[Vanilla] Under 40% of players have won a game (from Steam global achievements)

[King Rad]

It's a 2.5 percentage point increase. Twice the proportion of players of Civ 6 have completed Deity as compared with Civ 5. Sure there's selection bias, but seeing as this is the only stat that can be compared directly between the two sets, I'd say it was significant. Not conclusive, certainly.

Unfortunately, even that is not a real comparison since V would not have included deity wins where the player was using mods. I usually play mid-level [prince or king] and have no interest in getting lowest turn win, etc. I just play for fun and I play through each civ once before going to next civ; but I use mods [nearly always the unlimited experience mod from barbarians, since I generally play peacefully plus i think it's fair to gain experience against later bards since their tech increases as the game goes along] so many of my finishes in V would not have been counted, while they are in VI [I usually finish my games - and now I'm trying to get the final DLC civs completed in time to start the new civs for Rise and Fall!]. Bottom line, not counting mod games for deity level in V is probably enough to account for the difference in percentage of finished games.

 

[Returning Lurker]

For comparison, the relevant stats for Civ V - it's not an exact comparison, as the achievements are "Complete the game on X difficulty", and you don't automatically unlock the achievements for lower difficulties.

Settler - 13.6%
Chieftain - 22.4%
Warlord - 14.6%
Prince - 15.4%
King - 7.3%
Emperor - 4.4%
Immortal 2.4%
Deity - 2.0%


And for victory types:

Domination - 23.1%
Space - 19.6%
Culture - 16.2%
Diplomatic - 12.9%
Score - no achievement

Players not finishing games is not a problem unique to Civ VI.

Ugh, don’t remind me of Civ 5 not having backwards compatible difficulty achievements. I still have nightmares about being forced to play settler again. Very boring nightmares. Then again Civ 6 has starting era specific achievements which is equally stupid since why would you ever not want to start at the ancient era? In a game about “standing the test of time”?

 

[Dedrytus]

I started play civ long ago (civ I) and I rarely play to the end. I know I've won or not, so what is the point to play further?

 

[Prima Italia]

I do not think it has much to do with the mechanics but what civs people like.

Great to see the de facto mascot civ Rome, having the highest completion and by some margin dwarfing half the other vanilla civs.

Poland was released before Australia but is significantly less completion rate. Interesting. Firaxis should take these figures into account when designing future content. Brazil was a waste as with Poland.

 

[bookman_]

For comparaison here are the stats for a few other games :
Game___| First achievement | Game won
The Witcher.........| 65% | 25.9%
Stellaris...............| 26% | 3.2%
Endless Space 2 | 30% | 10% . . . . . First achievment is late in the game
Endless Legend_| 69% | 17%
Civ games
CiV ....................| 76% | ~~30%
Civ Be................| 60% | >=15% . . . .No "win the game on any diff" achievement
CiVI ...................| 80% | 39%

As you can see, CiVI userbase is actually extremly engaged with the ame in comparaison to the average, specially other 4X games. This can be explaned by the fact that the game has yet to see a major Steam sale, and thus holds a higher value to its buyers.

 

[Uberfrog]

I do not think it has much to do with the mechanics but what civs people like.

Great to see the de facto mascot civ Rome, having the highest completion and by some margin dwarfing half the other vanilla civs.

Poland was released before Australia but is significantly less completion rate. Interesting. Firaxis should take these figures into account when designing future content. Brazil was a waste as with Poland.

I would certainly not like Firaxis to take such a narrow view of the game when choosing which Civs to add.

 

[Inlex]

I usually aim at winning a game with every civ at least once (at least on emperor or immortal). Every time I want to start a game of CIV VI, I catch myself double checking: "I really didn't win a game with (X) yet?"

I find that the reason is that the late mid-game absolutely bores me to tears. It's often clear cut who will win, unless something drastically changes (=never) and the turn times are so long that I can't be bothered to take the risk of seeing it out, so I start a new game. Hell..this week I have had 3 tries at winning with Persia alone, but got fed up every mid game...

 

[Prima Italia]

I would certainly not like Firaxis to take such a narrow view of the game when choosing which Civs to add.

You do not have to but I am sure Firaxis collate data on what players are doing in their games and it influences their strategy. Knowing what civs play a lot and least must be high on that list.

 

[ltccone]

I rarely finish games anymore. Once I know that I will either win or lose, I start a new game. Since there is no HOF, why bother finishing?

 

[God of Kings]

@bookman_

Don't forget that some of the games you listed are also available for home consoles.

Note that there's no publicly accessible stats for completion of Civ VI games on the Mac App Store or the iPad.

 

[bookman_]

Yeah of course, but do we care about the console stats ?
edit : And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but the market is vastly different, the stats will be too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Doubtful it's bugs, as there really are no bugs preventing you from finishing the game. Lack of interest is probably the big reason. The game isn't for everyone. Another reason could be turn time (in between turn).

I'm surprised at the level of drop off to King level. I actually found King level not much more challenging than Prince. Hardly any difference really.

Poor Spain, even casual gamers can see they suck.

I see three major problems obstructing players from finishing SP games:

1. Sheer volume of unnecessary extra inputs by the UI. Civ 4 is the best in the series at this by an enormous/indisputable margin...and it wasn't that good. But hey, at least you could adequately manage 50 cities in a runaway game in under a minute if you wanted and had half/sometimes functioning unit cycling instead of leaving it so bad that turning it off is better!
   
2. Turn times, even on "recommended" specs or better. Especially bad on larger maps. If you play at a decent clip civ guarantees you spend more time waiting than playing.
   
3. Design problem of "game is over long before it ends". When you have a guaranteed win/90% or more of choices you make don't do anything but maybe let you win faster, unless you care about winning faster rather than winning at all the choices don't matter. That VC is still 50+ turns out though, each marred by time problems per above.

Basically the turns take unnecessarily long for the player because Firaxis forgot that UI is important about a decade ago, the AI isn't fast at playing its turns, and the 4x nature of the game leads to slippery slope. It's a perfect formula for quitting games early.

Thats actually a much higher completion rate than say Endless Legend (17%) or Endless Space 2 (11.5%). Paradox is a harder comparison as you don't really win, but for example, EU IV has Win a War or conquer a province at 23/23% and the the top achievements on Stellaris - colonize a planet (26%)

Paradox games require a disingenuous "ironman" mode to earn achievements at all, which is not true in civ 6.

Don't get me wrong, with well over 5000 hours of experience in EU 4 I can confirm that game is a buggy, DLC-bloated mess. It tends to suffer the same runaway-before-ending problem that civ does and is similarly bad with unnecessary inputs, but there's a lot less waiting to play the game. Unless you pick new world because you hate yourself. Then you wait alot. It's like picking huge maps in civ 6.

EU 4 sets a pretty low bar, but in terms of UI and resulting game pacing Civ 6 tunnels under the ground to get lower.

 

[Depravo]

I've finished one game, and I had a couple of mods running so it didn't register. I wouldn't read too much into this.

 

[God of Kings]

Civ isn't made for everyone.

It has a very steep learning curve.

Yes, I wrote a few strategy guides that allow casual players who never played a strategy game to win on Deity quickly and consistently.

ROME WINS BY DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

 

[JustifierNA]

Another thing to consider is the percentage of players who are included in that who are playing multiplayer games -- most of which are never actually completed but called on score after it becomes evident that one person can no longer be beat

 

[Acken]

I know its surprising but a lot of people simply dont play some of the game they buy. I must have 20 of those that I grabbed in a sale.

And then you have those that dislike the game.

 

[kryat]

Rome - 10.8%
Germany - 8.7%
America - 8.0%
China - 7.3%
Japan - 6.8%
Sumeria - 6.3%
Egypt - 6.3%
Russia - 6.3%
England - 5.8%
France - 5.7%
Scythia - 5.2%
Kongo - 5.0%
Gorgo - 4.7%
Aztec - 4.7%
Pericles - 4.4%
Arabia - 4.3%
Norway - 3.9%
Brazil - 3.7%
India - 3.5%
Spain - 3.2%

Is it weird to anyone else that all of the women leaders are clustered so tightly in the middle of the pack?

Emphasis added to original quote

 

[Frostburn]

Late game is relatively boring IMO. It's rare that I finish a game. As many others have said- at a certain point wining is a foregone conclusion, and it can take hours just "going through the motions" to officially win.

I would like to see them make some adjustments to late-game to make it more interesting, and also add some features to speed up/simulate certain aspects if one so chooses. Would also be cool to play up until a certain point and than let the AI simulate the end of the game.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I am surprised that more people have the Cultural victory and Scientific, cuz my victory of choice when I don't have any clear path is science, and my first game I always went for science victory. The religious victory I only did once, tried it one more time afterward but failed. I found religious victory very boring/tiring, just spamming missionaries/apostles and converting cities back and forth are so dull

 

[Nobody]

for every game i finish i probably get 5 games to the modern era and get bored. Long turn times and it seems to take hours to just send a sub to the other side of the world.
I have only won on prince maybe i should go for king since i win pretty easy on prince.