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

[ThERat]

Civ 1 was like that? I can't even remember. I remember it being a really fun game. Like Civ 2. With Civ3 more sophistication appeared (cultural borders, more diplomacy, incredible warfare on higher difficulties. Civ 4 was the most sophisticated of them. It had a lot to do with the fact that the beta testers were real cracks and Soren didn't have that 'i know it all' mentality. It was also the high point of interaction of Firaxis with the fanbase. The regression or back to simplification hit really hard with Civ 5 and someone's dream of a panzer general civilization. Too bad, Civ 6 is all too similar to Civ 5. I still find it a lot better thanks to districts and local happiness, but unfortunately, it falls pretty flat on everything else at this stage.

 

[CoolLizy]

It was part of the fun to take a really HUGE piece of paper and draw the tree for yourself (including all the units, buildings and wonders with all the parameters)!

Or you just used the fold-out tech tree in the manual like you were supposed to.

It wasn't a secret, not even in-game. You could even look up all the tech requirements in the Civilopedia (yep, all you yung'uns, that's been there since the very first game).

 

[Gorbles]

I don't ever remember having a manual. I can barely remember the case these days.

 

[CoolLizy]

I don't ever remember having a manual. I can barely remember the case these days.

I still have both the Civilization 1 box and the Civilization 1 manual, both intact and in pretty good shape. I would be loathe to ever be parted from them.

In any case, yes, there was a fold-out tech chart in the manual.

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah, sorry, my post was to point out that maybe not every version of the game shipped with one. Not that you didn't have one!

It was one of the earliest games I had on my parents' original PC, so my memory is a bit hazy. I do remember that I learned to play without knowing how to change the production queue on my cities and I used to be able to make it to the modern age with just Militia. 50 stacked Militia vs. a single Modern Armour.

I can't remember how I built buildings :/

 

[TheMeInTeam]

no, i think it is fair to say you speak for yourself. talk about a bunch of strawmen in these comments. until some sort of scientific poll is done (and no forum poll is all that scientific), you just dont know what long time fans of the series think about VI. you know what a certain segment of fans of the series think based on comments found in this forum. and to say those particularly vocal (and i'd say, whiney) people are somehow representative of the franchise, and, as frappy does above, suggest that anyone who thinks otherwise is a newcomer or not truly dedicated is as immature as it is ridiculous.

The idea that fans of the series would like a gutted/broken UI isn't plausible, absent support for such a notion. Why would a fan of something appreciate it getting materially and measurably worse at something?

My position is that the game unambiguously regressed in the facets I mentioned, and that it is not reasonable to see these regressions as good things. Do you dispute these regressions?

"broken game" is what is in need of defense

1. The controls don't work by default (unit cycling). The game forcibly ignoring your commands and selecting other units is broken, full stop. You instead can turn off broken controls, and the option to do that was patched in. If you do so, you get poor controls with a per-turn input burden comparable to games 20 years ago. You also have nonsense like inconsistent displays on ranged attacks, and next turn =/= next turn (active misinformation). Presumably, UI misinformation is not part of the game's design, and neither are pieces of the game controls that don't work. The *reasonable* conclusion for something that obviously doesn't work as intended is that it's broken. If Civ 6 didn't have broken UI, next turn really would mean next turn and the game's rules wouldn't be comparably useful to player attributes in Madden.

2. The game hides its rules. A lot. What exactly goes into tourism and how is it applied? How much war exhaustion do I get from killing a unit? Losing one? Fighting a battle? Refusing a peace deal? Why can't I build a given unit despite having the technology for it, and why is the game inconsistent with its presentation of units that can't be built? This is a turn-based strategy game. Information on your opponents is reasonably limited. Information on what the rules of the game you are playing are being hidden is fake difficulty.

3. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Re-sync. Just because it's better than civ 5 vanilla MP doesn't mean it's actually in a good state, and that's before we talk about how people can join private games because pausing one makes private = public...and if you rehost after that it deletes the former player civ.

4. Having the game take priority over the task manager on exiting it is annoying when it hangs. This is not the behavior of a well functioning title. Even crash-happy paradox games at least manage not to block you from using the task manager.

A playthrough of the game on Chieftain is just as valid as a playthrough of the game on Deity. It might not be as valid to you, if you prioritise challenging AI as a game feature, but that your personal definition of value and nobody elses'. Playing on Chieftain or similar (as a journalist) would probably cover far more of the potential playerbase's interests than a review from a journalist that also happened to play on Deity.

I agree with you, but when reviewers don't so much as mention issues like civ 5 had with MP on release or unit cycling in this game on release it plummets their credibility all the same. The high grades civ 5 got in vanilla without even a passing mention of MP, ranged attack =/= ranged attack or starving while growing type stuff were so far gone that I can't trust anybody who did that for future reviews.

Difficulty is the least of our worries when looking at a game through a lens making a passing attempt at being objective. I'm more interested in what the game does or doesn't do, how it plays, and whether it offers interesting choices (if in the strategy genre).

 

[El Caballerion]

I agree with just about everything the OP stated. After a few years of playing more complex and realistic historical simulation games (CK2 and EU4), CIV6 just seems like too artificial a game experience. I blame some of that on the saturated map, cariacatured units, etc, but honestly, the entire concept of CIV seems too familiar and arbitrary. Placing a holy site by a mountain gives you +1 faith? Ok, that's cool from a game perspective, but doesn't really make sense from a historical perspective.

So... I've realized that CIV is a GAME, but sadly, it's not an EXPERIENCE. I'm out for now too...

 

[Gorbles]

I agree with you, but when reviewers don't so much as mention issues like civ 5 had with MP on release or unit cycling in this game on release it plummets their credibility all the same. The high grades civ 5 got in vanilla without even a passing mention of MP, ranged attack =/= ranged attack or starving while growing type stuff were so far gone that I can't trust anybody who did that for future reviews.

Difficulty is the least of our worries when looking at a game through a lens making a passing attempt at being objective. I'm more interested in what the game does or doesn't do, how it plays, and whether it offers interesting choices (if in the strategy genre).

I'm probably going to get a lot of pushback on this point of view (not specifically from you; it's a much-maligned view r.e. games journalism), but journalism shouldn't be considered as an objective truth. Or even objective. The reviewer should attempt to show as much of the game they are able, but the personal conclusions they draw from that aren't necessarily going to be met with agreement. For example, the prominence of unit-cycling (which has infuriated me, don't get me wrong) might not be the issue that prevents people from buying the game. But maybe the tech and civic quotes do (to reference another thread; I disagree personally but I'm highlighting how people apply different weights to different things).

Multiplayer is definitely a larger issue but again if the target audience isn't the MP playerbase? I don't know, it comes down to market demographics and intended audience, and so forth. From what I know of CiV on release (disclaimer: I picked it up during a Steam sale with G&K) it certainly had more issues than just poor MP performance (though MP issues persisted for far longer than the mechanical base took to be improved). Maybe reviews focused on the former issues, rather than MP stability. I don't know, because I never read them.

But I started this tangent to talk about the validity of difficulty levels, so this is incredibly aside from the point, sorry.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On civ 5 release, it wasn't "poor MP performance", it was "you can't get 20 turns into a game" non-performance. There was no actual MP in civ 5 release, it flat-out didn't work! A review of the game should at least mention that, if the game is inaccurately claiming it has it.

I would not have lost all trust/perceived credibility if the reviewer mentioned the issues and then gave his opinion of a high score in spite of them. It would be a head scratcher, but oh well.

People have all kinds of things they will buy or not buy a game based on. The graphics got major complaints in civ 6, despite it being purely a matter of taste. Some people don't like the civ lineup (I'm among them, but don't care about it over much, some do). A person reviewing a game should touch on what it does well and doesn't do. Even if it's not intended to be 100% objective, reviews should not simply ignore glaring issues outright. Between the gamespot review and PCgamer review for example, I would distrust the reviewer in pcgamer on review for future games, because he doesn't so much as mention significant issues. Gamespot gives civ 6 an awfully high score, but manages to still talk about controls/AI issues/opaque tourism. Perusing a few of these mention of MP is surprisingly zilch. You don't expect emphasis there, but given it straight up didn't work in 4 and 5 release you'd think it'd merit a mention that it's better but not great in 6.

 

[Balerune]

I agree with just about everything the OP stated. After a few years of playing more complex and realistic historical simulation games (CK2 and EU4), CIV6 just seems like too artificial a game experience. I blame some of that on the saturated map, cariacatured units, etc, but honestly, the entire concept of CIV seems too familiar and arbitrary. Placing a holy site by a mountain gives you +1 faith? Ok, that's cool from a game perspective, but doesn't really make sense from a historical perspective.

So... I've realized that CIV is a GAME, but sadly, it's not an EXPERIENCE. I'm out for now too...

Have played EU4 which is a very nice game with a lot of history but the Civilization series were always about something else, more of an imaginative free wheeling game based on historical cultures, the strength being an almost unlimited ability to change history(?) as there are few historical restraints on game-play.
I really have to be in a mood to play Europa Universalis as it is a very tight game. This game is just more fun.

 

[manu-fan]

There are only two things I think Civ 6 needs to fix to make it absolutely awesome.

Slow down the tech tree a bit, and improve the AI a bit.

I think it's pretty awesome as it is.

 

[Rathelm]

Have played EU4 which is a very nice game with a lot of history but the Civilization series were always about something else, more of an imaginative free wheeling game based on historical cultures, the strength being an almost unlimited ability to change history(?) as there are few historical restraints on game-play.
I really have to be in a mood to play Europa Universalis as it is a very tight game. This game is just more fun.

Not to mention that people seem to be mixing up the difference between a game and a simulator. The Civ series is not nor never has been a grognard civilization simulator. It's closer to design to a board game. It's meant to be faster pace with less minutiae. Personally anyone lamenting that would be like me getting into a heavy wargame then complaining it's too complicated. That's the point.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Well I had my doubts about Civ 6 after starting a couple of games. Then I decided to give it one more try. Glad I did! Needless to say I'm completely addicted again and have that old "one more turn" feeling. Yes it can be better but hopefully forthcoming patches and DLC will do that. Civ V didn't start too well either - I gave up on that until Gods & Kings came out a long time after release.

 

[noto2]

I disagree with this notion that Civ 5 saw a "dumbing down" or simplification of the series. Sure, Civ 5 vanilla was simple, but so was Civ4 on release. After BNW and years in the modding community, Civ 5 is a rich game, just as much if not more so than 4, and I say this as someone who still has more hours logged in on 4 than 5, and we're talking thousands.

I do agree with TMIT, though, that 5 saw a regression in terms of UI. I haven't really gotten into 6 yet and I don't anticipate doing so soon. But I'm hopeful that after some time and expansions it will prove to be a great game, that's exactly what happened with 5 and, to a lesser extent, 4.

I also understand that perhaps the average player plays on Prince or King, but why does Firaxis never release a competent combat AI? The way Firaxis does it, they make the AI completely incompetent in combat, then they give it massive economic bonuses to present a challenge in brute force for high level play. On the other hand, if the combat AI was actually good, they could easily make the lower difficulty levels more palatable by simply nerfing AI production, so that it had smaller armies. Or am I just dreaming here? To be honest, I just don't know. I know that AI can handle games like checkers or chess on par with the best human players in the world, but perhaps a game like Civ is just too complex. Maybe it's not realistic to ask for a competent combat AI?

I just find it really immersion-breaking when I'm in the middle of a giant war with a peer power and our big armies are squaring off, and the AI just dances its units around pointlessly, basically gifting me the war, allowing me to win battle after battle. There are many times I make a mistake and I think "oh no, my unit's dead", but the AI doesn't kill it. I can play sloppy and still steamroll the AI if my military is even close to being a match.

It also ruins game balance because, on the economic side of things, the AI is nearly impossible to beat on Diety. Good luck sitting there and trying to win by peace. Good luck trying to build any wonders or catch up in tech without any fighting. What happens is that it always boils down to war. Winning by culture or spaceship - without wars of conquest - actually is incredibly difficult to do on Diety. But winning through conquest, or winning by simply smashing your rival's tourism-generating capital, or space ship building capital, is much, much easier.

The easiest way to win from Civ3 to Civ5 was to just start building units, keep building units, and kill, kill, kill, and never stop building units. Screw buildings, screw wonders, screw culture, screw all of it. Just pump out a military and stomp heads. It's really tiresome. Why have anything else in the game if it's not balanced? They really need to improve the combat AI, I mean REALLY need to. The rest of the game just doesn't work without it.

 

[orasis]

I am the opposite of you ... I cannot go back to V for a single-player game anymore. It feels too much like checking off boxes now. I mean after seven years you sort of know how everything works...

 

[Gorbles]

I disagree with this notion that Civ 5 saw a "dumbing down" or simplification of the series. Sure, Civ 5 vanilla was simple, but so was Civ4 on release. After BNW and years in the modding community, Civ 5 is a rich game, just as much if not more so than 4, and I say this as someone who still has more hours logged in on 4 than 5, and we're talking thousands.

I do agree with TMIT, though, that 5 saw a regression in terms of UI. I haven't really gotten into 6 yet and I don't anticipate doing so soon. But I'm hopeful that after some time and expansions it will prove to be a great game, that's exactly what happened with 5 and, to a lesser extent, 4.

I also understand that perhaps the average player plays on Prince or King, but why does Firaxis never release a competent combat AI? The way Firaxis does it, they make the AI completely incompetent in combat, then they give it massive economic bonuses to present a challenge in brute force for high level play. On the other hand, if the combat AI was actually good, they could easily make the lower difficulty levels more palatable by simply nerfing AI production, so that it had smaller armies. Or am I just dreaming here? To be honest, I just don't know. I know that AI can handle games like checkers or chess on par with the best human players in the world, but perhaps a game like Civ is just too complex. Maybe it's not realistic to ask for a competent combat AI?

I just find it really immersion-breaking when I'm in the middle of a giant war with a peer power and our big armies are squaring off, and the AI just dances its units around pointlessly, basically gifting me the war, allowing me to win battle after battle. There are many times I make a mistake and I think "oh no, my unit's dead", but the AI doesn't kill it. I can play sloppy and still steamroll the AI if my military is even close to being a match.

It also ruins game balance because, on the economic side of things, the AI is nearly impossible to beat on Diety. Good luck sitting there and trying to win by peace. Good luck trying to build any wonders or catch up in tech without any fighting. What happens is that it always boils down to war. Winning by culture or spaceship - without wars of conquest - actually is incredibly difficult to do on Diety. But winning through conquest, or winning by simply smashing your rival's tourism-generating capital, or space ship building capital, is much, much easier.

The easiest way to win from Civ3 to Civ5 was to just start building units, keep building units, and kill, kill, kill, and never stop building units. Screw buildings, screw wonders, screw culture, screw all of it. Just pump out a military and stomp heads. It's really tiresome. Why have anything else in the game if it's not balanced? They really need to improve the combat AI, I mean REALLY need to. The rest of the game just doesn't work without it.

Good AI is extremely hard work. I can't overstate this. People don't believe me, that's fine, but seriously it is difficult.

To compare it to chess or draughts (UK UK UK), both of those games have a predictable finite number of moves. I mean, all games do in theory, but chess in particular is the ultimate two-person board game refined over centuries, if not millenia. You have a specific amount of pieces, and they have a specific amount of moves. The board has a fixed amount of space. This greatly reduces the available decisions to make in any one situation compared to something like a video game. Nevermind one that's had as much refinement (and expansion) as Civilisation has had. Because there is such a trackable amount of finite moves, you can easily store these in a logical structure (which is where a chess AI has the edge on a human; they can store an infinite amount of future moves indefinitely and recall them precisely, whenever they want to).

Civilisation has variant maps. The detail on these maps are randomised. There is a far greater amount of units by comparison, and these units can both change over time (including their movement options and secondary abilities) and function on different layers of the map. You can't track the number of available moves as easily. Iterating over the map data to work out what moves are valid that turn takes more time. And so on, and so forth.

This isn't to say it can't be done. The AI works in Civilisation (6, but substitute this for whatever version you want) in that it does its best to understand these systems and work out optimal solutions for each of the units for each (competing) faction. It doesn't always work well. Sometimes it fails on specific combinations of specific mechanics. Which is why AI errors are hard to reproduce, and as is usual with bugs, even harder to fix (or address in some way). But understanding what little I do about games AI and indeed AI in general makes me compelled to post like I do, especially when people say that Firaxis couldn't be bothered, or that Firaxis are lazy, and so on, and so forth.

That said, you completely lay out the issues in pure economical scaling for video game AI. And that's not to mean that I don't support improving the AI as a whole. I just wanted to use chess vs. Civilisation as an example of how difficult it can be to make those comparisons as justification for putting <significant AI subroutine> into a video game (in this case, combat AI routines).

 

[Photi]

ok so here are a couple screenshots from two different games. the first is from a deity inland seas map where i was playing Egypt. Japan DOWed me and five or so turns later took my capital and city # two. the second is from an emperor inland seas map where i was playing Greece/Pericles, i got DOWed by Arabia, Egypt and Japan on the same turn and a few turns later as you can see Egypt now controls Sparta. Apparently the AI does know how to take cities. The last screenshot below is from the second game, Arabia is escorting a settler, just thought i 'd throw that in there for the record.

Spoiler :

edit: haha i just noticed my own greek settler is not being escorted

 

[ThERat]

@Photi,

I have resorted to AW games on Inland Sea maps on deity. It's incredibly hard as the AI gets insane help and even their units got additional strength. The AI in this case, really does not hesitate to take your cities. If you don't get at the AI fast enough to advance in the tech tree, you are toast. However, that is the only time the AI can challenge me, as any other setting will be eventually a walk in the park. This cannot be the solution, isn't it.

 

[Horizons]

ok so here are a couple screenshots from two different games. the first is from a deity inland seas map where i was playing Egypt. Japan DOWed me and five or so turns later took my capital and city # two. the second is from an emperor inland seas map where i was playing Greece/Pericles, i got DOWed by Arabia, Egypt and Japan on the same turn and a few turns later as you can see Egypt now controls Sparta. Apparently the AI does know how to take cities. The last screenshot below is from the second game, Arabia is escorting a settler, just thought i 'd throw that in there for the record.

Spoiler :

View attachment 460120
View attachment 460123
View attachment 460121

edit: haha i just noticed my own greek settler is not being escorted

If you give enough typewriters to enough monkeys you'll eventually get a reproduction of Shakespeare. I guess if you give enough bonuses and free stuff to the AI it will eventually manage to take your cities. Impressive!

 

[noto2]

You don't even need to give typewriters to monkeys, you can just have a computer randomly select characters from the alphabet, and if you do this enough times, you'll get Shakespeare. It might take several quadrillions of attempts, or maybe many more, I'm not sure.

https://libraryofbabel.info/