Its Boring

Moriarte said:
Kinda strange. It was never meant to be a game for kids, more so for their older brothers and sisters. Yet the cartoony
way was chosen? Now, after playing for a bit I can see why - the whole graphics business isn't very high quality art, it certainly isn't revolutionary, like IV --> V
transition was. Which probably saved a lot of $ along the way. Not that that should get in the way of good underlying gameplay. Just strange. I can see Sid sitting
in his penthouse, thinking - hmm, why don't we do something original and chuck all the people who don't like cartoons out the window with our new installment? As expected,
there are more people liking cartoons, so it sets a franchise record of 1 mil copies in first two weeks IIRC.

It's not a bad game, by the way. Just very raw, much like V on release.
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  1. A non-realistic art style does not mean it was meant for children.
  2. The detail within the art presented is very high. The models appear detailed, and the textures likewise.
  3. Art that appears "cartoonish" doesn't mean it was any cheaper to make.
  4. This is not the first Civilisation game to have non-realistic aesthetics.
  5. A non-realistic art style does not mean it was meant for children.
 
there's very good reasons not to buy this game but the OP sounds like a very unpleasant person who's just looking for a way to feel better about himself
 
i dont think the game is more complicated. it has more features in some ways than civ 5 BUT (and its a big full bodied but) the city building has gotten imo too complicated now. i have no objection to cities spreading over more than one tile - its having to do detailed town planning i object to. i have cities:skylines for that. in civ it should be about the civ on the global scale not spending all my time frustrated by housing/amenities warnings when to build those would remove the farms the city needs to survive. i have local government (town and county councils) who deal with that. im the leader of the government not the local head of the town council or city mayor.

in that respect, i think civ is getting a bit far afield from what the games should be about - civilisations, history, armies moving and exploration, scientific advances. the global governmental view.
 
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treadwin said:
2. The AI, particularly early in the game, doesn't seem to play to win, it seems to be doing its best to be as irritating as possible. Ive had up to 3 civs march 30 hexes across the map to plant a city so close to my territory that two of them didn't have a clear hex around it. In occasional games, even on lower difficulty levels, for no apparent reason, civs attack you aggressively en mass, with surprising co-ordination with the barbarians, who will hurl themselves to death on your city walls, rather than capture a worker or pillage an AI civ much closer to them. While this does increase the difficulty, I have the difficulty slider for that.

3. Ridiculous trade agreements keep being offered to me, turn after turn. The diplomacy screen is slow, even if you escape out of it. I don't need to keep seeing offers for me to trade all my luxuries and gold, for open borders 20 turns in a row, from 3 civs. How difficult is it for the AI to stop offering stupid one-sided deals?

5. Religious warfare; surely a case of the emperor's new clothes, no one willing to tell Ed how much it sucks. I am not opposed to the idea of a religious victory, but not only does the system not begin to give a respectable representation of religion (not essential I know), but religious combat is just another version of military combat, with all the fun, complexity and interest taken out. The question isn't whether it is enjoyable, but how could anyone think it is enjoyable.

8. The start screen and main menu has features removed even from Civ5. The high scores table, and the ability to change the default create settings are gone, for no other reason than they were too lazy to include them. So you start a game and suddenly realize you forgot to set the speed to quick, so back out; start it up again; crap, I forgot to change it from random civ; start it again; lousy start, restart; start it again, oh crap, speed setting again! Give up!
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I agree with the points I've quoted, but I don't agree that the game is going backwards: I think I enjoy it about as much as I ever did. The problem is that it's improving things marginally, while not fixing the main defects that the game has always had since version 1: it's too long and complicated, combat is repetitive and not very interesting, and the later stages are so tedious that I've given up playing them: I now play 44% of a full game and then stop. (So I have no complaint about spying, because I've never tried it.)
Combat has been improved and it's no longer as bad as it used to be, but I still find it rather a chore: wars are something I go through as a matter of occasional necessity. I don't really enjoy them, and never did.
There's also the problem that the game is loosely based on world history, but it can't be called even an approximate simulation: it disregards reality too blatantly. I don't want painstaking detailed realism, but it would be kind of nice if the designers had accepted criticism of the form "That's totally impossible in the real world", instead of dismissing it as irrelevant.
 
Gorbles said:
  1. A non-realistic art style does not mean it was meant for children.
  2. The detail within the art presented is very high. The models appear detailed, and the textures likewise.
  3. Art that appears "cartoonish" doesn't mean it was any cheaper to make.
  4. This is not the first Civilisation game to have non-realistic aesthetics.
  5. A non-realistic art style does not mean it was meant for children.
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You brought up numerous examples of adult animation earlier. The entire trend started with The Simpsons (and unsurprisingly, there was a huge uproar when the Simpsons was first aired, back in the early 1990s (the Simpsons debuted in 1989)). The Simpsons broke the Animation Age Ghetto, paving the way for other adult animated series to become popular. Nowadays, the Simpsons is considered tame as compared with the examples you brought up (the Simpsons is now considered a gateway series to the adult animation genre).

I may not be prudish, but much of the adult animation genre isn't my cup of tea. I have no problem with "cartoonish" graphics, as I stated earlier, hence my love of the Kirby games, despite me being slightly older than the Simpsons (the television program; the Simpson shorts predate me though).

There's also numerous examples of Teen-rated Japanese RPGs with anime-style cel-shading, with Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle for the PS2 (later re-released for the PS4 in the PlayStation Network) being among the first.
 
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Well, I wasn't directing my reply at you, so I never said you had a problem with adult animation. I completely understand that people might not be a fan of the concept (regardless of specific style or implementation) - I have friends that still can't get into Borderlands and that's a relatively realistic example (relatively!).

And of course there will be criticism. Butit doesn't mean the criticism is apt, or in the case of the post I quoted even vaguely-accurate. That was more the point I was trying to make, sorry if I wasn't clear!
 
God of Kings said:
You brought up numerous examples of adult animation earlier. The entire trend started with The Simpsons

...

There's also numerous examples of Teen-rated Japanese RPGs with anime-style cel-shading, with Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle for the PS2 (later re-released for the PS4 in the PlayStation Network) being among the first.
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Actually, as I understand it, Japan never went through an "animation is for kids" phase; since basically the beginning, all age ranges have been targeted by animation. (they just find it hard to export it)
 
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Zuizgond said:
I think Civ 6 and Civ 5 are less complex than Civ 4.
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Really? Perhaps you played with all the addons. I played Civ 4 quite a lot, but stuck to the basic game. Which is what you should be comparing Civ 6 with, because the addons for Civ 6 haven't arrived yet.

I can't play Civ 4 now, it won't install on my current computer. In any case, I played it to death; the last time I tried it, I thought, OK, that's enough.
 
Weirdly, I *prefer* games that don't try to be visually stunning. WoW took grief because it went the cartoon route for its graphics... until people realized that WoW would play on a moderate to low end machine even on release while things like Conan and Warhammer chugged along poorly. I'm currently playing the hell out of 8-Bit Armies.

Give me CTP2 armies and governments, with Civ4 border mechanics, with Civ5 graphics and religions and I'll die happy.
 
I think the civ 6 graphic style is fine, with the exception of the fog of war which turns everything monotonously brown, unappealing and confusing to look at, and some elements of the terrain that are hard to see and distinguish from each other. It's mostly the way it is put together into a user interface which currently has major issues.
 
RealAntithesis said:
I think the civ 6 graphic style is fine, with the exception of the fog of war which turns everything monotonously brown, unappealing and confusing to look at, and some elements of the terrain that are hard to see and distinguish from each other. It's mostly the way it is put together into a user interface which currently has major issues.
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I'm looking forward to the SDK specifically because it may allow editing in custom "parchment" map styles - for example:
  • Black and green faux-VDU style
  • Children's "treasure map" style
  • National Geographic fat border maps (actually this is implemented in the United States' earthquake report website at USGS and it looks teriffic).
On a side note, the old short-lived Warhammer MMO (warhammer online) had different world maps depending on which race you played. The greenskins' map was hilarious.
 
Artifex1 said:
The graphics are a strong point of the game IMO.
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I agree and disagree.

The aesthetic is fine. Or rather, that's always going to be up to preference.

What could have been better is contrast between terrain type. The terrain is less visually clear between types/hills/etc than both civ 4 and civ 5 and that should be seen as a clear step backward graphically. Some of the other stuff looks better IMO but given how often players interact with terrain of different typing and use it differently having a lack of clarity there hurts. It's a small complaint overall compared to my serious ones though.
 
It's clear to me why people think Civ VI graphics are for children. The reason is really simple, but not that obvious. So here it goes:

The terrain is SO lacking in detail that it subconsciously reminds people of their old days, playing older games where the terrain graphics were just as bland. They were kids back then, so they assume there's a connection that makes sense to them.

Because terrain is the first thing you see, and because people don't like to change their opinion once they've convinced themselves that they have good reason to have that opinion, the fact that everything BUT the terrain is very detailed and really lovely makes little difference.

This explanation is perfectly logical.
Don't try to convince me otherwise.
 
Ryika said:
It's clear to me why people think Civ VI graphics are for children. The reason is really simple, but not that obvious. So here it goes:

The terrain is SO lacking in detail that it subconsciously reminds people of their old days, playing older games where the terrain graphics were just as bland. They were kids back then, so they assume there's a connection that makes sense to them.

Because terrain is the first thing you see, and because people don't like to change their opinion once they've convinced themselves that they have good reason to have that opinion, the fact that everything BUT the terrain is very detailed and really lovely makes little difference.

This explanation is perfectly logical.
Don't try to convince me otherwise.
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Actually I think the cities look awful with a Granary and Egyptian style Monument dominating the city center of every city regardless of tech level and civilization. Also the Palaces that consistently look too advanced for their era. And the way Sheep always stand on the outside of an empty pasture instead of inside of it like every other pasture. And the way walling a city makes the amount of internally usable space look next to nothing because its dominated by the Granary and Egyptian Monument.

Don't get me started on the fact that no matter the civilization playing the game always feels like you are running a Communism Dictatorship even when you are supposed to be a Republic and Monarchy. Or that I can't decide how the inheritance laws work in my society. Inheritance law is the foundation of Civilization!
 
So I played Civ VI when it first came out... then stopped... and I forgot why, so I tried it out again tonight.

Here is why I stopped playing, I think. What fun is this?

Screen Shot 2017-02-18 at 8.37.35 PM.png
 
You just have to know that there will be more barbarians in the early game. Once you understand that, it's easy to take care of them. The game requires a mind shift from CiV just like CiV required a mind shift from Civ IV.

Are their issues with the game? Sure, but I think early barbs is a design choice that's easy to play with once you understand it.
 
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