The thing is I didn’t hate Civ VI. I didn’t hate V. I just liked pre 1UPT Civs better, but I’ve always looked forward to getting something new in the Civ family. I’ve been playing since the first and the series has always been special to me.
I am planning on playing Civ VI again to see what it’s like after the updates. I haven’t played in a while.
The deciding factor for me to pick this up at launch is if I’m busy with other early-2018 releases (I know there are a few, I just can’t think of them off the top of my head). If nothing else is coming out for a little while after 2/8/2018 I may well grab it just as an excuse to dive back in and see if my opinion has changed. I’ve barely played Civ VI, which is a shame.
Don’t forget the Mark L corollary to the Chick Parabola: After any major patch that makes claims to improve the AI, gamers will gaslight themselves into thinking the AI has improved. This usually takes around 2 weeks of play to settle down.
I wouldn’t say I’m done, but I’ll need to hear really good things about any future installments before paying attention, let alone money and time.
The beginning of the end for me was the Colonization expansion for IV. I dearly loved the original Col, and the revisit was just… not right in so many ways. Played VI and enjoyed it well enough, but I’m not interested in returning to it. And I do wish I’d waited for a sale and a patch.
Lots of things to criticize about Civ VI and Firaxis. It boggles the mind that it took them more than a year to fix the UI representation of religious belief. And the military side of things is such that I can’t believe anyone would have the patience to play a “paint the map” style of game.
Still, more than any other recent game, this one continues to provide me with hundreds and hundreds of hours of fun. I go off and play something else for a few weeks, but before you know it, I am back to this. So I am sure i will be buying the expansion. The ages (dark/golden) and the loyalty aspects look the most promising. New civs are always fun, although truth be told, modders do at least as well with that. Not sure if more units will really make the game better, but it will be fun to see.
The AI? I can tell you for a fact that it will not be good. It can’t be, the game was not created as the sort of game where the AI can be competitive. Rather, it will remain basically what it is, a builder game where rival civs serve as speed bumps along the way. Rivals will force you to waste turns dealing with them, and their leaders will do things to aggravate you and thus make you care about beating them. And if you play at a high enough difficulty, don’t save scum, and go ahead with a weak starting location, you might even fall behind and feel pressed well into the mid-game. But once you have some experience playing, this is not going to be an AI that actually defeats you.
I guarantee, as a former AI developer and a former game designer (not at the same time) the game AI could be vastly superior to what it is now with a very modest conventional programming effort, without requiring any rocket science programming at all. For pity’s sake, they are still parading great generals on their own without stacking them, they run siege weapons right in front of enemy infantry, and they never focus multiple unit attacks on single targets except by accident. Even just requiring ranged weapons to all fire before melee attacks in an AI turn would be a step forward in reducing the counterattack damage incurred by melee units, but despite the trivial programming cost, it’s one they’re just not interested in implementing.
Yep.6 AI suxors
I forgive V its many flaws for the fact that I can have an enjoyable time doing my thing and winning on Emperor with an exceptional UI even if the AI is doing all the dumb shit it is so well-documented to do.
VI I just…I just can’t. It’s too broken. And I’m crippled by a UI that. Well. It’s not very well-designed. Sorry.
Weren’t they supposed to release some sort of modding SDK that let modders get deep into the AI code?
If it follows what they did with Civ5, those tools won’t be made available until they stop working on DLC / expansions. Which would be a damn shame, if so.
We’ll always have Civ IV.
-Tom
Amplitude have been doing this for some time with Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, now. These forums are not super wild about those games, but I am fond of them. That said, the AI will still not impress you - even though this is something I know they spend significant resources on, it’s just not an easy problem to crack. (But it’s not as stupid as Civ VI seems to be.)
It’s not that I disagree with what you are saying. It is obvious to me that Firaxis’s places very little priority on AI.
But I also think that how much someone minds that depends upon their perspective. The more you are picturing playing a competitive game – particularly a conquer-the-map military game – against quasi human opponents, the more this will drive you nuts. And that is pretty much what a large number of people here are looking for.
But I look at this as a building game, where the emphasis is on providing interesting and varied hurdles to successfully building a secure nation. The neighboring civ is not a symmetrical competitor playing by the same rules and with the same goals so much as a hurdle who will likely require time and resources to handle one way or the other.
A parallel could be made to the typical RPG. The enemies you fight rarely have any real chance to beat you, they are not playing the same game you are. They are just hurdles to overcome.
The thing is that Civ VI (in my opinion, much more than Civ V) makes the hurdles much more interesting and diverse. Maps vary, start locations vary, opponents vary, etc. Which, in my book is great, but it makes it all the more impossible to write AI that could pass for a symmetrical competitor. My assessment of it is that Firaxis was just realistic about what this game really is and what it is not. In my view, they made the right call, in that it would take a total re-write to make this a game that could really compete for the wargame market.
However, unless you do some rather gamey or exploitative things, you can have dozens (probably hundreds) of hours of gameplay where the obstacles provide interesting challenges, and this can be dramatically extended if you play some less-than-ideal civs, play through poor starting locations, don’t save-scum, etc.
Very astute summary I think! Nailed it.
I would like to see the Civ series embrace its board gamey aspects a bit more. Something meatier than Revolutions, but more streamlined and elegant than VI. Maybe Sid could have one last crack at it before he retires from the industry completely? Probably too late to go back now, but the feature creep is becoming a problem for me.
Oof - I feel like they tried that with 6 and I hate it. Wish they would do the opposite, honestly.
Hey - those posts we’re a great read, thanks for the link.
I finally started a game of this - I hadn’t played since release… I was doing my usual thing, keeping as little military as I could, building up my economy. Arabia sneak attacked and I easily fought them off. I kept building the economy. Japan sneak attacked. They took 3 of my 5 cities. I was so under defended.
Their attack stalled after that and I refused their repeated peace deals. They were willing to give me back 2 of my 3 cities, but that wasn’t good enough. They even through in gold and luxuries. I want all 3 back or else they have to finish me off.
I finally took 1 back and have to advance for the next 2. This is on Prince difficulty - but I am very rusty.
I don’t like how willing the AI is to do sneak attacks, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any fallout over doing it.
It depends heavily on the era. In the first era, there is absolutely no penalty to sneak attack wars. The main reason not to do it yourself is that it is often a waste of resources to do so. But you could almost go as far as to say that there is no real peace in the first era. Penalties are only slightly higher for a sneak attack in the second era. But after that, it is a problem for most civs.
The exception – which I find aggravating – is that to civs can agree together to attack you (I forget the name at the moment, war alliance?) and for some reason that is deemed a formal war and not a sneak attack… However, in my experience, this rarely leads to a particularly fierce attack.
One thing to keep in mind (one of the silliest things in the game, imo) is that AI civs attack, lose their units, and then give you piles of things to end the war, even though you never really threatened their cities. So being attacked is often a good thing, as long as you’ve got a few ranged units at your disposal.