Fall from Heaven 2 was the best Civ.
Yeah, I’m with you. When they do Civ7, the only hope I have is that they bring in someone with a fresh outlook (like they did with Soren years ago), and strip down the bloat of Civ6. I doubt that happens, since it’s such a massive franchise that sells zillions of copies. I don’t see any big changes happening. I see tons of people online who rave about Civ6, although I doubt many of them are the more hardcore Civ players.
Yeah it’s a real problem. The best strategy games are ultimately the ones that can encapsulate the minimal amount of complexity necessary for the subject matter and to give you fresh experiences (IMO). If Civ went back to simplicity, and just tried to fix what wasn’t working in the Civ1/2 model, that would be amazing IMO, but it would not suit the people who played Civ5-6 religiously. So they have to keep adding bloat. That’s why a new IP (like Old World) has a better chance of cleaning up the mess.
Isn’t that basically what Civ3 tried to do? Improve on Civ2/fix the things that weren’t working, then creating new problems in its stead (pollution!) that Civ4 then solved for the most part while also introducing its own issues, especially in the last expansion pack (Warlords was great)? Civilization Revolution is definitely an attempt to strip out all of the bloat and make the game playable in a shorter time frame (and therefore the best iteration in the series, obviously – fight me).
Civ5 is a far more radical retooling, while also stripped things back, even removing religion before adding it back in an expansion pack, along with other unnecessary bloat, and lobotomizing the AI, of course. I actually prefer vanilla Civ5 over any of the expansions, precisely because it’s a more stripped-down experience, even though imperfect. (I haven’t touched it in years, though, so take that as the most lukewarm of recommendations.)
Civ6 is the first Civ where the release version felt bloated already, and instead of streamlining things they just keep adding more and more junk to the messy core game design, while doing nothing about the abysmal AI. I think I got both the expansions, played for a while, and then just grew frustrated with it, uninstalled the game and never looked back.
Agreed!
Ideally that would be true, but I don’t think that’s how it worked in practice. Civ 3 was a very turbulent experience built by a desperate company over Alpha Centauri tech. Civ 4 was purely an improvement iteration (as were its expansions), but it clearly wasn’t the final one needed (as can be seen in Old World). Further Civ iterations have taken the series in unfortunate directions.
Digging into Master of Magic for the first time really frustrates me, because it’s clear Simtex had a lot of excellent improvements to the Civ formula which were completely ignored by Microprose for their own series.
Yeah Civ4 Warlords was a bit cleaner than BTS imo, the corporation micromanagement late game was very bloaty and there was some weird additions to mid game unit balance iirc. I think Warlords was where unique buildings were introduced which were good.
I have a Civ5 semi-rant I don’t think I ever posted regarding my view on its failures on a strategic/“interesting decisions” level, dunno if that should go here.
Civ3 has some very unintuitive mechanics (though I can’t recall all of them now…) and was very micro heavy.
I really should purchase Civ6 at some point so I can actually assess its mechanics…
I think @SorenJohnson even recommended playing Civ4 with Warlords? It was during a podcast that he said this, I think, but I can’t remember which one (3MA?).
Don’t buy it for full price is all I can say; it really isn’t worth it. ;-)
…hmm. Where is this thread you mention? I have been looking for this thread and could not find it. I would also be interested in the map keys you have found.
I got CivVI for free on the Epic Games Store. I fired it up, tinkered for 15 minutes, and went back to Old World. Maybe I didn’t give it long enough? Should I persevere?
No…
That frees some room up on my hard drive at least.
Possibly in here somewhere:
@malichai11 it doesn’t look like you shared them, you were trying to figure out a way to do it. I’d love to have them as well. Perhaps converting into a google sheet from the excel and linking that?
I’ve never played a Civ. I just trundled through the tutorial for VI and uninstalled. Nothing interesting happened :/
Box quote?
“Dozens of gamey features to distract you that the underlying system doesn’t work!”
Game certainly has some infuriating failings. But then, when asked for my list of best games of the year (and decade) I realized that every game on my list I had rage quit at one point or another, over some problem.
All I know is I am over a thousand hours of Civ VI gameplay, and have highly enjoyed most of it (especially when I was smart enough not to go much beyond the Industrial era). I could probably write a book on the game’s failings, but still.
ok, i need to chime in here
the vast majority of gamers DO NOT play the game the way the designers WANT you to play the game…EVERY game is DESIGNED to be played a certain way…its amazing to see people bitch about a game because it was NOT the game they wanted…I read 100’s of steam reviews and the pattern is there
CIV has ALWAYS BEEN a builder…it is not a wargame…it is not a diplomacy game…and quite frankly, its not a strategy game…its a builder…you build cities…you build an economy…you build wonders…etc…everything else is the AI nibbling at your feet, trying to undermine your ‘building a civilization’…thats why there is NO AI…it is NOT DESIGNED to beat you…YOU WILL ALWAYS BEAT YOURSELF
btw, i never finished a game of civ5…i’ve finished 4 games of civ6…and the ‘endgame monotony’ has been inherit in all civ games and clones since 1991…some day someone will figure out how to address it.
maybe its time for gamers to actually play the games they purchase, the way the designer wanted you to play it…you don’t play chess like it was checkers…you don’t play solitaire like it was poker…you would have alot more happy gamers
I disagree with pretty much every single point there.
But mostly the idea that it’s the paying customers who are the ones imposing on the company for wanting a different (working) product. You’re pretty much arguing against the right to ever criticize any consumer product.
The game is extremely popular as is though. Sure people complain here, but I can go to any number of forums and people love it as is. They make the game for those people, not the people complaining about the AI. Not enough customers care about that, so it’s not worth spending the money on.
Think @Bangorang2003 is 100% correct.
I don’t think the series was always about just building. Civ I could kick your butt if you didn’t know how to exploit the AI. All the way up to Civ IV, the AI was quite competent. At lower difficulties, it was just a nuisance, but at higher levels, it got enough bonuses to stomp you.
I do think that Civ V came around, and Firaxis saw that bad AI didn’t translate to low sales. The audience of the game shifted from people who wanted strategy mixed with building, to people who wanted a idle clicker while they watch Netflix. So Civ VI is more of that, and has built up an audience with the expectation of a no-pushback builder. Why should Firaxis improve the AI now? It just risks driving their new audience away.
It’s worth noting though, that without an enemy that’s at least semi-competent, none of the famous Sid Meier ‘interesting decisions’ are interesting at all. Why would it matter what you picked at any point, if no enemy can make you pay for a bad choice? It’s become a zero-resistance game.
This reminds me of Binding of Isaac, which had 2 audiences: those (including myself) who wanted a tough roguelite, and those who wanted a screensaver of becoming OP in different crazy ways. Over time, the latter group triumphed, and that’s what the game has become. There’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle, without ticking off the audience that buys the game in massive numbers at this point.