Complexity kills fun

[LuckyLuke73]

Hey Firaxis,

(Sorry for my mediocre English, I'm not a native speaker...)

I've been a huge Civ fan since Civ 1. Bought my first PC because of Civ, spent housands of hours from Civ 1-5. All of them hooked me, played them again and again until sunrise.
Unfortunately Civ 6 has not this effect to me. I played it for about 100 hours and I dont feel the need to play it again. The game pace is just too slow, there are too many things you need to keep track of, too many options, too much to do. A Civ 5 game the way I played it usually took me about 12 hours - in Civ 6 I need about 30 hours and thats just too long.
Why must trade routes end after a specific amount of rounds? It just sucks to reenable them again and again.
Why does another leader ask me for the same thing, again and again and again?
No automated workers, seriously? Another waste of time.
Why does it take a minute (really, I stop watched it) to load a save game, when the game is installed on a SSD?

Then the AI:
For some strange reasons, most of the other civs are always spawned close to my Civ. And any of them likes to start wars for no obvious reason. And that happens even on easies difficulty level! What if I just want to play a casual game, where I know I will win because its too easy, but I enjoy it that day? Impossible in Civ 6, you must go to war early in game, if you want or not.
It's nearly impossible to create a long lasting alliance with another civ. So you're always forced to have a huge military. Thats not diplomacy, it's just switching between cold war and war and the switch is decided by the other civs not me.

The Districts:
I like the concept of the districts, but at the end the whole map is full of buildings, just like a huge, confusing mega-city. It makes it so hard to get related to cities and what you've specialized them for.

Finally the bugs:
I really can't remember any previous Civ which was buggy. Firaxis was like Blizzard: when they released a game, it was working - period. Civ 6? Full of bugs, some of them so dramatic that you just could not go on with your game.

The big problem:
Civ 5 was ok but not great when it was released. The reason was it was not complete, but the addons made it complete. It was for the sake of making money, but it was okay for me, because at the end I had a lot of fun.
But Civ 6 started too complex and addons just can make it even more complex. I doubt most players will like this.
So maybe just skip the addons and instead fix the bugs, increase the performance and automate A LOT of stuff - and then go straight ahead and make a restart with Civ 7.

 

[RealAntithesis]

I think two of the longer term issues with Civ6 (apart from bugs and balance issues which should be fixable in future updates or mods), is that the map becomes way too 'busy' and difficult to decipher due to the carpet of 1UPT units scattered all over the place (it becomes a sea of brightly coloured icons hiding all the unit graphics underneath which tend to blend into the landscape), the many districts and their associated buildings that we're now forced to have in order to build up our cities, the wonders that are now also taking up entire tiles, national border graphcs which are mere multi-coloured straight-edged dotted lines that end up intertwining with the national borders of other civs with their own multi-coloured straight-edged dotted lines, the fog of war borders and the transition between the brown unviewable terrain and the terrain in view as well as the unexplored terrain, then on top of this, strategic and luxury resource icons scattered all over the place because otherwise they are hard to see where they are, tile yields (now thankfully able to be turned off with a hotkey) etc - it all becomes a bit of a confusing mishmash and sensory overload for the eyes. Somethings a little wrong when I need to tool tip over everything to see what is happening on a tile - is this a hill, has it been improved etc. Added to that the excessive micromanagement, and turns can become a bit of a slog to get through.

In short: map complexity needs to be reduced and streamlined, micromanagement needs to be reduced and streamlined. On the fun factor, Civ6 is 'functional', but lacks some of the things that make for a more well-rounded experience - things like the throne room, random events, animated advisors, leader graphics with cultural /environmental context that are more than just talking animations etc.

 

[steveg700]

I disagree with the notion that complexity kills fun. Shallowness and monotony kills fun.

The OP's actual complaints have little to do with complexity, and are in fact mostly complaints about shallowness and monotony. Slow pace, constant reassignment of trade routes and spies, repetition of leader requests....Nothing to do with complexity.

 

[Ryika]

You complain about complexity, but then none of your examples actually have anything to do with complexity. What you're complaining about is better described as... I don't know... "clutter"?
And yeah, with that I would agree, there's tons of it, and a lot of it is unnecessary, and just exists because Firaxis was too lazy - or ran out of time - to include a way to temporarily automate stuff (building queue, auto-renew trade routes, etc.) - although I still disagree some of the stuff you complain about, automated workers for example.

The complaint about complexity though... no, that's just dumb. Civ 5 was terrible when it was released, an empty shell of a game. Civ VI has different problems, but it released "feature-complete", which is great. DLC does not actually need to add core mechanics to have a finished product, it can focus on other things.