4 Problems I have with Civ 6 after 1,000 hours

[@awldune]

0:00 Production is too hard to come by except by hill tiles. 8:20 Specialists are seldom worthwhile 15:29 Great prophet points useless after you have religion or have missed out. Other religion thoughts 20:17 Poor cost/benefit for mid and late-game buildings Good ideas generally. My neck hurts from nodding so much :)

[@michaelgodwin6158]

I feel like I could have saved myself 27 minutes of this video by just reading this comment.

[@madagaskar8162]

Thank you for saving me from having to watch the whole thing. :) Generally speaking, none of this is in any way a new complaint (which doesn't mean any of it is wrong).

[@hapsanaCovjece]

I think Culture victory is so boring.. i mean you just wait for the win and defend works with spies.. THATS IT. Thats why i almost get to industrial era and then exit cause there is nothing to do after...i like that they will add bands to GS but i think there is much more to do. And i agree with great theologist and almost every thing you said..

[@SirZorgulon]

I feel the production scarcity is the key issue. This is really what's behind chopping being the predominant strategy. Late game buildings and Wonders are way too expensive for what they provide. I hope Gathering Storm (which is nerfing the policy card chop overflow exploit) can solve this. I hope that is what they are doing with the new power plant mechanic, giving you a way to massively boost production in the Industrial Era (as is historically appropriate) and actually have a chance to produce late game stuff with hammers.

[@fti9994]

Tourism was a good point as well. Liked the idea you had about banks, production, etc. gives different civs, different options. Balancing feels like the issue here. Some civs benefit from adjeceny bonusses whiles others already gain a huge amount of gold + adding the specialty districts makes for HUGE powerhouses. To make it really impressive, you'd need more policy cards through ages + slots. This will ensure a wider balance amongst players whilst using such a strategy. //Balancing with Tall/Wide might again, be an issue. Some civilizations will also become way stronger then others. For instance Germany and Mali, so how will Zulu compete here? Adding a "Civ Type Bonus" might be even as impressive. Civilizations always lean towards something, be it: Food, Production, Military, Gold, Faith, Culture, Science, GPP(+5 or +10%....) and Era score might also be cool here ((Receive double era score every time you earn some or more civ unique ones(Zulu = +5 every city taken))) BUT you'd have to be, in all cases, mindfull of civ's like Germany, upcoming Mali. I'm always a pro on more leaders(min 2) for every Civ...Since it's in the game, why does it feel so.....shallow?

[@Piggyandsilly]

One of my problems. Declared 0 wars total. got around 6-8 wars declared on me. took 2 cities total of sparta. denounced by all AI instantly in Classic era....wtf.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Thats being fixed in the Expansion with Grieviances.

[@zeroc977]

Windowmaker The AI will screw with you if you’re too passive.

[@kriegdoessomething]

Daniel The A.I doesn’t screw with me when I am passive for some weird reason.

[@Lawofidentity]

Were you playing Israel?

[@remlapwastaken8857]

That reason alone is why Australia is the best civilization in the game. You're going to have war declared on you so much that you're just going to swim in production.

[@stevenbov]

Not only is the production problem frustrating from a balance perspective, it's very a-historical. Surplus food is what allowed civlizations to actually form in the first place, and for most of human history most people spent their time growing food. In the real world highly fertile river valleys helped form the earliest powerful civilizations, but in civ6 its a garbage start.

[@PommieUsian]

It's possible that Gathering Storm will attempt to change this. At least, I'd hope so.

[@mastertoad2]

Steven B Yea, it always felt weird to me having huge empires with literally 0 farms

[@AquilonBoreas]

Andrew Morris I mean unless they were already planning on putting it into gathering storm, it probably won’t happen until the next patch if they see this and really rush it out.

[@honkai8692]

the 4 olderest ancient civilization shared a similarity: they controlled the wealthest land at the time. that is : the ability to support massive amount of population growth. you are completely correct, its the population that supports the civilization's activities, production, culture, science, faith, economic, everything. civ 6 really goes against that logic. massive population in one city in civ 6 reword you so little, espectially in the early game, that there is no point getting your population up, instead we are going to build a massive army(we dont need farms to feed our army btw, warriors drink enemies blood to keep themself alive！) and invade other civ.

[@RohanTej]

@@LanceGreenbacks It should be in the game. Maybe it is asking too much but that is such an interesting feature. But I would much rather like the ability to sell units to civs or at least the ability to build them at a subsidized rate. I personally find domination victory really boring because in the late game, I am basically fighting archer armies with my mechanized infantry.

[@BlackBullet2008]

Your idea about Theologians is great. The secondary Great Prophets should be used to upgrade your religion, not Apostles.

[@thomaschambaz7946]

I like that idea too. Another one is make apostles replace prophets once you've earned one.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Basically stolen wholesale from JFD's mod Rule with Faith

[@crypticmrchimes]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey Honestly that and the different government districts are my favorite parts of that mod.

[@thedarkmaster13]

I don't think that great people should be tied to enhancing your religion, at least not in the current form of letting you choose more beliefs. That means that you have to continue competing with the other players for Great Prophets after you've already founded your religion, a strong disincentive from using religion as a way to augment another playstyle. If you need to keep earning Great Prophets, you should only attempt to get a religion if you intend to take it all the way to a religious victory. It wouldn't be worth trying to pick up a religion along your way towards a science, domination, or cultural victory. I play the game with a religion mod that dramatically improves the power of many of the beliefs, especially the religious buildings. Almost none of these changes make spreading your religion any better, but they do make using a religion to augment another victory type far more rewarding, and I absolutely love the dynamic it adds to the game.

[@Jake-mc4zk]

The mod that addresses these issues should of course be called... *Rise & Tall* (... I’ll see myself out) Superb suggestions, potato!

[@GODOFMAYHEM96]

Underrated Comment! XD

[@LWT1331]

@@GODOFMAYHEM96 Not in the slightest.

[@tutatris]

I sincerely hope Firaxis sees this video. Production scarcity especially is why I usually grow tired of playing in the late game.

[@timonsmeets387]

just build production districts and internal trade routes, i always have to much production :P

[@thepurplepanda4]

@@timonsmeets387 then you, are a liar!

[@JMurph2015]

@Gabe Roderick the problem with this is that a) if your only solution is "get to the industrial era" then you indirectly dismiss the first 2/3 of the game and all of the civ's that are early/mid game focused and b) this doesn't change the fact that production still has too high a value. The fact that it's worthwhile to spend 40-60 turns fully stacking an industrial district in ~~ every city you own, means production is overvalued and makes for formulaic gameplay. Edit: also rip just saw this is 8mo old

[@JMurph2015]

@Gabe Roderick but that's the thing though, in the early game PotatoMcWhiskey specifically was calling out the lack of production, which I agree with, unless you get really favorable terrain, you just don't have the production to get everything you really would like. To be fair, I don't know if having very building you want in every city is very much fun either, but if you think about it, the turns required to build various buildings didn't really go down from Civ V, but they also added this 20 turn project you have to do beforehand. So you do end up with just more to build without the additional resources to compensate.

[@anonyme4881]

Starting in the plain is so harsh, and sometimes you dont want to upgrade your army tech because it will cost too much to actually make an army. I like the idea of 1 citizen = one production

[@TheImmenseFence]

High tourism against another civ = higher war weariness. It makes perfect sense. People in the civ are going to be pissed off that they're at war with a civ they visit all the time.

[@Cooleocarter]

Getting a Religious victory is boring, change my mind. But in all honesty there should be more variety in the type of religious units because how it is now they are the same at the same at the start of the game and they’re the same at the end of the game. There’s no progression. Also pressure is worthless. It should be more impactful like loyalty.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Religious Victory is very uninteresting I agree.

[@nekroneko]

Yeah, we need televangelists and those preachers that ply their trade in those megachurches.

[@ross259]

I agree. It's a complete grind. I also think the theological combat is silly. I like the concept of having religion but I think the mechanics of how its implemented should be completely reworked.

[@michaelgodwin6158]

In practice, religious victories play out as the very most stripped down, bare bones domination victory that's 100% less fun and 500% less interesting. But it's fun as hell to spread "Crabs" to every city on earth.

[@feedmeplease5531]

I'm more of a "Turtle Power" religion :)

[@GewalfofWivia]

The real issue is that food and production yields from buildings and districts are extremely low compared to tile yields. The industrial zone has a +100% adjacency policy card but doesn’t have one that boosts building yields like with Commercial, Campus or Theater district. Specialist yield definitely needs a buff too. But the biggest problem for me is that the game gets very boring once you secured the early snowball- you basically become uncontested and can just roll over the AI/skip turns until you win.

[@XxxKinetypicXxx]

Thats why civ 5 with vox populi mod is the BEST civ. I really hope that someday they will make a vp for civ6

[@Koivisto147]

Exactly how I feel. I've only completed one game in Civ 6 after 500 hours of gameplay just because the game stops being fun after I'm in the modern era in 800AD with twice the score of the second place civ and no one else can possibly contend with me. I've tried higher difficulties too, just makes the early game harder to survive, but If I can make it to around the industrial era, I'm usually snowballing way ahead of the pack.

[@thedarkmaster13]

The early game is too hard, the end game is too easy. The first is because of how deadly the barbarians are, especially on slower game speeds, and the AI getting huge bonuses out the gate if you turn the difficulty up. The later is because the AI is hopeless at keeping up with the player. You have a huge hill to climb just to survive the early game, but the mere act of surviving is usually enough to give such a huge advantage or lead over the AI so as to push you to an easy late game victory. I just don't understand what's so difficult about giving the AI scaling bonuses or advantages over time rather than doing it all at once? I want prince AI enemies during the first few eras, but stronger than diety level AIs when I reach the late game. I want to be able to get away with rushing out an early district or wonder rather than military units. I don't want to feel compelled to build several cities before the ancient era is over just to have a chance to compete. Securing early wonders shouldn't be next to impossible, while late game ones are often laughably easy.

[@Adam-zq8sl]

Agree - poor AI that can't compete with competent players is the biggest flaw in this game. We've switched things up and started playing free for all with comps thrown in instead of doing the co-op vs. AI comp stomps that we prefer - given the bad AI those are just no fun, so playing free for all and having to compete with other competent players is the only fun way to play, unfortunately I know that isn't an option for everyone given the length of Civ games :-(

[@NSA.Monitored.Device]

"I just don't understand what's so difficult about giving the AI scaling bonuses or advantages over time rather than doing it all at once?" Because scaling doesn't help at all, just temporary. That's why you "climn the hill" at beginning, nothing more. The problem with AI is that it's stupid. In so many situations I won (e. g. wars) with kindergarten tactics that would have never worked (that good) even vs. an mediocre human player. And because scaling is crap, usually deity players just go chokepointing. Because then numbers don't count...

[@LivingArtifice]

I feel exactly what you mean about production being scarce. I almost exclusively play on "New" world age for exactly that reason. Gimme all those hills. The only problem with that is that the AI's percentage bonuses get even trickier to deal with

[@hapsanaCovjece]

My suggestions to improve CIV6 beside yours: 1. Add repeat to production queue.. late game i just want to repeat projects cause there is nothing else useful to produce. 2. Add more interesting stuff to late game so people don't quit the game during industiral/modern era, myself included. Maybe reworking victory conditions. Keep it fun during the whole game. 3. Fix Tomyris positive agenda so it can trigger.. Never have i ever seen it in game.. 4. Rework abilities for Gandhi, Tamar and make Sumeria playable for me. I dont want to have Gilgabro, i want to BE Gilgabro. 5. Remove first impressions negative factor. 6. Add new requiresitions to trigger Eureka/Inspirations and mix them each game so it keeps the game fresh..

[@MArineboi09]

starguard jinx it’s almost always negative first impressions I’ve noticed too. Also I agree with the repeat. I think the new expansion is making the late game more fun due to the climate change aspect and them adding the extra epoch to go through will give the modern and industrial timeline more fun.

[@hapsanaCovjece]

@@MArineboi09 thanks for commenting.. can i ask you did you ever trigger Tomyris positive agenda?

[@MArineboi09]

@@hapsanaCovjece I cant say that I have. Only know her to actually just follow the backstab averse one.

[@hapsanaCovjece]

@@MArineboi09 i know her ability but i can never trigger it due to a bug i think... i become her friend and nothing whole game

[@benthemaster4321]

@@hapsanaCovjece For me, the turn after I friend her, she says: "Our two nations have never been stronger. May you have many victories in times of peace."

[@mikedalvano3389]

"Very small set of optimal decisions i can make" This is it. This is the game. Even with SO MUCH crammed into the game, majority of it doesn't matter. Each game seems to come down to one or two, did i succeed at that or not moments. If you do, you can stop the game cuz you win. If you don't, you can stop the game, cuz you lost. Tall cities have SOME use when playing someone like India. And just mashing out working stepwells. But, you did mention going for faith victory as your one tall scenario.

[@Baleur]

But most of us dont play to WIN, we play for the journey and experience of playing the game, regardless of the outcome. Otherwise, just play the slot machines, faster.

[@Katsura_ja_nai_Zura_da]

@@Baleur Yea I never played to win in any civ games, I usually turn off victories!

[@thepurplepanda4]

@@Baleur yeah.... sure

[@wiitubeaccount]

@@Baleur Trying to win is part of the fun though...

[@DeuceGenius]

@@Baleur umm i play to win solely

[@DahvPlays]

I always play with mods that buff Harbors and Aqueducts, since these districts have very limited use otherwise. As for Specialists and production, giving Specialists baseline production sounds like a great idea. I would also add policy cards or government effects to make them cost less housing and/or amenities, giving you a way to reduce citizen upkeep in tall cities

[@danclassic7065]

I see your point on aqueducts, but harbors are pretty good. The first district building gives you a trade route, and improves food yields from all coastal and lake tiles in the city. Pop down some fisheries with Liang, and that's some pretty good yields.

[@DahvPlays]

The trade route is one of the only reasons to build it, and only if you don't have a commercial hub. The extra food yield is ok but as stated in the video growth isn't that important. Coastal cities and the naval game in general aren't great with some exceptions. (Gitarja plus Auckland for example, you definitely want that extra food yield). But for most civs and maps its really not worth the production cost to build except in maybe a couple cities.

[@danclassic7065]

I guess it depends on how you play, but I usually find myself needing to throat-punch the leading science AI civ in order to secure my own victory. I find a navy to be pretty useful for that.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Harbours are in a good place except for the Seaport and the lack of City State interactions.

[@danclassic7065]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey You don't like the +2 gold per coastal tile? I certainly wouldn't put one in every harbor, but for a select few its pretty great.

[@Emiltat]

they should really improve the passive religion spread. i played a game recently where a 3 pop city on online speed would take 500 turns to convert. i would love if they added either population or the faith generated in a city to the spread. this would help alot both for tall and faith strong civs with reiligion

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Yeah Religious pressure is quite weak outside of the very early game, even then if a city is growing rapidly it can be difficult to keep the religion spreading.

[@Emiltat]

@@williamtopping that would also be a cool mechanic, like every science yield neglect some Faith pressure

[@buzzerbee9353]

@@Emiltat that would act very strangely with civs that focus on on both science and religion like Arabia. However, as Saladin's description says, he's achieved a delicate balancing act between science and religion so maybe Saladin could have a special effect where the science yield doesn't effect the faith yield, but it effects every other civ

[@cobalius]

@@williamtopping it would also be nice to have events like conspiracy theories after any serious war, catastrophy and stuff. But i see, that they've already add similar stuff as secret societies. But i meant the mechanics of conspiracies. Over-simplified they'll likely to happen in cities after the population received a lot of uncertainty within a short period of time. Then to re-gain their control over the situation they re-invent those situations by themselves and rewrite scientic and historic events within the process. First it's harmless, most of them are even with over 1 million followers, but as soon as some ideologists and business guys hopp into the boat, it becomes at least dangerous to the cities science, faith and production points. But they'll get money and tourism in return, because it suddenly evolves into a subculture and affects literature and stuff. Yeah, but beside the harmless flat-earthers, we could also aquire some conspiracies like drinking quick silver or eating stones is healthy or just absorbing the sun and love of trees would be enough. (Like suddenly you have to purge all of a certain luxury or bonus ressource to avoid penalties or that forests in the late game throw penalties again despite the climate change problems because people quite working for absorbing the earth energy from forests and misteriously die as if it wasn't working good enough for them) Whatever. I would like to see my cities evolving into something own, especially throughout the informatiom era. Something that makes the religious win extremly difficult and adds twists to the cultural and science win conditions.

[@BeaDSM]

"Banks should produce interest. That would be interesting." Yes Potato. Yes it would.

[@xxExoGamerxx]

I like how you don’t just state the issue but you provide a solution too.

[@McRoma2]

ive always hated the ai's way of diplomacy in the game. you'll meet someone and get them to like you, then all of the sudden they either declare war on you or denounce you because "they just plain dont like you"

[@brandontankersley8107]

AND the game sees you as the warmonger.

[@unholyxeras8182]

regarding specialists, my solution would be to remove the GPP and yields from buildings and districts, and move them to specialists worked in that district. So for example a campus with no buildings gives just its adjacency bonus and no GPP whilst not worked. Add a specialist and now it gives +2 science and 1 great scientist point. Build the library, and now you can assign a second specialist, and each give +3 science, +2 great scientist points. A university could maybe make it so now its 3 specialists at 5 science, 3 GPP each...and so on for each district.

[@cazaderon]

Great idea, which is also simple to implement. Firaxis should definitely offer a PTS and do some community suggested or community inspired playtest on it with simple changes like that. Would be very interesting to improve the game continuously

[@nicholasmaniccia1005]

@@cazaderon I have heard a lot of bashing of this game but it always comes from a good place. The fans want this game to be great, I think it would solve a lot of problems if Firaxis went through the KZbin gaming community for criticisms and cultivated a small test group to see what changes work. I really want to support this studio but they have such a bad reputation for needing one or two expansions to fix the initial rollout.

[@zeytelaloi]

Civ4 had this. You had a library in your city (not as a district) and you could put specialists into it which contributed to great people points. Then you could build a university and put more specialists into that and so on. The other way IIRC was through wonders.

[@tianarmas1665]

Yeah I'd basically make it more difficult to progress through the science tree (it's pretty unbalanced IMO) but add the new production system (+population = +prod) so that we can focus more on other stuff like science.

[@Ooshgaar]

I actually use the mods to slow down science and culture by x3 and to half all production costs. It now feels a bit more realistic on the pacing. I got sick of getting to Medieval times and before you know it, after building 1 knight, they was obsolete. Also, I feel the general pacing of the game in general is all off. You should be spending a LOT more time in the ancient and classical era, then the era's speed up, but not too much as they get later on. You know, like how it REALLY did. I try to place it in Marathon mode, but for you to take 17 turns to build a scout is stupid. It should be 1.

[@davidlundberg9924]

Researching Robotics should give you lots of ways to gain production.

[@alec2themax]

I was just complaining to myself last night about some of this stuff, especially production scarcity. Especially with some Civs starting bonus, you'll get a massive flat area. To add, the late buildings and units also feel useless. I don't think ive ever built a single airplane in the game. If I havent won by then, I am going to win soon enough that it doesnt matter anyway. Maybe in online play its different.

[@samuelsteinman-friedman1913]

I've built airports/airplanes as "leave me alone projects" while I'm waiting for my other cities to finish a science victory. I do think they're buffing them in GS though.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Airplanes can be fun, but they're a pain to set up and use, and they don't really do that much.

[@TheSjuris]

PotatoMcWhiskey bombers can. Pretty much cut walls down quickly. Usually without any chance of being fired in due to being way ahead of science. Seen the AI build airports without the tech for planes.

[@alec2themax]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey yeah, I recently just tried making a few for fun but they didn't seem super critical. Most domination victories are won before then, and most other troops can be made without needing a whole new district

[@muhdyusuf24]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey But they are quite useful against submarines though. They do tons of damage to submarines. I get them when the AI sending bunch of 3 corp nuclear submarines to my shores and killed them easily with bombers. Also pretty good if you can't hold the front line with your land units, bombers can be pretty annoying for the Ai.

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

At least one idea for the lack of use for Tourism: Alternate Building for either Theatre districts or Commercial Hubs - Hotel. It would allow for a variable amount of gold per turn based on the amount of tourism a city has. Like 1/2 the total tourism yield. It could potentially be quite powerful in a high tourism output city with a bunch of wonders and works of art and what-not, but would be useless in a city that has basically no tourism. It would also be nice to see more use for the whole concept of districts, which, if there were more building *options* would be about city specialization. Right now most districts have zero building level sub options and it's just a clear "how much should I upgrade this district" path, which makes the whole point of districts less meaningful.

[@DrZaius3141]

Civ 6: Always wide, always violent. I remember good old Civ 5... just build 3 cities, be always ahead in techs because of tech cost scaling, beeline Industrialization (3 factories -> unlock Ideologies, pump out world wonders, get a religion and make it world religion in world congress - guaranteed and interactive culture victory. Or Ghandi science with 5 cities that have 40+ population each. Or Venice with only a single city. In Civ 6, everything has to be wide... and everything has to be violent, that's the worst part. In Civ 5 you could always bribe other civs to start fighting each other when they came too close to your border, you could win without building a single unit, if you chose so.

[@johannpohland2826]

But wide should have been there a little stronger too, like wide in civ6 is always the best strategy, going tall was always the best in civ5 if you werent playing pangea full-on domination, science was just so strong (at least it was realistic in that regard lol). Science? Obviously Science ist best for this. Culture? Science and then just get all the wonders. Diplo? Science, get money fast through earlier trade routes and buy all city states. Domination? Rush science, get units 2 eras ahead of the KIs, steamroll them. Also, diplomacy punishments for warmongering were really really heavy there. That wasnt too either, but at least I could deviate from that route. Honestly, just get back civ4 with hexagons instead

[@ichbinrudi]

@@johannpohland2826 I think civ vi gives you some more variation in terms of "what should i do now?". In civ v, like you said, it's was kinda always the same. You get 4 cities either build workshops or universaties first, then rush for the tech with infantry and science labs, spam science labs und you won. I'm really looking forward in playing the new expansion myself. Watching other youtubers of doing so, gives me the hope the game will be A LOT better. Same with civ v bnw.

[@jazy921]

DrZaius3141 And always Marathon...? i mean, you get to maximize your units' number of turns, therefore also maximize their movement points by changing the game speed to Marathon.

[@Jamie-oo4eg]

I havent played since the release date of civ 6, the always having to go wide sorta ruined it for me. sad to hear its still the only viable strat

[@stuartconrod8364]

It's quite a dramatic change from Civ 5, where Tall was the way to play and Wide empires were barely worth the effort to found or manage them. The per-city-owned penalties to culture and science, combined with the gold-upkeep costs associated with more buildings, meant that wide empires had a whole boatload of problems to manage that tall ones rarely did. Hearing that specialist slots are weak where in Civ 5 there were almost essential is amusing too. You didn't get anywhere in 5 without getting Universities built and having Scientists in them, leading to great scientists and more.

[@cfalcon513]

I think for me the biggest problem is the third tier buildings are useless compared to the cost of building them. It makes end game play so boring, no matter what victory you're going for, because all you need to do with your cities is spam projects. So then you just kind of have a very boring 30-50 turns of just hitting skip because all you have to do is wait. It doesn't provide fun or entertaining game play, and there's really no decisions to be made. Which I think is a huge flaw in a game like Civ, where essentially the point of the game is what decisions do you need to make to ensure you can win.

[@rioreichard1804]

My main issue is also the production problem, I often find myself rerolling my start like a bagilin times because there isn't enough production and I already know I will lose on a higher difficulty if I don't get production. In my opinion a player should still be able to win on deity without having the amazing production start. Great vid as always keep up the great civ Content 😁😁👍

[@diddykangable]

4 complaints after 4 games worth of playtime? 🤔

[@Folsomdsf2]

Really makes you wonder how badly it was tested that anyone playing minimal amounts of time can spot it.

[@profstein-bq2tc]

i have almost 1/10 of the playtime and i can say that denunciations are broken because the ai can denounce you for all eternity until you make them happy without the option to denounce back like civ5, it's not possible to play tall and be around where the ai stand science wise, and it seems like ai will try and go for joint war as much as possible.

[@Goranparra]

I think one feature that'd be interesting would be if you were be able to choose which four cities you want your different luxury resources to go to. This would, gameplay wise, allow you to choose your most important cities and give them buffs through ameneties, it would also work really well historically as it would represent mercantilism (if you choose to play it that way) in a cool way. Say you're in the late game, then you'd want colonise different continents just to grab LRs and send them to the home continent. This would with most certainty lower your loyalty and happiness in the colonies but would at the same time keep your home cities happy and efficient through the happiness-buffs. I don't think it would change the game too much and it would give you more options in the game while also representing a historical economic system.

[@flobbingdonkey]

Basically, Civ IV has the answer to every single problem: Production - slavery civic and whipping your population Specialists - Create GP and are crucial in a specialist focussed economy (as opposed to cottages) Great prophet points - Can build shrines for each religion converting each worldwide city that follows your religion into 1 gold per turn. Or you can settle them. Or you can burn them for a golden age. Or you can use them to bulb a new tech. Late game buildings/benefits - This is not really an issue (in so far as it has always been an issue, but isnt so much of an issue in civ IV). After civ 6 i went back to IV. And its superior in almost every single way.

[@ryanmccoy8980]

Same, going back in I got my ass kicked and I remembered I had to actually pay attention to what other Civs are doing not only what I'm up to and they have a semblance of intelligence when it comes to the combat system. I don't think I've lost a single city in Civ VI playing on every difficulty, I completely lost a couple games because I didn't focus on my military in Civ IV. I miss that.

[@geoffreystepinski5003]

I would add some of the tech tree and civics to Civ 4. I agree, I've tried playing 5 and 6,always get back to 4. It's a smarter game, far more playable, it looks better (with mods) and L Nemoy did the voice over. Just expand off of civ 4 Imo

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

@@BuildinWings BSOD?

[@hansjorgkunde3772]

Exactly, it left always a bad taste winning in Civ 5 with acquiring enough city states to win a diplomatic victory. So civ 5 became already strange for that kind of game, Civ 6 certainly developed in a very wrong way. With all the warmonger penalties. Who exactly cared 2000 BC if one led a war against someone else? Actually even in modern times no one really cared, see 30 year religious war in Europe or the 100 years French-England war.. So its an outright bad game mechanic.

[@hansjorgkunde3772]

@@MidlifeCrisisJoe BSOD Blue screen of Death ? Battle stack of death? who knows :D . May the largest stack win... who needs tactics...

[@Rosewell8]

I think one of the best parts about this is that most of these suggestions are already active in CIV V. Unemployed people give production, and most specialist give GPP., You need 2 Great prophets to max out religion then can use the rest for tile improvements / Taking cities.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I am not asking for unemployed people to give production. But yeah, some of these things existed in Civ 5. And they are missed. Honestly I wasn't even thinking of Civ 5, just the first things that came to mind.

[@Toonga0]

They need to fix the ai, i feel like i can only get eliminated bewteen acient era and medieval.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Based on what I've seen in GS gameplay videos the AI is improved significantly.

[@BobTheTesaurus]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey im hoping that improvement fixes the painful habit of allied nations attacking your city-states

[@clawclamzz5136]

Sooo true! I played as Germany in Europe True Start Location. I have Eleanor Aquitaine of France beside me. Her AI is so annoying! shes the one who condemn me for settling beside earlier than her lol. Then she settle another city right beside me, I dont like that city so I attack a smoll city of Toulouse to be mine. YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? I become everybodys target in world congress emergency, then all Europe hates me and declared war on me, ON A SINGLE TURN! I havent kill your capital city, why she boolin me? loooool

[@jyutzler]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey I don't think so. When is the last time someone declared war on you in the Industrial Era? If you get past medieval, you'll make it to the end of the game. You might not win, but you won't get knocked out.

[@infinitedonuts]

I really loved how you brought solutions to the problems put fourth on the table. Your unique ideas I have never thought of were intriguing. Firaxis should hire you for the civilization development team.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I don't know if they should go that far, certainly I hope my ideas give them better ideas.

[@Tom-sp1sx]

Great ideas, the production thing makes sense I generally feel like new cities are kinda hassle because of scaled districts. Lol wouldn’t u get better at building stuff once u’ve built it before

[@JohnNaru2112]

It kills me when I settle a city around turn 175 to get an island hop from continent to continent for war or religion or what have you, but it takes 80 turns to build a harbor. You have to throw like 10 trade routes into a new city just to get it to do anything at all.

[@thedrrwoods]

Your points are well thought out and totally valid. 100% agree. I build seaports in coastal cities, for the production boost more than anything else.

[@246Rennie]

Maybe they could make it so the yield of working a district scales with the amount of buildings you have in it, like every building in your holy site would yield a extra +1 faith if the district is being worked.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

That was another Idea I suggested a LONG time ago.

[@uzernamefail]

Reactions: - Production: While I somewhat agree (and it would make grassland plains starts less painful), I don't know if this is the best option, as food would become a really strong yield. Civ 4 was my main experience before I got into 6, and it had some pretty interesting ways of reigning in production. Mines in 4 actually reduced the food yield of the tile, forcing you to have a balance of food and production tiles. This would be a pretty good way of keeping mines from being too powerful, as spamming them would take away from your city's potential food. On a minor note, what happened to cottages? There isn't a general improvement in 6 that gives gold, which really hurts the gold-buy playstyle unless you are playing Mali. - Specialists: 4 gave you great person points from working a district, and it was actually a big part of some victory types. I'd take it a step further and say working districts should be your PRIMARY way of earning GPP, with only a small amount from buildings and none from the base district. I hate how great people in 6 is just "build as many of this district as possible, even if the adjacency sucks". - Religion: Another hot take, I think you should get Great Prophets throughout the game and they should be how you evangelize beliefs, not apostles. I'd also like for people who didn't found a religion to use prophets to form a "schism" religion, such as having China form "Chinese Eastern Orthodoxy" from Russia spreading their religion. It would be a sort of mini-religion that converted civs could use to fight or delay a religious victory, or just get some bonuses that the founder skipped out on. - Scaling: I think some of the penalty should be taken off of the districts themselves and moved onto the buildings. It makes no sense for a Modern campus to cost so much more than an Ancient campus, but the libraries cost the same amount. This honestly is one of the biggest detriments to a "colonial" playstyle in 6 after loyalty, just because most colonies will have a hard time getting online without a ton of resources from traders and builders.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I like the idea of specializing tiles more towards their intended purpose, mines lose food, etc. Problem is that if you don't have mines you're shit out of luck so need improvement on flatland that give production.

[@uzernamefail]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey This is kind of solved with conservation, as you can plant trees and build lumber mills off of them

[@kholdanstaalstorm6881]

I agree that a change to the production for tall cities is needed, hopefully there will be one more DLC. At least one of the natural disasters will give production in Gathering storm, the volcanic eruption. Will be interesting to see when it releases how the new mechanics changes the game. It's like with all of the Civ games, you only get the complete game after all the DLC/expansions.

[@timothyboland1048]

I think ALL of your points here are really great, especially point #4. Certain buildings just feel so painfully long to build, and by the time it takes to get a real benefit from them the game is over or nearly over. I LOVE the idea of the bank/stock exchange type of abilities you mention, that's very cool.

[@Michael-fd1gx]

Sea-walls

[@iiiiisharpiiiii2041]

Good points, well phrased. I personally think that Civ 6's problems are mostly balance related. If production is the most important resource then you cannot really deviate from the optimal path. But Civ V was all about tall and the stupid global happiness, I do prefer 6 over 5 with regards to wide vs tall. It just needs balance. Hopefully Firaxis takes a look at this video!

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I don't mind Wide being better, but I'd like some mild nudges to even out Tall vs Wide to be a little closer so that Wide isn't always 100% more optimal and better. Just bring them a bit closer in line.

[@iiiiisharpiiiii2041]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey Yeah, that would be a good for the game.

[@cinnanyan]

I agree somewhat, but large cities often have quite good production. It's the early game that has the most problems for high food, no hills civs, which could be fixed with a mechanic like Civ 4's slavery (purchase buildings/units with population points) or something else that converts food to production.

[@zeytelaloi]

Yes but as Potato said, why would you found a high food no hills city in the first place to reap the benefits of good production way later on?

[@MercifulMing]

cool observations, may be difficult to adjust something so basic as city production this late, but one can hope! Bring back the whip from Civ IV?

[@bracey191]

MercifulMing you can, it’s called world age & humidity

[@harrismaroudas6141]

Advanced game setup> Resources: Abundant, World Age: New ( more hills ), Rainfall: Wet ( more woods and rainforest ). Setting Temperature to Cold will also take away 0 yield desert tiles, leaving higher yield Tundra. I think these settings will give you many places to go tall. Don't forget that you can plant woods ( and then lumber mills ) after the Conservation Civic, giving tiles at least 3 production.

[@eduardo3652]

Some great ideas. I miss being able to go tall like I used to in Civ 5. It makes the game faster and a lot less micro-management focused than when you have a very wide empire.

[@jasonb7330]

I agree with all of your points here. I think the biggest issue I have with Civ 6 in a general way is that they seem averse to making civs too powerful in any particular way. They don't seem to want a player to generate too many resources or yields because it would make the game too easy to run away with or appear "over powered", particularly in the late game. I think this is one of the things Civ BE got really, really correct. Why not let the player build up to like 10 yield per tile in a resource? If the player invests in it, specializes that way, they SHOULD be able to have clear and overt bonuses to that part of the game and the trade off can be a weakness or inflexibility in another area. We see these in some of the watered down religious beliefs or the lack of uniqueness to district buildings. Same with some of the government types-imagine if going a certain government type gave you certain bonuses as they do now, but they had WEAKNESSES too that could be exploited by clever opponents in every age. It seems they are addressing this in some minor ways with some civs being specifically designed for certain terrain or victory conditions with Gathering Storm. I don't see why they can't implement similar things based on districts, special buildings, or other mechanics mentioned in the video. Hopefully the new specialized civs are a vanguard for this kind of thinking around power scaling and specialization.

[@coldfusion230]

No mention of loyalty forcing you to build in one massive clump and naval domination games near impossible?

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Yeah, I plan to address stuff like that in future videos.

[@jesusthemezziuggh]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey I'm a fan of naval domination and it is somewhat only feasable only with certain cards and map types...islands map and maybe 2 or 3 civs can viable make it possible as opposed to land domination where all got the chance...it's not balanced

[@ChevaliersEmeraude]

I actually love the loyalty thing. It just makes sense IMO. Like, in the real world you rarely see countries being all spread out around the globe. There's no U.S. states in Europe, you know? And IF the U.S. were to conquer a place in Europe, obviously the people over there would rebel and fight back. Loyalty is a nice in-game way to reflect that.

[@marinary1326]

@@ChevaliersEmeraude I do appreciate the loyalty mechanic and think it helps prevent some truly silly border gore. However, if the real world were run by this game mechanic, the U.S. would probably not be able to hold Alaska or Hawaii (heck, maybe even the West Coast before it became a population center). There ought to be some flexibility in the system, maybe some options that you opt in to in order to hold onto particular cities, but doesn't erase the problem for all your territory.

[@jamaicajames123]

@@marinary1326 off the top of my head, maybe being able to use an additional population for a settler to give the newly founded city a temporary protection against loyalty disadvantage? Something like an additional cost or investment to help protect your city until it can get its population going a bit would give you another option to think about.

[@The_Grimsun]

Yeah I agree, I never knew why I kept feeling like I was messing up in civ 6 because early on I would go hard, but then come like turn 50 on I would struggle. Now I realize that it is because of all the production-related things you said and the going tall vs wide thing. Like often I don't like building wide and as such I have had games where I hit 20 pop in 1-2 cities, but then the lack of space and the lack of production just murders my ability to do anything mid game. So then I build new cities and then it is kind of too late to catch the cities back up. So for me, it opens my eyes on how I can improve, but also annoys me in knowing that the new district stuff feels like a waste compared to just spamming decent mining cities.

[@TDurden527]

Ya . . . I feel ya. I end up with so many cities at near the end taking care of the building program is almost game killing.

[@ltdan215285]

I have a few things that could make improve or make some parts of the game more interesting. 1. Religion IS too weak. To piggy back off of our tater boy. GPP could go towards theologians who could, in turn, improve religious pressure, instantly create relic, eliminate incoming pressure from trade routes, etc. Religous pressure hasn't been anything to worry about and they should make it more powerful. 2. There should be animosity towards civs that are running away in terms of score and vise versa. Civs that are lagging behind get a kind of pity like. Ex. IF Korea is far beyond in science and their score is like 800, then Brazil, with 450 should have like -4 favor toward them. And they other way, Korea should have a +4 with Brazil because they aren't any sort of threat to them. (Just a thought. Not even sure if I like this idea too much lol.) 3. Loyalty pressure should be stronger with your originally founded cities if you are at war with your enemy neighbor. Think about how silly it would be if Venice flipped to the Austrians in WW1 or a few German cities flipped to French because their culture was to die for lol. And how different would the world be if English, Dutch, French, Spanish colonies flipped to Native American Tribes years after settling. Loyalty should be built fighting for your nation. +0.5 (up to 20) Loyalty per turn towards your originally founded cities while at war, with the same decay after peace. -0.5 loyalty per turn (back down to base 0). Wars generally increase loyalty and national identity among the population.

[@sleepyg9129]

After hearing your point about production being important but scarce, I've thought of a reason why that is good. If it is not worth it to build something, you have to ask yourself if it is worth buying it with gold or faith.

[@gumbycat5226]

Dear Potato Your problem with production relates to your tendency to chop everything.

[@ChrisJones-dg9xn]

Yes. Absolutely this.

[@lam3359]

Seconded. Like, chops are loans; you get the stuff upfront but its probably less than its yields in 200-300 turns. He takes loans all the time and is suprised by no long-term income, rip.

[@TheBake1986]

LAM 33И If you chop a hill and then build a mine you'll get short and long term gains...

[@skrappy3387]

Chopping on a hill (even if also on a river) is a net gain in both short term and long term production. Forests not on a river only ever add one production so a chop is almost always going to be more valuable if you end your games in ~ 200 turns. Flatland river chops are the only debatable ones.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

@@skrappy3387 Even if this were the case A: Forests come online in terms of production so late into the game. B: Forests can be replanted later in the game to get the short term benefit AND the long term production income at the cost of 3 total builder charges.

[@covovker]

I'd say seaports are the sole notable exception for those buildings. With proper harbor tile and +100% adjacency policy it is not uncommon to have it give you +10 production (2 from city center + 1 from two districts + 2 from resources, double from policy), +15 with the governor. Apart from that... I'd prefer to have civ5 like percentage or city pop based bonuses on later tier buildings instead of flat ones. And yeah, it should also scale science costs accordingly. The other thing about percentage bonuses is that it applies to specialists, which makes them at least less of a joke. Another problem I have with civ 6, that is kinda related to buildings, is that despite they stated the cities can be specialized, the fact is they don't. As you said, you grow cities to pop 7/10, build your core 3-4 districts and call it a day. And that solely comes from one district per city limitation. And this limitation also forces everyone to go wide: wide player will always be better at science and money and faith and whatever you're going for. Why does that limit exist? How is it bad to have multiple districts of the same kind? You still have your district limit per city and district cost increase, and that also justifies getting really large cities. Especially with governors, it would make so much more sense to have a tall science-focused city, a tall commercial city, and so on.

[@themagicalbeast6188]

Would be nice to have the ability to make mines on flat land too. Hills would still be good as they give +1 production and grassland tiles for 2 food would be good as you could have 2 food 1 production or 3 food. Plains would be a 1 food 2 production or once again a 2 food 1 production. This would balance both tiles into a balanced tiles to work. We need the ability to make mines on flat land as well as hills.

[@valamaas]

Looking forward to your next "problems" video. Perhaps about warmongering and the poor AI ability to wage warfare? Yesterday I gave up playing Civ6 after an easy victory. Have played all Civs and have original boxes. I give up because the AI is so useless I feel I am wasting my time playing. Am I buying the new expansion? Not unless it is a massive sale. Firaxis likes to keep adding features and making the game look cool. Artists are firmly in control of this game.

[@davidlundberg9924]

They feel so rigid and are way to easy to predict with their new personalitys. I know France will hate me from the start because I don't have diplomacy. I know Rome will take every city star that it can without regards to trade

[@marinary1326]

Hasn't the AI in Civ games always been lackluster? Not saying your complaints aren't fair, it would be nice to see improvements, just that this is an old problem. I wonder how difficult it is to fix this sort of thing, however. Civ players make a lot of complicated decisions based on lots of information and generally with a specific goal (ie win condition) in mind, plus other goals that are less easy to codify. I have no idea how difficult it is to program the AI to, for example, execute a competent military strategy.

[@ZerglingWasteland]

​@@marinary1326 While the Civ AI has generally always been weak and I believe at one point the devs implemented a modder's fixes into the AI (Blake's Improved AI for Civ4 BTS, IIRC), the move to the 1 unit per tile, as well as increased variety of choices on the mechanical side, seems to bog the AI down in warfare traffic jams, highlights its inability to really strategize beyond just amassing a ton of units, and also that it just kinda plays without a goal. Simpler logistics of the previous games allowed the AI not to get bogged down nearly as much (though they would still be terrible at managing specialists and tile improvements in particular), and also scale better with difficulty levels (which are generally just a way to feed the AI bonuses while hampering the player). I've seen multiple reports that the climb to Immortal/Deity has become much easier from Civ5 onward. My assumption is that beating a cheating bastard of an AI that hulks out with a massive stack of soldiers by 600 AD and you have to use every single trick in the book (rampant tech brokering, subservient brown-nosery in diplomatic relations to stall, deliberate calculations on leveraging Great People, extremely precise planning and timing on World Wonders you actually want) to stay afloat is more of an achievement than against the AI bestowed with the same bonuses but drowning in choices and possibilities that it cannot leverage. This was even seen in some way in the previous games - for example, the Civilization AI historically really sucks on Archipelagos and other maps where navies are likely to play any sort of role, because it has a problem with expansion and defense due to the variable of having to constantly ferry settlers and armies with ships. When are you more likely to die to the Aztecs in ancient/medieval - when they're your next-door neighbor on the same landmass or separated from you by miles of the sea and some one-tile islands? And since ancient/medieval is generally the most important phase in the game (due to Civ's snowbally nature), a player is likely to be left alone, effortlessly stave off ineffectual invasions to build up in the early game. And, of course, since Navies are generally more mobile than land armies and the AI has issues with mobility (has a hard time dealing with hit'n'runs and in some iterations of Civ even gets confused if you have a stack of high-mobility units in hitting distance of the capital city simply because you're not parked exactly on the adjacent tile), the player is likely able to launch stronger surgical attacks once he gets a navy of his own. Even if the AI has a shitload more battleships in some intense late modern era scenario, often all you have to do is raze their capital city and they're done (especially if they were going into space). On a complete tangent, Civ2's Multiplayer Gold Edition introduced a "fix" to the weak Civ2 AI by simply locking the player into a quasi-Always War mode because at the beginning of your every turn your diplomacy reset into animosity. If you wanted to do anything like trade maps, you had to feed them 4-5 gifts in one turn and then initiate diplomacy on the turn they're still happy, because the next turn they hated you again. Which sometimes didn't work because the AI could at some point of the negotations simply declare sth to the effect of "We apologize, but we have no more time to spend; we must deal with more important matters" and then refuse to talk. That was some good shit. **tl;dr: the hypothesis is that the game mechanics became more complex but while the player can appreciate the complexity, the AI can't brute force through its inefficiencies as easily, so difficulty level junkies end up dissatisfied**

[@PedroRicardoVP]

I think the part I agree the most with is of late game buildings. It really makes no sense to come to turn 320 and have to wait 30 turns to get an airport...

[@ninodoko3437]

"I think that would be an INTERESTing mechanic. "

[@Igorex2930]

Those are some really good points and well-structured answers for those problems. If I were a modder , I'd make some mods implementing the changes you listed.

[@ChrisProfrock]

So one year later, have any of these issues been addressed or mitigated in some way?

[@mrnarason]

no

[@terrywu6381]

@@mrnarason oof

[@marcelocalucho1756]

MEGA INDUSTRIAL ZONES

[@marcelocalucho1756]

Settling near a river can easaly give you 40 production from a industrial zone from adjacency alone

[@marcelocalucho1756]

Add in buffed factorys and magnus vertical intigration you can easaily get 150 pruductiob in your capital

[@Alphenis]

So, where are we, nearly 2 year later ? For production, they changed the way the industrial zone work, you can now fairly reliably get 20-24 production from adjacency alone (with the card and coal power plant) if you play dense. That being said, you are still extremely reliant on IZ. Alternatively, you can try a mod that give production per pop here: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1651788601 For specialist, the last building in each line increase the specialist production by +1. That's still very weak tho. Again, mods can help, this one give +1 to each specialist: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1651756807 I would prefer GPP per specialist, but unfortunately it's not mod-able. For great prophet point, they now provide +1 faith per GPP once you've founded your religion, so we're good now. As for the poor cost/benefit, I simply disagree with Potato. They are too costly, yes, but that's tied to the production problem, and not an inherent weakness of the system.

[@jaeusa160]

I love building tall so my biggest beef with Civ 6 was always that growth isn't limited by Food+Happiness like in 5 but Food AND Happiness(Amenities) AND Housing AND that the main method to expand 2/3 of those was to make Districts... which requiring growing the city in the Amenities case, later game techs in the Housing case, and either is more difficult to achieve without a big city... it's that catch 22, can't get the tools to grow without growing, can't grow without the tools. I also dislike how much Civ 6 makes going wide way too easy, I feel like that leads to a given civ being able to snowball out of control way too easily. I miss global happiness and its tax on going wide.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Yup. Its a problem that compounds upon itself.

[@jaeusa160]

Reminds me that another thing I miss, which a mod probably solves, is being able to set up Teams in game creation. It was, ironically, a fun way to make the game more challenging as you had to deal with your AI teammates' chaotic denouncements and war declarations. But it was also fun seeing if you could force some of the notoriously bad AI Civs (every Religion Civ in 5) to actually become strong in a match.

[@dingchat555]

I wish wide play had some downsides too, but I absolutely hated the global happiness system in V. Surely there's another way to do it while still keeping the amenity system mostly the way it is.

[@jaeusa160]

@@dingchat555 I can't even say Loyalty helps with wide being favored, since Loyalty itself kind of reinforces jamming a lot of cities together rather than spreading out taller cities.

[@bobbyt9431]

The happiness mechanic in civ 5 made no sense to me in limiting how wide your civ could be. The early civ games used corruption and waste as a way to limit how fast a civ could expand, which makes much more sense.

[@Autonomous113]

Thanks for posting this, it's very much like a few conversations I've had with my friends who I do multiplayer games with. I for one would love to see a rebalance/community patch made with much of your points in mind.

[@Biditchoun]

I think you should just be able to place mines on flatlands, as you are able to put farms on hills. I just don't understand how this has not been thought of.

[@Gageandkyleshow]

Spot on, send this to the devs seriously. You are one of the the biggest civ 6 youtubers and they might listen. Every pop should give you a little of yield if you have the associated district. For example, if you have a industrial zone district, you city gains production per pop, and this increase based on era (cultural or scientifically depending on what district) or having more buildings in the district or as you said policy cards. Specialist yields could go up based on what era you are in (cultural or scientifically) or buildings in district or as you said policy cards. Also I didn't even know that you don't get GPT even when you aren't working the district with a citizen, that makes no sense. As for relics I think you should be able to get them where religious combat has taken place there is a chance it will produce a religious antiquity site.

[@jaythompson5102]

I really like the idea of a basic population gives you some production mechanic, however what about culture producing hammers later in the game? Makes sense considering how massive the entertainment industry is in the modern age.

[@shubhamtripathi2683]

Nicely done👍

[@rhettorical]

I thought the point of the District system in general was to resolve the issue of bad city placement, so if you're in a place with low production, you could invest into your Industrial District to offset that. Late game, your districts would be so powerful that your citizens would basically stop working the land and only work Districts and/or Strategic resources. It would force you to make tough decisions and specialize each city. By making the Districts get exponentially more powerful as they're more developed, it forces you to decide if you want to build one or two highly-developed districts, or a bunch of evenly-developed ones.

[@WithinTheShadows00]

Sadly, I can upvote this video only 1 time

[@playboxfan]

Every single idea you mentioned is greatly needed for civ 6, this game has a lot of amazing unexplored potential if only the devs would get to work.

[@TDurden527]

Steam workshop and civfanatic:)

[@a37n31]

Just bring back CiV4 mechanics with hexes and unstacked city

[@bobbyt9431]

Hey finally someone else realizes that this franchise peaked with Civ 4 and no expansion will fix a game with broken core mechanics.

[@a37n31]

@@bobbyt9431 since 1upt introduction the franchise focus shift from a empire management with long term decision to a strategy game with short term min/max decision. This is what keep me play CiV4

[@zeytelaloi]

@@bobbyt9431 cIV will always hold a special place in my heart but it had some issues, like the weak tall game and need for constant expansion we now see in cVI (which was over compensated for in ciV).

[@PGHammer21A]

@@bobbyt9431 - It isn't that it isn't fixable - it IS fixable, but you can't play the base game to do it (which was the case with EVERY Civilization back to Civilization "III"); you have to mod it. However, Civ IV and up include a crapton of mods - and Civilization VI includes still more (and I'm not talking just the DLC, either). Look at the mods that the base game has, then Rise and Fall, then Gathering Storm adds even MORE mods on top of Rise and Fall. One nasty thing about Gathering Storm is that it is even MORE weighted toward a Religious and Cultural Victories than Rise and Fall is. I tried two custom settings with two civilizations (Teddy Roosevelt and a non-military civilization) on a large map. Who won? Itr was not TR OR the other civ I chose to go against - and that was despite no war; instead, the winner was a city-state winning a Religious Victory (first set of settings). Then I did a variant where a Religious Victory was disallowed (yes; you can set the game up to disallow a Religious Victory - instead, TR *still lost* to a city-state - a Cultural Victory. You can't (right now) disallow city-states - you can disallow other civilizations, but not city-states. A city-state can sneak up on you and snatch a Cultural Victory UNLESS you disallow it for ALL civs; the same applies for Religious Victories. My last game I played I had the Maori city-state sneak up on me and pilfer a Cultural Victory. The mods you are asking for CAN be voted on or off via the World Congress; however, the AI (and especially city-states) take greater advantage of them than YOU are allowed to (even if they are passed via the World Congress to benefit your specific civilization).

[@Smoothiecom]

One change that could decrease the production scarcity is to make quarries and lumbermills increase in production earlier like mines do. While mines get 4 and 5 production pretty early, lumbermills without rivers stay as 3 until steel, which is way to late and means that flat wooded areas are just bad.

[@Ares42]

I think there's a much simpler solution than introducing production per population, just bump up the initial forest spawn rate. It makes sense really, the world is "wild" and uninhabitable, and then civilization comes along and chops down the forests to make their cities. From a gameplay perspective it also works by introducing options, rather than just a passive bonus. You're faced with the choice of how much land do you want to clear for farms, how much do you want to chop just for production and how much do you want to keep for late-game production. You can go hard on deforestation early on hoping that gives you an advantage, but by doing so you're sacrificing your late-game. And with Gathering Storm there could even be environmental effects in place. I also feel like some of the stuff you're talking about are compound issues. You talk about how it's better to go wide than tall and there's little to no benefits from going tall, but then you say late game buildings and units are too expensive (which they aren't if you go tall). It makes it sound like a lot of "because I play this way these things I chose to sacrifice is a problem". Just look at what I was talking about with forests. Most people would agree that the "right" thing is to use forests to chop early on for the advantage, but then coming back around and complaining about not having enough production late in the game becomes somewhat disingenuous. If you're constantly running into production issues then maybe chopping for early advantage isn't as obviously good as it seems like.

[@stevenbov]

Yeah, maybe more forests on flat lands but leave hills alone. Note that by the time of the game he's talking about, whether or not you chopped your forests doesn't matter much because your builders can just re-plant them.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

You can replant forests in the late game but it still doesn't really make up for the lack of production relative to the construction cost, and Tall just really isn't viable at all compared to Wide. Wide is King.

[@thomaschambaz7946]

I guess you need to take into account the "time to win" in your analysis, the sooner you win, the less valuable it is to grow tall, and the more valuable chops are. If it's fine to win at turn 300 rather than 150, coz "who cares if you win sooner or later, a win is a win!", then yeah, you can grow taller.

[@Ares42]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey I'm not trying to argue that tall is viable, just that playing wide comes with its consequences. So it's not that there's a fault with the design, it's just that the most successful strategy creates some degenerate gameplay. It's mostly a consequence of trying to keep a balance between the two strategies. If there is no consequence to playing wide then playing tall is even less of an option. And as far as planting forests not being enough. By switching a plains farm into a plains lumber mill late game you're literally trading food into production at something around 1:2 ratio. You get 3-4 extra production from a plains lumber mill (at a loss of 1-2 food if placed well), what more do you want ? It's gonna cost you a bunch of resources though, so having more forests around in the first place removes that extra cost. Also, having the forests there from the get-go means you don't have to be like 75% through the game before a big flatland city can finally get production.

[@bobbyt9431]

Early civ games made building wide a difficulty with the corruption mechanic. Essentially how it works in real life - if your empire is 4k miles across then the people living 2k miles from the capital are going to be much different culturally and ethnically than the people in the capital. Before highways and air travel, this was a huge problem, and why ALL large empires throughout history have eventually fragmented. I think it was in Civ 3 when borders were first introduced to the game and your empire could actually go through a civil war and half would split off into a new civ if you expanded too fast.

[@agni772]

1. Citizen base production is nice, I would probably just beef up the workshop/industrial zone a bit (more slots, production that scales with age); also think domestic trade routes should allow users to 'export' excess production/food in addition to what's generated from trade, with the maximum amount scaled per era. So a food heavy city can export 1 food in return for 1 production and vice versa, scaling to maybe a maximum of 4 if you want. 2. Going with the domestic trade route solution, specialists at the target city could also add more value to trade routes (in case of international routes, add more benefits to you so they're almost like a defensive spy in some ways). So in addition to their production, they will be giving bonuses to your other cities that send routes there. 3. A very simple (?) way would be to use great prophet points to create relics/religious art. Another way would be to create specific religious units that could create a 'religious fort' you can build in neutral/friendly territories where your religious units will get bonuses + healing (and bonus faith production if it's worked).

[@SuperDoggy99]

I've tried to like Civ VI--I really have--but the game has a multitude of problems, most of which sit at the design level. I find myself constantly asking how this game was even made, when it has such obvious shortcomings.

[@nolanwalsh9262]

I agree going tall is the biggest problem with the game. For example in culture victories I find I have to expand to have enough cities to hold all my great works and have enough coastal tiles for Resorts. My solution for this problem would be to allow for a city to build another version of the same district once you get above a certain size i.e. 20. This way you can still get the benefit of having multiple copies of a distract without having to build a new city. This can make practical sense a lot of large cities would have two campuses or two museums. Probably just need some requirement that they are 3 or 4 tiles away from each other. Also, really large cities should output a lot of tourism and influence in GS which would allow for certain victory types to really benefit from going tall. I agree with religious issues. I don't have a ton of solutions for this, but I agree with your ideas that religion should offer more benefits. I think the victory condition could be completely redone since right now it is super boring to go for a religious victory. Anyways, if they could fix one thing I hope they go after making going tall better. I like really building large and power cities more then creating a bunch of small isolated cities.

[@jamesboswell3733]

Maybe some of these will be addressed in the expansion.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I specifically picked out things I was reasonably sure wouldn't change in the expansion for my pre-expansion problem video, post expansion will be a different story.

[@michaelalexander6064]

You are 100% spot on with every critique and suggestion. Couldn't have said it better. I have over 600 hrs in Civ 6 (and more than 1600 in Civ 5), and I keep going back to Civ 5, simply because I feel the decisions are more interesting and the AI is more surprising. The decisions in 6 often times feel more like an irritating situation that I am forced to decide on, rather than a true weighing of costs and benefits.

[@Flor-um1zu]

just put 10K special in the title

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

NO U

[@Samplenoob]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey NO NO U

[@igorsdonjon2271]

what does that do?

[@stephencross1230]

A solution for too much food and units taking too long too be built in regards to tech speed is to make each have a dependency on food from that city. Abit like settlers did in civ 2 where they required 1 food from the city to survive, instead do this for ALL units from that city and lower there production costs dramatically. This way production becomes less important, food becomes a necceassry thing for armies and you can enjoy units long before there obsolete. This also would play into the tall vs wide problem as a small, high population civ would have a easier time fielding a army over a large, low population civ.

[@CREXPO.]

didnt plan on watching a 30 min vid butttttt

[@Musician7831]

I feel a good feature in a future Civ game would be to reintroduce similar town concepts, where a town appears because a city gets larger and it yields a small advantage in food say 1/2 a unit, but more importantly roads passing from one city to another, would help divert excess food to other cities in it's sphere and thus you could amplify growth in your chosen city. This is realistic as it happened all over history. Obviously you would limit this, so you can't super grow a city, or starve the provider.

[@herrmajestat]

I didn’t listen, I just watched the gameplay.

[@MegaBearsFan]

"production is too important, and too scarce" is a very astute and accurate observation. I would however say that gold may be a bit more important than production. If you can generate a lot of gold, you can usually offset most of the drawbacks of having low production. Unfortunately, you do need the production to get the commercial hubs, harbors, and traders out onto the map, so there is still a bit of a Catch-22 there.

[@PatSeagramson]

You could be an auctioneer. You talk really, really fast.

[@etsharry]

First of all thanks for this awesome content, and i wish more people would do such videos explaining precisely whats wrong designwise with their games and even giving possible solutions. I also love this suggestion as a noob player and esp how easy it would be to implement. To the first problem of production and for me also adressing the issue of a possibly higher variance of playstyles based on starting terrain, i thought of a very specific change to specialists. And it is pretty simple. My idea was that specialists in districts get promotions. An example: if a worker works for like 15 turns in a scientific district with a bibliothek it gets an promotion which can be chosen like religious believes. An promotion for example could be something like: in the city this scientist works up to 3 dessert tiles get +1production. or in the city this scientist works 3 tiles of tundra gets +2 gold, etc. or three farms produce 3production instead of 2 food. These buffs should also stack. so if you have like a dessert scientist that increases production you can put anpther dessert scientist that increases the gold yield in the city as long as it has enough specialist slots. 2nd 3rd and 4th upgrade can only be achieved if the corresponding buildings (university, lab, etc) are built. This promotions should also be developed for commercial hub industrial zone etc. Also the specialists would behave like they were fex great works: they could be traded with other civilizations and between cities (as an abstract ressource without acually trading the citizens). If designes well thist may lead to awesome descitions and also to more diverse start strategies. you could actually use cities with low production yields but high pop to educate high tier scientists or other specialists to export them to other cities. there could also be more interesting promotions like more loyality or more efficiancy of buildngs etc. With this change it may be a very interesting descition if you invest in specialists ealry but having less yields for 15 turns or if you want to go more agressive. It basically is a buff to playing more economicly but still offering weaknesses to certain counters. this suggestion may btw also help with the last very good complaint you had. Because these higher tier bistrict buildings would provide new awesome promotions to their specialists as long as they work there for some turns. Third tier promotions could exactly do some of the things you suggested for the buildings.

[@Hamun002]

I think in order to do anything here Potato, you need to do some hard numbers crunching, otherwise this is just your intuition and gut sense. I’m not saying you’re wrong but presenting this argument as a ramble when it comes to thing like the yields really makes it difficult for anyone to logically reach a conclusion. Numbers, especially to a developer, tell a more detailed and compelling story than “here are my thoughts after 1k hours also, I play the game in an incredibly specific way that may not reflect what the developers want the experience to be.” Your experience playing at a high level and exploiting bugs and glitches(no judgement, I just want you to realize that you are taking advantage of things that change the way you experience the game) changes your anecdotal data. What about games played at lower levels? Have you considered that data at all when it comes to just raw production? Etc. Etc. Really good point on religion though, having extra theologians would really enhance the game. Especially if you do things like pit them against each other in a religious debate(as people did back in the day and still do to this day) or to influence a religion you didn’t found. Maybe you could even have a theologian to claim a religion after you defeat the original founder. A lot of fun ideas in there.

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

I did crunch the numbers, normally my late game cities of 10-15 population would have between 30-60 production. My proposed solution would bring them up to 50-70 Production gradually over the course of the game.

[@Hamun002]

@@PotatoMcWhiskey Oh yeah, I saw that chart regarding the scaling of your suggested change. I'm not talking about that. I should have been clearer about what I meant. I'm talking about how you're referring to playstyles as well as to specialists and buildings. How you view one playstyle vs another for example. The reward vs. risk of completing more specialist buildings. Thats the kind of stuff you need to back up. What if those buildings suddenly become game changing on the levels that you suggested? How many banks would someone need to essentially "live off the profits"? Would you consider that valid, just because its in the game? All of a sudden you're production problems are mostly solved: you can buy everything and recoup costs. It completely changes the game, but is that actually a good thing? Are increasing these yields actually going to be a good thing? I also question all of these things because your strategy, not to knock your playstyle, is so rote. I don't know if you've realized this but you've completed the game pretty much. You've found your strategy for answering the game's questions. When did you last attempt the methods you've derided? Are there metrics you're drawing on there to show "if I choose one city here, vs. these three cities I will more likely lose the game due to reduced returns". Building on the last point, could you point to numbers that say: if you make these quantified adjustments here, here and here the specialist buildings can be used to outplay someone playing wide? Maybe an idea for an experiment would be to take a series of save files over a series of games and essentially play them in the different methods you described and compare them so you have something more visceral (or at least more visceral to me, maybe someone has already calculated all this and I'm wasting keystrokes) than "this is better because you can get to three districts at seven pop". That is what I mean about the title: 1k hours doesn't mean much at all. Esports professionals have thousands of hours playing in game, not counting the time they take outside the game to watch others play and strategize. They still lose tournaments.To me it feels more like you've hit the boundary of what you feel like you yourself can do, so you're trying to make sense of what could be done to give your self more challenges. This is more or less what I was trying to get at. Let me know if I missed something.

[@JackRule16]

@@Hamun002 His playstyle is the optimal one after those hours of trial and error

[@Hamun002]

Jack that really isn’t even an argument. Go play chess for a thousand hours. After 1k hours would you slap a video on the internet saying “chess is broken here are some things that need changing”? Experience is not in-valid but it’s not inherently an argument when so much of what is discussed in this video is about mathematical formulas that can be tweaked. You can do math, you can answer these questions(to some degree). Potato does have some interesting ideas regarding changes to buildings, the religion, and probably other things I’ve missed that could probably add a lot of depth that is more apt to being evaluated with the “eyeball test”. I have an idea though to maybe help, but involves me writing a mod for software I’ve never used. So it might be on the back burner.

[@Hamun002]

PotatoMcWhiskey hey Potato if I figure out how to get a mod working that implements your idea for civilian production pop, would you be willing to stream it/ test it?

[@havan56]

Your points are well made and your ideas sound great. I hope that some modder does pick up on this (and can actually implement some of it) I tend to reach a point in every game where the the game starts to drag a bit and it's generally related to some of the issues you address here.

[@darksilversoul9]

Why don't you make a NoQuitter's kind of mod for Civ 6? I'm sure people including my self would be happy to fund this kind of mod if you found somebody to mod it for you etc...

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Modders hit my DMs on Twitter/Discord

[@loganstrosahl7952]

I'm not 1000 hours in (close to 300), but these were great points and your solutions were brilliant. Thanks for the in-depth content.

[@Rich-MarsEco]

May I also state, with your religion having flaws and points of weakness, I would like to say: (we already know war and faith can work well together as can it with culture [which makes total sense], but) I feel like going religion should hinder a person going for a science victory (the easiest of the win conditions, imo) and I should hinder the new diplomacy victory a little too. I know it has its' own win condition but I think to balance out the win conditions, each one should also sort of help 2 others and hinder a little the other 2. And I am mad they arent tweaking religion at all with this DLC/update.

[@DesonEQ]

I hope they see this. One of the first things I noticed post civ4 was the loss of the workshop improvement. Civ4 has a few ways to make population convert to useful resources and ways to adapt to changing conditions. I hope they use some of the ideas from here and the older games before closing out civ 6

[@Barph]

I think I'm playing this game wrong... I can't say I've those problems with production, or wide vs tall..?

[@TheBake1986]

Same. Admittedly I only play on low/mid difficulty but 6 or 7 cities is usually enough for me. I see streams of people managing 12-15 cities and it just seems like a pain.

[@InuyashaHanyu]

play on deity and you'll loose with few cities, respectively the game will take beyond turn 300 on standard speed

[@jamesboswell3733]

I was actually thinking the same thing. Do you play on the higher difficulty levels?

[@Barph]

@@jamesboswell3733 I play one level lower than deity (Immortal), though.. Deity is still too much for me (800+ hours, and over 2.000+ hours on Civ 5).. But thanks to PMcW, I'm getting there!

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

@@Barph How long does it take you to build a Seaport? 20-30 Turns? That feels like too many, I feel like a benchmark for building speed should be around 15 turns in an appropriately built up city, often late game buildings take 30+ turns.

[@Wise_That]

Agreed. The issue with population in Civ6 is that it's both difficult to get, and useless (or harmful) when you DO get it. The intent behind the housing system is clearly to make high population difficult to come by. From that we can infer that population is _supposed_ to be powerful, and the decision to settle on a river, or give up and entire tile and several turns of production for an aqueduct is supposed to be a meaningful one... but it never feels like it's worth it. The districts being more expensive as you build more of their type and also tied to pop makes me wonder if maybe some kind of synergy system would be a better solution? At current building another districts a roughly linear increase in power, i.e. building one campus in one city and one encampment in another is no different from building both together. What if the districts gave eachother bonuses (beyond minor adjacency), meaning that one city with 4 districts was MUCH better than 4 cities with one?

[@DynaCatlovesme]

I've never been comfortable with religion being a part of the game at all, though in Civ 4 it was at it's best. Just a cultural boost and money boost. As it's evolved, it provides magical benefits that sort of push Civ into a "swords and fantasy" area.

[@MArineboi09]

DynaCatlovesme I dislike the religious gameplay as well. I normally turn that off so that I’m not having to be bothered by annoying enemy missionaries. It doesn’t add that much just an annoying variable.

[@Dayvit78]

Playing as Indonesia, I did great because Kampung can be placed in ocean tiles and get extra production. But even more importantly, I found, is that I had a ton of gold from trade and my maritime focused run through. I used gold to buy buildings. When I saw the graph at the end, my gold completely overshadowed any of the other civilizations throughout the whole game.

[@johanwittens7712]

I've been playing civ since its first ever incarnation, and civ 6 is probably the least engaging version i have ever played, closely followed by civ 5. I have played it for a few hours, and never found it interesting, the game mechanics are weird and unbalanced, and the district system is completely pointless and completely unrealistic. The graphics are confusing and not clear at all, and the map ends up a difficult to overview and difficult to manage mess in the later game. Oh and half the map becomes unuseable because for some reason wonders take up the same space as an ENTIRE city now... I used to play civ4 with few, but well developed cities close together, full of wonders. Ever since civ 5 that has been made impossible to do. And now civ 6 makes it even worse. What game gives you less play possibilities in it's next version?? For me the go to version of civ is still civ 4 (with warlords & beyond the sword), even after all those years. The only recent civ version i liked was civ beyond earth...

[@Hurttoto]

Ive heard of beyond earth... Is it still advailable?

[@johanwittens7712]

@@Hurttoto On steam it probably is still available, in stores i'm not sure.

[@ivanhorvat8403]

Agreed on all 4 problems listed. Of those four, production, and lack of options to play tall are two of three my biggest gripes about Civ6. I have, partially, remedied the production problem by almost exclusively playing Germany, and clustering Hansa districs to get more bonuses. Since going tall is not an option here, and Babylon is a city-state now - I regularly fire up Civ5, and wreak havoc there. Babylon, a staple civ since the beginning of the series being reduced to a mere city-state really bothers me. It has been my favourite civ to play since 1991, and not being able to play them in Civ6 setting where we have loads of, IMO, less deserving civs available just doesn't sit well with me.

[@ScoutEboy]

I make cities with massive production by settling them near hills and building industrial zones and getting adjacency bonuses. You get +1 production for industrial zones for every mine you can build next to it. You just need to plan around it.

[@jbishop6703]

I had never played any civilization before. This video appeared in my que. After watching it a week later it went on sale. 3 weeks later I've bought both expansions and have over 200 hours played. Now this video makes amazing sense. Well done McLovin

[@EchoMonarch]

I always play an ultra wide Germany, never have an issue with production and always end up with a handful of cities over 20 pop. That being said, I agree that more production is needed because the only way I know of optimizing production is using Germany's Hansa as early as possible

[@awesomeo550]

All the points you’ve made are great, the extra planning ahead you would be able to do really does add the extra layer of strategy that would help spice up the mid to late game. I hope that Firaxis does implement changes to these areas, but if they don’t it seems as though we would need to wait for the civ 6 version of vox populi

[@yourfriendjohnny8889]

This is a great start. There are many more issues with civ 6, I look forward to a part 2 for this video.

[@407to618]

Man you so nailed this on the way you feel about the game I love it overall I have had it for close to a year multiple re-tries and constantly getting out done just because it feels like I’m never being put in a good position to win in the first place

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

They fixed all these problems with the game over a year ago

[@407to618]

PotatoMcWhiskey Yeah but it still feels like a lot of games I’m being put in an area that really doesn’t have a lot of resources and it takes so long basically it feels like I’m playing catch-up the whole game but I feel like playing it

[@brad9180]

I completely agree with what you said about production and mid-lategame buildings.