Civ VI reviews on Steam

[Archon_Wing]

What feedback? Firaxis is ignoring us!!!!

That's not mutually exclusive with what I said. My statement isn't exclusive to Civ VI. It was obviously implying the possibility of developing with feedback, not that it was actually happening.

That being said, it worked with V, and while you may not be happy with the changes to the game, but at least a few seem to be in response to community concerns.

 

[bcaiko]

No, wait. It is obvious that this game requires expansions to be worth anything - UI continues to be a mess, the AI continues to suck and worst of all, it isn't fun. Too clicky and too repetative. It's the SimCity societies of civs. It doesnt feel like an Empire builder

Yeah, they were talking about this recently on Polycast. The game quickly becomes annoying in forcing you to make 100 meaningless "meaningful" decisions a turn. If the game was going to focus on making every decision meaningful, it should have also focused on reducing the number of decisions you'd be forced to make. A brain has only so much processing space before it decides future decisions are just boring. Limiting decision making to the fun decisions is Game Design 101 stuff.

I also love the character design & animation of the historic world leaders. The interactions with the world leaders is the main draw for me next to the intricate strategy portions.

Have to heartily disagree with this one. I believe the massively toned back interaction screens in Civ6 are a huge drawback for the series. The limited interactions with the doofus "characters" which are the leaders in Civ6 destroys the roleplay aspect of the game, which has always helped carry the Civ series forward.

I also find the music in the game just atrocious - mostly due to the terrible choice to tie the music to the (too quickly moving) eras, while maintaining the same melody. Leading with your least interesting piece of music (the Ancient Era) is not a way to enrapture your player.

What feedback? Firaxis is ignoring us!!!!

Have they addressed the fact that they've been publicly called out for their terrible Civ6 UI for months now on multiple sites and through multiple types of media? If they have, I'd like to see their response.



Ed Beach sure fixed up Civ5, but he's dropped the ball on Civ6. Maybe, like Civ5, someone else needs to step in and corral his vision into something remotely playable.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I probably put around 500 hours into it so it's definitely playable and enjoyable. I do think the last patch was a step backward though, and they haven't done enough to keep the game interesting lately so I won't be playing it until the first expansion comes out.

Diplomacy, religion (some aspects), and combat AI are a total mess. They have improved the latter to some degree, but not nearly enough to keep me interested. Diplomacy is just completely broken IMO. They introduced some good ideas there but it just doesn't work and now you can't even form alliances so it's even less useful. This discourages peaceful play and just funnels you into an all out war strategy which is frankly a cakewalk once you get your infrastructure up. The early game is still fun and challenging since there are far fewer warmonger penalties and the AI bonuses are effective for science and culture initially. They just aren't able to keep pace and make proper use of districts or put up much of a fight once you get to the later eras. UI is the other element that most people complain about, and though not game-breaking, it's certainly annoying and detracts from the experience.

Outside of the above I think they did a lot of things well. The game has a lot more variety than the previous editions and more replay value due to all the unique bonuses. The civs seem pretty well balanced now and it's a lot of fun coming up with strategies that play to the strengths of each one. There is more depth as well, though they need to fine tune the mechanics so certain avenues of play are viable (like religion and diplomacy). It's still fun to tinker with those elements but after awhile you just find that they generally aren't optimal and can (and probably should be) bypassed. Take religion for example. It has some nice bonuses and fun gameplay elements, but it's tough to acquire one which nulls the victory condition. It's also basically impossible for the AI to even win via religion yet they all build holy sites like crazy and swarm you with religious units anyway. That's the kind of obvious (and arguably game-breaking) deficiency that will draw some heated and deserved criticism. Districts, Great People, Wonders, Civ traits, tech/culture trees, and maps were implemented well in my opinion. There's room for some improvement there, but I would happily come back to the game if they focus on the stuff above first.

 

[Archon_Wing]

$27 and 172 hours later for me and I think it's been a net positive. But as one would see, it'd create problems with thumbs up/down as a simplification for the Steam review format.

It's a bit annoying though that minor bugs will take an entire 3 months or whatever to fix, and the diplomacy has taken a step backwards. But at least there are sound ideas that involve nerfing the early game, and the AI pursuing early friendship as well as being more aware of you winning.

There are many good things, such as districts and wonder placement. I think that can lead to a lot of future, meaningful planning. Pillaging which has always been sorta minor, is now a huge thing. Corps/Armies also help with the choke issues. The game also encourages acquiring more land, which is what an empire building game should be like.

There are also good ideas but are badly executed. The Great People mechanic is quite neat, but the problem is that RNG presents a huge issue. Passing a GP you don't want in the hopes that the next one is needed, especially space tends to be a lot of gambling. (honestly, I think the "winner" should be able to see the next GP). It's also beset by it being dependent on the global tech pace, which is annoying because it can be out of your control.

Culture is for the most part a fun system, but I feel it is a regression from Civ 5; being somehow less sophisticated yet more cumbersome. Tourism having no secondary purpose and hidden behind opaque systems makes it annoying to grasp. It's also silly you can dominate the world culturally without even having met some civs. Both 4 and 5's cultures were not just filling buckets but your cultural power had very concrete effects that would impact enemies around you.

Barbarians are interesting in that for the most part they are an active threat and requires active play. However, Barbarians being able to keep up with your tech and sometimes exceeding it (notoriously the horse units/quardiemes immediately) can lead to a lot of unneeded variance that just skews some games.

The cost of various buildings and units is way out of whack, though they've been experimenting on that.

And then there are things that are just flat out bad. The AI goes without saying but I can accept its tactical flaws; it's the strategical ones such as not upgrading units and just not building enough that bugs me. And then religion is simply a mess which is tedious at best and a roulette at worse.

I mean, the greatest problem is still the lack of polish but at least the ideas are flowing. So that's something to think about.

 

[Jaybe]

What feedback? Firaxis is ignoring us!!!!

They aren't ignoring us, they just aren't publicly responding to all the thousands of comments and complaints about the game. Instead, they are putting their energy into deciding what to change, and how. In addition to developing the coming (in who knows what time frame) expansion. This has almost ALWAYS been how Firaxis has done the civ series.

Look, I appreciate how the need to vent your frustration leads to much of the gum-flapping on the forums, but are you acting your age/maturity, or are you succumbing to the 'idiocy' aspect of internet culture (as I occasionally do myself).

 

[SirWill90]

As to the original question I would advise anyone on the fence to wait for the first expansion. I enjoy the game but as you have read by now it needs quite a bit more work to live up to its potential. This is normal for Firaxis since IV and I feel it will be no different for VI.

If you don’t mind a quite flawed but still fun Civ experience, by all means buy and play now, I still prefer it to V even with its flaws and I am looking forward to future improvements, including DLC, patches, and expansions.

 

[Pythakoreas]

Of course! You can get the whole fun in the 'complete edition' for the price you paid already. But you decided to buy too the ticket for the 'be part of the "Making of civ6" - Live Challenge' beforehand, so that is ok.

Btw, it's not the money - the real cost is the invested lifetime. So enjoy it.

$80 CAD.
Biggest investment I made into gaming in my lifetime. (I'm young but again because I'm a student I'm poor)
Pre-ordered and got it on release date.
Not a full game but a ticket for the "Making of Civ6 - Live Challenge".
I won't install an OS on Day 1 but I had 1100+ hours into Civ5 so I bought this.
...Despite being disappointed with Beyond Earth preorder before

Moral of the story: NEVER preorder a game again - It's my fault for buying it on Day 1.

I have no idea how far your experiences with computers or software etc go.

From my point of view it was not very likely to receive 'a finished product' when purchasing VanillaCiv6. But then it is more than 30 years that I've sworn to myself: NEVER buy again a V1.0 program ... the naming conventions changed since then (probably because of this ), but technically we have now civ6 v1.0.5 or so and I'll still wait, perhaps for civ6 v1.2.2 or so. Just because I know myself: In the current state I won't enjoy playing civ6 as much I want me to enjoy it.

civ1 had no expansions; civ2 addons were nice to have, but nothing really important; civ3 started AFAIR with leaving away essentials in the vanilla for later release with expansions. For civ4 & civ5 you can read in every second thread, that the final version was BY FAR BETTER than the vanilla. So what could a informed customer expect?

Did you really believe you will get 'a finished product'?

This is one of the most absurd things I've read in any gaming discussion in quite some time. And look at all these likes!
There were strategy games in recent years that were amazing right off the bat. Total War: Shogun 2 is a good example.
Total War: Rome 2 took only a year or so to get fully patched to become a playable game. Civ6 a year into release on the other hand...
I remember being mesmerized by MGSV and Witcher 3 without any DLCs from two years ago.
I really enjoyed Civ5 Vanilla+DLCs when I was first introduced in the Civilization franchise, I don't really know how things were at launch, but I had a lot of fun pre-G&K.

"Did you really believe you will get a finished product?" Say that to gamers protesting against Day 1 DLCs and bugginess at launch.
Now that I said it I realize both are what Firaxis is guilty of.

I'm sorry if I sound like a hater but it has to be said.

 

[bcaiko]

They aren't ignoring us, they just aren't publicly responding to all the thousands of comments and complaints about the game. Instead, they are putting their energy into deciding what to change, and how. In addition to developing the coming (in who knows what time frame) expansion. This has almost ALWAYS been how Firaxis has done the civ series.

Look, I appreciate how the need to vent your frustration leads to much of the gum-flapping on the forums, but are you acting your age/maturity, or are you succumbing to the 'idiocy' aspect of internet culture (as I occasionally do myself).

Considering a large lot of the critiques comments are about the same issues (e.g., the UI), it's not as if we're actually talking about "thousands of comments" they have to reply to. A singular post of "We hear our player's criticisms of the UI (or other thing X), and we are working on it. Stay tuned." Acknowledging there's a problem and that a fix is being worked on is that easy. And it's bad customer service to do otherwise.

Also, let's be careful questioning other forum posters' maturity, shall we? IMHO, Spectrum's post in no way evidenced behavior that should lead to a personal attack.

 

[Archon_Wing]

They have improved the UI though. Not by much mind you.

But hey, they haven't made a decent UI in the last 20 years, so it seems to be a challenge.

• Add Relationships tab to city state Intel Reports which displays that city state's at war status with other civs and city states
• A popup box is now used to modify deal item values
• Added leader dialog for Gifts and Demands

• Reports now displays great works, adjacency, and districts information
• Trade Route chooser automatically selects previously completed trade route
• Additional improvements to the Trade Route chooser
• Added a turn blocker notification when city ranged attack is available

These changes are obviously based on user complaints I have read across the internet

• Reduced the cost of the Aqueduct by 30%, and Sewers by 50%
• Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%

Based on complaints about escalating districts and ineffectiveness of housing buildings

• Increased the discount for districts you have less of from 25% to 40%
  Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%

Same as above, I thought that was a good change since buildings can be purchased.

• Reduced cost of all spies by 25% (Nobody uses Spies, etc
• • Walls now provide Tourism, and do not have Maintenance (Walls being useless)
  Balance Change to Archer (cost +10) (Early Rushes too strong)
  
• • Moved “Urban Defenses” from Civil Engineering to Steel (same thing with walls)

• Scythia’s heal down from 50 to 30. (duh)
• • Greece: Award an envoy whenever they complete an Acropolis.
  • France: Catherine’s Flying Squadron now awards a free Spy when the extra capacity is earned at Castles. All spies start as Agents with a free promotion. (these suck, etc)

 

[Spectrum]

They aren't ignoring us, they just aren't publicly responding to all the thousands of comments and complaints about the game. Instead, they are putting their energy into deciding what to change, and how. In addition to developing the coming (in who knows what time frame) expansion. This has almost ALWAYS been how Firaxis has done the civ series.

Look, I appreciate how the need to vent your frustration leads to much of the gum-flapping on the forums, but are you acting your age/maturity, or are you succumbing to the 'idiocy' aspect of internet culture (as I occasionally do myself).

Someone is mature when he realizes how the world really works. I'm sure you have't understand how Firaxis works yet.

Moderator Action: Addressing other posters in this manner is trolling. If you can't post in a civil manner, please refrain from posting.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Siptah]

Someone is mature when he realizes how the world really works.

So only weirdos who believe in a lot of conspiracy theories are mature?

Moderator Action: Please do not respond to troll posts. Report them and let us handle them.

 

[Victoria]

(these suck, etc)

Completely disagree. Playing as Catherine, probably my 30th game as her, the spies are just awesome now. That first free one with promotion is great and one you can speed it up and get it to master spy you are rocking.
When you have 4 or more master spies you just cause chaos, I love them. When great works become expensive again oh dear how rich can you become..... behind in science? Bah.
Agreed if you want to finish the game in 100 turns they are limited but if you like immersion they are cool.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Completely disagree. Playing as Catherine, probably my 30th game as her, the spies are just awesome now. That first free one with promotion is great and one you can speed it up and get it to master spy you are rocking.
When you have 4 or more master spies you just cause chaos, I love them. When great works become expensive again oh dear how rich can you become..... behind in science? Bah.
Agreed if you want to finish the game in 100 turns they are limited but if you like immersion they are cool.

I think you missed my point.

 

[Victoria]

I think you missed my point.

Well making something that sucks free with an extra promotion does not stop it sucking. But yes, clearly over my head.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well making something that sucks free with an extra promotion does not stop it sucking. But yes, clearly over my head.

It's not just the promotion though. You also get it earlier, and spies were buffed globally. But this is not the point.

People thought France sucked, and there were a number of complaints on the matter. It doesn't matter what you or I thought. Thus, they buffed France. Buffing spies indirectly buffs them The changes don't pop out of nowhere. They buffed civs thought to be weak, and nerfed civs thought to be strong.

So while Firaxis may not pay the best attention to its base, the notion that they have just been ignoring feedback is complete hogwash and has little basis in reality.

 

[Spectrum]

So only weirdos who believe in a lot of conspiracy theories are mature?

No, "weirdos" area only "weirdos".

About steam reviews. 50% of them are negative for a good reason.
They only want our money, not our opinion. Ok, we have all the right to make this costly for them, because It is our only way to press Firaxis to make the necessary changes to this an future games. Remember Beyon Earth please.

 

[Abaxial]

Lets not go down this road...

Neither of those things, sadly, will sell an expansion pack to the millions of people who have bought Civ6. Might get lots of the people on this forum to buy it, that isn't enough; looking at past expansion packs makes it abundantly clear thats what the developers think. What Firaxis will do for an expansion pack is release more content: both in terms of civs/leaders and in mechanics. Both will actually make the AI and Balance worse by introducing more variables that need to be carefully tuned. But careful tuning wont convince people to shell out $30, so it won't be the focus of any expansion pack or DLC. It *might*, if we're lucky, be the case that the UI, AI and Balance are 3-5th on the priority list; but that is very much a best case scenario.

This is very true and applies to pretty much all software. No company releases something with the message "This fixes all the broken stuff in the last release" even if that is what users really want. The Marketing Dept would throw up their hands in horror. It has to be "Adds new features!" not an admission that the core product was actually rubbish - and it may even continue to be rubbish if all the budget was spent on the new features.

 

[c4c6]

This is one of the most absurd things I've read in any gaming discussion in quite some time. And look at all these likes!
There were strategy games in recent years that were amazing right off the bat. Total War: Shogun 2 is a good example. [...] Total War: Rome 2 took only a year or so to get fully patched to become a playable game. Civ6 a year into release on the other hand...

Well, I used civ3, civ4 & civ5 for my prediction of the early development phase of civ6 and how to handle it in my personal context (which includes ability of "easy" modifying for my special tastes (codechanging, not just looks), sometimes a perfectionist tick, ie. overproportional awareness of small flaws, mistakes).
I'm quite satisfied and glad with the outcome of my prediction so far. Even more so as you tell me, 'this is one of the most absurd things you've read in any gaming discussion [...]'. Obviously I had pure random luck when I decided to wait ...

You seem to have based your prediction (and thus your decision to buy early) on your personal context (curiosity(?), willingness to take some risk, maybe a comparable low frustration level towards small bugs etc.) as well as "strategy games in recent years that were amazing right off the bat", namely Shogun 2 & Rome 2 ...
I am sorry to hear, you are now suffering somehow - especially as nobody could have foreseen such an outcome!

Btw, infinite tiredness. To be clear: never towards CIV. Just towards the same old arguments. And the entitlement to speak for other / all people ... 'we', 'the community' ...

 

[Art Morte]

I probably put around 500 hours into it so it's definitely playable and enjoyable. I do think the last patch was a step backward though, and they haven't done enough to keep the game interesting lately so I won't be playing it until the first expansion comes out.

Diplomacy, religion (some aspects), and combat AI are a total mess. They have improved the latter to some degree, but not nearly enough to keep me interested. Diplomacy is just completely broken IMO. They introduced some good ideas there but it just doesn't work and now you can't even form alliances so it's even less useful. This discourages peaceful play and just funnels you into an all out war strategy which is frankly a cakewalk once you get your infrastructure up. The early game is still fun and challenging since there are far fewer warmonger penalties and the AI bonuses are effective for science and culture initially. They just aren't able to keep pace and make proper use of districts or put up much of a fight once you get to the later eras. UI is the other element that most people complain about, and though not game-breaking, it's certainly annoying and detracts from the experience.

Outside of the above I think they did a lot of things well. The game has a lot more variety than the previous editions and more replay value due to all the unique bonuses. The civs seem pretty well balanced now and it's a lot of fun coming up with strategies that play to the strengths of each one. There is more depth as well, though they need to fine tune the mechanics so certain avenues of play are viable (like religion and diplomacy). It's still fun to tinker with those elements but after awhile you just find that they generally aren't optimal and can (and probably should be) bypassed. Take religion for example. It has some nice bonuses and fun gameplay elements, but it's tough to acquire one which nulls the victory condition. It's also basically impossible for the AI to even win via religion yet they all build holy sites like crazy and swarm you with religious units anyway. That's the kind of obvious (and arguably game-breaking) deficiency that will draw some heated and deserved criticism. Districts, Great People, Wonders, Civ traits, tech/culture trees, and maps were implemented well in my opinion. There's room for some improvement there, but I would happily come back to the game if they focus on the stuff above first.

This is a very good and fair assessment, imo.

The religious game is bad and a completely exhausting victory condition to aim for. But at least the religious game can also be completely ignored.

If Firaxis just took a 'first things first' sensible approach and fixed all the damn bugs that would already go a long way to improving the game. Now they're tinkering with the game while it remains very buggy.

The late-game is my biggest complaint, though. The expansion phase is by far the best thing about the game, if you ask me, and they should try to prolong that one. Seeing that 50 turns production time for a spaceport when it feels I've already spent the last 50 turns just making the obvious decisions to race through the tech tree without much anything changing in the game any more, it just makes me quit and start a new game more often than not.

 

[nzcamel]

The religious game is bad and a completely exhausting victory condition to aim for. But at least the religious game can also be completely ignored.

Whereas I think the religious game is the most interesting with a victory attached so far.