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

[Cosmic Fox]

He has good points, I see the rest of you kind of either bashing the man for his views or telling him to go play something else, or a mod. I happen to agree with him on almost all his points. I have come to the conclusion all of this can be changed through modding. If they DID NOT allow us into the SQL database, didn't allow us to use the lua like civ 5 abortion, then abandoning civ 6 would be inevitable. However this is not the case, civ 6 will be the best of the series. They will not let the community down this time around, why there are new people working on civ 6 and not the same clowns who put out revolution, civ 5 and that awful Beyond Earth (Could have been great but no they messed it up)

I love civ 6, it needs serious modding help and I believe they intentionally left it this way for the community to change why the code is wide open to us.

Stay tuned for a complete rewrite of Civ 6 from the ground up with The Balancer Mod making its debut back to the scene that has been on hiatus since civ 3.

 

[elitetroops]

Gee, I wonder why all the wonder is gone for you. Almost like complaining about a game being too easy after following a walk thru. I see some people here has been picking this game apart for decades.. sorry they don't cater to you're particular level of expertise on this series.

Civ IV is still very challenging on deity, even after it has been picked apart for a decade. That game does cater to a very high level of expertise. Civ VI deity plays like Civ IV monarch-emperor, except early conquest, which plays more like Civ IV noble-prince. Ideally a game should cater to all levels of players. They managed to do that 10 years ago, it's a shame they failed completely this time.

That said, I've still had some fun with this game, but it's a different kind of fun. I've also had fun in the past with some Civ IV HoF challenges aiming at fastest settler victory, or stuff like that. It's just never about figuring out how to win, only about how to win as fast as possible. In contrast, if I fire up a Civ IV game, standard size, normal speed, deity, and pick the first map I'm presented with, I will struggle a lot to win, and it's also quite likely I lose the game.

I might be wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that the purpose with Civ IV deity was that it should be impossible to win. Or at least the devs thought it was impossible when the game was released. That's the level of challenge I like to see. It's much more rewarding when you accomplish the impossible.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm sure a lot of the games that were released back in the 80s-90s contained game breaking bugs and exploits, only most people would never know about them.

They did, but there were fewer in the good titles because games in those times were, by their nature, simpler. Way fewer interactions --> fewer opportunities for this stuff. It still happened but the sheer quantity of extra chances for error in interaction in today's games makes an expectation of similar error rate unfair.

3. Performance is always arguable. I see comparable times to Beyond Earth (though I haven't exactly labbed it), which vastly improved on CiV (and said improvements were backported at least in part to CiV I think, resulting in improved turn performance there, later in BNW's lifecycle).

I haven't benchmarked turn times between BE and civ 6 but unit movements in 6 are better because there is no post-move lag before moving the next unit like there was on the 5 engine. If unit cycling wasn't gutter tier trash I'm not sure I could out-move the prompts meaningfully. In civ 5 the game couldn't keep up with the rate I could move units and wouldn't input buffer, meaning I would sometimes do orders that never happened. That's not a problem in civ 6, once they stop making the game select a unit different from the one you selected as you're trying to move with cycling on.

Between turn times are still an issue on larger maps. The complete inability to turn off animations entirely is pretty brutal of a design choice. I don't want to watch quick animations all the time, I want to be able to turn off animations on my own turns and not have them going on onscreen OR offscreen between turns.

There is plenty of information you can't get in-game even if you try everything the UI offers, so ease-of-use and information presented are both problems with the civ 6 UI, and they're two separate problems.

Side note: calling something like reading strategy on this forum "cheating" is not rational .

 

[blasto]

That's why I started with "part of the problem"... I have played civ since version 3, I know 4 was best in terms of AI.. I personally didn't mind the AI compromise to get one unit per tile. I thought the stacks of doom was more of a grind than what we got today.. just a massive battle of attrition.

But you also can't deny that coming here and sharing every little tip and trick doesn't help you have a challenge.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's why I started with "part of the problem"... I have played civ since version 3, I know 4 was best in terms of AI.. I personally didn't mind the AI compromise to get one unit per tile. I thought the stacks of doom was more of a grind than what we got today.. just a massive battle of attrition.

But you also can't deny that coming here and sharing every little tip and trick doesn't help you have a challenge.

I do not understand how stack combat or anything in 4 can be considered a "grind" relative to future games. 4 objectively has far less inputs required on a per-turn basis (and because it's older + has less AI pathing/animations issues, rolls turns faster too), both because the stack moving + useful options like waypoints/queue mitigated the tedium and because you could actually end turn without being forced to command every non-fortified unit without exception. One of the reasons 6 is so slow is exactly because you need several times the inputs on a per turn basis, many of them unnecessary in a better-designed UI environment. Civ 4 gave you tools such that you could manage 50 cities with fewer inputs than you can manage 15 or less in civ 6. That's part of the reason why I don't hesitate to call this game's UI pathetic, because it's not the only issue with civ 6 UI.

Sharing tips speeds up the process by which a player who doesn't enter a state of perpetual intermediacy learns. It also helps to crowd source to cover obvious design failures like discovering the rules of the game (thread on S&T about combat damage per strength differential, tourism math, that kind of thing). If anything, if you want to make a case that someone is cheating, it is the developers/game itself, because the game is hiding its own rules and the player is asked to learn the RULES through trial and error...one of the most basic forms of the fake difficulty trope.

Why should I or anybody else respect a "sense of wonder" in a game that mails it in wrt UI and its core gameplay rules?

 

[elitetroops]

That's why I started with "part of the problem"... I have played civ since version 3, I know 4 was best in terms of AI.. I personally didn't mind the AI compromise to get one unit per tile. I thought the stacks of doom was more of a grind than what we got today.. just a massive battle of attrition.

But you also can't deny that coming here and sharing every little tip and trick doesn't help you have a challenge.

Well, yes and no. Yes, because, as I said, if I had never read CFC I would probably find Civ VI decently challenging. No, because usually in my games I go totally against what people here currently preach as "the best strategy".

Reading here does indeed help a lot with understanding the mechanics that Firaxis didn't reveal to us, though. Like how tourism victory works.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I find that people who play later iterations of a series are going to find them easier. Personally, I tried Civ 4 after playing Civ 5 for years and frankly I'm getting my butt kicked.

 

[blasto]

I do not understand how stack combat or anything in 4 can be considered a "grind" relative to future games. 4 objectively has far less inputs required on a per-turn basis (and because it's older + has less AI pathing/animations issues, rolls turns faster too), both because the stack moving + useful options like waypoints/queue mitigated the tedium and because you could actually end turn without being forced to command every non-fortified unit without exception. One of the reasons 6 is so slow is exactly because you need several times the inputs on a per turn basis, many of them unnecessary in a better-designed UI environment. Civ 4 gave you tools such that you could manage 50 cities with fewer inputs than you can manage 15 or less in civ 6. That's part of the reason why I don't hesitate to call this game's UI pathetic, because it's not the only issue with civ 6 UI.

?

Well I don't understand how you can't understand this.. almost no situational awareness on unit placement.. just spam a unit stack bigger than the next guy with maybe a tiny emphasis on unit mix. Wow, such tactics.

Now at least every move is critical regarding placement, using geography to your advantage and getting best unit placement rotation going, ect.

As far as Civ 4 AI being more challenging, I argue that too in regards to it not being any smarter, just that the advantages give the AI for production just suited the stack of doom scenario better.

 

[elitetroops]

Well I don't understand how you can't understand this.. almost no situational awareness on unit placement.. just spam a unit stack bigger than the next guy with maybe a tiny emphasis on unit mix. Wow, such tactics.

Now at least every move is critical regarding placement, using geography to your advantage and getting best unit placement rotation going, ect

I'd argue the opposite. My decisions on the battlefield in Civ IV feel so much more meaningful, mostly because if I make bad decisions I lose the war. In Civ VI I quickly stopped caring. Just walk in and take those cities. Sure, some quick analysis of the terrain is good, but a successful war doesn't require nearly as much strategic planning as in IV.

I agree that Civ IV AI isn't particularly good either if you look at the decisions it is making. It is also capable of some completely idiotic stuff and is often very easy to manipulate once you know how to do it. But on the other hand, I don't care that much about how smart decisions the AI makes. It's more about wishing for a challenge than about a wish to marvel at the brilliant intelligence of my opponent.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well I don't understand how you can't understand this.. almost no situational awareness on unit placement.. just spam a unit stack bigger than the next guy with maybe a tiny emphasis on unit mix. Wow, such tactics.

I was under the assumption you had a firm grasp of civ 4 tactics. What I'm quoting is either misinformed or disingenuous representation of civ 4 combat. No, "bigger stack" is not how you win higher level civ 4 wars against the AI, and going into someone's borders with a big stack in MP blindly is suicide after the ancient era.

Now at least every move is critical regarding placement, using geography to your advantage and getting best unit placement rotation going, ect.

Oh please. Ranged focus fire + using cavalry to stack flanking bonuses isn't rocket science. There's roughly as much depth there as blindly stacking, and you don't have any terrain specific unit promotions that open up otherwise impossible tactics either. If you weren't using geography to your advantage in civ 4, you didn't know how to fight in civ 4.

As far as Civ 4 AI being more challenging, I argue that too in regards to it not being any smarter, just that the advantages give the AI for production just suited the stack of doom scenario better.

That's part of it for certain. The basic tactic of 5/6 of camping a blocker unit or two in front of ranged can hold off tremendous numbers of AI units. However civ 4's maintenance model (and AI's ability to largely ignore it at both unit and city levels) and its ability to at least sometimes get culture or space wins to the point of being threatening similarly contributed.

 

[blasto]

I was under the assumption you had a firm grasp of civ 4 tactics. What I'm quoting is either misinformed or disingenuous representation of civ 4 combat. No, "bigger stack" is not how you win higher level civ 4 wars against the AI, and going into someone's borders with a big stack in MP blindly is suicide after the ancient era.

True, you needed multiple stacks of doom.

Oh please. Ranged focus fire + using cavalry to stack flanking bonuses isn't rocket science. There's roughly as much depth there as blindly stacking, and you don't have any terrain specific unit promotions that open up otherwise impossible tactics either. If you weren't using geography to your advantage in civ 4, you didn't know how to fight in civ 4.

The geography issue is pretty much the same but planning on unit rotation for healing and covering your ranged units can only be more complicated with one unit per tile.

 

[Morningcalm]

I have to agree with TheMeinTeam that Civ VI and V's idea of tactical importance isn't borne out by the games that introduced 1UPT. There are complications and nuisances concerning moving your units out of places (because your own units are blocking your others). But this doesn't create meaningful tactical combat, just nuisance. I for one would not oppose a return to stacking combat, as long as they limited stack size somewhat.

Civ IV's geographical promotions created far more tactical combat than the "+ strength vs infantry and archers OR + defense strength when defending against archers" promotions of Civ VI. And the cliff scaling promotion? I've never seen it useful even ONCE in Civ VI.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The geography issue is pretty much the same but planning on unit rotation for healing and covering your ranged units can only be more complicated with one unit per tile.

Not true in principle (example: create 1UPT with only one unit class) or in practice. There's no consideration of how many healthy units to leave to cover for damaged ones in civ 5 or 6, contingent on your expectation of enemy ability to counter-attack if you split forces, for example. You simply move a sufficiently damaged unit out of harm's way and ZoC + movement restrictions take care of the rest.

Civ IV's geographical promotions created far more tactical combat than the "+ strength vs infantry and archers OR + defense strength when defending against archers"

These are often forgotten because players could just milk collateral initiative for days in civ 4 against the AI, but yes. Archers and gunpower could both gain access to a promotion that simultaneously doubled their movement in hills *and* increased defense in hills. If these wound up on top of an important strategic resource or the terrain allowed them to threaten multiple cities at once, it could be a nightmare. The required to dislodge that or ensure against them being more than a nuisance was disproportionate to their cost.

Melee got a similar promotion with forests/jungle. This kind of tactic could cause serious problems if you didn't position to deny it in advance, but came with opportunity cost for the units taking such promotions. The combat and drill lines had legitimate tradeoffs too, even if the balance there wasn't perfect.

Since cities shooting you and ZoC abuse weren't a thing pillage was a bigger threat then than even civ 6 too, especially in the case of cottages since the time lost on pillaged cottages was even more damaging than districts.

 

[Morningcalm]

Agreed as to all. I miss Civ IV's gameplay....though the atmospherics could use some work, obviously (no leader screens, dramatic peace agreement transition animations, etc).

 

[ThERat]

If there were a Civ4 with Civ5 style graphics (or for that matter, Civ3 graphics), I'd say the game would be near perfect.

 

[Bleser]

I'm saddened to read this thread as it affirms my feelings now that I'm used to the Civ6 mechanics.

It's just so easy.

The AI poses no threat. I can build any wonder I want. I can win however I want.

With Civ3/4/5, it took months to progress in difficulty. With the total lack of a challenge, I'm close to going back to Civ5. I really hope the next patch focuses entirely on improving the overall AI threat and making the game harder to win.

 

[noto2]

I suppose that's a fair point. Take a look at Xcom2. Without the internet and the ability to ask veteran players for good strategies, or watch them play on Youtube, I don't see how the average mortal could get anywhere in that game.

I do not understand how stack combat or anything in 4 can be considered a "grind" relative to future games. 4 objectively has far less inputs required on a per-turn basis (and because it's older + has less AI pathing/animations issues, rolls turns faster too), both because the stack moving + useful options like waypoints/queue mitigated the tedium and because you could actually end turn without being forced to command every non-fortified unit without exception. One of the reasons 6 is so slow is exactly because you need several times the inputs on a per turn basis, many of them unnecessary in a better-designed UI environment. Civ 4 gave you tools such that you could manage 50 cities with fewer inputs than you can manage 15 or less in civ 6. That's part of the reason why I don't hesitate to call this game's UI pathetic, because it's not the only issue with civ 6 UI.

Sharing tips speeds up the process by which a player who doesn't enter a state of perpetual intermediacy learns. It also helps to crowd source to cover obvious design failures like discovering the rules of the game (thread on S&T about combat damage per strength differential, tourism math, that kind of thing). If anything, if you want to make a case that someone is cheating, it is the developers/game itself, because the game is hiding its own rules and the player is asked to learn the RULES through trial and error...one of the most basic forms of the fake difficulty trope.

Why should I or anybody else respect a "sense of wonder" in a game that mails it in wrt UI and its core gameplay rules?

This is so true and one of the things I miss about Civ4. Civ games tend to drag on towards the end, but at least in 4 I knew I could wrap up an end game war in a reasonable amount of time, say an hour or two. I would spend 5-10 minutes setting my build ques in my cities, and another minute setting up my waypoints, and that was it, I was finished. From then on, every time I hit "end turn" I would have a whole pile of reinforcements ready to go and I'd spend my turns actually fighting. Even though there was no such thing as capital sniping I could still finish a late game war on a huge map after dinner, before bed time.

In 5, though, forget it. Not only do the turns take longer but I'm constantly forced to fly around the world and tell my cities what to build. Launching an intercontinental invasion in 5 was a chore...holy smokes... sometimes I'd have to sit there for 20 minutes just telling my units where to go just to get in position for the war.

It seems, so far, that 6 hasn't done much to address this issue.

Agreed as to all. I miss Civ IV's gameplay....though the atmospherics could use some work, obviously (no leader screens, dramatic peace agreement transition animations, etc).

If we're talking atmosphere, I miss the advisers from 2, and the throne room. I miss the leaderheads progressing through the eras in 3. I miss the music changing based on the era - and hearing electric guitar solos as jet fighters engaged in air to air combat. I miss the units speaking in their language.

At least wonder animations are back. I haven't even finished a game of 6 yet to see if victory animations are back, I hope they are. They don't even have to be very elaborate...just something more than a popup saying "you win".

 

[Drakarska]

If there were a Civ4 with Civ5 style graphics (or for that matter, Civ3 graphics), I'd say the game would be near perfect.

Actually, there are 2 graphics mods that kick up Civ IV a couple of notches. 1) Blue Marble, Taken from Nasa satellite imagery and placed as a graphic overlay. And 2) VIP graphics mod, which is an epic visual update for a very old game. I highly recommend both ( my personal preference would be VIP).

 

[Acken]

Im either considering going back to civ5 on my mod or to civ4 to reach deity.

Civ6 is fun but the AI is too awful and the only livestream of the AI lead made him seem clueless so Im getting skeptical.

 

[CoolLizy]

If we're talking atmosphere, I miss the advisers from 2, and the throne room. I miss the leaderheads progressing through the eras in 3. I miss the music changing based on the era - and hearing electric guitar solos as jet fighters engaged in air to air combat. I miss the units speaking in their language.

To be fair, Civ VI has one of those things.

At least wonder animations are back. I haven't even finished a game of 6 yet to see if victory animations are back, I hope they are. They don't even have to be very elaborate...just something more than a popup saying "you win".

They're not very good, but there are victory movies for each victory condition.