thoughts on civ vi from old-timers

[Victoria]

I first played Colonization way back then and I loved it, clunky and crappy in retrospect but at the time it was wonderful.

Earlier Civs I likes the underwater cities

It was at about Civ 3 that other games were catching up and I started being more judgemental. But I still liked it a lot, using history and trying to make it half realistic (1/4?... 1/8?)... but if you look back at the limitations compared to Civ 6 there was so many things wrong with it.

When I played Civ4 I hated the stacks sooo much I burnt the disks. If we ever go back there I will do so again.

When Civ 5 came out is was a mess but I stuck with it for a while but the AI annoyed me so I stopped. Once BNW was out it was playable and I loved it. Yes it has problems but it was not easy to beat on top level and a pleasure to play on prince. That meant depending on mood I could have variety.

Now Civ6 is out I am older and wiser... and busier. I know it is not the best but is playable. You can obey your own rules in your head rather than take advantage of the weaknesses. I do not play to win anymore. Its about the struggle and journey. Everyone has a diffeent agenda, play to suit yours.

What I want is that ability I had in Civ5 of saying "I feel like an immortal game including these Civs on this map" and then spam about 20 quick games to get a decent layout to invest 10-20 hours of my time in knowing it is not going to be a walk over.

The thing with being an oldie is that we tend to remember things fondly. There was always more severe issues in older releases but we were not so aware and not so demanding. As time and tech moves on its easier to get fussier.

 

[Usama84]

Been playing hardcore since Civ 2, I am not thrilled about Civ 6, but Civ 4 took some time to refine... by the end of it, I had BTS with tonnes of modded units, it was great. I hope this game is modable, because as it is now, it is not really playable for more than a couple of hours IMO, much better than Civ 5, but I hate this 1 UPT garbage

 

[se7en]

Having played all the Civ games as well, Civ6 feels like the most complete one at launch of all of them. That said, they were a bit overzealous in trying to add so much I think. Rather than in previous games where the XPs added lots of features that felt missing at launch, I feel like with Civ6 they will mostly just need to refine the game as delivered.

 

[LMT]

I've been playing since Civ II and think every edition has been a step forward. The "Great Leap Forward" (in terms of change), obviously, was Civ V .

It seems like Fraxis et al. are trying to innovate, while at the same time, trying to keep the core playing mechanics that make Civ Civ.. That's tough to do.

 

[DevilMike77]

Hello Civfolks!
Well I'm running soon 39...and ive been playing civ since the first iteration on amiga. I fondly remember the sunrise when I was playing for the first time with my neighbour, we just did not realize we spend all night gaming. I played all iterations, loved civ4 for the realism but hated stacks of doom. A lot of hopes in civ5, very disappointed at the beginning but I still clocked insane hours on it. Still lots of hopes for civ6. I am yet to buy it, watched a lot of marbozir let's plays, read a lot of stuff on the forums. So far, I still think it is one of the best at release but a lot of work to do in 3 key areas:

- AI: of course we need a challenge. Make them escort settlers, make them attack cities, make them upgrade their units, make them tactically intelligent, and make diplomacy less schizophrenic. By browsing I found 3 mods that seem to adress some of the issues
Delnar ai cleanup mode
Siesta guru ai+
Strategic resource and tech tree rebalance mod lite (on Reddit) => for unit upgrade
I wish everyone would work together like in community patch! Thanks for the work to all.

- balance: tech tree too fast, production too slow, sea tiles unusable...
Browsing here again I found xaviar mod which seems to address a lot of issues
Civ6 improvement patch! Thanks for great work Xaviar!

- UI: for me it is more a QOL thing so it is not the #1 priority. Main things: auto cycle (but there is an easy fix), not possible to sort out trade routes and cities by production, map scrolling...I guess there will be plenty of mods to address that I wish there was one integrated or a firaxis patch.

On and on the game looks great, love the art, the districts, music, government systems, and that it is so complete at release.

Main hopes are now that Firaxis or the best modders manage to address the key areas.

I buy my new laptop and the game...and the mods as soon as I'm back from holiday. Can't wait!

 

[kaltorak]

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.

I am not finding it incomplete. But I am not enjoying it as much as other civs, don't really know why.Maybe it will change, like it did with civ5 after some updates

 

[AKstorm]

Been playing since CIV I too.
I'm only 6 hours into civ VI...so far i'm enjoying it a lot.

The direction they are giving the mechanics is definitely great imho. Fun and innovative.
I don't get so upset about the rough edges, they will be sorted out for sure, but I guess to each their own.

 

[Potenzo]

Although I've played the whole series (since the Commodore Amiga, ya-boo to your ST! ) I don't really think comparisons with Civ I and II are meaningful: they're so long ago, and the game has evolved just so much since then.

Compared with III, IV and V, I think this version is the most complete on launch yet.
I don't think it really necessary to spell out why this is better than the near-disaster Civ V was at launch; only Firaxis' commendable commitment to ongoing product support during the cycle rescued that from killing the franchise. Civ3, I remember my initial reaction less than clearly, but do remember my disappointment at going back to a relatively simplistic and uninteresting government system after SMAC. And in Civ 4, certainly, I distinctly remember having a strong sense of loss at launch for features that had been present in Civ3 PTW that didn't make it through to CIV. I worried that the "purity" and especially the complexity of a 4X game had been sacrificed on the altar of a 3D engine.

This time, I really don't feel any loss from CiV: certainly, the game is lacking some polish (not flashy stuff, like the Wonder animations, but important QoL items like unit cycling, and knowing how long before a city border expands). But the main game systems and mechanics all seem present. I am left feeling confident that a couple of rounds of the patch brush, and everything will be ship-shape.

My commendations to Firaxis. This time, I think they've done an impressive launch.

 

[knighterrant81]

I've been playing since the original Civilization game. Civ 1-3 are just totally different games and from a totally different era in game design.

Here's what I think has been done right:

1. The relationship between districts and production is working very well, by which I mean it greatly rewards good decision making (which district to build where and when). I've never had a civ game where I want to restart right away after a victory to see if I can improve upon these kind of micro-decisions.
2. They've done a pretty good job of making each decision meaningful. You can't just queue up the same build order and forget it (and not just because they killed the actual build order UI - oops!)
3. The game is way more functional than 5 was on release. Each expansion added so much to 5 that it was like 3 different games. The original 5 was like playing patty-cake compared to the final version.
4. The game (partly just by learning lessons from things added over the years) has many more fully fleshed out features than 4. Religion, culture victory, ranged units, etc.

Here's the flaws in Civ 6 that I see:

1. Lots and lots of room for improvement in the UI. Never anything major, but so many more points where you just want more information that it becomes a major flaw in the aggregate.
2. The AI is bad at combat.
3. I'm not sure, since I'm still playing around with everything, but the AI seems bad at coherent strategy/victories in general.
4. Balance. The culture/tech tree split is causing science development to move ridiculously fast without hardly any investment by the player.

2 and 3 is every civ game. Don't kid yourself. They've NEVER had good AI. That's the whole reason they give the AI ridiculous advantages to up the difficulty; the game has always been too complex to design an AI that can make decisions remotely as well as a human. If you're playing civ looking for a strategic combat challenge, you're playing the wrong game. A domination victory is human strategy vs. AI advantage in numbers/resources.

Which leaves the UI and the balance issues, which are minor compared to the issues 5 had at launch. Overall, I'd say 4 and 6 are on a comparable level. I'd give 4 an edge, unless you consider all the lessons learned (and added to 6) since then, which would give 6 the edge.

By the way, 5 by the end is comparable with 4 and 6, and most of the issues with 5 at the end came from having to deal with inherited design decisions from vanilla (e.g. policy trees causing cookie-cutter strategies).

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

This is already my favourite Civ game ever by a country mile and I've also been playing since Civ 1. We are I think in danger of underestimating the extent to which the innovations it has have refreshed the whole experience of the core game. Obviously it's not perfect. Civ games NEVER are perfect at release, if ever, and this is a very tough crowd to please here. That said, this is easily, easily the best launch and post-launch experience I can remember. They will fix the issues but this is a fantastic platform on which to build several years of really solid gaming. IMHO.

 

[FurballRocker]

Old timer here also and all things considered civ 6 has been the best "release" of a civ game and is up there with the best release of most games in many years for how smooth it has been especially considering how complicated it is when you look at it and thus how drastically it could go wrong with small imbalances being able to cause major issues.

It isn't perfect but it is mostly tweaks for a lot of little issues, none of which are game breaking by any means rather than it needing a major overhaul to bring it up to standard.

My only feeling of loss from civ v is just some UI and information polish in certain areas with almost everything else seeming like a step forward even if it still isn't perfect.

My two favorites are i seem flooded with choices for building in my cities, all of which have benefits so i have to make actual choices rather than just finding myself stuck with a single obvious choice or nothing to build at all so just building units for the sake of it.
And the fact that melee/cavalry units can now actually be used in combat rather than just simply being a blocking/soak for ranged in the case of melee or a roaming pillaging force in the case of cavalry or simply being required for taking a city once it has no HP left.
You can now attack with both without being assured they will die the next turn which allows more scope for combined arms and thus more realistic tactics.

 

[Sprenk]

Steam says I've played 72 hours already. I basically dropped my other game (World of Warcraft) completely (despite a recent Xpac drop there). Yes, there are a few minor annoyances, which have already been discussed in these forums, but overall I've very happy.

It's easy to groan about the need for more play-testing before a release, but it's really hard to do that and solve balancing issues while the game mechanics are in flux (unless you want to delay release indefinitely, polishing and polishing). Most balancing issues will only get fixed after an expansion, because there needs to be extensive play experience with a single iteration, over time, for the real issues of balance to be apparent. Basically, unless Firaxis were to give all of us Civ Fanatics a copy months in advance--well, there's no easy way to recreate the level of scrutiny we're giving the game right now. And frankly, I don't know of any games (well, besides Tetris) that come out of the box perfect--there's always a need for ongoing balancing.

 

[GIO888]

Civ addict since Civ I, and every new version has been an improvement and totally addicted me immediately - with the exception of this one.

Never thought I'd say it, having waded thru all the teething probs of the other versions, but this plays and feels (to me, of course) like a dumbed down, ready-for-smartphone BETA.

Where have all the advisors gone? It'd be nice to know how many military units I had, let alone where they were! Sentry option? Now they just have to sleep, which means (me, at least) forgets where they are and only remember them when I'm told someone just killed them. Why aren't resources 5-coal or 5-oil? I got one uranium and I could build H-Bombs all day long as a result. Can't even at-a-glance which city has most production, culture, etc.

The only improvement for me has been the Espionage and Trading, both of which would comfortably fit in my bottom two of "Very important to my gaming experience" list. I used to "grrr" at the moaners, go play something else, I'd think.

For the first time since 1993 that's what I'm doing -

I'll go around again once there's a patch and the DLC gets going - but how sad is that!!

 

[Roxlimn]

Civ addict since Civ I, and every new version has been an improvement and totally addicted me immediately - with the exception of this one.

Never thought I'd say it, having waded thru all the teething probs of the other versions, but this plays and feels (to me, of course) like a dumbed down, ready-for-smartphone BETA.

Where have all the advisors gone? It'd be nice to know how many military units I had, let alone where they were! Sentry option? Now they just have to sleep, which means (me, at least) forgets where they are and only remember them when I'm told someone just killed them. Why aren't resources 5-coal or 5-oil? I got one uranium and I could build H-Bombs all day long as a result. Can't even at-a-glance which city has most production, culture, etc.

The only improvement for me has been the Espionage and Trading, both of which would comfortably fit in my bottom two of "Very important to my gaming experience" list. I used to "grrr" at the moaners, go play something else, I'd think.

For the first time since 1993 that's what I'm doing -

I'll go around again once there's a patch and the DLC gets going - but how sad is that!!

Speaking as a fellow old man, hold your horses, man. We old timers have this weird problem that we are skilled in the old games and we naturally think that that should make the new games just as easy to play. The new games have new features. So they're going to be harder to parse and we have to relearn. If we stop relearning, we get old. Older, anyway.

The military units list can be brought up by clicking on name of the active military unit. This wasn't done in order to facilitate smartphone play because that click would be impossible on a smartphone. I think it was done to facilitate controller input, because that WOULD be intuitive on a controller. Steam controller is a big thing now, so Civ 6 is evolving to take advantage.

Sentry option I got nothing. They really ought to return that function.

Resource management here is more thoughtful. They're "unlimited" but more scarce. You could theoretically end up with no iron, or coal, or uranium at all, so they don't limit your unit count through resource count but through maintenance, which kind of makes more sense. That's how Civ 3 did it, and I thought that was fine enough. There's an added wrinkle that you need two of a resource to make the unit in all cities.

Each city has an output readout at the bottom that tells you how much it's making of anything. If you cycle through your cities, you can compare easily. If you don't like that, there's a Report button that itemizes all the cities and all their outputs in a spreadsheet so you can tell which city produces the most of what and why.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

Speaking as a fellow old man, hold your horses, man. We old timers have this weird problem that we are skilled in the old games and we naturally think that that should make the new games just as easy to play. The new games have new features. So they're going to be harder to parse and we have to relearn. If we stop relearning, we get old. Older, anyway.

The military units list can be brought up by clicking on name of the active military unit. This wasn't done in order to facilitate smartphone play because that click would be impossible on a smartphone. I think it was done to facilitate controller input, because that WOULD be intuitive on a controller. Steam controller is a big thing now, so Civ 6 is evolving to take advantage.

Sentry option I got nothing. They really ought to return that function.

Resource management here is more thoughtful. They're "unlimited" but more scarce. You could theoretically end up with no iron, or coal, or uranium at all, so they don't limit your unit count through resource count but through maintenance, which kind of makes more sense. That's how Civ 3 did it, and I thought that was fine enough. There's an added wrinkle that you need two of a resource to make the unit in all cities.

Each city has an output readout at the bottom that tells you how much it's making of anything. If you cycle through your cities, you can compare easily. If you don't like that, there's a Report button that itemizes all the cities and all their outputs in a spreadsheet so you can tell which city produces the most of what and why.

yes to all that. Wish that reports sheet was sortable by yield, the way it is divided up is a pain

 

[SammyKhalifa]

yes to all that. Wish that reports sheet was sortable by yield, the way it is divided up is a pain

Yeah, that's just one of many things that need patched in.

 

[pod123]

Hi, I've been playing Civ 1&2 long time ago, and recent years I mess with my own Civ 5 overhaul.

My impressions about Civ 6:

1. it definitely feels like a "next gen" game, both graphics and gameplay

2. many changes are great, but some raise doubts (probably the biggest will be civics as another tech-like tree)

3. overall there are so many changes that the game is messy and unbalanced atm. Overhauls and add-ons needed to make the game better, so I'll continue playing Civ 5 for 1-2 years I guess ))

4. graphics seem too splashy for my eyes

 

[elmurcis]

Yeah, that's just one of many things that need patched in.

Like Civ4 F1 city advisor screen where could have 60 cities (normal Huge map late game) sorted by production, population, trade routes income, maintance cost and so on so on...

 

[alpaca]

I think it's fine, really. The basic game mechanics have promise, and even if I've stopped playing for now because of bugs and imbalances, I'm looking forward to play some more once the most egregious issues are patched out. Meanwhile, I think players who care less about playing as good as they can will have a lot more fun with the current build than I.

I still don't think 1upt is an adequate fit for Civ, though, especially considering creating a good tactical AI is much harder than a strategic one because it's much less about number crunching and far more about learning explicit moves.

 

[Sogno di Volare]

Old timer guy here as well. Played Civ 1 when it was the only civ game in town and so on.

I think VI is fairly feature rich release, maybe since II and of course the almighty Alpha Centauri. III was an odd duck, IV and V both came out fairly bare bones.

I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to all the polish and balance stuff. We see balance issues all the time and I really don't care about exploits. Civ games evolve over time that goes for balance and outright bugs.

Honestly the worst thing about VI... the quotes. Sean does a good job but there is too much uneven humor, completely out of context / poorly edited, or meaningless quotes.