Looks like Civ 6 is done: Kevin called April "final game update"

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I would have made Alexander a dual leader for Greece and Persia.
.

With this. Macedonian needs an alt leader, a similiarly strong leader as powerful as Iscandar himself.
And Personally he should astride Greece and Macedonia.

 

[Zegangani]

While I agree with this dynamic and design philosophy, I'll doubt it a little. One counter-example: Canada.
I don't think that "farms on tundra" is a mechanic that they thought about that they felt they needed it in the game.
Diplomatic favors from tourism? A French ability, sure, but a canadian one?

For me, Canada is the perfect example, IMO and how I see it, as a civ that they wanted integrated in the game that they found mechanics to add to it.
One the other hand, Scotland would seem to be a better example of it. "More science and production from happiness" is indeed a fun and interesting mechanic, and not one we would have thought of first with Scotland.

I personally think that, in reality, around half the mechanics are truly find first, but half of it is from civ they know and want to include and then find mechanics to them.

True. At the same time I can't help but see how some playstyles they just tack on to a civ because they want to bring them back in the game, considering 5 out of the 8 civs from the NFP were returning from previous games.
For instance a civ revolving around spreading your religion and then using that to conquer cities, doesn't necessarily scream Byzantium upon first glance. However I guess if you look at Basil II, it does fit his reign.

Yeah, as I said, not every Civ goes through this Procedure. Portugal is another Example. Because it's a staple Civ that is Popular among a lot of Fans. Gaul on the other Hand, isn't a Civ that is anticipated by the majority of Fans (I'm not talking about CivFanatics, we are the minority), so I doubt they have planned to include it from the begining.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

With this. Macedonian needs an alt leader, a similiarly strong leader as powerful as Iscandar himself.
And Personally he should astride Greece and Macedonia.

All these things are true, however I don't see the need for a separate Macedonian civ if they were just going to make him an alt. leader for Greece in the first place. That probably would have made it worse.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Are you sure about that?

Civ V Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Songhai, Zulu
Civ VI Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, Kongo, Mali, Nubia, Zulu

Civ V Americas: Aztec, Inca, Iroquois, Maya, Shoshone
Civ VI Americas: Aztec, Cree, Inca, Mapuche, Maya

Those lists look even to me. Or do you not count South American native cultures as "Native American"? Even so, it's basically equal.

Edit: Removed Carthage and Phoenicia, added Nubia!

Not including Songhai again is a pretty egregious offense considering its the largest empire Africa has ever seen. The whole Mansa Musa thing is kind of a meme at this point and Mali never had the same territorial expanse as Songhai. If they don't like Askia Muhammad nothing is stopping them from picking another leader like Askia Dawud or even Sunni Ali (though Sunni Ali gets kind of dicey if you take the Islamic sources at face value with him ordering babies crushed etc but I guess we have Genghis Khan so....).

Personally, I would have liked to have seen a return of Morocco or at least the Almoravids/Almohads and some South/Southeast African civs that aren't the Zulu like the Kingdom of Mutapa or some trade centered civ to capture the richness of the Indian Ocean trade. I know we have the Great Zimbabwe as a wonder but we could have also had the culture that built it...

 

[pokiehl]

I have to chime in and say that the Macedon civ was brilliant and I hope they bring it back. Alexander just would not have worked as alt leader for Greece. Likewise with keeping Bzyantium totally separate from Rome. These conventions allow the developers to give us more variety in gameplay styles.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Why does it always come back to what other civs people want...the civs discussion is that way >>>>

The game doesn't need new civs - 50 is already more than most will reasonably be able to play through even once. What it needs is more polish, greater depth to certain game modes, and a reason to play into the late game.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

They seemed to very specifically point out during the latest livestream that this was the last piece of content "for the new frontier pass". I don't recall them ever definitively mentioning it was the end of the road for Civ 6. I actually thought the fact they kept stressing that it was the end of the new frontier pass hinted that there was still something coming. Personally, I found very few of the modes (Dramatic Ages, M&C, Tech/Civic, maybe Barbs) to be "always on" or even "usually on" so I'd be happier if they just did another round of civs and maybe made the existing systems a bit deeper and more interconnected and forgot about game modes.

 

[The Civs 6]

Why does it always come back to what other civs people want...the civs discussion is that way >>>>

The game doesn't need new civs - 50 is already more than most will reasonably be able to play through even once. What it needs is more polish, greater depth to certain game modes, and a reason to play into the late game.

Yeah, I am starting to see this as the biggest problem with 6. If you get past the challenge of surviving the first 50 turns because the AI is given unfair advantages, your reward is getting to do all the fun mid-game stuff. But I have never seen an AI (even Babylon!), even if they have managed to keep up, translate that into winning. Except for diplomatic victory points.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Why does it always come back to what other civs people want...the civs discussion is that way >>>>

The game doesn't need new civs - 50 is already more than most will reasonably be able to play through even once. What it needs is more polish, greater depth to certain game modes, and a reason to play into the late game.

I think they should focus on deepening the base game systems. Since the game modes are optional any time spent further on them risks not being of any interest to huge swaths of the player base.

 

[pokiehl]

Why does it always come back to what other civs people want...the civs discussion is that way >>>>

The game doesn't need new civs - 50 is already more than most will reasonably be able to play through even once. What it needs is more polish, greater depth to certain game modes, and a reason to play into the late game.

Perfectly said. As @acluewithout said, the game really does feel like it loses steam after the mid-game. That goes both for gameplay but also visually! Not every civ needs to look exactly the same once the game hits the Modern Era or whatever; I've suggested this before, but I wish the art team had taken some creative liberties with imagining how the distinctive cultural styles could look today.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Perfectly said. As @acluewithout said, the game really does feel like it loses steam after the mid-game. That goes both for gameplay but also visually! Not every civ needs to look exactly the same once the game hits the Modern Era or whatever; I've suggested this before, but I wish the art team had taken some creative liberties with imagining how the distinctive cultural styles could look today.

When wasn't this the case though? A huge element of the fun of the early game is discovery - both physically discovering terrain and uncovering political situations among other things. No matter what they do - they can't replicate that uncertainty and fun in the late game. I feel like dumping more resources into a part of the game that is never going to be as interesting as the early/mid-game isn't going to yield any real benefits.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I would have really disliked all your changes, sorry!

Probably because Civ V was the worst title of the series I do agree that something is missing, I think in both Civ IV and Civ V by the end of the game the Civs had broken up into power blocs which made the late game more interesting.

Lol and I'm here with more time in Civ V than Civ IV and VI combined XD.

But I will say one of the biggest reasons why the endgame of VI is so dull compared to V is STILL the diplomacy with other civs. After so much content it. is. still. a. mess! Civ V's AI and diplomacy wasn't anything spectacular but I will say that streamlined simplicity of alliances and denouements made it so much easier to see where people were. In Civ VI, not only did they add the dual "agendas" (Which in my opinion is just annoying-the AI doesn't do anything besides reprimand you relentlessly for the "secret" one. Just keep it as one agenda), but they also have a bunch of new alliances and causes belli that are nice but in the end, force you into road bumps to wanting to do simple actions. It's not a particularly deep system-it just gets in your way to making friends and alliances. A lot of the time I just choose to not bother with other civs at all since I don't want to have to deal with the stars aligning just to make a friend lol. And tbh..I still don't like that you can't bribe/fund people to go to war with another player. I just miss that simple yet fun feature from V...which actually is another example of taking control away from the player and instead having to put them through a bunch of rigamarole just to accomplish their goal.

The next huge reason things tank is the endgame is the lack of colonial play. Say what you will about V and colonialism as a whole, but the game had a "happiness spike" in the late game (Around ideology) which incentivized you to explore the world to find spots to colonize AND IT WAS FUN. More luxuries, new trade deals-stuff could open up! And in doing so, you would often trip into another continents' problems/wars which would make things fun in the industrial era. It also made it so that having a navy was a good idea lmao. It shifted the power dynamics and really changed how you played in the mid/late game. But in VI with loyalty, it's so hard to keep colonial possessions and there's no real reason to even make a boat if you don't have to. And as a result, there's less of an incentive to explore the map and meet other civs...which sucks. I've actually won a SV without even leaving my contients and discovered 3 other civs at satellites (This was before GS) but it really is that unincentivized. Undeeped loyalty mechanics and the lack of benefits of colonial play really hurt the post Renaissance game as a whole. Maybe FXS was trying to move away from colonialism as it's a touchy topic in society, but tbh it was hilarious to go across the seas to conquer Spain as the Aztecs, or colonize England as India. And, like I was saying before, it gave you more options and a reason to play/explore the late game.

Finally, the WC. In V it was simple and effective. And tbh, the rich deciding the diplomatic agenda of the world kinda made sense...and even then there were ways to "buy" votes from people so it really did have more depth to it than that. It was simple yet effective and made for some hilarious decisions and late game shenanigans that really made Civ V late games compelling. Especially after ideologies (But that's already been talked to death)

My main point in all of this, and my reasoning in why Civ V is slightly better is just because it was more streamlined, yet also dynamic. Civ VI has all these additional features that are cool in their own right...but after about 5 minutes, the rose glasses come off and one realizes the mechanic was just shallow and needed to be expanded to not make the late game more tedious and/or restrictive. V had an incredible "opening up" of everything when you got to the late game while VI feels like things narrow considerably which is just bonkers to me and doesn't fit history at all. And the biggest casualty of a more narrow path to victory is that the gameplay feels just...dull. Basically the feeling we're all talking about.

Anyways, TLDR: Keep things simple to make the game open up/give you more options in the late game. And if you're going to add in new feature, make sure they're well polished and streamline well into the game's existing systems etc.

 

[thecrazyscot]

When wasn't this the case though? A huge element of the fun of the early game is discovery - both physically discovering terrain and uncovering political situations among other things. No matter what they do - they can't replicate that uncertainty and fun in the late game. I feel like dumping more resources into a part of the game that is never going to be as interesting as the early/mid-game isn't going to yield any real benefits.

But, the late game could be interesting - in fact, it could be downright fascinating:

• Revolutions - cities break away as blocks and form new civilizations entirely, or previously conquered lands could declare independence and reform their old civilization...this should be more and more likely the larger you are
• Puppet or vassal states - instead of total domination, a state could submit to being a vassal state, with no direct control but provides tribute, support, etc...and of course could revolt if not treated well
• Global alliances - somewhat like ideologies, diplomacy should become complicated and global conflicts should emerge
• Global crises - pandemics, climate change, etc...all of these are "late game" challenges that could require much more effort to address
• New frontiers (heh) - open up new avenues for exploration, with underwater and space layers, which also would set off a new colonization boom

These are just off the top of my head, and are all things which have been done to some extent in previous iterations of civ and almost all of which already have a very barebones system in place in Civ 6.

 

[pokiehl]

When wasn't this the case though? A huge element of the fun of the early game is discovery - both physically discovering terrain and uncovering political situations among other things. No matter what they do - they can't replicate that uncertainty and fun in the late game. I feel like dumping more resources into a part of the game that is never going to be as interesting as the early/mid-game isn't going to yield any real benefits.

I don’t agree at all, especially if you’re saying “well I think it’s always been bad so who cares.” Late game was fun in Civ 5 and Civ 4; much better than in Civ 6, that’s for sure. There are numerous ways to make it better. Aside from improving late game systems, something akin to the late game crisis in Stellaris (ie, a huge event that occurs in the late game that shakes everything up so people can’t rest on their laurels) could also work.

Edit: TCS beat me to the punch but I agree 100% with his post. Throwing our hands up and just saying “this sucks, oh well” is a bad approach to anything.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Not including Songhai again is a pretty egregious offense considering its the largest empire Africa has ever seen. The whole Mansa Musa thing is kind of a meme at this point and Mali never had the same territorial expanse as Songhai. If they don't like Askia Muhammad nothing is stopping them from picking another leader like Askia Dawud or even Sunni Ali (though Sunni Ali gets kind of dicey if you take the Islamic sources at face value with him ordering babies crushed etc but I guess we have Genghis Khan so....).

I personally liked that they went back to Mali and Mansa Musa, making that area of the world more of a trading focus, instead of another aggressive and domination civ, considering we already have the Zulu for that in Africa.
I mean sure the Songhai could focus on other things too but if they wanted to have a civ that focused on gold generation, there's no reason to not go with Mali.

I have to chime in and say that the Macedon civ was brilliant and I hope they bring it back. Alexander just would not have worked as alt leader for Greece.

I like Macedon too but I can also see Alexander leading Greece again. It doesn't matter to me as long as he continues to be in the games.

 

[Menocchio]

Perfectly said. As @acluewithout said, the game really does feel like it loses steam after the mid-game. That goes both for gameplay but also visually! Not every civ needs to look exactly the same once the game hits the Modern Era or whatever; I've suggested this before, but I wish the art team had taken some creative liberties with imagining how the distinctive cultural styles could look today.

I could not agree more, and I find it fascinating (and frustrating) that they put in the effort to imagine futuristic/ancient soundscapes for ancient/modern civilisations respectively (such as Rome's wonderful electronic Magna Mater) but at the same time took a dim graphical approach in respect to visuals. This becomes especially egregious considering how many present-day "civilisations" have unique architectural landscapes distinct from the uniform International Style that the game presently represents - not to mention modern vernacular architecture. It's a similar shame that district buildings also more or less do not reflect different visual styles, though to be fair this has a gameplay-conscious context so it's more understandable.

 

[thecrazyscot]

But, the late game could be interesting - in fact, it could be downright fascinating:

• Revolutions - cities break away as blocks and form new civilizations entirely, or previously conquered lands could declare independence and reform their old civilization...this should be more and more likely the larger you are
• Puppet or vassal states - instead of total domination, a state could submit to being a vassal state, with no direct control but provides tribute, support, etc...and of course could revolt if not treated well
• Global alliances - somewhat like ideologies, diplomacy should become complicated and global conflicts should emerge
• Global crises - pandemics, climate change, etc...all of these are "late game" challenges that could require much more effort to address
• New frontiers (heh) - open up new avenues for exploration, with underwater and space layers, which also would set off a new colonization boom

These are just off the top of my head, and are all things which have been done to some extent in previous iterations of civ and almost all of which already have a very barebones system in place in Civ 6.

Just wanted to add, Civilization II - released in 1996 - has a more dynamic end game than Civilization VI. Pollution, climate change, nukes galore (oh, those pesky spies planting nukes), barbarian cities, and revolutions which could drastically reshape the map of the world. 1996!

 

[DWilson]

Just a curiosity that I wonder if you all might share the following opinion. I really liked CiVI, but of the few things which I thought V did better than VI, and I don't think there are overly many, I think the use of the agendas system over the personality tables has led to a significantly blander and less interesting set of AI behaviors in game. Even with any AIs agenda, it doesn't really seem to greatly influence what they do, mainly seeming to add mildly influential diplo modifiers.

 

[pokiehl]

Just a curiosity that I wonder if you all might share the following opinion. I really liked CiVI, but of the few things which I thought V did better than VI, and I don't think there are overly many, I think the use of the agendas system over the personality tables has led to a significantly blander and less interesting set of AI behaviors in game. Even with any AIs agenda, it doesn't really seem to greatly influence what they do, mainly seeming to add mildly influential diplo modifiers.

Oh man, I 100% agree with you. The agenda system is, to me, a complete downgrade from Civ 5 and verges on failure. The Civ 5 AI "personality flavors" led to much more distinctive and cohesive AI personalities than the incoherent, tantrum-throwing AI we have in this game. It kills my immersion so much. And "satisfying" their agendas is never fun or engaging; it's just tedious and irritating. I don't care that this person wants me to have a navy or that person wants me to settle on the coast; that's not having a personality, that's just a set of banal yes/no criteria to meet or ignore.

The other benefit of the AI flavors was that Civ 5 had an option to randomize the personalities as well, which greatly enhanced replay value to me.

Please Firaxis, go back to AI flavors!

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Just a curiosity that I wonder if you all might share the following opinion. I really liked CiVI, but of the few things which I thought V did better than VI, and I don't think there are overly many, I think the use of the agendas system over the personality tables has led to a significantly blander and less interesting set of AI behaviors in game. Even with any AIs agenda, it doesn't really seem to greatly influence what they do, mainly seeming to add mildly influential diplo modifiers.

Secret agendas are just another thing for you to memorize so that you can arbitrarily maybe try and get other people to like you. It's just not fun or integrated very well.

And as a result, I feel like they are there so that leaders have an excuse to interrupt you turns and yell at you. It's just so stupid...keep diplomacy a little more simpler FXS