I don’t think 6 had religion or a bunch of stuff originally, it had less content than 5 at launch (forget the civs, just the mechanics). That was fixed in the first major update.
I’d expect a year or 2 before we can start seeing 7 become the full game it needs to get to to pass 6.
it was diplomacy that was stripped then re-added this time. in base civ 6 there was no diplomacy. that’s ridiculous. that’s like one of the most core mechanics and win conditions. then when they did add it it was so busted that you’ll often accidentally get a diplo victory on your way to any other victory.
6 definitely had religion at launch. IGN actually declared “This game will go down in history as the most fully-featured launch version in the 25-year series.”
that’s a weird thing to say about a game that came out without diplomacy or diplomatic victories. but ign has a long history of overating games from waelthy companies.
edit: but also, the way that ign feels the need to praise it for being fully featured at launch when it was still missing a base mechanic really helps my point. they always do this. this may actually be the least bad one they’ve ever done. that’s just a low bar. like the 4th least bad release.
idk man… i guess In today’s market this behavior has become less bad by comparison to everyone else, but I’m not going to ignore the rising temperature of the water in this pot. the whole industry is getting worse. I’m not going to give this company ground to legitimize their greed because the rest of the industry shot past them in shittyness. this was one of the first series to explicitly be scummy with dlc. they helped create the modern landscape of battle passes and gacha bullshit. they were once some of the worst out there…
Sure but the fully fleshed out diplomatic victory in Civ V was only added by DLC, it’s not that crazy that the equivalent was a DLC in VI. Beyond that, things like religion, archaeology, and espionage were all DLC features in V but were base game in VI. It was a clear step forward on the whole.
