thoughts on civ vi from old-timers

[Gidoloi]

Been playing since Civ1 on the Amiga.....in all that time the main lesson I've learn't is to defer gratification and wait until those clever modders and developers sort out all the problems. This time around I need a new machine as well....think I'll wait before i jump in....

 

[Kougar7]

Bottom line: Civ VI is in better shape than its predecessor at launch, and despite concerning flaws in its combat AI, there is a lot of potential. It's too early to come to any definitive conclusions.

I fully agree. As having played V to death in all three major versions, my opinion is the launch day state of VI is comparable to V with the G&K expansion and fixes. I think VI was a good release, it is considerably in better shape than V ever was on launch day and I applaud the devs for putting effort into keeping gameplay affecting bugs to minimum, most are generally cosmetic, glitches, or edge cases. Hell the multiplayer stability alone is absurdly better.

I also agree the AI has a lot of work left. It seems much better at being able to manage its own cities, but instead of the corps/army grouping helping the AI it hasn't yet been able to make use of it. On Emperor Gorgo used a ton of mech infantry against me and would only group a third of it. AI in general never upgrades its outdated units and has genuine problems attacking cities, it would just congregate around cities not attacking them. At least programming the AI to mass a sufficient force before it engages would help that instead of stringing in units one-by-one. Even on emperor with a 2-3 era advantage on units it would not attack a city just group around it as if waiting for something else to show up, so I'd never lose a city even when by all rights I should've.

That said the AI has been exceptionally nasty at hit & run style raids on my cities behind my lines, so I'll give it points for that. The barb horsemen also keep things interesting as well. The AI at least seems to have better ideas of when to retreat to save units and regroup too.

 

[orasis]

The arrows on your keyboard also move the map around; I think I like this method best as it won't deselect units as with the mouse grab and won't annoy as with the mouse scroll

I am a mouse scroll kind of man. I really hate the arrow method - you can also do WASD if you want to edit some files, but, meh I am not a big fan of that either.

 

[orasis]

[The] AI in general never upgrades its outdated units .

The barb horsemen also keep things interesting as well.

Yes, the AI keeps too many outdated units which hurts it's economy which further hinders it's ability for proper warfare...

I am not sure if they are the same file, but I have found that the barbarian AI seems much better at conflict.

 

[Underseer]

I have been playing this game since Civ I (which I played on an Artari ST computer....google it kids) and I must say that I have never witnessed such an incomplete game as Civ VI seems to be on initial release. Am I alone in that feeling? Not trying to start a hate fest or troll war, I'm just curious as to what some of the old-timers thoughts are on this.

All my friends bugged me to try Civilization. Didn't actually buy it until Civilization 2.

I have to say that I don't agree with you. At least this game shipped with religion and espionage in a functional state. Sure, a diplomacy victory is missing, but I never liked diplomacy. All that sucking up got nauseating and expensive. Besides, I have enough to do trying to wrap my brain around all the new mechanics that the last thing I need is to worry about another civilization getting a diplomacy victory.

 

[orasis]

All my friends bugged me to try Civilization. Didn't actually buy it until Civilization 2.

I have to say that I don't agree with you. At least this game shipped with religion and espionage in a functional state. Sure, a diplomacy victory is missing, but I never liked diplomacy. All that sucking up got nauseating and expensive. Besides, I have enough to do trying to wrap my brain around all the new mechanics that the last thing I need is to worry about another civilization getting a diplomacy victory.

I agree, again. This is a damn good first version of the game. It is only what? 8-9 days old and people are comparing it to games that took 3-4 years to become fully playable. 6 is pretty playable right now.

Yes, it has some bugs ... like archers being OP as fawk, and diplomacy menus disappearing ... for me anyways.

Give it 4 years and I think this will probably be the best CIV game ever released.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Civ 5 was far, far worse on release, so bad in fact that I dropped it after a single game and never gave it another chance.

Civ 6 is about 90% complete with UI and AI flaws being the main holdup along with a few bugs and exploits. That's par for the course and exactly how it was with 3 and 4 as well.

I'm a Civ vet too (played Civ on the Amiga!). Civ V was definitely boring on release. I played it for a while, got completely bored with it and then came back when Gods & Kings was released and loved it. Brave New World made it better again too.

I've got Civ VI waiting to play but I'm holding off for a bit due to lack of decent time to play it and a possible patch it iron out early problems (of which there don't appear to be many compared to when IV and V were released!).

 

[pulzar]

I've played every civ since the original... Civ VI is a pleasant surprise, it offers many interesting new mechanics, some of them meaningfully different (and likely better!) than old ones.

However, about 50 hours into it, it's starting to get a little boring and annoying due to various little and big things. AI is even worse at war than it was in early Civ V, which I didn't think was possible... so having to fight anyone at all feels like cheating. The UI has so many little annoyances that make it hard to do tedious things quickly. Instead of micro-managing, which I love and want to do, I'm micro-clicking.

The game is also quite fun up to about 2/3rds into the tech tree, and then all of a sudden you go from musketeers into jet fighters and thermonuclear bombs. The sudden jump in weapon technology kills the late game.

Culture victory is too easy to achieve, domination is super easy but tedious, and it's hard to win science victory without accidentally winning culture, so it's not really all that different.

Lot's of complaints up there, but the truth is that the "bones" of the game are actually quite good and I'm excited to see where it goes. But, many things need fixing to make this as replayable as, say, late Civ V, or Civ V with community mod pack.

 

[jekke]

One thing I don't understand is why people keep comparing (fresh) Civ VI to vanilla Civ V and not to BNW. We usually learn by doing, and this was a whole point of evolution from vanilla Civ V (which was terrible) all the way to BNW (which was playable even without the mods). A great deal of knowledge must have been accomplished over these years, I mean, the knowledge how to program AI to deal with 1 UPT, expansion, diplomacy, trades etc. Why do people suggest throwing out all this knowledge and start from scratch, as this is the approach which justifies comparisons with vanilla V? Vanilla V is history now but it must have served a noble purpose of teaching (hopefully, at least). We should move on and use other, more recent reference points instead. Otherwise it is a bit of a hamster wheel.

 

[Roxlimn]

Rose tinted glasses going on here. Civ 3 was alright at release, but the introduction of Armies in Warlords made the entire war game a complete walk. You don't need any simple tactics either. In Civ 5, the tactical game is "easy" because you can fool the AI. In Warlords, there was no game. You made an Army (and actual unit formation) and clicked with it until you won. Not figuratively zero tactics. Literally zero tactics. Never really got fixed. This is the reason Firaxis stayed away from the Army idea until Civ Rev, and the version in Civ VI comes from that tradition. Thankfully, the AI knows how to join units now, at least.

Civ IV at release was a total mess. I loved it. I played it even against the 2 and 3 naysayers, but the AI was completely unworkable, and the combat system was completely borked - imagine a combat game in which you ever just need to make one unit, in any age. That's Civ IV at release. None of the other units had any use. The stack damage from siege came in much later. And they never really fixed the massive super stack problems. Back in the day, Civ IV players here used to be impressed by a 20 unit stack. That was before we found out about Drafting. Once you can Draft, stacks ballooned to hundreds of units. Not really a very wieldy system, and they never really fixed it.

Civ 4 was great and all. It's still great, but let's not defend broken combat.

 

[Snovvdog]

I like many things and will undoubtedly play this a lot like civ5.

However, some things annoy me:

- General UI and display of information. Why on earth can't I for example sort my cities by production, but without typing a whole page, the UI is in many ways disfunctional or inefficient at displaying the info you want. Civilopedia wasn't too clear either eg. that the same (eg. great engineers) great people differ in effects per GE. Also the ''luxures/anemeties'' system is badly explained. Also in replay, I can't compare GPT, Hammers per turn, and Food per turn, why?
- Why such a punishment for building wide, upgoing district costs are really ******ed.
- Mentally impaired AI, even on Deity, you can win a war with 6 units vs an ai with 30+.
- WHERE IS TERRA? I miss my fav. map type. Fractal is the only ''interesting'' map choice atm. Continents are just boring blobs, even worse than in previous games imo.
- Religion, please give me numbers (eg. religious pressure)
- Bugs, I had to alt f4 when I did diplomacy in the AI's turns, also why can't you disable the boring leader movies/animations? Various other minor bugs liek seeing a movie of a leader who denouces you, but you're seeing your own leader... Or being able to make war pacts against people you haven't met, or create embassies to someone you're at war with (because war pacts before meeting em). Vague ''broken promise'' penalties, or getting ''armies at my borders'' from my automated exploring units.
- Why can't I micromanage (citizens or production queue) while the AI's are taking their turns?
- General slowness of play, in civ 5 I did about 3-4 hrs per game on normal speed, here ~7 hrs.
- Lack of builder automation, yes even with expendable builders, late game (or even mid game, from 10 cities) I don't give 2 ****s about what they're doing, as long as they're improving stuff.
- Construction queue


I've only played about 20 hrs atm (finished 2, almost 3 games) but I don't feel such an urge to play like in civ 5 or 4.

I like the unit coupling, new culture system, combining into armies and fleets, boosts, and the new builders. Definitely improves the late game tiresome unit clutter.

Fix the bloody UI so information is easier available and gameplay is faster.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Civ IV combat had it's issues but in the BTS era it was fun to play and you felt the AI was trying to win and playing sensibly. Civ VI is just no fun - it's like playing a game of chess with a preschooler.

 

[Underseer]

What a silly and nonsensical thing to say. What's your basis for this perspective? Anything other than your own desire to think yourself superior to others?

"The kids" have, if anything, much higher expectations than we ever had growing up. Back in the 80s and 90s, video games were still this miraculous thing that was so niche that you felt privileged to get to play them. Now, they're ubiquitous (which is a good thing) and there's so much insight into the development process and the work of designers and so much more frequent communication from gamedev companies that younger players have come to expect it as de rigueur throughout the industry. And when there is insufficient communication or a buggy release, the blowback is widespread and intense. (See also: No Man's Sky.) The industry has changed dramatically, especially around deployment methods, so some of that is to be expected and makes sense given the models they've grown up with. (In contrast to the release models we grew up with, where everything shipped on physical media and the Internet didn't exist, so patches and updates were either nonexistent or few and far between.)

So to say that "the kids will accept anything" is ridiculous on its face. If anything, younger gamers tend to have much more stringent expectations than we did when we were teens. But yes, anyone who wants to hold off until any product is fully-patched and has all the features they desire should of course do so - just don't think you're somehow a more discerning, sophisticated consumer because of it. You're not.

As a fellow old fogey, I have to agree with you.

 

[pulzar]

- Why can't I micromanage (citizens or production queue) while the AI's are taking their turns?
- General slowness of play, in civ 5 I did about 3-4 hrs per game on normal speed, here ~7 hrs.

It appears, at least in my experience, that most of the delay of "AIs taking their turns" is Civ doing animations of moves that we can't see, as silly as it sounds. Turning on "quick moves" makes the game go significantly faster. Fast enough that I hardly have time to do anything other look around the map for what needs to be done when my turn starts.

 

[TurboJ]

I also started it with Civ I. Played a lot of Civ II too but then had a long break due to not having a gaming PC. 2000+ hours on Civ V and expect to play a LOT of VI too.

The VI feels much more like a quality board game than any of the previous installments. Nostalgia reasons I won't compare it to the original Sid Meier classic, but I feel the VI will be the best one of all the later games.
It's the fact how all aspects of gameplay require thought and planning. Much more than before, everything affects everything. I love the district thing, all the tile adjacency bonuses and the unique nature of each map that now actually has real meaning in gameplay terms. Combat is better. The culture tree is great. The tech/social boosts are great. The game looks great - I was worried about the cartoon style before I saw it for real - it goes really well with the board game nature Civ VI has.

But there are big problems. AI is stupid in multiple ways; this is the biggest problem by far. It feels like the devs have been working really hard at all other aspects and the AI has been just neglected. It's worse than Civ V for sure. UI has some small issues but that's nowhere near game breaking. AI needs to be fixed - but I believe it will. If official patches fail to do so, modders will.

A random notion is the game feels easier to beat than V. Only my second playthrough I was easily able to beat on Immortal and from watching Youtube Deity doesn't seem that bad either. I wonder if they did the same thing as they did with XCom - the II was much easier to beat than the I...

A great game, truly great. But so far not really finished. Both facts not really surprising to be honest.

 

[DocRock]

I'm playing since Civ 1 and so far VI is a bit meh for me. I'm not that kind of an anti-1upt guy that still sticks to IV, but the whole game feels unfinished and unpolished. If you crank up the difficulty, you just get steamrolled by unit carpets. I counted about 35 attacking horsemen from Scythia in 700 AD. Even though I have a Commerce district in every of my cities, after 8-10 units the upkeep puts my income below 0. Of course this doesn't effect the AI in any way. Before that, a horde of 15 Apostels was partying in my area, blocking my army from attacking the Chinese constantly and there was nothing I could do about it.

Well, I mean.. besides all the bugs, exploits, strange design decisions, the bad graphics.. the game is somehow not fun. That's what worries me the worst. Because you can fix everything else with Mods or Patches. To put it into perspective, it's not a bad game. It's a slightly above average one (70-75%). But slightly above is not good enough to justify investing my small timeframe of available gaming time. I scored three wins and now I'm done with the game. Waiting for significant changes and bugfixes now.

 

[CHE:\IMPERIAL>]

played all civ games too..


loads of potential here i find and im sure the rough edges will be fixed in the coming patches. AI behavior has topped the complaint charts since civ 1 so nothing new there...


hoping they bring back the UN the future. i quite liked the ability to set embargoes on other civs.

 

[Helmling]

I'll chime in. I, too, have been mainlining, er, "playing" Civ since the first version. It's been my principle form of entertainment for more than 20 years now.

I think Civ VI is the best out-of-the-gate version I've ever seen from the series. It's got tons of systems and lots of interesting ways to play the game.

Unfortunately, it retains the worst mistakes of CiV, which makes it very tedious to play in the late game. In some respects, this has been a problem for the series all along. I'm talking about unit movement in the late game. When you have huge armies and you need to engage against a player halfway around the world on a huge map, then your army is going to be a few tech generations behind by the time if reaches the theater of operations. It's a huge problem that they've never figured out how to deal with--I don't even know they're trying. Movements speeds just need to be significantly ramped up for the modern era, but they can't seem to reconcile that with turn-based combat. When they shifted to 1upt, though, things got really ugly and moving an army is such a chore that in CiV, I refused to wage war until I got those Xcom units that I could actually pop across the globe in a blink. Anything else was too frustrating as I'd set a unit destination, then have to reset it the next turn because some worker happened to stop and block the tile my unit wouldn't arrive in for twelve turns anyway, then two turns later I'd have the unit blinking at me and forget where the heck it was going.

Now, for me as an unrepentant wonder whore, I'm also not crazy about unstacking the cities. It does add a whole new layer of strategy to the game, yes, but it also stretches the conceit whereby a city lords over such a huge swatch of territory on the map. If this game is super moldable, then I'd love to see all this unstacked city mechanic get pulled back into the city. Like, what if there was a city view again like in the good old days, but it was a fat hex tucked inside your city's hex? Then you could place your buildings and they would take up more reasonable amount of space in the game world--instead of, say, the Eiffel tower requiring five hundred square miles. If this mechanic was workable, then you could even have the option for tactical combat. Up to three units on each side could enter a zoomed-in fat hex from opposite sides and you could use terrain advantages more logically--so again, archers wouldn't then be firing across the English channel and such.

Just a pipe dream, I know. But my point is: Civ VI is pretty good, but as always, we dream the game we want to play and sometimes the reality is disappointing by comparison.

 

[rockhpi]

I've been playing since Civ II. So far 6 seems like it's basically in place but needed more development time. The AI opponents act seemingly without rhyme or reason at best and are psychotic at worst.

 

[Gidoloi]

I'll chime in. I, too, have been mainlining, er, "playing" Civ since the first version. It's been my principle form of entertainment for more than 20 years now.

I think Civ VI is the best out-of-the-gate version I've ever seen from the series. It's got tons of systems and lots of interesting ways to play the game.

Unfortunately, it retains the worst mistakes of CiV, which makes it very tedious to play in the late game. In some respects, this has been a problem for the series all along. I'm talking about unit movement in the late game. When you have huge armies and you need to engage against a player halfway around the world on a huge map, then your army is going to be a few tech generations behind by the time if reaches the theater of operations. It's a huge problem that they've never figured out how to deal with--I don't even know they're trying. Movements speeds just need to be significantly ramped up for the modern era, but they can't seem to reconcile that with turn-based combat. When they shifted to 1upt, though, things got really ugly and moving an army is such a chore that in CiV, I refused to wage war until I got those Xcom units that I could actually pop across the globe in a blink. Anything else was too frustrating as I'd set a unit destination, then have to reset it the next turn because some worker happened to stop and block the tile my unit wouldn't arrive in for twelve turns anyway, then two turns later I'd have the unit blinking at me and forget where the heck it was going.

Now, for me as an unrepentant wonder whore, I'm also not crazy about unstacking the cities. It does add a whole new layer of strategy to the game, yes, but it also stretches the conceit whereby a city lords over such a huge swatch of territory on the map. If this game is super moldable, then I'd love to see all this unstacked city mechanic get pulled back into the city. Like, what if there was a city view again like in the good old days, but it was a fat hex tucked inside your city's hex? Then you could place your buildings and they would take up more reasonable amount of space in the game world--instead of, say, the Eiffel tower requiring five hundred square miles. If this mechanic was workable, then you could even have the option for tactical combat. Up to three units on each side could enter a zoomed-in fat hex from opposite sides and you could use terrain advantages more logically--so again, archers wouldn't then be firing across the English channel and such.

Just a pipe dream, I know. But my point is: Civ VI is pretty good, but as always, we dream the game we want to play and sometimes the reality is disappointing by comparison.

Can someone create this game please?