Civ VI ...Huge disappointment

[Pythakoreas]

There are mod tools out, but afaik the modders are still waiting for more.



One of the reasons I'm defending VI is because I've seen it greatly improve with patches so far, so there's that part already.

District system: The whole idea behind the system is forcing you to specialize in some things and abandon others, and to be fair, there's only 3 districts (maybe 4 because Theater Squares need so much work in order to grant any real culture that you're already aiming for a culture victory if you really work on them) that are conditional or bad, and those are the Holy Site, Aquaduct and Spaceport. Holy Site and Spaceport are very much about one victory only, whereas Aquaduct is just not worth it. For the rest, I build all districts in all games, and while I indeed build more Commercial Hubs than I build Entertainment Districts, that doesn't mean I'm abandoning Entertainment Districts.
Dual tech trees: Maybe it can be overwhelming, I don't know. But I don't see how everything should be as low a threshold as possible. Sometimes, you make something more complicated than the bare minimum because it simply makes for a better game. And I don't believe it's too difficult for new people to understand.
Unique great people need some balancing, sure, but it adds a lot of flavour compared to every great person being the same.
Amenities/happiness: But you don't have to micromanage the cities. That's done automatically. All you, as player, need to do, is add a source of amenities if there's an unhappy city. And excluding giant metropolises it doesn't even matter where you add the source of amenities, as the game just pushes luxery resources around. On top of that, I was mainly referring to unhappiness being handled per city, meaning you no longer have the instant -75% growth when you're unhappy, as well as getting a boost in production and everything when you're happy, which means that there's actually a benefit to getting more happiness, while Civ V was "you get nothing for being happy but if you're ever unhappy all your people now refuse to reproduce".
Movement rules are debatable; I really prefer this, but I can see people preferring the Civ V ones. But there's a reason I ended my post with "not even one of them?"
You can't deny that the AI has improved in it's use in archers. It may still be horrible at fighting wars, but that wasn't my point. My point was that it's use of archers had improved. Mind you, I was replying to someone who said that VI was in each and every way worse than V.
How many roads were built before the medieval era other than through traders? Only the Roman roads (built by Legions... check) and, from what I've heard, the Persian roads (who have the bonus that their roads are a level higher than other roads in the same era). Maybe it's inconvenient, but it's accurate and it adds a great flavor.
Propose something better than builders/workers.
You haven't tried diplomacy. To be fair I haven't tried it a lot either, though I still know how to get as many people to like me as to dislike me, but if you want to know what's possible with diplomacy, just ask the forumer Victoria. She's had things like 6 other civs in the game, alliance with 5 of them.
For the agenda system, I was referring to V's system with a lot of invisible modifiers and leaders lying about how they thought of you. There, you had no idea wheter someone liked you or not, even if there was a Friendly/Neutral/Unfriendly, wheras here, you can see why they like or dislike you (assuming you have at least one of delegation/embassy, trade route and printing press) as well as their sore points (for the hidden agenda, you can often deduce it from what they say to you about it, otherwise you simply need two of the above), so you can at the very least take steps to avoid it.
And I was talking about the gameplay of civs being more unique. Not their leader screens and music.



This should be exhaustive enough. Again by Victoria.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/culture-victory-guide.25713/

You're still replying with someone who thinks VI is in most ways worse than V. The culture victory seems a clearer, but the game is still nasty for essentially hiding one of its victory conditions - unacceptable in my book.
I can't propose something better than workers or builders, but basically they're both really silly systems when you think about it.
District system basically spreads out your spies and puts restrictions on which building you can have. You can't have a shrine without having a full-blown Holy Site. That's a bit inconvenient though. And having to choose your districts with some clearly more useful than others is more restriction than freedom.
The civic tree is essentially empty at the end, we should reward better culture-focused players by having sweet sweet civics they can get before others.
Checking every city for unhappiness is basically micromanaging. The larger your empire is the more tedious it gets. With the possibility of rebel units appearing if you ignore this tedious task it can be annoying.
Everybody hating you and declaring war on you for no reason is a very well-known problem to begin with, this is one of the things I want to see absolutely fixed before I play Civ6 again. And no I won't try to please an AI in a video game for one match. It's tedious and pointless. I can put up with the Civ5 AI despite all of its flaws.
For the "agenda" system, I hope you know how to see modifiers in Civ5, you point your cursor on top of Friendly/Neutral/Guarded/Hostile and you'll see Green and Red texts, these are why another civ won't/will like you. The Civ6 AI doesn't accept delegations/embassies most of the time (again, not my fault, it's the horrible diplomacy AI) and declares war on you for no reason so it's borderline pointless. Main/Hidden agenda system has to be improved, not eliminated; in fact, I waited for this feature!
Gameplay is more unique for each civ? Really? Having flat combat bonus points is more unique than swimming in gold for discovering Natural Wonders(Civ5 Spain)? Extra happiness for depleted luxuries(Netherlands)? GP generation bonuses for friends(Sweden)?
At the end of the day CivV was about snowballing Science, and CivVI is about catching up to production inflation. Pretty much the same story for every civ...

 

[Victoria]

Ummm the culture victory is 100% clear in my guide... not clearer

seaside resort culture strategy is purely science based, it needs little production and no theatres... well 1 theatre to clear relics from the shores.

The science victory does require a lot of science and you can buy the great scientists that allow you to bypass a lot of the ending production if used right. A large portion of the production comes from internal trade routes so I would argue a science victory is more about gold and science than production but yes it is still needed.

Does a religious victory need high production?

The code comments hint at diplomatic victory or at least diplomatic UN which will make the game more interesting... the game is not finished just like civ IV and V were not 6 months after release

I would also argue that you are generalising. For example the build order at the start of civ V is fairly fixed but it is not in VI, there is no thread where people agree. There are choices to be made that rely on a landscape you know nothing about at the start.

Production is king but gold is god. You do not build IZ first, you build CD so it's not primarily about catching up in production. Also people still get huge gold earnings up.... just how much is optimum no one can agree on.

There is so much discussion about the rights and wrongs that it shows the game has choices.

One issue is as you get to deity the best build becomes more fixed at the start but risks having an army with no civs to attack.

 

[ashendashin]

I'm not trying to do that, I've been quite critical of Civ 6 myself, as the massive list of desired changes thread that I'm writing demonstrates. What I'm saying is that if we want to avoid this stuff if the future, pre-ordering is not the way to go. People in thread have complained about how the market is now able to support sub-par products, but the market supports sub-par products because people buy them. My point is that the people who make those points are almost invariably contributing to the problem just as much as the game's defenders.

Ah, sorry I misunderstood you since you mentioned those who bought it after release as well. Civ being an old series, it's expected that many fans would try it out anyways, so in this case I don't see the correlation to purchases.This isn't a No Man's Sky scenario where people endlessly complained about not getting what they were marketed. Just another sub-par AAA release. You'll get no argument from me on pre-orders being terrible.

Because you're talking rubbish. You say it's objectively inferior (like, WHAT???), wheras, for me, this is already the best title they've ever released. Stop being such a !@#$# and at least omit objectively from your post.

...

I didn't intend to get into an argument on this. There's plenty of threads and user reviews that explain in detail what Civ 6 is lacking.
I'll give a quick answer anyways. Previous civ games have more content and have already been fleshed out. Civ 6 will remain raw until the first expansion is released, as that's what Firaxis does. Add mods to the previous civ games and Civ 6 is objectively inferior to them. It could turn out better in the end. Balance changes and mods could flesh out the game eventually. Civ 6 has some potential, and I know many enjoy contemplating that. But from an objective viewpoint, it isn't at that point of quality.

 

[Leyrann]

You're still replying with someone who thinks VI is in most ways worse than V. The culture victory seems a clearer, but the game is still nasty for essentially hiding one of its victory conditions - unacceptable in my book.
I can't propose something better than workers or builders, but basically they're both really silly systems when you think about it.
District system basically spreads out your spies and puts restrictions on which building you can have. You can't have a shrine without having a full-blown Holy Site. That's a bit inconvenient though. And having to choose your districts with some clearly more useful than others is more restriction than freedom.
The civic tree is essentially empty at the end, we should reward better culture-focused players by having sweet sweet civics they can get before others.
Checking every city for unhappiness is basically micromanaging. The larger your empire is the more tedious it gets. With the possibility of rebel units appearing if you ignore this tedious task it can be annoying.
Everybody hating you and declaring war on you for no reason is a very well-known problem to begin with, this is one of the things I want to see absolutely fixed before I play Civ6 again. And no I won't try to please an AI in a video game for one match. It's tedious and pointless. I can put up with the Civ5 AI despite all of its flaws.
For the "agenda" system, I hope you know how to see modifiers in Civ5, you point your cursor on top of Friendly/Neutral/Guarded/Hostile and you'll see Green and Red texts, these are why another civ won't/will like you. The Civ6 AI doesn't accept delegations/embassies most of the time (again, not my fault, it's the horrible diplomacy AI) and declares war on you for no reason so it's borderline pointless. Main/Hidden agenda system has to be improved, not eliminated; in fact, I waited for this feature!
Gameplay is more unique for each civ? Really? Having flat combat bonus points is more unique than swimming in gold for discovering Natural Wonders(Civ5 Spain)? Extra happiness for depleted luxuries(Netherlands)? GP generation bonuses for friends(Sweden)?
At the end of the day CivV was about snowballing Science, and CivVI is about catching up to production inflation. Pretty much the same story for every civ...

Cultural victory is explained in the victory condition overview. Tourism increases foreign tourists, culture increases domestic tourists, have more foreign tourists than any other civ has domestic tourists. That's what it is, though I do have to be honest it's the most complex victory, so I can understand if people don't understand what exactly they should do. That said, they're not hiding it in any way.
Again, districts are created to force you to choose. You can't anymore build any- and everything you want in a single city, you have to specialize it. You may not like it, but it's a purposeful game mechanic.
Agreed that the civic tree is far too empty, I think we shouldn't be surprised if we get an expansion focusing on the endgame.
Checking city unhappiness is actually very easy. At the top of the screen you click "reports", you go to the last tab, and there you can see the happiness level of every city you own in one single column. The most tedious part about it is that if you have more than some 30-40 cities you'll have to scroll to check them all.
Everybody hating you and declaring war on you for no reason is not what happens, I'm sorry to bring it to you. If they hate you it's because you're a warmonger or because you're going against their agendas. There's some agendas out there that are really hard to meet, I know, but there's also ones that are really easy to meet, and in general there's always a reason. If you're playing peaceful and not caring about diplomacy at all except for sending envoys (my typical gameplay) about half will like you about half will dislike you, sometimes you get into a war, you smack them, in the peace deal you ask anything they have from them and then everything's allright again.
I know how the civ 5 modifier work. Did you know that AI leaders in Civ V sometimes deliberately hide modifiers from the player that are there, to the point of acting friendly while they're about to declare war on you? Bet you didn't know that. Civ6 AI accepts delegations/embassies if you're neutral or better AND if you just made peace with them. Always. Nearly never if they're unfriendly though.
Gameplay IS more unique for each civ. In V, you had 1-2 special units and 0-1 special buildings as well as a special ability. In VI, you have bonus units, bonus districts, bonus buildings, leader abilities, civ abilities, there's far more variation than there is in V, and even if you don't think that, there are more ways in which it is different. An average civ in VI has 3 bonus units/buildings/districts/improvements, a civ ability and a leader ability. On top of that, their power level tends to be higher than in V.
I very much agree that VI is too much about catching up to production inflation, to the point where I manually reduced said inflation in the code. That said, it's the first civilization game, and you have to give them credit for it, where it's not all about science. You say V was about snowballing science, but so were I, II, III and IV.

 

[Leyrann]

I didn't intend to get into an argument on this. There's plenty of threads and user reviews that explain in detail what Civ 6 is lacking.
I'll give a quick answer anyways. Previous civ games have more content and have already been fleshed out. Civ 6 will remain raw until the first expansion is released, as that's what Firaxis does. Add mods to the previous civ games and Civ 6 is objectively inferior to them. It could turn out better in the end. Balance changes and mods could flesh out the game eventually. Civ 6 has some potential, and I know many enjoy contemplating that. But from an objective viewpoint, it isn't at that point of quality.

But you're getting it anyways because what you're saying isn't true.

You say Civ isn't fleshed out while previous civ games have more content? Civ 6 right now has almost as many features as Civ V had after two expansions. Yes, diplomatic victory and the UN is missing, but can you point at anything else major in civ v (so not single techs or units or something like that) that is missing? Meanwhile, release Civ V, which is honestly what we should compare with, had no faith, no religion, no tourism, a very bad culture victory, etc. Oh yeah and that AI I mentioned in above post that hides modifiers? Was toned down in the expansions, it was even worse before.

You know what an objective viewpoint is? Civ IV and Civ VI both have their merits for being the best Civ, and if you for some weird reason don't mind the V happiness system, then maybe you could consider V the best game. On top of that, the only game still getting official support is VI, so it may very well turn out to be superior to all previous Civs.

 

[ashendashin]

But you're getting it anyways because what you're saying isn't true.

You say Civ isn't fleshed out while previous civ games have more content? Civ 6 right now has almost as many features as Civ V had after two expansions. Yes, diplomatic victory and the UN is missing, but can you point at anything else major in civ v (so not single techs or units or something like that) that is missing? Meanwhile, release Civ V, which is honestly what we should compare with, had no faith, no religion, no tourism, a very bad culture victory, etc. Oh yeah and that AI I mentioned in above post that hides modifiers? Was toned down in the expansions, it was even worse before.

Civ V was garbage at release. Single player Civ V vanilla with expansions is boring, frustrating, and also suffers from a terrible AI. Civ IV isn't a good comparison to either game, but it holds certain victories over both (mostly mods IMO. Never played much of it though). You yourself just said that it doesn't currently have as much content. I'm not comparing releases, as that gets back into potential.
It's worth noting that Civ V was so detached from IV that they were essentially forced to build many concepts from the ground up (they did a pretty bad job though). You have to wonder how the balancing, AI, and the content you yourself mentioned got thrown out the window for VI.

Civ V modded though? I can talk about that. There's loads more content. The concepts have been fleshed out immensely and even expanded upon. The AI had years of work done and isn't so blatantly ignorant of what affects the modifiers you like to pay so much attention to. Vox Populi is actually being taken care of properly and with a good AI in mind.

Civ VI doesn't hold up on a single concept in quality compared to mods. It has new things. Interesting things that could be really fun eventually. But most of it wasn't implemented well, whether it be balancing, AI capability, or simply forgotten for the later cash grubbing expansions that will no doubt make some of those concepts less empty. Agendas, eurekas, and diplomacy comes to mind on bad implementations. There's small mods to fix some issues, I know. But once again I don't want to get nitpicky because I'm not looking to tell you that your opinion is bad and you should feel bad. Play the game and have your fun. But the simple fact of the matter is that Firaxis didn't implement a large number of things as properly as they should have. There's nothing to excuse them essentially starting from scratch on the AI. There's no reason to remove World Congress and simplify the tech trees besides later cash grabs. The agendas give the impression that whoever pushed them never sat down and played with it. Same can be said about tech vs unit progression.

Like V, the new things can make it fun and unique. A new Civ experience. But until everything in it works in harmony with an AI that isn't incessantly frustrating to deal with, then it's not top in quality. Mods have already provided this, so there isn't a single reason for me to say that other games aren't objectively superior at this time.

 

[Gedemon]

Civ 6 will never get where it needs to be. Civ 5 is far better.

It's a bit early to make this kind of statement, we'll see in 2 or 3 years.

 

[Leyrann]

Civ V was garbage at release. Single player Civ V vanilla with expansions is boring, frustrating, and also suffers from a terrible AI. Civ IV isn't a good comparison to either game, but it holds certain victories over both (mostly mods IMO. Never played much of it though). You yourself just said that it doesn't currently have as much content. I'm not comparing releases, as that gets back into potential.
It's worth noting that Civ V was so detached from IV that they were essentially forced to build many concepts from the ground up (they did a pretty bad job though). You have to wonder how the balancing, AI, and the content you yourself mentioned got thrown out the window for VI.

Civ V modded though? I can talk about that. There's loads more content. The concepts have been fleshed out immensely and even expanded upon. The AI had years of work done and isn't so blatantly ignorant of what affects the modifiers you like to pay so much attention to. Vox Populi is actually being taken care of properly and with a good AI in mind.

Civ VI doesn't hold up on a single concept in quality compared to mods. It has new things. Interesting things that could be really fun eventually. But most of it wasn't implemented well, whether it be balancing, AI capability, or simply forgotten for the later cash grubbing expansions that will no doubt make some of those concepts less empty. Agendas, eurekas, and diplomacy comes to mind on bad implementations. There's small mods to fix some issues, I know. But once again I don't want to get nitpicky because I'm not looking to tell you that your opinion is bad and you should feel bad. Play the game and have your fun. But the simple fact of the matter is that Firaxis didn't implement a large number of things as properly as they should have. There's nothing to excuse them essentially starting from scratch on the AI. There's no reason to remove World Congress and simplify the tech trees besides later cash grabs. The agendas give the impression that whoever pushed them never sat down and played with it. Same can be said about tech vs unit progression.

Like V, the new things can make it fun and unique. A new Civ experience. But until everything in it works in harmony with an AI that isn't incessantly frustrating to deal with, then it's not top in quality. Mods have already provided this, so there isn't a single reason for me to say that other games aren't objectively superior at this time.

In my opinion, a game that has recieved 2 expansions and several years of modding can never be compared fairly with a game that has been released six months ago. I'll give it to you that I don't understand why the AI got worse, but for the world congress and the tech trees, it's quite obvious why they're left out. The tech tree is now split into two, meaning that there's more techs+civics than any old game has had techs, it just feels empty because you're always researching two at the same time, and I do not doubt they will add more techs and civics later on. For the world congress, this is typical expansion stuff. There is no reason why it needs to be in the base game. Diplomatic victory is a bit of a weird victory, making it less of a requirement than the other victories, while the world congress as a whole, at least the way it was in Civ V, adds a lot of flavour to things but, again, doesn't need to be there. It just gives a bunch more options.

 

[RohirrimElf]

The game has been released 6 months ago. Give it some time. It is very playable with even just the Moar unit mods and quick ui.
Civ 5 was absolute crap on vanilla and even one year after launch. It improved a lot with mods and expansion.

 

[Pythakoreas]

Ummm the culture victory is 100% clear in my guide... not clearer

Still, having the player to figure out the game rules is nasty. There's something called Civilopedia for some reason. Your post should be a section of the Civilopedia. At least BNW culture/tourism ideology pressure system was simpler and it took a week or so for Civfanatics forum users to figure it out - it was pretty intuitive after all. The theming bonuses on the other hand had to be discovered through trial and error. That's rather forgivable compared to how hard it is to figure out tourism in Civ6. If it wasn't for your guide I would never know of it. What's up with all these formulas - I don't want to do a calculus homework over a video game!
But still, thank you very much for the guide, I have at least one reason to come back to Civ6 and it is to try out the culture victory.

Cultural victory is explained in the victory condition overview. Tourism increases foreign tourists, culture increases domestic tourists, have more foreign tourists than any other civ has domestic tourists. That's what it is, though I do have to be honest it's the most complex victory, so I can understand if people don't understand what exactly they should do. That said, they're not hiding it in any way.
Again, districts are created to force you to choose. You can't anymore build any- and everything you want in a single city, you have to specialize it. You may not like it, but it's a purposeful game mechanic.
Agreed that the civic tree is far too empty, I think we shouldn't be surprised if we get an expansion focusing on the endgame.
Checking city unhappiness is actually very easy. At the top of the screen you click "reports", you go to the last tab, and there you can see the happiness level of every city you own in one single column. The most tedious part about it is that if you have more than some 30-40 cities you'll have to scroll to check them all.
Everybody hating you and declaring war on you for no reason is not what happens, I'm sorry to bring it to you. If they hate you it's because you're a warmonger or because you're going against their agendas. There's some agendas out there that are really hard to meet, I know, but there's also ones that are really easy to meet, and in general there's always a reason. If you're playing peaceful and not caring about diplomacy at all except for sending envoys (my typical gameplay) about half will like you about half will dislike you, sometimes you get into a war, you smack them, in the peace deal you ask anything they have from them and then everything's allright again.
I know how the civ 5 modifier work. Did you know that AI leaders in Civ V sometimes deliberately hide modifiers from the player that are there, to the point of acting friendly while they're about to declare war on you? Bet you didn't know that. Civ6 AI accepts delegations/embassies if you're neutral or better AND if you just made peace with them. Always. Nearly never if they're unfriendly though.
Gameplay IS more unique for each civ. In V, you had 1-2 special units and 0-1 special buildings as well as a special ability. In VI, you have bonus units, bonus districts, bonus buildings, leader abilities, civ abilities, there's far more variation than there is in V, and even if you don't think that, there are more ways in which it is different. An average civ in VI has 3 bonus units/buildings/districts/improvements, a civ ability and a leader ability. On top of that, their power level tends to be higher than in V.
I very much agree that VI is too much about catching up to production inflation, to the point where I manually reduced said inflation in the code. That said, it's the first civilization game, and you have to give them credit for it, where it's not all about science. You say V was about snowballing science, but so were I, II, III and IV.

It technically doesn't hide what you really need for a Culture victory but I had no idea how Domestic/Foreign tourism was calculated. I put up Great Works/Relics/Seaside Resorts but it didn't seem to help much. I had Naturalists sitting around not knowing what was the requirement for a Park.
Having the player to figure out the game rules is not acceptable. Victoria's guide should be added to Civilopedia.

Yes, CivV leaders deliberately hide modifiers and try to be Friendly just before the attack, that is their "Deceptive" stance, of course I know this, I played 1100 hours of it. You know something's fishy when your rival who was coveting your lands is Friendly all of a sudden.
CivV's global happiness system makes it a lot easier to manage as you get a single number instead of 40 different numbers in each city with the possibility of rebels appearing pillaging tiles and disrupting trade if you neglect it. Newbie and casual-friendly for sure. Civ6's Amenities system has pros and cons of its own, I just focused on the cons to prove my point...
As far as I know Greece is still the only civ with distinguishable leader ability and a civ ability. This has potential but for now I've not seen Civ5 Spain/Sweden/Netherlands level of "Uniqueness" when it comes to civ abilities. Even if compared to Civ5 Vanilla having flat combat bonus is not as impressive as Wounded units fighting well (Civ5 Japan), Converting barbs (Civ5 Germany, Ottomans), Movement bonus in forests (Iroquois), etc. The impressive ones are copy-pastes from Civ5 (CS fighting bonus, Germany from Mongols; Culture for kills, Sparta from Aztecs; Bonus land grabbing, Russia from Shoshone) Some of the special tile improvements were completely unnoticeable (Spain's Mission) and I'd rather have 2 unique units instead.
From what I've heard I-IV were really about domination. My point was that at the end pretty much every civ plays the same and it is to catch up with production/gold inflation. It also screws up on the "Uniqueness" as a science based civ like Babylon and Korea had massive advantages and so do civs like Germany in Civ6 as they get Production/Gold advantages.

About the Diplomacy AI: Did we even play the same game? Even if you play peaceful everyone ends up Unfriendly to you (No embassies), your efforts get negated by their agendas most of the time, and you get random Wars on you to have the AI to come with a peace proposal 10 turns later. I did have alliances/friends sometimes, that's when I happened to fit with their agendas. But Wars for no reason pretty much screws the diplomacy and trade. The AI is really really really really bad at making deals as well. They got worse from the BNW AI.

 

[Pythakoreas]

Does a religious victory need high production?

The code comments hint at diplomatic victory or at least diplomatic UN which will make the game more interesting... the game is not finished just like civ IV and V were not 6 months after release

(...)

Production is king but gold is god. You do not build IZ first, you build CD so it's not primarily about catching up in production. Also people still get huge gold earnings up.... just how much is optimum no one can agree on.

High production/gold output means that you can build more Holy Sites and erect Temples more easily. You can also wipe out a civilization that does not adhere to your religion with a big military. Not the main requirement but definitely helps.

Nothing is confirmed on Diplomatic Victory yet. If this is real I hope it's better than CS bribery though.

I think we build a Commercial Hub first because Industrial Zone is not even available in the early game. But the point is it's still about catching up on the production/gold inflation. Gold can't build districts and trade/diplomacy is a mess with AI declaring war on you randomly, but ultimately Gold is better as they nab you Great People but they still can't get me these astronomically expensive wonders.
When you have to ignore Wonders we know we have a problem. We're putting away a good chunk of the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

5 was gutter tier trash on vanilla release (MP was in such a state that it met the standards of false advertising, and many of the inexcusably weak UI problems in 6 are from 5) so it's a bit much to claim 6 can't catch it. That said, this level of quality is not a good look for a AAA game product.

 

[Victoria]

The AI strategy is agrarian. The turn their city lands into farmland quickly so they can grow quickly. They get something like a 70% production bonus but that is not enough to keep up with hill cities with +4/5 prod mines.

I am querying just how much production you need if you can out produce the AI in this area anyway. Other areas like for example science they still get the high bonus in and with high growth cities is more of a catch up problem. The AI is now faster with science as they are allowed to build more than on neighbourhoods.

I win on deity without building many or sometimes any IZ so I query just how much others have considered the gam overall rather that just saying production =everything. Also I am not alone in avoiding IZ

Wonders are a big chunk of the game? Nah... for each victory condition I find 1-2 wonders fine but not necessary. A lot of the others take a lot of production for questionable value. I am in no way convinced you have to squeeze every ounce of production out of the game and do wonder if doing so prolongs some victory conditions, certainly a culture one.

 

[Leyrann]

It technically doesn't hide what you really need for a Culture victory but I had no idea how Domestic/Foreign tourism was calculated. I put up Great Works/Relics/Seaside Resorts but it didn't seem to help much. I had Naturalists sitting around not knowing what was the requirement for a Park.
Having the player to figure out the game rules is not acceptable. Victoria's guide should be added to Civilopedia.

Yes, CivV leaders deliberately hide modifiers and try to be Friendly just before the attack, that is their "Deceptive" stance, of course I know this, I played 1100 hours of it. You know something's fishy when your rival who was coveting your lands is Friendly all of a sudden.
CivV's global happiness system makes it a lot easier to manage as you get a single number instead of 40 different numbers in each city with the possibility of rebels appearing pillaging tiles and disrupting trade if you neglect it. Newbie and casual-friendly for sure. Civ6's Amenities system has pros and cons of its own, I just focused on the cons to prove my point...
As far as I know Greece is still the only civ with distinguishable leader ability and a civ ability. This has potential but for now I've not seen Civ5 Spain/Sweden/Netherlands level of "Uniqueness" when it comes to civ abilities. Even if compared to Civ5 Vanilla having flat combat bonus is not as impressive as Wounded units fighting well (Civ5 Japan), Converting barbs (Civ5 Germany, Ottomans), Movement bonus in forests (Iroquois), etc. The impressive ones are copy-pastes from Civ5 (CS fighting bonus, Germany from Mongols; Culture for kills, Sparta from Aztecs; Bonus land grabbing, Russia from Shoshone) Some of the special tile improvements were completely unnoticeable (Spain's Mission) and I'd rather have 2 unique units instead.
From what I've heard I-IV were really about domination. My point was that at the end pretty much every civ plays the same and it is to catch up with production/gold inflation. It also screws up on the "Uniqueness" as a science based civ like Babylon and Korea had massive advantages and so do civs like Germany in Civ6 as they get Production/Gold advantages.

About the Diplomacy AI: Did we even play the same game? Even if you play peaceful everyone ends up Unfriendly to you (No embassies), your efforts get negated by their agendas most of the time, and you get random Wars on you to have the AI to come with a peace proposal 10 turns later. I did have alliances/friends sometimes, that's when I happened to fit with their agendas. But Wars for no reason pretty much screws the diplomacy and trade. The AI is really really really really bad at making deals as well. They got worse from the BNW AI.

The Park requirements are in the Civilopedia, I know that for sure. I'll give it to you that you don't know what the numbers for Domestic/Foreign tourism are just from ingame information, but if we're talking about doing calculus homework for a video game... That's what you get when you can find it ingame, while if you can't find it ingame, you just try to get as much culture as possible to avoid a culture victory, or as much tourism as possible to get a culture victory. So really, if you don't want to do calculus, this option is actually the better one. (not that I mind Victoria's guide being added to the civilopedia though)

About happiness... Again, as I already said, you don't need to manage 40 different numbers. You simply need to check the reports every now and then (though really, you only need to check when you get the message that there's cities that don't have enough amenities) and make sure none of the amenity levels reaches -3 which, really, doesn't happen fast. In over 200 hours of playtime, I've had a rebel spawn happen exactly one time in my own cities. The situation was relatively early game, so I didn't have Entertainment Districts or a lot of luxery resources yet, and I was fighting a war that was taking longer than I had intended to, and (as that's how war weariness works) all war weariness stacked in a big, previously conquered city which then spawned some rebels. It was a combination of not having enough luxery resources to bring to the city and the city being too big, as well as fighting a too long war. It doesn't just happen for nothing. I actually don't think I've ever seen a city even reach -2 amenities in my games without me fighting a war. Meanwhile in CivV I wasn't fighting enemy civs as much as I was fighting that darn happiness system. You know you've done something wrong as a game designer when the happiness system is the true enemy of the player. Which returns to my point, I was saying that this happiness system is superior over the V one. You still don't agree with that?

One last thing about the happiness system (just because I hate the V version so much), at least this one doesn't strangle you for building new cities, as they only need their first amenity when reaching size three. On top of that, if you do something wrong and have your amenities be provided almost exclusively by districts and stuff and barely by luxeries (luxeries grant the flexibility to always smooth out the happiness), then only one city is messed up by your lack of happiness, namely the city that doesn't have any happiness. In civ V however, if you gain cities on one side of your empire, all your citizens refuse to reproduce and start rebelling if it gets too bad. Like, why aren't you happy when you got all happiness buildings and 2 luxery resources nearby? Because there's unhappy people 3000 km away? How does that make sense?

/happiness rant

Greece the only civ with a distinguishable civ/leader ability... You could say that, as they are currently the only civ with multiple leaders, but there certainly are leader abilities that have a big effect on the game, and civ abilities are often most certainly not geared specifically towards the leader, very much allowing for a second leader that plays differently.
As far as uniqueness of abilities... What about Arabia's The Last Prophet? Egypt's Iteru, which wasn't even possible in civ V? Rome's All Roads Lead to Rome? Or Russia's other half of the unique ability, which turns otherwise useless tundra into semi-viable tiles? Scythia's People of the Steppe? And then I've only been looking at Civilization abilities, not even at the special buildings/units/etc or the leader abilities. Two of the "impressive" ones you mention actually exist in VI was well, by the way. Japan's Samurai still have the ability that they always fight as if they were full health which, I might mention, is actually better in VI than in V because of the combat system working on strength difference with an exponential scaling, meaning there's virtually no strength difference if the combat strength is 1 different, while a unit deals twice as much damage as it takes on a 10 stength difference. And converting barbarians exists as the Apostle promotion Heathen Conversion.

For diplomacy AI, if you totally ignore them they're probably not going to like you, no, but as I already said, just send them a delegation. You can't do that, you say? That's because you're too late. The turn you meet them you should send them a delegation. It gives a positive modifier that offsets the (difficulty dependent with randomizer) modifier you get when meeting them. If you meet one of their agendas and don't go against their second one (many agendas have a grey zone where they are neither negative nor positive, think about Kongo when you don't have a religion or Scythia when you don't declare surprise wars) then they'll already end up friendly after a while, and once they're friendly, you can get a declaration of friendship, which gives an additional positive modifier that is enough to offset a negative agenda, allowing you to remain friends. Once you are allies, I think you might actually be able to offset two negative agendas as long as you're the same government. As I already said, I don't care a whole lot about diplomacy, and I see an about even distribution in unfriendly, neutral and friendly. The only thing you should be very careful with is warfare, it's very easy to become hated by the whole world for that.

 

[Victoria]

I like the diplomacy in principal. There are a few bugs in it but it's fairly decent in my view
If they are a declared friend they cannot declare war on you, great 30 whole turns of peace with that civ, it would be nice to know 5 turns before it expires though.
Allies are just awesome beyond belief, you are not only sharing maps but all your unit movements. And +27 diplomacy points is a lot of anti warmonger points. Especially if you are warring right and not raising cities or wiping civs out. Gift a city back and they forget about you still being in their other cities, you can even sell a city to them to wipe away the negative.
If you do not play diplomacy right you are not being "optimum" not that I like that word particularly. You miss out on good trade deals and great intelligence.

 

[Leyrann]

Just popping in here as there's been some discussion that "these days" games are released when they're half finished and then have to get patched before they're playble, but I came across a Penny Arcade comic from 1998 (so before the rise of internet, DLC, etc), and well, I think some people are letting their nostalgia get the better of them... Apparently games that need patches aren't quite a new thing. I understand the critisism, but don't say that it was better 20 years ago.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/12/21/the-patch-parade

 

[Victoria]

Agreed, I remember having to work with windows 4.1 as part of my job... and Oracle, well known in the 90's for "it'll be fixed in the next patch"

 

[rschissler]

Agreed, I remember having to work with windows 4.1 as part of my job... and Oracle, well known in the 90's for "it'll be fixed in the next patch"

You must mean Windows 3.1

 

[Victoria]

Yeah friggin fingers, typed it before rushing to the London marathon today

 

[Jimdigriz]

Tried to find a thread applicable but this was the closest.

I know we are awaiting a couple of expansions but the absence of so many combat units pre 20th century is just silly. In my current game I still have Pikeman and Knight units that cant be upgraded and yet I have observation balloons and Infantry units elsewhere. We desperately need more units such as Rifleman and Grenadier etc to fill the gaps between Musketeer and Infantry!