Civilization VI - Now available, so you can sink all your free time into it

[Archibald]

Whats the problem with rapid expansion that it mus be prevented?

 

[Snorkack]

It becomes a problem if it's the only valid earlygame strategy, like in civ 3. Civ 5 has the opposite problem: there's no reason to expand past three or four cities. Civ 4 hit the middle ground perfectly.

 

[kris]

It becomes a problem if it's the only valid earlygame strategy, like in civ 3. Civ 5 has the opposite problem: there's no reason to expand past three or four cities. Civ 4 hit the middle ground perfectly.

Only problem with Civ4 was that it had some thresholds. Basically it was quite dependant on some technologies/buildings at which point you moved forward. It was not a major flaw, but it was quite noticeable how you as a player stopped expanding for a while at some point and then when the relevant tech/buildings was done you built like 5+ settlers. (only on bigger maps of course)

 

[rezaf]

Isn't it kind of an eye opener when the lead designer of a new installation in the Civ series is most anxious about how people will react to which leaderheads have been selected to stand in for the different cilivizations, of all things?
And he's most proud about an idea that was basically shoplifted from Warlock and Endless Legend, having the city spread out across the map.
One further step away from any notion of realism as the city of Berlin builds it's barracks on the Polish and it's Granary on the French border.
Note how the two games that worked like that are fantasy games with no ties to reality.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It becomes a problem if it's the only valid earlygame strategy, like in civ 3. Civ 5 has the opposite problem: there's no reason to expand past three or four cities. Civ 4 hit the middle ground perfectly.

Exactly. Civ 3 was ICS galore.

Everything shown with 6' so far seems to be going in right direction, even the Civ 4 composer returning.

And he's most proud about an idea that was basically shoplifted from Warlock and Endless Legend

Meanwhile, Warlock and Endless Legend totally didn't shoplift all of the basics of gameplay from Civilization series.

 

[rezaf]

Meanwhile, Warlock and Endless Legend totally didn't shoplift all of the basics of gameplay from Civilization series.

But did it's designers pat themselves on the back for the things they stole from Civ?

 

[Mr. Pink]

If you're going to streamline, get rid of builders.

spending half of your playtime shuffling builders around isn't fun or interesting. Just plop improvements (they should take a few turns to be constructed) paying with food/production/gold from the city.

 

[Snorkack]

If you're going to streamline, get rid of builders.

spending half of your playtime shuffling builders around isn't fun or interesting. Just plop improvements (they should take a few turns to be constructed) paying with food/production/gold from the city.

What? Atleast in IV, being able to micro your workers and not waste worker turns is one of the key skills that separates the good player from the mediocre. If you don't like it, just hit autobuild, that's still enough for Prince difficulty. But completely scrapping workers would be a worse case of dumbing dorwn than 1upt.
Although the fact that in NuCiv we will have buildings inside a city as well as outside, and some tile improvements will be built by workers and some by the city - this concept sounds pretty half-baked and could use some sort of clean-up.

 

[Mr. Pink]

If you're going to streamline, get rid of builders.

spending half of your playtime shuffling builders around isn't fun or interesting. Just plop improvements (they should take a few turns to be constructed) paying with food/production/gold from the city.

What? Atleast in IV, being able to micro your workers and not waste worker turns is one of the key skills that separates the good player from the mediocre.

I didn't know that was even a skill outside of multiplayer. It's not terribly hard to do, and even if you suck, you're still going to be more efficient than any AI. Since improvements don't have any kind of upkeep, there's no downside to hitting autobuild and letting the workers go to town with trading posts and farms mid-game.

I agree that multi tile cities as it is, seems half-baked. Either intergrate it with the worker system by having workers build the city expansions (expanding the city should alleviate unhappiness from overcrowding and turn food tiles into gold tiles) or have the player just plop everything. It's awkward to have it in between.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

They are changing the workers no? If I'm not mistaken, workers are going to have charges now. Once the charges are used, poof.

 

[Grunker]

Never understood why they didn't just cap the workers. Choosing between which improvement to do next is fun, microing a horde of workers isn't.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

1 upt workers is pissing enough already. all the computer needs to do is throw 2-3 cavalry units in your general direction and suddenly you're going to spend the following 200 years fixing a farm. no thank you.

 

[sser]

The movement change -- rounding down on the AP to prevent one-upping from plains --> hills is a pretty big deal. That's one of the few things I do like about some of the changes.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Reading this thread gave me nostalgia for the good old times, so I reinstalled Civ3. I am not a hardcore Civ player but a filfthy casual who just likes to dick around and build some pretty cities, still I managed to win Civ5 three times in a row on the average difficulty, with three different Civs, in three different ways. So I think, hey, I'm not half bad at this, lets see.. So picked the average (Regent I think) difficulty setting and before I can really begin to appreciate the pretty graphics, the historical explanations for every tech (when and why did they take that out of the Civ games exactly) and learn the systems - I got my head kicked in within less than three hours by Irqouis and Aztecs. Wow, talk about difficutly.

Seems like the winning strategy in Civ3 is to spam cities like crazy, rush early military and blob the world before everybody else does? Not sure how I like that, I enjoyed slowly (and peacefully) building my empire in Civ5.

One thing that was amazing however was' "Nilstown defected to the Aztec Empire. Reports say that they are in awe of their culture." Didn't know this could happen. Guess I am not as good as I thought, will try to get better. And start by reading the fucking manual..

That's always been the key in every Civ game. They only changed it in V. In fact they went waaaaaay overboard. And so did other 4X games. Case in point: Endless Space. Have more than 2 planets and suddenly everyone is mad as hell and not gonna take this anymore.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

aaaaaaaand another thing that master of orion 3 made right :V

 

[Lone Wolf]

Having watched parts of that stream, I now have issues with the art style. Particularly, with the UI.

Very disappointed.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The UI looks too much like a mobile game. Probably artists get too many mobile jobs theses days, so that style is unconsciously ingrained in their works.

 

[rezaf]

With the "steamlining" of game mechanics having progressed to such degree, I personally consider a mobile UI quite a good fit...

 

[sser]

The UI looks too much like a mobile game. Probably artists get too many mobile jobs theses days, so that style is unconsciously ingrained in their works.

Having watched parts of that stream, I now have issues with the art style. Particularly, with the UI.

Very disappointed.

Yeah the interface is pretty shit. I actually took a pic because it was definitely glaring:

The dev did mention there was a resolution issue going on, though.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I also didn't like the policy cards UI.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

That's always been the key in every Civ game. They only changed it in V. In fact they went waaaaaay overboard.

I suppose I am in the minority here but that endless city spam bores the hell out of me, it makes the game feel like a grand strategy blobber , which it shouldn't be. I actually prefer how Civ V did it, and very much so.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I suppose I am in the minority here but that endless city spam bores the hell out of me, it makes the game feel like a grand strategy blobber , which it shouldn't be. I actually prefer how Civ V did it, and very much so.

Wtf is a grand strategy blobber? That makes no sense.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I phrased that awkwardly, I just meant the usual map painting in grand strategy games, where all you do is expanding for the sake of expanding. Its sometimes referred to as 'blobbing'.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Well you have to do map painting, how else do you expect to CONQUER THE WORLD MUAHAHAHAHAHA?

But yeah the manic pace of expansion required to even stand a chance in earlier Civ games was a bit lame. Perhaps a different approach would have been better for gameplay, meaning that you can expand like a thirdworldian, breeding and conquering as you go, or focus on building a smaller, more successful civilization with advanced technology, then steamroll through ugabooga mumbuthu with your boomsticks and carriages while they control vast amounts of land but rely on spears and witchcraft. You know, the way real life worked.

 

[rezaf]

Wtf are you guys even talking about? Manic pace of expansion? This only applied in Civ3, and even then only because the AI would otherwise happily waltz through your lands to plop down a city on that tiny three tile mountain area not yet within your borders.
And ... I think since Civ2 or one of it's rereleases you had the option of playing on a smaller map for a quicker paced game with less cities.
Even Civ5 wouldn't have scaled down cities so much if not for the fact that to make their oh so glorious 1UPT in a global strategy game idea work they had to make sure FAR less units were being produced and on the map. Thus less cities and less production in general.

On the Civ 1 cover it said: Build an empire to stand the test of time. Empire. You know, like the Roman Empire. Or the British Empire. Or the Ottoman Empire. Or ... you get the point. Those had more than three cities, you know. Seriously. Read it up on wikipedia. Fascinating stories...