Does Civ 6 have the potential to surpass Civ 4?

[isau]

IMO it's already better than Civ IV because Civ IV is not that much fun. Sorry, I realize that's blasphemy on these boards. But as someone who likes to dig through XML and make small adjustments to suit my gameplay Civ V and VI offer far more systems and hooks than IV did. I can play V and VI. IV I have to turn off after a couple of minutes because it's dull. The AI is more competent in the sense that it can reliably walk to and touch your city with a stack of units, which can cause a loss, but that's not saying much.

 

[Sascha77]

N

Sorry, but can I ask you, on which difficulty you are playing? If you dont go straight for astrology and focus more on the lower part of the tech tree f.e., it is quite hard to get your religion at all beginning with emperor+ difficulty. Sure, you can pump in the prophet wild card, more holy sites, shrines, projects. But all that is not that "en passant" like you are discribing. And if you dont protect your religion and forget it for a dozens of turns, it will just get wiped out by apostles/missionaires spams of the AI ...

Not in my games so far. I've been playing Prince and King. Which, BTW, is also what I play in IV and V and that's what I'm basing my comparison on.

How is it hard to get a religion even if you can't/won't build Stonhenge? The Eurekas make it *pretty* easy to grab all the early tech rather quickly, and being able to found city after city (I'm usually on four or five cities between turns 80 and 90 on standard speed) means that I don't have to neglect my military or exploration while I build a holy site in my capital.

S.

 

[StrideColossus]

Sorry to offer heresy but civ 6 is way better than any of the previous incarnations IMHO - the new mechanisms add another level of complexity and painful decision-making that we haven't had to deal with before (district placement, GP selection, 2 trees, eurekas, etc), the world graphics are gorgeous and offer a lot of visual information, and the music is second-to-none. Obviously the game requires considerable balancing, the AI needs to get it's finger out, production vs science seems way unbalanced, the agendas are currently making all AI civs psychotic, the UI needs work, etc. but I expected such issues and have no doubt they'll will be resolved (or at least mitigated) over time.

For those that consistently raise the spectre of 1UPT being the downfall of civ: it's relatively easy to control a single SOD than manage proper tactics, the civ 6 AI isn't any less competent it just has a lot more to deal with - civ 4 and 5 both suffered from dumb AI. Personally I'd sooner see a vibrant, complex game with a flawed AI than the simplistic approach of civ 4 and certainly the tedious formulaic game that was civ 5 (4 cities tradition, bee-line NC, rationalism, click until VC). Nostalgia is one thing, nit-picking is another.

 

[CultureManiac]

Absolutely it has the potential. It is far better than vanilla CiV, which after BNW became a great game. And comparing Civ6, not even a week out of the gate, with Civ4 mods that have been around for a decade is hardly fair. Civ4 lives on, but we don't need to replicate it.

 

[Rhavanna]

Does it have the potential? Sure. At present? Hell no.

I'm one of those civ4 elitists, but I acknowledge that civ6 has introduced a lot of cool features that show incredible promise with balancing and expansions. The micromanagement in civ4 was incredibly deep and meaningful imo. These new features have the potential to meet that with the right additions and tweaks.

But I also feel like the current 1upt system will forever cripple the AI. In time perhaps modders can fix this, but I found myself easily beating deity AI in my second game. Even monarch AI was a legitimate threat in civ4. In civ6 you can defeat any AI army with a handful of archers and 1 walled city. There's never really a threat from the AI.

 

[Lord Gruin]

This is one of those questions that will never be answered to everyone's satisfaction. Those who hate 1upt will never think that Civ 6 is better than Civ 4, and those who like 1upt will think that Civ 6 is better than Civ 4. I fall in the latter category.

 

[Balkans]

Hello, I'm wondering if based on your current impressions, does Civ 6 have the capability to be even better than Civ 4/5?

Yes. This comes from someone who hated civ 5 and adored civ 4. A nice fat patch down the line, maybe some good expansion, i think civ 6 has capability to be even better than civ 4, it goes without saying than civ 5.

 

[Tomice]

People's minds tend to be too focused on recent memories, so even if we try, we'll have a hard time fairly comparing release-day Civ4 or Civ5 with the new game.
Your subconscious mind inevitably knows that earlier games have been optimized by 2 expansions and a dozen patches.
It's hard assuring your mind that it will be the same for the new game, even if it's extremely likely. The doubt that the game might become another Beyond Earth can't be erased.
TLDR: it's hard to make this comparison.

Personally, I know that Civ4 had serious issues that annoyed the hell out of me, back in the day. I doubt I could return any more.
Apart from 1upt (which I'm neutral about) there is e.g. still the lack of hex tiles and natural border growth - I hated the "fatcross" stile city borders. Ugly road spam was an issue. There are surely more I have forgotten.

My memory of release-day Civ5 is less blurred, and 6 is definitively in a much better state than 5 was at release.

 

[catweazle]

I played Civ 4 and 5 both hundreds of hours and for me Civ 4 was great, Civ 5 was different, not worse, not better, but good in it's own way. Civ 6 at this moment is somewhat below both, but has the potential to rise above them.

 

[UWHabs]

Fix some of the UI issues, improve the AI, and get a balance patch out, and then yeah, I think this could definitely beat 4. And that's not even counting what might happen in an expansion.

 

[dexters]

Civ 4 is beloved (I love it myself) and had the perfect mix of accessibility and relatively low specs requirement to run for about half a decade now. Not to mention the pIles of mods for it. This means for some it is impossible to beat. I can play it on a laptop, netbook , desktop etc. It's as close to a portabe full featured civ game out there. I don't see civ6 hitting that kind of saturation until the end of its life. That's the advantage of being an 11 year old game.

I personally rarely play with mods unless it's a city builder and I prefer the pure civ experience. That may change with Civ6 if mod support is improved and there are cool mods for me to try that I can seamlessly click on and off.

In terms of where the game is positioned. The aesthetics , even minor visual cues like a whirlwind type effect flashing in your districts when you assign a city to build a relevant building for it as well as the ipad friendly tech screens, the whimsical colorful playfield and emotive caricatured leaders tend to indicate there is a desire to position civ6 as being less intimidating and serious than civ5.

Civ6 also has the benefit of picking up where Brave New world left us in terms of features so my mind is ready for where they take this game in its expected 1st and 2nd expansions.

Civ6 has the potential to be very well remembered even if it doesn't quite top civ4. With Ed Beach leading the effort I am pretty confident we'll get a good product at the end of the day.
Regardless of fandoms and preference it's hard to argue that this is a great time to be a civ fanatic.

 

[Lord Shadow]

If you compare it to every vanilla version of every Civ, Civ6 is undoubtedly the best. There's no question about it. Do bring up evidence of any Civ which has had more features and more polish at launch.

I happened to love Civ4 and have lukewarm feelings about Civ5. Civ6 is instantly better than Civ5 and all its expansions, which is a major achievement given how vanilla versions tend to be inferior to those with a couple of sizeable expansions under their belt.

Civ4 is a substantially simpler game at its core, and when people compare it to Civ6, they take expansions, patches and years of modded content for granted. Obviously unfair, just like it would be to compare fully expanded and modded Civ5 to release Civ4 and its issues. Even the idealized masterpiece would pale in such comparison.

 

[lordqarlyn]

I'm probably will always be a CIV 4 BTS player, because some of the minor changes they did in CIV 5 and still kept in CIV 6 irk me.
I don't like the permanency of the starting capitols, I like being able to change my capitol as I see fit, I like being able to raze a capitol if I want.
I was really annoyed that CIV 5 didn't allow bombers to destroy tile improvement; that's been my war strategy since CIV 3.
And now CIV 6 removed the ability to rename cities, and, the sentry function.
People will no doubt tell me to go back to playing CIV 4, which I do, as if that's a bad thing lol.

 

[mazz0]

Yeah, it's hard not to be excited at the prospect of a big expansion for Civ VI isn't it?!

 

[ond_magiker]

Nope.

It's already surpassed 5 G&K (I didn't play BNW).

 

[Bad Wolf]

I don't think it has the potential to be better than IV, unless they get rid of 1UPT and add a lot of flavour (IV had all sorts of world stats etc. that you could check, same with V to a lesser degree).

It could easily surpass V though, it actually feels like a complete game, unlike V which needed two expansions to make it good. (Well ok, one expansion - G&K fixed most of the issues/missing features with vanilla, BNW actually added to the game.)

 

[one179]

Definitely not, CIV 4 is still KING

 

[Captain Sharpe]

The combat/army system of Civ Call to Power was such a thing.
It not only had a limit on army size (18 units IIRC), but also had all units take a role (Melee, Ranged, Flanking) in combat, so that players who would assemble their armies with a combined arms approach would be rewarded by a lage synergy of all of their units.

Not only did it have less micromanagement than 1UPT, but also had a combat in which you actually felt that 2 armies battle against each other ... a feeling that I never had this way in the normaql Civ combat (not even before 1 UPT, when SM-Civ still had stacks)

I still hope for a future Sid Meiers-Civ that implements such a system.
(To be more exactly it is my opinion that a "Greatest Civ of all times" would be one, that sensibly implements both, elements of Civ Call to Power (I/II), as well as elements of the newer parts of SM-Civ)

Your words ring true, and are far more than a mere 'hope', for many of us old grognards who experienced, still remember, and still hold fond memories for: Civ Call to Power (I & II). The creation of such an undoubtedly commercially successful evolution of the Civ franchise by Firaxis would, for many of the franchise's faithful followers, serve as the realization of an enduring dream that we have held onto through the dark days and years since the discouraging release of Civ V and the disastrous 1upt combat mechanism which accompanied it. The combination of Civ VI's new unbundled city administration system and Civ Call to Power's far superior combat system mechanics would soon be proven to be near Nirvana for a solid majority of Civ players, and also a staggeringly commercially successful decision that would excite new and longtime Civ followers alike to a far greater extent than has happened since the release of Civ IV and its hugely popular and successful expansions and mods.

 

[cephalo]

I think it has plenty of potential. I think 3upt is a great compromise between 1upt and doomstacks. If they support modders properly I'm sure the AI will handle it well enough. Civ has never had a great AI and it doesn't need one to be what it is.

 

[jekke]

cmon, let's admit that the best thing about Civ IV was the Rhye's and Fall mod (or mods, more accurately). Accordingly, the future of civ VI depends on how modding-friendly it is going to be. And I am not sure if we have a slightest clue in that respect (of course, those guys keep telling you it will be MUCH MORE friendly than anything else in this world and other sweet stuff, but that's hardly relevant).