Change for the sake of change

[PhilBowles]

I am playing civ6 - is that the right game?

Not sure it can be. From what I've found diplomacy is a complete irrelevance - it doesn't even have an especially useful trade screen. Diplomacy in Civ V in close to its final iteration was better than anything the series managed before - like strategic resources and city states, Civ VI takes a hammer to something that needed a minor tweak (Civ V could just have had fewer strategic resources spawning, removed gold-based influence altogether from CSes and removed gold payments that allowed the AI to be exploited diplomatically. The influence generation system and the interaction with espionage had no need to go).

And if there are features in it that I do not like or that I do not think work the way they should I can express my opinion. I think the developer wanted to stop all the possible exploits in civ 5 being done by deity players (and others) and by doing that they left those of us who do role playing behind with very few options from the very beginning of the game.

Overall I think Civ VI is simply the consequence of the old adage "be careful what you wish for". Players clamoured for more of Civ IV's features, so they just added Civ IV features in a Civ V framework. The result is a game that's mechanically inferior to Civ V - whatever you can say in favour of Civ IV, it was mechanically clunky - as well as being less coherent than either Civ IV or CIv V, each of which was fundamentally designed around its own systems.

 

[Manol0]

Feels like some of the mechanics that were present in Civ5 were solid and didn't need any changing/upgrading, yet were changed for the sake of it. I haven't been taking notes, so I can only comment on the three that are on my mind atm; how strategic resources are calculated, how roads work, and the FoW.

Strategic resources were pretty straight forward. You found a resource-rich plot of land, mined it, and received x amount of it, so '10' iron meant 10 swordsmen. This was good because it;

- Made duplicate hexes of strategics valuable.
- Enriched trade options.
- Required more strategics be placed on map, which
~ Made possible interesting buildings such as Forge.
~ Made hexes more interesting (better yields, more significance in taking cities)

Now it's different. You only need one hex of strategics in order to build infinite items from said strategic, which strips away all of the above points. Requiring 2 of a strategic to build from a city also makes no sense whatsoever from a gameplay perspective or a realism perspective.

Realism - If I have a blacksmith making swords, him being stationed in a military-only area won't make his swords require less raw material, and if I've tamed horses on a pasture, why can't I begin training horsemen without first gathering way more horses?

Gameplay - The guy with the good start (multiple horses) gets to snowball said start by saving hammers on encampments and getting an earlier (no time wasted on encampment) and more potent (encampment hammers put into units) rush going. The guy with the meh start has to invest in an encampment, making the meh start even slower. This also takes a tile away from him, which could have been a diamond/triangle farm formation, district adjacency, or wonder in the future. Just totally unintuitive.

Roads are also an issue. In Civ5, workers created roads. The benefits were;

- Personalized road layout for empire, which
~ Was aesthetically pleasing.
~ Allowed more efficient movement between cities.
- Quicker troop movement on both offense and defense.
- Custom roads for things like feeding troops to an allied Civ or CS.
- Fair and logical tradeoff in the form of upkeep cost.

And that's all gone now. I argue that trade-route-roads are flat out worse than worker-roads. They remove all of the above points, and trying to remedy any of them results in an awful tradeoff.

- Sending a route to future-enemy for a road costs an internal route, which is food, production, etc.
- Sending a route to/from a satellite city to complete a road system can cost a more valuable internal route.
- Military engineers cost way too much for 2 road hexes, come too late in game.
- Cannot determine the pathing for a trade-route-road.
- Cannot prevent a trade-route-road from occuring.

Complete downgrade to me. And to top it off, the movement on roads has been heavily nerfed as well. Coupled with the new movement point costs, and we have much slower movement around the map.

The FoW is a bitter topic for me. Glance at this thread here to see a direct side-by-side of Civ5 and Civ6's FoW. Huge reduction in clarity and readability, for the sake of an arbitrary and subjective 'improvement' on aesthetics. Aesthetics to me mean absolutely nothing if they get in the way of gameplay clarity, and I personally found the aesthetics of Civ5 to be beautiful enough as-is. The new fog messes everything up for me.

- Harder to tell which areas are valuable/high-priority expands.
- Harder to tell which areas are valuable/high-priority cities to capture from enemy.
- Harder to tell which areas are particularly difficult to traverse/attack into.
- Harder to tell, at a glance, resource distribution.
- Unwelcome feeling of being isolated (subjective).

And to make matters worse, the fog now bleeds into the mini-map, so all areas you don't currently have vision of are just this irrelevant, hard-to-decipher grayish mess. Complete downgrade in terms of clarity and functionality compared to Civ5.

I totally agree with these statements! Very well said! Especially those for the strategic resources. Current system make the game unrealistic and poor as a strategy game in general.For example the possibility to spam tanks with just one point of oil frustrates me a lot...Strategic resources miss their importance in CIV VI ...and that's the main reason I aint buy the game. I ve 850 hours in CIV V...and I ll keep playing it...

 

[nzcamel]

I am playing civ6 - is that the right game? And if there are features in it that I do not like or that I do not think work the way they should I can express my opinion. I think the developer wanted to stop all the possible exploits in civ 5 being done by deity players (and others) and by doing that they left those of us who do role playing behind with very few options from the very beginning of the game.

As someone who enjoys smelling the roses as he plays, I'm open to what you mean by role playing. But I do not think that any Civ game has been better or worse at facilitating what I think of as role playing. V maybe allowed for more of it as there was so much down time?

Not sure it can be. From what I've found diplomacy is a complete irrelevance - it doesn't even have an especially useful trade screen. Diplomacy in Civ V in close to its final iteration was better than anything the series managed before - like strategic resources and city states, Civ VI takes a hammer to something that needed a minor tweak (Civ V could just have had fewer strategic resources spawning, removed gold-based influence altogether from CSes and removed gold payments that allowed the AI to be exploited diplomatically. The influence generation system and the interaction with espionage had no need to go).

Overall I think Civ VI is simply the consequence of the old adage "be careful what you wish for". Players clamoured for more of Civ IV's features, so they just added Civ IV features in a Civ V framework. The result is a game that's mechanically inferior to Civ V - whatever you can say in favour of Civ IV, it was mechanically clunky - as well as being less coherent than either Civ IV or CIv V, each of which was fundamentally designed around its own systems.

I'm so very happy with what I wished for

Diplomacy in IV was better than diplomacy in V...but I suppose that's from an immersion perspective than a gameplay perspective. Still - if it's going to be "gamey" (AI playing like a human might) at least let the jokes fly rather than just the constant anger and miserableness; cos when I'm playing a game with others I don't want to make everyone miserable lol. I don't know how you can say Diplomacy in VI is irrelevant. Even in my latest game as Monty where I am warmongering, I am currently keeping everyone who hates me (which is everyone most of the time) at arms length. The ones who hate me slightly less, and are a potential danger have been bribed to consider their actions even more carefully

It could be fair that VI is a mix of both IV and V, and maybe that is contributing to some of the issues. But as you say this: "Civ VI takes a hammer to something that needed a minor tweak" haven't you considered that there are many players of IV who would have said that about V? i.e. there was a large part of the Civ fan base who purchased V; but were very disappointed.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm so very happy with what I wished for

Diplomacy in IV was better than diplomacy in V...but I suppose that's from an immersion perspective than a gameplay perspective.

Odd that you say that, as diplomacy only really existed in Civ iterations prior to V as a way to exploit the AI through trades. It rarely had any function beyond trade, while Civ V's system was much more strongly founded in actual diplomatic relationships. Of course as with 1UPT the system's ambition somewhat outweighed the AI's ability to cope with it.

I never had any sense in Civ IV that the leaders had characters as distinct as those in pre-BNW CIv V (pre-BNW, because ideology ruined the diplomacy system). In Civ IV I think I just wasn't called on to interact with other leaders often enough, and didn't particularly register that the -1 modifer was for X rather than Y unless it was of any strategic utility. In Civ VI they have arbitrary, extremely artificial agendas which they insist on describing to you, but apparently no personality characteristics beyond that. Though I may not have been playing enough to notice, they should grab the attention as other players rather than as pieces of the game scenery earlier and more forcefully than they do.

[quote[ I don't know how you can say Diplomacy in VI is irrelevant. Even in my latest game as Monty where I am warmongering, I am currently keeping everyone who hates me (which is everyone most of the time) at arms length. [/quote]

So far because I haven't had to engage in it in multiple playthroughs, other than open borders here or there. There are no rewards for being on good terms (or at least weren't pre-patch) as even your allies won't agree to joint wars, no one ever seems to declare war past the early game, and if they do the only reason to offer peace is if the war is draining too many resources to fight that you can't expand or develop. There's never any material risk to your cities. In one game I kept ignoring protests from the Russians, kept one of their cities, refused to make or broke promises repeatedly, and they just grumbled at me for a while and I could even send traders to them if I needed to.

Started a new playthrough today, and a surprise war from the Russians right at the start (for a change, not with a second civ joining in) lasted just long enough for me to steal a settler and kill a scout, when they sued for peace. They've had units wandering around my capital every so often since but no declaration of war has ever come - and in fact they're no longer unfriendly due to Peter's immersion-breaking "I love you because you're doing better than me" agenda. As Russia started off with a poor east coast starting position with tundra to the south and Spain to the north, and I settled immediately to their west, everyone is doing better than Peter. His expansion was lethargic not just because he lost two settlers, and his two cities are in suboptimal positions that I passed up.

It could be fair that VI is a mix of both IV and V, and maybe that is contributing to some of the issues. But as you say this: "Civ VI takes a hammer to something that needed a minor tweak" haven't you considered that there are many players of IV who would have said that about V? i.e. there was a large part of the Civ fan base who purchased V; but were very disappointed.

Civ IV and Civ V were designed around different frameworks - Civ V went back to the series' board game roots and asked 'how can we vary the strategies?' to come up with tall vs. wide. This wasn't territory the pre-existing system was designed around. Civ V never took Civ IV as its starting point and asked "what do we need to fix?" the way Civ VI appears to have done. It also attempted to solve longstanding problems that the series had repeatedly tried to tweak and never managed to solve satisfactorily - maintenance isn't much better than corruption.

On many of those counts it's fair to say that Civ V failed, but it did at least have a coherent vision that Civ VI appears to lack - at first, at any rate. While changes through the expansions were largely positive they did entail sometimes unwelcome feature creep and the baggage of multiple redundant systems.

 

[Aheadatime]

I don't think anyone is simply saying that we go with what the Devs want over other factors. Their opinion is clearly relevant from the POV that they have a responsibility to deliver a good product for 2K. I guess if we take your rationale on popularity and look at say Monopoly, then that game must be brilliant! But it isn't...it's pretty awful compared to most other board games.

Look this point is dragging on too far, and is losing it's sense of relevancy. You're not keeping the origins of this convo in mind when responding to me. Magil said, arrogantly, that the road system and strategic system are 'proven superior for gameplay'. When I asked what the proof was, he/she said "the devs made the call".. hence my point. The devs thinking a gameplay choice is good =/= the gameplay choice objectively being good. There is no debating that lol, it's just objective. The devs are humans too, they make mistakes, and they don't playtest as thoroughly as the fans do in the long run.

I believe you said this:

"Because each hex of iron is 'infinite', there are far fewer hexes of iron.
Because there are fewer hexes of iron, there would be far fewer cities with the forge available to them.
Because there would be far fewer cities with the forge available to them, the building would just essentially be another snowball device, ie. "dude with 3 iron in his early empire also gets access to this rare, specialized building that speeds up his production..?"
Or, you make the building relatively weak, in which case why even include it at all?"

You're complaining about the effect of a forge (from V?) as a snowball device; when it isn't included in VI anyway. So what is the problem?

Again, this stems from you not paying attention to the entire convo thus far. I hate backtracking on a convo tbh, but I'll re-state and clarify what you seem to be missing.

Me - Civ5's strategic system allowed for more hexes of strategics on map, which gave way to buildings like forge.
Magil - We can still have a forge in Civ6.
Me - It's not that simple. Infinite iron per hex > less iron hexes > less forge cities > forge power struggle (OP or UP)
You - forge?

The problem is (restating what was said in the OP...) Civ5's strategic system let more strategics be generated per map, which created more potential for interesting buildings like the forge, which isn't as easy in Civ6 due to the above. Remedying that issue, as outlined in a previous post(...), by simply putting more iron down per map devalues the rare/valuable aspect of strategics and makes the strategic prereq for units arbitrary.

"This shouldn't even need explaining but here goes. In situation one, you can trade your iron away in Civ5 but cannot in Civ6. In situation two, you can trade your iron away in Civ5, but doing so in Civ6 puts you back in 'situation 1' status, meaning you have to resort to encampments, which is limiting and slow."

So you are okay with Encampments; so again; why this ^^^ comment? If Encampments are fine as they are, what's the problem?

I don't get your question? Encampments are fine as a district idea. Put your barracks, stables, etc., in there. Give it a ranged shot and wall strength. Great. I wish it provided housing tbh, and that you could upgrade it in unique ways (like Civ5 great general AoE burn effect), but that's besides the point. It's fine as a district. What's not fine (in the sense that its design is worse than Civ5's imo) is the strategic system of having to build a district early game to build units when you only have one copy of a strategic. My gripe is with this strategic concept, not the fact that encampment districts exist.

I'd say it's more luxuries that other Civs are after, but every now and then they want a strategic resource too.

Well the luxuries are irrelevant to this convo. The point of debate was whether or not (as outlined in previous posts) Civ6's new strategic system provides a less diverse trade mini-game, which I argued (in previous posts) it does.

I disagree that V brought with it more opportunities to trade when compared with VI. I suppose for anyone trading in single units you may have a point...but as I understand it some consider that an exploit; which needed fixing anyway.

So you're saying that being able to trade away 1-2 spare iron copies is just as opportunistic as being able to trade away 8-16? Of course V brought with it more trading, and I'm not referring to any exploits. You could trade away 4 copies to the guy who pays half price after the first 4, then trade away 5 to the guy in good-standing who equates 5 iron to a lux. The rest you could use to siphon off GPT. All the while you're creating positive trade modifiers with multiple civs. Meanwhile, in Civ6, you've traded your single spare iron to one leader for GPT. -_-

The great thing about III was that when it introduced strategic resources actually allowing for specific units etc it did create tension that hadn't existed before. IV ramped this up; and commonly wars were fought over startegic resources. With how common resources became in V; I would say it was that game that reduced this very real world situation. With that in mind, VI has taken a different approach. One that hasn't completely worked, say from the POV of AI not being able to upgrade its units etc.
In short...I don't see the issue you're raising as being specific to VI.

Back to the origin of that quote-train, I was referring to the forge issue outlined above. I've never played any Civ besides CivRev, Civ5, and Civ6, so I can't comment on your thoughts. I just know what I've typed thus far in regards to Civ5 vs Civ6.

Not in 500AD, let alone 1000BC! I don't think you've thought this through The Romans were the clear exceptions of course. Sure, heading into the medieval era others had picked it up, and some roads were planned; but most just followed the existing tried and true tracks that had been laid for centuries by traders and travellers. It wasn't until the modern era that genuinely new roads were often planned that had never existed before. So I think the game has it about bang on. Maybe engineers should have one more charge. Or even an infinite ability to build roads; but that function will (like a worker) take them more than one turn. But the pre modern set up for road building is very immersive.

Stone-paved roads were around in 4,000 BC lol. Maybe trade-route roads would make sense for the first couple of eras, but you have to balance gameplay and realism, and honestly this change is flat out awful for gameplay compared to civ5. I've outlined why I think that's the case in the first page. So as to not repeat myself so much, just read and respond to those points if you disagree and we can have a proper discussion/debate. As for your engineer idea, I think it's an improvement but it doesn't go far enough. My thought is that workers should be able to build roads from turn 1, and engineers should get buffs in new and exciting ways (like constructing siege towers and other devices on the battlefield, etc).

But we don't. You keep doing this - making up complicated scenarios to knock something that is much more simple.
I can get on board with what you're suggesting as a "solution" in the industrial era; but not before.

Sorry, I thought my post was quite simple. I'll simplify it further. In Civ5, you made choices. Where to send your trade routes to/from was a choice you made. Which hexes to put roads on was a choice you made. In Civ6, these two choices are awkwardly combined. My opinion is that this is a bad design choice in regards to gameplay, as it disrupts efficiency and slows down the movement of the game. Agree/disagree/want me to elaborate further?

No...I didn't see what happened there. You did the same thing again where you over complicated things without much nuance to...I dunno lol. I have no idea why, as there are plenty of shades of grey here and not just two poles!

Ok. You stated that slow = interesting in Civ, and that speed should be sought after in other games. My post was an attempt at showing to you how wrong that statement is, as clearly, Civ games need a healthy pace sitting somewhere between too fast and too slow. So if someone states the game feels slow, or suggests ways to speed it up, it's not fair or productive (and quite immature) to tell that person they should play a different game, since again, Civ is supposed to sit between fast and slow, and everyone has a different idea of where that balance exists. Clear? It would be more productive to try to explain why you feel it's adequately paced, or suggest alternative methods to slow it down/speed it up if you don't feel its adequately paced but disagree with suggestions thus far.

I like what they have done with movement. Maybe it's because I remember pre IV when pretty much everything (cavalry aside) moved 1 square at a time. Those games weren't a fail because their slow units moved at that "speed". I remember the reason given by Soren for workers getting a second move point in IV; and it was nothing to do with speed; and everything to do with feedback they got that people would forget what they were going to do with that worker (how you did that pre IV...I dunno!!) when the next turn rolled around. So in IV you could move the worker, and then start it on it's next action in the same turn. Your non cav fighting units in IV still only moved 1.
V "sped" things up...I have no problem with VI restoring the status quo a little

I understand. Like I said, I can only reference the 3 Civ games I've played so far, and this game feels by far the slowest. So much so that it's become tedious to play it. Rather than modding the movement rules, I figured it would be a better idea to focus on the road issue. Ultimately, I think the game would be balanced in a healthier, more long-term way if the roads were fixed up. Just giving everything tons more movement can really distort the pace of war imo.

Thank you for the in depth discussion

You're quite welcome