Initial Reactions

[TheMeInTeam]

Civ5 suffered from a lot of growing pains. Though the final product is IMHO a fantastic 4x game, best in the franchise, a cursory read here still see lots of posters reverting to their vanilla civ5 experience and extrapolating it to civ6. It's unfair to be sure but it's worth noting civ6 will not suffer those problems. The devs are much more familiar with the 1upt and In crafting a game that works with hexes , 1upt , and city states. I cannot wait to see city states 2.0

Civ IV release is forgotten, but was pretty bad too in some ways. Firaxis does not have a long history of great release-day quality in this series. MP in Civ V is pretty bad even now (de-sync, problematic to move on re-host to the point of being almost untenable with nowhere near max players, often 5 will be enough to screw it).

Civ VI having a strong release in terms of quality/stability/MP would be a pleasant divergence of the previous trend, but I'll believe it after I see it happen.

Similarly, the track record of the game getting better over time is there so we can anticipate that it'll likely be pretty good eventually for SP, and MP might work at some point .

 

[dexters]

Civ IV release is forgotten, but was pretty bad too in some ways. Firaxis does not have a long history of great release-day quality in this series. MP in Civ V is pretty bad even now (de-sync, problematic to move on re-host to the point of being almost untenable with nowhere near max players, often 5 will be enough to screw it).

Civ VI having a strong release in terms of quality/stability/MP would be a pleasant divergence of the previous trend, but I'll believe it after I see it happen.

Similarly, the track record of the game getting better over time is there so we can anticipate that it'll likely be pretty good eventually for SP, and MP might work at some point .

Heh. I don't disagree that civ6 could very well experience other problems at launch like the new features not working ad intended , modding being difficult or broken etc. But the core elements would IMHO work because they've been tested.

 

[Spaceturtle]

Of course that tweet is not real. The game will be out in october, the art will be tweaked and refined, but it won't change significantly.

I'm sure they knew a lot of people would hate it, as it always happens. They won't scrap all the great work the artists have done because of some angry comments on the internet.

 

[Westwall]

Thank god. I'd really hate for them to try and wash out the colors just to appease people who think the game doesn't "look mature enough."

If the actual gameplay is good, by this time next year the entire Civ 5 playerbase will have migrated to Civ 6, as was mostly the case when Civ 5 was released even before subsequent expansions.

Of course if it isn't good, well we all know what happened to BE.

 

[COF]

Thank god. I'd really hate for them to try and wash out the colors just to appease people who think the game doesn't "look mature enough."

If the actual gameplay is good, by this time next year the entire Civ 5 playerbase will have migrated to Civ 6, as was mostly the case when Civ 5 was released even before subsequent expansions.

Of course if it isn't good, well we all know what happened to BE.

Eh, the problem with the art is not that it is not mature enough. But I feel like the over-saturated colors and the large models will be too difficult to look at during longer sessions. In addition another problem I have is the camera angle. In Civ5, Endless Legend and pretty much every 4x game you look at the surface from above, while these seem a bit too flat(?), if that is the right term, my English is failing me right now.

That being said I have seen several screenshots with the colors being slightly desaturated and I feel like it is a massive improvement.

Spoiler :

 

[PhilBowles]

It was also the most hated Civ by veterans. It seems it just pulled a WotLK and attracted a whole new generation of players who weren't actually interested in a Civ to begin with, and which ended up replacing the veterans.

By some veterans, certainly - those who tend to be vocal on an internet forum, at least. Even on said forum a subset of veterans stuck with Civ V from early on, and a sufficiently large proportion shifted to it post-BNW that the previously ever-present 'Rants' thread vanished from the Civ V discussion first page and the two games had approximately similar forum readership.

The new intake of Civ V players are themselves now veterans who will be more likely to buy into a familiar-looking Civ VI than one that resembles a game they may not have played at all.

By the end of its release cycle, Civ V was superior in terms of most of its mechanical systems to (unmodded) Civ IV. It was still somewhat shallower in terms of strategic diversity, including early-game options, due largely to balancing issues that were never ironed out, and it still had basic system issues inherited from the vanilla game that were simply obsolete. Yes, the latter includes global happiness - but as much hate as that receives, both corruption and maintenance were poor mechanics as well. Civ games just haven't found a good way to constrain expansion that leads to enjoyable gameplay. BNW's economic system - which makes gold a limiting factor early - is probably the best effort, but trade route yields become too high too quickly for it to remain relevant.

From what I've read, the problem with the latest MOO is precisely that they DIDN'T just updated the graphics, they gutted a lot of the core gameplay. I can't have any definitive opinion here as I haven't played either, but that's what I read in the reviews when I was wondering to buy it on GoG.

The core gameplay is all but identical - again compared with the unmodded version of the game. Combat being real-time is not as significant a difference as it appears; MOO was never exciting because you got to move a horde of ships individually a couple of tiles at a time in a lethargic turn-based system, it was exciting because you got to actively control ships you designed - and which functioned in meaningfully distinct ways based on those designs - in combat, and that's still there. The constraints of the space lane system are basically unnoticeable. Everything else is a straight port across, right down to the specific random events (not sure about espionage - it wasn't implemented when I last played, though it is now). It feels as though one of the best games to come out in the 1990s was somehow held in a time warp until 2016.

It was still hilariously spot-on
After the Windows-like design of Civ4, they went for a console-like look for Civ5, and now they're switching to a mobile-like design for Civ6.

Windows went to a mobile-like design for Windows 8...

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

sometime in late 2017. Sorry, Firaxis, but between what Civ V was upon release and the BE debacle, this fan (with 2500+ hours of Civ V and most of the other Civs as well) is going to be adopting a wait-and-see on this one ...

 

[civvver]

Moderator Action: Let's keep the focus both in this thread and in the Civ VI forum on Civ VI, both what is known and speculation rather than Civ V.

If they fix those things it'll be a good game, that's my point. My reaction is eww it looks like civ5, not a brand new game. I hope those civ5 features are not present.



One other really BIG thing, they need to fix performance. It takes me like 5 minutes to load civ5 and another 5 to load a save. It is ridiculous. My computer is ~6 years old but it still does fine on everything else and civ5 is a 6 year old game. I would play civ5 a TON more if it just loaded faster and I could squeeze a few turns in here and there.

 

[vorlon_mi]

What about mountains? I never understood why they made mountains impassable in Civ4 and Civ5. They were quite useful in Civ3. And seriously, humans have been traveling up into, and over, and mining/exploiting mountains for thousands of years. Where is the benefit to gameplay by keeping them impassable for 6000 years of simulated history?

 

[Westwall]

I agree, maybe make them use up 2-3 moves to pass instead of using just 1 like with hills and forests, etc.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

BNW's economic system - which makes gold a limiting factor early - is probably the best effort, but trade route yields become too high too quickly for it to remain relevant.

Maintenance made gold the limiting factor also. The reason it is superior to BE's setup is that it was very much relevant. It prevented the bizarre constrained "tall" play optimum set point that emerged in V while trying to stomp down ICS, but still (severely) punished early ICS attempts and left the cost/benefit of attempting it later in the game often unpalatable...the first main-line civ title to accomplish that. It's still the best balance we have for disincentivizing ICS...so far. Civ VI might beat it, but it won't do so by copying V.

Its primary downside was accessibility; prior to settling another city you had no way to anticipate the financial consequences of settling another city in a given location. You had to know from experience or from formula, and the value varied dramatically by difficulty...and even whether the map was flat, round, or toroidal. That kind of "all in the manual" fake difficulty has no place in a strategy game, it's similar to having a random build cost for building a unit and then hiding its possible range. Experienced players will learn the range eventually anyway, and it confers no real meaningful benefit to the game's strategy, only downside.

If "dumbing it down" means stopping the fake difficulty of hiding game rules, sign me up. What matters is how frequently you make meaningful (IE has an impact on game outcome) choices on a turn to turn basis, and how long you're waiting between making those decisions doing mundane actions or on the AI. If Civ VI's new subsystems get you making more important choices, it'll be a stronger game than V.

 

[Akka]

If the actual gameplay is good, by this time next year the entire Civ 5 playerbase will have migrated to Civ 6, as was mostly the case when Civ 5 was released even before subsequent expansions.

Well, considering Civ5 gameplay was terrible and it's hardly the case that most of the Civ4 base moved to it... you're not really helping your case

 

[Drakarska]

What about mountains? I never understood why they made mountains impassable in Civ4 and Civ5. They were quite useful in Civ3. And seriously, humans have been traveling up into, and over, and mining/exploiting mountains for thousands of years. Where is the benefit to gameplay by keeping them impassable for 6000 years of simulated history?

Ironically, it was Civ IV modders who made the modcomp "usuable mountains" to resolve that issue. My guess, it will be modders again who will have to tweak and peak to get things done right. And yes, I read the part about being "highly moddable". But IIRC, Civ V was touted as "being the most moddable Civ ever", and that took forever just to get basic tools. I think I'll refrain from holding my breath in anticipation for awhile until some good, solid reviews come in.

On another note, I haven't really seen anything solid about if it is going to be Steam only again.. Anyone have details on that?

 

[Lexicus]

I can't imagine it not being Steam only.

 

[hangman]

We really need to see an in-house rise and fall mechanic. The success of RFC was integral to the later life of Civ 4, and it was a shame that the only mod that came close to it for Civ 5 was abandoned and is now broken (at least last I know of). I would very much have liked to use rise and fall mechanics for my Andes mod, and there's really a lot of potential for regional total conversions like you can see in the RFC modmods. There's really no excuse not to have at least the option of rise and fall rules. Maybe we'll have to demand it in an expansion, because I doubt something like that would be part of the game at launch, but maybe they will pleasantly surprise us.

Also, graphics suck so far, but the basic ideas seem like they'll flop significantly less than Civ 5's launch.

You just know modders will make better Earth maps than the ones included....

I may have to buy it early on just for this reason. I can't stand bad Earth maps, and I nearly have my MSc in atmospheric science, so it drives me nuts if I play any random maps other than PerfectWorld

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

We really need to see an in-house rise and fall mechanic. The success of RFC was integral to the later life of Civ 4, and it was a shame that the only mod that came close to it for Civ 5 was abandoned and is now broken (at least last I know of). I would very much have liked to use rise and fall mechanics for my Andes mod, and there's really a lot of potential for regional total conversions like you can see in the RFC modmods. There's really no excuse not to have at least the option of rise and fall rules. Maybe we'll have to demand it in an expansion, because I doubt something like that would be part of the game at launch, but maybe they will pleasantly surprise us.

Also, graphics suck so far, but the basic ideas seem like they'll flop significantly less than Civ 5's launch.

To be honest, even if we dno't get it Day 1 I'd expect to see it in the first or second expansion pack, given that almost all the features are STILL in on Day 1 (Religion, Espionage, City States etc) so unlike Civ 5 they never took anything out leaving room to make MORE stuff.

Stability would also be efficient in controlling the expansion of empires, and you could use the City State system to create unique CS types that would correspond to a trait of a Civ that has "collapsed"

 

[PhilBowles]

Maintenance made gold the limiting factor also.

It did, but unlike Civ V gold wasn't actually a useful resource in its own right. In Civ V you want a positive income because gold is actually at its most important early for rushing things like early settlers or a second archer. And the slider ensured that gold was more or less infinitely available depending on how big a temporary hit you were prepared to take to your science.

Civ IV also had tile-based commerce yields and cottages, which made the resource much more readily available than in Civ V.

Maintenance as a system in isolation might well be better than BNW's economic constraint - which was too binary as expansion was either constrained early or not really constrained at all - but in the context of Civ IV's mechanics it was, while somewhat effective, not good for gameplay as it was very gamey and, indeed, very gameable. Much as global happiness was very effective at constraining expansion but few people consider that it was actually a well-executed mechanic.

And like corruption before it, and like other Civ IV mechanics like health, maintenance was purely punitive and offered exactly one viable way to combat it - as not expanding was not a viable option. Neither is a good attribute for a game system - global happiness offered an active incentive for keeping a positive happiness balance in the way it initiated Golden Ages; positive gold income means you have more gold, with all the assorted uses. Being in the red in Civ IV was bad, but being in the black wasn't good - it was just not bad. You didn't get any use from gold (certain civics aside), you gained no substantial benefit from positive health or happiness other than a buffer against the next ill-health/unhappiness threshold.

Its primary downside was accessibility; prior to settling another city you had no way to anticipate the financial consequences of settling another city in a given location. You had to know from experience or from formula, and the value varied dramatically by difficulty...and even whether the map was flat, round, or toroidal. That kind of "all in the manual" fake difficulty has no place in a strategy game, it's similar to having a random build cost for building a unit and then hiding its possible range. Experienced players will learn the range eventually anyway, and it confers no real meaningful benefit to the game's strategy, only downside.

Which is a pretty hefty downside indeed.

 

[nikdra]

My initial reaction is that the graphics and expanded cities makes it look like a Settlers game and not a Civilization game. That wonders take up an entire square around the cities, the look of the units and the look of the city itself makes my think the game has been dumbed down, iow. simplified in game play, maybe less buildings, less techs, less wonders, who knows maybe even smaller maps and less civilizations. I think it looks like a Settlers-Civilization hybrid and that game play will be simple with mostly graphical changes to the historical epochs game-play. I *really* hope it isn't so, I fear it is.

I could be wrong it could be like the units, the buildings have add-ons and that there are lots of buildings inside the city. Could be all terrain tiles have add-ons. Could be only a few early wonders are built around the cities, could be they are replaced by other wonders in later eras. Could be the tech-tree is much expanded and allow for deep historical gameplay. Could be the map look changes over time as era's progress. Could be it's just the tablet like graphics that gives the wrong impression as they only show one historical era and one zoom level.

I was hoping for a much more complicated and historically accurate version, a deeper much more realistic map, a more real civilization simulation with lots of possible playing styles and many more options, this doesn't look like that at all. I'm very disappointed, the civilization series is going in the totally wrong direction. If they wanted to make a tablet type easy strategy game couldn't they just also have done a Civilization Revolutions II and developed a real Civilization VI?

 

[Lexicus]

And like corruption before it, and like other Civ IV mechanics like health, maintenance was purely punitive and offered exactly one viable way to combat it - as not expanding was not a viable option. Neither is a good attribute for a game system - global happiness offered an active incentive for keeping a positive happiness balance in the way it initiated Golden Ages; positive gold income means you have more gold, with all the assorted uses. Being in the red in Civ IV was bad, but being in the black wasn't good - it was just not bad. You didn't get any use from gold (certain civics aside), you gained no substantial benefit from positive health or happiness other than a buffer against the next ill-health/unhappiness threshold.

I'm honestly confused by this. Gold was used for research, upgrades, and tech trading while extra happiness was "used" on the whip.

 

[Vallation]

The more "cartoon" art style seems to get a terrible stigma, as if it suddenly removes any kind of depth a game can have. They specifically said the base game will have many of the features included in Civ 5's expansions, in addition to some new features, so I'm not really worried about it. These are the same people who added much needed depth to Civ 5 itself.

A game doesn't need to be a pile of spreadsheets to require smart strategic/tactical play. Good game design generally presents important information more clearly and easily allowing players to make effective decisions, removing unnecessary and/or redundant clutter. Too streamlined can be bad too though (like Civ 5 launch diplomacy), so it's a balance of showing a lot of information in a clearer manner. The end result is easy to learn, hard to master. A game doesn't need to be difficult to learn to have a high skill cap. Approachability brings in new players, while complexity keeps them around for hundreds or thousands of hours while also satisfying veterans of the series.

My first impression of the graphics is good readability. Even with no UI the screenshots give a ton of easy to see information to the player. I still prefer Civ 5's more "real" look, but it always felt a bit muddled and you couldn't always see things as clearly at a glance. So this art style works well for players who don't zoom out and/or want to play with too many map icons toggled on. I think it's visually good from a practical standpoint, it feels more like a board game in how it presents things clearly (for better or worse), but in terms of personal preference I need to see it in motion before I can judge it better.

As far as the announced features go, I'm optimistic about the city changes. I love the series, but mechanically Civ 5 felt too much like more of the same without much evolution past what Civ 4 already did. The new cities really changes up strategies. The research changes should make it more dynamic, so people are rewarded for taking advantage of their starting locations, exploration and whatever else is involved. So less pre-planned tech progression and more adaptive approaches. Combat changes sound fun on paper too, hopefully fixing traffic jams and adding more tactics while still not allowing stacks of doom.

Overall I'm pretty pleased but want to see the game actually being played before I can really say for sure if I'll like it or not. Graphics are a bit interesting but seem pretty practical especially with the new city system. Static images don't always do games justice either; I want to see it moving. It sounds like a bigger step forward than Civ 5 was after Civ 4 as far as gameplay goes.