Key Loyalties

This mod has two goals – add more depth to the loyalty system and introduce a wide penalty to Civ6. It does this by making max loyalty dynamic based on number of cities and other factors instead of an always static "100".

In anticipation of more city loyalty flipping in dynamic ages game mode, I have released an update that improves how penalties are calculated for cities that you did not found. Now there is no additional penalties for cities that loyalty flip to join you. Cities captured through combat still have a -10 penalty.
CIties also now get max loyalty bonuses based on their number of districts or wonders. Right now the way this is calculated is very simple but I hope to add more depth to it in future updates.

Creates a loyalty level for every possible loyalty value (0-100) so that every point of loyalty makes a difference to yields/growth.

Makes maximum loyalty dynamic primarily based on: number of cities, original city owner, governors. The following do not apply to your capital or cities that have an always loyal effect.

• In cities with no governor established, max loyalty = 100 – (2 * number of cities). For example, if you have 4 cities the max loyalty of your cities without a governor will be 92 – which also means yields will be 92%.
• The impact of this penalty is capped at 50, so even if you go over 25 cities your max loyalty will not drop below 50 from the number of cities penalty.
• Cities where you are not the original owner have an additional -10 penalty to max loyalty if captured through combat. There is a -5 penalty for cities gifted to you. No penalty for cities that loyalty flip.
• Establishing a governor eliminates the penalty from number of cities, but does not eliminate the -10 penalty from cities you captured. Please note that the governor must be established and not just assigned.
• The AI (because it is dumb and to avoid hampering it) gets 5 cities for free, so it experiences no penalty from the number of cities it owns until it reaches 6 cities.

The existing loyalty system only has 4 loyalty "levels" – causing huge jumps in the impact loyalty has when you cross certain thresholds (25, 50, 75 loyalty). In the existing system, if your city has over 75 loyalty and is gaining loyalty then you can completely disregard loyalty. If you fall to 75/50/25 loyalty suddenly yields drop 25/50/100% and growth drops by 25/75/100%. The maximum loyalty is also always fixed at 100 which I find unrealistic for cities that were captured from other players.

Past versions of Civ had various ways of penalizing civilizations that grew too wide too fast such as corruption/waste (Civ1-3), increasing city maintenance costs (Civ4), or the global happiness and science penalties of Civ5. For some reason Civ6 drops these kinds of systems and the amenities system is not enough to discourage ICS (infinite city sleaze). On top of that most district and building yields are independent of population size, so there are many benefits to going wide but few for going tall.

This mod requires Rise & Fall or Gathering Storm.

Can be combined with totalslacker’s Loyal Capitals mod.

To get the correct max loyalties to display this mod has to make changes to UI files. I like playing with Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments, and did some extra work to make this mod compatible with it. This mod may not be compatible with other mods that make changes to the city banner. Concise UI should be compatible with this mod because it does not appear to change any of the same UI files.

The city report screen has not been updated to show the new max loyalties imposed by this mod. At this time I have no plans of updating this because it will make this mod incompatible with other mods that change the city report screen.

I don’t feel that the changes in this mod completely nerf wide play, but it does give players a reason to think twice before building more cities. I want both tall and wide play to be good options. I recommend combining this mod with some of p0kiehl’s that buff tall gameplay like production from population and improved specialists.

Governor placement is now even more important – making for more interesting decisions. Should you recruit a new governor so another city can reach 100% yields or do you upgrade an existing one? The changes also make the neutralize governor and foment unrest spy missions more impactful.

Now there is possibly a reason to build the Statue of Liberty. Remember its ability makes all cities within 6 tiles always 100% loyal. Before its ability would not really benefit your core cities since they were probably at 100% anyway. Now it frees up cities of the need to have a governor to reach 100% yields, so you can use those governors in cities beyond the range of the SoL and support a wider empire.

Phoenicia’s "Mediterranean Colonies" ability definitely gets boosted.
Wide empires – beware the Mapuche!