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Comment by cbg0 | Hacker News Reader

They did get quite a few negative reviews on the Steam store page about this issue, and there's also a large thread with users complaining ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/discussions/0/17095641... ) which probably led to this action.

As an aside, complaints might have been even more numerous if the game were actually good, as of now Civ 5 has a peak of 30K users playing daily, while Civ 6 a peak of only 20K.

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> As an aside, complaints might have been even more numerous if the game were actually good, as of now Civ 5 has a peak of 30K users playing daily, while Civ 6 a peak of only 20K.

A question to the gamers on HN: What makes Civ5 in your opinion/in the opinion of many gamers better than Civ6?

Been a while since I've played Civ6 but I didn't like some of the weird game mechanics. For example, some of the city boosts required you to permanently sacrifice tiles, which made the boosts a lot less interesting. Graphics were cool, though. Personally, I prefer Civ4 a bit over Civ5, and don't like Civ6 at all.

Thanks, I thought I was alone in this. I don't like to permanently sacrifice tiles and honestly this feels like adding another layer of micromanaging and distracting players from the bigger 4X picture which to me is where the fun in Civ lies.

Civ 5 was a mess when I originally played it and Civ 4 still plays much more seamless. I honestly didn't mind stacking units and I think it makes perfect sense for a video game -- not to mention it made the AI much simpler and therefore much less stupid when comparing vanilla versions of Civ 4 and 5 (or 6, for that matter)

I always thought the Great Person tile improvements in Civ5 were really interesting, because they felt like a big, rare sacrifice - you had to pick a tile to weaken for a different payout. Converting it to a standard feature of development makes for strange gameplay, even if it makes a lot of thematic sense.

Still beats the Beyond Earth development experience for me, but that's not really saying much...

I think it’s just way cheaper? I’ve played both and if I didn’t have a lot of cash I probably wouldn’t have Civ 6. So Civ 5 is “better” in the sense of a way longer development cycle with a bunch of expansions. Civ 6 has some pretty graphics though.

Generally for the Civ games the new one doesn't become overly popular till a few expansions are released. It was the same when Civ V came out, a lot of people were saying Civ IV was better. Civ VI is a good game I think most people will switch eventually, just takes some time.

It is more about modding outside of the general player base that already played, and dropped it.

The sustained users are ones that have good mods that improve the AI, and other aspects of the game. Civ 6 hasn't released the DLL, so us as modders, are in a holding pattern. Most of the major modders have quit (as have I) until the DLL is released.

As an AI modder, I just can't improve the AI without the DLL.

// The sustained users are ones that have good mods that improve the AI, and other aspects of the game. Civ 6 hasn't released the DLL, so us as modders, are in a holding pattern. Most of the major modders have quit (as have I) until the DLL is released.//

That's it right there. The Civ5 mod(s) "vox populi" is a must in any game I play. And it changes much of the game. Not possible to do in Civ6.

Also, I don't like the cartoon graphics of Civ6.

The way it feels on my 2014 MPBr, I figure one those new, fully-spec'd MBP's ought to be able to play it acceptably... on medium settings.

Maturity, game mechanics, mods.

Civ6 will eventually be the same, probably once Civ7 is released.

Once the DLL is released. Modders can't make proper mods until they release the DLL. Civ 4, was released immediately and had an amazing mod community. Civ 5 was delayed release, and the modding community got into a groove afterwards for some amazing mods.

Civ 6, who knows. The longer they wait, they more they have to rely on their game to drive play. And the AI for example, is a trainwreck that needs help

The AI in Civ 6 is kind of a mess, I have civs on the other side of the globe I've never interacted with more than a scout passing by once dozens of turns before just declare war on me. Then nothing happened for 3 dozen turns because they couldn't reach me and they sued for peace. That happened multiple times.

I'm an AI modder for Civ. Civ 4, Fall From Heaven AI, Civ 5.

Civ 6 hasn't released the source for the DLL, so none of the AI modders can do anything about it's AI. We have the tools, we're aware of how it works, we're just completely held back until Firaxis releases it.

Base Civ 5 AI is terrible. Modded Civ 5 AI is glorious.

Every single AI modder has quit, waiting for the DLL. I don't even know if we get everyone back the longer they wait. Really disappointing.

Do you have a recommended AI mod for Civ V? It'd be interesting to get back into it with something like that. I've only ever really played vanilla Civ. (since 2...)

I have heard good things about the 'Vox Populi' mod, and I've been meaning to try it soon.

For convenience, I believe these are the links:

* https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/community-patch-projec...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli

Are Civ5 AI mods allowed when the game comes from Steam? Doesn't Steam do some sort of integrity checking for the game files?

Can't speak for civ, but steam hasn't ever done any sort of integrity checking for other games in my library. For instance, something like fallout 4 script extender modifies/replaces much of the core game files, and steam hasn't once complained.

I’ve never met a civ 5 fan that uses AI mods. I’m sure many use AI mods, but I must know a dozen or so fans of Civ 5 and none of them play with mods, just expansions. Most didn’t move on to Civ 6, but “no AI mods” wasn’t a complaint that I heard.

It's pretty common to see this with games from Firaxis (the developers of the Civ series). They tend to design each new title around a couple of Big Ideas, but they don't fully shake out the ramifications of those ideas during development. Instead, they put the game into the hands of players and then listen to them to figure out what's working and what isn't. Then they release a big expansion pack a year or two down the road that fixes the things that didn't work. Civ 4 wasn't really "complete" until the release of the Beyond the Sword expansion; Civ 5 wasn't until the Brave New World expansion; XCOM 2 until the War of the Chosen expansion; and so on.

As a result, it's not unusual for people to vocally prefer an older, already-expanded Firaxis title to its newer, still rough-around-the-edges successor at the successor's initial release. Lots of people strongly preferred Civ 4 over Civ 5 for years, until Firaxis fixed the big complaints they had with the latter.

I expect at some point we'll see expansions to Civ 6 that address the major issues people have with it now, and then Civ 7 will come out and we'll all have to listen to people longing for the good old days of Civ 6 for a year or two.

For me, it's mainly because of Communitas -> Community Balance Patch -> Vox Populi (rebrandings and changing devs over the many years) it's what makes Civ V really worth playing (Windows-only because the SDK was only released for the windows Civ version). Far superior AI, balance and more features.

But also because Civ VI feels like it's much more combat focused.

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