3253

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.

3254

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…

3255

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.

3256

I think Civilization Revolution fits that nicely.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exupéry
It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

3257

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.

3258

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 - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/spring-patch-notes.632218/page-11

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.

3259

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.

3260

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.

3261

It is most definitely encouraging. I hope they are putting work into the strategic / diplomatic AI as well. I hated that AIs from across the world, or ones that were super weak would declare war on you. I also didn’t like the fact that AI relations didn’t take into account the benefits of peace. For example, Egypts big ability is that trading with them gives you a bunch of food (IIRC). This in theory is supposed to make everyone want to trade with you and be a peace with you. In reality, it made no difference in foreign relations.

3262

Over the last two weekends, I decided to see if Civ 6 as it currently sits has risen to be anything worth playing.

First off, what an absolute mess of an experience playing this game is. More than anything else, it lacks the kind of subtextual feedback that Civ4 and versions previous to that had regarding just simple things like progress. Basics like “Am I keeping up on tech?” For whatever reason, Civ4 (and even kind of in Civ5) you just had a feel for that stuff, even without having to check on it.

But right now I think my biggest issue with the game is how bloody long it takes for the stupid AI to complete turns. I’m in my fourth game to get to the Medieval era, and on a fast, beefy rig this game takes FOREVER just to process all its turns. Meh. Does this ever get better? Or is this mess a loss cause?

3263

I’ve been in the mood for a non-war empire builder so I thought about reinstalling this and going into it with low expectations, just to see if it had improved at all since release. Couldn’t get myself to do it, though, as I thought about all the things that drove me nuts with the game. Then I read your post and I’m glad I didn’t waste the bandwidth.

On to your issue, I don’t know if this problem followed from Civ5 but one of the reasons turns took so long is because the AI just couldn’t let a unit sit, it had to shuffle everything back and forth every turn which took forever. Turning off animations helped, but it has its own problems when you start your turn with a bunch of damaged units and you’re trying to figure out what happened.

3264

It makes one amazed to think of how good turn times and AI were in Civ IV.

3265

I tried VI again after the expansion. Nope, still awful.

3266

It remains a pretty good game when played against humans. There are certainly flaws, but the core mechanics provide for interesting decisions. Which makes it so much more of a shame that the AI is so woeful.

3267

I mean…it is making me want to play Civ IV all over again, so it’s got that going for it. ;)

Kevin, I think that unit movement thing is definitely still an issue with Civ VI, and definitely part of why the turns take so long. But as you mention, turning animations off means losing pursuit, too.

3268

I actually started a game of Civ IV a day or two ago. I need to get back to it. I get the feeling that special resources have a more profound effect on resource yield than Civ V / VI.

3269

Civilization was the game that got me into PC Gaming, and I have played all of them to varying degrees.

It is sacrilegious to say here, but my favorite of the series was Civ5. Yes, the AI was garbage, but the rest of the product came together beautifully (except late game turn chugging, which I can’t believe has never been fixed). I like 1UPT because it gave me a greater sense of military fronts and strategies, even if the CPU couldn’t handle it.

Civ6 gave me a bad feeling the second I saw the art direction, but I was excited by the new city building. I played the game for maybe 40hours when it came out, and it has killed my love of the franchise.

This game is just a mess. The pieces don’t fit together to make any sort of coherent experience, and as such the AI problems which were an annoyance to me in 5 have become centrally destructive in 6. Meaningless wars, worthless diplomacy, missionary spam, city spam, poorly designed cities… The systems in 6 are poorly designed AND even worse they don’t mesh well with one another.

I haven’t played a Civ game since 6 released… But like Kevin above I thought of reinstalling this past weekend to see if time and patch had polished it up… But reading the comments here have just killed any desire I had to do that.

3270

Before I jumped back in, I watched Quill18’s 6-part video series explaining some of the stuff with Civ6 for “Beginners” (which, even though I’ve been playing Civ since the very week the first one came out, was still useful).

I came away thinking that this game is absolutely the platypus that dionisus describes. It’s like this game built by committees, with all these bolted on parts that never come together. And all the while, you’ve got some invisible hand in the background in a vaguely worded design document saying “make it a little more like EU4.”

That I guess is the biggest issue for me with Civ6. It wants to have complexity that its scope and mechanics aren’t meant for. EU4 is ground-up built to support the absurd level of detail it aims for. Civ6 isn’t anywhere near as detailed, but it makes all these swerves into complexity that simply do not work. This is a game that desperately needs to get back into its lane.

3271

@robc04: Civ VI resources give +1 to a yield. In Civ IV they give +1 unimproved and then another +1 or +2 when improved.

When you consider that supporting a farmer costs approximately 2 food and 1 gold in Civ IV, a 6 food grassland wheat farm is much more than twice as good as the 3 food you’d get from the same tile without wheat. Resources are super powerful in the early game.

3272

@dionisus1122 / @triggercut: Could you give some examples of gameplay systems that you feel are bolted on and don’t fit the core experience? (N.B. That is gameplay as opposed to AI behaviour.)

The obvious one to me is the implementation of religious combat. Religion itself is a really nice strategic mechanic: a big (and continuing) investment that gives access to a number of useful powers. Religious spread works quite well (albeit the UI is dreadful). But the religious combat mechanic (and hence the religious victory condition) is pretty horrible. And worse, if it’s going poorly you can just flip the table by declaring war and instantly destroying religious units with military ones.

Some of the diplomatic options fit that as well, but in isolation from the insanity of the AI they’re either fine (e.g. friendship) or irrelevant (e.g. casus belli, research pacts).