How does Civ 6 compare to Civ 4?

[Vaclac]

I agree that Civ IV diplomacy was probably the best in the series, but it also had issues of being too stale, due to diplomatic modifiers tending to compound and to the significance of religions. Being friendly allowed more trading and less wars, which made you more friendly, and so on. Religion basically determined whether you had the positive cascade or the negative one, and you ended up with fairly static religious blocks pitted against each other. Even after people switched to free religion, the accumulated peace and trading benefits of having once shared a religion kept such friendships stable. I actually like both the significance of religion for diplomacy and the fact that friendships and rivalries tend to increase over time unless something major changes, but I think that combination created for a stale diplomatic game when religions almost never changed.
I think the game should have some mechanics that cause religious changes that shake up the existing diplomatic order, like a reformation mechanic that splits an existing religion. For example, you could start a new religion by reforming an existing one. This would give later founded religions a chance to thrive and become significant by allowing them to piggyback on the existing beliefs and followers of an earlier-founded religion. By increasing how often religious changes occurred, it would also shake up diplomacy.

 

[MkLh]

This is worse than 5. Just a totally pointless and an absurdly easy "game" (more like a sandbox with a terrible UI). Comparisons to 4, which was the pinnacle of the series, aren't even meaningful.

 

[Morningcalm]

I agree that Civ IV diplomacy was probably the best in the series, but it also had issues of being too stale, due to diplomatic modifiers tending to compound and to the significance of religions. Being friendly allowed more trading and less wars, which made you more friendly, and so on. Religion basically determined whether you had the positive cascade or the negative one, and you ended up with fairly static religious blocks pitted against each other. Even after people switched to free religion, the accumulated peace and trading benefits of having once shared a religion kept such friendships stable. I actually like both the significance of religion for diplomacy and the fact that friendships and rivalries tend to increase over time unless something major changes, but I think that combination created for a stale diplomatic game when religions almost never changed.
I think the game should have some mechanics that cause religious changes that shake up the existing diplomatic order, like a reformation mechanic that splits an existing religion. For example, you could start a new religion by reforming an existing one. This would give later founded religions a chance to thrive and become significant by allowing them to piggyback on the existing beliefs and followers of an earlier-founded religion. By increasing how often religious changes occurred, it would also shake up diplomacy.

I'll take Civ IV's "stale" diplomacy over V and VI's unstable meaningless chaos any day. I agree religion needs a shake up, and the expansions will likely do that, perhaps by allowing more control over apostle powers and increasing the power of religious defense/spread. It's too easy in VI to get your religious capital immediately converted and then your religion is basically dead.

 

[Pepo]

Sure, Civ IV AI isn't a genius, in fact it can be quite ******ed on a few occasions, but it does is work: a reasonable diplomacy and destroy you with greater numbers. What does the AI in Civ VI does? A very poor job on diplomacy and be totally incapable to carry an offensive war against the player. We aren't asking for an AI that doesn't need bonuses to keep the difficulty, only that it is capable to play the game.

And the AI at release of Civ Iv was more than capable to do that

 

[wiggawuu]

Civ 4 was hard!!! The only way you could win on highest level was to understand the math. Its amazing how firaxis has brainwashed us all into accpeting these new standards. Like, wtf?

It sounds weird, but they give the player so much more info to play with. The old games you had to calculate that stuff yourself. It was harder unless you understood the code.

Basically, there should be a mod that takes away showing you the modifiers and such. Although, it only shows it to you for districts.

idk

 

[culdeus]

Yeah, I had a special spreadsheet for Civ4 to manage some of the harder aspects. I can't seeing that being needed this go around except it would be nice if someone made a nice pdf checklist of sorts of all the eurekas you could get laid out in groups (kill things, have things, research things, build things, find things, etc.) I may have to do this myself.

 

[Roxlimn]

Morningcalm: Civ VI has that, too. What you're experiencing is called confirmation bias.

Oh, come on, that doesn't even make any sense. The only way you could do that is if all the cities are only one tile from your border, not one or two cities but all. Last time I checked, tanks only have two movement points, so not realistically possible to declare war, move, then attack and conquer all in one turn.

It's possible if the Civ is sufficiently advanced to have multiple railroads connecting its cities - and they're close enough together. You're failing to think it through.

You only need one city to be close to your borders - and the rest of them to be close enough to each other to have one tile difference between the new border and your targets. If you need more help, you can culture bomb, too. I assure you that this is absolutely possible, and absolutely doable repeatedly. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes harder, but taking most of a Civ's cities in the late game is trivial, and all of them in one swoop takes some doing, but perfectly doable.

 

[MyOtherName]

It's possible if the Civ is sufficiently advanced to have multiple railroads connecting its cities - and they're close enough together. You're failing to think it through.

You only need one city to be close to your borders - and the rest of them to be close enough to each other to have one tile difference between the new border and your targets. If you need more help, you can culture bomb, too. I assure you that this is absolutely possible, and absolutely doable repeatedly. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes harder, but taking most of a Civ's cities in the late game is trivial, and all of them in one swoop takes some doing, but perfectly doable.

This is a far cry from "Once you have bomber attacks that can reduce them all sufficiently, and the tank force to attack them as necessary (and sometimes paras), then you can execute a One Turn War."

(It also prompts the question of what difficulty level you're doing this on, and/or relative power. Knocking out your rival superpower is very different from mopping the backwards wimp that you left until the end of a conquest run)

 

[Roxlimn]

Um. You don't have to set it up all that much? A lot of the forces you'd use for this are things you would use in a conventional war with conventional play. Seriously guys, if you didn't know this was possible, just admit it to yourself and then go try it out. Civ 4 still works.

The biggest problem here really is enemy Civ infrastructure. If you're playing on Prince or Noble, there is a fair chance that the enemy Civ won't have enough railroads for you to use. That's a problem. But then if you're playing Prince or Noble, then the AI's shortcomings should be all too apparent, and you don't need anything like this to win.

 

[SahintheFalcon]

Civ 4 was hard!!! The only way you could win on highest level was to understand the math. Its amazing how firaxis has brainwashed us all into accpeting these new standards. Like, wtf?

It sounds weird, but they give the player so much more info to play with. The old games you had to calculate that stuff yourself. It was harder unless you understood the code.

Basically, there should be a mod that takes away showing you the modifiers and such. Although, it only shows it to you for districts.

idk

Understanding the code does not make you a better player. It just makes you a more experienced player.

 

[elitetroops]

Um. You don't have to set it up all that much? A lot of the forces you'd use for this are things you would use in a conventional war with conventional play. Seriously guys, if you didn't know this was possible, just admit it to yourself and then go try it out. Civ 4 still works.

I don't see your point. Sure, you can set up for a 1 turn war, but it requires a lot of planning and usually more units than you'd need to take out that same AI in a more conventional war. Besides, you're talking late game, which I don't care about at all. Snowballing starts in the early eras and here is the big difference between IV and VI. In IV, unless you are playing Inca, you won't be doing any super early rushing on deity. You have to at least reveal some strategic resource, hook it up and then start building your army. Taking out an AI with ancient/classical units is still possible on deity/normal speed, but it requires a lot of resources and is not guaranteed to snowball you into a dominant position. On the contrary, it might snowball someone else. When you attack your neighbor, that leaves more room for their other neighbor to expand, then the other deity AI might grow too big too fast and spiral out of control.

In VI, you build some slingers, upgrade to archers, then walk over the first couple of neighbors and the game is won. Works with every leader and once you've taken out one or two AI there is literally no challenge left in the game. Also, the 1 turn war you describe shouldn't be that hard to pull off in VI either. Enough bombards/artillery with observation balloons combined with horse units to take the cities, or maybe just 5 move Cav with escort promo and siege towers would be enough. The way the AI is teching, I'm sure you can have those Cavs out while the AI is still having only warriors and heavy chariots.

It sounds weird, but they give the player so much more info to play with. The old games you had to calculate that stuff yourself. It was harder unless you understood the code.

Basically, there should be a mod that takes away showing you the modifiers and such. Although, it only shows it to you for districts.

Couldn't disagree more. The game should give you a lot more information. Calculating simple additions and multiplications is not why I play these games. Whenever such calculations are necessary to make an informed desicion about some basic task I'm likely to do dozens of times over the course of the game, I'd like the game to do it for me. Having to do those calculations yourself only makes gameplay slower and more tedious. Right now the Civ VI interface is missing a lot of vital information and a lot of the features aren't even explained so you cannot do the math even if you wanted to. BTS also does a very poor job at providing you with necessary info. BUG mod is needed to make the game more enjoyable.

 

[Roxlimn]

elitetroops:

Begging your pardon, but if you don't know how to take out an AI in one turn, then you don't know how much planning is truly involved and how many troops you're going to need.

You cannot take out multiple even Ancient Walled Cities in one turn in Civ VI because there are no 0-move structures in the game. You're going to need a few turns at least - and that's with Cavs vs. Warriors. Right now, the AI actually doesn't tech all that badly. The problem appears to be upgrading, but even that's inconsistent? I've gotten into a war with Russia on King and he actually fielded Knights and Crossbowmen, so it's not like they're never teching up.

I mean, you're talking about multiple copies of level 4 Cavalry? Do get that many promoted Cavs you're going to need to have warred a lot, and that many surviving promoted Cavs means a prolonged and successful war. At that point, you're already in a winning position. The Cavs are basically pointless at that juncture.

And you know what? Stop conjecturing. If you know how to take out an entire medium-sized Civ in 6 in one turn, then tell me how, because I've never seen that happen.

 

[elitetroops]

Begging your pardon, but if you don't know how to take out an AI in one turn, then you don't know how much planning is truly involved and how many troops you're going to need.

Not sure which game you're talking about now... I know very well how to take out an AI in one turn in IV, and I also know this is usually far from the optimal strategy.

I mean, you're talking about multiple copies of level 4 Cavalry? Do get that many promoted Cavs you're going to need to have warred a lot, and that many surviving promoted Cavs means a prolonged and successful war. At that point, you're already in a winning position. The Cavs are basically pointless at that juncture.

War early with horsemen, you only need 1 level 3 horseman/AI city to get siege towers in position. Upgrade them to level 4 with Terracotta. Cav with siege towers vs a 40 strength city shouldn't require too many hits. But you are right, at this point I'm already in a winning position. Though so far I haven't come across any situation in Civ VI where I wouldn't have been in a winning position.

 

[Roxlimn]

elitetroops:

If you know how to do it, then what's this nonsense about it not being optimal?

War early with horsemen, you only need 1 level 3 horseman/AI city to get siege towers in position. Upgrade them to level 4 with Terracotta. Cav with siege towers vs a 40 strength city shouldn't require too many hits. But you are right, at this point I'm already in a winning position. Though so far I haven't come across any situation in Civ VI where I wouldn't have been in a winning position.

Don't expand. Keep to one city. Play on Deity. Upload to youtube.

 

[elitetroops]

It's not optimal because it requires more units and a longer setup than you'd need if you don't set an arbitrary constraint like "have to take every city in one turn". Also, if you are in the modern era and are looking to win the game, then most of the time you shouldn't be aiming at taking all their cities in the first place. It's much more efficient to beat them down just enough for them to capitulate, then move on to the next target.

I'm sure Civ VI can be made challenging by setting additional rules like don't expand. But it's quite sad if the only way to make a 4X game challenging is to turn it into a 3X game.

 

[Roxlimn]

One City Challenge was one of the things a lot of players did in Civ IV, and Venice was catering to that in Civ V. It's a variant of playing the game that many people liked. You said you didn't know of any situation in which you'd lose. Now you do. I can name more, if you like.

The point of the one turn war is that it shouldn't require more units, and the fact that you think it does makes me think that you can't really do it all that well. You're not supposed to actually attack the enemy AI stacks of doom. You do know that, right?

 

[elitetroops]

OCC is completely different as it has different rules and it's a game mode that is actually meant to be played like that. In Civ IV OCC can be one of the easiest ways to win on deity. In fact, back in the days my first ever Civ IV deity win was OCC.

I'm sorry, but the one turn war you are describing is simply not the best option most of the time. Early in the game with HAs you can take a few cities the same turn you declare, which is good. Later in the game you can take a lot of cities, especially with naval/air support, which is good. Add in some tactical nukes and it even becomes easy, no matter where they keep their stack. But why do you need to take them all? That only requires extra resources to be able to attack useless tundra cities and stuff like that on the turn you declare.

Your premise seems to be that you want to end the war in one turn to avoid facing their stack. Most of the time they keep the stack either in a city, or out somewhere fighting a war. If it's in a city, you have to face it in a one turn war. If it's out fighting a war, it won't return immediately just because you declare on them, so you have several turns before you'd need to face it. You have plenty of tricks at your disposal to slow down the return of the stack if you fear it will interfere too early. If you bribe them into Caste System before declaring, they have at least one turn of anarchy (unless SPI) and cannot produce any new units right after you declare, and it will be 5 turns before they can switch to slavery and quickly whip units to counter your attack. In addition, you can use the espionage screen to see which cities are potentially currently building units and how fast those units would be completed. If the attention of their stack is diverted elsewhere and you remove their capability to quickly respond by whipping more units, what do you benefit from taking every city in one turn? If you instead take them in 2-5 turns you get to attack more times with all of your units = you need less units. For example, you were talking about bombers. Can we agree that you need more bombers to eliminate the cultural defenses of all their cities in one turn than you'd need to eliminate all cultural defenses in two turns? And as I said, conquering all cities is very rarely the goal anyway, except in the early game. Take a few cities, capitulate them, move on.

 

[Roxlimn]

Granted, a literal takeover of the entire Civ is rarely the best thing, but getting them to capitulate in one turn is just as good. Still a one-turn War. Why do 2-5 turns? The premise is that you end the war in one turn so you don't use so many turns waging war.

But anyhow, I said there's your situation. So go do it. Play OCC on Deity in Civ VI and see if you can win that.

 

[rschissler]

Granted, a literal takeover of the entire Civ is rarely the best thing, but getting them to capitulate in one turn is just as good. Still a one-turn War. Why do 2-5 turns? The premise is that you end the war in one turn so you don't use so many turns waging war.

But anyhow, I said there's your situation. So go do it. Play OCC on Deity in Civ VI and see if you can win that.

You presenting this "One Turn War" as the norm in Civ IV, when what your really describing is a unique situation. Not relevant to the general comparison of Civ IV to VI.

 

[Roxlimn]

I said it was possible and relatively common. Civ is sufficiently varied that there isn't really a norm. You wouldn't do that for particular scenarios. A win with a Wonder Economy or a Culture win wouldn't benefit much from a war at all. It's not unique, but it is very doable. It's relevant because it demonstrates the gulf between the AI and the human is just as wide in Civ 4 as it is in Civ 5 and 6, and arguably it's larger in 4.