Top 10 Bad Ideas: A Civilization VI Retrospective

This will be the second part of a 2-part Retrospective on Civilization VI. The first part features my personal list of Top 10 Good Ideas that Firaxis put into the game, and this second part will be the Top 10 Bad Ideas. If you haven't read the Good Ideas yet, then I highly recommend you check that out first, as there will be several topics in this list that will build on what was said in the previous list. In fact, there will be some topics that are appearing in both lists, so I hope you'll read the good things that I have to say before reading the bad.

I also don't want to be a complete downer, and would like to provide constructive feedback. So wherever possible, I will try to make suggestions on how I think Firaxis could improve on some of these ideas if they chose to revisit them for future games. And some of these ideas are certainly worth re-visiting.

10: Privateers are better Scouts than Pirates

This is going to be kind of a funny complaint because I actually love the Privateer unit in Civ VI. I think it is a really great unit in the game, and a very under-utilized and under-appreciated unit. Their ranged attack and ability to perform coastal raids makes them great for scouring the map for those lingering barbarian outposts that spawn on unsettled coasts or isolated islands, and farming some gold and experience. So they are pretty good naval scout units.

They are less good, however, at being actual pirates. Privateers in Civ VI do not have hidden nationality and cannot attack or harass the units or trade routes of civilizations with whom you are not at war. Since Civ VI lacks the ability to be in informal conflict (you are either at peace and cannot attack each other, or are in formal war), there's no real value in creating Privateers for use against other civs when you can just train Frigates instead. Yes, that aforementioned coastal raid ability can be great for attacking an enemy's infrastructure or economy, but the new district mechanics kind of negate that by making it less necessary to build infrastructure directly on the coast, which limits the potential targets for Privateers.

Personally, my favorite versions of Privateers in Civ games are the ones in Civ IV and Civ IV: Colonization. Those versions had hidden nationality, which allowed them to attack any civ's units or infrastructure, even if you are not in a formal state of war. The other player, however, had a small chance of discovering who owns the Privateer, and an attack against a friend or ally would be seen as betrayal and could lead to war. I liked that system a lot. It made it so much more important to build up a viable navy in the mid-game since it wasn't just the occasional barbarian caravel that you have to defend yourself against. Navies have always been an under-utilized element of Civ games, and this is a prime opportunity to make them more relevant.

This is especially true considering the trade routes mechanics implemented in Civ V and Civ VI. Having un-escorted trade ships can be a real liability if there is the potential for rival pirates to plunder them. The grievance system of Civ VI also offers a way for the A.I. to recognize and deal with hostile actions from other civs or the player, since discovering that a hostile Privateer belongs to a particular civ could create grievances and lead to a diplomatic incident, and banning the use of Privateers could be an interesting and valuable resolution in the World Congress. Planting Spies in rival Harbors could also have been a way of discovering the location of that civ's Privateers, which would give additional military utility to Spies. Put simply, there are a lot of mechanics in Civ V and Civ VI which I feel would complement Privateers, and Firaxis sadly dropped the ball this time around. Maybe we'll get more interesting Privateers in Civ VII?

To make navies more important and necessary earlier in the game, perhaps the naval raider class should come into play earlier in the game? Maybe a late classical or early medieval Corsair unit could be a precursor to the Privateer that can discreetly attack other civs' traders and force civs to have to build navies in response?

Another way to handle privateers could be to borrow a concept from the Barbarian Clans game mode and treat them more like hired mercenaries. Maybe Privateers aren't built by civilizations, but rather hired as mercenaries to harass other civs' shipping and coastlines, similar to how the Barbarian Clans game mode allows barbarian clans to be hired to attack a nearby civ or city state. Again, perhaps this is something that spies can detect, and being caught hiring privateers to harass an opponent could lead to grievances and a diplomatic incident.

9: Arbitrary World Congress

The World Congress works really well in Civilization V. Players have a lot of agency in what resolutions get proposed, and the can negotiate with each other and buy votes. It allows players to play politics. It worked.

In Civilization VI, however, Firaxis seems to have tried to fix what wasn't broken, making changes for change's sake, and ended up with a World Congress that, in my opinion, just falls flat. Players have no agency or control over which resolutions get proposed, and there's no period of time in which players can negotiate with each other to trade or bribe each other to vote one way or another. The whole thing just feels arbitrary and random.

8: Abilities are too complex

As much as I like how the abilities provide unique flavor to each civilization and leader, I have to admit that some civs and leaders have abilities that might be a bit too complicated. When you need a whole paragraph to explain the ability, and that still doesn't quite explain how it all works, maybe you scale it back a little bit.

Look at, for instance, the national ability of Australia. Extra housing in coastal cities, pastures act as culture bombs, and districts provide bonus yields based on appeal. They aren't bad abilities, per se; it's just a lot to unpack. And that's just the national ability. Then you also have John Cutrain's leader ability, and Australia's unique improvement and unit.

Wilfred Laurier's leader ability is similarly wordy. Can build farms on tundra, tundra tiles are cheaper to purchase, strategic resources on tundra accumulate faster, bonus food on farms and camps, and bonus production on mines and lumbermills. Phew. Again, it's a lot to unpack. Yes, it is all focused around settling in the tundra around the poles, but it's just a lot.

Then there's England's "Workshop of the World" ability, which grants extra iron and coal, double production towards Military Engineers, extra charges for Military Engineers, extra yield for buildings with power, faster production of Industrial Zone buildings, and extra resources stockpile from Harbors. Again, phew. It's just so much to take in.

Having all these small abilities, as opposed to a single large ability, might be cumulatively powerful, but when I see stuff like this in the leader-select menu, it just doesn't stand out to me or make me want to play that civ.

Also, on the topic of England, why did Firaxis replace England's ability completely, instead of doing what they did with Roosevelt and Catherine and just add a variant of England so that both abilities are still usable? I guess its harder to justify having duplicate civilizations, as opposed to duplicate leaders with different outfits.

In any case, I hope Civilization VII finds a way to streamline some of these abilities.

7: Leader agendas lead to silly behavior

Leader agendas is one of several topics that is paradoxically showing up on both my list of "best ideas", and my list of "worst ideas". I like the idea of leaders having more specific A.I. that is better at using the leader or civilization's unique abilities, infrastructure, and units. That has the potential to improve the play of the A.I. dramatically. It just doesn't work that way in practice. Some of these leader agendas lead to erratic behavior, or behavior that seems contrary to the leader acting trying to win the game.

Look at, for instance, Harold of Norway. He likes to build a large navy for himself, which makes sense, as a Viking king, with naval units built around raiding the coasts of rivals. But yet, somewhat paradoxically, he likes other civilizations who have large navies, even if those civilizations are in a position to use those navies against his.

Similarly, Tamar of Georgia likes to build her unique walls, and she likes other civs who build walls, even though these walls might have been built to protect that other civ from attacks from Georgia.

In both cases, these civs might attack you, then you build the units or infrastructure that they like, so that you can defend yourself from their aggression (and maybe even turn the tables against them), and then they suddenly like you and want to be friends.

These agendas in particular would work fine if they only applied to civs that are already friendly or allied to Harold or Tamar. It would make sense that they want their allies to be strong and well-defended; but not their enemies. These agendas would also make more sense with a "fear" and "respect" mechanic similar to what was implemented in Civilization: Beyond Earth's Rising Tide expansion. Having a powerful navy could cause Harold to respect his friends more, and also fear his enemies, but it shouldn't turn enemies into friends.

Further, even if Harald is warning his allies that their coasts are left vulnerable to raids, he is the only leader with the ability to raid the coasts for half of the game. So what difference does it make whether you have a navy in place to defend your shores from raids or not?

And then, of course, there's Mvemba a Nzinga, who will complain that you haven't sent missionaries to spread your religion to his cities, even if you just founded that religion like 5 turns ago and simply haven't had time to create any missionaries yet, or send them across the map into Kongolese territory.

6: Restrictive Great Work theming

Like with the World Congress, there are a couple other mechanics ported over from Civ V that I feel have regressed and don't work as well as they did in Civ V. One such mechanic is the great work theming. Great works is a system that worked perfectly well in Civ V, and could have been ported verbatim, but Firaxis felt it necessary again to make changes for the sake of change. The end result is a system that is much more restrictive and less expressive.

I preferred how Civ V allowed museums to have different themes. One might be a Museum of your civ's national history, full of artifacts from your own civilization over different eras. Another museum might be a museum of world history, containing artifacts from foreign civilizations from different periods of history. Yet another might be a museum dedicated entirely to a specific era of history, containing artifacts from different civilizations from one era. Similar theming rules applied to art museums. This provided a lot of versatility in combining different artifacts and great works, and allowed theming to come into play earlier in the game, and just be more engaging overall.

In Civ VI, there is only one type of theming: different civilizations and different eras. No museums of national history, or museums of antiquity, or a museum dedicated to a long-defeated rival civilization. It's a bummer. Acquiring the specific artifacts and great works to meet this stricter requirement is much more difficult, especially since a single civilization is likely to monopolize most of the great works of a single type.

And also, I really wish there were a Paleontology civic or technology that would unlock the ability to dig up fossils and create museums of natural history. I mean, the museum graphic shows a dinosaur in the game for Sid's sake! Yet we can't dig up dinosaur bones?! Travesty.

5: Less reciprocal benefits from trade routes

The other mechanic that I feel has regressed from Civ V is the trade route mechanic introduced in the Brave New World expansion. In Civ V, from the beginning of the game, trade routes to other civilizations would provide reciprocal yields to the destination civ. This gives both civs an interest in maintaining stable, peaceful relations, since both civs benefit from the trade. It also makes the decision of who to trade with much more interesting, since you are provided extra yield to a potential rival.

In Civ VI, trade routes do not provide such reciprocal benefits -- at least not by default. It isn't until later in the game that trade yields go to the destination civ based on the districts in the origin city. That's fine. The districts are the core design pillar of the entire game, so they should tie into other game systems, and having trade yields be determined by the districts in the respective cities is good design. But that doesn't mean there can't be at least some small reciprocal yield by default.

Because there is no such reciprocal yield, there is very little incentive to maintain peaceful relations with other civs who may be trading with you, and no risk to you for sending one.

4: Roads have little impact

Roads have also been problematic since Civ V unstacked armies. Roads have much less value when you can't run your armies along them all together. In Civ VI, this problem is compounded by the fact that the players have little control over where roads are built. Since they are built automatically by civilian traders, instead of by Workers or Builders, they follow the routes taken by traders (usually to friendly territory) instead of following the paths that your armies will be taking to your enemies. This does provide some incentive to trade with hostile rivals -- even if temporarily, and it may diffuse the tensions and lead to lasting peace.

To be clear, I don't mind that roads are created by Traders instead of by Builders. My problem is that the unstacking the armies means that they don't get to travel along the roads as an army. If I recall correctly, Military Engineers used to locked away until a renaissance era tech (was it Siege Tactics?). Thankfully, Firaxis moved them up to Military Engineer (in the late medieval era). Personally, I would prefer it be moved up even further to either Military Tactics, Construction, or Engineering.

Civ VI also has the problem that roads provide little substantive benefit. Early in the game, they barely speed up movement, since all they offer is reduction in the movement penalty to enter rough terrain. The classical era only adds bridges over rivers. It isn't until the industrial era that roads actually speed up movement.

3: Climate change does not represent an existential threat

In the Top 10 Good Ideas post, I mentioned that I approve of Civ VI's inclusion of anthropogenic climate change as the major feature of an entire expansion pack, turning it into a core mechanic of the entire game (rather than the afterthought that it has traditionally been represented as, if it was represented at all). This one, however, comes with a big caveat: climate change within the game still does not have the teeth that it should.

The only effects of climate change are an increase in the frequency and severity of weather disasters, and the permament flooding of some coastal tiles. The player will know exactly which tiles are at risk of flooding right from the start of the game, so you can plan around it, almost completely eliminating the risk.

Aside from the flooding of a handful of coastal tiles, and the melting of polar ice (which may actually be beneficial for trade and military tactics), there are no permament consequences of climate change in Civilization VI. Droughts do not result in permanent desertification of plains and grasslands. Lakes and rivers do not dry up and reduce the housing available to nearby cities. Warming climates do not allow disease-carrying mosquitoes, ticks, and other biting insects to migrate to new regions and spread those diseases to new populations. Oceans do not become hotter and more acidic, which would result in the bleaching of coral and death of fish and other marine life. The snow does not melt off of Ski Resorts and negate their yields. Perhaps worst of all, climate change eventually caps out in Civ VI, removing any pressure or necessity to reduce emissions once the last level of climate change is triggered. In real life, all those things will happen, and more. And if we don't stop emitting, they will only continue to get worse until, hypothetically, the Earth would look more like Venus, on which a runaway greenhouse effect created a thick, toxic atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane, and sulfur, and surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead.

The disasters can be destructive, but they come into play at a point late enough in the game that they are unlikely to impact the outcome, and you usually have enough production to easily repair the damage.

More fundamentally, a civ can drive up the temperature through unchecked industrial activity and still win the game without taking any steps to address climate change. Mitigating or reversing climate change is not a necessary condition for completing any of the victories, nor is it the basis of any new type of victory, nor is there an "everybody loses" condition in which the planet is rendered unfit for modern human civilization.

Climate change is an existential threat to our way of life. It will be costly to mitigate, and will only become more costly as our leaders continue to drag their feet about dealing with it, and as individuals refuse to make even simple lifestyle changes to reduce their carbon footprint. Yet in Civilization VI, even though it is treated seriously, it is still little more than an inconvenience.

This is a tricky thing to get right, as making climate change so strict and punitive that industrializing will potentially lose the game, players will simply never industrialize at a scale that even remotely approaches real life. Part of the problem with real-world industrialization is that there are individual actors, such as corporations, politicians, and consumers who contribute to climate change in order to improve their immediate quality of life, without concern for how it affects others, and which put internal pressure on countries to industrialize further. Such an internal pressure does not exist in Civilization VI.

And since climate change only becomes an issue at the very end of the game, it's not really a big concern. In real-life, climate changes isn't going to become arbitrarily moot in 2050. Life goes on, and the next generation (after the end of the game) would still have to deal with the problems left to it by past generations.

I'm not really sure how to resolve this. One idea would be to prevent any civ from winning as long as the climate is warming. Even if a player reigns in their own industrial output, the endgame would still require finding ways to prevent or limit other civs' emissions, whether by conquering them, imposing economic sanctions, or through diplomacy.

But that has problems too. A losing civ could troll all the others by building a bunch of coal plants to prevent anyone else from winning. So perhaps climate change also needs to create unrest within city populations that might lead to internal protests or eco-terrorism that destroys or disables excess industry to prevent such trolling.

Another option might be to make the exact effects and severity of climate change unknown until it actually starts to happen in the game. In some games, climate change might be really mild. In other game instances, it might begin early and be oppressively strong. That way, the player still knows that too much industrialization is bad, but they won't know how much industrialization is too much until after certain thresholds or tipping points have been reached. This might more closely model real life, since civs cannot proactively curtail industrialization with full knowledge of how it will affect climate. The pressure to remain competitive in the industrial era would lead to large scale industrialization, but civs would would have to react to it after the fact. This would also have the benefit of possibly creating much more variety in late-game scenarios which might help make the late-game feel less stale and rote.

2: Overwhelming defender advantage with little investment

Even though walls are required for a city to bombard enemy units, and even though there are multiple levels of walls that should require upgrading them in order to maintain military parity, I find that defending cities is usually far too easy. There are many reasons for this -- not the least of which is the incompetence of the CPU leaders' tactical decision-making. The cost of moving through rough terrain makes it very difficult to set up a siege without taking losses from the city's bombardment. The short distance between cities, and the addition of Encampment districts which can also bombard and project zone of control means approaching armies are subject to multiple overlapping bombardments (more on this later). And the inability to deal collateral damage to units within a city (not even from siege weapons like Catapults, Tebuchets, and Artillery) means that the defender can get yet another bombardment against the invaders -- two if the city is coastal and can place both a ranged unit and a ranged naval unit in the city center.

Lastly, the combat strength of city bombardment doesn't increase with the level of walls. It actually increases with the strength of the most advanced military unit that the civ has built. Building a single advanced unit increases the bombardment strength of all of that civ's walls. The walls themselves provide only small, incremental increases in bombardment strength. I find that I can often hold off invasions from the A.I. with just ancient walls. A human opponent will likely pose more of a threat, but they still have to survive long enough to actually surround the city and put it under siege.

Don't get me wrong, I do like that Civ VI focuses more on infrastructure and empire-management, and doesn't feel as much like a strict war game. I like that a civilization can play peacefully, build up its infrastructure and economy, and not have to spend all its time producing units and fighting wars. I like that it is an option.

But that really doesn't work unless the game has meaningful coalition-building mechanics that allow militarily capable civs to defend and protect their defenseless trade partners. Without being able to rely on a coalition of military allies, a civ should need to invest a little bit into a standing army for defense, if it wants to be able to protect itself from a belligerent neighbor. That one-time investment in walls (and maybe an upgrade here or there to higher level walls) should not be sufficient to hold off an invasion.

The problem was even worse before the New Frontiers DLCs. Civ VI lacked a Trebuchet unit until the final content update of the final month of the New Frontiers DLC Pass. The game already included Medieval Walls from launch, that ostensibly defend against medieval siege weapons, even though it hadn't included the medieval siege weapon that the Medieval Walls were supposedly intended to defend the city from. That got fixed though. Eventually.

1: Even more claustrophobic map

One of the design goals of Civilization VI was to reduce unit congestion on the map and make the battlefields feel less claustrophobic. This goal led to several complications being added to the one-unit-per-tile system that was implemented for Civ V. Civ VI implemented "layers" of units which could stack on top of each other, but each tile can only contain one unit from each layer. There are combat units, support units, religious units, and civilian units, and each tile can contain a stack of 1 of each of those types of units. Further, combat units can eventually be combined into corps and armies (or fleets and armadas for naval units), which would allow multiple copies of the same unit to be joined together into one more powerful version of that unit. These ideas work moderately well to reduce the congestion of units.

Ironically, however, decisions with the design of the map kind of counteracted the designs with units. The "unstacking" of cities and lack of hard limits on how many cities can be built leads to even less open space on the map, and more urban sprawl, which dramatically reduces the amount of open field for fighting battles. Cities and encampments have so much overlap that it's almost impossible to walk into enemy territory without being subject to multiple bombardments per turn.

It also completely eliminates the possibility for cavalry raids behind enemy lines because any single cavalry unit that you send to pillage enemy tiles is at extremely high risk of being hit by 2 or 3 bombardments from cities and encampments. Even if the opponent does not have any defensive units to protect their valuable tiles or resource deposits, it is still mostly un-viable to perform these hit-and-run pillage attacks in enemy territory.

The way that the maps themselves are generated was also changed. The use of mountains for adjacency bonuses for both campuses and holy sites necessitates the inclusion of a lot more mountains, including massive, impassable walls of mountain ranges that can completely cut off access to entire regions of the map, or which funnel units down very narrow paths. This contributes to even further congestion and claustrophobia.

I think that fundamentally, both Civ V and Civ VI suffer from the same problem of the civilization-level map not being scaled appropriately for the tactical-level combat. I honestly only see two ways to resolve this:

1. Add more tiles to the maps, and design cities so that they should be placed further apart.
2. Put tactical battles on a separate map from the main world map.

Humankind implements a system in which units can be stacked into armies until they meet on the battlefield. At that point, the stacked armies unstack and deploy their units for a tactical battle that takes place over several rounds within a single campaign turn. It's a decent compromise, but still doesn't fundamentally solve the issue. I'm not sure if it's the right approach for future Civ games. I would really hope that gaming PCs are getting powerful enough that they can support larger maps, so that maps can be scaled such that there is more distance between the urban centers, and more rural space or undeveloped countryside in which to have field battles. Personally, I think that's the best solution.

What will Firaxis have in store for Civ VII?

Given my lists of Top 10 Good Ideas and Bad Ideas, what do I hope to see from any potential Civ VII? Well, first and foremost, I'd like to see some time pass before Civ VII is released. Civilization games are huge games, and I still have plenty of civs, leaders, and game modes in Civ VI that I haven't even played yet. So I hope that we don't hear an announcement of Civ VII for a couple years at least. I'd like to have some time to play more of Civ VI now that it's complete.

And that's to say nothing of my desire to play more of Humankind and maybe also have time enough away from Civ to put a dent into my massive Steam backlog.

In the meantime, I'd personally much rather see Firaxis release a different game. Colonizatin released between Civ I and Civ II. Alpha Centauri was released between Civ II and Civ III. Pirates! released between Civ III and Civ IV. Railroads and Civ IV: Colonization released between Civ IV and Civ V. And Beyond Earth was released between Civ V and Civ VI. I'd like to see that trend of releasing smaller side projects between mainline Civ titles continue.

Perhaps we'll see a sequel to Beyond Earth? Or maybe another remake of Colonization using the Civ VI engine and hex-based grid? Or maybe remakes of Railroads or Pirates? I guess Pirates is unlikely, since that already showed up as a custom mod scenario in Civ VI.

Or maybe Firaxis will do a fantasy or supernatural strategy game that utilizes some of the ideas from the New Frontiers game modes?

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Firaxis do a take on a space-themed 4x. Not just colonizing a single alien world as in Alpha Centauri or Beyond Earth, but a proper space-based 4x along the lines of Master of Orion.

In any case, a seventh Civilization game is a pretty safe bet. It's Firaxis' flagship title, and turn-based 4x is kind of having its own little renaissance with the release of Humankind, Old World, and so forth. So I'm sure that parent publisher 2K will green-light another game in the series in the not too distant future.

Humankind was referenced several times in both of these Top 10 lists, and I would assume that the designers and developers at Firaxis are taking a good, hard look at that game in particular. After all, I get the impression that many of the biggest design choices made for Humankind are in direct response to criticisms of Civilization. I'm sure there are things to learn from Old World and other 4x games as well, but the more narrow scope of those games might limit their applicability to Civ. Though I hear Old World does some interesting things with diplomacy, so maybe there's some lessons there.

Anyway, what do you think? Do you agree with my lists? Is there anything that you love or hate about Civ VI that did not make it into my lists? If so, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.