My take on why Civ 6 will be a bad game, a 3 pt. podcast

[rastak]

Civ6 should be an expansion pack. It having a new engine is BS excuse to sell it full priced as a new game. All the game mechanics are the same civ5.

1-2 unit per tile is ******3d. Civ has just become boring.

Then I guess this is goodbye wiggawuu? Sounds like you have waved the white flag.


@Bibor, you certainly are a polite fellow. At the end of the day, we're talking about a game, nothing more. It's cool you took so much time to share your thoughts. I disagree with most of them, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. In a few weeks you should have a better feel if it's something to try or back to the Civ IV forums and gaming, probably for good as I would think they aren't go to regress the game as you want them to. You probably won't see a fundamental shift, given the lead guy on Civ VI was also a designer for the blessed BTS expansion of Civ IV. This is the vision.

 

[ftl]

In my defence, its really hard for me to nail it down. I was watching Quill18's video and I just went "Are you kidding me?" Yes, it might've been burnout, but I haven't touched Civ5 in 2 years, so I guess its unlikely. Am I driving this discussion on my gut feeling and driving everyone crazy (including myself)? Yes. Am I sorry for that? Yes. The gut feeling still remains though, but from now on I'll stay quiet and try to figure it out without ranting across the forums about it.

May I suggest a really simple explanation?

1) You didn't like Civ 5 at all.
2) When you saw Civ 6, you immediately noticed it "looks more like Civ 5 than the other civs". The most distinctive visual elements of civ 5 compared to its predecessors are a hex grid and 1UPT - after all, having more or fewer yields, or production or a better balanced tech tree don't really affect the overall look and feel.

That would perfectly well explain why you have a "gut feeling" that it'll be bad but can't put your finger on why. And first impressions are powerful and hard to change. This is especially true when nobody has played the game, and we're primarily speculating on how the different mechanics will interact to make the whole game work together when we don't even know all of them!

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Here's my three points on why I'm not watching this:

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[plasmacannon]

Since I took the time to listen to all 4 video clips you posted and read thru all 143 pages of this post, I feel I should comment. (Mostly good)

"Turns should be Bloody interesting" - Bibor from Why Civ will be a bad game part 2
Agreed.
It sounds like you would like one aspect of Civ Revolutions. They don't have workers to move.
I like the part about scouting the river, finding another city and maybe I'll build a road to it and trade with them.
I'd modify it to: Maybe discovering a goody hut will create a dirt path to the nearest city on the most direct and flattest land route possible.
I like the river flooding possibility from not doing something. Civ4 Realism Invictus Mod added epidemic chance which is higher for Flood Plains, Jungle and Swamp tiles near the city.
I agree that things should happen more quickly.

Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 fielded some 5000-6000 chariots. He wasn't building them from 3000 BC or whenever he finished the Wheel tech onward. I could see the construction of the chariots taking a few turns, but the training and manning of them had to take place during the person's lifetime. So those should be faster.
They had thousands of horses for these chariots. So why not build several stables around one city and specializing in horse breeding? Say for every stables that a city builds, they breed enough horses for 1 chariot which appears the next turn. Which is like 100 years. Or would queue up in the Stables tile acreage to unload and make available. This would permit a quick buildup of armies. It would force attacking players to destroy the stables and it's horses in the city tiles surrounding the city to prevent a counter attack of mounted units. This has been done throughout history. Here are two examples:
"On September 8, 1858, U.S. Army Colonel George Wright (1803-1865) orders his troops to slaughter 800 Native American horses (the herd of a Palouse chief) at Liberty Lake to deny their use by enemy tribes. Soldiers also destroy Native American lodges and storehouses of grain."
Even Colonel Custer's Battle of the Wahorsehockya River on November 27, 1868 were burning everything and slaughtering 800 Indian ponies.
So the horse have to be a resource that can be pillaged and eliminated.

It almost sounds like you want a Civilization manager game. Where things happed to your Civilization and you must deal with each one and hope for the best outcome. Making each decision meaningful. Maybe your river floods or forest fires and other natural disasters that you as Mayor of one city, or Governor of a State of cities have to deal with to keep your people safe and city striving.

Originally Posted by Bibor, "Aren't you frustrated by how long the turns take? How little you can do in 5 minutes of game time? How lazy your brain becomes, conditioned to think less and "experience" more? How you are not allowed to be clever and devise new, brilliant diplomatic, economic, military plans? How playing on larger maps or higher difficulty level is not about intellectual conditioning but sheer stamina to spend so many hours in front of the screen?"

Yes I am. Diplomacy has always been poor from at least Civ 2 on. Civ1 is the first, so I can forgive it, but there should have been faster progress in the AI and Diplomacy options department.

Why can I not negotiate a tile border with a nearby opponent city and come an agreement that it is fixed here, regardless of our culture? So we don't have to worry about border pops.

Why can I not purchase a tile from them, like the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia or the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico?

Why can I not negotiate a trade deal, like Britain did during WW2 for American fighters and other military equipment?

How about a napalm resource unlocked some time after Chemistry and requiring the use of Great Scientist to invent it. It's owner could trade such a resource to other nations in the trade screen for gold per turn. It's could be used to burn away jungle tiles or cause extra damage to targets. If used on a city, the same 'destroy building' list that spies see could pop up and 1 building could be chosen to be destroyed.
I would add all of these and more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bibor showthread.php?p=14399091showthread.php?p=14399091
They "unstacked" cities, moved out buildings to the map. Are they aware that this will create "carpeting" strategies where you build a few frontline units and have a sizeable number of cheapest units possible just to carpet-raze enemy lands? And what about paratroopers in later game? Just land and pillage? So end-game will be bombers, fighters and paratroopers? There was a gameplay reason why cities held most of the infrastructure.
Originally Posted by Ryika "No, the devs have never thought about this very obvious potential problem. The real question is: Have they got sufficient limitations to prevent this."

I think they would have known this. I have used this strategy in Civ4 Always War games for years. It was just against Workshops, Towns, Farms and Lumbermills.

If one start begins with on a River, so It can irrigate, and another doesn't. The first has an advantage. If because one doesn't have a Freshwater source, the game permits that civilization to invent the Well to irrigate lands to compensate. This would help maintain some game balance do to a poor start. I wrote this down and you said something similar.

Originally Posted by Bibor,
"Peoples living in poor lands were better soldiers, because starvation is a powerful motivator. They had to hunt, plunder, travel longer distances to find sustenance. Nomadic cultures always conquered stationary cultures. The result was a fusion of new and old, conqueror and conquered. Other peoples with limited resources turned to trade (norse, greeks etc.), motivated people turned to risk of shipping, either via land (silk road) or sea (greeks etc.).

It could work the same way in civ as well. Land itself could determine what type of civilization you're building. If you're a coastal civ with scarce lands, you should be able focus on trade and naval supremacy. If your civ is in a tundra or great desolate plains, your civ could feature mighty mounted warriors even with limited infrastructure.

In time, this could transform, expand into new eras with different conflicts. Colonizing or conquering nations would be strong because of their trade and exploitation, while other nations might be focusing on diplomacy and crafts."
and this:
"here are some examples of mechanics that would make this game so much more fun and challenging:
This building provides X science for each sea tile owned by the city.
Owning X sea tiles increases the combat ability of naval units by Y.
Policy: owning more sea tiles than land tiles provides these benefits.
Policy: Having more than X mountains or jungles per city makes units ignore terrain movement penalties within Y hexes of that city.
Each tile with this new improvement gives a X% bonus to units attacking enemy cities.
This building costs hammers, but provides fresh water resource around it."
and this:
"Like SC2 has humans, zerg and protoss, Civ could have nomadic, seafaring and stationary themes. The same gains (production, faith, culture etc.) should be possible to be generated from various sources. Most civs would obviously be a mix of these three, but by the midgame, you'd have truly unique civs, defined by the map, but shaped by the player. From the midgame onwards, you'd have the clash of these unique civs, each with their strenghts and weaknesses, where diplomacy and new mechanics dominate, and finally the endgame, the final resolution."

These ideas, I like!!!!!

Originally Posted by GamerKG, "You cannot KNOW that your suggestions arent even in the game."
We know that we will not start out as Nomadic, Seafaring or Sedentary Lifestyle Civilizations Only and build up from there. We have our Nation's names attached, which really should come much later. The Civ4 Caveman 2 Cosmos Mod does something like this. One can choose to start off as Spain, but really only have "European Culture". If one drops another city and it has a certain resource, That city might become the Mexican Civilization, granting you it's UU and UB from that city. It is a very interesting twist on the game.

Overall, you have some great creative ideas. I doubt they will all be in Civ6. Some could be moddable. Others, you might have to write your own game for and please do, because it does sound more challenging.

 

[Atlas627]

That's a completely different game, not Civ.

I think its cool too, but its not Civ.

Using it as a reason why Civ is bad does not apply.

 

[Aheadatime]

Aren't you frustrated by how long the turns take? How little you can do in 5 minutes of game time? How lazy your brain becomes, conditioned to think less and "experience" more? How you are not allowed to be clever and devise new, brilliant diplomatic, economic, military plans?

Yes. Civ6 will still provoke these feelings imo, but they'll be less intense. The 'new features' do look fun to play with, but don't seem to provide a total remedy or cure for the issues at hand. I don't have a clear definition of the issue at hand nor a clear solution, but I generally agree with the OP that there is a 'lacking' present in Civ5 that Civ6 seems to have held onto.

Edit - And to the people who are being rude and dismissive of the OP, you should observe your emotions and thoughts inwardly. Getting defensive over a game that you yourself don't even know you like yet is unreasonable. Even if you played it for 1k hours and loved it, getting upset over somebody else's differing opinion is unreasonable, as it displays a lack of a strong theory of mind. People are not you, and will always differ from you in opinion, taste, emotional content, and thinking patterns. Letting that fluster you (particularly on a gaming forum) isn't very productive.

 

[Thormodr]

I really like the idea of nomadic, seafaring and sedentary civs at the start. Would be great for a mod or a spinoff to try it out.

 

[Paramecium]

I have to admit, that I neither heard your podcasts nor that I read every post in that thread.
But I think the quintessence of your post is, that you have to less decisions to make in Civ 6 and that is way it is a bad game?

But speaking of decisions, the civ series evolved quite a bit in that regard. I personally played every Civ game so far, at least the vanilla versions, starting with Civ 1 and continued until today, only Civ 3 I didnt play as much as the first two games and most of the early expansions (both for 2 and 3 I didnt play) and the expansions for Civ 4 I played years after their original release.

But what I have to say, the decision making was increased over time. Until now, science was always the key to victory and my major focus. I wanted to go for domination? So a tech lead was good to roll over the others with better units. Science victory was in the serie from the start, so it was always a option too.
Later there was culture, but you could pump it up with better buildings needing better tech. But back in Civ 4, the culture victory was all about to get a lead in it and maintain it over the time, it wasnt that exciting imo. Just clicking next round and hoping, that noone declared war against you.

Religion was in Civ 4 mainly a diplomatic factor, on higher difficulties, it was quite rare to found one yourself.

But now, you have a lot of decissions to make. The yields for faith, science, gold and culture are now mostly linked to those districts and those are linked on your population per city. The first decision you have to make early in the game is, are you building a science or faith district, especially because both profit the most to be near mountains which will be limited in some way.

And then, you have now different victory conditions who will force you on different approachs.
You want to go for domination? You have to focus on production mainly. But what will be your second focus? Science to get better units? Or culture to get better civics and those corps and armies?
And in general, if you focus on one victory, what are you doing to defend you against other victories, which might get achieved by your opponents faster? If im leading in science and want to get as fast as possible to settle down on mars, but an opponent is spamming his religion all around the world and might get the religion victory earlier, how do I react? Having a bit of faith so I can protect my city with inquisitors to not get converted? Or will I declare war on the religion spammer to put an end to his effort?
But at the same time, America is spamming tourism left and right, shall I increase my domestic tourism to defend myself or can I sabotage this attempts differently?

My only concern until now are those eureka and inspiration moments. I have quite the fear, that my or the general gameplay will be around to get as most as possible, so the gameplay will be quite similiar in most games. Sure, everyone will build a mine in his games, but will I prioritize it early to get the eureka?

And last but not least, I think that general sceptic against Civ 6 is rooted in the beginning of Civ 5 (vanilla). Civ 4 was and is still a great game. Civ 5 had a lot of changes, mostly the hex system which I like a lot and the 1UpT, because I didnt like the stacks of doom personally.
But Civ 5 had way too many weaknesses at the beginning, I was personally disenchanted myself. It wasnt that complex, no religion, no goverments, no companies (okay, I didnt like that a lot).
The AI had big difficulties to manage the new tile system in regards of war and you could play her way to easy with the diplomacy.
And mostly, the global happiness system, the general penalties for founding new cities (higher science and culture costs, higher happiness needed) and the early decision for the social policies, which in general were a good mechanic I liked because it made culture more usefull compared to Civ 4 and 3, but it forced you early on to a specific gameplay. Later with the expansion, I had the feeling, that tall was stronger at the early beginning and on the long run to the end so tradition was better then liberty, even I liked the liberty play better.

Those mistakes made early with Civ 5 upset a lot of people I think and I might not even mentioned everything or anything correctly. But as I see it until now, Civ 6 might not do the same mistakes again. With goverments and civics you are way more flexible now and so you can make more decisions, it is a bit like going back to civ 4 and combining the sopos with the goverments, which is a good decision I think, but we have to wait how it will play out.

The biggest points of concern for me are until now, will there be a lot of eureka and inspiration moment chasing or wont it be that easy to get all, so I have to decide? How good will be the balancing?
And mostly, how good will be the AI? Because I think most people will play single player at least at the beginning and a good AI will play a big part in it if the game will be fun for a longer time or not.

And in general, if I look at other 4x games, Civilization was always in the better half, other games lacked quite a lot of mechanics civ had to offer. I dont know to well those paradox games, which are highly complex, I wanted to try them for a long time, but never found the time and muse to actually test them (intensivly).

Ok, just my 2 cents...

 

[LDiCesare]

TSo we've had to re-tune the way the map generates and staggers stuff out.

THANKS you so much for finding this quote.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You mean the Company that pushed the Diablo 3 Auction house Simulator? That brought "They're limited time, and you can't craft them, but you can randomly get them in Crates that are limited, but can be bought with real money?"-Skins to Overwatch? Whose solution to WoWs outdated, boring leveling experience was to add a microtransaction - measly 50€ - to get a max level Char and skip the process?

Yeaaaaah... I don't trust companies to have my interests in mind. And nobody should - it keeps companies honest. Because in the end no matter how much the individuals in the company want to create great games that people can have fun with, the company is in it for the money.

I'd forgotten, I haven't played a Blizzard title since Sc2 vanilla, which was a good game.

Based on what you're saying I downgrade Blizzard to ~Firaxis levels (remnants of goodwill they're likely to lose if following trend). And yes, I don't consider Firaxis much better, if at all. Say what you want about the respective models, but from what I hear Overwatch largely works (a point slaughtering Civ 5 release, and even Civ 5 as of now!) and the DLC model 5 uses blocks MP usage unless people both buy it...in that regard they're actually worse than Pdox (where you use host's DLC, no matter what you have). Despite my gripes and lack of trust with pdox they beat civ in MP experience pretty easily.

I don't trust companies to act in my interest. I have variant degrees of trust in them reasonably acting in their own long-term interest.

 

[Acken]

Its true that dlc compatibility issues where a massive f-up. Well i consider the whole mp platform to be really badly made anyway.

On Blizzard, Overwatch is decent but lacks a bit in content. However said content is being introduced for free little by little.

 

[Zyrica]

I think there are some really good ideas and opinions here, even thou I don't agree civ 6 will be a bad game I'm too much of a fanboy I know I will absolutely love civ 6 as long as it doesn't crash or is ridiculously bad balanced. To me it sounds as you are speaking of a different game. It actually kind of sound as a game I've been building for the past 2 months.

It's a web based, civ inspired, graph and text game where you act as a ruler and make decisions in different topics each turn. I just wish I had gotten further so I had something I wanted to show

 

[Haig]

I think the thread and podcast title is a bit cocky but should be instead "Why I think I will not like civ 6"

Looks like me and many people will have even more fun with Civ 6 than with previous titles.

 

[Battlehelm043]

I feel it is a bit over blown to assume that Civ VI will be terrible. I mean heck I have gripes about the unit list as it stands thus far but I know I'm still gonna buy it [bought it] and play it. At the end of the day they will make the majority of decisions based on what their creative vision is for the game. The popularity of the game is the real measure of it's success. I was one of the first people to rage about the art style but it has grown on me. There is way too much of this "I'm not buying it" high horse non-sense. I mean there are people out there who said the same about CiV an then turned right around and bought it. I remember joining this community at the height of the 1 Upt flap an that has for the most part simmered down.

 

[TheJokker]

The game is what it is. There are many people who do enjoy Civ and will be very happy to have a new version to play. If you don't enjoy the game maybe you should focus your efforts on finding a game you do enjoy. I'm glad I did not read every post or read an analysis of a game that has not even been released by people who like to beat dead horses...

 

[Nares]

I want MY choices to affect the game

You're not the only one. "Meaningful choices" has become a buzzword in the industry. However, the industry has conflated false choices with "meaningful choices."

I'd rather avoid "meaningful choices," and the steaming pile of mediocre false choices it generally implies.

And maybe you wouldn't get bored of it so quickly if you didn't use the community to hive-mind a solution.

Yes, that was Civ4's problem; hive-minded solutions.

 

[Atlas627]

You're not the only one. "Meaningful choices" has become a buzzword in the industry. However, the industry has conflated false choices with "meaningful choices."

I'd rather avoid "meaningful choices," and the steaming pile of mediocre false choices it generally implies.

Yes, that was Civ4's problem; hive-minded solutions.

That's exactly my point. Every single person wants to play the game. Playing means making your own choices, not following someone else's suggestion. The hive-minded solution is not my choice, its the choice of a bunch of people put together.

Now, figuring out the hive-minded solution is a game of its own...but it isn't Civ.

And as for meaningful choices as a concept: a game requires a way to win. Thus, some choices must bring you closer to winning than others. Actual meaningful choices refers to those. The mediocre false choices you talk about are the antithesis of that.

Unfortunately, sometimes the false choices are a side effect of the system as a whole. Because you want nuance, and you cant explicitly craft every single choice if you want any amount of content depth, then sometimes you will have 1 good option, several meh ("false") options, and then some awful options. Thats just the way the cookie crumbles.

 

[Nares]

You mean the Company that pushed the Diablo 3 Auction house Simulator?

To be fair, D3 development was led by their own Shaffer.

And they did recover, disabling the auction hall and importing the D2 loot model. But, the guy they put in charge after Jay Wilson is a substantially better designer.

 

[Nares]

The hive-minded solution is not my choice, its the choice of a bunch of people put together.

You continue to conflate a gaming community with "hive-minded solution(s)."

Why?

Are you simply so used to games of such simplicity that they cannot support a larger discussion of strategy beyond a single "correct path?"

then sometimes you will have 1 good option, several meh ("false") options, and then some awful options. Thats just the way the cookie crumbles.

That's the way the cookie crumbles? More like, that's exactly when the "hive-mind" manifests. There's only one good option; hive mind works well with that. Hive mind eats false choices for breakfast.

"Meaningful choices" is just marketing jargon. I understand you have a definition in mind, but in my experience any developer promising "meaningful choices" is only going to deliver false choices. If they need to make "meaningful choices" a marketing or development point, it's because the design doesn't inherently generate any of the genuinely meaningful choices you reference.

Every single person wants to play the game. Playing means making your own choices, not following someone else's suggestion.

Again, any developer I've seen say something to this effect ends up delivering a game full of false choices. I would not be surprised if someone dragged up an interview in which Shaffer says exactly what you say in this quote.

 

[Atlas627]

You continue to conflate a gaming community with "hive-minded solution(s)."

No, I'm not. I am well aware that a community does not need to mean hive-mind solutions. I am here, in this community, despite stating I hate hive-mind solutions, am I not?

The person I was responding to originally (may have been you, I've forgotten) said they lamented the loss of the community because they loved the hive-minded solutions. I was merely countering that.

Are you simply so used to games of such simplicity that they cannot support a larger discussion of strategy beyond a single "correct path?"

Calm down there sir. My point has nothing to do with this.

Discussion of strategy is absolutely fine. Having something worth talking about is great. I have no problem with this.

My point was simply countering whoever said they will be quickly bored because they will read all the discussion. That the game is inherently bad because it cannot have infinite discussion.

Something will be optimal. It may not be simple, but something will be optimal. It may not always be optimal, and sometimes something else will be instead. But discovering what is optimal is a big part of a strategy game. If we discuss it, we are letting other people play parts of it for us, so that in exchange we get to play deeper earlier. We get to explore closer to the true optimal strategy sooner.

That is a different game all on its own. And I can enjoy the game just fine, taking my own time to reach its strategic depth.

That's the way the cookie crumbles? More like, that's exactly when the "hive-mind" manifests. There's only one good option; hive mind works well with that. Hive mind eats false choices for breakfast.

I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, duh? Why does that make my point wrong? I said "thats the way the cookie crumbles" because that's an inherent part of making a game system that has some choices be more right and some choices be more wrong. One of those has to be most right. That's just how math works. Most choices will be in the middle, or as you say, "false". That's just how math works.

"Meaningful choices" is just marketing jargon. I understand you have a definition in mind, but in my experience any developer promising "meaningful choices" is only going to deliver false choices. If they need to make "meaningful choices" a marketing or development point, it's because the design doesn't inherently generate any of the genuinely meaningful choices you reference.

Again, any developer I've seen say something to this effect ends up delivering a game full of false choices. I would not be surprised if someone dragged up an interview in which Shaffer says exactly what you say in this quote.

Because that's how math works. If you have some higher enlightenment here that I'm not seeing, please explain the magical method by which you can have a spectrum of choices without having extremes that are the most right/wrong and an area in the middle which seems pointless.

The game is about figuring out which are which. Every game is solvable, every game has a skill cap. The question is, how deep can you go before you reach that point?

Hive-minding makes you reach that point faster. If you enjoy that, go ahead. But if your complaint is that the game isn't deep enough for you, you could start by *not* participating in the hive-mind. You'll play the same game, but it will last you longer before you solve it. That's all I was saying.