Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Thoughts on Civ6

[Magil]

Same thing when building, say, a bank, or a library, etc. This is not discussed, the issue on topic here is to what extent this 'investment-repay value' goes.

Not the same thing at all. Food is the single most important resource in the game and can easily be converted into anything else. Furthermore, Libraries and Banks interact with the terrain and the local output of the city, which directly limits their ability to return their investment. Corporations have no such limits, since they don't interact with the local terrain at all. You're simply ignoring too many factors here, quite deliberately I imagine.

It is not. It should have a proper alternative with serfdom -which it doesn´t-. But it is fair for the epoch it is set to be, period. Make use of it as far as you can, eventually it diminishes it´s power. Why it would be broken, any civ can use it , and it even reflects the historical social structure of it´s epoch (caste sys makes for a nice alternative given a specific strategy though)

What Slavery teaches us is that active economic management that's not just sitting and waiting for buckets to fill is interesting and fun. But it should be handled in a more balanced way. I think that the Eureka and Inspiration boosts from Civ VI take this lesson to heart. Will they be balanced? That remains to be seen; my current estimation is that Eurekas and Inspirations will be responsible for more Research/Culture produced over the course of the game than any other single source. That doesn't necessarily mean it's overpowered, we'll need to see more of it to know that.

But Slavery's implementation is broken. It has no equal in the Labor civic category, as Serfdom is a joke, and Caste System is great for narrow niches (Specialist economy, Spiritual shenanigans) but otherwise no competition. Emancipation is really only competition because the AIs adopt it and it directly penalizes Slavery when they do so, otherwise you'd probably run Slavery in the lategame too. It also assigns even more value to food when it's already such a powerful resource, which is not a good idea. To the extent that I would say that production is largely marginalized in the early-to-midgame--it's useful enough in small amounts, but you don't want to heavily emphasize it because it's better to build with food and grow onto cottages. It's simply way too efficient.

 

[Ricci]

Not the same thing at all. Food is the single most important resource in the game and can easily be converted into anything else. Furthermore, Libraries and Banks interact with the terrain and the local output of the city, which directly limits their ability to return their investment. Corporations have no such limits, since they don't interact with the local terrain at all. You're simply ignoring too many factors here, quite deliberately I imagine.

Mmnmn, so many things I don´t share view here. Nevertheless, the analogy is given into the investment-repayability concept. Building a bank, library, corp. expansion, etc, is the same thing. That is what I deliberately meant.

But Slavery's implementation is broken. It has no equal in the Labor civic category, as Serfdom is a joke, and Caste System is great for narrow niches (Specialist economy, Spiritual shenanigans) but otherwise no competition. Emancipation is really only competition because the AIs adopt it and it directly penalizes Slavery when they do so, otherwise you'd probably run Slavery in the lategame too.

You yourself are stating caste and emancipation as alternatives!! Serfdom is very difficult to take advantage from, true. With large cities it truly looses it´s shine, slavery.
Slave revolt augmented intensity/freq might make the civic much more interesting, I believe also. I would never call it broken, still. Again, our balance criteria is really off Magil.

It also assigns even more value to food when it's already such a powerful resource, which is not a good idea. To the extent that I would say that production is largely marginalized in the early-to-midgame--it's useful enough in small amounts, but you don't want to heavily emphasize it because it's better to build with food and grow onto cottages. It's simply way too efficient.

I dont know, it depends on happiness availability, and game strats. Cottages are slow to grow, need more pop than emphasizing prod. And yes, slavery is a no brainer for the time it comes to be, and it goes on loosing it´s power as the game progresses. Of course there are a couple of trategies which can keep you on it (colonial heavy expansion I used several times for instance).

 

[Magil]

Mmnmn, so many things I don´t share view here. Nevertheless, the analogy is given into the investment-repayability concept. Building a bank, library, corp. expansion, etc, is the same thing. That is what I deliberately meant.

It's not really comparable, is my point. When you get a bank or library, you pay hammers and receive a multiplier on commerce--but the commerce is returned based on the city's yields. A crappy city with no improved terrain won't give you very much return for your investment, and it will certainly take longer to see much in the way of return. In any case, the returns depend greatly on the city's development.

This is not the case with corporations. When you invest in a corporate branch, the yields you receive in return do not depend on the city at all, and the amount of gold you make per turn in the corporate HQ also doesn't depend on anything. So its returns are not at all tied to the land or development of the city. True, you can -do- more with food in a developed city, but having a large influx of food or production leads it to reach self-sustenance all that much quicker. It's pretty much always good (unless you have heavy maintenance costs, likely due to Environmentalism).

So to summarize, when you spread a corporation, the rate at which you earn back your investment has almost no dependency on the city's development. This is not the case for a bank, library, or other similar buildings--all of those depend greatly on the city's output. Whether it's a library modifying commerce or a forge modifying production, those buildings are still, in the end, tied to working the land, and that affects how big of a return you see on your investment. A corporation is completely disassociated from the land.

You yourself are stating caste and emancipation as alternatives!! Serfdom is very difficult to take advantage from, true. With large cities it truly looses it´s shine, slavery.
Slave revolt augmented intensity/freq might make the civic much more interesting, I believe also.

Alternatives, yes, but in very narrow situations. I largely consider a "specialist economy" to be more of a novelty than a true strategy, you need so many things to go right for it to work. It is an interesting concept, but it makes getting the Pyramids so important, which is a risky proposition. In any case, I would expect a specialist economy to get plenty of good use out of Slavery too when it can do so, particularly early on.

Spiritual can utilize Caste System, but that's merely because they have a unique feature which means they can utilize both Caste System and Slavery without sacrificing very much. The classic Spiritual swap of "Slavery/Organized Religion to whip out infrastructure, then while I wait for the happiness penalty to go away, swap to Pacifism/Caste System to get some quick Great People" is a neat trick, but that's not about Caste System versus Slavery, that's about using both in tandem.

 

[Ricci]

Ok Magil. All has already been said.

 

[Zhahz]

Stacks of doom are pure cheese. Any serious war game uses 1upt. While civ isn't a purely war game, 1upt is vastly superior and more widely used by any decent game.

Have a nice day!

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I am one of the aforementioned Civ 4 lovers/Civ 5 haters.

Civ 6 plays like a heavily improved version of Civ 5. I enjoy playing it so far, much more than playing Civ 5. The main gripes I have with 6 is it seems clunky. The turns feel like they take a long time to do trivial things, and one-unit-per-tile still makes maneuvering units for combat kind of tedious. Overall, I still think it's a great game.

Stacks of doom are pure cheese. Any serious war game uses 1upt. While civ isn't a purely war game, 1upt is vastly superior and more widely used by any decent game.

Have a nice day!

Hearts of Iron 4 is a very serious war game and it does not use 1upt. It would be much worse if it did.

 

[jjkrause84]

Stacks of doom are pure cheese. Any serious war game uses 1upt. While civ isn't a purely war game, 1upt is vastly superior and more widely used by any decent game.

Have a nice day!

'War games' like that typically happen at the tactical level, do they not? Civ is a grand strategic game. You shouldn't be faffing around with tactics as emperor.

Do you feel like you're leading a mighty army when you have 4 musketmen and 3 cannons and can easily take over the world? I know I don't.

 

[Ranbir]

I like it. The carpet of doom is still on the table, which is far less elegant than stacks; and I'm sure any serious 4er would agree there was actual a tactical component to stack composition anyway.

I like 6, it feels to do a lot better with the core designs by Jon that we seem to be stuck with. I hope 7 relooks at that.
Unstacking cities was an interesting idea and I like it. Annoyed a little things here and there but my general feels is I might actually play this game a lot.

Of course, ultimately it depends on the modding scene too. The mods for 4 were a flourish of creativity and variety. 5 did not seem to provide the same enthusiasm of content.

Oh I still miss the demographics page and a rankings page to show civ score. Like what the hell man. Those were some two really useful info-pages.

 

[Staler87]

I like it. The carpet of doom is still on the table, which is far less elegant than stacks; and I'm sure any serious 4er would agree there was actual a tactical component to stack composition anyway.

I like 6, it feels to do a lot better with the core designs by Jon that we seem to be stuck with. I hope 7 relooks at that.
Unstacking cities was an interesting idea and I like it. Annoyed a little things here and there but my general feels is I might actually play this game a lot.

Of course, ultimately it depends on the modding scene too. The mods for 4 were a flourish of creativity and variety. 5 did not seem to provide the same enthusiasm of content.

Oh I still miss the demographics page and a rankings page to show civ score. Like what the hell man. Those were some two really useful info-pages.

You know there is a ranking page showing civ score, and civ military power, and civ culture, and actually quite a few things?

 

[Ranbir]

But not the classic pages! It was cute to see top five cities. And a page to show a list of constructed wonders. And the "demographics" page that played out like a CIA worldfactbook.

 

[labellavienna]

Bump, curious to see if others join in =]

 

[Staler87]

But not the classic pages! It was cute to see top five cities. And a page to show a list of constructed wonders. And the "demographics" page that played out like a CIA worldfactbook.

I checked the demographics page often inbetween turns. It was a nice feature.

 

[Brianstorm]

Stacks of doom are pure cheese. Any serious war game uses 1upt. While civ isn't a purely war game, 1upt is vastly superior and more widely used by any decent game.

Have a nice day!

There's plenty of cheese for the AI already, the whole difficulty system is cheese. Also I disagree with that in the first place, you have to create a much more balanced army with stacks vs the 1UPT garbage that's now broken two straight games.

 

[nzcamel]

There's plenty of cheese for the AI already, the whole difficulty system is cheese. Also I disagree with that in the first place, you have to create a much more balanced army with stacks vs the 1UPT garbage that's now broken two straight games.

Agreed. Except I don't quite think it's "broken Civ". A middle ground between the two would be better imo.

 

[TheUndeadFish]

Agreed. Except I don't quite think it's "broken Civ". A middle ground between the two would be better imo.

I wouldn't say it broke Civ. I would only say it broke Civ for those who enjoyed the challenge of the AI in emperor+ games in Civ 4. I played my first game in Civ 5 at immortal on release and found it to be incredibly easy to cheese down the AI with how OP ranged attacks are. I thought it to be a fluke and did my second, and all subsequent games on deity and still found almost no challenge even while barely putting any thought into what I was doing. I went back after both expansions to see if anything changed, yet nothing did because the AI has no clue how to handle hit and run ranged attack spam.

Civ 6 didn't address this issue at all, and instead made even more mechanics that the AI has no idea how to handle with medics and balloons. Further compounding the problem the AI causes them to declare war as soon as turn 20-30 hits in which case they just surrender 10ish turns later giving you all their free AI crutch gold putting you way further ahead than you should be while putting them far below you in gold income allowing you to steamroll through the entire game with no challenge at all. It almost seemed like their goal was to make the AI even easier to fight as you increased the difficulty level because they just give you their bonuses for no reason just to make it easier and quicker for you to win.

All of these problems are very easily fixed by letting the AI stack their units because you can't just pick them off one by one. You would need to kill from strongest > weakest. I feel the HP system of units is also partly at fault, but its much less of an issue to the point where I don't find that to be the problem with the AI.

 

[nzcamel]

I tend to agree with your view here.

 

[Manifold]

My first impression on Civ 6 are much better than my first impression was with Civ 5 - really much better. The day/night circle is very cool it adds variety onto the battle map view