The Successes and Failures of Civ VI

[Katakanja]

There's a new interview with Ed Beach up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/07/13/civilization-6-post-mortem/#more-460165

Nothing too shocking that we didn't already know, but Ed does talk about how he still isn't satisfied with the late game, and there are a few more hints that the World Congress is something they are working towards re-including in the game at some point in the future.

Also there's an interesting little bit about the espionage system and how originally it was going to be a bit more complex, with police forces you would have to deploy within your cities rather than counterspying.

 

[Siptah]

Thanks for the link. Sounds promising and looks like Ed is designing the expansions as well. And no shenanigans like useless units... Good news!

 

[redwings1340]

I can definitely believe the espionage system initially being designed to be more complicated then being scaled back. The espionage system feels unfinished, as though the designers had some fun ideas but couldn't figure out how to get it to work. I think the game could use that being worked on more in the future, spies are a fun concept but not super well done at the moment.

 

[Katakanja]

I can definitely believe the espionage system initially being designed to be more complicated then being scaled back. The espionage system feels unfinished, as though the designers had some fun ideas but couldn't figure out how to get it to work. I think the game could use that being worked on more in the future, spies are a fun concept but not super well done at the moment.

Yeah, the police force thing he describes as a means to defend against enemy spies definitely sounds more interesting than what we have at the moment, but I'm willing to take his word that it wound up being even more micromanagement intensive and therefore less fun in practice. He talks about it in terms of allocating units, so I guess it was perhaps like sending envoys to city states, only replaced by selecting which of your own cities to reinforce.

At least if they had more to begin with and scaled it back, it means they have concepts to work with and improve rather than having to start from square one for future improvements.

 

[Uberfrog]

Diplomacy, the Late Game and Espionage are two areas I'd really like to see expanded upon, and I'm glad to see Ed is on the same page. I shouldn't be surprised really, he seems like a desinger who thinks everything through from a mechanical perspective.

I'm excited to see how the game develops beyond the immediate necessary tweaks to bugs and UI and AI etc we will see in the patch.

Also: he couldn't drop one hint about the next DLCs?

 

[Manifold]

The title is hard. Are there some sales statistics out?

The most important sentences are:

0. "...into distributed districts, with attendant tile-space-management gameplay." Yes the districts are cool

1. "...Nine months on..." long time ago...

2. "forty civilisations"

3. "world was a little bit more dynamic" major random events like volcanic eruptions

4. to the spy game: "I think if we could come up with ways to make that even more engaging and active that would be a plus, though."

Maybe there are some old board games in my shelf ( Inkognito, Cluedo, Stratego) with some easy ideas for a spy minigame.

5. "...the conflicts of the 20th century. And I do think that’s an area that we could definitely make some improvements on in Civ VI."
Churchill, Stalin, Eisenhower, Khrushchev

 

[bbbt]

Well, it certainly sounds like Ed Beach is planning on staying through all the expansions.

 

[Sherlock]

Barb spawn rate needs to be cut in half. City-States need to stop spamming crazy numbers of military units which a) block the map, and b) are crazy-overpowered if they go to war for their Suzerain.

The random crashes have to go. There's a LOT to be done with this game, these are just some of the most obvious things.

 

[gettingfat]

Yes, districts is a cool idea in principle. Unfortunately it appears to be poorly handled by the AI and there are also some annoying issues as well. Hope they don't just feel good about the idea without really putting enough effort to make this idea truly work. My honest opinion is it doesn't work well at all in the current state. An AI civ with like 12 cities but only one CH and only a couple of IZ is quite ridiculous tbh. CS needs to build more districts (especially entertainment zone as rebels just pop out too often in mid to late game) besides their primary one and sometimes a harbor. Some fine-tuning in terms of the district placement is needed. Now they just place it whereever gives most adjacency bonus. The cost scaling needs some rework so we don't need to hold up the tech and civics advance to avoid costly districts, and they should find a way so building districts after 150 turns won't need like 50 turns even with a trade route. The district repair cost after pillaging needs to be lowered to be more reasonable. Just because I take an encampment to make capturing a city easier shouldn't automatically turn it into pillaged state, and even worse, make me waste five hundred years to fix it!

 

[Leyrann]

I'm just saying, all the way to endgame I can build districts in 15 turns.

As for the AI, many of it's problems seem to come from one base thing, and that is that they do not value production enough. This makes them fall behind in districts and units, which turns into falling behind in everything.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Playing Kongo has really been eye opening. It seems so much better that I don't bother with religion at all, it would seem.

I think it Religion could use some work. The AI goes for it so hard (even on crappy difficulties like Prince that I'm playing on) that I can't imagine people grabbing them without crippling their early game growth on higher difficulty. And then you have to fight off their missionary spam! Even with multiple holy sites, it's impossible to deal with people like Hojo. All I can lament is why didn't I build troops instead of this crap? At the cost of a campus, a commercial hub, or even an encampment that would have gotten me ahead. Oh sure you can kill them, but if you're willing to war with them over that, might as well just have not bothered and focused on military conquest anyways.

Also Barbarian Quadrimes at the very start of the game? If coastal starts didn't suck enough already.

I can't really say district costs have been a problem. Most main cities can produce them easily throughout the game, and by the time your backwater frontier cities are making them, it's unlikely even if you could make them at a decent rate that they would pay off in time anyways. Not every city needs everything. I mean, if you get a power plant in range of your random tundra city meant to capture a few luxuries, do you really need to build another industrial hub in the city proper there? Or even most things. The only thing I really want in most of my cities is a commercial hub for more traders. And traders can work in place of infrastructure if you really need to build something in a city. It doesn't make sense to build things so you can build other things slightly faster Perhaps I should play on bigger maps, but I will say that mines turn a loser city into a winner though.

 

[stinkubus]

I'm just saying, all the way to endgame I can build districts in 15 turns.

As for the AI, many of it's problems seem to come from one base thing, and that is that they do not value production enough. This makes them fall behind in districts and units, which turns into falling behind in everything.

AIs don't build Commerce Hubs, but if they had to handle a multitude of trade routes the game would bog down with slow turn times at the end. AI needs more buffs like free gold to make up for this.

 

[Siptah]

2. "forty civilisations"

He's referring to civ V expansions in that case and is not telling us what to expect from VI.
I think we will end up in the same region though.

5. "...the conflicts of the 20th century. And I do think that’s an area that we could definitely make some improvements on in Civ VI."
Churchill, Stalin, Eisenhower, Khrushchev

I hope they stay away from leaders like that.

 

[isau]

I think for Espionage the game to look at for inspiration is Invisible Inc. Create a new overlay for the map where city placement creates "cooridors" that spies can sneak through. Then add improvements that make it challenging for spies to move through the terrain.

To make Faith and the overall Religious game better, I think the Age of Wonders series is where to look. If we could cast spell-like abilities using the cursor like in AoW (it doesn't have to be "magic," it could just be "inspiration") I think this game would be vastly improved. Think of stuff like spending faith to heal a unit, slow enemies, change terrain, etc. The foundation of this is there in the Naturalist unit spending Faith to claim National Parks. Again it needn't be literal "magic" but could follow the way map spells work in AoW.

AoW could also provide some inspiration in terms of the tactical capabilities of units. Civ is weird in that it became a "tactical" game. But very few units have actual tactical abilities. There are no AoE attacks (other than nukes). No slows, no bleeds/poisons, no stuns, no confusions, no berzerks, and only a small handful of other tactical effects. Thats part of why making new units is so difficult. Most units just have + this and - that. They need more room to offer support and counter-support.

 

[Zuizgond]

I can definitely believe the espionage system initially being designed to be more complicated then being scaled back. The espionage system feels unfinished, as though the designers had some fun ideas but couldn't figure out how to get it to work. I think the game could use that being worked on more in the future, spies are a fun concept but not super well done at the moment.

Agree. I just hope they will fix espionage through a patch and not consider the fix as a new content for an expansion...

 

[Leyrann]

AoW could also provide some inspiration in terms of the tactical capabilities of units. Civ is weird in that it became a "tactical" game. But very few units have actual tactical abilities. There are no AoE attacks (other than nukes). No slows, no bleeds/poisons, no stuns, no confusions, no berzerks, and only a small handful of other tactical effects. Thats part of why making new units is so difficult. Most units just have + this and - that. They need more room to offer support and counter-support.

I think, if you were to include that, you would also need to include the Age of Wonders stacks mechanism though, as otherwise all those abilities would have to have very low range. With just two-tile ranged units people are already complaining about unrealistic scale, and 2 tiles wouldn't be a lot for suchs effects.

Also, it might push the game too much towards fantasy territory, while it should be history territory. How many armies in real history had units that made enemies "go berserk", for example?

 

[Tatran]

The comments section is the best part of the article.
The current status of civ 6 isn't good, so we have to wait and see what the future will bring.

 

[Morningcalm]

Ed Beach is right to discuss the major gameplay features. Looking forward to seeing espionage expanded (esp. with active spy defense ala Civ IV).

But I would also like to add (in case the devs read this) that other minor things matter too. For example, the intro screens for the leaders are definitely inferior to those of V. You get really simplistic intros with almost no historical flavor in VI, sadly. So Alexander is told conquest is the only way, and nothing about the Mongolian invasions is mentioned in Hojo's intro screen, etc. And silly platitudes like "You need not rush into the unknown" appear in them as well. For me a big part of the enjoyment in Civ is the historical flavor (transplanted as it may be), so to have such lacking intro screens was a bit turn off for me, as are simple things like no post-game map/timeline, Hall of Fame, etc.

 

[Sherlock]

Ed Beach is right to discuss the major gameplay features. Looking forward to seeing espionage expanded (esp. with active spy defense ala Civ IV).

But I would also like to add (in case the devs read this) that other minor things matter too. For example, the intro screens for the leaders are definitely inferior to those of V. You get really simplistic intros with almost no historical flavor in VI, sadly. So Alexander is told conquest is the only way, and nothing about the Mongolian invasions is mentioned in Hojo's intro screen, etc. And silly platitudes like "You need not rush into the unknown" appear in them as well. For me a big part of the enjoyment in Civ is the historical flavor (transplanted as it may be), so to have such lacking intro screens was a bit turn off for me, as are simple things like no post-game map/timeline, Hall of Fame, etc.

Yes, absolutely. This was a let down. I'm also very disappointed in the music which seems pretty random. I miss Brahms. And Grieg. And on and on......