Civ is getting progressively worse since 4.

[Wingednosering]

It seems to me that V was just such a huge shift that it split the fanbase into the people that liked the new direction and the people that didn't.

I'm probably in the minority on this foum, but I thought IV was 'half a great game'. The builder side of it was great, but super opaque. As a kid, I had to go to external resources to figure out how ANYTHING worked (it was my first civ game). I played multiple times before I even understood how food worked. Trying to bring new players on at the civ IV point was a nightmare.

The half of the game that sucked was combat. The AI could build well because Civ IV was all about 'optimal build strategies', which AI can perform better than a player. They still just SoD'd you and to me, this made civ IV a good game, but incomplete.

When civ V came along, 1UPT won the day for me. I actually prefered vanilla V over BtS. The user interface, while being less informative, made the basic concepts so much clearer and simpler to understand (except the wide build penalties). By the time BNW showed up, I actually played very little, because I'd already wrung every ounce of content out of V. I loved that game.

Now we have VI. The AI definitely needs to be better, but that's really difficult given how many factors are at play. I hate the civics system. I hate the new movement system. Things have become a bit more opaque again, which isn't great. Districts add some strategy, but I'm neither for or against them. Frankly, Civ VI is a downgrade from BNW in nearly every way.

It's young though. The AI has already improved dramatically in patches (current patch bugs notwithstanding). It looks like the first expansion is focusing on diplomacy heavily. It is by far the most complete vanilla experience I've seen in the series.

BNW felt a bit bloated at the end. New features came with new interfaces and while the UI was pretty, it started to be a bit jarring that it had so many different styles integrated from its stages of development. VI has almost all the same features, but feels more cohesive (except those stupid civics).

 

[PhilBowles]

What about Tetris? It has challenge without the AI.

AI is just part of gameplay system. Or imagine civilization game with static enemy units placed on the map and race against time to conquer specific location. The game will be not interesting, but still challenging as you could loose if those units are too strong or time is too tight.

AI is just one of the gameplay system. It is designed to mimic player to some extend to give real players more immersive victory, but no personality is really required.

AI isn't a singular gameplay system - there isn't really an artificial player hiding under the hood. It's the collective name for the entire suite of systems that governs the game's behaviour. Any single-player game more complex than the static scenario you suggest involves AI.

As for personality, that's an immersion issue - why am I playing vs. 12 civs with different names and traits if they all behave identically? Civ VI is not a challenging game, so it needs immersion to keep people playing. Beyond Earth failed where Civ V succeeded partly because of a few design missteps in BE, but mostly because they were very similar games but Beyond Earth lacked the immersive quality of Civ V. That too was down in part to identikit factions that displayed no personality.

 

[need my speed]

Civilization V took the core of Civilization away - empire building - and Civilization VI continued this trend.

This is visibly in many, many factors, amongst which:

The optimum strategy in Civilization V revolves around having a maximum of three cities
One unit per tile (which actually detracts from warfare; Civilization IV had complex promotions, stack make-up, units countering each other, collateral damage... In V and VI, amphibious invasions, efficient use of paratroopers, and so on, are hardly possible)
One district per tile
Smaller maps (compounded by one unit per tile, one district per tile, cities having a BFC of three tiles, cities having a minimum distance of three tiles, et cetera)
Loss of immersion (primarily because of the loss of IV-style diplomatic AI)
Mechanisms such as global happiness (IV's maintenance was perfect - why was that ever changed?)
Filler trivialities to occupy one's time, such as archaeology

And so on.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm always mystified why so many professed Civ 4 diehards keep insisting on posting in the Civ 6 (or 5 previously) forums. Civ 4 has active forums on these boards.

While plenty of those people exists, trotting out this line irrespective of context is just scapegoating that fails to address Civ VI's major shortcomings. The OP notes that he played both Civ 4 and Civ V extensively and has positive things to say about Civ V. I tended to prefer Civ V to Civ IV and was known to defend it against the 'diehards'. Civ VI is not just an iteration on a game Civ IV players already hated and won't stop moaning about - at present it's a game that compares poorly to Civ V even among many who liked Civ V. I'm actually surprised to find I've played more Civ VI than Beyond Earth, since my feelings towards both games are similar.

 

[PhilBowles]

Civilization V took the core of Civilization away - empire building - and Civilization VI continued this trend.

This is visibly in many, many factors, amongst which:

The optimum strategy in Civilization V revolves around having a maximum of three cities
One unit per tile (which actually detracts from warfare; Civilization IV had complex promotions, stack make-up, units countering each other, collateral damage... In V and VI, amphibious invasions, efficient use of paratroopers, and so on, are hardly possible)
One district per tile
Smaller maps (compounded by one unit per tile, one district per tile, cities having a BFC of three tiles, cities having a minimum distance of three tiles, et cetera)
Loss of immersion (primarily because of the loss of IV-style diplomatic AI)
Mechanisms such as global happiness (IV's maintenance was perfect - why was that ever changed?)
Filler trivialities to occupy one's time, such as archaeology

And so on.

I'm not sure how you can possible suggest Civ IV diplomatic AI was immersive - it was a trade screen I found myself ignoring most of the time, and the fully deterministic way the AIs responded to the visible cumulative modifiers didn't help. And I have to say I prefer filler trivialities to take the form of ideology than to be compulsory make-work like health.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I'm not sure how you can possible suggest Civ IV diplomatic AI was immersive - it was a trade screen I found myself ignoring most of the time, and the fully deterministic way the AIs responded to the visible cumulative modifiers didn't help. And I have to say I prefer filler trivialities to take the form of ideology than to be compulsory make-work like health.

It might have been deterministic, but also potentially a heavy player in the gameplan.

I think IV's diplomacy is the best out of the 3.

 

[PYITE]

The series had been and continues to be very successful. It's impossible to make a game that plays exactly how everyone wants. Civ 6 is selling very well, they must be making smart design decisions that are appealing to the masses.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

I'm always mystified why so many professed Civ 4 diehards keep insisting on posting in the Civ 6 (or 5 previously) forums. Civ 4 has active forums on these boards.

Well, I consider myself to be a Civ 4 diehard who also has over 4000 hours in Civ 5 and 600 hours in Civ 6, so why can't I be in both places (or all three)? Is my opinion less valid because I like Civ 4?

The problem I'm having is that Civ 6 has the potential to be the best of the three. But after seeing this patch, the company is going the wrong direction. I mean, I see the excitement over the restart button and saving options (seriously?! excitement?! those should have been there since day 1), but making settlers more expensive will destroy this game, making warmongering even more profitable.

Civ 4 had a mechanism that made sense for warmongering. Seriously, early in the game, if you don't have your commerce up to speed you will *bankrupt* yourself with too many cities (this even goes for building too many settlers). There was a balance there. As you progressed, you could afford more cities. So, in the end you could take over the world, but not all at once. Contrast that with 5 and that very silly global happiness, or 6 where each settler is more expensive BUT if you steal 10 settlers and capture 20 cities it makes NO DIFFERENCE to settler cost.

In fact, I have had to quit Civ 4 games due to overexpansion, where I had absolutely no science and still negative gold.

That, my friends, is strategy. Pure and simple. Nothing in Civ 6 compares, except for war, due to how they are implementing the system of empire limitation. And, if war is the only answer, then having a worse warring AI than Gods & Kings isn't doing the game justice.

 

[PhilBowles]

It might have been deterministic, but also potentially a heavy player in the gameplan.

I think IV's diplomacy is the best out of the 3.

I favour Civ V diplomacy pre-BNW (ideology modifiers made a mess of everything and the AI was completely incapable of using vote trading effectively), but then I tended to play it in the spirit of the system rather than using the gold trade exploit, and it was certainly highly relevant when approached that way.

Unfortunately, of all Civ V's systems it was the one that was furthest beyond the AI's capabilities - I often say Civ V has a diplomacy system of a different generation than anything before or since, but it never played as well because the AI couldn't use it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I favour Civ V diplomacy pre-BNW (ideology modifiers made a mess of everything and the AI was completely incapable of using vote trading effectively), but then I tended to play it in the spirit of the system rather than using the gold trade exploit, and it was certainly highly relevant when approached that way.

Unfortunately, of all Civ V's systems it was the one that was furthest beyond the AI's capabilities - I often say Civ V has a diplomacy system of a different generation than anything before or since, but it never played as well because the AI couldn't use it.

Well, I liked Bnw diplomacy. The key thing was that it was meant to add spice to the tradtionally boring late game. Considering ideolgy can be weaponized culture, it makes sense that it causes divisions, and can shake things up. People are getting mad at each other for very real reasons.

Agreed that vote trading left more to be desired, but I like the idea of shady backroom deals of what 6 could use.

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, I consider myself to be a Civ 4 diehard who also has over 4000 hours in Civ 5 and 600 hours in Civ 6, so why can't I be in both places (or all three)? Is my opinion less valid because I like Civ 4?

The problem I'm having is that Civ 6 has the potential to be the best of the three. But after seeing this patch, the company is going the wrong direction. I mean, I see the excitement over the restart button and saving options (seriously?! excitement?! those should have been there since day 1), but making settlers more expensive will destroy this game, making warmongering even more profitable.

Civ 4 had a mechanism that made sense for warmongering. Seriously, early in the game, if you don't have your commerce up to speed you will *bankrupt* yourself with too many cities (this even goes for building too many settlers). There was a balance there. As you progressed, you could afford more cities. So, in the end you could take over the world, but not all at once. Contrast that with 5 and that very silly global happiness, or 6 where each settler is more expensive BUT if you steal 10 settlers and capture 20 cities it makes NO DIFFERENCE to settler cost.

In fact, I have had to quit Civ 4 games due to overexpansion, where I had absolutely no science and still negative gold.

That, my friends, is strategy. Pure and simple. Nothing in Civ 6 compares, except for war, due to how they are implementing the system of empire limitation. And, if war is the only answer, then having a worse warring AI than Gods & Kings isn't doing the game justice.

The game doesn't need maintenance, but I agree it needs some meaningful constraint on expansion. Civ V's global happiness was widely hated but did generally achieve this purpose. When BNW changed the economic model, gold was a very strong constraint on expanding early since the trade route system largely managed the pace of expansion - it was the source of most funds, and absolutely everything in Civ V (including roads) had a maintenance cost. There's no point having cities that can't pay for themselves in the early game in Civ V.

Unaccountably Civ VI both put gold back in the landscape in quantity and made maintenance costs trivial or nonexistent, which appears to combine the worst of pre-BNW Civ V (readily available gold in the landscape - something other Civ games didn't have thanks to the commerce resource) with the lack of per-unit (to a certain threshold) or per-building maintenance in Civ IV. And then on top of that it softened the trade unit cap.

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, I liked Bnw diplomacy. The key thing was that it was meant to add spice to the tradtionally boring late game. Considering ideolgy can be weaponized culture, it makes sense that it causes divisions, and can shake things up. People are getting mad at each other for very real reasons.

Agreed that vote trading left more to be desired, but I like the idea of shady backroom deals of what 6 could use.

I resented the ideology system for wrecking carefully-cultivated game-long relationships - they could survive differences in diplomacy, but it took a lot of work, and there weren't really any ways to influence which ideologies your allies would choose. The idea wasn't bad, the implementation just made modifiers too severe - it basically tried to make the late game exciting in the same way Total War: Shogun 2 did, by introducing Realm Divide. The end game always ended up playing identically, with three blocs facing off against each other and eventually going to war.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I resented the ideology system for wrecking carefully-cultivated game-long relationships - they could survive differences in diplomacy, but it took a lot of work, and there weren't really any ways to influence which ideologies your allies would choose. The idea wasn't bad, the implementation just made modifiers too severe - it basically tried to make the late game exciting in the same way Total War: Shogun 2 did, by introducing Realm Divide. The end game always ended up playing identically, with three blocs facing off against each other and eventually going to war.

To me, that sounds like such a human thing to do which is why I like it. Long term relationships of any kind are hard to maintain, and that is why it feels rewarding.

It is like in civ iv where religion makes it easy early on and then free religion hits...

 

[Disgustipated]

As for districts, even if the AI can't handle them, it gives the human player something fun to do. At least I think they are fun. I play this game as a builder game. I usually only conquer enough to have a strong enough empire that no one will threaten me and I can build to my heart's content.

And this is from someone who feels Civ4 is the best game. While it may be the best game, I'll never play it over Civ6. It just doesn't offer enough for me to go back to it. Though I do miss some of the mods like Rise of Mankind, and I miss vassals.

 

[Japper007]

Well, I liked Bnw diplomacy. The key thing was that it [ideology system] was meant to add spice to the tradtionally boring late game.

Except it didn't, at all...
By the time the late game rolls around you are either:
A)so far ahead in economy or tech that the AI's end up suiciding themelves against you for no rhyme or reason, not immersive at all, it'd be like North Korea attacking the USA (despite it's bluster even Kim Jong Un's regime realizes this'd be suicide), they have nothing to gain.
B) so far in the tank that you probably didn't have the remotest chance of winning even without your erstwhile allies suddenly turning on you

It's also stupid from a historicity standpoint, there's a massive ideological gap between the US/Britain and mainland Europe, yet they still view eachother as trusted allies. Many modern countries that'd follow Freedom in civ 5 happily cooperate with dictatorial/religious extremist* states, like Saudi-Arabia or Singapore, if that happens to coincide with their goals.

*as an aside civ 5's Ideologies are incomplete without a Fundamentalism ideologie...

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Different is a better word than worse, the best game would be the one you find the most fun and I doubt everyone find Civiliization IV to be the most fun game of these 3.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Except it didn't, at all...
By the time the late game rolls around you are either:
A)so far ahead in economy or tech that the AI's end up suiciding themelves against you for no rhyme or reason, not immersive at all, it'd be like North Korea attacking the USA (despite it's bluster even Kim Jong Un's regime realizes this'd be suicide), they have nothing to gain.
B) so far in the tank that you probably didn't have the remotest chance of winning even without your erstwhile allies suddenly turning on you

It's also stupid from a historicity standpoint, there's a massive ideological gap between the US/Britain and mainland Europe, yet they still view eachother as trusted allies. Many modern countries that'd follow Freedom in civ 5 happily cooperate with dictatorial/religious extremist* states, like Saudi-Arabia or Singapore, if that happens to coincide with their goals.

*as an aside civ 5's Ideologies are incomplete without a Fundamentalism ideologie...

Err... If we are bringing real life into this, then Kim joing un's fronts vindicate stupid ais if anything.... His diplomatic game is poor and carried by other nations worrying about warmonger penalties.

Also, sure US and UK may have diffrences, both countries would fall under freedom. There is a little thing called the cold war of which was obviously the base of this whole idea when the soviet union adopted order.

And sure, cooperation with others that have diffrent ideologies? Well you can still trade with people that you don't like in all the games, so I don't see that as contradictory to anything.People are going to look after their own intrests but there is still a hiearchy on who you prefer to do business with. And then mutual enemies are also a thing.

Let's say if we suddenly switched to autocracy, things would not be the same.

Oh, and the US and UK weren't always buddy buddy. I mean, about 100 turns ago, England did raze our capital....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

AI is weaker at 1UPT because the game itself is deeper as it has tactical level.

Nonsense. Justification for that is inconsistent at best, and usually denotes inexperience with the tactics available in civ 4. It's different, but deeper is a tough case to actually make.

I will agree, however, that civ 4's combat AI was quite terrible. That is nothing new to the 1UPT games. In fact, the AI was so terrible at stack combat that most players talking about stack combat now don't actually know how to fight, because the AI didn't use anything but abject idiocy so most of the relevant considerations were lost. The main advantage the AI had under stack combat is that it could apply a greater proportion of its on a fixed point to overwhelm the player on high difficulties...something 1UPT obviously denies.

Civ4 was a great game (and better still after BtS) but it had lots of busy work like adjusting your sliders to absolutely maximise your gold/science each turn, or pop/chop rushing that was incredibly specific, that people mistake for depth. It's more work

One of the single greatest design flaws of civ 5 and civ 6, by a wide margin, is that they have objectively more busywork on a per turn basis than civ 4, which had enough already. Civ 4 is miles and miles and miles ahead of civ 6 in terms of "inputs per turn", to the point where I can manage 50 cities in civ 4 in fewer inputs + faster in real time than the faster person alive could possibly manage 25 in civ 6...in fact I'd probably be completing turns in well under half the time...and all of this is BEFORE we factor AI turn time, which 1UPT, city states, and GROSSLY pathetic optimization (IE animating units in the fog trololol) did no favors.

Having to click the slider all the way to 100 or 0 after x number of turns has absolutely nothing on the dozens of extra inputs civ 6 has on every single mid-late game turn without exception. There is no way to make a coherent case that civ 5 or 6 improved on the "busywork" aspect. I am willing to call that out as *objectively* false, and we can measure in a number of inputs basis to see that if you want.

It won't be pretty.

This I agree. Tourism was a complex, multifaceted, yet engaging system whereas it seems to have all its depth stripped from it in 6.

The hidden rules for this mechanic are a travesty. Civ 6 has no tourism system, it has fake difficulty as a VC.

And then the major problems, that Civ VI had the idea of making your games different, by districts. And instead, the developers have told you how to play. What I mean is, on any given map, there might be some interesting aspect, that makes you want to play the map. But, if it's a wonder, you need to build a district, and place the wonder, and then the AI suddenly finishes the wonder, that you have been planning for, for 30 minutes of game time, and now the whole city placement is just plain bad and the aspect of said game is lost. That could also happen in Civ V, but now with necessary districts and so forth, it's much more time invested, gone to waste.

I never got the hate (or major praise) for districts. They're okay as a concept. They're basically just buildings with an extra consideration for terrain, and roughly as important to protect as developed cottages. The method chosen to scale their costs was strange, but as a mechanic it's decent and the growth/housing/placement/defense tradeoffs have some actual consideration involved. It's nothing super ground-breaking, but it's a reasonable enough addition to the game, enough that it's better for having them vs not.

I'm always mystified why so many professed Civ 4 diehards keep insisting on posting in the Civ 6 (or 5 previously) forums. Civ 4 has active forums on these boards.

Just because civ 4 was good doesn't mean civ 6 has to have glaring design flaws and regress. We wanted the series to get better. In some ways it has, but with far too much regression in the wrong ways.

Civ 4 was far from perfect. It had hidden rules of its own, UI problems, game throwing AI, poorly balanced victory conditions, strange vassal interactions, and its own diplomatic issues. If newer entries didn't gut much of what civ got right, introduced new systems despite not gutting it, and didn't bog players down in busywork more than ever this type of thread would barely exist rather than being spammed in different forms many times. Still, when you can look at how you handled 50+ cities in that game and notice that it was in fact possible to sensibly order them + manage them many times faster than 6 it's hard to avoid the question "why did civ 6 regress so much" in that aspect. The AI is another common complaint, but with 1UPT it was somewhat expected.

 

[gfeier]

I actually preferred Civ V vanilla to Civ IV. It was because of 1UPT. The terrain suddenly mattered a lot more and some cities simply could not be attacked effectively. You had to figure that out before you sent an army after one of them. I Prefer VI to V because you have a wider scope for your imagination as you progress through the game. In both IV and V, you pretty much knew how the game would play out but VI is capable of a few surprises and offers a wider range of choices. I've been playing since Civ I and I had over 3800 hours in Civ V. I'm almost up to 1200 in Civ VI, so I have a bit of experience.

 

[PhilBowles]

To me, that sounds like such a human thing to do which is why I like it. Long term relationships of any kind are hard to maintain, and that is why it feels rewarding.

It is like in civ iv where religion makes it easy early on and then free religion hits...

At root, while Civ needs to be immersive, it is still a strategy game. Making relationships difficult to maintain is a good goal. Pinning a large portion of that difficulty on an arbitrary AI preference that the player has no tools to influence is not the way to go about it. It amounts to "I can follow an effective diplomatic strategy until point X, and then after that I roll a die and on a 5 or a 6 I get to keep doing so. On a 1-4 all my work will be undone and, crucially, nothing I can do will fully reverse it".