salty mud
Deity
Full disclaimer: I know Civ VI is a direct sequel to V. However, this thought popped into my head recently and it's made me re-evaluate the way I look at Civ VI. I was always an avid Civ IV player, playing it semi-regularly since it came out in 2005. I tried V, gave it a good old try, but just couldn't manage it. It took the Vox Populi mod to make it even playable for me, and even then, it's the same game underneath the fancy bells and whistles. Global happiness is still sort of present in VP. City States are annoying to deal with, with their influence ticker mechanics and blandness. A major complaint is that the map just isn't as important. Cities will seem to grow and prosper no matter where you put them. What good is an empire building game where you don't even have to plan out your empire?
I've seen it mentioned a few times that Civilization IV players react more favourably to Civilization VI, whereas Civ V players are generally turned off. As a Civ IV player, I think I fit into this category, and I can see a few reasons why:
1. City management is more indepth. At least, on the surface, with the continuing debate regarding the effectiveness of amenities. Cities in Civ IV had health and happiness requirements. Fail to meet these and city won't grow and won't work. Civ VI has housing and amenities. Without enough housing, your growth is crippled and without amenities, your tile yields are negatively affected. Compare this to Civ V with its simple, keep-global-happiness-above-0-at-all-times mechanic. Civ VI is clearly influenced by Civ IV in this area.
2. Playing the map is more important. In Civ IV, city management was key and city specialisation was crucial on higher difficulties. You needed a production city, a floodplain cottage city, a GP farm and so on, and you had to scout and fight for these locations. In Civ V, cities are just generic places on the map. The best place to plop a city was next to a new resource and that was more or less the depth. No matter where I placed a city, I always seemed to get similar growth and production rates. Civ VI's districts demand specialisation. A mountain city is excellent for science. A city with plenty of hills can benefit enormously from mines and an industrial zone. Coastal cities seem to have a use at last.
3. I see Civ VI's policy cards as a follow-on from Civ VI's civics. Civ V players complain that policy cards don't carry enough meaning as they can be easily changed, whereas Civ VI players complain social policies are too rigid and not representive of "real" government. Civ IV was, in fairness, fairly shallow in this area. There were five categories, each with five choices that could be changed around whenever the player wanted, and some options were clearly better than others. Some players never even left slavery once it was discovered. I feel Civ VI's return to a more flexible style of government is again emulating Civ IV.
4. Return to a slightly "cartoony" style. Seems people have short memories, but Civilization IV could easily be described as cartoony. Leaderheads were almost caricatures, soldiers held way oversized weaponry and the map, pre-blue marble, was bright and bloomy. Civilization VI again emulates this, but probably takes it an extra step further, I will admit. That said, I like the style, and seem to be in the minority in that I adore the handdrawn map style FOW.
5. Era by era music
Desperately missing from Civ V, and the soundtrack all around is a huge improvement with memorable jingles and more upbeat music to Civ V's more muted, serious soundtrack. Again, like Civ IV.
Perhaps I've missed a few reasons. What are your thoughts? Civ VI obviously inherits a lot of feautres from Civ V such as city states, trade routes, 1UPT and so on, but I feel a lot of core design goes back to Civ IV. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
I've seen it mentioned a few times that Civilization IV players react more favourably to Civilization VI, whereas Civ V players are generally turned off. As a Civ IV player, I think I fit into this category, and I can see a few reasons why:
1. City management is more indepth. At least, on the surface, with the continuing debate regarding the effectiveness of amenities. Cities in Civ IV had health and happiness requirements. Fail to meet these and city won't grow and won't work. Civ VI has housing and amenities. Without enough housing, your growth is crippled and without amenities, your tile yields are negatively affected. Compare this to Civ V with its simple, keep-global-happiness-above-0-at-all-times mechanic. Civ VI is clearly influenced by Civ IV in this area.
2. Playing the map is more important. In Civ IV, city management was key and city specialisation was crucial on higher difficulties. You needed a production city, a floodplain cottage city, a GP farm and so on, and you had to scout and fight for these locations. In Civ V, cities are just generic places on the map. The best place to plop a city was next to a new resource and that was more or less the depth. No matter where I placed a city, I always seemed to get similar growth and production rates. Civ VI's districts demand specialisation. A mountain city is excellent for science. A city with plenty of hills can benefit enormously from mines and an industrial zone. Coastal cities seem to have a use at last.
3. I see Civ VI's policy cards as a follow-on from Civ VI's civics. Civ V players complain that policy cards don't carry enough meaning as they can be easily changed, whereas Civ VI players complain social policies are too rigid and not representive of "real" government. Civ IV was, in fairness, fairly shallow in this area. There were five categories, each with five choices that could be changed around whenever the player wanted, and some options were clearly better than others. Some players never even left slavery once it was discovered. I feel Civ VI's return to a more flexible style of government is again emulating Civ IV.
4. Return to a slightly "cartoony" style. Seems people have short memories, but Civilization IV could easily be described as cartoony. Leaderheads were almost caricatures, soldiers held way oversized weaponry and the map, pre-blue marble, was bright and bloomy. Civilization VI again emulates this, but probably takes it an extra step further, I will admit. That said, I like the style, and seem to be in the minority in that I adore the handdrawn map style FOW.
5. Era by era music
Desperately missing from Civ V, and the soundtrack all around is a huge improvement with memorable jingles and more upbeat music to Civ V's more muted, serious soundtrack. Again, like Civ IV.Perhaps I've missed a few reasons. What are your thoughts? Civ VI obviously inherits a lot of feautres from Civ V such as city states, trade routes, 1UPT and so on, but I feel a lot of core design goes back to Civ IV. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
