What do the Civ III veterans think of Civ VI?

[Quintillus]

So it's been a month since Civ VI was released now, and everyone and their cousin has an opinion on it. Whereas Civ V generally got very positive reviews, it seems it's a bit more mixed for VI... but considering that I couldn't get into V and stuck with III and IV, that doesn't necessarily mean I'll like it less.

As such, there's two groups that I'm curious to hear reviews from. One is those who have stuck with Civ III but have played Civ VI; the other is the equivalent group who stuck with Civ IV (of course, alternating between both is fine too, main point is your primary game is III/IV, rather than V). I have a friend telling me I should get VI, and it does sound like it has some interesting ideas, but said person preferred V to III/IV, and that means I'm not sure how applicable their enthusiasm is to me.

You can chime in if you haven't played it yet, but I'm really looking for those who stuck with III/IV, bought VI, and have played, say, at least the majority of one game in it so far.

 

[Buttercup]

I think you're wrong about Civ V getting generally positive reviews, I seem to remember it being wildly unpopular for a good long time before people relaxed a bit with regards to things like 1UPT and City States etc.

I haven't played Civ VI yet but I think it appears to have some really interesting concepts in it and I'm looking forward to trying it one day. Weirdly enough, I think its color scheme is great and a huge improvement alone, that particular shading of desert yellow suits the franchise a whole lot more than the more blue hued IV and V. I'd say its the Civ game which most looks like a Civ game since III.

 

[ThERat]

Well, I still like Civ3 (esp CCM Mod) and have recently fired up a Emperor AW game on Pangaea. A blast. I liked Civ4 to a certain extend and really enjoyed some Mods like Realism Invictus (until it started to crash on Windows 10).

I disliked Civ5 with a vengeance mainly due to 1upt and global happiness. Now, I had hoped that Ed Beach would ensure a much better version for Civ6, but I think I am more convinced than ever that 1upt is resulting in the AI being no credible opponent, be it AW games or even standard games where you would want some proper opposition if you decided to take over AI land.
Sure, the policy card game is initially interesting and districts can be intriguing. Both concepts are currently killed by a really poor UI and too much micromanagement. The MM is initially not an issue when you have few units and few districts. However, once traders, spies and religious units come in, the MM fest starts. You are busy with reassigning trade routes constantly (and get zero info which trade route was it, that needs to be reassigned), you are busy fending off a gazillion of religious troops and struggle with unit movements across a map with virtually no help to make them move faster). Add to that, that workers now need to be repurchased constantly due to 3 or 5 charges and this gets really tiring.

I do hope that the UI gets made reasonably well by the community (I got no faith in Firaxis that they do what they were supposed to do) and that maybe the diplomatic game can get from totally insanely useless to something I could enjoy. Civ3 diplomacy was at least a little more enjoyable with tech 2 or 3 fers and other stunts one could pull thanks to crafty play. In Civ6, the AI feel to be mere bystanders that never really threaten you. No runaway agri Civ that take over the entire other continent and really threatens to win by UN vote or other means.

I played a few AW games in Civ6 and stopped due to a totally incapable AI, I tried a normal game and the ridiculous diplomacy and MM kills it for me too. Trading is down to, oh I got a useless luxury (worth 1 happiness point for 4 of the many cities you own), let's trade it with your luxuries.

Maybe some others can share how they deal with the many fallacies of Civ6.

 

[Kirejara]

I have not played Civ6 yet, but the description sounds very promising.

My current PC is unable to handle Civ6 and I wanted to wait until Firaxis has taken care for the first bug wave.

While I could get a newer PC by now and a first patch is out, the same patch made it impossible for me to install Civ6 by its sheer size (2,1 GB). With my slow and unstable internet connection I would need literal days to download that much data (assuming that my connection does not have any interruptions. Downloading more than 100 MB is a gamble ).

For the same reason I have not played Civ5 (and World of Warcraft, that I would love to).

And Civ4 is IMHO both by the graphics and in game play the worst civ ever.

I will have to wait until Civ6 comes as complete edition on DVD (or the Bundesregierung fulfill its promise about stable and fast internet connection for everyone).

And yes, it is most of the time also not possible for me to view online videos.

 

[agonistes]

I am a Civ3er, although prior to VI coming out, I had been playing V quite a bit (which is why I still haven't sent you that save btw).

I've put in over 400 hours on VI, doing some rough math, so let me see if I can collect my thoughts a bit for you:

I enjoy III because:
1) it is so easy to mod (and has a large pool of mod material to draw from);
2) you can build large empires;
3) large number of civs; and
4) the Stacks of Doom prevent unit clutter.

I enjoy IV for diplomacy and vassalage. V is nice for the graphics, and rezzing dead civs, liberating cities, and so forth.

VI, to me, is awesome. Love the districts. The religious war is a pain in the ass, diplomacy is all messed up, ai is weak, too few units, not enough techs, and tech pace is too fast (and I play on marathon). Deity is pretty easy, it comes down to whether or not you can survive the early onslaught (everyone dows on you by like turn 10). But, mods can take care of some of the issues, patches will help with the rest I expect. It has the foundations for an incredible game, I guess I should say, and I really enjoy the building/designing aspect of it.

Religious unit spam can be dealt with using the religious units respect borders mod, diplomacy is a work in progress but the civ leaders definitely have personalities, barbarians are hyper aggressive while civs can't find their a-holes but this is being worked on.

There are mods to slow down the tech pace already, and I expect we will see heavy modding of the tech tree and added units.

We will probably never again see the vast empires of III, but you can get a 30 city empire if you want. And the Yeta map is already available to the public (alpha 10 or 11 atm, I've been using alpha 7).

Got to go.

 

[vmxa]

I almost fell out of my chair, reading about positive V reports. It open with mostly heaps of anger dumped on it. I gave it a real shot, but it sucked. I do hear that at the final look, that it was good. I doubt it, but will never know. At the time it came out it had so many problems and 1upt was horrid.

VI made me give 1upt a better mark, but it is still a huge problem for civ. I am at the same point in VI I was in IV. I thought I liked it a lot, but after the first month I was no longer interested in it and went back to C3C. I think a lot things are fun in VI and still hope for it to become fairly good. Not sure, if that will happen for me, but it is still a shot. Both 4 and 6 are games I could play from time to time. I just rarely ever do play iv, but I do not hate the game, but I hated V.

 

[agonistes]

VI made me give 1upt a better mark, but it is still a huge problem for civ.

I agree. I honestly don't know, though, exactly where I stand on this (Stack of Doom vs. Carpet of Death), or how best to fix it, although I've given it some thought. Not going to turn this thread into a SoD vs. CoD discussion though.

 

[Quintillus]

Thanks for the inputs, especially those who have played VI. I guess my takeaway is that I should wait until they patch up the AI some, and maybe some of the micromanagement/religious aspects. Really, the most concerning thing to me is AI, and the possibility that 1UPT is indeed the core of the AI problems. I've discussed that enough elsewhere, including thoughts on middle grounds, so I'll just leave it at it sounds like maybe Civ6 didn't go enough towards a middle ground to solve the AI challenges present in 1UPT.

The positive Civ V review comment was mainly about the average reception as based on Steam reviews (96% positive currently), which I consider more neutral than Amazon as Amazon's was dragged down by 1-star reviews because it required Steam. I'm well aware that the reaction among seasoned veterans was far more mixed, but the same was true of Civ4 when it came out and it's now quite well received almost across the board among series veterans - even among those of us who prefer III, there are few who dislike IV with its expansions. By comparison, Civ VI was around 78% at the time I made the first post, though it's now at 82%, and 88% in the past month - so either the initial buyers were more critical, or the first patch is helping the average review score, quite possibly both.

And still, reviews aren't everything as I saw with V, but I'm glad the trend is at least in the right direction, they never did quite hit that with Beyond Earth.

 

[ThERat]

After playing some AW games in Civ 6, I can safely say that 1upt is not the right tool for a warmonger. Forget about the AI being unable to use it, it's also a royal pain for the human player. Every game plays out the same. You crawl your units up to the enemy city and start bombarding the city defenses until you can finally safely attack with cavalry or melee units. Once, the city is taken, you move on to the next spot juggling your precious bombards around to make sure they don't get killed in the process (a city with high defenses can almost kill your archery/bombard types in one shot). It really pales if you compare it with Civ3/4 type of warfare where you could used troop compositions, territory etc for tactical advantages.

I am done with this type of game and will have a look only after major improvements and expansions.

 

[Theov]

Couldn't catch my interest after a few games of 4.
4 was alright for a few games, but I got bored with it pretty quick.

 

[Quintillus]

1upt ... it's also a royal pain for the human player. Every game plays out the same. You crawl your units up to the enemy city and start bombarding the city defenses until you can finally safely attack with cavalry or melee units. Once, the city is taken, you move on to the next spot juggling your precious bombards around to make sure they don't get killed in the process (a city with high defenses can almost kill your archery/bombard types in one shot).

That's how it felt to me in Civ V. It didn't feel tactical so much as tedious.

 

[ThERat]

That part has actually gotten worse now with the new movement rules and more or less zero roads to cities where you don't have trade routes. Most of the times, all you do is move 1 tile per turn as there is always the river, hill or forest to makes sure the 2 moves per turn are reduced to 1. You can't enter a hill/forest/cross river with partial movement now. It's really painful.
Civ6 is a game for people who like puzzles (Eureka's) and city building. Not for the people who need units as the main force of the game.

 

[Buttercup]

Combat has never been Civilisation's strong point, I haven't enjoyed combat in any of them really, but 2's was the most bearable. I'd probably prefer the civ series if they figured out a way to do away with combat altogether rather than keep providing half-baked, laughable systems designed off the back of a napkin and, on top of that, then implement it with AI instructions from the space left at the bottom of said napkin. I have no idea why you find so much pleasure in only playing all war games all the time, there must be dozens of games out there that do 4x combat more satisfactorily. Civ games are only interesting because they offer a whole lot more than just All War victory conditions.

 

[Quintillus]

Well, I hate puzzle games, but like city building games. That's 50%. Not a fan of Always War though, I like a diplomatic element. Although Eurekas don't sound like the thing I dislike in puzzles - that I get stuck and can't progress, and then get frustrated since there often isn't a logical way out, but just finding the one possible solution (as opposed to programming, where there often is a logical way out of a place that I get stuck, and often more than one of varying efficiencies).

 

[Kirejara]

VI made me give 1upt a better mark, but it is still a huge problem for civ.

I assume, that 1UPT will give me a headache too.

But at least there is allready a mod to allow multiple units in a tile.

 

[bbrady413]

Well, I'll give a general weigh-in.

Civ 3: The best. Still the best. The balance of giant empires, war, diplomacy, and the variety of victories has made this game a replayable classic for 15 years.
Civ 4: I dabbled in this and enjoyed it, although after a short time I felt myself being attracted back to 3. No fault of 4, and I may give it another shot.
Civ 5: Worthless. Hated it. 1UPT was awful, and I could just never get into this game.
Civ 6: I have an older computer, so I probably won't get it.
Future: I'm waiting for a true sequel to Civ 3 to come out. A fresh update with game mechanics, and diplomacy, and units. I just think 3 is superior in all aspects, and needs a refresh, but not a complete reboot.

 

[vmxa]

Probably not going to be a reboot for III, but one can hope. Some major companies are rebooting older games that were successful. I would want to see at least making the game run on win10 and support higher res monitors. Nice would be to incorporate a few of the fixes for the long standing bugs, such subs (once fixed and then broken) and scientific GA. If they want to charge more than a few buck, then upgrade the graphics to true HD.

 

[ThERat]

@vxma, there was this coder here for a while who actually fixed the scientific GA. He was on his way to fix the submarine bug too. Yes, it would be great to see Civ3 with a graphics overhaul and the elimination of its worst features such as ROP rape, broken reps etc.
CCM is attempting to eliminate some of those and its the MOD I enjoy the most.

 

[vmxa]

Yes I like the Civinators mod, not sure about some of the changes he has for the next version though. I know at least one person has a fix to the Science bug and the subs where fixed prior to 1.22, sigh.

 

[ThERat]

There will be CCM 2.0 soon, which incorporates the science GA and sub bug fix, I believe