Civilization VI

Civ IV had some pretty glaring issues at launch (infinite money from selling units and that horse economy thing among others) and that probably didn't help the situation going forward.

There were a lot of complaints about the spyware. Fair enough reason I'd say since that kind of thing shouldn't be allowed.

But other than that, I think people are generally overly critical and harsh these days towards a lot of things. I've had a lot of fun from Civ 5 and 6 and if I read the reviews and stayed away I would have missed all that fun. I'm actually hitting a point where I'm more critical of the reasons people are for and against something. If something is getting bagged because of the bugs etc, or developers dodgy practices, fair enough. But when it comes to the game and how it plays, I've found that my opinion differs from most.

I'm quite happy with the way 5 and 6 play and as such, have really enjoyed my time with the game. Double dipped and also bought it on Ipad as well. (Graphics no where near as good, but it's nice to have the portability).

I stopped reading Angry Civ Player comments years ago, when it became obvious to me that none of them understand the design of Civilization AI. It's not designed to be a replacement for a human player, it's not even designed to be a bot. Hell, depending on the circumstances of the game, it might not even be trying to win. Bugs aside, most complaints center on the AI not acting like a player, when it is not meant to be a player.

This misunderstanding is a problem with a lot of games, but in my experience Civ gets the most Female Doggoing.

Tyops wrote:

Civ IV had some pretty glaring issues at launch (infinite money from selling units and that horse economy thing among others) and that probably didn't help the situation going forward.

Those are absolutely true, but the same players who complain about these faults excessively are also players who seem to have forgotten that all the Civs had worse problems at launch. Even a year after launch, Civ 4 tile management algorithms were so bad that the countryside resembled nothing more than an underdeveloped ruin - and these weren't the worst of its balance issues.

It's one thing to point out a balance problem, and another to say "This makes the game worse than others before it." Even if it had launched in the state it's in now, they'd have bashed it anyway.

Civ6 in particular was primed for hate for a lot of very inane reasons like their palette choice and the artistic direction being "mobile," whatever the heck that means.

These are two of the things I love about Civ6:

1. Workers. Builders are a fantastic solution to Workers. I was skeptical about workers having charges and insta-builds, but they actually work better with Civ's fundamental design than its classical workers. Brilliant tweak.

2. Cities on tiles. No more megacities with everything everywhere. You simply don't have the space. Most locations can be specialized towards particular ends, so you build the cities to have those focus or focuses. A sprawling Wonder City can be a fantastic production powerhouse, but it's not going to have everything if only because you'll run out of tiles. Want a powerhouse military Production City? Ruhr Valley is a nice wonder for that, but you can't have many other things in it because each tile takes away from its production power.

Agree with those two especially.
The game also feels a bit incoherent, more so with the expansions. Most of the big features seems underdeveloped (very limited options in the Ages, or the new Events as examples) and/or not relating to each other. Religion is still weird, and personally I miss diplomacy victory. Like the two previous civ games it really feels like it could use that second expansion.

Well, there is a good chance they're working on it right now.

Yeah, would be quite surprising if they are not.

I really enjoy civ 6 and the changes it brought to the table. I especially love the district idea. My biggest compliant at the moment is that there are a couple "must have" districts in every city so there really is not room to deviate from a standard build pattern.

Unless you are rushing for an early religious victory, holy sites are a waste.

Campuses are as overpowered as science has always been. The adjacency bonus doesn't even matter post universities, some could argue ever.

When is production not good? Build an industrial some on every city as the first building does not give it's production to other cities, so you are leaving 3-5 production on the table if you don't.

Unless you need super fast unit production, an extra bombard, or are lacking strategics, the encampment provides nothing for the city. Might as well go for that super easy science victory instead.

I always seem to eek out enough culture to have a steady advance without culture districts, and the culture victory is pretty hard and obscure to achieve. The district doesn't directly lead to a culture victory, but provides a small contribution towards it.

Money is always good as well, so a harbor or commerce district is good where you can afford them. But they do the same thing so you don't need both.

The system might work better if there was some kind of restriction on districts, but on standard it's campus > industrial > commerce > whatever. Maybe doubling or tripling science costs could help, but that kind of just makes campuses necessary instead of overpowered.

Malkroth wrote:

Unless you need super fast unit production, an extra bombard, or are lacking strategics, the encampment provides nothing for the city.

If you're going for a domination victory, having at least one encampment in your civ is always a good idea.

Malkroth wrote:

the culture victory is pretty hard and obscure to achieve.

I disagree. In my very first game of Civ6, I accidentally triggered a culture victory while trying to get a science victory. A culture victory is not hard at all if you focus on things that generate tourism.

Personally, I've found all the districts have their roles and I've always taken a pretty balanced approach to them. So much depends on how you play and how you focus on policies.

You typically don't need a bunch of encampments, no, but they are strategic in addition to giving small boosts in production and unit experience. In addition to planting one or two with high-production, unit-producing cities, an encampment in the right spot near a border with an aggressive nation basically amounts to two free attacks each turn, plus unit attacks. That can be very nice to have in the right situations. (Say, if you're looking to hold a border in place and necessarily expand it militarily.)

I am, admittedly, a marginal Civ player, so your mileage here may vary; but I've also found culture and culture districts very impactful, and culture wins really are not all that hard to get if you focus on using those districts in ways that will drive not just culture points, but greater tourism (since that's the metric for a culture win). More than once I've won a culture vic while aiming for science or military because I also had culture districts pumping out great writer/artist/musician points that lead to great works that lead to greater tourism. Throw in some decent wonder production with the right government policies and it can be hard not to win by culture before you can even get around to finishing the space race or capturing each civ's capital.

To the others, so much depends on the map and specific strategies. On an island plates map or any map with lots of water, harbor districts can be a lifesaver for cities lacking much in the way of quality food tiles on land. I tend to ignore faith as well, but I've seen players make incredible use of it by pairing faith generation with certain policies, leaders, or golden ages where you can use faith to buy up walls, builders, and settlers and not just religious units. One of Potato McWhiskey's series using this was bonkers!

If you always focus on campuses first (something I tend to do as well!), I'm not surprised you race off towards a science victory, but I think that's a bit more a product of your strategy than it is a golden path. I suspect you could change that priority (say, to culture districts) or balance it and find equal success pursuing other victory types.

The problem I run into is lately I have been paying with a couple friends, and at least one will prioritize science. If one player is doing that and no one else is, you will just get steamrolled as technologically advanced units will tear apart vast quantities of inferior units.

My experience with districts may be slightly skewed because of this. I just kind of wish there was a mechanic in the game to force the city specialization they touted in the previews.

Oh yeah. I can imagine with multiplayer it must be a way different balance.

From what I understand terrain is supposed to be the limiting factor in what you can and can't do with districts. If you do not have a river or other water source, you can't build an aqueduct, and that's a shame because it's downright useful.

And those, combined with the adjacency bonuses, can really separate the men from the boys in terms of power. Sure, you may all have academies, but if one is in a spot that gives it plus four and the other is in a city with tiles that only give a plus one, it really counts in the long run. It's particularly true if you're going for a religious victory.

But it's a subtle thing, and there are a lot of ways to balance it if you're good. I'm thinking it's not strong enough to counteract some of the B.S.

And encampments are a key part of my strategy dealing with aggressive neighbors. It effectively gives you two garrisons in each city area. So if I need to turtle up the east side to deal with Attila next door, those cities get them immediately.

However, I also play with a multiplayer group that effectively plays "cooperative" by gentleman's agreement, so some of my experience may be different.

If someone is playing science, then they don't have production and probably no encampments, either. It's a steamroller play. Why not attack them immediately?

I find Campuses good, but not "build in every city" good, because you just don't have the cogs to do that without trashing your other Civ aspects. No trade routes. No encampments. Poor cultural development means bad government choices.

The fact that Corps and Armies are in Cultural outputs means you can output militarily competitive forces with a Cultural advantage, if you're not too far behind in science, and you shouldn't be if you're leveraging the catchup mechanics right.

For some starts and civs, Science will be king. But that's not necessarily the case for all. Culture is decently fast at winning below Emperor, and it doesn't have the demanding production requirements of a Science win.

Notably, some districts have extremely powerful City State support. Carthage makes your Encampments double as Commerce districts for trade routes, so that's a gimme, especially for Japan.

I like to pursue science with the intent of a military win. So the science gives me access to higher tech units; military for the encampments and other military buildings. But you still have to pursue production to be able to make the higher cost units as well as commerce to pay for them. Culture and religion I pursue just enough not to loose - there have been times where I've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by neglecting one of them.

Randomly, this is coming out for the Nintendo Switch in November

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...

Just curious, what level does everyone play at?

beanman101283 wrote:

Randomly, this is coming out for the Nintendo Switch in November

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...

I will certainly be getting this.

jrralls wrote:

Just curious, what level does everyone play at?

Usually King, unless I've been away for a while, then I'll drop back to Prince. Anything higher requires more micromanagement than I am interested in. I used to play Emperor more, but I find that King lets me be more flexible.

Emperor and Immortal aren't really much harder, just more tedious. You have to be hands-on with everything, know your tech and civics paths ahead of time, use advanced techniques like pre-chopping forests, manually assign every citizen, optimize each city for specific output, and you generally have to be more aggressive. It's more attention than I really want to pay to every little detail.

Deity is like that, too, but it is additionally utterly unforgiving of mistakes and more sensitive to unlucky terrain layout.

jrralls wrote:

Just curious, what level does everyone play at?

Prince, Pushing to King if I'm finding Prince too easy. I don;t have the attention to detail to play much above King to be honest - I'd have to be much more into the game to do that. As much as I love Civ, it's a game I play "too see what happens" much more than I do it win.

That said, if I find myself in a bad situation I will quit rather than see it through.

I recently moved up to King once I figured out how to abuse money in the early game, Prince became a steamroll. Being able to buy a 2nd settler by the time I'm finishing producing my first 'naturally' certainly helps land grab and getting an initial flow of deadly archers. If i'm lucky enough to have horses nearby too, i'll wipe out pretty much any enemy on my island. I still find that on King, too, but those Civs that are out-with walking distance have time to level the playing field while i'm spilling blood, so the mid game can be more equalling.

My last King game I managed to build Big Ben just as I amassed 20k gold in the bank, so Big Ben doubled it to 40k. Then I just bought a huge army and went nuts. Doesn't always pan out that way, and I've been sneak-defeated by religion a couple of times because Religious Wars/Victories are my go-to insomnia cure.

Taking a bit of a break from Civ6, though, but I'm sure I'll be back soon enough.

King, for all the reasons BadKen outlined above.

jrralls wrote:

Just curious, what level does everyone play at?

Settler. And I’m not ashamed of it.

Yeah, pretty much like BadKen described. Emperor once in a while, but it kinda feels less fun.
Haven't played in a while, game really feels like it is lacking something to keep the systems together,

Eleima wrote:
jrralls wrote:

Just curious, what level does everyone play at?

Settler. And I’m not ashamed of it.

Quite right, too. Play whatever makes it FUN, for you. No point in playing otherwise.

Well, I don't play it at all at the moment, but whenever I do get around to Civ6 it will be at whatever the default difficulty is. I don't think I've ever changed it in any of the previous civs, I'm just not interested in having to work too hard to win.

I play at King. That's only one level above the default, which I believe is Prince. I don't do it for the challenge. I increased the AI level so the AI will present me with nice targets once I have my armies and soldiers. Also makes for better allies and trading partners.

It has been a while since I played Civ V or VI, but I think I played them at King and won pretty regularly. I don't think I usually win often Emperor.

I started playing Civ IV again and King has been kicking my butt. I won one time out of about a dozen games, and I only won because I made a permanent alliance late in the game to share his win. I should drop it down to Prince.

How was the drop back to Civ4? I fancy trying something like Caveman to Cosmos, but it's Civ4 only. The mechanics have changed considerably from 4.... maybe it'd be fun to give it a try.

Civ IV holds up surprisingly well. While I liked Civ V and VI enough to put time into them, I don't think the switch to 1UPT was a good one. Playing Civ IV it was nice go go back to making some combined arms stacks and not juggling units around trying to get them positioned. It lets you focus more on the big picture

Now I do miss the more unique civs in V and VI. Leaders and civs in IV aren't as differentiated. There are enough combinations of leader traits to give some variety though. I also think that resources in Civ IV have a bigger impact on desirable locations.

In any case, it wasn't painful to go back and play a much older game - go for it!