Honestly, I don’t play Civ games for a real challenge. I play them kind of as a world leader light RPG, and 5’s approach fits this semi-casual approach much better. In addition, the AI’s shortcomings (improved but not gone with all the mods) aren’t so acutely felt because it’s competent enough for my needs.
I am almost secretly praying that Thea 2 and Anno 1800 will release before she has the urge to ask me to play this game again. Since her SO proclaimed Thea his relationship killer, i have the highest hopes for that one.
Y’all are going to make me want to try Civ V with some sort of community ai patch or mod.
The AI mods are great. Civ5’s engine on the other hand… that thing is a ghastly pig. Won’t be too much of an issue if you’re sticking solely with singleplayer, which I presume to be the case.
Sadly there’s a vocal group in the community that equates more features with a better game. Firaxis seemed to find it very difficult to drop any headline feature at all between Civ V and Civ VI, even as they changed the design. Not all of those features fit well.
By comparison, I’m extremely impressed with current developments in Stellaris. Without even having to move to a sequel they have the vision to drop some gameplay systems that didn’t work well and replace them wholesale.
I’m willing to play a certain amount of slick-stupid Civ games instead of smart ones so long as the next turn button doesn’t make me wait forever. But Civ V and doubly so Civ VI cause excruciating waits because the stupid game insists on jiggling all the AI units around every turn even when they have no strategic place to go, and because the combination of bad pathing with no stacks means that the code wastes zillions of useless cycles every turn on just finding a place for all the units to fit. I can’t imagine how anyone has ever played Civ VI on a large map.
I just got my butt kicked in Civ IV on Prince, which I used to beat pretty much every time and usually played on King. I was never great at Civ IV, but I didn’t suck.
I tend to delay building a military and sometimes push my luck too far. Everyone decides they want to kill you if you’re too weak.
Preaching to the choir. 1200 AD and I have one warrior in a border city…should be ok, more culture!!!
I’m playing Civ IV, but this really pertains to any Civ game.
If you get to the point where you know you’re not going to win, but you still have a decent empire do you:
- quit
- make a suicide move to try and make something happen and maybe get lucky.
- act in the best interest of your empire and just try to survive / just thrive the best you can until you lose.
- something else?
I tend to just make a move that will probably result in my death to make an attempt to win - but mostly just force the loss.
I can’t remember the last time I was ever in a non-win scenario that was military/conquest based, since I play as a builder, so I always play to the end whether I have a chance of winning or not. For me, it’s just about seeing where I end up, not so much about coming out on top. One thing I don’t like about Civ games is the idea that all but one civ don’t ‘stand the test of time.’
So no, no last minute attempts at rushing, suicidal moves, I just continue on my way as best I can.
With Civ, I normally keep playing unless I’m completely disengaged from the game due to lack of time immersed in that particular world. It sounds corny, but I like to try and keep the hope alive. And I’ve had those moments where the dominoes fall into place and I can scratch out a win. And those wins are the best. That phoenix rising from the ashes.
Where I normally quit a game of Civ is when I’m miles ahead and the end game bores me (all too often with Civ V and VI) or it is early game and the more I uncover the fog, the less I like my start position.
I’d say I’m most likely to quit, but if it’s a situation where someone I’ve been friends with most of the game has a shot at winning I’ll keep playing and try to secure them the win (even though it’s AI).
Also, if I’ve been playing a militaristic game I’ll go for a suicide attack as it seems more in character but I tend to prefer building so that rarely happens.
Is there a mechanic that limits City spamming? I don’t see the equivalent of Corruption or other mechanics that reduce your effectiveness as the number of cities grow, although I’m not past the “poking around trying to figure out the mechanics of the game” stage. (I’m playing vanilla without the expansion.)
Yep, but it doesn’t tell you about it!
Districts get an opaque cost modifier based on how many you have vs the leader, Era, and the disposition of Mars relative to Taurus. It easily becomes 2x or worse.
Also techs get a cost coefficient and probably some other dumbass things, because Civilization VI is wrong about everything.
The district cost modifier works in favour of more cities, not against: the cities you do have can’t build districts cheaply, but more population (helped by having more cities) gives you some of the advantages districts can offer such as more science, culture, gold etc.
The district cost modifier is based primarily on the number of techs and civics you have finished. There is also a discount available if you have lots of districts completed but few placed of a given type. There’s no comparison to other civs.
Nonetheless, the modifier renders districts quickly extremely expensive. However it’s exactly the same modifier as used for the value of harvesting resources and forests, so you can reliably chop out districts at the same effective cost throughout the game. That does bring into focus one of the main drawbacks of the Civ VI economy: chopping forests provides way more production than cities can. So a freshly founded city with lots of forests to chop can produce an army faster than several established cities.
Techs do not scale in cost with the number of cities placed, that’s a Civ V thing only.
The primary mechanic that actually limits city spamming is that the cost of settlers increases with each one you build. At default speed it’s 80 cogs for the first one, 110 for the second, 30 more for each thereafter. Pretty severely limits how quickly you can build them in the early game. The negative effect of this is that it just makes conquest (or capturing settlers) all the more powerful: you get the cities without the cost increase.
The other reason not to spam cities early on is the opportunity cost in not doing everything else. In particular there are quite a few tech and civic boosts that you will miss if devoting your civ to building settlers.
Okay fine what he said. But just cause I’m wrong doesn’t mean I’m wrong ;)
I don’t mind you hating on Civ VI, it has loads of flaws. Particularly in single player where all the clever aspects of the design are irrelevant because the AI and UI suck so much. But hey, they may as well be accurate flaws. :)
Nothing proved that the designers have no idea how the game works than when they gave Magnus that insane forest chop bonus.
Agree on Magnus. I like Civ 6 more than most people here, but I’ve always hated chopping in Civ. I wish they’re remove it altogether.
They had an interesting idea by giving chopping a cost (it costs a builder charge). And then they completely screwed it up by making builders cheap and chopping overpowered. Oh well.
I read about Magnus and gave the expansion a miss.