Civilization VI - Now available, so you can sink all your free time into it

[Fedora Master]

The fanbase for Civilization fundamentally changed after Civ5. The discerning people stuck with Civ4, the rest are either delusional CivFanatics users or Redditors who couldn't tell a good game if it hit them in the back of the head and just want pretty colors and "a few hours of game time" every day.

 

[FreeKaner]

Anyone who thinks Civ4 is better than Civ6 is delusional. Anyone who supports deathstack is a mental degenerate who doesn't understand it makes positioning and movement not matter at all, in a turn-based and tile-based strategy game that is downright invalidating the concept itself. The only problem is Civ6 has so much tile management that Firaxis is not up to the task to create the AI required to handle all its intricacies regarding units, unit compositions, support units, districts, wonder placement etc. AI can barely handle proper city placement at best of its days.

Oh also it looks like a Disney inspired tablet game. That's terrible.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Anyone who thinks Civ4 is better than Civ6 is delusional. Anyone who supports deathstack is a mental degenerate who doesn't understand it makes positioning and movement not matter at all, in a turn-based and tile-based strategy game that is downright invalidating the concept itself.

In a Civ6 traffic jam, there's no positioning and movement. And not being able to built units in a city with a garrison ("too many units of that type") isn't a strategic challenge, but a nuisance.

 

[FreeKaner]

Anyone who thinks Civ4 is better than Civ6 is delusional. Anyone who supports deathstack is a mental degenerate who doesn't understand it makes positioning and movement not matter at all, in a turn-based and tile-based strategy game that is downright invalidating the concept itself.

In a Civ6 traffic jam, there's no positioning and movement.

Traffic jam is positioning and movement. The need to actually position well and account for the movement of your units, having to use support units and group some units means that there is immense amount of tactical depth. Accounting for logistics of it all is tactics. If anything strategy games in general never account for logistics which was the limiting element in reality.

In civ5 and 6, especially in 6 with support units and grouping, you have to plan out in advance where to send your units and in which order, it also means that settling a city strategically on a choke point, near the mountains, across a hill or a river actually matters. This is also why a player can be so much more effective than AI, because they can tactically block certain tiles, using this advantage to deal damage with cities, ranged units and siege units while the AI is not good enough to handle it so their force multiplier is much less. It means that taking a city through a narrow pass from mountains is actually extreme hard to do and require you to approach it in other ways.

Wanting to just walk your deathstack to every city in your way taking all of it with no thought put into it at all is asking for the most important part of warfare to be non-existent. It's active dumbing down.

 

[GrainWetski]

If only there was some kind of middle ground like for example a max of 12 units per tile. Since you obviously can't make that happen, you either dumb it down for retards with 1UPT or stick with "muh deathstacks".

 

[FreeKaner]

Explain what is dumbing down about having to account for positioning, order of movement and terrain features except that "I don't like it".

Also you can combine units in Civ6 with appropriate tech and certain support units also stack.

 

[vonAchdorf]

So you are advocating for a system, which the AI can't handle?

It's an empire builder and shuffling around 5 warrior units so they fit through a narrow passage or retreat from the front line to heal isn't really fun.

Bring back the winner-takes-it-all combat from the early Civ games. The introduction of hitpoints was a mistake and made everything slow. It's Civ, not a poor man's Panzer General.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Gee if only there were mechanics that injured all units on a tile

 

[GrainWetski]

Gee if only there were mechanics that injured all units on a tile

The trannies at Firaxis are too busy cutting their dicks off and googling for female leaders to make a good game.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The only problem is Civ6 has so much tile management that Firaxis is not up to the task to create the AI required to handle all its intricacies regarding units, unit compositions, support units, districts, wonder placement etc. AI can barely handle proper city placement at best of its days.

I agree, because I'm not a min-maker and don't want to read up on all wonders, districts and synergies to plan the optimal layout before even clicking the "Found City" button. But there are players, who liked to optimally re-allocate workers to tiles every turn even in the earlier Civs.

 

[FreeKaner]

So you are advocating for a system, which the AI can't handle?

It's an empire builder and shuffling around 5 warrior units so they fit through a narrow passage or retreat from the front line to heal isn't really fun.

Bring back the winner-takes-it-all combat from the early Civ games. The introduction of hitpoints was a mistake and made everything slow. It's Civ, not a poor man's Panzer General.

You don't really need that many. Early on 2-3 warriors, 2-3 archers and 1 battering ram (support unit that goes on your melees) is enough to take just about any city. Upgrade them as they come and add couple ranged siege units and you can take them. Later on you can combine units together.

Anyone who says they want deathstacks is saying in essence they want to just turn off their brain, not plan for any movement and just rightclick on cities until game is over.

The only problem is Civ6 has so much tile management that Firaxis is not up to the task to create the AI required to handle all its intricacies regarding units, unit compositions, support units, districts, wonder placement etc. AI can barely handle proper city placement at best of its days.

I agree, because I'm not a min-maker and don't want to read up on all wonders, districts and synergies to plan the optimal layout before even clicking the "Found City" button. But there are players, who liked to optimally re-allocate workers to tiles every turn even in the earlier Civs.

You rarely have to do that, you build districts and wonders according to terrain and build that. Only thing you have to account for is city placement with keeping in mind you want to drop down districts.

So for example you settle near say 2 quary resources, so you put a industrial district between two of those, then you put a commercial district near that one and a river to get bonuses from those, if it's near sea you can put a harbour near the commercial district, put a campus district near a mountain etc. as you go. There are only few cases where you have to plan all districts ahead with synergies between multiple cities, like making a square of industrial and commercial districts near a river from 2 cities but those are rare.

Saying you don't want to actually manage your cities in a game fundamentally about managing your cities is absurd honestly, the district system is so good because it finally made civ city-management meaningful beyond order of buildings and gave you things to do in turns instead if idly clicking next turn until you have an army to kill everything. As I said the only real problem is AI not being great at handling it.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Stacks of doom are high risk / high reward and the AI could also use them. And there were always nukes (or artillery).

As I said the only real problem is AI not being great at handling it.

It's not a satisfying challenge, if the AI attacks with waves of catapults, but forgets the actually bring infantry to capture the bombarded cities.

 

[FreeKaner]

The only real advantage of deathstacks is that it's easier for AI to manage yes.

It's not high risk / high reward, it simply makes terrain features invalid and tiles pointless. Might as well just play it directly on the map on that point, in fact I think people who like this should probably play EU4 and not civ.

 

[GrainWetski]

Civ was always about making the enlightened plays of putting units in choke points and on tiles that give +strength. Real high IQ plays that only 0.001% of gamers can make, you know. I agree that something simplistic like EU4 might be more up to the rabble's speed than a game as deep as Civ 6.

 

[FreeKaner]

Apparently it is as it makes people beg for return of deathstacks.

 

[Parabalus]

Civ3 deathstacks were retarded, you just a-moved everything down, 50 vs 50 units dead in 0.5 sec.

 

[BING XI LAO]

The way to solve the problem of deathstacks is just to add collateral damage and maybe supply limits, that sort of thing

It would be hard to fully express how retarded I think it is for a 'grand' strategy game to have 1UPT. Chess or XCOM,sure, but why would you want to be limited to one (1) troop per tile in Civ where each tile is a large area of land?????

 

[FreeKaner]

Because CIV really isn't grand strategy. Not the way war games and paradox games are.

 

[BING XI LAO]

It's definitely not a tactical squad combat game either.

 

[Space Satan]

For fuck's sake the pricing of this shit is like a whole new game

 

[Hellraiser]

Bring back the winner-takes-it-all combat from the early Civ games. The introduction of hitpoints was a mistake and made everything slow. It's Civ, not a poor man's Panzer General.

The problem with winner takes all in earlier civ games (especially Civ IV) and SMAC is that combat outcome was random and an unlucky roll could fuck you over (the spearman winning versus a tank of memetic fame is good example). Civ IV was bad in particular with this as it put so much emphasis on promotion and perks, with war relying on you keeping your best experienced units alive to take cities at all, only to have any combat always have a chance of murdering your unit in an instant.

Also winner takes all emphasised attacking first above all and thus high mobility units with high attack, this is why impact rover rush in SMAC is so powerful and why rovers and later chop and drop armies rule in the unmodded game.

I prefer the Civ V system of deterministic combat allowing retreat. At least if you send in a scout to see what hides in the fog of war it can survive if you run out of moves next to a barbarian. Good luck in SMAC if you end a move next to a mindworm that you couldn't see before you moved. Also a problem with vision range in general in the early game.

That and I actually liked that shit happened "slow" instead of waiting 10 turns to build and move a unit only for it or the attacked to die instantly and spend another 10 turns sitting on your ass until combat happened or looking for a new target to kill.

 

[Trithne]

If you think civ4 combat was just build a single doom stack and throw it at the enemy doom stack you weren't playing civ4 right. Civ4 combat was, when done correctly, all about terrain and mobility, while 1upt turns it from "where is the most effective spot to put my army and where can I hide my cavalry and reinforcements" to "how do I get this archer to this tile without opening a hole in my lines trying to free it up."

Terrain mattered a shitload, due to multiple factors: defense, visibility, and mobility. The 1upt games have some of this still, but it's completely ruined by the fact that even a small army requires so much space that the strategy aspects become irrelevant in the face of the traffic jam. Shit goes somewhere because it fits there.

Don't get me wrong, I've played a lot of civ5. But the combat is incredibly poor in it and reducing civ4 to "muh doomstacks" as a counter argument is horseshit.

 

[coldcrow]

If you think civ4 combat was just build a single doom stack and throw it at the enemy doom stack you weren't playing civ4 right. Civ4 combat was, when done correctly, all about terrain and mobility, while 1upt turns it from "where is the most effective spot to put my army and where can I hide my cavalry and reinforcements" to "how do I get this archer to this tile without opening a hole in my lines trying to free it up."

Terrain mattered a shitload, due to multiple factors: defense, visibility, and mobility. The 1upt games have some of this still, but it's completely ruined by the fact that even a small army requires so much space that the strategy aspects become irrelevant in the face of the traffic jam. Shit goes somewhere because it fits there.

Don't get me wrong, I've played a lot of civ5. But the combat is incredibly poor in it and reducing civ4 to "muh doomstacks" as a counter argument is horseshit.

Guys who complain about civ4 doomstack probably never played against a human opponent. Even discounting proper MP, the AI even in civ4 bts vanilla is far and beyond civ5-6. A good human opponent spots your war effort by looking at the domestic stats, and prepares. If you attack with a slow-moving stack you will get shredded by counterraids from fastmovers and your stack will likely get catapulted into oblivion.

 

[Cael]

People crying about Civ4's Stack of Doom never used any startegy except "turtle, turtle, turtle!" The fact of the matter is that the Stack of Doom is highly vulnerable to attacks. It is only when you decided to play Fortress that the Stack becomes a massive problem. If you can hit it with siege and cavalry, it is going down fast. The reverse is true if you play Fortress because then it is your Stack of Doom that is getting hit. it may take 10 turns or more to take apart a Stack of Doom, but done right, it doesn't stand a chance. In Civ 4, mobility, terrain and visibility matters a lot. That is why you want outriders, and feint units to draw enemy fire away from important units. Put the feint and scout units on hiltops, but try to sneak the important units behind them by sticking to valleys and other restricted visilibity areas.

Having played Warlocks 2 and Civ4, I vastly prefer Civ4. In Warlocks, frequently 2-3 units was enough to completely block off and neuter 2 "civs" because of the 1 upt thing.

 

[Fedora Master]

The only real advantage of deathstacks is that it's easier for AI to manage yes.

That's really damn important, considering the AI in 6 was incapable of taking cities for a long while.