Civilization VI

Civ VI is actually legitimately amazing as a builder game. The wargame on top is almost a downside, really.

LarryC wrote:

Civ VI is actually legitimately amazing as a builder game. The wargame on top is almost a downside, really.

This. CIV VI is a zen game for me, I like playing on Prince and going autopilot for a while. Through playing Old World I realized that I don't want the war AI to be too challenging either, but the lowly CIV AI takes me out of the game as well.

Guess it could be interesting if War difficulty and Build difficulty, so to speak, were two separate difficulty settings in these games.

I like playing Civ on higher difficulties, but regardless, combat is by far the least fun part to me. I try to avoid it as much as possible, outside of trying remove or limit nearby neighbors early on.

Maybe not a War difficulty setting that made combat easier as you lowered it, but made less and less viable to wage war, for both player and AI. So you could set a game where most civs would be fairly peaceful unless pushed to the brink (by culture bombing or by being boxed in).

I feel like the war mechanics haven't moved past the 90's-era Civ games? And the "combat" in those games was a function of the limitations of the technology at the time. So we've still got war happening in this game that devolves down into [unit as a representation of military force] + [animations] + [broader game queue of activities that are often more fun/interesting than telling a unit to travel X spaces] and you mash all that together and it just doesn't fit right. You get jerked out of the broader long-term planning mindset and are teleported down to "tactics" that don't feel meaningful, or fun, or cohesive with the rest of the game's decision-making structure.

It's almost like war should happen behind the scenes or be a function of other variables and the results are produced for you based on your strategic decisions/goal-setting (set against other players' decisions).

It's almost like, instead of choosing, [Build Building X] and you get a result, the combat is the equivalent of pouring the foundation and placing individual boards and nailing individual nails. It's incongruous to the rest of the game.

Maybe that's just me.

LarryC wrote:

Civ VI is actually legitimately amazing as a builder game. The wargame on top is almost a downside, really.

100 percent. The minute I reframed CivVI in my head as a player v. environment game (rather than player v. AI), my appreciation for it shot straight up.

Very simplified, almost purely output number-based combat, as Top_Shelf describes, is one thing I have generally appreciated in my favorite citybuilder/production chain games, such as Settlers 2 or Pharaoh. With combat that was just an abstracted measure of your production chain. Another example could be Factorio. Automatically creating weapons/warriors in an appropriate amount and quality, and the actual combat mostly handles itself.
The more focus the Settlers series placed on moving armies around, the worse it got.

Going that far might probably also feel weird or not work, in a 4X type game, with specific territories you want to take. In most of the games with the above system, it is more about protecting your territory from invaders.
But something in-between could be an interesting approach.

Or alternatively, make non-war takeover a more viable path in Civ again. It exists in Civ6 of course, and the Dramatic Ages game mode added in the recent season pass, pushes even more in that direction (if it wasn't for the gamebreaking bug I mentioned earlier...). Building on that could offer a fully viable path to gain territory, without controlling individual units.

The dev team for Civ 6 seemed to really like the individual unit spam though. Much worse than the military path in Civ 6 is the micromanagement of religious units, if you go for that victory.

Steam &/or 2K have sorted out their issues. The leader pack can now be added to your account for free if you already own all the anthology content.

Thanks. I actually had one of the previous DLC that I didn't own, so purchasing that for £1.40 added it and the Leader Pass to my account. I'm almost back around to my yearly winter Civilization addiction, so it's good timing.

I really really really want to play this game. I must find time for it

Darkhaund wrote:

I really really really want to play this game. I must find time for it

Playing it on Quick settings is a great experience!

LarryC wrote:
Darkhaund wrote:

I really really really want to play this game. I must find time for it

Playing it on Quick settings is a great experience! :)

can you be kind enough to explain that?

Quick cuts the # of turns in half (250 turns rather than 500) and cuts production and research times in half. So, you can play a game in half the time.

Thank you... LS so good to see you

Well, Firaxis finally proved me wrong. The Culture Industry policy bug has been fixed in a patch yesterday. After only 2 years.
Need to find time to play a game of Civ 6 in celebration

I like how they claim the bug made it "appear as if production would take 999+ turns to finish", what, no, it would literally take 999+ turns, aka. no production would ever happen for the rest of the game.
Oh well, /rant over.

Official confirmation that Civ 7 is in development at Firaxis was made today.

I think that the fallout from Midnight Suns not performing nearly as well was 2K was hoping is starting to show.

How so? I think it's safe to say there was always going to be a Civ 7.

EDIT: Press release about new studio head at Firaxis. Ed Beach will continue to be Creative Director for Civ 7.

I'm excited.

Do we think Jake Solomon left because he didn't get chosen as the new head of the studio?

Sorbicol wrote:

Official confirmation that Civ 7 is in development at Firaxis was made today.

I think that the fallout from Midnight Suns not performing nearly as well was 2K was hoping is starting to show.

I don't own it (yet), but all I've heard from Goodjers is how awesome Midnight Suns is. Did it really not sell well?

Critically acclaimed, commercially flopped, from what Take Two has said.

TBS and CRPGs have always been more niche games despite their increasing popularity and number. I'm not surprised if someone thought putting Marvel IP was going to sell tens of millions of copies. The fact it didn't hit huge numbers combined with Disney's likely huge royalty cut (I'd guess around 25%) probably left their execs scratching their heads.

I mean, Pathfinder WOTR recently hit 1M sales. And by comparison I think Pillars 2 hit 0.5M and they considered that a disappointment.

I don't think the XCOM series is niche, is it? And this Marvel XCOM... With superhero slice of life. What's not to enjoy?

Yeah I meant niche as in it's not FIFA / NBA / COD / Battlefield / Assassin's Creed level of broad appeal this the market is naturally smaller. Not to say it's unpopular, just a smaller fan base for those games as a subset of genres.

Hopefully see something new and exciting from Civ 7. While I generally liked Civ 6, I only played one game after Gathering Storm came out, it definitely did not have the long term engagement for me that 4 and 5 did.

I'm kinda tired of the Civ/Humankind (and Old World albeit I've not played it) setting on Earth. I'd love more BE / Alpha Centauri setting, y'know? Weird exotic biomes and funky space lasers etc.

I'll probable end up buying Civ7 regardless but offworld 4x isn't bounded by history. That's why something like Falling Frontier looks so appealing to me.

Did you play Age of Wonders Planetfall, Bfgp? That has aliens, weird biomes and stuff in it. A very nice game.

Yeah I slightly bounced off Planetfall. I got decently far along the "human" faction but couldn't adapt well to some of the other factions you're rotated into as part of the campaign. The art style was beautiful though.

My boy really enjoyed the tactical combat, but for me, it took too long. A bit like how the Total War battles can be awesome but sometimes that auto resolve button is what gets you through the meat and bones of a playthrough.

This kinda takes me to the same points others have expressed where Civ 6 feels more of a building puzzle with the tedious combat distracting you from the more strategic building gameplay. I'm feeling this a lot with Distant Worlds 2, actually. I love that first interstellar jump, the surging expansion to mine every system and colonise everything profitable. But once combat hits, so much micro required to build and control fleets.

Bfgp wrote:

I'm kinda tired of the Civ/Humankind (and Old World albeit I've not played it) setting on Earth. I'd love more BE / Alpha Centauri setting, y'know? Weird exotic biomes and funky space lasers etc.

I'll probable end up buying Civ7 regardless but offworld 4x isn't bounded by history. That's why something like Falling Frontier looks so appealing to me.

Master of Orion please!

I guess we already have Stellaris, though.

If someone can make a game that rediscovers the magic of MOO2, I'm in! I guess that's at the space 4X level. I'll have to give Stellaris another run soon, but I find I actually enjoy no hyperplanes more than otherwise.

I'll have to check what I get with the Civ 6 season pass, although I think there's season 1 and 2 (I only got season 1 though).

Robear wrote:

I don't think the XCOM series is niche, is it? And this Marvel XCOM... With superhero slice of life. What's not to enjoy?

It wasn’t really Marvel XCOM though was it? It was Mass Effect’s Normandy ‘let’s all be friends’ interactions with an odd little card based tactical battle system attached. I saw enough to know it wasn’t what I wanted from a Marvel XCOM (and to be honest, I didn’t want a Marvel XCOM, I want, and still want XCOM3).

Bfgp wrote:

If someone can make a game that rediscovers the magic of MOO2, I'm in! I guess that's at the space 4X level. I'll have to give Stellaris another run soon, but I find I actually enjoy no hyperplanes more than otherwise.

I'll have to check what I get with the Civ 6 season pass, although I think there's season 1 and 2 (I only got season 1 though).

I wonder if you ought to give Old World a try? It does enough things differently - and interestingly differently - to the standard x4 model to be its own thing. I would like Firaxis to take another stab at remaking Alpha Centari though.

Interstellar Space Genesis might be worth checking out as well?

Bfgp wrote:

If someone can make a game that rediscovers the magic of MOO2, I'm in! I guess that's at the space 4X level. I'll have to give Stellaris another run soon, but I find I actually enjoy no hyperplanes more than otherwise.

Give Stars in Shadow a try. Doesn't overcomplicate things, fairly good AI, and you can jump right in and start playing.