Play and expand peacefully or through minor skirmishes.
Find a time to attack and grow; which era typically depends on leveraging the unique unit.
Once I have a bunch more cities, decide on which victory I feel like this time.
The year 1900 comes around and it’s pretty clear I’ll get there eventually, but it’s too tedius per turn, so I quit and start again.
And I enjoy this, really it’s a great formula except I never end up playing late game, even though part of me wants to.
Does the loyalty system change this formula? Does it really encourage of even force smaller late game Civs? I’ll read another couple reviews.
does anyone remember if and how the science cost per technology depends on map size or number of cities? if it doesn’t depend on either then research should go faster on larger maps, is that what happens?
Population contributes less to science in VI than it did in V, but going wide is still the ideal for generating it. That said, the decision to go wide has new considerations in VI, so it’s not always a straight-forward path to success.
Supposedly the science rate per pop has been nerfed a bit, hasn’t it? Also, I hadn’t realized that Eurekas and Inspiration rewards were recently reduced from 50% to 40%, which I think is better. In general, I’m seeing slower science progression in my games, which I think is a good thing. I’d still like it slower; perhaps I’ll try a Marathon game for that.
The Loyalty system, plus the new Government District and Governors system, all seem to make going tall more viable. Which suits me fine. I love having city-flipping back! Forward-settling by the AI is now potentially a good thing for the player, as the city may flip. I do wish there were more Governors to pick from; right now the decisions seem too obvious. I’d like more difficult trade-off decisions, too, like those in the Dark Ages but for all ages. There’s one in the Gov’t District: an improvement that gives you +4 housing and other benefits, but costs you 2 loyalty per turn in any city that lacks a governor. I’d like more choices that have benefits and drawbacks.
The UI annoys me more than I remember from launch. It’s so darn cluttered. Tooltips appear too slowly, and it’s sometimes hard to decipher what’s on the map. There are some minor improvements: you can disable auto-selecting of next unit, and there are more hotkeys. (Plus I used Auto Hotkeys to enable WASD.) I haven’t ever tried CQUI, but when it’s updated for R&F, I’m immediately going to install it.
On the other hand, I’m seeing some AI improvements. I don’t really care much about combat AI, as I prefer to play peacefully, but I’ve seen it take walled cities (sometimes!) now, even later in the game. It now (sometimes) finishes off my units rather than letting them escape. It now (sometimes) focuses fire. I worry more about my neighbors than I used to. Barbarians are stronger (though not really smarter). Some players report capturing AI cities that have actually made intelligent decisions about where to build districts – in one case even buying the best tile for a district with good adjacency bonuses. The diplomatic AI has been less annoying than usual – though still occasionally annoying. None of this will satisfy those who want an AI that’s an order of magnitude stronger, but I do think it’s improved noticeably.
How are people using their governors? My first game I tried to rotate them around from City to City to use special powers in different ways but I ended up having the wrong guys in the wrong place and wasting a lot of time with them in transit. So this game so far I’ve left them where they are which makes things simpler. They seem like it potentially interesting addition to the game but maybe not fully polished yet, it would be nice to see some more variation or perhaps 1 Civ specific choiceper Civ.
On a different topic as someone else posted , the emergency mechanic is kind of weird, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game to parachute in money rewards like that.
I played one game since the update and neither the governors nor the ages mechanic change much in the way it plays. The damn nostalgia keeps pushing me into giving Firaxis money nowadays…
Finished my first game, a cultural victory in 195 turns with the Cree. Tense first third, improved middle section, but the late game was only marginally better, A couple civs retained enough power to give me trouble, if they had chosen to. But for the most part they stayed in alliances with me.
If anything is overpowered, in my view, it is the use of Magnus the Steward as as governor, when he can eventually combine not requiring strategic resources to build units in his city, with cumulative production from other nearby industrial zones. I think that this is what allowed me to pull away (especially as suzerain of Toronto).
Ages, loyalty, espionage, etc all seem interesting but not game changers, at least not this time. I liked the Cree abilities, but do not think they are at all overpowered. Scotland did horribly in this game as an AI civ, the Mapuche were very strong.
I think one thing I am going to adjust is to try playing on a standard rather than a large map. I always feel this compulsion to have a lot of civs and a lot of total land, but I sometimes think that that works against having a good game, beyond the early stages.
I’ve been playing on standard map size and have personally found it to be large enough. I haven’t tinkered with either the number of civs or city states, but provided the game doesn’t cramp the start on a continents map by throwing 1-2 neighbours right on my doorstep, I find there is ample space to grow wide. Wide in this case is having between 6 and 12 cities. I do mix standard map size with epic game speed to ensure I have a true gunpowder and industrial age. I find marathon is just too slow, despite it being the gamespeed I settled on with Civ IV.
One caveat is that in my current game on standard map size, I did conquer a nation early, but even in the industrial era I’m still founding new cities. I’d say the AI has had other priorities, but I wanted to learn the new features in an easier difficulty.
In my one game I left all my governors where they were until the end game, where it benefited me to move the one that gives the space project bonus into my manufacturing city.
I finished my first game. Only played on prince and it was touch and go. Not because I was in any danger, but because Teddy went on a rampage on his continent and got pretty big. I was behind in every category until I was really able to crank up my science production towards the end of the game. I combined that with spying on Teddy to get eureka’s for most of the late technologies I needed to proceed with the space victory. He finally caught me and asked me to stop. I told him too bad and kept right on doing it. I made use of the alliance system quite a bit too to stay very friendly with 3 civs.
There was an early declaration of war on me by 2 civs that didn’t make sense and that was it. It was nice to make alliances and keep the relations strong and not have those civs stab me in the back. That part seemed more logical. I prefer the AI to play like a country might instead of a player who will do anything to win.
It was nice to return to Civ VI with some new features. I do find it less clear to choose what path I’m going to take. But, it does feel different than prior Civs so that is nice. I do think enough time has passed to so I wouldn’t mind a Civ IV based sequel and introduced some new features, updated the look, etc…
I’ve won 2 science victories, the first on prince with Scotland and the second on king with Korea. The 2nd time was faster and easier, in part because I used the new “spend builder charges to rush space projects” ability, but also because Korea may better fit my play style. Now to try the Cree,
