Thus I posit that the only way for efficient play to not be boring is if there are multiple efficient ways which can only be facilitated by first recognizing that something is over-centralizing the game and needs to be fixed. Mastery of a game is a strong driving force and fun factor behind why a large percentage of gamer types play a game repeatedly and unfortunately; "you can always play differently for fun" often comes into conflict with that specific goal of mastery. Why do we include fastest victories times in the hall of fame? Mastery. Why do we compare strategies? Mastery. Why do we disdain certain playing styles? Mastery. The community recognizes and approves mastery and it's going to difficult to curb that instinctive desire.
Lets not go too far down the rabbit hole regarding efficiency - we already know that you do not like games that have any randomness that might undermine your ability to optimize. Fair enough I guess, but many of us do like strategy games to reflect the real world -at least to a degree- where unaccounted for events are always throwing spanners into the best laid plans. We see it as -when done right- an immersive way to make the game both harder and more varied.
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 the potency of Civ 6 even more.
I'm glad they scrapped the world congress as it felt to me like it was too one dimensional. Maybe I played Greece too much, but the diplomatic victory in it wasn't interesting regardless. If it makes you feel better, I don't think the dip victory in IV was any better really. I hope they bring it back with an expansion, but really put some huge thought into how to make it layered and interesting (I'd like to see civs fighting for control of multiple world bodies, who get delegates in different ways and mastering a majority of the world bodies would give you that victory. Bygones).
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?
Because I play Civ in the first place for the immersiveness of the experience. In that I want to have friends and allies as countries do in the real world, not just enemies. This goes back to one of those arguments that has played out in V and VI as the game being described as more "gamey" by many. Of course any game should give you things to overcome...but I did prefer to be able to do that with a long time ally like in IV. I enjoyed building a good relationship. In V that became almost impossible, and while I know they softened it later, it never lost it's initial gameyness. VI overcame the flaws of V in this regard by making leaders more predictable (but not totally - the 2nd agenda is great..though I'd like to see that improved on still...made deeper somehow) so that players could try to build a relationship.
It could do with some more work...some more nuancing; but it is vastly superior to the inevitably pointless diplomacy in V.
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.
In your opinion.
Many of us who loved IV, were very underwhelmed with V, and found a lot of comfort with changes that VI introduced. There's no point going over everything again, but I will say that in my opinion V is the most tedious release in the series with more turns than ever involving no real decisions being made. VI on the other hand...
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.
I'm not saying that it
had to be that way. I do prefer the less bland Civs in VI to the very bland ones in V (and esp the invigorated leaders!). I just offered that up, that as some have criticised the Civs abilities as all being too OP, that maybe the devs had foreseen that and felt it was better to tone down a different aspect of the game; to balance out the increase of variability in civs and leaders.
I do like that it's harder to build many wonders in VI, meaning that they get spread round a bit more. And that they are a gamble - if you don't build it first, the loss is significant. But had they decided to do them a bit differently, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
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.
Sure. And more work needs to be done on that. But I'm glad they're trying things like removing the immediate bombarding walls that allowed players to plonk down a city then not bother defending it. That removal has maybe made it too easy to be aggressive in another way; yet I hope they find a solution that isn't the extreme of the immediate bombarding walls.
Well I think both Civ 5 and 6 have a strong lack of variety of 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 don't think they do limit game play that way...well not deliberately. Civ tries to do something much more ambitious than any other game series; and I think the depth of it's boundaries, while trying to stay a little bit like real history, makes it hard to do balance well. I think it is fair that we ask for more in this regard.
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.
Yeah, I'd agree with what you're saying - I love detail like that too. I think that the lux bans were a bit too arbitrary in V; but something along those lines is great to have in the game, and I hope to see it return with a revamped diplomatic victory.
I want the game to have interesting options of interacting with the AI that isn't just blunt force!
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.
Yeah, I think a few CS could do with a bit of sprucing up. And the interaction between them and the AI civs needs work. I dunno...maybe they need to figure out a different way for them to work unit wise....as of course they will always be vulnerable with only the one production line (V is great with gifting units!)
But yeah, your last sentence is -imho- a throw back to your dislike of randomness. Fair, but not shared by everyone.
