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

[CppMaster]

I personally find early expansion to be very enjoyable, but as the game goes on, the more cities I have, the more I have to spend my turns making dozens of tiny decisions which I personally find tedious. It is especially bad in Civ 6, due to some questionable UI design, lack of automation, and the large amount of loosely connected content which adds loads more micromanagement to the game. Mid-late game Civ 6 is already a game of many chores, and adding a dozen production orders of marginal importance does nothing to help that.

That's true, although I assume you play without UI mods? Because these helps much with that regard.

 

[KayAU]

That's true, although I assume you play without UI mods? Because these helps much with that regard.

I do have a few UI mods, and it does indeed help. The one that lets me see city information on mouse-over is brilliant.

 

[Naokaukodem]

The reward is additional districts which heavily outweights the penalty of less amenities.

But what's the point if a certain number of those cities have low production ? Plus you have to build monument first, builders, granaries, etc.

 

[CppMaster]

No, you don't have to produce it. All of it can be bought by gold.

 

[Naokaukodem]

... that you get building ports and commercial hubs, plus traders ! If I have 10+gold per turn early, I'm happy and thanks my luck for the luxuries...

 

[CppMaster]

You don't settle weak cities early. It's better to do it later, when you have gold to spend.

 

[Naokaukodem]

That's the point ! The map generator is too capricious so that some people like me start with only weak cities possible early. I'm not saying it's the case of everybody but I ended up this way so often that it looks ridiculous. Not talking about mountains ranges, deserts, nah, I think I don't like this game for its map generator only. It seems the best difficulty level I can overcome everytime no matter what is only King (Prince too easy), eventhough I beat Deity a couple times.

 

[aieeegrunt]

@CppMaster

I don't agree with you. I'm not claiming to be the world's best player or anything, but I have played a lot of Civ 5, and 5-7 cities works very well. I'm not saying it's necessarily the optimal way to play, but it is very viable. As for non-Tradition, you may have a point, I can't remember the last time I didn't go for Tradition in vanilla Civ 5.

As for Civ 6, it is indeed about getting more districts, which generally means getting more cities. You are certainly encouraged to expand outwards, and I acknowledge that that is one of the Xs in "4X". If there's one thing you can learn from these forums however, it's that people have varying ways to play and varying degrees of enjoyment and tolerance for different aspects of 4X games. I personally find early expansion to be very enjoyable, but as the game goes on, the more cities I have, the more I have to spend my turns making dozens of tiny decisions which I personally find tedious. It is especially bad in Civ 6, due to some questionable UI design, lack of automation, and the large amount of loosely connected content which adds loads more micromanagement to the game. Mid-late game Civ 6 is already a game of many chores, and adding a dozen production orders of marginal importance does nothing to help that.

The tedium is indeed bad. What makes it worse is the snowball nature of the game, which means often it’s a hundred turns of tedium when you basically already know the outcome

That's the point ! The map generator is too capricious so that some people like me start with only weak cities possible early. I'm not saying it's the case of everybody but I ended up this way so often that it looks ridiculous. Not talking about mountains ranges, deserts, nah, I think I don't like this game for its map generator only. It seems the best difficulty level I can overcome everytime no matter what is only King (Prince too easy), eventhough I beat Deity a couple times.

I only play Legendary Starts with abundant resources for this reason

And no iron/nitre is an automatic restart

 

[qouigv93027]

Civ6 introduces a lot of gameplay innovations that make it better than Civ5. Whereas some of the game design choices for Civ6 make it more tedious and unpleasant in some regards. Like has just been noted above, the snowball nature is not ideal. The game doesn't have a good way to deal with the tedium, because playing wide is generally good.

Civ5 actually made playing tall viable, with the global happiness approach. Whereas Civ6 offers no drawbacks to settling tens of cities, other than the opportunity costs thereof. This increases the tedium and reduces the feasibility of the tall option for tall-leaning players such as myself (which I prefer because it minimizes micromanagement).

 

[CppMaster]

In unmodded Civ5 playing tall is not only viable. It's a dominant strategy.

 

[Ordnael]

The little i remember about civ v was the play tall or get screwed. Barbarian would spawn very easily. It happened a few times, even after i understood the mechanics. I came to CIV VI playing tall because of what I learned from CIV V, only much later i realised i could ever way more than 5/6 cities. The thing I also prefer less cities to manage. In the end CIV VI is to lenient, for better or worse, in the unhappiness factor. Last game i went domination, I ended up with almost cities, rebellion by loss of loyalty sure I got that, but barbarians spawning because unhappiness not even once!
The final patch should fix this as the AI goes really crazing about settling cities that will never hit the 5 pop mark.

Moderator Action: Please do not use language to evade the autocensor. Have edited your post to make it more family friendly without changing the meaning. leif

 

[Patine]

I've been stuck with only a tablet for a bit, so went 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?

Why is the choice of judgement only between Civ5 and Civ6? I still find, after 25 years, that Civ2 remains my favourite iteration of the game by far.

 

[CppMaster]

Why is the choice of judgement only between Civ5 and Civ6? I still find, after 25 years, that Civ2 remains my favourite iteration of the game by far.

Could you expand about that? I've never played it. How is it in comparison to Civ5 or Civ6?

 

[aieeegrunt]

Why is the choice of judgement only between Civ5 and Civ6? I still find, after 25 years, that Civ2 remains my favourite iteration of the game by far.

It’s the thread title

Civ2 is one of my favs. Personally I think Civ peaked with 4

 

[Patine]

It’s the thread title

Well, yes, I got that part. It was what led to the limited choice behind the thread, and thus it's title, I was inquiring about.

Could you expand about that? I've never played it. How is it in comparison to Civ5 or Civ6?

Unfortunately, I haven't actually played Civ5, so this discussion may start out at a bit of a disadvantaged state.

 

[CppMaster]

Ok, how about Civ6?

 

[reddishrecue]

It’s the thread title

Civ2 is one of my favs. Personally I think Civ peaked with 4

Yeah,, I think so too. civ 4 was soo good.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well, yes, I got that part. It was what led to the limited choice behind the thread, and thus it's title, I was inquiring about.

Because they are the two most recently released civs, is my guess. Or it could be those are the only two the OP has played, like me.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah,, I think so too. civ 4 was soo good.

The Realism Invictus mod perfected it

I get that the seperatism/rebellion part of the mod is controversial, but it’s the first and only anti-snowball mechanic in the entire series that doesnt feel like some arbitrary limit, and mimics actual history fairly well

My first game of RI I ate a neighbour early (pre Iron working). In just about every civ title this gets the snowball rolling and I am heavily favoured to win

Here I actually had to struggle to keep control of my new conquests. Being this early in the game my civ did not have a lot of the civics/techs that would allow me to keep control of foreign lands

I eventually lost control of the conquored cities to seperatism and a new civ former out of it

Loved every minute of it!

 

[reddishrecue]

The Realism Invictus mod perfected it

I get that the seperatism/rebellion part of the mod is controversial, but it’s the first and only anti-snowball mechanic in the entire series that doesnt feel like some arbitrary limit, and mimics actual history fairly well

My first game of RI I ate a neighbour early (pre Iron working). In just about every civ title this gets the snowball rolling and I am heavily favoured to win

Here I actually had to struggle to keep control of my new conquests. Being this early in the game my civ did not have a lot of the civics/techs that would allow me to keep control of foreign lands

I eventually lost control of the conquored cities to seperatism and a new civ former out of it

Loved every minute of it!

I wasn't really a modder but I did have the sword of Islam for a quick minute. I used to take a few turns but I used to multiplayer a lot.