An overview of problems the game still faces

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I've done three large campaigns on hard to push the game mechanics, with over a 100 hours of play for this early access. Many of the original problems have been fixed and addressed with the second patch, but there is still some work needed. While some of these things are issues that I and others talked about in other threads, this is my full comprehensive overview of what still needs work, in my opinion.

I'm not going to go into things that should be added, only the flaws of what we have now.

TL; DR- The game breaksdown after 300 turns, and punishes you for trying to build or conquer an empire in a 4x game.

Strategy in wars are pointless, as battles end up resulting in WWI style mosh pits where your attempts at planning prove fruitless. The epic set piece battle between your stacks and theirs winds up becoming dozens of mini stacks duking it out ignoring the distances between them. That wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for these two factors:

1. Can't cross a river and move during your planning phase? Well, in the battle phase apparently soldiers can walk on water, cause rivers aren't a problem anymore when a seige 12 tiles away you happen to be heading towards is happening. (never mind that pesky water, it's only a problem when you're not fighting!)

2. If you're not going to show an actual fog of war overlay, dont' bother having one. Because the result is that invisible armies are popping up during the battle phase that you don't see in the planning phase; making it nearly impossible to know what the difference is between what is in our LOS, and what is there.

When combat occurs, because of the extremely bizzare and choppy animations, it can often have some bad results- one specific example being my trebuchets failing to fire any projectiles, even though the animation showed them being fired.

The authority system is broken in the late game. Once you hit the authority cap (with all research and policies is around 28) it becomes difficult if not impossible to build large empires. I understand if you want to have a system that players have to be careful when expanding too quickly, but neither should a game about conquest punish players for wanting to build or conquer large empires, because god help you if your King dies and you're shot into a civil war that destroys your economy (so forget about trying to take BACK those cities either!) A suggestion, is that instead of summer palaces increasing culture, perhaps they increase authority instead? It's smart to have personal authority be such a major factor- but in game terms you should give players a CHANCE to make a comeback from those bad situations, rather than giving them an unending death spiral, especially when most battles result in indecisive battles (more on that later) making the development of personal authority exceptionally difficult.

Culture victory is far too easy. All three of those campaigns were won with culture victory, involving me simply settling and building extremely large cities and economies and then spamming culture buildings. What with the AI being remarkably passive if they think you're stronger (even on hard!) You could theoretically play an entire game and win without fighting. Which is good Art of War, but bad from a 4x game standpoint.

Because of the extreme distance and map size on the grand campaign, the nomads in the north are city spamming to the point that there are MORE nomadic herders than farmers both in settlements and population. This is immersion breaking to the extreme. While you did have examples of semi-nomads who built sizable communities (i.e. the Uighurs, Beidi, etc.) you didn't have horse nomads having population sizes or number of cities rivalling the farmers to the south. And even they are having difficulty with the authority system, because I had the Xiong Nu rebels wipe out the Xiong Nu entirely, ruling over ALL of their former cities. I presume that with them already being the "Rebels" faction, you probably won't have Xiong Nu Rebels Rebels faction, so don't expect any instability among their cities! So even if by some miracle you manage to avoid the broken authority system, a culture victory, and the strategy-less late game moshpit battles- it's STILL extremely difficult to achieve a conquest victory which ultimately is more about finances than about warfare. While I myself have found it nearly impossible to get vassalage working with factions I've been beating to a pulp; I have heard from other players that they've been able to get vassals who offer to become vassals without having ever fired a shot in anger at each other, or even a military disparity. Just chuck lots of money at them! We already have Son of Heaven victory for that. I want to try roleplaying as Qin Shihuang, or Han Gaozu and CONQUER all of China, dammit!

I'm not going to comment on the mostly pointless diplomacy system, because I'm assuming the developers are planning on expanding on it in the future. Right now it's barer than a marmot skeleton in the Gobi, but it gets the job done so far.

Of course, when you manage to get vassals or allies, you're screwed if you both happen to have two armies near each other, and often get dragged into battles you do not want to fight- usually involving me trying to manuever my stacks around the cities I'm seiging, and then my ally or vassal using a single unit to initiate the attack, resulting in another "indecisive battle" that leaves all my armies more fatigued and exactly where they started. (And of course, if you win the battle, your ally will probably get the city anyways, even if you were there with 4 stacks, and him with one beehive gunner) Indecisive battles are the NORM- where you bash and smash an enemy with a good charge or flanking manuever, or you riddled them with crossbow bolts and missles from a defensive position, it doesn't matter if the casualties were 5 to 1 or 10 to 1, if it results as an indecisive battle, almost no one moves. The result of course being that entire armies seiging a city can be halted in their tracks by a single unit of peasant milita- or worse- settlers- and spend some 6-7 turns trying to kill that ONE unit instead of attacking the city you're trying to beseige. Oh, don't forget too that the cities defenders (and there's no evidence to show they're sallying from the gates) is killing your army while you try to kill that one unit- even if you never told any of them to attack the city.

Finally, the game simply bugs out like crazy once the amount of cities, people, stacks on the map gets too high. I'm not sure why, but floating unit cards, disappearing cities, boats sailing on land to do battle, the list just goes on and on. (Also, why on earth doesn't the AI build ships? Are they allergic to water? Where are the roads? Do they dislike them?)

I apologize if this comes off as a rant. I really love this game, I really do. I really want it to become a part of the pantheon of great 4X games, because this is something I've wanted to have successful from since the very first announcement. Creative Assembly has given us historical gamers the finger (or rather Sega did on their behalf) and while Civ 6 is looking superb so far, the very noticeable lack of a game set in China (and yes, I know about KOEI's Three Kingdoms series, but they have become incredibly lackluster with recent releases.) makes me put a lot of my hope and money on this becoming a success. The early to mid game is superb; but I have to be blunt: Did you guys not expect players to go into longer games? I remember Neutron saying "We didn't expect players to play that many turns" or something along those lines.

Anyways, this isn't meant to be just a rant, but it is basically my review of the current problems the game faces. I think I will save the positives for a later post, because this one is already getting too long. I also really want to thank the Iceberg Interactive Team for being so great at keeping in touch with us fans and EA users and listening to our feedback as well. We all want this game to be successful, and we're all rooting for you. Keep up the good fight!

PS- I can send the save of my current campaign if the devs want, and if anyone is interested, I can pull up some screenshots of some of what I've been referring to.

PPS- What the hell does Ambush do? Does it even work?

[Hypnoticborrat]

I just played with the Zhou because I wanted to try chariots. I now know why I never built chariots before: because they suck! Honestly, you have 3 archers at the cost of a full squad with horrendous recruiting costs who almost never melee and if they do, they don't do any charges and always attack the spearmen. And die.

[demodletc]

Culture victory too easy is a problem. Too often I get to finish my conquest campaign but after some faction somewhere got a culture victory at turn 215 or so. Annoying.

Ultimate pain is neutral or allied units blocking your movement. Its hard to move siege units anyway with restrictions on forest and hills - so to have the only available path block by a settler of your vassal is infuriating. I get that it makes for blocking out of allies and neutrals in sieges for tactical gain, but the negative far outweighs the positive IMO. Could we have a 'pass though" mechanic, at least for vassals units ?

Next major one for me is that so many units suffer exhaustion or cant recoup because they are associated with a skirmish on the outskirts of the area you re occupying. Maybe a change whereby they are exhausted if they actually go into in combat and not if they don't do any fighting. This way you can enjoy tactics like skirmishing and waiting for your moment without being run down to zero for no good reason .

Finally - loving the game and thanks to the developers .

[Neutron]

I'm thinking about making cultural victory depend on culture points per city, rather than just a total. It's there for people who like to play a less military game, and the threshold is set low enough that you can reach it with 6-8 cities. However, it seems people player expansionist games are reaching it too easily. Anyone have any thoughts.

[Neutron]

I've also been meaning comment on OPs thoughts on authority. If the system is restricting you in the late game, then it's working as designed.

It's fundamentally difficult, if not impossible, to design a city management system that is complex enough to be interesting when you have a handful cities, that doesn't become a micromanagement nightmare when you have 20 plus cities.Therefore OE uses the authority system to guide players away from runaway conquest or expansion, and encourage them to turn enemies into vassals. Since vassals also have a chance of rebelling, this adds another element of late game challenge.

Clearly some people do want to paint the whole map in their color, and I'm sure that one of the first mods available will be the "everyone gets plus 1000 authority" mod.

[Cao Cao Mengde]

Originally posted by Neutron:

I've also been meaning comment on OPs thoughts on authority. If the system is restricting you in the late game, then it's working as designed.

It's fundamentally difficult, if not impossible, to design a city management system that is complex enough to be interesting when you have a handful cities, that doesn't become a micromanagement nightmare when you have 20 plus cities.Therefore OE uses the authority system to guide players away from runaway conquest or expansion, and encourage them to turn enemies into vassals. Since vassals also have a chance of rebelling, this adds another element of late game challenge.

Clearly some people do want to paint the whole map in their color, and I'm sure that one of the first mods available will be the "everyone gets plus 1000 authority" mod.

Well, that's just it. It's not actually a micromanagement nightmare. In fact, your automation system (apart from farming sometimes) is incredibly good. I never feel like I'm stuck clicking through each city and can in fact focus on the parts of my empire that need it. So being able to build your empire and conquer more and more cities is incredibly fun, and exactly what I myself, and I think a lot of other players have been wanting. Seriously, your automation system is better than many other similar games I've played!

I think the way you have authority built now in terms of dealing with over expansion in the early and mid game is a great mechanic. It's also fun to see other factions suffer civil war from it too. But the problem is when we get into the very late game, when we're trying to achieve the conquest victory and it's if not impossible, at least very irrational how and when you can get people to become your ally. The worst part, is when you have the northern nomads going into full city spam because of the lack of rivals they have. Again, all three grand campaigns I played, they, or their rebels were spread across the entire map. So kiss conquest victory good bye! (especially if they're rebels!) At times, it feels less like conquest, and far more like economic victory- and we already have Son of Heaven for that.

For what my two cents might be worth, I would recommend that the authority system works to PUNISH players who expand rapidly, but DON'T pay attention to HOW the cities develop. For example, in Civ 5; if you expanded rapidly but failed to develop your cities (with the necessary happiness buildings and the like, etc.) you DID suffer the consequences. And badly, too. But it gave you a window to be able to keep building a large empire if you so desired- as long as you stayed aware and careful how you did it. Like what I said in my first post, I would recommend changing the culture points on summer palaces and the like to authority points. That way not EVERY city has them, and there IS a bit of a limit, but that it also gives players an out if they want to keep expanding.

I really appreciate that you're trying to have a less militaristic option for players, which is always appreciated; but at the moment, other than heading towards the victory, culture adds very little to the game. Most of the time we build culture buildings so we can get the other benefits, or research culture techs so we can get the other more useful items. Perhaps if more culture had an effect on happiness, or authority, that would help create some immersion. As for how to stop culture victories from being too easy, I think simply making culture points harder to get would be more than sufficient. But mayhaps that's too simplistic.

[Hypnoticborrat]

Originally posted by Neutron:

I've also been meaning comment on OPs thoughts on authority. If the system is restricting you in the late game, then it's working as designed.

It's fundamentally difficult, if not impossible, to design a city management system that is complex enough to be interesting when you have a handful cities, that doesn't become a micromanagement nightmare when you have 20 plus cities.Therefore OE uses the authority system to guide players away from runaway conquest or expansion, and encourage them to turn enemies into vassals. Since vassals also have a chance of rebelling, this adds another element of late game challenge.

Clearly some people do want to paint the whole map in their color, and I'm sure that one of the first mods available will be the "everyone gets plus 1000 authority" mod.

I like your vassalization idea, but unfortunately my enemies never want to become my vassals, even if their power is "very weak" and I am sieging their last settlement. Additionally, I'd like to have the option to turn a captured settlement into a vassal or liberate it, I think it works perfectly fine in Total War.

[Guilu]

Conquest right now is just a poor option. It costs a lot to maintain a standing army that can fight a proper war, the cities you capture are going to end up lacking food because of pillaging, and they cost you authority. With the huge amount of space on the Grand Campaign map, it's simply better to colonise for the entire first half of the game, after which new cities take a bit too long to catch up because of the rising infrastructure requirements and high populations.

Warfare also doesn't bring in vassals. I like the idea of the design : The Authority cap is there so as to encourage you to take fickle vassals to expand your powerbase. But it seems that hostile nations just don't want to become your vassals, so bribes combined with veiled threats are the best way to go about it. I feel as though you should be able to give your vassals cities, or even be able to create custom vassals from your own cities. That way you wouldn't end up simply unable to profit from warfare because you're at the authority cap.

Not much to add on the culture victory front, it's too easy to get. I'm a bit disappointed in the temples in general though. Once you're out of the area where random events can put you in the danger zone, Peasant Happiness doesn't do much because unrest decreases linearly afaict. It doesn't actually let you do more work in the long term. And Noble Happiness is even worse, because of its very global nature. Even getting additional noble happiness in critical towns, you've no guarantee that they won't be the ones to flip in a rebellion, because your authority drops sharply on successions - far more than what your buildings can compensate for. Only case I can imagine them being useful is for cities that are isolated from luxuries.

[{O|G} Erik the Red]

Yeah I do think the combat system needs an overhaul, to make better use of formations, battle plans, and movement orders during the execution phase. The one on one, one after another combat, just devolves most stacks into a wide battlefield mob.

Siege has gotten better since the update and mostly makes sense since I now understand it better. Archers targeting priorities of defenses vs external forces could still be improved. Siege assaults should only start when orders are given. I would like to see an expansion to the variety or complexity to sieges, say starving out the defenders, or battering rams or ladders or saps by assault units (perhaps unlockable by research...)

Combat and settlements could also use some more polish... The animations and pathfinding seem pretty generic, and while battles look awesome in the frontlines, its a bit strange watching the whole unit act as if they are engaged. Larger or multiple units also need to collide, swarm, and surround around smaller enemy units more naturally. Just because a single unit only has so much battle frontage does not mean a larger force can only wait to fight on that frontage;

Cavalry and chariots also should be able to chase routers a bit before retargeting, perhaps dependent on battleplan.


Culture victory is too easy, I agree. And most of the time I am building culture buildings for their other benefits, such as controlling unrest. And there are a quite many research techs that only add culture points (not sure, but seeminly moreso than authrority techs).

As for conquest, the defined way to win is to control a certain population amount through direct control or vassals. Building an empire with many populous cities is a major element to reaching this, and will push those authority limits to their threshold. Fighting wars and conquering other cities may add population centers, increasing your empire, but I find myself having to destroy many cities just to lower the overall world population as well. I do think there should be a provision to allow for massive empires to continue growth as space allows... I do like the challenge of micromanaging the economy and problems of empire; and I would like to see China of the grand campaign fill up with cities, rather than my concentrated empire in just a portion of China's geography surrounded by wasteland.


Making vassals is a fine idea to solve authority limits, but threats of anihilation simply do not work. The enemy hardly seems to have a sense of self preservation, and currently seems to require being bought out in order to become a willing vassal. Vassalship also currently seems to give the vassals a better deal too, as overlords can't declare war on them or manage or limit their growth, yet they are free to expand like usual, and end up dragging their overlords into wars I as overlord are not prepared or willing to fight. I do like the idea of vassals being able to grow and possibly contest power, but that does not mean it should happen unchecked or unhindered.

I think an interesting way to solve this (I have suggested before) would be to be able to grant or revoke cities to vassals, perhaps even being able to create new vassalized factions. The Zhou decreed and partitioned many vassals after their conquest of Shang; many of these grew into the states and kingdoms they became. Perhaps depending on much population your vassals end up controlling and your own portion of empire, a vassal could claim hegemony over the realm; or if there is high unrest in your own settlements and risk of rebellion, they transfer (ie, defect) to a "kinder" vassal's rule (much like Zhou eroding Shang's power).

Which brings me to the last point of conquest issues. Peasant rebellions are way too common and powerful. Two of my four games, by mid-late game they were the most powerful faction with half the total population. While it's fun for a bit watching whole factions crumble to a disaster and unrest, the remnants are massive and can't be vassalized, and are harder to deal with or destroy than regular factions. I think they should be more localized and isolated events in the sense that they would not be an organized faction unless they declared themselves to be one. Suppressing a local rebellion should also have an unrest bonus for awhile to help prevent another; the memory of suppression should keep some stability for a few turns.

[NoNameSteak]

Conquest victory isn't that bad, just raze cities more than you occupy them.

[PES1979]

Full stack peasant rebellions arising in revolting cities is just discouraging.

[Hypnoticborrat]

I have never had a rebellion.

[똑똑한]

Essay incoming, but I have some limited experience with game design and programming so let me know your thoughts.

The biggest issue to me, which has been hinted at, is the lack of impact of Siege and the lose-lose opportunity present.

Sieging is my biggest issue because while field battles will generally resolve in 2 or 3 turns pretty clearly (unless both sides are fully fatigued, but thats a fair gameplay mechanic I think and gives a major advantage to whichever side kept a fresh reserve) sieges can go on for 10+ turns pretty easily by late game. The culprits here are twofold

1. the ability to constantly recruit more peasant troops to take up space. This instantly changes the balance of the fight, especially considering fresh peasant troops can do quite well against fatigued other soldiers. It also allows a siege to theoretically run forever without resolution, as even vastly superior troops cant kill every single member of a unit in one turn easily. Therefore, you need to make the city fall from the inside by targeting food supplies and economy, which brings us to point 2.

2. The omnipresent rebellion threat. Rebellions in this game are bad news for EVERYONE, and can escalate incredibly quickly because of the conversion mechanic (which I love normally). Sieges however, often consist primarily of peasant troops + trained artillery (for wearing down defender fatigue before sending nobles to break through) which means theyre fodder for conversion. By targeting the food production, you increase peasant unrest rapidly because of the drop in food production. While this can appear positive at first glance, it has two consequences:

-Destroyed farms must be repaired once the city is taken, and population is lost, hurting profitability. Fair enough, thats the price for war

-The city rebels, turning to eyebrow/turban etc and also possibly flipping your siege stacks. You now have to siege rebels which is even more frustrating.

There is 0 positive reason to target the countryside at the moment, because the only possible endgame to such an attack is a rebellion that you have to put down, resulting in even more damage to the city. Therefore there are no gameplay choices except to spend dozens of turns battering down walls and dealing with constantly respawning garrisons.

Sieging is thus not a zero sum game. While I think that non zero sum components can be very good to include, they need to be seen as such, and the primary issue here is that sieging at first appears to be zero sum (I siege and win, i get city and you lose city/ and vice versa) but actually turns into a non zero sum (I siege and win, I don't get city, I lose soldiers, you dont get city, you lose soldiers)

To make matters worse, the rebels are hostile to the siegers as well as the original owner, making what could have been a good attrition warfare mechanic (I cant afford an army to take the city itself - catapults are expensive man! - but i can control the land around it - maybe i have a strong cavalry army or heavy infantry but not siege equipment. Unfortunately, by causing this damage to the city I am just as likely to hurt myself as I am to hurt the original owner, as the rebels are chaotic.
This already has a solution in game: civil war rebel factions. Isnt it believable that some noble in the city (assuming no ruler/character present, which could add another use for governors) would see the hopeless state of the city and rise up, uniting the peasants underneath him in a imperial rebel faction (Shu: Rebels instead of Yellow Turban Rebels)? Maybe he will offer to vassalize himself to the sieger as "Free city of Wuhan, Wuhan Territory etc. Basically creating a neutral city state hostile to the original owner. This allows empires to sabotage each other even when not strong enough to outright take a city without harming themselves directly, and adds diplomatic options for future expansion. It also allows for more regional powers and localized wars without drawing in the major empires, ( as a rule I'm assuming these factions wouldn't have access to settlers, and would those "go tall" rather than spread out, leading to highly developed cities that would attract the attention of all nearby)

How to work towards improving sieges: Have low food prevent spawning troops (if you cant feed your soldiers why would anyone join you?) and lower readiness or strength (malnourished soldiers wont fight well) .
Also, prevent spawning troops outside the city if enemies are within the borders. This will allow for better surprise attacks as enemies will only be able to spawn 8~ units in garrison rather than 2 or 3 dozen in lategame. Justification is that you wouldnt risk opening up the walls with enemy troops so close by. Think of how vulnerable freshly mustered troops would by while assembling in the field for the first time and being assigned, it makes sense imo.

(Interestingly, if we extend this mechanic to apply to all tiles based on borders, then you suddenly have a lightweight supply line system implemented. Not feasible for inclusion because of ai concerns at the moment, but still interesting nonetheless)


Really love this game, so lets see if we can get it to the best it can possibly be!

[Neutron]

I think yesterday's update addresses a lot of you issues. While there is some balance to be found, I don't think the idea that the war leads to rebellion and chaos is necessarily a bad one.

Both the Han and the Ming came from peasant rebels, so having peasant rebels sometimes turn into organized factions is a reasonable idea. Certainly something on my wishlist for noble rebels.

[Cao Cao Mengde]

Originally posted by Neutron:

I think yesterday's update addresses a lot of you issues. While there is some balance to be found, I don't think the idea that the war leads to rebellion and chaos is necessarily a bad one.

Both the Han and the Ming came from peasant rebels, so having peasant rebels sometimes turn into organized factions is a reasonable idea. Certainly something on my wishlist for noble rebels.

I'm loving the peasant rebels system, because it keeps you on your toes, and through proper management and just enough luck you can succeed in building large empires. I just hope later you take another look at the authority and culture victories. Otherwise, the battles have improved a lot- and keeping forests from regrowing after being pillaged has made seiges much more manageable. Great work on the patch you guys! (That said, I love the flavor text on Vassaling, but I've yet to see if that actually makes the vassal system a bit more functional...)