CBP players, what do you think about Civ VI so far?

[merill]

I wish it has WASD camera support.

fix here: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58u6hp/civ_vi_fixes_megathread/

 

[Frozen In Ice]

• No blatant upgrade line issues like Pikeman -> Lancers

I thought it was silly that my crossbowmen upgraded into siege units. That seemed to be the only problematic upgrade though.

 

[Galbias]

Strangle Khan's post says a lot of the stuff I wanted to, though I also like that each Civ has a lot more individuality than in 5.

More on difficulty, on my current Emperor game I'm getting ahead of the AIs around the medieval/renaissance era, so it seems bizarrely frontloaded due to the AI being really bad at city development, or the AIs don't get many bonuses beyond the starting settler. Which I'm still not a fan of, I don't like every game to involve getting beaten up early in the game and then then easily catching up later.

 

[Senteliks]

As some people mentioned it's too early to judge but. .. I manage to restrain myself from pre-ordering the game, however my friend wasn't so strong-willed as I and she bought it (I was close to pre-order it, about 2 days before launch). Here's why I hate first impression and watching "dev" streams in general:

- Judging from TB first impression, I was under impression that Civ VI is more complex and mature game (in a way, it is more complex... from vanilla CIV V)
- The way TB went on and on about "complexity" of District system, you would get impression it's really some deep concept, which would require time to grasp basis of it (as it turns out, when all "juicy" elements are out of way, it's very simple system... ).
- Then, the company put accent on "dynamic" research (active), more "lively" and human-alike AI diplomacy behavior..... I was sold, until I had played game with friend, and after that my impression was "meh", it's just "flashier" concept , but under the hood pretty much the same thing.
- I am not against cartoony style and I liked how cites get much more flashed out, like you really build a city but ... (will get to that).
- I was afraid that AI will just suck at military operations and I wasn't wrong...

So, here is post-impression, after I played together with friend for couple of hours (about 8-10):

- I read somewhere, how you have more task at hand between turns, more than just clicking "end turn " button at beginning, and that kind of stuff, because of the way how tech and social polices are handled now. That's not true, in fact you are going to through them like a knife through butter, compared to developing cities, and in fact you are going to spend a lot of time, pressing "end turn" doing nothing at beginning .

-District system is actually nice idea and it brings forth "city" specialization and customization and somewhat complexity, for me this is the strongest attribute CiV VI has, but don't get ahead and think it will bring up complexity of Paradox games, it won't.

- Tactical on land and sea .... it's tactical on the land and in the sea you had seen in CiV V, but made to be more convenient and there are few new sets of rules, nothing incredibly game breaking.

- Leaders ... I like the detail, art wise, but scripts are for my taste immature, thought that's only flavor, so I can tolerate. What I can't tolerate is so called "agendas", about which there is nothing "dynamic" and they are just "hard" rules, nothing more. Diplomacy is more flashed out than in Civ V, but seriously it's same thing, just a bit more flashier as Gazebo said. As for diversity between leaders, that all about personal preference, I am not getting into that, but only reason why they may feel diverse is because of pre-set rules, known as agendas.

- Art style of map is way way too much colorful. We had to tone down few graphic options, because it gets ridiculous at max settings. And I can tell, I am not only one, who can't tell difference between "fog of war" and "undiscovered" areas of map.

Well, I will end here because this is enough to point out what I think of the game. It's just not that much different or to be more precise, it didn't brought enough to the table, that would make me to rush and buy it, exactly this moment. For new comers to CIV VI it's perfect, because game decent at it's core. For veterans, I am not so sure but I will leave that to others to judge that.

 

[Txurce]

Don't get me wrong, I think Civ 6 makes some really good choices overall. Do I think it deserves to be at a 94% metacritic? Not really, especially since the most common conclusion from users is that it will be good 'with some DLC and/or patches.' That, in my opinion, warrants any product an automatic downgrade to a B/B+ at best.

I give it a c+/B-, with an asterisk for potential. Frustrating as its present embryonic state is, the bones for the best Civ ever are there, thanks to the Civics slot cards, the district system, and the potential for a high-end diplomatic system. I say potential here because, as of now, there is no replacement for the WC. Doubtless this will come down the road, but it's obviously a step back. Otherwise, I have the option to scream if comparing it to VP's AI and diplomatic system... or I can accept it as a slow, simpler game, requiting a different lens if I want to enjoy it. The latter is what I do when, for instance, I watch Romanian films. They're slow, and the camera doesn't move much, so you have to adjust if you want to appreciate them for what they are. That said, at this point Civ 6 is not yet up to contemporary Romanian film standards.

I'm completely shocked that no one mentioned this yet, but was I the only one actually using the mouse to scroll the map? Why did they decide to just nuke this feature completely?
Sure there is an option to enable mouse-scrolling, but it clearly isn't working properly, move the mouse too much in a direction and the scrolling just stops.

Yeah, at some point you have to scroll in the opposite direction to keep going north.

I feel the contrary :
Cities have a much lower production when comparing to civ5, which means you don't get to build as many things. Moreover, the cities' number of districts depends on their pop.
Mechanically, you can't build as many things in each cities, so you don't end up building even tier 1 and 2 buildings (i.e. market and bank) once you've unlocked the tier 3 building for your specialized cities (which you nearly have to do because of the happiness system in CBP.

Low production, which has been noted frequently, is one glaring imbalance. Gedemon already has a mod to address this.

 

[XplosiveLun]

The low production rate isn't that critical if you're playing wide with Rome. I have prehaps 30+ cities in Early Modern. Each city get at least one trade route with +6 productions. Their size are generally larger thanks to Baths and farms. Although they produce everything except infrastructures for around 25 turns, I could care less on building and focus on conquering.

 

[Degenx2]

- Judging from TB first impression, I was under impression that Civ VI is more complex and mature game (in a way, it is more complex... from vanilla CIV V)
- The way TB went on and on about "complexity" of District system, you would get impression it's really some deep concept, which would require time to grasp basis of it (as it turns out, when all "juicy" elements are out of way, it's very simple system... ).
- Then, the company put accent on "dynamic" research (active), more "lively" and human-alike AI diplomacy behavior..... I was sold, until I had played game with friend, and after that my impression was "meh", it's just "flashier" concept , but under the hood pretty much the same thing.
- I am not against cartoony style and I liked how cites get much more flashed out, like you really build a city but ... (will get to that).
- I was afraid that AI will just suck at military operations and I wasn't wrong...

As much as I love all of TB's other content, he's pretty much just a casual player when it comes to Civ. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wouldn't put much stock into anything he says about the game, especially balance issues.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

2 Days of Civ 6 and I have to say, Great potential, but at the moment very unbalanced.
The super aggressiv barbarians are very annoying right from the start, last game I had 2 warrior and one scout (from a hut), I get sieged by 2 rider, one horse archer and a scout. That is ridicoulus.
The new movement system wasnt necessary, but could be a good decision, if you get used to it.
The main problem is this insane technology push. 50% less research for half or more technologies (I think your able to get eureka for the most technologies), leads to medieeval at 300 BC.
Production is way to slow, my solution was cleopatra and her gold increase for traderoutes, but this absolutly unnecessary increase in gold cost for units or buildings fudged me up. Did no one from firaxis tested this version or gave it some mediocre players to get their opinion?

Also, playing city state friendly (like with greece) is terrible, in some of my games half the city states were conquerd after 100 turns, even without germany in game.

The potential of this game is awesome, some fast fixes for the main issues could be done in a day. (Tune down eureka from 50 to 25%, reduce production cost of buildings and wonders by 20%, reduce aggressivness vs city states, increase value of settling for Ai, remove inceasing cost for objects, should fix it.)

 

[infidel88]

1. Lack of balance of civs is terrible, some skills are useless (hello Peter and +1c/s for caravans which is peanuts) and some awfully strong (hello Peter, new Shoshone, given how hard it is to grab land), the difference in production cost makes new units a pain rather than profit.
2. There are completely no penalties for going wide, so it's always a better choice -> Trajan = OP.
3. Meeting early city states first can reduce difficulty level by a lot (+4g, +2c, +2s).
4. Archers are way, way, way too good. Three archers rush always works.
5. So many denouncements...
6. Roads are crap, moving anywhere is slow, game is missing dynamic.

Playing on prince, game was piece a cake, by 100AD I had 10 cities (2nd best England had 3) and building Ruhr Valley. On higher levels the only difference is more bonuses to AI and more aggressiveness. And best solution, as always is instead of creating infrastructure, simply conquering it.

 

[Degenx2]

Played another game this morning. Another thing I noticed about the bad AI that I haven't seen pointed out yet is that it still has a huge problem with losing builders. The game this morning I had three builders just handed straight to me for the cost of 20hp on one of my units.

I don't want to just **** all over Firaxis because I know this stuff is hard. But I kind of feel like they should have done a bit better than this. A lot of the mechanics are very similar to Civ V, so their programmers would already have a decent amount of reference material to work from, including the VP AI which is outstanding. I might be putting my foot in my mouth here big time since I write business software for a living and have zero experience in game development, but I feel like I could probably have done a better job.

Eagerly awaiting the release of modding tools to see if it's fixable.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't want to just **** all over Firaxis because I know this stuff is hard. But I kind of feel like they should have done a bit better than this. A lot of the mechanics are very similar to Civ V, so their programmers would already have a decent amount of reference material to work from, including the VP AI which is outstanding. I might be putting my foot in my mouth here big time since I write business software for a living and have zero experience in game development, but I feel like I could probably have done a better job.

Considering the VP team is a bunch of unpaid amateur game designers (and managed to put out a very competent AI), Firaxis needs to have a bit of a flogging over this. I'm consistently baffled by how poorly the AI understands Civ 6. This'll be the third civ series to have bad AI at launch (Civ IV had terrible AI at launch which was -aha- improved by the inclusion of modder AI changes in BTS), and the third RTS from Firaxis in a row to be blighted by bad AI (Civ V and Civ BE never had theirs fixed, either). What's the breaking point?

G

 

[Stalker0]

Considering the VP team is a bunch of unpaid amateur game designers (and managed to put out a very competent AI), Firaxis needs to have a bit of a flogging over this. I'm consistently baffled by how poorly the AI understands Civ 6. This'll be the third civ series to have bad AI at launch (Civ IV had terrible AI at launch which was -aha- improved by the inclusion of modder AI changes in BTS), and the third RTS from Firaxis in a row to be blighted by bad AI (Civ V and Civ BE never had theirs fixed, either). What's the breaking point?

G

I have to assume its a time factor. They are working on the game all the way to the very end, that AI is basically not really looked at until after the game is released. The thought is....why teach an AI to play a game that is constantly shifting and changing?

Beyond that...they may have simply realized that good AI is not important to the vast majority of their fanbase. They can get the vast majority of their game sales with only a little work in this department, and then fix it later....or never fixing, again realizing that the majority of the game buyers don't care about it that much.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

"Considering the VP team is a bunch of unpaid amateur game designers (and managed to put out a very competent AI), Firaxis needs to have a bit of a flogging over this. I'm consistently baffled by how poorly the AI understands Civ 6. This'll be the third civ series to have bad AI at launch (Civ IV had terrible AI at launch which was -aha- improved by the inclusion of modder AI changes in BTS), and the third RTS from Firaxis in a row to be blighted by bad AI (Civ V and Civ BE never had theirs fixed, either). What's the breaking point?"

Completely agree!

 

[ExpiredReign]

...
Beyond that...they may have simply realized that good AI is not important to the vast majority of their fanbase. They can get the vast majority of their game sales with only a little work in this department, and then fix it later....or never fixing, again realizing that the majority of the game buyers don't care about it that much.

This is my conclusion as well. Why bother when 90% of the users wouldn't know the difference?

 

[heinous_hat]

Considering the VP team is a bunch of unpaid amateur game designers (and managed to put out a very competent AI), Firaxis needs to have a bit of a flogging over this. I'm consistently baffled by how poorly the AI understands Civ 6. This'll be the third civ series to have bad AI at launch (Civ IV had terrible AI at launch which was -aha- improved by the inclusion of modder AI changes in BTS), and the third RTS from Firaxis in a row to be blighted by bad AI (Civ V and Civ BE never had theirs fixed, either). What's the breaking point?

G

I think it's a case of innovation being valued over quality. Firaxis are constantly reinventing the wheel (in many respects) instead of refining their existing work. A lot of code and related knowledge goes out the window, especially with personnel changes. They also clearly don't define "competent AI" in the same way as their more demanding customers (that's us, in part). Thus, you don't get that bit of extra time at the end of a development cycle where it's optimal to do AI improvement. Quality is relative, I suppose, but this approach has lead to an awful lot of disappointment and vocal thrashing over the years on the part of enthusiasts. Firaxis, as a leader in their field, deserves the heat.

On the other hand, you don't want to criticize them too hard since they're one of only a handful of developers nice enough to release source code. They're willing to expose the guts of some often rushed work for our benefit. Neither VP nor many of the better civ4 projects would have been possible without that arrangement. You could definitely take issue with the state of certain other mod tools ( WorldBuilder, Nexus ) but ultimately, we're having a good time here because of that generosity.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

I have to say that so far I really don't like Civ 6. The policy stuff is nice and the districts but that is about it. I hate the new movement system. It is just sooooo slow and add to the fact that roads are bad moving units is just too damn slow. And when the research is so fast by the time I get my units to enemy boarders I should upgrade them.

The tech tree is also damm boring. There are so many "filler" techs. Same goes to the civic tree. When you have to research a tech which only unlocks one wonder it is so boring.

And ofcourse the AI sucks balls. They don't upgrade their units, they don't escort their settlers and so on...

 

[Funak]

The super aggressiv barbarians are very annoying right from the start, last game I had 2 warrior and one scout (from a hut), I get sieged by 2 rider, one horse archer and a scout. That is ridicoulus.
The new movement system wasnt necessary, but could be a good decision, if you get used to it.

This really does not have much to do with barbs being aggressive as much as it has to do with scouts being too fast to be stopped and barbarian camps near horse-resources being completely bonkers. I mean they spawn a horseman or horsearcher ever 2 turns, from turn 1, you're supposed to fend them off with warriors and slingers? Yeah I get it, horse-riders from the steppes were a major historical issue and for a long time the only real defense against it was holding up behind walls and hoping they would go away, but that just doesn't make fun gameplay. Or maybe it would make for fun gameplay if the camps were consistent, but with them spawning in random locations and horses spawning in random locations, half the games you're not going to have to deal with it at all, and you're able to do whatever you want in the earlygame as barb slingers/warriors are easily dealt with.
I mean I've played games where barbs were such a non-factor that I couldn't get a boost to bronzeworking at all, and in my last game I spent the first 50 turns with my capital completely surrounded by horsemen, picking them off one by one with a slinger. Honestly, if the barbs hadn't lost interest and started sending their reinforcements to city-states instead of me I would probably have been stuck like that forever as one unit can't pick off the horsemen at the rate they spawn. Once I broke out of that hold I had to go settle cities near every horse-tile I could find just to keep the camps away, I ended up with 15 sources of horse in 8 cities, yeah.

 

[Senteliks]

Considering the VP team is a bunch of unpaid amateur game designers (and managed to put out a very competent AI), Firaxis needs to have a bit of a flogging over this. I'm consistently baffled by how poorly the AI understands Civ 6. This'll be the third civ series to have bad AI at launch (Civ IV had terrible AI at launch which was -aha- improved by the inclusion of modder AI changes in BTS), and the third RTS from Firaxis in a row to be blighted by bad AI (Civ V and Civ BE never had theirs fixed, either). What's the breaking point?

G

Why would they, when game is geared towards casuals ? If you recall, there were people who actually struggled with Civ V AI. Some of them were even saying that, tactical AI is too advanced and it obstructed them from building "peaceful" empires and playing diplomatically. If you ask me Firaxis took step in this direction with CIV VI, towards that sort of players, who get to have their own playground to mess with. Most of them handle things worse than AI itself.

 

[Gazebo]

I think it's a case of innovation being valued over quality. Firaxis are constantly reinventing the wheel (in many respects) instead of refining their existing work. A lot of code and related knowledge goes out the window, especially with personnel changes. They also clearly don't define "competent AI" in the same way as their more demanding customers (that's us, in part). Thus, you don't get that bit of extra time at the end of a development cycle where it's optimal to do AI improvement. Quality is relative, I suppose, but this approach has lead to an awful lot of disappointment and vocal thrashing over the years on the part of enthusiasts. Firaxis, as a leader in their field, deserves the heat.

On the other hand, you don't want to criticize them too hard since they're one of only a handful of developers nice enough to release source code. They're willing to expose the guts of some often rushed work for our benefit. Neither VP nor many of the better civ4 projects would have been possible without that arrangement. You could definitely take issue with the state of certain other mod tools ( WorldBuilder, Nexus ) but ultimately, we're having a good time here because of that generosity.

After looking at Civ6's database, it is pretty clear they're still using the army operational model from civ 5 for their tactical AI. So no, they didn't reinvent that wheel at all.

 

[heinous_hat]

After looking at Civ6's database, it is pretty clear they're still using the army operational model from civ 5 for their tactical AI. So no, they didn't reinvent that wheel at all.

Well, that's certainly not encouraging . I think the most disappointing thing I took away from the pre-release interviews was when EB stated that he thought the combat (from civ5) was "fine" and left it at that.

Not suggesting that they never reuse code or basic models, only that they lose an opportunity for iterative refinement wherever there's a radical change. For example, if you guys decided to introduce limited unit stacking in VP, you'd no doubt undo a lot of work spent on tuning the AI to value certain tile positions. What I was suggesting is that we'd (in theory) have a better product if they went with more frequent releases and made gradual changes. If what you say is true though, they've missed the boat on something that's remained fairly static. Superficially, the biggest changes to combat in civ6 look to be the movement rules and how to handle city attack/defense. Corps and armies seem to just create a "super unit".

Haven't really gotten into too much player vs AI combat yet to compare or judge quality.