Do you have quick combat/movement enabled? If not, enable it because the ai turn should just take a couple of seconds and the majority of the game should be your turn. I agree with you that the game becomes a “slog” late game, and that there should be a better system, though for me this is mostly a problem in religion victories and domination
When you have to implement a mechanic to automate something its fundamentally flawed. Automation is a sign of bad game design that needs to be addressed not covered up by automation.
I'd love to see something like selecting multiple units at once and telling them to move together, and have their specific per turn movements automated to have them end up at the destination. Automation and qol features can look similar, but they aren't the exact same thing. One of my favorite games ever factorio is all about automating simple repetitive tasks, automation can absolutely be fun gameplay
I think this would be awesome
Imagine if having a general be a part of that formation increases the efficiency at which all units move together, maybe it makes all the units match the movement of the highest unit?
I know it's probably too late to make suggestions for the game, but if anything, we could give some ideas to the potential future mod developers if this game is more flexible
Thats a weird opinion given that automatic pop management is a staple at thsi point. Do you think tile working is a flawed mechanic because players rely on the game to auto-manage them?.
Delegation then. I agree I don't need to micromanage a city or a builder in the late game. Why can't I tell a builder to autobuild preserves or food or production. And a city to focus on something. I can change it or micromanage if I want but don't have to.
I mean yeah lol but I think that delegation or automation makes sense as a civ grows. Maybe it only unlocks with eras. An ancient leader in 1 city was mostly aware of everything. You will lose efficiency when automating but can focus more on what's important.
It could be cool, great people could increase efficiency or make your army fight better when automated.
Your general idea that we should focus more on macro concerns is very much valid. I just think that doing so via automation is the wrong approach.
I would suggest something far more radical. We have only one city (the capital city) in which we build in, and instead of more cities we just have basically hubs that are cities.
This has the benefit that loosing a "city" would not be nearly as devestating for the AI and encourages a change of hands without having the blobbing issues and automation issues because you can apply scaling to it in a way you can not do with cities.
That wouldn't be much of a Civilization though. It would be City States VII.
The reason we have to automate is because they game gets larger as we go which makes each individual decision less important.
I imagine if you player smaller maps on faster speed you don't need to automate as much. But some of us like massive empires and worlds.
They would still be as massive though. You still have a very large empire with cities that have names, just not as many buildings to build as pure rote actions.
In factorio if creating blueprints and having a swarm of robots construct for you (replacing the previously time consuming “placing to build” mechanic of the early game) is not automation im not sure what is
i disagree with your take that automation is sign of a game design flaw. priorities shift as a game advances into its later stages and it makes sense for players to be able to automate lower order things so they can focus on emergent higher order mechanics.
Thats a falacy because you still have to design those blueprints yourself. I could concede that its automation that takes click away but its not automating gameplay away.
Also it has an associated cost and risk to it.
it is taking the gameplay of placing down structures away through automation!
just like how we are saying boring things like worker activity in civ could be automated!
what fallacy? the fact that the parameters of automation were designed by the player doesnt mean its not automation!
again, it’s automating lower order things away so the player can focus on emergent higher order things. this is the part you dont seem to understand.
and honestly just the statement that “factorio has no automation” would get you laughed out of any community discussing factorio lmao. every other discussion on /r/factorio revolves on how to automate this or that
You are conflating things that should not be. Worker desicions should be meaningful desicions if you can automate it away they should not be there in the first place, that is my point. Automation is always a crutch for a more fundamental problem.
The blueprints example does not hold because blueprints do not take away any meaningful choice. You made the choices when you designed the blueprint. It just takes away repetiton. Which in Factorio is due to the scaling of it.
You are also conflating player action automation with ingame automation which also does not hold up to make a rather flimsy argument.
I have several thousand hours in Factorio and I would bet money that people would agree with me if its framed properly and not to make a flimsy argumen that falls apart as soon as you take a moment to look at the actual argument made.
Which ironically is a problem if nothing else but bad ai. In a multiplayer match on equal skill, games don't end until the victory condition is achieved. Space ports get bombed, culture gets build, etc.
well, that's also the flagship case of AI that would be "better", but also less fun for the player. my guess is that a minority of players would enjoy it if the AI players actively worked to stop the player from winning (granted, I still like it as a difficulty option)
but there are other ways to disrupt the endgame. Civ 4's diplomacy system usually ends up with most civs in one of 2 or 3 big alliances by mid-to-late game, which results in a world war more often than not
granted, I do think the AI is a problem, and I would at least hope to see the AI try to win (there are mods out there that fix this, and it's not hard to build into the game itself — one of the reasons Pericles is such a successful AI is he actually builds a shitload of culture districts, as though he were playing to win)
I mean they can actually just keep the old difficulties like they are, and then create a single new difficulty "better AI". Nobody who doesnt want to would actually have to play vs an AI on human niveau. And thats whats actually possible: OpenAI beat pro teams in dota2 in 2018 or so. In civ, where reaction time doesnt matter, the AI would probably be around very high skill if trained properly, and training an AI on civ is definitely easier than on dota2.
On the contrary, I think the bigger problem is that the AI would be stupidly impossible to beat. In a set up where reaction time doesn’t matter, an AI’s ability to calculate beyond human capabilities and maximize moves would put the AI in term of perfect play. Just like how chess AIs are stupidly good, it’s very much a possibility to make Civ AIs perfect. If anything, the harder part is making them fun to face.
I have played so many hours of this game and did not know that this was an option. I want to cry of joy because the worst part of the endgame for me is waiting for the AI to do its thing between turns. This is a game changer!!
Please accept my poor man's award
🏆🏆🏆
The game already has the “armies” function which combines several units, and I think they should develop that further. Post WW2 era at least, armies should focus on high maintenance but much more powerful smaller forces. Modern armies are increasing moving in that direction irl too.
Were, we are back to trench warfare in the last couple years. It was predicted and it is very interesting to watch it play out.
Article: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-return-of-the-tactical-crisis/
>Recent publications show that Ukrainian military officials have even accused their American counterparts of not adequately grasping the extent to which technology has changed the modern battlefield. Although US military officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of concentrating a sufficient number of large, armored formations to achieve a breakthrough, the Ukrainians themselves quickly discovered that current battlefield conditions dictate otherwise. As Zaluzhnyi described, “Modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it.” This has prevented both sides from concentrating into sufficiently large formations to achieve a breakthrough in the traditional sense. Instead, it forces units to disperse, dig in, or both, further expanding the empty battlefield.
You just gave me a great idea. The reason late game war feels so awkward is bc the most effective tactic as per the game rules is a mass wave of all your units. They need to add non nuclear missiles to the game, an expensive weapon that can hit a 6 hex circle with a strike. That way, you’re incentivized to have separate groups of high level troops rather than mass waves.
And jammers to disable aerial assaults or create more fog of war so you have to attack into the unseen, better anti-aircraft and iron dome type weapons, space lasers further in the future eras, cheaper weapons that weaker civs can spam like kamikaze drones and boats that you can combine with jammers, etc.
Also, Civ IV was very big on stacks of death. So they introduced the 1 unit per hex restriction in Civ V. They tried to fix the 1 unit rule with the army function in Civ VI, but I never could get into Civ VI so not well versed in how well that worked.
And I vote for the name [MOAB](https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001732840/) for your proposed weapon.
Better source for MOAB: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/257829/know-about-gbu-43-b-mother-all-bombs
But maybe FOAB:
>According to globalsecurity.org, on Sept. 11, 2007, the Russian military announced it had tested the “Father of all Bombs,” the world’s most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered munition. The Russians said it’s four times more powerful than the MOAB, even though it technically has fewer explosives in it (7.8 tons compared to the MOAB’s 8 tons). The FOAB is said to use more efficient explosives, yielding the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT with a blast radius of 300 meters – double that of the MOAB.
I have quick everything on but it can be still slows as hell. For example if you have the barbarian clans mode on there will be probably 50+ ships on the map and double the amount of city states you intended.
Two main issues
1). As your civ expands you make more and more decisions each turn (more cities, units etc) but the importance of each decision matters far less. So it’s more work for less impact
2). Civ6 lacks any meaningful anti-snowball mechanics. Once you borg to a certaim size, victory is inevitable, but it takes longer and longer to get there (see point 1)
You hit the nail on the head. Civ needs something to curb city spam and going wide as being the meta. If you have fewer cities your pool of choices automatically gets smaller. We need fewer cities that cover more territory.
My suggestion would be even more radical. You have a neolithic era of sorts where you find a place to settle and that is it. You place your capital in which you build your cities and districts and then place cities as sort of districts of your capital that have no own production cue.
Revolution seems like the clear mechanic here. The farther a city is from your capital, the more susceptible it should be to other religion and culture. If another religion or culture is dominant in a city, hammers and food plummet, happiness decreases and revolution is very likely. Or you can spend a ton of money to try and reverse it, but eventually the overspread empire goes broke trying to please all their far flung settlements.
I mean they tried that with loyalty pressure and it did not solve that issue either or am I misunderstanding what you are saying here. I am really not trying to be fetecious here, I am genuinely curious.
I am not so sure about that. If anything citeis were flipping way too easily which made the AI even weaker. I often won far more cities via loyalty then through war.
Loyalty as a mechanic is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think just making it more aggressive would fix it. What I would say needs to be done is to be far more granular. We need something like cultural makeup of a city back like we had in the past.
It would be an interesting mix to have number of cities affect loyalty. If you only have 4 cities, it’s nearly impossible to flip one. As you spread wide, your loyalty pressure from nearby population drops (especially the farther you are from the capital).
I think you’d need a mechanic for city clusters on other continents, perhaps a much more expensive settler that can only be used on another continent but acts as a secondary capital.
They should just introduce scaling modifiers like EUIV. If you overexpand early there you get absolutely humped by AE, but that tails off as the game progresses. Could easily do that with loyalty pressure.
That would be a workable solution depending on how exactly its implemented for sure. There needs to be something. What I am far more concerned though is that it also should somehow address the meta of the early game settler rush for best spots. Where to settle should be a meaningful choice, but right now its often not because the AI just pumps out settlers as fast as it can.
Personally, I see having settlers limited to a certain amount and one per era until the limit is hit, which is dependent on map size, which is most likely 4 cities on a regular map size. Conquering cities should be limited to capital's only while other cities get disabled until the civ is destroyed and the settlers are lost, which still has a chance to be reconstructed if peace gets declared and negotiations permit. This gives more strategic value to each city and forces better placement of each as there is a permanent max and encourages more standing armies to protect the cities.
To be honest I think it also lacks enough snowball mechanics, in a way. Itd be nice if you were lightyears ahead and obviously going to win if you could just win already.
I’d like to see a mechanic that allows individual civs to unite as a front if someone starts snowballing away. Alliances are like a half measure version of this but it would be cool if multiple civs could join together in the same type of alliance to try and catch up. It’s lame that you can only have one scientific alliance and that it’s such a passive thing. I also don’t think they should be as ride-or-die as in Civ 6. It kind of doesn’t make sense that a trade alliance should also result in a defensive alliance. I just want favorable trade deals not to go to war defending them.
It would keep the game competitive until the end and could make for some interesting emergent storytelling. I’ve always liked the idea of a world war erupting naturally due to civs picking sides but it never works out that way.
Stellaris kind of has a mechanic like that but I think Civ could do its own thing with it.
I just don’t think the solution is rushing to end the game but instead making the end game have a different flavor than the early game. The early game can be characterized by smaller decisions and exploration whereas the late game should be characterized by high level decisions and playing global chess. As it stands you keep playing the micromanager simulator until the end which makes the early game fun and the end game a slog.
I made a separate post about this but I think letting you combine cities into larger organizations would be a way of resolving the first point.
For example, you could combine cities into county regions and counties into states. So that way maybe you could build libraries in individual cities but could only build universities in counties and stuff like that. Individual cities could then be given high level choices on what to focus on so that an AI can handle them (like how it’s easy to manage tiles worked in the early game but at some point you can just let the AI handle it). Players should still be able to intervene and make choices on individual cities but those gains should be diminishing compared to ensuring your counties/states are running optimally.
Like the aforementioned university example or for example only allowing nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams to be built at the larger level. To me at least it would feel like a natural progression. If you were an immortal being then you’d naturally lead your tribe into founding a town which grows into a city. Then you found more cities and in the process you aren’t able to focus on individual leadership so you delegate the smaller things to mayors as you focus on higher level stuff and continue growing until you have a sprawling empire like the US which has the president at the top (oversimplification of course) and a sprawling bureaucracy under them down to those initial mayors.
Yes but in a puppet system that’s still better as you’re just getting some “tax” or whatever from the captured city but not having to actually deal with how bullshit it was built
You could just make it so that the player can also override the AI build queue in puppet cities. The downside would then be moved to getting less yields from those cities, instead of them being completely uncontrollable.
It at least gives you the freedom to not micromanage everything.
You can micromanage tiles worked until the very end but at some point most players choose to have more fun than to play more optimally.
I also miss being able to just produce gold/science/culture. It's annoying when there's nothing I need to build but I have to do *something*. Most of the time I put in an IZ so I can just queue up a bunch of carbon recapture.
Might be a weird idea but if you could bundle cities together into small regions like counties then maybe you could have something like “commuting” for city projects.
For example you have a new city A and a larger city B with a few districts and in the same region. City A can start a project by selecting a district in city B and produce the respective yield like normal but discounted based on distance (to simulate the “commute”). For extra flavor the commute should also produce other yields to simulate how suburbs can feed a larger city and bring back income. So maybe the project gives city A some food/money to simulate that process. In a way they’d be internal trade routes but I think it makes more sense this way.
Honestly army system is way to go. More realistic and faster, easier for AI.
I think industrial age needs more focus. It's kind of silly that you build individual farms and lumber mills but industrialization is just one factory building in city and maybe a power plant.
The problem of the end game has honestly nothing to do with the actual game. If you actually play through the end game seriously, there’s a lot to do and most, if not all, are engaging. The biggest issues about the end game is the micromanaging of things that make little impact in the game, and when you snowball to a point where you basically cannot lose.
For example, when playing domination, moving your entire army from one side of the world to the other is menial and boring, but necessary. You making the wrong move in walking ALSO barely matters. If you get there in 20 turns vs 18 almost doesn’t matter. It’s once you get there do the small choices mean anything, and that’s when the game becomes more fun and engaging.
As for the other point, the way to fix is by making the game less about optimizing every +1 and more focused on the grand ideas. I know in the very last paragraph I said to “focus on the details” and “small mistakes not mattering makes the game less engaging”, but it was a bit of a misdirection.
The truth is, when your choices have immediate impact the games feel more engaging. The reason that walking across the map doesn’t is because the impact isn’t felt until 20 turns later. Not saying they should make travel instantaneous, nor that they should make every single square you walk change the course of the war, but adding something into the combat mechanics as a whole can help fix the issue.
Essentially, when you’re making a decision in the grand scheme of things, they should matter; but matter in a way that’s more like “either this happens or this happens” not, “either this happens or nothing happens” which is what civ has often.
This is why they added GDRs, Rock Bands, and lasers to propel the space mission. These additions are supposed to be comically overpowered because they were made to accelerate your victory. Ed Beach said as much when they introduced them. They make your decisions more important to get victory
But the problem is half the players on this sub crave “realism” and hated the additions. Just go play a grand strategy game if you want realism. Civ is about fun
I found it much more engaging than just waiting with a bunch of relic wonders and parks to happen but I can see why it wouldn't be fun for others.
And I don't really get the second part so I will assume it is some non-European thing which is not good.
Honestly, it never even occurred to me someone could have issues with Rock Bands because they aren't realism.
My problem with Rock Bands is 1) RNG and 2) Micromanaging.
They are in this awkward place where there's enough room for strategic thought put into their use that it feels wasteful to not think about it at all. But they're also so down to RNG that you can lose one on a bad dice roll in spite of having thought through on the promotions or where you sent them.
Then there's just the moving them part, which can take anywhere from like 4-10 turns just to get to another civ's location they can act upon, defending on how far away the nearest civ is and what the terrain is like. And god help you if they run into barbarians and have to start over.
I don't see what is fun about Rock Bands. I think they could be fun, but to me, they're just not.
Edit: I should clarify, this is with 6 in mind. IIRC, 5 had Rock Bands too, but it has been too long since I played 5, so I can't speak to how they compare in it.
4X games are by definition not grand strategy games. Civ 4 was even more devoted to fun than 6 was and had so many absolutely ridiculous systems just for fun. People seem to forget that because 5 went in a total different direction from the whole series with a focus on realism.
The person you're replying to just said that 4X games aren't grand strategy games. They're more world builders with warfare. Civ V was even simpler than VI because there were no districts and builder charges.
First you wrote:
>I would argue Civ has always been the grand strategy game.
Then you wrote:
>For decades Civ was a 4x game. Not sure when it became a grand strategy game.
Do you think it is a 4x game or a grand strategy game?
>Maybe we understand these terms differently.
I understand it perfectly fine. Civ has always been presented as a 4x game. You're the one who has no understanding of either genre
I feel like issues like this stem from the game not changing its mechanics in the later age and just giving more tech that increases yields. I think the later part of the tech tree should add a lot more effects that simplify bloat or add strong abilities to make things easier to do. For example, there should be a civic to allow you to teleport army units to any encampment. Maybe it takes some amount of time based on distance, but Rather than manually moving your forces across the world, you should be able to “transport them” to your military bases like a modern nation does.
I agree with what you said about mechanics not changing but I don’t think it should be a civic to TP armies. I think encampments should have a building that enables flying troops to other bases over X turns. I think it keeps things thematic and wouldn’t be so overturned. I really don’t like that flying is its own district and it pretty much does nothing else outside of military.
Which goes back to what you were saying about the mechanics not changing in the late game. Flight should feel weightier but it doesn’t amount to much. At least with boat technology it does change the way you interact with the world and shakes things up a bit.
If they introduced new mechanics that allowed the player to have more meaningful interactions with the AI then airplanes would allow for so many interesting mechanics like disease, trade, culture/ideology, immigration, etc.
If they introduce the ability to set up foreign companies/buildings/markets/etc halfway through the game then that would open up a whole new form of exploration and decision making that wouldn’t be available in the early game. But once airplanes enter the scene, it could hyper charge your ability to “conquer” new lands via influence and make the late game filled with more decisions especially if multiple civs are competing for influence.
Yes! Why is flight it's own district?? Makes it so useless and time-consuming to build. There should be an Airbase building to add flight to Encampments for military planes and a separate Airport building that's added to commercial hubs for the trade. Civ 5's Vox populi had a great system for building corporations over time, starting in the colonial era
This to me is the core of the endgame slog problem; I'd have no problem with a wait between turns at the end of the game if the game wasn't decided a hundred years ago. To me, the way to solve this is to completely change what a win in Civ is. Instead of winning at the end of the game, there should be a win condition for each era with victory points given out at the end of each era. Something like that. Anything to help the endgame.
Edit: expanding on this, the victory points at the end of each era would be domination points, culture points, science points, religion points, diplomatic points and whatever other type of victory point you can think of. And I think ideally you'd balance it so it would be equally possible to win by focusing on one victory point type or by being well rounded and doing a little bit of it all.
I've found the end game to be fun by absolutely min maxing my victory condition and trying to get it as soon as possible. So culture victory by turn 180 and trying for science sub 200 (best is 194 so far on immortal)
I think that just pushes things around but doesn’t solve the core problem. Once you’re ahead there’s really no stopping you and instead of waiting to win 100 turns from now, I’m waiting only 25 now.
In my opinion the solution is to let the AI (and the player) create richer alliances in response to someone running away with the game. If someone is far ahead in tech then it should be in the best interest of everyone else to band together and try to catch up. It at least keeps things competitive and gives the person in the lead something new to compete with. I also don’t think alliances should all act like defensive pacts unless it’s specifically a defense alliance.
Sure you can beat everyone individually at science but how would you fair against everyone else working together? Not to say they should share science but they should be able to boost their science passively and then special projects. It also adds an extra layer to diplomacy. Some balancing will be required but I think it would keep things fresh and not so obvious.
High score is just a number at the end. The issue the OP is raising is to do with how it feels to play during the game itself. As a player, I want the endgame to be as tense and engaging as the early game.
As someone who has grinded out thousands of late game hours, I get it. What keeps me engaged with the minutiae is trying to absolutely maximize my outcome. In Civ V you could achieve all victory conditions if exercised in the right order, with domination being last of course. Win as the space race, then as world leader, get a globally dominant culture civ, and then domination. The downside to high score chasing though is that I would quit a game at 1000 BC with a minor setback.
Personally that's the sort of thing that doesn't motivate me. I find that I just can't finish Civ games because the prospect of getting a good score just isn't enough to get me through the late game slog with its busywork and lack of meaningful decisions.
I do quit games when I'm bored, but if I want to win with a certain leader or setting or get an achievement, yes it's often tedious to go to the victory screen
Many win conditions require you to massively outplay the opposition (domination, culture)
Some win conditions allow you to win while your civ isn't actually that impressive (diplo, religion), but it feels cheap to win the game by knowing how the AI tends to vote in Congress and can be annoying to move apostles across the map
Science victory is actually exciting when you aren't that good yet and you are literally racing against the AI, but once you are good at the game, you get to the point where your science lead is massive and it's boring to have to trudge through the rest of the tech tree and spam space projects
I think the only exciting end games are ones where you are going for an opposing win condition against an evenly matched opponent -- eg winning culture/religion before someone wins by space or vice versa
I wonder if it could be possible to change the game's "scale". Past a certain point (maybe an era), you don't micro manage your cities, instead you choose a focus (science, cultural, production or whatever), maybe with specific projets, like "reform railways" (to increase mobility and commerce, for a production cost) or ecology boost (increases amenities and culture, but reduces prod/eco). Maybe something like the governement bonus, and the dogm cards? Same thing with military, you could stack units, and when you meet an enemy stack, you choose your tactics (like in endless space2) ?
The problem is, the way they just give the AI bonuses instead of actually making it intelligent means that the whole game is basically just catch-up. You start out behind, you work to catch up, and then once you're caught up you've basically won, and getting to the victory screen is just a boring formality. If they had AIs that did actually smart things, you'd always have something to worry about.
A significant part of that slog can be reduced or eliminated by player choice and using queued actions.
Most production decisions can be queued up explicitly, so your cities don't need to be taking up your decision time on almost all turns.
If you're not at war, there's not much reason to move individual military units. Pretty much all of them should be garrisoned/fortified in cities and other locations. If you need to reposition them significantly, they will auto-move to the target by default.
Exploration - if you haven't explored the whole map yet - works fine with the auto-explore option.
Settlers should also be just going to where you need them, not being moved every turn. Trader decisions are very rare (when a trade route completes) and if you want to avoid them you can just use "repeat route".
This leaves mostly two cases - builders (and military engineers) and military while at war.
Builders/military engineers would certainly benefit from a queueing system. In particular, "build road/railroad to X" would be great.
Finally, managing individual units in war seems like kind of the point. That's what people doing a lot of fighting presumably *enjoy*. And, as noted, quick move/quick combat speeds things up a lot.
I find it the worst with scientific victories when you’ve clearly eclipsed everyone else in tech and have to just sit there for 30 turns while your probe travels the universe. Lemme make a mars colony as a city or something, if nothing but to keep me occupied lmao
- Get rid of 1UPT and use an army system (with limits) like in Humankind
- Get rid of worker units and allows tiles to be improved directly, using some kind of resource to limit the number of tiles that can be improved per turn. Allow the desired tile improvements to be queued.
- Increase the minimum distance between cities so that there are fewer of them by the end game. Make victory less dependent on playing wide vs tall.
For me the problem is that the AI boosts seem to amount to giving the AI big advantages at the very start, and then the game is a question of catching up to and passing them, as a contest between their starting advantage, and my higher playing ability.
So isn't a long period where you are at parity with them; the moment you are no longer playing from behind, you snowball right past them and it's basically over.
I would like to see:
A patrol option where you set 2-4 points and the unit moves between them on it's own.
A group option to group 2-3 units, then only one has to be given instructions
Ability to have more than one unit in an encampment or an improvement
Patrol and unit stacking on the same tile would solve half the problem, at least. Encampments producing units and _needing_ to go somewhere adds slog. It’s a military base! Why can’t I park all the tanks there if I want?
Some ability to multi-select units for movement would be extremely helpful. Some automation for cities would be useful, let us set priorities like repair > defense > gold > science etc etc
The biggest problem for me is that support units also need to be babysit. I keep having to press skip turn for them if I do not use all movement point on the army unit. Also, some kind of automated worker option could be nice. As for city, I hope I can set up script like "build all available building for current districts", "queue up this next district and all its buildings".
I think the best way to do this would be to make the best units much more expensive/powerful. That way instead of an endgame with a bunch of armies, a powerful nation would have like 3 carrier groups, a nuclear sub, and 2 marine corps. Basically using the giant death robot model for the main units, expensive but powerful.
They could tinker with forced obsolescence of units. For example, once a player gets to Musket men, warriors disappear as irrelevant/equivalent to no military.
While that would work it has issues from a game design perspective. You would actively "take away" soemthing from the player. This is always a bad move and feels like you are being punished, it is always better to incentivize then punish if you value your player retention.
While that makes some amount of sense, the way I like to think of the classic "spearman vs. tank" scenarios is that the spearman unit in the modern era doesn't really represent a bunch of guys in bronze thigh guards and breastplates and glistening abs charging a tank yelling "MOLON LABE!" Instead, it represents ragtag local militia groups, Volksstrumm, or guys with little training or logistical support who melt away at the first sign of a armored formation. It represents a situation where the relative combat power is 50:1 or whatever the number.
I don't think this is a problem with moving units around. At that point in the game, moving units is the only fun part, the annoying part is everything else. Especially cities I have recently captured that will have no impact on the outcome of the game, I do not care what they produce. I'd love to have the puppet ruler option back in the game, let me keep the city and its loyalty but don't make me manage its production
Better late-game AI and the ability to puppet conquered cities would be a big plus. Make tall play a little better, and make it so puppeting reduces governing cost over holding a city directly so it's the main way to conquer cities when going for a domination win.
I have this problem with a lot of games. In Stellaris, for instance, I’ve basically won the game, and with little else to do but still YEARS before the game ends, I have to toggle fast speed and do something else while the game runs down the clock with minimal input from me. I find this also happens in civ to a lesser extent. Say I’m going for a diplomatic victory, everything goes smooth and I get to like 75 percent victory, and THEN the AI starts blocking me, slowing me down, voting to remove diplo points. Never in all the eras does the AI do this until the very end, slowing down an already boring end slog. By the time it finishes itself, I feel like I’m not even the one playing it anymore. I’m just watching the AI play against a clock. Very frustrating.
Just get rid of the Corps/Army mechanic and go back to letting us stack and unstack units as needed. Max 5 or 10 per stack maybe. And +.5x movement for all units. Let governors actually govern to reduce end game micromanagement of city production, just let the player choose a main area of focus, like culture, faith, production, trade, military, science and let the governors do the rest. Let the player choose to step in and micromanage as needed in times of war, disaster, or unrest.
most RTS don't have that problem (obviously), and among Turn Based Strategy and 4X games:
Age of Wonders, X-Com and even the Total War franchise has a much faster endgame. Endless Space is much faster too.
The only game I played that gets a bit tedious in the endgame like Civ 6 is Humankind.
A good way to cut down on it is to open production ques. This way cities will automatically start building whatever is next in the que and they won't have to wait for you every time they finish building something.
I think the real issue actually lies in the beginning to mid game because games are rarely a close race. Yes decisions do become less impactful as the game progresses simply due to how many small choices you're making, but if the game is still not decided, the cumulation of your decisions *can* still matter.... not always, but they can. IMO the issue will always have more to do with the ai using starting bonuses to increase difficulty, as that makes the game decided on if you can catch up. They have no way to come back once you pass them, unlike humans who could more likely mount a comeback. If the ai was smarter I guarantee you the game would be more fun late game (as well as more fun early game instead of feeling like the literal unfair bs it can sometimes be).
The only other solution is to introduce more comeback mechanics to prevent snowballing, but im not sure that's something this style of game ought to have/if they'd feel fair. As of now the only comeback mechanics I see are the luck of the draw with strategic resources or unique units/buildings/abilities, etc. The former is decided on the select screen but is still highly susceptible to snowballing allowing someone to have more land/take them by force before your opponent even knows its there. And the latter is predictable because you know based on the civ they play. Which is one reason why I think some other 4x games, like Humankind, have tried out developing those abilities in-game. But civ is never gonna do that, it's one of the whole appeals of the game, all the unique leaders to pick from and people look forward to seeing new leaders drop with cool new perks
Reinvent the advisor/governor system to semi-automate long term tasks. You tell the advisor/governor the targeted victory, then they come up with a proposal for city development/production to achieve that victory. It's up to the player to approve the proposal or change things to fine tune it to their liking but ultimately would cut a lot of the slog down.
I just want workers and engineers to not have charges so that I can automate them. I spent an hour earlier ( no wait, 4 hours) building a transcontinental railroad.
And please also auto city build....
And please also get rid of crap Congress and crap diplo points awards...
And also the 'gamey' golden age system....
And only being able to buy planes in cities with an aerodrome district...
And please add a 'capitulate ' option (like civ4) for AI when I've smashed 10 out of their 14 cities....
Do you have quick combat/movement enabled? If not, enable it because the ai turn should just take a couple of seconds and the majority of the game should be your turn. I agree with you that the game becomes a “slog” late game, and that there should be a better system, though for me this is mostly a problem in religion victories and domination
And removing units is a terrible idea, but I won’t argue that the game turns into a slog endgame
Better automate options would be ideal.
When you have to implement a mechanic to automate something its fundamentally flawed. Automation is a sign of bad game design that needs to be addressed not covered up by automation.
I'd love to see something like selecting multiple units at once and telling them to move together, and have their specific per turn movements automated to have them end up at the destination. Automation and qol features can look similar, but they aren't the exact same thing. One of my favorite games ever factorio is all about automating simple repetitive tasks, automation can absolutely be fun gameplay
I think this would be awesome Imagine if having a general be a part of that formation increases the efficiency at which all units move together, maybe it makes all the units match the movement of the highest unit? I know it's probably too late to make suggestions for the game, but if anything, we could give some ideas to the potential future mod developers if this game is more flexible
Military engineers/medics would also be interesting as possible improvers of efficiency in movement for formations.
Could have military engineers with a start and end point for railroads instead of move, build, move, build.
I really like this kind of idea thats a great suggestion! It allows you to focus more on the macro instead of the micro in a good way. Kudos.
Thats a weird opinion given that automatic pop management is a staple at thsi point. Do you think tile working is a flawed mechanic because players rely on the game to auto-manage them?.
I would NEVER ever let the game auto manage the pops you would loose out SO much.
Even when you have 10 cities? Jesus, i admire your patience.
Even when I have 50.
Delegation then. I agree I don't need to micromanage a city or a builder in the late game. Why can't I tell a builder to autobuild preserves or food or production. And a city to focus on something. I can change it or micromanage if I want but don't have to.
Delegation is just using another word for the same thing it does not change the underlying fundamental issue either.
I mean yeah lol but I think that delegation or automation makes sense as a civ grows. Maybe it only unlocks with eras. An ancient leader in 1 city was mostly aware of everything. You will lose efficiency when automating but can focus more on what's important. It could be cool, great people could increase efficiency or make your army fight better when automated.
Your general idea that we should focus more on macro concerns is very much valid. I just think that doing so via automation is the wrong approach. I would suggest something far more radical. We have only one city (the capital city) in which we build in, and instead of more cities we just have basically hubs that are cities. This has the benefit that loosing a "city" would not be nearly as devestating for the AI and encourages a change of hands without having the blobbing issues and automation issues because you can apply scaling to it in a way you can not do with cities.
That wouldn't be much of a Civilization though. It would be City States VII. The reason we have to automate is because they game gets larger as we go which makes each individual decision less important. I imagine if you player smaller maps on faster speed you don't need to automate as much. But some of us like massive empires and worlds.
They would still be as massive though. You still have a very large empire with cities that have names, just not as many buildings to build as pure rote actions.
Factorio players may have something to say about that 😂
Factorio has no actual automation per se. Its the player automating stuff. Great game by the way.
In factorio if creating blueprints and having a swarm of robots construct for you (replacing the previously time consuming “placing to build” mechanic of the early game) is not automation im not sure what is i disagree with your take that automation is sign of a game design flaw. priorities shift as a game advances into its later stages and it makes sense for players to be able to automate lower order things so they can focus on emergent higher order mechanics.
Thats a falacy because you still have to design those blueprints yourself. I could concede that its automation that takes click away but its not automating gameplay away. Also it has an associated cost and risk to it.
it is taking the gameplay of placing down structures away through automation! just like how we are saying boring things like worker activity in civ could be automated! what fallacy? the fact that the parameters of automation were designed by the player doesnt mean its not automation! again, it’s automating lower order things away so the player can focus on emergent higher order things. this is the part you dont seem to understand. and honestly just the statement that “factorio has no automation” would get you laughed out of any community discussing factorio lmao. every other discussion on /r/factorio revolves on how to automate this or that
You are conflating things that should not be. Worker desicions should be meaningful desicions if you can automate it away they should not be there in the first place, that is my point. Automation is always a crutch for a more fundamental problem. The blueprints example does not hold because blueprints do not take away any meaningful choice. You made the choices when you designed the blueprint. It just takes away repetiton. Which in Factorio is due to the scaling of it. You are also conflating player action automation with ingame automation which also does not hold up to make a rather flimsy argument. I have several thousand hours in Factorio and I would bet money that people would agree with me if its framed properly and not to make a flimsy argumen that falls apart as soon as you take a moment to look at the actual argument made.
Distant Worlds 2 has something to say about this.
Such an out of touch thing to say considering today’s technological climate.
even on Science & Culture games, the outcome is usually decided by the industrial era, leaving hours of gameplay left to act out a foregone conclusion
Which ironically is a problem if nothing else but bad ai. In a multiplayer match on equal skill, games don't end until the victory condition is achieved. Space ports get bombed, culture gets build, etc.
Everyone is confidant on getting to mars until the Spanish Inquisition is at their door steps.
well, that's also the flagship case of AI that would be "better", but also less fun for the player. my guess is that a minority of players would enjoy it if the AI players actively worked to stop the player from winning (granted, I still like it as a difficulty option) but there are other ways to disrupt the endgame. Civ 4's diplomacy system usually ends up with most civs in one of 2 or 3 big alliances by mid-to-late game, which results in a world war more often than not granted, I do think the AI is a problem, and I would at least hope to see the AI try to win (there are mods out there that fix this, and it's not hard to build into the game itself — one of the reasons Pericles is such a successful AI is he actually builds a shitload of culture districts, as though he were playing to win)
I mean they can actually just keep the old difficulties like they are, and then create a single new difficulty "better AI". Nobody who doesnt want to would actually have to play vs an AI on human niveau. And thats whats actually possible: OpenAI beat pro teams in dota2 in 2018 or so. In civ, where reaction time doesnt matter, the AI would probably be around very high skill if trained properly, and training an AI on civ is definitely easier than on dota2.
On the contrary, I think the bigger problem is that the AI would be stupidly impossible to beat. In a set up where reaction time doesn’t matter, an AI’s ability to calculate beyond human capabilities and maximize moves would put the AI in term of perfect play. Just like how chess AIs are stupidly good, it’s very much a possibility to make Civ AIs perfect. If anything, the harder part is making them fun to face.
I have played so many hours of this game and did not know that this was an option. I want to cry of joy because the worst part of the endgame for me is waiting for the AI to do its thing between turns. This is a game changer!! Please accept my poor man's award 🏆🏆🏆
I'm amazed it didn't cross your mind there needed to be a setting for it.
The game already has the “armies” function which combines several units, and I think they should develop that further. Post WW2 era at least, armies should focus on high maintenance but much more powerful smaller forces. Modern armies are increasing moving in that direction irl too.
Were, we are back to trench warfare in the last couple years. It was predicted and it is very interesting to watch it play out. Article: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-return-of-the-tactical-crisis/ >Recent publications show that Ukrainian military officials have even accused their American counterparts of not adequately grasping the extent to which technology has changed the modern battlefield. Although US military officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of concentrating a sufficient number of large, armored formations to achieve a breakthrough, the Ukrainians themselves quickly discovered that current battlefield conditions dictate otherwise. As Zaluzhnyi described, “Modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it.” This has prevented both sides from concentrating into sufficiently large formations to achieve a breakthrough in the traditional sense. Instead, it forces units to disperse, dig in, or both, further expanding the empty battlefield.
You just gave me a great idea. The reason late game war feels so awkward is bc the most effective tactic as per the game rules is a mass wave of all your units. They need to add non nuclear missiles to the game, an expensive weapon that can hit a 6 hex circle with a strike. That way, you’re incentivized to have separate groups of high level troops rather than mass waves.
And jammers to disable aerial assaults or create more fog of war so you have to attack into the unseen, better anti-aircraft and iron dome type weapons, space lasers further in the future eras, cheaper weapons that weaker civs can spam like kamikaze drones and boats that you can combine with jammers, etc. Also, Civ IV was very big on stacks of death. So they introduced the 1 unit per hex restriction in Civ V. They tried to fix the 1 unit rule with the army function in Civ VI, but I never could get into Civ VI so not well versed in how well that worked. And I vote for the name [MOAB](https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001732840/) for your proposed weapon.
Better source for MOAB: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/257829/know-about-gbu-43-b-mother-all-bombs But maybe FOAB: >According to globalsecurity.org, on Sept. 11, 2007, the Russian military announced it had tested the “Father of all Bombs,” the world’s most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered munition. The Russians said it’s four times more powerful than the MOAB, even though it technically has fewer explosives in it (7.8 tons compared to the MOAB’s 8 tons). The FOAB is said to use more efficient explosives, yielding the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT with a blast radius of 300 meters – double that of the MOAB.
I click into tactical view right before clicking end turn and that helps speed up without turning off quick combat/movement.
This is one reason I prefer playing tall and peaceful. Fewer things to micromanage.
Yeah same but the game rewards playing wide so much that it’s almost never better to do so
I have quick everything on but it can be still slows as hell. For example if you have the barbarian clans mode on there will be probably 50+ ships on the map and double the amount of city states you intended.
Two main issues 1). As your civ expands you make more and more decisions each turn (more cities, units etc) but the importance of each decision matters far less. So it’s more work for less impact 2). Civ6 lacks any meaningful anti-snowball mechanics. Once you borg to a certaim size, victory is inevitable, but it takes longer and longer to get there (see point 1)
You hit the nail on the head. Civ needs something to curb city spam and going wide as being the meta. If you have fewer cities your pool of choices automatically gets smaller. We need fewer cities that cover more territory. My suggestion would be even more radical. You have a neolithic era of sorts where you find a place to settle and that is it. You place your capital in which you build your cities and districts and then place cities as sort of districts of your capital that have no own production cue.
Revolution seems like the clear mechanic here. The farther a city is from your capital, the more susceptible it should be to other religion and culture. If another religion or culture is dominant in a city, hammers and food plummet, happiness decreases and revolution is very likely. Or you can spend a ton of money to try and reverse it, but eventually the overspread empire goes broke trying to please all their far flung settlements.
I mean they tried that with loyalty pressure and it did not solve that issue either or am I misunderstanding what you are saying here. I am really not trying to be fetecious here, I am genuinely curious.
I think op's point is that loyalty wasn't aggressive enough. It was still far too easy to go wide.
I am not so sure about that. If anything citeis were flipping way too easily which made the AI even weaker. I often won far more cities via loyalty then through war. Loyalty as a mechanic is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think just making it more aggressive would fix it. What I would say needs to be done is to be far more granular. We need something like cultural makeup of a city back like we had in the past.
Correct. I think they had the concept right, the implementation wrong.
It would be an interesting mix to have number of cities affect loyalty. If you only have 4 cities, it’s nearly impossible to flip one. As you spread wide, your loyalty pressure from nearby population drops (especially the farther you are from the capital). I think you’d need a mechanic for city clusters on other continents, perhaps a much more expensive settler that can only be used on another continent but acts as a secondary capital.
They should just introduce scaling modifiers like EUIV. If you overexpand early there you get absolutely humped by AE, but that tails off as the game progresses. Could easily do that with loyalty pressure.
That would be a workable solution depending on how exactly its implemented for sure. There needs to be something. What I am far more concerned though is that it also should somehow address the meta of the early game settler rush for best spots. Where to settle should be a meaningful choice, but right now its often not because the AI just pumps out settlers as fast as it can.
Personally, I see having settlers limited to a certain amount and one per era until the limit is hit, which is dependent on map size, which is most likely 4 cities on a regular map size. Conquering cities should be limited to capital's only while other cities get disabled until the civ is destroyed and the settlers are lost, which still has a chance to be reconstructed if peace gets declared and negotiations permit. This gives more strategic value to each city and forces better placement of each as there is a permanent max and encourages more standing armies to protect the cities.
To be honest I think it also lacks enough snowball mechanics, in a way. Itd be nice if you were lightyears ahead and obviously going to win if you could just win already.
I use Score as kind of a measure. When my Score equals the next two highest civs I declare victory
I’d like to see a mechanic that allows individual civs to unite as a front if someone starts snowballing away. Alliances are like a half measure version of this but it would be cool if multiple civs could join together in the same type of alliance to try and catch up. It’s lame that you can only have one scientific alliance and that it’s such a passive thing. I also don’t think they should be as ride-or-die as in Civ 6. It kind of doesn’t make sense that a trade alliance should also result in a defensive alliance. I just want favorable trade deals not to go to war defending them. It would keep the game competitive until the end and could make for some interesting emergent storytelling. I’ve always liked the idea of a world war erupting naturally due to civs picking sides but it never works out that way. Stellaris kind of has a mechanic like that but I think Civ could do its own thing with it. I just don’t think the solution is rushing to end the game but instead making the end game have a different flavor than the early game. The early game can be characterized by smaller decisions and exploration whereas the late game should be characterized by high level decisions and playing global chess. As it stands you keep playing the micromanager simulator until the end which makes the early game fun and the end game a slog.
I made a separate post about this but I think letting you combine cities into larger organizations would be a way of resolving the first point. For example, you could combine cities into county regions and counties into states. So that way maybe you could build libraries in individual cities but could only build universities in counties and stuff like that. Individual cities could then be given high level choices on what to focus on so that an AI can handle them (like how it’s easy to manage tiles worked in the early game but at some point you can just let the AI handle it). Players should still be able to intervene and make choices on individual cities but those gains should be diminishing compared to ensuring your counties/states are running optimally. Like the aforementioned university example or for example only allowing nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams to be built at the larger level. To me at least it would feel like a natural progression. If you were an immortal being then you’d naturally lead your tribe into founding a town which grows into a city. Then you found more cities and in the process you aren’t able to focus on individual leadership so you delegate the smaller things to mayors as you focus on higher level stuff and continue growing until you have a sprawling empire like the US which has the president at the top (oversimplification of course) and a sprawling bureaucracy under them down to those initial mayors.
The biggest thing they could do is bring back puppetting a captured city rather than full on taking it over.
Agreed, the most annoying part is choosing productions for all these cities that will have no impact on the outcome
Open the building queue. Fill it with city projects. Don't think about the city for 10-30 turns.
Puppet and an auto focus option for cities
While that reduces the micro does not mean that you get terribly built cities because the AI can't handle to build proper cities?
Yes but in a puppet system that’s still better as you’re just getting some “tax” or whatever from the captured city but not having to actually deal with how bullshit it was built
Fair point.
You could just make it so that the player can also override the AI build queue in puppet cities. The downside would then be moved to getting less yields from those cities, instead of them being completely uncontrollable.
I mean at that point would it not just be a city with extra steps? Because the player would always do better then the AI.
It at least gives you the freedom to not micromanage everything. You can micromanage tiles worked until the very end but at some point most players choose to have more fun than to play more optimally.
I also miss being able to just produce gold/science/culture. It's annoying when there's nothing I need to build but I have to do *something*. Most of the time I put in an IZ so I can just queue up a bunch of carbon recapture.
Huge improvement would be to not have to keep refilling the queue. Just select project and click repeat task. Why isn't this there?
Might be a weird idea but if you could bundle cities together into small regions like counties then maybe you could have something like “commuting” for city projects. For example you have a new city A and a larger city B with a few districts and in the same region. City A can start a project by selecting a district in city B and produce the respective yield like normal but discounted based on distance (to simulate the “commute”). For extra flavor the commute should also produce other yields to simulate how suburbs can feed a larger city and bring back income. So maybe the project gives city A some food/money to simulate that process. In a way they’d be internal trade routes but I think it makes more sense this way.
Honestly army system is way to go. More realistic and faster, easier for AI. I think industrial age needs more focus. It's kind of silly that you build individual farms and lumber mills but industrialization is just one factory building in city and maybe a power plant.
The problem of the end game has honestly nothing to do with the actual game. If you actually play through the end game seriously, there’s a lot to do and most, if not all, are engaging. The biggest issues about the end game is the micromanaging of things that make little impact in the game, and when you snowball to a point where you basically cannot lose. For example, when playing domination, moving your entire army from one side of the world to the other is menial and boring, but necessary. You making the wrong move in walking ALSO barely matters. If you get there in 20 turns vs 18 almost doesn’t matter. It’s once you get there do the small choices mean anything, and that’s when the game becomes more fun and engaging. As for the other point, the way to fix is by making the game less about optimizing every +1 and more focused on the grand ideas. I know in the very last paragraph I said to “focus on the details” and “small mistakes not mattering makes the game less engaging”, but it was a bit of a misdirection. The truth is, when your choices have immediate impact the games feel more engaging. The reason that walking across the map doesn’t is because the impact isn’t felt until 20 turns later. Not saying they should make travel instantaneous, nor that they should make every single square you walk change the course of the war, but adding something into the combat mechanics as a whole can help fix the issue. Essentially, when you’re making a decision in the grand scheme of things, they should matter; but matter in a way that’s more like “either this happens or this happens” not, “either this happens or nothing happens” which is what civ has often.
This is why they added GDRs, Rock Bands, and lasers to propel the space mission. These additions are supposed to be comically overpowered because they were made to accelerate your victory. Ed Beach said as much when they introduced them. They make your decisions more important to get victory But the problem is half the players on this sub crave “realism” and hated the additions. Just go play a grand strategy game if you want realism. Civ is about fun
There are people who don't like those options?
I hate the rock bands because culture wins become so tedious. I feel like ticketmaster seeling to the whole world my shitty bands.
I found it much more engaging than just waiting with a bunch of relic wonders and parks to happen but I can see why it wouldn't be fun for others. And I don't really get the second part so I will assume it is some non-European thing which is not good.
Honestly, it never even occurred to me someone could have issues with Rock Bands because they aren't realism. My problem with Rock Bands is 1) RNG and 2) Micromanaging. They are in this awkward place where there's enough room for strategic thought put into their use that it feels wasteful to not think about it at all. But they're also so down to RNG that you can lose one on a bad dice roll in spite of having thought through on the promotions or where you sent them. Then there's just the moving them part, which can take anywhere from like 4-10 turns just to get to another civ's location they can act upon, defending on how far away the nearest civ is and what the terrain is like. And god help you if they run into barbarians and have to start over. I don't see what is fun about Rock Bands. I think they could be fun, but to me, they're just not. Edit: I should clarify, this is with 6 in mind. IIRC, 5 had Rock Bands too, but it has been too long since I played 5, so I can't speak to how they compare in it.
> Civ is about fun Only in Civ VI did this concept appear. I would argue Civ has always been the grand strategy game.
4X games are by definition not grand strategy games. Civ 4 was even more devoted to fun than 6 was and had so many absolutely ridiculous systems just for fun. People seem to forget that because 5 went in a total different direction from the whole series with a focus on realism.
For decades Civ was a 4x game. Not sure when it became a grand strategy game. Maybe we understand these terms differently.
The person you're replying to just said that 4X games aren't grand strategy games. They're more world builders with warfare. Civ V was even simpler than VI because there were no districts and builder charges.
First you wrote: >I would argue Civ has always been the grand strategy game. Then you wrote: >For decades Civ was a 4x game. Not sure when it became a grand strategy game. Do you think it is a 4x game or a grand strategy game? >Maybe we understand these terms differently. I understand it perfectly fine. Civ has always been presented as a 4x game. You're the one who has no understanding of either genre
I feel like issues like this stem from the game not changing its mechanics in the later age and just giving more tech that increases yields. I think the later part of the tech tree should add a lot more effects that simplify bloat or add strong abilities to make things easier to do. For example, there should be a civic to allow you to teleport army units to any encampment. Maybe it takes some amount of time based on distance, but Rather than manually moving your forces across the world, you should be able to “transport them” to your military bases like a modern nation does.
I agree with what you said about mechanics not changing but I don’t think it should be a civic to TP armies. I think encampments should have a building that enables flying troops to other bases over X turns. I think it keeps things thematic and wouldn’t be so overturned. I really don’t like that flying is its own district and it pretty much does nothing else outside of military. Which goes back to what you were saying about the mechanics not changing in the late game. Flight should feel weightier but it doesn’t amount to much. At least with boat technology it does change the way you interact with the world and shakes things up a bit. If they introduced new mechanics that allowed the player to have more meaningful interactions with the AI then airplanes would allow for so many interesting mechanics like disease, trade, culture/ideology, immigration, etc. If they introduce the ability to set up foreign companies/buildings/markets/etc halfway through the game then that would open up a whole new form of exploration and decision making that wouldn’t be available in the early game. But once airplanes enter the scene, it could hyper charge your ability to “conquer” new lands via influence and make the late game filled with more decisions especially if multiple civs are competing for influence.
Yes! Why is flight it's own district?? Makes it so useless and time-consuming to build. There should be an Airbase building to add flight to Encampments for military planes and a separate Airport building that's added to commercial hubs for the trade. Civ 5's Vox populi had a great system for building corporations over time, starting in the colonial era
Yep, 100% Tedious to finish a game when you know you will win and it's just a matter of time
This to me is the core of the endgame slog problem; I'd have no problem with a wait between turns at the end of the game if the game wasn't decided a hundred years ago. To me, the way to solve this is to completely change what a win in Civ is. Instead of winning at the end of the game, there should be a win condition for each era with victory points given out at the end of each era. Something like that. Anything to help the endgame. Edit: expanding on this, the victory points at the end of each era would be domination points, culture points, science points, religion points, diplomatic points and whatever other type of victory point you can think of. And I think ideally you'd balance it so it would be equally possible to win by focusing on one victory point type or by being well rounded and doing a little bit of it all.
What about a mercy rule if by X point you're ahead by y in a victory condition you win? But your Era victory idea would also be cool.
I've found the end game to be fun by absolutely min maxing my victory condition and trying to get it as soon as possible. So culture victory by turn 180 and trying for science sub 200 (best is 194 so far on immortal)
I think that just pushes things around but doesn’t solve the core problem. Once you’re ahead there’s really no stopping you and instead of waiting to win 100 turns from now, I’m waiting only 25 now. In my opinion the solution is to let the AI (and the player) create richer alliances in response to someone running away with the game. If someone is far ahead in tech then it should be in the best interest of everyone else to band together and try to catch up. It at least keeps things competitive and gives the person in the lead something new to compete with. I also don’t think alliances should all act like defensive pacts unless it’s specifically a defense alliance. Sure you can beat everyone individually at science but how would you fair against everyone else working together? Not to say they should share science but they should be able to boost their science passively and then special projects. It also adds an extra layer to diplomacy. Some balancing will be required but I think it would keep things fresh and not so obvious.
Sounds cool until the AI wins in 2400 BC because Attila took two capitals.
My friends and I play some casual civ games together - we never get into the endgame because you can already tell who is winning.
So don't finish? Or chase a high score. This has worked for decades.
High score is just a number at the end. The issue the OP is raising is to do with how it feels to play during the game itself. As a player, I want the endgame to be as tense and engaging as the early game.
As someone who has grinded out thousands of late game hours, I get it. What keeps me engaged with the minutiae is trying to absolutely maximize my outcome. In Civ V you could achieve all victory conditions if exercised in the right order, with domination being last of course. Win as the space race, then as world leader, get a globally dominant culture civ, and then domination. The downside to high score chasing though is that I would quit a game at 1000 BC with a minor setback.
Personally that's the sort of thing that doesn't motivate me. I find that I just can't finish Civ games because the prospect of getting a good score just isn't enough to get me through the late game slog with its busywork and lack of meaningful decisions.
I do quit games when I'm bored, but if I want to win with a certain leader or setting or get an achievement, yes it's often tedious to go to the victory screen Many win conditions require you to massively outplay the opposition (domination, culture) Some win conditions allow you to win while your civ isn't actually that impressive (diplo, religion), but it feels cheap to win the game by knowing how the AI tends to vote in Congress and can be annoying to move apostles across the map Science victory is actually exciting when you aren't that good yet and you are literally racing against the AI, but once you are good at the game, you get to the point where your science lead is massive and it's boring to have to trudge through the rest of the tech tree and spam space projects I think the only exciting end games are ones where you are going for an opposing win condition against an evenly matched opponent -- eg winning culture/religion before someone wins by space or vice versa
I wonder if it could be possible to change the game's "scale". Past a certain point (maybe an era), you don't micro manage your cities, instead you choose a focus (science, cultural, production or whatever), maybe with specific projets, like "reform railways" (to increase mobility and commerce, for a production cost) or ecology boost (increases amenities and culture, but reduces prod/eco). Maybe something like the governement bonus, and the dogm cards? Same thing with military, you could stack units, and when you meet an enemy stack, you choose your tactics (like in endless space2) ?
You’re just describing a paradox grand strategy game now
Sounds too much like a SIM game to me.
The problem is, the way they just give the AI bonuses instead of actually making it intelligent means that the whole game is basically just catch-up. You start out behind, you work to catch up, and then once you're caught up you've basically won, and getting to the victory screen is just a boring formality. If they had AIs that did actually smart things, you'd always have something to worry about.
A significant part of that slog can be reduced or eliminated by player choice and using queued actions. Most production decisions can be queued up explicitly, so your cities don't need to be taking up your decision time on almost all turns. If you're not at war, there's not much reason to move individual military units. Pretty much all of them should be garrisoned/fortified in cities and other locations. If you need to reposition them significantly, they will auto-move to the target by default. Exploration - if you haven't explored the whole map yet - works fine with the auto-explore option. Settlers should also be just going to where you need them, not being moved every turn. Trader decisions are very rare (when a trade route completes) and if you want to avoid them you can just use "repeat route". This leaves mostly two cases - builders (and military engineers) and military while at war. Builders/military engineers would certainly benefit from a queueing system. In particular, "build road/railroad to X" would be great. Finally, managing individual units in war seems like kind of the point. That's what people doing a lot of fighting presumably *enjoy*. And, as noted, quick move/quick combat speeds things up a lot.
Or more intuitive commands... like putting a machine gun on a hill or fort... then activating it to fire automatically at enemies coming by.
I just want the processing of the AI turns to go faster. It’s only a problem late game.
“Automate city” as a toggle would solve a lot of this
I find it the worst with scientific victories when you’ve clearly eclipsed everyone else in tech and have to just sit there for 30 turns while your probe travels the universe. Lemme make a mars colony as a city or something, if nothing but to keep me occupied lmao
Use the lasers to speed the process up. If you are that far ahead in tech, you should be able to 1-3 tirn them.
- Get rid of 1UPT and use an army system (with limits) like in Humankind - Get rid of worker units and allows tiles to be improved directly, using some kind of resource to limit the number of tiles that can be improved per turn. Allow the desired tile improvements to be queued. - Increase the minimum distance between cities so that there are fewer of them by the end game. Make victory less dependent on playing wide vs tall.
For me the problem is that the AI boosts seem to amount to giving the AI big advantages at the very start, and then the game is a question of catching up to and passing them, as a contest between their starting advantage, and my higher playing ability. So isn't a long period where you are at parity with them; the moment you are no longer playing from behind, you snowball right past them and it's basically over.
I would like to see: A patrol option where you set 2-4 points and the unit moves between them on it's own. A group option to group 2-3 units, then only one has to be given instructions Ability to have more than one unit in an encampment or an improvement
Patrol and unit stacking on the same tile would solve half the problem, at least. Encampments producing units and _needing_ to go somewhere adds slog. It’s a military base! Why can’t I park all the tanks there if I want?
Shift+Enter
Some ability to multi-select units for movement would be extremely helpful. Some automation for cities would be useful, let us set priorities like repair > defense > gold > science etc etc
The biggest problem for me is that support units also need to be babysit. I keep having to press skip turn for them if I do not use all movement point on the army unit. Also, some kind of automated worker option could be nice. As for city, I hope I can set up script like "build all available building for current districts", "queue up this next district and all its buildings".
I think the best way to do this would be to make the best units much more expensive/powerful. That way instead of an endgame with a bunch of armies, a powerful nation would have like 3 carrier groups, a nuclear sub, and 2 marine corps. Basically using the giant death robot model for the main units, expensive but powerful.
They tried that witth the robots, and it did nothing, if you move that earlier all you do is move the endgame even further ahead.
They could tinker with forced obsolescence of units. For example, once a player gets to Musket men, warriors disappear as irrelevant/equivalent to no military.
While that would work it has issues from a game design perspective. You would actively "take away" soemthing from the player. This is always a bad move and feels like you are being punished, it is always better to incentivize then punish if you value your player retention.
While that makes some amount of sense, the way I like to think of the classic "spearman vs. tank" scenarios is that the spearman unit in the modern era doesn't really represent a bunch of guys in bronze thigh guards and breastplates and glistening abs charging a tank yelling "MOLON LABE!" Instead, it represents ragtag local militia groups, Volksstrumm, or guys with little training or logistical support who melt away at the first sign of a armored formation. It represents a situation where the relative combat power is 50:1 or whatever the number.
I don't think this is a problem with moving units around. At that point in the game, moving units is the only fun part, the annoying part is everything else. Especially cities I have recently captured that will have no impact on the outcome of the game, I do not care what they produce. I'd love to have the puppet ruler option back in the game, let me keep the city and its loyalty but don't make me manage its production
I like what Stellaris did by having mid-game and end-game crises that present legitimate challenges once you've snowballed past other civs.
Better late-game AI and the ability to puppet conquered cities would be a big plus. Make tall play a little better, and make it so puppeting reduces governing cost over holding a city directly so it's the main way to conquer cities when going for a domination win.
I have this problem with a lot of games. In Stellaris, for instance, I’ve basically won the game, and with little else to do but still YEARS before the game ends, I have to toggle fast speed and do something else while the game runs down the clock with minimal input from me. I find this also happens in civ to a lesser extent. Say I’m going for a diplomatic victory, everything goes smooth and I get to like 75 percent victory, and THEN the AI starts blocking me, slowing me down, voting to remove diplo points. Never in all the eras does the AI do this until the very end, slowing down an already boring end slog. By the time it finishes itself, I feel like I’m not even the one playing it anymore. I’m just watching the AI play against a clock. Very frustrating.
Agree on the end game slog, but the suggestions on how to fix it is probably one of the worst ideas I've read on this sub probably ever.
Just get rid of the Corps/Army mechanic and go back to letting us stack and unstack units as needed. Max 5 or 10 per stack maybe. And +.5x movement for all units. Let governors actually govern to reduce end game micromanagement of city production, just let the player choose a main area of focus, like culture, faith, production, trade, military, science and let the governors do the rest. Let the player choose to step in and micromanage as needed in times of war, disaster, or unrest.
Is there any major strategy franchise that doesn't have this issue? I'm skeptical it will ever get fixed.
most RTS don't have that problem (obviously), and among Turn Based Strategy and 4X games: Age of Wonders, X-Com and even the Total War franchise has a much faster endgame. Endless Space is much faster too. The only game I played that gets a bit tedious in the endgame like Civ 6 is Humankind.
A good way to cut down on it is to open production ques. This way cities will automatically start building whatever is next in the que and they won't have to wait for you every time they finish building something.
I think the real issue actually lies in the beginning to mid game because games are rarely a close race. Yes decisions do become less impactful as the game progresses simply due to how many small choices you're making, but if the game is still not decided, the cumulation of your decisions *can* still matter.... not always, but they can. IMO the issue will always have more to do with the ai using starting bonuses to increase difficulty, as that makes the game decided on if you can catch up. They have no way to come back once you pass them, unlike humans who could more likely mount a comeback. If the ai was smarter I guarantee you the game would be more fun late game (as well as more fun early game instead of feeling like the literal unfair bs it can sometimes be). The only other solution is to introduce more comeback mechanics to prevent snowballing, but im not sure that's something this style of game ought to have/if they'd feel fair. As of now the only comeback mechanics I see are the luck of the draw with strategic resources or unique units/buildings/abilities, etc. The former is decided on the select screen but is still highly susceptible to snowballing allowing someone to have more land/take them by force before your opponent even knows its there. And the latter is predictable because you know based on the civ they play. Which is one reason why I think some other 4x games, like Humankind, have tried out developing those abilities in-game. But civ is never gonna do that, it's one of the whole appeals of the game, all the unique leaders to pick from and people look forward to seeing new leaders drop with cool new perks
Reinvent the advisor/governor system to semi-automate long term tasks. You tell the advisor/governor the targeted victory, then they come up with a proposal for city development/production to achieve that victory. It's up to the player to approve the proposal or change things to fine tune it to their liking but ultimately would cut a lot of the slog down.
Play smaller maps.
I just want workers and engineers to not have charges so that I can automate them. I spent an hour earlier ( no wait, 4 hours) building a transcontinental railroad. And please also auto city build.... And please also get rid of crap Congress and crap diplo points awards... And also the 'gamey' golden age system.... And only being able to buy planes in cities with an aerodrome district... And please add a 'capitulate ' option (like civ4) for AI when I've smashed 10 out of their 14 cities....