Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Thoughts on Civ6

polypheus

Prince
Joined
May 30, 2004
Messages
372
There are quite a few of us who loved Civ4 and hated Civ5. I am one of them. I'm not going to rehash all of the reasons. All of us Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters more or less know what they all are!

I think the way to best sum up the main reason that Civ4 was so great was that it was probably the most "historically immersive" version of Civ ever. On the other hand Civ5 basically went away from that "historical immersion" experience and made it much more "boardgamey". Anyway, I think all of the Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 haters know exactly what I mean!

My main interest in Civ games is the ability to play a game that feels like reliving alternate history in a nutshell. I prefer Civ4 over all the other parts of the Civ series because it comes closest to that personal vision and interest. Civ5 OTOH felt way too much like a glorified boardgame that was much further removed from that history building experience.

So what are the thoughts from other Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters on the upcoming Civ6?

Myself, I am not sure although I am somewhat hopeful.

Firstly, I am very heartened to hear that Civ6 is getting rid of one of the horrible concept of global happiness back to city happiness of Civ4. That was a must for me to even consider Civ6! Civ4's system of local happiness and city maintenance was near perfect in terms of balancing "wide vs tall" styles of expansion and also felt historically immersive whereas Civ5's new system was a huge disappointment. It looks like Civ6 is trying to be more like Civ4's system?

It also seems that Civ6 is trying to find some middle ground between stacks of doom vs carpets of doom. Whether it works or not, we'll see. I can tell you that I hated 1UPT and the carpets of doom and making Civ5 function on a tactical level on world sized maps was just something I could never get into!

Now I know that Civ5 tried to make amends with BNW but ultimately it never corrected many of the fundamental flaws of Civ5 to make it as good as Civ5BTS IMHO.

But I will say that some of Civ6 new features such as the builder concept, district concept and actions direct research and these all seem to be good historically immersive ideas. Also the city-state implementation seems to be improved from the overly simplistic bribe with gold only model (although I still am not crazy about CS in general).

Where I think Civ6 might fall short is in trade and diplomacy. Civ6 diplomacy was horrible and extremely historically immersion "breaking" as all the AIs basically were acting way too "gamey". Civ6 seems to try to improve that but will it do it enough for us Civ4ers?

I think ultimately though, Civ6 really sounds more live Civ5.5 to me. I don't think I'll hate it as much as I did Civ5. But will a Civ4 lover like me ever feel like it is a step up from Civ4? I'm very skeptical.

What do other Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 haters think?

For us Civ4 lovers who play the game for the historical immersion/history building aspect, will Civ6 give us that feeling? Or is it will it still be too "boardgamey" for our tastes?
 
I didn't hate Civ V, I'd rank it about equally to IV. Both very good games.

In terms of immersion, neither game really works for me better. They are silly and very cynical "what ifs" on history.

I personally think Civ V's Global Happy mechanic was far more "realistic" than IV. In IV population just comes out of nowhere and is a bit too easy to manage. In real life, this isn't the way it works. Many many many nations have been overthrown by having too many people. Neither game really deals with the realistic outcomes of mass migration or the fact that World Wars would leave millions of refugees, but of the two Civ V is closer. Of course "realistic" may not be the best measurement here.

I do think Civ V was a bit too punishing toward wide empires. I think the designers were thinking religion would fill that gap and it just didn't do it well enough. That however can be fixed with mods.

I never understood comparisons between Civ V and IV diplomacy favoring IV. Civ V AI was IMO moderately annoying in Vanilla. By BNW it was fine.

Civ VI may not have global Happiness but it will almost certainly have something to put the breaks on ICS. Hopefully tuned well enough that a wide empire is possible, just not crucial to rush settlers.
 
@ Isau

When talking about the features, you can't really isolate them but must take into account the overall effect. One can certainly argue whether local vs global happiness makes more sense individually. However, the overall consequences and impact of the global happiness made Civ5 overall feel much more gamey because it led to this optimal 4-city strategy all the time and felt nothing like how empires expanded throughout history.

OTOH Civ4's mechanic made the growth of civilizations match "historical" feel much more. Try to expand too much too fast (or conquer too much too fast) and the happiness and cost per city maintenance would limit that in ancient times and you'd be crushed economically (kinda like what happened to Greek/Roman Empires) before you can take off. But expand once you are at the right point in history and you can become like the British Empire, wide and tall!

I can't really explain it but people who love Civ4 and hate Civ5 know what I mean. But I understand that for people that love both Civ4 and Civ5, the features and overall feel of Civ4 that made it feel more historically immersive were either things they didn't care for or they weren't after that historically immersive feel from playing in the first place and treated both as simply boardgamey games to beat.
 
Or is it will it still be too "boardgamey" for our tastes?
This will it be for you, I think. From what we have seen so far, Civ6 will be even more "boardgamey" then Civ5. So I do feel, you will *hate* Civ6's combat mechanic since you hated (<-- your wording) 1UPT and more tactical combat in Civ5. Its up to you, to keep your fingers away form Civ6 or take it, but please: dont judge about those, who just see this different then you do.
 
This will it be for you, I think. From what we have seen so far, Civ6 will be even more "boardgamey" then Civ5. So I do feel, you will *hate* Civ6's combat mechanic since you hated (<-- your wording) 1UPT and more tactical combat in Civ5. Its up to you, to keep your fingers away form Civ6 or take it, but please: dont judge about those, who just see this different then you do.

If Civ6 is even more "boardgamey" than Civ5 and going even further away from the Civ4 overall feel then you could be right. Its all individual taste and opinion of course nothing about one better than the other.

But the point of this OP is whether Civ6 can be something that Civ4 lovers/Civ5 haters can look to. If it is still in the "boardgamey" style as opposed to Civ4's more historically immersive style than I guess not?

Sigh, time for more Civ4 and wait for Civ7 for me then? :(
 
If it is still in the "boardgamey" style as opposed to Civ4's more historically immersive style than I guess not? :(

That's a false dilemma polypheus, a board game, or a 4x game with board game mechanics can of course be historically immersive.

But will a Civ4 lover like me ever feel like it is a step up from Civ4?

No one can answer that question for you.
 
I personally think Civ V's Global Happy mechanic was far more "realistic" than IV. In IV population just comes out of nowhere and is a bit too easy to manage. In real life, this isn't the way it works. Many many many nations have been overthrown by having too many people. Neither game really deals with the realistic outcomes of mass migration or the fact that World Wars would leave millions of refugees, but of the two Civ V is closer. Of course "realistic" may not be the best measurement here.

I don't see how the happiness mechanism in CiV can be anything close to realistic. The people in Alaska are unhappy, so you built a circus in Hawaii to make them happy again? In real llife no one in Alaska cares if there is a circus in Hawaii or not. Your empire is unhappy because there are too many people? Good that you are at war with Ghandi. He throws atom bombs on Washington and New York which makes your people happy because now there are fewer of them. You have fought a war for centuries? Hopefully you will not succeed as additional cities make your people unhappy. On the other hand, if your capital is captured they will be happy again...

I hope these logics never return!
 
I don't want to sound offensive, but I don't get the point of this thread: you make it clear that you love CiIV and hate CiV. What now then?
This topic has been quite developed as far as we had the first glimpsed of CiV vanilla...

Looks like you are looking for a CiIV 1.5 but I'm afraid this won't happen ever.

I'm pretty sure the developers have in mind neither 4 nor 5 models. They borrow from both, maybe more from CiV since it's fresher.

Regards,

4N4
 
I don't want to sound offensive, but I don't get the point of this thread: you make it clear that you love CiIV and hate CiV. What now then?
This topic has been quite developed as far as we had the first glimpsed of CiV vanilla...

Looks like you are looking for a CiIV 1.5 but I'm afraid this won't happen ever.

I'm pretty sure the developers have in mind neither 4 nor 5 models. They borrow from both, maybe more from CiV since it's fresher.

Regards,

4N4

The point of this OP is mostly to discuss with people that are of like mind to myself. Maybe there has already been discussion on this very topic from before but I have been away from civfanatics for many years unfortunately and just catching up again with imminent release of Civ6. Prior to this OP, my last post here was many years ago.

Myself I am not fully up to date with all Civ6 and of course it hasn't even been released yet. Also even if it isn't what I want, I also realize that many years in the future it can be more of what I want too. (Like how Civ5 BNW made Civ4 lovers/Civ5 haters at least more tolerant of Civ5.)

So for me its more what other people with same thoughts as me regarding Civ4/Civ5 think of Civ6 who are much more up to date on it than I am. Its basically a way to catch up with Civ6 with like minded people that is all. What do people who felt as I do regarding Civ4/Civ5 think of Civ6 so far to the best of their knowledge and understanding?

If you are not such a person then understand the OP was not directed at you (although all are of course welcome to respond regardless!)
 
I believe Civ4 lovers / Civ5 haters are quite broad category:

- Some players hate 1UPT, they'll hate Civ6.
- Some players hate AI being unable to handle 1UPT, they'll have mixed feeling as we could expect AI to look better, but definitely not being able to compete with human players equally.
- Some players dislike vanilla lack of features, they'll be happy with Civ6.
- Some players hate how BNW favors tall empires too much - looks like they'll be happy with Civ6 as well.
- We've seen some people even hate Civ5 for having GDR and XCom units. For those we don't have any good or bad news yet.

That's the reasons I remember seeing myself, could be much more.
 
I don't see how the happiness mechanism in CiV can be anything close to realistic. The people in Alaska are unhappy, so you built a circus in Hawaii to make them happy again? In real llife no one in Alaska cares if there is a circus in Hawaii or not. Your empire is unhappy because there are too many people? Good that you are at war with Ghandi. He throws atom bombs on Washington and New York which makes your people happy because now there are fewer of them. You have fought a war for centuries? Hopefully you will not succeed as additional cities make your people unhappy. On the other hand, if your capital is captured they will be happy again...

I hope these logics never return!

(Firstly, your profile is amazing. Joined in 2004 with only 13 posts? Wow!)

Anyway, your analysis is spot on.

Civ5 took a fairly good if not perfect per-city happiness and per-city maintenance model of Civ4 and changed it to something much worse.

If you are thinking in a "boardgamey" way, then really neither Civ4 happiness/maintenance vs Civ5 happiness/maintenance mechanics is better than another. Its just a boardgame rule. But from a historical immersion experience (assuming that is what you are looking for), one is clearly much better than the other for all the reasons you have explained in why global happiness model of Civ5 was very bad.

I know at the time of Civ5 a lot of Civ5 supporters were saying you just want Civ4.5.

This is not really fair. We wanted Civ5 but we wanted it to add to immersion and away from being "boardgamey". The issue wasn't for me wasn't about not wanting major changes. I wanted major changes! The issue was whether the changes was in the direction of even more historical immersion or away from it in the more "boardgamey" direction and Civ5 vanilla definitely was the latter.
 
I believe Civ4 lovers / Civ5 haters are quite broad category:

- Some players hate 1UPT, they'll hate Civ6.
- Some players hate AI being unable to handle 1UPT, they'll have mixed feeling as we could expect AI to look better, but definitely not being able to compete with human players equally.
- Some players dislike vanilla lack of features, they'll be happy with Civ6.
- Some players hate how BNW favors tall empires too much - looks like they'll be happy with Civ6 as well.
- We've seen some people even hate Civ5 for having GDR and XCom units. For those we don't have any good or bad news yet.

That's the reasons I remember seeing myself, could be much more.

True. I think I was more thinking about people who loved Civ4 due to its overall more "historically immersive" feel and hated Civ5 due to its more boardgamey feel.

Maybe I misunderstood, but your description sounds more like people who just dislike one set of mechanics or rules over another for their own sake regardless of whether it added to or subtracted from historically immersive feel. That's fine too but I wasn't really thinking along those lines exactly.
 
I have a feeling that immersion is rather subjective. I'm looking for fun rather than immersion so I don't mind (that too is subjective, but no civ game really disappointed although I have some issues with 3), but I've read on many different thing that they 'break immersion'. In that case it will be very difficult to tell, they might have a mechanic that will be immersion-breaking to some. They night not.
 
I'll be honest I never got Civ V. It just didn't seem Civ to me. And I've played religiously from II to IV.

But from the trailer, there's something special about Civ VI. I'm coming back to it. I think Civ V they realized that he game had to change and i understand that but I think it had teething problems they learned from it and I think Civ VI will put it back on track but with the new direction V put us in.

And my gut feeling about Civ VI was confirmed with the reintroduction of Queen Victoria. I had a gut feeling she'd be in the game and I'm back, like her. The Queen is back!
 
While I don't hate Civ5, I definitely understand your point of view. I like historical immersion myself, and Civ5 was a step back in that area. I also hated the global happiness system and that it was better to turtle than to try and build an empire. (I still clocked in at 1000 hours before I got bored, though.)

I am looking forward to Civ6 a lot, for several reasons. For one, unstacking cities will be better for immersion, at least for me: seeing those sprawling metropolises instead of abstract "city hexes" surrounded by endless farm fields will be great. Also, Ed Beech has a lot of good ideas and knows how to design systems, as shown in the expansions to Civ5. Furthermore, Civ6 won't start as barebones as Civ5 did, so there will be more to do from the get-go.

From what I have seen so far, it looks like there will be one component that will make or break it for me: combat AI and general AI aggressiveness. If the AI manages to wage war effectively, and manages to force me to keep up militarily, it will feel like I have a worthy opponent. Otherwise it will be like Civ5: build up economically and scientifically, wait for the AI to declare war, buy a few units with gold, beat the AI against overwhelming odds (because of its complete inability to understand tactical combat), and back to turtling. In Civ5, I never played for Domination because it felt like cheating.
 
From what I have seen so far, it looks like there will be one component that will make or break it for me: combat AI and general AI aggressiveness. If the AI manages to wage war effectively, and manages to force me to keep up militarily, it will feel like I have a worthy opponent. Otherwise it will be like Civ5: build up economically and scientifically, wait for the AI to declare war, buy a few units with gold, beat the AI against overwhelming odds (because of its complete inability to understand tactical combat), and back to turtling. In Civ5, I never played for Domination because it felt like cheating.

It isn't just the tactical aspect and/or AI ability to handle it aspect of 1UPT that you point out. Rather it is how 1UPT basically creates a situation that affects all aspects of the game.

The only way 1UPT can kinda work is if you strongly curtail expansion and production. Otherwise you end up with carpets of doom early in the game. But once you curtail expansion and production you basically start to make the game flow in a very "historically unimmersive" way.

1UPT only works if your army has empty space to move in. It requires an army smaller than the map. 1UPT led to small army sizes, which led to lower production and faster science, which led to the broken economy system and broken gameplay from a historical immersive POV. So the issue of 1UPT was never just a preference for one combat system over the other. The issue is how 1UPT caused the entire Civ5 game to have to be changed to accomodate it and change in ways that made Civ5 much less immersive and much more gamey.

Also the fact of 1UPT makes pretty much all wars into Battle of Thermopylae affairs of using tactics to overwhelm superior numbers and production because as you said AI is terrible at tactics. In real history, wars were much more of productive capacity affairs although on occasion superior tactics defeat superior production. The Civ4 SoD model did that very well although it was flawed in its own way (but much less flawed than 1UPT from an overall historically immersive POV). Unlike in Civ4 SoDs where you can might have to deal with multiple fronts and multiple strategic threats, Civ5 is basically just playing Battle of Thermopylae over and over again! It is stupid.

One thing that might be good is that it looks like in Civ6, they are moving slightly away from 1UPT in favor of mini-stacks. Depending on the particulars, that MIGHT alleviate some of the major issues of 1UPT but I don't know all the details.
 
Wouldn't getting rid of unit healing help with the problem somewhat? If you had to re-supply the warfront with new units constantly, the carpets of doom wouldn't last.

Or, alternatively, add a "military capacity" mechanics like in Paradox games.
 
I stopped playing Civ5 after a few games. I still play Civ4 and love it intensely. As a matter of fact, it is the only videogame I still play.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Civ6. What we've seen so far looks promising, but I'll need to see late game wars and Combined Arms in action before I commit myself. I won't buy it on release, that much is for sure, I may even wait until bugs are fixed, expansions are released and/or there is a big sale on Steam.
 
I've ranted at civ 5 before and preferred civ 4 and I honestly don't have a clue about what you are on about. I hated civ 5 for its tedious micro management, they have made some improvements such as attack queuing but there's room for a lot more.

In Civ 4 I could do everything like ten times faster, civ 5 combat is more interesting but can be a complete bore at times.
 
Back
Top Bottom