Civilization VI

Lackluster end game screens are the least sad thing about Civ 6.

What happened to the Firaxis Civ group? It feels like they have no one on the team with roots going back to CIv IV who can say, “these things are important to our long-time Civ players (graphs, data, end game summaries amoungst other things). They need to be part of the game on release… in full and not half-assed”.

The abysmally slow patch schedules on top of this makes me wonder what’s going on there.

They haven’t made a new civ game “because they had a great idea” for a very long time. What happened to them is exactly what happens to anything creative that falls into a rut and only keeps getting made because you’re pretty sure it will sell.

I think people should earn some sort of merit badge just for making it to the end of a game!

I think 1UPT was a disaster, but I think it was “great idea” that in theory sounded like it could radically change the game for the better. I think they (and myself) were wrong and that it just doesn’t work, but it did feel like they were trying to take the series to new places. Unfortunately, it feels like the franchise has just been in milk mode since then, as you described.

This a hundred times.

Sometimes I think QT3 is in a disconnect from what happening regarding Civ and the wider gaming population.

Civ V currently sits at number 18 and Civ VI at number 22 on the Steam stats (most of the games above them are action games). For the longest time Civ V consistently held its place in the top 10 on current player stats.

I don’t have a major point or objection to what everyone is saying here, but those metrics don’t strike me as Firaxis just coasting by on their reputation and not giving a shit.

Firaxis is clearly making strategy games that have a large following. Maybe a lot of the players of V and VI are new to the series so they are experiencing the initial wonder that the old guard felt when starting with 1-3 and are less jaded after decades of Civ games. I’m not entirely sure.

While there are lots of new players, it doesn’t mean they should throw away many of the things the players who’ve been around since I-IV have loved so much. It’s unnecessary.

There’s a disconnect, for sure. We’re a forum filled with a lot of strategy game grognards. Steam is full of a lot of people which likely first played a 4X with Civ5. I think you can see a lack of some of that “fresh car smell” in the lukewarm reception to Civ6.

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To be clear, I think Steam reviews are worthless as any sort of measurement of quality. But in terms of how the game is seen by the masses, I think the All Reviews category is a good metric (the Recent tends to often just be angry carpet bombers these days).

Are these 2 points mutually exclusive?

Call of Duty and it’s ilk hardly innovate year on year yet they are very successful franchises.

And good milking requires a fat cow.

You can be assigned to something and come up with a good idea, maybe even a great one. My point was, these games aren’t being made because of inspiration. When the archeologists arrive, the gods depart.

Fair enough. Carry on.

It goes beyond making it mass market friendly. They could have easily included some higher level play people in the development and testing (exactly like they did with IV) while still putting in streamlined features. They just didn’t give a shit.

And the UI, who exactly is that for? It’s a mess for veteran players and it’s an even bigger mess for new players.

Other things like the change to movement rules that makes everything move at a crawl is just plain unfun to everybody. I keep hearing that everybody hated the new movement on the development team, but the lead designer insisted it stay.

To be fair, both Civs V and VI are wonderfully creative. In terms of the crunchy innards of the designs, they’re quite complex and interesting.

The problem with V is that the AI is (less so now, but still) unbelievably incompetent and ill-equipped to deal with 1UPT.

The problem with VI is that the AI is if anything worse, and the rest of all that intricate and complex system of rules that make up the game logic don’t actually add up to a fun game on anything other than a basic spinning-plates level. It’s engrossing for a while, until you realize that you haven’t actually done anything other than press the buttons that lit up for you on any given turn for the last ten hours and put the game back down again, in spite of all the wonderful production value and care that was clearly poured into it.

“You know a design is perfect not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Read that somewhere…where was it…

I don’t know how widespread this opinion is, but personally I like it the new way.

In my mind it always seemed kind of crazy that you could climb a two movement point hill if you had one movement point remaining. And, in practical terms, it also makes the 8-9 tile separation between initial cities a little less cramped.

However, i admit that I prefer maps no larger than standard, and I rarely fight offensive wars past the classical period. Maybe I would change my opinion if those things were not the case.

I think Civilization Revolution fits that nicely.

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

Yeah, I usually can’t bear to go past 1000 BC or so myself. It gets so goddamn tedious. All these meaningless decisions you’re forced to make, like hordes of biting gnats. Look: I’m obviously winning the game but I don’t want to spend 12 hours conquering every civilization in the world. Just surrender to me already.

To me, it looks like there’s a lot of good stuff in this patch. I like the fixes to joint wars, increasing envoy rewards for liberating city-states, the much-needed nerf to Magnus’s chop bonus (100% down to 50%), religion affecting loyalty, much-needed) Korea nerf, AI now not sticking with Monarchy exclusively, and the AI targeting cities more. The patch notes say nothing about AI airforce management, but there’s at least one positive report on this too (see below).

Alas, the patch doesn’t do as much for the UI as I’d like, as the UI is my biggest beef with the game. The CQUI mod has been progressing nicely, but now that there’s a new patch, that’s going to delay arrival of CQUI longer. There is already a CQUI test build for R&F, but not for the new patch; we may have a new test build in a few days.

For those of you who find the AI to be the games biggest flaw, there are some initial reports at Civfanatics that the list of 15-odd AI changes has had some positive effect. E.g., one fix is this: “AI will prioritize a city over units if it can capture or nearly capture the city.” Some posts on civfanatics, from the thread on the new patch - Spring Patch notes | Page 11 | CivFanatics Forums

Alright, the AI can definitely take cities now. Khmer attacked me with 3 Warriors and 2 Archers while I had 3 Archers defending… could not manipulate the situation to my advantage… he did not go for wounded Archers but instead attacked and captured the city.

My two cents on the patch: WOW! The AI can fight now! In my current game as sole civ on a continent as Egypt, I have had to deal with a very belligerent, very smart barbarian horde through middle ages. The AI now targets the weak units first (read: ranged), so my previous laziness with troop arrangements is over. I love it, as now I actually need to strategize again, not just throw a few units around and see what happens.

The AI can fight and upgrade too. They took cities and liberated city states for emergencies too! Germany was not the only snowball either. America snowballed and before I realized it, I was surrounded by modern tank armies. Sumeria was no threat which was surprising.

Which leads to another thing. Not declaring wars still makes it possible to be friends with nearly all AIs for the entire game. Like as if Canada in real life was the most popular country on Earth. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not, but my next game I’m going back to my warmonger roots and see how much of a fight they put up head on and raise the difficulty as well.

This is not your daddy’s Civ 6. The game is different now. Maybe we are turning the corner finally and getting closer to that finished product everyone has been hoping for. The bad news is that for the people that struggled on King and below, you better get more skills. You might be really crying foul now. Me myself, I am a little scared to try Deity now after this first game.

The TLDR: I think some of you that wanted a stronger fight in Civ 6 should be able to get it now, unless you are as good as Lily Lancer or CivTrader6. I hope Marbozir starts up a new game. He just started a new Civ 5 game, so he might be busy. Hey Marb if you see this post, play a quick game of 6 and see if it is hard enough. If bet Civtrader6 is playing around with it. I’d like to see him post a new game too, especially since he cannot just chop a Mongolian army now LOL

Was on the verge of being wiped out by Norway, paid Chandragupta to enter the war against him, watched as Chandy smashed him up with Varus and took his capital. Awesome. Although now I have to deal with India.

AI seems much better at fighting each another from my current game, which is good.

Greece took out two civilization on her continent and she’s keeping up with me in science and culture into the atomic era.

In total, I had 18 civilization and six were destroyed and I only destroyed one. I like seeing that.

I normally run the AI+ mod, but since its patch, I turned off all mods. The AI really doing quite well. Both in combat and city management. So far…I am quite impressed =).

I noticed Nubia did a much better job than normal of rebuilding a military after I destroyed a wave of units. Normally, following that I would be able to sweep in and grab everything I wanted with only mild contest. This time, she produced a second wave stronger than the first that shut me down on her second city. My only choice was to sue for peace with only one city gained. If she had refused she would have wiped out my overextended units, retaken the soon to flip due to loyalty city, and pushed in on several of my weaker cities.

I’ve seen a report here on this forum that air force is being used, and to success (as in intercepting nukes no less).

Inevitably there will be the “AI still suxx0rs” counter-posts, but the initial readouts are encouraging.

I mean, yeah. I know that I can’t even go back to the widely considered great that is Civ IV. I just can’t. I did it recently, and the experience was just not enjoyable.

Civ was a great game in its time, when I played it first. But even a brilliant incarnation of Civ is going to leave me cold.

And it’s all because I’ve played many more strategy games, particularly EU IV DRINK and Victoria. But those are niche games. Well selling, but not the juggernaut that is Civ. Same for every other superior strategy game.

So we are like the beer snob who turns up his nose at a Samuel Adams, preferring a Founders, Ballast Point, Lagunitas, or this weird Belgian trappist beer that only is available for two months a year at this monastery near Bruges. The book critic who will brutalize a Dan Brown book because it is inferior in every way to Umberto Eco. We tend to be much more selective and particular. And that’s all right.

Now if you don’t mind I’m going to drink Arcadia Ales Loch Down scotch ale and play some Victoria.

The difference for me from Civ V and Civ VI is I want to like Civ VI. I just don’t. I washed my hands of V awhile ago, but when I am politely coerced into playing Civ VI with my gaming group, I can actually start to the feel that oh wow, exploration! oooh, better take care of those barbs, Yes my first ship and then… and then I start running into the AI Civs, and it turns to crap. And I am not talking about like trying to get them to do some super AI strategic better strap in for the war ride stuff. I may not be an average Steam player, but I am not a wargamer either. I just need to dang AI to make some damn sense when they do something.

What’s her face, Victoria was a problem in the last game. Maybe she’s beefed up enough now where I can get engaged again. Otherwise it’s me half-ass playing Civ and watching TV while my gaming group dives into it.