Detour to the modern version

[patinthedesert]

I had the itch to go try CIV 6. I was building a new desktop machine that could run it, as long as I included a decent graphics card like a GTX1050. So I bought Civ 6 from Humble to play on Steam. It is a radical change for me. Never tried Civ 5. Many new concepts and new layers like policy cards, no unit stacks, districts. So I was kind of lost. After 3 or 4 tries that I quit on, I finally played to a conclusion. By going down to 2nd easiest level on a 'tiny' map. Not sure how many times I will be playing it. But I think I'm coming back to Civ 3 for the kind of play that I understand.
The look on Civ 6 is very attractive. I may just play it as a sandbox just to see an empire.

 

[Jivilov]

But with only one upt it's kinda hard to get into warmongering, no? My son has Civ5 but prefers 4.

 

[jguy100]

Afraid you’re not going to find much love for civ 6 in this forum

I couldn’t get into civ 6 either. Not really sure how to put the why into words. I guess civ 3 feels more like a board game to me whereas civ 6 feels more like a simulation. And a virtual board game is what I want to play.

 

[patinthedesert]

No I was not looking for praise for it here, because it figures which version people like that read this forum. Maybe a little advice if any, But no big deal. Without understanding the new layers in civ6 it was a grind to try to move forward even on the easy level. But it looks nice. I got my butt handed to me the first time I tried to attack a walled city without understanding about the wall defenses.
Civ 3, with Conquests like on Steam, remains my favorite. With Civ 4 BTS being a close second. Civ 4 feels like an amped-up version of Civ 3.

 

[Lanzelot]

I like Civ6 a lot. It's a different game, so cannot be compared to Civ3, but each has its own benefits.

In Civ6 I like the fact that all nations are very varied with lot's of different traits and capabilities and therefore different strategies that can be implemented with different civs. (However, it also means that multiplayer is much more imbalanced than in Civ3, unless you give everybody the same civ...)
Also the combat model is much better than the kind of "crude" combat model in Civ3, and the promotion tree for units is very nice.

In Civ5 I didn't like the stupid happiness model, which leads to bizarre behavior, like if you are successful in a war and keep capturing enemy cities, your population keeps getting unhappier and unhappier up to the point of revolt, while when you are getting beaten badly and getting your ass handed to you, your population becomes happier and happier... Yeah, like in real life... very authentic...

Civ4 was for me the worst of the entire series so far. Got it in 2005 from my brother-in-law, tried 2 games and then uninstalled it in disgust. It did not feel like "Civilization" at all, did not ignite the "civ fever" for me, and had lots of stupid concepts I didn't like. The combat model was too complex, with a maze of units, counter-units and counter-counter-units. They way, artillery type units worked, was simply braindead (every cannon immediately blowing up and getting destroyed upon firing the first shot, yeah, very realistic... that was a major step backwards from the artillery units we had in Civ3...), and the promotion tree was not a "tree", but more a "jungle" in which to get lost...Too many steps in the wrong direction. (And I didn't even mention the ridiculous kindergarten graphics and look&feel yet...)
So for me, Civ4 feels like a screwed-up version of Civ3 (sorry, patinthedesert... )

Civ5 was a step in the right direction again, I liked it from the beginning despite its shortcomings like the bad happiness model. It already had many of the features that later got continued and improved in Civ6, like the combat model, the clear-cut promotion tree, the one-unit-per-tile rule which requires strategic thinking and well-planned logistics in warfare, a good religion model, diverse nations for trying different strategies, lot's of fun stuff.

 

[Kirejara]

IMHO each version from the orginal Civ to Civ3 got better and improved its strenght and weaknesses (and after the horrible german translated 1 und 2 I took extra precautions to get my 3 in english language!).

Civ4 was a great dissapointment for me (same reasons as Lanzelot has written).

Civ5 I have never played.

I was enthusiastic about Civ6, but this cooled down in the very first game (after the tutorial).

In fact it started to cool down during the installation, since I brought the DVD-Version to avoid great downloading with our slow internet connection. And what did the program do: downloading the game from steam for days (literally!).

Game play and expansion was very sluggish and slow.
Rome got on my nervs immediately after our first meeting by echoing his opinion that I should expand (and then denounced me after I finally expanded).
And I am more or less unalbe to get informations about my cities, units and other stuff (either I could not find the info itself or I was unable to read them).

So I am still playing Civ3.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I played Civ 5 (with only G&K expansion) for about a year, and liked a few aspects of it. I liked that units could swim and I liked the religion model. One needed to make strategic choices when building your religion, based on the map. I didn't like that the national wonders seemed optimized for a 4-city empire. "That's not a civilization to stand the test of time," I said to my friend. "That's just Ohio or Texas." Global unhappiness, and the increased unhappiness as you have military success (as others said) were wearisome. Denouncements never seemed to go away.
Last year, I picked up Civ Beyond Earth (and its Rising Tide expansion) on a Steam sale. It's based on the Civ 5 engine, set in space, and more importantly, fixed the happiness mechanic. I enjoy playing that game much more than regular Civ5, which surprised me a little. Using another Steam sale, I bought the last Civ 5 expansion and am trying to get back into it, using my lessons learned form BE:RT.

I got Civ 6 around Christmas last year, using the new laptop that I had used for playing BERT. It's a different game. The focus is on the map, with spread-out districts, and each Civ is very different. Workers don't build roads like in Civ 3 or 4; the trade units build your roads for you. Walled cities are super hard to attack with ranged units, as I do with Civ 5 and BERT. Siege units (like Civ 3, Civ 4) are required. I do like the civic tree (like the tech tree) and government choices in Civ 6. The social policies in Civ 5 always felt like a ratchet, adopting once, never changing. One needed to make decisions about when to change civics in CIv 4, and similar decisions are needed in Civ 6.

Civ 4 messes with my head. It's similar enough to Civ 3 (stacks of units, build roads, try to take over dozens of cities) that I can jump in, but there are key areas where my Civ 3 instincts get me into trouble in 4. I'm tempted to use by Great People as soon as they're generated in Civ4 -- because you have to, in Civ 3 -- but often one should wait. Lots more decisions, opporuntiies for me to screw up if I play too much like Civ 3 or Civ 5.