Things in Civ V you don't want to see in Civ VI

First of all, let me say that I do like Civ V, there are some things that the game does very well (The religion system is an improvement over Civ IV, City States are cool, and I like the unique abilities). However, there are things in Civ V I really hope are not included in Civ VI:

Global Happiness:

By far my least favorite part of this game. It also doesn't make any sense. Why should a city you control on another continent affect happiness in your capital? In the earlier Civ games happiness was a local affair. If you conquer another civilization, the cities you conquered aren't going to be happy, but your core cities will continue to function just fine.

In Civ III, unhappiness became a serious problem when it became widespread. If all your cities went into civil disorder your government would be overthrown. This sometimes happens when there is massive war weariness. This adds to the realism of the game as war weariness played a major role in the downfall of the Tsarist regime in Russia. This would be a good thing to bring back

Penalties to Expansion:

This ties in to the global unhappiness. Population unhappiness makes sense, and larger cities tend to have greater unrest. This has been the case since Civ I. But I've never understood why having more cities decreases happiness. Granted, I can see why this was put in the game. In Civ III the goal is to build as many cities as possible and the early game is spent pumping out settlers. Civ IV took a more balanced approach. There isn't a rush to settle every empty space on the map, but it doesn't cause revolts either. In Civ IV there was an economic penalty for over-expansion, which makes a lot more sense than a happiness penalty.

The other penalty to expansion is the warmonger penalty. While I have no problem with this in theory it goes too far in Civ V. I'm hoping it gets toned down a bit in Civ VI.

One Unit per Tile:

I have very little hope that this will be changed. It's a major hindrance for movement and it can often make it difficult to help your allies defend their territory. In Civ IV you could send your units into the same squares as a civilization you had open borders with. This makes defending allies from military invasions much easier as your units don't block theirs and vice-versa. If you started with Civ V this aspect of the game probably doesn't bother you very much.

Embarking:

If you have 1UPT you need to have embarking because it would be a pain to build transports that can only carry one unit. But if 1UPT isn't in Civ VI I hope they bring back transport ships. It makes more sense to actually have to build boats for your unites to cross the ocean.

Cultural influence:

I don't think it's very realistic for Civilizations to basically lose a lot of their independence because of how powerful another civilization's culture is.

Conclusion:

While there is much to praise about Civ V, I hope that Firaxis looks back at Civ III and Civ IV and brings back elements of those games when making Civ VI.

Another thing regarding cultural influence that I would like is there a bit more incentive to get some tourism even if you aren't going for a cultural victory. Public Opinion can usually be dealt with and has little effect against the AIs massive happiness bonuses. This could probably be something like immigration.

Celticempire, agree with everything you say except I'm pretty sure we get another combat overhaul as there's been so much critique from 1UPT. Probably a limited stacking or creation of armies or whatever(I remember reading they planned this for Civ IV or Civ IV BTS but instead went with collateral damage).

I love Civ V but I hate Cities' Ranged Attack. It makes cities into some sort of powerful turrets, really stupid and I bet no-one likes it. It's good that cities have hit points, they should have left it like that.

1UPT is kinda meant to be a hindrance to movement, so you actually think about logistics and unit placement. I started Civilisation with the first game, and spent most of my time playing SMAC, thanks for the assumption though

As for culture and "realism":

a) video games aren't meant to be inherently realistic; good mechanics come before adherence to "reality", and

b) it's actually incredibly realistic because social pressure is one of the largest historical components of severe change the world has ever been affected by. As evidenced by how the radio transformed the 20th century, how the printing press revolutionised the Middle Ages (and the ages after it), how Roman roads were the cornerstone of maintaining their Empire, and so on, and so forth. All of these had cultural as well as technological impact (which is how technological and artistic achievements in CiV affect your Tourism).

Honestly, I can't think of anything I don't want in a future Civilisation game. Reforms to some systems? But I wouldn't want the systems themselves to go away. I'm confident Firaxis can bring in new things without sacrificing the modern base Civilisation 5 has established (though I'm always cautious of expecting too much, simply because I know realistically what games development is like, and how difficult it is).

Bringing back things that earlier games had is better than scrapping things that were brought into the game for CiV.

Iamteehee said:

Another thing regarding cultural influence that I would like is there a bit more incentive to get some tourism even if you aren't going for a cultural victory. Public Opinion can usually be dealt with and has little effect against the AIs massive happiness bonuses. This could probably be something like immigration.

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How do you think it would work?

Haig said:

Celticempire, agree with everything you say except I'm pretty sure we get another combat overhaul as there's been so much critique from 1UPT. Probably a limited stacking or creation of armies or whatever(I remember reading they planned this for Civ IV or Civ IV BTS but instead went with collateral damage).

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Combat is always overhauled in some way in each game. Civ II introduced hit points, IV merged attack and defense, and I'm sure Civ II did something as well (though I've never played it). They'll do something different with combat, and I hope you're right.

I love Civ V but I hate Cities' Ranged Attack. It makes cities into some sort of powerful turrets, really stupid and I bet no-one likes it. It's good that cities have hit points, they should have left it like that.

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I don't like ranged cities either.

Gorbles said:

1UPT is kinda meant to be a hindrance to movement, so you actually think about logistics and unit placement. I started Civilisation with the first game, and spent most of my time playing SMAC, thanks for the assumption though

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I think a limit on how many units can be in a tile is fine, but I just think that limiting to one unit per tile goes a little too far and is a big inconvenience.

As for culture and "realism":

a) video games aren't meant to be inherently realistic; good mechanics come before adherence to "reality", and

b) it's actually incredibly realistic because social pressure is one of the largest historical components of severe change the world has ever been affected by. As evidenced by how the radio transformed the 20th century, how the printing press revolutionised the Middle Ages (and the ages after it), how Roman roads were the cornerstone of maintaining their Empire, and so on, and so forth. All of these had cultural as well as technological impact (which is how technological and artistic achievements in CiV affect your Tourism).

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My problem isn't with culture playing a larger role in V than in the past, my issue is with how it affects ideologies and how Civs with weaker cultures are unable to choose their own ideologies.

Honestly, I can't think of anything I don't want in a future Civilisation game. Reforms to some systems? But I wouldn't want the systems themselves to go away. I'm confident Firaxis can bring in new things without sacrificing the modern base Civilisation 5 has established (though I'm always cautious of expecting too much, simply because I know realistically what games development is like, and how difficult it is).

Bringing back things that earlier games had is better than scrapping things that were brought into the game for CiV.

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I can see where you are coming from. I am probably in the minority with most of the problems I have with Civ V.

Anything at all similar to Civ V's Great Generals.

They make war ridiculous. And war is already ridiculous without them, being quite absurd due to the already-mentioned city bombard.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

Anything at all similar to Civ V's Great Generals.

They make war ridiculous. And war is already ridiculous without them, being quite absurd due to the already-mentioned city bombard.

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Just wondering, have you played Civ III or Civ IV? If so, do you like the Civ IV great generals or the Civ III great leaders?

I can't get information on Civ III easily. My understanding of IV is that Generals in that game do nothing.

In V, the fact Generals swing war so far the other way from 'impossible' says it all.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

I can't get information on Civ III easily. My understanding of IV is that Generals in that game do nothing.

In V, the fact Generals swing war so far the other way from 'impossible' says it all.

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Generals in Civ IV give units promotions. They were added in the Warlords expansion. They are not nearly as powerful as Civ V Great Generals.

In Civ III a leader will occasionally emerge when an elite unit wins a battle. A leader can be used to either build and army or, depending on which expansion you have or which settings you use, hurry production. An army is the combination of three units (or four if you build the Pentagon).

I'm sure that sounds somewhat confusing though.

Old Faithful

Generally speaking, I hate I guess I would call them hard limits. You shouldn't be punished for a particular playstyle, there should just be different rewards...

I mostly want to scrap the happiness system. Of all of its functions throughout the franchise, I think it's only had one that could actually enhance the game (It doesn't however, unless you play certain civs, because the bonus isn't good enough)
The functions are
1) Limit tall cities
2) Limit expansion
3) Trigger Golden Ages
The only potentially interesting function is 3. If golden ages are powerful enough AND you are more likely to trigger golden ages by staying small, you have a legitimate reason not to mindlessly expand everywhere.

I'd like to get rid of national wonders, I know that they help small empires but they just feel so contrived.

For soft caps to expansion , primarily I think tech costs should be increased (They are at the moment but not enough). To me, if you only have a few cities it makes sense that new technology could be adopted quickly across the populace. But if your cities are spread out over a wide area, it would take much more time, which in game would be reflected by increasing technology costs for wide empires.
For a secondary effect, although I didn't like gold maintenance in IV (The cost is straight-up), I would be okay with buildings costing more gold maintenance in faraway locations/newly conquered cities.

I (greatly) prefer 1UPT to stacks (And the general idea of less units on the map the better). If they go back to stacks they need to be smart about it. Personally having dedicated (and actually good) anti-stack units would be a nice starting point there.

I hate ranged combat (Both cities and archer units). Siege units are okay though.

Here's a few, better AI not included obviously:

1. Aggressive expansion modifier: It punishes building a wide empire just as much as (un)happiness does. It is kind of realistic though, I live in a big city and I really hate the bits that are directly related to the overpopulation, however as soon as you settle 5 or more cities you will DEFINITELY be attacked and you will lose time you need to build up.

2. Arbitrary war/peace mechanics: There's been a number of games where I had absolutely no activity on either fronts for dozens of turns and yet the AIs never wanted to make peace for whatever reason. At least make it so that it's somewhat transparent.

3. Better civ research, some of the civs are much better or much worse than some other civs.

Basically everything that defines Civ V that wasn't in previous iterations, besides hexes (much superior to squares). That is a lot of things, but a few things in particular stand out:

- 1UPT. God how I hate this idea. Almost everything in Civ 5 and Beyond Earth was ruined by this decision, and most likely Civilization 6 will be ruined by it as well.

- Removal of science sliders and base science is directly tied to population growth. This is another contributor to Civ5 being a game of filling buckets, where the only objective is to grow, grow, grow to get everything. Population growth should be valuable, but it shouldn't drive everything the way that it does in Civ5. Previous games in the series did a much better job of making pop growth valuable without making it the only consideration.

- Artificial fixes to stunt the value of wide empires. If they want tall cities to be competitive with wide, then make vertical investment meaningful, rather than imposing an artificial penalty against wide empires (global happiness, sci/culture penalties per city). All that does is encourage players to find every way possible to break the artificial constraint on wide, as most players circumvented global happiness quite easily in Civ5 vanilla.

Other things which are general gripes against the series:

- Barbarians should be more sophisticated than just random units to force the player to be honest about their military. I could see something like Civ5's city-states, but instead of fixed cities they would be minor tribes which the early player must interact with. The decisions the player makes in how they assimilate or annihilate minor tribes would inform their makeup down the road.

- Get rid of pre-game civilization uniques completely. This would mean less time is spent balancing 30-40 different civilizations (or not balancing, in the case of Civ5) and more time is spent balancing the game's fundamental mechanics. If desired, the developers can include hooks that allow modders to add uniques to civilizations, but the base game shouldn't bother beyond cosmetic decisions.

- Technological development should not be solely a matter of collecting beakers, particularly in the ancient and classical eras. How this would be done is a complicated question, but in almost every civ game technology is way too strong and cramming beakers is a dominant strategy.

- Military management is better accomplished by managing armies, rather than stacks of 10, 50, or whatever units. The army can be split into however many subdivisions, but generally a bigger army would be stronger than 20-30 smaller armies amounting to the same size.

- Consider moving away from tiles altogether, at least at the interface level. This would allow for a true spherical map, which is impossible with tiles or hexes.

- Diplomacy and AI always need a lot of work. The AI should be far more aggressive and willing to fight the player, and should not be easy to manipulate. This would require constant attention after the initial release, so that player feedback can be used to build a better computer opponent. Any diplomatic modifiers (as in Civ4) should be tied to tangible in-game benefits... for example, if someone has +10 diplo with you, trade between your empires is better, while negative relations basically make trade agreements impossible between two empires. It can be (and should be) more complex than that.

- Just keep religion out of the game. It's become another property of civilizations, rather than an independent force... and thus it is utterly uninteresting. If religion is to be involved in the game, it should be done differently than it is now. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and so on are not interchangeable things, and shouldn't be treated as such... more than that, the introduction of religion diminishes the historical influence of liberalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and modern-day movement. It would be hard to do religion/ideology properly without stepping on too many toes, though Civilization V's ideologies and cultural pressure mechanics were an interesting take on the Cold War.

Things that Civ 5 did right are few...

- Hexes are an improvement over square tiles, but I prefer removing tiles from the game altogether. That said, if tiles are a thing, better to keep them as hexes. Tile acquisition in Civ5 is generally fine, though I believe that borders shouldn't hard-lock players out of entering them until later eras (and further that open borders should always be an option).

- Cultural policies could be good, if they were not a matter of picking the only good SP tree. Rather than that, SPs should exist to add cultural definition to a civ, replacing the pre-game options; and they should be arranged more like BE's tech web (but with some customizable results once a branch is researched).

- Unlike many people who bemoan 1UPT, I thought cities defending themselves was perfectly fine. (Ranged bombardment, not so much, but I hate the very idea of ranged combat to begin with.) Cities should be difficult to capture and hold, and having their own combat strength and HP is a starting point. It also means that players don't have to worry about garrisons too early.

- Removing tech trades / steal is much better, until espionage came along anyway.

One final thing:

Include an option to make all turns resolve simultaneously, with necessary rule changes to make this option playable. This is the only way multiplayer Civ will ever be viable without turning into a joke, as with Civ5's bad-RTS multiplayer. It might be better to build the game around this concept entirely, but purists will likely complain about simultaneous turn resolution in single-player.

Secret tiles in a strategy game turns into the mess that is Valkyria Chronicles.

Extra Credits says that any game in this domain coming out of America needs to be political or suffer the shame of parading without cognizance of its extrinsic political nature. Civ cannot shy away from heady topics, and taking a stand on them, morally.

Your post largely diverges from the outset thread aim.

CELTICEMPIRE said:

Generals in Civ IV give units promotions.

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Yeah, they do nothing. 's what I said.

I don't like how barbarian camps randomly spawn under fog of war. I'm not sure how else to implement them. Maybe have them spawn on game creation but be more difficult to clear? I just find it annoying that you can have a perimeter of units scouting out your entire starting area, 4 cities placed in a group, and that ONE tile under fog of war in the center of everything randomly spawns a barb camp just to trash your trade route. It isn't that big of a deal but it is like... why? It just annoys the player without any interesting interaction or decision making.

I also hope Civ 6 gives a reason to expand. I am a firm believer of the 4X formula. Okay, players don't want Civ to have the eXterminate or at least keep it as a minor option, fine. But you also take away eXpand and we are left with BNW gameplay where everyone sits in the corner of the map playing Sim City for 300 turns with their 4 cities. Huge portions of the map unsettled in modern eras. Where is the drama, tension, the fight for resources? It is non-existent, because you have everything you need with a single city.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

Secret tiles in a strategy game turns into the mess that is Valkyria Chronicles.

Extra Credits says that any game in this domain coming out of America needs to be political or suffer the shame of parading without cognizance of its extrinsic political nature. Civ cannot shy away from heady topics, and taking a stand on them, morally.

Your post largely diverges from the outset thread aim.


Yeah, they do nothing. 's what I said.

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Asertive ignorance in full display.
Any civ with a healthy birth rate of GG has the better chance of winning a war towards a civ without. GG either can:

-Give instant promotion -specialization- to a number of units
-Give XP and/or promotions towards newly built units
-Create a super warying unit
-Create a super medic unit
-Build an academy for more military production

Anyhow, it needed to by propoerly answered.

I agree with the happiness parts. Especially at higher level, it s just stupid compared to the buffs the AI get. Seeing hiawatha cover the entire map while settling a 5th city kills your entire empire is stupid at best.

Maybe there should be some kind of scaling with the number or city you have. 0-5 city would give specific perkd/penalties, 5-10 another set etc... So instead of being punished it would become a trade off reflecting a choice from the player.

For 1upt and cities. Both issues are linked in a way. I think it s more a scaling issue. 1 upt is better in terms of strategy but the land/unit scaling is terrible. Same goes for city. Basically you need to conquer one tile to grabe a city that actually covers up to 20+ tiles. I d love to see a rework of border and city capture. Something that would allow to conquer half of a city. You could specifically pick where you build building in the area. And capturing say a barrack could lower defensive units efficiency in the premices of the city. This would tie nicely with a rework of the land/unit scaling for 1upt.

Proper naming of cities is needed!

For example the Iroquois:

Why is BUFFALO one of the IROQUOIS city names? Who came up with that? Just like Salamanca being Iroquois capital in CivIII, Firaxis!, I really though you'd at least be able to do your historical/geographical research and provide factual city(village/settlement) names.
Niagara, Tonawanda, Cheektowaga, Irondequoit, Oswego, Oneonta, Susquehanna, and many, many others. Use them native (English version of native) village names please, and it doesn't matter that some of them are Delaware or Huron (or other tribe's), that's fine, since those tribes you surely won't include in the game anyhow.

For all my, and other players suggestion about what's to be added/changed in Civ VI as compared to Civ V please see thread:

[CIVI LET THE SPECULATION BEGIN!

So many of the things you mention here, like the idiotic 1upt and lack of armies (with a maximum number of units in them of course-no stacks of doom!, and no collaterals unless bombardment units included in your army/stack)

The need to rid of the stupid EMBARKATION

And several others are mentioned there already.

Unit enhancements that can make it more effective at fighting enemies in cover than it is fighting on an open plain.

I'd like city states and their ridiculous bonuses (maritime city by the desert gives you food for 12 surplus cities) to be removed but that won't happen.

I wish the civics system from civ IV/Alpha Centaury came back.