Civilization VI or Civilization V with Vox Populi EUI

[Authopius]

I want to know everyone's opinions whether the Civ 6 Vanilla is better or worse than Civ 5 with Vox Populi (Only Vox Populi EUI, no other mods included).

BEFORE YOU COMMENT, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE CIV 6 GAMEPLAY.

For me, I prefer Civ 5 - Vox Populi EUI (Version 8-6-2018) more than Civ 6 Vanilla. First of all, I love VP's AI because it feels more like competing a real human. Second, the gameplay balances are great. And lastly, EUI helps me manage my empire more easily than Civ 6 IMO. This and all of the other assets of VP truly makes me feel rewriting a new version of history in each game.

And you, what's your vote and why?

 

[Viralvoid]

Civ6 is plain boring (for me). I loved the graphics, and other mechanics, but it was very "imbalanced". There is no such thing as perfect balance right? but being that imbalanced is not fun at all.

The great person system, and how to acquire them is very imbalanced, it is not about how you design your empire through government and cards, but how many districts of that type you have built which made Germany a little op for great engineer, Russia can accumulate lots of GWAM early, by just having Lavras. The different effects of each great person is the worst, I don't care about uniqueness, but skipping and wasting great person points is dull, and it is exploitable by humans if the great person is useless (idk if AI can skip).

I love how civilization and leader's traits were separated, but the traits themselves were imbalanced, players even tier each civs, meaning that some civs are really weak and too niche like Denmark and England.
AI is stupid, and the agenda system is irritating.
DLC civs were op, compared to vanilla civs.
Well, conquering 1 city makes you a warmonger, and everyone will denounce you.

Lastly, Civ6 is more of a role-playing game building a beautiful looking empire to screenshot, while Civ5 is more on strategy (that is why I voted for civ5)
That's all, kabayan XD

EDIT: I played Civ6 about a few years ago,when it was released, finished more than 20+ games about 60+ hours in total. I enjoyed the role-playing, but it was too easy even for deity, that is why I returned to Civ5 VP.

 

[Owlbebach]

Vox Populi for sure. I played 3 games of Civ6 half a year ago and it became boring after that.

1) Civ6 introduced a lot of interesting mechanics (districts, religion battles, dark ages, etc) but all of them seem unfinished. Everything is so easy and straightforward. Even after the recent DLC it is still a beta version. It does not have bugs, but the game feels ... empty?
2) Civ6 AI is dumb. Like really dumb. Even with AI+ mod it is still dumb. After playing VP i set Immortal difficulty right away. I won by a huge margin playing the game for the 1st time.
3) Civ6 AI is dumb at war too. I had unique Swordsmen and decided that i need to use this advantage. I build 5 of them with couple of Archers and a Catapult with an idea to capture 1 or 2 cities. Turned out i captured 6 cities from 2 civs. They had plenty of units, but they could not use them
4) Civ6 has absolutely zero balance. Every single part of the game has zero balance. Some civs are stupid strong (Zulu, Poland) some others are stupid weak (can't remember). Also in one of my games one AI started with a Capital right next to a 3-tile World Wonder that was giving 3 science and food from a tile. He had 4 times more science than me right from the start...

Many many other things....

I think Civ6 developers just didn't care about making a strategy game. This is not like they tried to do a balanced game but failed, they had no intention of making a balanced game! Balance just was not on the list of their goals. They made a role-playing game that is about building a cool-looking empire, not solving a puzzle. They wanted to do a game for casual player that plays it 200-300 hours without any desire to put any thoughts to how he play.

EDIT: funny thing is that i didn't read @Viralvoid comment when writing.

 

[Stalker0]

Vox Populi all the way. I actually do like many of the changes that Civ VI did (with the exception of the movement cutoff, I cannot stand it).

However, as commented above, it is an empty shallow game in comparison. There is not nearly as much to do, and not nearly as much challenge. The balance is just not there.

 

[Zarggg]

I wouldn't say either one is "worse" per se. I prefer Civ 5 in general (both vanilla and modded) mainly because that's what I'm used to. There were a large number of gameplay changes between the two games and I just never got into Civ 6.

 

[RuntimeError]

It's a tricky comparison. Civ V+VP have years of features and updates. My feeling is that Civ VI/R&F is in a better spot than Civ V/G&K, and that makes me really look forward to see what a VP-like mod for Civ VI would be like

 

[andersw]

I see these comparisons in various games and I don't know, these discussions rarely lead into any constructive talk and is generally about bashing the game that someone does or doesnt play.
I am not interested in Civ6, havent bought it and have little interest reading about it on a VP forum, likewise I'm not sure Civ 6 players have much interest reading about VP in that part.

 

[tu_79]

Are you sure this is the right place to make such poll? In the VP subforum? Where we all VP lovers gather?

 

[ryanmusante]

VP compared to C6 is apples to oranges.

VP is a modded form of a game developed for years on top of DLC and expansion packs.

C6 isn't moddable to the same degree, so it's handicapped regardless of what stage of development.

 

[ashendashin]

Are you sure this is the right place to make such poll? In the VP subforum? Where we all VP lovers gather?

He's significantly more likely to get people who've played both, at least. I find it weird how separate we are from the rest of the forums, but I suppose there are loads of other projects for older civ games and CFC has lots of old accounts. I mean, have you seen the off-topic section? Don't change that if you haven't.

 

[theMisterRud]

It's very unfair to compare the 2:

Civ 6 is a modern SimCiv focused in engaging the player with fun, good looking, addictive mechanichs (like Eurekas), which push the "story" of a playthrough forward

VP is specialist mod focused in pushing the tactical and strategic strength of CiV5 to the limit

different audiences

 

[Viralvoid]

It's very unfair to compare the 2:

Civ 6 is a modern SimCiv focused in engaging the player with fun, good looking, addictive mechanichs (like Eurekas), which push the "story" of a playthrough forward

VP is specialist mod focused in pushing the tactical and strategic strength of CiV5 to the limit

different audiences

I think it is fine (because you said unfair), because both were from the civilization series and it is a sequel, right?
They were entirely not from another game like LoL, it is dumb if you compare them.
TBH Civ6 should be better in terms of AI because they have full time employees and programmer to work on them, and they were being paid, so it is fair IMO

And AI and balance is the main concern, not the very core of the game play mechanics, which were interesting imo

EDIT: As far as I can remember, their target audience were both new and advanced civplayers, and they failed.

 

[bigcat88]

If Gazebo, iteroi, Infixo and many other developers(here very long list of people who worked on Vox) will decide to make such thing for civ6, I will start to play civ6.
Currently there is no technical possibility to make such deep modding(as I understand Firaxis need to open part of src code to let developers do something like Vox).
So I will just play civ5 and wait for year or two, till Firaxis release all DLC and let people to mod their child. After that I will start to play civ6.
And I voted for Vox, but I didn't play much time in civ6 to make real opinion on that game.

 

[theMisterRud]

I think it is fine (because you said unfair), because both were from the civilization series and it is a sequel, right?
They were entirely not from another game like LoL, it is dumb if you compare them.
TBH Civ6 should be better in terms of AI because they have full time employees and programmer to work on them, and they were being paid, so it is fair IMO

And AI and balance is the main concern, not the very core of the game play mechanics, which were interesting imo

EDIT: As far as I can remember, their target audience were both new and advanced civplayers, and they failed.

it is unfair in the sense that establish a comparative (better/worse) judgement without context on what the 2 products are trying to archieve is misleading. The fact that they both belong to the same series doesn't say much: both Alien and Aliens belong to the same series, but the first is an horror movie while the second is more of an action flick: comparing them in terms of action, the first comes short, while comparing them for horror elements, the first shines brighter. There is value in Civ6, but it might be something that we (as strategic-focused players) do not consider much

On the matter of AI, a similar rule applies: the fact that Civ6 has professional developers behind does not guarantee that AI is a major focus of the development process: VP has years of development behind AI because it is an implied requirement of the audience. If FIraxes establishes that AI is not a part of Civ6 in which the return of investment is meaningful, they will focus on other areas instead (content, art, game flow etc.) ... and yes, history DID establish that AI is a secondary goal for mainstream success

 

[SLGray]

This type of comparison should be done when they have released all the DLC's, updates, and expansions for Civilization 6. The game is too new to compare with Civilization V.

 

[CppMaster]

This type of comparison should be done when they have released all the DLC's, updates, and expansions for Civilization 6. The game is too new to compare with Civilization V.

The comparison is helpful to decide to which game it's better to play now, so they are compared at current state. Nothing wrong with that, same comparison can be done later anyway.

 

[Stalker0]

If FIraxes establishes that AI is not a part of Civ6 in which the return of investment is meaningful, they will focus on other areas instead (content, art, game flow etc.) ... and yes, history DID establish that AI is a secondary goal for mainstream success

The designers of Gal Civ 3 wrote a great piece on this. In short, the people that really care about AI are a very niche part of the 4x community. The fast majority of players play on low difficulty settings and are not that competitive. For them, the AI is just fine.

So what we often see as a failure the rest of the 4x community sees as a success. By not focusing on AI work, they get new games they like faster and cheaper than they would be otherwise.

 

[Viralvoid]

it is unfair in the sense that establish a comparative (better/worse) judgement without context on what the 2 products are trying to archieve is misleading. The fact that they both belong to the same series doesn't say much: both Alien and Aliens belong to the same series, but the first is an horror movie while the second is more of an action flick: comparing them in terms of action, the first comes short, while comparing them for horror elements, the first shines brighter. There is value in Civ6, but it might be something that we (as strategic-focused players) do not consider much

I don't understand what is so "unfair/misleading" about comparing two "thematically same game, from the same series".

Spoiler biology says: :

In comparative anatomy, you'll compare two animals in completely different phyla, it does sound weird but it is important to establish hierarchy!
What I am saying here is, no animal is better than the others, some manifest a better breathing system underwater, some were better at high altitudes, everyone has their own weaknesses and strength, with this we can exploit something. (Since you gave me an irrelevant example, seriously, a game series to a movie series).

Human and aves lungs were considered same in terms of functionality but different in mechanism. Humans have exploited things based on this discovery.
There is no unfair in comparing, that's what I am trying to imply. Since you said that "it is unfair in the sense that establish a comparative (better/worse) judgement without context on what the 2 products are trying to achieve is misleading"

Well, time will go on, and this "current comparison poll" might change. I don't understand what is the issue for in basic understanding, I DECIDED to play VP BECAUSE I made a constructive criticism for which game is really better to play "right now" (not just in AI but also in balance, content and others)

Civ6 will be criticized because players from civ1 to civ5 made a threshold, or standards, especially for a game with a genre of "turn-based strategy game", well why not suggest to change it to "role-playing"?

Oh, I forgot to mention, I was so hyped in the new agenda system because the AI should be diplomatically dynamic, and that was so 2016.

EDIT: I loved Civ6 mechanics, and I'm actually excited and updated about it.
And don't forget, they have a section in their updates named "balance changes", so their team is really looking forward on balancing the game.

 

[CrazyG]

"Bias" is a better word than unfair. Logically the people on this forum like VP (though we do occasionally have exceptions), you aren't polling randomly, so its a biased poll.

The thing I really cannot stand about Civ 6 is the movement change. The other changes are pretty cool, they need tuning of course but have some interesting potential. The movement change is just bad.

 

[glider1]

This thread could be potentially useful for VP players that might buy Civ6 but it is useless at the moment because no-one is specifying whether they are reviewing Civ6 based on the latest patch or just their memories of when they played it on older versions.