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

[rastak]

Fair enough. Perhaps I misread your intent.

Anyway, I have always figured that when posting on forums such as this that I am giving my opinion. I kind of figure that's a given.

I used to also....then came the absolute declarations of what this is and what that is and how we are all screwed.

Anyway, here's to Civ 6 Thormodr, may it be fun for the majority of us this fall.

 

[Thormodr]

I used to also....then came the absolute declarations of what this is and what that is and how we are all screwed.

Anyway, here's to Civ 6 Thormodr, may it be fun for the majority of us this fall.

Yes, I think we are all in agreement about that. We all want Civ VI to be a great game.

I really do think it is looking quite promising.

 

[chrisge]

Could be a bad choice of words. I really meant people who claim to speak for everyone or state their opinion as some sort of fact.

Correct: I think Civ 5 is dumbed down.
BS: Civ 5 is dumbed down and everyone thinks so.

I think rastak was referring to me trying to speak on behalf of the older Civ community not liking Civ 5. I only meant that I had read through all the posts here, and my impression seemed to be that there are more people who disliked Civ 5 to some degree. This may be because I have a Civ 4 filter on though and I don't want to go about with a pencil and paper through this forum. I know we are a very vocal lot also.

 

[Thormodr]

I think rastak was referring to me trying to speak on behalf of the older Civ community not liking Civ 5. I only meant that I had read through all the posts here, and my impression seemed to be that there are more people who disliked Civ 5 to some degree. This may be because I have a Civ 4 filter on though and I don't want to go about with a pencil and paper through this forum. I know we are a very vocal lot also.

Lots of passionate people on these forums which is why I enjoy them. The Civ series is near and dear to so many people.

I do hope that we'll all share the same passion for Civ VI.

 

[Aristos]

It's called CivFANATICS not because we like baseball... no passion, no fanatic. With passion comes inevitably some clashes and sparks when steel meets steel. Some people here are just a little too sensitive about the sparks and the sound of metal... PCBS at it's best, I guess.

Candor dat Viribus Alas.

 

[Chiyo]

I think rastak was referring to me trying to speak on behalf of the older Civ community not liking Civ 5. I only meant that I had read through all the posts here, and my impression seemed to be that there are more people who disliked Civ 5 to some degree. This may be because I have a Civ 4 filter on though and I don't want to go about with a pencil and paper through this forum. I know we are a very vocal lot also.

What is showing now is that there is quite a number of old Civ players who were driven away from the series by CiV. I am one of those. I want to build an empire and not quit after the 4th city. For me that was the major flaw with CiV. I don't care very much for victory conditions or an AI "playing to win" because from CIV 1 on after having won the game several times I usually only started a game and quit when it was clear I was the dominant force and would win the game anyway.
I vividly remember the discussions when CiV was released and when this criticism slowed down it was not because CiV had become a great Civ game but because the critical old-timers did not return anymore. Sullla's analysis from the early days is still pretty much spot on. Now with the hope for a great CiVI they come back and so does the criticism for CiV.

For CiVI 1upt is fine for me. It is important that I can actually build an empire and not remain small or need to conquer most of the time. I want to build something up and not burn something down all the time. From what I have read so far chances are good the CiVI will go into the right direction and prove an interesting game for me again. The only thing I have a bad feeling about is City States. I don't like the concept because it is unrealistic. The bonuses so far are unrealistic and the fact that you cannot burn them down is making building the best possible empire impossible. If I turn them off parts of the game like social policies or civ abilities become useless.

 

[spfun]

Except it sounds like most of the non-tech techs (chivalry, etc.) got moved to Civics.

Yes this is right but we will learn both simultaneously now. I went heavy into science and culture in Civ 5 and have even more reason too in Civ 6.

 

[Vicullum]

I've been playing since civ 1.

I loved all of them...except civ 5. I WANTED to love civ 5, but a number of bad game design decisions just completely turned me off from the game. The AI was terrible, the unit balancing was a joke (I remember conquering the world with just a handful of mounted units), diplomacy was also a joke (why did this guy suddenly hate me and declared war? Who knows, the game didn't tell you, and it may as well be random), most buildings weren't worth the effort to build, the UI was bad, and while the one-unit-per-tile mechanic seemed refreshing at first, by late game it meant the land had become so choked with units that marshalling your army from one side of the world to the other took freaking FOREVER.

Seriously, Look at civ 4's diplomacy screen. You can tell at a glance who's at war or allied with who, simple and elegant. Now look at civ 5's. You have to scroll through a clunky list? What were they thinking?!!

Civ 6 sounds promising, but after getting burned by 5 I'm going to hold off and wait for some in depth reviews.

 

[historix69]

What is showing now is that there is quite a number of old Civ players who were driven away from the series by CiV. I am one of those. I want to build an empire and not quit after the 4th city. For me that was the major flaw with CiV.
...

I played all parts of Civ, also Col and AC.

While I can enjoy Civ5 in general, there are a lot of things which offended me :
- Certain civs' UAs. I like to play as certain civs for immersion and if they have a silly UA you don't like, it is difficult to enjoy the game. (Custom UA would be desirable.)
- Happiness system. The Civ5 system of local/global happiness and unhappiness, extra unhappiness per city, etc. is confusing/unclear and overcomplicated. Especially in war times the effect of taking one city too much and having all your cities in kind of emergency state is killing every immersion.
- Unrealistic increasing costs for National Wonders by number of cities ... making them useless for wide players.
- Unrealistic Competitive Race for Religion and religious traits. (Most Religions are founded at a time when mosts civs do not even have met.) Every player should be allowed to found a religion and if he likes Pagodas and Sushi, that is ok.
- Traffic jams of military and civilian units, especially when playing on smaller islands (e.g. as Japan on world map).

Some of those points can be disarmed by modding ... but not all.

I look forward to Civ6 to not repeat those mistakes of Civ5. (See the interview with Ed Beach.)

 

[chaosprophet]

Yes this is right but we will learn both simultaneously now. I went heavy into science and culture in Civ 5 and have even more reason too in Civ 6.

They will very likely balance it so you reach the end of the tech trees around the same amount of turns / around the same time you would in other civilization games playing at same speed.

 

[binhthuy71]

I've played Civ since it was released by MicroProse in 1991. I was a beta tester for a subsequent version and its expansion. Civ V had some warts, as did Civ IV, III, II... Civ VI will be no different. The AI will never be good enough until we all have quantum computers, there will be jarring anomalies and plenty of ahistorical moments. OTOH, the game has become more rich with each iteration and it's done so without the need for micro managing at all but the highest difficulty levels. Yes, I'll be buying Civ VI, that it is being published at all is a pleasant surprise.

 

[ldvhl]

- Unrealistic Competitive Race for Religion and religious traits. (Most Religions are founded at a time when mosts civs do not even have met.) Every player should be allowed to found a religion and if he likes Pagodas and Sushi, that is ok.

Religions being founded before most civs meet sounds historically accurate to me.

 

[darko82]

Civ will never die because so many people love the game. It is everlasting.

Each civ offers something different; none of them is perfect, but it's perfect that each of them is different. Lots of variety. Just open your minds and stop being oversensitive. Just enjoy and support the game. That's my word

 

[Makavcio]

As a person who started his adventure with deity games in Civ1 on Amiga 500 I must say 2 things:
1) appalling graphics that look worse than many mobile productions;
2) several really interesting, certainly promising features that correspond with my expectations about "civilizations that mold themselves" instead of being built by totally arbitrary decisions of the player.

Everything is still in alpha so there can be no real judgement. I'm a little concerned that this game may fall victim to simple schematics, i.e. a glimpse of the map will predetermine 100 upcoming turns because every sane player will have to do X in order to exploit the only advantage his start offers.

The best thing so far for me is the "active research" thing that in my opinion should be employed in every aspect of the game. Science is earned faster because a civilization has or does something - just like in real life. The same should be true for culture and statecraft. I find it extremely disappointing that culture traits/policies can be changed by spending a lump sum of gold. It would be much better if a player had to pace changes in this field, i.e. one trait/policy change allowed each time the civ advances to another era plus one change based solely on turn counter. Great people could affect such changes, wonders could do the same, and even wars could pave the road for cultural change. Some gold is the worst choice possible. Even simple timer, i.e. cannot change anything for 20 turns, would be better.

I'm also extremely curious about the new city system. Hopes couldn't be higher.

 

[Louis XXIV]

- Unrealistic increasing costs for National Wonders by number of cities ... making them useless for wide players.

I have no problem complaining about Civ's balancing issues when it comes to tall vs. wide, but there's nothing realistic about National Wonders to begin with so lack of realism in cost seems an odd complaint.

 

[historix69]

Religions being founded before most civs meet sounds historically accurate to me.

The complaint is not that Religions are founded before civs meet. The complaint is that every pantheon and religion founded by other civs has an unrealistic "divine" impact on the possibilities of your civ by increasing faith costs, removing beliefs from the list and, after up to 7 religions have been founded, makes it impossible to found your own religion, even if you get a Great Prophet. And this even without meeting any civ with religion. This is unrealistic. This is an artificial competition (game feature) with no rational historic reason which I therefore dislike.

Just imagine Techs would be treated like religious beliefs. Any Tech could only be known by one civ ...

 

[AriochIV]

Civ 6 sounds promising, but after getting burned by 5 I'm going to hold off and wait for some in depth reviews.

The great thing about being in the YouTube age of gaming is that you don't have to rely on reviews or other people's opinions any more; you can watch the game being played and decide for yourself.

 

[elitetroops]

The complaint is that every pantheon and religion founded by other civs has an unrealistic "divine" impact on the possibilities of your civ by increasing faith costs, removing beliefs from the list and, after up to 7 religions have been founded, makes it impossible to found your own religion, even if you get a Great Prophet.

A valid complaint. Again, I've never played V, but it's kind of the same in IV. I've played games where Astronomy has been required before half of the world can get any religion at all, if the other continent is packed with religious fanatics who go for them all early. Historically, there has hardly been any civilizations that wouldn't have worshipped some kind of higher entity. In this sense it would be more accurate if everyone could found their own religion early, if they don't get one spread to them from the outside before this, then decide for themselves if they want to stay in their own religion or spread some other religion around later for diplomatic reasons. However, this would make diplomacy a mess, and would require some careful AI coding so that they don't all insist of only staying in their own religion.

 

[AriochIV]

Religions and beliefs being unique is a gamey element, but no more so than Wonders being unique.

 

[Kid R]

Thought so far: when I was a teenager this kind of feverish interest was called "gagging for it". FFS make them work, Firaxis is a soulless heartbreaker. They don't see your true love they just see a heaving crowd of faceless $80's being desperately waved in their face before they've even asked anyone to dance.