AtlantisAuthor
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 12, 2016
- Messages
- 96
Civilization VI immediately became my most anticipated game of 2016 when it was first announced; I pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition shortly after it went up for sale. I watched every preview video on Youtube and gleaned all of the game's mechanical details (like the new Civics Tree and how the Districts work) in the months leading up to its release. And I spent the entire night when the game finally launched until after the Sun came up diving into my first playthrough.
Yet now, at 36 hours in and a little over halfway through my second full game (Online Speed on a Huge Continents Map), I find myself having lost interest, at least for the time being. Instead, the second wait has begun: the wait for the inevitable patches and, further down the line, expansions which will fix Civ VI's (MANY) problems and tweak and refine it the same way that Gods and Kings and Brave New World utterly transformed the vanilla Civ V.
I wish to clarify that I'm not angry, blindly casting blame, or trying to trash Civ VI in any way; it's just that I realized that I frankly wasn't having much FUN with it in its current state, certainly not in the sense that Civ V captivated me to the tune of 1000-plus hours. But I do have a list of things which I hope (and believe to varying degrees) that Firaxis will be addressing in the days, weeks, and months to come. I'm listing the most pressing issues here in a similar manner to a previous post I made sometime ago, along with the likelihood that each area will see such improvements.
1) The Auto-Rotation Between Units/Cities Needs Some Fixes Civ VI can act downright schizophrenic with how it obsessively tries to jerk the camera away from the unit you were about to select/move to go to another one...and yet simultaneously fail to notify you and awaken units/cities when enemy units are approaching (especially from a direction you're not focusing on or which is beyond the edge of the screen). Civ V alerted you and military units woke up whenever enemies approached in Civ V, and I don't imagine this is something the dev team deliberately left out here. I'm guessing this mechanic simply wasn't cleaned up before launch but will be in the near future.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: >95%, VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
2) Religious Warfare Stinks In Its Current State First, the animations, with lightning bolts and magical spells, don't belong in a game supposedly grounded in in reality like the Civilization series. And while we're on the subject let's mention an uncomfortable fact: some religions are historically far more prone to violence against other faiths than others, while some do their best to avoid violence. Pitting religious units in bouts to the death in the manner Civ VI does is neither accurate nor respectful of the various faiths in the game (or any players who may follow those faiths). In essence the entire mechanic is a second military front and that's about it.
And speaking strictly mechanically, Religion is a mess right now in Civ VI. The AI can absolutely SPAM Apostles at such an absurd rate that it can be highly difficult to protect your own territory from proselytization, let alone mount any attempts to spread your own religion abroad. AI Leaders routinely ignore or break their promise not to continue proselytizing your citizens when you ask them not to; the only way to stop them with actual military units as opposed to just what religious units you can churn out is to declare war (something Civ VI has just a wee bit too much of already).
Missionaries are useless except for spreading religion to your own cities; they can't hold their own in combat against the hordes of Apostles the AI sends your way. And Inquisitors are rendered fairly redundant by the existence of Apostles. This whole thing comes down to who can spam the most units, kill off the opposing Apostles, and proselytize the others' Capitals (Holy Cities) first. The hammer-fisted simplicity of Religion in Civ VI as it currently stands makes it frankly annoying that it has any bearing whatsoever on a Victory Condition. And its cardinal sin (pun intended): it isn't remotely FUN.
FIX LIKELIHOOD (RELIGION AS A WHOLE): 60% VIA EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY
FIX LIKELIHOOD (RELIGIOUS COMBAT/ANIMATIONS): 40% VIA PATCH OR EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY
3) The AI Is Stupid I hear some people use this complaint a lot even with regard to Civ V, but while that game certainly had its quirks and exploits it's abundantly clear that a LOT of things remain to be cleaned up in Civ VI. Honestly I believe that most of the problems that I and other players have experienced and/or reported here are due to a lot of things still being in a placeholder state when Civ VI launched, and that Firaxis will be getting to each of them as fast as they can according to which they feel take the highest priority.
Here are some of my personal pet peeves currently:
A) The AI still using Ancient Era military units in the Modern Era.
B) The AI's diplomacy basically amounting to repeatedly making war on you and/or denouncing you across the whole game.
C) Manual (non-Trade Route) trade and deals with AI Leaders feel a lot less flexible and useful than before, and most of the time they won't offer reasonable deals because they hate you anyway.
D) The AI will burn your districts but seemingly has no clue about how to capture a city, making them more a nuisance than a threat.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: VARIES, AVERAGE 85% VIA PATCH, EXPANSIONS, NEAR FUTURE AND BEYOND
4) Unit Movement Is Currently Awkward DISCLAIMER: Part of this paragraph is copy/pasted from my previous post.
Unit movement is a mechanic that has so far been very frustrating in Civ VI for me. Maybe it’s the change from what I’m familiar with in Civ V, but even Scouts seem slower. The really frustrating aspect is when you can move two hexes but get stymied by Woods, Jungle or a River; where you could enter them in Civ V, here you have to manually choose to Skip until the next turn. It’s an extra mouse click (and the icons here seem smaller than in Civ V), and when multiplied by an entire game, boy that becomes tiresome. Bottom line: moving units feels like more of a chore than in Civ V.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: 50% VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
5) The Civics Card System Is Uneven I wish to give kudos to Firaxis for trying something new and which potentially could give players a way to genuinely tailor their Culture/Civics approach to their own liking, but for now the truth is that some cards are simply more useful than others. Some I use all the time; others I don't see myself ever bothering with. This system obviously needs tweaking, but with time I believe they'll make this a truly deep and fun mechanic to experiment with.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: >95% VIA EXPANSIONS, 1 YEAR AWAY AND BEYOND
6) The Visual Presentation Of The Map Is A Hindrance DISCLAIMER: Part of this paragraph is copy/pasted from my previous post.
One feature that I hate to be critical of but can’t help doing so is the Map, specifically the way explored territory unfolds (and ESPECIALLY when you're exploring open areas like oceans). Aesthetically it’s gorgeous and resembles ancient seafarers’ maps, with monsters and fantastical beasts depicted on the unexplored regions. But in practice all of that uninterrupted brown really tends to get in the way of instantly seeing where you’ve been at a glance. I’ve found myself missing Civ V’s white clouds and the darkened explored territory, because the eye can instantly distinguish the difference. I hope that Firaxis will eventually add the option to switch between the current map design and Civ V’s clouds and darkened terrain; it may sound trivial but to me it makes a big difference when exploring or navigating the map. The same issue was a big reason I couldn’t stay interested in Civ: BE; that black-shrouded unexplored territory made it feel as if the planet was eternally shrouded in perpetual night, and it actually got depressing to look at after awhile. I know this sounds weird, but the psychological effects of color usage actually are a big deal, especially in a game where you’re expecting people to sit staring at a screen for extended periods.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: 20% VIA EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY OR BEYOND
7) The Leader Animations Need A Reboot DISCLAIMER: Part of this section is copy/pasted from my previous post.
Leader animations are one thing I REALLY hope Firaxis cleans up. Don’t get me wrong, the animations of the Leader models themselves are superb, but having the screen go black and then show a static image of the Leader with the same message they just gave you with a box to click “Goodbye” is both redundant and time-wasting. That extra mouse click gets annoying fast.
Regarding the Leaders themselves, there’s an inconsistency here that I can’t help but feel needs addressing. Some of them (Peter the Great and Tomyris) have fairly normal-looking proportions, while others (Gandhi and Theodore Roosevelt) look like exaggerated caricatures. And the static backgrounds behind each Leader, which are dominated by a black backdrop, are vastly inferior to the genuine sense of time and place you felt in Civ V when visiting Nebuchadnezzar’s throne room , Enrico Dandolo’s Venice, or Kamehameha’s Hawaiian beach. I know it’ll probably never happen since the aesthetic design of Civ VI is already set, but I’d personally love to see Firaxis ditch these animations entirely and start from scratch with Leader animations that more closely resemble those of Civ V somewhere down the line. As it stands there’s something off-putting about them; where Civ V’s Leader animations had such atmosphere (not to mention them speaking to you in their actual languages, which was a brilliant touch), Civ VI’s just feel bland and click-through boring.
FIX LIKELIHOOD (EXTRA STATIC SCREEN): 85% VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
FIX LIKELIHOOD (COMPLETE REDESIGN OF LEADER ANIMATIONS): <5% VIA EXPANSIONS, 1 YEAR AWAY OR BEYOND
Anyway, these are currently my personal complaints with Civilization VI as it currently stands. As I stated, I believe that most of the technical problems are things that Firaxis is fully aware of and will be working as fast as they can to fix. As for the more aesthetic issues, those are largely a toss-up and mostly depend on how much feedback their team gets from other users.
I have NOT given up on Civ VI by any stretch, but I am going to be playing it less until, at the very least, the mechanical issues begin to get ironed out. I won't even say that I'm disappointed, let alone angry; anyone who would expect a flawless experience on par with post-BNW Civ V right out of the gate would have been expecting too much in my humble opinion. I believe the dev team will do right by this game and eventually will make it every bit as much fun as its predecessor. But for the time being we must endure the Wait.
Yet now, at 36 hours in and a little over halfway through my second full game (Online Speed on a Huge Continents Map), I find myself having lost interest, at least for the time being. Instead, the second wait has begun: the wait for the inevitable patches and, further down the line, expansions which will fix Civ VI's (MANY) problems and tweak and refine it the same way that Gods and Kings and Brave New World utterly transformed the vanilla Civ V.
I wish to clarify that I'm not angry, blindly casting blame, or trying to trash Civ VI in any way; it's just that I realized that I frankly wasn't having much FUN with it in its current state, certainly not in the sense that Civ V captivated me to the tune of 1000-plus hours. But I do have a list of things which I hope (and believe to varying degrees) that Firaxis will be addressing in the days, weeks, and months to come. I'm listing the most pressing issues here in a similar manner to a previous post I made sometime ago, along with the likelihood that each area will see such improvements.
1) The Auto-Rotation Between Units/Cities Needs Some Fixes Civ VI can act downright schizophrenic with how it obsessively tries to jerk the camera away from the unit you were about to select/move to go to another one...and yet simultaneously fail to notify you and awaken units/cities when enemy units are approaching (especially from a direction you're not focusing on or which is beyond the edge of the screen). Civ V alerted you and military units woke up whenever enemies approached in Civ V, and I don't imagine this is something the dev team deliberately left out here. I'm guessing this mechanic simply wasn't cleaned up before launch but will be in the near future.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: >95%, VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
2) Religious Warfare Stinks In Its Current State First, the animations, with lightning bolts and magical spells, don't belong in a game supposedly grounded in in reality like the Civilization series. And while we're on the subject let's mention an uncomfortable fact: some religions are historically far more prone to violence against other faiths than others, while some do their best to avoid violence. Pitting religious units in bouts to the death in the manner Civ VI does is neither accurate nor respectful of the various faiths in the game (or any players who may follow those faiths). In essence the entire mechanic is a second military front and that's about it.
And speaking strictly mechanically, Religion is a mess right now in Civ VI. The AI can absolutely SPAM Apostles at such an absurd rate that it can be highly difficult to protect your own territory from proselytization, let alone mount any attempts to spread your own religion abroad. AI Leaders routinely ignore or break their promise not to continue proselytizing your citizens when you ask them not to; the only way to stop them with actual military units as opposed to just what religious units you can churn out is to declare war (something Civ VI has just a wee bit too much of already).
Missionaries are useless except for spreading religion to your own cities; they can't hold their own in combat against the hordes of Apostles the AI sends your way. And Inquisitors are rendered fairly redundant by the existence of Apostles. This whole thing comes down to who can spam the most units, kill off the opposing Apostles, and proselytize the others' Capitals (Holy Cities) first. The hammer-fisted simplicity of Religion in Civ VI as it currently stands makes it frankly annoying that it has any bearing whatsoever on a Victory Condition. And its cardinal sin (pun intended): it isn't remotely FUN.
FIX LIKELIHOOD (RELIGION AS A WHOLE): 60% VIA EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY
FIX LIKELIHOOD (RELIGIOUS COMBAT/ANIMATIONS): 40% VIA PATCH OR EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY
3) The AI Is Stupid I hear some people use this complaint a lot even with regard to Civ V, but while that game certainly had its quirks and exploits it's abundantly clear that a LOT of things remain to be cleaned up in Civ VI. Honestly I believe that most of the problems that I and other players have experienced and/or reported here are due to a lot of things still being in a placeholder state when Civ VI launched, and that Firaxis will be getting to each of them as fast as they can according to which they feel take the highest priority.
Here are some of my personal pet peeves currently:
A) The AI still using Ancient Era military units in the Modern Era.
B) The AI's diplomacy basically amounting to repeatedly making war on you and/or denouncing you across the whole game.
C) Manual (non-Trade Route) trade and deals with AI Leaders feel a lot less flexible and useful than before, and most of the time they won't offer reasonable deals because they hate you anyway.
D) The AI will burn your districts but seemingly has no clue about how to capture a city, making them more a nuisance than a threat.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: VARIES, AVERAGE 85% VIA PATCH, EXPANSIONS, NEAR FUTURE AND BEYOND
4) Unit Movement Is Currently Awkward DISCLAIMER: Part of this paragraph is copy/pasted from my previous post.
Unit movement is a mechanic that has so far been very frustrating in Civ VI for me. Maybe it’s the change from what I’m familiar with in Civ V, but even Scouts seem slower. The really frustrating aspect is when you can move two hexes but get stymied by Woods, Jungle or a River; where you could enter them in Civ V, here you have to manually choose to Skip until the next turn. It’s an extra mouse click (and the icons here seem smaller than in Civ V), and when multiplied by an entire game, boy that becomes tiresome. Bottom line: moving units feels like more of a chore than in Civ V.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: 50% VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
5) The Civics Card System Is Uneven I wish to give kudos to Firaxis for trying something new and which potentially could give players a way to genuinely tailor their Culture/Civics approach to their own liking, but for now the truth is that some cards are simply more useful than others. Some I use all the time; others I don't see myself ever bothering with. This system obviously needs tweaking, but with time I believe they'll make this a truly deep and fun mechanic to experiment with.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: >95% VIA EXPANSIONS, 1 YEAR AWAY AND BEYOND
6) The Visual Presentation Of The Map Is A Hindrance DISCLAIMER: Part of this paragraph is copy/pasted from my previous post.
One feature that I hate to be critical of but can’t help doing so is the Map, specifically the way explored territory unfolds (and ESPECIALLY when you're exploring open areas like oceans). Aesthetically it’s gorgeous and resembles ancient seafarers’ maps, with monsters and fantastical beasts depicted on the unexplored regions. But in practice all of that uninterrupted brown really tends to get in the way of instantly seeing where you’ve been at a glance. I’ve found myself missing Civ V’s white clouds and the darkened explored territory, because the eye can instantly distinguish the difference. I hope that Firaxis will eventually add the option to switch between the current map design and Civ V’s clouds and darkened terrain; it may sound trivial but to me it makes a big difference when exploring or navigating the map. The same issue was a big reason I couldn’t stay interested in Civ: BE; that black-shrouded unexplored territory made it feel as if the planet was eternally shrouded in perpetual night, and it actually got depressing to look at after awhile. I know this sounds weird, but the psychological effects of color usage actually are a big deal, especially in a game where you’re expecting people to sit staring at a screen for extended periods.
FIX LIKELIHOOD: 20% VIA EXPANSION, 1 YEAR AWAY OR BEYOND
7) The Leader Animations Need A Reboot DISCLAIMER: Part of this section is copy/pasted from my previous post.
Leader animations are one thing I REALLY hope Firaxis cleans up. Don’t get me wrong, the animations of the Leader models themselves are superb, but having the screen go black and then show a static image of the Leader with the same message they just gave you with a box to click “Goodbye” is both redundant and time-wasting. That extra mouse click gets annoying fast.
Regarding the Leaders themselves, there’s an inconsistency here that I can’t help but feel needs addressing. Some of them (Peter the Great and Tomyris) have fairly normal-looking proportions, while others (Gandhi and Theodore Roosevelt) look like exaggerated caricatures. And the static backgrounds behind each Leader, which are dominated by a black backdrop, are vastly inferior to the genuine sense of time and place you felt in Civ V when visiting Nebuchadnezzar’s throne room , Enrico Dandolo’s Venice, or Kamehameha’s Hawaiian beach. I know it’ll probably never happen since the aesthetic design of Civ VI is already set, but I’d personally love to see Firaxis ditch these animations entirely and start from scratch with Leader animations that more closely resemble those of Civ V somewhere down the line. As it stands there’s something off-putting about them; where Civ V’s Leader animations had such atmosphere (not to mention them speaking to you in their actual languages, which was a brilliant touch), Civ VI’s just feel bland and click-through boring.
FIX LIKELIHOOD (EXTRA STATIC SCREEN): 85% VIA PATCH, NEAR FUTURE
FIX LIKELIHOOD (COMPLETE REDESIGN OF LEADER ANIMATIONS): <5% VIA EXPANSIONS, 1 YEAR AWAY OR BEYOND
Anyway, these are currently my personal complaints with Civilization VI as it currently stands. As I stated, I believe that most of the technical problems are things that Firaxis is fully aware of and will be working as fast as they can to fix. As for the more aesthetic issues, those are largely a toss-up and mostly depend on how much feedback their team gets from other users.
I have NOT given up on Civ VI by any stretch, but I am going to be playing it less until, at the very least, the mechanical issues begin to get ironed out. I won't even say that I'm disappointed, let alone angry; anyone who would expect a flawless experience on par with post-BNW Civ V right out of the gate would have been expecting too much in my humble opinion. I believe the dev team will do right by this game and eventually will make it every bit as much fun as its predecessor. But for the time being we must endure the Wait.
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It is like the game is only 2/3- 3/4 long as what it is. Instead of 750 turns on Epic it should be 500, Instead of 500 turns on Standard it should be 350 etc.
