Does Civ 6 have the potential to surpass Civ 4?

[isau]

I think the District system has opened Civ up to incredible possibilities. The thing I have to keep reminding myself is this the Civ 6 base game. I can't even imagine what this game will be like when fully fleshed out it with its likely 2 expansion packs (fingers crossed).

I am picturing, for example, how in expansion packs we might see Corporations make their return in the form of Districts, or what the U.N. will look like if they give that an entire expansion pack. Plus the original ideas I'm sure they have about things we haven't thought of. Will we get a Civ 6 Venice? Time will tell.

 

[dexters]

I'm going to make a bold claim and say diplo VC is getting added back in with a much more fleshed out world Congress / UN in an expansion

That was the only glaring ommision from Civ6 vanilla and we all sort of agreed we weren't too keen in diplo VC as it was. I was fairly certain that was the VC they would take out too when it became known they would take out one VC and add a new VC.

 

[Biz_]

Well, which game mechanics of Civilization IV received complaints? How was the game fundamentally flawed?

civ4 was "boring" for a lot of people because it was just a strategy game about making the most stuff. think of how quickly you hit "end turn" once you finished expanding

if you don't play it competitively where you have to figure out how to outmaneuver your opponents to get ahead, i think it falls short for a lot of casual players (which is most people not on this forum)

like if you civ4 "properly", you don't even need any of the expansions. at high levels of play, the expansions just make the balance worse

but the thought of playing a civ game without all the features is horrifying to a lot of people because the game isn't about the strategy contest to them - it's about all the "interesting" things they can do with an empire. they play it like sim city, not like starcraft

 

[jjkrause84]

V is a much better game than IV. It's systems are more complex yet better interconnected. IV is a shallow game compared to V, and it's systems are still more flawed than those found in V. I honestly think the bizarre worship of IV is due mostly to people who care more about the switch to 1UPT than anything else the games actually had to offer.

'Complexity' and 'depth' are two very different things. Civ 5 ultimately had more systems, more moving parts, but the end result was fewer decisions that really mattered....in part, yes, because 1UPT meant that you could turn around and destroy the AI any time you wanted. The only thing stopping you was your own self-selected limitations. In previous Civs the AI was far from perfect, but at least it could pose a threat and defend itself.

Just look at the strategic thought behind 'do I chop this forest or not' in Civ 4:

- Do I need the hammers now, or can I hold off until lumbermills?
- What are the hammers for?
- Do I have Mathematics yet?
- What else could my worker be doing?

A simple and commonplace decision was both meaningful and deep in Civ 4. Civ 5 had nothing like it.

 

[jjkrause84]

I don't think Civ VI will surpass IV, for the simple reason that they're such different games I don't evaluate them in parallel. I played a few hours of IV last night, and one thing that struck me is how beautifully simple the game is. The strategic depth is immense, but the core of gameplay is pretty straight-forward. And those are good qualities, IMO.

Civ V lost a lot of that depth of gameplay, and to make up for it, added many more layers of "stuff" to do. That successfully shored it up as a game, and now is much better than it was at launch. But it hardly resembles IV. VI takes the same thing even further, with things like districts being whole mini-games in and of themselves. Those are also good qualities, IMO.

Civ VI is well beyond Civ IV in a "lots of fun mini-games" capacity. It will not surpass Civ IV in a "simple decisions with huge depth of gameplay" capacity. To me, that makes the OP's question impossible to answer. (Although for my money, Civ IV is still my favorite.)

This is exactly it. Civ V (and to an extent Civ VI) relies on fluff and distractions to keep you from realising how insignificant everything is. In Civ IV getting that one particular wonder really mattered. The difference between having 5 or 6 cities was vast (thanks to Oxford and Wall Street). Bee-lining that one critical tech mattered. In Civ V I felt like nothing truly mattered.

All that said, I do think Civ VI is a solid game with a lot of potential. It's going to take a miracle for it to be better than Civ IV, though.

 

[Lyoncet]

Just look at the strategic thought behind 'do I chop this forest or not' in Civ 4:

- Do I need the hammers now, or can I hold off until lumbermills?
- What are the hammers for?
- Do I have Mathematics yet?
- What else could my worker be doing?

A simple and commonplace decision was both meaningful and deep in Civ 4. Civ 5 had nothing like it.

Excellent example!

I do like VI so far, especially given it hasn't even had any patches yet. Of course I imagine the future content will all be of the "more stuff" variety, so even if it improves upon the game, the gap between Civ VI and what is great about Civ IV will only get wider.

Also, triple adjacency bonus for eXplorminate posters!

 

[isau]

'Complexity' and 'depth' are two very different things. Civ 5 ultimately had more systems, more moving parts, but the end result was fewer decisions that really mattered....in part, yes, because 1UPT meant that you could turn around and destroy the AI any time you wanted. The only thing stopping you was your own self-selected limitations. In previous Civs the AI was far from perfect, but at least it could pose a threat and defend itself.

Just look at the strategic thought behind 'do I chop this forest or not' in Civ 4:

- Do I need the hammers now, or can I hold off until lumbermills?
- What are the hammers for?
- Do I have Mathematics yet?
- What else could my worker be doing?

A simple and commonplace decision was both meaningful and deep in Civ 4. Civ 5 had nothing like it.

See, this is the kind of thing that always really frustrates me about discussions about Civ 5.

Civ 5 was not as well balanced as 4, that I can admit (not that 4 was perfectly balanced.) But a lot of things about Civ 5 are adjustable. It is not the case that people who enjoyed 5 were just playing it as is, or that it was never capable offering significant challenges. The Community Balance Patch was excellent, and even just tweaking around with some numbers could make that game much more difficult. The fact that the meta game was the 4 city empire doesn't mean those of us with hundreds of hours in that game played that way all the time.

 

[ahcos]

Well... "Civ"6 has maybe the best vanilla release of the series.

1UPT still kills it for me because it makes war unbearable, the AI's just too dumb to handle it. It's as simple as that, unfortunately. Don't get your hopes up, there won't be a big patch fixing the underlying issues. There hasn't been one for "Civ"5, even though it was a huge commercial sucess.

And it's not even the stupid AI that kills all the fun, it's also that wars in "Civ"5, just like in "Civ"6, are way, WAY to tedious with all the units you have to move around. Micromanagement is a lot less impactful, diplomacy is ridiculous....

There are a lot of oh-so-great improvements in the newest incarnation of the series that i'd LOVE to see in a real Civ game, but for me personally, the series ended with Civ4, simple as that. 5+6 are... something else entirly. Which is fine, honestly. I've had my fair share of fun with Civ games.

But don't ever think that "Civ"6 can surpass Civ4, as "Civ"6 isn't even a real game of the franchise. It has the looks, but lacks the soul.

 

[XboxAddict77]

I think he has done and will do a great job, and that Civ VI will be a really good game. But I also think that in the end, the AI will never know how to fight, and combat will always be an absurdly easy charade. The non-combat portions of the game will be really strong though.

Question: I've never played Civ IV, but how was the combat AI in that game? If it was better how did it get "worse" in CiV and Civ VI?

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Question: I've never played Civ IV, but how was the combat AI in that game? If it was better how did it get "worse" in CiV and Civ VI?

It's not so much that the AI was "smarter" in Civ IV. It was just that combat was simpler when stacks were allowed. Basically in Civ IV the AI could combine all its units into a big stack and march it toward your cities. If you didn't have enough units to deal with that stack, you were screwed. So the AI could actually bring most of its resources to bear. In Civs V and VI, the AI might have ten times your army size, but 90% of those units are milling around uselessly in the back. In Civ IV, if the AI had ten times your army size, it would form a gigantic stack you could not possibly deal with, and then methodically take one of your cities after another. So the AI was way, way more dangerous.

Now, contrary to popular belief, massing all your units into one giant stack is not the most effective way to play Civ IV. Try that in multiplayer against some competent humans and see what happens. But it does have a certain efficacy, and it's a simple enough strategy the AI was capable of doing it. The Civ V and VI combat AI basically can't do anything.

 

[Esperr]

Question: I've never played Civ IV, but how was the combat AI in that game? If it was better how did it get "worse" in CiV and Civ VI?

Being able to stack units made the AI "good" at war. If you didnt prepare to defend yourself they would suddenly DOW and roll up with a 60-80 strong SOD and just slowly absorb your empire city by city. So they were actually a threat. In IV, DOW would make my heart race, in V and VI I ignore it half the time.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

civ4 was "boring" for a lot of people because it was just a strategy game about making the most stuff. think of how quickly you hit "end turn" once you finished expanding

if you don't play it competitively where you have to figure out how to outmaneuver your opponents to get ahead, i think it falls short for a lot of casual players (which is most people not on this forum)

like if you civ4 "properly", you don't even need any of the expansions. at high levels of play, the expansions just make the balance worse

but the thought of playing a civ game without all the features is horrifying to a lot of people because the game isn't about the strategy contest to them - it's about all the "interesting" things they can do with an empire. they play it like sim city, not like starcraft

I don't want that to be true....... but you're probably right
Similisation 6?

 

[Stilgar08]

Being able to stack units made the AI "good" at war. If you didnt prepare to defend yourself they would suddenly DOW and roll up with a 60-80 strong SOD and just slowly absorb your empire city by city. So they were actually a threat. In IV, DOW would make my heart race, in V and VI I ignore it half the time.

I'm not a fan of 1UPT myself and I think they should soften the caps further , not only making 1UPT even harder for the AI to get (corps and armies and support units) . . . Maybe 3-4UPT, allow friendly units on the same tile, more unit layers. . . .

SODs are uninteresting nowadays nevertheless and would help zero . . .

 

[need my speed]

civ4 was "boring" for a lot of people because it was just a strategy game about making the most stuff. think of how quickly you hit "end turn" once you finished expanding

if you don't play it competitively where you have to figure out how to outmaneuver your opponents to get ahead, i think it falls short for a lot of casual players (which is most people not on this forum)

like if you civ4 "properly", you don't even need any of the expansions. at high levels of play, the expansions just make the balance worse

but the thought of playing a civ game without all the features is horrifying to a lot of people because the game isn't about the strategy contest to them - it's about all the "interesting" things they can do with an empire. they play it like sim city, not like starcraft

You certainly have a point in that the competitiveness is miles and miles ahead of any other Civilization game - I believe Sulla has a few examples on his website of the sheer work that goes into one tiny turn - but as for casual players, myself included, I don't think many care about winning, or about finishing a game with a victory condition. I think diplomacy - an AI with a rational personality - and perhaps most importantly, the feeling that you're building an empire, are extremely important factors that both V and VI lack. Though VI might be able to reignite that feeling of building an empire... I doubt it, because of districts (I actually like them! But not for my idealised >Civilization< game) and one unit per tile, but we'll see.

 

[ThERat]

Question: I've never played Civ IV, but how was the combat AI in that game? If it was better how did it get "worse" in CiV and Civ VI?

Have a look at some of the Always War Succession games that we played in Civ3 as well as Civ4. They are amazing games with lots of challenges posed by the AI due to the fact that they can handle stacks far better than 1upt. Wars with 1upt are painful.

For a start, have a look at those games:
Civ 4: http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/grumpy-old-men-awp-hub.157868/
Civ 3: http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/handy-21-regular-pangaea-awd-again.130862/

These two games are some sort of pinnacles of Always War games. The AI is constantly threatening to beat you completely, but we managed to hold on. By the way, there were quite a few Always War games we lost when the AI overran us.

 

[dexters]

The problem with stack warfare , especially in those insane Sid-level always war scenarios is that it devolves into maximizing production (clicking citizens on and off, overflow management, manazing improvements etc) and spending an hour managing stacks. It's really a management sim and not an empire builder at that point.

I love Civ3 , and like Civ4 but I didn't love and like both for the stacks, it was for the other things.

In Civ3, I loved it more for how Soren Johnson programmed a lot of low level things and let the AI build up on it. Diplomacy, city level, and even unit level. What's really great is the AI isn't very smart , and Soren knew it, but he programmed for it to know just enough that it can by chance and happenstance arrive at a seemingly believable aggregation of results, what he called 'emergent behavior'. Like in Civ3, there were these elaborate chains on alliances that cascade into WW1 style world wars. Of course, the curtain is unveiled when the AI's stupidity is made plain when some of them will sue for peace and dow the next turn again and again because it fails to realize it's in a defensive pact that obliges its right hand to attack the same civ the left hand is trying to make peace with. But it works in such an elegant way and often enough to trick most people. I actually feel like a lot of was lost when things got more locked down in 4,5,6 with the AI subroutines becoming more complex, but also less emergent. But I don't bemoan that experiment that was abandoned in Civ3, like 1UPT, ship has sailed.

Anyways, I think we've sort of arrived at a place where (and I've said this before) people who like 1upt will like it, people who don't won't but it doesn't really answer the question of where Civ6 stands.

As I said upthread, it's the best and most complete initial release. I can't wait to see where they take it. And yes, it absolutely can surpass Civ4. Actually for me Civ5 BNW already did, years ago.

 

[ThERat]

In Civ3, I loved it more for how Soren Johnson programmed a lot of low level things and let the AI build up on it.

In this sense Soren was the ideal Civ programmer. He knew the downfalls of the AI and worked with it. To me, Civ6 makes some fundamental mistakes as it is loaded with features, we know, the AI can not and will never be able to handle. More options are nice to have for players, but if the AI can't handle it, the SP experience will suffer.

We can always argue about SOD versus 1upt. To each their own, of course. But programmers should keep in mind the flaws of an AI in a civilization game setting.

 

[Quoth the Raven]

Civ V with the 3 units per tile mod was way better than Civ IV in my opinion. They should implement something like that in Civ VI. One unit per tile would work better if maps were a lot bigger and units costed less.

 

[isau]

Question: I've never played Civ IV, but how was the combat AI in that game? If it was better how did it get "worse" in CiV and Civ VI?

In Civ IV you just walk up and touch the other stack, just like in Civ 5 with a melee unit. The game (generally) automatically picks the best defender in the stack and the two units fight each other. In most cases any attack will kill either the attacking or defending unit (individual units are much more expendable in Civ IV). You just keep walking into the opponent until one or the other stack is dead.

The AI could handle it because the task was mainly "build a lot of units" and then "walk to location." It was/is definitely not especially clever with its stacks.

 

[lamaros]

I do think the primary flaw of the AI - building way too many units and sending them in odd directions - can be address with better programing. But it will require a decent effort.

And there are other elements it does well (rotates damaged units with full health ones, etc).