Civ VI is done. So how does Civ V look in comparison?

[kaspergm]

I'd add another thing, which is that unpacked cities seems to make a civilization smaller, not larger. I like the district mechanism, but even on large maps, a player quickly runs out of free space. In contrast, Civ V's cities maintain open spaces between them, creating a sense of real distance and open ground. Your civilization simply feels larger. There are other benefits to one-tile cities, as well - islands are easier to settle and terrain is easier to read.

While I'm happy to recommend that Firaxis ditch the agenda system, I'm less enthusiastic about removing districts. However, perhaps they can integrate more into the districts, the way they brought back "stacked armies" in the form of Corps and Armies. Two easy ways to do this: (a) let cities build neighborhoods in districts, and (2) bring wonders back into city centers. Integrating non-specialty districts into specialty districts (an aquaduct runs through this theater district!) would do a lot to reduce clutter and keep more space between cities.

I think there are many different aspects (and/or flaws) of Civ6 that plays into the problem you describe with the map being overly cluttered. First off, I think that cities are generally settled too close to each other - I kind of understand why they kept the minimum distance at 4 instead of increasing it to 5, because a distance of 5 means you often get large areas of "dead zones" between cities of different civs/city states, or between cities and mountains/coast, that end up not being claimed, but I wish that game overall had been designed so that settling with more distance would be more optimal, and that AI would not always default to the minimum distance between their cities.

Secondly, I wish that farms would play a more central role in generating food. Curiously, Civ6 has the perfect frame for this through the addition of farm adjacency bonuses, which would allow you to create major farming centers, yet we don't really need that, and in late game it feels like food just magically appear from trade routes once you adopt democracy. The City Lights mod taps a bit into this territory with the addition of rural districts (farming towns and mining towns), but what I could wish for Civ7 is a more flexible way of handling city limits, so instead of the very static "can only work tiles within 3 hexes" of Civ5/Civ6, we see something where large "metropolis" style cities are surrounded by zones of farmland or mines. This would probably need some sort of mechanism where large cities start to drain population from nearby small cities (urban migration) in order to "clear up" land around the big cities. Again, City Lights mod taps a bit into this territory with borough districts that make your big cities "urban", but there is only so much a mod can do.

Thirdly, which I do like the ideas of districts and wonders being on the map, I think there should be some changes made. I think districts should be required to be adjacent to another districts - so your first district always must be adjacent to city center, and then you can either cluster around city center or expand in a direction. This would give a larger feeling of cities being coherent entities rather than just random districts sprawled all over the map. I'd like more "filler buildings" in the space between districts to give a more urban feeling (there are already mods that does this). With regards to mods on maps, this works in some cases, but need not be in all. When you build the Great Lighthouse, make it go in your Harbor district instead of the regular lighthouse (the fact that you need to build a lighthouse in order to build the Great Lighthouse is quite laughable in the first place). The same goes for many of the obvious "replacement" buildings (Great Library, Mahabodhi Temple, Oxford University, ...). This would clear up some space on the map.

Oh and lastly: Please make agendas go away and never come back. I hate them with a vengeance. Every time Harald comes complaining that my shores are undefended, I want to throw my monitor out the window.

 

[Zaarin]

Thirdly, which I do like the ideas of districts and wonders being on the map, I think there should be some changes made. I think districts should be required to be adjacent to another districts - so your first district always must be adjacent to city center, and then you can either cluster around city center or expand in a direction. This would give a larger feeling of cities being coherent entities rather than just random districts sprawled all over the map.

This is one solution; the other is to more visually support the idea that districts are smaller towns within larger regions, of which the City Center is the capital.

Oh and lastly: Please make agendas go away and never come back. I hate them with a vengeance. Every time Harald comes complaining that my shores are undefended, I want to throw my monitor out the window.

100%.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I still play civ V and VI alternatingly (by alternatingly, I mean I tend to play one for a few months then bounce back to the other, not TOO frequently changing). These are a few things I like better in 5

- AI is more of a military threat. In Civ VI you can build ancient walls and put archers in your cities and ignore military for the rest of the game. I think the AI is less likely to declare war in 5.... but when they do, they seem to be more effective.

- Ideologies (and along similar lines, religion) can form serious alliance/diplomatic union type things. In Civ VI, there are some ~very minor~ diplomatic penalties for having different religions or government types, but it's 99.9% ignoreable. In Civ V, lategame ideologies were fantastic at making blocs (although occaisonally it seemed quite arbitrary who took which ideology and some old friendships get ruined, which can be annoying). This should have been the case, in both games, with religion, especially around the midgame... neither game does this, but 5 does it a little better.

- 5 just looks a lot better imo.

- I prefer 5's production balance; by that I mean, it's worth building way more buildings in your cities. In Civ VI, I often have my first handful of cities build lots of stuff, but then the rest of them just build a harbor/commercial hub and then just make builders for the rest of the game, which feels like a waste of a city. On a related note, unlimited use workers. It's really annoying to keep making them in 6. I get it, the balance is different, but I feel like I spent 50% of the hammers I make every game just on improving my tiles.

- World congress not happening until you meet everyone. It's silly in 6.

- I prefer 5's diplomatic victory to 6's, although neither is that great.


However, while there are some things I like about 5, there are some things I really REALLY miss when I leave 6 which pull me back to 6. These are

- LOYALTY. This is the main thing. You get forward settled way more aggressively in 5 than you do in 6; and yet, the only thing to do about it is warmongle, which I dislike (and the AI seem way more judgy about light warmongering in 5, so you'll never live it down). In VI, you have other ways around these un-naturally aggressive forward settles.

- In V, it seems like if you aren't rushing science, you're just losing. Every victory is just science. Gotta rush that great library every game or else it... feels un-optimal! 6 is a lot more flexible so I don't feel pressured to do the same thing every time (although in more minor ways I do, such as certain pantheons/secret societies/etc being way better than their alternatives, but that's less overbearing)

- Civs are more usable in various ways. In Civ V, it seems like half the roster is only good at one thing, and half the time, that one thing is just way. Denmark? Mongolia? Zulu? Songhai? America? England? Huns? So many civs feel like "if you don't go for domination victory and fight tons of wars, you have little to no unique bonuses". Almost nobody is like that in 6. Even the Zulu can try science victory with Ikanda science, Basil can go for religious victory... Genghis is sitll pretty one-note though. But domination civs can pivot to science fairly well in 6, unlike in 5.

- Lack of happiness is too punishing in Civ V.

- This is a small thing but I like that civs willingness to pay gold for your luxuries/etc scales over time. In Civ V, they'll basically give you 7 GPT for a luxury the whole game, barely any more or less (unless they hate you). In Civ VI I often am glad to get 3-4 GPT really early and can get like 20 GPT late.

- Another small thing, but I like 6's movement system better. In civ 5 if you have one movement point left you can still move onto a hill/into woods. This kinda feels like cheating to me.

- I like how tundra/desert cities can still be decent in 6, unlike 5. If you don't have petra or are morocco you basically never want to live in a desert at all. In 6 there are sometimes more reason to be there... coal/oil (which didnt matter as much in 5), deserts seem to have bonus luxes more, etc.

EDIT:

Also agreeing with some other people here... agendas are not really fun to play around. I like the idea but in practice it just becomes a chore. Make sure to send missionaries to Alfonso, make sure to send a trader to the Netherlands, etc... I will say that 5 has similar things too though, like "Montezuma is being nice so he's gonna betray me like every other time" and "Oh look, the Iroqouis are on the map, they're going to make 999999999999 cities and steal all the land (how ironic to history?)" or "Augutus is gonna be tsundere the whole game"

EDIT2:

Some things I think both games kind of fail at is staying fun after the initial ~30-60% of the game is over. The early exploration and settling and early building phase is way more fun than the "look, our science/tourism has snowballed, time to click next turn for three hours (civ 5)/five hours (civ 6) until I inevitably win!"

Also having to micromanage arts and theme them. Very minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

Also, I forgot to mention this before, but I like civ 5's policy trees a lot more than 6's policy cards. The policy tree effects are more substantial and interesting, and there is less micromanagement of cards.

Even though I think I listed twice as many things I like about 5 than I did about 6, I still probably enjoy 6 more overall nowadays. These were just a few random things that popped into my head.

 

[steelaway]

I prefer VI overall, and have trouble going back to V due to the visually bland world map and VI's QoL changes. The happiness system severely punishes doing anything besides 4-city tradition, the lack of loyalty pressure is annoying after playing VI.

However, V really nails the intangibles in a way that VI doesn't. Playing V always felt more like an immersive sim/story of a civilization, whereas VI feels like I'm playing a board game against a bunch of predictable computers with no personality. As many have already mentioned in this thread, the agenda system is a huge contributor to this predictability. In Civ V, I could run into the same civ 3 games in a row, and in one game they outright hate me and war me the whole game, in the second be the best ally I could ask for, and in the third hit me with the "Although feigning friendship with you wasn't very polite..." line.

Another big complaint I have about VI is the AI's refusal to advance governments. As bad as it is to lose a 2000-year old friendship because my neighbor picked Order and I picked Freedom, it's preferable to being a Democracy surrounded by Classical Republics and Monarchies in the Atomic Era...

I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but I HATE HATE HATE the spies in VI. In V they were functional if a bit bland, but VI just makes the system cumbersome. I have to click on the spy, and then assign them to a city, and then assign their mission X turns later, and then they get promoted so I have to spend another turn micromanaging them... Pretty ridiculous that there isn't a dedicated espionage screen. Also, there is no reason to send them to city-states, since the envoy battle is pretty easy to win. Most spy missions aren't worth the time. I just spam siphon funds and put a secret service detail on Pingala, since everyone likes to neutralize him (I also protect my spaceport if I'm playing a science game).

 

[Zaarin]

Another big complaint I have about VI is the AI's refusal to advance governments. As bad as it is to lose a 2000-year old friendship because my neighbor picked Order and I picked Freedom, it's preferable to being a Democracy surrounded by Classical Republics and Monarchies in the Atomic Era...

This was especially annoying back when having different governments carried a huge diplomatic penalty (made worse by the seemingly omnipresent Ideologue agenda). Stop complaining about our different governments when you're the one who won't advance!

 

[iammaxhailme]

I prefer VI overall, and have trouble going back to V due to the visually bland world map and VI's QoL changes. The happiness system severely punishes doing anything besides 4-city tradition, the lack of loyalty pressure is annoying after playing VI.

However, V really nails the intangibles in a way that VI doesn't. Playing V always felt more like an immersive sim/story of a civilization, whereas VI feels like I'm playing a board game against a bunch of predictable computers with no personality. As many have already mentioned in this thread, the agenda system is a huge contributor to this predictability. In Civ V, I could run into the same civ 3 games in a row, and in one game they outright hate me and war me the whole game, in the second be the best ally I could ask for, and in the third hit me with the "Although feigning friendship with you wasn't very polite..." line.

Another big complaint I have about VI is the AI's refusal to advance governments. As bad as it is to lose a 2000-year old friendship because my neighbor picked Order and I picked Freedom, it's preferable to being a Democracy surrounded by Classical Republics and Monarchies in the Atomic Era...

I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but I HATE HATE HATE the spies in VI. In V they were functional if a bit bland, but VI just makes the system cumbersome. I have to click on the spy, and then assign them to a city, and then assign their mission X turns later, and then they get promoted so I have to spend another turn micromanaging them... Pretty ridiculous that there isn't a dedicated espionage screen. Also, there is no reason to send them to city-states, since the envoy battle is pretty easy to win. Most spy missions aren't worth the time. I just spam siphon funds and put a secret service detail on Pingala, since everyone likes to neutralize him (I also protect my spaceport if I'm playing a science game).

Good points! I forgot to mention spies and AI governments... so many times in civ 6 I see the world congress voting to give a government type a wildcard slot and the winner is something that makes me think "what, the AI is still using that???"

On spies, I like that you can use them for more things in civ 6. I found spying very boring in civ 5. But the spy micro in civ 6 is also a bit annoying. I wish you could set your spies to "continue stealing money/whatever until you're caught" instead of having to refresh every couple of turns.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

For me the issue is thst the AI decisions don't seem to have personality. When they declare way, it doesn't seem to follow a narrative, they fo it just because the numbers add up. It makes it hard to form a narrative when they don't seem to particularly react to your actions in any special way. You don't have Alexander who will use any excuse as a provocation for war while Cleopatra will tries to mediate any dispute, for example. It's pretty obvious that they're all identical apart from two fixations as dictated by agendas.

Part of it is how the AI uses things as well. Denouncings are second only to DoFs in making me feel safe (AI only declare surprise wars and so if they denounce, they're not going to do anything about it). As a result, Denouncing me just tells me that they don't like me, which I already knew because of the unhappy face, so it doesn't add to the narrative. When they like me, they don't tell me why. So they don't really express what l they're "feeling".

They also don't have much change in behaviour according to my actions. We don't get into colonisation races (a la "the race for Africa") or resource grabs. Sometimes CSs get to the the focus of contests, but that seems somewhat random in that it's just that one civ might grab Akkad, then I will, theb some other civ will, rather than two of us having a rivalry over it. Religion tends to be better, granted.

Combine a lack of difference in behaviour with a lack of distinct personality, and it's very difficult to formulate a narrative. For individual events, yes, but I rarely get a feeling of rivalry or significant interaction. The AI is just there plodding along and occasionally we'll have a squabble and if we survive, we just go back to plodding along again.

I think the agenda system was a good idea, but it didn't go far enough. Harald was a vanilla AI that had a thing for boats, but really you need a naval AI that is specifically built to be focusing their civ around naval doctrine. Or better yet, give Harald a viking AI that is built to use his civ. Pie in the sky I think, that would be very expensive to implement compared to the generic AI with a hint of flavouring via the agenda system.

To clarify, I've never played Civ V, nor any other Civ, so I'm not saying that it did it any better (or worse), I'm not in a position to say that. I'm just judging Civ VI by its own merits.

I feel like Grievances play a large role in making every leader feel the same. Because warmongering is going to be hated by every leader (including Alexander), it just feels like everyone hates you for the same things. Everyone dislikes the same things. Everyone likes the same things. Even Agendas, which were supposed to solve this issue, just mean that everyone will be obsessively ranting at you from a preselected copy+pasted group of the same things.

Can we have some variety, please?! Even on the topic of war alone, every leader's preference of it should be different. Sure, peacemakers like Poundmaker and Wilfrid can still dislike it, but other leaders could instead applaud you for it. Shaka respects your troops, Alexander admires your vast conquered territory, Harald congratulates (and secretly fears) your naval dominance, and Victoria can appreciate sporadic wars, especially Colonial Wars.

Oh, and that reminds me! Cassus Belli and actions during the war can also have their own preferences. Cyrus can still keep his affinity for surprise wars, but he only appreciates humanitarian conquerors. Yes, you can conquer your enemies, but don't excessively pillage them, or raze their cities. That is cruel and unforgiveable. (EDIT: also, he should like leaders who liberate city-states. Oh and btw, where is our achievement for liberating Jerusalem when playing as Cyrus, Firaxis?) And of course, Menelik, Lautaro, and Montezuma can all despise Colonial Wars.

These are all just ideas, but even some miniscule tailor-made preferences like these can make each of the leaders feel a lot more distinct.

(Also, your neighbors should not automatically hate you on Deity regardless of who you are. Makes sense for some leaders, but zero for others. It should not be universal)

 

[steelaway]

On spies, I like that you can use them for more things in civ 6. I found spying very boring in civ 5. But the spy micro in civ 6 is also a bit annoying. I wish you could set your spies to "continue stealing money/whatever until you're caught" instead of having to refresh every couple of turns.

The variety of missions is interesting in theory, but in practice, at least how I play (I'm usually a heavy min-maxxer), there isn't much incentive to change up what my spies do. While the micromanagement makes me irrationally angry, ultimately Civ VI's espionage falls in the "cool idea but poor execution, maybe do it better in Civ VII" category.

 

[Galvatron]

Yes, realism doesn't have to equate to bland and ugly with no art direction, and Civ5 was both. This is why I emphasized that the trend in the late 00s and early 10s that went out of fashion wasn't so much realism as a grimdark aesthetic. The real world is, after all, full of beauty.

40k actually makes pretty heavy use of bright dominating colours. For example the poster boys of the game, the space marines, are defined by lurid heraldic colors. The most popular faction is literally called the 'Ultramarines'; and yea they are in fact ultramarine.

The term grim darkness refers to the subject matter of the setting, not literal darkness.

 

[Platypusbill]

Broadly speaking, the strengths of Civ VI IMO are:

-more interesting city building (because of district and wonder placement)
-better diversity of strategies (because of a more flexible social policy/government system and district build orders, although some options are admittedly more niche)
-better "cool factor" (larger wonders with animated construction, more unique tile improvements, and unique buildings/districts are very visible on the map)

The downsides are:

-even worse AI (it just fails at long-term city planning, often neglects improving tiles to laughable degree with the limited-use builders, and even on Deity is not a military threat after your vulnerable early game)
-lesser player agency (random promotions on some special units, RNG natural disasters, tile yields and district placement causing huge imbalance in quality of land, the partly luck-based boost system...)
-terribly balanced combat (anticavalry units generally suck, cavalry units are mosty just better than melee/anticav, stacking combat and movement bonuses are OP, cities are either squishy as hell or ridiculously tanky...)

 

[Horizons]

I'm not sure about districts to be honest. How many universities in the world are situated in mountain ranges?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I feel like Grievances play a large role in making every leader feel the same. Because warmongering is going to be hated by every leader (including Alexander), it just feels like everyone hates you for the same things. Everyone dislikes the same things. Everyone likes the same things. Even Agendas, which were supposed to solve this issue, just mean that everyone will be obsessively ranting at you from a preselected copy+pasted group of the same things.

Why they never implemented a "warmongering scale" like in Civ 5 is beyond me. We have this for City States but not actual warmongering? Civ 5 had a scale for certain leaders, so someone liek Shaka would be more likely to overlook your warmongering compared to Gandhi who would instantly depise you for stealing a worker for eternity. Which gave enough flavor to the game.

I prefer VI overall, and have trouble going back to V due to the visually bland world map and VI's QoL changes. The happiness system severely punishes doing anything besides 4-city tradition, the lack of loyalty pressure is annoying after playing VI.

However, V really nails the intangibles in a way that VI doesn't. Playing V always felt more like an immersive sim/story of a civilization, whereas VI feels like I'm playing a board game against a bunch of predictable computers with no personality. As many have already mentioned in this thread, the agenda system is a huge contributor to this predictability. In Civ V, I could run into the same civ 3 games in a row, and in one game they outright hate me and war me the whole game, in the second be the best ally I could ask for, and in the third hit me with the "Although feigning friendship with you wasn't very polite..." line.

Another big complaint I have about VI is the AI's refusal to advance governments. As bad as it is to lose a 2000-year old friendship because my neighbor picked Order and I picked Freedom, it's preferable to being a Democracy surrounded by Classical Republics and Monarchies in the Atomic Era...

I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but I HATE HATE HATE the spies in VI. In V they were functional if a bit bland, but VI just makes the system cumbersome. I have to click on the spy, and then assign them to a city, and then assign their mission X turns later, and then they get promoted so I have to spend another turn micromanaging them... Pretty ridiculous that there isn't a dedicated espionage screen. Also, there is no reason to send them to city-states, since the envoy battle is pretty easy to win. Most spy missions aren't worth the time. I just spam siphon funds and put a secret service detail on Pingala, since everyone likes to neutralize him (I also protect my spaceport if I'm playing a science game).

I recently completed a game of Civ 5 with Indonesia and Cultural Victory and had so much more efun than I've had with Civ 6 (not to mention an odd visual glitch and just god-awful starts made it very unfun for what I was trying to do).

I think Civ 5's World Congress, and Cultural game (in terms of Tourism) is way better than in Civ 6.

Civ 6 also suffers because it really does feel bit blaoted with the new game modes, especially the unbalance ones.

Civ 5 also didn't seem to suffer from the "ugh, next turn", I still had plenty of things to do and things i wanted to achieve (albeit that was largely due to a small mod that limited number of cities per era), but it was just fun to play, while in Civ 6 I often just get so automated that I already know I won before turn X, and it just loses the essence of it.

 

[Platypusbill]

I'm not sure about districts to be honest. How many universities in the world are situated in mountain ranges?

Observatories are often built at high altitudes, although being on lowlands near mountains doesn't really help. Astronomy is also a narrow subset of science, as are the fields that would benefit from studying reefs, geothermal fissures, or jungles, but I suppose the devs just wanted campuses to benefit from natural features. There aren't really any districts that would make sense as an extra source of adjacency.

 

[kaspergm]

-better diversity of strategies (because of a more flexible social policy/government system and district build orders, although some options are admittedly more niche)

Personally, I think Civ5 was much better than Civ6 is in this area, although admittedly I had modded Civ5 pretty extensively (as I have Civ6). Particularly the government/policy system of Civ6 is one of the things I really dislike about the game, and which I feel fail completely when it comes to diversity and variation between games. While all three tier 1 government are appealing to me depending on conditions, I'll find myself using Theocracy in about 75 % of my games (with the remaining 25 % being Merchant Republic when I don't have a religion or any faith economy at all), and I'll find myself using Democracy in about 99.9 % of my games (tier 4 governments, if they even come into play significantly, will be a toss between the culture and the production/power one, depending on victory condition).

With social policies, it's even worse. I'll use the same subset of perhaps 10-15 policies in almost all my games, no matter which civ or which victory I'm pursuing (God King, Urban Planning, the +100 % Holy Site/Campus/Industrial Zone/Harbor cards, the +builder charges cards, the 50 % upgrade cost cards, the free envoys and gold from envoys, sometimes the production to wonder cards if using a GE or chopping a wonder, ...), and I think I can honestly say that a third of the cards in the game, I've not used more than a handful of times at most. I hate the swap-in/swap-out aspect of the cards, not only does it offer a lot of tedious micromanagement, it also feels cheap and abusive and kills your immersion (hold off on upgrading your units, swap in gold and resource cards for one turn, upgrade all units, swap cards out again after one turn - seriously, that's so "gamey"). I miss how in Civ5, when you chose to open a policy tree, this would be a lingering commitment to the game, that would actually form the strategy you would pursue for the rest of the game - and yes, with modding, the different options actually felt viable to me, so that it was not always just Tradition-Rationalism-Freedom.

Observatories are often built at high altitudes, although being on lowlands near mountains doesn't really help. Astronomy is also a narrow subset of science, as are the fields that would benefit from studying reefs, geothermal fissures, or jungles, but I suppose the devs just wanted campuses to benefit from natural features. There aren't really any districts that would make sense as an extra source of adjacency.

Campus should get much bigger adjacency from being next to city center, and could even get dedicated bonuses from being next to industrial zone (bonus science when researching "technological" technologies), encampments (bonus when researching military sciences), commercial hubs (bonus when researching economic sciences). As has been discussed at lengths elsewhere, I'd much rather see the mountain thing come into play through unlocking an Observatory building when campus is next to mountains, similar to how it was in Civ5.

 

[Zaarin]

40k actually makes pretty heavy use of bright dominating colours. For example the poster boys of the game, the space marines, are defined by lurid heraldic colors. The most popular faction is literally called the 'Ultramarines'; and yea they are in fact ultramarine.

The term grim darkness refers to the subject matter of the setting, not literal darkness.

I'm aware what grimdark means for a setting, but here I'm simply using the term to mean "pointlessly edgy for the sake of it." And de facto, that's goth colors.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I've been stuck with only a tablet for a bit, so we back and loaded up Civ V to see how it compared as a final product to Civ VI as a final product. It made me realize that for all the conveniences and improvements to Civ VI (an in-game clock!), there was always something about Civ VI that seemed to be missing: emergent storytelling.

TL;DR: Civ VI is better in almost every way except in the thing that I liked most about Civ V, which was its feeling of emergent storytelling, and I think the cause is Civ VI's agenda system.

Here's the scenario: I started out as Morocco on a nice desert floodplain. I quickly realized that I was pinned between an ocean on one side and two city-states on the other. I needed space to expand. On the other side of the city-states was the Maya, who had pledged to protect both. I focused on building up my military, and raiding and weakening the nearest city-state. Pacal warned me to leave it alone, and I blew him off. My second attack resulted in the Maya declaring war and advancing with a large army of inexperienced and obsolete units, who I slaughtered in a pitched battle across the river. I then advanced and conquered the nearest city-state.

Why it matters: Now I may have no idea what the AI was "thinking," but that scenario is as clear as anything Thucydides would write. I had obvious reasons for doing what I was doing, and the Maya had obvious reasons for doing what they were doing. I needed to expand, and the Maya needed to maintain a buffer state and uphold their credibility. OF COURSE I had more experienced and upgraded units, because I was focused on military expansion. OF COURSE the Maya threw a large, unprepared army against me, because it had to build its forces quickly once it realized the threat and while it still could benefit from the nearby city-state units. Whether that was the result of good AI or just happenstance is kind of irrelevant, because it's the kind of thing that I recall happening in most of my Civ V games, where my mind was always able to ascribe clear motives to the AI's moves.

That's just not something that happens in the Civ VI, and I think that's why the game has always felt unsatisfying despite its leaps forward in game mechanics and its vast array of leaders and civilizations.

If I had to guess why Civ VI lacks a sense of emerging storytelling, I'd guess that it's the fault of the agenda system. In theory, an agenda system sounds cool - hey, leaders are people too, and they have biases. But in practice, it creates random incentives and disincentives that don't seem to have any real weight to them. The AI attacks you just because. It wants to trade with you just because. It wants what it wants for no real reason and with no rational explanation.

If there's something to be learned from this, it's that Civ VII could improve by losing the agenda system. I don't blame Firaxis for trying it - it was worth a shot! But some things just don't work out. The name of the game is "Civilization," not "Leader," and tying a civ's story to the whims of one regent makes the game actually feel less realistic, not more. After all, in real life, heads of state do lots of things they aren't interested in because they need to shore up political support. LBJ wanted to create a huge welfare state in the USA; he wound up micromanaging a war in East Asia.

My suggestion: Firaxis, you like 1/3 new. How about the 1/3 new being rotating leaders? If a leader's agenda is at odds with the needs of that civilization, that leader is replaced with someone who will [push back the enemy/improve happiness/fix the budget crisis]. It would put new emphasis on the long-term interests of a Civ. It could create new mini-games/strategies in that players could try to get hostile leaders switched out with politicians more amenable to your civ. It would be more realistic, since countries do change leaders and vice-versa. And it would allow for all sorts of new gameplay mechanics, such as democracy being advantageous in that its changes of leaders are less disruptive but occur more often, whereas monarchies are the opposite.

What say you, Civ fans?

The Good - Things Civ VI did better
Civilization Playstyle Variety - VI absolutely beats V in this regard. I remember feeling like a good 75% of the civs in civ V played exactly the same. The small bonuses weren't enough of a differentiation.

Art Style/Color Use - I vastly prefer the colorful and lively design of VI. V feels very bland and uninspired.

City States - VI did these better in literally every way. They are way more impactful for one and two the envoy system and city state diplomacy just makes more sense. I always thought the constant decay in Civilization V was terrible and made no sense. I felt like I was paying tribute to these small states and being their subordinate rather than the other way around.

Loyalty - Not much to say here. This was a great system to introduce. I have no critique of it other than wanting it to be deeper with more interactions with other systems like culture etc.

The Bad - Things Civ V did better
World Congress - Say what you want about the exploitability of the world congress in Civ V but at least when a vote came up I gave a damn about it. Even in MP matches, the world congress in Civ VI is mostly useless. There have been very rare occasions where a vote actually made a difference or players cared about it. I play a weekly MP match with 8 other players and the stars have to align for any one of us to give a crap about the proposals. The proposals should be determined by the players. I like the A/B option on each proposal but the random proposals absolutely kills it for me.

Immersion - There is no way to get around this.... Civ VI is a virtual board game. For competitive multiplayer and players who enjoy digging very deeply into min/max strategy this is a god send. For those of us who enjoy immersing ourselves in a game world and writing a storyline, this absolutely ruins the experience. When compared with its predecessor it is exceptionally difficult for you to roleplay a story because nearly every facet of the game is tightly related to a game board-like mechanic. There was a huge opportunity to REALLY let players write a story with the introduction of the timeline feature but instead it was tied to a game mechanic and did not allow us to create our own events or even catalogue some important events in each civilizations history. I thought Civilization V did a better job of immersing people in the game world even though I did not think it was all that great at it either.

With all that being said, and especially given the state of the AI, I don't agree with the devs refusal to implement negative events either. I would love random events that occurred and gave us options to deal wit them. Each should ideally have a positive and a negative and occasionally maybe a negative event just occurs and you have to chose how to mitigate it.

Civics Tree - This will be a theme as I am not a fan of the board gamey direction the game has gone. I don't like the cards. While I also did not like the inflexibility of the trees I prefer them to the cards.

Undecided
AI - The AI isn't great in either title. When I mention the AI I am specifically talking about the AI's ability to pose a threat to the player both in terms of militarily and victory condition. The military AI for example seems beyond incompetent outside the first 50 turns on deity. I have seen several AI with massive yield leads but they failed to successfully leverage them in either game. I could honestly go on and on about this but in general I also feel like the Civilization VI AI is far, far too passive. I want the other civs to feel alive and I want them to be aggressive when I am standing in their way and/or transgress their ideologies/beliefs.

Districts - This will be an unpopular opinion. I think districts made the map matter more - and it should.. but it also has started to make the game feel a lot more like SimCity and a lot less like an empire management strategy game. This combined with the passive AI really go a long way in making Civ VI feel like SimCity. I don't have a problem with (and I expect to see) districts continuing in the series but I neither like or dislike them.

Diplomacy - Generally underwhelmed by the shallowness of diplomacy in both iterations. I want something beefier and more consequential. I agree with calls for a return of an ideology like system but I want something deeper than that as all that really does is shake up the relations late in the game but still maintain the same shallow diplomacy. For example, before the world congress is founded or even after, can we have options to refuse traders from specific empires individually? I also think its far too easy to make friends with the AI. I personally have started playing with a mod that doubles the negative penalty for going against an agena/angering the AI and it has helped make my games less "ally with everyone and hit end turn while they sit around and fumble their yield advantage and never declare war on anyone).

 

[UWHabs]

I feel like Grievances play a large role in making every leader feel the same. Because warmongering is going to be hated by every leader (including Alexander), it just feels like everyone hates you for the same things. Everyone dislikes the same things. Everyone likes the same things. Even Agendas, which were supposed to solve this issue, just mean that everyone will be obsessively ranting at you from a preselected copy+pasted group of the same things.

Can we have some variety, please?! Even on the topic of war alone, every leader's preference of it should be different. Sure, peacemakers like Poundmaker and Wilfrid can still dislike it, but other leaders could instead applaud you for it. Shaka respects your troops, Alexander admires your vast conquered territory, Harald congratulates (and secretly fears) your naval dominance, and Victoria can appreciate sporadic wars, especially Colonial Wars.

Oh, and that reminds me! Cassus Belli and actions during the war can also have their own preferences. Cyrus can still keep his affinity for surprise wars, but he only appreciates humanitarian conquerors. Yes, you can conquer your enemies, but don't excessively pillage them, or raze their cities. That is cruel and unforgiveable. (EDIT: also, he should like leaders who liberate city-states. Oh and btw, where is our achievement for liberating Jerusalem when playing as Cyrus, Firaxis?) And of course, Menelik, Lautaro, and Montezuma can all despise Colonial Wars.

These are all just ideas, but even some miniscule tailor-made preferences like these can make each of the leaders feel a lot more distinct.

(Also, your neighbors should not automatically hate you on Deity regardless of who you are. Makes sense for some leaders, but zero for others. It should not be universal)

Yeah, I'd agree a lot on this. I think the CB system was a good start in trying to "differentiate" between wars, but I think the next step would certainly be to customize the setup even more. Like, it would be awesome if there were some leaders in the game that didn't care how often you went to war with someone, but pillage a farm during combat and they will denounce you to the heavens. And other leaders who don't want any conflict whatsoever, but if you're both Christian, then will gladly join you in the next round of crusades to convert the heathens.

And then on the flipside, you also need cases where an AI may hate you, but for a strategic purpose, may want to ally. Like, Britain and France may have been at war for 500 years, but if Germany is becoming a global threat, then it only makes sense for the other civs to put aside their differences and join together. Emergencies sort of try to do that, but not quite enough.

If you do that, and then combine that with a slightly more varying setup of their default personalities, that would help. So, like, it's one thing if Ethiopia makes a snap judgement of me because when I first met them they saw my hill city and wanted it for themself. But 300 years later, I dunno, maybe that should matter less than us having years of mutual trade?

 

[Zaarin]

Yeah, I'd agree a lot on this. I think the CB system was a good start in trying to "differentiate" between wars, but I think the next step would certainly be to customize the setup even more. Like, it would be awesome if there were some leaders in the game that didn't care how often you went to war with someone, but pillage a farm during combat and they will denounce you to the heavens. And other leaders who don't want any conflict whatsoever, but if you're both Christian, then will gladly join you in the next round of crusades to convert the heathens.

I've mentioned before that Civ should look to CK3 for inspiration on religion. Another point it could look to CK3 for is that sometimes the purpose of a war is something other than to take land. In fact, Civ (in any iteration) is very poor at representing anything short of total war, a modern concept.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Personally, I think Civ5 was much better than Civ6 is in this area, although admittedly I had modded Civ5 pretty extensively (as I have Civ6). Particularly the government/policy system of Civ6 is one of the things I really dislike about the game, and which I feel fail completely when it comes to diversity and variation between games. While all three tier 1 government are appealing to me depending on conditions, I'll find myself using Theocracy in about 75 % of my games (with the remaining 25 % being Merchant Republic when I don't have a religion or any faith economy at all), and I'll find myself using Democracy in about 99.9 % of my games (tier 4 governments, if they even come into play significantly, will be a toss between the culture and the production/power one, depending on victory condition).

With social policies, it's even worse. I'll use the same subset of perhaps 10-15 policies in almost all my games, no matter which civ or which victory I'm pursuing (God King, Urban Planning, the +100 % Holy Site/Campus/Industrial Zone/Harbor cards, the +builder charges cards, the 50 % upgrade cost cards, the free envoys and gold from envoys, sometimes the production to wonder cards if using a GE or chopping a wonder, ...), and I think I can honestly say that a third of the cards in the game, I've not used more than a handful of times at most. I hate the swap-in/swap-out aspect of the cards, not only does it offer a lot of tedious micromanagement, it also feels cheap and abusive and kills your immersion (hold off on upgrading your units, swap in gold and resource cards for one turn, upgrade all units, swap cards out again after one turn - seriously, that's so "gamey"). I miss how in Civ5, when you chose to open a policy tree, this would be a lingering commitment to the game, that would actually form the strategy you would pursue for the rest of the game - and yes, with modding, the different options actually felt viable to me, so that it was not always just Tradition-Rationalism-Freedom.


Campus should get much bigger adjacency from being next to city center, and could even get dedicated bonuses from being next to industrial zone (bonus science when researching "technological" technologies), encampments (bonus when researching military sciences), commercial hubs (bonus when researching economic sciences). As has been discussed at lengths elsewhere, I'd much rather see the mountain thing come into play through unlocking an Observatory building when campus is next to mountains, similar to how it was in Civ5.

Interesting, I feel similarly about T2 and T3 governments, except the one I almost always use is merchant republic. For T3 govs, yeah I use democracy most of the time, although if I was doing an early-violent-pivot-to-science game (which is a lot of mine) I generally have no friends so I go communism for the science/production boosts as I wouldn't get anything from democracy's trade agreements. Fascism is just useless.

I'm with you on the civ 5 policy trees, they felt way more substantial, although they did have their own balance issues (like you said, traditionalism rationalism freedom was the best) and in civ VI I also find I use the same cards all the time, generally thje same as yours.

 

[UWHabs]

Interesting, I feel similarly about T2 and T3 governments, except the one I almost always use is merchant republic. For T3 govs, yeah I use democracy most of the time, although if I was doing an early-violent-pivot-to-science game (which is a lot of mine) I generally have no friends so I go communism for the science/production boosts as I wouldn't get anything from democracy's trade agreements. Fascism is just useless.

I'm with you on the civ 5 policy trees, they felt way more substantial, although they did have their own balance issues (like you said, traditionalism rationalism freedom was the best) and in civ VI I also find I use the same cards all the time, generally thje same as yours.

I think Democracy is way too strong, especially since they made the trade route bonuses work on suzerains, you can still get nearly full power from it even if you're the world's pariah. It really needs something like a +300% penalty to war weariness to counter-balance it, never mind that its govt-specific card in New Deal is so much stronger than any contemporary policy card that it means there's no point to running any other government. Heck, often I find myself staying in Democracy even when I am unlocking T4 governments, especially if I already have a couple bonus policy slots from wonders. The T2 governments since the rebalance I think are in much better shape - while I will rarely stay in Monarchy forever, it's at least a useful stepping stone, and you can actually really rack up some diplo favour if you go wall-heavy while in it.

I think overall the flexibility of the C6 policies is better than the fixed C5 policy trees, especially since 5 never really fully balanced them. When you factor in the government plaza buildings too, there's just so many ways to run things in 6 that it's so much better overall. Although I would also definitely agree that the balance of the current policies is still pretty horrible, and I do think it's still way too easy to mix and match, and change things around. Like, you can run 5-year plan for just a single turn. I kind of wish the system in 6 was set up so that things locked in a little more either when slotted or unslotted. So, like, if you slot in a card, it has to be in your policies for 10 turns (unless if you change governments or something), and maybe once a card is swapped out, you can't swap it back in for 8-10 turns? If you did that, you could even get rid of the "only changing cards when you get a new civic."