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

[Zaarin]

So, I'm guessing that it wouldn't be popular to have each leader stylised according to the artstyle of their civ, then?

It would depend on how it was done, but in a game covering such a broad time period and geography it could--probably would--end up looking very disjointed.

 

[aieeegrunt]

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."

This “greater choice” is an illusion because the balance is so hilariously bad. I rarely deviate from my policy/government choices from game to game.

I find it hilarious because given that Civ6 is such a deterministic numbers munchkin GAME you wouldn’t think this would be hard to balance.

I find it strange people think card choices are limited when there was a ton of debate over which ones were good in the elimination thread.

I would honestly be surprised if people could even agree on the first 3 things to build, much less long term card usage though.

As for governments, I have use for 5/6 of the 1st 6 governments. But I bet nobody can guess what the 6th one is now.

T3s I use less but usually Democracy is for alliances, Communism when alliances lack, and Fascism for Domination.

T4s are kinda useless all around except for Synthetic Technocracy which is tailored for science victories. I guess you can take Digital if you're not ready to launch, and the other government is just stupid.

Now Religion kinda sucks. Besides Founder beliefs, most are so incredibly dull. Pantheons are also dull.

The elimination threads were all blowouts. We were meming about it after the first ones

I think people are punching Civ 6 more than they should. It is a great game, definitely flawed and somewhat lacking an overall sense of completeness (although it still feels way more complete compared to even a year ago, before New Frontier), and that on both technical level, content level and overall complexity is the best the Civilization franchise has offered so far. I think people may have expect way too much from Civ 6, it is isn't yet that "perfect" Civ game most of us have been waiting for years, maybe Civ 7 will be. But overall the game is fantastic and very fun to play, despite a somewhat problematic AI and certain mechanics which haven't been integrated in the best and most interesting way possible (World Congress, Leader Agendas..).

What for me was always somewhat lacking in Civ 6 compared to Civ 5 were two things: Immersion and a sense of Journey. In Civ 5 with its beautiful art style and more grittier tone you really get the feeling that you are embarking on a journey through history and that you really are step by step building a civilization. Civ 6 has more of a feeling of board game that has the filter "Human History" turned on. You don't really get that sense of Immersion or Journey, you are way more focused on the gameplay than just enjoying the whole process. This is the reason why I think a lot of people are drawn towards Amplitude's Humankind, because that game really gives you a sense of embarking on a Journey towards Human History, rather than just playing a game, the out of this world art style is also a huge plus.

Whenever Firaxis decides to start working on Civ 7 I really hope they will take into account the whole Immersion and Journey factor.

The immersion and the journey are the ENTIRE POINT OF CIV. If I wanted a deep complex more similation kind of thing there are other franchises for that.

This game repeatedly smacks me in the face with the fact that it is a game. So many mechanics either ignore even the vaguest allusion to historical fidelity or outright contradict it. It plays more like a board game than the original Civilization board game (which I still have) and in the latter case one can forgive that due to it being limited to cardboard tech.

The AI being the weakest in the entire series is kind of a fatal flaw

 

[KayAU]

At the end of the day, I still prefer Civ V. It has its flaws, for sure, but I prefer those to those of Civ VI. Civ VI has a lot of content, a lot of mechanisms, but...I end up not caring about a great deal of it. The World Congress. Moving governors around. Espionage. Religion, usually. Tourism. It is also a game which has many good ideas, but often not the best implementations, and they so rarely refine anything. Take Eurekas/Inspirations, for example. It's a really cool idea: let the surroundings or style of play influence how a civ develops. Unfortunately, in practice it's a series of "fetch quests" - often incentivising you to do a bunch of things which are otherwise irrelevant to your plans, and creating a mechanism in which you will waste research if you happen to forget to swap it out once you cross the 60% threshold. It could easily be improved, but since the release of the game, the only change to this which I can remember, is that they at one point changed the amount of research gained from Eurekas/Inspirations from 50% to 40%. It barely changes anything, and this is typical of the kinds of "refinements" we have gotten in patches. It's a +1 here and a -5% there.

Civ V may have started off worse, but it improved significantly over time. I appreciate that others may feel differently, especially here on the Civ VI forums. I also understand that some may be bothered more than I am by certain oft-criticised aspects of Civ V, such as global happiness or its seeming bias towards tall (although that is not nearly as inflexible as some describe it). For me however, the inescapable fact that is that I simply feel more bored when playing VI than V. After almost 2,5K hours of V, and almost as much of VI, I still complete my games in the former, and I feel the urge to take just a few more turn to get to the next reward or step in my plan. In Civ VI, this desire tends to evaporate at some point in the medieval era.

And then, of course, Civ V has Vox Populi, which in my opinion is far superior to both VI or unmodded V.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The elimination threads were all blowouts. We were meming about it after the first ones

Not really, there was plenty of discussion. Maybe the top 2-3, but that's not all that matters.

There were many posts that were something along the line of "all these cards are good..." and many cards had their own proponents:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-5
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-6

And yea I guess the ancient/classical ones weren't that interesting of a debate, but there's just not enough things happening in those eras.

Of course, I actually participated in most of them (where were you?) because I'm much more interested in what people think, than the result, and found a lot of people with differing opinions. I'm sorry it didn't work that way for you.

This game repeatedly smacks me in the face with the fact that it is a game.

Because it is?

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

So, I'm guessing that it wouldn't be popular to have each leader stylised according to the artstyle of their civ, then?

I think that would be a really cool idea, but I worry that accuracy would be sacrificed for pop-culture history.

 

[Fomalhaut]

What I don't like in 6 as compared to 5

• The eureka \ inspiration system. The first games it felt great. But afterwards I feel like I am always streamed into one and the same flow. Build a slinger and find someone to kill, make exactly 3 archers, find a natural wonder - it feels like a scripted board game and for me it ruins the immersion how I am entirely in control.
• The world congress - the whole voting system of favours with non-linear scaling which practically means even I am the suzerain of all city-states I can always be outvoted by several other civs each spending few diplomatic favours. Combine that with the randomness of resolutions (unlike the selection in 5 from the host & the second) - so the whole diplomacy mini-game seems useless and strange.
• The leader graphical style which seem quite unrealistic and cartoonish to me as compared with civ5.
• In civ6 all the leaders feel to me as well one and the same playstyle. Some strange plus or minus points because of some weird agendas but that could be compensated. It was much more immersive and realistic in 5 with some leaders are clearly warmongering and backstabbing while others were more peaceful. In addition - Deity AI was dangerous all the game in 5 and one had to be careful, in 6 - until the first walls.
• Late game - in 5 it was the ideologies - forming alliances, "flipping" others with cultural pressure. Potentially even a war when the Deity AI was producing carpets of tanks, infantry and airplanes. I still have memories of some epic battles. In civ6 -- well...building many solar farms in order to delay sea rising ?

What civ6 did better

• Being able to play wide. In 5 it was - penalty to science AND culture AND not being able to build national wonders. "There is a great free spot next to me, but I will not expand since it is actually bad for my 4-city tradition" was always wrong feeling.
• Great people - having unique people with different bonuses and luring them with gold in competition to the other civs seems much better from immersion perspective
• City states and unique bonuses and improvements that builders can make
• Loyalty system
• Being able to achieve religion victory
• Traders building roads (no longer micro managing that)
• One unit per turn clumsiness being mitigated by corps\armies and as well civilian and religions units on another plane.

I have some mixed feelings on the districts. It seems interesting and great for example how non-sea city can get a naval access via harbor, but is also eating a lot of space and terrain and seems a little unrealistic - having aqueduct blocking a whole square and being as big as a mountain seems strange. There are some great suggestions in the thread though on how those can be improved. (I wish there was a mod like this or better implementation in 7)

 

[UWHabs]

Not really, there was plenty of discussion. Maybe the top 2-3, but that's not all that matters.

There were many posts that were something along the line of "all these cards are good..." and many cards had their own proponents:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-5
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-6

And yea I guess the ancient/classical ones weren't that interesting of a debate, but there's just not enough things happening in those eras.

Of course, I actually participated in most of them (where were you?) because I'm much more interested in what people think, than the result, and found a lot of people with differing opinions. I'm sorry it didn't work that way for you.



Because it is?

Well, if there's debate about the top 3-4 cards, the fact that you can slot 4-6 of them in that era means it doesn't really matter which is "best" since you can usually run all of the top ones. Which is also part of the argument - it might change game to game which is the absolute best policy card, but to take those medieval policy cards as an example, I basically always run those top 5-8 medieval policy cards, and can't tell you the last time I've run one of the bottom ones. Counting swapping in the upgrade cards as needed, you can basically always run almost all of the top ones from that list, which means you effectively have no decisions to make. I'd love if it there was a way they could set up the policy cards that actually gave you a change in how you played.

I guess when it comes down to it, the policy cards really only have a limited power, and given they are fixed every game, so it's almost always going to be choosing which policy cards based on your play in the other parts of the game, rather than ever altering your gameplay depending on how you run the policy cards. Maybe if you were redesigning things from scratch, you'd change it so that the policy cards altered more of the basic setup of the game, rather than just give bonuses for what was already happening. Like, if the cards were more like "+1 faith for each TS adjacency", kind of like some of the golden age cards, then suddenly that becomes a potentially more intriguing way to play, where you can use one strength to boost another weakness.

I guess to get back to the original topic, the civ 5 policy trees were different enough that it did change how you approached things, and the civ 6 governments don't do that enough. I guess the fact that they can be swapped out means you have less "permanent" decisions to make. I guess the government buildings are the closest to that in civ 6, since those are permanent bonuses. Or Secret Societies, which drastically alter the style for the game, although obviously that's a very separate mode to consider.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, if there's debate about the top 3-4 cards, the fact that you can slot 4-6 of them in that era means it doesn't really matter which is "best" since you can usually run all of the top ones.

Yes, but you can't, because they're separated by military, economic, etc and also depends on your government. I run autocracy early mostly, so there isn't much space for economic cards. There will be cases where you have to pick between some.

And also by this logic it doesn't matter if 1-2 cards blow each other out when you need to be decided between cards 4 and 5.

It certainly does have more nuance. For example, serfdom may have been the best card, but you should only have that occasionally slotted...

 

[aieeegrunt]

Not really, there was plenty of discussion. Maybe the top 2-3, but that's not all that matters.

There were many posts that were something along the line of "all these cards are good..." and many cards had their own proponents:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-5
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/medieval-era-policy-elimination-thread.668481/page-6

And yea I guess the ancient/classical ones weren't that interesting of a debate, but there's just not enough things happening in those eras.

Of course, I actually participated in most of them (where were you?) because I'm much more interested in what people think, than the result, and found a lot of people with differing opinions. I'm sorry it didn't work that way for you.



Because it is?

Other people have already answered your points about the cards. There is almost zero variation in how and when you use them, and furthermore the game is usually decided in the ancient/classical era anyways

As far as being a game, that is a really lame semantics there buddy. Civ games have always had certain amount of immersion and suspension of disbelief built into them to give you the feeling of guiding a civilization’s development in a journey over time.

Civ6 utterly fails at this due to it’s focus on minimaxing yields and the board game mechanics in just about every way.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Other people have already answered your points about the cards. There is almost zero variation in how and when you use them, and furthermore the game is usually decided in the ancient/classical era anyways

Yea, which is why everyone in the threads agreed that "the game is over anyways, no point in discussing".

The game being "over" in the classical era, yes, I agree. But that's a red herring. Heck, you can say that the game is over by turn 1 if you wanted to be completely reductive. But that's not what everyone cares about; some of us like to play faster or more efficiently to get better win times. That's why we even have a strategy subforum. Or should I just post in each of them "just click buttons, you'll win anyways"?

But these are all red herrings tbf. I just found it funny that you saw fit to tell me what happened in the elimination threads, even though I participated a lot more and you barely did. I mean, you can say you didn't like them, or found them too trite.

As far as being a game, that is a really lame semantics there buddy. Civ games have always had certain amount of immersion and suspension of disbelief built into them to give you the feeling of guiding a civilization’s development in a journey over time.

Sounds like personal preference being tossed as fact. I've honestly thought immersion is and has been a pointless buzzword. Also, "suspensiion of disbelief", yea sure, every civ spawns in 4000 BC. It's always been a board game.

I would say that 5 and 6 are pretty lame in terms of customization and roleplay than what 4 was. But I bet you can't tell me why.

 

[Gedemon]

Because it is?

could be more (and previous iterations were more) than just a board game.

It's like a movie reminding you every minutes that you're watching a movie, I mean, breaking the 4th wall can be a voluntary effect, can be well done, and I do think the naked board game aspect of civ6 is also by design, but sadly for me it's not something I want in a 4x game on my computer.

Sounds like personal preference being tossed as fact. I've honestly thought immersion is and has been a pointless buzzword. Also, "suspensiion of disbelief", yea sure, every civ spawns in 4000 BC. It's always been a board game.

I would say that 5 and 6 are pretty lame in terms of customization and roleplay than what 4 was. But I bet you can't tell me why.

Yes, civ4 was better on that aspect, and, at least, civ5 was moddable on that side.


edit: and, well, "realism" has been slowly banned from the gaming communities because a large majority of players misunderstood the "gameplay trump realism" citation, so tell me, what word should we use now if "immersion" is pointless ?

 

[Park Hyun]

edit: and, well, "realism" has been slowly banned from the gaming communities because a large majority of players misunderstood the "gameplay trump realism" citation, so tell me, what word should we use now if "immersion" is pointless ?

In the example from my original post about the fighting over two city states, the AI's actions were both realistic AND good gameplay. Those moments have provided the most fun and memorable times I've had with the Civ series, and I'm trying to understand why I seem to get notably fewer of them in Civ VI. I suspect it's due to the agenda system. I'm not sure why it would have anything to do with cards or governors or golden ages or what have you - I actually like that stuff.

I'm currently playing a Civ VI Mediterranean map game in which I, as Byzantium, started out two tiles away from Turkey. We settled right next to each other and immediately went to war. So far so good - but as the game progressed, I noticed that Turkey was not only cranking out units, but had swordsmen and horsemen even though they seemed to have no resources. Although I was able to take Istanbul (creating a fabulous Constantinople-Istanbul corridor across the Dardanelles), this led to everyone simultaneously declaring war on me. I'm enjoying the challenge, but what sense does this make? Why is Pericles or Dido sending waves of troops and ships against me, because I defended myself and took the nearest enemy city? What strategy do I have to weaken Turkey if they don't need resources to create upgraded troops? Why does Persia have Men-at-Arms in 400 BC? And no, I'm not playing on Diety.

That's the kind of issue I have with Civ VI, and it's a curious one.

 

[Horizons]

Traders building roads (no longer micro managing that)

Replaced with manual railroad spam though.

I liked Call to Power's 'public works' idea; also the idea of changing the length of the working day etc.

Civ2 had amazing immersion. Communism vs. democracy etc. I also don't like 'cards'.

 

[NukeAJS]

I prefer Civ 6 when all is said and done.

That being said, the WC in Civ 5 was just better. I understand that the WC proposals were done in such a way that a single civ couldn't dominate what was proposed -- makes sense. But I think randomly picking proposals was the wrong way to do it. A potentially better system would be to weight each civ by their diplomatic favor and then use those weightings to make proposals. From there, they can get narrowed down to, say 4, then do it again. Finally, when just 2 are left, Civs vote like they do now.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Civ6 utterly fails at this due to it’s focus on minimaxing yields and the board game mechanics in just about every way.

?????

Every civ game since inception has involved minmaxing yields and board game mechanics. If you don't like it in Civ6 you must have absolutely hated civ 4.

Maybe you're playing the wrong franchise.

And of course there will be some choices (in this case cards) that are better than others. This is inevitable in a game where you have options, I think. People here will dissect things until finding one that is "best" in most case. And even if they were all somehow made completely even, that's not really a choice either.

 

[shaglio]

could be more (and previous iterations were more) than just a board game.

It's like a movie reminding you every minutes that you're watching a movie, I mean, breaking the 4th wall can be a voluntary effect, can be well done, and I do think the naked board game aspect of civ6 is also by design, but sadly for me it's not something I want in a 4x game on my computer.

It reminds me of how Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition tried to turn D&D into "World of Warcraft on paper" and failed miserably. Which is ironic because WoW itself was" D&D on a computer." Luckily they came back to their sense with 5th edition and returned it to a TTRPG.

Civ 6 seems like it tried to turn their 4X computer game into a "board game on a computer." Which is ironic because the Civ franchise itself was based on an old Civilization board game by Avalon Hill on a computer. Hopefully, Civ 7 will come to their senses and return the franchise to what it used to be.

 

[Zaarin]

It's like a movie reminding you every minutes that you're watching a movie, I mean, breaking the 4th wall can be a voluntary effect, can be well done, and I do think the naked board game aspect of civ6 is also by design, but sadly for me it's not something I want in a 4x game on my computer.

Self-awareness, meta-humor, and fourth wall breaks can all be very interesting, potentially even in a 4X game, but they require an intentional approach that Civ6 certainly isn't taking--Civ6 isn't intentionally breaking the fourth wall or making meta commentary. Since Firaxis' sense of humor has been pretty hit and miss for me, I'd rather they didn't try that approach, either.

That being said, the WC in Civ 5 was just better.

Yes, Civ5's was better...but it was still pretty bad. Honestly I hope we just never see the World Congress again because it's always a pain.

It reminds me of how Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition tried to turn D&D into "World of Warcraft on paper" and failed miserably. Which is ironic because WoW itself was" D&D on a computer." Luckily they came back to their sense with 5th edition and returned it to a TTRPG.

I'm very appreciative of DnD 4e because it gave rules-light indie RPGs a chance to flourish. I was ecstatic when DnD did not dominate the Ennies for once last year.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Yes, civ4 was better on that aspect, and, at least, civ5 was moddable on that side.


edit: and, well, "realism" has been slowly banned from the gaming communities because a large majority of players misunderstood the "gameplay trump realism" citation, so tell me, what word should we use now if "immersion" is pointless ?

I mean, it's fine to use these terms, but one should be pretty careful to define it for themselves as not all will agree, so it's kinda pointless to say it's not immersive or something. People can become immersed in anything. I mean "one more turn" and crap. It's like if I told you a game was "shallow". You would ask me "why?" I dislike it when people use highly abstract concepts which are basically circular hot air arguments.

One also has to realize you can make anything look bad if you strip away all the details. Computer games are just pushing buttons and we're just on a stupid rotating tiny rock. So when someone says you're going to win anyways early game and thus nothing matters, it's a true statement, but it's also a pointless one. Games are not just about the end point, I think. Well, for some.

For example, there are some items in the mid or late game that will hurry up your victory. Now, some don't care about that because you'll win anyways. But there is still a certain value in having a more efficient win to others. There are also items that are non-impactful either way, and I think it's worth differentiating between the two. Everyone plays at a different level with different goals in mind and "hurr hurr, you should have been winning since t60" isn't really a definitive argument. It's funny because even some of the biggest sticklers for fast victories and should have been the least open minded realize that.


I really don't think there's much realism given how you know your tech path from the start and understand units in the future. You also have an unbroken line of succession and can never be overthrown. Heck, Sim City would boot you if you ran the economy in the ground.

So yes, a lot of stuff in Civ is historically based, but funny enough people often don't like the realistic stuff. For example, diplomacy is inherently about dealing with humans who can be incredibly irrational and leaders with absolute power would be psychotic. But people don't like that. Why? Well, gameplay.

Gameplay always trumps realism because reality is pretty boring in certain places. It may be realistic for Gilgamesh to see I have no army and thus backstab me, but then the game just dissolves into endless war, and not everyone likes that. We like to pretend some people can be friends. If I wanted to kill everything, there's no end to games with that goal in mind.

Granted 6 isn't that balanced either, but whatever. The man@arms is definitely something that needs to be fixed.

As for Civ 4, I think it had touches that were elegant and simple. Here's one of the differences. Who are you playing in Civ 4? You. You get to name your leader and you get to name your civ. On the other hand, 5-6 makes you play as the designed leaders. It's the difference between you directing a character to do something, and you actually, you know, leading a civ.

And a lot of the stuff in 4 is with this role playing kept in mind. The advisors address you directly, and so do the leaders. What the heck are the advisors in 6? I dunno. It's all impersonal. I want those goofy ones from 2 back.

It's a very small thing, and can be ignored. This is important because this is your game, and you can choose whatever you want. It's also why I really disliked 5 because that game insisted on penalizing you for... well doing anything really. Road maintenance may have been realistic, but it was also terrible. But I'll stop my 5 talk here; I don't consider it Civ at all-- 4 cities lol-- I have Sim City 4 regions bigger than that!

I do find it funny about the min-maxing debate though. Civ 4 is one of the most min-maxed civs there are. Heck, that strategy forum has always been active and despite its age still has active strategy discussion despite being 10 years older. There were absolutely tons of "gamey" mechanics. My favorite victory in Civ 4 is the religious victory, and most people wouldn't even know it existed. (It was called Diplomatic Victory via Apolistic Palace) and is one of the most gamey, abusive things in this franchise.

But it's also awesome. I liked being the pope of a cult that took over the world, even if not really. (it was spread slightly to each of every civ besides mine). Some of us play civ to break it and bend it to our will, after all. And the game would allow for it. You could expand now or later, but you had to manage your economy. There were no stupid banal arguments like "tall" and "wide". But you could make megacities if you wanted.

Isn't that much more interesting than common talking points like "1upt" and "the AI is dumb"? Or, "This doesn't immerse me?"

 

[UWHabs]

Replaced with manual railroad spam though.

I liked Call to Power's 'public works' idea; also the idea of changing the length of the working day etc.

Civ2 had amazing immersion. Communism vs. democracy etc. I also don't like 'cards'.

Yeah, that's one piece I definitely miss about the earlier games. Having less choice of government, having anarchy when changing governments, etc... felt more like a ruler making a choice, rather than a board game slotting in the token you have available. Even if you don't go back to it fully, it would be pretty awesome if, for example, more policy cards had restrictions (which to be fair, often happens in board games too. Some guns can only be carried by dwarves or elves or whatever). So, for example, if Serfdom was not a valid policy card if you were running a Merchant Republic government, well, now you have some real choices to make. Or if you actually had to spend a turn or two in anarchy to change between governments of the same tier, I can't simply cycle through all of them in the span of 5 turns for some unique bonuses.

?????

Every civ game since inception has involved minmaxing yields and board game mechanics. If you don't like it in Civ6 you must have absolutely hated civ 4.

Maybe you're playing the wrong franchise.

And of course there will be some choices (in this case cards) that are better than others. This is inevitable in a game where you have options, I think. People here will dissect things until finding one that is "best" in most case. And even if they were all somehow made completely even, that's not really a choice either.

Yeah, min-max and optimizing always happens. That's expected. And sometimes the "top" cards will vary a little bit, so that, for example, one game I absolutely will beeline to the card doubling campus adjacencies, and another game I'll just grab it when I get a chance. But there's not quite enough of that right now in the game, and still too many policy cards I have never once run and wouldn't even consider.

Like, for example, another change that was great was the late game great people cards. With the updates to them to give you more engineer points per workshop, or more per factory, late game is actually one of the rare points of the game where I have some legit decisions on how to run my empire and they can make a difference. By the time you get there, you have a bunch of legacy cards, you have a bunch of normal cards, and now you add in a bunch of cards to, say, double your great engineer points, there's some real choices. Early on, I do think you get a little of that too, since I do occasionally find myself running the +2 great writer points for 30 turns to try to sneak in an early writer. But mid-game I think things drag down, where some early cards simply do not scale well, but before their replacements kick in.

It reminds me of how Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition tried to turn D&D into "World of Warcraft on paper" and failed miserably. Which is ironic because WoW itself was" D&D on a computer." Luckily they came back to their sense with 5th edition and returned it to a TTRPG.

Civ 6 seems like it tried to turn their 4X computer game into a "board game on a computer." Which is ironic because the Civ franchise itself was based on an old Civilization board game by Avalon Hill on a computer. Hopefully, Civ 7 will come to their senses and return the franchise to what it used to be.

Yeah, it's always the balance between making it a game, vs making it a "sim". I mean, it's not that, obviously, but I guess a little bit since there's suddenly so many factors than can change and shape the game, it almost feels like we lost a little bit of the "personality" of the old games. But I guess that's also a little bit of the argument to "make the AI play to win" vs "make the AI play to tell a story".

 

[Zaarin]

it almost feels like we lost a little bit of the "personality" of the old games. But I guess that's also a little bit of the argument to "make the AI play to win" vs "make the AI play to tell a story".

Yes! This is where I take issue with a lot of people complaining about the AI. If I wanted to play against someone who was hyper-competitive and only focused on winning, I'd play multiplayer; I'd much rather the AI play like it actually has in-game rather than meta-game objectives and like it is being driven by someone with a personality and quirks and preferences. Things like "denouncing you because you're winning" are a total turn-off for me. You might expect that from a human player in multiplayer, but I don't expect the AI to practice that kind of meta-game awareness.