Civ6 June Update Video

[Bonci]

I loathe the discussion of "do they even know how to play the game at an elite level?"?

Per the Steam stats, something like less than 4% of players have ever won a game at Diety level (and I'm sure I'm not the only one that cheesed that achievement with a 1-turn Roman score victory).

Not only should Firaxis NOT play their game at an "elite level", they should actively avoid making "elite level" any type of priority. It looks like they KNOW that their playerbase is mostly casual people that play to have fun, play on base difficulty (or lower!), and don't really care about min/maxing.

As a business decision, you pick the LARGEST group of people and try to sell to them. If literally all of the Diety players stopped buying Civ stuff... less than 4% of sales would stop and if they added things that got the attention of 5% new people DUMPING THE DIETY PLAYERS WAS A WIN.

So adding in a Zombie Apocalypse mode, even if literally every Diety Player boycotts, is probably a net win, income wise.

By this logic they should do a mobile candy crush civ clone next, but I guess they still have at least some integrity and love for what they are doing (and their core players)? The fools...

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Why attempt to balance the game at all?

Because the world is not black and white and design more focused on casuals doesn't mean the game should not be balanced. But the main question is what does it mean to be balanced? On what difficulty level, on what map size?

 

[AntSou]

By this logic they should do a mobile candy crush civ clone next, but I guess they still have at least some integrity and love for what they are doing (and their core players)? The fools...

That doesn't follow from his logic, but ok.

Core players and Deity players are not one and the same thing. The latter are probably much more likely to come from the former, but other than that, you're making too many assumptions regarding what constitutes the core player.

 

[MrRadar]

I loathe the discussion of "do they even know how to play the game at an elite level?"?

Per the Steam stats, something like less than 4% of players have ever won a game at Diety level (and I'm sure I'm not the only one that cheesed that achievement with a 1-turn Roman score victory).

Not only should Firaxis NOT play their game at an "elite level", they should actively avoid making "elite level" any type of priority. It looks like they KNOW that their playerbase is mostly casual people that play to have fun, play on base difficulty (or lower!), and don't really care about min/maxing.

As a business decision, you pick the LARGEST group of people and try to sell to them. If literally all of the Diety players stopped buying Civ stuff... less than 4% of sales would stop and if they added things that got the attention of 5% new people DUMPING THE DIETY PLAYERS WAS A WIN.

So adding in a Zombie Apocalypse mode, even if literally every Diety Player boycotts, is probably a net win, income wise.

At this moment, my Steam client shows 5.4% of all players have the achievement "Win a regular game at Deity difficulty".

There is a "but". For Civ VI, when you get an achievement for completion of a game on a certain difficulty, it also awards you all achievements for completion on all the lower difficulties, which is reflected in the wording for completing the game on the 1st, Settler difficulty: "Win a regular game at Settler difficulty or harder".
This particular achievement has been unlocked by 42,6% players.

So, less than half of those who purchased the game bothered to finish it at all, at least once. The percentage of those who finished that managed it on Deity is therefore 12.7%. This number is considerably less negligible.

But where are those 57,4% players who did not bother to finish the game at all, even once? What stopped them?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

At this moment, my Steam client shows 5.4% of all players have the achievement "Win a regular game at Deity difficulty".

There is a "but". For Civ VI, when you get an achievement for completion of a game on a certain difficulty, it also awards you all achievements for completion on all the lower difficulties, which is reflected in the wording for completing the game on the 1st, Settler difficulty: "Win a regular game at Settler difficulty or harder".
This particular achievement has been unlocked by 42,6% players.

So, less than half of those who purchased the game bothered to finish it at all, at least once. The percentage of those who finished that managed it on Deity is therefore 12.7%. This number is considerably less negligible.

But where are those 57,4% players who did not bother to finish the game at all, even once? What stopped them?

I wonder if that includes gifted games that the receiver never really played.

 

[MrRadar]

I wonder if that includes gifted games that the receiver never really played.

Yeah, also how those free weekends are reflected in the stats.

Another one:
Currently, the most common achievement is "Have 6 Improvements at one time." – 85,2%
That is just mere nibble at the game.
So 15% of the owners of the game probably never even played it.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Yeah, also how those free weekends are reflected in the stats.

Another one:
Currently, the most common achievement is "Have 6 Improvements at one time." – 85,2%
That is just mere nibble at the game.
So 15% of the owners of the game probably never even played it.

In my steam account it says I have Portal II. I don't even know where it came from; let alone ever installed it, or played it at all, or won on any difficulty level.

I wonder if I'm on their stats as having never finished a game. On Portalfanatics.com they're probably talking about what a noob people are who can't even finish on portalsettler level.

 

[MrRadar]

In my steam account it says I have Portal II. I don't even know where it came from; let alone ever installed it, or played it at all, or won on any difficulty level.

I wonder if I'm on their stats as having never finished a game. On Portalfanatics.com they're probably talking about what a noob people are who can't even finish on portalsettler level.

Yes. A considerable part of the game owners acquire it by some sort of accident, get it gifted or during mass sales, with little or no interest in it at all. But that means that you can't so easily dismiss dedicated players on account that their share in the playerbase is mere 5% or less. As Steam stats show, around half of the "playerbase" is not even interested in playing the game to the end at least once. So dedicated players must represent a much bigger share of the active playerbase who are much more interested in further updates and DLC and will probably buy them, so their voice must be listened to as well.

 

[RohirrimElf]

At this moment, my Steam client shows 5.4% of all players have the achievement "Win a regular game at Deity difficulty".

There is a "but". For Civ VI, when you get an achievement for completion of a game on a certain difficulty, it also awards you all achievements for completion on all the lower difficulties, which is reflected in the wording for completing the game on the 1st, Settler difficulty: "Win a regular game at Settler difficulty or harder".
This particular achievement has been unlocked by 42,6% players.

So, less than half of those who purchased the game bothered to finish it at all, at least once. The percentage of those who finished that managed it on Deity is therefore 12.7%. This number is considerably less negligible.

But where are those 57,4% players who did not bother to finish the game at all, even once? What stopped them?

I have actually played Europa Universalis 4 for 1400 hours total and never reached the end date. Half of the civ 6 games i’ve played past the first half of the tech tree were not finished. Ether because i pretty much could press enter till victory on autopilot. Or because the turn times were to taxing on my system while still enjoying the game.

Dont think i have completed 60% of the games in my steam library. So these numbers are not that shocking.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Because, as an "expert" player, you seem to think that casual player is synonymous of carefree or stupid players. Which are not. I'm a casual players, but I still take care of some strategies and read on the wiki to know more, even if I play and feel casual.

Even the most casual player, if he tries to play but there is some large unbalances, would see it. My boyfriend is even more casual than myself and yet he doesn't like Korea because she feels bland and overpowered. Casual players also want some challenges, just not the ones you think. And that asks a little balance. Not "everything must be perfect" balance but a "we will give massive bonuses to Kongo because they have a huge malus" balance, or "is religion fun and not too overpowered/underpowered? Then it's ok" balance.

At no point did I say that casual players are stupid. In the post I was replying to, it assumed that most players are casual, and that firaxis should not bother to learn how their game works at a higher level in order to balance it. This to me is crazy talk, if you are making a strategy game, the lead designers should understand the game systems well enough to have a firm grasp on the heuristic tree and the core pillars of the game in order to improve the game. Now I don't think anyone is looking for "Perfect Balance", more that we should look to the largest imbalances, and try to bring them under control. The easiest way to look for imbalance, is to study the best players in the community (I am not one of them) and report what the most egregious strategies are. This brings me to the next reply below:

Because the world is not black and white and design more focused on casuals doesn't mean the game should not be balanced. But the main question is what does it mean to be balanced? On what difficulty level, on what map size?

This is a very nuanced discussion, and has been had for many years on this forum. Like I said above, if you look to the best players in the community, you can see which areas they exploit the most to get the best results. If these methods/exploits are used often enough, and lead to overwhelmingly better outcomes every game, then that something should probably receive some balancing measures. I do agree that a lot of casual players will also notice glaring imbalances, but maybe they wont understand the extent of them like an Elite player would. Here is a good example:

I once played a lot of Civ5 with my friends, I would often take the 'Honor' Social Policy Tree because I liked the look of it, my friends on the other hand would often take 'Tradition'. We were all casual players, and I just assumed that the developers had balanced the Social Policy Trees well enough that I wouldn't be severely handicapped for taking a certain tree, as long as I played to the strengths of that tree. In most of these games I would often find myself at a massive disadvantage, so much so that I wanted to keep taking the 'Honor' tree to prove that it could be used effectively and the game was infact well balanced. A few years passed, and later I learned that it was well understood in the community that Tradition was far and away better to take in 99.9% of situations than Honor. All that time, I was wasting my time trying to make a strategy work that was doomed from the start because basically the developers couldn't be bothered to balance it. This is poor game design, and all it does is make the casual player feel bad, and the Elite player have way less options for different strategies.

So to answer the question as best I can, in terms of balance, I think the goal should be to have a broad spectrum of viable strategic options. And I am not saying that all decision making should be made equal so everything is perfectly balanced, part of the game is trying to find good combinations within the mechanics and leaning on those to gain an advantage in the game. But we should try to crack down upon oppressive strategies that are the best option to run with in 99% of games. These elements take all the fun and strategic depth out of the game. In terms of map size/difficulty level etc, the game should aim to allow different strategies to be viable on as many of the different map sizes as possible. That is why things like Number of Tourists required for culture victory is different depending on number of players, and hopefully is balanced accordingly.

 

[jdevo]

At this moment, my Steam client shows 5.4% of all players have the achievement "Win a regular game at Deity difficulty".

There is a "but". For Civ VI, when you get an achievement for completion of a game on a certain difficulty, it also awards you all achievements for completion on all the lower difficulties, which is reflected in the wording for completing the game on the 1st, Settler difficulty: "Win a regular game at Settler difficulty or harder".
This particular achievement has been unlocked by 42,6% players.

So, less than half of those who purchased the game bothered to finish it at all, at least once. The percentage of those who finished that managed it on Deity is therefore 12.7%. This number is considerably less negligible.

But where are those 57,4% players who did not bother to finish the game at all, even once? What stopped them?

I wonder if the reason so many people don’t finish their games is because the UI makes the late game such a slog that most just give up.

I really enjoy the first 100 turns but after that it just gets less and less fun. The UI is really the biggest issue I have with this game. Late game civ has always been sort of a chore, each click and decision you make has less impact on the game as you go up in turns. This problem has been in all civs, but it’s the worst in civ6.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

In my steam account it says I have Portal II. I don't even know where it came from; let alone ever installed it, or played it at all, or won on any difficulty level.

I wonder if I'm on their stats as having never finished a game. On Portalfanatics.com they're probably talking about what a noob people are who can't even finish on portalsettler level.

Oh man, you're missing out. That's a great game.

 

[MrRadar]

I wonder if the reason so many people don’t finish their games is because the UI makes the late game such a slog that most just give up.

I really enjoy the first 100 turns but after that it just gets less and less fun. The UI is really the biggest issue I have with this game. Late game civ has always been sort of a chore, each click and decision you make has less impact on the game as you go up in turns. This problem has been in all civs, but it’s the worst in civ6.

Amen to all of that.
This UI is a developer's UI, to get by somehow during the development, but they never made it a real User interface, you know, actually intended for the benefit of the players.

 

[criZp]

I always thought that the "you're going into bankruptcy" line was just their way to tell you that you are not as rich as they are, because they have that agenda.

I mean I think is not a literal thing.

That's true, but the message still makes no sense. If the AI is to call me poor then that's fine, but don't make them call me bankrupt when the economy is perfectly ok.

 

[IvoryPavane]

Naval units are supposed to heal to full in city borders with a Cothon present and they currently don’t.

It’s not game breaking by any means, but I’ve had a few games where I really could have used the healing and I’ve submitted a few bug reports now to no avail.

So apologies about bringing it up so often but repetition is key!

So uh, not to disrupt the flow of conversation here but I thought I would surgically remove my foot from my mouth and report back that the Cothon bug has actually been fixed ^^;

I just tested it and my biremes healed for 99, 76 and 50. I was sure this wasn’t the case a few weeks ago but either way I am a very happy gal as that has been a bee in my bonnet for some time.

And now I can shut up about it!

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

At no point did I say that casual players are stupid. In the post I was replying to, it assumed that most players are casual, and that firaxis should not bother to learn how their game works at a higher level in order to balance it. This to me is crazy talk, if you are making a strategy game, the lead designers should understand the game systems well enough to have a firm grasp on the heuristic tree and the core pillars of the game in order to improve the game. Now I don't think anyone is looking for "Perfect Balance", more that we should look to the largest imbalances, and try to bring them under control. The easiest way to look for imbalance, is to study the best players in the community (I am not one of them) and report what the most egregious strategies are. This brings me to the next reply below:



This is a very nuanced discussion, and has been had for many years on this forum. Like I said above, if you look to the best players in the community, you can see which areas they exploit the most to get the best results. If these methods/exploits are used often enough, and lead to overwhelmingly better outcomes every game, then that something should probably receive some balancing measures. I do agree that a lot of casual players will also notice glaring imbalances, but maybe they wont understand the extent of them like an Elite player would. Here is a good example:

I once played a lot of Civ5 with my friends, I would often take the 'Honor' Social Policy Tree because I liked the look of it, my friends on the other hand would often take 'Tradition'. We were all casual players, and I just assumed that the developers had balanced the Social Policy Trees well enough that I wouldn't be severely handicapped for taking a certain tree, as long as I played to the strengths of that tree. In most of these games I would often find myself at a massive disadvantage, so much so that I wanted to keep taking the 'Honor' tree to prove that it could be used effectively and the game was infact well balanced. A few years passed, and later I learned that it was well understood in the community that Tradition was far and away better to take in 99.9% of situations than Honor. All that time, I was wasting my time trying to make a strategy work that was doomed from the start because basically the developers couldn't be bothered to balance it. This is poor game design, and all it does is make the casual player feel bad, and the Elite player have way less options for different strategies.

So to answer the question as best I can, in terms of balance, I think the goal should be to have a broad spectrum of viable strategic options. And I am not saying that all decision making should be made equal so everything is perfectly balanced, part of the game is trying to find good combinations within the mechanics and leaning on those to gain an advantage in the game. But we should try to crack down upon oppressive strategies that are the best option to run with in 99% of games. These elements take all the fun and strategic depth out of the game. In terms of map size/difficulty level etc, the game should aim to allow different strategies to be viable on as many of the different map sizes as possible. That is why things like Number of Tourists required for culture victory is different depending on number of players, and hopefully is balanced accordingly.

I must say it...
First of all.
If you look to the best players... elite.
Jesus Christ 99% of people are not the best hardcore minimaxes. Not even in this forum and not even those 5% who beat deity. Maybe people just need to focus on what THEY like, or what is fun for THEM, not that mythic elite pro gamers. The world would be better.
Second of all Exploits are unintentional glitches. They have nothing to do with balance issues. Of course, they should be removed as quickly as possible, but balancing game is an intentional process. Possible exploits are not.
And now ad meritum.
This is a very good definition and a very good start point for the discussion: the goal should be to have a broad spectrum of viable strategic options.
And now those viable strategic resources depend on:
1. player abilities to utilize them
2. difficulty level that pushes a border and makes efficient options more narrow.
The truth is every game is imbalanced. It only depends on those two factors above how imbalanced it is from your subjective point of view.
Let's take a minimaxer example:
Their aim is ALWAYS to find the best possible path. Better he is its playstyle MUST become more and more narrow. As I said even the best possible balanced game has its meta and optimal paths of play. The problem is not to make a game to easy for those players too soon and let the game be challenging as long as it possibly can. But it is a problem of a vast minority of players. What helps to make the game challenging for them is usually difficulty level.
And now let's take a casual player or player who wants to play just for fun - or just to choose a cool looking stuff. In this case scenario, they should have the possibility to take strategic options they want - not always the best possible - and still be able to win. And again you can archive that aim by difficulty level. So the game must be equally easy for casuals and equally challenging for hardcore players at the same time. This is a real good balance.
The problem I see is either people want to play casual and archive minimaxes effects or want to have a game almost independent from your strategic decisions because, in the end, all victory paths are expected to be equally viable. This is not the way how it works.
What I mean: if someone wants to have a game more fun with more viable strategies it is always a possibility to play on lower difficulties. If someone wants to have a game more challenging with less viable strategies it is always a possibility to switch to a higher difficulty level. A Fair balanced game is a game that provides that kind of experience to the largest number of players for the longest possible time period. There is no such thing as one point of perfect balance. Better you play more efficient strategies you can use. I don't know why people bother so much with minimax elite opinions, must always play on higher difficulties, and complains how narrow is a strategy. It is not a shame to play even on settler you like it. Who the hell said you must be hardcore best in a video game and lost all fun from the game. Never play a single game with Georgia because someone else said it is weak. Never try to win religion game because someone else said it's bad and boring. Is it your game and your time or "elite players" one? This is just a game at the end. Honestly, people are too much focused on efficiency and somewhere lost all fun...

 

[Lord Lakely]

I don't think the mechanics needs to be changed at all :3 The game runs much better than Civ 5 does (which I'm currently playing and man it can be a slog based on which civ you roll. Money, Culture and Happiness are three massive bottlenecks and the game is only really enjoyable if you roll a civ that excels at any (or all) of those things - even ahead of science and faith civs. There are several things Civ 6 should have kept, such as the Specialists, Espionage and Religion, but as a whole you're no longer pigeonholed into 2-3 strategies (on King/Emperor) with any other approach resulting in a guaranteed loss.

What should change however, are some of the weaker abilities or tenets, which should be buffed. While not to the extend that I would have like to have seen, this is the most prudent option.

 

[CivLuvah]

There is no such thing as one point of perfect balance. Better you play more efficient strategies you can use. I don't know why people bother so much with minimax elite opinions, must always play on higher difficulties, and complains how narrow is a strategy. Is it not a shame to play even on settler you like it. Who the hell said you must be hardcore best in a video game and lost all fun from the game. Never play a single game with Georgia because someone else said it is weak. Never try to win religion game because someone else said it's bad and boring. Is it your game and your time or elite? This is just a game at the end.

I realized something about the criticisms of this game, especially from people who criticize aspects that aren't even objectively game-breaking, that are just nit-picky.

I don't mind "balance issues" whenever I play a 4X game. I just have fun - or survive. Whichever one comes first. I don't mind details such as which policy card is the best or the specific particulars of a certain strategy for a certain civ under a certain leader. The phrase in bold sounds redundant but I'm trying to emphasize how this kind of approach to a strategy ultimately does not take into account multiple play styles or people who like to have a bit of everything because they want to have fun. Therefore you end up seeing the kinds of "elite" players who complain about the game as just that - elitist. I want to improve my play style in Civ6, but I want to learn a strategy that's flexible regardless of what civ I am playing, and whose principles I can use to make the most of the bonuses that I have. Strategies shouldn't be absolutes, in that you recommend someone to play a certain civ with a certain playstyle so they're guaranteed to get a certain victory... and tell them that this is the only strategy you should do.

The truth is the majority of players don't actually care about these small details unless they are absolutely game-breaking. They just want to have fun, to simulate history, or try out new things, or whatever. Sure, you could say that there isn't enough competition in the game, that's fine, that's a valid criticism. But for some people to say that this should be optimized to such and such, or that balance should be in this or that when it fact it doesn't really break the game for most people, is too meticulous to be a gold standard for what the devs should do to improve the game. The people who do that have tons of time playing the game - most people who play the game don't. So improving the game based on the observations of an elite group of people wouldn't exactly benefit the majority of players. People behind the scenes in movies don't make movies to please people like CinemaSins who complain about every little detail. They make movies knowing what the majority of viewers and critics expect from them and do the best they can. /Rant over

 

[Westwall]

I'm with you, Luvah. My beefs with the game are less nitpicky and more broad strokes just based on my repeated attempts to try and get into Civ6 and failing over and over despite acclimating to all previous titles in the series fairly easily. Civ6 just doesn't feel like empire-building to me... more like city management if that makes sense. And to be clear, I'm in no way knocking people who enjoy that kind of play style, there are entire gaming genres dedicated to it after all. But if this is the trajectory Firaxis is ultimately headed with the franchise, I think I'm probably done. The early game for me was a tiresome slog of battling (and mostly losing) loyalty points while the late game was about trying to keep the lights on because everything eats power like a blackhole. Eventually I just stopped caring about the victory conditions and to this day I haven't finished a single game despite logging hundreds of hours attempting to do so. I'm really glad so many people enjoy it though, some have even told me it's by far the best in the series, but it's just not for me. I keep finding myself getting lost in the trees time and again, ultimately unable to see them for the forest as had been the case with the previous Civ games.

Maybe my disappointment is more with myself than anything else for not being able to grasp and keep up with all the mechanical nuances but the end result is the same; I'm just not having much fun and I'm finding myself looking to other 4X games to see if they can offer something that's more my speed. It's still heartbreaking though because Civ has always been my jam and I never thought a time would ever come when I wouldn't swear by it or be excited for what's next.

 

[tedhebert]

At this moment, my Steam client shows 5.4% of all players have the achievement "Win a regular game at Deity difficulty".

There is a "but". For Civ VI, when you get an achievement for completion of a game on a certain difficulty, it also awards you all achievements for completion on all the lower difficulties, which is reflected in the wording for completing the game on the 1st, Settler difficulty: "Win a regular game at Settler difficulty or harder".
This particular achievement has been unlocked by 42,6% players.

So, less than half of those who purchased the game bothered to finish it at all, at least once. The percentage of those who finished that managed it on Deity is therefore 12.7%. This number is considerably less negligible.

But where are those 57,4% players who did not bother to finish the game at all, even once? What stopped them?

It's a good and valid question, but it seems you and most everyone who quoted your message seem to equate FINISH with WIN !!! the stats are for those who WON a game, not for those who FINISHED a game.

the question then becomes: where are those 57% of players who never WON a game ?

In my mind, that's an important nuance. It's still way too many players, but might it mean that the game isn't SO VERY easy to win ???