JoshoB
3837
Who needs Civ – and especially Civ6! – anymore when you’ve got Old World?
KevinC
3838
Yeah, I took a quick peek at the game (kind of backburnering it until it gets a little further along in early access) and liked what I see.
Steam doesn’t know what that is.
Benhur
3840
I hate to be the one to admit it, but I’ve lost a Science victory against the AI. Until recently I was in the habit of abandoning games of Civ VI when I thought I got my play’s worth out of them. In January of this year, something changed and I started finished games… maybe for the achievements? During that time I played several games and went for different victory conditions each time. During a cultural victory run as Pericles, the AI ended up winning a science victory out of nowhere. I play on the Prince difficulty setting.
dfs
3841
Civ VI has been my goto during the covid time. I play on emperor. Within recent memory I’ve lost via both the science and religion routes in games I thought I was going to win. It’s pretty easy to get beat in the early turns by domination, but I don’t regularly stick with those games. I’ve won by both diplo and culture, but I’ve never seen the computer player win that way.
I seem to like the even releases. I liked 2 and 4 and 6. Three didn’t do much for me. Never put much time into 5.
$40 for non-core gameplay seems silly to me, but since I’m deeply invested in the game I’ll likely pony up.
So I’m missing a $40 expansion and now a $40 season pass. Uh, hm.
It’s a weird one when you consider the course XCOM 2 took with modding, with the popularity of the Long War mod for the first XCOM even being acknowledged during XCOM 2 marketing. I can only guess whoever is in charge of the decision making for the Civilization series over at 2K\Firaxis is far more fearful of what mods might do to Expansion\DLC sales than their XCOM counterpart, or something.
Feels like being Civilization is a bit of a millstone around the neck of Civilization, especially in terms of publisher expectations. XCOM feels like it has more latitude to experiment and try stuff because it wants to rather than just because “money”.
Chimera Squad feels more like the developers had some interesting ideas they wanted to try out and it ended up being fleshed out into a standalone game. This Season Pass feels much more like 2K wanting something Civilization related published for this financial year to fill in the gap until Civ 7 or whatever the next major release is.
DeepT
3844
They still haven’t really improved the AI in this game yet, have they?
It is much better than it was before the Gathering Storm.
Doesn’t change the fact that the AI is in weird state: it’s both roleplaying and tries to win. And it roleplays hard. If AI likes it when you build walls then it will be your best pal forever if you really invest into walls.
I will say $40, while a lot up front, is going to give a lot of content over the next year. Also, there will be free updates in addition to this stuff for everyone when new DLC drops, so it’s just like the Creative Assembly/Total War model, which I’m a big fan of, honestly.
It’s not just leaders, there are new game modes (the first one sounds kind of interesting), new bits and boops to find on the map like natural wonders, city-states, and natural wonders, which makes each new game that much more interesting (to me, at least).
My biggest issue is the last time I played this (Feb 2019, Steam tells me, probably around when Gathering Storm dropped) I had some fundamental issues with how the game’s systems worked - they just weren’t … I hate to say they weren’t fun, but something about the gameplay I don’t click with like I did with Civ V, for some reason. I probably should go up and see if I wrote about it last year, but I remember walking away from the game not super thrilled with it overall.
That said, I did like some aspects of it, certainly, and maybe it’s time to give the game another spin? We’ll see. Warhammer 2’s new update drops next week, so it won’t be in May, most like.
Maybe you’re talking about too many plates to spin.
Civ was always about gradual complexity growth. Like a game with a built-in tutorial. Civ6 seem to rely a lot on you already knowing the systems. And you’re thrown into a lot of systems early. You have to know where will you put your districts and wonders long before they appear. You aren’t just fighting barbarians, you are catching their scouts. You get a dozen civics in dozen turns. You have to produce settlers fast and many. It’s more involved than modern Paradox games, Stellaris is the closest to Civ and in that game you won’t even encounter any active enemy before several hours in.
Carto
3848
I have really tried to get into Civ VI. In theory, I like the concepts of districts, natural disasters, and eras. I’ll start up a game and get excited at the prospect of fighting over a stretch of land or turtling to a Civ’s favorite era. In practice, I hit a point where I feel like I’m making a dozen inconsequential decisions a turn. And the AI never rises to the occasion of whatever interesting conflict the map teased at.
The most fun I’ve had with a civ run is playing some games of the month with civfanatics folks. But playing civ competitively (against humans or cheating AI) means stripping all the historical fluff from the Civs and mechanics in order to min/max the system.
Changing subjects briefly, I always wondered why they went to the trouble of implementing alternative leaders if they weren’t going to use them. Glad to see they’re putting more variety in there, but at this point it feels like there’s btoo much and it’s too late.
I agree with Scott - the systems just aren’t very fun. Outside of the early exploration and expansion, the game is quite a slog.
Religion, for example, is just extremely tedious with endless missionary spam clogging up the map.
Districts were an interesting idea - but there isn’t any organic nature to them. You are planning your industrial zones thousands of years before industry would appear and they become just mind-boggling expensive as the game progresses. Likewise with wonders, you are planning ahead or severely limited on getting to place many of them.
I come back to the game every year, and I enjoy it for awhile before the game just becomes extremely tedious - and then I return to Civ5 which I think is an all-around better game, even with the brain-dead AI.
I see lots of mentions of “6 new game modes” but I haven’t been able to see what those are- are the details of the first few out yet?
KevinC
3851
That should be the box quote, honestly.
I think they’re all TBA except the first.
OK what’s the first please?
KevinC
3853
@Scotch_Lufkin has the roadmap posted a few posts up. The new game mode is called Apocalypse, beyond that I haven’t looked into details.
Have they said what is apocalypse mode? Just More and earlier flooding and volcano eruptions, Or new victory conditions? Or new kinds of events
I saw a screenshot with a meteor screaming towards a city, and I know it requires Gathering Storm, so it’s probably more disasters and more common, maybe, but I assume there is a little more to it than that.
