Why does civ 6 feel so much easier than the older civ games?

"There are more cards that boost trade"

Except they're universal, my point isn't that the "Trade Routes are useless", iut's that the origin often makes little difference

There's like a handful policies actually make changes to the trade routes where it matters where from or where to you are sending a trade route, every one else is "For each trade route, gain X".

 

The main challenge of Civ4 to me was trying to guess where the SOD would pull up. I usually only played King difficulty in that game. Even on King those stacks could really be be big. I tried too hard to equally defend all my cities which is a bit of a mistake in Civ4. You need a stack of your own to defend against that AI stack. You just need to have it in the right position. As much as I love that game, I haven't really been able to play a full game of Civ4 again. I tried a couple years ago, but only got about 1/4 of the way through. I still like the animals in the beginning though.

Compare that with Civ6 where walls and an archer can often hold back enemy forces on Emperor difficulty. Though having a melee unit nearby is sometimes necessary. It's almost child's play to beat back attacks provided you have the troops to do it. Only time people run into trouble is those attacks in the first 50 turns, and god forbid you have your units out exploring or on the other side of your land. Right now, loyalty is the most challenging thing in the game to me. Often when I'm striking back against the AI who is larger than me, and it's usually the case I'm in a dark age. Ugh. It's tedious, but I can get it done.

 

Often I see an AI yield an attack against me with a number of melee and ranged units combined with a battering ram, and I think "that can become troublesome", only to have the march the battering ram back and forth between tiles 2 and 3 hexes from the city instead of bringing it in where it would make a difference. It is indeed really easy to defend in Civ6, but often that's due to the complete lack of AI competence.

 

The improvements in civ 4 is also very balanced. Doesnt matter so much which improments you build. But in civ 6 correct district placement and improvements can make supertiles. Which the AI cant.
So it is very hard to win peacefully in civ 4, thhe easiest way to win in civ 4 is actually warfare where you learn how ai plays and counter it.

Also remember starting units on emperor in civ 6 = diety in civ 4.

But the AI in civ 6 needs to build and upgrade units much more. But I believe the AI is programmed to be passive and not wanting to win because people likes to build their civilization in peace.

 

Simply removing 1UPT would improve Civ6 so much, because the way everything else works in that game means you won’t see megastacks because units are so expensive.

Your’re entire military in Civ6 might be a dozen units depending on map scale

 

No, buying you units with faith means a human chainsaw anytime you want.
And there are plenty of other ways to get a huge stack quickly as well.
And therefore we are back to civ IV with a huge stack of xbows appearing over a hill, not my idea of a fun game.

 

Right, forgot about the broken nonsense intoduced by the expansions

So you actually balance the game properly, keep the unit density from being absurd, remove stacking, and you now have the upsides of both and the downsides of neither Stack nor Carpet of doom.

 

The Firaxis people are not noobs at this. and Humankind just shows how easy it is to make things snowball.
I am not convinced it is as easy as a couple of sentences.

 

Was faith buying introduced by expansions?

 

There are ways to get a lot of units in Civ6. Moreover, the larger the map/Empire the more units can be built but the area of the battle may not be larger. Limited stacking would solve a lot of issues. (Still do not understand the problem people with Civ4 stacks though. You counter enemy stacks with your own army just as in any other strategy game. The defender has a huge advantage in Civ4 and it's not like the AI is bright either. Of course, you need to have some units.)

 

No idea, I’ve been playing the basic game for a while. Maybe with Theocracy?

 

Rise and fall. Grand Masters Chapel

 

It was in base game too, I'm not sure if it was in a belief like in Civ 5 or with the Theocracy government in base game.

 

Right. The player can still generate carpets of units easily. That's why explanations like "its tedious" seem so silly. This thread about why the AI can't compete, not why some people preferred stacks. The AI in 6 dont use their production bonus. Plain and simple.

With stacks you still had to build stacks which meant rallying units built by half a dozen different cities, micromanage their composition then tell them to attack the same tile 20 times. Definition of filling buckets. Tedious.

I liked 3 and 4 though, every bit as much as I liked 5 and 6. I don't exactly understand the "tedious" complaints because I'm playing an empire sim 4x game where micromanaging citizens, builders, buildings, etc is the path to victory. Tedious seems a weird complaint in this genre.

 

Since we don't have access to the source code, we can't improve the tactical AI. Period.

But it would be interesting if it were possible to teach AI to create more units throughout the war. That is, to quickly replace those that were killed. AI wouldn't get any smarter, of course; but surely wars would be more interesting.

By the way, does anyone know if it is possible to distinguish the production bonus between buildings and units? Is there a mod for that? It would be interesting if there was a way to increase the bonus for units only (making troop replacement faster), preventing the bonus on buildings from making it impossible to compete for wonders.

 

I'd assume so. The different production policies would indicate that.

 

I got Old World last month, and it's really driven home how much Civs V and VI suffer from the AI's ineptitude: The combat is 1UPT-based, designed in a reasonably similar fashion to Civ; the major tactical differences are the increased variety of unit classes (ala Civ IV), the lack of innate defensive bombardment in cities (I'd be interested in seeing a mod for Civ V or VI that implemented this), and the lack of automatic healing for cities (they need to perform the "Repair Defenses" project), all of which are good, IMO, but none of which shift the combat-paradigm. What really stands out is the AI's comprehension of the battlefield; rarely does it waste a unit, and it's fairly decent at knowing which enemy units to prioritize attacking; its army-composition is also effective, often besting mine. It's not perfect, but it frequently produces formidable opponents that seem to have half-a-clue what they're doing. What I'm trying to longwindedly say is that it made me realize that a lot of dissatisfaction expressed with the warfare mechanics of V and VI really stems from the AI's poor grasp of them. I think that, but for that flaw, everyone would sing the praises of 1UPT.