The problems of Civ VI that will not be fixed in the next espansion

bumpyglint

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Hoping Firaxis will read this, I try to tell you why Civ VI is still less popular and apprecciated than Civ V and why the next expansion probably will not change anything about this (even if I hope it will).
I will not even consider the smaller problems, I will go directly to the major points:

1) The game is INCREDIBLY static after the first 1-2 ages. Nothing changes, literally. After the AI built its cities and provided them with walls, the game will be the same for ever (if the player doesn't directly wants to conquer all the world). Just as an example, if you play Europa Universalis IV you will see nations rise, you will see empires fall, colonies to get their independence, and the world will change every few years (often in a drastic way). In Civ VI instead if you take a picture for every ages after the classical/medieval you will see no difference, ever. Sometimes the AI will sacrifices its production in random stupid wars, but nothing will change with battles (except maybe in the Information Era, where 99 % of matches are already finished). And how did Firaxis try to change this? With the Loyalty system. In this way sometimes the AI will place a city in such a stupid place that they will lose it in 9-10 turns, giving the Idea that something changed in the map. The Loyalty system can be pretty fun, but at the moment is just a system which the AI can't handle and that give the false impression that the AI is actively changing the game.
I think this is even more evident by the fact that in Civ V at the end of the game you could watch a 2D version of the map with all the progress of the game while in Civ VI they removed this feature: probably they noticed that the map was always the same after the first ages so they found ridiculous to add this feature also in Civ VI.
Changing features like walls could help the AI to be more active on this front.


2) The proportion between Science/Culture and Production in this game is totally wrong, and this has huge consequence in the gameplay. In this game it's totally normal to reach the Industrial Era around the 1000 AD for some strange reason, while instead you need something like 20 turns to build anything (and the game usually ends at most around turn 300...you build 15 things per city in the whole game). This means that you keep unlocking tons of thing you will simply have to TOTALLY ignore. When you know how to play you don't even pay anymore attention about all the things you are unlocking with Science/Culture because you already know what to build and what to ignore, but for a new player this is pretty bad. You got the costant idea that it doesn't matter how good you are, you will always be in a society full of genius scientist that can't build anything.
This has huge consequence expecially for the war: when you will have finished to build a good army for your historical period, guess what? You will pass on a new age and you will have to update it again. The solution for Firaxis to avoid this? Simple, putting just 3-4 units for every type in all the scientific tree so that they could become older a bit later. I think it's incredible that at the moment you will pass directly from Knights to Tanks (while Civ V, who didn't have this problem, had tons of more units and they didn't get "old" one second after building an army).
Obviously I'm not saying that every city should always build the 100 % of everything for its age, this must obviously be a game made of choices, but come on, the situation at the moment is pretty ridiculous.

3) Linked to the last point, the AI is so bad that at higher difficulties they had to buff it incredibly: this means they will always produce everything, while you can focus only on one or two aspects. If you don't want to lose, this aspect must be war, because the AI is so bad at moving units that you will win even with one third of their units and you will steal everything they produced until that moment (while instead if you try to outsmart them on the production side you will always lose because of their bonus). This makes the game too much unilateral at higher difficulties, you can't really choose different strategies, which is a big problem for a game that should point on different aspects of the Society.

4) Rome became rich thanks to the Mediterraneum, Colonial Nations became rich thanks to the Atlantic Ocean and even nowadays an Ocean, the Pacific, is the center of the world commerce, but in Civ VI this aspect is TOTALLY ignored. Settling on the Coast can be good for Housing (still worse than a river) and really few times for resources, but having a good control of the seas is totally useless (or at least, way more useless than controlling the land). Even if you got a perfect fleet your opponent could simply ignore coastal city and you will have wasted tons of production for what? Nothing. Coastal city should have at least a good bonus for trading, and this bonus doesn't exist, because don't even try to tell me that the little trade range bonus is a good trade-off for a civ that invested a lot in the "Sea part" of the Science Tree and for the production of a fleet. Society like Venice, Genoa, the Colonial Spain, England and so on simply can't exist in a game like this, because focusing on controlling the seas gives way less advantage compared to the one you can take focusing on the same way on the land.

5) Since the introduction of the Loyalty system, it's impossible to have colonies. I find this pretty ridicolous considering that colonization has been a thing for centuries in our history. I would simply try to change this in someway, for example I would not have used the population as the basic systeam for Loyalty, but I think it's too late to change this...

6) The Culture Victory is meh. It's not only incredibly bad explained in the game, but if you want to win with this you have to focus about it since the beginning while instead if you don't want to win with it you will totally ignore all the tourism system (I know that actually you can win a cultural victory without focusing on it since the beginning, but when this happens is because you are in such a good position compared to the AI that you could simply win in any different ways). The point is that tourism is "all or nothing". If you focus on tourism and at some point you discover that you can't win with it, you simply wasted everything until that moment. If you focus on science/war/religion but you can't win with it, maybe you didn't play in the most optimized way but you will still have some new usefull techs/cities/bonus. This is pretty no-sense, they should add even a minor bonus for tourism so that you can't totally focus or ignore it (a bonus like in Civ V could be enough). This is expecially true considering that the AI will NEVER win a cultural victory so all the Civs with some type of tourism bonus are underpowered (because they will simply never get any advantage by them) and the AI will often focus on Great People/wonders/building about Tourism that it will never use, wasting tons of resources.
Actually I think that they said they will change the Cultural Victory with the expansion, so maybe this will change (I hope it).

7) The AI. I don't have to add anything else to this part, you know what I'm talking about.


I just hope this expansion will not simply add new features (that pretty often the AI can't handle) and that instead it will try to fix these problems, but I think they are so much eradicated in this game that almost nothing will change until Civilization VII (even if I'm pretty sure Civ VII will sell WAY LESS than Civ VI if they don't fix this game).
 
I agree that they really messed up coastal cities and navies with the removal of the cargo ship as a different thing from caravans. I think that the single trader unit can be kept as is, but traders should not be able to move over both land and water in the same route. They should either move from coastal city to coastal city (or from harbor to harbor) across the ocean, or they should move from city to city (or commercial district to commercial district, if available) across land. Then the ocean-going routes can get a 2x yield bonus (or maybe a little lower) like in civ 5.

For cultural victories, the tourist concept is completely unnecessary and should be scrapped, just keep it like in civ5 (accumulate more tourism than opponents accumulated culture). Mechanically the same thing, but is much more transparent.
 
I would add some little thing that exist in Civ5 and there are not present in Civ6:

1. Pledge to protect city state. Very important to me, in fact I dont understand why this simple option wasnt in the game at launch --- not to say after two expansions :confused: .. city states would becamo more important , there would be actual war starter because of them (now it is only emergancy)

2. Defensive pact (I now they exist through alliances , but I think this should be seperate) ... also some kind of non-aggression pact

3. Reworked ocean tiles .... its just unrealistic that inland cities are better options than on cost, even if you have cost+river , still

4. Roads being built by traders and in general not that useful. I thout this will be somehow changed during Civ6 life circe, but seems not. In Civ5 roads were incredibly important, because it was easier to conquer cities and if you army was on the other side of map you needed way to quickly move them if someone attack you in the back.

5. Better and more deep trade. In civ5 there was cargo ship - in Civ6 nothing similar. This would make cities on coast more important and navies also, to protect your trade routes. I remember how important for me in World Map as Japan to build some early navy so my cargo ships could safely go to Korea or China ... now its not case in Civ6

6. Units gap ... many missing reinessanse era units, almost all WW1 unit tree ...

7. World map reveal. I still dont understand why Firaxis disable world map trading. It is rediculus that you have planes in most of you games, but still didnt discover all nations in world and all continents

probably there is more those little thing , just cant remember them all right now
 
I’ve posted about this stuff at length before - see my links. I don’t have a lot more to say really. FXS are clearly aware of these issues. This expansion is clearly directed at resolving these issues.

GS looks like it’s taking a real look at resources and industry. This part looks really promising - not just more hammers, but a real change in how production works with the introduction of power. Depending on how everything fits together, we may end up with real competition over resources late game, which would be awesome.

Diplomacy is also another way the late game can be improved. They deliberately didn’t rush out the World Congress, and did a dry run in RnF with Emergencies. I’m hoping his reflects they’ve really thought about Diplomacy, and that they’ve only included it now because it works.

I don’t really agree with the comments around loyalty. I think it works very wel, and does introduce some dynamic stuff. But it does need a bit more. The “proble” is that past the about the Medieval era loyalty is not doing all that much, which is a real pity. I’d thought this expansion would introduce ideologies, and flesh out loyalty, governors, gov Plaza and Legacy Cards more ... but looks like I was totally wrong about that. Pity. What we have is okay, but hopefully this will get expanded in dlc or the mythical lost ark of the covenant third schroedinger expansion.

As I’ve said before, Civ VI currently doesn’t do much with colonialism. But GS might change that. If the game lasts longer, then colonial cities (and late game cities generally) might be more useful. Likewise, if resources are more important, that could also make colonial cities better. Hopefully diplomacy will also play into diplomatic influence.

(Hey. @FXS? Are you reading this? Can I give you one tip? Give players additional diplomatic influence for having colonial cities. Like, +x for each continent you have cities on (a bit like England’s Trade Route bonus). It twould be very flavourful for both diplomacy and colonialism, and would really really buff colonial cities and give you more reason to have them. It would also indirectly buff England, Spain etc., which would be cool but for England would particularly fit Pax B historically.)
 
Last edited:
acluewithout: "I’ve posted about this stuff at length before - see my links. I don’t have a lot more to say really."

me: looks ahead and sees 5 more paragraphs follow, laughs, then reads them

Cheers, @acluewithout :beer:

Even when I have nothing to say, I take a long time to say it...
 
Personally, I think the loyalty situation and colonization works pretty well... if you have certain civs. When I have played Spain, I never had trouble establishing a colony overseas. Have a builder, make a mission, send Victor, buy a monument (and a granary if possible), have Amani with the appropriate promotion within 9 hexes. Likewise, England, except capture a city with a harbour rather than settle... it becomes a royal dockyard and you are good to go. There are probably other civs that are good colonizers, but those two are off the top of my mind. Makes sense, too, as the Spanish and English were both notable as colonizing powers.
 
There are dozens and dozens of really obvious edge-case bugs from vanilla Civ VI that were not fixed in Rise & Fall (and dozens of new ones were introduced), and so I doubt they will fixed in the new expansion. They've been really sloppy in this respect with Civ VI, more so it seems than in previous titles.
 
They could improve trade in CIV VI, but I personally like that there is just one trade unit. I would allthough like to see techs/civics having effect/improvement on trade. For example certain techs allowing longer trade routes. Longer trade routes should also have some type of bonus IMO.

There are small irritating things that could be easily fixed. For example when you get combat promotions from natural wonders (Giant's Causeway, Matterhorn) there is no easy way to see if your unit has that promotion. How is this even possible?
 
Yeah, there are a few things in the OP that I don't think hold up. To highlight a couple of major points:

The proportional weighting of Science and Culture you're describing isn't the problem. The problem is you reaching the Industrial Age in 1000AD, without the supporting infrastructure. Slingshot was very popular (and indeed kinda necessary on the higher difficulties) in CiV, but the entire design and pacing of VI kinda runs against it. It's certainly possible, but the entire way Ages work in Rise and Fall, combined with the general slow-burn of infrastructure (with a number of things actually needing to be built, and not obtainable with Gold) means you're not meant to rush this. Certainly, only within the limits of your own empire-building.

The game in VI is the least static, and most alive, I've felt in an unmodded Civilisation game. This is a lot more arguable of course :D But I always feel there's something happening. It feels a bit more organic than the continuous warmaking against City-States that I found in CiV (and BE) - and stuff like Free Cities helps that, albeit in a rather niche way. The visibility on agendas has really helped (they were very opaque in the past), and Grievances could really help with all of that as well.

Nothing wrong with wanting more from a Culture victory though. I actually won one by last night by mistake, was almost at the stage of a Science victory when the Culture screen just popped up!
 
There really is no excuse for the terrible AI. Play en old PC game of Chessmaster, also on NES and SNES. Does the Chessmaster start with more queens, more pieces on higher difficulty? NO. What the AI does in Chessmaster when you crank up the difficulty is think many moves ahead. Now I know that these advanced Civ games have many more variables then a game of chess, but the approach should have been less raw buffing, and more caution. Better reasoning. Less trusting of the player and more ready to seize every little advantage.

The terrible AI is at the root of every problem here. The real reason there is no production queue, or that you can't see how many turns until your border expands. The nerfing of coastal cities and navies, because the AI is terrible at Navy and in Civ V on any map with a decent amount of water, a good navy dominates the game. Rather then improve the AI, they have taken these sneaky steps to stop the player from being more efficient.

I get that it's a new game from Civ 5, but why so many unnecessary changes? They put the minimap on the left now instead of the right. The psychology is to get everyone used to the new format and then they wont want to play the older games. That being said I do appreciate the things being added in garthering storm, namely weather and natural disasters, but even those, when you look into deeply, are a somewhat artificial means of creating randomness in an otherwise completely static game.
 
I disagree if you look at the stats I predict more people will play civ vi than Civ V when gathering storm comes out. (I keep a tally of how many people play each Civ game on average everyday)
 
To be fair ,some if not most point you are addressing are advertized as .. addressed.

* Coastal, sea value seem to be a focus
* Game mechanics are introduced to have the game last longer , so I guess it means they kind of slowed the pace of science.
* Nothing on the production side (magnus is still boosting chop) , chop does seems to have counter effect in ecology but if building stilll takes forever we are not out of the wood.
 
There really is no excuse for the terrible AI. Play en old PC game of Chessmaster, also on NES and SNES. Does the Chessmaster start with more queens, more pieces on higher difficulty? NO. What the AI does in Chessmaster when you crank up the difficulty is think many moves ahead. Now I know that these advanced Civ games have many more variables then a game of chess, but the approach should have been less raw buffing, and more caution. Better reasoning. Less trusting of the player and more ready to seize every little advantage.

The terrible AI is at the root of every problem here. The real reason there is no production queue, or that you can't see how many turns until your border expands. The nerfing of coastal cities and navies, because the AI is terrible at Navy and in Civ V on any map with a decent amount of water, a good navy dominates the game. Rather then improve the AI, they have taken these sneaky steps to stop the player from being more efficient.

I get that it's a new game from Civ 5, but why so many unnecessary changes? They put the minimap on the left now instead of the right. The psychology is to get everyone used to the new format and then they wont want to play the older games. That being said I do appreciate the things being added in garthering storm, namely weather and natural disasters, but even those, when you look into deeply, are a somewhat artificial means of creating randomness in an otherwise completely static game.
I'm not going to say the AI can't be improved, but to claim firstly that there's "no excuse", and then compare it to chess, maybe suggests that you don't appreciate the problems a game like Civilisation has to solve vs. a game of chess.

And don't get me started on "artificial". It's a video game. Anything is "artificial" if you personally want to claim it as such.
 
Yeah, there are a few things in the OP that I don't think hold up. To highlight a couple of major points:

The proportional weighting of Science and Culture you're describing isn't the problem. The problem is you reaching the Industrial Age in 1000AD, without the supporting infrastructure. Slingshot was very popular (and indeed kinda necessary on the higher difficulties) in CiV, but the entire design and pacing of VI kinda runs against it. It's certainly possible, but the entire way Ages work in Rise and Fall, combined with the general slow-burn of infrastructure (with a number of things actually needing to be built, and not obtainable with Gold) means you're not meant to rush this. Certainly, only within the limits of your own empire-building.

The game in VI is the least static, and most alive, I've felt in an unmodded Civilisation game. This is a lot more arguable of course :D But I always feel there's something happening. It feels a bit more organic than the continuous warmaking against City-States that I found in CiV (and BE) - and stuff like Free Cities helps that, albeit in a rather niche way. The visibility on agendas has really helped (they were very opaque in the past), and Grievances could really help with all of that as well.

Nothing wrong with wanting more from a Culture victory though. I actually won one by last night by mistake, was almost at the stage of a Science victory when the Culture screen just popped up!

Even assuming that in a game about history is totally normal to reach the industrial Era in 1000 AD literally EVERY time (and this is not ok for me), I just know that even if I totally ignore Science (like I did in my last game, because I wanted to win with Culture) I'm always way ahead in the science tree than in the production of everything. I didn't exactly understand what you mean saying that Ages in R&F works against this, why do you say this?
And maybe this is the biggest coincidence ever, but in all my games I pass the last Eras just pressing "skip turn" and even the AI doesn't do anything "new". Wars between the AI usually ends up in nothing (and the rare times the AI takes a single city usually they lose it in 3 turns because of Loyalty) and if I don't want to conquer the World I'm left with almost nothing to do.

I disagree if you look at the stats I predict more people will play civ vi than Civ V when gathering storm comes out. (I keep a tally of how many people play each Civ game on average everyday)

I'm 99 % sure that 3 months before the release of Civ V Brave New World there were more people playing Civ V than Civ IV, while at the moment there are still more people playing Civ V that Civ VI (and it's incredible, expecially considering that after some years obviously a lot of people just stop playing older games).

To be fair ,some if not most point you are addressing are advertized as .. addressed.

* Coastal, sea value seem to be a focus
* Game mechanics are introduced to have the game last longer , so I guess it means they kind of slowed the pace of science.
* Nothing on the production side (magnus is still boosting chop) , chop does seems to have counter effect in ecology but if building stilll takes forever we are not out of the wood.

I miss where they said that coastal will be a focus in the new expansion, where did you read it?
For Science they just said that they would have add some new techs, not that the proportion between Science and Production will change, so I see no difference here.
 
I'm 99 % sure that 3 months before the release of Civ V Brave New World there were more people playing Civ V than Civ IV, while at the moment there are still more people playing Civ V that Civ VI (and it's incredible, expecially considering that after some years obviously a lot of people just stop playing older games).



I miss where they said that coastal will be a focus in the new expansion, where did you read it?

There's actually more playing 6 than 5 at the moment (see steam charts). 6 passed 5 this week, likely because of the gold plus steam sale (5 has a much bigger installed base but 6 might be catching up slowly) and maybe expansion hype.

They talked about how cities on the coast now get a 'dock' (and I think China has some unique changes related to it). They haven't said what it does yet, so it may give a trade bonus or something else.
 
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