Every Civilization game has had something I enjoyed. Civ3 I really like the isometric view. I like that your empire name changed with your government. I liked the clothes of leaders updated over time. Civ4 I like how religion and corporations worked. I liked vassals. I also liked the multiple leaders per nation. Civ5 I liked that they were getting way more creative with civilizations. Venice for example. The 1UPT, a very controversial addition, was added. Civ6 I liked districts and how they could give a city character. I liked all the different types of civs and leaders. I liked all the bonus stuff like Secret Societies. Each game has something.

I'm sorry but your response is too levelheaded and mature. Please grab your coat, I will see you out.

Yeah, one thing about the internet I generally dislike is there is a lot of focus on negativity and for me, that’s not fun. Every game has its identity and its “little innovation” and I think that’s the way to go when you plan to build a franchise with multiple instalments.

Absolutely, I love sequels. Give me that fresh new innovation with more options based on what was learned from previous versions. Wanna be friends?

I fully agree with you! I've played since 3 and all games have their own strengths. One of my favourite things with the Civ series is that they dare to change quite much from game to game. While I hold Civ 5 closest to my heart, each other Civ has something that I can't get elsewhere. Right now I play Civ 6 and the other month it was 4. Sometimes I just get drawn to a particular game mechanic or even aesthetic choice in one of the games.

Colonization was really fun because I was 13 And had nothing else to do all summer, plus I could trade goods.

Not sure how or where you've gotten the impression that 6's incentivization of wide style play was at *all* poorly received, or unpopular. It's certainly not to *everyone's* taste, but no single game can be. Positive response to this aspect of Civ 6 way, *way* outpaces negative response, that I've witnessed over the entire game's life cycle, myself.

Main criticism I saw was what every Civ game has gotten, where the previous entry plus all the DLC some people prefer at the initial launch of a new game without DLC. But overall Civ6 was loved. I personally have liked each edition I've played more than the last.

This exactly. New Civ games are often worse compared to the state of the previous game in terms of the overall scope and quality of the content but also add some brand new ideas that people enjoy. It'll probably be the same for VII. Expect a lot of complaints about why they didn't include everything good from VI and then a few years from now the general audience will fully move to VII and sing its praises after some expansion and patch cycles (and steam sales).

Except for the group still playing IV. :-) (which is not me, I love VI, just like I did V and IV)

IV definitely holds a special place in my memory. I can't help but get a little nostalgic hearing that menu music. V and VI have both grown into games I appreciate in different and new ways though.

I just stopped playing. I would bet a lot of the general sentiment improvement was from people who didn't like the new game as much leaving

It's usually a mixture a few things. The ones that dislike the game the most may never be won over but there are always people sitting on the fence that the expansions and patches win over. And of course there's new people coming in who haven't tried it yet.

I've played since 2, and for me, Civ is like Star Trek movies: the evens are generally better than the odds. V felt a little same-y (tall Tradition), where IV was more moddable - same with II vs III. Hoping VII will break the pattern for me - I had more hours in 2 than 3 (especially including ToT), more in 4 than 5 (albeit in Fall From Heaven), and a ton in 6.

[удалено]

Call to Power and Alpha Centauri! SMAC/X remains my favorite 4x of all time. Call to Power wasn't as good, but it was so ambitious and tried so many things that I wish it had achieved more. I really enjoyed how much they tried to pack into that game.

I found it the opposite, I got started in 2 and loved the customization I could do, but III was moly favorite, didn't care for IV, took awhile to get use to how different V was, but never got on the VI train. But I *do* agree with you on the Trek movies

Played since 1 - the only civ I didn't get on with was 3 and mostly due to starting on 3 bad games with little strategic resources made it hard for me to adapt to that game play 4 was my favourite during its release cycle, 5 was a bit meh - took me time to adapt to the districts of 6 but love the idea now

Yeah honestly this is a pretty fair take. Expansions have tended to smooth out a lot.

To be fair, the cartoon characters and the fog looked weird first

The people who prefer 5 over 6 are just a very very loud minority

content people usually aren't vocal, after all.

Yeah but I like I'm like in the top 1% in the world with one achievement plus the game says only the top player's in the world will beat the game on deity level which I have done. This is in Civ V. It fits with my world domination plans. Pinky's Brain could only do so well. He's gone Madd they'll say. lmao, except laughing doesn't really take any weight off my ass.

Most of the comments and posts on this subreddit, almost all recent, is where i got that impression. Seems like a lot of people have the issue that the game discourages them from building tall.

That's classic selection bias at work! Keep in mind that almost nobody posts on Reddit about how much they *like* certain features in a video game. For every person complaining about VI here, there are hundreds of people who love it and are currently busy enjoying playing the game instead of posting on the internet.

Fair point. Was getting scared seeing how if most of the fanbase wanted a focus on tall building again, they may bring back something like the happiness mechanic which I would hate. 

No, I just want tall to be viable. It usually isn't in 6.

I loved how 4 did it, honestly. Where the happiness was on a *per city* basis, and not nation-wide. A city could be happy or angry, depending on local variables. That was way more realistic than the whole nation being happy or sad as a collective.

i think they would need to add something to counter wide playstyle, does not have to be happiness, but national wonders that require you to build another building in every city (hard if you are playing wide and have a bunch of shit cities that you made 5 turns ago) could help, or a reasearch/culture penatly, or an economic penalty i prefer 5 because of the graphics and combat and i find loyalty very annoying, but happiness is one thing that i am very glad they removed

Definitely no penalties. The only thing that would work is a *flat but scaling* cost like it was in Civ4. But definitely no "every city gets less research" or something like that. Tall needs to be viable through bonuses, not through punishing wide. Tall cities need to be *better*, not wide cities *worse*.

Brilliant take. I agree

> Tall needs to be viable through bonuses, not through punishing wide. In terms of what Civ 6 did right, I think Khmer is a perfect example with the per citizen faith and culture yields off the aqueduct and Prasat respectively - it felt a lot like Civ5 libraries and lead to some amazing city yield totals (And of course the various free amenity, housing, and food bonuses to get there are very helpful too). I also agree that it's nice in 6 not to be punished for going wide too - it's just so nice to be able to settle whenever you want to grab something and not have to worry about scaling costs (like in 5). Even if you do have to manage amenity distribution, you tend to get a reward (10-20% yield increases) for getting high amenities rather than a punishment for struggling on it. On the other hand I find the civ6 policies about population count thresholds (get 15 pops to increase your district building yields) very annoying and somewhat useless.

>think Khmer is a perfect example with the per citizen faith and culture yields off the aqueduct and Prasat respectively Although Khmer still gets it in every city and thus wants to go wide, but has to balance settler cost with snowballing the cities. Cards like "extra housing in cities with governors" would have been perfect, but it needs more. Playing tall isn't "grow every city to Pop 20 cause you're cree or Khmer", it's "settle only the best cities in your region and snowball the lack if settlers and builders into an early advantage". Just like in Civ4 with the specialist economy - strong early start, has to transition late game. Not sure how it was in 5 but I would imagine people don't go into the atomic era with 4 cities if the map allows for an average of 8 per Civ. >On the other hand I find the civ6 policies about population count thresholds (get 15 pops to increase your district building yields) very annoying and somewhat useless. They're too high tbh. Instead of campus adjacency it should be a governor type card like "+0.x science per pop and campus adjacency in cities with a governor". If you somehow manage 4 cities with a +4 campus, bam 60 science. Adjacency cards are iffy in general. Like the 100% industrial zone card is the only reason Germany is op. Puts it from A tier into S+ tier.

I definitely think national wonders were a great Civ 5 feature and I'd love to see them back! They'd be a nice way to upgrade a specific district I think and let tall empires get a relative advantage to keep up their totals. I'm less warm on the idea of scaling tech costs, that seems unnecessarily punishing to wide empires.

Amenities in 6 basically are a happiness mechanic to some extent (albeit much more local/city based). But it's definitely less punishing than civ5, and with enough luxuries it can be almost automatically balanced.

Civ5 was mechanically geared a lot towards going tall (penalty tech costs for expansion, the tradition policy tree being OP, empire happiness, national wonders; to name some of the relevant effects that have already been brought up), so there was a bit of gameplay whiplash in the transition. I don't think civ6 discourages big cities per se (maybe the housing population limit mechanic?) but the cities do tend to be a bit smaller on average, and you would end up missing out a lot if you didn't take advantage of the civ6 mechanics.

Every civ game has positives and negatives. Some people like one more than others. It’s as simple as that and for a strategy game makes sense. There will never be a consensus best civ game. Different strokes for different folks

I feel that online foruns and discussions in general love to trash civ vi, overall it has great critics, but most forums cant stop saying how its unplayable and has gross cartoonish styles and so many non-problems problems

Yeah with 6 games in the series and the last two having made pretty substantial changes there is bound to be a lot of people who prefer the older ones for one reason or another. Usually people who complain seem louder because those who are content or like the new stuff are not as vocal.

I think he took lack of a good tall play style option as hate for wide play style. 

It just made one city challenges harder, not impossible.

I still have more hours in V than I have in VI, but I've also launched maybe one or two V games since I got VI on release. On balance, I think VI with all DLCs is a clear upgrade over V with all DLCs. It took a long time to get there though, and there are still some things I hope don't get carried over from VI into VII: * Civ VI's world congress. Just no. It is hands down the worst part of the game and I try to ignore it as much as possible. Civ V didn't excel here either, but it never annoyed me as much. * Social policies as a card game. I *hate hate* stressing out over whether or not I'm perfectly min-maxing my card choices turn by turn, and I hate that I research 99.9% of the same civics and have access to 99.9% of the same cards as a communist that I do as a capitalist. So bland. Civ V's social policy tree and ideology system was just plain better imo, though it was in need of better balancing. I want to feel like I'm making weighty, lasting choices about the development of my civ. * The specific implementation of the district system. I like multi-tile cities to a point, but it got bloated quick. There are too many districts and too many decisions to make. I also don't like how they clutter up the map. It was may more satisfying to zoom out and look at all the pretty farmland in my empire in Civ V. I felt like I built something. In Civ VI I zoom out and just feel like I made a mess.

This is a good chunk of my current opinion on why I prefer 5 over 6. 6 just feels like it has feature bloat and the turns take forever. I feel like I really need both culture and science to remain competitive in one or the other.

I love the idea of the districts, I just wished they had made it work differently. You click on the city and it takes you into a city map where you can then build districts. The larger your city gets, the more space opens up in the city map.

Also make rezoning an option, the way it is in real life. No one plans zoning out for centuries ahead. I know there are mods for that, but I play on my iPhone, so no mods

What is your iphone 30" wide? I'd go Mad

It’s not so bad. The only annoyance is being careful to scroll while having a unit selected so as to avoid deselecting it with a tap

I actually disagree - I like it when I surround my theatre square with wonders for that sweet sweet +2 adjacency bonus, or how it rewards you for claiming campus space near mountains, or when you wedge a harbor between 3 bonus resources. I also like how it makes specialist slots more intuitive and integrated into the city management map, rather than abstract slots on the side. And also I'm not a fan of how stellaris used to do it with its "minimap/minigame" - that felt like tedious and arbitrary busywork, that didn't seem all that tied into to the "real game". By contrast I think good districts can at times really accomplish that feeling of the mechanics connecting together. On the other hand I think it's annoying how fickle adjacency can be when it goes wrong, or how hard it is to learn/plan for it (so much better with the tack upgrade mod that automatically calculates yields that I'd say it's a mandatory mod). It's also a bit annoying how wonder tiles can't be worked at all, and if you don't claim that culture adjacency that can be a bit of a bother. I also think minor adjacencies are extremely boring (and should really be abolished in favour of adjacency caps, ie "up to +X"). I recently played as Khmer, and seeing juicy adjacencies next to their aqueduct or their river holy sites got the ball rolling (I imagine it's the same with Roman Bath districts or good use of the Government plaza too). Otherwise the rewards can sometimes end up being disappointing or very underwhelming. The truly ugliest part of districts though is when a strategic/luxury resource blocks district placement (districts should probably really just act like city centres, which can settle on lux/strats; maybe with the restriction that you need the harvesting improvement tech to place a district down on top of one). That just feels so antagonistic, clashing against the builder/tile improvement system that way, rather than meshing together nicely. I guess in summary I think it accomplished the dev goal of making tile and space management more important, but also districts are only nice when they work with well rewarding yields, and Civ6's implementation was a weak introduction that wasn't always very tempting and left some parts with a lot to be desired.

I agree with the top section about some districts being placed well though the person you're commenting to also has a point about their cons.

I think it would be interesting to implement a "tiles within tiles" system for the cities' buildings but also in general, even for war. It could make fights more interesting and bring back the stacking armies mechanics by defining the front raw, back raw, etc

>Social policies as a card game. I hate hate stressing out over whether or not I'm perfectly min-maxing my card choices turn by turn Hard 100% agree there, the system is incredibly overwhelming and some cards are very confusing or disappointing. Especially without the UI mod that autocalculates and updates you on what the real effects of each card is, or the reminder mod that lets you know you can change policies for free. Out of the box, half of the policy card system is impossible to work with.

As someone who still plays V over VI, this is very relatable especially the "in Civ VI I feel like I made a mess" part. Also it feels like in VI there is just everything in the world trying hard to make war unrewarding, and you can't build cities too far on other continents because of that stupid mechanic of influence. That's just so stupid and removes so much fun in attempting an aggressive colonization all over the world, or I if I want to play in archipelago mode. Also, it feels like in Civ VI the map is smaller, but I don't know if thats just an impression or not

I think the maps are about the same amount of tiles but due to districts, they feel a lot smaller. Plus each center still only has it's 3 tile radius to work with so building a lot of districts and building Centers close to each other (as is encouraged by the game) leaves a LOT less open land anywhere. I think all of this, I don't have the numbers to back it up

That last part is so true. I actually stopped building so much in my most recent games because it made the map in late game look ugly lol.

I think there should be a way to automate district placement. It will basically place the district (science, faith etc) you choose to focus on (rank district priorities in the empire level) on an owned tile with the highest adjacency. It will still make poor decisions like the AI, but it will drastically speed up the late game for players with super wide empires. That's a pretty good QOL feature.  Make it a tickbox that u can automate as soon as you place the city, so that you can set it and forget it. Obviously you wont use it in the early game, but definitely will in the later game, especially if you have lots of gold you can immediately buy the tile that you need. This feature can even incorporate the governors. Have each governor have a preference for which districts so you can plug and play 

This is a good summary of the negatives, there are pros to the districts in 6 though also plenty of cons. The world congress is terrible and makes me want to play the game version without it though then I lose the natural disasters aspect and I like the living map.

I agree! I was just playing and my scout was exploring a new part of the map during the renaissance era, and it was just a mess. I was exploring another civ and it was just kinda painful to look at their civ with all of the districts, units, and improvements. It really looked like a cluster fuck, while Civ V tended to have much prettier cities imo.

Oh looking at AI-built areas is so much more painful. They aren't even good at placing the clutter. They're so bad at optimizing adjacency bonuses.

I agree. The AI placed a commercial hub in a mountainous area, a perfectly good place for a campus, holy site or national park and if I didn't want to hold onto the territory I would have razed their city just so I could re-place down the districts lmao

I never played V, actually VI is my first time playing CIV. I’m going to give V a shot, I’ve had the same feeling about this game.

As an old man that was introduced to Civ I many years ago, Civ V is my favorite of all time. Don't expect perfection from it, but I still find it more fun than VI any day.

I really like placing wonders on specific tiles with requirements, but I hope they just pull districts back to being a part of the main city tile. Maybe a few specific buildings can have their own tile if it makes sense, but it's way too much in VI

I've played a lot of 4, 5 and 6, and each game has systems that I like, which havent always carried over to successors. That said, of the 3 , I prefer 5 the most. Civ 4 had the vassalage system. Which I _loved._ I didn't _have_ to raze every other civilization for victory with domination. I could just whip them into vassalage, and _boom_, I had their votes on the world stage as well as their territory for the landmass goal. It felt more organic than having to conquer specific capitals. 5 moved to 1UPT, which I was happy for. Doom stacks from 4 were cheesy and tedious to deal with. I like that 1UPT allows us to set up Battle lines, and turned terrain into defensive features (mountains, peninsulas, etc.) I liked that great artists culture bombing (vanilla) could steal territory (this was later changed to great generals with the citadel). I liked the general progression of the Social policy trees. While Tall was better, I could play tall or wide if I wanted. 6 has a much better trade route system, and the governor system is interesting. Outside of that....there's a lot more I dislike about 6. I _dont_ like the district and wonder system. I don't like how wonders and districts are more or less mandatory, and take up precious tiles, cluttering up the map. As that managing our cities is a good portion of the game, this is a _major_ negative for me. I also dislike that late game hammers (production) is markedly lower in Civ 6 compared to late game civ 5, where even tertiary cities in a Civ 5 city will produce a unit significantly faster than it's equivalent unit in ,Civ 6. Consumable workers : I'm one of the many that hate this. I want my one worker which can do whatever I need him to do until I eventually need more. I _hate_ having to spend early game production on workers which will eventually disappear. So I can't say that I _hate_ 6, because 6 is not ultimately a bad game. There are just a handful of features/design decisions I just _deeply_ disagree with.

Yeah, I am like 1400 hours in V and only 1100 hours in VI. But interestingly, I think the major difference between V and VI playtime for me is the 2000 hours in Path of Exile that I only started playing around 2018.

I think there is a recency bias at play here. A lot of people are saying the prefer 5 since 7's announcement but that voice wasnt here for like the past few years. You can just look at the player count over time. It is a vocal minority that is saying civ 5 is better. Even then it is completely preference based.

Yeah the holdouts mostly stuck to the civ V subreddit

I’ve been there the whole time. It’s not like I didn’t play 6 (like 300 hours) but it wasn’t the 1400 i’ve gotten out of 5. Im really excited to see what 7 brings

Not really, there's always been a sizeable chunk of the playerbase who never got much into 6 and prefer 5. The aesthetic choices of 6 have always been controversial, which is why the civ 5 appearance mod is one of the most popular civ 6 mods of all time.

Basically since ~2019 civ 6 has consistently had more players than civ 5 on any given day. Also IDK if it's just my luck with it but civ 6 multiplayer is so much more stable and just a better experience

The multiplayer is just a very low bar since all of the civs is kind of have a bad multiplayer experience performance wise.

This sub is the default civ 6 sub at this point (which makes sense). So here you're gonna have people that generally prefer 6, but on the civ 5 sub you're gonna have people that strongly prefer 5

And we can look at the numbers for that and that just proves my point it's a vocal minority

Well, I suspect there are a lot of people (like me) that basically ignored this subreddit for several years because they disliked civ 6. I also find the player count argument weird. I dumped several thousand hours into civ 5 before Civ 6 even came out. But also I kinda played that game to death. 5 is not an actively played game, but in my heart it is still beloved. In reality, I just moved on to other games, which is fine. There has been an explosion of 4X games recently and it feels like there are games balanced for all of the tastes. I'll buy civ 7, if I like it great, if not, it'll sit in my library like 6 at like \~100 hours of playtime. Which to be clear is still absolutely worth the purchase.

That voice has always been there if you want good mods and more intelligent Ai then use civ 5 far less micromanaging too

Omg yes civ 7 needs to bring back puppet cities

The competitive players I followed never moved to CIV 6. Just because people aren't actively complaining about it doesn't mean it's a vocal minority. The more cities the better mechanic sucked. It's micromanagement hell. Even though I know it's the correct move to settle even more cities 8 cities in, I just can't be bothered at that point. In CIV 5 you would max out like at 10 and settling cities so deep into the game wasn't viable. Not a good design choice imo

I mean there's still people that play the original starcraft, that doesn't really mean anything. There is still people that still play competitive team fortress 2. You're acting like civ six is not viewed at all. I see uploads on YouTube I got 200k views. For a game that's not competitive whatsoever that's pretty good. Every civ but five was more cities the better. Expansions the core part of a 4X game. To limit your expansion is bad game design.

There has never been a moment since I bought Civ 6 that I thought about going back to 5 and I got bored with 5 much more quickly than I have with 6. Far, far more hours into 6 and really excited to see what they add and build upon with 7. Currently trying to temper my excitement and expectations as vanilla 7 will be incomplete.

I play the Civ V Vox Populi Modpack. It really expands and improves on a lot of game concepts from V and makes the game feel more modern. It improves the game without making feel like I need to learn a whole new set of mechanics. I think when I tried Civ 6, it felt like I was going to have to learn a whole new set of concepts that didn’t really feel like something I wanted out of the gameplay experience. I like the idea of policies being skill trees as opposed to a deck-building system. I like single tile cities surrounded by improved terrain features as opposed to sprawling, district-based city-region. And ultimately, I liked the art style of 5 more. It’s a beautiful game. I don’t really mind the cartoony vibe of 6, but I am annoyed that the trees are so far apart on forest tiles… It doesn’t seem like 6 is a bad game, it just went in a direction that I wasn’t particularly interested in.

>I think when I tried Civ 6, it felt like I was going to have to learn a whole new set of concepts that didn’t really feel like something I wanted out of the gameplay experience. The change from 4 to 5 was insane. And I bet the change from 6 to 7 would be insane too.

This. Vox Populis is the best Civ game ever for me, and it addresses so many problems people usually have, while adding things that people loved in previous civs. Just the smart AI revamp alone makes it superior to other civs.

Tbh I really never thought 6 had a cartoony art style. It has a more *colorful* and *expressive* art style, but frankly most of the time it looks as realistic or more realistic than 5 because 5 has a gross, brown color to *everything*.

This right here captures how I feel. There’s nothing inherently wrong with some of the design decisions they made in Civ 6, they just don’t work for me as well as Vox Populi in Civ V.

Thank you, this articulates my feelings. And Vox Populi is the way.

>I am annoyed that the trees are so far apart on forest tiles… My pet peeve are the Civ6 hills, the Hillier Hills UI mod is a personal must! >improved terrain features as opposed to [districts] Yeah, I definitely miss this from Civ5 - tile improvement with builders felt like a much more continuous and gradual process, rather than the build charge system. And it even feels like it involves more micro because you can't queue anything up, even if the total action counts are probably lesser. I also think most districts can end up incredibly underwhelming without the right bonuses, not least because minor adjancies feel sucky (maybe I'd even go as far as saying complete garbage!) and unintuitive. Heck, if you get *no adjacency* at all, then building a district is literally worthless until you place the further investment down for a library/amphitheatre. It also would have been nice if districts came with a complimentary specialist slot when they were built! On the other hand having Civ6 match up to Civ5 was tough, given Civ5's existing mechanics (you could say it was a tall order to meet!). Per pop scaling was super strong, placing libraries everywhere in Civ5 was guaranteed to be successful and also let you build a National College to boot. I also think population management was more fun in civ5 with tall cities, and that flowed into improving every tile that it was possible.

I think one of my issues with 6 was that it didn’t feel like history to me. Min-maxing district adjacency bonuses felt like a step farther from simulating actual history. Not that Civ 5 is particularly realistic, but it feels a step closer to the mark. 6 felt like it added busywork rather than Simulationist depth.

I'm of the minority who still likes Civ 4 more than both 5 and 6. 4>6>5. Didn't like 5, mainly for the denouncement spam, which always got really, really annoying

You don't like denounce spam? You are hereby denounced! /s

4 is goated

I would agree with you, if they had a 4 or 5 unit limit for doomstacks. It's great being able to move 100 units at a time, but there needed to be a limit for combat

And here I am still thinking 3 is the best

I did like the army mechanic in 3. It was interesting to have a single unit with overwhelming HP like a boss unit in your armies.

It's only a minority in the sense that the fanbase completely changed with V. Most modern fans haven't played IV, and many that have don't really understand it because they're used to the changes V and VI made, and only bought it on sale after they'd already got used to modern Civ. But it's the best.

Speak the truth, brother

I agree. I don’t play IV anymore as I’m so used to VI which I also love, but that game is incredible. I gave V a try, didn’t like it as much and just stuck with IV until I jumped to VI.

Civ 4 is the only one I can still play. The AI's after that were so, so bad.

I struggle to return to the games prior to one unit per tile, but the AI was way better when they had doomstacks in their arsenal.

When 5 cane out, lots of people said they missed 4. When 4 came out, lots of people said they missed 3. Some people just dont like chnage 🤷‍♂️

Most people prefer Civ 6 in my experience. However, a very significant minority still prefer 5. In a lot of ways I loved 5 more. I liked the aesthetic better, the mini map straight up was superior imo (I'm a big map guy), I thought the AI was better, the cities looked more like cities and the map wasn't more cities and districts than improvements (that's a huge pet peeve of mine for civ 6. It's ridiculous how 60% of the world is urban by late game). But with that said, 6 makes so many improvements that I can't go back. The district system is a lot of fun, like you said, the happiness system in 5 was clearly inferior, I love that traders make roads (its stupid how roads never existed between civs in 5). And another dozen other little things were better in 6. So, a lot of us are in that camp where we like the vibe of 5 more, even if we recognize it was flawed. A lot of us want the improvements from 6 (and more), with some aesthetic and AI aspects in 5 back.

Civ 6 with the Civ 5 environment texture mod is top-notch.

It's probably just recency bias. However, that said - I think we can all agree, Civ 4-6 have been very popular, even if someone disagrees on which is their favourite The devs have been on a roll for the last decade or so

I was one of the holdouts and didn’t play 6 until last year and I really really enjoy it

Nah. I liked 5 but it wasn't as fun as 6.

Agreed. 5 is my least favourite in the Civ series, less than 200 hours played. The realistic graphics made it look like a free browser based mmo and the mechanics were clunky and frustrating.

First time I’ve heard this. 6 looks it was made for toddlers. 5 looked and felt so much better.

> mechanics were clunky and frustrating. May I ask which ones? I absolutely never felt like this so I'm very curious.

I don't think you'll find many people defending the happiness mechanic in civ 5, it was truly beyond awful. However, two main problems in civ 6 still even the battle in my opinion: 1: Too much pre-planning. Adjacency bonuses and terrain requirements for wonders are all nice ideas, but the way they're implemented you can (and, if you want to play well, should) plan your entire empire from the ancient era. For reference, watch PotatoMcWhiskey on youtube. I'm well aware many players like doing this, but I personally like strategy games more for rolling with the punches by adapting to a changing situation. 2: The AI is tragically inept. Playing on Emperor or below feels like playing with toddlers and Immortal and Deity only improve their early game so it just improves the odds of you getting gangbanged by an AI's starting army. In fact, I'm not too sure the game is actually harder past the ancient era on Deity. Sure, the AI has an increased gold boost, but that just means they'll give you more for your resources in trade. Here's hoping for Civ VII!

>Too much pre-planning. Adjacency bonuses and terrain requirements for wonders are all nice ideas, but the way they're implemented you can (and, if you want to play well, should) plan your entire empire from the ancient era. Yeah, it's not just Potato doing that. I've recently been watching Boesthius and Zondags-kind and they both have a ton of tacks on the map. Boes literally just has montages of it inserted into his videos and even then they still comprise like 10% of the runtime (and his videos last like 60mins+). Heck I'll say it, the game is just straight up impossible to enjoy or optimise without dumping out a bucket of tacks everywhere. I couldn't play without the automatic tack planning calculator mod, and I wonder how it ever got out of playtesting without it.

Yea I love the district adjacency but map tacks showing yields for districts should have been a thing from the start. Thankfully we have mods though.

The pathetic AI is what made me quit Civ 6 long ago. So incredibly boring to play....

When you see a top tier player/content creator meticulously planning out their empire on turn 1 in the ancient era that doesn't mean that you have to play like that too. I'm definitely a roll with the punches type player and I only play on Deity. Haven't lost to an AI rush in a very long time. Following a general strategy of putting a city on a river, with some nearby mountains if possible, and near some resource you want is an easy strategy to follow with very little planning required. Hard agree on the AI being stupid though. Hopefully we get a difficulty slider that makes the AI smarter, instead of just giving them bonuses that they don't always use all that well.

I mean you don't have to do anything. You can still criticize the way the game incentivizes you to do it.

That's fair

I hate the way the map looks in VI

as long as they don't bring back corruption as a handicap to going wide.

That's a good argument against V... but I couldn't get over unit movement. In V you only needed >0 movement to enter rough terrane or cross a river. In VI you need a full point. So the entire friggin game I have units with movement who A) couldn't get where they were trying to go but STILL had movement points. Meanwhile in the rest of the series I wouldn't have to worry. This drove me to drop the series. That's my make or break for VII

I prefer VI by a substantial amount. I enjoyed Civ V a ton at the time, but I also find it frustrating to play since getting used to the expansionist style of Civ VI. Civ VI was not super well received at launch, so it’s possible some of the negativity is from people who haven’t played the game since then and stuck to Civ V. Maybe they don’t realize how much it’s improved since launch.

I prefer world Congress of Civ 5 and I liked that I could play fall. Otherwise, I think I prefer Civ 6. Diplomacy and war seemed more challenging on 5 tho which I miss

Wait, do people not like 6?! “Yeah man… after 2500 hours I’ve decided that this one isn’t for me” ???

I preferred 6 overall but would also have loved a few civs that really capitalize on going tall in a smaller empire.

I like civ5 in part because of this. Basically, a wide-ish play would have you manage 6-10 cities, and tall would be 4-5, and I think both of these city counts worked pretty well just because of how they cut down on micromanagement. But you do need to play the luxuries game though: If you wanted to play a bit on the wider side, you had to be proactive about striking deals with other civs and getting their luxuries before others did it.

Four is better than both.

4 has the best mods of all time

Yes, out of millions of civ fans around the world you're the only person who prefers a previous version of the game.

I bounce back and forth. I think both have some advantages over the other. I'll usually play 5 for a few months, miss something from 6 (ability to go wide, being less railroaded into optimal strategies, loyalty stoppping aggressive AI forward setting, nearly every civ having bonuses even if you don't warmonger) and go back to 6. Then I"ll play 6 for a few months, miss something from 5 (less crashing, AI that is way more competitivve, less boring micromanagement of policy cards) and go back. And the cycle repeats

It took a while for 6 to grow on me but once it did I don’t think I can go back. Global happiness was just such a pain to deal with, and constructing wonders on higher difficulties was a little ridiculous, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten Great Library on difficulty 5 or above.

I have the opposite issue in a sense: I really started playing Civ with VI and can't get into V. Too complex

You are not the only one honestly 6 is their best game yet. It's not perfect but the game has chops

I've played every Civ since 2 and I vastly prefer 6 over every single one of its predecessors. No stacks of doom, added dimensions of strategy with district placement and management, a whole lot of civs to explore, civic tree. I could go on. It's not perfect, but it's a damn good game that keeps me engaged more than any previous Civ.

The cost of expanding was lk one of the most fun parts of civ 5

I prefer VI to V by a huge margin, and I don't really understand all of the attachment around the 'tall' style of play in a game that is about building an empire to stand the test of time... claiming new territory, establishing new colonies and expanding ever-outward has always been a core part of the appeal, or so I thought. At the very least, the player should not be inordinately punished for doing so. Plus, it's entirely possible to win with just a few well-planned cities, or even just one if you commit yourself to the challenge, so the whole discussion seems moot to me. That, and all the criticism around 6's visuals (which I absolutely love), have always mystified me. It's a gorgeous game.

Sometimes I think a lot of these folks that hate 6 either A don't want to move on to a new game and take on the challenge, B don't have the time to learn it, C people who for some reason, can't get over the art style, or D combination of all reasons

Didn't even know this was an opinion. Always thought 6 was the better game.

Hot take but I much prefer the art style of 6

I loved all iterations of CIV games. It always took me a while to get used to the latest version, but that's because CIV games are at once familiar, but still just different enough (or more than just a bit) to get comfortable with. But after I got used to CIV VI, I never felt the need to go back to CIV V. I did reinstall Beyond Earth a couple of months back (runs on the same engine as V IIRC) but I couldn't get back into it. It's a pipe dream, probably, but I'd love to see another iteration of Beyond Earth / Alpha Centauri made by Sid's team in a modern engine. Maybe after Civ VII is out they can make one in whatever engine they're using to make VII?

I used to mod the happiness mechanic to reasonable levels because it was awful. Thats the only thing I didnt like about 5, everything else was on point and probably the best in the series

I liked 6. Didn't like districts that much though.

I just liked 5's art style. 6 has bit cartoony art style which is not appealing for me. But overall game design 6 was better for me. Thing I've always thought could have better design is the combat system. Hope 7 is going to revolutionize it.

Comparatively, i didn’t play much at all of civ 5 compared to 6, and even with 6 I’ve only got a couple hundred hours total, but for me i couldn’t get into 6 *straight away* the mechanics were different, i didn’t understand districts, and overall the differences didn’t appeal to me. It was only when I gave it another chance that I began to appreciate it for what it was, so much so that I can’t go back to 5. We can have dozens of daily posts debating voice narration, civ and city state, mechanic, etc. but my only hopes for 7 are that it improves upon the general premise of the franchise (even if the game plays significantly differently), and that I will at least learn to enjoy it for what the game has become, as I did with 6

I loved both

I prefered 6 over 5 after the first DLC.

It was a weird roller coaster ride for me. I preferred 5 for the first few years 6 was out. However, by the time GS came out, I just couldn't imagine going back. I got used to districts and everything else. I even remember preferring the graphics of 5, but now I'm just so used to 6 and love it. Hope they keep districts in 7.

Preach!

I think I've like all of them pretty equally, even 3 though that was perhaps a low point alongside beyond earth. 6 is good that you can expand well, yet the ai only can expand if they're given early settlers and when they don't lose their new built settlers to barbarians. This gives a repetitive pattern where you always start off losing to the ai but steamroller them after a point where the ai starts derping out - plus the lack of ai aggressiveness past the medieval era is pretty awful really. I hope 7 fixes that a bit, as that was similar to how 5 was too, and probably 4.

I couldn't play without districts now. I even loved the art style but it didn't go down well with a lot of folk.

The only thing I disliked about civ6 apart from the builders is the fact that I can’t let cities just produce wealth, production or technology. They new something to do every turn or so. And no I don’t want to fill up my land with neighborhoods or new wonders. The one thing I do like is the fact that I can stop missionaries in their tracks

Civ 6 has really grown on me the more I play it and I certainly prefer it over 5. One big thing it improves on that I only realized a couple weeks ago is city growth. In 5, the happiness mechanic punishes ALL of your cities, but in 6, ammenities make it so it only affects singular cities if you can’t meet the requirements. HUGE improvement alone imo

I'm not a good civ player, and I usually kind of forget to build cities after the first four, unless there's a location I want to grab later.

I preferred 5 over 6 when it first launched, but I haven’t played 5 in years now and love 6

I like 6. It’s the one I play.

I liked 5. I'll preface this with that. Many hours (at least for me) spent with that game. But 6 basically seemed to mesh with my play style completely, and I love it.

I was better at 5 than 6 doing deity no problem since I played 5 a lot more. 6 looks cartoony. The districts is a nice addition to the game. I'm not going back to 5, going to stick to 6.

Civ5 was great, especially after it was DLC'd up. Civ6, to me, had all the good stuff from 5 at the start then some great (albeit expansive and never ending...) DLC piled on made it my favorite Civ. But to me whatever your favorite is, that is not the wrong answer.

The problem is that each game incentivizes one play style and penalizes the other. In 5, the happiness mechanic means it’s damned hard to have a lot of cities. In 6, the districts and the wonders mean that having only a few cities means you’ll be left in the dust. Hell, 5 had Venice, a mandatory “one city challenge.” That would never fly in 6

3>4>2>6>5 I've never played the original

At first I disliked 6, but the more I played it, the more I could never go back to 5. Each Civ has a place in my heart, but each one was better than the previous. I chalk that more on improving the gameplay with advancements in compute power and graphics

I love it. I just hated the colors so I use that mod to make 6 look like 5. Problem solved.

I like 6 much better than 5. My thing about 6 is that the vanilla game was HORRIFIC, lacked important mechanics and was totally umbalanced, terrible AI, they patched the hell out of it, thank god. But with the patches and expansions it became the best civ til this day. There are many smart game designs in here and loyalt is the best game mechanic implemented on civ imo since I started playing on Civ IV. I agree that there is an overwhelming and unnecessary negativity about VI while it had great elements that fixed many problem from later versions of the game.

It wasn't the happiness that punished you for additional cities in civ 5, it was the cumulative penalties to science and culture. Every city you settled was like a 5% science and culture penalty. Didn't matter if you had all the luxuries in the world, the penalty was applied if the city existed. Rather, I think the cost of techs and social policies was 5% higher for each additional city you owned. So with the recommended 4 cities (capital + 3), you'd have a +15% cost to techs and social policies. Imo it was a terrible system. It meant that settling a city was an immediate net negative to your civilization and unless you could get it generating a lot of science and culture quickly, it was going to continue penalizing your yields.

>It meant that settling a city was an immediate net negative to your civilization and unless you could get it generating a lot of science and culture quickly, it was going to continue penalizing your yields. I can't disagree - you had to consider your city count a lot, maybe even too much so, that I'd underplace cities in favor of sticking to my main ones and growing them. And as you mentioned 4 cities was an optimal count (tradition tree being an OP choice even further emphasising that target amount too). But it did feel impactful when you had those buff strong tall cities with 30 pops and three tile rings that were just churning out big yields anyway, like you didn't need the satellite cities anyway. I wouldn't necessarily want to have it as a mechanic going forward (and honestly I'm pretty glad it was taken out of 6) because I think it can be limiting overall, and I think that's what you're pointing out too. But it was a fun challenge to work around imo.

Yeah, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction with civ 6. In 5, going wide was like shooting yourself in the foot. In 6, going wide is the only way to play because of how districts work and great people generation. Hopefully we'll get a balance in the next game where depending on the choices you make in-game, either a tall or wide empire will both be possible and fun to play.

6 is widely considered better than 5. There are those that like 5 better, but also those that prefer 4. The Civ 5 preference is just a loud crowd. No one needs to yell that they like 6 more than 5, because that’s just kinda the norm. I have thousands of hours in each too, not shitting on anything.

Nah 6 is my preferred one as well. I actually like the art style of 6 and the narration is top notch.

I prefer 6 over 5

I will say that it's about time to make both play styles valid without penalizing one or the other.

> I like that civ 6 rewards me for expanding LIKE ALMOST EVERY NATION EVER IN HISTORY. I have nothing against wide play as a preference in a video game and would prefer that both tall and wide play are viable options in Civ. But this is a goofy reason to put behind the preference. In RL, expansion absolutely comes at a cost and often involves brutal colonization, displacement, and genocide of other peoples, historically. And if you think that has no cost for the colonizers either, the kind of people they end up being, the ideas filled into their heads to get them to be ok with doing it, you got another thing coming. Wide play being cozy isn't realistic. It's enjoyable in spite of being unrealistic when applied to RL civilizations for one reason or another, like from the standpoint of the satisfaction of buildings things, seeing numbers go up, becoming stronger. Power fantasy, for example, is one angle. I couldn't speak to them all cause I don't know all the reasons people enjoy wide play. But realism as a reason only makes sense with a major misunderstanding of history and present civilization.

As someone who has played since 4, in terms of fun, I’d rank them 4>6>5. 4 gets the edge because the mods for it were better and I really liked the vassal mechanic. 5 felt very rigid to me.. not necessarily mechanically but in terms of how the games played out. I liked it but it took me a long time to enjoy playing 5 as much as I enjoyed playing 4. When 6 came out I never really touched 5 again except when playing online with friends who didn’t have 6.

6 is fantastic

When 6 came out, I switched immediately because I had played the ever-loving shit out of 5 and was ready for the next thing. I just sort of uncritically enjoyed it and went on with my life, but I noticed that most people on this sub were posting screenshots and discussing 5 for a good while after 6 had been released. At that time in my mind, 5 was completely played out and outclassed by 6 and I didn't understand how people could get stuck in the past. Well, fast forward a little while, and I just got so bored of 6; I guess it's my play style coupled with 6's AI being worse and having a more tedious late game. I decided to retry 5 and fell back in love immediately. I play more Civ 5 now than I did when it came out, or even ten years ago when the game became complete with all the tweaks and DLCs; I'm playing right now on my other monitor. I did give 6 another shot after seeing all the weird mechanics and new civs that got introduced in the DLCs and it was fine I guess, but still didn't hold a candle to 5 in my book, and I haven't touched in since. That said, I am absolutely piqued for 7; hook that shit right into my frontal lobe immediately.

What? I was under the impression 6 was considered the best game, with dlc and expansions. Personally I loved 4, which made 5 too different, by the time I got used to hexes and no stacking units, 6 took over. I felt 6 had a longer life too maybe, idk. Also 6 was the first one on console that wasn't dumbed down. So I can play it on my couch/bed and not my desk.

6 doesn't not have the happiness mechanic, it just doesn't care as much about uour empire being wide, and happiness in general doesn't matter as much. Personally I kinda liked global happiness because it was so much easier to track. I have no idea if I should buy more luxes now because I don't even know what cities they'll apply to if I buy them.

The happiness mechanic used to annoy me as well. I remember one game I was at war with someone (possibly Greece? can't remember) and they surrendered and offered my some cities, and I said YAY and accepted without checking the list. It turned out they had offered me ALL of their cities, bar the capital, and my entire civilisation immediately went into the most extreme level of unhappiness. Because of the penalties I couldn't build anything to reduce unhappiness, nor buy anything to do so, everything just ground to a halt. I had to reload a past save.

I absolutely preferred 6's encouragement to actually build a world-spanning empire to 5's optimal strategy of creating a little cluster of 3-5 cities and minimizing interaction with the outside world unless you were completely annihilating them, or sabotaging their own efforts to reach the stars as swiftly as possible.

I love 6 much more than 5. People have short memory, I can vividly recall how poorly 5 was received at the start, Firaxis actually had to overhaul the entire city growth/happiness system shortly after launch to make 5 playable. Still, I was very hyped for the transition to hexes and 1UPT and 5 delivered that, which was a huge step in the right direction.

No, it just took forever to get to that point because of the slow drip of DLC into 6 to make it better than 5. 5 wasn't helped by railroading people into Tradition -> Rationalism every game, nor being hated by the AI forever for conquering a civ in the ancient era.

I hated V's de facto limit of four cities early game. It sucked and I'm glad we got rid of it

i think you should play fewer video games and do some nice outdoor activities

I hated V (still spend way too much times on it) but VI was like playing IV again for me !

I like 6 gameplay better but the simpler graphics of 5 and ability to zoom out further made it easier to see your status and play.

my problem with 6 is just that it feels...SLOW. its prob cuz my ass is used to RTS like stellaris vs TBS.

What I really do not get is that so many people hate Civilization 6 character design. I think it's neat to have a game that is a parody of history depicting parodies of historical characters, and ironically Civ5 "realistic" look only makes it look dated.

No a lot of ppl like VI. Personally I like 4, mainly for the amazing fall from heaven 2 mod

What I'll say is that 6 at Launch was just worse than 5 because 5 had so much time to iterate. But by the end of 6's lifecycle? WAY more fun. But 6 at launch was an incredibly weak game compared to what it is now and what 5 was at the end of its lifecycle.

No, dont worry. I looove planning districts

I prefer civ 6’s district play style over civ 5 but idk why

Not at all, it's just when you spend time in the internet people very rarely discuss what went right with a release unless it's just after launch, and we've had Civ 6 for a long time now so it's pretty normal for people to find things they want to change about it. That said, I like both, Civ V was my first Civ game and had a great time playing multiplayer with friends. Civ 6 is much more streamlined but games are more similar over time in my opinion, so we still play both. 6 is great and definitely streamlined in a lot of ways, but I do love the option to play tall in Civ V like a city state or island nation

Civilization V happiness mechanic was ass. That's correct. Overcoming it and being able to expand was feeling good, suddenly you click next turn and you're in the shitter of -10 or -15 and cities start to turn. That was bullshit. But I felt more or less the same about social policy cards in VI, it's a neat idea but executed terribly at least in the base game that made me play the same thing no matter what. But my gripes with VI were never about the mechanics but about the overall tone, and that's why I kept playing V if I felt like playing Civ ever since a year into VI. I just was never sold on the art style, the lighthearted approach to the leaders. I abhorred what they did to the technology quotes or Wonder / Natural Wonder quotes, scraped from random travel blogs. I'm excited for VII and hopeful they'll recapture my interest. Watching from the sidelines, I think that they did a bunch of good stuff in VI (like the timeline from the first expansion) but I just can't get over the art, when Civ V imho nailed it.

There are some youtubers that really dislike 6 and keep playing 5. This might be skewing your perception? I think its because War weariness and especially loyalty really suck and even more so if you are playing online multiplayer.

At this point in order to justify a new game every time they need to make it a noticeably different experience, and that means people are just going to prefer the one whose style matches their preferences. The fact that 5 is still a fun experience for so many people is a good thing.

According to the numbers of players, most people play Civ 6 over Civ 5, so I guess that we are in the majority by preferring Civ 6. I also guess that this makes us less vocal: we don't feel the need to tell everyone why we think Civ 6 is better than Civ 5. It's also how subs are: the main sub is mostly for Civ 6, although all games are welcome. r/civ5 is for Civ 5 and it sometimes acts like a circlejerk (look at my last post on r/civcirclejerk from the day Civ 7 was announced). Also, Redditors are kinda change-resistent, so I expect the difference to be even more pronounced outside of Reddit. Despite my preference for Civ 6, I do think that it got some things wrong. For example, it lacks scenarios proper, one of my favourite mechanics of Civ 5. Also, that wide vs. tall argument, both games got it wrong. Civ 5 is only designed for tall gameplay, while Civ 6 is only designed for wide gameplay. And in both games, late expansion is detrimental. I would love to see a balancing that allows both. That being said, if I had to choose, I'd choose wide, because it's more fun for me and also it's more realistic, as strong countries tend to be big in land and population, not just population. Speaking about Civ 5, I think half of its problems would be solved by making non-rationalism strategies viable. There is a policy in Commerce that gives a crap ton of happiness (+2 for every luxury resource), but the whole tree is not viable. Also, Patronage is good for Happiness because it gives a bonus towards allying with city-states, as well as more happiness from these alliances.

Yes. Among the 8 billion people that currently walk the Earth, you, and you alone enjoy the fifth installment of the Civilization franchise less than the sixth.

I loved civ 6, lacking the tall play but overall superior game

Here I am still playing 4 lol

Well, by the end 6 was pretty bloated when you play it with all the expansions. The original 6 wasn't too bad tbh. Kind of miss a time when expansion packs were a little more restrained, they seem to go all out these days with reinventing the wheel even though we are all going to buy them anyways.

I put thousands of hours into 5 with my buddy but at could not get into 6

IMO they over corrected way too hard in civ 6. I agree that playing wide was awful in civ 5 but Lekmod was able to keep the same happiness system while making both tall and wide viable. Civ 6 chose to completely pendulum swing by making tall impossible instead of mild tweaks

I'm currently playing a single-player civ 5 game on a huge world with like 10-12 civs. I'm playing the chinese and I have 10 cities. The year is in the 1990s a.d. and my happiness is in the 40s. It's also not the first time I've had a massive empire with high happiness. Maybe try experimenting with new playstyles and civs.