CIV 5 vs CIV 6

[Diktaattori]

I came into the CIV series with CIV5, and have recently started playing the game again. Somehow I’m just not convinced by 6, but a fair number of ppl seem to be playing it.

Do I need to re-adjust my thoughts here, which is the better game?

Firaxis really messed up AI. They give deity AI 50% more bonuses than on Civ V and it still cant compete even with settler level Civ V AI.

 

[Diktaattori]

In some ways I like 5 more, but there's also the problem that in 5, I feel compelled to play basically the same way every time, because the optimal path in 5 (approx 4 cities, focus on science, tradition into patronage/liberty and then into rationalism) is so much better than any other path that it's basically pointless to do anything else. 5 needs a rebalance, but 6 needs more of a total overhaul, at least with the AI being basically unable to play it.

You need to drink 15 cans of beer and then start to play. If it is still too easy you should consider some shots of tequila

 

[Leucarum]

I found 5 quite constraining as some other posters have said. But then I never did try playing with many mods...

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think Civ 5 is probably more balanced and straight forward, simpler, and it works to its benefits

Civ 6 introducers a lot of wildcards, and it makes the game unpredictable

But in Civ 5, once you get a system going, you keep at it, and it's difficult to stray

Civ 6 offers you the ability to experiment more, which makes it more replayable in my eyes.

 

[kaspergm]

But in Civ 5, once you get a system going, you keep at it, and it's difficult to stray

Civ 6 offers you the ability to experiment more, which makes it more replayable in my eyes.

I agree with this from an overall perspective (not including mods).

On the other hand, on a civ specific level, I feel 6 often forces you into one very specific strategy with the civ you choose based on their individual bonuses. It’s not “let’s play Korea and see what happens”, it’s “I want to play a science game so I pick Korea”. 5 also had this issue, but to a lesser extent, and I still feel the policy trees of 5 offered more potential for variation than the government cards of 6.

 

[Naktis]

Civ 5 is better. Civ 6 start with many new features looked promising, but then they introduced expanssion with loyalty feature, I hate it, without this expanssion it is debatable who is better..oh and bugs...as it stands now Civ 5 way better.

 

[shaglio]

I tired hard to like Civ 6, and played it quite a bit. I like the districts concept a lot.

Unfortunately, I feel the game just has too many different kinds of choices to make that don't make much impact on gameplay. A lot of the game feels like busywork to me, with choices to be made that have little or no effect on the long term outcome. I also think diplomacy (city-state and civilization) is a large step backwards from V - I thought that system was great as it is (especially combined with the Ideologies of the late eras).

I couldn't agree more. I'm sure most people get excited when it's time to choose a Golden/Normal/Dark Age bonus, or spend a new governor point, or vote in the World Council, or vote for an Emergency proposition. But these things all annoy me and make me feel deflated. They're such distracting, tedious chores that just want to get them over with ASAP so I can get back to playing the game.

 

[kivanc]

civ4 is the best one by far. But as civ6 is easier, I cannot play civ4 after getting back from wprk. requires more attention.
So I play 6 more but still I play 4 from time to time when I miss it; even after so many years
Yeah. Civ6 has nice additions but by means of greatness and excitement 4>6>5
By means of casual easy play, 6>4>5

5, I dont play much. It is a worse version of 6 for me.
4 is totally a separate game.

 

[kaspergm]

I couldn't agree more. I'm sure most people get excited when it's time to choose a Golden/Normal/Dark Age bonus, or spend a new governor point, or vote in the World Council, or vote for an Emergency proposition. But these things all annoy me and make me feel deflated. They're such distracting, tedious chores that just want to get them over with ASAP so I can get back to playing the game.

I think many of the features you name are marred by poor balance. For instance Era bonus: It's basically Golden Monumentality and then everything else is trash. Or Governor promotions, there are a few key promotions - basically the bottom three on Pingala up to and including double great person points, buying districts with faith on Moksha, doubling your envoys on Armani - and then all the rest is more or less filler. Sure, the settler promotion on Magnus and the Disaster promotion on Lian can also come in handy, albeit situationally. World Congress just plain sucks, full stop. Probably the worst implemented feature of any civ game imo.

 

[Naokaukodem]

The main interest of Civ6 is to make YouTube videos to show people how insane you can go with some civilizations uniques. And the success of it, is because social networks are in fashion and are viral. Civ6 success relies nearly exclusively on the virality of social networks. It's a great business model, but for normal people who are not constently browsing ununderstandable content makers like PotatoeMcWiskey (omg, this one speaks too fast, come on I'm just a french guy), and make normal games with their sticks & dicks (fun word for kids, moderators ), it all flattens pretty quickly. In one hand, it's not interesting to play in lower difficulty levels. (except for total noobs, but that's fair ) And in higher ones, it can be discouraging to be so backwarded. Only fools can sanely continue a game where at say turn 80 (normal speed, 500 turns) the most advanced AI has 20 techs more than you. (if you survived any early rush, I don't have anything against early rushes, but sometimes, it's just impossible to survive you know, due to AI BONUS units, which make it silly) Civ6 replayability is just about exploits and particular uniques and particular features.

and [AI] still cant compete even with settler level Civ V AI.

Pardon me, but I find Civ6 Deity not so easy. It's definitely not as easy as Civ5 Settler difficulty. It's to compare with Civ5 Deity definitely. Eventhough I've tried to win, and won, on Deity Civ5 only once and 2-3 times in Civ6. (but, trying to repeat it in 6, especially with other civs than Rome or Scythia, is not easy at all)

 

[KayAU]

I think 5 is better, although 6 has different strengths which makes it worth playing every now and then. From my point of view, the strength of Civ 5 is that it is more polished and refined, with systems that work well and interact well with each other. The downside is that the optimal path is quite clear, and so it tends to get repetitive. With Civ 6, there's some really nice variety between the civs, many of which are very interesting. The downside is that Civ 6's systems are poorly integrated and unrefined, and so I end up not caring about half the stuff which is in the game. The AI is also so weak that you can still be completely dominant without caring about all that stuff.

If you consider mods, the difference is much greater though. Vox Populi goes a long way towards fixing the flaws of Civ 5, while at the same time adding a bunch of content. As far as I know, Civ 6 doesn't have anything approaching that, and it seems unlikely it ever will.

 

[Chekko]

I play Civ 6 and prefer it, but I think Civ 5 is better in how I get more excited from the gameplay. That sound you get when you unlock a new policy makes me a bit excited, how you can build a real enormous city is fun where you have the possibility to build so many wonders in it. The card system in Civ 6 is not exciting, the bonus you get from them are not big enough for me to be hyped over and Civ 5s policy system is permanent which I think is better.

 

[Anno]

Vox Populi >>>> 6, but I’ll take vanilla 6 over 5. Both are good though.

 

[Equilin]

I'm curious to know how many would stay with Civ 5, over Civ 6, if Civ 5 did not have all these mods sometimes overhauling the whole game?

well i still play unmodded civ5 a ton and it's still very fun. I considered uninstalling civ6 a couple times (because storage issues) but never civ5.

 

[LMT]

I think Vox Populi Civ V is probably a better game, meaning it's more balanced and more challenging.

That being said, I have more fun playing Civ VI. I recently started playing Civ V Vox Populi and I really missed the districts. Plus the artwork (other than the leaders) is far better in VI IMHO.

 

[iammaxhailme]

well i still play unmodded civ5 a ton and it's still very fun. I considered uninstalling civ6 a couple times (because storage issues) but never civ5.

I play 5 with light modding (More Luxuries, More Pantheons, a few custom civs, a few small balance tweaks) but not with huge overhauls like VP, and yeah it holds up.

I played with VP for a while. Every single game basically devolved into "some civ or two would invade me and never go to peace and it was a big boring endless slog stalemate". Maybe I just wasn't familiar enough with VP's balance, but it soured me on wanting to play with it more.

 

[Socrates99]

The way Civ V pushes you to have very few cities always ruined it for me. 4Xs are always about pushing to get bigger and expand. I know people push the tall v wide narrative but in civ IV and Civ VI I often push for tall and wide. You can have empires with a few mega cities and smaller satellites. Civ Vs mechanics almost always made that a bad choice. Building "tall" empires always feels like sitting on my hands and ignoring one of the "Xs" in 4x. Civ VI has issues but it doesn't have that (IMO) massive negative.

 

[reddishrecue]

I just couldn't tell which civ was the better game. Obviously, it has to be civ 6 because its bigger, has more civilizations, a few setbacks but the added additions are obvious, and they show that the purpose of the civilization series is to make a better civilization than the earlier civilizations. That's what the purpose seems to be.

 

[Equilin]

Also one more thing that i don't like about 6 in comparison to 5 is how it cannot handle maps as large as 5. Giant Earth from YnaMP is one of my favorite map to play for both games, but 6 cannot handle it (now, it used to be somewhat ok) while 5 can.

 

[Krajzen]

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.

Other than that, civ6 factional bonuses felt much more powerful, useful, and interesting to use than the misery of civ5 uniwue bonuses which often felt to me like "we are all lying to ourselves this very narrow UA gimmick makes any statistical difference in how you play and win as this faction". Even those which were actually powerful (Polish UA, Babylonuan UA, Mayan UA) often offered not very engaging gameplay, just giving you free candies with very little effort. Civ6 design of civ unique stuff is vastly superior - now its main problem to resolve in civ7 is some civs unique stuff amounting to too many small dispersed bonuses which are hard to remember and comprehend (hello Maori, which have iirc like 13 separate bonuses and modifiers!). Which is, again, something to balance in civ7 - give us actually powerful and actively engaging unique factional stuff of civ6, but simpler and described in fewer paragraphs, like civ5.