Civilization VI

I usually aim for a reasonably balanced civ through the first three ages. It just makes you less brittle in the later ages. Once most of the world is colonized, it should be clear what the path ahead can and should be for my civ.

IIRC, it was in Civ V that you could gift an amount of gold or a military unit to a city state for more influence with them. Pretty sure that has been all reincorporated into the envoy system now. Which is too bad, as the buffer state of La Venta is under siege by Alex the Great and I could use a few more turns in which to prepare for his onslaught.

Also the first game in which I've been on the wrong end of the Berserkers from Norway. That was extremely unpleasant.

Natus wrote:

Which is too bad, as the buffer state of La Venta is under siege by Alex the Great and I could use a few more turns in which to prepare for his onslaught.

If you have suzerainty, you can still send in your own troops to clog up the attack lanes and prevent siege. If you have a good scout force, you can make it so only one Greek unit can come into range at a time. Hopefully that gives La Venta time to chew it up with city and ranged units.

I like to think of them as a peacekeeping force.

Oddrune wrote:
Natus wrote:

Which is too bad, as the buffer state of La Venta is under siege by Alex the Great and I could use a few more turns in which to prepare for his onslaught.

If you have suzerainty, you can still send in your own troops to clog up the attack lanes and prevent siege. If you have a good scout force, you can make it so only one Greek unit can come into range at a time. Hopefully that gives La Venta time to chew it up with city and ranged units.

I like to think of them as a peacekeeping force. :)

OMG this is brilliant! Thank you!

Just finished up a Portugal run: Large map, continents & islands.

Hoo boy, can they make gold! I got up to over 100g/turn in the Ancient era, and never looked back. Ended up with a religious victory, because I was being all peaceful in order to have alliances and get the extra trade bonuses from those, and a culture, diplomatic or science victory would gave taken too long.

A satisfying run, and it feels extra cheeky building the Feitoria improvements on other civs' territory. I found out after that you can build them on oil, and get the oil, and you can build more than one in a city's territory, and they stack.

I've been playing Civilization for 30 years! I remember playing Civ in the basement of McConnell hall (residence at McGill University) in late '91/early '92.

Damn, I'm old

Tach wrote:

I've been playing Civilization for 30 years! I remember playing Civ in the basement of McConnell hall (residence at McGill University) in late '91/early '92.

Damn, I'm old :)

Me too! My Dad bought it for me and my brother, figuring it was an educational game.

Can't think of any other series I could say I've been playing for 30 years.

Felix Threepaper wrote:
Tach wrote:

I've been playing Civilization for 30 years! I remember playing Civ in the basement of McConnell hall (residence at McGill University) in late '91/early '92.

Damn, I'm old :)

Me too! My Dad bought it for me and my brother, figuring it was an educational game.

Can't think of any other series I could say I've been playing for 30 years.

Age of Empires, for me, is close.

I played Strategic Conquest (an ascii based Civ predecessor) before Civ was a thing....

Edgar_Newt wrote:

I played Strategic Conquest (an ascii based Civ predecessor) before Civ was a thing....

Remember the game Empire, that it was based on? When I was a kid I thought that was fascinating. Looking back, I realize now it took forever for much to really happen, but at the time if seemed amazing.

You can still buy Empire on Steam, I think. The ultra gussied up version of Empire Deluxe. And yes, it was a game of economies, being able to pour out more units than the opponents, but with the possibility of strategic surprise if you were unwary. Great game.

Was thinking about diving back into Civ VI at some point. Is Firaxis done with iterating on the game, BTW? Any plans for future development?

Now is as good a time as any, Budo. There's enough content for that game that you could play 4 hours a day for a year before you really even come close to exhausting it. It is in no way "incomplete".

They haven't mentioned anything in a while. The year-long Frontier Pass content has been finished, with nothing currently announced as a follow-up.

I wish they would make a patch at least. The Era mode from Frontier Pass has a gamebreaking bug in it. If you pick a specific policy card your Production becomes literally zero. As a player you can just avoid the card, but the AI can't. So far the only solution I have found is a mod that outright disables the card.
And then, the Corporations mode is wildly imbalanced, also kinda gamebreaking.
It is a shame since both modes are quite good imo.

Civ VI is done. I have a hard time believing that it will get any more updates (other than bug fixes). Imo it didn't end up as polished as Civ V but it's still decent. I was playing it just last week.

Huh. Ok it looks like Firaxis is done with official updates. That's cool. I haven't touched any mods yet and this means they're focusing their resourcesXCOM3 on otherXCOM3 possible titlesXCOM3.

On a side note, am I the only one who actually thought Beyond Earth was a really good game? I mean it's no Alpha Centauri, but I really enjoyed it for what it was. I certainly wouldn't mind a sequel.

Budo wrote:

Huh. Ok it looks like Firaxis is done with official updates. That's cool. I haven't touched any mods yet and this means they're focusing their resourcesXCOM3 on otherXCOM3 possible titlesXCOM3.

On a side note, am I the only one who actually thought Beyond Earth was a really good game? I mean it's no Alpha Centauri, but I really enjoyed it for what it was. I certainly wouldn't mind a sequel.

I think with some distance from it, I mostly agree with you. I was really disappointed when it came out, because what I wanted was SMAC2 and what I got felt a lot like a lightly skinned Civ V. But that was selling it short -- it really was its own thing, and that's especially true with the expansion. My biggest complaint is that the victory conditions are pretty rough. A whole lot of clicking End Turn -- more so than in a typical 4x.

Also, the soundtrack for it is great.

Budo wrote:

On a side note, am I the only one who actually thought Beyond Earth was a really good game? I mean it's no Alpha Centauri, but I really enjoyed it for what it was. I certainly wouldn't mind a sequel.

You are not alone. I loved Beyond Earth and whenever I think about it I get a bit sad that it never got it's all important 'Second Civ Expansion' that always tends to round out a game in the series nicely.

I loved Beyond Earth. I still played it a bit earlier this month - two games of Pan Asian. I always thought their benefit was a little weak but this time I sniped Wonders that boosted workers and military and that was really fun.

I've been playing this a lot again recently - I picked up the New Frontier stuff in the Christmas sales - and I've been really enjoying it again. I know I said - years ago now - that I thought Civ V was the most accessible Civilisation game there had been, but for whatever reason I seem to find the competing systems in Civ VI easier to understand than previous iterations of the game. I've just won a Emperor level difficulty game with a Science Victory, although I had to repeat a lot of turns when an Apocalypse Asteroid strike took out my only spaceport and I'd only just launched the Exo-Planet expedition. That was pure dum luck as far as I can tell but by the time I had another spaceport up, and I'd so many interruptions thanks to solar storms that I barely had any time to make proper use of the laser stations to accelerate the ship.

It's been a while since I've been able to play and win a Civ game on Emperor - CIv II to be precise, or whatever level it was called back then but it's really quite satisfying building a city that can exploit district adjacency bonuses properly and see your civilisation take off.

2K have had a massive Data Breach. You might want to think about changing passwords etc.

Ouch.
But Civ6 doesnt have accounts or passwords, or am I missing something.

Some of the cross-platform stuff (start on Switch, finish on PC) requires logging into a 2k account.

Thanks. I didn't even think I had a 2k.com account, but Lastpass remembered it for me. Password has been changed.

It took my brain a few moments to process that VI as VI and not VII, and I got all excited for a moment.

Maybe with this additional income, they will finally have money for hiring someone to fix the Culture Industry policy bug.
Though, probably not.

Edit: seems the pass is free if you own either the Anthology, OR already own all DLC (which makes it impossible to buy the Anthology on Steam). That is nice at least.

New leaders sound cool ... just need them to fix whatever bug is on the PlayStation version that borks the game out from turn 300 or so and makes it unfinishable -- so unsatisfying for one of my favourite games.

TIL I spent 150h playing CIV VI on PC alone (and probably another 50h or so on the Switch), but also haven't touched the game in 2,5 years. I feel old.