Which is the “best” Civ (1-6) and why?

[Marla_Singer]

Simplification or "dumbing down" mechanics is a common strategy to reach a larger market, and casual gamers are a significant captive audience. The term is not intended to be derogatory in any way. If it seems so, we can consider using a substitute word, you can choose one that better fits the tone to your liking. However, my main point remains unchanged

Civ5 and Civ6 did streamline some mechanics, but in the meantime they also incorporated newer ones, like tourism, influence, loyalty, adjacencies and so on. So in the end, it doesn't necessarily make "simpler" games.

For instance, in Civ7 they removed workers because that was considered "tedious micromanagement", but now that cities are unpacked (meaning that they spread all over neighbouring tiles), workers just don't make sense as you build your cities all over its radius instead. I'm not sure that deciding on which tile you build your library to get the best adjacency bonuses is any less "tedious micromanagement" than building a mine on a hill.

Fundamentally, the core problem is that the game is always more guided towards an intended direction. It totally lost the open-end sandbox feeling of the earlier games in which you had no clue how the game would evolve when you initiated it. As a matter of fact, even Civ5 and Civ6 players complain about that about Civ7. If the purpose is to attract a broader more casual audience this way, I'm not sure that's a good one. Open-end sandbox games as diverse as Factorio, Stardew Valley or Cities: Skylines are all very popular, proving there's a large market for that. It's not just a niche.

 

[r16]

help me with the maths here . This interview says 33 million copies sold , 8 of them V .

https://venturebeat.com/games/how-bruce-shelley-brought-a-board-gamers-view-to-designing-civilization/

1,5 for l , 3 for ll , 3 for IV , 8 for V . What's missing here ?

 

[Gorbles]

I get that, that's why I bring that up because despite having way more fun playing Civilization 1 and 2 when I was a kid, revisiting that series can't really reenact the same enjoyment as when I'm revisiting Civilization 4, while Civilization 4 is as good as the way I played it back in the day. Hence, in a way, it's objectively good. Sure, that doesn't mean it’s devoid of any personal preference or other subjectivity, but there's an element of objectivity in it being as good as I remember playing it decades ago, unlike Civ 1 or 2.

I get that. I still play Borderlands 2 (and 3, to be fair, and no doubt I'll play 4). A better example for me would be Dawn of War II. Or even SMAC, which I dip into occasionally.

Well, dumbing down is a common term that's widely used; that's why I used that expression, but removing unnecessary complexity pretty much defines it well. We can use that. Similar to how it simplifies the complexity of how religion works or policies work, 1upt is basically part of that simplification package. I argue that instead of improving what already worked and was good in the previous Civilization games, which were pretty much a source of inspiration for many other big title strategy games, shifting to 1upt brought a lot of follow-up problems that needed to be readdressed and endlessly fixed in the upcoming series, which is just not a good decision. My question is simple, is 1upt working well right now, or is it still problematic?

Shifting to 1UPT was never the only answer. I'm sure there were other answers, with their own trade-offs, benefits, and drawbacks. But it was the choice that was made, and subsequent iterations (post-V) have been tinkering with it to find more of a sweet spot.

Whether or not it works well depends immensely on whether or not you enjoy the tactical feeling of combat. Hex positioning matters. Unit range matters. At the same time, you're limited by the amount of units you can fit on the relevant hexes. I think Army Commanders are a very good way of handling the issues with logistics; with movement. But they won't do anything if you dislike the change in how actual combat unfolds. That's very much going to be a preference thing, and nobody is wrong for liking or disliking it.

Factorio, Stardew Valley or Cities: Skylines

Notably, none of these are turn-based 4x games. I guess you could call Factorio technically turn-based?

The "sandbox" argument has also been done relatively do death. "sandbox" is again a vibes-based phrase. It basically means the illusion of freedom. When players feel railroaded, it doesn't actually matter if they are or not. The same goes for when they don't. Take any number of "corridor shooters" from the 00s and compare it to HL2, which is a masterclass in being a "corridor shooter" but not actually making it obvious to the player. You even say this by calling it a "sandbox feeling". I've always known how my Civ. games will go, because I often play them in a specific way. On higher difficulties, you even have to. Deity runs can be ruined by a single misclick at times. That's not a sandbox. That's laser-guided precision.

(and I'm not even a good Civ. player)

 

[Marla_Singer]

help me with the maths here . This interview says 33 million copies sold , 8 of them V .

https://venturebeat.com/games/how-bruce-shelley-brought-a-board-gamers-view-to-designing-civilization/

1,5 for l , 3 for ll , 3 for IV , 8 for V . What's missing here ?

3 for III and 11 for VI. But you're right, the maths aren't there still:
1.5 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 8 + 11 = 29.5

So there are 3.5 million missing.

 

[r16]

.5 millions for lll ...

edit: Sorry, just noticed . The article apparently has no mention of VI or with VI it is not 33 but 40 or whatever and ever ..

 

[Marla_Singer]

View attachment 725389

.5 millions for lll ...

edit: Sorry, just noticed . The article apparently has no mention of VI or with VI it is not 33 but 40 or whatever and ever .

Yeah that's what I told earlier, neither Firaxis nor 2K published official numbers of units sold. Therefore that's all very speculative.

 

[H4run]

That's very much going to be a preference thing, and nobody is wrong for liking or disliking it.

For combat specific, I may like 1upt more than stack, it's more entertaining, but it just doesn't work well for a civ game where you want to build a huge empire and army, unless you limit the unit production or the number of players in the game, or you increase the map so it can accommodate it at the expense of the game being much more demanding to run or at the expense of tuning down the graphics (which is a fair option to me, but I believe that will never be an option to consider). And let's say if we magically manage to pull that off (a huge scale 1upt civ game with beautiful graphics and light on the machine), micro-managing the units in the late game will simply be a nightmare.

Hence why the 1upt may be the culprit for the follow-up Civ games after Civ 4 not being able to achieve the huge empire-building that Civ 4 and the previous Civ series were usually able to attain. And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

How big is the largest world scenario for Civ 5, 6, and 7? In Civ 4, it's around 18 civs, and if modded, you can have way more than that, and it runs perfectly well. It has a great balance of early, mid, and end game. What about the other series? I played Civ 5, but that's about it, I barely even remember.

 

[Gorbles]

For combat specific, I may like 1upt more than stack, it's more entertaining, but it just doesn't work well for a civ game where you want to build a huge empire and army, unless you limit the unit production or the number of players in the game, or you increase the map so it can accommodate it at the expense of the game being much more demanding to run or at the expense of tuning down the graphics (which is a fair option to me, but I believe that will never be an option to consider). And let's say if we magically manage to pull that off (a huge scale 1upt civ game with beautiful graphics and light on the machine), micro-managing the units in the late game will simply be a nightmare.

Hence why the 1upt may be the culprit for the follow-up Civ games after Civ 4 not being able to achieve the huge empire-building that Civ 4 and the previous Civ series were usually able to attain. And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

How big is the largest world scenario for Civ 5, 6, and 7? In Civ 4, it's around 18 civs, and if modded, you can have way more than that, and it runs perfectly well. It has a great balance of early, mid, and end game. What about the other series? I played Civ 5, but that's about it, I barely even remember.

I don't know how large scenarios or maps get. That said, 1UPT doesn't seem to be the problem when rendering large maps hits issues over X,000 tiles. This is something I am aware of, being semi-active in the modder channels on the official Civ. Discord.

What we should ask is: how large should scenarios or maps get? That's the thing when it comes to design. If you want to mod a game with 10 tiles to have 250, and you can do that . . . does that mean you should? Will the rest of the game's systems hold up under that kind of design change?

Expanding 10 to 15 is obviously a different argument. Just like expanding 100 to 150 is.

But when it comes to games design, things are designed within certain parameter sets. If Firaxis wanted to make a more massively-scaled world (in terms of the number of hexes), the game wouldn't look like it currently does.

 

[Lexicus]

Been playing since Civ 1

Not exactly, because you totally skipped 3 and 4 iirc.

 

[Gorbles]

Not exactly, because you totally skipped 3 and 4 iirc.

And some people skipped V and VI. What does it matter?

Marla was making a much more egregious assumption about the behaviour of those who play V and VI, which is what I was responding to. Nitpick that!

 

[Kyriakos]

Imo it's not impossible for CivVII to become very popular (eg more popular than previous titles).
But at the same time I feel that (according to the reviews and videos of it I am aware of) it is perhaps the most drastically different civ title in the series.
Then again, assuming that most of the buyers are new, this can't be the deciding factor.

 

[Lexicus]

And some people skipped V and VI. What does it matter?

It means that a more accurate characterization than "I've been playing since civ 1" would be "I played 1 and 2, then came back for 5." This has some significance because I think relatively few people are thinking of 1 and 2 when they defend the older doomstack civ franchise entries: most are probably thinking of 4. You're right that is mostly just a nitpick though.

I also don't really think "casual" is a derogatory term, not everyone wants to dive into a game and learn all the mechanics asap so they can minmax (not the only possible casual-hardcore axis, to be clear) and that's totally fine. If anything casual gamers are more likely to have healthy balance in their lives instead of playing games for like 20 hours straight and forgetting to eat. Which I, uh, have totally never done.

 

[Lexicus]

Imo it's not impossible for CivVII to become very popular (eg more popular than previous titles).

I actually think civ 7 multiplayer has the potential to be huge as a spectator esport.

 

[Marla_Singer]

And some people skipped V and VI. What does it matter?

Marla was making a much more egregious assumption about the behaviour of those who play V and VI, which is what I was responding to. Nitpick that!

I wasn't targetting you and I'm sorry if you took it personally. I was actually thinking about what I could read on the civ subreddit. The knowledge of the franchise before Civ5 is generally very limited over there.

 

[H4run]

I also don't really think "casual" is a derogatory term, not everyone wants to dive into a game and learn all the mechanics asap so they can minmax (not the only possible casual-hardcore axis, to be clear) and that's totally fine. If anything casual gamers are more likely to have healthy balance in their lives instead of playing games for like 20 hours straight and forgetting to eat. Which I, uh, have totally never done.

Exactly, thank you Lexi, I'm trying to be cool with the tone refereeing because we've got good history and are pretty much on board with much heavier topics, this one, though, is about a Civ game, very trivial topic it's not a hill for me to fight for but at its core I heavily disagree that the word "casual" is inherently derogatory or that my use of it is dismissive. I'm pretty much a casual gamer compared to someone who plays games like Hearts of Iron, Dark Souls, or Sekiro for many different reasons mostly because I don't have the time or, sometimes, the patience to play them. At the end of the day, I play to have fun, and with that level of difficulty, I just can't extract the fun.

Does that make me more of a casual gamer compared to those who love those games? Yes. Does that make them better gamers or person than me? No. I just don't like that level of complexion. By not any mean I'm a casual gamer, there are level to it, and there are lots of peoples like you say, just want to play a much simpler game and having fun without having to spend a huge amount of time to learn or enjoy a game.

 

[Gorbles]

It means that a more accurate characterization than "I've been playing since civ 1" would be "I played 1 and 2, then came back for 5." This has some significance because I think relatively few people are thinking of 1 and 2 when they defend the older doomstack civ franchise entries: most are probably thinking of 4. You're right that is mostly just a nitpick though.

I also don't really think "casual" is a derogatory term, not everyone wants to dive into a game and learn all the mechanics asap so they can minmax (not the only possible casual-hardcore axis, to be clear) and that's totally fine. If anything casual gamers are more likely to have healthy balance in their lives instead of playing games for like 20 hours straight and forgetting to eat. Which I, uh, have totally never done.

"casual" is a bugbear of mine, particularly as tribalism to any given iteration of a game in a franchise applies to, well, every fanbase (even the ones that think it doesn't). I see this in the AoE community a lot as well (which is the only other game community I'm really embedded in to any similar extent - anecdotes, ho ).

I wasn't targetting you and I'm sorry if you took it personally. I was actually thinking about what I could read on the civ subreddit. The knowledge of the franchise before Civ5 is generally very limited over there.

And this kind of demographical shift is why I said CFC wasn't statistically-relevant r.e. a metric for success. Neither is reddit, or wherever else. Each of these communities represents a different kind of snapshot, and in turn attract different kinds of users. I'm sure reddit has Opinions™ on CFC as well, whether they consider the average poster here too critical, too old, or too whatever (there could be positive descriptors as well, but communities weirdly tend to exist in competition, and not collaboration, these days. Platforms like Discord are starting to blur the line a bit though).

As a complete tangent: I think there's a "reddit vs. classical forums" antagonism in general (again, I see this in the AoE community).

 

[Kyriakos]

As a complete tangent: I think there's a "reddit vs. classical forums" antagonism in general (again, I see this in the AoE community).

You are full of surprises
Are you active as an AoE player, or just lurk/post in the subreddit?

 

[amadeus]

I'm sure reddit has Opinions™ on CFC as well, whether they consider the average poster here too critical, too old, or too whatever (there could be positive descriptors as well, but communities weirdly tend to exist in competition, and not collaboration, these days.

Doing a bit of digging, the results always came back with positive feedback, mainly regarding improving the strategy of the players that perused the forum.

I think there is overall less awareness we exist if anything. I mean, how many games do you play, and how many forums for said games can you think of? We probably make up an older cohort that is (a.) more familiar with old BBS systems and (b.) have had more experience overall with games in the series.

 

[Gorbles]

You are full of surprises
Are you actively as an AoE player, or just lurk/post in the subreddit?

Semi-active. Was more active a year or two ago.

I think there is overall less awareness we exist if anything. I mean, how many games do you play, and how many forums for said games can you think of? We probably make up an older cohort that is (a.) more familiar with old BBS systems and (b.) have had more experience overall with games in the series.

Perhaps! But they maintain a presence in the strategy genres, I find (forums). Definitely on the way out considering the ubiquitous nature of stuff like Discord (that developers can also benefit from).

 

[Marla_Singer]

As a complete tangent: I think there's a "reddit vs. classical forums" antagonism in general (again, I see this in the AoE community).

We couldn't have that conversation on Reddit because unpopular opinions are downvoted and removed. Considering that in the context of this thread you're the minority here in defending 1UPT, that would make of you the victim of it. And as your visibility on the platform depends on your overall karma, that leads people to only post things that they think will be upvoted. It's like the ultimate echo chamber machine pressuring everyone to conformity. Now it's true that all social platforms are becoming echo chambers, including forums. The "like" button already has that effect to give a weight to messages that could discourage people to post the counterpoints necessary to make a discussion more productive. Except that you can still do it, whereas it's much harder on Reddit.

As for the death of forums, that's nothing new. In the 2000's, Google returned forums threads as search results. This massively contributed to the rise of websites such as this one. Google stopped doing so something like 15 years ago and now it's reddit discussions which are sent as search results. But this is changing again with the rise of chatGPT and other AIs which are much better than Google to find relevant sources to a search request.