Civilization VI

Apollo0507 wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

I always buy Firaxis games/expansions on release. They are probably my favorite developer. Most of the time, I don't get to play them on release, but just want to support them. I went to Firaxicon several years ago and the people just seemed happy and nice to be working there. Got to meet Sid and Jake Solomon too which was awesome.

I too do this and also was at Firaxicon back in 2014--I'm all about doing anything to let them continue to make new games and agree it would be awesome to go to another Firaxicon.

Played a little this AM--I am very intrigued about the Inca and plan to lean into their bonuses centered around settling near mountains. Though I personally think all of the new Civs have some interesting ideas and I'd like to give each a try.

i have like 5 of the new civs i desperately want to try. Inca, Maori, a full friendly canadian run. so much excitement

Playing now. Too early to conclude much. But grievances seems interesting. Well, if I wasn't playing as Canada, who can't make surprise wars... Seriously Canada. Trump told me you burned the White House, that sounds like a surprise to me.
The strategic resource change also seems huge.

Surprisingly, the one thing that hasn't mattered much so far is the weather effects.

Trump was wrong. It was actually British troops who attacked and burned DC. 4th (King's Own) Light, 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot and the 85th Regiment of Foot. None of them were raised outside England.

Shadout wrote:

Playing now. Too early to conclude much. But grievances seems interesting. Well, if I wasn't playing as Canada, who can't make surprise wars... Seriously Canada. Trump told me you burned the White House, that sounds like a surprise to me.
The strategic resource change also seems huge.

Surprisingly, the one thing that hasn't mattered much so far is the weather effects.

I am playing as Canada too!

Robear wrote:

Trump was wrong. It was actually British troops who attacked and burned DC. 4th (King's Own) Light, 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot and the 85th Regiment of Foot. None of them were raised outside England.

Also it was a war instigated by America, not Canada or Britain. Canada's polite reputation is intact.

thrawn82 wrote:
Robear wrote:

Trump was wrong. It was actually British troops who attacked and burned DC. 4th (King's Own) Light, 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot and the 85th Regiment of Foot. None of them were raised outside England.

Also it was a war instigated by America, not Canada or Britain. Canada's polite reputation is intact.

Granting that for the sake of argument, Canadians do claim credit for it, though. edit: some context

Put in a couple hours this afternoon using the Inca. Their ability to build mountain routes (via builders) is six different shades of cool, if you get the right map to take advantage of it

I've got environmental events turned up to three (out of four) and after roughly 50-100 turns, I've seen a couple tornadoes, maybe a half dozen floods to different rivers, and a couple of droughts. I lost a builder to a tornado line (worse than a single twister) after I stashed him in my capital thinking he'd be safe there. Instead he got wiped out when it struck, and I lost two pop to boot. So, there's a safety tip there. Just get your units out of the way, if you can. (The game gives you an idea what direction they're going after they first appear.)

It's only a couple hours of play, so the weather is still in that "it's interesting for its newness" phase more anything. I do like that you can set up build queues (without mods) now, and I really like that you can get named map features (rivers, mountain ranges, etc.) I've also settled a city two tiles off a volcano that will eventually have a district right next to it. What could possibly go wrong?

I picked up the expansion eagerly and got a game started last night. I might be regretting staying up til 3:30 today at work, but someone had to get the early information out to people - even though I didn't write anything about it until now. I started my favorite settings: Epic game speed (slower than Standard, but not 200% more so), on a huge Continents map, so 10 players overall. I chose the Mali, since I like having a lot of gold. I left the environmental hazards at 2 out of 4, which was what it defaulted to. My starting position was near a volcano, and along a river, so I immediately got +2 Era score for settling next to a potential flood spot and a potential lava death spot. I'm not convinced it was the best idea, but I felt like I could deal with repercussions if I needed to.

I fairly quickly meet my first neighbor: Nubia. I have never really had a lot of positive interactions with her, so I was not thrilled about that, and then I met America. I was going for one of the new Wonders, it prevents flooding from the river it is built along, but I lost it to someone. I turned the excess production into a settler, and went about getting some defenders. I saw America moving two warriors and one slinger near my area, and was getting worried. After I had 2 extra warriors of my own and one slinger on the way, I felt safe enough, especially after I saw America move their troops away from me, which was a mistake. The lower production from my copper mines meant that Roosevelt's early attack on my actually managed to take my Capital. The bastard actually didn't declare his surprise war until after I spent most of my money on a granary for my second city. I was able to retake it, but it was a pretty massive bump in the road for me.

One thing that I really liked was how much more transactional things were already. I had gotten some tea, and had a LOT of income, so I was happily trading luxury goods or gold per turn for favors, usually 10 per transactions. When my capital was taken, I wasted 30 favors trying to get an emergency, but it cost America at least 60 to vote it down. I was still able to buy Nubia's involvement for 20 favors, and I had an excess of greivances against America to not have to worry about getting a bad reputation.

One drawback to the finer-tuned trading was that I was almost constantly being contacted to trade 5 gold for 1 horse, or 1 favor for 1 iron. At first I didn't mind, but eventually I was getting sick of needing 24 more horses to make one horseman unit and getting pestered for my 6 horses almost all the time. I'd like to see a patch that gets the AI to stop asking for the same thing if it gets rejected - at least increase your offer!

I think I played until around 1000 AD, roughly? My local volcano went active once for a few turns, then returned to being inactive. My local river flooded, damaging my market and shutting down a trade route - losing 15 gold per turn was unpleasant. After the flood subsided, though, I got 5 food from wheat, and the city started to really thrive. Nubia had a series of droughts, bad enough to sponsor a request for help. I was happy to provide the most support, and got 1 point towards a Diplomatic Victory. Roosevelt had his second city directly next to Mt. Saint Helen's, and it had no fewer than three eruptions - the first two did a significant amount of damage to his city and districts; it was great. I saw other rivers flood, and a few tornadoes, but nothing that felt like it would ruin anyone's game.

I'm itching to finish work and head home to try to see if I can get a Diplomatic win out of the game, there is a second request for aid that I have 2 cities working on relief efforts, so hopefully I'll be in a good position to win more points there. My gold and luxuries should give me a lot of sway over the other civs, and I'm on excellent terms with most of them, so it seems likely to work out so far. All in all, I really like what they've added, and I am excited to try out a play by cloud game.

Okay, as weak as floods has been, a blizzard just killed 8 citizens and ravaged 20+ hexes. That hurts.
My turn to be the recipient of aid. Though I dont have much faith in the computer delivering.

Edit: Yeah, thanks Hungary for your 3 gold.
Edit 2: Actually they ended up giving me 900 gold overall. Not terrible, but compared to how many turns I spend rebuilding, it might as well have been zero. Heck, since you cant participate in your own Aid Emergency (obviously) you lose out on the rewards, which are a lot more useful than 900 gold.

Okay.. so I know the Incans can build fancy tunnels through mountains and all.. but this start is taking the....

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

On the bright side: Coral, fish, and whales aplenty?

Hm, they added more ways to get wildcard policy slots - seems like you can get at least 4 more than before. But apparently there is a cap at 6 slots. That doesn't seem smart.
Edit: nvm, dont think that is the case after all.

Getting 22% off is probably the cheapest its going to be for a while, right? It may hit 25% off this summer and no more than 33% by winter. That probably means I should just get it now right?

Anyone have strong feelings either way?

robc wrote:

Getting 22% off is probably the cheapest its going to be for a while, right? It may hit 25% off this summer and no more than 33% by winter. That probably means I should just get it now right?

Anyone have strong feelings either way?

You should just get it right now, yes.

I am such a good enabler.

Played about 100 turns this afternoon as Sweden, continents, King difficulty, disaster rating 2. So far I somehow got stuck on my own island with a single City state. Managed to find a second but then discovered Nubia was across the water... Because she killed Valletta. So far I am just sitting across my medium sized island, setting up massive science and culture farms (I got Machu Picchu which makes mountains give adjacency bonuses for theater, commercial, and industrial zones and I have a lot of mountains). Will need to build a Navy soon and explore the world.

Did find out that archers do very little damage to boats now (mine had a -17 strength when attaching them). Made all those barbarian quadriemmes annoying.

Will not have any more play time until Sunday night, but so far it's interesting.

robc wrote:

Getting 22% off is probably the cheapest its going to be for a while, right? It may hit 25% off this summer and no more than 33% by winter. That probably means I should just get it now right?

Anyone have strong feelings either way?

Yeah, the only sensible choice is to get it now. You are losing MoneyTime (tm) by waiting.

Finished my Canada game, through a diplomacy victory. It actually got "annoying" (in a somewhat good way) toward the end. The AI sems better at fighting against your victory, than they are at all the other victory conditions - where they usually do nothing whatsoever.
Since in the World Congress you can vote to take Diplomacy victory points away from a Civ. And they all kept voting to take my points away at the end, and they refused to sell me even a single of Diplomatic Favor point (in my attempt to make them unable to get more votes). So it looked like they could just keep me from winning at all - but at the final vote they failed, I bought 28 votes (for the silly cost of 4000 diplomatic favor or so). They had about 35 total votes, so they could prevent me from winning again, but one of the Civs got cocky and spend 11 votes on himself instead (so not that smart after all).
So, the winning condition for Diplomacy is interesting, but it feels like it is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the game - it is its own little game. Which brings me to another of the new features.

The climate change was kinda disappointing. It might have to do with playing on a '2 large continents' map, but even though I failed completely at stopping it (I think it reached the highest lvl it could, at least it did in the UI), the coastal damage was very minimal. And just like in our actual climate change, telling me that there is 3% higher risk of storms, is less effective for pushing people into action, than watching a coastal city disappear into the ocean.

And like diplomacy, climate change didn't seem to connect that much to the rest of the game.
Which leads me to; I had expected those two features would be heavily interconnected. Like gaining substantial diplomacy for fighting climate change. But while you get some, it is nothing compared to what you get from other sources.
That disappoints me, I think both the Diplomacy and Climate Change features would get more interesting if Diplomacy Victory became the 'Climate change game'. At least, if Firaxis ever wants to go in that direction, it is something they can easily do in a patch, since the mechanisms are already there, the Diplomatic Favor points gained (or alternatively, points lost for being the ones causing climate change) just have to increase substantially.

Btw, maintaining those nuclear power plants is annoying busywork. I think I'll take global warming instead (political lesson of the day).

As for other changes; cultural victory seems to have changed, with the addition of 'rock bands' - oh boy did the other civs spam them at the end, and they come with an annoyingly loud sound effect. That has to be either changed or a sound you can turn off.
Tech victory is also changed, but I never started it.
Uh, the Giant Robot unit you get at the end is insanely strong. I-win button.

The grievance-system, and the strategic resource changes still seem like they might be the biggest changes overall to the game.
In my game I didn't really lack of any resources - except missing Niter entirely, but then that often happened before the expansion too. Part of the reason was never building any meaningful army, so nothing to spend the resources on, and due to playing diplomatic game, I befriended most of the city states, who then gave me some of the resources.

robc wrote:

Getting 22% off is probably the cheapest its going to be for a while, right? It may hit 25% off this summer and no more than 33% by winter. That probably means I should just get it now right?

Anyone have strong feelings either way?

Get it! What is 3% of $40?

I've restarted from the Main Menu, and rerolled maps (from 'Restart, in the menu) a *lot* of times. Checking out maps, different starts for the new Civs, etc.

For some strange reason, about 50-60% of the time, no barbarians spawn... at all. Definitely don't have 'No Barbarians' ticked, as I never do. They just don't spawn at all...

Am I the only one that is seeing this?

I also had (and have submitted a bug report for) a game-ending World Congress, that wouldn't let me select a leader to target for one of the resolutions, no matter what I did... so I couldn't progress the turn...

Haven't had any issues with no barbs in either of my games so far.

Maori are really fun to play early on, the ability to just explore the whole world freely is great. Might also be a bit overpowered, at least after 64 standard turns I am so far ahead in tech it's not even funny.

On an 'small islands' map this time, so rising ocean lvls should be way more devastating. At least all 3 of my cities so far will lose tiles when/if that happens. And there aren't exactly many land-tiles to begin with.

Sailed around the world in the year 1320 BC. No problem

Shadout wrote:

Sailed around the world in the year 1320 BC. No problem :D

Just like the real polyneseans. They just don't get credit cause, only Europeans count.

omni wrote:

For some strange reason, about 50-60% of the time, no barbarians spawn... at all. Definitely don't have 'No Barbarians' ticked, as I never do. They just don't spawn at all...

Yeah, I just had this. Pity -- I like murdering barbarians.

On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else automatically start humming Mel Brooks' Inquisition whenever you start an inquisition?

I'm teetering dangerously close to a purchase after the positive reports here. Except the barbarian thing, that sounds kind of annoying. Anyone have anything else negative to report? Has anyone completed a game or two? Still curious about the late game and whether the diplomatic ai is up to the task of making a diplomatic victory interesting.

I've played one game to completion. Inca, King, Science Victory.

The Inca were fine, but I didn't make much use of any of their specials. There were a few mountains right near my capital, but very few others anywhere nearby. And the mountains had enough natural passes that I didn't feel the need to spend a builder charge on their special tunnel. The terrace farms were nice, but nothing to write home about.

I mostly like the changes to the science victory. For some reason my engineers launched my ground laser into space. Also, I think the programmers didn't really understand the science. The ship ends up traveling faster than light. And you accelerate it more by shining a laser on its butt. Lasers. Made of light. Traveling at light speed. That said, I like the mechanical changes. If you mentally swap 50 LY travel for 5 LY travel and drop the speed by a factor of ten, it all works out.

The world congress is hit or miss. A lot of the proposals just seem random or incoherent. Why are we suddenly voting to give someone bonus immigration? But, the emergencies seem much better now. You can spend political capital to avoid some of the repercussions of your aggressive strategies.

I wasn't really pursuing a diplomatic victory. I just kept anyone else from doing it (not hard -- Egypt was the only threat).

Oddrune wrote:
omni wrote:

For some strange reason, about 50-60% of the time, no barbarians spawn... at all. Definitely don't have 'No Barbarians' ticked, as I never do. They just don't spawn at all...

Yeah, I just had this. Pity -- I like murdering barbarians.

On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else automatically start humming Mel Brooks' Inquisition whenever you start an inquisition?

I've seen this and at the same time had a game that I gave up on very early that had an insanely high level of barbarian camps popping up. My only guess is it's somehow related to continents or location. It's probably just observation bias but something feels off.

Sometimes having lots of barbarian camps has always happened.
Especially in multiplayer games barb camp spawn rate typically seems off the charts (as if it spawning X times per player). But also in single player. I doubt anything is changed there.

But yeah, no spawns at all is weird, and seems new. On my third game so far and haven't had it. 2 contintental maps, 1 island map.

I finally find myself *interested* in a Civ game again, with this latest expansion. There's enough going on to keep my interest. It's a good feeling.

So, update on my second game: turns out there are barbarians. Just found my first camp. On turn 186. They must be so lonely.

Completed my first game last night. Science win, Inca, on King. It definitely shows that they've extended the late game, which I think is a good thing just because it gives room to play with and enjoy using the modern units and buildings and whatnot. After avoiding wars the entire game, I got sucked into one via alliances and got to put a Giant Death Robot to work. That was fun.

After all the talk about nuclear accidents, I actually had one. I had two nuclear plants operating, and I figured the game would let me know when maintenance was necessary, but it doesn't. The only way to tell is to highlight the maintenance project and check the popup, which I wasn't doing. So kerplooey. Took between 12-24 turns to clean up all the fallout and repair the damage to tiles and districts.

Late game climate also really came into play for me. There were something like 4-6 rises in sea level that washed out a bunch of tiles. I ended up taking a bunch of small cities from Spain late in the game, all on or near low-level coastlines, and I couldn't build the sea walls fast enough to protect tiles. I'd also started doing a bunch of climate mitigation stuff (focus on renewables and carbon capture), but only barely managed to slow it down. None of the cities I had flooded, but I lost several tiles, including some with resources, because there appears to be no way to rush build them. You'd think you'd could use military engineers to push them forward (since they can help rush dams and canals), but that appears not to be the case. I think Firaxis is going to end up needing to make some adjustments there. I get the approach, but there should be some way to put your full civ's resources to work on protecting smaller cities so you can complete those projects in under 20-70 turns. Regardless, I really liked how that played out. Sea rise can be a serious problem that adds some meaningful choices to the late game.

The AI was the AI. A couple civs had made meaningful progress on space race projects, which I don't usually see, but they were so hopelessly behind me on techs/civics that it didn't amount to much. Religions were pretty well held into regional check. One civ made something of a culture push, but nowhere near close enough to win the game, and I was buying up all the diplo points (almost got the in there first) so the other civs never got off the ground with a diplo win. Still had a lot of fun. There is zero chance I'd go back to a pre-Gathering Storm version, and I'm looking forward to starting the next game. (Oh, and I love that they brought back the hall of fame. Just wish it hadn't taken until the second expansion to do it.)

ubrakto wrote:

Late game climate also really came into play for me. There were something like 4-6 rises in sea level that washed out a bunch of tiles. I ended up taking a bunch of small cities from Spain late in the game, all on or near low-level coastlines, and I couldn't build the sea walls fast enough to protect tiles. I'd also started doing a bunch of climate mitigation stuff (focus on renewables and carbon capture), but only barely managed to slow it down. None of the cities I had flooded, but I lost several tiles, including some with resources, because there appears to be no way to rush build them. You'd think you'd could use military engineers to push them forward (since they can help rush dams and canals), but that appears not to be the case. I think Firaxis is going to end up needing to make some adjustments there. I get the approach, but there should be some way to put your full civ's resources to work on protecting smaller cities so you can complete those projects in under 20-70 turns. Regardless, I really liked how that played out. Sea rise can be a serious problem that adds some meaningful choices to the late game.

I'm the opposite here so far. It feels way too easy to mitigate both the climate change and most of the weather effects. Considering how much we struggle with the latter today.
Would love for the end-game to show some real, impactful consequences, if/when stopping to prevent the climate changes to take full effect.

Shadout wrote:

I'm the opposite here so far. It feels way too easy to mitigate both the climate change and most of the weather effects. Considering how much we struggle with the latter today.
Would love for the end-game to show some real, impactful consequences, if/when stopping to prevent the climate changes to take full effect.

Is it just sea rises, or does it handle things like desertification as well? Be interesting if you have a desert region that expands across half a continent.