The game is really, the way the map now works with units having "half movement" or w.e you wanna call it (which is that they have to pay more movement to cross rivers/enter forest/jungle) makes the strategic element more interesting, supports units is a great addition to the war.
The district parts are amazing, it just gives the game so much more depth, I can easily sit 10+ min per city just to decide where to place my districts. Usually I plan out all of them but its often built around the first one so if e.g campus is to the left of a mountain the industrial zone likely will be next to this campus etc. This very far planing is really fun and really rewarding, you sat up your next city close just to get al the districts close to each other, or do you go far away to get an extra luxury etc. Japan is a big favorite of mine as I love build everything condensed. The only real gameplay problem (Except the bugs) is how it does not feel balanced at all, military civ in general feels way stronger even on higher difficultly its quite easy to demolish 1 close civ + take a 1 or more city states with any early military civ such as Sumerian, Scythia or Aztec. Several Civ feels very meh on their abilities. I am probably gonna write/do a video about how I feel each civ plays.
Anyway now I have to again talk about the AI. I want to try and skip to go over the general AI issues as much as possible as its so obvious but after playing a recent game its behavior yet again surprised me how bad it is.
There is a general issue in how the AI is very binary, e.g have a religion. Meet Kongo, he will instantly hate you if you dont give him your religion, when this was first talked about it sounder interesting and great but its just no depth to it.
So if you are on the other side of the world he will complain, already this is annoying as you just met him and its like 100+ tiles to him....so yeah thanks for never trading with me.
But I actually found it even more annoying and how evidently binary it is when you found a religion.
I was playing a game as Tomyris(Scythia) and I have meet everyone on my continent which included Kongo, which was on the far eastern coast while I was on the west coast. I build Stonehenge and am the first to found a religion. BAM instantly hated for the rest of the game by Kongo. This is frankly just stupid, the very next turn after I founded my religion he hated me. There i literally 0% chance for the player to give anyone even the closest civ the religion the turn they found it let alone the civ which is the furthest away.
The AI needs to have way more len way in how it reacts, it took me like 200 turns to give him my religion, could I have speed that up, yes probably could give him it in under 50 or so, but that is still very long time for him to refuse to have any trade with me etc. And after I gave it to him he still was on bad terms so...
This is the basic issue of the Civs, build 1 wonder and China Qin hates you. Have 1 city ally and Germany Barbarosa hates you and so on.
It should be more like, have 3-4 city allies depending on map and number of city states he and you are close to and depending if he aims to conquer them, not just a very strict border. Well even if it was just a border that needs to be set way higher, as in Kongos case he cannot instantly hate anyone with a religion should give them at least the number of turns to walk between your capitals or something similar.
But I think most are aware of this, now what really pissed me of was this:
This image clearly dont say much without context
So what happened here is that I was on very friendly terms with Tomyris, we where not just friends but even allied.
Already at this stage of declared friend the AI is really stupid, it still will refuse fair trade deals like I talked about in my article before this, which just makes no sense, now Alliance is the next step higher, the highest step in the game of cooperation between 2 Civs.
Here the AI still acts like they hate you...whatever one can just guess that issue will remain.
But this image is after Joint War so Tomyris has asked me, Yes SHE asked me. If I wanted to join in war versus Peter of Russia. Please note again that SHE wanted this and asked me even payed for me to join her war with gold and luxuries.
Clearly then this next action of her makes zero sense. I was really pissed of at this, the thing is that its hard to even get some deals with the AI and as we where were close friends the whole game and she was in lead tied with we had a lot of deals back and forth. Now after I attacked Russia with her...for her she is angry at me is just wtf.
This is truly brain dead. So I just my ally for the last 2000 years because I did what she wanted. Its one thing that the other Civs got pissed at me and her for being warmongers, as we allied to attack 1 other civ but she should be even more happy with me.
This would be a horrible AI actions from any civ. BUT, its also important to note that this is Tomyris, which is why I was even more shocked when this happened. They all have their basic personality + 1 random e.g she was this game into people with high science, so she liked me from that as I was aiming for very science at start. That trait is sometimes a little less binary then their primary one but also much static like their base persona.
And her basic trait is that she is very, very loyal. As we had declared friendship a few times than later having 2 alliance and then during the second alliance I followed her into war. She really should be extremely binary in favour of me as we have had super, really super loyal friendship.
But no apparently warmongering trumps their otherwise strict binary personality. SO really how are you supposed to figure out how to please them. I get that other AI civ will hate me regardless becasue of warmongering (note that I never even conquered a single city this game, they all including her instantly hated me the next turn after I joint her war), but as I joined her she should have 0 hate towards me war and in actually I should get massive bonus in our relationship both from simply joining her, from having a new deal with her(Joint war + luxury trading etc) and lastly a major bonus as its specifically with Tomyris.
If this was another grand strategy game I would expect a marriage proposal after joining her war, here instead she completely flipped flopped on our extremely long loyal relationship which every AI should like you for but Tomyris should extremely like you for this. I never built any citys next to her etc always did what she wanted, which is the one reason I joined this war to please her and she just instantly hated me for it the next turn and then permanently for the rest of the game.
This was the most irrational illogical decision I have seen in Civ 6 so far and that says a lot becasue the AI does a lot of crazy stuff all the time. The last thing one should not forget here too is that this was also in no way beneficial for her. Pretty much no other civ in the game liked me or her even before this war so after it they all hated us, so they wont trade with her, while I got like 5-6 luxuries that I can trade for her 4-5 abundance of luxuries, the effect is that we both just lose a lot of amenity (happiness). Its simply illogical on all fronts and it goes extremely against her persona. IF Ghandi did it or something it would at least makes kinda sense that he hates you because he got bribe you into a war or something. But She is for the first obsessed with loyalty, secondly she is a warmonger and does not normally become angry for this until you take a lot of cities, thirdly, she was the beneficiary of me going to war as I just helped her troops and sank Russian units, fourth she than had a huge abundance of resources that no one wanted to accept from her and she refused to trade to me...
The 3-4 I can kinda ignore as just bad AI overall. But 1-2 really, really annoys me as that as I said several times goes against her core personality. So yeah please fix.. I have no idea how the AI is gonna act after 120 hours of game time.
