The Paradox of Civ6

[God of Kings]

There are two main types of players: those who play to have fun and those who play to win.

I play Civ to have fun, because I know that I cannot beat players who consistently win on the Deity difficulty properly. However, I also play to win, which is why I primarily play in difficulties in which I know I would win.

R&F has the Timeline feature, which facilitates storytelling.

Civ does a great job at accommodating both player types.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

It is true that a score is irrelevant for those who want a different victory condition, but since you can disable different conditions, I would like to see it available for those that want it.

Your statement on unwanted random events is not something I feel a valid reason for not having them. People complain all the time about events they don't like. I feel that certain types of events ought to be optional the way barbarians are now. To me it is confusing with the number people that complain the game is too easy, or boring in the later periods, you would think random events would help remove some of the boredom as well as complicate things for a civ. I would like volcanoes, tsunamis, and plagues to be in the game. I have to admit, the only thing I am really unhappy about is barb spam close to your first city. One or to camps seems reasonable, but four camps, two of which are horse camps, and the fact that they spawn like every other turn, can pretty much ruin any chance you have. I would be more accepting of a volcano blowing my initial city away because then I can restart a new game right away rather than fighting barbs for the first 50 or so turns building nothing but units to fight. With volcanoes you can move your settler away from the danger area. A super volcano should affect all civs within a certain range and might not start visible. It should also affect all civs globally as far as the temperature (sun covered by ash in the air), poor food production and lesser food from camps. I think it would be interesting playing in such an environment.

I'm up for random events but don't like the sound of an invisible super volcano. I would prefer a system that gave you a choice: settle next to a volcano and benefit from the fertile lands surrounding it (extra food yields on each tile) but run the risk of having your city destroyed, or forgo the extra growth and avoid the risk.

 

[LMT]

This is an interesting thread. Thanks, OP and all those who have commented above.

As someone who has played since Civ II, I can say that I finish many more games of Civ 6 compared to 5. And I finished more games of 5 compared to 4 and so on. Why is that? It may be because as I grow older, I have more free time (though I'm not sure that's true).

But it may also be because the games have become more engaging, with more options of how to develop your civilization. Yes, it seems like the optimal strategy to win any victory type is build a large army early and take out a neighbor. But once that is done, there are many different ways to proceed. And really, you can play peacefully and win on all but the higher difficulty levels.

I think the developers have done a reasonably good job of expanding and changing the game over the years to have me continuously engaged in it. Yes, there have been periods when I don't play for weeks (or months) at a time. But there's something that always brings me back. My guess is that it's a decent balance between a strategy game and a historical simulation with a large variety of options on how to play..

It's neither a perfect strategy game nor historical simulation and it never will be incredible at either of these as long as it tries to be both of them. But I don't mind this because if it tried to be more of one at the expense of the other, I doubt it would maintain my interest for years on end.

So some ideas for improvement...

I wouldn't mind seeing random disasters again (e.g., volcanoes, earthquakes, etc), but they couldn't be so overwhelming as to destroy most of your civilization. I do like the idea of new civs spawning from the ashes of ones that have been destroyed. And I wouldn't mind the return of barbarians being able to take over cities. Maybe these barbarian cities could evolve into free cities. And if enough of them occurred in any area, they cold evolve into a loose confederation, forming a new civ. And maybe bring back the world congress in some form?

Anyway, I guess my point is that minor tweaks, interspersed with major game changes, have kept Civ fresh for me. I hope it never becomes too much of a game or too much of a sandbox. Just give me lots of options as to how gamey or sandboxy I can play it.