How does Civ 6 compare to Civ 4?

[CaiusDrewart]

Overall, I think AI agendas were an interesting idea but should be eliminated.

Sid Meier (or Soren Johnson? I forget) said something about this during a game design talk. He said that it's not fair to make the AI react according to rules that the player would not value.

So like let's say you're designing Spain and you make it an AI rule that Spain will never DOW a civ with the same religion. The player can exploit this rule to control the AI's behavior. If he doesn't want to fight Spain, he can be the same religion. Now imagine it's a multiplayer match and your neighbor civ is a human playing Spain. He is just trying to win. He doesn't care what religion you are.

Same deal with Germany. A human German player is not more likely to declare war on you just because you are sovereign of several city states. He just cares if you're in the lead.

The AI should be programmed to just try to win. There are too many AI behavior rules that are in the game purely to show off the "flavor" of each civilization

It was cool in Civ 3, when civs would have different aggressiveness levels or pursued different victory types. That was just making sure you would face a variety of AI strategies instead of every AI pursuing the same beeline. But now after 3 more sequels, the game is cluttered with AI behavior controls that make them behave crazy.

This stuff should be constrained to the city states. Because they are NPCs, they can't win, but they can give quests and favors. It makes sense to give them thematic behavior & motivations.

Soren Johnson gave an hour-long talk on AI behavior. I think it's up on youtube. But are you sure that's what he said? That would be a very strange thing for the designer of Civ IV to say, given that Civ IV diplomacy is built around stuff like favorite civics and shared religion.

Anyway, I don't think AIs should "play to win." Civ is a historical simulator--a very loose and inaccurate one, sure, but that's still what it is. And in real life, things like feelings of kinship, shared religion, common cultural ties, really do matter to people and stop them from fighting--not all the time, but some of the time. Obviously, when you're just playing a game that you know isn't real, this stuff isn't going to matter. But when you meet other civilizations in your game, those civilizations should care, because they do represent real civilizations, in some abstract way. The player can then choose to roleplay along with that or cynically exploit it, as he or she wishes.

 

[LDiCesare]

The AI should be programmed to just try to win. There are too many AI behavior rules that are in the game purely to show off the "flavor" of each civilization.

That's what Jon Shafer did for Civ V. The result was horrible.
The AI should not be programmed to just try to win. That is not what most players want, and that would make some victory conditions impossible and the game less rich (currently it's religion, before that it was diplomatic victory).

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, that seems like the opposite of what Soren's talk was about.

The flaw with the AI playing to win is that it basically removes all diplomacy aspects, as we saw in civ 5. You could have a nearly perfect relationship with someone, and then when they get to the mid-game, if they realize their only chance to win is to declare war on you, they'll declare war. And that makes for a bad mechanic.

Now, on the other side, if you try to make them follow their flavour too much, then that can definitely be a bad thing as well, as they should still try to win overall. But you can still make it so that they'll lean to their flavour more - if I'm next to a religious civ, I would expect that they should try for a religious victory more often than a domination victory. Or if I'm next to Monty, well, I expect that he'll try for a domination win most games.

But as always, they need to be balanced. The best parts about 4 was building up a relationship and actually feeling like they were your friend and you could trust them. I do feel that it went a little too far - I mean you share a religion with Izzy and she would literally never attack you even if you had no soldiers. And really, there's 2 ways to play the game for me - you play to win, or you play to tell a story. If I wanted to simply play the game by the strict rules and see who could win, I'd play multi-player. But I play single player games, yes, to win, but I feel better when I win with some style. I mean, I remember some civ 4 games where you literally do have to give in to your neighbour's bribe demand, otherwise their relation would drop enough and they could stomp you. In 5, and so far in 6, I have seen literally no reason to ever give in to an AI's demand. I almost never see a reason to choose a different government in order to get the diplomatic bonus. And I miss those decisions. If I always choose the government that works best for me, I tend to follow a fairly narrow path - I'll always take the same governments because they work for me in my specific case. But if you give the AI enough personality so that I can have that discussion - "Hmm, Theocracy really won't help me out in this case for my civ, but it will keep Saladin off my back, so maybe that could be worth it", to me that only adds to the replayability and flavour of the game.

 

[Takfloyd]

Yeah, trying to make the AI like a human player is the absolute worst thing they could possibly do with this franchise. I don't understand why ANYONE would want this. It's partially what they did with vanilla Civ V, and everyone hated it. Civ has never been and will never be a good strategy game, it's only a good casual empire simulator/roleplaying facilitator.

 

[MyOtherName]

Many human players -- at least those playing the SP game -- when behind will still try to win a losing space race or pull off a last ditch cultural victory rather than charge forth into an unwinnable war.

While the poor experience of Civ 5 diplomacy is often blamed on making them "human-like", I really don't think that's accurate summary of the problem.

Incidentally, Izzy's friendliness doesn't necessarily go against "playing to win" -- sure, it means she'll leave me alone if I make nice with her, but conversely when I'm going with a more military approach I often wind up leaving her alone as well.

 

[Balkans]

I'm a civ iv die hard fan but i moved on. If they patch civ vi and polish it, and actually put some effort in doing so, i would rather play civ vi than civ iv. I hated civ v, but i really like civ vi. A lot of people, especially fans of civ iv just praise the game, but i remember also the stupid things about civ iv, it wasn't that perfect if we will be honest. The torn in civ vi's foot is the dreaded one unit per tile and the AI that just can't plan what to do with an army, so human easily defends from massively stronger armies. Civ iv AI isn't better, it just appears so because you easily lose undefended city because there are 10 units in a stack.
I love most of design concepts and how all fits together. Religion units and concept of victory is probably one thing that i would like redesigned.
If they somehow manage to figure something out about the crucial stuff people mostly complain about - issues with the AI, UI, religion, some diplomacy stuff civilization vi will be far superior game to even fully patched BTS.
Also, it's almost impossible to compare these two games because 1UPT change. It's different game. But i really enjoy how the civilization vi feels. I wouldn't go back to civ iv, but i also don't have a problem if people say civ iv is better. So what, that's even better, you can go back and play the better game - i am waiting for my fat patch, while enjoying not so polished civ vi vanilla latte.

 

[Usama84]

i really can not understand why anyone likes 1 upt... by far 99% of my issue with this game is 1upt. Is there any chance they will remove this absurd rule in a mod?

 

[Skulbow]

i really can not understand why anyone likes 1 upt... by far 99% of my issue with this game is 1upt. Is there any chance they will remove this absurd rule in a mod?

See there is a big difference as I hated those huge stacks of 20 plus units all coming on one tile. I personally much prefer 1upt (and so do a lot of civ players). A war can become very strategic as you try to control certain tiles with certain units. I do think the AI can better utilize the stacks of units rather than organizing his army like a human player. I have a few mp games and iupt works quite well there.

 

[Usama84]

what is "strategic " about 1 UPT? I understand you dont like stacks... ya.. when they are breathing down your neck, and that's the whole point. AI will never be intelligent enough to map out a strategy that you cant figure out how to exploit in a game or two... with stacks of doom, there is only one strategy... build more stacks.... war was usually about numbers, not fantasy movies like 300 or Fury. The only strategy with 1upt is like a rubricks cube, shuffling units around for no apparent reason, so absurd and silly.

 

[MyOtherName]

i really can not understand why anyone likes 1 upt... by far 99% of my issue with this game is 1upt. Is there any chance they will remove this absurd rule in a mod?

I think, for the most part, they don't have any particular love for 1UPT; they just don't enjoy managing large numbers of units.

I don't think 1UPT was ever sold on its merits -- the PR campaign simply equated the notion of 1UPT with the notion of a solution to unit management.

 

[Babarigo]

I think, for the most part, they don't have any particular love for 1UPT; they just don't enjoy managing large numbers of units.

I don't think 1UPT was ever sold on its merits -- the PR campaign simply equated the notion of 1UPT with the notion of a solution to unit management.

To be honest I feel like I have to manage more units with the 1UPT and I take much more time. For exemple if I have an army of 15 units I have to move each one and attack with each one and it's quite time consuming. In civ 4 I have 1 stack with artillery and 1 stack with the attacking force, in 5 clicks or less I have taken the city. Now compare it to the 1UPT where you have to bombard with every single unit, attack with each unit, move all the other units. I find it to be way longer than combat in civ 4. It will only be longer in civ 4 if you don't use any shortcut and if you click on each unit but if you use just the grouping option I hardly see how it can take more time than the 1UPT.

 

[HF22]

My biggest problem with 1upt, apart from the AI, is simply that it is so very tedious. It does not work at the scale of Civ, and I don't think it ever will.

As a tactical combat game, who would buy Civ? Its really not a very good one.

And unless and until it is decided that Civ doesn't have to do everything on the same strategy map, I don't see how you fix that.

 

[Eurik]

I hate city states and love vassal states. As long as I am forced to play with city states in Civ 6 I will always prefer Civ 4.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Civ4 remains my favorite GOAT.

Civ5 wasn't my game. There are too many reasons to list here, but I found it both easy and frustrating.

I am enjoying Civ6 so far, but I think that's because I've had to time to come to terms with Civ5. The base game is already better than Civ5. There are still a lot of problems... so many minor AI and UI issues... but I'm enjoying the getting-to-know-you phase. I don't think I'll stick with it, however. Unlike Civ4, there are definite strong strategies that are just plain better. For example, Civ4 had a good balance between rapid expansion and going tall. In Civ5 it was better to go tall. In Civ6 it is preferable in almost every situation to go wide. There's a lot of small balance issues like that create a preference for certain styles of play and limits multiple strategies. Unfortunately, this seems be part and parcel with how they chose to implement expansion penalties. I'm not sure if they'll be able to balance the options properly. Similar issues arise in many other contexts. After I put my ~100 hours in I think I'll wait for the next expansion and hope for the best.

But, yeah, right now it's: Civ4 > Civ6 > Civ5.

 

[JtW]

When it comes to mechanics, Civ6 is on par with Civ4 for me. Some things I liked better in Civ4, but there are some things I love in Civ6 (the civics tree, the governments, the eurekas, unstacked cities, religion.)

There are two areas where Civ4 is better:

Civ4 has a unique way of pulling me in - the wandering animals at the beginning, etc., the little things make me feel I am a part of something real more than any other part of the series. But this is no showstopper, obviously.

The showstopper is the AI, especially combat AI. In Civ6, it is so laughably incompetent, that I can't even bring myself to launch the game anymore.

So yeah, if they ever manage to improve the AI, Civ6 might become my favorite part of the series. For now, I'd rank it even below Civ5.

 

[LDiCesare]

Civ iv AI isn't better, it just appears so because you easily lose undefended city because there are 10 units in a stack.

We have different measurements of good I believe. Civ VI AIis unable to take a city with overwhelming forces past the classical era. Ci IV can.
Civ VI is never a challenge past the classical era. Civ IV is.
You can't lose an undefended city in VI, ever, once the AI has started using its 'modern' city attack algorithm. The AI in VI is just infinitely worse than that of IV, as in it's worth zero versus something that is more than zero, even if it's not much.

 

[elitetroops]

I find with 1upt in Civ VI the strategic options are a lot more limited than in Civ IV. There's fewer units and each unit has a smaller amount of moves available. Most of the time the best solution is obvious, so the available choices aren't very interesting. And in the end it doesn't matter much what I do, because the AI is so incompetent. I suppose 1upt can be interesting in multiplayer, but currently in singleplayer it pretty much kills the any tactical warfare element, since the AI is way too easy to outmaneuver. Not saying the AI can't be outmaneuvered in Civ IV, it sure can, but at least it has enough units to still make warfare challenging on the highest difficulties. Maybe, if they teach the AI in Civ VI to use proper units for the era, it could get at least a bit more interesting.

 

[Usama84]

someone said "For exemple if I have an army of 15 units I have to move each one and attack with each one and it's quite time consuming. " EXACTLY! I dont know why people complain about stacks, when you can lump them all as one unit and click a few times, like you said, and you get the city! 1 UPT makes absolutely no sene. Its like this game wants to be a RTS, but its not an RTS, its like a digital board game.

 

[Usama84]

Like come on Fraxis, what were you thinking? You had 6 years to make a good game, what do we get?
1. Religion has almost no effect on the game
2. No random events? Very boring!!!
3. 1 UPT, this should be #1
4. production is too slow , I guess there is no room on the map for units in this game
5. AI has no strategy, just seems to float back and forth?
6. graphics are mediocre
what a disappointment, i guess we have to wait 2 years for an expansion pack that will probably not address any of these issues anyways

 

[bladex]

1. unless your going for a REL VIC.
2. so?
3. learn to position your troops better.
4. cut down trees and rainF to get boosts.
5. true
6. who cares about the GFX only console kiddiez care about DAT ****

would you like some cheese with your whine?