Which was good in 6 till the last patch...
Added to 5 in an expansion...
I think that (Wonders and Great people are also more powerful and game-changing) good as a much greater variety in 6 comes from civilization & leader abilities.
Sorry but I beg to differ. Diplomacy in Civ 6 was never a game changing factor and still isn't. If it's not powerful to make a significant difference it's not good. The fact that the world congress does not exist limits its potency even more. The penalties for friendship as well as the pervasiveness and profitability of war makes it quite useless. Perhaps you could elaborate on what aspects of it cause you to conclude it was good before and explain why those benefits overshadow the downsides. What benefit of befriending an AI could one possibly have that outweighs the benefit of conquering it?
Every iteration of a game is expected to be complete by itself and better than its predecessors. It is not fair for people who paid good money for the game to expect it to be good only after expansions are released. Civ 6 made a terrible mistake of attempting to revamp and fix things that were already good by removing them entirely.
With regards to why you think it good that Wonders and Great People are weaker. Since when was
variety mutually exclusive to the strength of Wonders and Great People? Who dictated that they have to be withered down to bring out the strengths of unique civilizations? Perhaps you should explain why powerful Wonders and Great People destroy variety in the game when quite honestly they only brought about variety and excitment in Civ 5.
In fact, in order for varieties of strategy to exist the elements of the game that lend credibility to those strategies must all hold equal power, else only the most powerful ones would be even considered for playing. Case in point; warmongering. If warmongering is so successful now, there must be other strategies that can achieve the same efficient results, or else that ends up as the only efficient way to play which inevitably leads to boredom.
Its the "Possible strategies are more restricted" that I struggle with going back. I end up taking the same old routes. I think because its easier to win in 6 I find myself drifting into all types of weird scenarios. V is a much more polished game as it should be and the big loss for me is the ideologies and UN... as for culture, sure the culture bombs are a different end mechanic that is nice but otherwise I do not feel V's culture victory is more advanced, just different.
I preferred the civics trees then to now, much more focused and a personality enhancer.
City States are far more powerful now and I did find them a bit unimportant in V.
I also find the walls and combat mechanics are more interesting now.
I quite like they way goody huts are not as strong, I used to hunt for them in 5 like a madman, in 6 they are nice but I am not going to change my strat for them.
I did enjoy V religion a lot more though and yeah those wonders are wonderful., so much so that you end up getting loads in one city which felt strange.
Its weird, I have now played as much VI as V in a much shorter time and I find V stale but still enjoy VI
I play a game of V every now and then just because I miss the graphics.
Well I think both Civ 5 and 6 have a strong lack of variety in strategy. They just both favor that one thing that everybody has no choice but to go for if they wanted efficient play. Trying out other strategies beside conquering and non-stop expansion in Civ 6 is like playing liberty and piety in Civ 5. Nice to play but just too weak. I have no idea why they like to limit gameplay that way.
I'll have to correct myself on the Cultural Victory part I was really referring to Cultural Power as a whole that was also expressed in the form of ideology pressure. I thought it was really cool that you could engage in a power struggle without force of arms. The same can be said of embargoes and luxury bans made possible through the world congress. The fact that you could use religion and the world congress to boost cultural victories was awesome as well.
It is very true that City States are far more interesting in Civ 6 but many of them are just intentionally plain underpowered and the AI has a terrible habit of just eating them up plus they're too random to be a staple in any strategy...unreliable things really just can't be counted on unfortunately.
