Civilization VI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_VI

October!

i was reading a preview of VI the other day and it seemed like a nice incremental improvement on V (which i liked a lot). one of the more noticeable changes is that workers will complete tile improvements immediately rather than over the course of several turns, and that after a set amount of tile improvements they'll disappear. seemed like a nice way to streamline the mid-to-late game

hell, it's a nice way to speed up the early game. Also interested in the combined arms unit stacking and to see what lessons they brought from After Earth

my biggest hope is that they fix multiplayer. i had a beautiful 8-player game going on with a bunch of my friends, and it was a complete fucking blast...until about 50 turns in, when every turn took at least 5 minutes to load and it started crashing so often that it became impossible to play. but while it was working, it was some of the most fun i've ever had playing videogames.

and take it from me, a guy who has a LOT of fun playing videogames

*winks at camera 2*

the lead designer for this one oversaw the expansions for civ5, which came close to salvaging it, so i am tentatively interested

i didnt really care for brave new world - trade routes in particular just seemed so ham-fisted and poorly integrated into game play and it made the game very easy imo

fwiw the fan-made multiplayer for the og civ is really good. its probably the best multiplayer xp ive had w/ civ

i still play civ 2 every once in a while

i don't really want a challenge, tho -- i just like building it

Watching a guy play this on Twitch. I think maybe tap-to-farm tablet games (incl. Anno?) are catching up, except instead of spending $$$ on premium farming swag, you pay for it all up front and then there's a frisson of strategy / trade-offs built in to Civ. IMHO I would totally pay premium mobile dollars for a Tiny Pixel Tower People - Civ mashup.

having never played any tablet games idk how similar the gameplay is but it has certainly borrowed the cartoon style. it seems like they're resolving the less satisfying elements by copying their own success: unstacking cities as they did with units in V; turning culture into another research tree; having religious conflict take place on the map as with military units. the government card system, new builders, trade and combined arms all look promising. if it makes the game more about adapting to the contingencies of your situation rather than imposing a generic playstyle then it will be good. I'm keen, anyway

from what i've seen, 6 looks really good -- still not used to the more cartoony graphics, but whatevs

i'm hoping they port this to mac around the same time as the pc release

i've not played any civs (or any games) in a really long time, maybe over 7 years? but really excited about this new one

cannot wait for this - mac version already in the works

i know but no release date yet

i like the art style a lot (i think) -- thought civ5 was weirdly ugly and monotonous and am really taken by the way in 6's screenshots fog-of-warred land looks like a drawing on a map.

i didnt really care for brave new world - trade routes in particular just seemed so ham-fisted and poorly integrated into game play and it made the game very easy imo

agree that much of it felt pasted atop mechanics it maybe would rather have changed (tho the game was already trivially easy, because the ai couldn't play it), but that's why i'm optimistic about its designer making a civ from scratch. haven't kept up with its features because of a weird sense of spoilage but

turning culture into another research tree; having religious conflict take place on the map as with military units

sounds promising because it sounds like it reduces a thing i hated about civ5, that everything is a giant global variable:

a lot of the new mechanics are just new numbers tho. those big ugly numbers that add to themselves endlessly. i read a negative review of the original civ5 that said "huge numbers perch at the top of the screen like crows" and i can never forget that image when i play. it's not a very elegant game in some ways. the new diplomatic stuff tho is way fun: being able to spend the ~20 turns before a congress sending diplomats to capitals and bargaining for delegates and counting votes. it's more robust than SMAC actually. more of those kinds of numbers please, less "you have 3765 culture out of 4221."

― """""""""""""stalin""""""""""" (difficult listening hour), Saturday, July 13, 2013 8:45 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whatever, fuck this, played 4 today for the first time in a while and it was balm. ultimately you do nothing in 5 but wait for numbers to accrue, and you can't even give firaxis $5 to make them accrue faster.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, May 5, 2014 4:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

happy w anything that makes a physical thing on a map (or even, like, a fluctuating variable! or a set of local variables like civ4's happiness/health) out of what in civ5 was just a thing you had more of every turn. think this is where adaptability to contingencies comes from, too.

yes, I think making more of the map is the right way to go. when you say it's trivially easy, do you mean beasting it on deity easy?

ha no fair cop i didn't play it enough. but feel like anyone who found it very easy on deity in brave new world would have found it easy already. high difficulties gave the comp cheats (making nonmilitary victories particularly harder) but idk that they ever taught it to field armies.

yeah it's just buffs for the AI but the higher difficulty levels so end up changing the game a lot, shortening it, the margins becoming so fine, diplomacy is crucial & you have to be very flexible and responsive. but yes the comp is not amazing at unit placement, especially at sea. I generally really liked V but that's at least partly bc I got a lot better at civ playing it.

i disagree with dlh - part of the reason civ v ended up so easy was because the ratcheted back ai aggression and tinkered with build priorities. i actually think the difference btw deity and immortal or w/e the next lowest difficulty setting was werent that big, at least post g&k. civ v on deity was extremely challenging on release or maybe one patch post-release (i think the one that removed scientist slots from libraries?) where almost every ai went four cities - unit spam - dow you. i remember kinda liking that period because were super map dependent and there were reasons to go both liberty and tradition but it was very punishing. it slowly became the easiest and least interesting civ game as the added more features, none of which obscured the games essential sloth.

ive been watching filthy and marbozir stream some early access games and excited to give civ 6 a try but dont necessarily love some of the balancing theyve done. real test will be playing with higher level ai settings tho

oh i defer on the difficulty question then, def don't have exp at a similar level. think we agree abt "the game's essential sloth" tho.

the one civ game i can function in turned up all the way (to "transcend" iirc) is alpha centauri. love civ4 but don't play it well.

essential sloth is a nice way of describing it. civ v definitely had a off-putting feeling of inertia about it. i just felt like there were always things i had to do vs what i might've wanted to do so it felt more on rails than previously. idk i think that is partly a change in how i play games too tho, if i am comparing all the way back to say civ 2. haven't really thought about it. i was so excited for v to come out and now my enthusiasm is kind of burned away, although it's not like i really disliked it. hoping i get excited in the coming weeks. for some reason 6 is reminding me of endless legend.

How hard is it to transition from Starcraft to Civ?

totally different games but if you could learn starcraft there's no reason you couldn't learn civ

if you like the idea of civ but are into space and scifi, try out galactic civilizations (II or III). i played II for a bit and it was entertaining. smaller compared to civ, though

civ's learning curve isn't as steep as, say, europa universalis, so you're good. but wait til 6 comes out

part of what made early civ v so difficult was that the higher-complexity units like naval and air didnt matter because they ai just leveraged its production bonuses to swarm you with swordsmen. also swordsmens power relative to natural city defenses made holding out against an early rush v challenging. i remember some of the og high score guys regularly finishing all their games win or lose before turn 80. none of this is probably particularly good game design but i think they ended up giving players too much time to do these 3-city tradition opens and then turtle up and pursue more optimized builds/unit use and beat the ai.

or endless space maybe xp

my space 4x rec is still master of orion 2, tho i also enjoy getting high enough to be patient with the micromanagement in space empires 4.

starcraft is more like jet dogfighting than it is like a 4x game. all about rapid adaptability and constant rationing of attention. you'll be fine.

(not counting alpha centauri as "space" in the sense of moo and galciv but it is sf and is the best thing ever.)

i think they ended up giving players too much time to do these 3-city tradition opens and then turtle up and pursue more optimized builds/unit use and beat the ai

adding the composite bowman made it so much easier to turtle if you had aggressive neighbours. the diplomacy was easy to exploit too: AIs would start early wars with no clear plan and once their initial wave was repulsed they'd be quick to sue for peace. I did enjoy persuading AIs to attack each other tho & it'll be interesting to see how much these new agendas nerf that

I had a friend who was heavy into Diety level Civ II, who ended up like a chess grandmaster - the stuff you have to do at the start, a few (dozen) significant moves, the great brow furrows, an impressed nod, then close it down and start again.

i've got 80 dollars in my pocket and it's rainy af outside and this game isn't out for mac

I've got two twenties and two tens in my wallet and I was afraid they'd be there til next April

I followed a Dealzon link and got it for $48 USD from GMG. Here we go!

i want to play this so bad

Hey, Sean Bean is the announcer in this one!

I'm stuck waiting for the Mac version too. Apparently they're promising to roll it out quicker than they usually do.

Will become increasingly more useful over time, no doubt:

https://m.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58u6hp/civ_vi_fixes_megathread/

So Team Liquid has officially hired a pro Civ 6 player, I look forward to this because at least it isn't Hearthstone eSports

is team liquid moving into civ? does civ even have competitive multiplayer? why would a civ 6 player be useful for an LOL team?

Well I didn't make it up

http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/23/13372408/civilization-6-pro-gaming-esports-team-liquid

oh don't misunderstand - i think competitive civ 6 is a fantastic idea. just had no idea it existed (and acc to that link apparently this will be the first tournament so kinda it doesn't yet)

GUYS GUYS IT'S TIME

https://m.popkey.co/0c01b3/dZwYR.gif

link?

steam

https://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meier-s-civilization-vi

shweet

should just leave work and play this all day

thanks man

dang, looks like it requires capitan or sierra.

it's for the best, i probably should not be allowed to play a new Civ until i get a job.

this is the only game i have been fantasizing about playing

I can't even get into this until my move is done... And then...

i thought they fixed that whole "nukey" quirk?!

they did

They did, but I think it’s good for the community to keep spreading the rumor because it used to be so good :)

it's just what Gandhi wants us to believe.

So I just found out about the win conditions and to see my score compared to other cities, and I'm losing on basically all fronts! I kind of screwed myself a little bit -- I'm boxed in, I've pissed off all the other big cities -- I wonder if I should restart the campaign or just play the tutorial?

I bet you could just restart, skip the tutorial and just take a look at the Civilopedia for a bit. there might be some concepts/rules that are new to you that you'll find in there (like how combat works and stuff like that) but in general you're good to go

I restarted my game and only played till 11pm, which is progress! I thought I was doing pretty well till another leader declared war on me -- I hadn't bothered building up ANY defenses, and what military troops I bothered to train were all over the continent, so that's going to be take 3 sometime this weekend.

I won my first game! Unfortunately I played from 4pm to 8am.

:D congrats! Classic

That’s a very quick game!

I'd figured out (more like read up on) the early game strategy -- I didn't realize how critical early expansion is, whereas I'd been thinking that organic growth was the way to go, even though it happens very slowly (I guess I thought it would accelerate over time). I also didn't know that parking my units on the borders of other nations would provoke them into war.

And actually, technically, my game is still going on -- I was close to launching a satellite when I actually reached a cultural victory.

I haven't played VI yet, but building a load of cities as early as you can has always been.the best strategy

I'd figured out (more like read up on) the early game strategy -- I didn't realize how critical early expansion is, whereas I'd been thinking that organic growth was the way to go, even though it happens very slowly (I guess I thought it would accelerate over time). I also didn't know that parking my units on the borders of other nations would provoke them into war.

That was a learning curve for me as well, as I tended to play V with Civs that got by with just three or four cities. VI seems also to encourage more early skirmishing as a result. I tend to play relatively peaceful games so it took me a bit to adjust, as it felt like I was spending the early game pumping out combat units and settlers rather than doing the building I was interested in.

some of the disasters are so overpowered, wtf. i was playing a game with default settings and a blizzard killed a quarter of a city's population and pillaged all of its tiles when i was in the information age. that same game i had tornadoes take out the industrial zone that was powering half my civ and killed a bunch of population in the city i was building a spaceport in.

Its so real

on extra-real mode, sometimes half of your citizens just choose to kill themselves, and no matter how hard you try to get them to stop doing it, they keep doing it. these death cult citizens are not only annoying, but they are also very loud and you can't turn them down. any time you scroll over your part of the world, it's just these loud people complaining and dying

luckily you can use new diplomatic measures to convince another empire to let you join them and wage war on the republic of whiners that you once had to oversee

i had to re-install civ 6 and now i get these weird dark vertical lines coming up out of land that's in shadow. i vaguely remember this happening in the past but i totally don't remember what settings i tweaked to make it go away, v annoying.

Civ VI is on a DEEP discount on Steam at present - I got the Anthology bundle which is every single DLC and expansion country, for like $35.

I was reluctant to bother with 6 - I'm used to 5, I like how it looks (the cartoonyness of 6 is mildly offputting) and I'm still learning even after whats apparently 6 years according to when i last posted lol.

Even after all this time I've only ever had one culture win. Its such a timesink of a game I only pick it up in lulls between other big games and Elden Ring/BOTW/TOTK got in the way the last few years.

Anyway visuals aside I'm already intrigued by the more complex system so we shall see!

That's a great deal. I wonder if the discounting is in advance of a Civ VII announcement sometime soon?

I had assumed so, yeah.

bought this (five quid!) and giving it a go, any tips? seems like loads of extra new stuff and I'm not sure what's really important to get used to. on first look barbarians seem to be a much bigger deal, I can't automate my "builders", roads just seem to appear without being built and there are city states around which I should probably try to capture using culture or sth?

For context I am only used to civ IV and (decades ago) civ II

Roads get automatically built once a trade route has been established, either by yourself, one of the other civs or a city state. So if you're planning to move troops good idea to link the cities up first.

City states can be conquered, I don't *think* you can convert them using culture? As you get diplomacy points you can send envoys to them, and if you send enough you become their suzerain. You can then levvy their military and move through their territory as well as other benefits.

Some random advice that I don't know whether it's VI specific, having only played Revolutions before this: always a good idea to have some cities on the coast, as eventually you'll have to explore beyond your continent; a lot of resources only get discovered midgame (coal, oil, eventually plutonium), so get ready to rush to certain spots to found a city or to gather your troops and attack someone who already has those fields; the Council of Nations or whatever it's called is really dull but you have to look out so an adversary doesn't get a diplomatic victory, make sure to use your diplomacy to vote against giving the person winning in that category more points, also if you want some easy diplomacy points vote for units to spend less production, as that is something the AI always goes for.

One big difference with Revolutions is you can't send units into ships, so you have to send them on their own across the ocean and have them be protected by warships around them. Be aware land units have very little health when offshore.

Do you have a preferred kind of victory?

I always preferred the space race victory, bit sad that's gone, but I suppose science is almost the same. domination works for me too, score/time seems a bit arbitrary, but guess that's ok. diplomacy and religion are strange and unsettling and I don't want to go there.

I recommend checking this user’s guides if you’re playing a specific Civ: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Zigzagzigal/myworkshopfiles/?appid=289070§ion=guides . I found them to be useful to get my bearings, especially as I’m not a player who is inclined to study the game like homework and figure out all the optimizations and tile yield bonuses etc.

I've got this on the ps4 but found it hard going using a ps controller after originally playing it on a pc.

I'm slowly getting used to this compared to V - its a completely different game. I couldnt work out why the barbs were just reducing me to paste repeatedly because I didnt know about the scout mechanic and how you had to especially kill any that spotted your city and were heading back to base. The fucking civopedia is useless. I just kept restarting over and over til I'd get a bit better then realise where I'd fucked up then start again. I've only gotten to about 500AD on any given try so far and I'm sick to death of Ned Stark droning on about how far I've come every time I restart hahaha.

Oh god yeah the Stark quotes are the worst, really hammering it home that much as I love this game it's def made by libertarians.

I was surprised how early I got attacked by another civ too. I barely had any military as I tend to play turtle/culture/diplomatic type games, I dont like war battles. WHich lol prob defeats the whole point of this bloody game but anyway. I got SUPRISE!!! attacked by Arabia for no reason really early in my most recent game. No coin to buy spare troops, I had to just queue up a bunch of em in production and hope they spat out in time to defend myself.
Somehow I actually won/stole Baghdad off the guy.

(TBF I am playing on Cheiftan mode)

Got some mates coming over from Melbourne tomorrow night for our annual civ and beers session. Will report back with the match commentary (spoilers, I'm going to surprise nuke the bastards all to hell and back and claim the throne )

Two acquaintances became very close friends a decade ago when we collectively found out we all play civ. Videogame nukes bring blokes together

Ha nice. I'd like to give multiplayer a try some day but I need to git way more gud before I can even consider it.

yeah, the technology quotations in civ 6 are bad, they seem a lot worse than the ones in 4 and 5. I know they’re all from 2016, but they have one from fuckin scott adams for christssakes!

The qutes in 5 often seemed to be from rather obscure old poets and stuff from like Persia and India. The ones in 6 are frequently really silly. And why are so many Mark Twain?

I barely had any military as I tend to play turtle/culture/diplomatic type games, I dont like war battles. WHich lol prob defeats the whole point of this bloody game but anyway.

Disagree! One of the things I love about Civ is that unlike most games of this nature it can grasp the idea that you could create an important civilization by means other than just pillaging and enslaving all your neighbours. I mostly play as a pacifist, with just some troops for defense if someone invades me (the fact that the game has no way to make peace with barbarians and basically you have to genocide them is...not great, of course).

I think the AI is most likely to attack you when it has placed too many civs on the same continent and so your presence impedes another civ's expansion.

Civ VI is definitely more aggressive the V. Even just the barbarians at the start will absolutely mess you up if you only have two units. Can still play pacifist, but definitely have to give yourself a nice little protective military at the start, to deal with those pesky barbs at the very least

I got confused when at one point I coulnt buy more units because the game was telling me I had "too many of same type in the area" or something???

I am interested to see how the climate change stuff works vis a vis coal vs windfarms etc later inthe game.

Ah you probably had a unit stationed in the city when you were trying to buy? there's gotta be room for the unit to spawn when you buy it and units can't be placed on top of each other

Ah bugger you might be right! I fell into the same trap in V.

lately for early game defense I’ve been gold purchasing slingers, which frees up production for builders/settlers/holy site if I’m trying to get a religion. esp since killing a barb with a slinger gives you the archery boost, it’s only 60 gold to upgrade to archers, and 3 archers gets you the machinery boost. I also always go for the +5 combat bonus vs barbs card asap

I am interested to see how the climate change stuff works vis a vis coal vs windfarms etc later inthe game.

You get renewable energy via wind and solar power, also you can make a carbon recapture plant (think you need a canal?). There's a diplomacy mission where everyone competes to lower their emissions, you can convert your factories to renewable power during this (but annoyingly not otherwise, suggesting the only reason a civ would do that would be for clout which, gulp, maybe quite realistic?). What really annoys me about the climate change stuff is if it progresses too far before you build coastal defenses against it tiles get flooded and unsuable, so sometimes it'll tell you it'll take 500 turns or something crazy like that to build and basically that means those fields are donzo. Can understand a penalty but think there should at least be an option to abandon the city and bring your populations to other cities.

We did it again. Built up a nice little bit of science in the early game, had the two computer civ’s declare war on me simultaneously, and then my “mate” declared war as well a few turns later. The two computer civ’s did literally nothing besides steal one of my builders and bate my mate into being an absolute jerk. Anyways, ended up pushing him all the way back to his capital and taking it because I knew it was coming by him having units on my borders for like 15 turns straight. My other friend joined in on the war halfway a show of solidarity that declaring war on someone that is already in a defensive war against two civ’s isn’t the nicest thing to do (even if those civ’s weren’t consequential).

Love this game

I dont rly like how punitive it is when you extend a war of defense to neuter an opponent. Like bitch dont attack me.

I have also thought that barbarian villages should go from something to be eliminated/managed to something to be protected/respected as the game goes on but idk

what I always enjoyed most about this game was upgrading military tech/units and warmongering, am probably doing it wrong. It's sort of amusing, becoming a sprawling continent dominating, purely evil, high-tech nuclear warfare empire, with military robots of destruction, and you still have horseback cavalry units waiting for an upgrade. I feel like playing this again but it sucks with a PS controller and am not even sure if my crap pc is good enough to run it.

nah calz I don't think that's "doing it wrong", I like that civ doesn't pitch that as the only option like many similar games do but it's certainly AN option

look i love a good game of civ but talking about moral issues w/r/t it is kind of absurd. 4x games are literally imperialism. "explore, expand, exploit, exterminate". if you're going to treat civilization (small c) as a "game" to be "won" you might as well just kill everybody! i find it to be a great power fantasy, a great way to get out my aggressive urges towards the concept of post-westphalian nation-states.