Bye for now, Civ 6 - It was nice getting to know you

[Drakarska]

I think by resource he means things like commerce or hammers.

BTW, "specialization" does not mean "run specialists". Specialization is, for example, when you find that early game spot with pigs and six grassland hills, so you grow it to size 7 and use it to produce all of your military (and maybe wonders if applicable) for half the game or more -- and, in particular, it does not work that other food resource in the BFC (except to grow to size 7) nor any of the cottageable terrain around it, because you're better off making another city to work those tiles.

The thing I find completely mystifying is that Phil thinks it's a bad thing that a library is not very useful in that city.

It's essentially the same thing. Using your example of pigs and 6 grass hills, I would probably spec that city as my HE/GG, especially if any of those hills popped a strat rez. If nothing else came out of the cities BFC, then yes, I would prioritize ENG's and prod based buildings just so I could have an additional prod city to assist in pumping out units/wonders. Hmnn, disagree with the 2nd part of your statement, as any additional food resource in a cities BFC is always a plus, whether for trade/growth, or health purposes. As for lack of cottages, hybrid economy is always better, and not every city needs to have any cottages. You'll want cottage placement priority along rivers or fresh water sources anyway.

 

[Drakarska]

Ohh, but you certainly did pay in IV, in large amounts you did. Anarchy turns (especially mid to late game) could easily translate in huge amounts of gold. Even in the early stages the anarchy loss impacts exponentially into the rest of the game. You should wisely restrict civic change as much as you can.

No kidding. Try a giant map at marathon speed during the REN era for a civic change. See how bad that hurts

 

[PhilBowles]

So... Civ 4 fails at being a strategy game because you get better results by making choices that support each other, and worse results when they don't?

...

I can't even guess at your line of thought anymore. (unless your line of thought is just being contradictory)

It's not that it 'fails' at being a strategy game, it's that it offers little of interest when the choice is as blatantly obvious as it is in Civ IV. It's less a question of getting better results by making choices that support one another than of getting no results if you don't. It's a bit like playing a chess game with 'Show Hint' as an option at every turn. Of course the game as a whole isn't that simplistic - this is in reference mainly to the core buildings, things like Wonders and a few buildings that provide multiple bonuses make it something of an oversimplification to boil the game down to this. But the point of focusing on that specific element was to try and explain one of the areas where I feel it failed.

Ok, I'm trying to wrap my head around the point your trying to make here Phil. Because honestly, I'm not quite grasping it.
First off, you wouldn't be specializing every city in the same way, as city spec is map/resource dependent, and you would want to tailor your specialist cities to reflect what the map is going to give you.

I'm talking specifically about the way Civ IV's building system was designed, and possibly I wasn't clear about that. The precise details of a given city location are irrelevant to whether you stack +X% culture buildings in cities producing culture or do the same for science buildings or production buildings - the location just defines which building chain you'll focus on.

Specialization is, for example, when you find that early game spot with pigs and six grassland hills, so you grow it to size 7 and use it to produce all of your military (and maybe wonders if applicable) for half the game or more -- and, in particular, it does not work that other food resource in the BFC (except to grow to size 7) nor any of the cottageable terrain around it, because you're better off making another city to work those tiles.

The thing I find completely mystifying is that Phil thinks it's a bad thing that a library is not very useful in that city.

It's a bad thing if you want to think of cities as actual cities in a civilisation rather than production centres for resource X in a game; the point I made here was one about character. Birmingham is an industrial city - that doesn't imply it doesn't have libraries or indeed a university.

Obviously Civ games are minimally realistic, but there's a definite middle ground between Civ IV's overtly gamey mechanics (one reason I could never stand that game's addition of Great People or unit promotions to the series, though I've grudgingly accepted I've lost that battle over subsequent iterations of the game) and a simulation. One of the things that has always puzzled me is that Civ IV, possibly the most mechanically explicitly "game-focused" entry in the series - at least prior to BNW - is often cited as being the one that feels most rather than least like leading a civilisation.

I'd prefer overall to go back to basics and identify the core parts of the 'Civilization' name we want the game's cities to represent. Such things as Great People Farms really don't qualify - they reflect nothing that has ever existed in reality, even as an abstraction. Agricultural centres whose function is to support the remainder of the empire don't really exist (not a Civ IV issue - they haven't really existed since Civ I, the only iteration prior to Civ V where food could be traded). Trade routes in the recent game approximate something similar, but their bland handling in Civ VI and the fact that in both Civ V and Civ VI all domestic trade routes give a fixed food bonus regardless of a city's own food output or specialisation don't incentivise making 'food cities' for any reason other than boosting population growth.

This will continue to happen when your points contradict, or are seemingly counterargumented, with how the addressed mechanic plays Phil:
"Forests don´t factor in health considerations" Well look.. bla bla blahh..

I think this is a comprehension issue as multiple people understood what I was driving at - the point that the fact that forests nominally affected health did not guide your strategic choices regarding when to remove them. If forests didn't have any association with health at all, there would have been no point even mentioning them in a discussion of health. The point was simply that the only real impact of terrain management on health is that health rewarded what you were going to do anyway (keeping forests to remove later, removing jungle, improving resources).

"Health is irrelevant in the early game" Well, keep in mind that.. blah blah..

At least one and I think multiple people came out in support of this very point, so I'm not sure what you're driving at.

"City specialization and health add little or no strategy at all" Well.. so on so forth

That's not quite correctly characterising my point - what I said was that the local micromanagement elements of health added little strategy, and nothing reiterating how the mechanics work has offered a real counterargument to that point. On the contrary a lot of people have emphasised all the global ways in which health is managed, which only supports my point.

The need for a system responds to the choice to represent some aspect of the game's frame or realm into the game itself. It seems as if you have some preconcieved idea of what functions civ IV needs, instead of accepting what the game has to offer, in functionality terms.

Yes, I'm opposed in principle to cluttering a game with systems that represent X for no better reason than that X can be represented. Game design should start from the basic premise of asking what the overall game represents, and should ensure that those systems fundamentally serve the goal of providing the player with a variety of tools with which to win the game - which ultimately is the point of playing it. A game should not start from the point - as Civ IV seemed to, and as BNW later did with its tourism and ideology systems - of saying "We want health in this game - how do we implement it?"

The names and concepts are all fundamentally window dressing - we can call essentially the same system health in one game or housing in another, and hey presto they're representing two somewhat different things. We can set a game with identical or near-identical mechanics on Earth and give the factions historical names and we're looking at a historical game, or we can put it on Alpha Centauri with invented factions and have a sci-fi colonisation game. If you want a health system, just name one of the existing mechanics in a thematically appropriate way if you can't find a new one that adds depth instead of clutter.

Slavery might be as well not necessary to a civ game, offering slightly different bonuses and maluse relative to other existing production mechanics, thus it might not make for a worthwhile or strategic addition!!!

Slavery's almost the perfect example of my point above. It was a mechanically interesting, strategically useful game tool that justified its place in the game on that basis ... but was saddled with an unfortunately anachronistic name that conjured up Hollywood images of pharaohs whipping slaves to death to build pyramids rather than reflecting the way slavery ever worked in reality, at least at the sort of scales and time periods it was intended to represent. The mechanic was welcome but it could have done with a less immersion-breaking name - and could have been given one without any cost to gameplay.

 

[MyOtherName]

It's not that it 'fails' at being a strategy game, it's that it offers little of interest when the choice is as blatantly obvious as it is in Civ IV. It's less a question of getting better results by making choices that support one another than of getting no results if you don't. It's a bit like playing a chess game with 'Show Hint' as an option at every turn.

If I were to use the analogy, it looks more like you're criticizing chess because the only way to capture pieces in chess is by the obvious mechanism of moving your piece onto theirs. (excepting en passant)

The strategy of the game is not in figuring out what game mechanic allows you to capture the piece -- it's in knowing when you want to capture pieces and maneuvering the game into a position where it's useful to do so.

It's a bad thing if you want to think of cities as actual cities in a civilisation rather than production centres for resource X in a game; the point I made here was one about character. Birmingham is an industrial city - that doesn't imply it doesn't have libraries or indeed a university.

If your point is "I don't like the role playing aspects of Civ 4", then I don't care; I know some people look for that, but I'm not one of them. And you should make that clearer; IMO you sound like you're saying "I don't like the gameplay of Civ 4 as a strategy game", and I bet most of the past few pages would have gone differently if your intent was more clear.

 

[Tatran]

Why are you wasting your time on this guy? He came with the same crap (bashing civ4) when civ5 was released.
If he's too blind to see why civ4 is clearly the godlike game and civ5 was not and probably civ6 also not, then that's his problem.
Even the older civ iterations + smac were godlike games, because it had macromanagement. (sliders, high council, trade system, grouping your units, no meaningless micromanagement, no 1 upt, the player knows what's going on in the game, empire size, etc.)
A godlike ruler doesn't care about peanuts, tedious repetitive actions or other useless info spamming every turn.
With some drastic changes civ6 can become a godlike game as the first 4 iterations (civ5 is lost), if not it will be a disappointment forever and will probably mean the end of the whole series.

 

[Drakarska]

Because he is entitled to his opinion Tat's, just like everyone else on these boards. Most of his arguments are well laid out, but colored by his own personal opinion, and some contradict the point he is trying to make. I am merely seeking clarity as to why he see's the last 3 Civ iterations in the manner he does, especially where BTS is being used in comparison to BNW and Civ 6. Not to mention his viewpoint concerning the aspect of strategy games.

 

[PhilBowles]

If I were to use the analogy, it looks more like you're criticizing chess because the only way to capture pieces in chess is by the obvious mechanism of moving your piece onto theirs. (excepting en passant)

The strategy of the game is not in figuring out what game mechanic allows you to capture the piece -- it's in knowing when you want to capture pieces and maneuvering the game into a position where it's useful to do so.

That seems a considerably poorer analogy because knowing when/whether you want to build a +X% building of type A in a city producing resource type A is not a decision that is ever going to vary with strategic context - you aren't going to decide your production city needs a library in one situation and not in another

City placement is closer, but that's a separate issue and I think some of the confusion here is because people are conflating the two, perhaps because they're used to seeing them as linked. The issue I'm trying to describe with the building system is that it amounts for the most part to make-work once you have already made the strategic choice - it's just a matter of teching up to the next tier, RTS-style.

You don't even need to resort to analogy - the exact system was used in Rome 2 pre-Emperor Edition and, stripped of any decisions about city placement (which don't apply in Total War games) or any ability to customise via Wonders etc., it was widely recognised and widely decried for its strategically simplistic, cut-and-paste approach to building provinces.

If your point is "I don't like the role playing aspects of Civ 4", then I don't care; I know some people look for that, but I'm not one of them. And you should make that clearer; IMO you sound like you're saying "I don't like the gameplay of Civ 4 as a strategy game", and I bet most of the past few pages would have gone differently if your intent was more clear.

I'm responding to multiple points in a single post, some about gameplay and some in response to comments about the game's 'character'. A superficial tendency for people here to see everything in binary terms is something I've noticed (see Tatran's post below) that doesn't aid discussion.

Civ IV had problems as a strategy game, and aside from the actual strategic issues was mechanically clunky almost across the board - that doesn't mean I didn't like its gameplay overall. Unfortunately comments like Tatran's, as much as they sound like over-the-top parodies of Civ IV fanboys, actually appear to be genuinely held opinions that won't brook even mild disagreement with the party line.

It doesn't follow that because X was generally a good strategy game, every system was of deep strategic relevance - and the point Tatran mischaracterises now is indeed much the same as the one that was mischaracterised in Civ V: Civ V was a mechanically more elegant game whose systems were more directly functional with less extraneous clutter like health. Unfortunately the fundamental gameplay wasn't as strong, and while its intent was noble in offering strategic choices between such approaches as 'wide vs. tall', it was too heavy-handed with them - as with Civ IV's building choices, the choices along each path were too stereotyped and binary.

Why are you wasting your time on this guy? He came with the same crap (bashing civ4) when civ5 was released.
If he's too blind to see why civ4 is clearly the godlike game and civ5 was not and probably civ6 also not, then that's his problem.
Even the older civ iterations + smac were godlike games, because it had macromanagement. (sliders, high council, trade system, grouping your units, no meaningless micromanagement, no 1 upt, the player knows what's going on in the game, empire size, etc.)

I'm presuming from context you mean 'godlike game' to refer to the scale of management (as in a god sim)?

A godlike ruler doesn't care about peanuts, tedious repetitive actions or other useless info spamming every turn.

And yet Civ IV was crammed with exactly this sort of city-scale micromanagement where other entries weren't to the same degree - that's precisely the point I've made about systems like health, micromanaging cities' population points etc. I'm afraid I'm not quite seeing the point being made here, since from your tone it doesn't seem you're intending to support what I've been saying.

As for units, 1UPT can result in tediously repetitive unit movement - but not tediously repetitive unit production from build queues that regularly needed refreshing or changing to build a different unit type, as with older games. The Civ series as a whole would benefit from ditching the idea of fine-scale unit types and just creating generic army units, but the major part of the fan base wants more and more detail, more and more minor distinctions between units, and unique units. No way of handling that demand is going to be light on micromanagement. Similarly a true godsim approach wouldn't have the ruler caring about building granaries or libraries or deciding where to make basic improvements in the landscape, but Civ has never really been a "godlike game" in the way you appear to mean. That's the preserve of Paradoxesque 'grand strategy games'.

With some drastic changes civ6 can become a godlike game as the first 4 iterations (civ5 is lost), if not it will be a disappointment forever and will probably mean the end of the whole series.

Since you're using 'godlike' to refer to game scale rather than quality, why is a version of the game that isn't "godlike" necessarily a disappointment? Civ is first and foremost a computerised board game - Avalon Hill's Civilization inspired its design and Civ I had a little more than Axis and Allies level of detail. It had a shorter rulebook than half of Fantasy Flight's catalogue. The further Civ has moved from that and cluttered its systems the less it's felt like Civ to me, with Civ IV the most drastic departure. Its heritage, ultimately, is games whose only sense of making your cities and units feel as though they belong to the same empire is the colour of the pieces (as indeed was the case in Civ I - sometimes I still miss the coloured square unit and city markers).

Because he is entitled to his opinion Tat's, just like everyone else on these boards. Most of his arguments are well laid out, but colored by his own personal opinion, and some contradict the point he is trying to make. I am merely seeking clarity as to why he see's the last 3 Civ iterations in the manner he does, especially where BTS is being used in comparison to BNW and Civ 6. Not to mention his viewpoint concerning the aspect of strategy games.

I haven't been drawing any direct comparisons between recent Civ iterations other than specific mechanics that are inherited or otherwise comparable across versions. I don't even subscribe to the idea that there's the equivalence between Civ V and Civ VI, exclusive of Civ IV, that you seem to (except, again, in terms of certain shared mechanics) save in a comment above summaring one of my earlier arguments from a different thread.

 

[MyOtherName]

That seems a considerably poorer analogy because knowing when/whether you want to build a +X% building of type A in a city producing resource type A is not a decision that is ever going to vary with strategic context - you aren't going to decide your production city needs a library in one situation and not in another

Some reasons a production city might want a library:

• To run scientists to deal with a pre-alphabet economic crash. (or post-alphabet in vanilla, whether wanting to run scientists or building research)
• The city has picked up enough commerce from tiles and trade routes to make it worthwhile
• To give cultural pressure
• As a prerequisite for a university, to meet the Oxford requirements
• The city is working all of its good production tiles and still has surplus food to run specialists
• The city is working all of its good production tiles and still had surplus food so you built cottages
• You built cottages because you have enough hammers that you get better results if some production cities don't have a single-minded focus
• You built cottages because you're transitioning from a hammer heavy early game to a long term economic development

Also, reasons not to build a library in a commerce city:

• You need to build a granary, for growth
• Forge first will make your overall development faster
• You're better off working more cottages than hammer tiles
• You'll get a better return by building buildings to break a health/happiness cap to work more cottages
• Military more important
• Low slider

(P.S. whether or not you capture pieces in chess is by moving your piece onto theirs doesn't change with strategic context)

 

[ThERat]

Thought this thread was about bye to civ6. It seems to be a civ4 versus civ5/6 thread. We had that discussions plenty times.

 

[Ricci]

It`s more like: "What the heck is the Phil character trying to prove?!!! Thread"


Ja! .. Civ V & VI are barely mentioned at this point. Phil`s relentlessly very elaborated answers, conclusions and ideas not matching the actual gameplay in it`s whole (mainly due to false premises I came to grasp) appear to have taken over the OP or/and any other sub thread that could have risen.

 

[PhilBowles]

Thought this thread was about bye to civ6. It seems to be a civ4 versus civ5/6 thread. We had that discussions plenty times.

That's why I've stopped responding - it began only with simple observations about issues with very specific systems in Civ IV emerging from the Civ VI commentary - and later a discussion of subjective issues of 'character' - and I'm not interested in the Civ IV obsessives pursuing me across unrelated threads because they take umbrage at the notion that there might be any flaws in the design of even a good game, or that raising those might be relevant in the context of Civ VI (the fear apparently being that if it's relevant to Civ VI to mention something Civ IV could have done better, Civ VI must be a better game - which is of course complete nonsense).

Ja! .. Civ V & VI are barely mentioned at this point. Phil`s relentlessly very elaborated answers, conclusions and ideas not matching the actual gameplay in it`s whole (mainly due to false premises I came to grasp)

Due more, on my reading, to the apparent fact that people want me to be saying something I'm not, and if I won't oblige they'll just stereotype me as having said it anyway. My comments weren't about "the gameplay as a whole", as I made clear on multiple occasions. I've been characterized as "bashing Civ IV" as though problems with the health system were the entirety of gameplay, and of drawing comparisons across the "last three iterations" with the clear implication that I'm apparently finding Civ IV lacking overall in comparison (I don't. I've pointed out on other threads that Civ IV is probably the best of the three games, albeit perhaps not by as much as many of its fans believe - while Civ VI is pretty much undeniably the worst at this stage. My post-patch experience suggests Civ VI has improved to the point where it appears it has potential rather than being Beyond Earth 2, but that's not very high praise).

Other people have stopped mentioning Civ VI, but my major contributions to this thread have been critiquing - mainly more negatively than not - Civ VI's systems - witness one post where I went into (requested) detail on the implementation of housing and amenities in Civ VI. The response to that post, aside from a "thanks for the comments on Civ VI", was an extended treatise exclusively focused on side issues I'd mentioned with Civ IV. I think you may need to look elsewhere if you're trying to find someone to blame for derailing the thread.

 

[PhilBowles]

Some reasons a production city might want a library:

• To run scientists to deal with a pre-alphabet economic crash. (or post-alphabet in vanilla, whether wanting to run scientists or building research)
• The city has picked up enough commerce from tiles and trade routes to make it worthwhile
• To give cultural pressure
• As a prerequisite for a university, to meet the Oxford requirements
• The city is working all of its good production tiles and still has surplus food to run specialists
• The city is working all of its good production tiles and still had surplus food so you built cottages
• You built cottages because you have enough hammers that you get better results if some production cities don't have a single-minded focus
• You built cottages because you're transitioning from a hammer heavy early game to a long term economic development

Also, reasons not to build a library in a commerce city:

• You need to build a granary, for growth
• Forge first will make your overall development faster
• You're better off working more cottages than hammer tiles
• You'll get a better return by building buildings to break a health/happiness cap to work more cottages
• Military more important
• Low slider

(P.S. whether or not you capture pieces in chess is by moving your piece onto theirs doesn't change with strategic context)

All fair enough - though I think more a flaw at my end in that I chose an especially poor analogy (a basic resource boost building - for the game's most important resource, no less - that also has a cultural boost) than with my point as a whole. A bank in a production city might be a better example. But as has been pointed out, this is somewhat more of a distraction from the point of this thread than had been intended.

 

[PhilBowles]

A praise and critique of Civ 6 and maybe some other thoughts.

Civ 6 is not a bad game, I just want to throw that out there so the tone of the thread isn’t to be a bashing one even though I’ll briefly explain my critique and why I may be considering playing an alternative game (most likely Civ 5) for a bit. I’ll be talking about the base game without mods though I do use mods.

Let me start with the praises and why I think Civ 6 is a good (or at least decent game) and has the potential to be better in the future.

- District System (the positive): I enjoy this innovation. It really matters to utilize the map and I like more elements of the game that become important. Also, when you construct a city with several districts the visual appeal of it looks pretty nice as you can truly see a sprawling city over multiple tiles. Mostly it’s something new and I like something new in a Civ game that distinguishes it from other Civ games. It allows you to customize cities instead of having to build things like national wonders. The cities can truly stand on their own.

I do like the visual impact, but I don't think terrain matters as much as it ought to. Too many of the adjacency bonuses overlap - from what I can tell (and the continued lack of a tooltip showing adjacency bonus types is an irritant) you build campuses when surrounded by enough mountains or rainforests (which is basically what you do with science cities in Civ V due to science boosts from observatories and jungle) and industrial districts in the places you'd build production buildings in any other Civ game. Otherwise you build pretty much whatever you want, as the other districts offer bonuses for the same basic types of terrain.

Given a result that seems to match almost exactly what you'd build in Civ V anyway, at this point the district system seems something of a missed opportunity - just a way of slowing early production.

- A clear religious path. There is a pretty clear cut religious victory condition so all the resources you invest into it can result in a victory rather than just some nice buffs.

I particularly dislike this, actually. Religion as a set of bonuses that help you towards your end game, as in Civ V or Civ IV, and potentially to disrupt a religiously-focused opponent in Civ V and Civ VI, is a good addition and not intrusive - you can take advantage of it or not as suits your strategy.

But the religious combat system is rather absurd, and while it seems uncommon that any AI can actually realistically reach a religious victory (as in almost all sessions there will be multiple AIs spamming religion at one another), having to care about a game system you otherwise don't need to interact with for no other reason that it might randomly win an opponent the game feels like very poor design. It's trying to force you to care about something because that thing isn't well-integrated into the core game; tourism has the same problem.

- Tourism/culture is pretty straight forward in terms of a win condition.

You have to be the first person I've heard say this. There was at least one thread asking how culture victory worked and expressing puzzlement at random culture wins out of nowhere. It still seems very obscure how the numbers of international tourists shown on the cultural victory screen are generated (domestic tourists appear to be a direct product of culture, but it takes detective work to find this out and since - unlike BNW - there's no way of identifying your total accumulated culture over time it's not clear how numbers of domestic tourists relate to cultural output).

My problem with the tourism system above all - aside from not having much liked it in BNW once the novelty wore off, and still disliking the name - is that tourism has exactly no game meaning. It's just a victory counter, like score. In BNW it at least interacted with the trade and ideology systems (greater cultural pressure gave greater trade rewards).

- Plenty of new leaders we never seen before which adds a nice historical dimension to the game

I generally like this for the sake of completeness, but I'd rather have leaders who are accurately portrayed rather than variety for the sake of variety. Catherine de Medici in particular, it's been pointed out by many people, really ought to be Cardinal Richelieu - who would be a very good French leader choice but happens not to hit the female leader quota.

- Multiple lenses. I love this feature

I haven't made as much use of it as I probably should have.

- Still being able to grow while building a settler.

I don't know whether I like this or not. Having workers produced without costing population took getting used to in Civ V. Spamming the map doesn't really have much of a cost, and with the Civ IV health system reintroduced not having a way to cut population actually limits your options for managing housing.

- Builders have charges and make improvements immediately

On balance I like this, but improvements turn out to be more important than you might think from the fact that your tiles have to compete for districts and Wonders as well. Three charges per builder seems low in the early game when you might not be able to afford to create a new builder per city, while the bonuses to numbers of charges are too late in the civics tree to be relevant (as you've either improved all your land or builders take almost no time to produce by that point). That may just be a case of my not optimising production to hit a new builder every time I hit 3 extra pop, however there are going to be cases where you want to improve a tile you aren't using. It can also be frustrating if you have to make new builders to repair improvements (unless you keep one around on one charge for this sole purpose).

I wonder whether the BE system (exploration rovers run out of charges, but don't vanish when they're used up and can replenish them) would work well in Civ VI.

- Getting immediate trade benefits from internal traders (i.e. you get at least 1 food and 1 production out the door instead of having to build a granary/workshop first).

I dislike this because it removes a major part of the decision-making regarding trade and doesn't reward specialising a trade city as in BNW.

- The specialist system is dead and strong great people strategies are basically dead.

I strongly dislike the loss of the specialist system - unfortunately both Civ IV and Civ V redefined specialists as existing almost purely for GP points rather than for their resource boosts, and now that district buildings fill that role specialists don't serve a purpose. I've never much cared for the Great People system since it was introduced, but ironically I actually play GP-heavy strategies in Civ VI and one of my complaints about the AI is that it appears unable to do so given how strong this seems to be. I'll nearly always take the Divine Spark pantheon, for instance, and I prioritise an early campus for the GS points. GP strategies in Civ VI mostly seem to revolve around building to a faith strategy with or without a religion.

Great Prophets specifically are also very awkwardly handled in the new system, as most holy site buildings come too late to make relevant GP points and holy site GP points themselves become completely irrelevant once you either have a religion or run out of prophets.

Very limited slots for specialists who do not generate great people points (rather the district does itself) which makes playing tall even less appealing. In Civ VI you’re better off spamming cities if you want to generate great people instead of growing tall with infrastructure in fewer cities. It’s counter intuitive

It's counter to the Civ V approach at least, but nothing in Civ VI rewards going tall and the district system is fundamentally inimical to doing so as it stands, since going tall reduces the number of duplicate districts you can produce. I can sympathise to a degree - it was an interesting idea for Civ V to play with the tall vs. wide dichotomy, but as it turned out, tall just doesn't work well with Civ's basic mechanics: if you don't have many cities, you simply don't have very much to do.

- A limited pool of great people that will vanish by Era (if not claimed) make great people strategies even less appealing.

The intent actually appears to be to push them - since you get them now or they're gone. I think the system has potential but it's pretty horribly balanced. It's bewildering that Great Admirals made it into Civ VI given how limited and unpopular they were in Civ V. All prophets, (most) merchants and cultural GPs do the same thing as one another so there's no incentive to choose between them just to get a Great Work or a luxury with a different name The system works well with engineers and scientists though there are evident balance issues (+1 appeal to a few tiles or a space race boost?) - hopefully they can diversify a bit more with the other types over time. Mary Anning is perhaps the most interesting example of the system's potential for linking GPs to strategic choices - I had one game where I played for cultural dominance and she was a must-have I actively fought for, and another where I ignored archaeology and passed her (the space race GPs are in a similar position, but are far too strong if you are going for science victory especially as any AIs not doing so won't compete for them).

- Lack of overall strategy depth. Currently the game has no great strategies as every game seems monotonous regardless of the Civs you play or policies you adopt. Build wide – get science seems to be the mantra which ignores infrastructure and means your early game will be just pumping out settlers. Civ 5’s social policies were restrictive in their own way but as they developed they really allowed for some diverse gameplay right out the door which increased the fun of the experience.

In this Civ VI is actually reverting to type - this is the basic game progression of all Civ games pre-Civ V, which didn't really favour 'tall' as an option (save in the specific case of chasing cultural victory). Unfortunately it's not evident that Civ VI has any of the depth to make that approach interesting - it really seems to just want to address common complaints with Civ V levelled by players of the older games without really understanding why those worked well.

 

[Tatran]

I think you may need to look elsewhere if you're trying to find someone to blame for derailing the thread.

This is the RANTS thread, right? Or have I lost my way? I don't have a GPS in my car.

Guess who was responsible for derailing it?

Back to civ 6. Bye for now or bye forever?
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced Firaxis can't make a decent AI for this game.

 

[ThERat]

Tatran, I think with 1upt Firaxis has made a huge mistake as it exposed their inability to make a decent AI for the game they designed. Commercial success will tell them this is the way to go, but I guess I am done with Firaxis and civilization. If they can't even design a game which would enable the AI to pose at least some level of challenge, we will either have to go back to previous iterations of the game or move on.

 

[Sobornost]

The game we're having the most fun with at our house right now is AoE 2, a 17 year old game with 17 year old graphics and 17 year old mechanics. But the AI can wipe the floor with us (and does in maybe 1/3 of games - most of the rest are a satisfying struggle to win that keeps you on your toes).

From what I'm reading Civ 6 sounds like Sims right now. Build cool stuff, do crazy things, throttle a neighbor for the fun of it, nuke Gandhi (lulz). Competitive gameplay... not so much. It's like taking the chessboard since your opponent can't play for the life of him, and creatively stacking the chess pieces as high as you can. I guess that's making lemonade out of a lemon?

I sincerely hope you guys can make a game that your AI's can play, or make an AI that can play your game.

 

[Jabulani]

I sincerely hope you guys can make a game that your AI's can play, or make an AI that can play your game.

Of course I agree but they failed in the beta, they failed in vanilla and they kept on failing for three patches.

Of course civ vi is buried, that is the way devs wanted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the most beautiful game of history, thx devs and no further DLC will ever move the situation from the desperate one they already gifted us multiple times.

 

[Ricci]

Are we there yet?

Almost 4 years have passed from the last post. I've been completely disconected from the fuzz. So, has Civilization VI turn into something someone un Firaxis would be proud of?? And hence we can enjoy??

 

[salty mud]

I would say yes. Civ V vs Civ VI is no longer a debate worth having in my mind, Civ VI is objectively the superior game. Civ V Vox Populi vs Civ VI is a different matter, however. That said, if I had to choose, I would probably side with Civ VI.

Probably.

 

[kaspergm]

I would say no. While the expansions have added some good features and fixed some flaws on vanilla release, we also have features that are downright horrible in their implementation (world congress), are just boring and tedious (governors) or lacks actual implementation and balancing with core game (basically anything from New Frontier Pass). Add to that the fact that end game (i.e. anything after industrial era) is still a complete bore, and you end up with a much less rounded or satisfying gaming experience than Civ5 with mods.

But that's just my 5 cents.