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

[Lanthar]

2 UPT combined with a range of 1 for all ranged attacks. Eleminate's IV's suicide artillery and crazy stacks, forces artillery close (keeping appearance of scale intact) but allows a unit (or two if 3UPT) to provide defense.

You would also need resource restrictions on number of aircraft (AA range of 1 also) as they will be even more important with all ranged attacks at 1 range.

 

[aieeegrunt]

As wel as it being awful and tedious to solve a sliding tile puzzle every time you move a unit, and it being more difficult to code an AI to wage war properly, 1 UPT also completely destroys any sense of immersion and historicity.

Continious fronts in warfare outside of western Europe in the industrial age basically doesnt happen. The hilarity with ranged units is even worse.

Combine this with the low move allowance and all potential for any kind of tactics or manouver goes out the window and it’s a straight up deterministic attritional slugfest.

The fact that you can view an enemies’s force composition and health status and even get a summary of the odds BEFORE combat makes it even more stale, safe, and ultimatly boring as well as again, immersion destroying.

Like most of Civ6 it’s a minimaxing munchkin dream.

Why is this game even on a computer? The old school Avalon Hill board games had more interesting combat systems using cardboard tech.

 

[Zegangani]

The fact that you can view an enemies’s force composition and health status and even get a summary of the odds BEFORE combat makes it even more stale, safe, and ultimatly boring as well as again, immersion destroying.

This. I think just changing the Unit Panel UI so it doesn't show all the Infos about the other Unit (Enemy or Friend - just Unit Type, Owner...etc, obvious things that you should know), unless you start a Fight against it, would hinder the human Player a little bit, in a way that we can't act that effective in Battles like we do now. Because starting a New Fight would be something unpredectable, a Gamble, which would hamper the Human effectiveness just as much that is needed to make us less superier to the AI (You can easily count 1+1 and calculate how much CS a Unit could have (Health is tricky tho), if you know the rules ofc, but it would be tedious to do that for every Unit).

That should also be the case for Combat Strength of Cities that you don't have a Unit of yours inside its Territory.

I'm sure that would make Combat/Battle much more Fun than it is currently. AND ... because it's just UI ... it should be easily moddable for Civ VI.
Thank you for the Idea aieeegrunt. tbh I never thought of that (probably because I'm more of a Peaceful/Builder Player), but you hit the nail. It's immersion breaking not realistric AND, what's even more worse, it puts things even more in Favor of the Player, which is just unjust.

I really want to mod this rn, but unfortunately I currently don't have Time to do that and I'll be busy for some Weeks. but I'll try to find some Time for that durring the Weekends.

Edit: I recently played a Game with ARS's Improved Movement Mod, Real Strategy and by also giving Units +1 Movement, and the AI Combat was way better than usual. it wasn't realy good, but it made good use of the changes of those Mods. Now combine that with the Idea above, you will have an even better AI Combat (Player v AI).

 

[aieeegrunt]

This. I think just changing the Unit Panel UI so it doesn't show all the Infos about the other Unit (Enemy or Friend - just Unit Type, Owner...etc, obvious things that you should know), unless you start a Fight against it, would hinder the human Player a little bit, in a way that we can't act that effective in Battles like we do now. Because starting a New Fight would be something unpredectable, a Gamble, which would hamper the Human effectiveness just as much that is needed to make us less superier to the AI (You can easily count 1+1 and calculate how much CS a Unit could have (Health is tricky tho), if you know the rules ofc, but it would be tedious to do that for every Unit).

That should also be the case for Combat Strength of Cities that you don't have a Unit of yours inside its Territory.

I'm sure that would make Combat/Battle much more Fun than it is currently. AND ... because it's just UI ... it should be easily moddable for Civ VI.
Thank you for the Idea aieeegrunt. tbh I never thought of that (probably because I'm more of a Peaceful/Builder Player), but you hit the nail. It's immersion breaking not realistric AND, what's even more worse, it puts things even more in Favor of the Player, which is just unjust.

I really want to mod this rn, but unfortunately I currently don't have Time to do that and I'll be busy for some Weeks. but I'll try to find some Time for that durring the Weekends.

Edit: I recently played a Game with ARS's Improved Movement Mod, Real Strategy and by also giving Units +1 Movement, and the AI Combat was way better than usual. it wasn't realy good, but it made good use of the changes of those Mods. Now combine that with the Idea above, you will have an even better AI Combat (Player v AI).

Wow I feel honored

I’m looking into getting a PC to play Civ4 again, but I can also try out mods on 6 while I am at it.

One other idea is having a Scout unit allowing you to “preview” the enemy stack by…well..scouting it and thus giving you the summary back again.

You would need that one mod that lets you stack one of each “class” of units in the same hex for this to work. I have no idea if a script function can give you that scout ability though

If it did, I mean you’d actually have a reason to build scouts after the ancient era

 

[Zegangani]

One other idea is having a Scout unit allowing you to “preview” the enemy stack by…well..scouting it and thus giving you the summary back again.

You would need that one mod that lets you stack one of each “class” of units in the same hex for this to work. I have no idea if a script function can give you that scout ability though

If it did, I mean you’d actually have a reason to build scouts after the ancient era

That's another neat Idea! I barely build Scouts after I research Horsback Riding (and use Horsemen for Scouting instead). That would make them much more useful. That way they would act similar to the Barbarian Scouts (which was a really good Design choice), but without having them to return to your Territory for you to know their Scouting Infos (hard to mod anyway).

It is these little Ideas that improve the Game. One after One and you'll have a decent Game. In this case, I never saw/read that someone talk about this, till you mentioned it. This proves that having a Team of Game Testers (no matter how much) will never insure a well balanced Game (not just balance of numbers, but of Design choices as well, like with Player/AI). Because in some cases, maybe only 1 out of 1k or even 10k of Players will spot something that no one else has/will. Open Beta Tests on the other Hand can be very beneficial to this.

I really hope that FXS is not only using the Data they get from the Players to improve the current Game, like they did with Pantheons (they saw that most of the Players reuse a specific set of Pantheons and neglect the others, so they balanced them), but also take in consideration for the next Iteration (they sure know that the Scout Unit is one of the least Unit Types that get used after the Ancient/Classical Era, but they can't fix it without altering the Game Design of Units).

PS: Come to think of it, it is really ironic. Most of the Game's UIs don't give us all the informations that we need/want, but the Unit Panel UI shows us all the Infos about an opponent Unit, even Infos that we shouldn't know (except build Charges).

I’m looking into getting a PC to play Civ4 again, but I can also try out mods on 6 while I am at it.

Hope I will have the Mod finished by the Time you buy a PC and Civ 6 for it (wait for a Sale or buy the Anthology Collection now, if you want all the DLCs, and keep it till you have the PC). There are quite a bunch of QoL Mods that you will enjoy. Nothing that improve Civ6 significantly, but they defenitely improve the Game Experience a little bit.

 

[enKage]

Why no stack of doom? It was great to have 70 attacking unit next to owned city and it actually forced a player to build comparable army, in opposite to civ5 one highly promote UPT or civ6 eternal peace.

Anyway, I would try to remind in civIV mods a great solution was implemented - supply limit / urban or rural logistic, determining how many units can occupy single tile without penalties to combat strength.

I am bored with those neverending discussion 1UPT vs stack, ICS vs 4city, wide vs tall, while all of it has the whole space between. And many of them already present either in Civ4 or mods to it

 

[ashendashin]

I don't blame Firaxis, maybe the decision come from 2K, but whatever the reasons, I'm on the same boat here, I don't plan to buy/mod civ7 until I'm sure it's fully moddable this time.

Years ago, I read an article on Take2 taking an aggressive stance against GTAV modding, The impression I got was that Take2 simply does not want uncontrolled 3rd parties influencing their consumer base.
2K is owned by Take2. Firaxis is owned by 2K. As far as I'm concerned, Firaxis is Take2. This crap ain't fun, to the point that I hate all of Take2 as these business practices are apparent in all of its subsidiaries.

 

[Iconian]

Years ago, I read an article on Take2 taking an aggressive stance against GTAV modding, The impression I got was that Take2 simply does not want uncontrolled 3rd parties influencing their consumer base.

Why not just come back to Civ 5? It's half the price of Civ 6 on Steam right now, and I think most fans agree it's the better game. Plenty of moddability is still making the game better too.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Why not just come back to Civ 5? It's half the price of Civ 6 on Steam right now, and I think most fans agree it's the better game.

What, "most fans"? Who are these most fans that you talk about?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Why not just come back to Civ 5? It's half the price of Civ 6 on Steam right now, and I think most fans agree it's the better game. Plenty of moddability is still making the game better too.

Saying Civ 5 is a better game because of modability to me kind of is an oxymoron, at least in my opinion, considering it needed to be very modded to be a better game in the first place.

 

[KayAU]

Why no stack of doom? It was great to have 70 attacking unit next to owned city and it actually forced a player to build comparable army, in opposite to civ5 one highly promote UPT or civ6 eternal peace.

Anyway, I would try to remind in civIV mods a great solution was implemented - supply limit / urban or rural logistic, determining how many units can occupy single tile without penalties to combat strength.

I am bored with those neverending discussion 1UPT vs stack, ICS vs 4city, wide vs tall, while all of it has the whole space between. And many of them already present either in Civ4 or mods to it

I have been playing a bit of Vox Populi again lately, and among the things it proves, is that you absolutely can have engaging military gameplay within the overall system provided by Civ 5/6. Don't get me wrong, my preferred system is neither 1 UPT nor infinite stacks of doom, it's an army system. But Vox Populi proves that you can get much more out of 1UPT if you make an AI that...:
* ...does a decent job of competing in technological development
* ...builds military units
* ...is able to move those units somewhat competently
* ...will see and exploit weakness
I think the difference is striking when I compare with vanilla 5/6, where military engagement almost feels like cheating. It is exceedingly rare that they are able to even destroy a single unit, and I don't think I have ever lost a city to the AI. In VP on the other hand, I never feel comfortable letting my guard down. When I do get into a military conflict, I can expect to take losses. It is not unsurmountable, but it feels so much more engaging when I actually have to pay attention to these things. In my recent Byzantium game, I was struggling to protect my interests around the globe, and it was not until I had built up a well trained force of about three dozen warships and managed to finally gain a noticable tech advantage that I was able to do so quite easily. In another game I played, I was locked in a long conflict, where I was only able to start making progress once I had discovered flight and built up an air force.

 

[miaasma]

What, "most fans"? Who are these most fans that you talk about?

are the most fans in the room with us right now?

personally, i've always found civ 5 to be my favourite game, having grown up with civ 3 and played the crap out of both it and civ 4 throughout their lifetimes. i have a genuinely huge appreciation for each game. but if i were to compare 5 to 6, the AI is the biggest glaring downgrade i can think of, and i say this with the disclaimer that i actually think civ 6 did a lot of things really well, particularly after gathering storm

specifically, the AI in civ 6 just seems to either randomly like or dislike you. i'm not saying i need the AI's line of code for why they are the way they are displayed on the screen at all times, but a little bit of a reason for why someone is friendly towards me literally the turn after meeting me would be nice. because of this tendency for AI to just want to be your best friend out of nowhere, even if you don't satisfy their agendas, it renders them as a mechanic of the game kind of impenetrable

it is incredibly common for me to just be best friends with everyone throughout the whole game because there's almost no diplomatic pressure from anyone. the whole thing feels very frivolous and unimportant, and it sidelines the whole of diplomacy in favour of playing sim city (which is fine, but i like me some conflict and i almost have to go out of my way to find it most of the time in this game)

on the other hand, i sometimes just randomly get DoW'd incredibly early in the game, long before the AI could ever take a city, and then just refuse to peace even though there's absolutely no constructive use of the war. it usually starts with a "they just plain don't like you" denunciation out of nowhere and spirals into a bizarre cold war

i know that "i hope the AI is better next game" is just a broken record at this point, but i'd like to see them do away with the agenda system and go back to how civ 5 had distinct personalities and propensities towards different aspects of gameplay for each leader

 

[shaglio]

What, "most fans"? Who are these most fans that you talk about?

Yeah, one thing I've learned from all my years on these forums is that, at least with the posters here, there is no consensus as to which is the best Civ version. We've had numerous threads on that very topic and it is hardly unanimous. In fact the mere mention of the subject will inevitably derail this thread into yet another inconclusive debate.

 

[Green172]

It shouldn't even be a debate, if you got wrecked by the civ 4 doom stacks you were bad at the game. Civ 5, it's a passive and ultimately mediocre game, average strategy game with BNW at the least.

 

[Iconian]

What, "most fans"? Who are these most fans that you talk about?

Well, there's this I posted a month ago:

I just took a quick look at the store pages for Civilization 5 and 6.

Civilization 5 has approximately

177,000 positive reviews
7,100 negative reviews

making for about 96% positive reviews.




Civilization 6 has approximately

182,700
35,800

making for about 83% positive reviews.



Just a nice little fairly objective measure there.

 

[Iconian]

@Alexander's

Saying Civ 5 is a better game because of modability to me kind of is an oxymoron, at least in my opinion, considering it needed to be very modded to be a better game in the first place.

I think most every game can become better through modding, but I think I see your point. Why doesn't the company just make a great game to start? Probably $$ purposes.

@KayAU

But Vox Populi proves that you can get much more out of 1UPT if you make an AI that...:
* ...does a decent job of competing in technological development
* ...builds military units
* ...is able to move those units somewhat competently
* ...will see and exploit weakness

That sounds pretty cool.

It seems like a couple years back I tried to play Vox Populi, but I had some problem with installing it or something. I don't think it's available in the Steam Workshop, is it?

 

[LastSword]

We actually need civ7 to fully appreciate civ6.

Civ5 was a game with pathetic AI and balance issues before sequel dropped the bar.

 

[Linklite]

Well, there's this I posted a month ago:

I just took a quick look at the store pages for Civilization 5 and 6.

Civilization 5 has approximately

177,000 positive reviews
7,100 negative reviews

making for about 96% positive reviews.




Civilization 6 has approximately

182,700
35,800

making for about 83% positive reviews.



Just a nice little fairly objective measure there.

It really isn't objective. Civ 5 is far older and more mature game and has the advantage that Steam wasn't one of main ways of purchasing games when it came out (Steam was a significant method, but CDs were the major medium - my computer doesn't even have a disk drive, if I want to play Civ5, I'd have to purchase it on Steam (or similar), even if I already owned it. You're getting a lot of people who are buying it on again on Steam due to remembering that they enjoyed it (people who don't enjoy it don't buy it again on a different platform), bought it on the recommendation of a friend or already bought Civ6 and liked it, wanted more and so bought Civ5. Or they played a friend's copy and so decided they wanted it too. And so forth. Between being an older game and not the latest in the franchise, players are heavily biased towards liking it - they bought it because they've already played it or it's been recommended.

Civ6, while heading towards maturity now, isn't as mature as Civ5 yet. Most people buying it are either Civ fans updating - and having to overcome attachment to the previous games (and every sequel in most franchises has a hard time with that, especially when the predecessor was popular), or they're people like me who have heard about the franchise and decided to give it a go. While we're not necessarily predisposed to dislike it, the group is less biased since we don't know if we even necessarily like 4X games and so don't self select ourselves out if we don't like the game. If we don't like it, we put a dislike - unlike Civ5 players who mostly already know to not buy it.

While also not without its problems, a better method is to see how many people actually play it.

For Steam, Civ5:

And Civ6:

If Civ5 were the most popular, you'd expect people to still be playing it. More than double are still playing Civ6. Civ6 has double its 24 hour peak, and smashed it's all-time peak. It's also preserved a higher proportion of it's peak (16% v 12%) and 24 hour peak (68% v 58%)

A somewhat different picture being painted by people actually playing it.

I love the ideas behind Civy but I'm not happy with how they left it. I've considered getting Civ5 since my really big issues with Civ6 seemingly aren't present there. As you can tell, I'm not someone that religiously defends Civ6. However, it's the fastest selling iteration of the franchise and while I couldn't find sales figures, I'm pretty confident it smashed Civ5 - and this was before the pandemic.

Civ6 is very, very popular.

 

[UWHabs]

I think it's very personal which one you like better. The fact that civ 5 despite being the older version still has 10-20k players still on it shows that it has some staying power, for sure. It's not just people that have picked it up on a 5$ sale. My view is very clear based on my personal Steam stats, where I have over 3x more hours in civ 6 rather than civ 5. Of course, I never really got around to trying Vox Populi, maybe if I had, I would have stuck around longer on civ 5.

At least for me, even if the civ 6 AI is pretty pathetic at times, Civ 6 is actually still a fun sandbox game. Like, it can be fun optimizing your cities, building up your land, role-playing your leader, etc... Just because you don't have to be a perfect tactician to defeat the AI, it can still be a good game. I never really saw the same thing in civ 5. Whether it was game balance or something else, it just never really kept me wanting to come back to give it another shot. But 6 still has enough that I still have things I kind of want to try, so I'm still not bored by it. Like my current game is at this point a single player game within a single player game - I can just ignore the AI completely, and play my own game. And it's still more or less fun to continue going through, optimizing things, making my land and my empire as good as it can be. I don't think I ever felt that way in civ 5.

 

[KayAU]

That sounds pretty cool.

It seems like a couple years back I tried to play Vox Populi, but I had some problem with installing it or something. I don't think it's available in the Steam Workshop, is it?

No, unfortunately it's not in Steam Workshop, I'm sure it would be a lot more well known if it were. You need to download an installer, but it's pretty straightforward, as I described in the other thread. I'll leave a link to that post for anyone else who might be interested:

Have You Ditched Civ VI and Returned to Civ V?

Nostalgia playing Old World inspired me to crack open my dusty digital edition of Civ V after almost a decade. And you know what? I forgot what an awesome game it was! It can hold it's own to Civ VI. In fact, IMO it's gameplay is superior to Civ VI! What do you think?

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