Malf on 24/10/2016 at 09:59

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Thanks for pulling my attention away from this at the weekend henke & Thirith. I needed the break :D

So, Civ VI then.
Loving it, and can see my life being consumed by it for a good time to come.

There's loads of changes this time, and all for the better as far as I'm concerned.
After ditching my first playthrough and dropping the difficulty in order to learn how to play, I'm now almost at the end of my first proper game, and feel in a good position to offer some informed criticism on the new systems.

The "unstacked" cities makes geographically placing your cities a very important strategic choice, and you won't know all of the repercussions until late on in the game (or until you've had a few play-throughs).
I've been playing as Victoria on a huge "Islands" map as I love exploiting the AI's traditional complete lack of understanding of naval combat. While the AI is still as dumb as a brick when it comes to countering a strong navy, the interesting thing is how having lots of coastal cities has been excellent for trade, but bad for individual city development. The less ground-based tiles available to your city, the lower your production output shall be.
This has meant that my civ has weirdly mimicked Victoria's real empire to an uncanny degree. Okay, so I haven't taken advantage of her unique units to any great degree, but my civ's strength has been entirely reliant on creating maritime trade routes with as many other cities as possible. Subsequently, this has influenced how I've built my cities and formed my government, with focuses on generating Great Admirals, founding a religion that generates more cash for me, and implementing civics that favour trade routes and navies.

While my starting island barely had enough room for the three cities I'd founded there, I also got incredibly lucky in that just off the coast was the city state of Lisboa. City states are now leaps and bounds more interesting than they were in Civ V, and currying favour with them (by means of sending Envoys) offers tangible benefits. Once I'd attained "Suzerain" status with Lisboa, it meant that my maritime trade routes couldn't be raided, a massive advantage considering how focussed I had been on over-arching naval superiority.

Religion is also massively improved, although I do worry that it may be too advantageous, and playing as a "No religion" won't be possible.
However, in the meantime, it's massively fun to play with, and critically adds another element to keep things fresh in the late game, where Civ games have traditionally lagged.
Early on in the game when each of us were founding religions, Togo of Japan was my closest neighbour. He had founded Buddhism, while I founded "New Wave" (my own custom religion). I had decided early on that I'd be as peaceful as possible unless provoked, yet Togo wanted to spread his beliefs to my cities. I responded by sending a wave of apostles to all of his cities, all but wiping out Buddhism and converting his holy city to my religion.
He in turn got a mite pissed off that I'd converted his entire population and started a war. It was the only attack I'd face until the twentieth century, and I soundly wiped the floor with him. After he lost a city to my navy, he rolled over and offered peace. I let him live.
To this day he hates me for converting his holy city. I even gave him back the captured city after giving it various improvements in an attempt to assuage his anger, but nope, I converted his holy city, so he hates me.

Doesn't stop him spreading my religion for me though :D

I've since spread my religion over the map, with only one major roadblock stymieing complete conversion.

Bloody Ghandi.

Ghandi loves religion, and the only thing he loves more? Spreading it all over the place like it's fertiliser. It took me a long time to get to a stage where New Wave was more dominant than Hinduism, but I got there eventually, and without a shot being fired this time, mostly thanks to him not seemingly minding when I converted a Hindu city. Most other leaders would be all like "GET YER PROSELYTISING ARSE OUT OF MY BACK YARD!" as soon as I would attempt even one conversion, but Ghandi?
Wouldn't say a word when I sent my apostles to convert his cities. Every time the git would send a missionary anywhere near one of my cities, I'd just open diplomatic channels and tell him "NOPE". Occasionally he'd ignore me, but that in turn would allow me to denounce him and give me a Casus Belli, a new diplomatic implementation that basically means "Excuse to go to war that doesn't label me a warmonger". And one of Ghandi's traits means that he respects people who keep the peace, so it was in his best interest not to start a war with me. Nyah, sucks to be Ghandi.

I could go on with little stories like this from just this one playthrough (for example, that war in the twentieth century? Trajan attacked me with no provocation, so I took every city from him except one, and the only reason I didn't take that was because it wasn't on the coast and therefore not in range of my battleships), but I'll sum up the other impressive improvements I can think of here:

Fog of War.
Diplomacy.
Defined NPC behaviour, yet with a hidden, random trait to add spice.
3-use builders that build improvements immediately.
Civics, a cultural development tree that runs alongside the tech tree.
Corps.
Card-based government.
Eurekas, objectives that can accelerate civic or tech developments.

The stuff I have problems with at the moment are things like re-finding natural wonders on the map (important as they add massive bonuses to districts) and minor interface issues like that.
Performance is great, and I'm impressed that turns don't take anywhere near as long in the late game as they did in Civ V.

Overall, if you're a Civ fan, this is essential, and as it includes a lot of the features that in the past would have been reserved for expansions / DLC, you're getting a more complete package than you got with Civ VI & V.

My only slight worry at the moment is the seeming absence of Steam Workshop support, but I'm sure that'll come in short order.

Random_Taffer on 24/10/2016 at 12:54

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Nice write up, thanks for reviewing!
I'm looking forward to picking this one up.

Random_Taffer on 24/10/2016 at 15:14

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Certainly! Civ II was the first real PC game I ever owned back in the day alongside Thief and it sparked my interest in world history. Actually currently reading The Greatest Knight, which is the collected accounts about William Marshall.
I actually never played another Civ game until V came out.
I've played hours and hours and hours of V...

Renzatic on 24/10/2016 at 19:45

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This is the first game I've had to sacrifice this year, since far too many good games have come out already, and I've spent way too much money for comfort. Hell, I've still got Tyranny and Dishonored 2 to look forward to next month. That's a little over $100 right there.

Damn you, 2016! :mad:

Vae on 25/10/2016 at 04:23

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This is why I'm avoiding it...for now.

It's the crack-cocaine of games.