Civ is getting progressively worse since 4.

AI diplo has always been a bit contrived, to the point of game throwing. I wish civ would get away from that TBH, I don't see how game throwing/ignoring game rules (IE victory condition) to play a different game entirely falls under "immersion". It's a bit like playing tag, except half your participants are fishing off the dock instead. Maybe you like fishing too, but it's still not tag, and it makes the winner of tag less meaningful if the fishermen are considered players.

 

Well, I don't think that is completely the case here at the choices aren't completely arbitrary since from what I saw not many ais would take an unpopular ideology and base their decisons on who is the tourism king. These things being intertwined makes it less arbitrary than a lot of other things. Admitingly it is annoying if you go first though.

Also, I am seperating ai performance fro mechanics as that discussion can get dull.And yea, the ai gets bipolar.

Maybe fans of bnw can chime in a bit more? I am not a big fan if civ v, but I still think it is one of the less contruved things.

Iv is still thr game to go for permafriends though.

 

This forum would improve immensely if all posts related to Civ IV were required to be in that game's subforum. Isn't this subforum supposed to be for those who are trying to enjoy the new game?

 

Making 1000-2000+ less unnecessary inputs per game is pretty relevant to civ 6 though, and comparing it to civ 4 is a natural way to show they're unnecessary. Ditto for comparisons to 4 that serve a similar purpose.

 

I'm with you on the unnecessary inputs, it can be somewhat annoying when playing, but it's just beating a dead horse at this point.

 

BNW was a very mixed bag, to my mind. It tried too hard to force its late-game systems and it's best innovation - a near-complete revision of the economic system - largely got lost in the shuffle. Not that no one appreciated trade routes - quite the reverse - but I don't think it was fully appreciated how important the surrounding context was. Not least Firaxis, who went on to keep the trade system in Beyond Earth and Civ VI but undid much of what made it great.

The BNW economic system at its best was basically a replacement for happiness (which did lead to the annoyance that Civ V in its final form had two mechanics to punish early expansion). It had the potential to be the best expansion-pacing system Civ games have yet hit on (though of course was undercut by the surplus luxuries-for-gold trade exploit). Most income came from trade, and the number of trade routes were tech linked - so until a certain point in the game (when the map was mostly taken anyway) you could only support so many cities, and the pace of expansion was affected by the rate at which you reached the relevant techs.

Sadly, there were multiple reasons Civ V was not the best test bed for this effect - not the least of which was the fact that no one noticed since the game favoured going tall as the optimal stratregy.

 

Actually this isn't true either. Only a handful of ais put a high priority on religion while others cared more about civics. Some such as Shaka couldn't really be swayed either way.

Besides, this also assumes only one religion was popular.

 

One problem with civilization V and VI is how cheap war is for a human player against the ai. With good management you should be able to win without any losses as unit heal for free (why not make heal instant but at a cost of gold by multipling purchase cost with % damage?). Archers are a big problem as they can hurt enemies without taking any damage, again more resonable would be for archers to take some damage per shot and combine it with heal cost I mention above and maybe the archer rushes will be significantly weakened. Civilization IV war is actually expensive.

Civilization VI in particular have set its rules to favor warfare, for the price of 10 to 15 archers you can conquer a huge empire and then you can upgrade these archers for a relative low cost and continue on. If warfare have such huge gains its cost should also be high, especially if you are trying to conquer cities.

Warfare is so good in Civilization VI that it make pretty much everything else in the game secondary.

Civilization IV have its faults as well. If tech trading is on research is dominated by it and the technologies you are going to research are generally not the ones you need the most but the ones you can sell for most. City maintenance is just really early game rush stop otherwise the game favor warfare nearly as much as Civilization VI but warfare is more expensive. Victory conditions have pretty much no flavor at all, while you can say the same with civilization VI atleast the districts separate them. It also have its irritating stuff such great people randomness. Civilizations themself are very flavorless compared to civilization V and VI.

 

Rather than having archers/crossbowman take damage their range should be 1. Range 2 units shouldn't begin until at least field cannons.

 

Or even just turn them into support units that add +5 attack or so to melee units in its era and abandon the range concept entirely. Damage should not be healed for free, it worked in civ IV because each battle was a risk that you could lose your unit but it don't work in games there a battle have no risk such as civilization VI. Promotion should maybe be removed and replaced with another system as super units also hurt the game. I rather have experience to go into great general or other temporary things.

Warfare should have real economical cost, that is perhaps the biggest difference between civ IV the two later civ games.

 

I kind of enjoy the super units. If you play as Rome, and get the timing right, you can use Terracotta Army to get a mass of Legions the Urban Warfare promotion, and some of your ranged will be able to get the extra attack per turn. The map falls with ease once this is done, and you will only need muskets or field cannons for the last civ or maybe two.

 

The correct fix for archers was to make them - and all non-artillery ranged units - range 1. So they act much like Civ IV's 'first strike', but don't allow sniping or concentrating fire.

Slow production times and typically small numbers of cities made warfare in Civ V a real cost, unless you genuinely lost few or none of your early units - and even then you were at least paying maintenance. AI wars in Civ V were quite an effective way of slowing me down, as even though the AI wouldn't win I'd spend so much time and resources fighting that they could catch up.

The same doesn't seem true in Civ VI.

 

As you have all pointed out, Civ 4 had a lot of flaws. Tech trading is one of them. Firaxis did away with tech trading, that's great. Civ 4 also did some things spectacularly well - the maintenance system. Civ 4's maintenance was far superior to the global happiness of Civ 5, or the nonexistant empire expansion limit in Civ 6.

But perhaps the problem here is just that Firaxis no longer makes the kind of game I want to play, and that's personal. The AI could catch me with my pants down in Civ 4. If I sat there wonderspamming and barely building an army, and the AI sat there building up an army of axemen/swordmen, then came a knockin, I was done for. In Civ 5 this just ceased to be a problem. I could build a bare minimum of troops and fend off an invasion from just about anything, due to 1 UPT and strong defender advantage.

I suppose this is where I differ from most players. If I only built 2 warriors and 2 archers, and the AI declares a surprise war and comes at me with 4 spearmen, 4 warriors, 6 archers, and 2 catapults, I think I should be dead. But in Civ 6 I don't even sweat, I just shrug and think "oh, okay, I have to delay whatever it is I was doing for about 5-10 turns". I'm not worried at all. I'm basically invincible and never need to worry about losing a city. Ever. And if the AI manages to beat me to a wonder, in the back of my mind I know I can just march an army of 2 knights and 2 crossbowmen and take that city, no problem.

This was also the case in Civ 5, though it wasn't quite as bad. I think of Civ 6 as playing Farmville or the Sims. I could sit here arguing with my girlfriend about the fact that the Rachel character in Friends had no desirable qualities beyond attractiveness, while keeping an eye on the pasta on the stove, and casually clicking buttons and win a Civ 6 game on deity. Hell, my gf could probably do it. Victory is inevitable.

Civ 4 was not like this at all. When that horn sounded and that AI stack of doom crossed the border onto my land, I can tell you my palms were sweaty and my heart was pounding my chest like the fists of a heavyweight boxer. Games were nail-biters.

Look, there's nothing wrong with playing The Sims, or Sim City. I play those games, occasionally. They're entertaining in their own way. But to me, Civ is supposed to be different. When I play board games with my friends, like Risk, or hell, even a game of chess, I have no idea if I will win. The fun comes from knowing that I need to do my best to actually affect the game's outcome, and that others are doing their best to beat me. Civ 4 gave me that feeling. Civ 5 did not, but it was close.

Civ 6 is a joke. On deity, the AI barely builds a military and then doesn't bother to upgrade it. The warmonger penalties are meant to discourage being, well, a warmonger, but I quickly learned that having the entire world declare war on me was meaningless when I could take on the entire world and win. Try doing that in Civ 4. Sometimes you could fend off a 2 on 1 dogpile, for a while. Mayble. But 3 on 1? Forget it, you're done.

I said this a long time ago, before Civ 6 came out - that to me the absolute most important thing for Firaxis to do with Civ 6 was to either a) make the game a primarily multiplayer game and design it to work as such, or b) make the AI their #1 priority. They clearly did neither. I don't care how interesting the district system is (it's not), or how wonderful the graphics are (they aren't), none of it matters when the AI sits around sucking its thumb and I can just do what I like, as if I'm playing Sim City.

 

We still have these kinds of threads in this section?

That sounds like your stating a fact. I was a dedicated Civ4 player when it was at its peak. But I didn't play any Civ5 when it was in its peak. And now, I view Civ6 with the same favorable light, if not in a more favorable light, than Civ4. I think it's on par with Civ 4.

I guess I just moved on and accepted the new iteration, despite the perceived faults of the AI that people have been complaining about for, what, more than 6 months now? Besides, I don't judge a game just by one gameplay mechanic. Strategy doesn't merely involve war and/or diplomacy. That's why you have other non-violent victories besides domination.

Which makes me wonder... Do people who don't like Civ6 usually warmonger when they play previous iterations of the game?

 

I'll answer your question - for me I like variety. In Civ 4 I would play warmonger games, as Japan for example, or I would play wonderspam games, as Germany for example. The difference is that I honestly had no idea if I could win, and lost most of the time on immortal. Whether I was building or warmongering, losing the game was a very likely outcome. In Civ 6, war is boring because I will always win no matter what, but even building is boring. Building is boring because there is nothing to stop me. I feel like I'm playing Sim City, not Civ.

 

Posters here keep talking about "complexity", "depth", etc..... but one should remember good design or good intention doesn't always translate into good outcomes. The AI at this stage can't handle 1UPT, so warring is too easy; the AI can't handle districts, so their empire building is a mess. Other game mechanisms can be easily improved, but these two components are the core elements of the game and unless the AI is improved, they will always make the game somewhat silly, so don't expect too much. I play Civ 6 once in a while nowadays just because of the graphics. To be honest I have already switched back to Civ5. At least in Civ5 emperor level is already a bit of challenge. In Civ6 only the first 100 turns at immortal or higher will make me a bit nervous.

 

Well I guess it's all a matter of taste then.

I just don't get it though. When I build both in Civ4 and Civ6 I always had trouble with production, especially units. Or maybe that's just me, and I like to play easy while accepting a challenge from time to time. Can a Civ player be too good for a Civ game once he or she calls it boring?

 

..and at least there was a creative component to Sim City which made it fun.

Well said though, I wish the AI was up to par with Civ 4.

 

It is a fact - many who like Civ V dislike Civ VI, or at least consider it inferior.

AI isn't just a gameplay mechanic - it's at the root of all of them.

Certainly the people who complained most about Civ V were the ones who played aggressively - I found Civ V better competition for peaceful victories than many earlier games. While there's undoubtedly an element of that in Civ VI, you really have to wonder what else there is to do. Religious victory has a terrible unit spam system, cultural victory is opaque but just amounts to bucket-filling (as does religious victory, the only difference being that you turn that bucket into apostles), and the science victory is the science victory. The building system is rather simple and heavily constrained by the district approach - nearly everything requires building a district and then building each tier of building available for that district by rote. It's less that it allows specialisation than that it forces you down a rather uninteresting, RTS-esque build path. In my current game I'm on 9 cities and mostly just spamming units I don't need and making for long-shot wonders for no better reason than I simply have nothing else to do with many of my build slots, as some cities haven't reached the pop level needed for the next district or I don't yet have the tech to fill the ones I have out.

I usually like playing more or less peaceful games, but there's only so much clicking 'End Turn' I can do until I'm itching to move out and hit things.

 

The original release of Civ 5 was the only other program (apart from a
pre-installed version of Nortons) that made me feel like throwing a laptop out
of a window.

Compared to Civ 6, Civ 5 now feels like a toy game, an embarrassing demo of some
poorly sketched out ideas devs once made when "standard" computers were less
powerful.

Despite the obvious unique aspects of each civ in Civ 5, they still seemed too
much like they were made using the same cookie cutter. There were bugs that also
persisted for many years so it's far from the "perfect" game that many would
have us believe. In short, if it wasn't for Gedemon's TSL maps I wouldn't have
played Civ 5 anywhere near as much as I did.

The Giant maps for Civ 6 (ludicrous size = 230 x 115 hexes) are a delight to
play, especially when you move civs apart so each has time to establish and
grow. 25 civs and 40+ city-states makes for a very challenging game. Going back
to Civ 5 now would feel like being forced to play a mediocre board game.
If the changes we saw from Civ 5 original to its final state are any guide,
then during the next couple of years we'll see something light-years ahead of
Civ 5.