Civ5 vs Civ6 - what each of those games did better?

[Krajzen]

I have been recently playing civ5, and wondering how do both games compare both in big and very small aspects. The more specific the better, and the less obvious the better (yes, I do dislike civ6 art style as well )

CIV6 > CIV5: WONDER HOARDING
One pet peeve which is very rarely (if ever) mentioned. I have always hated how in civ5 there was often this one insane AI wonder builder. With very advanced tech (seemingly focusing on wonders specifically). With a single incredibly OP city (usually capital). Which hoards like half of global wonders of architecture. Very annoying and unbalanced, it is fantastic how in civ6 terrain requirements and free space spread wonders across many cities over the map.

CIV6 > CIV5: CITY STATE BUYING
Oh God, gold being the main resource needed when handling CS, with their "progress bar" going forever downwards. Annoying as all hells in countless ways (sudden ally sniping, insane AI empires buying everybody with infinite gold, constant pushing beyond the dreaded "lose status" margin). Unabalanced (only gold matters, with constant unreachable runaways). Anti immersive (CS diplomacy being all about throwing money at them). Envoys are so much better.

CIV5 > CIV6: TRAVEL TIMES
Never understood the need to nerf roads and make rough terrain even rougher. As if the combat and army system in these games couldn't be any more tedious.

CIV5 > CIV6: GRAVITAS
Forget about art style, there is something deep under the skin of civ5 which makes it more serious, somber and majestic, which is a plus for me - we are building a civilization to stand the test of time, after all.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I prefer Civ VI in almost every way, but...

MUSIC
Civ V > Civ VI

 

[Noble Zarkon]

CIV5 > CIV6: TRAVEL TIMES

That's the only one Civ V does better IMO.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think Civ 5 had way better production balance. I often feel, at the end of Civ 6 games, that about 80% of my cities are not even "half done" being built, because everything in civ 6 costs so many damn hammers

 

[Pietato]

Difficulty - Civ V - Shaka once dropped 150 X-com soldiers on my civ at once, pillaging every single square which was not already occupied.

 

[Myomoto]

I prefer Civ VI in almost every way, but...

MUSIC
Civ V > Civ VI

God, I do miss war themes. Especially how the music would also get all sad and sombre after prolonged warfare.

Biggest one for me is definitely cultural victory:

Civ 5 > Civ 6

Cultural victory in 6 just feels like a quickly implemented version of 5's to keep rough feature parity between the two games, and not like a distinct new iteration of the same concept.

 

[blackcatatonic]

^ Yes. I do love a lot of the music in Civ VI, but I really, really miss the way every Civ had a war theme and a peace theme. The era progression was a nice idea but it doesn't work nearly as well with all themes as it does with a few (I've said it before and I'll say it again, I believe the idea was developed primarily with the American theme in mind, which is why that is the one that makes the best use of the era progression), and to me it's an inferior replacement for the dramatic transition from the peace theme to the war theme you had in Civ V.

A couple of others:

WORLD CONGRESS
Civ V > Civ VI

LEADER SCREENS
Civ V > Civ VI

 

[Myomoto]

LEADER SCREENS
Civ V > Civ VI

Oh wow, yes. I had completely forgotten that we used to have elaborate and detailed environments, and everybody wasn't just trapped in some strange black void with a small piece of wallpaper behind them.

 

[enKage]

Civ5 > Civ6
Tourism. in civ6 it influence nothing except CV
AI level of aggresion

Civ6>Civ5
Everything else. Too many things to make a list

 

[Kupe Navigator]

CIV5 > CIV6: GRAVITAS
Forget about art style, there is something deep under the skin of civ5 which makes it more serious, somber and majestic, which is a plus for me - we are building a civilization to stand the test of time, after all.

I don't know... I kinda find Civ 5 art to be bit boring as leaders were bit too stiff. Granted I DO like the background in civ 5 better but leaders acted like one of those Animatronics dolls you can find in museums. They didn't move a lot. While in civ 6 they move a lot and expresses a lot.

I prefer Civ VI in almost every way, but...

MUSIC
Civ V > Civ VI

I disagree Music is one of those things Civ 6 does better... even when they are reusing same music as civ 5.
Compare for example arirang.
In civ 5 it is like this:

While good... it doesn't feel much like Korea... it is using just generic East Asian instruments. It isn't using any traditional Korean instruments.
Compare that with Civ 6 version of Arrirang

Very nice with the mix of western and Korean traditional musical instruments. You can tell they are definitely using traditional Korean instruments here and can't mistake it with other East Asian nations like China and Japan.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

There are 3 gripes I have with Civ 6 over Civ 4/5.

1. World Congress - I LIKE the choices in Civ 6 but I hate the system overall, I wish you could spend your Diplo Favor to propose a resolution affecting one option (say Embargo China), and EVERYBODY you know "participates", if the vote passes, China is Embargoed, otherwise, if it fails, they get the +1 Trade Route and bonus gold when trading with China instead (so basically the fail vote results in the opposite option being chosen).

2. Great Works - I miss the fun gameplay that the Great Works/Archeology brought in Civ 5. I miss theming Great Library, the Lourve, etc. And most particularly I miss being able to build limitless Archeologists. I miss being able to build Landmarks, because I don't have enough spots for a lot of my great work or production to spent on Archeologists in the few cities with the Theatre Squares. I also miss the effect that Tourism had on other civs, if you disable Cultural Victory, there's very little need to focus on maximizing your Tourism. In fact, the Cultural Victory itself is really bothersome to me, because it's so vague and still confusing, The Civ 5 was so simple and still a lot of work to pull off.

3. Espionage - I like that they are a unit again, but I wish the options mirrored the options we had in Civ 4. I also tend to be bothered by the fact that not every district has a mission, and more importantly, those that do usually have only 1 thing to do, and often they are not nearly as profitable. Thankfully Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm kinda filled out some of the bigger gaps so it's not nearly as bad as I remember it being in the beginning. Killing a Governor and Breaching the Dam can be quite fun (though I'm disappointed to find out that Breaching the Dam doesn't immediately flood the river, just pillages it).

 

[Aurelesk]

Workers & Builder:

• Workers in Civilization V are some immortal beings that could improve everything in your empire, but each improvement is costing time. Once you have some in your empire, you could put them in automatic and forget about it. You could improve their performance with Pyramids (-25% times) and Citizenship (-25% times). They also do roads and railroads.
• Builders in Civilization VI can improve 3 tiles but do it instantly. You can improve the efficiency with the Pyramids (+1 charge), Serfdom (+2 charges) and Liang (+1 charge) while having the golden age dedication Monumentality (+2 Movement, -30% cost, can use faith). Roads and railroads are outsourced by Military Engineer and... Trader? Which sure make sense but feels weird.

In the end, I guess the edge is for Civilization VI, but sure I wish they could add some auto-duty and auto-repair. They could follow a special pattern: improve luxury ressources → improve strategic ressources → improve bonus ressource → improve passable features* (Lumber mills on Woods / Rainforests, Farms on Floodplains) → improve the remaining lands*
* : I hope the Builders would be smart enough to detect if the improvement is worth it. For example: putting a Lumbermill (+4 Production) vs unimproved Forest with a Marae (+1 Faith, +1 Culture, +3 Production). In this case the Workers would not improve the feature. Furthermore, changing the focus of the city would change which improvement have priority. For example, if I put my city to Culture, then the City Park will be considered more interesting. But there is some downside: adjacency bonuses. If I have some Farms, the game could put Farms everywhere because more Farms = more yields. I guess I have to put the city to "No-Food" to make it works?


Tiles yields:

• In Civilization V, Hills and passable features do not increase the yield of the tiles but change it / apply a +1/-1 modifier. Therefore, flat tiles are as interesting as forested hills tiles. An hilly jungle start was a "bad" start while a tundra start was less harmful because you could put some farms if they have fresh water early on while hills and forested tundra were as good as their counterpart. Furthermore, you could put great tiles improvement on top of luxury, strategic or bonus ressource without removing them, and even exploit them.
• In Civilization VI, Hills and passable feature increase the base tile yield. A hilly jungle start is incredible for their +2/+2 bonus but starting in tundra is synonymous to loosing the game (+1/+0, can't put farms even with fresh water). Furthermore, luxury and strategic ressources prevent you from putting a district or wonders.

I might favor the way Civilization V did it. Civilization VI is going into a feast of yields with all the natural disasters and so on. I would like to have something in the middle. I am kind of okay for passable feature to increase the yield* (woods, tropical forest and marsh) because they propose a choice between harvesting or not. As long the more inhospitable places (tundra, snow, desert) have also a ton of feature/ressource and can have Farms next to fresh water (except Snow) to be attractive (or even all tiles with Civil Engineering). Hills do not propose any choice at all: you just enjoy your free production. It is a fact: a hilly start is better than a flat one. I would love to see how the game will be if Hills were a +1P/-1F modifier.
Also: please allow to put wonders and districts on top of luxury and strategic ressource, even if it is leading to Amenity just for the city / half gathering.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I liked the social policy system better in Civ 5. I LOVED the heavy pen writing sound that played whenever it was time to pick a new social policy.
Honestly it mostly 'works' better in Civ 6, but it can be taxing to swap in policies all the time. I liked the feeling of 'completeness' in Civ 5 whenever you finished a policy tree.

I think combat/fighting is much better in Civ 6. The movement is a negative but I honestly haven't been able to tell much difference between the two.

Civ 6 wonder building is amazing. I love the little videos that pop up. Much better than the painting in civ 5. Wonders in Civ 6 in general are better, the feel more impactful and you have to plan to get most of them.

There were also better map choices in Civ 5 IMO.

 

[Revanchist]

Civ 5's art style is hideous and one of the reasons I never got into the game. Also, the fact that cities did not span multiple tiles and it seemed like one settlement with a ton of improvements around it. With Civ 6, city management feels like a legitimate core of the empire

 

[blackcatatonic]

I disagree Music is one of those things Civ 6 does better... even when they are reusing same music as civ 5.
Compare for example arirang.
<snip>

The reason I prefer Civ V's music isn't because of the specific arrangements or choices of music they used - it's because I don't enjoy the era progression as much as I enjoyed the war and peace themes and the transitions between them. It made going to war feel like more of an event in the game. And the fact that quite a lot of the later-era versions of some themes in Civ VI basically just sound like 'same again, but with more instrumentation and brass and basically all the bombast we can find' just makes a few of them sound repetitive, in all honesty.

But, you know... I did use that smiley because I think my opinion is not the popular one.

 

[MrCynical]

CIV5 > CIV6: TRAVEL TIMES
Never understood the need to nerf roads and make rough terrain even rougher. As if the combat and army system in these games couldn't be any more tedious.

This is about the only thing I definitely think Civ 5 did better than Civ 6. On a lot of maps it feels like pretty much every land unit goes at 1 tile per turn in practice, which makes the "fast" units feel a bit pointless.

Maybe the happiness system? It didn't really work as intended in Civ 5 and failed to stop ICS strategies, so I can't exactly say Civ 5 did this well, but it did at least seem to have some impact on the game. The amenities in Civ 6 I barely pay any attention to - it doesn't seem to matter that much if a city is short on them or not.

On the Civ 6 doing better than Civ 5 side of things:

I really like the changes to wonders. The more complicated requirements and need for suitable tiles has mostly broken the tendency for the tech leader Civ to just get every single wonder in the game.

Adjacency effects add a huge amount more strategy to laying out the area around cities, rather than just always putting the same terrain improvements on each tile.

 

[hhhhhh]

Espionage is a lot richer in Civ VI. (Except Recruiting Partisans!)

I only wish there's some improvement on how spies travel. Currently it cannot move between cities 5 tiles away without taking 4 turns (if they don't have a harbor/CM/aerodrome).

But I do like that in Civ V Militaristic CS give you some units randomly, and sometimes it's a UU of another Civ, which is pretty awesome. Currently since gold upgrade are so cheap, many UU are too expensive to hard build - this make Militaristic CS's general bonus not very helpful. However if they knew the secret of Varu/Toa/Rough Rider then it will be much more interesting.

 

[Ezerin]

I want my usefull specialists to come back to me, so i can forget about civ 5 completely.

 

[SMcM]

I agree with the OP on pretty much all of that, I definitely prefer the 'gravitas' as he puts it to the gamey look of CIV6 (though that will make giving the next game in the series a distinct art style from it very easy). Besides that I'd say:

CIV6 > CIV5: Civilizations added
It's been nice to see a lot of new civilization added in this game, and also that some of these are in regions we've scarcely seen represented before
CIV6 > CIV5: Cities
Besides just in the context of wonder hoarding, having to think about city layout in general as well as housing limits as opposed to it being almost effortless to build up a supercity is good.
CIV5 > CIV6: Leader Screens
I especially don't like that a massive chunk of the left part of the screen is taken up by menu, I wish there was just a bottom bar and we could select options on that to bring up information we wanted. A redesigned version of the CIV5 interface with more options I would have preferred. There is a lot of space they could be using better at the bottom of the screen without massively obscuring the leader backgrounds.
CIV5 > CIV6: Civilization borders
I'm not sure why smooth borders were dropped in favor of the hexes having sharp edges, it just looks much less nicer.
CIV5 > CIV6: Music
I love the Hungarian leader scene music, but a lot of the diplomacy music sounds a bit bland, and I feel like the atomic era versions use a lot of the same sounds and sound a but samey to me. And I prefer having a music track for your civilization or culture group than hearing the themes of every civilization in the game, that makes playing as the civilization you've chosen feel more unique.

 

[Dotsworthy]

The use of music: V > VI. I love the leader themes of VI and how they develop over time, but what I do miss is the way V blended that with situational themes. I miss a proper war theme.

Diplomacy: V > VI: V is a tad more dynamic and kept you on your toes a bit more, especially once ideology appeared in the late game and could throw a real spanner in the works if your not careful. VI is very static, you know pretty much what to expect early on and it only changes if you make the decision to. And the soft locking of friendships is a real frustration.

Wonders and districts: VI > V planning ahead for wonders and city layouts is a lot of fun and stops the wonder whoring of the AI in V

Natural Wonders: VI > V: another benefit of the play the map design of VI

World Congress and Social Policies: I actually think this is a draw. Social policies are great in V with their sense of permanence on a civilization, but I do like the policy led planning of Civ, even if I think the policy selection would be better being fixed to a set number of turns rather than being unlocked along with a technology.

World Congress is not perfect in VI and is a bit clunky but V also had problems and could be nullified completely by money. I liked hosting in V and the discovery at printing press made a lot more sense, but I also like the diplo favour of VI and the use of emergencies.