What do you miss the most from previous versions of Civ?

[Beaver79]

I like how in Civ 2 and/or 3, traveling across railroads cost no movement point, so it was essentially teleportation. Now, can't say I would want something so broken to return, but it was damn fun back in the day.

In Civ 2 I would always build a road then railroad along the icecaps to connect 2 continents. Those were the days.

One thing I do not miss is maintenance cost for roads. More roads = more ways to empire build and more fun.

 

[schondette]

I liked being able to plop down 4 cities and stay competitive. Theres no going tall anymore and the early game is always the same with regurgitating nonstop settlers with virtually no repercussions

 

[Icicle]

"Route to" mode.

God-dang is it tedious building railroads one tile at a time.

 

[PhilBowles]

Good and evil AIs...

In civ VI they are all evil...
BNW had a much richer cast from Shaka to Theodora with starkly different personalities (and frankly speaking in BNW the good AIs tend to do better than the evil ones... Such was the system of research agreements and world Congress... Evil AI always get mass denounced and embargoed)

That was just a consequence of the much-disliked warmonger penalty system.

Civ V did however offer a better workaround for its AI's deficiencies than Civ VI does - both are notoriously poor at warmongering, so Civ V as of BNW pushed peaceful play (probably a little too far) so that the AI was rewarded for doing things it was comparatively good at, and conquest was more difficult for the player due to the greater numbers of AI units and stronger city defences.

Civ VI, sadly, is closer to Civ IV's AI without the advantage of a combat system it can use effectively - it's truly atrocious at peaceful play and tends to overinvest resources into votes it doesn't need (so never has the diplo favour to win in the late game), religion (which with more than three other AI civs isn't actually winnable by the AI) or unnecessary Wonders. Civ IV was terrible at peaceful play as well, but a combination of being strong militarily and a diplomatic victory condition that rewarded conquest helped it enormously.

I just finished my first full game post-patch, and although I had a strong start with a good random civ (Hungary, but I only ever levied a couple of CSes and only conquered a few cities from a weak neighbouring civ, so I wasn't heavily benefitting from the uniques), it was depressing how far behind the AI fell once it fell behind.

On Deity it can take much of the game to catch up, but once I caught up I soon had double the science of my nearest rival and more than that in culture/tourism, despite not having focused on culture and only going for random wonders when I had nothing better to do. Given how much of the strategy discussions on the forum for this and other entries in the series revolve around optimising resource inputs and only spending on necessities, it's depressing that the 'random walk to victory' route that was an early bugbear of mine with Civ VI is still alive and well. If you evade an early barbarian Zerg rush and don't have a poor start where you can't expand early, the game quickly runs out of tricks to stop you from winning.

 

[BrotherInJah]

Tech trade. Civ 6 lacks of good catch-up mechanism.

 

[Patine]

Tech trade. Civ 6 lacks of good catch-up mechanism.

"We desire the secret of Nuclear Fission. In return, we are generously offering Theology."

 

[Futumch]

Map trading
Customisable flags (Civ IV)
Gifting units

 

[BrotherInJah]

"We desire the secret of Nuclear Fission. In return, we are generously offering Theology."

You definitely don't know how it worked.

 

[Patine]

You definitely don't know how it worked.

You didn't specifically say which iteration you missed in it. It wasn't unique to just one. That's often how it worked in Civ2.

 

[ezzlar]

The senate has met behind your back and signed a peace treaty.

 

[Patine]

The senate has met behind your back and signed a peace treaty.

I remember that from Civ2 as well. "But I'm the English, and I have a House of Lords instead, and they've been nerfed." To no avail!

 

[WillowBrook]

The senate has met behind your back and signed a peace treaty.

The different governments in Civ II definitely felt more different from each other than in VI - I wish they could make them at least feel like there were more trade offs in the choices in VI.

 

[Abaxial]

Definitely gifting units to CSs would be nice to have back.

Incidentally, regarding some of the previous posts in this thread, given that Civ VI is made in the USA, it strikes me as curious that of the 4th tier governments, democracy is probably the weakest, and communism is rather good.

 

[ce61agg]

Maybe it's down to style of play, but i always found communism in civ to be powerful.

In civ 2 and 4 i remember always switching to it asap and staying with it till very late (sometimes for the full game)

In 6 on the other hand i rarely use communism as i find democracy more powerful thanks to the amazing bonuses to trade routes towards allies....

 

[Victoria]

Theres no going tall anymore and the early game is always the same with regurgitating nonstop settlers with virtually no repercussions

Of course you can!
Every victory has been won on deity with a single city (with some luck involved)
You can go 4 cities and still win but have to be fairly practiced.
In GOTM cultural victories are won in the fastest time with about 4-5 cities, religious ones even less.
There is guaranteed win settler spam or just to WTH you want keeping in mind some key points and still win.
Sometimes we get ourselves running in circles because that's what we are used to and it feels good for a while. try something new

 

[schondette]

Of course you can!
Every victory has been won on deity with a single city (with some luck involved)
You can go 4 cities and still win but have to be fairly practiced.
In GOTM cultural victories are won in the fastest time with about 4-5 cities, religious ones even less.
There is guaranteed win settler spam or just to WTH you want keeping in mind some key points and still win.
Sometimes we get ourselves running in circles because that's what we are used to and it feels good for a while. try something new

I appreciate the feedback. But its not the same wherein most cases you can just poop out ONE more settler in 6 turns and be even better off than if you didn't. Amenities does a poor job of de-incentivising that.

 

[leonardomalk]

I do like Civ6 as it is now. Love the district concept and was not fond of the stacks of doom. However, when I first read about the “support stacking” of Civ6 I thought we would get something like the Call to Power II system (or even something like Fallen Enchantress or Endless Legend). I like the concept of building an army and having different “corps” inside it (infantry, cavalry, artillery).
I also like the diplomacy system of BE:RT and the BE concept of settler-outpost-city.

 

[Sostratus]

I do like Civ6 as it is now. Love the district concept and was not fond of the stacks of doom. However, when I first read about the “support stacking” of Civ6 I thought we would get something like the Call to Power II system (or even something like Fallen Enchantress or Endless Legend). I like the concept of building an army and having different “corps” inside it (infantry, cavalry, artillery).
I also like the diplomacy system of BE:RT and the BE concept of settler-outpost-city

Support stacking: While in game now it can be underwhelming, the fundamental system as it stands I think allows you to do almost anything if you are willing to be creative. For example, in the modern combat, one could imagine having antitank crews and machine guns as support units you attach to main combat troops. Add in antiair units, supply convoys, drones, etc, and you have a lot of depth in the system - especially if you balance unit maintenance so that premier support units are harder for cash strapped warmongers to afford!

And obviously you could extend that back through the ages beyond the simple siege equipment we have now. Portable shield walls/ mantlets, contingents of specialized units (imagine the incendiaries promotion for archers actually becomes a special support unit) and so on. It's a great base system combined with corps/armies, in terms of potential. Far superior to doom stacks or limited stack concepts, IMO.

BERT diplo: I liked diplo capital and how you had "ability trees" for leaders. Some were unbalanced as heck, but it was fun because your domestic game played different depending on who you were facing (rather than just who you were playing as!)
It would be neat to have internal uses of diplo capital in Civ6 too.

Settler-outpost-city: The outpost stage was something I enjoyed, and i think the concept could be a good method of integrating things like starting overseas colonies, or having pseudo settlements in the frontier you could pick up or interact with.

One thing I really miss from BERT was how they had a project to convert production into anything; food, gold, science, culture, you name it. Then combo that with Al-Falah and get like 62.5% conversion efficiency

 

[leonardomalk]

Support stacking: While in game now it can be underwhelming, the fundamental system as it stands I think allows you to do almost anything if you are willing to be creative. For example, in the modern combat, one could imagine having antitank crews and machine guns as support units you attach to main combat troops. Add in antiair units, supply convoys, drones, etc, and you have a lot of depth in the system - especially if you balance unit maintenance so that premier support units are harder for cash strapped warmongers to afford!

And obviously you could extend that back through the ages beyond the simple siege equipment we have now. Portable shield walls/ mantlets, contingents of specialized units (imagine the incendiaries promotion for archers actually becomes a special support unit) and so on. It's a great base system combined with corps/armies, in terms of potential. Far superior to doom stacks or limited stack concepts, IMO

That’s my line of thinking. I believe all siege and ranged and maybe the anti-cavalry should be support units.

 

[Victoria]

even better off

I'm sorry, I have trouble with what this means because I hate to play the same all the time. I am even better off at the moment with a triangle of cities and just messing with aggressive civs.