Burned by Civ5 -- Give me a reason

[Ryan F. Mercer]

I loved Civ4 and when Civ5 came out, I was at the forefront of modding for it: BuildingResources, SaveUtils, ShareData, and ModList. I can't say I ever played the game itself, because it was so thoroughly flawed. But neither is my contempt directed at the game. The problem was, without doubt, Firaxis itself. When I heard there was going to be a 6, my first question was, "who's making it?"

So of course I'm interested, but I'm currently cringing. Can anyone give me a compelling reason to think this iteration is going to be different? Can anyone make me believe that Firaxis has gotten its proverbial head out of its past?

 

[pholtz]

I agree V had problems. But if you never played it you missed something. The expansions fixed most of the problems and made a great game. I couldn't go back to IV religion after I experienced V. And the new culture victory made a combination combat/culture victory fun.

Vanilla V was missing many of the things IV had with its expansions. This was it's main problem, it was missing many features. VI however has most of what V had, has brought some of IV ideas into VI, and changed both IV and V ideas into new and different things. So, imho, I believe VI will be worth it from the start. No it won't be without faults, no game this complex can be launched without problems, but it will be fun finding the problems and seeing them get fixed.

The other problem with V, it's mod problems I hope will be fixed with VI as it's a new engine. I don't expect all the tools to be available at the start, but I have hope that they will be released without too much delay.

 

[Ramkhamhaeng]

A nice article would be: http://www.sullla.com/Civ6/positivethoughts.html

I would suggest to give the players two or three weeks to check out the new game. Obviously it is no new engine, but an updated version of Civ5/CivBE (yeah, this game is already forgotten?!)
and I am still concerned they had learnd their lessons.

 

[Dale]

Can anyone give me a compelling reason to think this iteration is going to be different?

No.

Instead of whining to us, grow up and make up your own mind from the hundreds of lets plays and the incoming player reviews this weekend. There was no need for this "look at me" post.

 

[Leyrann]

A nice article would be: http://www.sullla.com/Civ6/positivethoughts.html

I would suggest to give the players two or three weeks to check out the new game. Obviously it is no new engine, but an updated version of Civ5/CivBE (yeah, this game is already forgotten?!)
and I am still concerned they had learnd their lessons.

It is a new engine. The devs have said this themselves, and to be fair I do not understand where the idea of many people comes from that it is the same engine as Civ5.

I did hear a few things about Civ5 and Civ6 obviously being the same engine, but you can't deduce the engine from what it looks like. Don't belive me? Have a look at this post. http://www.gamesradar.com/remarkably-different-games-were-made-same-game-engine/ (click on "next page" for the examples)

 

[wiggawuu]

Technically it a new engine, but it doesn't look/feel like one at all.

 

[anandus]

When I heard there was going to be a 6, my first question was, "who's making it?"

[...]
Can anyone make me believe that Firaxis has gotten its proverbial head out of its past?

The lead designer is Ed Beach. He didn't design Civ 5, but did design the expansions, with which he, in my opinion, turned a mediocre game into a very good game.
That alone, for me, was enough reason to trust that this game would be alright.

 

[Lord Shadow]

It is a new engine, and you can tell by the file structure and how each XML is organized, for instance.

The UI is somewhat reminiscent of Civ5's, which I guess is the reason some might think it's the same engine.

 

[8BitArchitect]

No.

Instead of whining to us, grow up and make up your own mind from the hundreds of lets plays and the incoming player reviews this weekend. There was no need for this "look at me" post.

He's not the only one that was disappointed with V. I think that it's a fair thing to bring up for discussion. In fact, I think modding was by far the weakest area of V at all points in it's lifespan, so this is a good topic to bring up, even if it's perhaps the wrong forum.

 

[Ryan F. Mercer]

He's not the only one that was disappointed with V. I think that it's a fair thing to bring up for discussion. In fact, I think modding was by far the weakest area of V at all points in it's lifespan, so this is a good topic to bring up, even if it's perhaps the wrong forum.

Thank you for recognizing this point. What Dale doesn't seem to appreciate, is the hundreds of hours I put into modding Civ5, not for my benefit, but specifically for the benefit of the modding community. All of my mods were utility mods for other modders. So when I ask how things have changed, I'm also inquiring about the nature of the current community, which is of course, influenced by how this forum is run. People like Dale don't impress me because they whine about others whining, which is really very silly. Comments like that one don't reflect well on the community and give me pause. Comments like yours remind me that there may in fact be fertile ground here. If I've placed this in the wrong forum, then I apologize, but this seemed the appropriate place.

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

To be honest, having spent quite a bit of time already with Civ6's internals, I cannot currently give a compelling reason why Civ6's modding situation is going to be any different from Civ5's. The SQL data itself is reorganized, and it looks like Firaxis finally realized that it's a good idea to use interfaces (or pure virtual classes in C++ speak), so there's no need to worry about inconsistencies across types of modifiers (e.g. whether it comes from a building vs. a tech vs. a UA vs. something else) when doing pure SQL/XML modding.

However, the Lua is just as cluttered as before. It's been more than a week since release and there is still no news on the SDK (even Civ5 had the SDK released a week after release), even as people can already buy the Aztec DLC. I'm having serious doubts that the DLL source code will be released anytime soon, and that's what really killed overhaul mods for Civ5 (there was no source code when experienced Civ4 modders were trying things out, and by the time it was released, all of those experienced modders had run out of steam with Civ5 and either went back to Civ4 or stopped modding entirely).

That said, I don't necessarily think this is mainly Firaxis' fault this time around. Rather, it stinks of 2K's involvement, especially regarding the absence of modding tools.