[GS] Your 3 best and 3 worst things about Civ 6

[konokono]

Best

Districts/Placement - I love how geographic location is more important than ever.

Unique Civ Abilities - Civs feel more unique than ever and that's a great thing for replayability

Graphics - I actually really enjoy the bright cartoony graphics

Worst

Bad AI - they're just not that engaging to play with and the biggest thing stopping me from returning to the game more often

Tall v Wide Imbalance - tips too much in favor of wide. Makes expansion too much of a priority regardless of desires victory path

Diplomacy System - especially world Congress. Just incredibly unflavorful and comes too early. Even for an arcade historical game, it's out of place

 

[Garth Vader]

Best:

Eurekas/boosts. I like that there is a random element to the tech trees now. In 5 I tended to research in a similar order and take the same civics trees. Now it's more of a combination of taking what's fastest while waiting to complete a boost.

Districts/land management. I don't actually "like" this but it does give a different feel and has a puzzle aspect that is what makes the game compelling to play.

Worst:

UI/graphics. There is a lot that's been changed from a gameplay perspective that I don't really like but it's an attempt to be different and that's good for the series. I have played every Civ over the years and sometimes new ideas take some time to get fleshed out into good gameplay. But there is no aspect to the UI that's improved, and in many cases features have been removed for no apparent reason. The one that seems to bother me the most is the trade screen. I used to be able to sort by any field. What's the route that nets me the most gold, OK I'll do that route. How do I do that now? Scroll through page after page of available routes. Isn't that fun. How do I find the city that has the most production? That's a lot more scrolling.

Tedium. Everything takes more time and is more difficult to manage. You need to keep rebuilding builders. You should really be swapping policy cards all the time. Governors should be moving all the time. Changed movement rules mean that most units finish a turn with moves and require extra clicking to move through them. Automated movement seems even worse than before. Or does that go into the UI issues. Religious combat is boring. More cities mean a lot more combat if you want a conquest victory. Less variety in units can grind conquest to a halt as you want an extra era for an improved unit. Diplomatic and cultural victories seem almost random. Tech victory is a long drawn out process.

World congress. Voting mechanism is bizarre. Resolutions range from punishing to pointless. Starts when half the empires haven't met the other half.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Long time Civ player here. With 2 expansions done and dusted (hopefully more content coming soon), I wondered what everyone's 3 best and 3 worst things were about Civ 6?

My 3 best:

1) Eurekas and inspirations - it is fun and intuitive to get help for science or culture depending on what you are doing e.g. clearing barbarians can help your military. I also think it was the right decision to split the science and culture trees. It would be good to get a bit more variety though after a while
2) The variety of civilisations - In older games I remember they tended to have 5 or 6 leader types. I think Firaxis have done really well, particularly in GS, at coming up with new civs with different strategies, for example, a Hungary game will be very different from a Mali game, which will both be very different from a Dido game
3) Eleanor of Aquitaine - I find her games to be so fun! It takes some work getting it set up but when you start peacefully rolling through another civ it is deeply satisfying.

My 3 worst:

1) Diplomacy - it's too static. You meet Gilga on turn 10 and 4,000 years later you have a level 3 alliance and you know that your ally will never betray you. I remember in earlier incarnations that if you were getting too powerful the AI would no longer ally with you or would gang up on you. I would like a more fluid diplomacy with more considerations of the balance of power.
2) Nice developer syndrome - Disasters were supposed to up the challenge for the player but they don't as implemented. Your city gets hit by Vesuvius and loses 4 pop. Oh well, with the increased fertility it will be back soon. If disasters/rising sea level could completely destroy your cities it would be much more of a challenge.
3) Lack of strategic choices in the late game - The early game is really interesting with exploration and lots of trade offs such as building a settler or a holy site. Your decisions really matter. By the mid-to-late game you know how you are going to win and is there is rarely any more strategy to it e.g. science victory - spam campuses, build IZs, build spaceports, get some aluminium, get certain GPs,win. You are still making decisions but a lot of them don't really matter that much.

Best:

Civ flavor/diversity: I actually feel like the civs play differently (some much more than others) in Civ V the weird bonuses felt obscure and in practice outside of a few outliers (Venice) all the civs felt the same.

Loyalty: I like it but I wish it was more impactful. I’ve been a fan of a region system and regions rebelling.

Graphics: I feel like the graphics are an insane upgrade from V which felt bland and uninspired. The game feels vibrant and alive.


Worst:

World Congress: love the idea hate the implementation. I’d rather they just copy and pasted Civ V’s Congress.

Era Score: tedious to keep up with. I don’t disagree with the idea but again the implementation just makes it feel like a tedious side chore and increases the feeling I’m playing a board game rather than leading a civilization.

Wide > Tall - I’d like some better balance here. Certainly not the cookie cutter builds of V but some different options. Really I’d like there to be a great deal more of immersion. I want some dynamic play too. Snowballing is boring.

 

[9167]

3 Favorite things
-Music is fantastic as always
-Civ choices are decently diverse and there are some unique and fun civs, feels like everyone gets something to play with. Obv the cubs that rely on certain cassis belli are the worst but whatever
-combat is a step up from V in a lot of ways

least favorite
-general readability of the game is horrid. This includes stuff like hills being very hard to spot, to the UI being absolutely terrible. Why can’t I sort trade routes by yield? The culture victory screen is way worse than the culture screen in Civ v with very clear expanding tourism bars. It’s very hard to be invested in a lot of these things when they are needlessly obscured by bad UI and readability.
-the victory conditions seem very separate. Imo a better designed game the steps leading to each victory condition would benefit every other condition for the most part. There is obv some of that in Civ 6, but but to my knowledge tourism doesn’t have the same effects it has in Civ V, it just seems like thing you only care about if you are specifically going for CV. Same with diplomatic victory points. Or even religion for that matter. Each separate victory should be more integrated into the whole game.
-the general art style and culture of the game is a bit too comical for my tastes. While I do think the leaders look really good, they are still very silly. Running around with units that look like they are out of an off brand Pixar film feels the same way, as do the sarcastic bad joke quotes that come with technology or wonders. Where is the gravity of older games? I get that it’s a video game but I’m building a civilization to stand the test of time

 

[Atlas627]

3 Best:

1) You are encouraged to play the map. With adjacency bonuses for improvements and districts, and specific location requirements for wonders, the map really matters. As it is the best type of RNG (variety, but you can and need to adapt to it), it really makes Civ6 way better than the older games on its own. I went back and played a few different other Civ games and I had forgotten just how much I didn't care what the map looked like. Since one of the Xs is supposed to be Exploration, it helps a lot to care about what the uncovered map looks like.

2) Civ variety is great. The powers are significantly different and encourage use of different areas of the game, allowing for the game itself to be more complex without overwhelming new players. I wish they were actually roughly equal in terms of usefulness and interest-generation...but at least the graphics and music for each Civ are also fantastic. In fact, the graphics and music in general are great.

3) Eurekas and Inspirations. Having small quests during the game and changing your tech tree progress from game to game based not only on what you want to unlock (which can easily form a meta) but also on what you can discount is really good for variety.

3 Worst:

1) It is still a race game. I don't care how many "different ways" there are to win the game. At the end of the day, the game is all about snowball, and we all know there is that annoying point where you realize you will inevitably win yet have to keep playing. And they can't change that because it is a race game.

2) Religious everything. I love Ed Beach's religious conflict in Here I Stand, because it is a cool area control game interleaved with a military area control game, and the 2 actually affect each other. In Civ6, you already have a tactical area control game using military so this is a missed opportunity to do something cool with religious conflict, since they barely even affect each other. Furthermore, the whole race to get a religion is awful. By making you invest into getting a religion, you must get a reward for that investment. But since it is possible to fail that investment, many people just won't invest and then won't interact with the system at all. And the system has very little interactivity in the first place, since you end up with giant swaths of religion and conversion is such a chore, and it isn't even that rewarding of a chore because goddamn the numbers are all off. Which brings me to...

3) Game balance is just terrible. Half of the mechanics aren't worth using because they are so horribly undertuned that they have no impact. Am I seriously investing in a religion just so I can get +1 science and gold per city with a Campus and Commercial Hub? Like what? Why do all yield productions scale linearly so you can't make half the things you unlock? Why does it take 50 turns, which is 1/10 of the game *if you had no victory conditions enabled*, to build a district in a new city? At that point why even found a new city? Oh so now I HAVE to get Reyna or Moksha to their last promotion to even bother, and you know that the new city still won't pay for itself before the game is over, because of that silly race-to-the-end issue I mentioned? At least this stuff can usually be modded, but that's a lot of work. I have to thank Firaxis for making these mods work in multiplayer though, which is a godsend!

 

[Loerwyn]

These are based on 300ish hrs as a semi-competent player.

BEST:
1. Jadwiga - She's a little tricky to use and relies on a religion push to get the most out of her, but I feel she suits me perfectly and is easy enough to use.
2. Music - Civ VI has some of THE best music the series has ever had. It's even better now I disabled Aus so I don't have to listen to flippin' Waltzing Matilda ad nauseam
3. Range of civs - Quite a nice selection. I'd like more, I hope there will be more (and looks like there might be), with a nice selection of female leaders too.

WORST:
1. AI Leader Selection - I find it terrible, and barely random. Can almost guarantee Pedro is going to be in a game, and John Curtin was in loads (hence disabling Aus). I find I tend to get the same few leaders over and over again, rather than a wide range.
2. AI behaviour - City spamming is utterly abhorrent, and they do it without punishment. I tell them off (and it *costs me* to tell them off), and nothing changes. The dialogue makes this even more infuriating - Trajan settled near me twice, I asked him not to and he said "he didn't notice I was so near". Uh huh. That made it worse.
3. Random lack of polish - For a game from such an experienced studio, there's a lot of spots where there's a lack of polish. From the alerts you get in game being grammatically incorrect reasonably often (see example below), to visual bugs with the leader animations (and Tamar's anatomy! Yeesh, her arms are tiny - she's like a T-Rex!) and how the game just slows to a crawl later on, I feel like there's a lot more Firaxis could do to just bring the quality up another level.

 

[newbie2]

best

-civs and citystates feel more unique, improving replayability.

-unstacking the city with districts and adjencency bonuses is a nice puzzle.

-era's and eureka's/inspiration giving a nice short term goal. Agenda's make the AI feel less irrational


worst.

Just one: map generation and location spawn. As terrain now is more important than ever (adjency bonusses, eureka's, unique districts, even troop movement) it's just infuriating you or even the AI spawn in totally unhistorical/unsuited terrain. I am a reroller, I'll admit it. But starting in the desert 4/10 times as scotland is so stupid. Just like when you are nubia and you spawn in lush rainforest. And then you discover AI canada, who depends on tundra, spawned in your desert...

 

[InDubioProReo]

Now I havent played 6 as much as I played 5, but from what I can tell after 300 hours:

Best:
1) Districts
2) Eureka/Inspiration
3) Golden Age mechanics

Worst:
1) Graphics: I still cannot stand the cartoonish look. 5 looks much better imo, it looks realistic and serious. 6 is just goofy.
2) Music: 5 had more variety in music. All I hear in 6 are variations of leader themes, depending on the age. In 5, each civ had their own music in addition to music from their part of the world (Middle Eastern, Asian, Western etc.) I liked that more.
3) Complexity: Despite 1700 hours in 5, I still have no damn clue what I'm doing in this game. It just feels like a clicking game sometimes. Almost like a mobile game. In 5 I have a set build order in my mind, in 6 I just have no clue beyond building campus and industrial districts.

 

[trev1972]

Disclaimer, i have only played 3 games with the expansion (i put 300 hours into vanilla though and prob 30k hours into other civs )

Good
I like districts, the disasters are pretty nice, i like some of the unique traits too.
I like the natural wonders, and well- its civ!
I finally prefer the combat to stack of dooms

Bad
I have only being playing on king, since i am starting anew with 3 years of not playing. But it seems the AI does not want to win, mid game where i am generating 500gpt the AI will sell me all its spare luxuries and 20 influence points for 20gpt?
The AI also seems very incompetent with its military, and improvements.
Finally, hard to explain but it feels a bit....gamey!

EDIT by far the biggest issue is the usual one, endgame

I knew i had won- id controlled diplomacy points, was bristling with military and went for the science win.

Then endless long turns, with tonnes of notifications every turn making each turn slow- waiting for my parts to be finished .... endgame felt tedious.

 

[Abaxial]

It's interesting to see how some features keep coming up as good/bad, while others are divided. I loath the cartoonish graphics where the units seem to be made of plasticene, but others seem to like them, But everyone agrees that the game gets boring in the endgame, though that tends to be the fourth phase in any 4X game - where the player has basically won, and all that remains is to mop up. I will just mention two bad things that haven't cropped up, or not very much.

1. The lack of a proper, integrated map creator/editor. Still waiting.
2. The incessant popping up of animated leaders with totally time-wasting demands.Can't hit Esc fast enough.

I shudder to think of how much of the development budget was wasted on those leader animations, which budget could have been put to better use elsewhere. It reminds me of a story about two guys (this was about 30 years ago) working on a file management program. They decided they would like it that when the user deleted a file, there would be a little animation of a piece of paper being scrunched up and thrown in a basket, where it would burst into flame with a satisfying whoosh. They spent so long getting the animation and whoosh sound to be perfect that they then found they had no resources left to develop the actual program.

 

[Aldor]

I'll start with the worst points for me:
1) I feel that the early and mid game is really well done, but after the industrial era it just takes way too long to get to the game conclusion. I'm comparing it with games played in Civ 5 or Beyond Earth: With comparable settings, there it takes me about 3 hours to play through a game from start to finish. In Civ 6 that amount of time will get me to about the atomic/information era, and then it STILL takes a good amount longer to actually win (science victory, other VCs may go quicker). Of course time spent is only one factor, but an important one for me.
2) World congress. I don't actually care much about the votings, but it really annoys me if the world congress forms when I've not even met half the civs!
3) UI problems. Stuff like the permanent, pointless interruptions by other leaders (as mentioned in the post above), and the worst, these come twice: first with leader animation, you hit ESC to clear that, and then the same screen is shown again static. Why???
Or the build queue, which just can't stay activated. Civ 5 and Beyond Earth do this better IMO.
Another thing (although that is not entirely UI related): The terrible "next unit" selection which causes the view to jump all over the map all of the time, instead of going to the nearest active unit after the current one.

And the best things:
1) Freedom to expand! Not being bound by happiness or other restrictions is a big plus for me.
2) Separation of tech/civic trees. Very good thing, and I love the civic cards.
3) I actually like the game graphics.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The good:

1. The uniqueness of civs: Each civilization is very distinct, even putting civ 5 to shame which in turn put the other civ games to shame in that regard.
2. Options: The other civ games more or less forced you on a set path in order to win, civilization 6 on other hand seems to be much more free in what you can do in the early game, you can expand like crazy, you can build a military or you can build up what you have and all of them work.
3. The World feels alot more alive than past: Barbarians really play a big part in the early game, exploration is rewarding, districts and wonder make the terrain much more interesting and so on and of course late game you have global warming.

The bad:

1. Focus on harvesting and districts: Civilization VI is maybe the only 4x game which don't really encourage you to build up a civilization, like it is more about how many campuses, Theatre Squares you can get out and production from chopping trees outweight the production you get from factories many times over. This mean for optimal play you end up with a bunch of small villages each with a campues and maybe no tile improvement at all as builder charges are more valuable for chopping. Pillaging is also several times more effective than owning the infrastructure for some reason.
2. Poor phasing: The early game is good with alot of stuff to do but the mid and late game feel slow with Little interesting stuff going on and the effort needed to win is quite steep, even when you are in a complete dominant position which in many other games would very quickly lead to the win screen.
3. The ai, while probably not worse than in other game have alot of trouble playing the game as the game is designed. It hardly can't capture cities or use military effectively. It can maybe be a threat in winning a science victory or so but thats about it. Civilization 3 and 4 probably had a much more dangerous ai, if just because how the game mechanics worked better for the ai.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Best:
1. Adjacency/Map Matters - I love the puzzle involved in city management and district/wonder placement. This to me is 'The Petra effect'. It's fun to identify that perfect Campus spot just as it is to see a bunch of sweet desert hills ready for a Petra city. Having the map be important is what keeps me coming back to civ6.
2. City States/Envoys - I prefer the Envoy system more than the civ5 gold purchasing of CS. I also like the unique Suzerain bonuses. Just like 'Map matters', it gives you options that can guide your strategy.
3. Great People Uniqueness - I really enjoy the great person system, It's fun to fight for great people that can help shape my overall strategy (much like world wonders do) . However, I would like to see even more diversity to some of the effects they provide.

Worst:
1. Wide vs Tall Balance - I don't want players to be punished for expanding at all, but way too many of the game mechanics favour wide empires. It has already been said, but flat building yields kill the game balance. All the City state/Great people bonuses/policy cards exacerbate this even further by adding more flat yields. To me, a 30 pop city and a 1 pop city should not have the same Science output from its Campus. There needs to be some payoff for growing a large city in this game, because otherwise every game starts to look and play the same. This is the biggest turn off for me.
2. Policy Card Balance - Too many of the policy cards are almost worthless, and a lot need tweaking as they are too OP. I also don't enjoy the trudge of constantly swapping out minor bonuses and trying to figure out exactly how much gold City State envoys give me compared to trade route gold or whatever. I would prefer it if I made fewer choices but they had a larger impact on my overall strategy here. (like the civ 5 policies did)
3. Victory Condition Balance - I just don't think the victory conditions are well balanced. In multiplayer try winning by Religious victory/Diplomacy or even Tourism. You are gonna struggle, then you will just default to Science or Domination Victory. This also happens a lot in Single player, but is less noticeable because anything is possible against the AI. I understand that DV and SV have a certain inevitability to them, but I am bored of going into games putting my all into a certain Victory Condition only to say "this will be much quicker if I just go to Space instead"

Honorable mentions, AI's personality is one dimensional throughout the whole game
UI is generally bad
World Congess needs a lot of work

 

[Vahnstad]

Top 3:
- Districts and wonders on tiles
- Loyalty
- The civs

Worst 3:
- Map generation: i hate it. There is barely any jungle at all. Overcrammed. Every map is similar.
- Diplomacy
- Policy cards.

 

[_hero_]

Best

1. Truly unique and diverse feeling leaders/civs. Sometimes I feel like sitting back and having a peaceful world conquest as Eleanor. Other times I want to buy the universe as Mansa Musa. Other times I want to murder everyone and be rewarded for doing so as Alexander. You get the idea.
2. Districts/Wonders on maps looks cool. It makes it feel like your actions have shaped the world.
3. All victory methods are viable. Some previous civ games have had issues with this where certain victory conditions were way significantly harder than other ones.

Worst

1. Lack of challenge/AI is too predictable
2. Districts matter too much relative to improvements and pop growth and certain districts are way too strong relative to other districts
3. Lack of dev interaction with the community. If I look at the various gaming companies that I have much experience with, the Civ team at Firaxis leaves much to be desired. I have noticed that whenever a company like Paradox puts out a dev diary, I get tempted to play the game even if I didn't like what I heard in the interview. Whenever the Civ 6 team has unveiled new content, I end up returning to the game even before the content is released if for no other reason than because hearing about the new things has gotten me excited about the game again. I understand that the gaming community can be awful to devs who put themselves in front of the public like this and frankly, I wouldn't want to do any of that stuff if I was a dev either because of it, but getting players excited and generating intrigue in the game is worth the negative backlash received from a vocal minority of the community.

 

[agonistes]

With over 3000 hours, here are mine:
(with the caveat that vi has some great concepts, but the implementation needs work)

3 things I like:

1) unpacking cities - great idea
2) new roads and builders systems
3) policies

3 things that disgust me:

1) combat/military strategy is yawn, and unit carpets are a problem
2) the religion subwar is annoying - make it passive
3) diplomacy is utter crap

edit: someone really needs to take the best of civ, eu, and hoi, and make one great game

 

[oSiyeza]

Best:

• Districts: The best feature of this game is how it plays with the map and how cities have a presence in the land.

• Exploration: The map feels more alive, climate and disasters look wonderful and add to the district and map core concept of the gameplay; it is just cool. Still is a shame that feels so inconsecuential. And, oh! the animal life mod, if only we could have our krakens haunting or caravels in exploration age and Kaijus from outer space fighting our giant robots... Ops I side-tracked myself.

• Modding: Not as gret as it can be but still awesome. More.

Worst:

• Religious game: So bad it hurts. Boring, repetitive, tedious, and uderdeveloped. With nothing interesting besides being a bad war game parody. A system that focusses on spamming units of limited uses, once and again, and again and again... ad infinite. The cherry on top is that the religious conflict is represented like magical lighning battles... in an historical game... is actually... insulting.

• WC: A cool idea that actually is so bland, inconsequential and boring, that is better to ignore it completely. The worst about it is that is a great premise implemented to not do anything interesting or cool in the game... intentionally.

• Diplomacy: Current diplomacy is shallow, static and just bad. The enemy civs are prisoners of a bad AI built on top of a nice guy behavior that seems to be programmed to be boring and too passive to ever be a military threat; all caged in a diplomatic system that lacks depth and dynamism. Too dissconected from religion, economy, exploration, science, culture and spionage; and where interesting interactions or relationships seem to have been discarded for multiplayer, or ot not have been ever considered.

 

[trev1972]

On the diplomacy, i dont want to drone on about old versions, but i recall 4 felt more- alive and much less gamey?
I vaguely remember being genuinely caught out by catherine who was being friendly to my face but suddenly hit me with a massive army that had been built up over time.

 

[oSiyeza]

On the diplomacy, i dont want to drone on about old versions, but i recall 4 felt more- alive and much less gamey?
I vaguely remember being genuinely caught out by catherine who was being friendly to my face but suddenly hit me with a massive army that had been built up over time.

I have the suspicion that fearing that players would feel frustrated if the AI does those kind of moves, they tried to remove all behaviors that the player cannot predict and prepare for. (I mean those that are not explicitly told in advance).

I thing they also limited the AI "will" to go to war after middle ages, to simulate the peaceful loving society that an advanced civilization should push for (sad puppy here). And also on the few times they actually try to expand militarly, I feel they made sure expansion stoped after one or two cities conquered, probably in order to not allow for AI snowballin,... and (miracle of miracles) a non competitive AI resulted in a boring enemy behaviour!.

I think the Interface is also trying to convey a board game feeling. FXS themselves said on more than one occasion that they wanted civ to feel like a boardgame... So if it feels gamey, I think the reason it is that it was designed to feel that way (...good job maybe?...).

It is a weird consolation to know that the game is mostly intentionally lame and not lame by accident.

Many of us wonder, how much of these eternal complaints will be actually addresed in the future content.

Probably none.

(Smily face, ...but sad on the inside).

 

[Abaxial]

For all that one might complain about the World Congress (and it is dim to have it meet before all Civs have met one another), I think it is rather better than the one in Civ V, where it is often hard to find a resolution that is actually useful. Also, some of the AI votes are predictable - the favoured district, for instance, is always the city centre.