[GS] Civ V v Civ VI: how is this still a thing?

Article from Strategy Gamer discussing Civ V v Civ VI - link here.

Article basically discusses opinions on why it’s taken so long for Civ V to overtake Civ VI on steam. I think these articles are mostly driven by slow news cycle for games - particularly for a website focused on niche games - but I thought people might be interested to read and discuss.

A few random thoughts.

• Civ V v Civ VI. How is this still something people talk about? Is this just a meme that’s past its usefulness or relevance, or is there a real difference that’s still worth discussing? I haven’t really played Civ V, but at this point (ie after GE) I can’t even see there is all that much difference between the two games. Civ VI seems to have almost all the same mechanics (and where it does, I think Civ VI basically does those mechanics better). The only real differences I can see are: (1) Civ V has more permanent choices than Civ VI because of Social Policies. Hopefully that’s something a Third Expansion of Civ VI might fix; (2) Civ V dis-incentivised “wide” by having more empire management (eg global happiness, more restricted gold). While I think Civ VI could use a little more empire management, I think Civ VI’s encouragement of wider play is basically right; (3) no Venice (a point specifically made in the article).

• Civ 5.5. Article discusses how Civ VI wasn’t such a big change in the franchise compared to Civ V, and that Civ VI is really just a iteration or evolution of Civ V. I think that’s basically right - Civ VI is basically all of Civ V’s mechanics (except Social Policies and Ideologies) and a few mechanics from earlier games, but just more fleshed out and polished. I don’t really see that as a bad thing either.

• Price. There are some criticisms of how much Civ VI costs with all the expansions. I hear this criticism a lot, but to me the overall cost is fine once you aggregate that cost over hours played. Has wonder though whether price has increasingly become the nub of the difference between Civ V and Civ VI. Regardless of which is actually “better”, Civ V is much cheaper to buy complete than Civ VI and so perhaps there’s a legitimate discussion about whether Civ VI’s improvements aren’t worth the additional cost.

• Third Expansion. There’s discussion and prediction of a Third Expansion, although based on no more that fan posts. Still, interesting the gaming press has basically bought into a Third Expansion happening. That must surely weigh on FXS’s decision to have a 3xp or not.

• MP support. I’m sorry to hear FXS aren’t still supporting stability for Civ V for MP. I know you can’t expect people to do things for free or against self interest, but that seems like a needlessly rubbish approach for FXS to take for such a well loved game.

Personally, I think the whole Civ V v Civ VI discussion is done. Civ VI is just better. Civ V‘s advantage is just you may have already bought it, so why move to a new version? Or you want to play a Civ game, and Civ V is cheaper.

 

Civ2 (specifically the Test of Time) was the greatest iteration of Civ EVER made - without a remotely close doubt.

 

Well, I don’t think I know enough about to Civ 2 to really comment on that, although I suspect Civ 2 is maybe the first Civ I played (it was a long time ago).

I do think there’s a missed opportunity here for a Civ 4 Remastered. I actually think Civ 4’s retro graphics are sort of cool. A bit of an update here or there, and it would be still a very fun game and maybe a bit more accessible for modern players.

 

I just finished playing Civ 4, and it's really a great game, quite different from Civ 5/6. Very elegant design.

I tweaked Civ 6 to require one ammenity per pop (like in Civ 6), and it works really great. Ammenity management is one of the most interesting subsystems of Civ 6, and it's a pity it was made almost non-existant. That tweak makes the game much better.

 

That sounds super interesting. Have you made any other changes to make that work? eg make amenities cover more than 4 cities?

There’s also a mod on Steam that introduces power requirements for Cities and negative happiness if you don’t have power that I need to try.

I agree Civ VI has a great happiness system. There’s lots of things to like. I particularly like the way via Policy Cards happiness gets tied to your Culture level, Government, and even Military; and I like how Happiness is one of the few ways to get +% in the game. But currently not much seems to turn on the happiness system - it’s easy to maintain happiness, it’s usually pretty stable, it seems to rarely make a significant difference to yields until late in the game at most, and while it’s tied to loyalty it’s not tied to much else (eg Era Score). Bit like the population and housing - great mechanic, if only I actually cared about Population size.

I keep coming back to “empire management”, along with something like Social Policies / Ideology and Cultural Influence, being the two big missing pieces for Civ VI. All the pieces are there - local happiness, amenities, loyalty, policy cards and governments, resources and power, maintenance, happiness and loyalty districts, governors, continents, grievances - but FXS have quite stitched them all together yet. I really hope the Third XP tackles this stuff, rather than meaningless busy mechanics like corporations, disease and (shudder) random events.

If FXS are really scared about discouraging wide as in Civ V, they should make the empire management stuff scale based on difficulty or like they did with disasters. Or make the empire management mechanics a free mod on Steam.

Honestly, I really think the lack of empire management is what holds back Civ VI from being really great, and is maybe what drives some of the Civ VI v Civ 4 and Civ 5 discussion. I don’t doubt getting it right is really hard - developers have experimented with multiple mechanics across each version of Civ, and none seem to have really clicked. I do think the current mechanics are basically right, but they need to be maybe fleshed out a little more and made a little more relevant.

 

From the article:

I love Civ but the fact is that major outlets have a certain bias towards giving Civ games an high score, a mix of the legendary reputation the franchise has and reviews written by reviewers that are really, really casuals, with reviewers that are known for playing this kind of games having a tendency to give a slightly lower score. You can see that if you read Beyond Earth and Civ VI reviews. Professional reviewers are highly forgiven with Civ and let most of its flaws slide. A Civ game would need to be really bad to get a mediocre score, so I wouldn't take the score Civ V got as a good reflection of how it was received, nor I would do the same for VI. Professional reviewers just like Civ games because they're Civ games.


The article is clearly written by a guy who really likes tall empires, Venice and seems to generally dislike VI. I love that he takes plagues and diseases as granted for the third expansion.


The way I see the current state of both games playerbase is that Civ is a really popular franchise. It has not one but 2 games in the top 20 on steam. It doesn't matter which one is the most played, both are in a pretty health state. That's good for Civ as a franchise.

 

I doubt many people that bought 6 went back to 5. It's just that people thought 5 was great so they didn't bother switching. That was me anyways. Firaxis also has a reputation for releasing buggy/half finished games at full price and then fixing them with 40 dollar expansions going forward. That was the 5 model and they did the same thing with BE and I held a 2 year grudge towards buying 6.

I'm glad I did get it though, it's a great game and I'm having a lot of fun with it. As far as price goes you can get all 3 expansions and every dlc for 50 bucks total now as long as you don't just buy through steam.

 

Barbs are more annoying and fun to fight than civ5. MP is much more stable for the current version.

 

Civ V is too peaceful-leaning, very dull. You just settle and fly your rocket without interaction with others.

Civ VI welcomes warmongers but only interesting in MP games since AI cannot handle warmongers. Moreover, AI are nerfed seriously than in Civ4/5/BE.

 

Yeah it's possible the guy who just happened to predict 2nd EXP name and who just happened to predict civs in 2nd EXP and who just happened to predict some features in 2nd EXP just accidentally got one prediction wrong.

 

OP asks how this is still a thing. But player numbers on Steam show that there are still plenty of people playing V. Maybe hang out in the V forums for a while?

I can certainly see players who felt burned buying every piece of V at full price not wanting to do that again. Plus the modding. And maybe thinking that VI isn't enough different to switch.

 

I haven't played Civ V. If I were to speculate about how I'll feel in the future about when Civ VII comes out (in 2024?) and comparing it to Civ VI if VII is just a slight modification I'll be disappointed. Slight meaning just a different way of getting policies (like V to V! apparently had) or tall instead of wide.

For price right now the structure is about right for me. I'm not sure at what point I would consider not buying the game. If the game required a monthly subscription i would still probably pony up even though during the summer I really only play once a month. It's also they only game I buy anymore which effects how I look at the price.

 

I don't even know where to start with this one, let's just say that the games are *very* different in almost every way. They both use 1 upt I guess and some other things. But the *major* systems -- happiness, tall vs. wide, social policies, and so forth, are completely different imho. And, add to that one of the good mods (like the community project) where civs are actually dangerous even on non-Deity and you will see Civ 5 really shine.

Of course, as @Gedemon said, the real problem is that we still aren't able to fully mod Civ 6 yet. I think that when that happens it can be made even better than the Civ 5 mods, because its systems could be made superior. Imagine, for example, something like truly specialized cities that could build 5-10 buildings in a district -- maybe some of those buildings depend on great adjacency bonuses or something. I mean, there is so much untapped potential in this game, but until you can also modify AI actions with more than just flavor, they become less impactful since of course most of us play SP.

Civ 5 was completely broken when it was first released. It was the first Civ game I purchased at release (I think that was November 2010). I mean, in my first game I had Egypt as my neighbor. They declared war on me and I stepped into their territory with a horseman. Instantly, 3 cities hit that horseman with a ranged attack and killed it, because Egypt thought it was playing Civ 3 and decided to place *every* city it had with only two empty tiles between cities (in all directions). That's right, every 3 tiles was a city. So, my first modding experience in civ was finding where the line was that said cities could only be 3 tiles apart and changing that to 4 -- of course, the game was eventually patched to 4 tiles apart, but again that was not how it was released.

But, in the end, they got it right by BNW and with mods and now I show 4542 hours in the game.

Civ 6 I only have 1186 hours because it was so out of balance that I just didn't play it for almost a year. But I hope they will get this right too, or at least release it so that the full modding tools are available.

TLDR: Civ 5 is a completely different game from Civ 6, almost as different as 4 is from 5 (except for the change to 1 upt which adds more to the difference).

 

I actually prefer V vox populi more than VI, but IV is still the best for both modded and original content. It's just so much fun to play, even now.

 

Civ2 ToT is the most fully moddable Civ iteration (within it's own setup) by far. You can edit graphics for EVERYTHING quite simply and easily, re-write and re-direct the tech advancement tree thoroughly, edit I believe all in-game text that actually appears, all terrain, and unit statistics, and unit, city and terrain improvement, and Wonder tech rerequisites and names, and the "events" editor system, abandoned entirely thereafter by Sid Meir and Brian Reynaulds when they left MPS and formed Firaxis, is a VERY useful tool in scenario and modding design that none of the well-known Civ2 fan-made scenarios would be even possible without.

 

Erm...as someone who has spent a large amount of time actually playing both games we are comparing here, I disagree. Civ V and VI may look similar on the surface, but they sure play quite differently. I also don't agree with the assertion that almost all mechanics from Civ V have been included and improved. Off the top of my head, I can list a number of things I liked better in Civ V. In no particular order:

• Religion
• The World Congress
• Social Policies
• Ideologies
• Tall cities actually producing much more than small ones
• Diplomacy
• Interaction between systems (cultural dominance actually affects other systems, for example)
• The visual style
• Roads and railroads, both how you make them and what they do
• Terrain improvement being better than chopping

That is not to say that everybody will agree with me on these, but you are incorrect in asserting that everything is simply improved in Civ VI. These things work differently, and people will have different preferences. I am also not saying that I necessarily like V more than VI at this point...it was true in the beginning, but after the last expansion, I'm having a harder time deciding. These are some examples of things I like more in Civ VI:

• The overall design of the different civs
• Great people
• Wide playstyle being viable (although they went too far in this direction)
• City state variety
• Governments
• More involved city planning

I have played both games for about 2000 hours, according to Steam.

 

I'm very happy about this. I worry in the future games I like just won't be made anymore. It's already happened with the RPG's I like. They are gone pretty much.

I'm one of them. I can see some of the appeal of 5 in terms of challenge. But that game really has nothing else going for it in my opinion. 6 is superior in every other way. I grudgingly accepted Civ5 after Gods and Kings, but the game never really excited me like Civ4 and Civ6 have. It still seemed to be missing something. The 2nd expansion was pretty good though, I'll give it that.

 

I guess the nub of my question in the OP is really “are there really any significant differences between Civ V and Civ VI to justify why people feel strongly about one version or the other, or why this topic keeps getting debated?”

And it certainly does keep getting debated. Leaving aside articles like the one I posted, I also see on Steam and Reddit a lot of questions around “which version I should buy?”, although I think the trend is for people to recommend 6.

I certainly don’t want to disparage Civ 5 or anyone that prefers it. But I do think most of the stuff (or at least, significant stuff) that’s in Civ 5 has found its way into Civ 6. And where it has, I do think the Civ 6 version is better designed. World Congress is a good example. Fundamentally, I think the mix of random resolutions and control over special resolutions via emergencies and competitions allows for more dynamic gameplay. I get that this is subjective to an extent, but that said it does seem to me just a better design overall.

I guess my point here is not even that Civ 6 does everything better. It’s more that, between Civ 5 and Civ 6, there just doesn’t seem to be much difference either way really.

I think in particular the tall v wide conversation is misconceived. You can play Tall in Civ 6 - there are Governments, GP buildings, Governors and Wonders that support that and there are Civs that are well suited to it. It’s just not an optimal strategy. But so what? It doesn’t have to be optimal to be viable and fun. Likewise, it seems to me Wide is entirely viable in Civ 5, but again just isn’t optimal.

The only significant mechanical differences I can see of Civ 5 over Civ 6 is (1) some people already invested in Civ 5, and don’t see the changes are significant enough to justify moving to Civ 6 (or overall they prefer Civ 5’s balance), (2) price (which also plays into point 1), (3) mod ability, (4) Civ 5 has, via Social Policies and Ideologies, permanent empire wide choices and clash of cultural influence, (5) Civ 5 has more “empire management”, eg because of maybe global happiness and gold being more scarce, (6) Civ 5 is better “balanced” overall.

To me, point 1 is totally understandable but not very interesting as a discussion point. Some people don’t want to upgrade. Fair enough. Point 2 is a bit more interesting, because while I think Civ 6 is “better” it’s a lot lot lot more expensive than Civ 5, and I think that does create a difficult choice for someone new coming into the series. (Frankly, when I see posts about whether to buy Civ 6 v cheaper Civ 5, I always recommend Civ 4, which to me seems to have an amazing value proposition in terms of cost v gameplay.)

Point 3? I think Civ 6 overall has better modability for casual modders like me, but I can see the frustration for more experienced modders. I hope the DLl gets released for them at some point. Is modability a factor for people that don’t make mods? I do find it disappointing how limited the mods are on steam beyond leaders. I wish there was a Vox P for Civ 6 (but if the game was more well balanced, would I still care? Probably not). But I’m not sure Mod variety is a big factor for people who just play the game.

Points 4 and 5 actually seem more critical to me, and I think the lack of these mechanics really hurt Civ 6. They are certainly the reason I keep looking at early versions of Civ and have been experimenting with eg EU IV.

Point 6 is a slippery one. Post September Patch, I think Civ 6 is much better balanced, with the result that a lot of mechanics are now actually playable and the game is more challenging overall. But there’s still stuff that needs better balancing - including specifically, units (particularly Anti-Cav, late game units, and maybe Seige), Religious Beliefs, World Congress Resolutions, and Happiness & Amenities.

It’s maybe also interesting to think how a Third XP and a few more patches could factor in. I think a 3xp that focused on wider economy and permanent empire wide choices, and a couple more really solid and robust balance patches like we’ve had so far this year, could really move the needle. Civ 5 etc just maybe wouldn’t compare anymore (except on price).