Tom Chick's take on Civ 6

[teks]

I think if the AI was remotely capable, and the traffic jams of 1up were addressed, it's shoot up to 4 stars. No matter what they do, the AI is utterly hopeless. Thank god my roommates want to join me in multiplayer or this game would be a no-go for me. But what can I say? This isn't unique to civ 6. I remember playing Dragon Age Inquisition on the hardest difficulty and getting bored. No challenge what-so-ever. I remember it was my girlfriend's first RPG. She didn't want the difficulty turned up. I warned her though. Sure enough as soon as she figured out the crafting system the game became a joke for her too. Total war has similiar issues plaguing it's sequels where the AI is so outrageously stupid that it kills immersion. (I haven't played the latest iteration mind you)

Civ 6 is a good game. But if the AI can't provide a challenge it can't get a good rating, and if the AI can't handle 1upt, it needs to go.

 

[caiman0815]

new "star" wars episode out here? Doesnt mind if tom gives only 2 stars out of 5, I personally think it should be 3 out of 5

However, the stars dont say that civ6 is a bad game per se. But look at the UI --- minus 1 star for sure. Incredible disbalances, weird tech tree and silly exploits ... another -1. Missionary and apostle spam woud be -2 for me

AI is not worth mentioning, cause AI was silly most games I played so far, some games perhaps somewhat better, not because of programming but of game mechanics it could be exploited

On the other hand, there are a lot of good and new game mechanics that increases rating: Unstacked districts, eurekas, civic tree, politics are nice and fun to play

I think thats the way he rates it and im ok with it. I just think civ6 needs a major patch that eliminates serious bugs and problems with UI, nerves exploits and balances out things

 

[kornelm1978]

I think if the AI was remotely capable, and the traffic jams of 1up were addressed, it's shoot up to 4 stars. No matter what they do, the AI is utterly hopeless. Thank god my roommates want to join me in multiplayer or this game would be a no-go for me. But what can I say? This isn't unique to civ 6. I remember playing Dragon Age Inquisition on the hardest difficulty and getting bored. No challenge what-so-ever. I remember it was my girlfriend's first RPG. She didn't want the difficulty turned up. I warned her though. Sure enough as soon as she figured out the crafting system the game became a joke for her too. Total war has similiar issues plaguing it's sequels where the AI is so outrageously stupid that it kills immersion. (I haven't played the latest iteration mind you)

Civ 6 is a good game. But if the AI can't provide a challenge it can't get a good rating, and if the AI can't handle 1upt, it needs to go.

But is the game playable in multiplayer with 1upt. Never tried, but it must be pretty boring when someone is in at war and his every turn takes few minutes. And the war takes many many turns. Thus you do nothing, just waiting. It is a question, not objection.

I have played last Total War. And my experience is that battle AI of the game is very good. Chivarly attacking weak flanks and retreating, pretty proper use of units, archers behing soldiers, going back when in threat. Not to be compared at all with CIV battle AI, at all. Obviously it is not genius, but you have got a feeling, that there is "inteligence" behind. Or at least decent use of units.

 

[jekke]

Agree with you. You can judge a game after playing few hours, but only those where the life of the game is 10 or 15 hours to finish. It's good or bad, you went through it, there is not more to dig in, maybe change the difficulty. To judge a game like CIv you need much, much more, as the game has the mechanics which take more time to assess, or at least huge experience in strategy games . And the life of the game for many players is measured in hundreds or thousand hours, thus the review for some would require long gameplay. The other thing is that very often strategy games are reviewed by those which are not experienced hardcore strategy players (I am taking in general, obviously there are exceptions, but reading proffesional reviews you can see it they are casuals in strategies). They do not have time to play thousands of hours in other strategy games to have deep knowlegde, as they are playing shooters, rpgs, racing, good ones and bad ones. Thus the reviews of strategy games are very often helpful to general public, which will not notice the depth of the game anywhay, but not helpful for civfanatics.

I have got a point also on youtubers - hardcore strategy players which are playing the game before the realese. They have given very good opinions of the game. But the problem is that their objectivity is not assured. I can not say that any of them is dishonest, but you cannot say they must be objective. The objectivity should come from the fact, that whatever the review is, youtuber position will not change. And they would probably suffer if they would rate the game badly, they may just not be invited for next pre-releases. And that's where many views of their channel comes from - pre-release let's plays (pretty obvious that pre-release gameplays have much more views that after release). Thus my point is - giving bad review to game of studio like Firaxis, would hurt them badly. That's why in their interest is to not criticize strongly (whatever their real opinion is). To underline once again - I cannot say that their opinion is not honest, but we must think of the issues which may influence their objectivity.

This is all of course true, but in my book these are only secondary arguments which only come after the question of why would you be interested in how a random dude evaluated a particular game? Watch the game on youtube or such, make up your own mind, get your own review and you don't need anyone else basically. The only point where the reviews might make a bit of sense is if they highlight interesting aspects of the game which you might have missed. Opinions do not matter. Interesting observations do.

 

[kornelm1978]

This is all of course true, but in my book these are only secondary arguments which only come after the question of why would you be interested in how a random dude evaluated a particular game? Watch the game on youtube or such, make up your own mind, get your own review and you don't need anyone else basically. The only point where the reviews might make a bit of sense is if they highlight interesting aspects of the game which you might have missed. Opinions do not matter. Interesting observations do.

Opinions should matter (that's the idea behind review). Obviously they are subjective, but should give you the message - the game is good/bad because; 1.2.3 reasons. But if the reviewer cannot asses the game for me because he is casual or lacks objecivity, that's not valuable. Thus we may value reviews of those who are objecive and have knowledge, like ie. Tom Chicks. It is obviously still subjective and you may disagree with it, but the at least two main prerequisites to give honest and meaningful opinion are there.

 

[Haggbart]

Opinions should matter (that's the idea behind review). Obviously they are subjective, but should give you the message - the game is good/bad because; 1.2.3 reasons. But if the reviewer cannot asses the game for me because he is casual or lacks objecivity, that's not valuable. Thus we may value reviews of those who are objecive and have knowledge, like ie. Tom Chicks. It is obviously still subjective and you may disagree with it, but the at least two main prerequisites to give honest and meaningful opinion are there.

No.

Two things:

1. There are lot of reviews that aknowledge the presence of bad AI, lacking UI and other critical points. They've simply weighted it differently. The same way Fallout New Vegas was given from 60 to 95 from reviewers who both experienced the same bugs/crashes and the same briliance. But for some it ruined the experience, for others it didn't. It has nothing to do with knowledge. I've played both Civ4 and Civ5 over 1000 hours and I find it elitist and arrogant to say that I can't rightly rate Civ6 as a 9/10 (which I would, and I even paid for it).

2. His reviews are worthless for anyone who enjoyed CiV. He gave both expansions 2 stars IIRC, BE 2 stars and now Civ6 2 stars. I get that he has his personal vengeance, but it has absolutely nothing to do with objectivity and knowledge.

 

[Magil]

The AI was always a complete and total joke in combat. That has not changed. If you're threatened by numbers from the AI, you're not playing the game right.

Typically, in Civ IV, Deity level players more relied on the AI not attacking because if it showed up on your doorstep too early with too many units you had a decent change of just losing the game since it wouldn't wander around and not attack. Or even if you didn't die, it would set you back to such a degree that you would have a very hard time competing economically. Thankfully, diplomacy in IV was much more logical and transparent, so you could generally tell when you were about to be attacked through a combination of the diplomacy screen and scouting.

But no, you couldn't just count on fending off an army that was five times your size. That shows up in the ancient era and you're quite likely to lose something (possibly the game), unlike in VI where the AI's warrior/chariot zergs are a laugh.

Yes, the AI will never be on the same level as a competent human player. But the difference in scale is significantly more relevant than you give it credit for.

There is no logistical game in Civ 4. You're rarely constrained by the terrain. There is no disposition before battle. You right click on a tile. That was it. One of the "strengths" oft-cited by fanatics of stacks is that you right click on something and your stack gets there. That's it. There is no game. There is no depth. That's better now. Some of you don't like the logistics. That's understandable. Strategy isn't for everyone.

Disagree. Moving tile-by-tile was still important in IV. The difference is you could move all your units with one or two clicks instead of having to click twenty times to achieve the same effect. That's 1UPT's illusion of depth at work.

Stack composition, angle of attack, forward intelligence, defensive infrastructure and a solid road network... all of those things still mattered a great deal. They were simply more abstract and less tedious.

Edit: If you want a very good example as to how important this stuff is, check out the postgame report of Sullla for the multiplayer game Realms Beyond Pitboss 2, where his team fends off a 5v1 attack due to a combination of superior strategy and tactics. If there was truly no depth, if it didn't matter how you moved units or built your empire... then how could that happen? They sure didn't win with numbers.

 

[MyOtherName]

Stack composition, angle of attack, forward intelligence, defensive infrastructure and a solid road network... all of those things still mattered a great deal. They were simply more abstract and less tedious.

I should like to point out that establishing a good road network was an important part of logistics in IV, and played a bigger role than it did in V (due to road maintan

Not to mention the orchestration needed to actually raise an army large enough, advanced enough, and early enough to matter (assuming you're not playing below your level), and in the case of early warfare, to actually be able to support that army and your conquests economically.

 

[kornelm1978]

Stack composition, angle of attack, forward intelligence, defensive infrastructure and a solid road network... all of those things still mattered a great deal. They were simply more abstract and less tedious.

Totally agree. I'd add one more point which mattered more in war in civ4 and in reality is important as well. Napoleon said, there are three imortant things to win war - money, money and more money. This is of course simplification that says you need to have resources to build and maintain armies. In civ 4 it mattered, to have powerful large army (and rebuilt after losses) you needed resources and production capacity which was better than oponents. In 5/6 nearly its irrelevant. You need really few units to beat AI, to defend 3 archers. To win war you need 3 things: time, time and more time to place your units correctly.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Just one simple question: how many hours do you have clocked in with Civ6?

I'm not playing the intellectually rude fallacy game. I will take what I'm quoting as a non-answer.

The quality of my points above wouldn't change if I had 10 hours vs 1000 hours in the beta. If they're well-constructed, they hold. If they're not, maybe you can show why that is instead of insulting a reviewer and then quoting a post without addressing it.

Don't mind TMIT. He's always grumpy.

Hardly. The tone of my posts is reflective of the state of the games I play/enjoy. If you want to see something different, you can compare something like my post history on FTL Reddit to here or EU IV forums, or even my oldest posts here to post civ-5 release.

Poor UI is a pet peeve of my in general, and strategy games that I have played over the past 10 years have been downright awful by the standards of good games in other genres, or sadly even older strategy games.

And make no mistake, the civ 6 UI is awful, even by civ standards. Ten-ish years ago, if I wanted to queue up two units in a city, it would take me three clicks and a single button press, a ~1 second input. If I wanted to instruct that city to send the units to the front after finishing them, I could similarly do so in under a second. I could even make an interim waypoint to avoid danger, if so desired...and while doing all of this I could trivially determine both my absolute yields and net yields at a glance, in fact I could pull up a report of this information by city and sort it, even changing builds from that screen.

Civ 5 and 6 each manage to require more inputs to accomplish the same basic tasks, which is the exact opposite direction of UI focus needed when unit management necessarily takes more inputs by design. They both bar the player from easy access to basic knowledge and instead force needless computation, despite that their predecessors did not do this.

Finally, Civ 6 is a strategy game that hides its own rules (even 4 did this, though less blatantly). A title that purports strategy hiding its rules is absurd. It's okay to like a flawed title, I'm still playing this game for now, but there's no hiding from reality here.

Edit:

Stack warfare had similar tactical requirements as present in civ 6. Those that think 4 was all SoD, all the time, never got choked, forked, or caught out of position by someone who knew what they were doing. If we're going by "vs AI" standards, then civ 6 is just about murdering stuff with ranged unit focus fire or a good UU while constantly avoiding losses. This takes roughly as much actual thought process as using siege in civ 4, though of course the UI for doing it was yet again less broken in 4 (since selecting a unit in civ 6 sometimes means not selecting that unit).

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

I did not know that. Well that's too bad. GC2 was the first 4X game that gave me the feeling that I was playing against other people.

This makes me want to get this game now. Never heard of it before but I'm sure the Google machine can help.

 

[kornelm1978]

I'm not playing the intellectually rude fallacy game.

Love your hard-hitting statement and agree

 

[Magil]

It's okay to like a flawed title, I'm still playing this game for now, but there's no hiding from reality here.

Agreed. Despite all the IV praising and VI bashing I may do, I'm still playing VI because I have thousands of hours in IV and there's enough good in VI to occupy me for now--the city management side of the game is where my heart is. I'm more tolerant of a bad UI but I'll certainly agree that it's severely lacking here (and how they manage to regress from IV/V in this area is a mystery to me).

I just wish one unit per tile wasn't a thing, because it has a severe negative impact on many other game systems. It really makes me want to just not engage in warfare at all. It baffles me how they can make one good decision (builders with limited charges are significantly better than workers using 1UPT rules) but not make other obvious, necessary changes (allowing civilian units to stack, religious units, etc.).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Agreed. Despite all the IV praising and VI bashing I may do, I'm still playing VI because I have thousands of hours in IV and there's enough good in VI to occupy me for now--the city management side of the game is where my heart is. I'm more tolerant of a bad UI but I'll certainly agree that it's severely lacking here (and how they manage to regress from IV/V in this area is a mystery to me).

I just wish one unit per tile wasn't a thing, because it has a severe negative impact on many other game systems. It really makes me want to just not engage in warfare at all. It baffles me how they can make one good decision (builders with limited charges are significantly better than workers using 1UPT rules) but not make other obvious, necessary changes (allowing civilian units to stack, religious units, etc.).

Yeah the apostle waves are awful, it should never be impossible to improve your own tiles with civilians at peace or move troops in your own territory. I feel similarly WRT terrain movement changes. Their reasoning for it makes sense in a vacuum, but it results in more bottlenecks than even civ 5, in an environment where that was an acknowledged problem.

1 UPT has problems, but it's not like the design was aggressive in addressing them. For example they could have done something like making a pretty-hard supply cap for military units, greatly limiting the potential of map clutter with military units, with modifiers to allow more or fewer available by empire size and tech. Right now it is conceivable possible to afford a military unit on every single tile in the game with plenty of money to spare. That didn't have to be true.

Corps and armies function more as a means to leverage hammers into more power than they do as a declutter mechanism...again this could have been better implemented to limit clutter. Eventually, however, we're talking about some pretty fundamental and significant game changes...but considering you're talking new game on new engine with >5 years development that was an option in play, had design opted for it.

 

[teks]

But is the game playable in multiplayer with 1upt. Never tried, but it must be pretty boring when someone is in at war and his every turn takes few minutes. And the war takes many many turns. Thus you do nothing, just waiting. It is a question, not objection.

I have played last Total War. And my experience is that battle AI of the game is very good. Chivarly attacking weak flanks and retreating, pretty proper use of units, archers behing soldiers, going back when in threat. Not to be compared at all with CIV battle AI, at all. Obviously it is not genius, but you have got a feeling, that there is "inteligence" behind. Or at last decent use of units.

With total war, that's why I stressed that I did not play the latest one. I heard they fixed some AI issues (and I believe they worked around some AI limitations) But if I say Rome 2 for example...yeah. I can compare it to civ AI. GJ to sega on finally getting the AI right!

I think I can confidently say playing with humans is better if my main complaint is the AI. Humans know how to utilize 1upt, so I can't imagine what possible issue there could be besides obvious exploits which we will simply not do. Waiting for war and such is a problem in the entire strategy genre and has been since the early 90s. It's not that big of a deal though.

 

[Kwami]

Poor UI is a pet peeve of my in general, and strategy games that I have played over the past 10 years have been downright awful by the standards of good games in other genres, or sadly even older strategy games.

I'm not actually disagreeing with your assessments of the UI. Overall, it is pretty awful.

Finally, Civ 6 is a strategy game that hides its own rules (even 4 did this, though less blatantly). A title that purports strategy hiding its rules is absurd. It's okay to like a flawed title, I'm still playing this game for now, but there's no hiding from reality here.

I also don't disagree with this.

Edit:

Stack warfare had similar tactical requirements as present in civ 6. Those that think 4 was all SoD, all the time, never got choked, forked, or caught out of position by someone who knew what they were doing. If we're going by "vs AI" standards, then civ 6 is just about murdering stuff with ranged unit focus fire or a good UU while constantly avoiding losses. This takes roughly as much actual thought process as using siege in civ 4, though of course the UI for doing it was yet again less broken in 4 (since selecting a unit in civ 6 sometimes means not selecting that unit).

But I do dislike stacks of doom, though. The 1UPT system isn't perfect, but it's still a lot more fun (to me) than stacks. I rather wish that the criticism on this forum was focused on improving the system, rather than wishing for an old system that isn't ever coming back in Civ VI.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But I do dislike stacks of doom, though. The 1UPT system isn't perfect, but it's still a lot more fun (to me) than stacks. I rather wish that the criticism on this forum was focused on improving the system, rather than wishing for an old system that isn't ever coming back in Civ VI.

SoD had solvable problems. 1UPT has solvable problems. The issue is that neither model has really seen heavy investment of design based around the limitations of either concept. I'm not sure the "collateral initiative" disincentive of Civ 4 even beat out the "you lose everything in the stack if you lose one battle" model of disincentive in civ 2.

Neither is something you can just slap a Band-Aid on and it's done, which is what 5 and 6 have tried to do with 1UPT. What I talked about earlier wouldn't necessarily work, but it's the kind of thought process needed. You have to set up the game's designed rules in a way that limits the issue while still being enjoyable. It's not easy, but that doesn't mean it should be abandoned. It has been possible to field 70+ units without debt for many years now, to the detriment of the game via performance and devolving into a grind. In a 1 UPT game with limited movement and ZoC, that should present as an obvious problem, but it's been ignored in favor of quite a few comparatively trivial things.

In principle, it should be possible to make 1UPT, stacking, and hybrid work depending on how the game's surrounding systems interact with it. What's more important is how it does or does not work with the surrounding systems. One of the main limitations of 1UPT is the sheer number of inputs needed to get through the game, compared to the number of them that are meaningful. When designing the experience, that deserves more attention than it gets. I don't like situations where only a small percentage of choices and inputs on a given turn matter, even worse when the time between them is lengthened.

 

[Ricci]

...
In principle, it should be possible to make 1UPT, stacking, and hybrid work depending on how the game's surrounding systems interact with it. What's more important is how it does or does not work with the surrounding systems. One of the main limitations of 1UPT is the sheer number of inputs needed to get through the game, compared to the number of them that are meaningful... ...

It should be possible. It should. Only argument being the AI computation needed to make 1UPT somehow fluidly work (for modern day hardware). And I am not thinking just about the combat scenario, 1UPT affects many more aspects & systems in the game than it´s stacking variants, that this limitation excels with it.

 

[Horizons]

The old Civ4 system (which was worse than Civ3 because of the ridiculous way bombard units are handled in Civ4) would not improve the game just because the AI can use it.

A dumb, clumsy, unfun, non-strategic system doesn't make a game better just because it's crappy enough that the AI can handle it.

If Meier could swallow his boundless egotism, he might learn a little from the innovative system introduced in Call to Power, where you can combine a few units together into an army, and it fights as an army. (Front line unit, mounted unit on the flanks, artillery in the back firing first)

 

[Magil]

But I do dislike stacks of doom, though. The 1UPT system isn't perfect, but it's still a lot more fun (to me) than stacks. I rather wish that the criticism on this forum was focused on improving the system, rather than wishing for an old system that isn't ever coming back in Civ VI.

Well, another reason I prefer stack combat is because I feel like it had less of an impact on the other game systems than 1UPT did. 1UPT slowed the game down a lot, by necessity, if production was at the same rate as it was in III/IV unit carpets would be even more of a problem. I preferred the pacing of the game in older titles and I'm not sure if there's a way to get that back with 1UPT.

But you are right. We're not going back to that system, certainly not for VI. The thing is, the obvious suggestions for improving 1UPT in regards to civilian units are out there. Hell, the Vox Populi mod/CBP did most of it for Civ V already (allowing stacking of units with other Civs with reasonable limitations, unlimited stacking of civilian units). There's not a lot to discuss there, except that the developers chose not to go with those improvements to the system. They'd need to make some small adjustments for religious units most likely, but it wouldn't be a drastic change.

Less easy-to-implement changes would be the expansion of the support unit role, and perhaps reducing the range of all ranged units to 1. There aren't enough support units. What about a support unit that strengthened the defensive strength of ranged units, which could be very weak in melee combat? A machine gun support unit that makes melee units very strong against other melee units (but not cavalry). Etc. That part is harder, and would require a fair bit of work (and honestly I am thoroughly uninterested in it so I can't be bothered to devote much head-space to it. I'd be more interested in an economy rework, because that's my favorite part of the game, not combat).