Civilization VI

Haven't watched in a while, but FilthyRobot was pretty good earlier on. I think he might've transitioned mostly to Twitch these days? People also seem to like Quill18, though he can get on my nerves a bit and his understanding of good strategy in the games he plays never seems to be quite up to the level of the best players. They're both variety streamers, rather than Civ6 specialists.

I've been watching some of PotatoMcWhiskey on YouTube. His stream VODs are less informative than his let's play stuff, but he also does a few smaller ones focusing on specific things, such as analysing first city placement, and why the obvious place might not be the best place. Like, instead of settling near a luxury resource, settling directly on top of it can give you + 3 or 4 gold per turn right from the off, as well as giving you something you can sell to the first Civ you see, rather than having to wait until you can improve the resource, with say, irrigation. Chocolate is a good one for that. Even with just one source of the luxury, you can sell it to another Civ for between 100 and 200 or so gold, which could boost you towards buying your first settler, rather than waiting to build one.

Also a plains hill tile can be the best non-luxury tile to settle on, as it gives you +1 production from turn 1, compared to other tiles, even hills (grass, etc). While +4 gold and +1 production may not seem a lot, in the first 50 turns or so, that can be game-changing, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

From even just those two tips, I've learned to really milk gold from the AI in the early game, when you need less luxury buffs for your own Civ.

He also does some on the Governors, but I don't find those tips beneficial at King, probably more important at Diety, when you will really have to strategically chop forests at the right time, in order to have any chance on completing a wonder.

Yeah I saw potato's video on first city placement but his obsession with chopping drove me insane. It did give me a really good insight on analyzing starting positions though and was looking for more along that line. I will have to see if he has anything else that doesn't require deforesting the world.

Took a look at FilthyRobot's channel and he has some good videos, except it looks like all his tips and tricks videos are from when the game first released. Any idea if he has any recent videos that are in this vein?

Just wanted to let everyone know that I won't be doing any more Rise & Fall games.

BadKen wrote:

Just wanted to let everyone know that I won't be doing any more Rise & Fall games.

I haven't played with the latest patch, did something change that ruined the game for you?

Nope, I'm just trying to lower my profile on this site.

BadKen wrote:

Nope, I'm just trying to lower my profile on this site.

Sorry to hear that... The low profile thing, I mean.

Robear wrote:

Sorry to hear that... The low profile thing, I mean.

Yeah same here.

+1

But thank you for setting this up and running the games that you did. Much fun!

(note: this thing I found on reddit may not be a Civ VI screenshot, but I thought y'all would appreciate it anyway)

IMAGE(https://i.redditmedia.com/xM7X1pgxBc4LM7rZazYNY5pr6vR99IwZEn6__Gmi-zo.jpg?fit=crop&crop=faces%2Centropy&arh=2&w=640&s=84330e60227ee5cfef39eb0d8e6ff2f0)

Hidden Mickey! That's what this is, right?

Clearly it is the Civ3 spacecraft

Dr. Evil's spaceship, natch.

Imgur tells me I uploaded this four years ago when I posted it in the Civ V thread, this is only the second time it's ever been relevant. (If you count the first.)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/X78quvn.jpg)

Decided to take advantage of the sale and bought the Rise and Fall expansion. Loaded up a new game as Scotland and enjoying the changes so far. Immediately I'm already thinking about Loyalty and deciding where to put my new cities. Feel like I've already made a mistake as America has closed the gap towards me in a tight cluster so I'm limited now and have to go the other direction.

Missed out on a golden era by about 6 points. Seems like it requires a lot to get. But only about 70 turns in, so perhaps was being a little too optimistic.

Seems fun so far. Good to be playing Civ again.

The Golden Ages in Civ6 are significantly toned down. They're not a Super-I-Win button anymore. You get a lot of graphical treats and a few possibly nice bonuses depending on your upcoming goals. You also won't need to worry about Loyalty for a while. Dark Ages are more interesting because you can really ramp up an aspect of your Civ - major bonuses, in return for some penalties. Loyalty will be a problem, though. It's tradeoffs.

Some people intentionally avoid era achievements just to trigger a Dark Age, and then a Heroic Age (all Golden Age benefits, not just one of three). Something like that definitely needs more doing now than before.

I think golden ages are more useful in later eras when you can get more expansion based buffs.

Riddle me this: why are the Civ 6 expansions and the DLC rated so badly on Steam? I know Civ 5 had some tough reviews in its day, but wow!

AFAIK, some folks were upset at the pricing.

I continue to enjoy the hell out of Civ VI with Rise & Fall. Steam has me closing in on 300 hours with it which, for me, is an absurd number, but I keep coming back to it.

Anyway, yeah, loyalty is a huge factor in the golden/dark ages. If you get a dark age at the wrong time it can become a real challenge to maintain loyalty if you share a border with a civ that has a strong pull. There's almost always ways to mitigate it through policies and governors, but you have to be careful. Likewise, a golden age can tip a low-loyalty city in your favor. Neither will swing the course of a game by themselves, but they can have an impact, which I think is great balance. In general, I think Civ VI has reached a place where all the mechanics and systems are really working well together. I still have warm memories for Civ IV, but I think it's a far superior game to V, at this point.

The main (only) thing that I think still holds this game back (as it almost always has) is the AI. It just can't play its own game without ridiculous bonuses out of the gate. And I know that's a tall ask because decent AI for something like this is probably damn near impossible, but it's very poor at managing its troops and its poor at managing its cities. Because of that, the upper difficulties end up being more about surviving the early game long enough to eventually match pace with the AI output for production, tech, culture, etc. and then sweeping past them in the late eras in embarrassing fashion. It is a challenge, but it's not a very satisfying one.

That said, it's obviously not stopping me from playing a ridiculous amount.

Rise and fall is worth it, but the price for individual civs is a PITA. I managed to get them all eventually, waiting for sales, especially a humble sale when they were relatively dirt cheap for the whole lot. I think I ended up getting them all for about $12. Which I still think is quite a lot for just giving an extra civ or two per DLC..

Natus wrote:

Riddle me this: why are the Civ 6 expansions and the DLC rated so badly on Steam? I know Civ 5 had some tough reviews in its day, but wow!

It could be the spyware issue they had.
And price of course, but that wasnt any different than Civ5.

Shadout wrote:
Natus wrote:

Riddle me this: why are the Civ 6 expansions and the DLC rated so badly on Steam? I know Civ 5 had some tough reviews in its day, but wow!

It could be the spyware issue they had.
And price of course, but that wasnt any different than Civ5.

I know it's not quite the same as steam, but if comments over at the CivFanatics forums were any indication, those negative reviews would have been a combination of complaints about AI and a heavy serving of nostalgia for a prior, "best" version of the Civ series [usually 4].

I really liked these games... I even have civ 5 -i think- unopened. I dont think I will be playing this anytime soon given my backlog

The Digital Deluxe version was the most cost-effective way to get all the extra Civs, otherwise the individual DLC packs felt extremely overpriced. It's tough to gauge whether that's a valid feeling or not, considering how many hours you can put into the game. I thought they were a lot of fun, and since I bought the Deluxe right away, I didn't have to think about it.

The sale is still going, looks like, so you could pick up those extra civs at a decent discount if you still haven't gotten them.

Also, the whole "spyware" thing recently brought the reviews down further.

I'm not a Civ expert, having only played 5 and 6, for far fewer hours than a lot of people, at lower difficulties. I like 6 a lot, overall, and wouldn't want to go back to 5.

Civ fans can be as bad as Star Wars fans in their ability to blow out of proportion anything they see as a slight to the “legacy” of the series.

Michael wrote:

Civ fans can be as bad as Star Wars fans in their ability to blow out of proportion anything they see as a slight to the “legacy” of the series.

Yup. I was more a lurker than a poster over on those forums, but the constant negative reaction to Civ VI convinced me to quit them for good. Call me crazy, but I'm more interested in enjoying my games than finding reasons to trash them.