Where's the joy in civ6?

[James_Champagne]

I guess he's talking about the older civ games (4 and older), where roads cost nothing to maintain, meaning that the map would eventually end up entirely covered in roads, which I personally think looks a bit silly. Civ 5 already got rid of this by adding a maintenance cost, while rewarding city connections. This means you wanted to build sensible, effective transportation networks. I liked this approach better than Civ 6's roads, which are created by caravans. I'm annoyed that I don't get to decide where roads go, and I don't like having to use my trade units for this task, switching to sub-optimal routes to make my road network and having to wait many turns for the routes to finish. If we are to have automatic roads, I actually prefer the way Amplitude games does it, where roads between points of interest just appear automatically when you research the required tech.

Yeah, this is something I miss from CIV V, liked being able to make sensible roads between cities. I mean it's not a dealbreaker for me but...

 

[KayAU]

Yeah, this is something I miss from CIV V, liked being able to make sensible roads between cities. I mean it's not a dealbreaker for me but...

It's not a dealbreaker for me either, just a small thing I wish they had kept. While it might seem like I generally hate any instance of micro management, I think manually creating roads is the kind of which makes sense. It is a meaningful choice, both about where to the roads should go, and when you should make the investment of worker time and gold maintenance to have them built. It is also something which you will eventually be more or less done with, meaning it doesn't add to the late game workload.

I am curious about how this will be handled in Civ 7, and also whether they will go back to Workers, stick with Builders, or choose an entirely different approach to creating tile improvements.

 

[Depravo]

I never had much problem with 6's implementation of early game roads, except that they should be buildable by builders using build charges if you absolutely have to have a route through a particular spot.

I could rant for weeks about its shortcomings representing infrastructure in general (railroads alone for at least a week), and the complete absence of logistics beyond physical distance.

 

[Disgustipated]

You may have been playing civ4 too long to accept some of the changes. I love Civ6, and last time I tried to go back to Civ4 I couldn't get into it. Despite loving the game. Building nearly the same thing in every city in civ4 can get annoying.

I will give you that warfare in Civ4 could be more interesting (and much more dangerous). But that game had some annoyances as well like being restricted by how large you can expand your empire or you'll just run out of money.

Maybe some of my love for civ6 is because I wasn't the greatest fan of civ5, though the 2nd expansion did improve that game to a playable state. So to me, Civ6 was a step up, even though the game wasn't in a great state at launch (things like religious units not having their own layer). As for my playstyle, I love the building aspects of Civ6, but I also like to warmonger as well.

 

[Jimdigriz]

I think you missed out by skipping 5. With Vox Populi, it is the best current Civ experience in my opinion.

As for Civ 6...I have written so much about it already, I don't want to repeat myself too much. Suffice to say, I think it has a lot of good ideas, but a lot of lackluster implementations. I think districts are the biggest innovation over Civ 5, and I think they work very well in the early game...not so much in the late game. The mid to late game in general is a bit of a problem for Civ 6. It always is in 4X games, but Civ 6 is worse than most, due to the amount of micro management and busywork combined with a lack of automation and new things to focus on in the late game.

I'm definitely an "old timer" in this context by the way, as I have been playing since Civ 1. On the Amiga.

Ha! I'm an "old timer" as well as I started playing Civ 1 on the Amiga too! Was it two discs or three?

Civ 2 on the PC is when the addiction really started though.

 

[vorlon_mi]

You may have been playing civ4 too long to accept some of the changes. I love Civ6, and last time I tried to go back to Civ4 I couldn't get into it. Despite loving the game. Building nearly the same thing in every city in civ4 can get annoying.

I will give you that warfare in Civ4 could be more interesting (and much more dangerous). But that game had some annoyances as well like being restricted by how large you can expand your empire or you'll just run out of money.

Maybe some of my love for civ6 is because I wasn't the greatest fan of civ5, though the 2nd expansion did improve that game to a playable state. So to me, Civ6 was a step up, even though the game wasn't in a great state at launch (things like religious units not having their own layer). As for my playstyle, I love the building aspects of Civ6, but I also like to warmonger as well.

I enjoy Civ6 for different reasons than I enjoy Civ4. But I want to quibble with your assertion that "Building nearly the same thing in every city" was a Civ4 hallmark.

In my experience, it was Civ5 that all but mandated "cookie cutter cities." Over in the Civ4 forums, they encourage specialization of cities. One with high production to build lots of units; a Bureaucracy capital with lots of gold producing buildings; one city with key wonders to generate lots of Great People points. Smaller cities were often set to produce "Wealth", that is, convert hammers(production) into gold, but the core cities were much more specialized. Civ4 restricted the *rate* of expansion of your empire, but never limited the overall *size* of your empire. Cities needed to grow to a certain size where they could pay for themselves. You were free to expand further after growth. Indeed, one of the victory conditions is expanding so that your empire (both you and your vassals) covers > 60% of the entire planet.

Civ6 certainly improved on the global happiness mechanic that I found onerous in Civ5. One of the attractions I still have for BERT is that it's possible to research / affinity / grow one's way out of negative global health. Planning districts, tracking era score, and responding to eurekas are fun for me in a way that Civ5 was not.

 

[brewgod]

I am bored of the World Congress. I don't really use it much to my advantage. Since I usually at war with other Civ's I don't have much with points to vote anyway. Builders are proven to be my number built unit.

 

[Patine]

I am bored of the World Congress. I don't really use it much to my advantage. Since I usually at war with other Civ's I don't have much with points to vote anyway. Builders are proven to be my number built unit.

As I've often said, I find the World Congress in Civ6, and from what I've heard in Civ5 (which I haven't played) as tantamount to fairy dust and magic fantasy, given the conduct, foundering, and failings of the RW League of Nations and UN, or even the EU, and the very nature of nations in their interactions with such Supranational bodies.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Hey OP - agree 100%. BTW - Civ V with the vox populi mod is a decent Civ game (can't have vox populi for Civ VI because devs refused to release dll code/lua API).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yeah, this is something I miss from CIV V, liked being able to make sensible roads between cities. I mean it's not a dealbreaker for me but...

It's not a dealbreaker for me either, just a small thing I wish they had kept. While it might seem like I generally hate any instance of micro management, I think manually creating roads is the kind of which makes sense. It is a meaningful choice, both about where to the roads should go, and when you should make the investment of worker time and gold maintenance to have them built. It is also something which you will eventually be more or less done with, meaning it doesn't add to the late game workload.

I am curious about how this will be handled in Civ 7, and also whether they will go back to Workers, stick with Builders, or choose an entirely different approach to creating tile improvements.

Well, you actually can build your own roads. You just have to use a Military Engineer to do that. And well that also requires investing in an Encampment and an Armory to be able to even produce one.

 

[universecreep]

The Civ series has always had excellent presentation and character that other 4x games (space or historical) are weaker or lack completely.

I may take a break from playing from time to time and try something different (playing Distant Worlds 2 now) but I always come back to Civ. It gives me that joy when I play I don't get from other games in the genre.

Firaxis hasn't let me down yet and I have great hopes for Civ 7 or whatever the next entry is.

 

[Patine]

The Civ series has always had excellent presentation and character that other 4x games (space or historical) are weaker or lack completely.

I may take a break from playing from time to time and try something different (playing Distant Worlds 2 now) but I always come back to Civ. It gives me that joy when I play I don't get from other games in the genre.

Firaxis hasn't let me down yet and I have great hopes for Civ 7 or whatever the next entry is.

I remember when Shogun: Total War 1, the first Total War game, was released, and Electronic Arts - that odd marketing aberration that you won't find a single who claims to anything but loathe the company, but it's always one of the biggest market contenders in the computer gaming market - made ads, in it's hyper-aggressive, counter-culture-youth-driven, motto-ridden marketspeak, that not only had they declared the Total War series in the 4x turf (which it wasn't), but that it was a, "Civ-killer." It's almost laughable to remember that, now...

 

[HktkNban]

My biggest complaint about Civ6 is that the AI players do not conquer each other's cities.
I play Civ as a historical reenactment simulator rather than a 4X game.
Therefore, I prefer to observe the rise and fall of civilizations around the world rather than optimizing everything for my own victory.

However, AI players are not able to take enemy cities because they are not good at controlling their units.
Because of this, the world in Civ6 is very peaceful and static. This fact disappointed me greatly.

Fortunately, this problem could be fixed to some extent by mods.
I used mods to reduce the HP of cities and defenses, increase the movement of units, and give AI units an anti-district combat bonus.
Additionally, increased the number of civilizations on the map to twice the normal number, making the map more overcrowded.
As a result, AI civilizations frequently went to war, conquered and retook many cities, and even led to the complete destruction of some civilizations by the end of the game.

The joy of Civ is not only to develop my own civilization, but also to observe the rise and fall of civilizations around the world.

 

[Patine]

My biggest complaint about Civ6 is that the AI players do not conquer each other's cities.
I play Civ as a historical reenactment simulator rather than a 4X game.
Therefore, I prefer to observe the rise and fall of civilizations around the world rather than optimizing everything for my own victory.

However, AI players are not able to take enemy cities because they are not good at controlling their units.
Because of this, the world in Civ6 is very peaceful and static. This fact disappointed me greatly.

Fortunately, this problem could be fixed to some extent by mods.
I used mods to reduce the HP of cities and defenses, increase the movement of units, and give AI units an anti-district combat bonus.
Additionally, increased the number of civilizations on the map to twice the normal number, making the map more overcrowded.
As a result, AI civilizations frequently went to war, conquered and retook many cities, and even led to the complete destruction of some civilizations by the end of the game.

The joy of Civ is not only to develop my own civilization, but also to observe the rise and fall of civilizations around the world.

See, this is what I love about Civ2. The AI players' are ALWAYS at each others' throats, and trashing each others' territory, even if the human player(s) aren't actively part of their conflicts at the time, at all.

 

[planetfall]

Just to clarify a few points others have made:

When I speak of the joy of civ4, what I am really talking about is BTS with active modding. The game itself needed work, but it was always fun with you could try a tweak and see the effect on game play.

BTS missed a few fun modern era units, but other than that, it was good. You could play with different number of specialized cities. One would be focused on science, another on production, another on military. When the fog of war cleared, it stayed clear so it was easier to plan ahead. Rainroads offered a faster tile transport movement feature. Naturally it was only fun when removed the key civ4 joy killer, corruption. One of the first mods to make to lower corruption so it was possible to build large empires. Another fun feature was the world builder, you could actually lay out resources and terrain features as you desired and then easily play the game. Civ6 has a primitive world builder, but not easy to load into game play and worst can't use world builder on a game in progress. Another great aspect was spying. Spies could enter a site and after gathered points, you could see the entire city production AND completed buildings. You also got bonuses from a state religion and because costly, no endless stream of missionaries.

BTS has some aspects that can't be changed. Too many roads. There was no way to get an advantage of having a 3 tier structure: empty space, roads, railroads. Thus every open tile had a RR on it. Diplomacy was primative, and easiest fix was to disable/downgrade it. Navies were primitive but since you had to build ships, you had real control of armadas. Much more fun to have an armada with trailing transports for new settlers to take over a new land. You had to carefully consider the mix and number of naval vessels. Once you had a foothold, then navies disappeared and were replace by air transport.

For now, I'm learning changing gameplay with civ6. Right now I'm focusing on comfort with the core gameplay, so remove distractions.
No barbs, no goody huts, one win method at a time, no team play, play one civ til get it's strength/weakness and then try others, no GS, and never R&F. As with any game, there are many items that are not revealed in notes, or forums. Policy options is something missing from BTS and are an interesting addition to gameplay. Districts are a nice change BUT district adjacency wreaks the play as you are forced into the same placement and city development is more boring than it need be.

Still missing the joy, but open to discovering new insights. Thank you all for your comments.

 

[KayAU]

As I've often said, I find the World Congress in Civ6, and from what I've heard in Civ5 (which I haven't played) as tantamount to fairy dust and magic fantasy, given the conduct, foundering, and failings of the RW League of Nations and UN, or even the EU, and the very nature of nations in their interactions with such Supranational bodies.

I think it is fine as a concept. I get that there is no real world counterpart with this amount of direct and absolute power, but I think the World Congress serves as a stand-in for a number of things in the real world, which would otherwise not be represented. Sanctions, international agreements and cooperative projects do exist, and do have an impact. If you think about it, everything in civ is a simplified stand-in for something much more complex and nuanced in the real world. Building a library, which generates beakers, to unlock Archery, isn't all that realistic either.

The World Congress in Civ 5 is very different,and a lot better than the one in Civ 6, in my opinion. For one thing, it actually works as a gameplay device. You can influence what is being voted on, you can influence how other civs vote, and other civs will care what you do there. This means it is something you can strategise about. In Civ 6 you can't even completely control what you yourself are voting for. I also think the resolutions in Civ 5 make a lot more sense. Civ 6's resolutions are a mix of the mundane (ban luxury), the nonsensical (buying units with faith is cheap now), and the bizarre (global ban on Lighthouses, no one can physically build Lighthouses anymore!).

The Civ 5 World Congress also has the purpose of giving you something different to do in the late game, when things like micro-managing your cities becomes a smaller part of the game, and things like ideologies and cooperative projects become a bigger part.

 

[KayAU]

Well, you actually can build your own roads. You just have to use a Military Engineer to do that. And well that also requires investing in an Encampment and an Armory to be able to even produce one.

Yes, you are right. I'm aware of this way to build roads, but it tends to come a bit too late, and it is seems more of an afterthought than the intended way to do things.

 

[newtociv6]

See, this is what I love about Civ2. The AI players' are ALWAYS at each others' throats, and trashing each others' territory, even if the human player(s) aren't actively part of their conflicts at the time, at all.

And this is how it was done before.

civ 6 feels like post-modern world being ported back to ancient era. Everything about diplomacy, climate concerns and congress are totally wrong until the last era.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The World Congress in Civ 5 is very different,and a lot better than the one in Civ 6, in my opinion

I think this is a universally shared opinion, as I havent heard anyone say they prefer the system in civ 6.
Thus I have no idea why the developers made this inferior system, nor any idea of why they didnt scrap it later on.

 

[KayAU]

I think this is a universally shared opinion, as I havent heard anyone say they prefer the system in civ 6.
Thus I have no idea why the developers made this inferior system, nor any idea of why they didnt scrap it later on.

Well...this is one of my main complaints about Civ 6. Were any systems or features ever significantly changed or refined from how they were first released? It seems that the focus has been on adding content, rather than to refine what's already there. I understand this from a financial standpoint, as new content sells and generates excitement. But I think the quality of the game has suffered as a result.

I realise I sound very negative, but please don't get me wrong. I don't think Civ 6 is a bad game, it's just that it had the potential to be much better. There are so many good and interesting ideas in it, and if they had focused more on improving rather than adding, it could have been amazing.