CIV 5 vs CIV 6

[Krajzen]

Overall I have greatly preferred civ5 after all
1) Far less tedious micromanagement (less painful 1UPT, vastly less religious units misery, worker automation, so much less micro in city management)
2) Art style and atmosphere more fitting my tastes
3) Hard to explain feeling of "less is more" (various subsystems have much less gimmicks and toys than in civ6, but it all synergizes to something more meaningful and those fewer strategic choices feel way more important)
4) AI personality spreadsheets were so much deeper and more interesting, more immersive, so much less annoying than the horror of thsoe stupid agendas than I don't even know how to describe it
5) Due to personalities >>> agendas, civ 5 congress >>> civ6 congress, ideologies and other stuff diplomacy in civ5 felt much more immersive
6) AI was much more capable of creating huge expansionist empires in civ5 (due to no loyalty nonsense, OP walls nonsense and pacifist attitudes nonsense) making for way more entertaining unpredictable evolution of the world (also combined with AIs personalities making them develop wild asymmetric empires)
7) Social Policy Trees >>> policy cards, they made for serious dilemmas so you couldn't casually run away from your past choices
8) Why were Ideologies removed I will never know, they were an entire awesome subsystem and a huge reason for the...
9) ...endgame being much more dynamic, interesting, better paced and fun than the horrible predictable slog of civ6 late eras.


That being said, there have been a lot of individual great ideas and flavour touches and mechanical solutions in civ6 which I do appreciate, they just didn't synergize together into an experience that would match my joy of civ5 "less elements but better working as a whole" experience. If those best new ideas from civ6 were taken out and combined with some reintroduced solutions from civ5, sprinkled with some fresh civ7 innovations and repackaged as a new coherent experience, well I am moderately optimistic that civ7 will suit my tastes better.

 

[Equilin]

The worst part of civ5 is happiness system which is quite frustrating to deal with, it feels like a pain in the **** for the entire game, a constant headache, a constant problem to have in the back of your head. It is also the main component of this game's way too restrictive and ultimately unprofitable (even counterproductive) expansion. The supremacy of tall gameplay was a big problem of this game in general - four city "empire" can dominate the world, and literally one city can contain half of all global wonders.

On another hand, civ6 unchecked wide expansion (forcing insane micro tedium when combined with district system), weakness of large cities and de facto lack of any meaningful happiness system is so miserable that I'm not sure if I don't prefer civ5 system between those two evils. One of the most important struggles of civ7 is to find the balance between hyper tall civ5 and hyper wide civ6.

I think the key here is population. Civ5's population is more powerful, especially on the science side (up to 2 sci/pop with library and public schools), have more tiles to work without spreading city like Civ6, and having specialists generate GPs. The problem is that a new city give 1 more pop but give extra 3 unhappiness, with unhappy penalty being rather severe and it counts on a global scale. This means it's preferable to grow a new pop in an existing city (also made possible with Aqueduct greatly reducing the food needed to grow) than to go for a new city, unless you really need the land. This leads to the tall meta that many despises.

Meanwhile Civ6's population is weak, they got capped by housing while districts and buildings generate yields without needing them, and tiles are taken up by districts and wonders, their base science yield got floored, while population generates equal unhappiness across the board. Meaning it's preferable to minimally grow a city so it can work a few good tiles while planting new cities for more district slots, using chops to quickly meet that check and build districts/wonders before moving to the next city. I remember talks about 4-pop city meta (or 7) and absolutely hates it.

So i hope that Civ7 will take both game's positives (strong population/specialist, local happiness only, etc.)

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Civ 5 with vox populi is hands down better than Civ 6. Civ 6 will also have have garbage AI because they lied about releasing dll.

 

[leif erikson]

Civ 5 with vox populi is hands down better than Civ 6. Civ 6 will also have have garbage AI because they lied about releasing dll.

In fairness, neither Firaxis nor 2K ever promised to release the .dll for Civ6. Personally asked them a long time ago and was told they would not.

If you know they did, please provide a link before you call them liars.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

In fairness, neither Firaxis nor 2K ever promised to release the .dll for Civ6. Personally asked them a long time ago and was told they would not.

If you know they did, please provide a link before you call them liars.

It was a lot of bold statements like "Civ VI was built from the ground up with modding in mind" etc. Not being able to fix broken AI belies these statements.

 

[leif erikson]

It was a lot of bold statements like "Civ VI was built from the ground up with modding in mind" etc. Not being able to fix broken AI belies these statements.

That is fine and it is one point. Calling them liars because they didn't release the .dll is another issue entirely.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

That is fine and it is one point. Calling them liars because they didn't release the .dll is another issue entirely.

OK - maybe a better adjective would be disingenuous or contemptuous?

Here's a great article that explains impact of this:

Civilization 6 modders are losing interest over its uncertain future

Without access to the DLL source code, Firaxis faces a crisis of faith from its talented community creators

www.pcgamesn.com

 

[leif erikson]

OK - maybe a better adjective would be disingenuous or contemptuous?

Yes, and this is a quote from that article:

Before talking about the limitations of modding without access to the DLL source, Gedemon praises the game’s basic modding toolset. “When Firaxis said Civ VI was built from the ground up with modding in mind, it wasn’t lying”, he tells me. “We can make new units, buildings, leaders, and more easily than in Civ V. We can completely change the terrain graphics (we could in Civ IV, but not in Civ V). We have access to all original assets, including DLC and expansions – not the case in Civ IV or V – and the modifier system is a powerful tool.”

edit - that is not to say that I would not really like to see them release the .dll code. However, it is disingenuous to call them liars in a forum.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

One of the most important struggles of civ7 is to find the balance between hyper tall civ5 and hyper wide civ6.

They did figure it out. It's called Civ IV.