Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Level of Optimism for Civ6

[elitetroops]

Yeah, the interface is a pain. Another thing that frequently happens to me is that I sen a unit somewhere, for example to attack another unit, but don't notice that the target tile is a hill, so he won't make it there this turn. It seems to me that I cannot cancel the move anymore the same turn. I've tried selecting the unit (after it already moved the first step) and pressing space bar or something like that to cancel the selected path, but still, the unit will continue with the move the next turn if I don't give it any new orders before the cued up move is executed. Maybe there is some way to cancel the moves, but I haven't found it.

Scrolling is a pain, it's almost impossible to open the City States advisor without scrolling the map. Zoom level is quite weak, even with a 6 city empire I can't zoom out enough to get a full view of everything.

But I can't give any verdict about the game yet. Haven't played any game past T100. Also, this early on you would always compare everything with what you are used to and see most changes as bad things, just because you're not used to it. So I'll give it some more time before I decide if it's worth playing or if sticking with Civ IV is still the way to go.

Regarding barb aggression, I've started a few games on emperor or immortal only to test some mechanics where I basically made no good decisions and just pressed end turn to get to some certain tech. No problems with barbs in any of these games, which mostly lasted about 50-70 turns. I don't know what those players are doing who are having problems with barbs. Maybe they think they are playing Civ 5 and always start by building scout->scout->monument.

 

[MyOtherName]

I think Civ6 will be three times better once someone mods the interface to have all the sane conveniences. At least, I hope it can be modded....

Barb aggression varies wildly with the terrain and where city states and opponents are located. Have two city states loosely covering most of your border? You'll probably just see a handful of things. Are you between the vast tundra and the rest of the civilized world? You're getting a lot of barbs.

 

[MkLh]

The tactical (and strategical) AI is still terrible. "Diplomacy" is still just a crazy mess. World wonders are still underwhelming. The game is very much like Civ5, luckily the global happiness is gone for good. Still it feels somehow better than V although it's hard to say why (except the global happiness). I fear it's just novelty. Yes, the game has very complex rules, two tech trees, tons of policies, complex city growth rules and all. Apparently they now had "more is better" -design approach. That doesn't mean it would have depth like Civ4. Monopoly has more complex rules than chess, but it doesn't make it a deeper game.

 

[Fippy]

I "love" how he captures an unescorted settler on deity and builds his 2nd city with it,
no worries that he's still at war with Spain who must be really close..

But why worry, his "slingers" seem to beat up everything fine.
Cap at size 3, time for a monument too.
Let's remember all this happens around turn 10 ~~

Certainly dun want to compare everything with Civ4, but this seems very much like the typical random gameplay where you have too much too early and can basically do what you want.
Maybe this Kongo guy is like HC? :b

 

[georgjorge]

Wait a minute...AI don't escort their Settlers? It may be understandable on some low level where they have not many units to spare, but don't they get extra units on Deity?

 

[MkLh]

Wait a minute...AI don't escort their Settlers? It may be understandable on some low level where they have not many units to spare, but don't they get extra units on Deity?

Yes, that's strange especially when there is now a dedicated escort mode for a human player. I guess that tells how high they have priorized the AI.

 

[MyOtherName]

Yes, that's strange especially when there is now a dedicated escort mode for a human player. I guess that tells how high they have priorized the AI.

I'd be really amused if it turns out that they actually taught the AI to fogbust so their settlers don't need escort, and this is just the AI being too trusting of the human.

 

[Chinese American]

Final verdict: Civ 6 is not the game you're looking for. It is basically Civ 5 2.0.

I'll quote myself from other forum:

"These arguments about units per tile really miss the real fundamental flaw with Civ 5 and 6: lack of city micromanagement. Once they removed attention from the cities, all you're left with is unit simulator. That would exacerbate any unit/tile system flaws.

"In older games, including 1-4 and Civ Rev, I would give so much care and attention to my cities. Every turn I would fret if they have enough yields and the right amount. Whether I should have extra food or extra production. This seemingly minute dilemma made a huge impact on my city and my civ.

"Unfortunately, they essentially removed all city management from 5 and 6. So that I no longer care about my cities, what their output is, what tiles surround them, etc. I used to spend over half the turn in the city screen; now they're just bothersome reminders. I just don't feel the conections with my cities anymore. They've become sideshows to the tedious shuffling of units. 99.99% of the turn is wasted shuffling units like they're so fragile and be stepped over.

"Meanwhile, maybe one second per turn total at most is thinking about my cities. Really, 99.99% of the time they might as well not be there. All this hoopla about happiness and housing is better whatnot, doesn't matter. Because you'll never spend time looking inside your city. Looking after the citizens, how and what they're doing, if they're behind in food or production or trade. That doesn't happen any more because they've simplified and streamlined too much of city management.

"So the real question is 'Why did they make cities the background, where they used to be the focus of the game?'"

 

[georgjorge]

I didn't play V, but why are cities not the focus anymore? After all, they're still your main source of production and commerce, you can still assign different tiles to max out your yields, you now even have to fit districts to terrain. What's the big change from IV that made city management irrelevant?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Playing some more... the Civ 6 interface forgot a huge number of quality of life improvements from Civ 4 (I don't recall if Civ 5 had these problems -- probably it did too).

Civ5 most definitely did have many problems with the interface, it's one of the major grievances I have with it.

 

[Chinese American]

I didn't play V, but why are cities not the focus anymore? After all, they're still your main source of production and commerce, you can still assign different tiles to max out your yields, you now even have to fit districts to terrain. What's the big change from IV that made city management irrelevant?

In previous games, you treated cities like they were your children, babies. You meticulously cared for them, tended, checked in every turn to see how they're doing. They showed icons of the population and makes them more relatable. Food and production progress were front and center to show you their growth.

5 & 6 removed all these human factors. Now they're just cogs in the 'tactical' war machine. You spend maybe a few seconds every 10 turns thinking about cities, when the interface pops up to change their production. Districts only happen scarcely. Sure you have some decision making with districts, but that's one-time thing per district.

Tiles and yields also feel less important. For one, there's too many types of yields, so that dilutes the value of each. Second, the interface is set up that you have to squint to know that those yields are there. That makes them feel less important, thus you tend to put less focus on city output.

In short, much less focus on cities, so what else is there to do? Nothing except uselessly, tediously shuffle units around. In the past, I spent over half the time in the city screen. Now I don't even check in at all until they pester you with pop ups, since you can't end the turn with empty production.

 

[MyOtherName]

Finally sat through a full game rather than quitting around Feudalism or early on. Won Deity space race on turn 315.
(for reference, I'm an emperor/immortal Civ 4 player)

To be fair, it I had a small continent to myself... but then again I was playing blind; I didn't study the tech tree or building lists or anything.

 

[shakabrade]

Yeah, I am also doing well on Deity (first game) and still didn't study tech/civic tree at all. AI is very weak and strangely peaceful. I mean, AI declares war often, but it doesn't use its army and doesn't upgrade it. Although I was far behind at first, my army was on par with the AIs. Game requires a lot of metagaming (knowing each leader's agenda and probably some other stuff) if you want any control over diplo. Interface is horrible but Civ 4 without BUG/BULL/BUFFY is also just like that. If Deity AI got a few lines of code which upgrades units every turn until they are all upgraded, it'd be much more dangerous. Also, something needs to be done about early diplo as you cannot do anything until mid game. I still see potential and really like government/civic system which makes me think every few turns about it, definitely an improvement.

Just like Civ4 Vanilla only captured me for a few games and needed BTS to really hook me, Civ 6 is still far from polished but designers still have chance to improve.
And comparing this gameplay to Civ1/2/3/4 is pointless. It is a different game from the same genre. I guess we'll still play Civ 4.

 

[Fippy]

And comparing this gameplay to Civ1/2/3/4 is pointless. It is a different game from the same genre. I guess we'll still play Civ 4.

They are asking for that thou, if they keep abusing Sid's name

But yup it's clearly pointless, there's no deciding between Civ 4&6 or anything like that.
One was still made for PCs and in times where they were not "afraid" of challenging gameplay.
And one was made for pre-game hype, Reviewers, YouTube stars, iphone and tablet gaming (joking with that last part..or am i?)

 

[Cristoval]

Then the big problem: In all these three wars I did not lose a single unit! I killed maybe 15-20 AI units but they didn't manage to kill any of my units. And this is the first time ever I play a 1upt civ game, I never touched Civ V. Now I understand what people mean when they say the AI can't handle 1upt.

So the game still has this problem from civ5. Until they remove 1upt, or get into quantum computing, civ will never have competent war AI. For me, the civ franchise has become too shallow.

 

[ThERat]

1upt, why oh why. Why do they think this is the way to go? The casuals love it? I am not too sure, but the AI is not able to handle it based on what I can tell. The only fun to be gotten out of it is similar to playing a warmonger game in C3C where the AI throws units mindlessly at you, but thanks to numbers, it poses a challenge. In Civ 4, the AI was too smart and often overpowered you with their SOD, if you play AW.

However, not everyone likes to play AW and then the AI becomes bothersome. Too stupid to handle 1upt and the diplo game.

 

[Fippy]

They explained why, because the guy was inspired by games like Panzer General.
Imo this translates into "everybody is online in some way these days, and we want to reach all those masses.
We sacrifice classic Civ for that, have fun".

 

[mogilan]

In previous games, you treated cities like they were your children, babies. You meticulously cared for them, tended, checked in every turn to see how they're doing. They showed icons of the population and makes them more relatable. Food and production progress were front and center to show you their growth.

I'll try explain it further for people who haven't spent much time in earlier versions of the game.

In earlier CIVs you had separate city screen with tons of information. In there you had even very nice City View that gave you a feel of Sim City game. On this city screen you could see even inhabitants of the city (Civ 1).

And there were less focus put on units. You could have veteran unit - and that's all. No complex 'RPG-sque' unit skillsets. In the result a player saw his units as a strategical Grand Army, not as a SWAT team that use pure tactics to fight the enemy. In the result placing and moving your units around the map was just a bit less important but also less time consuming. But still you had to think during wars as there possibilities to defend in choke points like important straits or mountain passes so it wasn't entirely pointless - instead made you think more strategically, less tactically.

 

[need my speed]

These are sorted chronologically; I added more and more as I played on:

The introduction movie is very nice.

The song is actually less nice than I thought it'd be.

The loading times are surprisingly long, when launching the game, starting a game, and exiting to desktop.

Continents might be a bit silly (I discovered a new one on turn two).

It takes a second for tile information to load.

The resource icons are hard to see at a glance.

I cannot see on which tile a citizen is working without opening citizen management.

I cannot see how long it takes until a city's culture expands - but that may be my fault, for surely such information cannot be absent?

Scrolling with the mouse is extremely inconvenient; it works just below the top of the screen, but not on the top, and it causes me to scroll upwards as I hover over various buttons.

The visuals are very nice, with a lot of attention paid to them... But then there is also the terrain - such as hills - which doesn't look nice at all. It's odd.

Barbarians are very present; I met a scout on turn three.

City states are also very present - I didn't see an option to change their amount? - and perhaps they are too present, for envoys grant fancy bonuses (+2 science, for example), and you get an envoy by simply being the first to meet a city state. That's a nifty system though!

I have never heard of 'gypsum' before, nor did I know of the board game 'Senet'. Thank you, Civilization VI.

The initial four government policies are excellent. Civilization V sorely lacked strategical choices here, but VI seems to have them.

Pressing 'Enter' doesn't close windows, which is silly.

I predict tech (science and culture) choices will be ruled by 'which eureka do I already have'. Eurekas aren't a nice mechanic (both way too easy - you get them randomly - and way too impacting; I would change the former, so that they are very specialised things, almost like quests).

Don't randomly press on the F? keys; I tried finding the Civilopedia (F12 seemed sensible), and discovered that F5 quick loads (or perhaps F5 saves it and F6 loads it) the game. This is silly, for the F? keys are known to provide information, and people will press them to try them out.

I didn't understand the embassy-esque thing at first; after meeting an AI, you get a second message, and if you say 'yes', you reveal the AI's capital to yourself. That could have been clearer.

I lack a lot of information in general, from 'extra production' (what is that? +1? +100?) to 'fortify until healed' (how many turns?) and ever so on.

The diplomacy text is abhorrent; leaders mention places that don't exist, Philip's text literally contains 'etc.' (please...), and translations are inaccurate ('... is to dance with the dead' was translated as '... is to invite death'), for example.

On the other hand, Saladin's translated text rhymes nicely - I wonder if that was intentional? It'd fit him very well.

AI's randomly pop up with unskippable (?) cutscenes to tell me random things about what they like or dislike that I am doing.

You can't properly zoom out, and so, there is no overview.

A city's production speed and citizen growth and all doesn't update while in the turn; if I'm working a tile with two food and change this citizen to work on a tile with one food, the growth rate stays the same until I go to the next turn.

The day and night cycle is nice and fancy, but I eventually turned it off and put the time at 12:03 (why can't I type in a precise time?).

The music is very nicely crafted, from what I have heard so far.

The maps are way, way, way too tiny. Huge with eighteen civilisations is completely cluttered by city-states and civilisations - there's room to build two to three cities per civilisation at most. In Civilization IV, meanwhile, huge maps with 30 or so civilisations wouldn't feel cluttered at all.

The AI is irrational as ever, and the warmonger penalty is a way too limited mechanic here; the penalties are too excessive, the possibilities too limited, and all in all it leads to the whole world hating the whole world.

That also goes for agendas - there are conflicting agendas, by the way - that lead to the whole world hating the whole world.

Surprisingly, I would say one unit per tile isn't thát bad - yet - but, well, I just entered the Classical era (though, on Standard game speed with techs that take as long as Marathon in the Ancient era and progressively longer in every later era).

What are the trade delegation diplomacy pop-ups for? And why do I need all these diplomacy pop-ups that aren't instantly skippable? And why are the diplomacy screens so huge and useless, with all useful information crammed in a tiny window? There's a lack of overview and a need to scroll, despite the fact that most of the screen isn't used!

Why, actually, does the game not instantly exit to desktop when I tell it to?

And as for diplomacy; how come people are unfriendly despite me having much more positive modifiers (added together) than negative modifiers (added together)?

Why is it so hard to go back to Civilization IV regarding AI's? AI's have a peace-value (Genghis Khan would have it near zero, Gandhi at ten), AI's like other AI's with the same peace value (as well as a plethora of other diplomatic modifiers, of course), and the only kind of warmonger penalty is that for declaring war upon one's friend. That system worked perfectly.

The UI in general is a mess, as I already stated; the city screen lacks vital information and is extremely inaccessible - again, what was wrong with Civilization IV?

So, too, for things such as selecting civilisations to play with, when setting up a new game; the boxes are large (for they contain a whole icon instead of a name), you can't type in a letter to quickly go to there (pressing 'Q' should lead me to 'Qin Shi Huang'), the scrollbar is too tiny to be of much use, and the differences between the selection box and the selected box (does that make sense?) are way, way too hard to see.

Why can't I press 'M' to stop the movement command (why was this ever changed from 'G' to 'M', on that note? Nothing wrong with 'Go to', is there? Consistency is important)?

It's nice to play on Standard speed with technology being researched at Marathon speed (200% slower) in the ancient era, 300% slower in the classical era, and 400% slower in all the following eras.

The explored-but-not-visible fog of war should be in the colour of the explored-but-visible parts, and should look exactly like those parts except for being shaded. Like in Civilization IV. I mean, this fog of war was a great idea, and it looks very nice - but functionality is more important.

Why can't I rename cities? Nor units - and requiring a promotion doesn't count - nor my leader, nor my civilisation?

Why do districts not display their yields?

Why can't I destroy my own districts?

Why can't I see where my borders will grow (or when, as I already mentioned)?

The tech trees (culture and science) lack overview; the buttons are too large.

Why are Sleep and Fortify different buttons with different hotkeys? That is pure nonsense.

Why is there no overview of trade deals and the amenities I currently get from which resources and whatnot?

Why is there no build queue?

Why does the Civilopedia not contain hotlinks, and why is it so terribly uninformative in general (that goes for the whole game, mind; 'extra production' is meaningless, write '+1 production' or such - there are so many ambiguities)?

Why am I forced to use that terrible Settler lens when I have one selected (same with Missionaries and Apostles, but they're less annoying)?

Why can I not see where units are going when I select them?

Why do I not care overtly much about which technology I'm researching (because of eurekas and because there is often no real need to research something now or later, be it because the technology doesn't unlock much or because there is no challenge)?

Why do I not care about where my citizens are working (because the interface is terrible and I can't be bothered opening the citizen manager - I can't even see where citizens are working without entering the citizen manager!)?

Why do I not care about which great people I am getting, randomly getting a message to randomly grab a person and forgetting him or her a moment later?

Why are so many of my city's tiles unimproved - why do I find myself to not care too much about them (because I might put down districts there later, because Builders have a finite amount of charges and need to be rebuilt, because improvements have rather meagre yields, because I am miles ahead of anyone anyway)?

Why is the sea completely and utterly useless?

Why are units so completely messed up? Why would I choose a swordsman over a horseman (spears aren't very relevant)? Why are the upgrade paths so messed up? How can you possibly make knights upgrade to tanks, musketmen to infantry...?

 

[elitetroops]

I agree with most of the things you said. The UI is severely lacking and there's so much vital info that they don't tell you anywhere.

Some thing can be fixed. All hotkeys can be reassigned in the options, for example. The first thing I did was assign G for move and Ctrl+S and Ctrl+L for save/load.

The scrolling can be fixed in "your install folder"\Base\Assets\UI\WorldInput.xml. Towards the end there's a section with some Container ID stuff. Replace it with this:

  <Container                                        Size="Full,Full">
    <Container  ID="LeftScreenEdge"    Anchor="L,T" Size="2,Full"               />
    <Container  ID="RightScreenEdge"   Anchor="R,T" Size="2,Full"               />
    <Container  ID="TopScreenEdge"     Anchor="L,T" Size="Full,2" Offset="0,0" />
    <Container  ID="BottomScreenEdge"  Anchor="L,B" Size="Full,2" Offset="0,0"  />
  </Container>

Works as a charm now. I have no idea how any dev could think it was a bright idea to make top edge scrolling the way it was in the original release.