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GeekNights Tuesday - Civilization VI Initial Thoughts
Tonight on GeekNights, we bring our initial thoughts on Civilization VI. In the news, Giant Multiplayer Robot is likely to be able to support Civ VI, Really Bad Chess is really great, and Nintendo Switch cometh (to Scott's interest and Rym's ambivalence). We'll be live at GaymerX East, and also at MAGFest! Check out the GeekNights Patreon, Rym's youtube channel, and Scott's youtube channel!
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Civilization VI still has some teething troubles to sort out for the moment, but at its core it's simply a better game than its predecessors.
He was one of the most progressive forces in modern American presidential history.
He also expanded our horror wars overseas and pushed a ridiculously aggressive foreign policy that shakes the world to this day.
So with that I choose to believe he took advantage of a bad situation, rather than caused it. Still dick move but less of one.
Also this is Civilization where if you are playing Multiplayer it's probably going to end up with you winning with a military victory of some sort.
There's a few important things I've worked out, as well as a couple of things I haven't worked out yet but would really like to know. I'll start with the big one I mentioned above, unit control.
Unit control
At a basic level, each unit's ability to do stuff is fundamentally controlled by its MP. Basically, a unit that has any amount of MP greater than 0 can do stuff, whereas a unit at zero MP can no longer do anything except be deleted.
[Core non-movement actions]
Melee attack
- Must have enough MP to move to the tile you're attacking.
- Ends turn (sets MP to 0).
Ranged attack / Promote / Upgrade
- Does not use MP (but you need to have more than zero).
- Ends turn (sets MP to 0).
Pillage
- Costs 3 MP [or your unit's max MP if it's less than 3].
- Does *not* end that unit's turn (you can move after pillaging if you have MP left).
[Things that look like actions but aren't]
Fortify
- As far as I can see, Fortify isn't an action in the same sense as the others; it's more like a special of skipping your turn. A unit can skip its turn normally, or it can skip its turn and, if it hasn't moved at all that turn, also get the bonuses of being fortified. In particular, if you click "Fortify" on a unit you still have the option of doing other stuff instead.
Heal
- Healing is actually a side-effect of not moving. Any unit that didn't move at all in a given turn gets to heal, whether it chose to fortify or not; for naval units this only works in friendly territory.
1. For some reason, [Fortify and Heal] and [Rest and Repair] both actually use up all your MP for that unit even though [Fortify] and [Sleep] do not do this. There doesn't seem to be a sensible reason why this should be the case, as those two orders correspond to [Fortify / Sleep] + [notify me when you reach full HP].
2. A lot of the time you will run into situations where the Promote option doesn't appear for your unit; that's because you've given it other orders that it intends to carry out when you end the turn. Thus, quite a lot of the time in order to promote a unit you will first have to hit Cancel, which then makes the option to promote available again.
Also, pertinent to my above differentiation between Fortify and the other actions, you can actually Fortify a unit and Promote or Upgrade it in the same turn. It's possible this is a bug and you're not supposed to do this, but if you have a unit at full MP, you can do this:
- Click Fortify.
- Click Cancel.
- Click Promote.
and your unit will (at least according to the UI) become fortified and also get its promotion.
Important question: If you promote a unit without moving it, do you also get the healing effects of not moving in addition to the healing effects of the promotion?
3. There are a bunch of promotions in the game that effectively seem to remove the "ends turn" effect from attack actions. "Breakthrough" for Heavy Cavalry says "+1 additional attack per turn if Movement allows" whereas several others say "can move after attacking". The "Elite Guard" promotion for melee units lists both of these effects.
I assume that this means you can have MP left over after attacking, but if those are two separate effects, how does this work? Can Heavy Cavalry with Breakthrough still move after attacking (despite the different wording), or do they have some kind of special MP that they can use to attack but not move!?
Additionally, as a side effect of this, I think it probably means that you can upgrade or promote units after attacking in that same turn, which is a pretty big deal when the promotion also heals your unit.
I haven't really had sufficiently high-level melee units to test this, but I did have a couple of ranged units with the Tier 4 promotion "Expert Marksman", which says "+1 additional attack per turn if unit has not moved". My observations:
- It seems that this is currently bugged, because I found that those units could move and still get two attacks anyway.
- After attacking, the ranged units would have their MP set to 0 making them unable to move, but they would retain the power to do other actions (e.g. attack again or promote). In particular, a ranged unit with that promotion appears to be able to Ranged Attack, then (as long as it didn't move) Fortify for the defense bonus, and then Promote; all in a single turn.
My guess is that the most basic level of unit control in Civ VI can be described by these three state variables:
(1) MP total
Melee attacks, movement, and pillaging all have specific MP costs that limit your ability to do these things.
(2) Active / Inactive
Normally, attacking or using up a unit's last remaining MP causes it to become "inactive", thus making it unable to perform any other actions. However, ranged units with "Expert Marksman" can be in a state where they have 0MP left but remain active, so clearly additional state variables are needed.
(3) Number of attacks made this turn.
Usually a unit can only attack once, but some units can attack twice with a special promotion. Thus one presumably needs an extra state variable to prevent units from attacking infinitely many times.