[GS] Under 40% of players have won a game - REVISITED

[Solovey]

But you won't see her if you'll play her. Only on loading screen and if you forgot your civ abilities.

It isn't about seeing her in the game. It's mostly about the civ and leader selection at the battle start.

As a quick look, civ 6 actually seems to have a decent 'finished a game' rate for a 4x, though it's hard to do a perfect comparison:

That's a great idea to compare Civ stats with other similar games! It's exactly how we can measure the game performance.

 

[WillowBrook]

Isn't it true that you can get achievements with UI mods like CPWimmer but not with mods that alter the save file, meaning anything that isn't merely cosmetic?

No, gameplay changes are fine, too. For the achievements that require a "regular game" you can't pay a mod that creates a whole new ruleset (some overhaul mods do this). But most mods don't block even these achievements - besides UI enhancements, you can add civs, city states, wonders, buildings, units, resources, religions, and great people; change the tech pace, civics pace, era length, and golden age thresholds; modify governments, policy cards, roads, civics, and techs; etc.

 

[God of Kings]

Try Aztecs. It’s not about high Faith output, it’s about getting Battle Apostles with as many combat bonuses as possible and turning Religious Victory into Wizard Domination.

...or how about Scythian religious game?

Scythian religious units also heal after they defeat an enemy religious unit.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Yeah, I think we may as well stop asking for better AI and stuff. Firaxis will look at the numbers and see it's not worth it.

Maybe. I guess it depends on how motivated Firaxis is to convert the people who've bought the game never completed a victory into players who are interested in paying full price for the next version and / or buying DLCs for the current version of the game.

40% of players completing the game isn't that bad. First, you have to understand the nature of Steam - a lot of players never play a lot of games thay bought. You know, discount sales, much cheaper, I'll play it later at some moment, etc. I know the lad who has about a hundred purchased games on Steam he has never played. Most of my friends have some game they ve never played. I do.
Secondly, there is a low chance to retain a player who won several Settler games only, meaning make him buying Civ VII or another Civ VI add-ons. Almost all games even the most successful ones have qute low players retention rate. Most players buy (or download for free), try and quit. Or try for a little bit longer and ... quit. I would love to see how many players have won 10 games, 50 games.
What I mean is that developing a great AI for guys who love playing diety is a long term investment - features like this guarantee that these core players will stay buying all DLCs, add-ons and subsequent games for years.
What a smart game development company does is logging everything all their players do, analyse it and make right decisions based on that. It's not just only 40% of players have completed a game - it's literally everyhting you can imaging. So the 40% fact by itself shouldn't affect the decision to improve the AI. On the other hand, even top companies fail doing their job from time to time and we can only guess what happens in Firaxis.

It's always interesting when these stats come up for a game. I think what we find is that people never even playing the game they buy+people buying a game and only playing it briefly accounts for a significant percentage of net revenue in the industry.

Based on the 6 tile improvement achievement, it looks like the number of purchases/gifts that have never been significantly played is 15% of total units sold.

After that, there's about another 45% of players who've never completed a victory. As noted above, that could be for a lot of reasons. Some of these could be players who played the game multiple times and never cared to finish any particular game, or who played multiple times and lost every game. Others will be players who didn't enjoy the game enough to come back and play it through to conclusion.

As this component of the purchaser base is larger than the number of player's who've completed a game with a victory, I would assume that a fair bit of Firaxis' focus would be on these buyers, and understanding what they need to do to sell future versions of Civ or Civ 6 add ons to them.

Unsurprisingly, Firaxis is also focussed on selling Civ 6 to Civ 5 players. Every time I launch Civ 5 I'm bombarded with Civ 6 ads. No doubt they've identified what percentage of the Civ 5 player base hasn't moved on to Civ 6. Whether at this stage that's enough of a market for Firaxis to do anything more than spam ads and offer price discounts, I don't know.

Anyway, that middle 45% of players (the "dabblers") might well be the group who most influence future civ releases: understanding why they bought and figuring out what Firaxis needs to do to get them to buy again.

 

[Karmah]

As someone who has been using many APIs and crawls from steam (and associated) ,I don't trust their stats.

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

As noted above, that could be for a lot of reasons. Some of these could be players who played the game multiple times and never cared to finish any particular game, or who played multiple times and lost every game. Others will be players who didn't enjoy the game enough to come back and play it through to conclusion.

I can attest to being someone like this in the past. I had 300 hrs in civ 5 and never won a single game. I just never cared to.

In 6, it's different for me, but I can sympathize with people who quit the game when either it's clear they lost, or it's apparent they're snowballing to an eventual victory but the game still has a long time to go.

 

[Morningcalm]

There must be a lot of people who bought or were gifted the game, and either didn’t play it, or didn’t play it long enough to finish a game.

It’s a symptom of having Steam. I have plenty of games in my Steam library that I’ve never even touched. And some of them are deemed very good games by critics and others alike.

 

[_hero_]

There must be a lot of people who bought or were gifted the game, and either didn’t play it, or didn’t play it long enough to finish a game.

It’s a symptom of having Steam. I have plenty of games in my Steam library that I’ve never even touched. And some of them are deemed very good games by critics and others alike.

I think steam sales are probably a factor here too. There have been a few games I thought sounded interesting but not enough that I normally would buy, but when it's 75% off or something why not? Naturally I don't end up playing it right away because I didn't want it that badly to begin with and only end up trying it out when all my normal games feel boring. If that first play doesn't wow me, I may forget I even have the game and never play again.

 

[God of Kings]

The vast majority of people who play the Civ games play them either on the side or not at all (despite purchasing the game).

We CivFanatics are just a very small minority.

 

[j_jimmy]

there is a contingent of people that say the AI is bad or whatever and that this is an easy game. this game is very hard to master.

 

[Aristos]

The AI is bad and this is an easy game. The game is not very hard to master; you can basically do whatever you want up to Immortal, and as long as you think at least a little down the road, you can win however you want.

 

[Wizard-Bob]

The game is not very hard to master

I disagree. For a newcomer to the Civ series, and moreso for a newcomer to the 4X genre, Civ6 is indeed a difficult game to master. Lots of things to learn about. Granted for veterans that frequent this site, this does not apply as much.

 

[Aristos]

I disagree. For a newcomer to the Civ series, and moreso for a newcomer to the 4X genre, Civ6 is indeed a difficult game to master. Lots of things to learn about. Granted for veterans that frequent this site, this does not apply as much.

Then he should have made his statement the way you did. If you talk in absolutes, don't be surprised that people will answer in absolutes.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I disagree. For a newcomer to the Civ series, and moreso for a newcomer to the 4X genre, Civ6 is indeed a difficult game to master. Lots of things to learn about. Granted for veterans that frequent this site, this does not apply as much.

I believe the main challenge for newcomers is that the vast majority of the choices offered to the player are poor choices in terms of increasing the strength of your empire. This is also one of the reasons the AI is so weak. The player is presented with too many options that are always bad relative to other choices, and the AI has to navigate the same land mines.

Once you understand the few choices that are important, then as Aristos points out you can basically play the game however you want and make all kinds of decisions for role-playing, uniqueness, fun, whatever. At that point, the game won't punish you for making these choices because whatever you're doing, the AI will surely be making even worse choices (victory wise). And if you do fall behind, with a little experience you quickly learn what you need to do to catch up (and pull the AI back).

Beneath the mass of features and systems, Civ 6 is a very simple game. I can easily understand, though, why a newcomer could be overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices offered. Once you figure out what's core and what's flavour, whether you continue to enjoy Civ 6 likely depends on how much you enjoy exploring the flavour.

 

[Disgustipated]

I would say Civ6 does take some time to master. It certainly can't be done in one game. And by definition, I still haven't mastered it since I don't regularly play on deity. I just can't play in specific ways. There are other things I want to do, even if they are sub optimal. I don't actually believe Civ6 is a simple game. Though if you've played civ5 a decent amount, then it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Districts and district placement, not to mention wonder placement rules are probably the thing most newcomers struggle with.

 

[HermannLombard]

Then he should have made his statement the way you did. If you talk in absolutes, don't be surprised that people will answer in absolutes.

Consider the percentage of players who ARE " veterans that frequent this site." Stats would be hard to come by, but compare visitors to this site to even the 40% who have one a game. Would it be even one-tenth of one percent? I doubt it. Consider the level of expertise of players whose only exposure to strategy is eurogamer or digitaltrends or strategygamer. The odds of their succeeding at Deity are probably very small. Consider an experienced gamer whose experience consists of FPS or RPG games. That experience seems virtually useless for a 4X with a wide--even huge--range of mechanics. Even most experienced 4X players aren't here, and won't have the patience and precision needed to succeed at Deity. This is a very complex game, if only in terms of knowing what to ignore.

Basically, YOU are an expert player with the commitment to learn the highest levels of Civ mastery. For most players, this is not an easy game at all.

 

[Socrates99]

Consider the percentage of players who ARE " veterans that frequent this site." Stats would be hard to come by, but compare visitors to this site to even the 40% who have one a game. Would it be even one-tenth of one percent? I doubt it. Consider the level of expertise of players whose only exposure to strategy is eurogamer or digitaltrends or strategygamer. The odds of their succeeding at Deity are probably very small. Consider an experienced gamer whose experience consists of FPS or RPG games. That experience seems virtually useless for a 4X with a wide--even huge--range of mechanics. Even most experienced 4X players aren't here, and won't have the patience and precision needed to succeed at Deity. This is a very complex game, if only in terms of knowing what to ignore.

Basically, YOU are an expert player with the commitment to learn the highest levels of Civ mastery. For most players, this is not an easy game at all.

So this finally dawned on me, not with the Civ series but with Majesty 2 from Paradox. As far as Paradox games go its absurdly easy and cartoony. A nice "kick back and relax" type game. Many of the reviews complained about how hard it is though. I was confused. Then my son, granted he's 8, started playing it and I watched him really struggle with even the early levels and hes a sharp kid.

If you're visiting this site regularly and you've sunk over a thousand hours into the Civ series altogether (some of us break that in one iteration) Civ VI is too easy. That's maybe 1-3% of the players at best. We can complain about how easy it is til were blue in the face but eventually we have to come to terms with the fact that it just isn't as easy as we think it is.

 

[Basajaun]

I think this shows how much these boards are not representative of the players who play the game. Anyone visiting these boards or going on youtube would think the majority of people play on Deity, when reality is different.

Well, I never played a deity game to the end, although I have started some. I play King to Immortal, depending on my knowledge of the civ.
But I think we cant take these stats as absolute truth. I for example, will have "won" about 10% of my games. Playing on epic speed, most of the time I go for scientific, or cultural/diplomatic. By turn 250 or so, either Im still lagging behind and only a military rush can save me, or Im well ahead on most victory conditions (save for religion, which I never follow) because I had a decent starting spot with not too many interruptions for the first 75-100 turns. So unless I have a very specific target in mind, I isually start a new game with a new civ or map before I reach atomic era, because the game is decided by then.

By the way, Hi there, first post

 

[anandus]

I think I haven't finished a game since Civ 3.
At a certain moment you get to the point where you know you've won. That's when I stop playing.

 

[RohirrimElf]

Personally i stopped caring about steam achievements. I’ve got my account made as private as possible anyway without any friends so it is more secure.

If i wanted to earn more achievement i could probably earn 20% more. Instead i stick with a couple of favorites like the vikings, rome and russia. If more players would play like me the statistics are not to be taken that seriously. I’ve yet to earn my first religious victory while scoring above 10 victories on domination/science and at least 5 culture victories.

I think mali might be my new to go civ. Ottomans are fun as well but i just can’t stand their soundtrack. It gives me a headache.