I have stopped playing Civ VI after over 100 hours of games play with different civs, maps, speeds, levels (Prince, King and Emperor) and size. Overall – it’s boring and I find myself just clicking away on techs and civics. I only need a limited military with ranged units in cities and a reaction force of a few mounted units located centrally to stop any attacks on my civ.
I went back to Civ V (BNW) and before I knew it, 2 hours had past and I had to stop for work, at work I was even thinking about the game and strategies to take when I started playing again – even after 1000’s of hours, Civ V still excites me, and Civ VI just can’t at this stage.
The graphics make it harder to see everything. The colors are less defined, all the writing on screen is small and I need to lean into my screen to read (on optimal resolution). There is a lot more information on the screen, resulting in missing certain things. The units move slowly (and the auto cycle that everyone complains about, I have disabled, requiring more clicks to move the units around, but better for my sanity). The explored areas that I can’t see are almost impossible to decipher. I can’t really see what my districts are at a glance, but have to zoom in and hold the cursor over a tile for what feels like a long time before the (very small text) info comes up about the tile. All of this slows down gameplay, adding to the boredom.
Diplomacy – enough has been said about this already, many steps backwards from Civ V. Less options for interaction, instead of having diplomacy options there but not useable due to game or progress conditions and an explanation of why you can’t ask or offer something (like V) there is simply no info until an option available. For example – open borders: have the command there but shaded from the start and then become usable once a tech has been researched. Oh and the AI hates you, all the time.
1UPT / units in general – I like 1UPT as I played Panzer General and Glory of Generals previously, it provides many more options to gameplay. I like the addition of the corps and army too. Perhaps a combined arms army (1 x Arty, 1 x Inf and 1 x Tank) might be more realistic, but may not work with the way the game is designed. Artillery feels poor due to the need on an observation balloon for indirect fire) being ex-military myself, all units can call indirect fire, so the artillery should be able to fire as long as the target is visible to any unit. Knights etc should be able to move after combat, gameplay is weakened because they can’t. Knight – Tank – Modern Armor really?? No other options in between? Why do they make the attack helicopters so weak in these games? Realistically an Apache can destroy many enemy tanks and vehicles without suffering a scratch itself, especially older tech units, so why do you take damage by attacking an enemy horseman? It should be a ranged unit with 1 or 2 tiles.
Cities / districts – I like this idea at first, but now I don’t. For wonders and large late game buildings I like it, same for encampments. But markets, libraries, temples, amphitheaters, banks, museums should all be in the city center, in fact the lack of buildings for your city center is annoying.
Tech / Civic – I likes the ideas of separate trees and the huge combination of governments and policies, but it all feels much weaker than Civ V. I just find myself clicking away mid to late game without even looking. In Civ V, I would plan out techs for certain buildings or units and it felt both simpler and more complex than Civ VI.
There is a lot to like about Civ VI, but I find it boring and predicable, hard to decipher the screen, bad AI and much worse diplomacy (really the worst part of this game). As I have gone back to Civ V, it would be nice is another expansion for that game could be made to sort out some minor issues
Its disappointing, with all the info on these forums that the developers have produced this.