Vanilla vs GS

[rgp151]

I played Vanilla for a long time, not really getting GS until about 6 months ago, and I still play Vanilla.

The difference between the two is striking and somewhat frustrating in terms of Single Player. Overall, I find Vanilla games more challenging and "fun", even though there are many aspects of GS that are more interesting and "fun".

For one thing, it seems to me like GS games end up dragging out too much. Both the Science and Culture victories come to a more rapid conclusion in V than GS, and in GS they seem to drag on past the point of being useful. Also, the fact that the victories come faster in V means that the AI is also able to threaten them more often, so in V I am often challenged to prevent the AI from winning, especially Kongo, Russia or Germany.

Great People are generally more useful in V, even though GS has some better GPs, especially Merchants. Essentially the GPs seem to have a bigger impact on the game in V than GS, because in GS other aspects of the game are relatively more powerful (you can get higher production, and more science, so the boosts are GPs are less important, etc.)

I find that in V the Science Victory is really all about the Space Race GPs. The amount of production needed to complete the Space Race is a lot in V compared to what you can produce, so the GPs that speed up the Space Race are critical. In addition the relationship between unlocking the Techs and doing the production was such that there was need to be able to have multiple Space Ports and kick off multiples projects at once, etc.

In GS, I find that I'm often waiting to research the next tech much longer than it takes to complete the projects, even if I haven't used any GPs at all, because its possible to get so much more production. 200+ production is easy to get in GS, whereas in V breaking 100 can be a challenge.

So in GS, the Space Race seems very anti-climactic, like a formality, whereas in V the Space Race is much more of a real race and getting those GPs is critical and often a challenge. Also in GS it seems like the GPs that give 100% boost are better than the flat production, whereas in V its the opposite.

As for Cultural victory. Again, in V, especially if Kongo or Russia are in the game (and you are not them), getting Cultural victory can be a real challenge. In GS it again seems to drag out longer, but be much more inevitable.

Yet, on the military front I think the AI puts up a better fight in GS, even though its still bad in the late game, its way better than the way the AI fights in V. In V the AI is useless in terms of fighting.

But many of the new mechanics and features in GS are quite fun and add a lot of depth to the game, the problem is that in spite of all that, the game feels less competitive. It feels less like a game and more like a Sim. V still feels more like a 4X strategy game, whereas GS feels much more like playing Sim City with lots of disasters and such to deal with. I find this disappointing because I'd like to play with the new features of GS in the way that the game feels in Vanilla.

 

[shaglio]

Man, that was a difficult post to read. Thanks to the infuriating insistence on the use of roman numerals (especially in regard to the Civilization franchise), every time you wrote a "V" for vanilla, my brain interpreted it as Civ 5 instead.

 

[Rg339]

I prefer vanilla. I also prefer games in which the standard civs are present.

There’s so much power creep in the expansions. There are alotta complicated mechanics added.

I don’t have any problems understanding complicated mechanics, of course. Problem is the AI does. Big time. The designers made their AI increasingly irrelevant with each expansion. Created this weird situation in which the game simultaneously got deeper and shallower.

Balance issues, too. They sold new DLC, as far as I can tell, by making leaders “cool” or “unique”. Fine. Often times they’re terribly unbalanced. Korea comes out; how are their science abilities even remotely fair to the older civs?

 

[E.man]

I prefer vanilla. I also prefer games in which the standard civs are present.

There’s so much power creep in the expansions. There are alotta complicated mechanics added.

I don’t have any problems understanding complicated mechanics, of course. Problem is the AI does. Big time. The designers made their AI increasingly irrelevant with each expansion. Created this weird situation in which the game simultaneously got deeper and shallower.

Balance issues, too. They sold new DLC, as far as I can tell, by making leaders “cool” or “unique”. Fine. Often times they’re terribly unbalanced. Korea comes out; how are their science abilities even remotely fair to the older civs?

I'm playing GS as Sumeria. Aztecs are ahead of me in Science and Korea behind so the ancients are going OK.

I was thinking of going back to basics but might take a break first.

 

[Linklite]

I'm playing GS as Sumeria. Aztecs are ahead of me in Science and Korea behind so the ancients are going OK.

I was thinking of going back to basics but might take a break first.

If by "ancients are going OK" you mean that they're doing well in science in the ancient era, that's normal. For the first couple of eras, the AI does do really well - at least in science.

 

[E.man]

If by "ancients are going OK" you mean that they're doing well in science in the ancient era, that's normal. For the first couple of eras, the AI does do really well - at least in science.

No, we're up to Spaceports.

 

[Linklite]

No, we're up to Spaceports.

Then I can't parse that sentence.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Personally I feel that with the exception of Barbarian Clans, basically every expansion made the game worse

As well as the well documented imability of the AI to handle any of this, I find most of the new mechanics irritating, broken, minimaxing munchkiny, and often all three.

Here is my recipe for Ultimate Vanilla:

Base Game

All victory conditions except Score off. The Base Game scoring tracks pretty close to traditional 4X game behaviors

Online Speed

No chopping. Chopping, while not as stupid broken as when you have govenors etc is still pretty broken. This forces you to play the map more, which is after all Civ6’s strength. It also greatly reduces worker micromanagement.

No Unit Upgrading; it’s better both as a mechanic and as history. A heavy investment in your military is ultimately an investment in obsolescence and a wasting asser. The way Civ6 works with upgrades you get to have your cake and eat it too, and it’s yet another snowball.

Abundant Resources and Legendary starts. This is mostly to help the AI. It makes builders less critical, which both makes the AI more effective AND again require less worker micro

Max number of Civs and City States. Crowding the map makes the game more interesting and makes it harder to simply spam settlers. Having abundant resources and legendary starts makes it less likely to be shafted with a crappy starting spot, which on a crowded map is death

Finally, as an option to make the game more challenging and alleviate the 1 UPT torure where you have to solve a sliding tile puzzle every time you move your units might I recommend Gran Colombia?

It is amazing how…game changing that plus one movement is. (•_•) / ( •_•)>⌐■-■ / (⌐■_■)

Gran Colombia also basically has zero other bonuses (save one) so it’s kind of a good neutral civ to play against the AI. I recommend a house rule where your Commandante Generals have to retire as soon as possible because warfare is already slanted in your favor.

 

[SirNovelty]

Finally, as an option to make the game more challenging and alleviate the 1 UPT torure where you have to solve a sliding tile puzzle every time you move your units might I recommend Gran Colombia?

Make the game more challenging.....Gran Columbia? I mean, I guess if you were playing Babylon every game before that sure, but, or you're just don't use the Commandates at all. Honestly though I think if all they had was the +1 move they'd still be above average. Honestly, if you think you have trouble with the sliding tile puzzle, I can guarantee you the AI's struggling far more, and you just gave yourself 50% more options on most units.

Actually I'd also question whether crowding the map actually makes the game more difficult. I've not done it much myself, it's rough on my computer, but on the few occasions I have I've found it makes the game much easier. The AI does not make efficient use of its space, nor do they handle unit movement well when things are cramped. Also on Deity/standard you end up severely limiting how much the AI can settle beyond its starting cities, and since they can't take cities, and you can....but again, only tried this maybe a handful of time, I'd love to hear it turns out differently.

 

[E.man]

Maybe it would crash my laptop less to have less processing needed as the game progresses.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Personally I feel that with the exception of Barbarian Clans, basically every expansion made the game worse

Agree, they all just promote insane power creep (like we needed more of that), and have features that are horribly broken.
Like when I see youtubers with their clickbait titles (like "turn 118 deity SV win!"), they are always just abusing these features, and turn their "deity" games into something more of an emperor game - where is the fun in that?
Add in the general power creep in civ 6, and the game just breaks apart, which is very evident in the botched late game these days.
Sometime around the renaissance, yields just start growing exponentially, and in the blink of an eye we go from the industrial era to winning the game.
Like, in several of my games I use warriors sometimes up until something like turn 60-70, before the game accelerates so hard that I'm suddenly speeding past musketmen, line infantry, infantry, and often win before mech infantry even become a thing.
Personally I partially blame the "yield porn" phenomenon, which is a absolutely ridiculous in civ 6.
In civ 5 for instance, you would rarely have tiles yielding more than a combined 5 in value, yet in civ 6 we can somewhat easily get +10, and sometimes absolutely ridiculous tiles with +15 or more combined yields (vampire castles, ley lines, natural disasters, wonders+improvements etc.).
It's fun the first couple of times, but not when it helps ruin the late game.
Just look at reddit, a large chunk of posts is basically people showing off their "yield porn" in a city, like it's a good thing.

One caveat though - random tech tree is absolutely brilliant, and has added so much replay value for me. Cookie cutter openings get thrown out of the window, or at least get shaken up considerably, and adds a lot more value to chasing eurekas to be able to plan ahead.