You are definitely correct that Civ VI does seem to have more choices than previous Civs. I was put off by Districts at first because they limit what you can do: I'm used to building a library in every city, not just in a few specialized cities. But in the end I think Districts was a great decision precisely because it gets rid of the "one build order for every city" problem. That's boring. Also, we all like to see number go up and the thrill of finding the perfect site for a district, successfully getting a settler there, and finally seeing the mad adjacency bonuses pile up makes my brain happy.
Honestly, *big-number gives brain happy juice* may be the main reason I enjoy Civ VI so much. Every time it prompts me to renew a trade route, and I see *bignum gold* I'm reminded of the number and I get another little dopamine squirt. That does a lot for me.
My main complaints with Civ VI is that the global warming mechanic is badly implemented (if you carbon capture *all* the carbon that's been produced the ocean levels do not go back down, nor can you start an ice age by the same method. Boring!) and that the constant stream of DLC makes it difficult to keep up with new mechanics.
What's your favorite Civ? Mine is II for nostalgia, either V or VI in practice (I haven't played V in years, but I still don't have a game I've sunk more hours into).
I am glad you like it, and I'm surprised at how I started out trying to write a somewhat neutral analysis and ended up angry by the end. I don't want to be negative, I'm much more interested in trying to figure out how this game, in a genre that I like and full of individually interesting systems, still doesn't really speak to me.
I agree that city specialization is a good thing. I think Civilization 4 was the first game that did that well, mostly because of the importance of the national wonders. I think the two problems with districts is that (i) they can get a bit too fiddly, particularly if you're anxious about shooting yourself in the foot, and (ii) while they work well in your important, core cities, they are annoying if you have another 10-20 less important satellites.
I've spent more time in every Civ game (except the first) than I'd care to admit. Personally I find myself in somewhat the opposite scenario than what you described in that I enjoy the mid to end of the games much more than beginnings. Possibly related, my by far favorite Civ game is Alpha Centauri, which really lets you dial up the micromanagement aspect if you're into that sort of thing (plus the wonder movies and quotes were unequaled).
Spies and Diplomats were only introduced in Civ 2.
Diablos are not role playing games, while 4X arguably are ? It's probably important to remember that Bruce Shelley and Sid Meier considered that the normal win condition was to survive until someone reaches Alpha Centauri, and they were particularly bemused that some players played it as a strategy game, trying to find exploits to military eliminate the other civilizations as fast as possible :
Spies and Diplomats were only introduced in Civ 2.
Diablos are not role playing games, while 4X arguably are ? It's probably important to remember that Bruce Shelley and Sid Meier considered that the normal win condition was to survive until someone reaches Alpha Centauri, and they were particularly bemused that some players played it as a wargame, trying to find exploits to military eliminate the other civilizations as fast as possible :
P.S.: The 1 unit per tile system arguably made Civ5-BE-6 *less* tactical, not more (especially by crippling the AI), the overhyped "stack of doom" issue having already been solved in Alpha Centauri.
Nitpick: I think there were diplomats already in Civilization 1. You could use them yourself against units and cities, and the barbarians had some that you could capture for money (?).
Citizens (at least in the sense of the population in cities that can work tiles) have been in all versions of Civilization. There is however very little meaningful citizen management in the earlier games, though there is some tedious busywork, such as stalling growth, assigning entertainers and converting entertainers to specialists in happy cities with too few good/free tiles. There are also some similarly tedious micromanagement tricks, mostly due to losses from overfilling the growth and production boxes.
P.S: I tend to agree, though it depends on whether you talk about the intention or the realization of the system. I'm quite fond of 1-UPT systems like in Panzer General, but I don't think they belong in Civilization, particularly because as you say the AI is too incompetent.
P.P.S: I would definitely include Diablo in RPGs (granted that RPG has a very different meaning in video games almost fully divorced from tabletop RPGs). Though I am working on a post arguing for Mario being a roguelike, so I'm definitely a crazy person.
Diablos aren't RPGs because there's literally zero meaningful choices available to direct the story, and the story itself (while often entertaining) is mostly there to form a background against which the game happens, the core of which is to kill monsters, get loot and XP, and improve your character in purely ways to become better at killing more monsters and getting more loot (which does not have an end, because you are pretty much expected to keep replaying the story ! (except in the first one ?)). Sure, you can *try* to play Diablos as RPGs - like you can any game ! - but even there you typically just end up focusing on these same core mechanics of the game (like making a barbarian that only attacks using leaps), unlike in a RPG where it would be about for instance getting friendly/unfriendly with some specific character/faction.
On the contrary, I think -- the reason Civ VI is so much better than the previous games in the series is because it rewards you significantly more for the time you put into the game. In Civ V, you get about 30 hours of gameplay (at most) before your sense of how to "do good" is pretty well fleshed-out. In Civ VI, this is not the case -- the complexity of the trading, envoy/suzerain, spy/counterspy and policy card systems is sufficient to prove a challenging optimization problem even dozens of hours in; I also think that these systems are generally pretty great at tying into your core goals of empire growth, state capacity, and advancing towards a chosen long-run win condition.
I never played too much 5 myself, but I have seen that you can go plenty deep on the optimization there too: http://dos486.com/civ5/index/
I definitely agree that Civilization 6 has plenty of really interesting optimization problems. My theory is that for players that don't want to deal with all of them at the same time all the time, they are a bit too intrusive.
In contrast, Civilization 1 (!) has a really challenging optimization problem that you might not ever discover: cities grow every turn if you can maintain (1) food surplus and (2) "We love the President day" (majority of happy citizens, I think?) and (3) aqueduct, past size 10. But you generally have to use the civilization-wide luxury slider for this to be possible, so to waste as little research as possible you have to do some very precise synchronization.
I've long felt that the biggest design failing in the Civilization games is that they don't have a "one more turn" button. That is, next to "next turn", there should be a button called "one more turn" that takes you to your next turn, but then at the end replaces both buttons with a single "save and quit" button. It's of course very easy to just start right back up, but many times playing the earlier games, I would have loved this "one more turn" button at 2 am.
I think a lot of the design features you mention are related to why I stopped playing the Civilization series (and never played 6 at all) but I'm still not entirely sure how the Paradox studios games manage to avoid it.
Happy to see someone ranting about Civ micromanagement. Great game, but it could be much better by reducing the importance of small decisions and tresholds.
Districts should just go.
They are very bad as simulation.
They are very too hard for new players.
They are too easy to abuse and get outsize importance for a good player
They being "non-reversible" creates too much stress for what should not be a super important decision (you can allways move the university campus in real life)
The cost increasing by era is just... ridiculous. Why handicap so much new settlements?
This is very much in line with my own feelings. Though, I'm a contrarian by nature, so when you agree with me I have to point out that putting together the German super-cluster of commercial/industrial districts is sweet. But I think they hog too much attention, and I think too many attention hogs at the "tactical" level crowds out the strategy game Civilization is probably supposed to be.
I think part of the one-more-turn effect of the Civilization games comes from how you're mostly *doing* simple enough management that you don't get fully absorbed by the *now*, but maintain a constant awareness of the progress of your ongoing projects and look about for new plans to set into motion.
Well *I* liked it. :-)
You are definitely correct that Civ VI does seem to have more choices than previous Civs. I was put off by Districts at first because they limit what you can do: I'm used to building a library in every city, not just in a few specialized cities. But in the end I think Districts was a great decision precisely because it gets rid of the "one build order for every city" problem. That's boring. Also, we all like to see number go up and the thrill of finding the perfect site for a district, successfully getting a settler there, and finally seeing the mad adjacency bonuses pile up makes my brain happy.
Honestly, *big-number gives brain happy juice* may be the main reason I enjoy Civ VI so much. Every time it prompts me to renew a trade route, and I see *bignum gold* I'm reminded of the number and I get another little dopamine squirt. That does a lot for me.
My main complaints with Civ VI is that the global warming mechanic is badly implemented (if you carbon capture *all* the carbon that's been produced the ocean levels do not go back down, nor can you start an ice age by the same method. Boring!) and that the constant stream of DLC makes it difficult to keep up with new mechanics.
What's your favorite Civ? Mine is II for nostalgia, either V or VI in practice (I haven't played V in years, but I still don't have a game I've sunk more hours into).
I am glad you like it, and I'm surprised at how I started out trying to write a somewhat neutral analysis and ended up angry by the end. I don't want to be negative, I'm much more interested in trying to figure out how this game, in a genre that I like and full of individually interesting systems, still doesn't really speak to me.
I agree that city specialization is a good thing. I think Civilization 4 was the first game that did that well, mostly because of the importance of the national wonders. I think the two problems with districts is that (i) they can get a bit too fiddly, particularly if you're anxious about shooting yourself in the foot, and (ii) while they work well in your important, core cities, they are annoying if you have another 10-20 less important satellites.
My favorite Civilization is definitely 4, though it might be mostly because I got to share it with both real life and the online community. I think it hit a really good compromise between a fairly simple core game and a lot of interesting, but opt-in subsystems. It also gave rise to this absolute monstrosity: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/lets-play-deity-bc-space-strategies-from-a-10-year-veteran.574724/
I also have a soft spot for Alpha Centauri, but the ICS gameplay there is really degenerate.
I've spent more time in every Civ game (except the first) than I'd care to admit. Personally I find myself in somewhat the opposite scenario than what you described in that I enjoy the mid to end of the games much more than beginnings. Possibly related, my by far favorite Civ game is Alpha Centauri, which really lets you dial up the micromanagement aspect if you're into that sort of thing (plus the wonder movies and quotes were unequaled).
Citizens were already in Civ 1.
Spies and Diplomats were only introduced in Civ 2.
Diablos are not role playing games, while 4X arguably are ? It's probably important to remember that Bruce Shelley and Sid Meier considered that the normal win condition was to survive until someone reaches Alpha Centauri, and they were particularly bemused that some players played it as a strategy game, trying to find exploits to military eliminate the other civilizations as fast as possible :
https://www.filfre.net/2018/03/the-game-of-everything-part-2-playing-civilization/
( But then, they were only lead designers on Civ1, not the subsequent ones : https://www.filfre.net/2023/01/sequels-in-strategy-gaming-part-1-civilization-ii/ )
Citizens were already in Civ 1.
Spies and Diplomats were only introduced in Civ 2.
Diablos are not role playing games, while 4X arguably are ? It's probably important to remember that Bruce Shelley and Sid Meier considered that the normal win condition was to survive until someone reaches Alpha Centauri, and they were particularly bemused that some players played it as a wargame, trying to find exploits to military eliminate the other civilizations as fast as possible :
https://www.filfre.net/2018/03/the-game-of-everything-part-2-playing-civilization/
( But then, they were only lead designers on Civ1, not the subsequent ones : https://www.filfre.net/2023/01/sequels-in-strategy-gaming-part-1-civilization-ii/ )
P.S.: The 1 unit per tile system arguably made Civ5-BE-6 *less* tactical, not more (especially by crippling the AI), the overhyped "stack of doom" issue having already been solved in Alpha Centauri.
Nitpick: I think there were diplomats already in Civilization 1. You could use them yourself against units and cities, and the barbarians had some that you could capture for money (?).
Citizens (at least in the sense of the population in cities that can work tiles) have been in all versions of Civilization. There is however very little meaningful citizen management in the earlier games, though there is some tedious busywork, such as stalling growth, assigning entertainers and converting entertainers to specialists in happy cities with too few good/free tiles. There are also some similarly tedious micromanagement tricks, mostly due to losses from overfilling the growth and production boxes.
P.S: I tend to agree, though it depends on whether you talk about the intention or the realization of the system. I'm quite fond of 1-UPT systems like in Panzer General, but I don't think they belong in Civilization, particularly because as you say the AI is too incompetent.
P.P.S: I would definitely include Diablo in RPGs (granted that RPG has a very different meaning in video games almost fully divorced from tabletop RPGs). Though I am working on a post arguing for Mario being a roguelike, so I'm definitely a crazy person.
My bad, diplomats are indeed in Civ1, I had mistakenly assumed that spies came first...
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Diplomat_(Civ1)
Diablos aren't RPGs because there's literally zero meaningful choices available to direct the story, and the story itself (while often entertaining) is mostly there to form a background against which the game happens, the core of which is to kill monsters, get loot and XP, and improve your character in purely ways to become better at killing more monsters and getting more loot (which does not have an end, because you are pretty much expected to keep replaying the story ! (except in the first one ?)). Sure, you can *try* to play Diablos as RPGs - like you can any game ! - but even there you typically just end up focusing on these same core mechanics of the game (like making a barbarian that only attacks using leaps), unlike in a RPG where it would be about for instance getting friendly/unfriendly with some specific character/faction.
typo:
"The simplest model of games focuses only on how choices eventually result in winning of losing"
Should be "winning or losing".
Thanks, corrected. I'm sure another few remain.
On the contrary, I think -- the reason Civ VI is so much better than the previous games in the series is because it rewards you significantly more for the time you put into the game. In Civ V, you get about 30 hours of gameplay (at most) before your sense of how to "do good" is pretty well fleshed-out. In Civ VI, this is not the case -- the complexity of the trading, envoy/suzerain, spy/counterspy and policy card systems is sufficient to prove a challenging optimization problem even dozens of hours in; I also think that these systems are generally pretty great at tying into your core goals of empire growth, state capacity, and advancing towards a chosen long-run win condition.
I think pretty much all these games have enough depth for almost any kind of player, though in the earlier games (1&2) it mostly takes the form of extreme micromanagement which is not everyone's cup of tea. I like to refer to this example for Civilization 4: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/lets-play-deity-bc-space-strategies-from-a-10-year-veteran.574724/
I never played too much 5 myself, but I have seen that you can go plenty deep on the optimization there too: http://dos486.com/civ5/index/
I definitely agree that Civilization 6 has plenty of really interesting optimization problems. My theory is that for players that don't want to deal with all of them at the same time all the time, they are a bit too intrusive.
In contrast, Civilization 1 (!) has a really challenging optimization problem that you might not ever discover: cities grow every turn if you can maintain (1) food surplus and (2) "We love the President day" (majority of happy citizens, I think?) and (3) aqueduct, past size 10. But you generally have to use the civilization-wide luxury slider for this to be possible, so to waste as little research as possible you have to do some very precise synchronization.
I've long felt that the biggest design failing in the Civilization games is that they don't have a "one more turn" button. That is, next to "next turn", there should be a button called "one more turn" that takes you to your next turn, but then at the end replaces both buttons with a single "save and quit" button. It's of course very easy to just start right back up, but many times playing the earlier games, I would have loved this "one more turn" button at 2 am.
I think a lot of the design features you mention are related to why I stopped playing the Civilization series (and never played 6 at all) but I'm still not entirely sure how the Paradox studios games manage to avoid it.
Civilization 4 introduced an in-game clock that has been a source of much shame for me.
Happy to see someone ranting about Civ micromanagement. Great game, but it could be much better by reducing the importance of small decisions and tresholds.
Districts should just go.
They are very bad as simulation.
They are very too hard for new players.
They are too easy to abuse and get outsize importance for a good player
They being "non-reversible" creates too much stress for what should not be a super important decision (you can allways move the university campus in real life)
The cost increasing by era is just... ridiculous. Why handicap so much new settlements?
This is very much in line with my own feelings. Though, I'm a contrarian by nature, so when you agree with me I have to point out that putting together the German super-cluster of commercial/industrial districts is sweet. But I think they hog too much attention, and I think too many attention hogs at the "tactical" level crowds out the strategy game Civilization is probably supposed to be.
I think part of the one-more-turn effect of the Civilization games comes from how you're mostly *doing* simple enough management that you don't get fully absorbed by the *now*, but maintain a constant awareness of the progress of your ongoing projects and look about for new plans to set into motion.