Do you prefer Civ IV's traits or Civ V's unique abilities and what'd you prefer in VI

[salty mud]

Civ IV and V were quite different in the way they regarded their civilisations. Civ IV gave traits according to its leader and affected how well certain playstyles could be played. In some civs' cases, more than one playstyle was encouraged through the use of multiple leaders.

Civ V took a different approach with unique abilities. Now, each civ gets a certain bonus often seemingly based on its actions in real life. For example, Denmark's history as a Viking nation gives their embarked units greater movement.

I personally prefer the Civ IV system. Whereas some traits are nearly always better than others (I'd take financial over protective any day) there is at least some use in every trait. Some of Civ V's abilities are very situational, and can sometimes be rendered totally useless. What's more, some unique abilities are clearly superior to others. Japan's Bushido ability is far superior to England's Sun Never Sets for example. Sun Never Sets can be utterly useless on land maps - Bushido is useful in any war. Spain is utterly useless if you don't find a Natural Wonder. Abilities pertaining to city states are useless if no city states are on the map and so on.

I much prefer the small, but nearly always useful bonus to a specific but sometimes worthless and too situational ability. I hope Civ VI takes steps towards this again.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IV does maintenance and UI better, V does UA and RNG better among many things.

The reason I like UA over traits is that they're a lot more flexible and variant. With set traits recycled they have similar bonuses and strength, making it harder to balance trait vs civ. With UA you have a lot more ability to really alter a civ's gameplay while giving them a great or trash UU/UB to cover strength to some degree.

Some UA weren't completely thought out or what I would have picked or whatever, but as a model I think UA are better because you can do a lot more with them and in principle match/surpass traits.

I'm a lot more torn between SP and civics, partially because neither managed to completely balance their options.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'd say weak design of the unique abilities in Civ5 shouldn't be considered a weakness of the whole system. It allows more unique civs than Civ4 system.

 

[Teproc]

It's mindboggling to me that anyone is voting for CIV traits here. I understand people preferring CIV overall, but the added flavor and variety in civ design in CiV is one of its huge draws...

Balance is ... almost irrelevant to me, as far as civilizations go. Civ is an exclusively SP game for me, so who cares if it's easier to win with Korea than with Denmark ? What matters far more is replayability : and CiV's unique abilities offers a lot more of that than CIV's traits (I'm not saying one is more replayable than the other overall, just that specific aspect).

 

[MadDjinn]

the uniqueness allowed per civ in V was far better than the blandness of recycled traits in IV.

granted, that's looking at it as a model, as TMiT said, rather than the execution of the model.

So continuing to go with unique styles would be good for civvi, but I wouldn't want the exact same thing as V.

 

[Ronnoc83]

I understand that IV's gives the ability for lots of leaders and easy to make civs, but it totally not worth it when it comes to variance and uniqueness of V.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It's mindboggling to me that anyone is voting for CIV traits here. I understand people preferring CIV overall, but the added flavor and variety in civ design in CiV is one of its huge draws...

Balance is ... almost irrelevant to me, as far as civilizations go. Civ is an exclusively SP game for me, so who cares if it's easier to win with Korea than with Denmark ? What matters far more is replayability : and CiV's unique abilities offers a lot more of that than CIV's traits (I'm not saying one is more replayable than the other overall, just that specific aspect).

This matches my feelings very well. I'm not so concerned with Balance as I am that the uniqueness sufficiently differentiates each civ from each other one. Sometimes a weak ability makes for a bigger challenge and a more satisfying experience.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ IV wasn't particularly well-executed wrt traits either to be fair. FIN was overrated by the community, but some traits were still too much better than the others in most cases. One of the patches nerfed down protective due to bugging overflow to give no gold at all (in an attempt to fix it getting multiplied gold from wall whips/chops), but that's one trait that really didn't need nerfing at all.

So you'd get god-tier civs like Inca with FIN/IND and one of the best UU/UB in the game for single player, or England with FIN/PHI and redcoats, then you'd get dumpster'd stuff like HRE with landcraps and IMP/PRO, or Germany/USA effectively not having unique units or buildings at all in practice with solid but unspectacular traits.

The end result was that traits didn't offer significantly less disparity between civs compared to what V gives. Even very dangerous civs in V like Huns early have at least some counter play, in contrast with say Mali using skirmishers on you early in IV, where in MP if you don't have Inca or very fast access to resources you can expect to be pillaged to death without anything you can realistically do to answer.

 

[Nixalo]

Why not both?

Couldn't a Civ get a UA, a trait, and either a UB or UU?

You could even balance strong UAs with weaker traits and viceversa. The unique abilities of CivV really brought out the fun of seeing a new set of Civs during a game. This is one thing I see that hurts many of those "build a faction" 4x games.

 

[Barathor]

I most definitely prefer Civ5's unique abilities.

I would actually like to see more unique units/buildings/improvements per civ as well. Perhaps three, instead of two. But within those three, each civ has to have at least one unique unit and building. The third unique is the wild card. I'm usually a less is more kind of guy, but being limited to two doesn't always work well. For example, in Civ5, a civ with two iconic unit types loses out on any kind of powerful building in each of their cities.

Also, abilites-wise, I'd like to see the removal of "titles" given to leaders' abilities. It focuses the theme of the ability too much. It would be nice to have more flexible, broader, and expanded unique abilities which don't have to focus on a particular theme and can be a whole bunch of different things to fit the theme of the civ as a whole.

 

[poom3619]

Well, It seems like Civ 5 UA, as the OP said, is "drawback" of bad UA design instead of the error of the system. Civ4 and Civ3 method is pretty limited and can be overpower or underpower due to bad combination.

When Civ 5 UA is bad. It can be fixed by replacing it. It is not as simple with trait that shared across several civ. It also give more room of creativity for modders.

 

[Tatran]

The reason I like UA over traits is that they're a lot more flexible and variant.

No, they are not. In most situations it is all or nothing (France, Spain), they are straigthforward (use it or not)
and most UAs are useful only very short period during the game while (most) traits (FIN, CRE) are helpful every turn.

 

[Xen]

I very much prefer the traits.

In civ V it feels like very often the "ability" of a civ railroads it into a certain strategy direction, and that if you dont make use of it in a certain way you're missing out on the full potential of the civ. Where as with Civ 4 almost any of the traits are helpful for any strategy over the course of the game.

I also like it as Civ4 traits tend to be not as heavy handed (IMO of course- YMMV) as Civ V abilities. Which pleases me ust as much as civ 'traits' in my perspective should be something you invest in over time. More like Europea Universalis 3 for example. (Or even EUIV, but that skews too close to pre determined rote that the Civ franchise embraces, which isnt usually something I applaud.)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No, they are not. In most situations it is all or nothing (France, Spain), they are straigthforward (use it or not)
and most UAs are useful only very short period during the game while (most) traits (FIN, CRE) are helpful every turn.

I meant from design, not from implementation necessarily.

 

[GenjiKhan]

You could even balance strong UAs with weaker traits and viceversa. The unique abilities of CivV really brought out the fun of seeing a new set of Civs during a game. This is one thing I see that hurts many of those "build a faction" 4x games.

Yeah, I think this one is the better alternative . I'd prefer that they first set the traits for each civ, and then give an UA to balance it . Or even better, they can adopt an idea from a certain Civ 4 mod, to add negative traits .

 

[JeszKar]

Why don't we have both?

 

[AriochIV]

I like the way Civ V's abilities were more unique and interesting, but it was nice to have more variety for replay value.

I would be very surprised if they had more than one leader per civilization in Civ VI. They say in the articles that they're trying hard to make each leader's behavior more unique, and increasing the number of leaders per civ would double or triple that job.

 

[poom3619]

Yeah, I think this one is the better alternative . I'd prefer that they first set the traits for each civ, and then give an UA to balance it . Or even better, they can adopt an idea from a certain Civ 4 mod, to add negative traits .

I don't sure it's a good idea to use UA and trait to balance each other. Balance either of them and UU and/or UB is pretty complicate already.

 

[Zaarin]

The generic civilizations in Civ4 were largely what drew me to Civ5 even before Civ5 got improved by expansions; if anything, Civ6 should continue to make civs more unique, not go back to the insipid bonuses of Civ4.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I'm all for a trait bonus and flavor, a unique ability, and 2 civ-specific Uniques (UU/UB/UI). I like the idea of a civ having a UA that is historically accurate but also allows the leader to have a trait that is historically accurate. Additionally, it would allow multiple leaders for the same civ that share the UA and UU/UB/UI from the civ but also has a trait that flavors that leader.

To borrow from Civ4 and Civ5 as an example:

America: Manifest Destiny, B-17, Minute Man
Washington: Charismatic and favors wider expansion
Roosevelt: Industrious and favors infrastructure