Civ4 lovers/civ5 haters, thoughts on civ6?

[Akbarthegreat]

I am aware that some people have asked this same question here already, but the threads I found were outdated, mostly to 2016 or early 2017 i.e. before the expansion. And we all know that comparing a vanilla version of a game isn't a fair metric for comparison.

My aim here is NOT to start a war of 1UPT versus SoDs. That is a pointless discussion, to each his own. My question here is targetted specifically to people who prefer civ4 over civ5, dislike 1UPT (as it was in civ5 at least), including those who still play 4.

Personally, I liked civ5 as a game, played for many months infact, but I ended up coming back to 4 because I found it to contain way more strategic depth, and it was much more of a challenge for me than civ5. I'm sure there others here who might share this opinion.

Do you think civ6 is better than civ5 in that regard for people like us? Does civ6 add strategic depth, and is the AI able to use the interesting new concepts that were introduced? And what about the expansion (which seems vaguely similar to RFC or revolutions from civ4)?

Or am I stuck with playing civ4 for the rest of my life?

 

[ezzlar]

I really didnt like Civ V and continued to play the Rhye's modmods in Civ IV. But now with Civ VI I was happy to switch over.

 

[gozpel]

I have played Civ6 for a while, and again I get bored after medieval era. Civ4-5 was ok, well actually the start of Civ5 was more than ok, as I spent 4000 hrs in it, but I only finished like 30 games.
Civ6 is very interesting, with the new districts and what not, but the game still gets very boring at a certain point of time.

What a waste of time! Civ3 was my big joy, with Succession games. I can't see CIV will ever have that concept again.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Civ VI is a great improvement on V with some really innovative concepts like Districts and I still play the odd game but Civ IV is still the pinnacle.

For me playing competitive games in the Hall of Fame Gauntlets etc keeps it fresh. Perhaps if/once there is a Civ VI SDK and we can make a HOF MOD for it then I might play a bit more Civ VI.

 

[Duuk]

I think your post is targeted at people like me. I played Civ5 a little but never really enjoyed it, but Civ6 got me to finally uninstall Civ4 (with RevDCM mod). While I still strongly dislike 1UPT, the AI can at least handle (land) combat better in 6.

The biggest change though is that the game is no longer focused on a "best" strategy of 4-5 cities. 5 had these great colonial map scripts and colonial themed civs... but colonization was a terrible strategy that would cost you the game if you did it. In a game all about the rise of empires, building an empire was a losing strategy and I hated that. Civ6 leans a bit heavy on map painting right now, and I'm hoping the final expansion at least makes diplomacy and "tall" play a tiny bit more viable, but even if it doesn't I still love 6.

 

[Arent11]

Bad design decisions:

(1) I don't like the design of the civs/the civ traits. That is my major qualm, because if I don't like the civs, I have much less reason to play.
(2) I want to play grand strategy. Right now I have the feeling that large parts of civ VI descent into a puzzle game. Which means that I have to work hard to ignore these parts of the game.
(3) I want to trade tech. At least eurekas. That I can't is a huge drawback for any kind of exploration & multiplayer.
(4) The terrain system is counterintuitive. Rough & open terrain should not be strictly "better" or "worse" than the other. A mixture should be needed for a good city. Grassland hills being some sort of super tile that provides both food and production is simply weird.
(5) The new movement system gets to my nerves. It is frustrating if you want to move on a hill but can't & have 1 movement point left.

Good design decisions:

(1) Governments & policy card system. They finally got it right.
(2) Districts. I'm not strictly for spreading cities across the map, but it's an interesting idea.
(3) Graphics in general: It's argueably much better than civ IV
(4) City states. They are interesting now. I still think it can be done better

 

[CPWimmer]

Personally, I liked civ5 as a game, played for many months infact, but I ended up coming back to 4 because I found it to contain way more strategic depth, and it was much more of a challenge for me than civ5. I'm sure there others here who might share this opinion.

Do you think civ6 is better than civ5 in that regard for people like us? Does civ6 add strategic depth, and is the AI able to use the interesting new concepts that were introduced? And what about the expansion (which seems vaguely similar to RFC or revolutions from civ4)?

Or am I stuck with playing civ4 for the rest of my life?

I am NOT your target audience for this - I have loved and adapted to each new version of Civ. I haven't played 4 in a long time, and I haven't touched 5 since 6 came out.

However, I will caution a few things:
1. -IF- what you really didn't like about Civ 5 was 1UpT - it's still here. Be sure that you are OK with that, before diving into Civ 6.Again, I'm not your target audience, i liked 1UpT in Civ 5. I won't go into this further, as you said this isn't supposed to be a 1UpT thread.

2. You mention you find Civ 4 "much more of a challenge for me than civ5" - if that is an important measuring stick, than Civ 6 is probably not for you yet. I think everyone would agree that Civ 6 is still not a challenge for Civ 4/Civ 5 Deity level players. It's fun, but the best players find the hardest level to be a cake walk. They can often finish games in about half the time that the AI can, with the only semblance of a challenge being surviving the first 15-30 turns of AI rushes (if they happen). For me this isn't an issue, but for some people it is.

Some good points to counter that:
1. The AI is slowly getting better with each patch.

2. The game, in my opinion, is much more in depth than Civ 5, up to the mid-game. (Districts, Loyalty, Unique Great People, Customized Governments,etc.)

3. We all expect at least one more expansion, hopefully with a new late game mechanic of some kind (Corporations, World Congress, Ideologies, etc.)

 

[MarigoldRan]

The problem with all Civ games is they get boring by the Medieval era.

 

[rschissler]

I loved Civ IV and played it to death. I only played a couple games of V, then went back to IV. VI is very different with a lot of new concepts, so for that reason it is worth trying out. I like the game, but after awhile the 1UPT becomes a drag. The movement system is also a slog, and wouldn't play it without the Rocketboots mod.

 

[Arent11]

I loved Civ IV and played it to death. I only played a couple games of V, then went back to IV. VI is very different with a lot of new concepts, so for that reason it is worth trying out. I like the game, but after awhile the 1UPT becomes a drag. The movement system is also a slog, and wouldn't play it without the Rocketboots mod.

The graphics are outdated. A remake would be nice.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

I was a big fan of V, and just recently I reinstalled it and played a couple of games just for the sake of nostalgia. I played it a lot my first year abroad and the music really brings back a lot of memories. I enjoy V's look a whole lot more than VI's. V's leaders looked formidable and imposing, the way the people who shaped history should. The cartoon look feels extremely out of place to me. Having said that, one of my big complaints about V was that it was so limiting in terms of expansion because four cities was ideal for almost all purposes. If I'm at the head of one of the foremost Civs in the world why do I look like a tiny back-water on the map? Why is it always a country like Singapore or Leichtenstein even when they call themselves Rome? I still love V but after the recent expansion VI feels like the more complete game.
I like building districts, and I like the puzzle of maximizing my bonuses. I especially like that we are encouraged to build big, sprawling empires. The difficulty curve is still an issue though. The first several dozen turns are a challenge on Deity, but if you play them properly it's entirely too easy to snow-ball past the AI. Lately I've started to lose interest in games around turn 100 give or take, because I can already see how the game will go. At that point I'm usually willing to forgo another 100 turns or so of micromanaging that it would take to actually bring the victory home. I realize that Deity players represent a small percentage of the fan base but this is the main barrier for the game right now. In V the AI was capable of launching the spaceship jaw-droppingly early if you weren't careful (and sometimes even if you were) but in VI they sure do take their sweet time about it.

 

[playshogi]

I quit playing for almost a year. I even missed all the hype around R&F. R&F was the first civ product I didn't buy on release since Civ2. But I watched 30 minutes of a Marbozir video and got hooked again. Bought R&F and got caught up on DLC and am liking the game a lot. Green Man Gaming has the deluxe at 70% off right now.

 

[Sherlock]

I played CiV for a thousand hours over five years - it was my favorite game of all time.

I've given up on CiVI so many times and now I think I'm done for good. It's a great looking game but the last half is NEVER fun (for me). The game seems to enjoy finding ways to punish the player. And there just are not enough decent places to found cities. So you end up with crappy, non-productive cities. It's just a drag.

I never played CIVBERT, I'm trying that now.

 

[Starwars]

Civ IV is one of my alltime fav games. I had fun with Civ V when I played it after the expansions came out but I have a hard time going back to it now.

I much prefer Civ VI to V but IV is still untouchable as far as I'm concerned. In VI, I still feel the AI is holding it back a lot which makes the game downright frustrating to play at times. It has never been great in Civ but it's become increasingly noticeable as the series has gone on.

But yeah, IV is still easily my choice but I play a lot of VI as well. It's nice to have some variation.

 

[UWHabs]

I am NOT your target audience for this - I have loved and adapted to each new version of Civ. I haven't played 4 in a long time, and I haven't touched 5 since 6 came out.

However, I will caution a few things:
1. -IF- what you really didn't like about Civ 5 was 1UpT - it's still here. Be sure that you are OK with that, before diving into Civ 6.Again, I'm not your target audience, i liked 1UpT in Civ 5. I won't go into this further, as you said this isn't supposed to be a 1UpT thread.

2. You mention you find Civ 4 "much more of a challenge for me than civ5" - if that is an important measuring stick, than Civ 6 is probably not for you yet. I think everyone would agree that Civ 6 is still not a challenge for Civ 4/Civ 5 Deity level players. It's fun, but the best players find the hardest level to be a cake walk. They can often finish games in about half the time that the AI can, with the only semblance of a challenge being surviving the first 15-30 turns of AI rushes (if they happen). For me this isn't an issue, but for some people it is.

Some good points to counter that:
1. The AI is slowly getting better with each patch.

2. The game, in my opinion, is much more in depth than Civ 5, up to the mid-game. (Districts, Loyalty, Unique Great People, Customized Governments,etc.)

3. We all expect at least one more expansion, hopefully with a new late game mechanic of some kind (Corporations, World Congress, Ideologies, etc.)

I'd be similar to this. Once a new version comes out, I really can't go back. As much as I loved the strategic depth of 4 (I still get chills sometimes when my relations with a neighbour dip a little bit and then you get that exclamation mark as an "oh crap I guess I need to mobilize for war now", or it was the only version of the game where I would actually give in to AI demands in order to stay friendly. But once 5 came out, I actually like the 1upt much more than suicide catapults, and so I just couldn't go back to 4 after starting up 5, despite it having many flaws for its first few years.

And now 6 comes out and I definitely like it a lot more than 5. Is it better than 4? I dunno - in so many ways they're so very different that I can't compare. If only we could get like the civ 4 diplomacy module combined with the civ 6 feature set, it would be just about the perfect game, if they can also fix up the AI annoyances too.

As for the rest of the OPs questions, I think the one thing that all these threads solidify is that everyone has a different opinion. The only think I can say is to find a sale (or a free to play weekend if they do one of those over the summer), and just try it out. You might love it, you might hate it, but none of us here are really going to be able to tell you one way or the other without you actually trying it.

 

[ShakaKhan]

The short answer- I think the main factor to judge civ games on is how much replay value they have, and I don't know why we civ-players find this as such a crucial game element. We can play games of other genres like (dating myself here) Zelda or Final Fantasy and conclude that they are great games, even exceptional games, and yet once we finish them once, there's really no reason or desire to play them again. For whatever reason, we desire our turn-based strategy games to be as engaging the 100th time around as it was the first. As such, Civ3 and Civ4 would rank extremely highly for me; I've played over 200 games of civ3 and over 350 games of civ4 and welcome the opportunity to play again. Just writing it down here is prompting me to install the games on this machine and give it a go. Civ5 ranks considerably lower than the previous two games, I finished about 100 games and have little if any desire to go back to it. Civ6, in regards to replay, is probably even lower than civ5 for me. I've finished about 20 games, and am having difficulty feeling motivated to return to the game that I'm currently playing through (actually find myself writing a short essay here to procrastinate from it.) And the long answer...

I'm a micro-management addict and I also love building big, sprawling empires, which is a terrible combination of traits for a player to have- the bigger the empire gets the more time it takes to micro-, and I've had some games where I spend three to five times as long tinkering with cities as I do actually playing. As such, Civ3 and Civ4 were the best games of the series- while powerful empires are larger ones, there is only so much you really need to do with your cities and the interfaces they used allowed you to do so quite efficiently. Civ5 I had a love/hate relationship with- while I could breeze through the turns while still satisfying my control issues (this was the first game where I finished games in a single sitting), it broke my suspension of disbelief how a very small nation could (and usually was) far ahead of sprawling empires. Perhaps I can see a nation like Estonia becoming more advanced or more commercially successful than the Russian Federation, but also fielding a larger military force with more guns and tanks too? It's basically saying that America would be far more advanced and powerful if the forefathers concluded, "We have Washington, New York, Philly and Boston, we should stop here. Too much inefficiency from overexpansion- look what that did to Rome. And nevermind all that gold to the west..."

Now we get to Civ6, which definitely focuses once again on larger empires being better, but it lacks the micro- shortcuts that much older games had. There is more and more planning that has to go into cities and a user interface that is much less user-friendly and much more time-consuming. Planning your cities is like solving a 10,000 piece puzzle where every piece fits with every other piece and no matter how you assemble it, you'll always form a coherent picture in the end. It just leaves you second-guessing yourself about whether or not you did it correctly.

I think part of the problem (that I have, at least) with Civ6 is that the developers were introducing new concepts that would have worked very well with CIv5's tall gameplay while reverting back to the wider-is-better meta-mechanics of the game. When they were working on civ6, the civ5 style of play was still fresh in their mind, and things like districts and wonders providing potent bonuses but requiring a sacrificial tile would be a very practical trade-off in civ5. Think of CIv5 Venice- even in non-culture win games, you still had several 4th and 5th ring tiles that you couldn't do anything with (except maybe improve a resource there and trade it off, but only in a few tiles which happened to have one.) Now imagine if civ5 Venice could build a commercial hub in each of those 4th and 5th ring tiles (I know, one district-type per city is a rule in civ6, but if the concept was properly introduced into civ5, they'd get rid of that rule.) and they get the double trade route bonus from each of the commercial hubs. That would make for a really fun game. But instead, the concept was introduced into a game which focused on wider empires, which likely have closer cities and tile value is much higher, leading to a higher "cost" of sacrificing a tile. If civ6 were released after civ4 instead of civ5, the new concepts would probably be more compatible to a wider-empire game template.

 

[Timothy001]

I've played all Civ games. Even the Call to Power. With each version, I play to have fun. I will stop and say sometimes I wish they had carried that to the new game, but I never regret the new game (even the steaming pile of crap CiV was at release). I've put too many hours into CiV, CivBE, CivBERT, and CiVI, that I just can't go back.

 

[Kruos]

I am aware that some people have asked this same question here already, but the threads I found were outdated, mostly to 2016 or early 2017 i.e. before the expansion. And we all know that comparing a vanilla version of a game isn't a fair metric for comparison.

My aim here is NOT to start a war of 1UPT versus SoDs. That is a pointless discussion, to each his own. My question here is targetted specifically to people who prefer civ4 over civ5, dislike 1UPT (as it was in civ5 at least), including those who still play 4.

Personally, I liked civ5 as a game, played for many months infact, but I ended up coming back to 4 because I found it to contain way more strategic depth, and it was much more of a challenge for me than civ5. I'm sure there others here who might share this opinion.

Do you think civ6 is better than civ5 in that regard for people like us? Does civ6 add strategic depth, and is the AI able to use the interesting new concepts that were introduced? And what about the expansion (which seems vaguely similar to RFC or revolutions from civ4)?

Or am I stuck with playing civ4 for the rest of my life?

Just to situate a little my opinion : I played +1000 hours on Civ4, only 500 on Civ5. Civ5 was a good game, but Civ4 is still far ahead in term of strategy depht. Any Civ veterans know it's not debatable.

IMO Civ6 is a real improvment vs Civ5 on the strategy depht front. As a lot of people have reported, in Civ6 you actually play the map, really, whereas in Civ5 you only execute a game plan (due to its mechanisms being poors and not very deeps). The 1UPT is still a pain in the ass but it as been improved (slightly) with the corp and armies. The Civic system is good, really good, it add some opportunity decisions and force the player to adapt its strategy with the context he is copping with. A tremendous improvment vs the (very poor IMO) civic tree of Civ5, which became quickly uninteresting once the optimal civics were known (basically after a handfull of games).

The major problem of Civ6 for now is its AI, which is still inferior to the modded one of Civ5, and the one of Civ4 obvioulsy (IMO : Civ4 AI >> Civ5 AI modded > Civ6 AI). After some improvments since vaniall and R&F release the tactial AI is nearly decent now (but still mediocre vs a human), but it's the strategic one which is lacking. For example, the AI has still some difficulty to follow a victory path efficiently, and to manage its economy basically.

There is still a lot of player playing Civ5, mainly because for with some big mods the game is now quite good for who want to play a simplistic game of war with one friend or two certainly, and also because the game is now very cheap and 'complete' in comparison of Civ6.

So, to conclude, for me Civ6 is a really pleasant experience, and I am already near the 500 hours count, despite all its youth defaults.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Some good systems, some questionable balance. Longstanding problems dating to civ 4 and back return (war tradeoffs, AI game throwing).

A lot of this is thrown off by an inexcusably garbage UI that is in some ways "just" awful (#inputs to play turns) and in others the single worst in the series (amount of rules that are hidden or misrepresented). City management is such a joke that it's possible to manage three times the number of cities decently in Civ 4 in less time than Civ 6, once you have 10+ cities in the latter, unit cycling somehow manages to be worse than the bugged out stack selection in Civ 4 (where sometimes the game "thought you were holding alt").

Districts, policy cards, etc are actually good concepts, though cards are again marred by incompetent UI (with GOOD UI, you'd be able to see what effects slotting a card will have in the screen you slot them, not have to manually do arithmetic after exiting out of the screen to count up your districts + adjacency for example). Barbs are a tweak the devs refuse to make (no turn < 10 scouts) from being the best iteration in the series. While the opaque joke UI doesn't do it any favors, the loyalty system is in some ways an improvement on the culture flip model in 4 once you discern how it works.

~~~

Basically this is a potentially good game with some solid new design choices, some questionable balance, and a near complete disregard for end user experience when interacting with it. If you are a slow player (civ 4 games took you 20+ hours), the trash can UI will only be a barrier to your learning and the few hours/playthrough it adds will only be ~5% extra time. If you could complete Civ 4 games in less than 5 hours, expect the UI to suck out a substantial portion of your play time in 6 in poorly optimized UI interactions and the occasional UI lie.

 

[UWHabs]

Some good systems, some questionable balance. Longstanding problems dating to civ 4 and back return (war tradeoffs, AI game throwing).

A lot of this is thrown off by an inexcusably garbage UI that is in some ways "just" awful (#inputs to play turns) and in others the single worst in the series (amount of rules that are hidden or misrepresented). City management is such a joke that it's possible to manage three times the number of cities decently in Civ 4 in less time than Civ 6, once you have 10+ cities in the latter, unit cycling somehow manages to be worse than the bugged out stack selection in Civ 4 (where sometimes the game "thought you were holding alt").

Districts, policy cards, etc are actually good concepts, though cards are again marred by incompetent UI (with GOOD UI, you'd be able to see what effects slotting a card will have in the screen you slot them, not have to manually do arithmetic after exiting out of the screen to count up your districts + adjacency for example). Barbs are a tweak the devs refuse to make (no turn < 10 scouts) from being the best iteration in the series. While the opaque joke UI doesn't do it any favors, the loyalty system is in some ways an improvement on the culture flip model in 4 once you discern how it works.

~~~

Basically this is a potentially good game with some solid new design choices, some questionable balance, and a near complete disregard for end user experience when interacting with it. If you are a slow player (civ 4 games took you 20+ hours), the trash can UI will only be a barrier to your learning and the few hours/playthrough it adds will only be ~5% extra time. If you could complete Civ 4 games in less than 5 hours, expect the UI to suck out a substantial portion of your play time in 6 in poorly optimized UI interactions and the occasional UI lie.

Overall a good summary here. I'm not a power user, so I'd say I'm probably slightly more than mildly irritated by the UI, but could certainly understand how it could infuriate people. I have to continuously mentally run the numbers in my head to figure out which cards to slot in (Ok, so I have 3 campuses with decent adjacency, so the double adjacency card is probably about +8 science. But I'm still building one settler, so how many hammers did that city get again? Oh, but I just unlocked the campus building bonus card, so which of those campuses were +3 or higher again? And then usually I just pick something and 3 turns later realize that I forgot to put the builder card back in, or that I didn't actually choose the card I wanted but had exited out of that menu and forgot to go back in...)