was peaceful for the last ~120 turns, but at least the civs that were pissed off at me had a reason to be.

 

[RandV]

On the bright side they seemed to have scaled back the penalty for just, you know, existing near another civilization. After loading up my saved game with the new patch I never heard a peep from France or Kongo threatening me for just being their neighbors and Norway didn't declare a fourth useless war against me without a shot being fired (I had no navy to speak of as Russia on a Pangaea map and they were clear on the other side of the map). That isn't to say it was peaceful for the last ~120 turns, but at least the civs that were pissed off at me had a reason to be.

Yes they adjusted the units by borders modifier to make it more reasonable, and did some made some adjustments for the AI declaring useless war.

Speaking of useless wars though, the game I mentioned above on Diety while in the information approaching a space victory my neighbour France declared a suprise war on me while I only had a few tanks & machine guns... and flooded my territories (I was wrapped completely around them to the South & East) with 3 star/army chariots and spearman .

Even funnier, nevermind the spearman beating a tank trope of older Civ games, with their 3 star armies vs my single star units, then combined with a bunch of religious modifiers that included at least Defender of the Faith (+10 strength near their religious cities)... my modern armor needed two attacks to kill a chariot so it actually took a bit of work to clear them out

 

[Bjorn Le]

I think the patch may have made some adjustments here, I haven't really noticed because I've always been playing with a modded tech tree, but in the base game the tech tree is kind of wonky because it allows some ridiculous beelining. You can basically ignore half the tech tree, so it's possibly to advance really far ahead in the era's. Even with a modded tech tree, I can still see the AI jump really far ahead, like playing on Emperor seeing someone complete the Big Ben while I'm still in the medieval era.

I've found this is all rather misleading though, and have moved on to playing Immortal and still find it pretty easy. While the AI can get off to a huge lead they can stagnate mid game. Settle more cities than them, focus on getting up smart industrial zones, and if you share borders improve your defense with a well placed military encampment.

There's two big flaws in the AI's game, first they don't build many districts, second the military AI is really tentative rendering it practically ineffective. So even with their advantage and they're not much of a threat, then stick to your expansion and district building and eventually you'll shoot past them.

...Kind of disappointing really. On Civ V I always stuck with Emperor difficulty, so if I'm finding even Immortal difficulty easy here that's a huge flaw in the system.

Yeah I don't mean it's necessarily hard it's just a pain in the ass. This most recent game was post-patch so it hasn't helped in that regard. I was killing it in production and gold because Germany is broken but taking cities was such a pain in the ass when the AI has jumped so far ahead. Like literally their cities were not going down. Made it not fun anymore. I know I could have won the game by lasting to the atomic era and nuking anyone who got close to winning but I just got bored. I know Civ has always been like this but I've lost appetite for playing against enemies that have so many bonuses you need to be gamey to win. I think I'll stick to King difficulty.

 

[Malmo]

https://www.civilization.com/news/entries/civilization-vi-winter-2016-update-now-live

Winter update out, including two scenarios and a new civ that looks op, Poland.

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

Got this as a Christmas gift from some friends, and actually finding it really difficult so far. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the districts and civics especially (I'm not used to having to focus so much on culture). The game is way more thorough than V was, which I appreciate and will come to love more as I understand the game more. The learning curve is killing me though.

 

[Osprey]

Well decided just to buy it to see if it can even run on my machine, and return it if not, and surprisingly it seems to work just fine. And wow it actually runs on my machine reasonably enough. Will have to see how the later era's go, but so far I'm in the medieval era on a normal sized fractal map. Apart from the game being really slow to start and load it's chugging along okay.

I'm replying to something that you wrote 3 months ago, and you may have already discovered this, since it's been an oft-talked about fix since the day that the game came out, but I just learned of it and wanted to share. Windows Defender likes to scan CivilizationVI.exe and that makes starting up and loading take longer than they should. Solving it as easy as adding an exclusion in Defender's Settings. Doing that seemed to speed up my startup time and cut the loading time of my first game by 30 seconds. It still takes a few minutes to load a map/save, so it's not the greatest reduction (though other people have reported that Defender made load times many minutes longer and make it look like the game froze), but those 30 seconds saved all came for me from a drastically shorter "Loading. Please Wait..." black screen (before the civilization screen is shown), which has nothing to read, look at or listen to, so it feels faster than than just that. If you haven't added a Defender exclusion yet, give it a try.

 

[SniperHF]

Maybe someone knows the answer to this one:

I've been experimenting with using the district boost cards lately and find using them a pain due to the interface.

Is there an easy way to see your adjacency bonus on districts that already exist? How about something like total culture output from district buildings?

In the latter case I just have to manually count them up which is annoying. And I have absolutely no idea how to see the existing adjacency bonuses.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

So they just announced the latest DLC civ and it's............Australia.

I mean, WTF? Still missing Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, Assyrians, Incans, Mayans, Byzantines, Netherlands, Portugal.....and they give us the bloody Aussies.

 

[Osprey]

I'm a little embarrassed that I upgraded my computer to play this and I haven't touched it in months. I think that the long load times are really discouraging me. I know that, if I fire it up, I'll have to wait for 2-3 minutes at a loading screen before I can play... and, if I should ever want to go back a turn or two, I'll have to wait for at least another 2 minutes.

I really don't understand how a game like this takes so long to load, especially since there's hardly more to it than previous games in the series. Similar games, like Crusader Kings II, also take ages to load (even just to get to the main menu; Paradox games are terrible at this). I don't get it. We have all of this processing power and rendering the state of a glorified board game with last gen graphics takes longer than a next gen game. I realize that it's often more the data state (where everything is and what the values are) than the graphics, but still; it's only ~5MB of savegame data and shouldn't take 2-3 minutes to process. It's just frustrating that load times have really come down in other genres of games, but they seem to be climbing in this genre for seemingly little good reason.

OK, I needed to get that off of my chest.

So they just announced the latest DLC civ and it's............Australia.

I mean, WTF? Still missing Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, Assyrians, Incans, Mayans, Byzantines, Netherlands, Portugal.....and they give us the bloody Aussies.

Well, I don't see the Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, Assyrians, Incans, Mayans or Byzantines clamoring to buy a DLC based on their civilizations . Seriously, DLC is about what people will pay for, and Australia is a fairly big market, larger than Netherlands and Portugal. Yeah, it's disappointing (unless you're Australian), but they don't have to produce DLC at all and going with what sells is typical for minor DLC. We may still eventually get some of those more worthy civilizations added via expansion packs or major DLC. That may make more sense than offering them as standalone DLC. Standalone DLC is more about getting people's attention, IMO, like they're trying to get Australian fans' attention here.

 

[RandV]

Well, I don't see the Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, Assyrians, Incans, Mayans or Byzantines being willing to buy a DLC based on their civilizations . Seriously, DLC is about what people will pay for, and Australia is a fairly big market, larger than Netherlands and Portugal. Yeah, it's disappointing (unless you're Australian), but they don't have to produce DLC at all and going with what sells is typical for minor DLC. We may still eventually get some of those more worthy civilizations added via expansion packs or major DLC. That may make more sense than offering them as standalone DLC.

Yeah I've always felt they should get the main players out of the way then go for more novelty DLC Civ's like Australia, Canada, Mexico, etc. Give your paying customers that aren't a world power or have an ancient history a 'home team' to play with.

 

[Osprey]

Yeah I've always felt they should get the main players out of the way then go for more novelty DLC Civ's like Australia, Canada, Mexico, etc. Give your paying customers that aren't a world power or have an ancient history a 'home team' to play with.

Another way to look at it is that producing DLC that's attractive to big markets ensures revenue and interest that makes it easier to justify expansion packs and adding the older civilizations that don't have big (or any) markets. Just imagine if their first three DLCs were the Assyrians, Ottomans and Byzantines and they didn't sell very well, since a lot of people can't relate or don't know much about them. That might tempt them to cut back on their DLC plans or reduce staff on upcoming expansion packs (or maybe even cancel one or more planned ones). As long as they produce DLC that sells or keeps the main game selling (ex. a lot of Australians who held off on Civ VI might buy it now), the ball keeps rolling and the prospect of getting major updates that fundamentally improve the game (like the expansion packs for previous Civs) stays alive.

To be clear, I totally get Mount Suribachi's point and share his disappointment, but I'm trying to look at it from a business standpoint and how what's best from a business standpoint could be what's best for gamers in the end.

 

[The Head Crusher]

So they just announced the latest DLC civ and it's............Australia.

I mean, WTF? Still missing Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, Assyrians, Incans, Mayans, Byzantines, Netherlands, Portugal.....and they give us the bloody Aussies.

Maybe they will make a scenario where the Aussies have to win the Emu War.....that is right they went to war with giant land birds.....and lost.

 

[RandV]

Actually it looks like the bigger news with the Australia DLC is they're finally releasing mod support.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

The fact that mod support still isn't ready is really the only thing about this game that truly infuriates me.


Australia being this early feels wrong, but I'm sure it makes financial sense to add a current country that pays for and plays your game, but still...Australia this early just seems...weird.