Civilization has never been a bastion of great computer opponent strategy, but it typically was good enough to suspend disbelief and enjoy. However, VI was just horrific. I played a lot of VI and stuck with it for a few years but the AI still would declare war... not attack, put little to no effort into defense.
It was a fun game and I got my value out of it but eventually it just became frustrating with the AI sort of rage quits and almost behaves like a human greifer just taking random actions that make no sense at all / kill the fun of the game.
I've played civ games constantly since civ but unlike the previous games I just had to quit VI because the AI made it seem so pointless when it ruins a perfectly good game by just going bonkers after you've put hours into it...
Unless it has gotten better, if you have a low tolerance for wonky AI, you might want to pass on this one.
This, sadly, is so accurate. That, or the fact that as difficulty levels increase, the game just gives the AI opponents crude modifiers - they don't get smarter, they just get cheat codes.
I had the same reaction to that comment. I bought Civ VI for the iPad for maybe $40. I played it for probably 80 hours total, and felt like I got my money’s worth.
It’s hard to imagine the mindset where you play a game for “years” and then say it wasn’t worth the $50 or so it cost.
No, it hasn't. The only way to really make the game challenging is to heap bonuses on the AI player, which is what the game does at higher difficulty levels.
You'd think at this point it would be worthwhile to use ML to train your AI for basically every big name game. It's fairly clear that such methods can make computer players that are better than any human player, and once you have the net it would be pretty easy to have different level computers based purely on how many epochs the net is trained for.
Late game Civ 6 is nearly unplayable. Civ 6, in particular, really encourages a "wide" play style, where you need to own many cities to win. Improving tiles and planning districts in all of those cities requires so much micro-management. Throw in a war on top of that where you have to move individual units around and it is just all too much, especially as the time it takes to calculate each turn increases. Does anyone know a good empire building game that doesn't have this problem?
> Does anyone know a good empire building game that doesn't have this problem?
Stellaris, lets you put colonies on autopilot. It's ripe with other problems, but handling late game scale isn't an issue unless you like to hyper optimize.
If you are willing to stretch beyond "Empire Building", I find Prison Architect amazing.
The PC version is the best, but there are Console Versions (even Switch), and IOS versions that have about 80% of the game.
I admit my thinking might be effected by quarantine but Prison Architect scratched my strategy simulator itch in a way CIV used to and hasn't for the last couple years.
It's way more contained, and more supportive of fun play sessions that are sub 30 minutes which is all I can squeeze in now.
It's a bit of an unsolvable tension. Too little to do per city and the early game where you have few cities is boring, too much per city and the lategame is overwhelming. Add a way to delegate tasks to AI, and the question arises of why those tasks are in the game at all if you lose nothing by automating them. And if you discourage wide play (which is my main complaint of the prior game, Civ 5) then you're barely interacting with the broader world at all, and the rest of the map seems pointless.
Try Stellaris, it is also a grand strategy game about empire building and diplomacy and wars... etc but I love the part that it is all real time, no turn base. And even better: I can pause the game and make a lot of commands, then unpause to see it runs. And able to increase or decrease the game speed.
And this game is on sale on steam very often. It was free last week though.
You can win with few cities. I’ve won with one city on emperor difficulty, and regularly win on immortal with less than 6 cities. It’s harder, but doable. You can also do smaller maps, or island maps where space is too limited to have tons of cities.
Civ 1 & 2 also had this problem. Civ's 3, 4 & 5 added some mechanisms to discourage a wide play style. Civ 6 has some of these mechanisms but they aren't as effective as they previously were.
I loved the earlier Civ games, and almost everything else with Sid Meier's name attached, but these new ones feel so focused on being pretty that they forget to have good mechanics. I honestly can't remember anything special about Civ 4/5/6, or anything that would make me want to play one of them more than the others.
Plus they've been putting so much of the interesting content behind a DLC wall that giving away the base game is basically pure profit for them. Paradox proved this business model with CK2 and EU4, which is why CK2 is like a $400 game now.
I think I'll just go play Alpha Centauri again instead.
I played up to 5 and while I enjoyed it, was more like a 3/5 meh not bad experience. I haven't even bothered with 6 and based on the comments here not going to either.
I agree that Civ 4 didn't really take the game to new heights the way 2 and 3 did, but it is probably the most sound and deep iteration of the series. It fixed all of the problems with degenerate gameplay that plagued the previous games and balances the viability of all the victory conditions. The tech tree and wonders are well tuned to make a lot of interesting strategies workable. The BTS expansion has the best vanilla AI in the series too.
On top of all that, it's the most moddable game in the series! I might just go see what people have done with it in the past couple of years... oh no...
This seems like a very interesting move from Epic's side. Their giveaways had some pretty nice giveaway games in the past (Assassins Creed Syndicate, Darksiders 1 and 2, Amnesia, Into the Breach and Towerfall)[1], but recently they've started giving away far bigger games like GTA V, and now Civ 6.
I wonder if this'll actually kickstart their market share.
That doesn't matter to me because I'm such a casual gamer I waited for the first steam sale before I bought RDR2 on PC. Out of principle as a cheapskate PC user.
But to most gamers GTA V and Civ VI are old games by now.
Either way, clearly Epic are trying to buy into the market share of Steam. Well needed competition.
No! No, no! Nicotine is less addictive than Civilisation. One person I accidentally introduced to Civ burned her PSU on the first game - which lasted 16 hours - all she could muster was "one. More. Turn"....
Then again it's been so long since I played it. One quick game won't hurt. It's just a few turns, is it not?..
I've come close, many times. Usually outdone by some super AI (I call them all Alexanders, after my first crushing defeat at the hands of none of than, Alexander the Great of Greece).
Never seen the late game Death Robot, never seen the Stealth Bombers... and I have an embarrassing amount of time in this game.
I used to only play on Epic with Random Personalities. Even when I tried Quick pacing, I still didn't get to the very end of the game without losing. Those cultural defeats sneak up on you.
I certainly have nuked more than my fair share of cities though... very satisfying.
something about the graphics has continually rubbed me wrong about Civ 6. It sounds weird but I can't get into it. Civ 5? I will play that all day long.
Same for me, the graphic of Civ 6 always felt sluggish, at least now I can get more people to try it with me.
On another side, the multiplayer in Civ 5 was always broken, the saves didn't load, someone getting dropped almost always meant 2+ turns lost for them. Hopefull this one doesn't suffer from this any more.
Personal opinion, Civ 6 gameplay feels like it sacrificed some personality in the name of balance. Civ bonuses are more muted, so it feels like less personality.
It introduced interesting new systems, but the agenda system usually feels more annoying than actually offering interesting long term strategic options. Same goes for religion, the religious combat mechanic is too fiddly, leading to me mostly just ignoring it.
Civ 6 is a deeper game, but for whatever reason I can't put my finger on, it was just a bit less fun.
I played a little bit, but what really made the beginning hard for me was that Barbarians suddenly "get away" from you. In V and earlier, a Barbarian came, your warrior killed him, fine.
In VI the Barbarian is faster than you, so it gets out of sight quick, and from then on you get one wave of Barbarians after another.
Also, I didn't understand the mechanics of the new religion system, but I think I got it on a basic level at least by now.
In some ways, I like VI (the district system can be infuriating, but is basically a good idea), I like the graphics, as well, but I never got "into" it as I did with V.
Honest question: in what ways do you feel it to be deeper than Civ 4? (I'm a 4 fan who did not like 5, and now I'm wondering whether I should give 6 a try.)
It is turn based. Each turn taking anything from seconds (early in the game, knowing only the immediate surroundings of the single city, with zero known opponents) to multiple minutes (late in the game, having a complete planet as play area and >100 opponent cities). But in aggregate it's terribly easy to play for hours on end, often into the next morning.
You can't make a price low enough if the product isn't good enough.
Civ is the only game I've played consistently since college, 1994. Civ VI breaks the balance a good strategy game has between aesthetics and efficient movement. It's become too inefficient to enable committed game play.
One possible progression of Civ would be to enable players to script movement or trade or war, to make it even more efficient, so that game play scales with the size of your empire, which indeed reflects the way leaders increasingly rule larger organizations through policy rather than direct action...
Maybe, but it's only free on windows, on Epic Games' store, which has a monthly free game apparently. They seem to be trying to buy their way into the user count steam has, and it might even be working.
They’ve just announced a Season Pass that will give players content through next year, so it’s likely an attempt to increase the player base to maximize sales of that pass.
It’s an unfortunate sign that they may be moving away from paid, yet substantial expansions.
Try the Historic Speed mod on Gathering Storm. It brings Civ VI into better balance, its a blast, especially if you like the longer game speeds. (I also turn down the storms and turn off city states altogether). But I agree there's too much tedium in the late game and movement takes too long -- like a decade to move armies from one side of a continent to the other. Another good mod is the trade mod that lets you automatically renew trade routes.
Or perhaps it just needs to update its main formula. After playing Endless Legend (which brought great and inventive stories to 4X genre), Civilization VI just feels stale and out of date. It's pretty, but nowhere near as interesting.
I love the civ games and Civ 6 as well, but I fully agree that the gameplay can become a little tedious at scale. Moving large groups of units deters me from wanting to play really large empires despite it being my favorite playstyle
The funny thing is that the tedious army of movement of Civs 5 & 6 are the result of countering the (controversially) tedious unit stacking mechanic of prior Civs. There ought to be some happy medium here, which I wonder if they're saving for Civ 7 (though they did clearly try to work there way towards that happy medium in 6 with the corps/army mechanic). Even just allowing Great Generals to stack units into "columns" for quick transport, and then deploy them at their destination (pseudo Endless Legend style) would be a massive improvement.
As someone who's been playing since Civ 3, agreed. Every wide, lategame empire turns into a management quagmire eventually.
Previous games did have a feature where you could assign AI governors to handle the city for you, but they were all so bad at their jobs that I could never being myself to use them.
If anything I think Civ 6 is the least affected, because now cities can be set to perpetually produce "projects" (which produce empire-wide resources like science or faith) rather than working through the tree of buildings or units. It still doesn't make the lategame nearly as good as the early game, though.
CIV6 was the first civ game I've played that I wasn't hooked on. I don't know if its the gameplay, the AI or what but I just didn't care and regret my purchase.
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Civilization has never been a bastion of great computer opponent strategy, but it typically was good enough to suspend disbelief and enjoy. However, VI was just horrific. I played a lot of VI and stuck with it for a few years but the AI still would declare war... not attack, put little to no effort into defense.
It was a fun game and I got my value out of it but eventually it just became frustrating with the AI sort of rage quits and almost behaves like a human greifer just taking random actions that make no sense at all / kill the fun of the game.
I've played civ games constantly since civ but unlike the previous games I just had to quit VI because the AI made it seem so pointless when it ruins a perfectly good game by just going bonkers after you've put hours into it...
Unless it has gotten better, if you have a low tolerance for wonky AI, you might want to pass on this one.
> It was a fun game and I got my value out of it
> you might want to pass on this [game that I played for years which is temporarily free]
?
It’s hard to imagine the mindset where you play a game for “years” and then say it wasn’t worth the $50 or so it cost.
Folks putting time into a game that takes a while to complete might take quite awhile before they realize AI rage quitting is pretty common.
Stellaris, lets you put colonies on autopilot. It's ripe with other problems, but handling late game scale isn't an issue unless you like to hyper optimize.
The PC version is the best, but there are Console Versions (even Switch), and IOS versions that have about 80% of the game.
I admit my thinking might be effected by quarantine but Prison Architect scratched my strategy simulator itch in a way CIV used to and hasn't for the last couple years.
It's way more contained, and more supportive of fun play sessions that are sub 30 minutes which is all I can squeeze in now.
And this game is on sale on steam very often. It was free last week though.
The most recent update to Stellaris (with admin offices) makes going wide the strongest strategy to do this by far. Still fun though.
That said, if you're going for cultural or science victories, tall is still the way to go.
try Settlers, maybe Age of Wonders? though both are fairly different from Civ and Total War
Plus they've been putting so much of the interesting content behind a DLC wall that giving away the base game is basically pure profit for them. Paradox proved this business model with CK2 and EU4, which is why CK2 is like a $400 game now.
I think I'll just go play Alpha Centauri again instead.
Aww c’mon, not even one thing? What about the greatest video game song ever produced (Baba Yetu): https://youtu.be/IJiHDmyhE1A
Agree on Alpha Centauri—definitely recommend picking up a copy on GOG for anyone in the mood for a classic strategy game timesink.
I played up to 5 and while I enjoyed it, was more like a 3/5 meh not bad experience. I haven't even bothered with 6 and based on the comments here not going to either.
On top of all that, it's the most moddable game in the series! I might just go see what people have done with it in the past couple of years... oh no...
I wonder if this'll actually kickstart their market share.
[1] Source - https://old.reddit.com/r/EpicGamesPC/comments/e9vj2c/updated...
That doesn't matter to me because I'm such a casual gamer I waited for the first steam sale before I bought RDR2 on PC. Out of principle as a cheapskate PC user.
But to most gamers GTA V and Civ VI are old games by now.
Either way, clearly Epic are trying to buy into the market share of Steam. Well needed competition.
I would prefer the option to buy via Steam, but Epic's PC exclusive game has been on point.
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Then again it's been so long since I played it. One quick game won't hurt. It's just a few turns, is it not?..
I've come close, many times. Usually outdone by some super AI (I call them all Alexanders, after my first crushing defeat at the hands of none of than, Alexander the Great of Greece).
Never seen the late game Death Robot, never seen the Stealth Bombers... and I have an embarrassing amount of time in this game.
I used to only play on Epic with Random Personalities. Even when I tried Quick pacing, I still didn't get to the very end of the game without losing. Those cultural defeats sneak up on you.
I certainly have nuked more than my fair share of cities though... very satisfying.
What a great game.
I'd play for 10-15 hours, and get hungrier and hungrier. But I just had to play one more turn.
On another side, the multiplayer in Civ 5 was always broken, the saves didn't load, someone getting dropped almost always meant 2+ turns lost for them. Hopefull this one doesn't suffer from this any more.
It introduced interesting new systems, but the agenda system usually feels more annoying than actually offering interesting long term strategic options. Same goes for religion, the religious combat mechanic is too fiddly, leading to me mostly just ignoring it.
Civ 6 is a deeper game, but for whatever reason I can't put my finger on, it was just a bit less fun.
In VI the Barbarian is faster than you, so it gets out of sight quick, and from then on you get one wave of Barbarians after another.
Also, I didn't understand the mechanics of the new religion system, but I think I got it on a basic level at least by now.
In some ways, I like VI (the district system can be infuriating, but is basically a good idea), I like the graphics, as well, but I never got "into" it as I did with V.
Civ is the only game I've played consistently since college, 1994. Civ VI breaks the balance a good strategy game has between aesthetics and efficient movement. It's become too inefficient to enable committed game play.
One possible progression of Civ would be to enable players to script movement or trade or war, to make it even more efficient, so that game play scales with the size of your empire, which indeed reflects the way leaders increasingly rule larger organizations through policy rather than direct action...
It’s an unfortunate sign that they may be moving away from paid, yet substantial expansions.
Until anything in the calculated path changes.
Previous games did have a feature where you could assign AI governors to handle the city for you, but they were all so bad at their jobs that I could never being myself to use them.
If anything I think Civ 6 is the least affected, because now cities can be set to perpetually produce "projects" (which produce empire-wide resources like science or faith) rather than working through the tree of buildings or units. It still doesn't make the lategame nearly as good as the early game, though.