Yeah, they definitely need to patch the diplomacy AI. Right now it’s pretty broken. I’ve heard tell of people being paid to enter a joint war against a third party, and then getting denounced by their ally as a warmonger.
I found the same thing, also with Germany. We shared a government style, trade routes, he had the green-smiley happy thing going on with me, then BAM! Surprise war declaration. I guess that’s why they call it a surprise!
I was playing as Norway, single city, with my original starting warrior and a few Viking Longboats… got rushed from the northwest by 5 or 6 warriors, and another 6 or more chariots. Next turn, Cleopatra gets in on it and also declares a surpise war on me, and sends another 8 or so warriors from the southeast. I purchased an archer to supplement my single-warrior defense force, then do the same on the next turn… and then build two spearmen, then get some quadriremes started… and destroy both antagonists. The AI has no tactical skill whatsoever.
I finished my first game yesterday - well, rather, I was suddenly told I’d lost. I couldn’t even find out how it was that I lost, as the last I’d looked, I was in 2nd place in most of the categories. How do you find out how the game ended and who won?
Yes. Penalty=bad. Math=bad.
I had the same thing happen to me. It seems like it was some sort of bug although I couldn’t figure out the cause. I reloaded a previous auto-save and I auto-lost on the same turn again.
I’m not impressed with the game. I’ll play the two games I’ve got going to conclusion (Rome on my Mac, and I can’t even recall who I’m playing as on the PC at home (I’m on vacay)). After that, I’ll probably put it away and won’t take it out again.
This makes two for two in the not-so-good department from Firaxis (Civ:BE, Civ VI). I think I’ll stop buying their stuff until it’s clear they’ve gone back to being top of the line.
Ok, I finally have found my REAL pet peeve:
Builders cannot be automated.
Yeah, I know, you shouldn’t automate them. Usually I don’t. But when the game is on easier levels, and you’re trying to speed things up to get to the end of a game you know you’re gonna win, letting them do their thing unaided is helpful. It’s also helpful because you see what the AI thinks is right to be doing with them (which means what the AI IS doing with them for your enemies). Now, I know the newfangled districts and neighborhoods and wonders and national parks, etc., make automating them a bit more difficult. And I know that, because they die off after they’ve completed their allotted number of builds, it’s not so easy to choose what to do. But it’s still quite annoying that it cannot be done. Means you have to actually choose each and every thing they do. EVERY thing they do. The whole freakin’ game.
UGH.
I was waiting to post anything until I got through my second game, but yeah, I don’t love this either. I’m not sure I even like it that much. The UI, the AI, and even a lot of the design choices don’t work for me. It reminds me pretty exactly of my experience with early Civ V: played 15-20 hours, enjoyed getting to tinker with the new stuff, but wasn’t interested in playing more. Eventually Civ V got better with updates… but I went back and spent some time with the older games this summer, and the fully expanded/patched version of Civ IV was still the one that gave me the full ‘one-more-turn’ experience. I might just not be the target audience any more, which I guess is okay, but I’m probably out on the next one when it pops up in five-ish years.
Was is after 500 turns, and did you lose the score victory condition?
I can’t figure out how trading works. I don’t mean how the process works, I mean how to physically change the current deal on the table. I’ve tried dragging items around, and that doesn’t work. I can’t remove things or add things to a deal. I can adjust the numbers down to 1, but can’t remove them altogether (or add something new). Am I missing something?
I’m having a hell of a time adjusting to this game, and I think it’s way harder than previous versions to get into.
Just clicking on an item will remove it from the trade list. TBH, I don’t remember if it is a right or left click, but you can alter the deal.
Right click. On a Mac, two-finger tap.
Ahh, I’m on mac. The normal clicking did nothing!
I do have to admit that the concept of the musical themes for each civilization in the game mutating through four different versions (ancient, medieval, classical, modern) is nice. I’ve enjoyed listening to “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme” in each of its versions. And the Norwegian theme is just teh awesome!
Not as impressed with the Christopher Lin theme song this time. Very grandiose, yes. But not as catchy. I loved “Baba Yetu.” And the opening movie simply sucks by comparison to some prior versions of the game.
OK, I’ll quite whining until these games are done. 
I’ve played a bunch more. A few thoughts:
I really like how cities interact with their terrain in this game. I enjoy planning out where to place my districts. I’m still getting the hang of it, and becoming aware of more and more important factors. This is particularly true as Germany; it’s good to place a commercial district and Hansa immediately in a new city, and one should balance the adjacency bonuses for each of them with the (mid-to-late-game) radius effect of factories and power plants. Similarly, high-end entertainment complex buildings have a radius effect that provides a massive benefit if you can snag four or five cities in their radius; but you have to balance it with the fact that the district gives +1 appeal to adjacent tiles. Remember that the suzerain of Toronto gets +3 to the radius of these buildings! Even the farm adjacency bonuses are interesting; they really make it feel like there’s a shift in society as a result.
Either production is too slow or research is too fast. By the time I have a handful of knight units ready to run roughshod over my soon-to-be enemies, the game tells me I’ve entered the industrial era. In previous Civ games I could easily whip up a custom game speed; I could set the multiplier for unit production, building production, city growth, and research independently. I can’t figure out Civ VI’s GameSpeeds XML file; it might just have a single CostMultiplier that applies to all of the above parameters. I hope that’s not the case.
Diplomacy is indeed really bad, but I can live with it for the time being. Agendas are poorly implemented; as someone on Reddit put it, most agendas consist of a leader getting mad at you for playing a particular part of the game (e.g. Barbarossa if you’re friendly with city-states, Qin Shi Huang if you build lots of wonders, or Pedro if you recruit great people). Warmongering penalties are ridiculous, but ultimately moot: By the time I’m ready to start waging wars that would give me warmonger penalties, I don’t need good relations with the other civs. I’m not going to, say, trade luxuries with them anyway, because they won’t accept any but the most lopsided of deals (and I don’t want them to have amenities). The only reason to want them to like me is so they don’t attack me, so it’s just a matter of being strong enough that they won’t attack me while I already have a war going on. There’s some potential with how you can make and keep/break promises, but that has its flaws.
Great people are interesting. Some are as good as or better than wonders (e.g. Adam Smith gives +1 economic policy slot). They’re rather hard to earn, though; at least if you don’t focus on it.
I dislike how the costs of districts etc. escalate. I’ve already figured out how to mod that out.
Oh, I also really like the music in the game. Is it just me, or does the music that plays depend on which Civs are in the game? In my current game I’m hearing a lot of distinctively American, Brazilian, and Kongolese music, and they’re my neighbours.
I like how I can found a city one or two tiles away from the coast and still build a harbour and ships there.
Every civ has its own unique theme song (there’s a list of the soundtrack at Firaxis’ Civ VI website). Those songs have four different versions, an “ancient” version, “medieval”, “classical” (read, industrial) and “modern”. As you progress through the game, the themes update to reflect your progression. Which themes you hear depends upon which civilizations are in the game.
What I have not figured out, yet, is if that means you can tell what civs are in the game before you ever meet them. I DO know that the themes stay active even after a civ is killed off; the awesome Norwegian theme is still playing, even though they got killed off by the Japanese ages ago.
Yeah, I’ve definitely heard music from eliminated Civs. Just now I heard some nice Japanese music playing, even though I eliminated them a few dozen turns ago.
I had originally only intended to liberate Toronto when I declared war on Japan, but figured I’d pick up one of their cities along the way. But then they wouldn’t accept a peace treaty with any remotely reasonable terms, so I took the other three. This left one of the world’s last few swathes of wilderness right on my doorstep, with room for four cities. Sort of like a genocide-free Lebensraum. After the war, I disbanded most of my obsolete troops for some quick cash (I bet they’ll patch that before too long) so I could rush build three of the four settler units I dispatched to the region. I made sure to get all four in place and then found all four cities on the same turn; that wilderness was also on Brazil’s doorstep, and they promptly asked me to no longer settle near them. I made and intend to keep that promise; the land-grab might even help foster good relations between our two nations. How’s that for metagaming?
The AI’s refusal to upgrade its troops makes some wars pretty silly. I know you love the hoplites, Gorgo, but they can’t stop bullets.
They stop them very well!, they just don’t get up again after the stopping.