Whats wrong with Civ 6 ... your opinion

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's like it's made by a dev team who've never played a Civ game before.

More like they had Heard of Civ Games, but never actually seen one before. . .

Civ VI has as many good ideas in it as any game in the Franchise, but the implementation of those ideas is even worse than Test of Time, which was my previous model of a Bad Civ Game. It is painfully obvious that none of the various systems were tested as to their interaction with each other, and so we have:

Production that doesn't scale with Unit Cost
Unit Strengths/Effectiveness that don't match their supposed purpose (Looking at You, Anti-Cav!)
Buildings, Wonders, Units, and other 'items' that cost more in time, Gold or Production than they are worth in any realistic gaming strategy.
A Diplomatic System that still feeling like an added Attachment to the game, neither integrated nor sensible
A Religious System based entirely on Conflict - and not, therefore, particularly relevant to many actual religions.
Uniques for Civs that are based on terrain conditions that the game does not always provide for that Civ - like, having to re-start Nubia 6 times to get any Desert in the Capital City's starting radius.
Major Historical Turning Points like the Renaissance, Enlightenment Era, or Industrial Revolution that pass by in the game as mere titles on the screen and no visible effect on game play other than new units and Wonders to compete for.

And so on and on. And on and on. The saddest thing is that many of these have been badly implemented systems since the game first came out, and they remain just as badly implemented now, only with layers of new, equally badly implemented systems on top of them.

Civ VI is the first Civ game of any kind that I have deleted from my computer, stopped playing, and gone back to playing a previous rendition of the game out of sheer boredom and disgust. I keep hoping that some combination of Mods and Patches will make the game playable and enjoyable . . .

 

[Sostratus]

I keep hoping that some combination of Mods and Patches will make the game playable and enjoyable . . .

Once they finally announce "okay, no more dlc, here's the dll" I would love to be involved with a community balance patch... I think so much of the game is simply held back by things we can easily fix with numbers tweaks. (And we will want to see them finish tweaking with stuff before we do such an effort.)

I think the disconnect between people feeling it and the devs making it happen is more organizational at this point: they have a lot of skills, including how to get really clever ideas in the ballpark. I really suspect there's an organizational issue that is preventing the follow up of "now that we have released GS, we should do fairly involved balance tweaking and really pay attention to that. Then we can feel comfortable our creation will stand the test of time." Quarterly patch cycle with almost no discussion of game balance or health is a very opaque thing to do in the era of agile game support. If they want civ to be a series with some esports facet like they stated they wanted in vanilla, they need to do this. Other companies are more and more interactive and rapid with patches and balance. They need to adapt. Even if it's just communication.

 

[Disgustipated]

Voted many good ideas, questionable implementation.

I feel hesitant to criticize this game as it's the one I've played the most, but some of that is due to real life status (or non status as the case may be). The ideas are good. But we have to admit at this point it's a sandbox game, and will suffer because of it. I feel it's moving away from any sense of realism into very gamey concepts. They are fun concepts, as I mentioned I'm having a lot of fun. But the sense of realism isn't as strong as with Civ4.

 

[Leucarum]

I think civ occupies a good spot relative to the other games out there. There are already deep historical simulation grand strategy games as well as in depth war simulators. I an glad there is an accessible, relatively short sandbox which doesn't try to push for realism too much.

That said, it feels like they err on the side of caution with new mechanics (most of the time), loyalty and climate change and the workd congress all aren't consequential enough. It makes exceptions like the maori kinda glaring

 

[Jewelrunna]

The best way I can describe my view on Civ VI is with the following analogy. The game is like a building that’s built on a great foundation. The focus on the map, the addition of districts, the splitting of the tech tree—all great ideas that, to me at least, make Civ VI more appealing to me than the other games in its current state. Despite that foundation, however, the building is constructed with questionable support beams. The tech tree (both it’s layout and the speed you move through it), production (the scarcity of it and the cost scaling), and the appalling unit progression all hold the game back from reaching its full potential. There are other problems too, like weak religion, the weakness of tall and coastal cities, and poor balancing. But solving those three main ones would honestly make the game 5x better on their own. I like a lot of the additions from the new expansion, but they’re just window dressing that don’t fix that weak support structure. Those demand proper addressing first.

 

[Bitterman]

I have more than 400 hours already and I'll have many more so it wouldn't be honest to say I'm not happy with it.

That being said, I really think that the base game without mods is just terrible; boring, dull and unbalanced. But again, that feeling it's not so different from the one I had with other great games when they came out, like skyrim for example. Civ VI is also infinitely better when played in MP with friends.

Right now I play with Real Strategy + Smoother Difficulty in Emperor and it's a good challenge. I consider that difficulty what King should've been. I recommend those mods combined fro anyone who is looking for some challenge.

 

[Medopu]

As strange as it sounds, i quite like Civ 6 lack of "all-in-one" data presentation system A.K.A. "horrible UI". Please hear me out.

The main reason for it is in my opinion because Civilization 6 tries to be more immersive. When your intervention isn't always guided by the UI, you're in some way forced (a bit) to not only search for the relevant information yourself but also remember things more, which happens to sink you into the game more. When there isn't any easily available data, like who owns extra resources, where your trade routes are going and how long they last, when certain time limit expires, etc...then your brain is automatically forced to remember the necessary info itself and if done right, that should be a good thing not only for training your ability to focus and remember but it also benefits if you don't remember every single detail, like what artefacts Saladin has for trade or which leaders hates you or someone else because it adds a certain element of surprise that you otherwise wouldn't have; had you been served all the required information on a silver platter.
Having everything neatly&completely presented in a UI package makes every kind of player subconsciously play the game more methodically, like it's their job.
God forbid someone forgets to minmax some thing they weren't informed by the UI. I don't know man, I feel like some of you would like to have a constant status report of everything and monitor it with no personal effort involved in aquiring the data. Don't get me wrong, there is definitely some information that should be easily visible that perhaps isn't, but overall, I like the idea of being "penalized" for not paying attention and being lazy while i play. In some ways, that's good in others, maybe not so much. But this is a part of why I find CIV6 games more meaningful, challenging and interesting to play.

And again, I know there are quite a few UI decisions that are just wrong, but I am not in favor of re-writing the whole UI because of some mistakes.

 

[The googles do nothing]

I said "Good ideas questionable implementation". The problem is I don't think the implementation is by accident. I think it's predictable for two reasons:
- They re-used the database from previous editions and i'm guessing the code as well. There lead tester spends most of his time playing the game. So they have a functioning but untestable pile of code that prevents them from really fixing the AI or doing deep analysis of balance.
- To meet sales goals they must cater to player who don't - for what ever reason - learn or master the mechanics of the game. And to keep selling content they need to make civs that have UU that roll over opponents (nubile) or have bonus that allow them to win while completely ignoring some of the constraints in the game (Most of GS).

Even having said that I don't think 6 is that far off from greatness. A lot of the issues can be fixed with existing mods. I'm trying to learn modding to fix what personally bothers me about the game.

I do think that for the $40 I paid for GS i'm owed a patch for bugs.

 

[Infixo]

@Medopu Information is key in managing complex things. Even in Egypt pharaohs had administrative „forces”, gathered info, etc. And it only got more complex in time. In history, virtually always the one better informed had a better position. Maybe I am an exception, but I like making informed decisions in a strategy game and that is why I consider UI lacking in this area not immersive, but simply bad.

 

[acluewithout]

Once they finally announce "okay, no more dlc, here's the dll" I would love to be involved with a community balance patch... I think so much of the game is simply held back by things we can easily fix with numbers tweaks. (And we will want to see them finish tweaking with stuff before we do such an effort.)

I think the disconnect between people feeling it and the devs making it happen is more organizational at this point: they have a lot of skills, including how to get really clever ideas in the ballpark. I really suspect there's an organizational issue that is preventing the follow up of "now that we have released GS, we should do fairly involved balance tweaking and really pay attention to that. Then we can feel comfortable our creation will stand the test of time." Quarterly patch cycle with almost no discussion of game balance or health is a very opaque thing to do in the era of agile game support. If they want civ to be a series with some esports facet like they stated they wanted in vanilla, they need to do this. Other companies are more and more interactive and rapid with patches and balance. They need to adapt. Even if it's just communication.

The best way I can describe my view on Civ VI is with the following analogy. The game is like a building that’s built on a great foundation. The focus on the map, the addition of districts, the splitting of the tech tree—all great ideas that, to me at least, make Civ VI more appealing to me than the other games in its current state. Despite that foundation, however, the building is constructed with questionable support beams. The tech tree (both it’s layout and the speed you move through it), production (the scarcity of it and the cost scaling), and the appalling unit progression all hold the game back from reaching its full potential. There are other problems too, like weak religion, the weakness of tall and coastal cities, and poor balancing. But solving those three main ones would honestly make the game 5x better on their own. I like a lot of the additions from the new expansion, but they’re just window dressing that don’t fix that weak support structure. Those demand proper addressing first.

Really agree with @Sostratus and, sadly, sort of, disagree with @Jewelrunna (sorry!). Yes the foundations are good. But so are the support beams and all that stuff (particularly the tech trees which I think are just incredibly solid). The game is really really solid mechanically.

There is just a bunch of balance and gameplay tweaking that is needed, and a few areas (mostly mechanics from RnF and some GS future tech stuff) where the game is mechanically sound but is a bit bland in implementation and or needs to be fleshed out.

FXS clearly can balance the game well - lots of tweaks they make are really very very good. (Spain. Inquisitors. Genius!) I think what they’re struggling with is just the volume of stuff that needs tweaking.

There are just a million of issues like “hey, maybe Railways should add hammers if they connect IZs to other cities or if they connect a city with your capital”. You know, two changes I just think are obvious are having a Diplomatic Policy Card that gives additional Diplo Favour for having Colonial Cities (a good buff for England, Spain etc) and another card that gives Diplo Favour for having Nukes (nice Cold War vibe ... and a good buff for India). I’d also like Policy Cards that better buff Tier 3 Buldings, and for Factories not Coal Plants to get the adjacency bonus, and maybe Military Engineers should rush Sea Walls... and so on, and so on, and son on etc. You might disagree, but I think all these sorts of things and others are mostly all very sensible, and the game is poorer for not having these touches and little integrations. But that’s what I mean - there’s a million of these things that need attention. I mean, good grief, they only got round to adding Anti-Cav to Oligarchy and Agoge when RnF came out!

@Jewelrunna you’re right that the game’s pacing is off, there’s a problem with late game production (and yields really), and unit balance is still a bit off. But to me, this is all just a product of the accumulation of mountains of little tweaks the game needs. FXS are making those tweaks - GS made a tonne - but it is just a mountain of small stuff.

(BTW we’ve discussed before how Tier 3 Buldings - even when powered - are underwhelming. Out of interest, do the power bonuses get doubled by cards like Rationalism? Does that make e.g. Research Lab more attractive at all?)

 

[Sostratus]

Out of interest, do the power bonuses get doubled by cards like Rationalism?

Oh they certainly do. That +8 from a powered lab exceeds the +6 from library/uni. Given what they cost (580), at that stage in the game it is cheaper to build a lab than to build a new campus+library+uni (district cost is ~400+340) in an existing city. They are very very good at jacking up your science fast. 10ish turns production across your research centers and you've doubled your science from campuses. Which is gonna be the great bulk of your science. That's like at least a 2/3 boost to your tech rate- which shaves suddenly very real turns off your science victory, because that takes longer now too.

 

[Victoria]

, I like the idea of being "penalized" for not paying attention and being lazy while i play.

I feel, been searching for this thought for a while.
I have been asking myself why do I like a game that’s got such bad elements and some of that answer for me.
There is a gentle punishment in my game for my desire for speed, I am not being as efficient as possible by any means but I am not punished too harshly for this.

 

[MrRadar]

Having everything neatly&completely presented in a UI package makes every kind of player subconsciously play the game more methodically, like it's their job.

Nope, not at all. It lets me enjoy the game more, because I can focus more on the elements that are 'fun'. It is when the UI makes me make 5+ clicks and go through four screens every time I just want to trade a luxury that I feel I might be still at work. Such a UI wastes a lot of time on menial and unnecessary tasks and bores the pants off me. I just have the feeling that I struggle fighting the UI more than I enjoy playing the game. And I am not an obsessive min-maxer, whenever I play some GOTM, I can't help straying into RP or immersive play and usually come 100-200 turns later than the fastest guys. But I enjoy playing it more like this, as if I led a civilization through history. And I prefer fighting unfriendly civs more than fighting unfriendly UI.

Anyway, I voted 'Many good ideas, terrible implementation', however it is more like 'sloppy implementation'. All the major efforts went into the presentation, actual gameplay mechanisms and balancing were spared all the expense and attention that could be spared. I could sit and look at the maps of this game for hours (as I actually do) under the spell of beautiful music, but I almost don't want to bother with the unmodded gameplay any more.

Now I'm trying a mod that increases tech and civic costs and makes eurekas harder. And I'm having a blast so far Progression through the trees is so much slower, I must really stop and think what is truly needed. I haven't seen AI building so many ancient and classical units since the times of the 'God of the Forge' bug. I'm losing cities, reconquering cities, clinging to them by the skin of my teeth, well mostly because AI is still terrible, but now I can better see how it works.
Qin surrounded my coastal city with archers, reduced garrison to 0 and could take it but his warriors have trouble to get through the ring of their own archers, so they go around, get trapped and get killed. One warrior could swap positions with the archer and get the city, but no, that is beyond AI capabilities. Archers spread fire and do not concentrate, nearby galleys draw their arrows and get promotions, I get more troops and little by little clear the surroundings and gear up for the counter-attack. I'm approaching 0 AD but just now getting swords. Still haven't got the chance to build a single district. I have 5 galleys under new eureka requirements but Harald thinks my shores are all too easy to raid! I have lost one distant expand to Gilgabro, but let him have it and made peace for now, because the carpet of his warcarts is just too impressive. I can't afford two front war now, I'll try to deal with China first, if I can. The battering ram is already rolling, troops are being distributed new swords and marching onto Xian.

So, you see - one little rebalancing of tech and civics cost and the game years suddenly match actual history so much closer, AI has more time to build units and become a factor to be considered, and the struggle is much more real. And the Concise UI mod lets me pay much more attention to the gameplay than to finding my way through the conundrum of useless information screens.

Another thing about UI for conclusion - Concise UI puts in there a little button, which removes all UI elements and leaves you with a postcard view of the map which you can rotate, move and enjoy from different angles at your leisure. Why such an option is absent from the stock UI? The devs made an eye candy, one would think they would want to let all the players to see all the beauty of it, enjoy their work of which they must be so proud, wouldn't they? It is not so complicated, isn't it? But no, apparently not...

 

[Krajzen]

The worst problem of civ6 is that it is too afraid to challenge its players. Everything has to be either easily avoidable or having positive side. That's why R&F failed miserably in its task of making player's empires crumble. Civ6 didn't have balls to introduce brutal, purely negative dark ages, loyalty revolts and disasters which exist for example in Paradox games. In civ6 every problem has to not oy have an easy escape route, at the end of that route there are even more bonuses.

I think this design philosophy is very dangerous in the long run, after all the single major complaint civ6 ever received was various forms of "too easy". AI is of course major cause of this, but I honestly suspect it is also under the "afraid to challenge" umbrella. It's not like devs are blind - they see AI is not very dangerous after early game and they seem to be fine with it, yeah few more tweaks but overall it "works fine" because civ6 purpose seems to be not to challenge players but to constantly shot their veins with dopamine rush of positive modifiers.

But too much dopamine leads to desensitization and I think this biological metaphor works well in civ6 case - it is too bloated with countless bonuses provided by reduntant systems, while similar fun could be provided by way simpler and frugal but more challenging mechanics. People like overcoming obstacles, that's what strategy games are build around.

AI issues and feature bloat are IMO subservient to Civ6 low difficulty design philosophy.

 

[UWHabs]

To me, let me start by saying that I do still enjoy the game, but definitely a few things that need more work. I voted for "implemented mechanics aren't deep enough" because to me, they need to better connect the various systems together.

Railroads are a great system. No-cost build with engineers, let them go connect my cities to move faster. All great things. but where's the link to literally any other aspect of the game? Okay, they give a bonus to traders going over them, fine. But no bonus to production. No interaction with factories. No bonuses to tourism.
Similarly, aerodromes and planes. Okay, you can airlift units, great. But part of the problem is that flight simply just starts to give you tourism to improvements without you even having to build an aerodrome or airplane! Aerodromes don't interact with anything else, either. Does having an airport help in any other way for my city? Should I in any way try to design my city so that my airports connect my neighbourhoods or population centres, or connect to my factories, or let me airlift cargo between cities, or have air trade routes with other nations?
Neighbourhoods are a nice bonus to late game to be able to grow your cities big with housing. Where's the best spot for my neighourhood, though? On the tip of the continent, next to water or mountains, away from everything else. Would it make sense for my people to try to live close to my mines or factories? Sure, those spots are horsehockey as hell to live in, true, but they're so bad in-game that you would never build one there.

There's plenty of other issues like this (static specialist yields, wildcard policy cards giving you +2 great scientist points per turn while your civ is already earning 30+ in the late game, being cheaper to build/buy an old unit and then upgrade rather than build from scratch,etc...). Basically, there's a lot of really great things in the game, very interesting mechanics, but they just simple don't have the scope necessary to really make them useful, so that in the end, even if I try to optimize for my civ and build an empire I like, it really doesn't matter because nothing beats just spamming campuses and upgrading your same army from the ancient era to continue plowing through the world.

 

[bonafide11]

The worst problem of civ6 is that it is too afraid to challenge its players. Everything has to be either easily avoidable or having positive side. That's why R&F failed miserably in its task of making player's empires crumble. Civ6 didn't have balls to introduce brutal, purely negative dark ages, loyalty revolts and disasters which exist for example in Paradox games. In civ6 every problem has to not oy have an easy escape route, at the end of that route there are even more bonuses.

Again, I disagree with this. You can capture cities and there is no "easy escape route" to maintaining them if there is no loyalty. Putting a governor there, monument, everything else, and you could still lose the city. If they made dark ages so your civilization would crumble, it wouldn't be fun. It should add a challenge, but not destroy your civilization. Otherwise things out of your control -- like lack of barbarians nearby -- could cause you to have a dark age and then your civilization would crumble. What fun is that? You should be challenged, but be able to overcome it. I'd be really annoyed if I had a dark age and it completely ruined the game I spent hours in and there's nothing I could do about it.

I hope the developers fix on fleshing out the parts of the game we have and tying them all together. They don't need to make it arbitrarily more difficult just because that's how it works in Paradox games (I don't play Paradox games so I'm not speaking from experience, just going off what other people here have said).

 

[Stilgar08]

Voted many good ideas, questionable implementation.

Love the game!

To answer your question of whats wrong with CiVI:
Simple:
balance and pace

Can be repaired, but takes longer than expected...

(P.S.: Considering the fact that "balance and pace" are overwhelmingly important to games of every kind it's amazing how good CiVI is nevertheless )

 

[Aristos]

As strange as it sounds, i quite like Civ 6 lack of "all-in-one" data presentation system A.K.A. "horrible UI". Please hear me out.

The main reason for it is in my opinion because Civilization 6 tries to be more immersive. When your intervention isn't always guided by the UI, you're in some way forced (a bit) to not only search for the relevant information yourself but also remember things more, which happens to sink you into the game more. When there isn't any easily available data, like who owns extra resources, where your trade routes are going and how long they last, when certain time limit expires, etc...then your brain is automatically forced to remember the necessary info itself and if done right, that should be a good thing not only for training your ability to focus and remember but it also benefits if you don't remember every single detail, like what artefacts Saladin has for trade or which leaders hates you or someone else because it adds a certain element of surprise that you otherwise wouldn't have; had you been served all the required information on a silver platter.
Having everything neatly&completely presented in a UI package makes every kind of player subconsciously play the game more methodically, like it's their job.
God forbid someone forgets to minmax some thing they weren't informed by the UI. I don't know man, I feel like some of you would like to have a constant status report of everything and monitor it with no personal effort involved in aquiring the data. Don't get me wrong, there is definitely some information that should be easily visible that perhaps isn't, but overall, I like the idea of being "penalized" for not paying attention and being lazy while i play. In some ways, that's good in others, maybe not so much. But this is a part of why I find CIV6 games more meaningful, challenging and interesting to play.

And again, I know there are quite a few UI decisions that are just wrong, but I am not in favor of re-writing the whole UI because of some mistakes.

Sorry man, but that is utter nonsense. A strategy game focuses on decision making and long term planning, and in order to do that, you need all available information easily accessible. Period. Creating a pseudo-challenge by hiding the information behind piles of mouse clicks that wear my G602 at the pace of a typhon is not difficulty nor strategy nor brain training nor anything but mediocre design and development.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't really agree with this. The AI still needs improvement, but it has improved some I believe since R&F. There is still strategy and it's not a sandbox, you can play with different strategies for optimal levels. Some work better than others. I think this post is just being a bit overly nitpicky and whiny.

More than half of the victory conditions the game purports are not viable when every playable nation on the board is trying. I don't see how his criticism is anything but valid in that context.