Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Not through fault of his own, though, he simply doesn't have friends that really trust his ideas. Not that Japanese intervention help matters.

Would Empress Dowager Cixi be a controversial choice of leader for China? I read Jung Chang's biography of her recently (which has, admittedly, been accused of being biased in her favour) and I at least found her to be a pretty fascinating character.

Oh wait, I think I mixed up Philip II and Ferdinand II...

First look at Montezuma. I believe that's the first leader returning from the last game we've seen.

Military Civs with economical bonuses tend to be good, which makes me assume that the Aztecs will once again be good.

According to the fine print, the Aztecs are preorder DLC that won't be available for sale released for free, apparently, to non-preorderers until 90 days after release.

edited 21st Jul '16 7:41:11 AM by lrrose

[Aztec crowd cheers]

Monty is looking good!

edited 21st Jul '16 7:41:04 AM by Ultimatum

Okay, I admit I can't take Montezuma (I? II? The trailer didn't specify) seriously at all here. Hell, even if his war cry stays the same (Ximicacan, ximicacan, XIMICACAN!) he probably still won't look like a properly frightening warlord. Then again, his depiction here can't really be compared to his leader screen in Civ V due to the different art styles.

On a sidenote, even though I'm miffed at the fact that it's DLC, props to the dev for keeping the single biggest problem about warmongering civs in mind while designing the Aztecs. As in, empire Happiness, which usually in V could only be addressed mostly via Autocracy and certain world wonders (Notre Dame, Prora).

If we're going to be historically pedantic about it, warmongering civilizations tended to be very popular back home as long as they were winning, thanks to the patriotism effect. In fact, starting wars has been something of a "get out of domestic doldrums free" card. Economy not going so well? Social unrest making things uncomfortable? Drum up a reason why those Others are evil so you can go to war with them.

This has many effects. First, you can take your disaffected, restless citizens who might otherwise be itching to depose you, shove guns (or spears) in their hands, and send them off to murder (or be murdered by) someone other than you. Second, you can paint the inevitable naysayers and complainers as unpatriotic and let your own enthusiastic supporters pillory them for you. Relatedly, you have a built-in excuse to clamp down on internal dissent. Third, at least in the old days before fiat currencies, wars were good ways to boost your cash flow by looting all your enemies' gold. When fiat currencies arose, it flipped around and wars became a great domestic stimulus program.

Of course, that only lasts so long. If you lose your war, you're basically hosed, but in the Civ games, for some reason, being forced to surrender cities as part of negotiating peace increases your happiness because you have fewer unhappy citizens left over. If your war drags on, eventually people get tired of sending all their kids off to die somewhere they've never heard of and want you to come home to fix the trains and/or aqueducts, but in Civ, military units don't have any effect on population and "war weariness" was dropped after Civ IV.

Historically, wars are great technology boosters, as your R&D churns out new ways to kill more efficiently, but in Civ, warring is a good way to fall behind in tech as your rivals can spend more of their resources on research. One thing Civ does get right is that, when you send all your armies off somewhere else, that leaves less army at home, making you vulnerable to your neighbors. It's also fairly good at showing the effort it takes to pacify conquered territory, but why the unrest in some city you captured over yonder should cause people in your capital to suddenly start rioting is beyond me. Civ VI seems to be going back to the old days of giving each city its own happiness rating, which is at least more realistic.

edited 21st Jul '16 8:06:51 AM by Fighteer

It's probably the first Montezuma again. He even sounds like he's voiced by the same guy who did his voice in the last game. And they probably wouldn't want the Aztecs to be led by someone who's famous for nothing but losing and having his empire destroyed. It'd be like having Romulus Augustulus as the leader of Rome.

Good. I don't like the happiness system in V, because it frequently makes no sense. One instance that made me Rage Quit one of my games was where I sent most of my army to conquer cities somewhat far away from my initial borders. I succeed, capture all of Alexander's territory, but suffer a huge deficit in happiness, so suddenly barbarians start appearing near my loosely-guarded capital. They plunder all of my trade routes and ruin some of my resources before I can send anyone back to deal with them, leaving my empire nearly bankrupt and my troops sorely weakened due to a lack of iron. Enter Shaka and Oda Nobunaga declaring war from the east and west over the territory I'd just captured.

I'd imagine it's hard to find qualified voice actors who speak all of the languages they are trying to depict. The talent pool there must be pretty shallow.

As for wars, you are at least told of the happiness penalty when you are deciding what to do with a captured city, although "Oh crap I don't want to capture this after all" is not presented as an option. ^note One strategy I've never tried is evacuating the captured city and letting the opponent retake it, especially as doing so costs huge amounts of population and infrastructure, making it basically useless to them, and making it cost less unhappiness to your own civ if/when you eventually capture it for good. Generally, puppeting it until you can sort things out is a reasonable decision. What really hurts is when your opponent surrenders and offers you their cities. Given that you don't have the opportunity to see where the cities are, it can be something of a roulette wheel, and it's the easiest way I've ever found to take your civ from surplus happiness to revolution in an instant.

edited 21st Jul '16 9:06:49 AM by Fighteer

It is possible to just sell cities you don't want, though. I once sold Attila's Court to Ramkhamhaeng, giving me a convenient buffer between me and the Huns and keeping Ramkhamhaeng too busy to think about attacking me.

I guess what ticked me off in the particular instance I named was more that the rebellion sprung up far away from the territory I'd captured, which didn't make much sense to me. I guess in-univers you could argue that the Greek resistance movement sent agents to my capital to divert the occupying army's attention away from the land they'd conquered. Do resistance movements realistically tend to do that, though? Like, did any of the resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe send agents to Berlin to conduct terrorism there?

It's more like you got domestic insurgents popping up who were mad that you were spending so much time in BFE while your nation fell apart back home.

Frankly, I've never tried selling a city to the AI. It never seems like they have enough gold to make it worthwhile except on the highest difficulties.

Edited to add: After watching that video about the Aztecs, is it wrong of me to want Montezuma's model to be that of Kotal Khan from Mortal Kombat X?

edited 21st Jul '16 9:36:12 AM by Fighteer

I ran out of money in my last game of Civ V for quite a while, but even with a nice, big, empire, my civ pop were quite happy. I was playing Ramses II on Order, so that helped a bit, probably.

Wait,how do you evacuate city?

Fighteer probably meant "evacuate military units out of the city". Makes sense if you want to leave said city as bait for retaking by another civ.

Ah.

On the top of my mind, there were a couple other solutions. Religious tenets (+1 Happiness in Shrines, +2 Happiness in Temples, Pagodas, Mosques, Cathedrals), roads towards your capital with Liberty (can be free if you are Carthage, for example), some civ's UB (Celts, Persia), pillaging enemies to buy Mercantile CS, the "+1 happiness if garrison" Honor tenet, Commerce's last tenet... I'd argue that the best Happiness wonder is the Forbidden Palace, but most of the time you don't go Patronage when warmongering (unless you are Siam, Venice, Greece or Poland).

Anyway, the point being that Happiness isn't only a warmonger issue, it is an issue for everyone, its importance mostly varies depending on the era you are in. Notre-Dame is famous because it is a huge source of happiness in an era that is very much deprived of any other, so happiness is known to be problematic to all civs that love to attack in the MA - Zulus or Mongols, for example.

There are lots of ways to boost Happiness in V; the trouble, as noted, is that they tend to be rather lacking around the Renaissance Era when you finally get enough tech to be halfway efficient at fighting wars. If you focus on culture so as to quickly get to the social policies that boost Happiness, you sacrifice in other areas, such as military, science, and economy. If only there were some direct bonuses for high Happiness values, like there are in Beyond Earth. Golden Ages are cool but the mechanic whereby they become harder to get each time you start one causes Happiness to have serious diminishing returns.

With good enough faith generation you can quite easily Great Artist your way towards eternal happiness. Liberty towards Aesthetics through Piety and you get 2 or 3 free Golden Ages, and the option to buy GA with faith. If you manage to get your hands on some other GWAM generation bonuses and build your Artists Guild in a city that is devoted towards pumping them as fast as possible (e.g. Garden + National Epic + Coffee House if Austrian), it's not even that complicated. Almost common Persian procedure with their sick bonus to Golden Ages.

edited 21st Jul '16 3:29:23 PM by Julep

That doesn't make your people happy, though; it just gives them ridiculous amounts of Golden Age bonuses.

edited 21st Jul '16 3:39:39 PM by Fighteer

I usually don't have happiness issues unless my empire grows absolutely massive and is about halfway tall at the same time. By that point I've already basically won and just playing from there is largely a formality.

Golden Age brings a ton of money, and Happiness can actually be bought (or at least Colosseums can, along with Zoos). The AI also tends not to care about Mercantile CS compared to Military or Cultural ones. It's quite easy to befriend one for a long time provided you don't face Alexander.

If you've got the pre-requisites, you can spam buildings like Monasteries, Pagodas, Mosques and so on with all the Faith you acquire, after the tax of founding a Pantheon and/or Religion.

All those combined can bring a large chunk of Happiness.

@Julep - if I remember correctly, the Forbidden Palace only works on non-occupied cities, so it probably won't be very effective for warmongers.