Civilization VI - Now available, so you can sink all your free time into it

[vonAchdorf]

Apparently leaders in Rise & Fall can have a secret agenda called "Flirtatious" which makes them hate leaders of the same sex.

Inb4 outrage about heteronormativity and ignoring historical LGBT leaders.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-02-09-civilization-6-rise-and-fall-review

Civilization 6: Rise and Fall review
The Wrath of Khan.

Messy, boisterous, chaotic - Civilization 6: Rise and Fall is the antidote to the Enlightenment.

I have this feeling that no one is actually any good at playing Civilization. There probably is someone, sure, but it feels like there isn't. I definitely don't know anyone who's any good, and the people who I know to be not-so-good at Civ only seem to know other people who are also not-so-good at Civ.

The more I think about that the more I realise it's probably the point. To play Civilization is to constantly bounce between knowing exactly what you're doing and having no idea what you're doing. A lot of the time it's both mixed together - I know I need to be building cavalry, because I'm going for a military victory with Genghis Khan and so I know cavalry are good, but when should I be building them? Should I be worrying about growing my Production first so I can churn them out faster? And what about Science - if the war goes on for long enough I can't risk getting left behind in the arms race, so when do I start thinking about that?

With time, that uncertainty inevitably starts to fade. The more you play, the more you learn about build orders and min-maxing and optimisation in its many, many forms. Get your cavalry out early and the Production will come from your Encampment buildings, and Science from citizens of the Civs you conquer.

The type of Age you're in determines the hue of your screen. Golden Ages are BRIGHT.

It means that things begin to fall into place. The world shrinks, to put it in very Civilization terms. The more you play the more the possibilities fade, and you reach your own version of the Enlightenment that reveals the truth, and eliminates the mystery. The almighty deities that we looked to for answers - that we feel like when we're getting right - become this dwindling God of the Gaps, and the joy of discovery can only exist in the fewer and fewer places we haven't already mapped out and written down and posted to Reddit.

That's part of the game - part of it's sort of meta-cycle, in a way, that progresses as you spend time with it. Just as maps are revealed and resources uncovered as you hurtle through the ages, so are strategies devised and first-ten or -twenty turns decided in advance. It's still fun - finally figuring out the ultimate Leader-Trait-Policy-Wonder combo is its own kind of late-game power fantasy. I'm a powerhouse of efficacy, like my Civilization is a powerhouse of my intelligent design.

But you do start to miss the mystery, and so the Enlightenment is the sickness to which Civilization 6's Rise and Fall expansion is, I think, a wonderful cure.

It's a simple fix, in a way - with Rise and Fall there is now just lots of new stuff. But that new stuff is also brilliantly devised. A range of new leaders is a major part of that. I'd normally say it's the least exciting part of an expansion like this because it doesn't really change anything material in the game - new leaders alone normally don't mess with the underlying mechanics, or force you to think about something new - but Rise and Fall's roster is an exception, and in fact it's exceptional.

The array of new Governors you can choose from - each time you earn a new one, you can opt to promote a current one for a new bonus instead.

The new leaders are so good because they're so distinct. Rise and Fall, at times, feels like the shackles have come off, and the team at Firaxis can finally play around a bit, and it shows. In vanilla Civ the most instantly recognisable leader is universally known to be Ghandi. Purveyor of peace but also wildly nuke-happy in the late game, Ghandi is a character. There are a handful of others that stand out in regular Civilization 6, like Russia's Peter, and Spain's Philip II, but Rise and Fall's nine new leaders - at least in my experience so far - are almost all Ghandis. Maybe they're not so comically conflicted in policy but they're absolutely their own in terms of style - there's an idea, a philosophy, or just a singular motivation to each, and it shows - liberation for the Mapuche (and a wonderful real-world tie-in between Lautaro and Philip II's conquistadors that you should absolutely read into), or diplomacy for the Cree.

My longest playthrough so far has been with the aforementioned Genghis Khan, and while his particular way of going about things is a bit obvious, it's the way his traits tie together, like many of the new Leaders, that makes it feel so distinct: trading with any other city immediately puts a Trading Post at the destination; Trading Posts increase your diplomatic visibility with that location's Civ; and increased diplomatic visibility translates into increased military effectiveness. So you trade with someone for a bit of gold, spend it on units, and then you throw a dozen early-game horsemen at them - which have a chance of converting enemy cavalry themselves - and suddenly the Mongolian horde is rolling.

Mongolian horde rolling a bit too well, it seems.

Okay, that's a fairly simple example, and there are some concerns already making their way through the community about certain particularly well-synergised new Leaders - namely the new Science-boosting Seondeok of Korea - and how they might be a little too easy to get going, but they're still identifiable, and memorable, and when you think about these characters and that fact that they all played a monumental part in shaping their nation's identity in the real world, and much of the context of the world in which we now live, ultimately that's got to be the point.

All that lovely synergy can, admittedly, sound a lot like the predictability and efficiency that I've lamented, that this expansion is supposed to fix - but the new Leaders are only really a small part of the expansion. The real headline stuff is the three new systems - which really work together as one big system - in the form of Loyalty, Governors and Great Ages.

Great Ages bring back Golden Ages - yes, Civ 6 really didn't have Golden Ages in it from the off, I know - but now in a far more complex, nuanced mechanic that also introduces Dark Ages and Heroic Ages to the mix. To earn a Golden Age you need to gain a certain number of Era Points before the world moves from one to the next, like the Classical Era to the Medieval Era. If you don't earn enough for a Golden Age you just get a normal age, and if you don't earn enough for that, you'll fall into a Dark Age - successfully propel yourself out of that into the Golden Age bracket though and you'll earn a special Heroic Age. Each has their benefits - even the dreaded Dark Age, thanks to some unique Policies that significantly boost one thing at the cost of another, like launching the Inquisition to boost religion at the cost of scientific progress.

The benefits of a Golden or Heroic Age, and the costs of a Dark Age, combined with the fact that Era Points are earned for all manner of achievements like discovering Wonders or defeating Barbarians - the moment-to-moment stuff that can go a little dry if you've been playing Civ for a while - means that it's constantly at the back of your mind. You can imagine the tension - and in my first game I experienced all four in a row, so I can vouch for it - and it completely shifts how you think about a game. Suddenly you don't just want to beat someone to constructing a Wonder for its own benefits - you need it for that last four points that stop you slipping into a Dark Age.

And that's where it ties in smartly with the other systems, because Dark Ages cause a drop in your cities' Loyalty - they can now rebel against you, or even be converted to another Civ - and Golden Ages boost it. Governors, which are earned like Envoys and placed in specific Cities to give them unique bonuses of their own, also affect Loyalty. Some are built around it, like the Diplomat, whilst the others just add a passive boost to it with their presence.

Smart use of a Governor could see you tip a crucial enemy city into rebellion, so you can swoop in with troops - or just your own Civ's diplomatic influence - to claim it for your own. The Governors themselves can also drastically change how you play the game, with new possible combos to strike with their usage that help Trade Routes and Commercial Hubs, say, or grant new ways to grow the smaller cities you might have spawned later in the game.

The Timeline is a nice aesthetic touch, but in Rise and Fall it's also hugely important.

A few other, more banal but equally important community complaints are addressed in their own ways with the expansion too. The AI - which will always be a bit weird and irrational in a 4X game like Civ because, for one, that's just how humans work - makes a little more sense thanks to a spate of new Agendas - some genius in their predictability and some equally so for the opposite reason, which I shan't spoil - and the knock-on effects of a Loyalty system that means aggressive forward-settling, where the AI would often pop up cities right on your borders before you got a chance to expand, is deterred by the fact they'll probably convert to your own Civ because of its proximity. Then there's the new Emergency Alliance system that will pop up when someone gets a bit too Alexander the Great, giving you a chance to bounce back from defeat or consolidate a lead.

The overwhelming sense from all of this is that here are just all manner of new factors to consider, new mountains of optimisation to mine and explore, and it's exactly what Civilization 6 needs. It can feel like pure chaos at times, like they should have called it Back and Forth, rather than Rise and Fall, and it's all going a bit haywire and making you wonder if you're really a smart enough human being to be playing this game at all, like it must be made for someone else. But then, inevitably, it swings back the other way, and you nick a city, or push back against that Emergency Alliance for a huge reward, or even just scrape your way into a regular Age to keep your head above the water, and you're back to feeling like a that mysterious, all-conquering deity once again. Rise and Fall is at times complicated and messy, a wilderness, that's the perfect compliment to too much Civilization.

 

[ArchAngel]

I think I am completely over Civ games unless they change them a lot. With each new one I replay them less and less. With Civ 5 I played it at release and later after all the DLCs. But with Civ 6 I only played one game at release and got no need or want to play ever again.
I guess I am waiting for Endless Legend 2 (unless they get rid of combat like they did with ES2).

 

[Space Satan]

Badge of retardness

 

[flyingjohn]

Does anybody else want good late game content?
Where are the proxy wars,corporations,pollution,immigration,overpopulation,etc?
There doesn't seem to be much difference between ancient and modern era minus some new units and buildings.

 

[Jenkem]

Does anybody else want good late game content?
Where are the proxy wars,corporations,pollution,immigration,overpopulation,etc?
There doesn't seem to be much difference between ancient and modern era minus some new units and buildings.

Immigration is a thing in R&F in the sense of influence. If a city is too close to other civs and is unhappy with you it will rebel and become a free city or join that other civ, people are less loyal if there are foreigners around.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Does anybody else want good late game content?
Where are the proxy wars,corporations,pollution,immigration,overpopulation,etc?
There doesn't seem to be much difference between ancient and modern era minus some new units and buildings.

Like a late game event that would spawn Merkel in a random country? :D

 

[Gord]

Got this from the Humble Bundle because I again forgot to pause the month.
Thought I might as well play it a bit.
It's around ~1300AD and I have now advanced to modern times - my cities are full of skyscrapers and my caravans have been replaced by trucks even though I have not even researched the steam engine yet and in fact my troops are a mix of antique and medieval units. I think it might be due to developing flight or something due to some lucky Eureka moments.

Somehow advancing through the ages seems much more random and arbitrary than in the older games (never played 5 though).

 

[thesheeep]

Gord That's Civ, though. I remember in the other games reaching similar states of tech without ever learning to read or other silly things.

I think that's a good thing, actually. Otherwise everyone would just be doing the exact same steps.

 

[Gord]

Hm, maybe, never felt that extreme though.
But whatever, I've not played Civ VI much so far, so a lot of the changes and additions are still somewhat unclear to me. Not dabbled with religion at all, either.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/12/civilization-6-rise-and-fall-review/

Wot I Think: Civilization 6 – Rise And Fall

Civilization is at its worst when you’re winning. Success breeds complacency as you click the end turn button and acknowledge the news of great accomplishments with the practiced apathy of a regent signing papers on behalf of an infant king. There is an inevitability about your empire’s march through history and it’s easy to feel like a passive pawn.

Rise and Fall, the first major expansion for Civ VI, attempts to address this by introducing global crises, dark ages and citizen loyalty. It gets about half of the job spot on; the fall is much better than the rise.

I’m always excited about Civilization expansions. The two major releases for Civ V transformed it from a stripped-down entry with one big idea (one unit per tile) into a fine alternative to its much-praised predecessor.

Civ VI, I would argue, had more big ideas right out of the gate. The leader and nation you choose to play as has a greater influence on the game than ever before, cities now occupy areas of the map rather than single tiles in a much more convincing fashion, and progress through the trees of civics and science is marked with mini-objectives and interesting choices. This is a game that doesn’t need new features so much as it needs a concentrated effort to refine the features it already has.

In that sense, Rise and Fall is pulling in the right direction. The focus, as the title suggests, is on the overall flow of the game, introducing the possibility of ages both golden and dark, and preventing that familiar drift toward cultural inertia.

Ages now have their own dedicated screen, telling you roughly how many turns will pass before the world moves into a new era. The eras themselves haven’t changed – ancient, classical, medieval and so forth – but they’re now aligned more firmly with the game’s competitive nature. You’re not just racing toward victory, trying to stay ahead of your opponents, you’re directly rewarded for being at the top of the pile at the switch from one age to the next.

I think Civ VI is the most competitive game in the series by some distance. Everything from the tech boosts that work like mini buffs and achievements to the focus on using the unique qualities of your chosen nation encourages a correct way of playing. There is so much feedback and positive reinforcement for ‘good’ choices that without even realising it, I’m sometimes locked into a specific way of playing that’s defined more by the map and the city states around me than it is by my own choices.

Rise and Fall has amplified that tendency. It’s a rare turn that doesn’t dangle some obvious rewards in front of me. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s good to have direction – but I often feel like I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs toward the end of history.

And if that’s the case, the Golden Ages are the biggest breadcrumbs of the lot. They’re big, crusty golden loaves, straight out of the oven. As the countdown to a new age reaches single digits, you’ll have a good idea of how things are going to play out over the coming centuries.

The End Turn button now has a tracker running around it, keeping tabs on your achievements in the current age, which then determine your standing in the next age. As each new age begins, you decide what your civ’s focus will be, broadly concentrating on art, science, faith, expansion or some other target. Any successes in that particular field will provide a more substantial boost to your score, but every major stepping stone provides some points. Maybe you met a new civ, maybe you helped out a city state, or maybe you founded a religion. It all goes into the pot.

Hit the first score threshold and you’ll avoid falling into a dark age, hit the second and you’ll rise into a golden age. And that’s where things get complicated, in a critical sense.

Simply put, golden ages aren’t very enjoyable. It’s like the game suddenly switches to easy mode and the reward for success is a few hundred years of minimal effort. What might sound like a welcome relief feels more like wasted time to me. Civ, like most strategy games, is at its best when there are meaningful decisions to be made, involving compromises and regrets. In a golden age, your people are so deliriously happy you don’t need to worry about them very much at all.

Dark ages are great though. I want an entire 4X game about civilizations collapsing rather than rising to greatness, where the only measure of success is how long you managed to hold off the inevitable.

I haven’t actually had a dark age finish me off in Civ VI but they do create interesting dilemmas. Loyalty, an important new feature that golden ages pretty much sideline by injecting happiness directly into your citizens, can become a serious concern during a dark age. It’s a fairly simple system, essentially allowing unhappy cities to free themselves from their original owner.

There’s much more pressure on loyalty during dark ages and a smart ruler can target unhappy civs and help to nudge their cities toward freedom. Once free, they can be seized in a manner similar to the culture flipping of earlier Civ games. Be more attractive than the other nations in the vicinity and you’ll convince the city to join your ranks.

Combined with some great new civs to play as – particularly the Mapuche, who make great use of loyalty to allow terrifyingly swift misery-producing raids – and Governors who allow cities to specialise in even stranger and more interesting ways than before, Rise and Fall’s core features are welcome, even if they don’t change the game as dramatically as I’d hoped. This is still Civ VI.

What surprised me is that I’ve enjoyed returning to the game as much for the foundations as for the expansion. I’d passed into the stage I often do with Civ games where the attraction of the new is replaced by frustration at some of the old problems that have existed for as long as the series has. I think it’s an excellent game though, and the three playthroughs I’ve completed since I began playing with the expansion have had enough variety that I still want to go straight back for more.

I conquered the world by amassing a fortune as a Dutch trading empire that owned an archipelago of weird islands, lacking in resources but rich in whale and fish. As Scotland, I built golf courses and attracted tourists from around the world. My Mapuche trampled all before them, with our good friends Georgia and Greece as close allies. There have been changes to alliances, which are now limited in number and focus on one specific aspect of the relationship – a cultural alliance, for example, helps with the sharing of cultural rewards. This means you can use alliances to bolster your weaknesses, or to focus on your existing strengths.

There are shorter term alliances as well, occurring whenever a crisis happens. These events could be the expansion’s strongest feature, upsetting the apple cart of history in an unprecedented fashion. Drop a nuke and you might find you’re the new bogeyman of the world, with a faction of the furious working to destroy you. I took the Mongol holy city after a brutal war and found myself black-listed by former friends and surrounded by new enemies.

As I said, crises could be the expansion’s strongest feature. They’re not though and the reason is simple. It’s not the economy. It’s the AI, stupid.

Civ VI is mostly fine when it comes to the 4X basics but it has a habit of ignoring some of the complexities. And it struggles with wars, as a general rule.

That’s a problem when it comes to crises because what should be a dramatic unilateral response often becomes a damp squib. The peacekeepers of Civ VI talk big but for all the posturing, intervention seems rare. I’d like to think this is a political commentary of some sort but it’s not; it’s the AI playing Checkers while I try to play Chess.

Your tolerance of the flaws will depend, to a great extent, on your tolerance for Civ VI. Rise and Fall adds some great features and they have a knock-on effect that makes the journey as a whole more unpredictable, but it’s still a game in conflict with itself. There are, broadly speaking, correct ways to play each of the unique civs and I still find myself reacting to what is available in the world rather than deciding how I want to play, and how I want my empire to behave.

Rise and Fall adds, tweaks and expands, but it doesn’t address some of the underlying issues, particularly those related to the AI. We’re not quite in the new golden age yet.

Sid Meier’s Civilization 6: Rise And Fall is out now on Steam for Windows for £24.99 and requires the base game to play.

 

[Cael]

It seems that they are adding more and more factors that eliminates good choices and boost bad ones. If you make good choices, you should, in a strategy game, get a runaway advantage so long as you keep making them when compared with your rivals. That they are trying to prevent ths shows that they want to eliminate good strategy and reward bad ones.

 

[Karellen]

It seems that they are adding more and more factors that eliminates good choices and boost bad ones. If you make good choices, you should, in a strategy game, get a runaway advantage so long as you keep making them when compared with your rivals. That they are trying to prevent ths shows that they want to eliminate good strategy and reward bad ones.

Well, in most Civilization games, if you get a runaway advantage you don't even need to keep on making good decisions to keep your advantage, which is arguably a problem; the default strategy of getting an early game lead and just holding on to that is kind of easy, but more to the point, it gets pretty boring too. That's why a lot of strategy games involve negative feedback loops that make it difficult for the leading player to maintain their lead. There's plenty of that in the more balanced Civ games - for instance, most other civilizations tend to hate the most accomplished civilization (for all the good it does to them), and there's things like Civ 4 reducing the cost of technologies when other civilizations have discovered them. It's arguably realistic, but more to the point it makes it easier for less advanced civilizations to catch up to the tech leader.

But, you know, I think that Civ 6 as it stands has fewer negative feedback loops than most Civ games. Most crucially, there's hardly any downside to having as many cities as you can possibly get, since there's no corruption, no city maintenance or global happiness. Which, to be honest, I find somewhat refreshing - I kind of like how my science-oriented civilization is a few centuries ahead of my rivals as well as real history in tech development, which is something that I did a lot in Civ 1, but not so much in Civ 4, where getting a big lead is much harder. Having said that, there are good reasons for a strategy game to introduce mechanics that make it more difficult to maintain that sort of lead, and insofar as Rise and Fall is doing that, it seems like a reasonable thing to do.

 

[flyingjohn]

But, you know, I think that Civ 6 as it stands has fewer negative feedback loops than most Civ games. Most crucially, there's hardly any downside to having as many cities as you can possibly get, since there's no corruption, no city maintenance or global happiness. Which, to be honest, I find somewhat refreshing - I kind of like how my science-oriented civilization is a few centuries ahead of my rivals as well as real history in tech development,.

I agree with civ 6 focus on larger empires being a good thing,4x games shouldn't be about a small 1-3 city planet empire dominating everybody.
Not to mention it gets boring.
But i would just like to mention that the "CIV V HAPPINESS SYSTEM IS THE WORST SYSTEM EVER DESIGNED IN A 4X GAME EVER"
It is designed to limit tall and wide plays yet does neither.
Oh,there is a great city location that has food,production and everything else except luxury resources,well fuck that,your core cities will suffer if you settle.
Its is a system that is designed to annoy the player without limiting him,which makes no sense.
civ6 housing and amenities makes perfect sense,even though their implementation could be improved.

 

[Fedora Master]

I had a version of RnF fall off a truck and been playing. The new mechanics are largely just busywork. As I said, it's the Paradox approach of burying bad mechanics under more bad mechanics so the player has something to click on each turn (and even then there are irrelevant turns in the early game). Doesn't improve the core gameplay in the slightest.

 

[Gord]

So I've finished my first game of Civ6. It was ok. Still think that the way it handles eras is wonky though. Also, while this was to some degree present in the older parts as well, for some reason I raced through the ages until around ~ industrialization, when somehow it slowed down considerably (I reached industrialization/modern times in the 1300s but it took me then centuries to reach the information age). Felt a bit weird.

Anyway, some mechanics are interesting (like e.g. city states), but I get where the complaints about the AI are coming from. Admittedly I played on a relatively low difficulty since it was my first proper game and I just wanted to check it out, but it still seems strange if you have every other civ declare war on you and you hardly see any enemy unit. And when you do it's a few x-bow archers of the weakest nation against my chopers and tanks. Yeah...

 

[Space Satan]

sad_trombone.wav

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

polygon. by fags, for fags. between polygon and kotaku i don't know who's worse.

anyhow, with the new expansion and finally a working earth map with true starting locations (albeit a pretty small map, even if it's the largest available, i'm almost sure even civ5 had bigger maps), i've been trying this again, and i have to admit this: with all the new things added, the race for the golden age, the multiple eurekas and stuff, the game definitely still sucks ass. worst offender, as always is the ai in its two incarnations: the diplomacy is retarded, it just makes no sense, and militarly the computer can't move units. really, i've been wardecced several times but i've hardly seen an enemy unit. at least in civ4 once you saw the message you had that brief rush "let's see if i can kill its doomstack", in civ6 all you can do is raise an eyebrow and murmur "like i give a fuck" and keep doing what you were doing, because you can be sure as hell the computer won't disrupt it.
and even if it somehow manages to bring some units near a city, the new defence system makes for it being totally unable to attack the city. literally, it won't attack, because it'd need a siege unit first but it didn't bring one, attacking the city would be too costly and so its units dance for a while, maybe pillage one or two buildings and then get the fuck off somewhere else.

but to me there's even a worse offender: there's not a single leader i'd like to larp. they're all a bunch of deformed midget looking retards, never heard before names and/or belonging to some shithole country nobody's ever given a rat's ass.

worst civ ever. no contest.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Does the AI now at least expand as far as it can?

It was so weird in CIV V when civs just wouldn't even settle their own continent / island they got all to themselves, no matter how long you waited. (Mods didn't help with that either.)

 

[oscar]

Does the AI now at least expand as far as it can?

It was so weird in CIV V when civs just wouldn't even settle their own continent / island they got all to themselves, no matter how long you waited. (Mods didn't help with that either.)

Settling more than about 6-8 cities was usually sub-optimal in Civ V anyway.

 

[flyingjohn]

Does the AI now at least expand as far as it can?

It was so weird in CIV V when civs just wouldn't even settle their own continent / island they got all to themselves, no matter how long you waited. (Mods didn't help with that either.)

That is weird,in civ v the ai loved to settle every useless patch of land(especially the Iroquois)
See that single ice island tile,well the ai will settle it gladly.

 

[Gord]

Noticed the same in my recent game (vanilla Civ VI).
There were 2 continents, roughly even distribution of civs on them. I found enough space to found 4 new cities on mine around 1200 AD and the other continent had probably enough unsettled space for an entire other civilization to appear. The AI definitely seems a bit unwilling to expand at times (it will of course still complain if you settle those areas close to them, maybe that's the reason why it doesn't do it itself, to prevent the diplomatic fallout?

 

[Teut Busnet]

Does the AI now at least expand as far as it can?

It was so weird in CIV V when civs just wouldn't even settle their own continent / island they got all to themselves, no matter how long you waited. (Mods didn't help with that either.)

That is weird,in civ v the ai loved to settle every useless patch of land(especially the Iroquois)
See that single ice island tile,well the ai will settle it gladly.

Yeah, that happened too: A civ has a continent with space to expand on to the north and south, but will settle on a two hex island far away.

Maybe it happened because I always played either 'Islands' or 'Small Continents'. Still shouldn't happen.

Settling more than about 6-8 cities was usually sub-optimal in Civ V anyway.

True. No civ would leave another the opportunity to create a bridgehead on their otherwise 'splendidly isolated' island though.

They should have created something like villages or outpost that allow you to extend your borders.

Noticed the same in my recent game (vanilla Civ VI).
There were 2 continents, roughly even distribution of civs on them. I found enough space to found 4 new cities on mine around 1200 AD and the other continent had probably enough unsettled space for an entire other civilization to appear. The AI definitely seems a bit unwilling to expand at times (it will of course still complain if you settle those areas close to them, maybe that's the reason why it doesn't do it itself, to prevent the diplomatic fallout?

Maybe sometimes, but a civ could be isolated on the other side of the globe and it would still happen.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

They should have created something like villages or outpost that allow you to extend your borders.

some older civs had "colonies" and civ4 had forts which projected borders. hell, even civ5 had them but i'm not sure they were mods. this one, the one who needs them the most, hasn't them.

 

[Teut Busnet]

There was a mod that let you expand borders with fortresses, pretty sure it was not in vanilla. Of course the AI never made use of it.