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

[Virupaksha]

I'll qualify this by saying I haven't played civ 5 in a long time and there were only 17 civs when I bought my copy but in both civ3 (persians) and civ5 (french) there was a single civ which seemed just too overpowered not to play it.

In civ4 still after all these years it's hard to pinpoint the best civ. Financial, expansionist, creative and spiritual are all great traits and a case can be made for philosophical and even industrious as well, even organised as you up the difficulties. Then you have India's supremely overpowered unique unit to consider.

Best leader in civ4 seems impossible to call. One of the reasons why its a superior game.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I'll qualify this by saying I haven't played civ 5 in a long time and there were only 17 civs when I bought my copy but in both civ3 (persians) and civ5 (french) there was a single civ which seemed just too overpowered not to play it.

In civ4 still after all these years it's hard to pinpoint the best civ. Financial, expansionist, creative and spiritual are all great traits and a case can be made for philosophical and even industrious as well, even organised as you up the difficulties. Then you have India's supremely overpowered unique unit to consider.

Best leader in civ4 seems impossible to call. One of the reasons why its a superior game.

I found organized to actually get less impressive as I went up in the levels. Actually started finding industrious and philosophical to be a lot more powerful. Philosophical is usually a top-tier trait in my opinion and industrious is up there maybe not on the highest level but it's high not just for the fail gold but also for the national wonders if not for all out Wonder spam.

 

[Atlas627]

UAs is definitely a better system, because it has more variety.

However, I think the multiple leaders need to return, if they intend to make the AI play to their personality so heavily. Having the same civ use the same strategy every time will get predictable. Of course, that's more work, but I think it will be necessary.

Also, if they have multiple leaders, then they'll need to have some sort of differentiation between them. So either traits or some other system would need to be there too...

 

[nokmirt]

I like the UAs in Civ 5. What I would like to see is more variety with UAs in Civ 6. From a modding perspective this would help us not have to add so many dummy buildings and dummy social policies into our mods. It would make modding abilities a bit easier.

 

[civvver]

Well I went with other cus while unique abilities is better in theory, in practice I find most of the civ5 civs kind of boring and too situational. I know they want to force you into playing like the civ, I mean your start is even biased base on your civ! but I don't really like that. I enjoyed the genericness of civ4 to a point.

I think we need a little of both. Maybe give leaders traits and civs unique abilities and uu's ub's. One trait that defines them like expansive, financial, creative, industrious and make up some new ones like resilient or something I don't know. Then the civs contain the unique abilities allowing for double leaders of civs. Something that civs share but then also maintain more uniqueness than just traits.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

The traits in Rising Tide could be the new approach they could go. That is more or less a fixed unique ability combined with 3 other choosable traits. But this was possibly also done because of the lack of UU's, UB's and UI's.
A system with 1 fixed UA + 1 choosable trait (without the diplomatic capital system) is my preference I think. This would especially helpful with map-dependent UA's if you are on the wrong type of map.

 

[poom3619]

UAs is definitely a better system, because it has more variety.

However, I think the multiple leaders need to return, if they intend to make the AI play to their personality so heavily. Having the same civ use the same strategy every time will get predictable. Of course, that's more work, but I think it will be necessary.

Also, if they have multiple leaders, then they'll need to have some sort of differentiation between them. So either traits or some other system would need to be there too...

In Civ 5 mod, it is treated as different civilization. With different UA/UU/UB. If Civ 6 going to have multiple leaders. They can have different UA but the same UU and UB.

Although I doubt it will happen consider all of the work that make another leader is equal to making another civ. To make a Civ5 leader, Firaxis need more complex 3D art and voiceover compare to Civ4.

I understand why Firaxis prefer to made 34 civ instead of 24 civ with 34 leaders.

 

[Monado]

Unique abilities....by a very very long shot. If Civ 6 was to ever regress back to just traits, I wouldn't bother buying it.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

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.

this is exactly what I was thinking as well

 

[ehecatzin]

I really prefer the UA system of civ5, however I would love it if they were a bit more dynamic on CiVI, as in having the option to focus on certain aspects of your civ (like ideologies but for each civ) for example, playing Rome and get to choose going republic or empire for diferent sets of unique stuff.

 

[Lexicus]

I like the UAs in theory, though in Civ V's case I ended up not playing the majority of Civs because I just couldn't bring myself to start a game, because their traits just weren't interesting enough or would pigeonhole me into playing a way I didn't enjoy.

 

[Zaarin]

UAs is definitely a better system, because it has more variety.

However, I think the multiple leaders need to return, if they intend to make the AI play to their personality so heavily. Having the same civ use the same strategy every time will get predictable. Of course, that's more work, but I think it will be necessary.

Also, if they have multiple leaders, then they'll need to have some sort of differentiation between them. So either traits or some other system would need to be there too...

I'm not opposed to seeing multiple leaders prefer, but tbh I'd prefer it to come in DLC or expansions than in the base game. I'd rather have 18-20 civs to start out with than 12 civs with 20 leaders, for example.

 

[bite]

Civ 4 traits were ok, but generic, I did like unique abilities, but they could have spent a bit more time tweaking them to balance out the meta of the game

 

[Lanstro]

Looks like I'm part of the minority here - I thought civ4's traits were excellent for replayability and balancing. Most civs handled most game conditions fairly well, and could reasonably pursue either a peaceful game or an aggressive game. Some exceptions of course - financial was overall a bit too strong and protective a bit too weak, and Japan had nothing to support a peaceful game.

In contrast, I found many of civ5's abilities boring past the first game. Particularly so the war-related ones like the Vikings, Mongols and Carthaginians. As others have said, I found many of them railroaded you into specific gameplans, or were pretty much useless in certain map types. That said, some of the abilities were quite fun over multiple playthroughs regardless of game conditions - highlights for me were Spain, the Aztecs and the Maya.

I play random civ, and I find myself restarting civ5 games very frequently because I just didn't want to play those bland civs. Whereas in civ4, the Arabians would be pretty much the only auto-restart civ for me.

Hopefully Civ6 takes the best from both worlds.

 

[Acken]

Civ5 system is better. Especially for mods.

On the other hand some civs really had boring UAs that were never changed.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Neither Civ IV's 'traits' nor Civ V's 'Uniques' were flexible enough to show the variability of any civilization lasting 1000s of years. In fact, the Civ V 'Uniques' straitjacketed the gamer into One or a few aspects of the civilization, which is why Modders produced 3 - 6 different versions of Russia, England/Britain, USA, France and China - NONE of those civilizations' historical uniqueness could be indicated with just 2 or 3 units/abilities/buildings.

My preference, which I have posted about before, would be a combination of 'generic' Uniques that are related to the civilization's geographical position (location and resources available to its cities) and development in the game: for the most classic example, an 'England' with a starting position in the middle of a continent and no port cities among its first five foundations will NOT have a Unique related to Naval units or Naval Warfare! On the other hand, it might have a 'generic' Unique ability related to its starting position in hilly/mountain country, jungle, forest, desert or marsh, and it might develop a unique unit like the Longbowman ('Yeoman Archer'?) by adopting certain Social Policies, having access to lots of wood, and building lots of foot 'ranged' units.

The result would be civilizations that might or might not develop exactly as they did historically, but would get 'unique' abilities that are always Useable based on the flow of the game - and would have access to 'uniques' peculiar to that civilization, but only if they develop along the actual, historical lines.

Interestingly, this is similar in concept to the stated/suggested changes to the Tech Tree in which technological development, it seems, will be related to game conditions and the actions of the civilization in the game.

 

[Westwall]

Civ5 system is better. Especially for mods.

On the other hand some civs really had boring UAs that were never changed.

Or just plain awful, like in the case of the Mongols.

If anything, their UA was actually counter-productive because to make use of it you had to conquer city-states, which always torpedoed your reputation with other leaders.

 

[Ikael]

Unique Abilities, this is not even a contest. More historical flavour, more different strategies, more replayability.

But if I would rather to pick my favourite differenciation method period, Civilization Revolution's "one extra trait per era" system would take the cake.

 

[salty mud]

How does a single unique ability per civ give "more different strategies, more replay ability?" You're being railroaded to play each civ in a specific way and if you don't you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

 

[Hail]

IV does maintenance and UI better, [...]

disagree. adding a city increases maintenance in all cities by some unknown sum. adding a citizen to a city increases it's maintenance by some unknown sum.