intellectsucks
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2014
- Messages
- 109
I just downloaded Civ 6 with the free promotion from Epic games and spent the last week playing it. I've seen a few people ask about how they compare so I figured I'd share my thoughts as a long time Civ 4 player who has recently started on Civ 6.
The Good:
I find the sound to be a HUGE improvement. The sound track, the ambient sounds, and especially the combat sounds (no more annoying horn sounds when you win a round). Obviously Leonard Nimoy was the perfect person to read the new technology quotes, but Sean Bean is pretty great in his own right.
Though it was sort of annoying at first, I actually kind of came around to the combat style of Civ 6. Combat is almost always a multi turn process now (unless one of the combatants is an era or two above the other on the tech tree) and giving cities their own built in defenders was a welcome change for me.
The religion system is much more robust and interesting. I find the different tiers of religious units and the religious combat system to be cool and fun. Having the ability to use faith to buy buldings and units is a nice addition too.
I also really like the "district" system. Placing districts and wonders throughout your city's workable area makes it much more realistic and adds to the immersion in my opinion.
On tiles that have certain resources, civ 6 gives you the option of improving the tile (with a farm, camp, quarry, etc) for a permanent small yield increase, or to "harvest" the resource for big one time boost but lose the resource. I was torn on this but decided to add it to the good section. It adds another dimension to city planning and forces you to think about what is more important, short term or long term gain.
Another feather that I'm indifferent about is the system of "eurekas" and "inspirations". These offer boosts to your technology and civics (the civics system in Civ 6 is essentially a separate tech tree that improves through your cultural output) when you complete certain goals, for example killing 3 barbarians gives a boost to the bronze working tech. Personally I find them to be another way to get screwed by the RNG, but a lot of players who are better than I am find them very useful. Maybe you will too.
The Bad
Civ 6 only allows one unit of each type per tile, a BIG departure from Civ 4. I'm not sure of all the different types of units, but there are definitely distinctions between military, support, and great people. This means you can't have a huge stack of doom anymore. You CAN have different types of units on the same tile, for example a swordsman and a builder, but not a swordsmen and a knight. This in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that one unit per tile includes the AI's units. With 7 other civs and up to 12 AI city states, the map can get very crowded very fast, turning army movement into a logistical nightmare. Moving any decent number of troops long distances is VERY tedious, as you can't really choose a destination more than 1 or two turns away because as new military units move into your unit's path, it will get rerouted or have it's movement interrupted.
Combine the above with what seem to be ABSURD movement penalties, and it is not uncommon to find a difference of 15-20 turns between one conquered civs territory and your next targets. Additionally, the military support units (siege towers) don't ever upgrade to something with better movement, turning what should be a blitz into a slog. I would have been fine with 1 unit per tile if they would have excluded enemy units and drastically increased movement speed as the game progressed.
Tile improvements are now done by builders. These units (initially) have 3 build "charges" and disappear after all three are used. Also, the production cost of builders increase with each one you build. This, coupled with the fact that many of the inspirations and eurekas are tied to making a certain number of improvements, means that you have to very carefully plan when you will produce builders, what they will improve and when they will improve it, all in conjunction with planning where your city goes. It's not enough to find a city spot that has the option for great tile improvements, you need to also figure out WHEN you can get a builder to that city to make those improvements. The improvements are done instantaneously, which I guess is a good thing, but I prefer the worker system used by civ 4.
I absolutely HATE the way that cities expand. Civ 4's Big Fat Cross made it easy to know which tiles your city would have access to, and the consistent growth formula meant that you could calculate exactly when you would have access to them. In Civ 6, growth happens one tile at a time, and which tile the growth happens on is random, though you an also use gold to purchase additional tiles. Oh and the tile growth also sometimes switches halfway through completing. This means that you will check your tile management view to see that a city is expanding to a certain tile, purchase a different tile based on the fact that you will get the first one for free, then have the growth randomly switch to a different tile meaning that you now have to purchase another tile to work the tiles that you had planned on. I don't mind the one tile at a time growth, as long as it is consistent and can be planned for.
Diplomacy is infinitely better in Civ 4. In Civ 6 AIs will declare war randomly, regardless of your relationship status with them. Some AIs will get mad at you for stuff that is completely outside of your control (the Aztecs don't like you because you have luxury resources?!? Seriously?!?). And declaring war outside of the ancient era comes with massive diplomacy penalties that can't ever be removed. Not that those penalties matter, since you can still make deals with the AI after they "denounce" you (the worst diplomacy rating you can get), which they will do on a regular basis if you are at all violent. The advice most players give about diplomacy is to ignore after a certain period of time. Civ 4 allowed you to strategically use diplomacy to form alliances and friends, even while warmongering, giving you a leg up on your competition. Civ 6 has other AIs who will probably all hate you.
The Ugly
The user interface is hot garbage. Critical information that was available with a mouseover in civ 4 is now obscured behind clicks or microscopic graphics (for example, in civ 4 you could mouseover different units to see which promotions and how much experience each had, in Civ 6 you have to click on each individual unit to get this info, then house over a different part of the units display). The scroll bars for various info screens are almost invisible. Info that should all be displayed together (I'm looking at you city screen!!!), is broken up into multiple displays. Some info is completely missing. Is there a spot to find your military power ranking vs other civs? If so I can't find it. All of this info was available and intuitively displayed in Civ 4. Same thing with the periodic alerts that pop up, such as a new barb village. They seem to disappear after a turn or two and I can't find a spot to review the previous ones.
I know I already moaned about diplomacy, but these rubbish diplomacy screens are really the best that Firaxis could do? All black with a static portrait? Really? Civ 4's AI interactions were so much better: dynamic, changing, and most of all ANIMATED!! It's been over a decade and they couldn't give us a better interaction with the world leaders?
Finally, the way the map is rendered makes identifying terrain and resources difficult, particularly for resources that are in the fog of war. The resource markers on the map get smaller as you zoom out, so scanning the map for a newly identified resources is much more difficult than in Civ 4, where the giant resource pins were easily identifiable at wider zooms. The sepia toned sections of map that is revealed but not currently visible, though a visually cool concept, make this even more of an issue. Having a feature that allowed you to quickly scroll through each revealed luxury and strategic resource would be a massive improvement that still worked within the same graphics scheme.
Overall
Ultimately, I think that Civ 4 is a better game overall, though I still think that Civ 6 is a great game. If you're new to the civ series, pick Civ 4 over Civ 6; it's got all of the complexity of Civ 6 without a lot of the issues of the newer version. If you're a Civ 4 veteran who is looking for a new challenge, you'll likely enjoy civ 6 as long as you keep an open mind; it scratches the same itch in your brain that civ 4 did but in a few different ways than its predecessor.
Moderator Action: Please mind your language, thanks! --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
The Good:
I find the sound to be a HUGE improvement. The sound track, the ambient sounds, and especially the combat sounds (no more annoying horn sounds when you win a round). Obviously Leonard Nimoy was the perfect person to read the new technology quotes, but Sean Bean is pretty great in his own right.
Though it was sort of annoying at first, I actually kind of came around to the combat style of Civ 6. Combat is almost always a multi turn process now (unless one of the combatants is an era or two above the other on the tech tree) and giving cities their own built in defenders was a welcome change for me.
The religion system is much more robust and interesting. I find the different tiers of religious units and the religious combat system to be cool and fun. Having the ability to use faith to buy buldings and units is a nice addition too.
I also really like the "district" system. Placing districts and wonders throughout your city's workable area makes it much more realistic and adds to the immersion in my opinion.
On tiles that have certain resources, civ 6 gives you the option of improving the tile (with a farm, camp, quarry, etc) for a permanent small yield increase, or to "harvest" the resource for big one time boost but lose the resource. I was torn on this but decided to add it to the good section. It adds another dimension to city planning and forces you to think about what is more important, short term or long term gain.
Another feather that I'm indifferent about is the system of "eurekas" and "inspirations". These offer boosts to your technology and civics (the civics system in Civ 6 is essentially a separate tech tree that improves through your cultural output) when you complete certain goals, for example killing 3 barbarians gives a boost to the bronze working tech. Personally I find them to be another way to get screwed by the RNG, but a lot of players who are better than I am find them very useful. Maybe you will too.
The Bad
Civ 6 only allows one unit of each type per tile, a BIG departure from Civ 4. I'm not sure of all the different types of units, but there are definitely distinctions between military, support, and great people. This means you can't have a huge stack of doom anymore. You CAN have different types of units on the same tile, for example a swordsman and a builder, but not a swordsmen and a knight. This in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that one unit per tile includes the AI's units. With 7 other civs and up to 12 AI city states, the map can get very crowded very fast, turning army movement into a logistical nightmare. Moving any decent number of troops long distances is VERY tedious, as you can't really choose a destination more than 1 or two turns away because as new military units move into your unit's path, it will get rerouted or have it's movement interrupted.
Combine the above with what seem to be ABSURD movement penalties, and it is not uncommon to find a difference of 15-20 turns between one conquered civs territory and your next targets. Additionally, the military support units (siege towers) don't ever upgrade to something with better movement, turning what should be a blitz into a slog. I would have been fine with 1 unit per tile if they would have excluded enemy units and drastically increased movement speed as the game progressed.
Tile improvements are now done by builders. These units (initially) have 3 build "charges" and disappear after all three are used. Also, the production cost of builders increase with each one you build. This, coupled with the fact that many of the inspirations and eurekas are tied to making a certain number of improvements, means that you have to very carefully plan when you will produce builders, what they will improve and when they will improve it, all in conjunction with planning where your city goes. It's not enough to find a city spot that has the option for great tile improvements, you need to also figure out WHEN you can get a builder to that city to make those improvements. The improvements are done instantaneously, which I guess is a good thing, but I prefer the worker system used by civ 4.
I absolutely HATE the way that cities expand. Civ 4's Big Fat Cross made it easy to know which tiles your city would have access to, and the consistent growth formula meant that you could calculate exactly when you would have access to them. In Civ 6, growth happens one tile at a time, and which tile the growth happens on is random, though you an also use gold to purchase additional tiles. Oh and the tile growth also sometimes switches halfway through completing. This means that you will check your tile management view to see that a city is expanding to a certain tile, purchase a different tile based on the fact that you will get the first one for free, then have the growth randomly switch to a different tile meaning that you now have to purchase another tile to work the tiles that you had planned on. I don't mind the one tile at a time growth, as long as it is consistent and can be planned for.
Diplomacy is infinitely better in Civ 4. In Civ 6 AIs will declare war randomly, regardless of your relationship status with them. Some AIs will get mad at you for stuff that is completely outside of your control (the Aztecs don't like you because you have luxury resources?!? Seriously?!?). And declaring war outside of the ancient era comes with massive diplomacy penalties that can't ever be removed. Not that those penalties matter, since you can still make deals with the AI after they "denounce" you (the worst diplomacy rating you can get), which they will do on a regular basis if you are at all violent. The advice most players give about diplomacy is to ignore after a certain period of time. Civ 4 allowed you to strategically use diplomacy to form alliances and friends, even while warmongering, giving you a leg up on your competition. Civ 6 has other AIs who will probably all hate you.
The Ugly
The user interface is hot garbage. Critical information that was available with a mouseover in civ 4 is now obscured behind clicks or microscopic graphics (for example, in civ 4 you could mouseover different units to see which promotions and how much experience each had, in Civ 6 you have to click on each individual unit to get this info, then house over a different part of the units display). The scroll bars for various info screens are almost invisible. Info that should all be displayed together (I'm looking at you city screen!!!), is broken up into multiple displays. Some info is completely missing. Is there a spot to find your military power ranking vs other civs? If so I can't find it. All of this info was available and intuitively displayed in Civ 4. Same thing with the periodic alerts that pop up, such as a new barb village. They seem to disappear after a turn or two and I can't find a spot to review the previous ones.
I know I already moaned about diplomacy, but these rubbish diplomacy screens are really the best that Firaxis could do? All black with a static portrait? Really? Civ 4's AI interactions were so much better: dynamic, changing, and most of all ANIMATED!! It's been over a decade and they couldn't give us a better interaction with the world leaders?
Finally, the way the map is rendered makes identifying terrain and resources difficult, particularly for resources that are in the fog of war. The resource markers on the map get smaller as you zoom out, so scanning the map for a newly identified resources is much more difficult than in Civ 4, where the giant resource pins were easily identifiable at wider zooms. The sepia toned sections of map that is revealed but not currently visible, though a visually cool concept, make this even more of an issue. Having a feature that allowed you to quickly scroll through each revealed luxury and strategic resource would be a massive improvement that still worked within the same graphics scheme.
Overall
Ultimately, I think that Civ 4 is a better game overall, though I still think that Civ 6 is a great game. If you're new to the civ series, pick Civ 4 over Civ 6; it's got all of the complexity of Civ 6 without a lot of the issues of the newer version. If you're a Civ 4 veteran who is looking for a new challenge, you'll likely enjoy civ 6 as long as you keep an open mind; it scratches the same itch in your brain that civ 4 did but in a few different ways than its predecessor.
Moderator Action: Please mind your language, thanks! --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Last edited by a moderator:
