Civilization 7 is in development

[scooter]

What bothered me about 6 was it felt like it was really close to being really good. The district stuff was great, and they improved the 1UPT stuff enough to make it more manageable.


However, in both SP and MP there were crippling problems. In SP, I remember being shocked that I conquered one neighbor early in the game, and the entire world hated me for the remainder of the game. You are forced into fully peaceful or full conquest - any other playstyle is seriously discouraged. The game just felt really hollow at that point. The AIs felt totally indistinct too which contributed to the problem.


The MP side in theory should redeem it. And to a degree it does. But it's incredibly obvious that way less thought went into MP for this game than Civ4 which came out in the dialup internet era. It still seems somewhat decent for MP, but there's a reason we don't get a ton of repeat players from those around here who jump into a Civ6 PBEM.

[T-hawk]

4 > 2 > 1 > 6 > 5 > syphilis > 3

There's multiple posts now to that effect - what's so bad about 3? I always thought it was fine, a perfectly solid iteration from 2 and SMAC. It had some problems (right-of-passage rape and too much tech trading/brokering), but the industry wasn't quite yet up to the standard of modern games where the players find all the balance cracks within a week and you demand everything to be tight and balanced by default.

I'm not even sure the series should have a ranking like that, since each game's place on the historical timeline is so different. 4 is the king, but there was still enough about it that felt dated after playing 5 that I never went back to 4. 1 is a worse game than any of the others by almost any standard, but obviously it deserves a ton of credit for inventing the genre. And SMAC is next-level awesome in a way that none of the mainline games quite is.

[DaveV]

I played a lot of Civ 1, despite its many flaws (free wonders and unsinkable boats for the AIs). Civ 2 was a huge step forward in a lot of areas and I put a lot more time into that game than the first. Civ 3 made enough significant advances (territory, ICS nerfs, more relatable AI opponents) that it made Civ 2 unplayable for me, but it didn't grab me the way the first two games did. I'd be playing a game of Civ 3, lose interest, and move on to something else. I don't know whether to blame this on the game or myself. Civ 4 was a very good game that became a great game with the patches (collateral fixes, Blake's AI, other fine tuning). I've probably played more of that game than all the others combined.

When SMAC came along, I loved the atmosphere and plotting, but I realized that I would have to invest a lot of time to become good at the game, and just kind of drifted away from it. Civ 5 and 6 fall into a similar category; the known and loved Civ 4 seems more appealing than a new game that I'm still learning. I imagine that's the case for most people: the game that came along at the time in their life when they had free time and energy to invest into it became their favorite. I think all of the games set out to address a weakness in their predecessor, with varying degrees of success. So each iteration can be regarded as a step forward for the target audience, but maybe that target has shifted over time.

[LKendter]

Stacks of doom were, amusingly enough, the exact reason I never vibed with IV. I only really dug into Civ when it went 1UPT.

The challenge for any developer. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

I loved always war with Civ3 and the insane troop rush your cities kept getting hit with.

[Krill]

Stacks of Doom and one unit per tile are neither here nor there really, but 1upt is far easier to manage time wise in the late game.

[Krill]

4 > 2 > 1 > 6 > 5 > syphilis > 3

There's multiple posts now to that effect - what's so bad about 3?  I always thought it was fine, a perfectly solid iteration from 2 and SMAC.  It had some problems (right-of-passage rape and too much tech trading/brokering), but the industry wasn't quite yet up to the standard of modern games where the players find all the balance cracks within a week and you demand everything to be tight and balanced by default.

I'm not even sure the series should have a ranking like that, since each game's place on the historical timeline is so different.  4 is the king, but there was still enough about it that felt dated after playing 5 that I never went back to 4.  1 is a worse game than any of the others by almost any standard, but obviously it deserves a ton of credit for inventing the genre.  And SMAC is next-level awesome in a way that none of the mainline games quite is.

Civ 3 suffers from the fact that it isn't civ 4, which is one of the greatest games of all time and it's different to civ 2, and change is inherently bad in many peoples opinion.

[pindicator]

I think I got the most SP game-for-my-money with 3. The problem is that 4 solved so much of the tedious micro management that you had to do so that it's unplayable for me now.

I think I'd rate 4 > 6 > 3 > 2 > 5 and I never played 1