Is the Civ VI 'hate' overblown?

[salty mud]

I'm a fairly longterm Civ fan and I've seen a few games come and go and the response has generally been the same. On release, people derided Civ IV as a pale imitation of Civ III. Civ V was lambasted as a "failure" and a "disgrace" to the Civilization series in 2010. Funny thing is, ask a great deal of people now and they will hold Civ IV and V as the pinnacles of strategy gaming. Times change, and opinions with them.

I think the same is true of Civ VI. On release, Civ VI WAS disappointing. It was gutted of features and featured a laughably inept AI. Its expansions, though expensive, have added multiple important dimensions to the game though that elevate the empire building aspects beyond those seen in Civ V. The range of Civ VI complaints range from the sensible and reasonable (AI and agendas, for example), to the silly (I've seen people refuse to play the game because of the inclusion of post-colonial nations like Canada and Australia... America's inclusion doesn't seem to bother them though.)

Do you think some of the complaints are unjustified?

 

[Roman Legion]

Admittedly I haven't played much of Civ VI yet which I aim to change that and had some issues that were to be expected coming from Civ 3 as the last I really played. Not sure exactly what all folks are saying, but I'm gonna give Civ vi a fair shot. I did enjoy my first civ 6 play through, even if I did lose. lol

 

[AriochIV]

I don't hate Civ VI, and I don't think most people here do either. There are things I like, and things I don't like, and I suspect most people feel the same.

I felt the "hate" much stronger for Civ V than I do for Civ VI amongst what I experience of the fanbase. I got lots of hours of enjoyment out of both games.

People are more animated about what they dislike than what they like, and I think that gamers in general can often focus on the negative. I might guess that some people could think that I hate Civ VI from critical things I've posted here, but that's not the case.

 

[kaspergm]

I think the same is true of Civ VI. On release, Civ VI WAS disappointing. It was gutted of features and featured a laughably inept AI. Its expansions, though expensive, have added multiple important dimensions to the game though that elevate the empire building aspects beyond those seen in Civ V.

Actually, my view of Civ6 is somewhat opposite of yours. Unlike Civ5, which was extremely lacking on release, I actually think Civ6 was very complete on release. Yes of course there were things missing, but both in terms of actual content and overall performance, Civ6 was very much playable on release (which could not be said about Civ5). As such, when Civ6 was released, I was really optimistic about the game, because I felt here was really a foundation for what could be come an epic game.

Sadly, I think the expansions have been extremely lacking and have in many ways pulled down my overall impression of the game. Sure, Rise and Fall brought the loyalty system which was a huge benefit for the game, but I think the implementation of ages is extremely gamey and lacking, and I think the governor system is overall just boring and drowns in micromanagement. As for Gathering Storm, overall I like the implementation of disasters, particularly after some tweaks, but on the other hand, the world congress is nothing short of a disgrace for the game. And finally now for New Frontier Pass, we see a collection of more or less half-baked "game modes", that don't really have integration in core game mechanics (because they are designed to be turned on and off at will) and on top of that are absolutely horribly balanced, and as such doesn't really add anything to the game for me.

So I think Civ6 has sort of squandered the potential it had on release. Furthermore, the fact that Civ6 is currently looking to end up being less moddable than Civ5 was is a major disappointment and a real failure from whoever-has-the-deciding-power on that question.

 

[KayAU]

No, I don't think the complaints are unjustified in general, and I also don't think that Civ VI gets much "hate". I am among those who have been critical of several aspects of it since the beginning, and since my biggest issues have never been adressed, I have remained critical. That doesn't mean I think it's a bad game. I am a bit disappointed that it never turned into what I wanted it to be, but I still enjoy playing once in a while.

I agree with @AriochIV that Civ V seems to get more hate, but my perception might be biased, as I personally like Civ V more, and don't really mind the aspects of it most of its detractors seem to hate (global happiness, 1 UPT, tall play being so strong). I was one of the weirdos who liked vanilla Civ V.

 

[civac]

I'm a fairly longterm Civ fan and I've seen a few games come and go and the response has generally been the same. On release, people derided Civ IV as a pale imitation of Civ III. Civ V was lambasted as a "failure" and a "disgrace" to the Civilization series in 2010. Funny thing is, ask a great deal of people now and they will hold Civ IV and V as the pinnacles of strategy gaming. Times change, and opinions with them.

These are not contradictory opinions. For example, release Civ4 is a very different animal from BTS with BUG mod. Lots of users here have said similar things about Civ5 at release vs Vox Populi(?) mod. Though I have no first-hand knowledge of Civ5.

 

[criZp]

The only complaint that is unjustified is the people who complain about cartoony graphics, every single other complaint is 100% accurate. For me the game is a collection of good ideas where most of them are not executed in a good manner. There is just so much chore work, from swapping out policies on a turn by turn basis to moving every unit around individually, and a build queue that doesn't let me queue up the things I want, and AI deal-making where you have to "test out" many different proposals to find the best one the AI is willing to accept. Game is just designed to waste your time.

 

[KayAU]

I pretty much agree with everything @kaspergm said above, apart from Civ 5 not being playable on release. I realize I am in the minority here, and perhaps I was a bit dazzled by the many new things I liked about the game (such as the move to hexagons).

I do agree that the expansions did a lot more for Civ 5 than they have done for 6. I think this is related to one of my general complaints about Civ 6, which is that while it has lots of features and systems, those systems don't seem to interact nearly as much as they did in Civ 5. To take an example: tourism doesn't do anything at all unless you are pursuing a cultural victory. In Civ 5 it influenced trade, espionage, conquest and ideology. Another example: the World Congress doesn't affect diplomacy in general. This one is just absurd to me. Anyway, the overall problem with the lack of interaction, is that while there are a lot of features and systems, a lot of them end up feeling redundant.

 

[Chefofrats]

The game has flaws, the ridiculous World Congress being the most obvious, but I love it, and have loved it since release. It is almost infinitely replayable - I have 1700 hours played, and I don't feel like stopping. No game is ever perfect, and it would be silly to concentrate only on the negatives.

 

[kaspergm]

It is almost infinitely replayable - I have 1700 hours played, and I don't feel like stopping.

This is actually my main objection to the game: I think it has much less replayability than Civ5 had. I feel like each civ is strongly shoehorned into one specific game style and victory type, and I feel like each game plays out very much the same as the last in terms of for instance research paths, district developments (with some minor detours - do I go theatre or not?) and most notably with regards to governments and policies, where I feel like I use pretty much the same handful of policies pretty much all game and every game.

Civ5 for me had much more variation with the policy trees - your choice of policy tree was something that not only had major impact on that specific game, it would also stick with you for the remainder of the game. Of course it required some mods to actually make the different policies viable (instead of just going Tradition-Rationalism-whatever every single game), but personally I found these much more interesting options than in Civ6.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

This is actually my main objection to the game: I think it has much less replayability than Civ5 had. I feel like each civ is strongly shoehorned into one specific game style and victory type, and I feel like each game plays out very much the same as the last in terms of for instance research paths, district developments (with some minor detours - do I go theatre or not?) and most notably with regards to governments and policies, where I feel like I use pretty much the same handful of policies pretty much all game and every game.

Civ5 for me had much more variation with the policy trees - your choice of policy tree was something that not only had major impact on that specific game, it would also stick with you for the remainder of the game. Of course it required some mods to actually make the different policies viable (instead of just going Tradition-Rationalism-whatever every single game), but personally I found these much more interesting options than in Civ6.

I think the inherent design of Civ 6 supports infinite replayability while Civ 5 doesn't. Namely because it is VERY easy to get a standard start game routine going (on Prince in Civ 5 I would always bee-line for Great Library), in civ 6 it's much harder because of the number of restrictions imposed on you, including harder science if you don't have mountains, specific wonder placement resitrictions etc.

But I do think that there is a number of things that are great in theory but not executed well, policies being one of them, I find them quite boring and I usually stick to the same ones all the time.

 

[criZp]

On the matter of boring policies, I do think I managed to mod in some serious improvements on that area, just in case anyone should care

 

[iammaxhailme]

I didn't start in this series until Brave New World came to Civ 5, so I can't really compare launch-time reactions. But I do think most of the criticism of civ 6 is fairly level headed and justfied. The game has some problems that need addressing, mostly the AI. But I don't think people are criticizing unfairly.

This is actually my main objection to the game: I think it has much less replayability than Civ5 had. I feel like each civ is strongly shoehorned into one specific game style and victory type, and I feel like each game plays out very much the same as the last in terms of for instance research paths, district developments (with some minor detours - do I go theatre or not?) and most notably with regards to governments and policies, where I feel like I use pretty much the same handful of policies pretty much all game and every game.

Civ5 for me had much more variation with the policy trees - your choice of policy tree was something that not only had major impact on that specific game, it would also stick with you for the remainder of the game. Of course it required some mods to actually make the different policies viable (instead of just going Tradition-Rationalism-whatever every single game), but personally I found these much more interesting options than in Civ6.

I do strongly prefer Civ 5's policy trees to Civ 6's civic cards. Their impact was more substantial and unique than a lot of boring "+percent to X" bonuses like civ 6's policy cards are. Having finisher bonuses in the trees ads a sense of direction and cohesion, imo. But I also like how civ 6 has a split science and civic tree; I think this makes games a lot less "same-y". In civ 5, every victory is really a science victory, since you use science to unlock ~everything~. Of course, I don't know what you could have on a civics tree if you don't use civic cards like civ 6 does, so I can't really offer a solution

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This is actually my main objection to the game: I think it has much less replayability than Civ5 had. I feel like each civ is strongly shoehorned into one specific game style and victory type, and I feel like each game plays out very much the same as the last in terms of for instance research paths, district developments (with some minor detours - do I go theatre or not?) and most notably with regards to governments and policies, where I feel like I use pretty much the same handful of policies pretty much all game and every game.

But that's true for every iteration of civ. After a few months hive mind strategery on here, certain paths and moves always seem to come to the top. If anything there are way more decisions and variations between civs here than ever before. It's us that have changed because the options will seem less "new" the more versions of the game we play.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

The mostly-criticized exploits in vanilla games are cost scaling for expensive districts, too much yield for chopping/harvesting, trade bug, early horseman rush being too powerful, late-game tech/civics cost too little so those eras are skipped too quickly etc.

During 4 years of development, none of them has been fixed actually. They even introduced some new ones such as extreme pillage yields and unreasonable era timer. Now we have a game where

1: Cities are settled for chopping and mostly according to number of trees/harvestable resources nearby.
2: Pillage yield much more than actually control a city.
3: Trade bugs are everywhere and can happen in any trade.
4: Spaceships are made of gold, faith, woods, builders' lives, and are finished in Renaissance or Industrial Era.
5: The game never progresses into Modern Era or later, any era-specific dedication, dark age policies, world congress resolutions after that simply become jokes. Except when we're pursuing Diplomatic victories, where we eliminate nearly all other civs to ensure our diplomatic supermacy. (The strategy still works and is still the best strategy.)
6: Dark ages are better than Golden ages, but much harder to get in.
7: We rock people up for cultural victory using faith, we don't care about our displayed tourism actually.
8: Mongolia is the best for religious victory, while Byzantium has "Byzantium Horde" for cavalries.
9: Sadly the "Byzantium Horde" is also buggy, like many other buggy features such as the Heitaroi special ability or the 1st promotion for melee units. Actually any unit with a melee attack can have the Byzantium Horde, not only cavalries.
10: Bombers and Fighters cost 1500 less science than Biplanes. How can THAT be?

*: Even now, the designers still don't know how to balance the game, and continue claiming they're doing a good job, Moderator Action: <SNIP> . I hate to watch those designer videos, whenever they say "we're fixing sth.", it is almost certain that their solutions either don't fix that or just make it even worse. None of the existing imbalances will actually be fixed. There'll just be more and more.

Moderator Action: Please leave the political references out of game threads. It constitutes trolling. leif
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[SammyKhalifa]

The mostly-criticized exploits in vanilla games are cost scaling for expensive districts, too much yield for chopping/harvesting, trade bug, early horseman rush being too powerful, late-game tech/civics cost too little so those eras are skipped too quickly etc.

During 4 years of development, none of them has been fixed actually. They even introduced some new ones such as extreme pillage yields and unreasonable era timer. Now we have a game where

1: Cities are settled for chopping and mostly according to number of trees/harvestable resources nearby.
2: Pillage yield much more than actually control a city.
3: Trade bugs are everywhere and can happen in any trade.
4: Spaceships are made of gold, faith, woods, builders' lives, and are finished in Renaissance or Industrial Era.
5: The game never progresses into Modern Era or later, any era-specific dedication, dark age policies, world congress resolutions after that simply become jokes. Except when we're pursuing Diplomatic victories, where we eliminate nearly all other civs to ensure our diplomatic supermacy. (The strategy still works and is still the best strategy.)
6: Dark ages are better than Golden ages, but much harder to get in.
7: We rock people up for cultural victory using faith, we don't care about our displayed tourism actually.
8: Mongolia is the best for religious victory, while Byzantium has "Byzantium Horde" for cavalries.
9: Sadly the "Byzantium Horde" is also buggy, like many other buggy features such as the Heitaroi special ability or the 1st promotion for melee units. Actually any unit with a melee attack can have the Byzantium Horde, not only cavalries.
10: Bombers and Fighters cost 1500 less science than Biplanes. How can THAT be?

*: Even now, the designers still don't know how to balance the game, and continue claiming they're doing a good job, like Donald Trumps. I hate to watch those designer videos, whenever they say "we're fixing sth.", it is almost certain that their solutions either don't fix that or just make it even worse.

But such issues have ALWAYS been the case . . .

 

[kaspergm]

I think the inherent design of Civ 6 supports infinite replayability while Civ 5 doesn't. But I do think that there is a number of things that are great in theory but not executed well, policies being one of them, I find them quite boring and I usually stick to the same ones all the time.

On the matter of boring policies, I do think I managed to mod in some serious improvements on that area, just in case anyone should care

Yeah, I agree, bad balance is certainly the bane of many things in Civ6. You could probably reduce the number of policies by a factor 2 and increase the number of relevant policies by a factor of 2 at the same time through balancing, and make the game much more fun in the process. I'll definitely check out that mod, although I'll miss the "extra builder charges" and production towards settlers cards.

 

[_hero_]

*: Even now, the designers still don't know how to balance the game, and continue claiming they're doing a good job. I hate to watch those designer videos, whenever they say "we're fixing sth.", it is almost certain that their solutions either don't fix that or just make it even worse. None of the existing imbalances will actually be fixed. There'll just be more and more.

They must be doing something right as you still play the game.

I think the goal of the designers isn't to have a perfectly balanced game. It's primarily a single-player game, not an eSport. As such the goal is to have a fun game that people keep playing. Steamcharts has consistently had Civ VI in it's top 25 games and is consistently the most played 4x game on there. By any metric the people running the company care about, the designers have been successful.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I do agree that the expansions did a lot more for Civ 5 than they have done for 6. I think this is related to one of my general complaints about Civ 6, which is that while it has lots of features and systems, those systems don't seem to interact nearly as much as they did in Civ 5. To take an example: tourism doesn't do anything at all unless you are pursuing a cultural victory. In Civ 5 it influenced trade, espionage, conquest and ideology. Another example: the World Congress doesn't affect diplomacy in general. This one is just absurd to me. Anyway, the overall problem with the lack of interaction, is that while there are a lot of features and systems, a lot of them end up feeling redundant.

Totally agree I was quite excited for expansions for Civ 6 since religion and espionage were already in so I was looking forward to new ground. While I don't think the expansions are bad they dont feel like they enhanced the game or tie in that well to whats already there. Adding a new victory condition as opposed to having a long hard look at how the others could be improved I think is emblematic of the expansions flaws.

 

[riddleofsteel]

I think it got worse for many, myself included, with each DLC and expansion pack that came out.