Civ 6 drops below Civ 5 on Steam

[Gorbles]

civ6's AI is working as designed. Firaxis had ample time to test the AI.

That's not how you work out if something is working as-designed. We're attempting to determine intent here, not the end product as a result of business-focused software development.

 

[Dale]

And this is where peoples' opinions differ. You consider Civilisation 4 a deeper and more mechanically-satisfying game? Or words to that effect.

Broken AI is a (set of) bug(s). You can't criticise the AI for not working properly (unless you're arguing the state of the AI in Civ 6 is as-designed, which I doubt), but handwave people pointing out the issues with the last expansion for Civ 4 (i.e. it's most-complete state).

I'm a software developer myself, I know what a bug and bad design is. A bug is something not working as intended, bad design is something not scoped correctly. In Civ's case (all of them, not just one or two of the games in the series) the bad AI stems from an incomplete set of decision trees. Decision trees are created at design level, not coding level. The AI coder simply codes in the decision trees that the designer wants. If the AI is not following the decision tree, or generates an error from the decision tree, then that's a bug. However, the AI in Civ games follows the decision trees correctly. The bad AI is not a bug.

And that's why the bad Civ AI is never fixed, and why in expansions the AI is generally worse at the new features than it is at the old features. The main game designer moves on (ie: Soren and Jon) and a junior designer comes in and never does complete decision trees for the new items, or even worse, leaves the decision trees up to the coders.

Bad design, not bugs. AI works as designed.

 

[MooFreaky]

Doesn't work.

Civ5 is still a crap game.

I don't. I played Civ4 BtS right up to Civ6 release. And just before Civ6 release I played a few games of Civ5 BNW so that I could see if Civ6 is going to be a step up or not. Yes it's a step up design wise, but the AI is a major step downwards. And like you say, Firaxis has a tradition of not fixing the AI, so I do not anticipate it to improve in Civ6 over time. I've played 165 hours of Civ6 (over 3/4s at the top 3 levels) so have a very good idea of how bad the AI is in the game.

Civ5 being crap is subjective. I loved Civ5. I loved Civ4 BTS also. I disliked the stacks of doom from Civ4, but it was a way for the inept AI to compete somewhat. I much prefer the concept on the 1UPT (though it could be tweaked somewhat) but the AI hasn't been able to manage it as well.
I feel too many people equate cutting out features as simplifying when that isn't always accurate. Managing poorly designed systems, or un-necessary tasks isn't more depth or better gameplay. Having fewer things to manage, but making the decisions important is far deeper than having lots of needless minutiae.
To really be the best at Civ4 there was too much "playing the system" for my liking. OMG I need to change around my populations to ChopRush at exactly the right turn, while shifting the research bars at exactly the right time. It wasn't skillful, as you didn't have to weigh your options, it was just remember to do this as it is always the best thing to do.

I liked that Civ5 there were plenty of different starting options that played differently depending on how and where I spawned. I think it has more depth than many haters want to admit, simply because it did away with needless unfun systems.

But I totally agree with your assessment of Civ6. It was another step in a good direction, but it has been let down by obvious flaws (the AI being the only thing really stopping me continuing playing). I hope it will be addressed, but I am not holding my breath. I think it has the concepts to be the best in the series, but it needs an AI capable of dealing with these concepts and of dealing better with 1UPT

Bad design, not bugs. AI works as designed.

Why do Firaxis keep making such horsehockey AI then? Your description makes it sound very easy. And since AI is so vital wtf is going on? What do they need to do, or change etc?

Genuine question, I know text can make it seem otherwise sometimes.

 

[Gorbles]

I'm a software developer myself, I know what a bug and bad design is. A bug is something not working as intended, bad design is something not scoped correctly. In Civ's case (all of them, not just one or two of the games in the series) the bad AI stems from an incomplete set of decision trees. Decision trees are created at design level, not coding level. The AI coder simply codes in the decision trees that the designer wants. If the AI is not following the decision tree, or generates an error from the decision tree, then that's a bug. However, the AI in Civ games follows the decision trees correctly. The bad AI is not a bug.

And that's why the bad Civ AI is never fixed, and why in expansions the AI is generally worse at the new features than it is at the old features. The main game designer moves on (ie: Soren and Jon) and a junior designer comes in and never does complete decision trees for the new items, or even worse, leaves the decision trees up to the coders.

Bad design, not bugs. AI works as designed.

We're all software developers

But no, seriously, I take you at your word (as I am one too, it'd be a bit pointless to get into that time-honoured CFC back-and-forth discussion, haha). But as a software developer you should also know the paramount importance of making assumptions about a codebase that you have little experience with. Or no experience with, even. I don't know what you have experience with, but I don't think you're a Firaxis developer. Even access to the core DLLs only affords so much insight; bad design is a specific result of scope and / or budget (it's not wholly scope, as you seem to be saying) - we can criticise the state of the code available to us, but we can't speculate beyond that.

Or, well, we can, but it ultimately comes down to opinion wrt. the specific experiences of the people talking (both of being developers and likely still having very different backgrounds).

 

[Dale]

We're all software developers

But no, seriously, I take you at your word (as I am one too, it'd be a bit pointless to get into that time-honoured CFC back-and-forth discussion, haha). But as a software developer you should also know the paramount importance of making assumptions about a codebase that you have little experience with. Or no experience with, even. I don't know what you have experience with, but I don't think you're a Firaxis developer. Even access to the core DLLs only affords so much insight; bad design is a specific result of scope and / or budget (it's not wholly scope, as you seem to be saying) - we can criticise the state of the code available to us, but we can't speculate beyond that.

Or, well, we can, but it ultimately comes down to opinion wrt. the specific experiences of the people talking (both of being developers and likely still having very different backgrounds).

Yeah time for me to back off. We are getting close to me saying something I'll get a nasty letter about.

Back to the original topic why Civ 6 drops below Civ 5. I stopped playing Civ 6 after 165 hours because the AI is pathetic. I stopped playing Civ 5 after 300+ hours because the game lacks depth. I stopped playing Civ BE after 55 hours due to both crap AI and lack of depth.

IMO no Civ since BtS has impressed me.

 

[criZp]

Are you talking about players? Because Civ 5 is a much cheaper game and you get a lot more for a lot less. It's silly to think that Civ 6 without DLC would've been anything near as good.

Also, I think it's silly to judge a turn based strategy game on less than 2 hours of gameplay, personally..

Yeah it sure is silly to think a newer, more expensive game should be better, or even as good, than the older one

Like, who can even imagine they kept the AI as decent as in the last game instead of killing it completely?

 

[CivBrit]

Apologies if someone already made this point; I must admit I didn't read every post on the previous five pages.

It's possible that Civ V has more players than VI because it is the inferior game. That may sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Most of us loved IV, so when V came out we rushed to buy the latest in a beloved series. But for a lot of people (myself included) V was a bit of a letdown. So I suspect that many people lost interest in the series and didn't buy VI as a result. Personally I think VI is a significant improvement over its predecessor (comparing vanilla releases).

 

[liv]

A lot more people like Civ V better than Civ IV so I do not think so.

 

[Ryika]

Apologies if someone already made this point; I must admit I didn't read every post on the previous five pages.

It's possible that Civ V has more players than VI because it is the inferior game. That may sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Most of us loved IV, so when V came out we rushed to buy the latest in a beloved series. But for a lot of people (myself included) V was a bit of a letdown. So I suspect that many people lost interest in the series and didn't buy VI as a result. Personally I think VI is a significant improvement over its predecessor (comparing vanilla releases).

That doesn't make sense though, Civ VI player numbers were great at first. Even ratings were great at first. And only over time people started leaving the boat, and ratings dropped from 8X% to what they are now.

Civ VI just doesn't didn't manage to make people stick with it, which is a clear signal that the long-term staying power just isn't there currently.

Workshop-support will fix that a bit, but it's nowhere to be seen so far.

 

[legalizefreedom]

The pattern has been cemented over the last 3 civ games. The consumers are less and less excited about the product. We love the games, but are very disappointed in the lack of effort in making them and are much more willing to wait (for improvements and sales) instead of fully supporting (playing vanilla and preordering).

If appropriate effort isn't put into the flagship series 25th anniversary game, there is not much faith moving forward.

 

[Jarms48]

I think every Civ game since Civ 4 has gone through the same cycle, at launch the product is inferior to the game before it, whilst at the end of its life each games experience is much more unique. What I liked about Civ 6 is that it was different enough at launch to play a hundred or so hours, but from now I'll only be playing the odd multiplayer game of Civ 6 until the first major DLC comes out.

What I really want to see is a return of the Conquest victory condition, and the World Congress/Diplomatic victory. In regards to the latter, I'd like to see the World Congress to be tied with the current envoy system.

 

[youngsteve]

The last 30 days ratings for the game have now gone down to 55% & is still falling. These are pretty awful figures for an 'A' title as this, & only kept at 78% in total due to the thousands who rated it early on before the problems became apparent.

 

[Zuizgond]

The last 30 days ratings for the game have now gone down to 55% & is still falling. These are pretty awful figures for an 'A' title as this, & only kept at 78% in total due to the thousands who rated it early on before the problems became apparent.

55% is indeed alarming. I don't recall that Civ5 vanilla has gone that bad. I wonder when they will start to do something about it.

 

[Ryika]

Steam Reviews didn't exist back when Civ V was released, so a direct comparison is impossible. But Civ VI currently sits at 72% on Metacritic, which is about the same that Civ V had a year after release. That's after the big fixes (and I think also after Workshop-Release), before that it sat on 6.9. So nothing too much out of the ordinary there, in fact, if Firaxis goes full improvement mode now and finally releases mod tools, the history of Civ VI will probably mimic the history of Civ V. Which is of course still pretty sad, but the game is not on a worse course than Civ V was.

I also wouldn't worry too much about that number on steam, the binary nature of the review system is bound to exaggerate user opinions. That's probably bad for Firaxis income, but that's about it.

 

[Zuizgond]

Steam Reviews didn't exist back when Civ V was released, so a direct comparison is impossible. But Civ VI currently sits at 72% on Metacritic, which is about the same that Civ V had a year after release. That's after the big fixes (and I think also after Workshop-Release), before that it sat on 6.9. So nothing too much out of the ordinary there, in fact, if Firaxis goes full improvement mode now and finally releases mod tools, the history of Civ VI will probably mimic the history of Civ V. Which is of course still pretty sad, but the game is not on a worse course than Civ V was.

Which shows they didn't learn anything with Civ 5.

I also wouldn't worry too much about that number on steam, the binary nature of the review system is bound to exaggerate user opinions.

In both ways.

 

[Ryika]

Which shows they didn't learn anything with Civ 5.

Sure. You said "55% is indeed alarming. I don't recall that Civ5 vanilla has gone that bad.", I just put that into perspective. That doesn't mean I'm defending the state of the game.

 

[Zanteogo]

I have not made the jump to 6 yet, and won't for some time I think.

To me, the game just doesn't have anything major going for it other than a few small additions.

I can play Civ5 now with all it's DLC and have a full game with working AI. Put mods on top of that and I see no reason to leave. I've watched too may videos of others playing Civ6 to know the AI is still not release ready.

Plus, IMHO, I just enjoy the graphics style of Civ5. I may have jumped over if they kept the same style, but modernized the quality.

 

[Acken]

These games are usually judged on a 1st expansion basis. I was convinced at G&K and wasn't at Rising tides.

We'll see where civ6 is at after first expansion. If it is able to fix the major issues or not. Maybe we'll have modding tools and a workshop by then too lol.

 

[Funababbitt]

[QUOTE="
Simply put, you're wrong. You're making an assumptive leap where you shouldn't be.[/QUOTE]

Jeez - with your kind of conceit you must be a psychologist - having cited Psych 101. ! You don't have time to sit and listen to community complaints about a new game, then you come up with a rant, telling people they are wrong in stating their preferences because an older game is more evolved evolved? Here's something for you to think about - maybe many people have solid reasons for being disappointed in Civ 6. You are entitled to your opinions but when you come on here attempting to appropriate the opinons, you're not only wrong, you're being foolish.

I tried to go back to Civ 5 and discovered I was played out. It no longer holds my interest. That doesn't alter the fact that in my experience, Civ 6, is a colossal failure. So I regret not bowing to your delusions of holding opinions superior to others, over who's right and who's wrong. You express your opinions like an adolescent or an old scold. I hope you don't have kids.

Moderator Action: Please do not address other posters in this manner. It's fine to disagree with their views, but you should do so in a civil manner. Calling them "foolish" and unfit for parenthood is inappropriate. -- Browd

 

[Horizons]

^ only if they fix the AI

Civ7 will probably be multiplayer focused.