Civilization 6 Gameplay: Top 3 Changes You Wouldn’t Like

[Unorthodox]

http://www.thebitbag.com/civilization-6-gameplay-top-3-changes-wouldnt-like/151402
(though its a popup hell site)

After the sci-fi entry Civilization: Beyond Earth, Civilization fans may see the return of the main, numbered Civilization entries in Civilization 6. News about the upcoming game has confirmed new features that lean toward city placement advantages and limited unit stacking in battles. While new additions are great, some changes aren’t always agreeable for some players. Here are three confirmed changes in Civilization 6.





Limited Unit Stacking

According to DigitalTrends. Civilization 6’s unit management system has found a middle ground in Civilization 4’s unlimited unit stacking and Civilization 5’s one unit per tile restriction by making unit stacking limited in the upcoming game. While it’s definitely a huge advantage for every player to stack their army, it makes heavily disadvantageous fights more grueling as funneling a larger army through choke points may not work anymore. Alternatively, you can stack your units yourself, but if the foe stacks better units than yours, your army may not survive the damage.

It’s definitely a step-up to the battle tactics in-game as it gives a chance for quantity vs. quality unit match-ups. However, fast production speeds by the stronger country effectively negates this unit matchlock, especially if the other nation churns out more units than your stacked defenses can handle.

City Placement Advantages

In Civilization 6, city placement is now considered to be crucial as it can affect your nation’s research speed and access to certain buildings. Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s article about Civilization 6 confirms that you can overspecialize cities even more toward certain productions than Civilization 5. The article noted that a “campus city” will thrive even more when near rainforest tiles, and the speed of researching nautical sciences such as “Sailing” will be exceptionally slower without a coastal city.

This addition forces the players to quickly establish cities that will cover all these weaknesses. This new system punishes non-expansive strategies in the early game as some nations thrive better when they trade territory growth with speeding up other advantages such as culture or capital city population.

Agenda System

The Agenda System for the enemy AIs are definitely an advantage for single players as it will now have a standard to follow when it comes to decision-making and politics. Rock, Paper, Shotgun also mentioned that it isn’t confirmed yet if the AI Gandhi’s famous “inexplicably aggressive and nuclear personality” in the Civilization series will stay or not. This new system may add more seriousness to most of the AI leaders, and it’s unknown if we’ll see another AI Gandhi that’ll be consistently entertaining to have in a single player mode in Civilization 6.

[Rusty Edge]

"Changes I wouldn't like" kinda assumes that I was pleased with the finished version of V.

STACKING- Stack of Doom was definitely an issue in IV, and there were plenty of discussions about it at CFC. I remember defending Europe, and I had a machine gunner, and infantry, and an anti-aircraft guy in each eastern city. My friend Cathy back stabbed me. Looking at the combat logs she lost something like 85 canon, and 150 each of rifles and Cossacks that turn. I lost several cities. Next turn, rinse and repeat.

The discussions concluded that making an arbitrary limit was gamey. Far better to control stacks with game mechanics. Lifting the 6 unit collateral damage limit, or even increasing the collateral damage % every 6 additional units. After all, the more stuff you crowd into a tile, the more it becomes like shooting fish in a barrel. Healing penalties to simulate disease in large armies. Increased maintenance costs. After all, once you reach a certain size army, you even have to supply it with water, because the terrain can't support it. Only so many troops can be brought to bear in an overcrowded situation. Just ask the Romans at Cannae.

It remains to be seen if this new approach to stacking helps the game engine with routing. Limited stacking sounds gamey, but one of the articles cited corps and armies in a Civ III sort of way, and that sounds encouraging.

CITY PLACEMENT- has always been important. V tried to make smaller vertical empires competitive. It sounds like VI will favor exploration and expansion for the sake of technological advancement. Well, I think I may have advocated something like this at one time or another. A maritime civ is going to learn to sail faster, and a mountain civ is going to learn masonry faster than one farming or herding on the plains of the interior.  I always explored and expanded anyway because I liked exploration, and I wanted to collect the entire spectrum of resources.

I assume the AGENDA SYSTEM refers to the A.I. acting more like a human, which makes sense to me. It was one of my issues with V.

[vonbach]

"Limited unit stacking" Things are looking up. So long as the AI (and players) can move its fine.

[Rusty Edge]

"Limited unit stacking" Things are looking up. So long as the AI (and players) can move its fine.

True. I have a feeling that the formation command will slow movement to that of the slowest member considering terrain, but it should simplify things for both player and A.I.

It sounds like an improvement rather than a further compromise of a dysfunctional approach.