Did Civ6 take a significant step backward?

[CaptainPatch]

I'm still playing my first full Marathon game of Civ6, but I must say there are a couple major letdowns for me. It may be that I have simply missed a couple features, so my perceptions may very well be erroneous.

1) Racial customization: From what I had been hearing in the Press Releases, I had gotten the impression that Civ6 was going to have MORE customization than Civ4 or Civ5. In those, you could "create your own race", but they were actually nothing more than taking an existing race and simply renaming the race and leader. That at least gave me the illusion of creating MY unique race. Especially when coupled with the ability to name my cities to be this supposed unique race's naming scheme. As far as I have seen, the player can't rename _anything_. Sad. I would have thought the mechanics had already been worked out so that renaming elements would have been a simple programming task in Civ6. What I had been HOPING for was to be able to select from menus for racial traits and advantages along with leader traits. <<That would have made for some honest-to-goodness Customization. Now I can't even rename cities.

2) Warmongers everywhere I look: I prefer to play a much more diplomatic game. Given a menu of 20-30 races, it HAD been possible to find 5-8 races that did not seem determined to Declare War at every turn. Instead, as with many/most of the Civ5 races, I have even distant leaders doing DoWs for literally no reason whatsoever. I even have empires on the far side of intervening empires complaining that my Settlers are encroaching on "their" territory. Throughout the Civ series, it has always bugged me that empires would declare war for NO REASON whatsoever. Now it seems that EVERY AI empire behaves that way.

3) Load sequences: As much as I like the sound of Sean Bean's voice, do I really have to put up with his spiel EVERY time I LOAD a Saved game? I'm hoping I just missed the Mute Option.

4) Game Setup: Where's the option to select how many City-States will be in the game? How about Raging Barbarians or No Barbarians? Or empires needing to be entirely exterminated, units and cities, to be eliminated? Or a dozen other Setup choices that were available in Civ5?

Admittedly, I've only been playing the game for 9 hours so far, but this is certainly feeling like Beyond Earth. Which is to say, unlike Civ4 and Civ5 which I played many,many, many times, I will instead play through a time or two and then move on to play something -- ANYTHING else.

 

[StittsvileJamie]

Nope.

 

[grandad1982]

So far mechanically I feel the game is a solid vanilla release. I enjoy the new district system and look forward to learning to use it well. The unique great people are also a nice addition. The policy slots and governments are also good.

My main grips are the huge number of UI issues and missing quality of life features from past games. It seriously baffles me that a game with the budget and resources of civ6 can have one of the poorest UIs in the series. Where the hell is the demographics man??!!

The other issues of balance around tech, tile yields and production are to be expected in a strategy game and I'm sure they will be tweaked over time.

That just leaves AI. I never expected good AI as I've been through to many strategy game launches now. Again hopefully there will be plenty of polish applied here as more player feedback is received.

If I was to score the game based on my current experience I would give it a high 6 out of 10. Might sound harsh but try to think of 5 as average rather than 7 or 8 as average. #fightscoreinflation

 

[nerovipusqc]

I do agree that there are some options that are missing, like number of city states that you can add or remove to minimum. At least you can add more civs. There is the map sizes that I find small compared to civ V ( huge map isnt that huge) and the choices of map aint that big compared to civ V. For exemple you had the choice of dozens of maps like Terra, Earth, contienents, south vs north, etc. But for the game to be a step backward, I would say no, but there is still room for improvement (still fun as hell, Ai could use some improvement also).

 

[Ryika]

Admittedly, I've only been playing the game for 9 hours so far, but this is certainly feeling like Beyond Earth.

Well, three of your four complaints boil down to "There's not enough options!", which is a valid complaint that I agree with, but at the same time shows that you're focusing on a very narrow field to make a statement about the game as a whole which is irritating.

The gameplay itself, while currently not balanced very well, is actually very enjoyable and most complaints that exist can be easily fixed by patches.

So no, Civ VI is not a step backwards, it's a step forwards that needs some polishing.

 

[nerovipusqc]

Also, this game is very far away from beyond earth that saddly was just horrible ....

 

[criZp]

Raging barbs are default option

 

[Matte979]

Simple No. Like all the new mechanics which are the most important, deeper than any previous civ. Needs a few passes on UI / AI and cleanup over time.

 

[kingchris20]

I'm still playing my first full Marathon game of Civ6, but I must say there are a couple major letdowns for me. It may be that I have simply missed a couple features, so my perceptions may very well be erroneous.

1) Racial customization: From what I had been hearing in the Press Releases, I had gotten the impression that Civ6 was going to have MORE customization than Civ4 or Civ5. In those, you could "create your own race", but they were actually nothing more than taking an existing race and simply renaming the race and leader. That at least gave me the illusion of creating MY unique race. Especially when coupled with the ability to name my cities to be this supposed unique race's naming scheme. As far as I have seen, the player can't rename _anything_. Sad. I would have thought the mechanics had already been worked out so that renaming elements would have been a simple programming task in Civ6. What I had been HOPING for was to be able to select from menus for racial traits and advantages along with leader traits. <<That would have made for some honest-to-goodness Customization. Now I can't even rename cities.

2) Warmongers everywhere I look: I prefer to play a much more diplomatic game. Given a menu of 20-30 races, it HAD been possible to find 5-8 races that did not seem determined to Declare War at every turn. Instead, as with many/most of the Civ5 races, I have even distant leaders doing DoWs for literally no reason whatsoever. I even have empires on the far side of intervening empires complaining that my Settlers are encroaching on "their" territory. Throughout the Civ series, it has always bugged me that empires would declare war for NO REASON whatsoever. Now it seems that EVERY AI empire behaves that way.

3) Load sequences: As much as I like the sound of Sean Bean's voice, do I really have to put up with his spiel EVERY time I LOAD a Saved game? I'm hoping I just missed the Mute Option.

4) Game Setup: Where's the option to select how many City-States will be in the game? How about Raging Barbarians or No Barbarians? Or empires needing to be entirely exterminated, units and cities, to be eliminated? Or a dozen other Setup choices that were available in Civ5?

Admittedly, I've only been playing the game for 9 hours so far, but this is certainly feeling like Beyond Earth. Which is to say, unlike Civ4 and Civ5 which I played many,many, many times, I will instead play through a time or two and then move on to play something -- ANYTHING else.

#1 is what I hated about Civ Beyond Earth, so I'm glad they got away from that. I like clearly defined civs with uniqueness to them.

#2 is what went wrong with Brave New World. After I got BNW, it seemed that no one declared hardly ever. It was kind of boring with no threat whatsoever. There needs to be that threat of an AI declaring on you to slow your progress to whatever goal you have. Yes it can be annoying, but I rather like the increases in DoWs

#3 seems a bit petty. It's a game, it has load screens, if it bothers you that much, mute your volume?

#4 is legit. I like having the ability to set the number of CSs, and I always had raging barbs on, but this game seems to have shipped with raging barbs ON lol.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm still playing my first full Marathon game of Civ6, but I must say there are a couple major letdowns for me. It may be that I have simply missed a couple features, so my perceptions may very well be erroneous.

1) Racial customization: From what I had been hearing in the Press Releases, I had gotten the impression that Civ6 was going to have MORE customization than Civ4 or Civ5. In those, you could "create your own race", but they were actually nothing more than taking an existing race and simply renaming the race and leader. That at least gave me the illusion of creating MY unique race. Especially when coupled with the ability to name my cities to be this supposed unique race's naming scheme. As far as I have seen, the player can't rename _anything_. Sad. I would have thought the mechanics had already been worked out so that renaming elements would have been a simple programming task in Civ6. What I had been HOPING for was to be able to select from menus for racial traits and advantages along with leader traits. <<That would have made for some honest-to-goodness Customization. Now I can't even rename cities.

The loss of renaming is odd, but Civ never has and never should allow mix and match civs. It's a game whose factions are meant to represent real civilisations, not a GalCiv or Master of Orion type game where the races are entirely fictional. There's no meaningful change here - I haven't used the renaming function since I renamed my civ the Vikings and gave my cities Nordic names back in Civ II.

2) Warmongers everywhere I look: I prefer to play a much more diplomatic game. Given a menu of 20-30 races, it HAD been possible to find 5-8 races that did not seem determined to Declare War at every turn. Instead, as with many/most of the Civ5 races, I have even distant leaders doing DoWs for literally no reason whatsoever. I even have empires on the far side of intervening empires complaining that my Settlers are encroaching on "their" territory. Throughout the Civ series, it has always bugged me that empires would declare war for NO REASON whatsoever. Now it seems that EVERY AI empire behaves that way.

I haven't had any wars declared against me by the 19th Century in my Emperor game, despite several wars between AI factions and the fact that everybody hates everybody else. Several city states have gone and at least one Brazilian city was captured by the Aztecs, but no civ has yet been wiped out or apparently lost its capital (which does make me wonder how the game calculates who's ahead in domination victory). Even upsetting Gandhi - and having previously attacked him - and being repeatedly denounced by him and Montezuma, I haven't faced a single declaration of war.

3) Load sequences: As much as I like the sound of Sean Bean's voice, do I really have to put up with his spiel EVERY time I LOAD a Saved game? I'm hoping I just missed the Mute Option.

Yes, that's a nuisance - as are the long load times (a problem with Civ V as well, which at least didn't repeat the voiceover). It doesn't help that the intro sequences aren't as well-written as the Civ V ones, and those weren't great.

4) Game Setup: Where's the option to select how many City-States will be in the game? How about Raging Barbarians or No Barbarians? Or empires needing to be entirely exterminated, units and cities, to be eliminated? Or a dozen other Setup choices that were available in Civ5?

Never used any of those, but I very much miss the loss of the random map size option.

Admittedly, I've only been playing the game for 9 hours so far, but this is certainly feeling like Beyond Earth. Which is to say, unlike Civ4 and Civ5 which I played many,many, many times, I will instead play through a time or two and then move on to play something -- ANYTHING else.

Civ VI so far seems to me to be a good game hidden behind bad graphics and a terrible interface - a few minor missing options, however irritating the omission, don't really impact gameplay.

 

[bbbt]

I'm definitely enjoying it and doesn't feel like a step backwards to me. There are definitely some mechanics that need to be refined, but that's not unusual

1) Racial customization: From what I had been hearing in the Press Releases, I had gotten the impression that Civ6 was going to have MORE customization than Civ4 or Civ5. In those, you could "create your own race", but they were actually nothing more than taking an existing race and simply renaming the race and leader. That at least gave me the illusion of creating MY unique race. Especially when coupled with the ability to name my cities to be this supposed unique race's naming scheme. As far as I have seen, the player can't rename _anything_. Sad. I would have thought the mechanics had already been worked out so that renaming elements would have been a simple programming task in Civ6. What I had been HOPING for was to be able to select from menus for racial traits and advantages along with leader traits. <<That would have made for some honest-to-goodness Customization. Now I can't even rename cities.

I think they were saying it was easier to create MODs of leaders than in Civ 5. I.e. it's more customizable via modding. The city rename is supposed to be coming, per developer comments in a livestream, so hopefully that'll be part of a patch soon.

 

[Krajzen]

Why are you using the word "race" as if the game's factions were, idk, aliens, not human civilisations
countries
nations
empires
peoples
cultures
states?

Any word fits them better than extremely weird "race"

 

[Plus Ultra]

I'd say Civ VI took a couple of steps backward from BNW on two fronts: UI and balance. This is understandable on a vanilla release and will eventually get polished trought patches, DLC and expansions.

Everything else, I'd say Civ VI is a huge step forward. Having a blast playing it.

 

[Fierro]

Definetly not. I love the new feature that allows you to pin a label on certain tile and mark him for future purpose (it can be ancient settlement, place for future disctricts or new cities)

 

[deltahawk5]

The game certainly took a step back in terms of options. However, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt in comparing it to Civ V, which is going into its 6th year in existence. It'll certainly need one or two major patches before it's up to an acceptable vanilla standard.

 

[Kev1916]

YES, thou TBF it only took Firaxis 2 years to fix CIv V into a game worth playing, AI sucks UI is awful, its to easy blah blah see you in two years

 

[CaiusDrewart]

In the advanced setup options, there is a "No Barbarians" box you can tick. Unfortunately there's no way to change the number of city-states, which is a great shame. There's no "Raging Barbarians" option, but to be fair I hardly think Civ VI needs one!

I agree the warmonger penalty is making diplomacy nonfunctional at the moment. This seems like something that could be modded pretty easily though.

 

[CaptainPatch]

#1 is what I hated about Civ Beyond Earth, so I'm glad they got away from that. I like clearly defined civs with uniqueness to them.

#2 is what went wrong with Brave New World. After I got BNW, it seemed that no one declared hardly ever. It was kind of boring with no threat whatsoever. There needs to be that threat of an AI declaring on you to slow your progress to whatever goal you have. Yes it can be annoying, but I rather like the increases in DoWs

#3 seems a bit petty. It's a game, it has load screens, if it bothers you that much, mute your volume?

#4 is legit. I like having the ability to set the number of CSs, and I always had raging barbs on, but this game seems to have shipped with raging barbs ON lol.

Not picking on you personally, but rather that you commented in the same vein as several other respondents.

#1) I'm a firm believer of "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it but not have it." Personalization/non-personaliztion is pretty much a matter for the players' preferences. I have always, going all the way back to Civ I, grooved on the concept of starting with a wandering tribe circa 4,000 B.C. and shaped its development all the way through @2300 A.D. In doing so, there is absolutely NO WAY that even the labeled civs would have been recognizable to the historical civs. This is why I preferred to create entirely unique races/civs/empires/whatever. If the Option is there, but you have no interest in using it, it's simplicity itself to just do the vanilla civ selection. But for those that DO like to customize their civ, if the Option Is NOT there, they have to miss out on a feature that was available going all the way back to Civ4. (Possibly earlier.)

#2) I don't mind that DoWs _can_ occur. But, please, at least show me casus belli more substantial than the monarch woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning! Further, would it really have been too difficult to add 5-6 civs to the mix that were NOT as bloodthirsty as Genghis Khan? There's, what, 19? 20? civs in the mix. Does EVERY single one of them have to be an out-and-out warmonger?

#3) Yeah, it is petty. But would it be all that much more difficult to add "Skip Intro" to the Options? Especially since they have already demonstrated in earlier renditions that they were entirely capable of doing so.

#4) What I dislike is that EVERY die roll is ruled by Fate. I liked being able to reseed the Random Number Generator. Perhaps it forces everyone to be "honest" by guaranteeing that a given outcome for a given event will ALWAYS be the same, no matter how often you re-Load a Saved game. (The lengthy time Loading alone should be enough to dissuade players from using that tactic.)

Overall, of the new features, I think Districts hold the greatest potential. OTOH, I really have no idea how a player is supposed to play a coherent Religion strategy. It seems to be predicated entirely on Luck.

If I were to make an analogy, I'd say that Civ6 plays less like Chess and more like pinball. And suggesting that it rates a high evaluation score (8, 9, 10), based on the pure speculation that it WILL have all the necessary fixits, tweaks, and add-ons provided by patches, expansions, and DLCs undercuts the entire rating system. Game reviewers are supposed to rate what is in front of them NOW.... Not some vague idea that "It WILL be fixed to where it rates this review score... someday... probably."

 

[apostaganha]

for me civ 6 is a bit of disapointing

 

[Magil]

It took some significant steps backwards in terms of UI and balance (no idea why old systems like chopping and deleting units were altered when they were fine before). Most everything else I think is good for the game though.