Repair-ivilization VII: The Continuous Pillaging

[Aluminum Elite Master]

There are things that are growing on me about Civ VII... it's more focused on a wider array of buildings and mix-matching of buildings. That's good... more to do beyond map-painting.

But with all these buildings and improvements comes a significant problem:

Currently, just on the absolute default settings, everything is getting pillaged, all the time.

Independent Powers I can typically stop quickly once they scoot in and pillage something; what is harder is that volcanoes erupt *constantly*. Rivers flood a bit less frequently, but nevertheless they are a problem as well. And we brought back the completely un-gameable, ultra-random tornado family disaster... because that was a fan favorite, apparently.

But then it just gets more senseless with things like a scripted crisis that brings a plague *that somehow is damaging the buildings themselves*. That Exploration Era crisis is low-key the worst design choice in the entire game, because while I have two volcanoes each erupting for the 25th time, I also have all these plague tiles to repair and the game doesn't make it at all obvious that the plague tiles have to recover first to be repaired. The result is the worst micro-fest possible, as I have to look at what cities/tiles have finally recovered from the plague, then individually click each 'repair X' option in each town. This is one area where automated workers would be great, because they'd just go do the repairs for me (otherwise, I'm okay without workers in the game).

I get that I can probably go mess with advanced settings... and that they will probably balance A LOT of things in the game, including disasters, pretty quickly.

But wow, the disasters do not feel balance-tested at all. There's tiles getting pillaged almost every few turns once I get up to 10 cities or more. I'm spending a very significant amount of time simply repairing tiles once I'm past the first age!

[[byah] WingZeroCustom]

Yeahhhh, plagues are absolutely f##king AWFUL. Like, the only way you should be able to lose 10+ pop in a single turn is if you get nuked. I had my capital lose 11 pop in one turn, and then my next biggest city lost 13 the very next turn. And then you can't buy anything because the city's also in unrest, so you have to waste turns building physicians or buying them elsewhere and shipping them in. Plagues are THE WORST decision the devs made with this game (that I've experienced thus far, at least). And yeah, farms being damaged during plagues kinda make sense, mines getting damaged I can understand, but buildings? What the actual F?

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by byah WingZeroCustom:

Yeahhhh, plagues are absolutely AWFUL. Like, the only way you should be able to lose 10+ pop in a single turn is if you get nuked. I had my capital lose 11 pop in one turn, and then my next biggest city lost 13 the very next turn. And then you can't buy anything because the city's also in unrest, so you have to waste turns building physicians or buying them elsewhere and shipping them in. Plagues are THE WORST decision the devs made with this game (that I've experienced thus far, at least). And yeah, farms being damaged during plagues kinda make sense, mines getting damaged I can understand, but buildings? What the actual F?

I'm okay with the population loss, if it were slightly toned down (because you are right, it does take the population down quickly if not addressed, though physicians and a few other effects can stop it).

The problem for me is that plagues are BOTH population loss AND damaged tiles.

Even just from a common-sense, real-life approach, it's a plague, not a B-52 dropping ordinance from high altitude. Losing population to a plague is logical... but when the miners get sick at the quarry, the quarry itself as a structure wouldn't immediately tumble to the ground as well.

[[byah] WingZeroCustom]

Also, do physicians actually *DO* anything besides take the settlement out of Unrest? Because they don't appear to remove the plague from the tile you pop them on. It's also BS that they: a) only have a single charge; b) die to the very plague they're supposed to be helping treat in two turns of being on a plagued tile (I'm pretty sure I even lost one after only a single turn); and c) have such small movement range (compared to, for example, a missionary) when it's vital they get to where they're going quick since they need to travel through the plague that kills them stupidly fast. Basically, everything about the plague makes it an unbearable mechanic imo, and any and every game that I play going forward is going to have crises turned off. BIIIIIIG L from the devs on that one.

[martinolund]

Don't build a city next to a volcano then. I've yet to have a single AI pillage anything on my tiles, maybe one day?