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

[Zeriel]

Jesus christ, this game is a clusterfuck. I didn't think they could do worse than Civ 5, but once again setting my expectations in the basement was just too high.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Well, I can't finish my game - around turn 250 on Prince, 5 AIs. I crushed 4 of them, and am now looking for China's capital - but whenever attack a city with a melee unit, the game crashes. Doesn't matter where on the map, it always crashes if I try to attack a city with a melee unit.

Endgame AI is incredibly retarded, doesn't know how to deal with aggression and especially naval units with upgrades (the 3 range one especially). I should try higher difficulties, but I'm pretty sure the AI is just going to cheat, not play better.

edit: seems some other people are having the exact same issue:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ctd-when-trying-to-capture-german-capital.601053/

Good job, Firaxis.

Has anyone actually been able to finish the game on a Conquest victory?

 

[MilesBeyond]

Team Liquid just announced competitive Civ6 player.

Competitive Civ.

Like what is the fastest Civ game you have ever seen anyway.

Well I mean competitive Civ is actually viable if done in the CivFanatics style of set singleplayer games with certain rules and restrictions and the player with the highest score wins. But as an e-sport? LOL.

Broke down and got it. Here are my reflections.

The Good:

1. Holy shit this is the first Civ game in forever that feels somewhat complete on release. I'm honestly sitting here feeling like DLC will be luxuries rather than necessities.

2. Really, really liking the inspirations system (where you can speed up research of a tech by fuliflling certain conditions). The struggle Civ games have always had is that they rapidly become linear due to certain tech paths simply being massively superiour. Civ VI definitely isn't going to avert that, but the inspirations system means that less viable paths are going to be more tempting now. It should also hopefully create interesting diversity in the tech levels between Civs, and more variety in playthroughs.

3. Absolutely love the new culture system. Combines the best of Civ 4's Civics and Civ 5's Social Policies. Plenty of variety and a real sense of progressing your Civ, but doesn't lock you into your choices. Also doesn't force military and cultural policies to compete with research boosting ones, which is amazing.

4. AI is not good, but it's a MASSIVE step up from Civ V and BE. As has already been noted, they're big on early aggression now, which is, like, huge. Part of what made Civ V and BE so easy even on the highest levels was that the AI was content to let you peacefully expand and develop and then try to start shit when it was too late. Now you're actually forced to choose between expanding your military and developing your empire early game. Getting a decent defense force up and running is going to significantly detract from your scientific and cultural development. I mean I understand this is a return to form of Civ 1-4 but still. Good to have it happening again.

5. Just all sorts of cool things happening. This is the first Civ game in ages where I've felt a little overwhelmed upon first booting up the game. Civ V and BE I remember sitting there like "That's it?" Here I'm going all over the place trying to take in the new concepts. True to Civ fashion, the game is still relatively simple compared to some of the 4Xs out there, so "overwhelmed" may be the wrong word. But there's enough new things that I'm excited about them, I guess. I haven't played enough to really dig into the district system or the revamped Great Person system but they seem pretty cool so far.

The Bad:

1. The UI. Holy hell, the UI. I don't get scrolling in this game. Mouse scrolling was off by default (lolwut) and when it's on it's super clunky. Also everything is super small. I feel like I'll appreciate the shrunken UI in the long run, but short term its left me often missing out on things or not knowing where to find them.

2. AI may be a massive step up but better/=good. Par for the course with Civ unfortunately (and really TBS games in general) but still a bit of a drag.

3. The still-motion leader screens are unnerving as hell. This might be an option I can switch, haven't fooled around with the settings that much yet, but I mean even Civ 1 leader screens had more going on. Additionally, I'm not a huge fan of the visual design, and find that sometimes the game can look pretty cluttered. Even relative to Civ 5.

4. I haven't played enough to be able to formulate an intelligent opinion on this, but something just feels a bit off about production speed. Or maybe it's just the game's less-than-great optimization making ten turns feel like an eternity. Speaking of which...

5. Optimization. The entire game feels slow and clunky and just blah. It runs like I'm trying to play it on a five-year-old laptop, which I'm not.

Random Comments:

1. This is the first Civ game since 4 where the majority of my complaints are on the technical side, rather than related to the mechanics themselves. A good sign.

2. The graphics and voice acting combine to give the game a bizzarely Fable-esque aesthetic.

3. Jury's still out on some of the changes. Roads being built by trade routes and reverting to the old "Settlers don't halt growth but drain population when they're done" are both things I'm not sure I like (or dislike, for that matter).

4. Tech tree looks a bit sparse. I realize that's because a lot of it has been moved to the Civic tree and I haven't played long enough to say whether it feels sparse, so I'm reserving judgment for now.

5. I love how Greece is the only civ with multiple leaders. Basically saying "Yeah multiple leaders are a part of this game but we're not really going to bother with them until DLC." Not even necessarily a complaint, actually, as I'm glad they focused on other things.


tl;dr Firaxis's best launch in a long time. IMHO Civ 6 at launch is already better than 5 with all DLC, and if they play their cards right, could one day become the best Civ.


EDIT: Turns out the leader screens being stationary was, in fact, an option that could be adjusted.

 

[Fry]

Nope nope nope. I'm done for awhile. I'll come back after they put in some UI fixes.

Think I'll try the Vox Populi mod for Civ5 instead. Anyone know if the claimed AI improvements are actually good?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i have to admit the game is growing on me, like a benign tumor you're too poor to afford to remove.
the interface is beyond beyond beyond retarded, "do you want to raze this city? yes/no but i'll not fucking show you the city itself, you must blind guess", having to hit esc one or even two times when some random retarded looking retard calls you to say "you have a big army" when literally two turns before he did the same to tell you "you have a small army". i'm being constantly attacked by this hydrocephalic swede, all he does is declare war, take years and years to move near my borders and then ask for peace with no battles ever fought. it took me a long while to understand how to assign envoys to city states. the number of techs is incredibly low, worsened by splitting them through several trees and systems.
civ5 had half a feature at launch but at least it was essential, barebone but working. its interface had huge issues but this is like being horrified by oblivion's interface and then meeting the unbelievably worse skyrim's.

funny trivia: i found the menu theme banal and too loud and annoying to be a background while i'm switching between options, and recognizing some patterns i quoted how uto ughi, one of our greatest contemporary violinist, commented on a guy who was selling a lot only because of these patterns and marketing and how he was the farthest thing from art and skill as possible. i've been covered with insults with the only explanation "this uto ughi guy has a silly name, thus he knows nothing about music and this song is awesome". this is the kind of retardation from where "this is the best gaem ever" comes from.
punch line: then pops up a some days old interview of "sogno di volare"'s author in which he explains "i use these patterns because they work".

 

[Mr. Pink]

Build times are totally out of whack, even in my 10 pop capital it'd take about 10 turns to build a friggin pikemen unit - and it only took the same city 20 turns to build the great library (and then 7 turns for some ancient wonder). Spearmen could be built in 2 turns at some point ... and now 10?!

rushing industrial district is absolutely mandatory. If you can get +4 or more adjacent bonuses, your production will start to snowball as you start building more buildings quicker.

it shouldnt be this expensive though.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Build times are totally out of whack, even in my 10 pop capital it'd take about 10 turns to build a friggin pikemen unit - and it only took the same city 20 turns to build the great library (and then 7 turns for some ancient wonder). Spearmen could be built in 2 turns at some point ... and now 10?!

rushing industrial district is absolutely mandatory. If you can get +4 or more adjacent bonuses, your production will start to snowball as you start building more buildings quicker.

it shouldnt be this expensive though.

Industrial + commercial for every city is the best route. You can get like 900 gold per turn with a shitload of units if you have 10 cities with these two.

 

[Got bored and left]

Gandhi denounced me as a warmonger after we declared a joint war against somebody (which was his idea, btw.). Asshole.

The AI seems very denounce-happy in general. Everyone hates everyone else, and there's loads of fighting. I think I've seen more activity in my 150-ish turns of Civ 6 than in the dozens of hours Civ 5 I've played.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

and what about the "please stop raping me" messages every two turns? i had to quit a war because i couldn't stand that whiny bitch anymore.

i insist: civ5 was horrible and had nothing, this one has more and is even more horrible.

 

[baturinsky]

It's still Civ5 with some gimmicks sprinkled on.
Combat AI is still retarded. My enemy was technically Atomic Age, but fought with my freshly-upgraded infantries with crossbowmen and spearmen.

 

[Jimmious]

They do have an issue with upgrading units occasionally, they seem put it to low priority unless they are actively going for war or sth.
I can't tell exactly, sometimes they're fine, other times not.
It also seems they do it either for ALL UNITS or for none of them

 

[cvv]

True to Civ fashion, the game is still relatively simple compared to some of the 4Xs out therem.

2. AI may be a massive step up but better/=good. Par for the course with Civ unfortunately (and really TBS games in general) but still a bit of a drag.

I guess we're living in different worlds, Civ has always been one of the most complex strategy games out there. Afaik only the Paradox grand strategies are more complex, at least from the mainstream pool (there might be some niche indie super IQ strats for all I know).

And crying about the AI got old in 1996, the AI is always bad, there isn't a single strategy game with a truly great AI and there never will be unless someone comes up with Skynet and then we'll have bigger problems to worry about than videogames. Agreed with the rest of your post.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

True to Civ fashion, the game is still relatively simple compared to some of the 4Xs out therem.

2. AI may be a massive step up but better/=good. Par for the course with Civ unfortunately (and really TBS games in general) but still a bit of a drag.

I guess we're living in different worlds, Civ has always been one of the most complex strategy games out there.

up to civ4.

 

[tripedal]

Ran into a really annoying bug, my archaeologist just disappears when I excavate something.

 

[Jimmious]

Ran into a really annoying bug, my archaeologist just disappears when I excavate something.

If the museum he comes from is full, he disappears afaik

 

[rezaf]

rushing industrial district is absolutely mandatory. If you can get +4 or more adjacent bonuses, your production will start to snowball as you start building more buildings quicker.

Industrial + commercial for every city is the best route. You can get like 900 gold per turn with a shitload of units if you have 10 cities with these two.

Yeah, this stopped being much of an issue at some point.

I've reached the Industrial Age, and by now, my biggest issue is the turn times. Damn do they take long to resolve.
Well, and 1UPT. It's kinda funny and sad at the same time seeing the AI maneuver it's huge bulks of military units around. They usually have everything, infantry, cavalry, ranged units, support units - often a dozen, sometimes more than twenty units. That's quite some occupied area.
Personally, I just don't have the heart making an army to try and put harm to an enemy that's not just around the corner. It takes soooooo much micronomanagement, and by the time you get to them, you'll have received three peace offers anyway.
So I just sit those wars out. Too bad now we'll have to wait at least for Civ7 for a better solution.[/QUOTE]

 

[Drakron]

and what about the "please stop raping me" messages every two turns? i had to quit a war because i couldn't stand that whiny bitch anymore.

i insist: civ5 was horrible and had nothing, this one has more and is even more horrible.

Vanilla Civ5 is pretty bad, seems This one managed to be worst (this is what happens when you shameless steal other people ideas without understanding them, even Endless had a build queue you morons) but Civ5 is much improved with the expansions and patches, I would say this might be the case with Civ 6 but this are the people that made Beyond Earth and that one wasnt fixed later.

 

[Agame]

Too bad now we'll have to wait at least for Civ7 for a better solution.

I doubt they will ever fix it. 1UPT is terrible, it looks stupid, why am I not building entire armies at a time eg. like Paradox games? At this scale its just retarded to have individual units taking up an entire hex space. And there is no challenge fighting the AI. Which I actually think is the main reason people like it. They can cheese victories against the AI and play on higher difficulties than they should be.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

True to Civ fashion, the game is still relatively simple compared to some of the 4Xs out therem.

2. AI may be a massive step up but better/=good. Par for the course with Civ unfortunately (and really TBS games in general) but still a bit of a drag.

I guess we're living in different worlds, Civ has always been one of the most complex strategy games out there.

up to civ4.

i'd like to know what all the "disagree" below are about. do you mean that civ5 is the pinnacle of complexity in civ games?

 

[Great Deceiver]

I was really starting to warm up to the game, but these crashes are too much. Given the widespread reporting about the same issue, I'm pretty confident all the glowing reviews out there are by people who haven't finished a single game.

 

[cvv]

i'd like to know what all the "disagree" below are about. do you mean that civ5 is the pinnacle of complexity in civ games?

Tbh can't really say if 5 is more complex than 4, haven't played Civ4 for very, very long time and I don't remember anything anymore (what was diplomacy like in Civ4?). I guess the 1UPT rule makes the combat tactically more complex tho so there's that.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Well, and 1UPT. It's kinda funny and sad at the same time seeing the AI maneuver it's huge bulks of military units around. They usually have everything, infantry, cavalry, ranged units, support units - often a dozen, sometimes more than twenty units. That's quite some occupied area.
Personally, I just don't have the heart making an army to try and put harm to an enemy that's not just around the corner. It takes soooooo much micronomanagement, and by the time you get to them, you'll have received three peace offers anyway.

This is because corps are only unlocked in the industrial age. They should be unlocked from the start, so AI can start stacking warriors and being an actual threat.
So I just sit those wars out. Too bad now we'll have to wait at least for Civ7 for a better solution.[

 

[Mr. Pink]

i'd like to know what all the "disagree" below are about. do you mean that civ5 is the pinnacle of complexity in civ games?

Tbh can't really say if 5 is more complex than 4, haven't played Civ4 for very, very long time and I don't remember anything anymore (what was diplomacy like in Civ4?). I guess the 1UPT rule makes the combat tactically more complex tho so there's that.

On the surface, civ5 should be more tactically complex, but in reality, the AI just can't deal with it, and will suicide their troops into your bottleneck every time without fail. The movement ranges are just too small for actual tactics. It's like playing checkers, one tile at a time. Multiplayer isn't much better, since almost all of the time, it will be a conga line of one unit fighting the other until it dies, and the next one replaces it due to bad terrain.

Stacks were more about who had the best economy, and who has the best army composition. This is something the AI can actually handle.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The solution against stacks were nukes, not 1UPT.

 

[J1M]

This game really is for people who enjoy watching paint dry. I found it particularly funny that most of the time when a wonder finished I couldn't remember why I bothered to build it 20 turns earlier.

For those looking for a more fun strategy builder game, consider Axes & Acres. Graphics are simple, but it has interesting choices and distinctly different paths to victory.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/448910/