[NFP] Is Civ 6 doomed?

[Lobox]

no there are no warning signs.

Civ 6 is the most popular game of this type according to Steam and it has been since it came out. It is no. 1. It is what most players want. Civ 6 has sold more copies than any other Civ games, it sold faster than any other Civ game before it. It had sold 5.5 million copies as of late 2019.

You always have the same pocket of players who are disappointed because it does not have this or that feature, but 99% of players do not care and never post here either. Most players want an easy fun game that entertains them and is semi-historical. They vote with their wallet, which is all that the Devs really care about since this is a business after all.

Maybe Humankind will be better, we'll know when it comes out, but this is not the 1st time a supposed Civ killer was rght around the corner, yet Civ 6 is still the champ.

Civ5 sold 8 million copies so Civ6 has sold less.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Civ5 sold 8 million copies so Civ6 has sold less.

You can re-do the math based on numbers quoted in this thread.

 

[Lobox]

You can re-do the math based on numbers quoted in this thread.

Saw that thread but it is only speculation, only number revealed is 5.5 million copies according to https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-6/sales

 

[Myomoto]

Civ 5 has been on sale for like 5 bucks a million times in the last decade

 

[John.B.C]

It's mostly an AI problem. I think 6 is great, second to 4. (I've played 4, 5, BE, 6. Of these, 4 is my favorite, 5 is okay, BE is okay, 6, now, is great). The problem in each has always been 'Wow AI what the hell are you doing' and the remedy was always that the AI gets bonuses and you get weighed down...which doesn't solve the problem.

That is where the focus needs to lie. How do we get the AI to be better, and what IS better AI anyway?

If you'd played 'Civilization 5' with Vox populi - you wouldn't be asking this question. Now here's an AI that acctually put up a real challange (beyond your imagination if you haven't experienced anything like it before).

So sad Firaxis couldn't do it, but why put in the effort when the game will sell millions of copies anyways?

 

[nmb93]

If you'd played 'Civilization 5' with Vox populi - you wouldn't be asking this question. Now here's an AI that acctually put up a real challange (beyond your imagination if you haven't experienced anything like it before).

So sad Firaxis couldn't do it, but why put in the effort when the game will sell millions of copies anyways?

Have they said anything about DLL access with civ6?

 

[Gedemon]

Have they said anything about DLL access with civ6?

At this time we don’t have plans to release the DLL source code.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/civ-6-new-season-pass-details

 

[c4c6]

Ninja'ed!

Have they said anything about DLL access with civ6?

First No decision yet and then No plans now.

How do we get the AI to be better, and what IS better AI anyway?

From the civ4 point of view: Have a look at those subforums:
Civ4 - Better BTS AI
Civ4 - BTS Unaltered Gameplay (BUG, BAT and BULL)


For some long term effects you may compare:
Civ4 - Creation & Customization
Civ6 - Creation & Customization

 

[chrimwinster]

Hello Fanatics
Few people on the planet have played more Civ then me so for my thoughts
in Descending order of how great they were on release
Civ 2, Civ 4 Civ 1 (win 3.1 then DOS then Amiga) Civ 5
3 and 6 both unplayable but tried numerous times to get the bug.
I last played Civ 4 and may consider a return to Civ 5 this year
I played Civ 5 for well over a thousand hours and it was only my fourth favorite Civ :O
Chris CivNut

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hello Fanatics
Few people on the planet have played more Civ then me so for my thoughts
in Descending order of how great they were on release
Civ 2, Civ 4 Civ 1 (win 3.1 then DOS then Amiga) Civ 5
3 and 6 both unplayable but tried numerous times to get the bug.
I last played Civ 4 and may consider a return to Civ 5 this year
I played Civ 5 for well over a thousand hours and it was only my fourth favorite Civ :O
Chris CivNut

I started a little later, never did play Civ I - but then, my computer was always a Mac, so had to wait until Civ 2 came out on the Mac before I even knew the game existed!

I still remember looking out the window and realizing that the sun was coming up, and I had played Civ 2 All Night - and never noticed the time passing. Have never done that with any game since.
Played all the variants I could get my Mac around: Test of Time, Revolution, Colonization, and of course Alpha Centauri, which is my Most-Wanted Updated and Modernized Game of all.

Actually played Civ 3, 4, and 5 - and 5 still has my max hours played at 7000, which seems unbelievable now. My total on Civ 6 is only about 3200, which is not necessarily a commentary on how enjoyable 6 is compared to 5 but more about Time Constraints: for most of Civ 6's lifespan I've also been intensively researching and translating Russian archive documents and now am writing a book, so in percentage of Free Hours spent playing, 5 and 6 are much closer.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Personally I have slowly transformed from a fan of 1UPT to complete opponent.
1) It is impossible to design good AI for it while also having good turn times, and lack of military threat has horrible impact on the entire game.
2) Utterly divorced from historical reality of pitched battles (1UPT continent - spanning frontlines make sense only in 20th century and even then only to some extent)
3) Tedious to control, frustrating with constant pains over traversing rough terrain
4) Makes the game lose that awesome adrenaline feel of "great battles that decide fate of empires"

In order to truly dislike 1UPT I had to participate in opendev of Humankind, which has "transport in stacks on the strategic later, 1 UPT tactical battles on the same map" system. Oh my God, this game isn't even in beta and has better military AI than civ6 after two expansions, I was actually losing battles and felt adrenaline and satisfaction. But something that I didn't expect and that was a final nail in the coffin of 1UPT was point 4 - rediscovering the feel of Dramatic Great Battles that 1upt simply lacks.

This has been my exact experience. At first I like 1 UPT because it reduced micro with a zillion units.

The big problem with it in Civ6 is you have 1 UPT AND a low move allowance AND lots of retrictive terrain AND not being able to use “leftover” move points to enter a hex with a high move cost

This turns simple into an agonizing Sliding Tile Minigame which clearly the AI can’t handle

The LOS thing with ranged units is just as bad if not worse.

They should double the movement point allowance or go back to stacking

Here is how good Civ VI is.

I gave it another really good try. I really did. But then after 4 out of 5 games on Deity without ever a declaration of war against me (one of them I played a Huge map with 20 civs and 36 city states (modifying the 24 limit) and even then, not one single war declaration, even when I declared early on and everyone denounced me. Even then about 50 turns later they were turning friendly. Watching paint dry is more interesting than clicking the end turn button from the middlegame to endgame in those games. 1450 hours in, and still no "life" from the AI.

This isn't Civ. At least not the Civ I know.

So, instead of starting another game, I decided to play a game of Civ 2, something I haven't done since 2002. It wasn't easy. I already had DosBox, but I still had to find a place with an old Windows image (I chose 3.1, oh the memories), install the image, then find the old CD for the game, installed the game, realized that the Win 3.1 in the DosBox needed graphics support and sound support, installed all of those, still couldn't get the music to play during the game (it doesn't think the CD is there) but the game actually played. Even found a pdf of the tech tree since I lost my poster many years ago.

And it was just a better game than Civ 6. Even to this day.

Of course I had to readjust to the graphics -- Civ 6 is so beautiful with great music as well. But, that readjustment was worth it. I wanted to remember where the franchise had gone since I first started playing.

I'm not saying the game is doomed. But when a game where your stack could be wiped out by a single attacking unit has more depth strategically than a game made 20 years later (1996 vs 2016 give or take), well, it's just not the same game anymore. And (imo) Civ 3 is better than Civ 2, and Civ 4 is better than Civ 3. Civ 5 with mods is interesting since the AI can be challenging, and heaven forbid, actually declare war on you.

I miss those days of Civ 2. I miss my (at the time) young son pointing at the monkey in the Theory of Evolution video and shouting "Look, it's Darwin!"

That was when the game/franchise had a soul. It may sell more copies now (although I just read that Civ 2 sold 3 million copies in the late 90's which isn't chump change), but it's not the same. Civ 5 was saved by allowing modders to have the source code. Alas, Civ 6 had no such savior, and now it's too late.

Civ2 perfectly balanced Doom Stacks by making it a risk, since they could be one shot.

I really miss Civ2, I wish there was an easier way to play it. Civ Rev 2 sorta fills that niche for me

Regarding 1UPT, one needs to regard this in the light of the long history of hex wargames from about 1970 onwards. In that case, "stacking" was something your did with actual cardboard counters when you moved them around a hex map (which is why I can't bring myself to refer to hexes as "tiles"). Conventions varied from game game to game, but it was usually the rule that stacking limits applied at the end of your movement phase, i.e. you could always move one stack through another. Early games, of which the classic was SPI's "Napoleon at Waterloo", had one unit per hex. Civ 6 is essentially one combat unit + one non-combat unit. Many other options are possible, besides unlimited stacking. For instance, two units per hex. Or one units plus one support (artillery) unit. That would be a good rule for Civ, which would give more flexibility without suffering "stacks of doom"..

Yes, I was around in those days. Met Jim Dunnigan as well.

I still occasionally read favorite articles from The General.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This has been my exact experience. At first I like 1 UPT because it reduced micro with a zillion units.

The big problem with it in Civ6 is you have 1 UPT AND a low move allowance AND lots of retrictive terrain AND not being able to use “leftover” move points to enter a hex with a high move cost

This turns simple into an agonizing Sliding Tile Minigame which clearly the AI can’t handle

The LOS thing with ranged units is just as bad if not worse.

They should double the movement point allowance or go back to stacking .

Just to point out, Humankind does both: the average movement is 4 - 6 tiles per turn and they stack. That allows them to have a decent 'maneuverability' on their tactical battlefields with only One movement factor per unit. My first thought was that it would make the map seem much too small, but there are plenty of Terrain Impediments (mountains, cliffs, crossing rivers, forests, etc) so that it seems to work.

I still occasionally read favorite articles from The General.

Spent six months living in New York City back in 1968 - 69 and spent many a Friday night at Simulations Publications offices as part of their playtest group. They practically invented the "develop a game - blind playtest - rebuild the game" system still in use in Game Development.

 

[Conquistador_514]

Normal ages are absolutely boring. Yeah, I have the same dedications than in Dark Ages, but I don't have powerful dark ages cards nor can I go to an Heroic Age. It's just... boring. They literally had a new cool mechanic (Ages) and made it than, if you missed the shot... well, it's like playing without that mechanic at all. At least with Dramatic Ages, you're always enjoying this mechanic, one way or the other, and that's cool.
Also, Heroic Ages are nice (three dedications), but... When I heard about "Heroic Ages", I thought about something really cool, something really heroic... But no, it's just "triple your bonuses for a regular Golden Age". In the base game, having dedicated Heroic Age cards would make this age way worth it and really more interesting.

I wanted to like the different modes, especially the dark age mode but unfortunately the AI just cannot retake their lost free cities so you end up with a million free cities in the world and it just get's boring and easy, in fact all of the modes suck because they make the game even more easy than it already is.

 

[Abaxial]

unfortunately the AI just cannot retake their lost free cities

In my experience the lost cities usually flip back to their original founder.

 

[Elhoim]

In my experience the lost cities usually flip back to their original founder.

Depends on how many they lost in Dramatic Ages, especially if several neighboring civs go into the dark age. Since in DA free cities have their own loyalty "irradiation" that creates a blob that the loyalty of the civ can't penetrate, and even sometimes cascading into sending other cities to free cities. Depends a lot on the difficulty you are playing as well, as the AI loses more cities the easier the game. So if you play on deity is less common.

 

[Bactrian]

Is Civ6 doomed? I don't know, I'm not sure what it means to be doomed after five years and tons of additional content. That seems like a pretty good run even if the sun is starting to set.

However, I will say--as someone who has purchased every single iteration of Civ (including the first), all their expansions and DLC, as well as spinoffs like SMAC and Colonization--I don't think I will be purchasing anymore Civ content unless there is a really radical change from their current direction. I certainly won't be pre-purchasing anything anymore (Civ was the only franchise I continued to do that with), because all the best ideas, even the fundamentals of the game, are being undermined by poor AI and slipshod implementation and balancing. I want to love Civ, I have for most of my life, but I just don't anymore.

So, is Civ doomed? I hope not, but perhaps for me it is.


(Incidentally, I used to love the Paradox grand strategy games too. But with them all becoming bloated monstrosities with poor balance and worse AI, I don't even really pay attention to them anymore.)

 

[Tychusfindlay919]

Needs dll release. That will be the most gigantic "breath of fresh life" into the game in the years to come.

 

[Tychusfindlay919]

Doomed ? Yes I think it will be unless Firaxis put more development resource in it again.

Stability is still going down from what I can see, and so far the current development process prevents any overhaul of flawed core mechanisms.

And once they stop development the game will be doomed to stay flawed, unless they release the source code later.

civ2 to civ5 survived the end of the development cycle and are still played today, for various reasons*, I don't see that future for civ6 once civ7 will have matured a bit. That doesn't mean civ6 is a commercial failure, it's the opposite, and I suppose civ7 will be an even greater success, being designed to be a consumable like some other game franchise, everyone moving to the latest iteration when it's out.

*modding is more accessible in civ2 and civ3 and deeper in civ4 and civ5, while IMO civ6 modding is at civ2 level (which is not a bad comparaison, especially if you ponder the graphic engine) but with a much harder learning curve.

Stability is awful on the latest patch. I can't even play a game without constant crashing... I hate it. I don't want have to go through the stupid hassle of trying to see if it's a mod issue, launcher issue, whatever issue (And I don't have a whole lot of mods, and the many I do are mostly small scale mods that do little but update numbers for the most part). It's just tiresome.

I'm just not going to touch civ6 until dll is released or a few post april patches makes the game less crashy.

 

[Tychusfindlay919]

Nice to finally meet someone else who is critical of the climate stuff of GS. And honestly, I don't think it's just a design failure, but also a feature of the global warming itself - how are you supposed to make a major mechanic out of the process which historically only started being relevant at the very end of 20th century? I mean, seriously. The game lasts from 4000 BC to 2050 AD. Of this, IRL global warming is a significant phenomenon on civilization level maybe since 1990s. It's basically the feature only significant in the very last era of the game, if made realistically. I honestly think climate change in civ6 is more about message and virtue signalling that anything profoundly impacting the gameplay. I'd go even further, I consider all environmental effects of GS insignificant. They are basically a shadow of usual feature of other such games, random events. Few random events per game is not something profoundly impacting the gameplay, it's more of a flavour thing (God these games need random events and such dynamic processes so desperately). And again, it's reflected by the reality itself - tell me, how many cases do you know of volcanoes ending civilizations, besides one moderately sized city of Pompeii and Minoans? I won't even comment on the presence of blizzards and tornadoes on the scale of centuries and continents, cause that's just stupid. Global - sized imperial - scaled game shouldn't follow such micro events, but here we are.

Climate has been very influential in the world history, but in much more subtle way: dynamic changes of regional patterns of climate in the background. You know: small ice ages, climate optimums, centuries lasting droughts, desertification. Such things were very interesting and influential. They had their impact on the collapse of Maya, rise and fall of Andean civilisations, North American natives, history of Sahara, fall of Rome, Migrations of Peoples, early modern European economy etc. Now if something like that has been happening and you were forced to adapt to that, that would be very interesting. You don't get perfect, predictable, fertile area forever - in one age yields may drop for you, slightly, but enough to cause a deficit and crisis. This way global warming could be an influential mechanic in the information era. Of course that would be too deep for this game so it could never be in.

Don't get me wrong, it is nice for the game to have an occasional volcano and moderately important global warming. But those are small micro features, third tier of importance for the global strategy.

Gunna sound weird. But I used to play starcraft 2 arcade games religiously. The SC2 Arcade was essentially a place where people could make and publish games using Blizzards map creator (which had assets from Warcraft 3 and SC2 and all of the stuff in sc2 that didn't make it in the published game. Blizzard gave us EVERYTHING to do with as we pleased). And there was this one game called Eras Zombie Invasion.

It's basically like CIV 6 zombie mode ---> but an RTS. The players played as one of several European countries and had to work together to eliminate the zombie bases that otherwise kept spawning stronger and stronger zombies. You started off in a sort of classical era and advanced into modernity just like civ. There were all sorts of mechanics present in this 2012ish-onwards little arcade game: random events (economic boons, economic depressions, outbreaks, boss events, you name it, it had it), technological progression that felt seriously impactful, country unique active abilities with tremendous cooldowns that had unique benefits AND DOWNSIDES that you had to coordinate with others for proper timing to use, warring with belligerent allied states (if someone trolled or whatever), etc.

ALL OF THIS WAS IN A SMALL ARCADE GAME. Blizzard just threw its map creator and practically ALL of its assets at the fanbase, and they were able, years before civ 6 NFP came out, to create one of the most complete and exciting RTS-style grand strategy games I had ever played. And one of the biggest reasons why the game had SO MUCH REPLAYABILITY was RANDOM EVENTS.

Now I get that some people hate RNG. Sometimes it can feel like the most unfair crap in the world. But when something is so monotonous and predictable, that is truly the WORST thing you could imagine for replayability of a game. There needs to be impactful random events that make sense. This little starcraft 2 arcade game that Blizzard had nothing to do with kept thousands of people coming back again and again to play it, and the games usually lasted anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 or so hours. Sometimes you get instawiped and sometimes you get intense, back and forth battling with reclamation of lost lands and whatnot. Civ needs this so bad, if nothing else, it needs this as an option.

It's too freaking predictable. It's too monotonous. Everyone I know, including myself, loves the first 100 turns of this game. After that, what a snoozefest. And sometimes the first 100 turns are frustrating as hell, and sometimes I feel like a God. But that's ok. Because it's relatable to life: there are so many things out of our control. We can influence it and get better, but we can never be omniscient like we can in civ6. There needs to be RNG. There has to be RNG. And it needs to be seriously impactful. Why not introduce random economic depressions and boons? Why not introduce plague outbreaks that can spread or be contained that nuke population centers? Introduce things to mitigate these effects sure, but they have to be there or the game just gets boring. Why do countries only have passive benefits/downsides? Why not give countries active abilities unique to them with long cooldowns or costs or whatever that reward timing, preparation, etc.

These are FUN aspects of micromanagement. And on that note, I can't forget that in the aforementioned little starcraft 2 arcade game, it had all the mechanics of base starcraft 2: I can set production queues so I don't have to micromanage EVERY little decision, I can give commands to multiple units at once (of course civ with 1UPT and turn-based nature you can't do that, but there's probably a middle ground firaxis or a modder with dll can reach to make unit management less tedious), I have clear and easy to see hotkeys that allow me to control multiple buildings or units at once (why can't civ add something like group hotkeys for cities? I can have as a huge Rome cities dedicated mostly to military production, settler production, etc., though production queues would also fix this crappy micromanagement system), etc.

It's sad to see what civ6 could be and what it isn't. It's double sad to see games much older than it and with much less resources put into development outmatch it in MULTIPLE ways.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Gunna sound weird. But I used to play starcraft 2 arcade games religiously. The SC2 Arcade was essentially a place where people could make and publish games using Blizzards map creator (which had assets from Warcraft 3 and SC2 and all of the stuff in sc2 that didn't make it in the published game. Blizzard gave us EVERYTHING to do with as we pleased). And there was this one game called Eras Zombie Invasion.

It's basically like CIV 6 zombie mode ---> but an RTS. The players played as one of several European countries and had to work together to eliminate the zombie bases that otherwise kept spawning stronger and stronger zombies. You started off in a sort of classical era and advanced into modernity just like civ. There were all sorts of mechanics present in this 2012ish-onwards little arcade game: random events (economic boons, economic depressions, outbreaks, boss events, you name it, it had it), technological progression that felt seriously impactful, country unique active abilities with tremendous cooldowns that had unique benefits AND DOWNSIDES that you had to coordinate with others for proper timing to use, warring with belligerent allied states (if someone trolled or whatever), etc.

ALL OF THIS WAS IN A SMALL ARCADE GAME. Blizzard just threw its map creator and practically ALL of its assets at the fanbase, and they were able, years before civ 6 NFP came out, to create one of the most complete and exciting RTS-style grand strategy games I had ever played. And one of the biggest reasons why the game had SO MUCH REPLAYABILITY was RANDOM EVENTS.

Now I get that some people hate RNG. Sometimes it can feel like the most unfair crap in the world. But when something is so monotonous and predictable, that is truly the WORST thing you could imagine for replayability of a game. There needs to be impactful random events that make sense. This little starcraft 2 arcade game that Blizzard had nothing to do with kept thousands of people coming back again and again to play it, and the games usually lasted anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 or so hours. Sometimes you get instawiped and sometimes you get intense, back and forth battling with reclamation of lost lands and whatnot. Civ needs this so bad, if nothing else, it needs this as an option.

It's too freaking predictable. It's too monotonous. Everyone I know, including myself, loves the first 100 turns of this game. After that, what a snoozefest. And sometimes the first 100 turns are frustrating as hell, and sometimes I feel like a God. But that's ok. Because it's relatable to life: there are so many things out of our control. We can influence it and get better, but we can never be omniscient like we can in civ6. There needs to be RNG. There has to be RNG. And it needs to be seriously impactful. Why not introduce random economic depressions and boons? Why not introduce plague outbreaks that can spread or be contained that nuke population centers? Introduce things to mitigate these effects sure, but they have to be there or the game just gets boring. Why do countries only have passive benefits/downsides? Why not give countries active abilities unique to them with long cooldowns or costs or whatever that reward timing, preparation, etc.

These are FUN aspects of micromanagement. And on that note, I can't forget that in the aforementioned little starcraft 2 arcade game, it had all the mechanics of base starcraft 2: I can set production queues so I don't have to micromanage EVERY little decision, I can give commands to multiple units at once (of course civ with 1UPT and turn-based nature you can't do that, but there's probably a middle ground firaxis or a modder with dll can reach to make unit management less tedious), I have clear and easy to see hotkeys that allow me to control multiple buildings or units at once (why can't civ add something like group hotkeys for cities? I can have as a huge Rome cities dedicated mostly to military production, settler production, etc., though production queues would also fix this crappy micromanagement system), etc.

It's sad to see what civ6 could be and what it isn't. It's double sad to see games much older than it and with much less resources put into development outmatch it in MULTIPLE ways.

This sums up my feelings perfectly. There are some great concepts and ideas in this game, truly the seeds of greatness that is often let down by terrible execution

This game is the most fun for me when I basically end it as soon as my score is as high as the next two civs combined, which is usually three or so eras in.