Old timer's, what are your thoughts so far?

[Dirt Farmer]

At a Summer dinner my brother and I watched our older cousin play Colonize and we were hooked. We bootlegged a copy and have played all versions of civ. I didn't play much of civ4 due to college and other life things. Got back I to civ when my brother sent me a copy of iv after some surgery in 2009. I was sucked right back in. We play multiplayer together and reminisce about the 7 year olds back in '93.
We both look forward to civ VI although at first we both hated the cartoonesque look. It has grown on us though. Is that old timer enough?

 

[mentos15]

lots of hot air to follow

I have played all mainline Civs and Civ Rev 1.

Played 1 and 3 the least, more due to life situations rather than (my perception of) game quality.

Civ 2 is my nostalgic favorite - In college, during the school year, friends would huddle around one computer in a dorm room, lots of pizza and, errr, soda and play by committee (guy in the drivers seat got final say) - we also did this with Masters of Magic around that time, a game that I think I'd like to see remade, but would probably ultimately disappoint - but I digress. Over the summer, my buddy worked the 3rd shift and he had a better PC than I at the time, and a copy of Civ 2, so I would drop by his apartment just before he left for work and would play Civ 2 until he got back in the morning. No, I didn't attend many classes over the summer, why do you ask?

Civ 4 - I can understand logically why others find 4 great / the best, but for whatever reasons it has the most negative or ambivalent memories of all the Civ games. I probably put way more hours into 4 than 2 (again due to life circumstances, 4 came out when I was single, lived on my own, and I had plenty of time to myself in evenings to invest). I have enjoyed reading and watching other people's play-throughs more than I have playing it for myself. I've tried to figure out what it is about 4 that just did not capture me ( I say knowing I put in triple digit hours ). I think there is a micro/macro management balance where maybe it was too micro on Civ/City aspects, which seemed out of whack for the macro management of just tossing your units into one big stack. I am also certain that multiple people here could tell me how wrong I am about this.

Civ 5 - again, I can understand reasonably why it supposedly isn't as good as 4 or other Civs, but I have enjoyed playing 5 more than 4. I most dislike that its a performance hog. I don't ever recall any other strategy games feeling as slow as Civ 5 has / does - and generally my PCs are above-average in respect to other gaming PCs of their time. In contrast to 4, 1UPT tipped the combat into being more micro than the Civ/City aspects which seemed too macro. that is also not my ideal but I think it "played" a bit better for my tastes.

My hopes and impressions for 6 (hopes are unlikely I know):

- excellent performance which allows for larger maps. 5 crashed or chugged along way too often on large maps and even today I see plenty of visual glitches that pop up mid game, you get the feeling that the PC is struggling to keep up with the map. This shouldn't happen in a strategy game - tone down the graphics / animations.

- Related to the above - I want the game to perform and have a UI that can scale well to 4k resolution. I realize I'm asking alot here.

- Better balance between micro and macro management of all aspects of civ - Your Civ as a whole / Cities / Combat.

- xUPT - I have seen that there is some semblance of an "Army" concept in 6 which is moving in the right direction, but I am skeptical that it will be exactly to my tastes - I think the sweet spot - given the typical Civ Hex/Sqaure "size" is 4 or 5 "full strength" units as opposed to 1 unit with a couple of "support only" units.

- Unit Types - I would like to more depth to leadership units (e.g. "normal", not "great" generals/admirals). As well as to Scout (Recon/Stealth). Leaders obviously would be more "support" unit

- I look forward to the city un-stacking, I think it has potential to be the one feature that will have universal appeal and sticks with Civ series onward. ( And I'll try to edit this out if its a disaster )

- The leader specific traits separate from civ-specific traits tease/imply that there will be multiple leaders per civ. This is something I would like to see more of in Civ without needing an expansion - unfortunately the increasingly extravagant productions for the leader screens means that this is unlikely to ever happen, and I fear that this potential feature is simply a convenience to the modding community.

Last gust of hot air:

There has never been a perfect Civ, even with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, and I don't think there ever will be. But they have all been enjoyable in their own ways and I could not imagine purposely "skipping" a Civ release unless I was unemployed and broke, it is a gaming staple and the dollars to hours ratio means I get quality entertainment for pennies per day. On the whole, I believe the quality has trended upwards and see no reason to expect otherwise with 6.

So, I will be buying Civ 6, and barring intervention of the wife I will probably put up triple digit hours into it within the first couple of months, get distracted by life, and then notice the sale on the "complete edition" on steam, purchase and then sink another few hundred hours into it (on a positive note regarding potential wife obstacles, I recently got back into 5 - bought G&K and BNW - and have re-introduced the wife to Civ - she also has memories of playing a lot of original Civ and Civ 2 - while teasing details of the upcoming 6, so fingers crossed there, she just started her own game with Elizabeth last night )

It is highly likely I will pre-order the "deluxe" (although I generally "pre-order" one day before release - part ensuring release date is correct, partly not wanting to give a game company free interest, and part because I'm a procrastinator - OK one of those weighs more heavily than the others )

 

[Martinus]

I have been playing Civ since Civ (1) (I'm 38). I liked every new iteration more than the last. This seems like a definite buy.

 

[Disgustipated]

Wow, I'm being called an old timer. Hmmm. That is humbling to say the least. Although I never played Civ 1, I started with Civ2 in 1996.

The game looks good to me so far. Although I haven't really looked at too much to avoid spoiling the game. I prefer to go into games "cold". that first experience of playing a game is always the best. Cherish those times. The only bad experience I had first playing a game was Civ 5 (never finished my first game), but the game grew on me with expansions.

Notice what I said above about expansions? That's why I have good hopes for this game. The people who did Civ5 expansions are working on this game. They are the ones who made Civ5 playable. I was at 8 hours played until the expansions came out, now I'm over 532 hours played. What does that say about the expansions?

The game seems to be adding more complexity, not dumbing the game down. And it's the good type of compexity, not just making things harder for no reason. The inclusion of terrain in your overall strategy seems intriguing to me.

This old timer is looking forward to it.

edit: Just noticed my time played is over 500 hours, not 400 hours.

 

[abj9562]

Civ I (28 when I bought it)

I feel like CIV VI is a demanding decision based engine masked by a mild childish artistic flair. So beware, the artwork may just lull many into a false sense of game complexity. CivVI appears to be engaging and exciting with decisions to be made frequently and often. They may have finally built an engine that will have more than 1 or 2 paths to empire building.

Ah heck, guess I'll have to join Civanon again.

 

[chaotoroboto]

I played Civ 1 a few times in the computer lab in middle school. Some of the computers had black & white screens. Really, I started with 3. As my best friend and I were in the process of dropping out of college and re-enrolling after waiting tables sucked, we stayed up til dawn co-piloting games until we finally won on Deity about the time 4 was announced.

Civ 4 at release was the culmination of the Civ series to that point. With specialists, religions, and Civics replacing governments, it was just a dream. I think the corporations were maybe too much complexity for no real reason, but Beyond the Sword is probably the best Empire Simulator made so far.

Civ 5 was a weird thing - the warring in 5 is much more interesting than 4, but the economics are much less interesting. Civ 5 was the first Civ game I've ever been bored by, although the combat kept me coming back long enough to buy the expansions. There's a central issue I have with 5's original design: Simplification for simplification's sake. There was a big move in videogames at the time Civ 5 came out to increase "Accessibility," which didn't mean things like making the game color-blind or mobility friendly, but rather removing decisions that might confuse the player. The problem is that rather than decreasing player confusion, it tends to decrease player agency instead. Especially since the Civ 5 interface just fails to explain some things - like the differences between global and local happiness, which was totally obfuscated until BNW. I think the expansions (and the demi-gods who've crafted the CBP, NQmod, and EUI) mitigated the worst of this, but some of it's just baked in.

There's probably three major areas where I think this was problematic, and I can basically say that I'm excited by 6 because it addresses all of them in some fashion.

1) Puppeting Cities - Why play an empire management game where you can't manage some of your empire? It's presented as an opportunity cost - "to build units, you have to manage unhappiness first"; but in effect it's "For half your cities, just let the AI make the decisions." I'll have the computer take cities from me that I didn't even remember I had because I puppeted them and forgot them. Civ 6 doesn't seem to have puppets, unless they were just missing from the press builds. You take cities and they're yours.
2) Static Policies - Once you take a policy in 5, it's yours forever. It was intended as kind of a build-your-own secondary tech tree, but it never really worked like that. Since you were stuck with your policies, you couldn't really afford to take marginal ones that matched your short-term goals, you could only take ones that were optimal over the whole game, and deferring policies entirely is considered an optimal deity strategy because policies were considered an opportunity cost to science. With Civ 6's card system, you can shuffle your policies around, taking sub-optimal policies for a short period at the opportunity cost of losing long-term benefits.
3) Killing the Slider - There's a lot of argument over whether the slider is needless complexity in 4 and earlier games, but the lack of a slider in 5 means that you really have to take all of your exponential science buildings as soon as they become available. Splitting the tech tree creates a more organic way of prioritizing research, while the shift towards static bonuses in both types of research should make bypassing buildings viable, increasing agency in city management.

Basically, with all this in mind, I think Civ 6 promises to have all of the military tactics of Civ 5 (and possibly more), while having enough economic depth to allow that to be the focus of your gameplay strategy.

 

[BrokenBokken]

I played Civ 1 a few times in the computer lab in middle school. Some of the computers had black & white screens. Really, I started with 3. As my best friend and I were in the process of dropping out of college and re-enrolling after waiting tables sucked, we stayed up til dawn co-piloting games until we finally won on Deity about the time 4 was announced.

Civ 4 at release was the culmination of the Civ series to that point. With specialists, religions, and Civics replacing governments, it was just a dream. I think the corporations were maybe too much complexity for no real reason, but Beyond the Sword is probably the best Empire Simulator made so far.

Civ 5 was a weird thing - the warring in 5 is much more interesting than 4, but the economics are much less interesting. Civ 5 was the first Civ game I've ever been bored by, although the combat kept me coming back long enough to buy the expansions. There's a central issue I have with 5's original design: Simplification for simplification's sake. There was a big move in videogames at the time Civ 5 came out to increase "Accessibility," which didn't mean things like making the game color-blind or mobility friendly, but rather removing decisions that might confuse the player. The problem is that rather than decreasing player confusion, it tends to decrease player agency instead. Especially since the Civ 5 interface just fails to explain some things - like the differences between global and local happiness, which was totally obfuscated until BNW. I think the expansions (and the demi-gods who've crafted the CBP, NQmod, and EUI) mitigated the worst of this, but some of it's just baked in.

There's probably three major areas where I think this was problematic, and I can basically say that I'm excited by 6 because it addresses all of them in some fashion.

1) Puppeting Cities - Why play an empire management game where you can't manage some of your empire? It's presented as an opportunity cost - "to build units, you have to manage unhappiness first"; but in effect it's "For half your cities, just let the AI make the decisions." I'll have the computer take cities from me that I didn't even remember I had because I puppeted them and forgot them. Civ 6 doesn't seem to have puppets, unless they were just missing from the press builds. You take cities and they're yours.
2) Static Policies - Once you take a policy in 5, it's yours forever. It was intended as kind of a build-your-own secondary tech tree, but it never really worked like that. Since you were stuck with your policies, you couldn't really afford to take marginal ones that matched your short-term goals, you could only take ones that were optimal over the whole game, and deferring policies entirely is considered an optimal deity strategy because policies were considered an opportunity cost to science. With Civ 6's card system, you can shuffle your policies around, taking sub-optimal policies for a short period at the opportunity cost of losing long-term benefits.
3) Killing the Slider - There's a lot of argument over whether the slider is needless complexity in 4 and earlier games, but the lack of a slider in 5 means that you really have to take all of your exponential science buildings as soon as they become available. Splitting the tech tree creates a more organic way of prioritizing research, while the shift towards static bonuses in both types of research should make bypassing buildings viable, increasing agency in city management.

Basically, with all this in mind, I think Civ 6 promises to have all of the military tactics of Civ 5 (and possibly more), while having enough economic depth to allow that to be the focus of your gameplay strategy.

Accessibility and streamlining is a great thing. I think the growth of board games in the recent years have brought a lot of design experience to the industry. It doesn't have to be 'dumbing down', but that was the case for the most part with CiV. I have more confidence they are handling it right this time.

 

[IbnKhaldun]

I'm 31. Been playing since Civilization II.

My analytical self has a deep and foreboding concern for Civilization VI. The game seem to be burrowing deeper and deeper into the Civ V model; which I considered a massive downgrade from Civ IV in terms of core mechanics, strategy, and accuracy in modeling human social development.

My fanboy self is SUPER HELLA PUMPED because I love this game series more than any human being should love anything that is not their spouse or child.

My fanboy self will probably control me for the first three months after release. After that my analytical self will quietly reassert its authority, wrap the sobbing fanboy self in a warm blanket, soothe and coo the poor child, and boot up Beyond the Sword with a sense of somber resolve.

Or maybe mods? Mods might be able to push this game to Civ IV levels of greatness.

 

[Countmonte8242]

Been playing since Civ 1, Amiga 500 version. I'm not at all excited about Civ VI, and am not going to purchase it at release. The anniversary edition tempted me but I abstained.

I'll try it out at some point, but not until well after release.

My ideal Civ would be something of a mashup of 4 parts IV, 3 parts II, 1 part V. Unfortunately looks like Civ VI is going to be 70% V, 30% new. And maybe some of those new parts will be fun, will see.

 

[Halcyan2]

I've played Civ I through V.

I've actually enjoyed each one more than the next.

Civ III was a big step forward over Civ II.
But I liked Civ IV more than Civ III.
And Civ V more than Civ IV.

Alpha Centauri was really good.

Was never interested in the simplified/streamlined Civ Revolution series.
Never got around to Colonization though it seemed somewhat intriguing.

The only anomaly was Beyond Earth, which was absolutely terrible! Far worse than Alpha Centauri. Far worse than Civ V. Even though I liked Civ V, Beyond Earth (before the expansion) was a poorly reskinned version without appropriate game balance.

In any case, I am very, very excited about Civ VI!

 

[Playsoneasy]

My first Civ was the PS1 port of Civ2 back in 1999 (I'm not sure if that counts), next was CivRev on the 360 in 2008, then Civ 5 in 2013 and finally Civ 4 a few weeks ago.

Some of what I've seen of Civ 6 looks good. The graphical style is growing on me a little and I'm glad they're bringing back governments, but I'm not happy about 1upt being back again.

And I'm still waiting for the system requirements to be released!

 

[jjkrause84]

Accessibility and streamlining is a great thing. I think the growth of board games in the recent years have brought a lot of design experience to the industry. It doesn't have to be 'dumbing down', but that was the case for the most part with CiV. I have more confidence they are handling it right this time.

Personally I think the design fad of 'boardgaming' everything is one of the worst trends to hit gaming in its 40-ish years of existence. The great thing about games is that they can be far more intricate and complicated than board games without overwhelming the player. Making things more boardgamey means far more abstraction and playing AGAINST a video game's natural strengths.

Very, very rarely does streamlining take out pointless busy work whilst keeping in tact the core decision-making freedom that introduced the clutter to begin with. Instead, streamlining almost always seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I'm 31. Been playing since Civilization II.

My analytical self has a deep and foreboding concern for Civilization VI. The game seem to be burrowing deeper and deeper into the Civ V model; which I considered a massive downgrade from Civ IV in terms of core mechanics, strategy, and accuracy in modeling human social development.

My fanboy self is SUPER HELLA PUMPED because I love this game series more than any human being should love anything that is not their spouse or child.

My fanboy self will probably control me for the first three months after release. After that my analytical self will quietly reassert its authority, wrap the sobbing fanboy self in a warm blanket, soothe and coo the poor child, and boot up Beyond the Sword with a sense of somber resolve.

Or maybe mods? Mods might be able to push this game to Civ IV levels of greatness.

We're the same age and I've been increasingly concerned that the industry has actually left us behind. Complexity, depth and a rich, free-roaming experience are not priorities in today's gaming industry. Everyone seems to prefer carefully manicured, designer-driven experiences rather than user-driven discovery.

If I'm right int this then the game industry has left us behind, and is never coming back for us.

(and, yes, I know...there's always Paradox....but they're basically alone here!)

 

[Staler87]

Personally I think the design fad of 'boardgaming' everything is one of the worst trends to hit gaming in its 40-ish years of existence. The great thing about games is that they can be far more intricate and complicated than board games without overwhelming the player. Making things more boardgamey means far more abstraction and playing AGAINST a video game's natural strengths.

People who think that board games are somehow 'less complex' than video have obviously not played a wide variety of board games. I'm currently in the middle of a WWII board game that is probably a step up in complexity and accuracy of simulation from HOI III. If you compare monopoly to HOI III (or even civ for that matter) you would reach the conclusion that video games are more complex. But if you're going to be talking about highly complex video games, that only a small portion of people who enjoy the video game hobby play, then you should also do the same with comparative board games.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Let's put ut like this. Computer could calculate more complex things than human in pure math. The obvious consequences are:

1. There are some game mechanics which could only be implemented in computer games. Ignoring them in computer game would be a limit. However, that's not the case in Civ5 as it includes those where needed (% bonuses from policy cards, district cost increase, etc.).

2. Having simple math where possible allows human players to calculate the odds themselves. This enhanced tactics. Partially this could be solved by user interface - showing combat odds on mouse over, for example. But you can't show them all - for example odds for human units being attacked by various AI units. For those cases having math which human player could calculate without computer is a really great thing.

 

[Staler87]

Let's put ut like this. Computer could calculate more complex things than human in pure math. The obvious consequences are:

1. There are some game mechanics which could only be implemented in computer games. Ignoring them in computer game would be a limit. However, that's not the case in Civ5 as it includes those where needed (% bonuses from policy cards, district cost increase, etc.).

2. Having simple math where possible allows human players to calculate the odds themselves. This enhanced tactics. Partially this could be solved by user interface - showing combat odds on mouse over, for example. But you can't show them all - for example odds for human units being attacked by various AI units. For those cases having math which human player could calculate without computer is a really great thing.

Many board games utilize calculators to do math required for the game or just round. The theoretical limitations that people put on board games are really easy circumnavigated with good design.

 

[Acken]

Depth is not about calculations what the hell.

 

[Bino]

Been playing Civ since Civ1 on Amiga, played all versions, even the call to power ones if those matter, as well as MoM which I loved.

I cant wait for 6 in order to uninstall 5 for good, like I did for 4 when 5 came out. Never looked back even if I liked all of them, looked at them for what they were and loved them, not for what they could have been.

I'd give an arm to have a MoM 2 with the quality of today games, crossing fingers its not a disappointment. The new MoO rings a bell.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Depth is not about calculations what the hell.

Yes, but there are some things linked to both. Like the tactical depth being linked to the ability to predict combat outcome.

 

[jjkrause84]

Let's put ut like this. Computer could calculate more complex things than human in pure math. The obvious consequences are:

1. There are some game mechanics which could only be implemented in computer games. Ignoring them in computer game would be a limit. However, that's not the case in Civ5 as it includes those where needed (% bonuses from policy cards, district cost increase, etc.).

2. Having simple math where possible allows human players to calculate the odds themselves. This enhanced tactics. Partially this could be solved by user interface - showing combat odds on mouse over, for example. But you can't show them all - for example odds for human units being attacked by various AI units. For those cases having math which human player could calculate without computer is a really great thing.

Exactly. Computers are just plain ole FASTER than humans at, well, computing!

Think of what takes place in a minute of Europa Universalis. Think of how many decisions the computer makes about troop and ship movements alone across the entire map. There is NO way humans could possibly do the same in any reasonable way.

The same is true for any number of strategy games. Think of XCOM. The computer instantly calculates your percentage chance to hit based on your aim, their defence, range, and aiming angle (depending on your settings). A human would take at least a minute or two to do the same.

With vastly increased speed comes vastly increased opportunities for complexity and granularity that humans with bits of paper and cardboard cannot possibly match.

 

[elitetroops]

After seeing some more of the game, I see a lot of potential in Civ 6, but also a lot of potential pitfalls.

There are a lot of different mechanics and things to pursue, which is good if they are well balanced. The potential pitfall here is that if they are not well balanced, the optimal strategy would force you to focus on one aspect while ignoring most elements in the game (which actually is the case in Civ 4). Take for example the divided tech tree. Unless the rewards are roughly equal, there is little point in focusing on the weaker part of it. I can imagine a situation where you reach a point in the civic tree early which is "good enough", then all focus should be on the science tree because that's where the real rewards are. Or maybe even the other way around. Haven't seen much of the late civic tree, can't tell what is down there.

Since I never played Civ 5, the whole faith system is confusing to me. Everybody seems so concerned about acquiring much faith. What benefit does that give you? I can see you can generate great people with it, but many of them don't seem very powerful. Tech boost to random technologies... really?

Overall the GP system is still a bit of a mystery to me. They are all different, but will they always appear in the same order? Will the first available GS be the same in every game, or is there some variation?

The heureka and inspiration system is interesting, but also dangerous. Might be that the optimal path through the early tech tree is quickly discovered, then every game has to start the same way.

It's hard for me to evaluate the real value of districts and buildings, since I don't know how the basics of teching, culture/gold production and growth works. All articles only talk about heureka moments and adjacency bonuses for teching. Apart from that, what is the base research of your empire? I read it's population based. Are the values known? Is it linear? Trade routes give you only gold, not research? As for growth, does population eat food like in Civ4, or is all food production used for growth?

Btw. will there be tech trading in this game?