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

[vonAchdorf]

Apparently there's an option for static leaders because my Laptop there's no animation for them.

The UI is atrocious though and you get too much information by default ("xxx used a Knight to clear a barbarian camp").

It's also annoying that after you conquered a city and the enemy officially ceded it in a peace treaty, they will denounce you for it even a couple of millennia later.

The AI seems to be bad at following a plan - even if they manage to attack with superior numbers and make progress, it often decides to stop attacking the city for no reason and just back off, even if they could easily conquer it.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I like palace from Civ1 better.

The Palace/throne Room declined heavily from 2 to 3, did 4 and onwards even have a private palace?

 

[Starwars]

Must say, playing Russia while 'Kalinka' is playing the background is a small incline on its own somehow.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'd be lying if I said I didn't crack a smile when a Tarrega piece started playing when I was playing my first game of Spain.

This'll probably turn into a decent game once layers of shit are shaved off the UI and the AI learns how to order its units to attack.

 

[Gerrard]

CivIV they told you to DO something. Trade, change civics, religions etc. In CivV and VI they pop just to tell you "Hello" or "We don't like you".

How is "Change your religion because we don't like it" any different from "We don't like your choice of religion"?

 

[spectre]

So, I'm finally done with my Warlord "tutorial" game.
Wanted to do a Science win to see everything, but instead won on culture that snowballed out of control as I was testing shit out. Damn that info screen is fucking useless.
It wasn't a bad game, I had more fun than with Civ 5 to be sure, but that's not a terribly high standard.
I think I'll just let it lie until some serious patching or modding takes off because I'm really pissed with the UI at this point.
Nevermind the number of clicks to get the simplest of shit done.
I'm surprised there were actually any beta tests, cause this shit is actually witholding useful information.

Let's say, I buit a district, for some I can choose one out of two upgrades. Would it kill anyone to let me see which one I'd built at a glance?

So, I built this upgrade that supposedly gives my units bonus exp. Wouldn't it be nice to tell the augmented units from unaugmented?

Do I really need to mouseover every fucking tech to see if it actually gives me any "hidden" bonus?
I actually learned by accident that there's one advance that allows my units to gain a flanking bonus.

It's all little things, but it all piles up and reeks of amateurism. Especially with all the fan wanking going around AND considering the asking price tag.


Still, this game appears very casual friendly. You can literally do anything and feel like you're accomplishing something,
and you get to customize shit, and kids love customization.
While it does leave a good first impression, I found that very often there isn't a lot substance underneath.
For example, I was quite excited to try out diplomacy, check the other civs for hidden agendas, only to learn that there isn't a lot to discover.

There's an upside to this, I am finding that the amount of time spent just clicking "next turn" until something happens is decreased noticeably.
It's open to debate how much of this is just irrelevant noise, but my initial impression is that there's quite enough shit to do regardless of the player's preferred playstyle.


I actually like some of the changes. Splitting science and culture felt like it was a good decision, and so are the civics.
I always enjoyed playing with raging barbarians, so I am pleased with their current default behavior.

Diplomacy is a mess at the moment, but it feels like it's salvageable with just shuffling some modifiers around.
The AI seems too fixated on their priorities, in my opinion. While it gives them a degree of character, I'd very much like to see some flexibility, and perhaps a bunch of semi-random goals?
Right, a man can dream.

Casus Belli is a very welcome addition. It does not help that the AI doesn't seem to use it a lot (or so far it hasn't in my games).
Is it just me, or do the civs behave erratically? It's as if it's hard coded for the first civ you meet to backstab you as the medieval period starts rolling,
doesn't matter we're friendly at the moment. I've also seen Teddy Roosevelt declaring a sneak attack (possibly triggered by slavishly obeying an agenda)
that was evident to do him more harm than good.

I also liked the changes to great persons. Apart from the artists, who are all the same, all others have gotten some character due to all those little quirks they've got,
like the science guy who heals military units, or Sun Tzu who doubles as a great writer when retired.

I haven't seriously gotten into religion yet, as going over all those lists of tiny bonuses felt like a chore,
at first glance it looks campy as hell, apostles throwing lightning bolts at each other next to skyscrapers and highways.

 

[Agame]

Good review

Still, this game appears very casual friendly. You can literally do anything and feel like you're accomplishing something

This is the key to the new design philosophy, lots of shallow systems that give the illusion of being meaningful and creating choice, and a constant stream of achievments every turn so you feel 'empowered'.

In reality you can durdle around do anything and still win, I won a game on immortal by just randomly building every new thing as I researched it with no plan or strategy. In fact I didnt actually win because the enui and tedium of hitting the end turn button killed me, but I was close to a space victory with no AI even remotley competitive.

Even if they fix the AI the game is still going to be stuck with its 'illusion of choice', you can do anything you want and you will win because your awesome!

 

[Mr. Pink]

still working on my quotes mod to replace all the dumb meme quotes with good ones from notable people like goethe , von neumann and timur . about half way done .

thinking about getting some voice overs from fiverr . . .

 

[Lone Wolf]

The problem with the war AI, at the moment, is that the AI has a few basic competencies - for example, it masses forces for an attack pretty well - but suffers from poor prioritization. In my last few games, 3-4 units defending a city fought off 7-8 without issue. The reason being that the AI prioritizes saving its own damaged units over killing your (similarly damaged) ones. This allows you to defeat their forces in detail, while continuously shuffling your own forces to avoid their being destroyed. At worst, you can hold them off until you rush massive forces over to deal with their surprise invasion.

If they retooled the AI to be more risk-prone when committing to city assaults, it'd be comfortably better than the Civ V AI.

 

[Icewater]

This release isn't without its troubles of course but there are some solid improvements here. Builders having charges rather than taking forever to build things and then sitting around uselessly until you research a new technology is a plus. Roads being automatically built by traders rather than having to micro it with builders is nice. Amenities/Housing is a better system than Civ 5's global happiness. Eurekas are an interesting mechanic. From reading the thread, many think they're too powerful right now, which may very well be, but that's the kind of thing that can be easily modded. It'd be a great platform as it is right now, even if they never added or patched anything.

This game shares a similar problem as previous Civ games, though; unit maintenance doesn't cap unit production as hard as it needs to, so wealthy-ish civilizations [and it's not hard to make lots of money, from the few games I've played now] are limited only by their ability to produce, which means you still easily get carpets of doom. Maybe formations will help a bit.

 

[kris]

I haven't seriously gotten into religion yet, as going over all those lists of tiny bonuses felt like a chore,
at first glance it looks campy as hell, apostles throwing lightning bolts at each other next to skyscrapers and highways.

In Civ5 religion was quite important and powerful as its bonuses really could tilt the battle, in this one its not. Yet, of course the AI then choose to prioritize religion over everything else. On deity I often see the AI having built a faith district first in all their cities and getting a religion on that difficult is close to impossible. Not that I care, the bonus from Pantheon is often the best part of the religions, so I am happy with that.

The biggest problem with religion though is another thing entirerly. It is the fact that all those religious units can't be killed by soldiers and they occupy tiles. AI often comes with a massive carpet of religious units, seriously borking up or downright stopping wars! It is troublesome enough with all the military units, mountains and such. Add 10 missionaries to that...

still working on my quotes mod to replace all the dumb meme quotes with good ones from notable people like goethe , von neumann and timur . about half way done .

thinking about getting some voice overs from fiverr . . .

The most stupid and vapid one is the Kilimanjaro one. I get physically ill when I hear it. Its that stupid vapid shit you can expect a millenial city dweller would think is funny and smart.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, I don't really remember the Civ 5 quotes, but comparing 6 to 4 is a serious decline. Instead of elevating shit to make you feel proud about making a fucking civilizational breakthrough, you now get a supposedly funny comment.
At times it sorta works (I kinda like Mark Twain's for writing), but most of the time it feels like they did a quick wikiquotes search by keyword and took the first thing they felt was on topic.
And Sean Bean doesn't really work for me, but I guess that's personal preference.

The biggest problem with religion though is another thing entirerly.

It is the fact that all those religious units can't be killed by soldiers and they occupy tiles. AI often comes with a massive carpet of religious units, seriously borking up or downright stopping wars! It is troublesome enough with all the military units, mountains and such. Add 10 missionaries to that...

They actually can iirc, but you need to be at war. But yeah, in the last few games when I didn't care about religion at all, there were literal carpets of kooks bumbling through my lands preventing my great persons from reaching the district I needed them in.
It's as though they're playing a little game in a game of their own, and without a great prophet you seem to be left out.

I haven't really checked it out, but I saw some military bonuses that felt relevant at a cursory glance, especially for playing defensively - (not that you need a lot of help vs the moronic AI) that healing bonus near a holy site could allow for some epic defense.

In reality you can durdle around do anything and still win, I won a game on immortal by just randomly building every new thing as I researched it with no plan or strategy. In fact I didnt actually win because the enui and tedium of hitting the end turn button killed me, but I was close to a space victory with no AI even remotley competitive.

So this feeling persists on higher difficulties? I scrapped a Prince game because of just that, thinking I have to up the difficulty a notch or two.
I'm starting to think the game could work for multiplayer, but it's always been a solo game for me.

 

[kris]

So this feeling persists on higher difficulties? I scrapped a Prince game because of just that, thinking I have to up the difficulty a notch or two.
I'm starting to think the game could work for multiplayer, but it's always been a solo game for me.

This is what happens on the highest difficult (several tries all went the same way for me):

1. Nearest AI (sometimes multiple) will attack you early on with warriors (or any second tier that they can build).
2. AI will rush stonehenge and build holy sites in all cities. Its possible that you will not have built a single holy site before all religions are out. So if you conquer AI then you will sit on a lot of faith income, but no religion! Remember, districts can't be sold or destroyed, only damaged. (AFAIK)
3. Unless you go hard for some kind of district apart from industrial (why should you?) early on then forget about all those great persons. The cheating AI only do one thing well, build districts, but strangely enough mostly ignoring the industrial one (okay, they might not need it as it cheats).
4. Nearest AI that didn't declare war on you early on will move over a carpet of its best unit, usually a huge army of horsemen or their unique unit. the "surprise" attack that they done on me all those games have obviously been telegraphed 10+ turns in advance as they want to march all their units to the front before starting the attack.
5. After that second round attack the AI only ever declare war on me again if i were a warmonger and its attacks then is halfhearted at best. Instead it will go for the space victory if you have that enabled. Unless Arabia is in your game then none really can become religious winner as they all just have to much faith for anyone to defeat the others.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Well it occurs to me, from what you're saying, that if you want to challenge yourself then you can try and find the hardest setting possible for a Religious win that doesn't involve killing everyone. Should be a good few hundred hours of sandbox fun there. ?

 

[spectre]

Well it occurs to me, from what you're saying, that if you want to challenge yourself then you can try and find the hardest setting possible for a Religious win that doesn't involve killing everyone. Should be a good few hundred hours of sandbox fun there. ?

Like I said, there's plenty of shit to do if you just want to bumble around. Religion is a bit like a game within the game, but from what I saw it's pretty shallow (even though you will see a shitload of options, some of them
look like they could be useful in some borderline circumstances). You only get to play with like three units? Missionary, Apostle, Inquisitor.

You can also try and play archeologist (England seems nicely suited for that with their high capacity museums), there's plenty of shit to dig up on the map: ruins, shipwrecks, this shit is all over the place.
It can even be a nice challenge how to get to some of the locations and stay peaceful.

I' still getting around to it, as I got weary of the game myself, but I'm thinking that a domination run should be fun on a large map.
With the current warmonger penalties, It could be a nice balancing act not to get gangbanged.
Or, failing that, it could actually provide some sort of a challenge.


kris
I noticed that the AI is all over dat stonehenge. Only way I managed to get it reliably on higher difficulties was with wood chopping,
though on higher difficulties, it seems that Arabia is the go-to nation if I want to have a shot as this whole religion thing.

And those "surprise" attacks really make me do an eye-roll, still, I welcome them because it gives me something to do and I actually like the modern civ combat (difficulty aside).

How's AI expansion on top difficulties? So far it looks like they're not doing a lot of it.

So if you conquer AI then you will sit on a lot of faith income, but no religion! Remember, districts can't be sold or destroyed, only damaged. (AFAIK)

I've yet to toy aroung with nukular wepunz, but thus far it seems they are in fact indestructible, apart from razing the city.
But wait, there's more, once you designate a location for a district, it's there to stay, even if it isn't built yet.
There was an idea to capture and AI city, shit all over its good tiles with districts, then give it back to them.

I actually managed to prevent the introductory sneak attack one time. It was with Cleopatra whose agendas are quite easy to fulfill (have a decent army, kill barbarian camps).
I Immediately sent a delegation after meeting, cause otherwise they never seem to accept it. I also gifted her a luxury resource I didn't need (I might as well cound, the AI never gave me anything close to a fair deal).
I'm guessing, buttering up the AI like is the only way to squeeze something out of diplomacy in this game, because otherwise they all turn sour after a while. The only time I saw the AI semi-actively seeking to make friends
was with the peaceful civs: Elizabeth, Roosevelt and Gandhi.

Also, a few tips I picked up along the way:
1. City States seem to be lagging behind in technology, often having warriors to defend from AT wielding barbarians. It seems to help when you levy their troops and disband them. They will then make more era-appropraite stuff.
2. It seems capturing towns is a big no-no. I had the brazilian guy bitch about it for the whole game, and I only took one of his cities as a result of a war he had started in the first place.
I would have to test it out, but it seems that the expected course of events is to dick around the town pillaging stuff untill the AI officially cedes control while negotiating a peace treaty.
3. Speaking of which, the exploit I remember from civ 5 is still around, you can keep shooting at a city with archers for eternity to max out their exp.
The AI usually just folds once you kill their initial assault, so you have all the time in the world. I never felt the need to use battering rams or artillery (though modern day 3 range arty looks pretty kinky).
4. Trade routes are the shit, not sure if the AI uses them as much as they should, but they are pretty instrumental in instantly developing your cities. Internal routes to cities with industrial districts give +4-6 hammers and a bit of food,
just pop 1-2 traders in a newly built city and it should take off on its own after a few turns.

 

[kris]

I noticed that the AI is all over dat stonehenge. Only way I managed to get it reliably on higher difficulties was with wood chopping,
though on higher difficulties, it seems that Arabia is the go-to nation if I want to have a shot as this whole religion thing.

Of course, they have a guaranteed religion and then you just need a few correct pics to win. for a real challenge you should use someone else. since I belive that the biggest problem is not accumulating enough faith to be a winner, but to actually be able to start one.

 

[vdweller]

Played 2 sessions so far. First time I got Greece with Pericles in Prince difficulty and won a cultural victory.

Second time took Norway and won a domination victory, in King difficulty.

I have to say that both sessions seemed a bit easier than their respective difficulty ratings in civ V. No one declared war on me. With Norway I played the entire game being at war with one nation at a time. No one else seemed to give a fuck except the occasional denouncement.

I think the science/culture penalty from having too many cities was removed and thus is better to have more cities, but I was too busy playing to confirm

Graphics aren't so retarded once you get used to them. Also, forgetting about Civ V altogether helps.

Music is definitely inferior to Civ V, just my opinion. Civ V's music was more varied and had many "real" pieces, that is they exist outside of the game as music. Vi had some shitty rehashes of Seikilos' music from the Greeks and some more of similar quality.

All in all pretty enjoyable, with some solid mechanics, and most changes/additions are OK.

 

[Starwars]

My experience with the AI is that it seems very happy to declare war in the earlier eras. Don't think I've had anyone declare war on me in the later eras at all, and I've played the game a fair amount now.

AI is definitely fucked up though. In one game I was sandwiched between two other civs and I had no defensible positions at all. Both the neighbours ended up declaring war on me (independently of each other, not a joint war) and I barely managed to hold off the first one when the other came rolling in with its army. It ended up knocking one of my cities down to almost zero health and then... it backed off. It could've easily taken the city on the next turn but nope. Just goes to show broken the AI is and how messed up its priorities seem to be.

I don't think they'll ever get it working in manner that feels satisfactory with 1upt but as was mentioned before, it would probably help if it was just more aggressive when waging wars. It seems really easy to get it to turn back.

The AI can certainly field huge armies, and if they can't make the AI handle the armies intelligently, then at least make it more prone to zergrushing the players. At least it will have the numbers to do some damage, at least on higher difficulties.

 

[MilesBeyond]

-snip-

Mate, I don't know what to tell you. Your understanding of Civ 4's basic mechanics is so fundamentally flawed that I don't really see where we can go from here. You've said before that you've only played it a couple times and it definitely shows. Really the only way we can have a conversation is if you play enough of Civ 4 to actually be able to understand it enough to critique it. Since asking you to play a game you don't like for the sake of being able to critique it more thoroughly is unfair - not to mention a waste of time on your part - I think it leaves us at something of an impasse.

 

[spectre]

My experience with the AI is that it seems very happy to declare war in the earlier eras. Don't think I've had anyone declare war on me in the later eras at all, and I've played the game a fair amount now.

Earlier eras have almost no penalties for warmongering, and they become more crippling as the game drags on. Also, it seems the AI cannot into all this casus belli thing.
It seems the AI is looking for easy pickings (military rank seems to be the key here).
One game I had Catherine declare the predictable lolsurprise war on me, and at some point actually managed to kill two of my exped archers when I've gotten careless and overextended. What followed, my military rank probably dropped a notch and
I immediately got a surprise war from Kongo (saying they won't be pushed around no mo... all righty then), doesn't matter we were friendly and had some trade going on. It made no sense at all, but for a second I felt that serious shit might go down.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The unit list (if you can find it) is a UI disaster (and not the only one). Maybe it's because it's my first game (and lowered graphical settings), but I don't think the map reads well. Quite often, it's hard to tell if a resource is being worked on or which unstacked districts actually are on the map. They could have used the more cartoonish / stylized art style to make them visually more clear and distinctive.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Religion would be a lot more important if sectarian and religious conflict was introduced. having two religions in your city would increase unrest if they were of equal size, cities with foreign religions would lose amneties if at war with the founder, ect. the amount of rebels spawned proportional to the number of religious pops.

there should be some civic cards that reduce all religions in your country in the industrial age, like cultural revolution or nationalism

it would also be cool if a civ could split off from the religion founder by making a sect, with the same bonuses as the original but with a new founding city. doing that would mean taking a huge diplo hit and increase sectarian conflict

 

[Morgoth]

https://steamdb.info/app/289070/graphs/

1 million units sold in under two weeks. That's a record for the franchise. So much for PC gaming being dead fairy-tales.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

if this shit sells so well, it's dead to me.

 

[Leechmonger]

1 million units sold in under two weeks.

Of course, look at all the retards who bought it in this thread.