Im playing on Empire difficulty and MAN the AI gets ahead SO FAST. 
Im a Deity Civ 6 players and ive played all the OpenDevs so I sorta have a feeling that im relatively competent 4X game player. Not to mention ive played orther 4X games; but holy moly the AI is SO FAST and there doesn't seem to be much I can do, im a snail and they are a rabbit. My first playthrough on the Closed Beta I played the game on Humankind difficulty and I got instantly invaded and conquered by turn 32 so I decided to reduce the difficulty yet it seems like the AI is really, really strong. They are on the Medieval era  while im barely reaching  classical era with era stars and ive only researched 5 technologies. Am I doing something really wrong here? I doubt it, but is anyone else experiencing this? 

Wolvski wrote:

Im playing on Empire difficulty and MAN the AI gets ahead SO FAST. 
Im a Deity Civ 6 players and ive played all the OpenDevs so I sorta have a feeling that im relatively competent 4X game player. Not to mention ive played orther 4X games; but holy moly the AI is SO FAST and there doesn't seem to be much I can do, im a snail and they are a rabbit. My first playthrough on the Closed Beta I played the game on Humankind difficulty and I got instantly invaded and conquered by turn 32 so I decided to reduce the difficulty yet it seems like the AI is really, really strong. They are on the Medieval era  while im barely reaching  classical era with era stars and ive only researched 5 technologies. Am I doing something really wrong here? I doubt it, but is anyone else experiencing this? 

It's not just you.

The pacing of the game feels the strangest it has ever in the 3 iterations of the game I have played. Honestly I'm surprised that amplitude released a closed beta in the current state - there are too many obvious problems with pacing here that make it really difficult to judge the overall experience. A couple of the AI are consistently in medieval by turn 50. I know that AI are consistently given buffs in 4x games to make them competitive with the player, but a really important part of that is the illusion that the player and the AI are playing by largely the same rules. That illusion is completely shattered here.

Right now the game has a problem that you feel like you're in a race against the AI.  The fact that I didn't feel like I was racing to a victory condition is exactly why I had prefered the humankind opendevs over games like Civilization. Your opponents are miles ahead of you on science for the entire game, and this is more true on higher difficulties. They don't seem to have to manage stability very much if at all. And ffs, several full stacks of hunnic hordes on turn 40 is just ridiculous. This has actually happened to me. 

I'm sure there are pacing issues I could identify when it comes to the actual mechanic implementation, but pacing has as much to do with the mechanics the player experiences as it does with their relative experience to their opponents (in this case the AI). The AI in this beta seem so overtuned that it makes the player feel like they are falling behind when in reality I suspect the game would feel like it had a fairly good pace if the AI weren't so far ahead at all times.

I'll have more thoughts as I play more games, but this is issue #1 when it comes to feel of the game right now. They have tons of pop, a huge military, are an era and a half ahead on science, claim territory extremely quickly - it just feels like they have no constraints. They're getting so many bonsues that all opponents just feel the same regardless of the culture they pick.

I'll also add here that I feel gold was overnerfed. Carthage is basically mandatory now if you want to use gold in a functional capacity, and stability nerfs makes it really hard to justify getting commercial quarters when you really need that science, production, and food. It seems food production may have been nerfed? A little overdone in my opinion. You're getting the double whammy of needing more people producing food, and having to commit more precious stability to agriculture quarters.

So, I guess I will give my feedback off of the questions to consider:

First, you hop on let's say nation difficulty, the AI is incredibly aggressive and gets ahead insanely fast to the point you are wondering where they pulled all the science, units and production out of and then you drop down to the difficulty right below it and things become pretty trivial cause the AI is not very competitive and rather docile.

Second, research progress has always felt weird in the game, mostly cause in the first two eras the pacing is pretty good, although really easy to grow and then spontaneously research progress slows down to a crawl so painful you need to spam out at least 10 science districts in all cities to somewhat mediate it. The research progress can get so slow in fact, that despite having "enough" turns to play through the industrial era, I still only get to play around 10-20 turns of it which really isn't much considering that you are still only roughly 75% done with the early modern era by then and the only industrial techs you can get at that point are from rushing by playing a synergy of joseon + france, so if the game is really supposed to be 300 turns long, the tech pacing is painfully slow.

Third, population growth is fine in the first three eras but then there is a massive rift between how much population you need for things vs how much you actually have and how fast you grow.

Fourth, influence drops off in importance around the early modern era quite fast save for getting wonders and absorbing cities, but for all other purposes it becomes somewhat irrelevant since you have way more than enough, as opposed to gold that is pretty hard to get considering how fast prices for infrastructure inflate, it gets pretty bad to the point you might actually be forced to become carthaginian just to keep the price growth at acceptable levels for the next era before it starts going out of hand again.

Fifth, the first two tiers of tenets for religions feel pretty underwhelming and become irrelevant quickly, but I'd say the last two tenets are pretty appropriately balanced although they really do carry the entire religion.

Sixth, the neolithic era is well timed, it doesn't take too long but gives you an appropriate time scope to do scouting for an ideal settlement.

I'm not as detailed as the previous posters, but I spent all day playing and here are my thoughts:

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow? Compared to previous OpenDev, I think the era pacing was a bit slower. Not as slow as I would like, but I'm someone who wants an extra long game.
• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns? Tech progress was the same as previous. I was way behind on tech. I didn't take any tech cultures, but I was consistently about 2 eras behind. I'm just about to enter Contemporary period and still working my way through Medieval tech. I expect tech to be a bit quicker, or the eras slower.
• How do you feel about the speed of population growth? I didn't pay attention to much, but just as some of the streamers had, my cities' population was massive compared to AI. I think my main city was approaching 90, and 60 in another city. Not sure if that's alot or not, but it was something I never paid attention to because it didn't cause any problems.
• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence) I was liking the influence growth. I always felt I needed just 1 or 2 more turns to get what I need; and then a new need arose and I needed more. Not until Industrial Era was my tech overflowing. So, I like what you said that you added more ways to spend influence, and they made sense in the game world (civic points, outpost or even building resource extraction in the outpost). Note: There's one civic that says it allows you to buy outposts with Gold instead of Influnce. I was afraid to take it because I didn't know if it REPLACED influence with gold, or gave you the option to use either.
• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now? Religions still had no impact for me. I liked the bonuses, but I also never paid attention, because I think the AI didn't either.
• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly? I still felt the Neolithic era was fun. I ascended when I had about 8 units, I think - that was getting all three of the stars.

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

On humankind difficulty I reached contemporary before turn 150, some of the ai advance very fast which may hurt their fame collection, they seemed to do well in terms of fame early but stagnated as the game progressed.

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

If you don't focus on science infrastructure your tech will be poor and you have to make your picks with care, like I was ignoring much of the medieval and early modern tech trees to research industrial era techs. Scientific cultures can clear out the tech tree quite quickly with their ability to convert resources into science.

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

The overall speed seems fine, late game you will get a population maybe every turn or two per city, in the early game it is slower.

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

I focus on food and industry early because those seems to be the engine that build your empire. I could ignore money and markets and still do fine in terms of money income. Science you need to build alot of research quarters to get decent tech rate, the ai seemed to have cities that specialized in building such quarters. Influence seems ok, cities are cheap to found, but merging cities together can come at influence cost of levels like 40k which seems excessive.

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

To me it seems fine, it have an impact but not to the level of the open devs.

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Are religions still too powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

magilzeal wrote:

I feel the pacing is mostly a problem because I feel very limited in what I can build due to stability nerfs from Victor and the reduction in effectiveness of sacrificing population to speed construction. Further, the map was resource-starved, with more cramped territories compared to Victor (at least, it felt that way, maybe it wasn't actually). I played at Nation and smashed the AI in every area, though it sounds like Empire will offer a good deal more challenge. The problem is everything is so slow to build now, and we are so limited in the amount of districts we can construct due to resources scarcity and the reduction in effectiveness of luxuries compared to Victor, it creates a "snowball" effect where building is much slower, so resource accumulation is also much slower. I was pretty consistently at least one era behind, sometimes two, in infrastructure and units, compared to my "cultural era".

+1 I think the nerf to population sacrifice went too far in the other direction and now I need 14 pop for one infrastructure so I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

I definitely feel like the first post-neolithic era is much slower on expansion now. I used to be able to get a 3-link first city and the start of a second city up fairly quickly, now I feel like I never have enough influence to do anything (as a non-influence culture). I managed to get a two-link with two extra outposts and then hit a wall where I needed ~140 influence to either link the third outpost or make a second city.

Not sure if there was some passive influence gain that was removed or there was just some luxury/exploitation that I didn't realize I had in Victor.

Its bonkers. I'm at turn 110 and already in the Early Modern, while tech is still hanging out in the Classical. The AI is even a little bit faster than me.

Pace is way too fast I think, I'm a classical culture, before finishing ancient research

Elhoim wrote:

workswithdragons wrote:
I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

I don't know if to laugh or cry at the idea of working people to death because "they are going to die anyway" jajajaja

Joking aside, I do exactly the same thing. I still think that buyout with population is way too "sanitized". It shouldn't require so many pops, but it should have a big stability penalty, especially if you do it over and over.

haha yeah I'm definitely going to need to give my avatar the "Cruel" archetype

And that's a great idea about using less pop, but giving a stability penalty! I also think the ability to sacrifice pop might be better as a civic instead of being a tech, then the decision to learn that ability could play into ideological proximity for diplomacy :)

It occurs to me quite frequently that the issue of era pace vs. position on the science tree would be easily solved if era advancement required a certain advancement on the science tree. Not only would this work (it does in Civ 6 and previous Civ games), but also it would reflect history. I don't care how much culture or money a previous civilization had, until it had the science, it didn't meaningfully enter a new era. Human eras are defined by science and the tech that springs from scientific advancements. Kinda like we're in the Information era now, and that required a lot of science to happen. If someone in the 1800s had arbitrarily stated they were in the Information era, that wouldn't have made it true.

It really wouldn't as long as 1. science stars counted no more than any other toward victory, 2. there were enough other fame points available that someone could win without grabbing all the science stars, 3 ending the science tree didn't arbitrarily end the game so other Civs specializing in different things couldn't catch up by the time the turns expired.

There's a way to acknowledge that science drives era changes without negating the contribution of other human endeavors to civilization. Yeah, it would make it so every civ had to have some amount of science. But simply having science wouldn't be sufficient to win. The science civ would also have to have some culture, money, industry, etc. too. If you made the game that way, focusing on science to the exclusion of everything else would guarantee a loss.

Elhoim wrote:

workswithdragons wrote:
I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

I don't know if to laugh or cry at the idea of working people to death because "they are going to die anyway" jajajaja

Joking aside, I do exactly the same thing. I still think that buyout with population is way too "sanitized". It shouldn't require so many pops, but it should have a big stability penalty, especially if you do it over and over.

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

Some are still too powerful, and what I dislike a bit is that they are too powerful compared to other options, like civics, for example. Plus the huge amount of bonuses makes the irreligion option a yield suicide. Basically, religion tenets has everything, while in other parts of the game it's contrasted against something. In the values is faith vs science. Tenets? You can make your holy sites the best research centers! Irreligion is presented as a choice of making faith into influence. Tenets? You can make them all about influence, and get THOUSANDS of influence if you choose the 3 options. So basically is too much of a catch all. I know that having ways to "customize" your civ is fun, but that's what civics are for, and they pale compared to the tenets. I'd rather have more civic options, especially making some of them easier to unlock, than making religion the biggest way to custom it.

I also like to compare sacrificing pops for production to Civ IV's Slavery civic, since I leaned heavily on that mechanic in IV (though it could be called the most overpowered mechanic in Civ IV). It decreased happiness, but it was a much more involved balancing act since population directly tied to happiness, while population is largely divorced from stability in Humankind. There was of course also the tension between working tiles and worker labor, while Humankind's citizen system isn't quite as involved. With the current balancing I'm not sure I like the idea of using pops to speed production decreasing stability, but perhaps as a larger rework of the system I could see it, because thematically it fits. If stability balancing was closer to the Victor build I would feel it entirely appropriate.

I'd also note that you cannot use this mechanic to make military units, while you could in IV, which makes the mechanic significantly weaker--not only could you carefully whip out an army in IV for an attack, but when playing defense in multiplayer, you would need to be aware of your enemy potentially sacrificing all of their population to produce military units, creating a powerful deterrent--not only would the cities you capture be worth a lot less, but you'd have to fight that much harder to get them.

As for religion, tying it more to stability could work and could still have options--instead of say, +1 gold per follower, how about +1 stability per merchant on Holy Sites? And my aforementioned idea of "+5 stability per Merchant Quarter" on Holy Sites? Maybe tone down the number if we're going all-in on stability, so like +2 or so, but you get the idea. And I'd rather see Secularism/State Atheism buffed significantly than town down religion a lot. Part of the fun in Civ IV was stuff stuff like the University of Sankore or Spiral Minaret, which are similar to tenets as currently implemented.

Wolvski wrote:

Im playing on Empire difficulty and MAN the AI gets ahead SO FAST. 
Im a Deity Civ 6 players and ive played all the OpenDevs so I sorta have a feeling that im relatively competent 4X game player. Not to mention ive played orther 4X games; but holy moly the AI is SO FAST and there doesn't seem to be much I can do, im a snail and they are a rabbit. My first playthrough on the Closed Beta I played the game on Humankind difficulty and I got instantly invaded and conquered by turn 32 so I decided to reduce the difficulty yet it seems like the AI is really, really strong. They are on the Medieval era  while im barely reaching  classical era with era stars and ive only researched 5 technologies. Am I doing something really wrong here? I doubt it, but is anyone else experiencing this? 

I played the first game on Metropolis, and cakewalked over the AIs. I took two of them out before I was out of the Ancient era (one of them was Neolithic, the other Ancient era). By the end of the game, I had taken out one more and substantially trimmed back another. In those two cases, I did so because they declared war on me. When the game ended as the Industrial era came to a close, none of the AIs had gotten past the Medieval era.

Then, I started a game on Civilization. I had established a city with two connected outposts when the first civ found me in turn 36. It came into my furthest away connected territory with multiple special melee units, all promoted. They stomped my two armies that consisted of my special projectile units and scouts even when I initiated battle from the high ground. One blow from their unit, and my unit was dead, even though my unit shot their unit first. I had a barracks there, and I was making troops, but the writing was on the wall. My units were like paper, the AI units didn't even register their blows.

There's a difference between the AI playing well and the AI being set up to win through so many bonuses that it's just cheating. This AI has crossed that line in my opinion.

There needs to be some level to play on that isn't so easy its boring or so annoying you don't even want to bother with it.