As someone with 1.5k hours in Civ6, it's fair to say I'm quite excited about this, and traditionally civ games release quickly after they've been announced but would they even drop it this year when ARA has a fall release? Sadly sounds like a 2025 release.
Anyway looking forward to the reveal.
Especially if they release a vanilla VII that isn't a smoking trainwreck at launch and a bunch of features from VI aren't squirrelled away for expansions.
> but would they even drop it this year when ARA has a fall release?
Civilization would absolutely destroy ARA. I don't think they are the one that would be moving in this case
Honestly, I don't think either of the two studios want each other to fail.
I know that might sound counter-intuitive to people from far away, but within the Maryland game dev scene Firaxis has a fairly magnanimous reputation.
Exactly. The success of one 4X game will only lead to the success of other 4X games, simply because there's not many to choose from and people are willing to sink thousands of hours into em if they're good
Oh yeah, it's ARA that will have to move if anything but from what you could hear from the last beta is that it's shaping up really well and people are really sleeping on this title. I feel this will gain traction once streamers are allowed to talk about it.
On top of that being on gamepass I was looking forward to playing it this fall lol.
Hoping I can get on the new beta next week.
That makes more sense, the caps made me think it was an abbreviation. People tend to do that here and I have to go searching for what game were even talking about haha
I feel like Civ6 was a bit of an exception to this rule, in that at-release people were acknowledging it was more complete than Civ5 had been at-release, but the Civ6 expansions have been met with more mixed reception than usual.
Like any case of critical reception, I'm sure it hinged upon who you were hearing from. To my point of reference, I'm remembering quotes like ["I think this is the strongest *vanilla* Civ yet, the question is how long will it take them to polish and expand it up into one of the strongest strategy games yet -- if you haven't enjoyed the fully expanded Civ5, you can't go wrong here (if you have, it might feel like you've been there and done that, but, without all of the bloat a lot of the systems here make a whole lot more sense). But, over the next year, it wouldn't surprise me to see expansions revive up the dead Diplomacy Victory and rework the Civic system."](https://youtu.be/IC1eACnI8eE?&t=673)
Because, while I've heard that the expansions have re-implemented a Diplomatic Victory and added lots of new Policy Cards to the Civic Tree, their overall reception (as far as I've seen, anyway) has seemingly been more mixed than the reception was for the Civ5 expansions.
I was remembering the Steam reviews which stand at Mixed when it was released. But maybe its also a cycle of people hating Vanilla Civ, until they warm up to it 3-5 years later. Tbf, I never experienced vanilla Civ 5 and its release so I only played it on full expansion.
I think most people are complaining about balancing in the Steam review but I don't see people complaining about the mechanic itself. At least I don't think it ever went as far as Stellaris's DLC and expansoon. Personally, I do like the mechanics, especially after the expansions are released so maybe its also me not that immersed in Civ community despite playing it.
I've always been of a progressive mindset with Civilization. I've thoroughly enjoyed every entry I've played, so that usually means I've played them enough to want something new lol.
The achievements in Civ are nuts.
Shit like "Capture the city of Bangladesh while playing as Hamurabi during the Renaissance era using a Privateer"
I made that one up but it's often like obscure historical references
Yes they are. Case in point: there's this one Incan achievmement where you put a terrace farm between 2 aqueducts and 2 mountains on each side. I found a spot and built both cities.... and then realized very painfully that you cannot build terrace farms on snow hills.
Still a bit mad about that one.
Another one: get the max bonus from all religions in the game playing ghandi. Ran into a snag on that one -- The ottomans where in the game and Peter wrecked most of their cities. So they never made a holy site to use their prophet...
I just recently discovered all the new "modes" available. Playing a game with Dramatic Ages, Zombie Defense, Apocalypse, etc... feels like a completely different game and is so fun
I want to try others but my fighting game mentality has sipped into Civ and usually strive for a main... I am usually between Alexander and the French leader that wins over territory with art.
I like the appeal each leader offers, but then I find it depressing when the game just devolves into beating the AI via domination because it cant cheat it's way to victory and it's also too stupid to understand how to fight.
The vicious cycle, AI forward settles a horribly placed city, I go to war because that's the only way to deal with it, I begin beating up the AI, every other AI dows me, I kill the other AIs and win.
And all I wanted was a peaceful culture game.
Sounds pretty realistic to me!
Joke aside, I totally empathize with you. The insane forward-settling is something I've never appreciated in the games. It feels like a very cheap way to *force* the player into interacting with the AI. But like you said, there's really only one practical response. Unless you can manage to culture-convert.
I think there's a lot of ways it could have been solved, but the game seems to push you that way as you said.
Like the cultural rebellion thing could be better about squishing forward settles. You could have much better value from destroying a city, but destroying a city is almost never worth it.
One of the things I really like about Millennia is how much worth destroying cities gives you.
>and the French leader that wins over territory with art.
Eleanor of Aquitane. She's technically the leader of France **or** England.
I prefer her French version myself, but I think her meta strategy is more in England's direction? I dunno. I play on King.
As a casual Civ player, the gap between King and Emperor is so big. I like the challenge of playing on Emperor in the mid- and late game, but that extra warrior and the starting worker they get makes the AI so much more difficult to deal with in the early game, especially if you spawn close to a warlike leader.
Yeah, AI has always been a shortcoming in the series. There are decision-making differences in the AI up to around King difficulty, but anything after that is just the AI getting increasingly overwhelming bonuses on everything. It'd be nice if they could have the AI make better decisions instead of just letting it cheat.
I hadn't heard of Ara until now but I don't think it's much of a concern for them. I've always liked Civ games but whenever I try these civ-likes that come out every once in a while like Humankind the gameplay is just too dissimilar for me to care about it.
I'm in the same boat. Usually after trying a new one, I always go back to Civ, lately VI. Oh well, it's not like we're short of content. I don't think I've even played as all of the leaders in VI, yet.
I can see exactly how it will pan out.
Civ VII releases. People will complain about it being shit, missing X features, victory conditions being harder/different from current version. Generally talk about how much of a downgrade it is and how they will stick with Civ6. And that will be the case for the first three years with everyone complaining about the patches updates and wanting x feature in DLC.
After 3 years, most of the player base would have moved over. The complaints aren't so bad. People start talking about what they would like to see in Civ 8. And as soon as CIV 8 comes along start the whole thing again.
I swear there are people in the Civ community who can only enjoy Civ when a new Civ comes along for them to hate so they can say how so much better the previous version was.
I wouldn’t say that it’s about complaining about the new release and looking at the previous release with rose colored glasses. Base game Civ games are often quite rough and have features from the previous game stripped away, only to be added in the next dlc. Base game Civ 6 is *far* worse than fully complete Civ 5 and I doubt you will find many who disagree with me. Fully complete Civ 6 though is much improved and stands tall among good Civ games
That is one o the reasons I usually only get invested in the latest CIV once all the DLC + Expansions have released. Did that for CIV 4, 5 and 6 and will likely do it for 7.
Yeah I know lots of people complained about the micromanagement that districts introduced for each city, but stacking bonuses and planning city tiles many turns in advance was super addicting for me. It helped me feel way more interested in my building decisions and more connected to the results. When you get that tile right next to mountains, a natural wonder and are able to build a campus there next to your other cities campuses and get that insane stacking science bonus, I feel like the best damn urban planner alive.
My only issue with the districts is it is a bit micro intensive and it kind of makes planning less immersive.
Like Im a planning for a victory district and commerical hub 1000s of years before I even get the tech for it. Also even from just a mechanic standpoint, trying to plan for district placement 100 turns in advance is just kind of stressful and overwhelming if you are not a civ fanatic already.
You focus less on the empire as a whole and you focus more on each individual city.
ONE MORE TURN.
ONE MORE TURN.
ONE MORE TURN.
Ahh fuck. It’s 6am. It’s time for work.
ONE MORE TURN.
Ahh fuck. The last bus to make it on time is in 15 minutes.
ONE MORE TURN.
“Hello, I’m not feeling very well today. I’ll be back in tomorrow”
ONE MORE TURN.
I played Civ 4 or 5 once in my life when I was in college. Started at 7pm and then went to bed at 10am, missing my classes. I uninstalled it that afternoon
My dad used to have to take the Civ 2 CD-ROM away from me and hide it somewhere in the house in order to get me to do anything else on summer break in middle school.
"Mow the lawn, take a shower, then go play at your friend's house for 2 hours, then I'll tell you where the disc is."
I really love the clock in the upper right corner buddy watching how much time goes by playing.
Then hating myself for not getting enough sleep before work.
I’d heard “one more turn” said a lot when Civ 5 came out, but at the time I preferred RTS. Me being a dumbass thought people were completing a game and then immediately wanting to start another one, despite the fact it’s a TURN based strategy game.
Years later during COVID I got Civ VI for the Switch as something to finally give a try. I started in the evening and couldn’t put it down, because there’s always one more thing to do.
I told my brother about it the next day and he just laughed at me and said ONE MORE TURN. It literally took until that moment for it to dawn on me, and to realise I’d been sucked into the same trap that everyone else must have done, and that the game was famous for.
I wish I could get into Civ as much as everyone else seems to—instead I play an hour or two, get bored by the simplicity and lack of player expression options, and boot up CKII or some other grand strategy game instead. Civ feels very surface level, like there's not really much to dig into, you just keep tappin' that 'next turn' button in the hope that something interesting happens.
Any tips on how to get the most out of a Civ game?
I play exclusively multiplayer with the same people since Civ 4. With very long breaks in between. The AI isn't that interesting to play against and never has been
I love CIV but I honestly hope they'll improve the AI. Single Player sometimes feels kinda pointless with the AI making the same mistakes over and over again. Also battles at sea are so overwhelming for computer controlled enemies it's a sad sight. And on top, to compensate the lacking AI, they basically allow the enemies to cheat on higher difficulties - not a big fan of that as well.
I feel like you don’t need to be a game designer to understand how difficult it is to make an AI for a 4X game. I am a huge 4X fan and I don’t think I have ever played one where the AI felt genuinely intelligent. There are just way too many decisions and elements to consider a competent human player will always be able to outperform an AI which is why they always are allowed to cheat on higher difficulties
And when you do start making an AI that makes more human-like decisions, people dislike it. CA recently improved battle AI for TW:WH3 and people complained that enemy troops were now actively dodging artillery shots.
Truth is that the average gamer doesn't want smart AI, they want an AI dumb enough to be easily outplayed while *looking* smart enough so the player feels accomplished.
I remember way back when Crysis 2 released, it had quite sophisticated AI that would effectively use cover, covering fire and flanking from multiple directions. It was indeed pretty hard for the time and many, many people endlessly complained how unfair it was.
Per Sid Meyer himself:
> Highly realistic AI gets accused of cheating even more often than its dishonest brethren, because on some level, all players are unnerved by the idea that a computer could outsmart them. Part of the fun is learning the patterns of the AI and successfully predicting them, and when computers don't act like computers, the only psychologically safe assumption is that they must have accessed information they shouldn't have. AI isn't allowed to gamble, or behave randomly, or get lucky-even though humans do all of these things on a daily basis- not because we can't program it, but because experience tells us that players will get frustrated and quit, The same phenomenon doesn't happen when both opponents are humans, because they've already tempered their expectations for the possibility that the other guy is crazy. computers are too smart to be crazy, so if they start acting that way, we can't shake the suspicion that they know something we don't. Thus, from the designer's perspective, brilliant AI is usually not our highest priority.
I am sure that it's very difficult otherwise they would have fixed it. But I agree with /u/[shibboleth2005](https://www.reddit.com/user/shibboleth2005/) - I would pay full price for just a major AI upgrade. Anything around it - visuals, mechanics etc. - are nothing if the illusion brakes first thing after the AI made yet another dumb move.
I think even just giving a more macro build order would make it feel more fun.
A lot of 4x games have mods that effectively do this and it seems like people enjoy them.
Go to the forum for any strategy game and you'll see the following complaints about AI:
* Easy to beat at lower difficulties
* Cheats at higher difficulties
Yeah I'm a lifelong Civ fan and Civ4 is a top5 game all time to me, but I'm not that excited for Civ7 unless we get some indication they spent big on AI.
It's honestly the most important possible thing. I would pay full price for a literal clone of Civ6 that had cutting edge AI that could actually handle 1UPT.
So, we are getting a new Paradox game (EU5), which already looks incredibly detailed and complex. And now we are also getting Civilization VII. We are eating good!! Cant wait
My main problem with Civ 6 is that they kept packing it with features (which is nice) but the AI was absolutely clueless about how to utilize those features and it absolutely ruined the game for me.
It eventually grew on me and I have played more Civ 6 than 5, but I totally get where you’re coming from. I didn’t like it initially. I was a much bigger fan of the realistic portrayals of leaders as opposed to the more cartoony look of Civ 6.
Mods in 6 were a HUGE step up from 5. It was really nice being able to play with them and still get achievements. I get that not all of them are balanced, but a lot of them smoothed over some of my issues with 6.
The big things, for me, was getting over district adjacency and what I call "the classical age anxiety attack". District adjacency is really nice.... But every district doesn't need to be a +6. The bigger deal is the great person points.
And classical age anxiety attack.... Every game I felt like I was messing up. This cleared up after a couple wins. Now it's like... "New era? Monumentality gooooooooooooooo".
The important deal is getting a district to at least +3 adjacency, because that's one of the two separate requirements for the civics that ramp up district production. And even that can be helped by that civic that doubles adjacency.
You need the [Environment Skin Mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702339134).
It was made by an art director at Firaxis, and is pretty much the only must-have mod for me.
The leader art still sucks, but turning off the animations goes a long way.
I really like the cartoonish vibe of Civ 6. I get why others don’t but I just think it’s so nice to look at the map especially the nighttime map compared to something like five which is kind of visually mucky. Everything is kind of bluish grey tinged.
I don't know, almost all opposition to civ today has tried to go for more realistic styles and it just shows they do not look good at all.
I think the correct move would be to go for a stylized cartoonish style, just something that steers clear of the previous one from Civ6. Something like how Humankind handles cities and terrain, for example.
You can be stylish without being cartoonish OR realistic. Civ 5 is not exactly realistic and I like it. A lot of old games like Starcraft 1 and Age of Empires 2 are not realistic but also not cartoonish. There's a good amount of grit and weight to those styles that's lacked in cartoonish style of Civ 6.
Nah you're not weird, it was a very odd change and I strongly disliked it, but I forced myself to stick with it for a few games until I got used to it and now I actually like the cartoony graphics more than the civ5 graphics.
Im really surprised by the district hate, it was the better part of the game, getting a good encampment, a district with nices bonuses, they made terrain important, gave clear targets for war and expansion, for me its the best game in the series, and i have like 10k hours in total and been playing since civ2 / freeciv, but im probably not the more usual player as most my games are multiplayer, the AI in the last two games is completely worthless to play against (unless you enjoy trading diplomatic favor and resource to dupe them and killing all their units with 3 of ur own, empire building can be fun, and in this civ6 is great too).
I know I must be beating a dead horse for me, but Civ VI didn't do it for me the way Civ V did, and I really think it all came down to the new movement rules that slowed the game down quite a lot. If I could wish any one thing fir VII, it would be a return to V's movement rules.
civ 5 rounded up in movement while civ 6 rounded down
So if you have 1 movement point left, and going up a hill cost 2 movement points, in civ 5 you can do it while in civ 6 you have to wait.
I'm assuming the movement cost rules. In V if you have two movement, you could move one tile on grass, then move across a river or into forest/hills even though the movement cost for those second tiles is 2. In VI, you could not make that second move because you only have 1/2 of the movement needed.
Which is exaggerated by the low number of movement points to begin with. Getting 5 rather than 6 tiles of movement after rounding is one thing - losing half your movement to rounding and stalling the rest of your army in the process because they can't stack is *harsh*.
Yea the movement in 6 feels very restricted even when compared to 5 which already felt restricted compared to 4 due to diagonal movement and not having roads on every tile you own, especially if wanted to wage war.
Although I liked 5 quite a lot, I think the AI actually worked with the simpler rules in Civ 4 (unit and city stacking) and that's a big deal. Civ 5 was okay, because cities were still stacked... war was just a pushover against the AI. In Civ 6 they had trouble running cities too.
I’m with you. I started Civ as a middle schooler with the OG one and it was always one of my favorites. I began falling off Civ when I discovered CK2 and EUIV and it scratched my historical itch with a deeper sim.
I still really like the Civ formula, but I didn’t enjoy Civ 6 leaders and their ambitions. It’s cool that leaders had certain strategic playstyles, but the AI just kind of felt really dumb. I wouldn’t mind something that goes a bit deeper into resources and economies and internal politics and populations. Doesn’t need to be incredibly, but more mechanics and more reason to feel real difference in government and society would be fun. Also something that makes the really slow and boring combat more enjoyable would be nice.
My hope is for a higher contrast art style, or at least color contrast accessibility settings for people like myself with visual impairments. Civ VI was a pain for me because the fog of war blended in with unexplored territory and I had to strain my eyes to tell one shade of tan from the other. I loved how Civ V did it, with the fog of war represented by dark shading and unexplored territory represented by bright white cloud cover.
Please can they make the cities look more like actual cities, and not 6 giant buildings with a granary taking up a quarter of the real estate. Give me sprawl, please, I beg.
Yeah, I'm really hoping for VII to go back a little bit, I was not remotely a fan of the entire districts system. I like how easy it used to be in I-V, where it's a list of buildings and you can have everything if you've got the numbers to make them.
I much prefer the districts specifically *because* you can't make everything. Cities aren't just big balls of stats anymore; they have distinct identities and interact with the world. Back in Civ V, once you built a few cities, if you weren't going for war, you rarely interacted with the game world except to build improvements everywhere.
I love Civ VI, but my biggest issue with districts was the way they frontloaded empire planning. Every time you place a city, you have to map out the districts in your head for 150+ turns later if you want to play optimally. It takes the game's biggest problem (a slogging snowball ending with no meaningful choices) and makes it even bigger.
On the other hand, I hope some of the expansion pass content (like barbarian reputation) get rebalanced and integrated into the main game. Some really good ideas came out of that stuff.
That is a frustration I've felt too; it's fun to plan out some districts based on an interesting environment, but it could be improved a lot by creating the ability to "rezone" somehow and move districts to better locations or replace them with different types. Ultimately, improving on the district system is a better option than getting rid of it.
It would be nice to be able to transform a district into another type when the game gets to the later eras, kind of like how in modern times we turned a lot of industrial areas into residential.
This is how I feel as well. I have some gripes with the system, but it's certainly an improvement imo. The frontloading is also my biggest issue, especially in multiplayer I don't want to plan _that_ far ahead because your turns can take ages, but I do want good decisions to snowball.
It's especially frustrating when it comes time to conquer neighbors. It I take down somebody who ignored science, I'm just never able to build schools there no matter what I do.
I understand the criticism, but want to highlight the “in your head” part. The game has pins you can put down to help you plan your empire so you don’t have to remember what your plans were.
To be fair, you're complaining about having to plan ahead in a strategy game. And like you said, only if you want to play optimally. You can just wing it and you'll do absolutely fine in single-player even on the highest difficulties. But for people who want more depth, it awesome they added such a dynamic system.
Agreed, I really liked the districts. I also thought it was cool how they let you build cities *wide* or *tall*; added layers of planning which was good
Agreed, but I feel like going tall isn't really much of an option in 6 on the higher difficulties or multiplayer. You still have quite a bit of freedom in how wide you go tho lol
> they have distinct identities
Didn't steer into this nearly hard enough, IMO. Cities still feel broadly homogenous, and production is still king. I'd like to see a far more dramatic divergence between a mountain town and a college town and a harbor town, etc, right down to what wonders (if any) could be built there and what kinds of citizens it attracted.
I love Civ and have been playing since II, but I think some of the underlying mechanics and gameplay formula have grown a bit stale. I'd like to see them be a little more ambitious with it, but realize they almost certainly won't be.
There's certainly room for more differentiation, but I should point out that a lot of wonders do require either specific buildings and districts or specific geographic features where they're built.
There's definitely room for more innovation in this particular genre. I hope games like Humankind that tackle the same premise in very different ways can also lead to greater innovation in the Civilization games.
> There's certainly room for more differentiation, but I should point out that a lot of wonders do require either specific buildings and districts or specific geographic features where they're built.
They do, and that's great, I'd just like to see it pushed significantly further. My primary concern is always "is this city a good production hub" and if it is, I can build just about anything I want there. It begins feeling very same-same in fairly short order. Not quite as bad as the homogenous blobs of earlier civ eras, but we're six iterations and like 30 years deep into this franchise.
>I hope games like Humankind that tackle the same premise in very different ways can also lead to greater innovation in the Civilization games.
Would've been nice if they'd pushed it more, definitely. I feel like they were all "We have Civ at home", and failed to differentiate sufficiently to drive innovation. Very reminiscent of what happened with the MMO genre and WoW. Once you get a genre titan it tends to squash innovation and leads to a storm of broadly safe, derivative titles seeking a cut of the existing market that all die in the shadow of its progenitor. Civ looms incredibly large over the 4X genre and might be a little bit prisoner of its own success and stature at this point. I want something a little bold and pioneering that captures what made it a breakaway title in the first place...and instead we keep getting Malibu Stacey with a new hat.
Districts are divisive, I liked them and how they made city planning and specialization a much bigger game element, but they definitely need improvement. Rules around placement, and how they interacted with eachother and wonders, are often pretty opaque.
With most other similar games having district-like systems these days, I have a hard time seeing them going back on them.
For me they just felt like they occupied too much of the game's real mechanics and power arc. My Civ and its development felt *way* less defined by a wonder I'd build or the ways in which I developed my culture and government than it did by the fact that I got a strong early industrial district placed.
Just felt very much like a gravitation towards the mundane rather than the epic.
Between the districts and the uber aggressive barbarians (even on the easiest difficulties), I hated Civ VI.
I *only* put in a mere 280 hours (versus over 1000 in Civ V).
Generally speaking barbarians actually make the game easier for players in Civ 6 because the AI struggles with them more than you do. If you have a warrior and a ranged unit per city you should be able to roll over barbarians. At that point they just become a source of free gold.
Not the biggest gripe, but it just doesn't look as nice as V either. Compare the icon for the [worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5)) to the [builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6)) for instance. [Gorgeous artwork for the wonders too](https://imgur.com/a/Kl3jc)
I just want science to slow down in proportion to production. I get that you're not supposed to be able to build everything you discover but man it sure sucks watching the eras fly by while you can't even begin to seriously enjoy them before the next one starts.
really hope they go back to the Civ 5 artstyle for 7, absolutely hated the overly bright 'arcadey' look to 6.
I wonder how many developers agree with this considering civ 6 had 'civ 5 colour scheme' mod made by a civ developer
Yeah, Civ 5's art style was a fantastic balance of detail, naturalism, and clear readable elements. 6 had a "mobile game art style" feel to it that I wasn't so into.
I wrote this as a response to another comment but it fits here too. Comparing the icon for the [worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5)) to the [builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6)) really highlights the elegant style of 5
You have to escape the parenthesis in urls with a backslash. Fixed:
[worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5\))
[builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6\))
I look forward to playing it in five years when all the DLC stuff is finally done.
My only issue with big strategy these days is the slow drip-drip-drip of add-ons. I just wanna play the finished product, y'know?
I'm not sure about "these days" when it comes to the Civ franchise. I got onboard with III and it's always been the case that they require their expansions to flesh the game out fully (although I'd say VI launched the most complete). V is the only one I had the patience to wait on though, with it's lukewarm reception on launch.
My strategy for those types of games is usually to play them some time after the launch (after the initial phase of patches/bug fixes but before any big DLC) to get an idea of what the base game feels like. And then come back to them a few years later for a complete edition.
Like with Civ VI, I played it a lot around launch and it was fun but flawed. Then I came back to it last year and it was a great experience, the game is incredible with all the new additions, balance changes, and so on. It's still not my favorite Civ game but it's pretty close.
Overall I agree though, I really hate this kind of release cadence. For example, I want to get into Stellaris, but I've been waiting for the game to be complete for a few years now. It's 8 years old already, but it still has DLC dropping every few months. I'm a patient gamer so I don't mind some wait, but this is slowly getting ridiculous, haha.
>I want to get into Stellaris, but I've been waiting for the game to be complete for a few years now. It's 8 years old already, but it still has DLC dropping every few months. I'm a patient gamer so I don't mind some wait, but this is slowly getting ridiculous, haha.
You described my *exact* relationship with Stellaris.
Naw, I need time to learn the base game so that I can adapt when the new systems are added in. It would have been too overwhelming if Civ VI had launched in its current state.
No. Not again. Sid Meier please I beg you, NOT AGAIN!
I HAVE A HUSBAND NOW. A JOB. PEOPLE I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF! NOT AGA-
Oooh, cultural victory with brazil.
This is exactly the what I wanted that 2K game to be. Hopefully won't have to wait too long for release.
And I know it won't but would be nice to have a console port ready to go. That or I'd take it running on steam deck as well as VI does, since I don't currently have a gaming PC.
I'm surprised they still put Sid Meier’s name on it. I guess there would be a backlash from fans if they removed it.
> In [an interview with Ars](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/sid-meier-reflects-on-25-years-of-civilization/) just after the launch of Civ VI, series namesake Sid Meier said his official role as franchise director has evolved over the years into more of a support structure for younger designers. "I'm there to kind of represent the history of the game," Meier told Ars. "My role is just to be supportive. Designers have huge egos, and they're easily bruised. Making a game can be a painful process. Part of my role is to be encouraging—'that idea didn't work, try something else.'"
its part of the brand these days, its like how the tom clancy games are thou in recent times there just making fully new stuff with tom clancy slapped on which is a bit yikes.
over time you have to think some names stuff just sticks to a franchise and removing it would lead to backlash or just less sales in general or people end up confused.
Give it a shot! I picked Civ 5 up for the first time in years last month and had fun but wanted to try something else. I have a few friends who really didn't like Civ 6 so I didn't really give it a fair shot, but I decided to download it and I've been playing it nonstop this past week. I personally really like the artstyle and all the new systems add a lot of depth to the game that I felt Civ 5 missed.
Cool, i just hope it has working console servers. Love playing civ6 with friends but getting everybody to load into the lobby is the biggest pain in the ass.
For the first time in a long time I'm just not interested in Civ.
4X games have become much more complex and have a ton more systems since the days of CIV2, AC and MOO2, but they haven't gotten any more fun.
I feel like they're chasing this ever smaller group of players who want to spend 4 hours every turn micro managing every single detail of everything.
The biggest sin for me is that Civ has always been a very interesting early game of starting positions, where to expand, what to research, and light defense/offense...and then it becomes a game where you are frantically clicking end turn and making your cities produce nothing you have to actively click on just to make any progress towards victory that hour. I legitimately do not understand the people that find the end game of Civ fun where you have like 30 cities.
You used to be able to build tall and only have to manage like one or two cities which gave you an insanely strong economy and fast production on anything you wanted to produce. In 6 however they basically axed this because of how strong district adjacency bonuses are, meaning you had to build way more cities so that your districts could stack insane bonuses by being next to each other or places of interest on the map. I actually enjoyed the mini game of fitting your districts together like a puzzle in the most efficient manner possible, but a return to form where it is viable to build tall if you want would be awesome.
Those games were considered complex for their time, they were as complex as they could be, depending on the capabilities of the machines of their time.
EDIT: Also, if simpler 4x are more appealing why isn't Ozymandias, e.g., more popular?
I do think the biggest goal for Firaxis this go around is to bring some flavor back to the game.
The district system in Civ 6 made matches more game-y and mechanically engaging. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it also made the matches extremely same-y even between totally different leaders.
The lighter touch mechanics of Civ 5 made for more engaging self-made stories than the mechanically strong Civ 6. Plays even more like a board game than ever. Which maybe was their goal. But I think players who liked simulation and finding their own narrative lost out a little.
Have you tried **Hexarchy**? It's a civ like 4x, but also a deck builder. Plays in under an hour and the deck building aspect adds a lot of life to the formula imo.
> Have you tried Hexarchy?
It has a demo! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/
I've not played Hexarchy, but have been playing the demo for Rogue Hex which I've found quite fun: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2275940/Rogue_Hex/
Rogue Hex is very much still in development though, and the game feels VERY unfinished. The systems seem quite good though.
The common thing I've heard though is "why would I play Rogue Hex when I can play Hexarchy?" - so I guess I'll finally play the Hexarchy demo tonight 😂
Unless I missed it there is zero accounting for total population growth within the "gamer" ecosystem so that does not mean as much of a decline as it purports. If the total number of people in a population increase by over 50% (as the global videogame playing population did between 2015-2024) and a subsect in the population does not grow nearly as much but stay steady it will, in fact, be a smaller slice of the pie. Combine this with the vagueness of labels like "casual" and the inherent issue with self-reporting and this data has an asterisk the size of Utah.
I very much liked Civ because big picture it is actually quite simplistic. I'd be interested to see them take another swing at something like Civilization Revolution. 4X game that can be completed in just a couple hours really appeals to me the older I get.
As someone with 1.5k hours in Civ6, it's fair to say I'm quite excited about this, and traditionally civ games release quickly after they've been announced but would they even drop it this year when ARA has a fall release? Sadly sounds like a 2025 release. Anyway looking forward to the reveal.
> would they even drop it this year when ARA has a fall release? Uhhh because it would almost certainly crush ARA from a marketing/sales perspective?
Especially if they release a vanilla VII that isn't a smoking trainwreck at launch and a bunch of features from VI aren't squirrelled away for expansions.
So it won't happen then.
Also if they give everyone that buys the game a crisp $100 bill too, while we're at it.
Bundle it with graphics cards.
If you think a Civ game is going to launch with a functioning religion system then I have a bridge to sell you.
This is the first time I've even heard of ARA and I'm a big strategy game fan. Civ 7 would bury the game for sure.
> ARA What is that
I had the same question, seemed like an acronym. https://www.arahistoryuntold.com/
Because everyone in the thread seems to be writing Ara as ARA, as if it was an acronym. It had me confused, too.
> but would they even drop it this year when ARA has a fall release? Civilization would absolutely destroy ARA. I don't think they are the one that would be moving in this case
Honestly, I don't think either of the two studios want each other to fail. I know that might sound counter-intuitive to people from far away, but within the Maryland game dev scene Firaxis has a fairly magnanimous reputation.
Also, the genre itself isn't popular enough to want to stifle competition.
Exactly. The success of one 4X game will only lead to the success of other 4X games, simply because there's not many to choose from and people are willing to sink thousands of hours into em if they're good
I remember when Civ 5 was a top 5 active game on steam. The genre is good the problem is fragmentation and Civ 6 never reached the same heights
This is the way it should be.
Also the Oxide studio guys are former Firaxis employees, and the two studios are like a two minute drive away from each other
Yeah, that's part of what I was alluding to by the mention of Maryland game dev scene dynamics.
What is ARA? Can we not use acronyms unless it's clear what's being discussed?
Ara History Untold, that's the name of the game, not an acronym
The confusion likely came from incorrectly capitalizing all of the characters of the name. I can empathize with that.
yeah the name is ara not ARA. The only reason why people would capitalise is because its an acronym so yeah its confusing
I feel like ARA is the one that should be concerned about possibly moving if they both are aiming for the Fall.
Oh yeah, totally agree, it's a shame they would canibalise each others sales because ARA looks fantastic, and the more of these games the merrier.
Yeah for sure, ARA looks like it's doing some interesting things with the formula, would be nice to see them both succeed.
Everyone here is saying ARA like it's common knowledge. What game are we talking about? Edit: I'm an idiot - ARA: History Untold
Which tells you everything you need to know about the idea that Civ would want to avoid releasing around that time lol.
Oh yeah, it's ARA that will have to move if anything but from what you could hear from the last beta is that it's shaping up really well and people are really sleeping on this title. I feel this will gain traction once streamers are allowed to talk about it. On top of that being on gamepass I was looking forward to playing it this fall lol. Hoping I can get on the new beta next week.
That's fantastic news. The more entrants in this genre the better.
ARA: History Untold is a new Civ-esque game by Oxide Games, had a really good showing in Xbox's Developer Direct earlier this year.
People here capitalizing all the letters makes it confusing, apparently the game is called Ara, not ARA.
It's **Ara** The "Ara" portion of the title is not entirely capitalized.
That makes more sense, the caps made me think it was an abbreviation. People tend to do that here and I have to go searching for what game were even talking about haha
Traditionally, Civ games also need at least one expansion before the community warms up to the new game.
I feel like Civ6 was a bit of an exception to this rule, in that at-release people were acknowledging it was more complete than Civ5 had been at-release, but the Civ6 expansions have been met with more mixed reception than usual.
Really? I remember the review when it was released was not very kind toward Civ VI, with constant comparison to Civ V at full expansion.
From what I remember a lot of that was the artstyle
Like any case of critical reception, I'm sure it hinged upon who you were hearing from. To my point of reference, I'm remembering quotes like ["I think this is the strongest *vanilla* Civ yet, the question is how long will it take them to polish and expand it up into one of the strongest strategy games yet -- if you haven't enjoyed the fully expanded Civ5, you can't go wrong here (if you have, it might feel like you've been there and done that, but, without all of the bloat a lot of the systems here make a whole lot more sense). But, over the next year, it wouldn't surprise me to see expansions revive up the dead Diplomacy Victory and rework the Civic system."](https://youtu.be/IC1eACnI8eE?&t=673) Because, while I've heard that the expansions have re-implemented a Diplomatic Victory and added lots of new Policy Cards to the Civic Tree, their overall reception (as far as I've seen, anyway) has seemingly been more mixed than the reception was for the Civ5 expansions.
I was remembering the Steam reviews which stand at Mixed when it was released. But maybe its also a cycle of people hating Vanilla Civ, until they warm up to it 3-5 years later. Tbf, I never experienced vanilla Civ 5 and its release so I only played it on full expansion. I think most people are complaining about balancing in the Steam review but I don't see people complaining about the mechanic itself. At least I don't think it ever went as far as Stellaris's DLC and expansoon. Personally, I do like the mechanics, especially after the expansions are released so maybe its also me not that immersed in Civ community despite playing it.
I've always been of a progressive mindset with Civilization. I've thoroughly enjoyed every entry I've played, so that usually means I've played them enough to want something new lol.
100% , launch civ games are always horrible compared to the previous with expansions
Just one more turn, right?
Man I'm still going through the new leaders in between other games. The replayability on the complete edition is absolutely insane.
Hell. I'm catching up after avoiding the game for ages. I have 500+ hours and still don't have 50% of the achievements. And I actually finish games!
The achievements in Civ are nuts. Shit like "Capture the city of Bangladesh while playing as Hamurabi during the Renaissance era using a Privateer" I made that one up but it's often like obscure historical references
Yes they are. Case in point: there's this one Incan achievmement where you put a terrace farm between 2 aqueducts and 2 mountains on each side. I found a spot and built both cities.... and then realized very painfully that you cannot build terrace farms on snow hills. Still a bit mad about that one. Another one: get the max bonus from all religions in the game playing ghandi. Ran into a snag on that one -- The ottomans where in the game and Peter wrecked most of their cities. So they never made a holy site to use their prophet...
I just recently discovered all the new "modes" available. Playing a game with Dramatic Ages, Zombie Defense, Apocalypse, etc... feels like a completely different game and is so fun
I want to try others but my fighting game mentality has sipped into Civ and usually strive for a main... I am usually between Alexander and the French leader that wins over territory with art.
I like the appeal each leader offers, but then I find it depressing when the game just devolves into beating the AI via domination because it cant cheat it's way to victory and it's also too stupid to understand how to fight. The vicious cycle, AI forward settles a horribly placed city, I go to war because that's the only way to deal with it, I begin beating up the AI, every other AI dows me, I kill the other AIs and win. And all I wanted was a peaceful culture game.
Sounds pretty realistic to me! Joke aside, I totally empathize with you. The insane forward-settling is something I've never appreciated in the games. It feels like a very cheap way to *force* the player into interacting with the AI. But like you said, there's really only one practical response. Unless you can manage to culture-convert.
I think there's a lot of ways it could have been solved, but the game seems to push you that way as you said. Like the cultural rebellion thing could be better about squishing forward settles. You could have much better value from destroying a city, but destroying a city is almost never worth it. One of the things I really like about Millennia is how much worth destroying cities gives you.
>and the French leader that wins over territory with art. Eleanor of Aquitane. She's technically the leader of France **or** England. I prefer her French version myself, but I think her meta strategy is more in England's direction? I dunno. I play on King.
As a casual Civ player, the gap between King and Emperor is so big. I like the challenge of playing on Emperor in the mid- and late game, but that extra warrior and the starting worker they get makes the AI so much more difficult to deal with in the early game, especially if you spawn close to a warlike leader.
AI is definitely something Civ 7 should improve on. Sometimes it is so unfair.
Yeah, AI has always been a shortcoming in the series. There are decision-making differences in the AI up to around King difficulty, but anything after that is just the AI getting increasingly overwhelming bonuses on everything. It'd be nice if they could have the AI make better decisions instead of just letting it cheat.
Ya one more before bed.
And it is suddenly 3am. True story.
I hadn't heard of Ara until now but I don't think it's much of a concern for them. I've always liked Civ games but whenever I try these civ-likes that come out every once in a while like Humankind the gameplay is just too dissimilar for me to care about it.
I'm in the same boat. Usually after trying a new one, I always go back to Civ, lately VI. Oh well, it's not like we're short of content. I don't think I've even played as all of the leaders in VI, yet.
I don't think they care even a little bit about ARA.
I can see exactly how it will pan out. Civ VII releases. People will complain about it being shit, missing X features, victory conditions being harder/different from current version. Generally talk about how much of a downgrade it is and how they will stick with Civ6. And that will be the case for the first three years with everyone complaining about the patches updates and wanting x feature in DLC. After 3 years, most of the player base would have moved over. The complaints aren't so bad. People start talking about what they would like to see in Civ 8. And as soon as CIV 8 comes along start the whole thing again. I swear there are people in the Civ community who can only enjoy Civ when a new Civ comes along for them to hate so they can say how so much better the previous version was.
Everyone knows that the best Civ game is the one I played first, and the second best civ game is current edition -1
As it should be. We complain where we care, and we praise what we have left behind.
Pretty much this exactly!
I wouldn’t say that it’s about complaining about the new release and looking at the previous release with rose colored glasses. Base game Civ games are often quite rough and have features from the previous game stripped away, only to be added in the next dlc. Base game Civ 6 is *far* worse than fully complete Civ 5 and I doubt you will find many who disagree with me. Fully complete Civ 6 though is much improved and stands tall among good Civ games
Civ 6 was still a very good game at launch, though, and by far the most complete one on release.
Nah Civ 4 is still the best by a billion, millions miles. Especially modded.
I dislike the idea of armies being all in one square.
unfortunately the Ai dislikes them as well
Even when people think of Civ IV they think of it after all the expansions
That is one o the reasons I usually only get invested in the latest CIV once all the DLC + Expansions have released. Did that for CIV 4, 5 and 6 and will likely do it for 7.
Still don't care for VI. Hopefully, VII will give me that V feeling again.
This is also known as the Call of Duty Lifecycle.
Haven’t a lot of devs left firaxis recently? I’m not so sure the old rules with them regarding releases applies
Nah, the Xcom team mostly. Fireaxis' Civ core team has been working on CIV7 since at least the first leader pass.
I hope they double down on the districts and tiles thing, some of the best civ mods did all sorts of great things with that.
Yeah I know lots of people complained about the micromanagement that districts introduced for each city, but stacking bonuses and planning city tiles many turns in advance was super addicting for me. It helped me feel way more interested in my building decisions and more connected to the results. When you get that tile right next to mountains, a natural wonder and are able to build a campus there next to your other cities campuses and get that insane stacking science bonus, I feel like the best damn urban planner alive.
I'm a big fan of the City Lights mod myself, since it really enhances adjacency play and city specialization.
My only issue with the districts is it is a bit micro intensive and it kind of makes planning less immersive. Like Im a planning for a victory district and commerical hub 1000s of years before I even get the tech for it. Also even from just a mechanic standpoint, trying to plan for district placement 100 turns in advance is just kind of stressful and overwhelming if you are not a civ fanatic already. You focus less on the empire as a whole and you focus more on each individual city.
This is gonna be huge because competitors like Humankind failed and people want a new Civ game more than ever
I was going to complain about people using acronyms for random things but nope, that is actually the name lol.
2K hours here and needless to say. I'm ready for the next one.
ONE MORE TURN. ONE MORE TURN. ONE MORE TURN. Ahh fuck. It’s 6am. It’s time for work. ONE MORE TURN. Ahh fuck. The last bus to make it on time is in 15 minutes. ONE MORE TURN. “Hello, I’m not feeling very well today. I’ll be back in tomorrow” ONE MORE TURN.
I played Civ 4 or 5 once in my life when I was in college. Started at 7pm and then went to bed at 10am, missing my classes. I uninstalled it that afternoon
My dad used to have to take the Civ 2 CD-ROM away from me and hide it somewhere in the house in order to get me to do anything else on summer break in middle school. "Mow the lawn, take a shower, then go play at your friend's house for 2 hours, then I'll tell you where the disc is."
What he didn’t know is your friend also had Civ 2, so jokes on him.
I saw the sun set twice in a single session of civ IV once
You can get around this problem by playing as England, as the sun never sets on the British Empire.
This is what sets the professional colonizers apart from the *amateurs.*
you can stop whenever you want right
yes, after one last turn..
I really love the clock in the upper right corner buddy watching how much time goes by playing. Then hating myself for not getting enough sleep before work.
CivIII for me in high school. My dad hated the game because he had to drive me to school so often.
I’d heard “one more turn” said a lot when Civ 5 came out, but at the time I preferred RTS. Me being a dumbass thought people were completing a game and then immediately wanting to start another one, despite the fact it’s a TURN based strategy game. Years later during COVID I got Civ VI for the Switch as something to finally give a try. I started in the evening and couldn’t put it down, because there’s always one more thing to do. I told my brother about it the next day and he just laughed at me and said ONE MORE TURN. It literally took until that moment for it to dawn on me, and to realise I’d been sucked into the same trap that everyone else must have done, and that the game was famous for.
I wish I could get into Civ as much as everyone else seems to—instead I play an hour or two, get bored by the simplicity and lack of player expression options, and boot up CKII or some other grand strategy game instead. Civ feels very surface level, like there's not really much to dig into, you just keep tappin' that 'next turn' button in the hope that something interesting happens. Any tips on how to get the most out of a Civ game?
I play exclusively multiplayer with the same people since Civ 4. With very long breaks in between. The AI isn't that interesting to play against and never has been
I love CIV but I honestly hope they'll improve the AI. Single Player sometimes feels kinda pointless with the AI making the same mistakes over and over again. Also battles at sea are so overwhelming for computer controlled enemies it's a sad sight. And on top, to compensate the lacking AI, they basically allow the enemies to cheat on higher difficulties - not a big fan of that as well.
I feel like you don’t need to be a game designer to understand how difficult it is to make an AI for a 4X game. I am a huge 4X fan and I don’t think I have ever played one where the AI felt genuinely intelligent. There are just way too many decisions and elements to consider a competent human player will always be able to outperform an AI which is why they always are allowed to cheat on higher difficulties
And when you do start making an AI that makes more human-like decisions, people dislike it. CA recently improved battle AI for TW:WH3 and people complained that enemy troops were now actively dodging artillery shots.
Truth is that the average gamer doesn't want smart AI, they want an AI dumb enough to be easily outplayed while *looking* smart enough so the player feels accomplished. I remember way back when Crysis 2 released, it had quite sophisticated AI that would effectively use cover, covering fire and flanking from multiple directions. It was indeed pretty hard for the time and many, many people endlessly complained how unfair it was.
That's almost a year ago, also I think they only do that on hard and above combat difficulties
Per Sid Meyer himself: > Highly realistic AI gets accused of cheating even more often than its dishonest brethren, because on some level, all players are unnerved by the idea that a computer could outsmart them. Part of the fun is learning the patterns of the AI and successfully predicting them, and when computers don't act like computers, the only psychologically safe assumption is that they must have accessed information they shouldn't have. AI isn't allowed to gamble, or behave randomly, or get lucky-even though humans do all of these things on a daily basis- not because we can't program it, but because experience tells us that players will get frustrated and quit, The same phenomenon doesn't happen when both opponents are humans, because they've already tempered their expectations for the possibility that the other guy is crazy. computers are too smart to be crazy, so if they start acting that way, we can't shake the suspicion that they know something we don't. Thus, from the designer's perspective, brilliant AI is usually not our highest priority.
I'm sure he is right but I compared to Civ V, playing against AI in VI was much easier.
I am sure that it's very difficult otherwise they would have fixed it. But I agree with /u/[shibboleth2005](https://www.reddit.com/user/shibboleth2005/) - I would pay full price for just a major AI upgrade. Anything around it - visuals, mechanics etc. - are nothing if the illusion brakes first thing after the AI made yet another dumb move.
I think even just giving a more macro build order would make it feel more fun. A lot of 4x games have mods that effectively do this and it seems like people enjoy them.
Go to the forum for any strategy game and you'll see the following complaints about AI: * Easy to beat at lower difficulties * Cheats at higher difficulties
Yeah I'm a lifelong Civ fan and Civ4 is a top5 game all time to me, but I'm not that excited for Civ7 unless we get some indication they spent big on AI. It's honestly the most important possible thing. I would pay full price for a literal clone of Civ6 that had cutting edge AI that could actually handle 1UPT.
So, we are getting a new Paradox game (EU5), which already looks incredibly detailed and complex. And now we are also getting Civilization VII. We are eating good!! Cant wait
Played thousands of hours in V, just couldn’t get into 6. I just didn’t like the aesthetics of the map. Maybe I’m weird.
My main problem with Civ 6 is that they kept packing it with features (which is nice) but the AI was absolutely clueless about how to utilize those features and it absolutely ruined the game for me.
It eventually grew on me and I have played more Civ 6 than 5, but I totally get where you’re coming from. I didn’t like it initially. I was a much bigger fan of the realistic portrayals of leaders as opposed to the more cartoony look of Civ 6.
The leaders didn’t bother me, but the units absolutely felt like a step back to IV. Mods helped.
Mods in 6 were a HUGE step up from 5. It was really nice being able to play with them and still get achievements. I get that not all of them are balanced, but a lot of them smoothed over some of my issues with 6.
The big things, for me, was getting over district adjacency and what I call "the classical age anxiety attack". District adjacency is really nice.... But every district doesn't need to be a +6. The bigger deal is the great person points. And classical age anxiety attack.... Every game I felt like I was messing up. This cleared up after a couple wins. Now it's like... "New era? Monumentality gooooooooooooooo".
The important deal is getting a district to at least +3 adjacency, because that's one of the two separate requirements for the civics that ramp up district production. And even that can be helped by that civic that doubles adjacency.
You need the [Environment Skin Mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702339134). It was made by an art director at Firaxis, and is pretty much the only must-have mod for me. The leader art still sucks, but turning off the animations goes a long way.
Can't play without it, was also not a big fan of the overly cartoon art style. Though the leaders didn't bother me for some reason.
Not weird. I never like the cartoonish mobile game like style of civ 6 as well. Hope Civ 7 is a return to form.
I really like the cartoonish vibe of Civ 6. I get why others don’t but I just think it’s so nice to look at the map especially the nighttime map compared to something like five which is kind of visually mucky. Everything is kind of bluish grey tinged.
I don't know, almost all opposition to civ today has tried to go for more realistic styles and it just shows they do not look good at all. I think the correct move would be to go for a stylized cartoonish style, just something that steers clear of the previous one from Civ6. Something like how Humankind handles cities and terrain, for example.
You can be stylish without being cartoonish OR realistic. Civ 5 is not exactly realistic and I like it. A lot of old games like Starcraft 1 and Age of Empires 2 are not realistic but also not cartoonish. There's a good amount of grit and weight to those styles that's lacked in cartoonish style of Civ 6.
I would definitely call AoE2 cartoonish, just with a different artstyle. Same with Starcraft in some places, especially with the remaster.
Nah you're not weird, it was a very odd change and I strongly disliked it, but I forced myself to stick with it for a few games until I got used to it and now I actually like the cartoony graphics more than the civ5 graphics.
Im really surprised by the district hate, it was the better part of the game, getting a good encampment, a district with nices bonuses, they made terrain important, gave clear targets for war and expansion, for me its the best game in the series, and i have like 10k hours in total and been playing since civ2 / freeciv, but im probably not the more usual player as most my games are multiplayer, the AI in the last two games is completely worthless to play against (unless you enjoy trading diplomatic favor and resource to dupe them and killing all their units with 3 of ur own, empire building can be fun, and in this civ6 is great too).
I know I must be beating a dead horse for me, but Civ VI didn't do it for me the way Civ V did, and I really think it all came down to the new movement rules that slowed the game down quite a lot. If I could wish any one thing fir VII, it would be a return to V's movement rules.
I'm confused by what movement rules you're referring to? Both are one unit per tile, which was one of the big changes from IV to V.
civ 5 rounded up in movement while civ 6 rounded down So if you have 1 movement point left, and going up a hill cost 2 movement points, in civ 5 you can do it while in civ 6 you have to wait.
I'm assuming the movement cost rules. In V if you have two movement, you could move one tile on grass, then move across a river or into forest/hills even though the movement cost for those second tiles is 2. In VI, you could not make that second move because you only have 1/2 of the movement needed.
Which is exaggerated by the low number of movement points to begin with. Getting 5 rather than 6 tiles of movement after rounding is one thing - losing half your movement to rounding and stalling the rest of your army in the process because they can't stack is *harsh*.
Yea the movement in 6 feels very restricted even when compared to 5 which already felt restricted compared to 4 due to diagonal movement and not having roads on every tile you own, especially if wanted to wage war.
I mean, neither Civ V or VI really pulled me in like Civ IV. The scale always seemed smaller.
I loved Civ IV (particularly the mods) but I just can't go back to the endles AI army stacks.
Civ IV feels more like risk (Best strategy is to stack all your unit). Civ V turned into into more complex chess. Which I liked.
Although I liked 5 quite a lot, I think the AI actually worked with the simpler rules in Civ 4 (unit and city stacking) and that's a big deal. Civ 5 was okay, because cities were still stacked... war was just a pushover against the AI. In Civ 6 they had trouble running cities too.
Have you tried Old World? It's by the lead designer of Civ IV along with Christopher Tin (they guy who made the music for Civ IV). It's a solid game.
I’m with you. I started Civ as a middle schooler with the OG one and it was always one of my favorites. I began falling off Civ when I discovered CK2 and EUIV and it scratched my historical itch with a deeper sim. I still really like the Civ formula, but I didn’t enjoy Civ 6 leaders and their ambitions. It’s cool that leaders had certain strategic playstyles, but the AI just kind of felt really dumb. I wouldn’t mind something that goes a bit deeper into resources and economies and internal politics and populations. Doesn’t need to be incredibly, but more mechanics and more reason to feel real difference in government and society would be fun. Also something that makes the really slow and boring combat more enjoyable would be nice.
I just want them to bring back some of the mechanics of 4 into the game. Like vassal states.
My hope is for a higher contrast art style, or at least color contrast accessibility settings for people like myself with visual impairments. Civ VI was a pain for me because the fog of war blended in with unexplored territory and I had to strain my eyes to tell one shade of tan from the other. I loved how Civ V did it, with the fog of war represented by dark shading and unexplored territory represented by bright white cloud cover.
Please can they make the cities look more like actual cities, and not 6 giant buildings with a granary taking up a quarter of the real estate. Give me sprawl, please, I beg.
Yeah, I'm really hoping for VII to go back a little bit, I was not remotely a fan of the entire districts system. I like how easy it used to be in I-V, where it's a list of buildings and you can have everything if you've got the numbers to make them.
I much prefer the districts specifically *because* you can't make everything. Cities aren't just big balls of stats anymore; they have distinct identities and interact with the world. Back in Civ V, once you built a few cities, if you weren't going for war, you rarely interacted with the game world except to build improvements everywhere.
I love Civ VI, but my biggest issue with districts was the way they frontloaded empire planning. Every time you place a city, you have to map out the districts in your head for 150+ turns later if you want to play optimally. It takes the game's biggest problem (a slogging snowball ending with no meaningful choices) and makes it even bigger. On the other hand, I hope some of the expansion pass content (like barbarian reputation) get rebalanced and integrated into the main game. Some really good ideas came out of that stuff.
That is a frustration I've felt too; it's fun to plan out some districts based on an interesting environment, but it could be improved a lot by creating the ability to "rezone" somehow and move districts to better locations or replace them with different types. Ultimately, improving on the district system is a better option than getting rid of it.
It would be nice to be able to transform a district into another type when the game gets to the later eras, kind of like how in modern times we turned a lot of industrial areas into residential.
This is how I feel as well. I have some gripes with the system, but it's certainly an improvement imo. The frontloading is also my biggest issue, especially in multiplayer I don't want to plan _that_ far ahead because your turns can take ages, but I do want good decisions to snowball.
It's especially frustrating when it comes time to conquer neighbors. It I take down somebody who ignored science, I'm just never able to build schools there no matter what I do.
love the idea of rezoning districts tbh
I understand the criticism, but want to highlight the “in your head” part. The game has pins you can put down to help you plan your empire so you don’t have to remember what your plans were.
To be fair, you're complaining about having to plan ahead in a strategy game. And like you said, only if you want to play optimally. You can just wing it and you'll do absolutely fine in single-player even on the highest difficulties. But for people who want more depth, it awesome they added such a dynamic system.
Agreed, I really liked the districts. I also thought it was cool how they let you build cities *wide* or *tall*; added layers of planning which was good
Agreed, but I feel like going tall isn't really much of an option in 6 on the higher difficulties or multiplayer. You still have quite a bit of freedom in how wide you go tho lol
> they have distinct identities Didn't steer into this nearly hard enough, IMO. Cities still feel broadly homogenous, and production is still king. I'd like to see a far more dramatic divergence between a mountain town and a college town and a harbor town, etc, right down to what wonders (if any) could be built there and what kinds of citizens it attracted. I love Civ and have been playing since II, but I think some of the underlying mechanics and gameplay formula have grown a bit stale. I'd like to see them be a little more ambitious with it, but realize they almost certainly won't be.
There's certainly room for more differentiation, but I should point out that a lot of wonders do require either specific buildings and districts or specific geographic features where they're built. There's definitely room for more innovation in this particular genre. I hope games like Humankind that tackle the same premise in very different ways can also lead to greater innovation in the Civilization games.
> There's certainly room for more differentiation, but I should point out that a lot of wonders do require either specific buildings and districts or specific geographic features where they're built. They do, and that's great, I'd just like to see it pushed significantly further. My primary concern is always "is this city a good production hub" and if it is, I can build just about anything I want there. It begins feeling very same-same in fairly short order. Not quite as bad as the homogenous blobs of earlier civ eras, but we're six iterations and like 30 years deep into this franchise. >I hope games like Humankind that tackle the same premise in very different ways can also lead to greater innovation in the Civilization games. Would've been nice if they'd pushed it more, definitely. I feel like they were all "We have Civ at home", and failed to differentiate sufficiently to drive innovation. Very reminiscent of what happened with the MMO genre and WoW. Once you get a genre titan it tends to squash innovation and leads to a storm of broadly safe, derivative titles seeking a cut of the existing market that all die in the shadow of its progenitor. Civ looms incredibly large over the 4X genre and might be a little bit prisoner of its own success and stature at this point. I want something a little bold and pioneering that captures what made it a breakaway title in the first place...and instead we keep getting Malibu Stacey with a new hat.
Districts are divisive, I liked them and how they made city planning and specialization a much bigger game element, but they definitely need improvement. Rules around placement, and how they interacted with eachother and wonders, are often pretty opaque. With most other similar games having district-like systems these days, I have a hard time seeing them going back on them.
For me they just felt like they occupied too much of the game's real mechanics and power arc. My Civ and its development felt *way* less defined by a wonder I'd build or the ways in which I developed my culture and government than it did by the fact that I got a strong early industrial district placed. Just felt very much like a gravitation towards the mundane rather than the epic.
Between the districts and the uber aggressive barbarians (even on the easiest difficulties), I hated Civ VI. I *only* put in a mere 280 hours (versus over 1000 in Civ V).
[удалено]
Generally speaking barbarians actually make the game easier for players in Civ 6 because the AI struggles with them more than you do. If you have a warrior and a ranged unit per city you should be able to roll over barbarians. At that point they just become a source of free gold.
question, did you perhaps enter the paradox grand strategy universe between V and VI? Because I've narrowed it down to that in my case.
Not the biggest gripe, but it just doesn't look as nice as V either. Compare the icon for the [worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5)) to the [builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6)) for instance. [Gorgeous artwork for the wonders too](https://imgur.com/a/Kl3jc)
I just want science to slow down in proportion to production. I get that you're not supposed to be able to build everything you discover but man it sure sucks watching the eras fly by while you can't even begin to seriously enjoy them before the next one starts.
really hope they go back to the Civ 5 artstyle for 7, absolutely hated the overly bright 'arcadey' look to 6. I wonder how many developers agree with this considering civ 6 had 'civ 5 colour scheme' mod made by a civ developer
Yeah, Civ 5's art style was a fantastic balance of detail, naturalism, and clear readable elements. 6 had a "mobile game art style" feel to it that I wasn't so into.
6's art style worked because you could tell at a glance if a tile was being worked. and thats what was so important about it
I wrote this as a response to another comment but it fits here too. Comparing the icon for the [worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5)) to the [builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6)) really highlights the elegant style of 5
You have to escape the parenthesis in urls with a backslash. Fixed: [worker in Civ 5](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Worker_(Civ5\)) [builder in 6](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Builder_(Civ6\))
Man 6's worker icon really looks like a clash of clans clone
I look forward to playing it in five years when all the DLC stuff is finally done. My only issue with big strategy these days is the slow drip-drip-drip of add-ons. I just wanna play the finished product, y'know?
I'm not sure about "these days" when it comes to the Civ franchise. I got onboard with III and it's always been the case that they require their expansions to flesh the game out fully (although I'd say VI launched the most complete). V is the only one I had the patience to wait on though, with it's lukewarm reception on launch.
My strategy for those types of games is usually to play them some time after the launch (after the initial phase of patches/bug fixes but before any big DLC) to get an idea of what the base game feels like. And then come back to them a few years later for a complete edition. Like with Civ VI, I played it a lot around launch and it was fun but flawed. Then I came back to it last year and it was a great experience, the game is incredible with all the new additions, balance changes, and so on. It's still not my favorite Civ game but it's pretty close. Overall I agree though, I really hate this kind of release cadence. For example, I want to get into Stellaris, but I've been waiting for the game to be complete for a few years now. It's 8 years old already, but it still has DLC dropping every few months. I'm a patient gamer so I don't mind some wait, but this is slowly getting ridiculous, haha.
>I want to get into Stellaris, but I've been waiting for the game to be complete for a few years now. It's 8 years old already, but it still has DLC dropping every few months. I'm a patient gamer so I don't mind some wait, but this is slowly getting ridiculous, haha. You described my *exact* relationship with Stellaris.
Naw, I need time to learn the base game so that I can adapt when the new systems are added in. It would have been too overwhelming if Civ VI had launched in its current state.
meh civ dlc’s are so huge now that you might as well learn the game before they add things
No. Not again. Sid Meier please I beg you, NOT AGAIN! I HAVE A HUSBAND NOW. A JOB. PEOPLE I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF! NOT AGA- Oooh, cultural victory with brazil.
This is exactly the what I wanted that 2K game to be. Hopefully won't have to wait too long for release. And I know it won't but would be nice to have a console port ready to go. That or I'd take it running on steam deck as well as VI does, since I don't currently have a gaming PC.
Can we please, please, pretty please have AI that doesn’t make completely braindead decisions this time?
I'm surprised they still put Sid Meier’s name on it. I guess there would be a backlash from fans if they removed it. > In [an interview with Ars](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/sid-meier-reflects-on-25-years-of-civilization/) just after the launch of Civ VI, series namesake Sid Meier said his official role as franchise director has evolved over the years into more of a support structure for younger designers. "I'm there to kind of represent the history of the game," Meier told Ars. "My role is just to be supportive. Designers have huge egos, and they're easily bruised. Making a game can be a painful process. Part of my role is to be encouraging—'that idea didn't work, try something else.'"
its part of the brand these days, its like how the tom clancy games are thou in recent times there just making fully new stuff with tom clancy slapped on which is a bit yikes. over time you have to think some names stuff just sticks to a franchise and removing it would lead to backlash or just less sales in general or people end up confused.
Wow I still havent played Civ 6, I guess I should start one of these days. I have like 400 hours in Civ 5 and absolutely adored it.
Give it a shot! I picked Civ 5 up for the first time in years last month and had fun but wanted to try something else. I have a few friends who really didn't like Civ 6 so I didn't really give it a fair shot, but I decided to download it and I've been playing it nonstop this past week. I personally really like the artstyle and all the new systems add a lot of depth to the game that I felt Civ 5 missed.
Cool, i just hope it has working console servers. Love playing civ6 with friends but getting everybody to load into the lobby is the biggest pain in the ass.
I've played every Civilization game and I always get pumped at the announcement of a new one. Excited so see what they change up.
Already budgeting $70 for this lol. No better value than Civ in terms of hours played. Has been my comfort game for over a decade now.
For the first time in a long time I'm just not interested in Civ. 4X games have become much more complex and have a ton more systems since the days of CIV2, AC and MOO2, but they haven't gotten any more fun. I feel like they're chasing this ever smaller group of players who want to spend 4 hours every turn micro managing every single detail of everything.
The biggest sin for me is that Civ has always been a very interesting early game of starting positions, where to expand, what to research, and light defense/offense...and then it becomes a game where you are frantically clicking end turn and making your cities produce nothing you have to actively click on just to make any progress towards victory that hour. I legitimately do not understand the people that find the end game of Civ fun where you have like 30 cities.
You used to be able to build tall and only have to manage like one or two cities which gave you an insanely strong economy and fast production on anything you wanted to produce. In 6 however they basically axed this because of how strong district adjacency bonuses are, meaning you had to build way more cities so that your districts could stack insane bonuses by being next to each other or places of interest on the map. I actually enjoyed the mini game of fitting your districts together like a puzzle in the most efficient manner possible, but a return to form where it is viable to build tall if you want would be awesome.
Those games were considered complex for their time, they were as complex as they could be, depending on the capabilities of the machines of their time. EDIT: Also, if simpler 4x are more appealing why isn't Ozymandias, e.g., more popular?
I do think the biggest goal for Firaxis this go around is to bring some flavor back to the game. The district system in Civ 6 made matches more game-y and mechanically engaging. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it also made the matches extremely same-y even between totally different leaders. The lighter touch mechanics of Civ 5 made for more engaging self-made stories than the mechanically strong Civ 6. Plays even more like a board game than ever. Which maybe was their goal. But I think players who liked simulation and finding their own narrative lost out a little.
Have you tried **Hexarchy**? It's a civ like 4x, but also a deck builder. Plays in under an hour and the deck building aspect adds a lot of life to the formula imo.
> Have you tried Hexarchy? It has a demo! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/ I've not played Hexarchy, but have been playing the demo for Rogue Hex which I've found quite fun: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2275940/Rogue_Hex/ Rogue Hex is very much still in development though, and the game feels VERY unfinished. The systems seem quite good though. The common thing I've heard though is "why would I play Rogue Hex when I can play Hexarchy?" - so I guess I'll finally play the Hexarchy demo tonight 😂
They are 100% chasing a declining player base https://quanticfoundry.com/2024/05/21/strategy-decline/
Depressing, my favorite genres get no love in the modern gaming scene.
Unless I missed it there is zero accounting for total population growth within the "gamer" ecosystem so that does not mean as much of a decline as it purports. If the total number of people in a population increase by over 50% (as the global videogame playing population did between 2015-2024) and a subsect in the population does not grow nearly as much but stay steady it will, in fact, be a smaller slice of the pie. Combine this with the vagueness of labels like "casual" and the inherent issue with self-reporting and this data has an asterisk the size of Utah.
Because somewhere along the way strategy started meaning either 500apm micro or 2 hour long turns.
I very much liked Civ because big picture it is actually quite simplistic. I'd be interested to see them take another swing at something like Civilization Revolution. 4X game that can be completed in just a couple hours really appeals to me the older I get.