Civilization VI

I’ve bought ever Civ game starting with the first, and I enjoyed them all in in their own way. I find the whole Civ VI experience to be very meh. I have trouble finishing games. I see there are some like minded people here. But when I peek over at Reddit, I see people wetting their pants with excitement over how the new Civ VI expansion is going to be “the best DLC ever made”. And when I casually observe that it isn’t even out yet, let’s wait and see what how it plays before we rate it, I pick up tons of down votes.

Different demographics? Is that mostly a younger set with different expectations? I really have no idea.

How does MP work for 6? Did Giant Multiplayer Robot get their stuff working for this releae? Last time I looked it was still Civ 5 specific.

I’ve played using PYDT for a PBEM-like experience. By all accounts the actual support for MP in the game is pretty awful.

That’s probably the thing for us here on QT3. We are all Civ veterans. I don’t doubt there is a bit of Civ burnout in play that does not apply to those much newer to the series.

Having said that, I’ve had my fun with Civ6, but not enough so that i am going to shell out for the expansions, at least not at full price.

Bingo. I dislike Civ, because I have passed it by. The flaws are insufferable to me. Even in the classics, I just can’t countenance to play them now. It’s not them, it’s me.

But if you are lightly into strategy, instead of it being your primary, then it’s probably fine. And for them I would not point them to my preferred options. They would run screaming from EU IV I’m sure.

Cool. I see in the forums they even have it working for Beyond Earth.

My sister loves this game. I don’t enjoy it. It’s not really… a view.

Hey I’ve been playing Civ 5 Beyond Earth. I am not sure which is worse.

I bought the DLC for the Lunar sale, cause I’m still a sucker for Civ (probably the game that got me into PC gaming way back with CivNet)

Civ 6 is, in my mind, easily the worst of the series. It isn’t even close really. Yet, booting it up I still enjoy the early exploration and expansion. However, the city spam, district mechanics, and awful religious warfare have me burned out by midgame.

Is there any reason to not just have as many cities as possible?

Also - if you look at steamspy at any given time, you usually see about as many people still playing Civ5 as Civ6. That has to be a somewhat concerning statistic for Firaxis. The game might be doing adequately, but it seems to clear to me at least that it isn’t doing as well as it should

I think the recent Civ games appeal purely to builders. If you just want to build up your civilization and feel like you’re winning against a powerless AI, Civ V and VI are ideal. Nobody will disturb your dominance and building. It’s the ultimate self-esteem boost.

Yes, the worst parts right there. I hate the district mechanics. It’s like they put a puzzle game in my civilization game. And I hate puzzle games. And the religious warfare is annoying as hell. Endless spam of units trying to convert my cities. I tell the leader “stop it”. He says “no”. Nothing else I can do about it. Why make it a diplo option if there’s no consequences? How about “stop sending missionaries or you’re eating a nuke”? No. You can just ask, and they can say no.

game reddits tend to stan their games hard. You see similar optimism in Street Fighter subreddit, despite that game being the Civ VI of its series.

Interesting. I thought the district mechanics looked cool and ensured some diversity. Is it that they require too much constant thought, thus bogging down the game flow?

Civ always had this problem where the cities work the tiles around them but you don’t actually do anything with the tiles except in the city screen- labor is 1UPT, but gains none of the UI benefits of 1UPT because you have to go into a bunch of city screens to glean the info and manipulate it. It’s probably the weakest aspect of civ from a playability perspective- if they made cities something you used in the main screen, it would do a lot to help more than just legislating that empires be 4-5 cities only.

They certainly shouldn’t: you can just drop down signs early on where you plan to place districts when available, and review them every so often. But I’m definitely on the side of liking the district mechanics: they provide some strategic decisions to make and add more considerations when choosing where to place your cities. The adjacency bonuses (the puzzle part) start off pretty important, but by the mid-game they’re not particularly relevant, overwhelmed by the income from the buildings in the district.

I do not believe so. To me the game simply is too slow and takes too long to play. The game flow is poor and once the exploration phase is largely done I feel the entire thing bogs down.

I find the whole system too limiting. I end up with some amount of paralysis because I don’t want to mess up and put a district somewhere inefficient. And there are so many districts that it can get really frustrating to remember which ones need to go where, and then I spend 1/2 my time counting tiles to see what is going to be covered…

Then you combine that with the wonders taking up a tile, and it gets really frustrating.

One of my favorite things in Civ5 was seeing if I could make a city of wonders. Rush Petra and see how many wonders you can build in a city.

In civ6, I don’t even bother building most of the wonders because either 1) I don’t meet the very specific requirements that many wonders require and 2) I don’t want to take up a tile. I recognize that to the designer, this is probably ‘working as intended’ and they did this by design - but to me it has eliminated one of the enjoyable aspects of the game. I don’t see most of the wonders in the game.

I like the idea of districts, and in the early game I like the puzzle of figuring out where to put them. But by mid- and late-game, there isn’t enough room to make any interesting decisions on their placement. As @dionisus1122 says, the same is true of Wonders – by late-game you’ve got to destroy something good to put up a Wonder. I do so anyway because I love building Wonders.

Does turning off the religious victory help deal with religious-unit spam? I turned it off on my last game and don’t recall the spam being an issue.

In general, I still really enjoy Civ VI – until the map clogs up in mid- to late-game. I’m hoping the new expansion, which apparently adds some late-game decisionmaking on politics and tech, will address that somewhat, but I know it won’t be a complete fix.

lol, then I must be doing something wrong, because I play as a builder and I have trouble winning on Emperor or above. The optimal way to win is to declare war and stomp your opponents, but I don’t do this – I have real grognard wargames that I play when I want to do that. I play civ to build a civ.

The devs are doing a live stream today at 2 pm EST.

I’d forgotten that they’re adding a Hall of Fame – about time! Also, will Play by Cloud make multiplayer feasible for busy people? I might be interested in trying a multiplayer game here at Qt3 if anyone else is.

Packed schedule today to fit in the remaining topics. Eleanor, Modern Era government changes, Hall of Fame, and Play by Cloud all should be featured. https://t.co/ceSMpBAGgc

— Ed Beach (@EdBeach23) February 7, 2019

Sorry to spam this thread, but I watched that live stream so you don’t have to.

First they showed Eleanor of Acquitaine, as the leader of England, culture-bombing the Ottomans into oblivion – even culture-flipping Istanbul. Eleanor used a combination of spies, music by Bach, and rock bands. Rock bands are civilian units, purchased with Faith after the start of the Cold War, that can gain levels and have a dozen different types of “record sales promotions.” Eleanor used Indie Rock to undermine loyalty in the Ottoman cities.

Next the devs showed the new Hall of Fame. It contains lots of stats and graphs and leaders to light up once you’ve won. It seemed like a nice addition.

Finally they briefly demonstrated the Cloud feature, using the WWI scenario. They suggested using this form of asynchronous multiplayer for scenarios or “online speed” games. But you can also mix it with real-time multiplayer: start in real time, then switch to the Cloud for later turns, etc.

Some random stuff:

The new railroads increase gold income for trade routes that follow them, but cost gold/coal to build and add to global warming.

With all its rock bands, I think England won a Nobel Prize for literature (Ed Beech cited Dylan’s prize as precedent, lol).

Ed Beech will play a multiplayer game against “Carl” on Monday. Devchat live stream on Wednesday.