[NFP] Is Civ 6 doomed?

[KayAU]

I don't mind 1 UPT that much, but it certainly isn't perfect. My preferred system would be armies - several units grouped together which move across the map as one. The number of units which could be grouped like this would be limited, and the limit could be modified by a number of things, such as tech/civic development, leader/civ abilities, or the abilities of the army's leader. Many games have systems like this, so I will not go into great detail, but some good examples would be Fallen Enchantress, Age of Wonders 3, Stellaris, and Conquest of the New World. I think this solution is a good middle ground which resolves both unit congestion and stacks of doom, while at the same time making the military aspect of the game a great deal deeper and more enjoyable.

Battles could be resolved either through a tactical combat layer, or a good autoresolve function which takes things like unit synergies into account. I personally enjoy tactical combat, although it may shift the focus of the game too far away from empire management. I think Fallen Enchantress and AoW3 are good examples of somewhat complex tactical battle systems, while oldie CotNW had a simple but enjoyable one. There's also a risk of messing this up, and in my personal opinion, Endless Legend was an example of that.

 

[oSiyeza]

Is Civ 6 doomed? Is it already a Lost Cause?

We’ve all been hoping that it will get better and will become the game we want it to be (of course that’s entirely subjective).

I’m starting to think that Civ 6 can’t be salvaged and I think the Devs believe this too. Given we’re coming into the 5th year of Civ 6, I’d say development on Civ 7 has begun.

I personally think Civ 7 will be the Diablo 4 of Civ. It will try to return to the more ‘natural less cartoony’ style of Civ 5 whilst introducing deeper mechanics.

I hope I’m wrong but it feels like Civ 6 is nearing the end of its cycle.

Regardless of what you think of the game. Assuming that the devs dislike it is ridiculous, maybe you can argue that they have cut corners or taken an approach you dislike. But that is the one they decided to go with and the game has been a sale success.

Also Im sorry to say, thinking than the devs are working in Civ VII, or that Civ VII will be better than VI is just wishful thinking.

For all we know CIVII will be an even more dumbed down multiplayer only experience that will not be out in another 5 or 6 years.

Honestly, is ok if you dislike the game. I may agree with you. But if you disliking the game is a reason for you putting blind faith in the devs that made this one to fix it in the next, is just setting yourself for dissapointment.

Dont like the game?, be sane and move on.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Regardless of what you think of the game. Assuming that the devs dislike it is ridiculous, maybe you can argue that they have cut corners or taken an approach you dislike. But that is the one they decided to go with and the game has been a sale success.

I agree. We wouldn't be getting any new content if the developers themselves disliked working on the game.

 

[RohirrimElf]

The sad thing is that if civ 7 would be announced today (which is highly unlikely). It would take like another year to launch and another 2-3 years to be on par with civ 6. Another 4 years wasted.

I think our biggest chance would be to let firaxis complete civ 6 development and wait for a community overhaul of the game. Waiting for civ 7 to happen is like waiting for the elder scrolls 6. It is a damn long time to wait. And best would be to ignore and focus on something else.

 

[Bechhold]

The sad thing is that if civ 7 would be announced today (which is highly unlikely). It would take like another year to launch and another 2-3 years to be on par with civ 6. Another 4 years wasted.

I think our biggest chance would be to let firaxis complete civ 6 development and wait for a community overhaul of the game. Waiting for civ 7 to happen is like waiting for the elder scrolls 6. It is a damn long time to wait. And best would be to ignore and focus on something else.

I think that is the main problem with all developers. They just restart from square one rather than actually make a sequel to a game have everything the previous game had, then adding something new on top if it. While updating the UI etc. It seems to be amplified in the 4X genre. No civ game has ever had the depth that say IV had, while V got rid of stacking but the rest landed like a wet mop and took years just to get back. Now were at VI.

 

[glider1]

There is one way to fix civ combat. Get rid of the tiles altogether. Do unit formations like Rise of Nations did. No tiles, no traffic jams and it is scale independent. Units travel a certain distance per turn. Put buildings down around the city like Rise of Nations did where-ever you like. Build defenses without tiles. Do culture and border spread using real numbers instead of integers. It would be a paradise for tactical combat and for the sim builders out there. Can the AI handle it? Yes. Rise of Nations AI was about the same standard as the Civ6 AI.
EDIT No the AI was better than the Civ6 AI.

 

[8housesofelixir]

There is one way to fix civ combat. Get rid of the tiles altogether.

In my humble opinion something that requires an entire new game engine writing from scratch is more of a "last resort" than "one way".

And most importantly the game you described is a RTS game. Civ is a turn-based game. These two are not comparable.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think that is the main problem with all developers. They just restart from square one rather than actually make a sequel to a game have everything the previous game had, then adding something new on top if it.

I feel like that's basically was what Civ 6 was though. It already came with religions, traders/trade routes, tourism/great works etc. The only notable thing missing right off the bat was the world Congress.
Compare that with Civ 5 that was missing corporations and religions, right at the start or at all, which were in Civ 4. In that regard, I think Civ 6 did better at least in my opinion.

 

[duckstab]

I think our biggest chance would be to let firaxis complete civ 6 development and wait for a community overhaul of the game. Waiting for civ 7 to happen is like waiting for the elder scrolls 6. It is a damn long time to wait. And best would be to ignore and focus on something else.

I don't see how there can be a community overhaul of Civ6 without a DLL release, something Firaxis has so far refused to do, a fact which is driving away the best modders. We'll get plenty of new civs, scenarios, and tweaks, both in the form of DLC and community mods for some time to come, but we won't get a major rework of the AI or combat system unless and until Firaxis is motivated to do so themselves. That would be Civ 7 by any other name.

 

[Bechhold]

I feel like that's basically was what Civ 6 was though. It already came with religions, traders/trade routes, tourism/great works etc. The only notable thing missing right off the bat was the world Congress.
Compare that with Civ 5 that was missing corporations and religions, right at the start or at all, which were in Civ 4. In that regard, I think Civ 6 did better at least in my opinion.

Well Civ IV also had the Apostolic Palace, Vassalage, a functioning Diplomacy that runs circles around V, and VI imo. You could also trade in pretty much everything in terms of commodities. Food, Luxury goods, you could even give other Civs, or they give you, techs. Military aid, even adoption of beliefs.

None of that has been part of the gameplay in the past two successor games which is weird, unless the Firaxis in game engine somehow prevents that. Though I doubt that as a bug in V, fixed really quick, allowed you trade Stone.

 

[Gedemon]

I think our biggest chance would be to let firaxis complete civ 6 development and wait for a community overhaul of the game.

That won't happen unless Firaxis release the source code... But even if they finally do, which modders would still be around to use it at this point in development ?

 

[c4c6]

Firaxis release the source code... But even if they finally do, which modders would still be around

I'd bet you would be positively surprised. Year after year of "no decision yet" & "no plans now" laid a heavy layer of mildew on the scenery.

Lethargy is currently the appropriate behaviour: just ignore that source code release, occupy yourself with something else & wait until this uncertainty comes to a conclusion ... perhaps somekind magic event jolt us out of this stage. Provoking acts like the one mentioned in my signature sparked euphoria into the modding community of civ4, which was in 2012 (5 years after final edition!) much more vibrant than civ6's now.

Well, and if not? Sometimes in life you don't receive an answer - you just notice a long time later, that the question has disappeared.

 

[Krajzen]

Personally I have slowly transformed from a fan of 1UPT to complete opponent.
1) It is impossible to design good AI for it while also having good turn times, and lack of military threat has horrible impact on the entire game.
2) Utterly divorced from historical reality of pitched battles (1UPT continent - spanning frontlines make sense only in 20th century and even then only to some extent)
3) Tedious to control, frustrating with constant pains over traversing rough terrain
4) Makes the game lose that awesome adrenaline feel of "great battles that decide fate of empires"

In order to truly dislike 1UPT I had to participate in opendev of Humankind, which has "transport in stacks on the strategic later, 1 UPT tactical battles on the same map" system. Oh my God, this game isn't even in beta and has better military AI than civ6 after two expansions, I was actually losing battles and felt adrenaline and satisfaction. But something that I didn't expect and that was a final nail in the coffin of 1UPT was point 4 - rediscovering the feel of Dramatic Great Battles that 1upt simply lacks.

 

[Joch]

well...some players have been announcing the demise of Civ6 before it was even launched. Yet, 4 years on it is still the 20th most popular game on Steam with around 50,000 players each day. I think a lot of developpers would like that kind of "failure".

 

[Krajzen]

well...some players have been announcing the demise of Civ6 before it was even launched. Yet, 4 years on it is still the 20th most popular game on Steam with around 50,000 players each day. I think a lot of developpers would like that kind of "failure".

The failure is relative. If USA was rated to be only 15th most influential country in the modern world jt would be a catastrophic failure.

Civ6 is a good game, but the problem is its predecessors were great games.
On metacritic (very good indicator imo unless there are rare review spam scandals) civ6 has significantly lower average user rating than every step of civ5 (release - first expansion - second expansion). On Steam 96% of users have positive opinion of civ5 (which is "goddamn amazing" level) vs 82% for civ6 (which is "good game" level). As I said, it is still a good game, but there are visible downward tendencies. And civ6 is supposed to be "civ5 but bigfer and better in every aspect", it wasn't really revolution in any aspect besides districts. Modding scene of civ6 is comparably dead when compared to the amazing wealth of civ5 modding community.

With such giant, established franchises as Sid Meier's Civ very high amount of players is pretty much guaranteed anyway, unless the game is really bad in some aspects and/or there is any alternative. Civ6 didn't even have any rival besides civ5, whom it only overtook in players after like three years by the way, which is a bad sign in itself, especially for a game that was continuous evolution of civ5, not radical controversial change.

But there are many warning signs regarding very questionable design approaches which may led to significant failures in the feature, especially if Humankind and Soren's Old World become very good and popular games. Open testing of Humankind blew my mind and I would completely switch to this game over civ6 if it was released already; good has no chance against great. For example, Humankind in ALPHA VERSION has way more engaging and difficult combat system than civ6 after FOUR YEARS (and it's not like AI and difficulty level aren't very often mentioned by fans).

Time will show what way will 4X market go, but there some warning signs for civ series.

 

[Joch]

no there are no warning signs.

Civ 6 is the most popular game of this type according to Steam and it has been since it came out. It is no. 1. It is what most players want. Civ 6 has sold more copies than any other Civ games, it sold faster than any other Civ game before it. It had sold 5.5 million copies as of late 2019.

You always have the same pocket of players who are disappointed because it does not have this or that feature, but 99% of players do not care and never post here either. Most players want an easy fun game that entertains them and is semi-historical. They vote with their wallet, which is all that the Devs really care about since this is a business after all.

Maybe Humankind will be better, we'll know when it comes out, but this is not the 1st time a supposed Civ killer was rght around the corner, yet Civ 6 is still the champ.

 

[Mahi]

The more I play civ 6, the more I hate all the small things that never were improved. And I've played civ 6 ALOT. Instead they just added content. Something is definitely wrong with the core game of civ 6.
I'm sure its a great mp game but as a single player game the AI is simply not good enough and the developers never really attacked this issue because they knew it couldn't be done with the resources available. So yes, Civ 6 is doomed since they won't improve the fundamental issue with civ 6 and they won't let the modding community get access to the core code of the game.
In hindsight it should have been pretty easy to predict that civ 6 would fail in many ways since they promised good modding tools but never provided. Just look at all the beautiful mods in Civ 4 and 5 compared to the scraps in Civ 6.

 

[Krajzen]

no there are no warning signs.

Civ 6 is the most popular game of this type according to Steam and it has been since it came out. It is no. 1. It is what most players want. Civ 6 has sold more copies than any other Civ games, it sold faster than any other Civ game before it. It had sold 5.5 million copies as of late 2019.

It's number 1 because it had basically no rivals I can't even name any "historical 4X game simulating all of history" from this period. And we need exactly that, not space or fantasy games. And people had enough of civ5 after six and more years so of course they have played whatever was next. Civ6 has always been acceptable enough to barely sway players over civ5 (it took like 3 years). The question is, is civ6 as great as previous games in the series (in fact, it should be better as a straight upgrade of civ5). I point at the widespread criticism on forums (not present at this stage of civ5 at all, I've been here for years) and significantly lower user ratings on various websites to explain my doubt regarding this.

As for Humankind, I don't know about the full game, but I have literally played its battles for hours and had more fun and challenge in its pre - alpha than in civ6 past two expansions, so here's that.

Also as I said, franchises as big as this one (and with no rivals) tend to usually sell great due to their intertia, that's not an indicator of their quality beyond the most basic "well the game is not broken looking at those sales numbers".

So the criticism is still possible and valid, even with those magnificent sales causes by trademark intertia of established series.

 

[acluewithout]

I feel like this entire thread, and many threads like it, basically comes down to this.

Civ VI is current a pretty good game. But it’s not a great game. It has all the pieces to be a great game, but it’s not there yet. It’s basically not going to be a great game unless there’s a third expansion or something equivalent to that. And no one knows if Firaxis will do something like that after NFP.

So, whether Civ is “doomed” comes down to two questions. One, are Firaxis likely to keep substantially developing Civ VI, or will they stop development or just continue adding window dressing content like NFP? If Firaxis don’t keep developing the game, then does being good not great mean the game is “doomed”?

It’s super frustrating. Man, I really like NFP. Like the game modes. Like the new Civs. But I’d love it a lot more if that was getting slapped on top of a more complete base game rather than the sort of “80%” done game we’ve currently got.

It’s frustrating playing such a tight and full early game up to like the Medieval Era, and then the game just drops off, both in terms of challenge but also the content that that’s there (or, really, isn’t there) in the late game.

It’s frustrating seeing obvious small tweaks and balance changes the game needs that just don’t get actioned (like anti-cav, unit balance), so you’re always swapping in tiny game mods or tweaking files. It’s frustrating that FXS often gets balances changes right, but then turn around and makes changes that just totally miss the point (like amenities tweaks that don’t do anything, buffing production but losing Lumbermill adjacencies and having weird Shipyard bonuses, tweaking spy missions but banning spies from allies).

It’s frustrating having all the pieces in place to add great mechanics from previous games (like having amenities / happiness, loyalty, tourism, governments, governors, but not having ideologies), but then FXS just don’t add those mechanics and instead give us game modes that just don’t compliment the game because they’re just a little too shallow or too game breaking.

I now find I’m just dropping into this forum to check that Firaxis haven’t announced Portugal, because maybe if we don’t get Portugal it means might get more better content after NFP? Jesus. That feels like a long shot, right?

The current currently feels like it did after RnF. Lots of good stuff going on, but also sort of a mess. And then along came Gathering Storm, and the game really felt like it was going in the right direction again, and actually in hindsight you could see RnF had been a step in the right direction you just could see what that direction was. I really hope NFP is the precursor to more and better. I really do.

Sorry. Going to get a bit meta here. But I feel like this is sort of part of a wider problem with popular culture generally at the moment. If you enjoy movies, and games, and comics, and tv, and animation, and novels and music, you have this constant experience of stuff being produced which is really, really, really on point and just nails things, but then tonnes of stuff that is so close but obviously soulless. Like, everything new Star Wars has been a total mess, seriously, why are we still making Star Wars stuff as a society, but then Last Jedi was this amazing deconstruction of Star Wars as a Genre and Mandolorian was a master class of executing Star Wars within Genre (which is hard given Star Wars as a Genre is itself such a mish-mash of Samurai and Western movies, Flash Gordon serials, WW2 movies, and this whole Campbell Heroes Journey Jungian crap). Or how you get She-Ra and Lumber Janes and Harvey Street Girls, but somehow they screwed the pooch on Voltron (man that first season was good).

I mean, seriously, if you’re done with Pixar and Hotel Transylvania and oh my God just let Toy Story Die, then go watch Kubo and the Two Strings. That’s how you make kids movies. Jesus, that’s how you make movies period.

It’s like the industrial corporate entertainment news complex finally figured out how to mass produce perfect laser focused all the feels and nostalgia popular culture for intravenous injection but then keeps randomly forgetting to follow the recipe. Like, it’s weird a big soulless corporate company like Disney gets it right sometimes but yet also gets it wrong most of the time. You’d think it would just be always right or always wrong. And then Marvel somehow makes all its movies really good, and even manages to pull of a double (almost triple) feature finale (on your left, cap), but WB can’t make a good DC Heroes movie except by total accident.

Or is that just how popular culture has always been?

Civ VI feels like another franchise that’s been around forever, where someone perhaps with quite good intentions said “hey, let’s take this thing that’s been through a million versions, and lets take our time and do a new version that updates things but also just really just nails all the stuff that’s good about this game. Like, let’s not re-invent the wheel or try to deconstruct the whole thing, but instead let’s just get it right. Whatever right means”. And, as an exercise like that, Civ VI has been pretty good. I mean, seriously, they’ve managed to put Disasters back in the game without the whole thing blowing up. That’s impressive.

But here we are, Civ VI is basically at this point where it’s almost Civ V as it promised to be with all the stuff you loved from Civ IV and all the stuff we’ve leant about game design over the past 30 years and ... and, yeah, we’re kinda treading water.

It feels like either Firaxis have something in the bag they’re not sharing and they’re going to just smash it at some point in 2021 after NFP is over, ... or this has all been a colossal waste of effort to just stop so short.

Good. But not yet Great. Future uncertain.

[Sorry. Total ramble. Clearly pretentious. Maybe just lockdown cabin fever pre-US election panic attack. Also maybe watching too much Bread Tube. Possibly just underwhelmed next mode is Heroes and Legends, which sounds decidedly uninspiring. I assume FXS will randomly tweak railways or fishing boats next month and I’ll instead be posting how FXS are just the best guys and the game is really great people just need to be patient. Or something. I mean, at least we’ve gone a year without Firaxis nerfing England again. Because that was not fun the last twenty times that happened.]

[OK. Sorry. Really. I’ll stop this time. I really will. Huh. Anyone notice Civ now has Vikings, Zombies, Vampires, Pirates and Giant Robots? And Cthulhu? HOW THE MOTHER FORKING SHIRTBALLS DO WE HAVE VIKINGS ZOMBIES VAMPIRES PIRATES AND GIANT FREAKING ROBOTS BUT I CANT SORT TRADE ROUTES BY YIELDS?? ... huff, huff. Ok. We just breath into the bag. In. Out. In. Out.

...

...

Oh look. The Scout has a Cat. That’s cute.]

 

[Gedemon]

"frustrating", yep, that's exactly how I would define civ6 in one word.

I've not directly posted this so far, it was published a while ago (sept 2019), but is still relevant, until Firaxis stop civ6 development leaving it unfinished, which is kind of the point of the thread.

In spoiler to prevent another wall of text

Spoiler The one more patch syndrome, or the enduring frustration of a civ6 modder :

A few weeks ago, when JFD asked me if I wanted to write an article about the "enduring frustrations of civ6 modders", I thought "ho, yes, that's an easy one, and I'll even be able to vent a bit!"

Because I am frustrated modding civ6, that's a fact. Yes, it really has been made from the start with modding in mind, there is no doubt about that, and yes, I still believe in its potential for massive mods, but on the other hand there are a few things I'd really like to do now (and would have been able to do with civ5 and civ4 at this stage of their development cycle) but have to postpone again and again until more methods are available for gameplay modding.

Sometime I really feel like moving away and don't look back. But then I have a "just one more patch to decide" syndrome.

So, yes, I was going to vent here, until a few days ago, when Humankind was announced and my first reflex was to try to learn about the modding capabilities of the previous games made by Amplitude Studios.

Because competition is good for us, and hoping that this new "historical" 4X would push Firaxis to accelerate the release of the DLL source code for civ6, I had a quick look at their games forums, at the workshops of the Endless series, and I asked around what other modders knew on the subject. And was disappointed by the answers.

And now I'm feeling a bit like a child wanting too much, too fast, but, hey, I suppose I just have to blame civ4 for having spoiled me on that aspect !

I still think this may give an incentive for Firaxis to further open gameplay modding for civ6, as an additional selling point, but I'll be surprised (in a good way) if there is a competition on the modding capabilities side.

Anyway, at this point, nothing has changed about my frustrations. It may even make things worst if Humankind provide big features I'd love to add in a Civilization game (and by the look of it, it will) while I can't mod them in civ6 on one side and at the same time can't mod basic but mandatory stuff for my gaming pleasure in Humankind...

What has changed is that I can now take a step back, a deep breath, and, instead of making a spoiled child tantrum, simply provide a small list of fourth points that are frustrating me with civ6 modding.

First, the most obvious and already mentioned point: it's limited compared to civ4 and civ5 because the DLL source code controlling the gameplay aspect has not been released.

As a reminder, the source code does not only allow core modifications outside the scope of the methods exposed to Lua scripting, it also provides a better debugging framework, is faster if you can code your mod's gameplay features in c++, and, finally, it's a direct documentation on how to mod everything that's already opened to modding (except the graphic/sound modding)

I would have listed the lack of documentation here BTW, but a good portion (graphic, UI, ...) has been released a few months back in the SDK folder and is sometime updated with new sections.

Second point, the one that makes every modder shivers in anticipation: I call it the Fatal Error Patch, the one you feel has been designed to specifically target and kill your most precious mod.

A special thought for UI modders here: all patches do that to them. And I know your pain guys, as since Gathering Storm, I've that feeling too thanks to every new patch breaking something in an unexpected and sometime very creative way in YnAMP.

Of course it's normal for patches to break mods, but there is two kind of mod-breaking patch: the good one and the bad one.

The good one is simply solved, you just need to identify the changes in the code (I've setup a local git on the game's folder to check those as we don't have full patch notes) and update your mod (sometime a 3 way merge is enough), and voilà, everything is back to normal.

The bad one is, well, bad. It either introduces a new bug or it makes a hardcoded change to a feature you were using. Sometime you can find a way to circumvent the issue, but it's time consuming. And sometime you simply can't.

I don't want to go into the details, but a short and partial list of things that have turned all my modding time into support time since February: separating LuaEvents from gameplay and UI context, heavy instability on larger maps, removing an exposed method from the vanilla DLL used to change plots ownership (fixed in a later patch, thanks), no method to set river IDs for custom maps, crashes to main menu without logged error if any AI civ or CS is not given a starting position, ...

That point about patches breaking mod is deeply linked to the first, I mean, when you know that you could fix a "bad patch" issue in a few minutes if you had access to the source code and it takes instead hours or even days of "free" time to do it (when you can do it, else it's months or years before the official patch fixing the issue. I'm still waiting for the one bringing back early 2017 stability on very large map), let me tell you, "frustration" is the extremely polite way to express your feelings at those times.

Third, the (general) lack of communication, and more specifically the lack of a public road map relative to modding. I mean I wouldn't have spend time to help code things and make tutorials about making mods to load a custom map if I had knew that the WorldBuilder was going to be updated to do just that for example.

Fourth, something mentioned already, but that you may not expect to be listed here: civ6 has a great potential for modding.

Let me explain, it's quite simple: it's very, very frustrating to see that potential, to think how you could use it creatively but are stopped because you can't truly exploit it. Yet.

Maybe I have to wait a little bit longer, yes, surely, just one more patch...