Do you have multiple games going at once in that scenario? You raise a really good point, but I feel like I would lose interest quickly.
rho21
4198
Just the one, but I had a forum to report my thoughts and strategies to, which made me think even more about what I was doing and why.
Yes to the plate spinning and ridiculous 1000+ year advanced district planning requirements.
The more I look back on it, the more that all the appeal of Civ 6 was just an illusion. The whole appeal was just the “ding, gratz” dopamine dose for a “bell ring” achievement bonus. Eureka achievement? Ding. District adjacency bonus? Ding. A complete museum artifact set? Ding.
Thinking about it, I don’t think I can name one single positive about Civ 6 that wasn’t one of those cheap thrill ding rewards. Really, that’s all the game is. Take those out, and you have a game that’s nothing but frustration and disconnected mechanics that don’t add up to anything at best and outright fail at worst. If you took the great person slingshot mechanic out of Civ 4, you’d still have a great and rewarding strategy game. Take the equivalents out of Civ 6, and you have nothing but a headache inducing version of Empire Deluxe.
I have only played through one full game of Civ 6 so far, but I really do not like the district and great person mechanics. They seem like adding complexity for complexity’s sake and don’t really add much to the enjoyment of the game. I also don’t care much for many of the expansions mechanics (like governors).
I’m curious, what are good alternatives to Civ nowadays? I know there have been a bunch of new 4X games coming out in the last few years, but haven’t had the chance to look very closely at them.
rho21
4201
I’m not sure I understand you here. It’s fairly normal for games to reward progress by telling you you’ve made progress. Is the problem then that the bonuses are large enough that you need to make sure to chase them if you want to play well, thus driving your strategy rather than allowing you to choose your own strategic goals in a more freeform manner?
If so, I certainly agree with this assessment, when contrasted against Civ IV. There I guess most of the big moments were new techs unlocking new things, but I never felt railroaded into a particular route through the tech tree. Instead the situation in the game determined the best strategy to take out of many viable ones.
Old World is probably your best bet from what I’ve seen. For all that it has its flaws, it has the longest Chick parabola of any 4x game I’ve tried in a while.
abrandt
4202
Can you elaborate a bit on what you don’t like about the great person mechanics?
I agree with the general complaints in this thread on the districts. As much as I like some of the city building moving out onto the map(and seemingly every 4X designer has decided this is a good idea) the adjacency bonuses are too complex and ideal placement is based on bonuses unlocked further down the tech tree that the UI doesn’t clue you in on. Humankind falls into this a fair amount too with how dependent on various bonuses their districts are, but you’re a lot less locked in to your choices in that one. My hope for Civ 7 would be that they keep something like districts but completely rethink bonuses for them.
I’m also with you on the governors, but that also feels like something that could be good but just isn’t in its current form.
I think the attitude towards districts depends on how much of an optimizer you are. I don’t min/max my way through Civ VI and so the fact that my district placement winds up being suboptimal because haven’t done the thousand turn lookahead doesn’t bother me. With that, it gets hard to play at higher difficulty levels but being stuck at emporer doesn’t bother me.
There’s a lot of systems in Civ VI and their interaction can end up proving huge advantages (or exploits idepending on how you view it). For example, if you decide to enable heroes and legends mode, getting Sindbad generates a ton cash, and if you’ve managed to build the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and grab the Great Engineer Shah Jahan, you can basically instabuild two wonders with cash.
abrandt
4204
I’m the same way. While I’m playing the game this whole district optimization thing doesn’t bother me at all. But when I consider it from a game design perspective it’s just bad design. The capacity to min/max this stuff exists, but it’s based on knowing what’s coming further down the tech tree. So either you have to memorize that or go hunting for the information and then do some work to count tiles and make sure you’re hitting it right.
Is there anyone from Firaxis on this forum? I have an issue with phantom MP play-by-cloud games still being registered on their servers that’s preventing me from hosting new MP PBC games. I haven’t found a way to contact Firaxis to help resolve this issue. I figured the games would eventually time out, but they haven’t.
I made 2K aware of the bug that’s causing these phantom games and they said they forwarded the bug to the dev team (but it still exists). I’m more than happy to work 1-on-1 with a Firaxis employee to resolve this.
Murph
4206
Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of weird MP stuff the last few months as well…to the point that we’ve almost totally abandoned it.
Bateau
4207
Finally picked this up during a sale (minus the last DLC, which didn’t seem to be rated too well anyway), and I’m curious about city spacing and districts - should I be prioritizing standard tile upgrades like mines, farms, etc, or go for districts asap, and second, since you can now buy tiles, how far apart roughly should my cities be?
dfs
4208
The last dlc provided a bunch of alternate ways to look at the game. I found it to be of value, but then civ6 is one of my goto comfort games.
You don’t want to improve tiles that you’re not working. Improving tiles that you are working ramps you up just that much faster.
I don’t think you have to choose between districts and tile improvements. You need both.
I settle cities as tight as the map allows me too. More cities is (almost always) a good thing.
Frankly, I would settle the cities more tightly than the map allows if I could, but I can’t so I don’t.
I find city spacing to be very situational. Sometimes I look and see plenty of tiles for distric finets and resource gathering, so placing a city the minimum 4 tiles away is. Other times, one or both cities will be squished for food gathering, etc. unless I place them 6-6 tiles apart. And then there are those times I choose the location largely based on blocking competitors from an area of the map.
btw, the ability to buy tiles is of limited value. Great if you see a great tile that will really help the city, but you’re going to blow through your gold really fast if do this indiscriminately. Cost scales up with time.
Seems funny to me to be starting this game all these years later. It’s my favorite game and like a blanket from my childhood at this point. Lucky for me a mod I installed stopped Steam from counting hours of game time.
On that note, do subscribe to the “Civ 5 environment skin” as it gives the game a more mature look with better landscapes.
The basic advice above is good. To me the main point is try not to fall into the min/maxing perfect play trap, where you restart 67 times because you don’t like the starting location, rip your hair out thinking of future district adjacency etc. It’s not worth it, the game’s not hard in general, and ‘perfect play’ along with ‘tactics use tactics!!’ will lead to frustrations.
Focus on food to get your cities above 3-4 population, then focus more on production and whatever seems appropriate (harbour, university, etc). Spacing wouldn’t worry about. Plains hills make good City spots.
Thanks for the heads-up about the Environment Skin: Sid Meier’s Civilization V. I did not know it existed and I believe it will improve my Civ6 gaming experience.
Here is a video about the skin:
abrandt
4212
After more than a year hiatus, the Civ Youtube channel has been posting small videos again over the last couple of weeks. Makes me awfully suspicious that they’ll be announcing something soon.
Just a new DLC, Leaders Pass. I wonder if there are any other changes. I haven’t played in quite awhile, maybe I’ll go fire it up.
LordGek
4215
So was that really a “leak” or is Firaxis floating this out semi unofficial to gauge interest?
Oh, look, an announcement video for their announcement of their DLC: Announcement tomorrow, November 15, 2022. #civ6 - YouTube
Is a ‘Leaders Pass’ really going to amount to much of a draw to bring anyone back or is this more for the fans who’ve stuck with it? I still have Civ VI installed, and probably will always have a Civ game close by, but I’ve not played in a while.
