2650

The only way to win is to not play - WOPR

2651

Just popping in here to pat myself on the back and say that I just won a Cultural Victory with Kongo on Deity level.

If you can avoid war as much as possible (and are lucky enough to find room to expand without stepping on too many toes), the AI can’t compete with what Kongo gets from a full set of Themed Museums:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100603690271730948/24B0F4F2BFCE324D6F0FE8EBCD4227F2FC0C1FF8/

Just resign yourself to the fact that you can’t hope to out compete them with Wonders. But you start with so many Great Work slots you can just use the trade screen to buy religious relics from the AI early on, then use that initial production boost to get started until you can get the Archeological Museums up and running.

2652

In my opinion, the way to enjoy this game is to give up and admit victory sometime during the mid-game. It’s really fun for 100-200 turns. Later on, it’s about as exciting as a lawn-growing sim. There comes a point where you know you’re going to win; don’t let your OCD side push you into wasting hours proving it to yourself. :)

2653

I usually play with the game speed set to “Online”, even in singleplayer. That way you don’t have to slog through as many turns.

With the AI’s research advantage, you still get into the exiting “disrupt AI rocketry through spying” race.

2654

I always enjoyed playing previous Civ games through at least the industrial age. They generally captured the rapid change of that time really well and going through that with your civ was fun. Within a couple of techs you’d unlock both railroads and factories. Suddenly, your workers were useful again(build a railroad network fast!) and the result was that it went from taking many turns for units to cross your empire to now being able to make that trip in one or two turns. That certainly changed how you needed to distribute units and felt very thematically appropriate.

Factories were the same way. Suddenly, your cities production jumped considerably which often made it worth rushing to get factories into all of your cities as fast as possible.

The last couple of games(espeically VI) have largely done away with that, and I assume it’s for balance reasons. Industrial zones are unlocked much sooner now and factories feel less impactful. The fact that they made them affect multiple cities was cool, but then removing the stacking of that effect made it far less so. Railroads are just entirely gone now and roads upgrade incrementally.

These aren’t huge things, but it does make me far less likely to play a game through to see how my civ looks and feels post-industrialization. I’ve always appreciated that the gameplay in Civilization evolved as a somewhat reasonable interpretation of history and I’m sad when that starts to erode.

2655

Yeah, I always loved building railroads. It meant nearly instantaneous communication between cities, and it looked cool. The way roads are handled in Civ VI may well be more realistic, in that trade routes leading to road nets makes sense, but it isn’t as satisfying at all.

2656

G’day, mate!

2657

I actually am surprised to say but I think there feels like more strategic diversity in Civ V’s opening despite VI’s emphasis on number crunching. The big problem for me is that bonuses for city states are so huge finding them first can double or more your starting output, so every faction regardless of bonuses goes City State hunting. And because the AI is so aggressive, every faction should just go to war with their neighbors as a matte of course. And Religion / Pantheon bonuses are so bad in Civ VI faith centered strategies seem pretty rarified and specific (some kind of faith rushed unit span maybe?).

In V I’ll actually do different sorts of things with the different factions that early - in VI I’m using the same strategy over and over. Maybe at Diety level play these differences matter but around King they don’t matter near as much until you hit their “unique unit” spam time.

2658

I agree, I think it’s a huge problem. I played a fair amount of Civ6 in MP, and whoever finds the most city states at the start would run away with the game every single time, without exception.

I like the fact that there’s a bonus to the first person who finds them, but I think the city state bonuses should unlock after 2 envoys, not 1 (or just give a one-time boost instead of per-turn). I don’t think the first tier of City State bonuses are too big, they’re just too big for how early in the game you can get them. If the +2 science/culture/whatever were delayed a little bit, it’d be fine.

And yeah, other than that, my strategy is always to rush archery and build stacks of military units because it is guaranteed that 1) the AI will forward-settle me almost instantly and 2) they will declare war on me, as they have more warriors (via harder difficulty bonuses). So I need a huge military to defend myself, and I need them to expand. All of this typically results in the game feeling “over” in the classic era, as I’ve either been swamped by numbers or I’ve demolished my neighbors and taken most of their cities, which lets me run away with the game. It’s really boring, honestly, and is why I haven’t touched the game in months.

2659

That’s what’s feels funny about Civ VI: it’s ostensibly the more hardcore, number crunching game, yet the numbers don’t add up. It all comes off as being more amateurish, or maybe, just less insightful and more iterative; more fan fiction than canon, as the kids say. The Quotes are mundane, the math doesn’t really work, there’s the illusion of depth without an deep understanding of where that depth goes, an almost old fashioned Eurocentricm, borrowing a lot from other 4X games rather than leading with new ideas, etc.

Also the art! Civ V has great and inspired Wonder Art. Civ VI doesn’t care about art, it has 3D animated cheesy buildings. Also the repair animation is hilariously cartoonish for some reason? And on and on… Civ V was the historian and wargamers game, Civ VI was made by engineers.

2660

The game would be infinitely better in the early stages if they eliminated the city-state-finding bonus. You can save literally a thousand of years of R&D if you find a couple of research cities, or can crank out a warrior army if you find the military ones, or can jump to classical republic a hundred turns faster if you find cultural ones, etc. And if you’re as usual stuck in the middle of 3 AI kingdoms, then you won’t get any first at all. It’s a very bizarre design decision on the devs’ part.

2661

Wait! There’s more coming in the next free update.

[quote]
Multiplayer teams and mod tools have been two of the community’s most-requested features, and we’re happy to bring them to Civilization VI. Steam Workshop will allow you to browse, add, and subscribe to mods more easily, and the other tools will make it easier for artists and modders to express their creativity within the game. With the update to multiplayer you will be able to team up with your friends to conquer the world together against AI or human opponents.[/quote]

2662

I’ll be curious to see the details on the modding tools. I know there was worry among the modding community that they were going to be limited this time around, with no access to the DLL.

2663

They aren’t letting you mod the code this time?

2664

I don’t know, it was just a common worry among the modding community that they wouldn’t allow you to do so this time around. It had something to do with interviews where modding was discussed during the games development, I believe.

2665

That addition of Australia’s culture bomb effect (from pastures) going up against Poland’s culture bomb (encampments and forts) would be an interesting battle, depending on how the land is diversified. I was happy to have it return and my game as Poland had me using it at every opportunity to steal land from the encroaching civs around me. Australia’s offers less flexibility (you can’t choose where the pastures are, after all) but you have the potential of having more of them. I wonder if you can erase the pasture and have it rebuilt in order to redo the bomb on a neighboring civ? If so, it’d be more useful since building pastures are some of the first things I would do and I wouldn’t wait for another civ to be right on top before improving the tile.

2666

This and @KevinC synopsis are part of the reason I hated city-states being added to Civ in the first place (with Civ V). To me they always felt like gamey cheese added to the game. And sadly if you play without them you cripple the Civ’s with those dependencies. I really feel like the last two games would have been better without them had they redirected those programming resources to fleshing out things like better trade, more strategic resources, better AI.

2667

The devs live-streamed the new multiplayer scenario, “Outback Tycoon,” set in Oz. The victory condition is economic only: most gold per turn, I think they said. Perhaps more interesting, the scenario features random events that the devs say will eventually be plugged into the base game.

One thing I’m not sure about: can you play a multiplayer scenario in a single-player mode? The devs played against a human and an AI, so maybe yes?

2668

Yes, you can. In fact, it’s perfect to play a game of Civ6 and not worry too much about the asinine AI, since those games are over so quickly.

2669

Thanks. Good to know. That scenario looks fun.