The game is not out yet, but we know almost everything about it already.
The vanilla civs include all the usual players plus Arabia, Brazil, Kongo, Norway, Scythia, Spain and Sumeria. The leaders are really interesting this time around. They include my favorite President, Theodore Roosevelt, as leader of the United States.
Civ VI incorporates almost all the features of Civ V, including religion and city states. They also mixed up several elements of the gameplay. For example, you now need to construct several buildings on districts. Districts are constructed outside of the city, which effectively means that you have to decide between mining more of a city's hinterland resources or constructing buildings instead. To make this more complicated, happiness is now local instead of global. It is majorly affected by the luxury resources any given city possesses. Another neat feature is that social policies now function the same way as research. You need a certain amount of culture points to unlock new and more sophisticated levels of government.
Militarily, the game is mixing things up by allowing you to eventually combine several units into a large army or armada. These combined units still function as one unit as far as I know, but they have greatly increased strength. This feature becomes available only later in the game.
Finally, the game also adds a new religious victory.
Civilization VI looks like it will be the most complete vanilla game to date. That having been said, I still am skeptical considering how mediocre the launches of Civ IV and V were. I will probably wait for expansions, but the game looks great so far.
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
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Kiwi the Tortoise
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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
I have seen some gameplay of the pre-release build.
A few worries I have are:
- That I haven't seen any mechanic limiting expansion (founded cities). CivV's use global happiness for this and I liked how you could do well with few cities in that game.
- No sign of diplomatic victory or UN stuff, which was absolutely great in CivV's final version as it also added importance to your city-state relations.
Otherwise, I am certainly interested in it and consider to buy it earlier than my wallet would like.
A few worries I have are:
- That I haven't seen any mechanic limiting expansion (founded cities). CivV's use global happiness for this and I liked how you could do well with few cities in that game.
- No sign of diplomatic victory or UN stuff, which was absolutely great in CivV's final version as it also added importance to your city-state relations.
Otherwise, I am certainly interested in it and consider to buy it earlier than my wallet would like.
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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
There's no diplo victory. To be honest, I'm not devastated by that given that diplo victory often just amounted to being ahead and bribing city states with lots of gold.
Good point on infinite city sprawl though. I'm not sure there is any mechanic to limit that. I think the main limiting factor is that individual cities need a lot of space to accommodate both districts and resource use. I think Civ VI is going to be a different game than Civ V and will likely encourage rapid spread of territory and cities. The good thing there is that this also raises the stakes because it will be a highly competitive game to fan territory out as far as possible.
Good point on infinite city sprawl though. I'm not sure there is any mechanic to limit that. I think the main limiting factor is that individual cities need a lot of space to accommodate both districts and resource use. I think Civ VI is going to be a different game than Civ V and will likely encourage rapid spread of territory and cities. The good thing there is that this also raises the stakes because it will be a highly competitive game to fan territory out as far as possible.
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Kiwi the Tortoise
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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Guess the lack of diplomatic victory points towards a stronger focus on competitive online multiplayer, as that was basically not an option (unless you get enough votes by yourself, which required control over all city states, world ideology/religion and preferably the Forbidden Palace).
The lack of UN (and competing for city state votes) makes me sad.
From what I've seen, the game encourages you to place cities close to each other as district perks splash over to other cities if close enough. So the game actively encourages squeezing micro-settlements in between. The value of each individual tile under your control has increased, however. As every wonder/improvement/district take up an entire tile, so there should be less wasted space.
The lack of UN (and competing for city state votes) makes me sad.
From what I've seen, the game encourages you to place cities close to each other as district perks splash over to other cities if close enough. So the game actively encourages squeezing micro-settlements in between. The value of each individual tile under your control has increased, however. As every wonder/improvement/district take up an entire tile, so there should be less wasted space.
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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Even if district benefits carry over, you still run the risk of not having enough space to provide sufficient production, growth, wealth, etc. to each individual city. As you stated, every tile matters more in this so I think there will be some thought behind where you plop down each new settlement. Too much overlap will probably hinder your own growth. Early on it likely makes more sense to spread far and wide, while later it will probably benefit you more to settle more densely.
While the game will probably foster ICS strategies, I don't necessarily have a problem with that.
CynicalBrit seemed to like the game a lot, but did mention that the AI was very crappy for the most part.
While the game will probably foster ICS strategies, I don't necessarily have a problem with that.
CynicalBrit seemed to like the game a lot, but did mention that the AI was very crappy for the most part.
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Kiwi the Tortoise
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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Ok, I jumped the shark and bought it (a Steam key at Amazon for roughly 20 bucks less)
Just finished my first game as Trajan of Rome on Prince difficulty.
A few initial thoughts, mostly on the problems:
- Wonders are more costly and less useful than ever. Not just huge amount of production, but you also need to sacrifice a city tile to place it on that requires very specific conditions (e.g. next to a certain district type while adjecent to a river). Most of the wonders are not worthwhile enough to go through all of this. These requirements are even worse if you ever want to found a national park..
- Sean Bean
- The district building is fun and makes the early-to-mid game interesting. Once you put one down you can't change it though, so you better plan ahead.
- The city states are kinda useless, much like in vanilla CivV. They give you some perks but not particular interesting or impactful ones.. especially in the late-game you feel the absent UN council.
- General late-game problems. Early on colonizing, exploring, city-planning, worker duties or plotting how to get science boosts is interesting. In the late game it doesn't. You get swamped by basic (less-interesting) empire micromanagement issues and as the turns take longer due to AI unit spamming (quantity instead of quality), the games pacing is going downhill.
- The music is great.
- I like how archaeology works. You need to build an archaeology museum and only then that city can build a single archaeologist which lasts until the museum is filled. No more spamming archaeologist to have them ravage the countryside like a swarm of locusts.
- The social policy system is kinda less good, despite being more flexible. Getting a policy in CivV felt like Christmas and all choices were impactful, here you just click most of them away as you will never use them.
- No proper replay feature...
- Great artists/writers/musicians are not a solid as in CivV. If you don't have slots (and you generally have fewer slots here), they are useless. In CivV all of them at least had and alternate use like e.g. writers creating a political thesis that boosts your path to the next social perk. The other great people skills are on one hand fun, as they are usually fitting and add variety, but on the other hand you will find many that are hard to use or useless for your situation. As such, the system feels inconsistent right now.
- Faith is worth gold! (and the other way around).
Just finished my first game as Trajan of Rome on Prince difficulty.
A few initial thoughts, mostly on the problems:
- Wonders are more costly and less useful than ever. Not just huge amount of production, but you also need to sacrifice a city tile to place it on that requires very specific conditions (e.g. next to a certain district type while adjecent to a river). Most of the wonders are not worthwhile enough to go through all of this. These requirements are even worse if you ever want to found a national park..
- Sean Bean
- The district building is fun and makes the early-to-mid game interesting. Once you put one down you can't change it though, so you better plan ahead.
- The city states are kinda useless, much like in vanilla CivV. They give you some perks but not particular interesting or impactful ones.. especially in the late-game you feel the absent UN council.
- General late-game problems. Early on colonizing, exploring, city-planning, worker duties or plotting how to get science boosts is interesting. In the late game it doesn't. You get swamped by basic (less-interesting) empire micromanagement issues and as the turns take longer due to AI unit spamming (quantity instead of quality), the games pacing is going downhill.
- The music is great.
- I like how archaeology works. You need to build an archaeology museum and only then that city can build a single archaeologist which lasts until the museum is filled. No more spamming archaeologist to have them ravage the countryside like a swarm of locusts.
- The social policy system is kinda less good, despite being more flexible. Getting a policy in CivV felt like Christmas and all choices were impactful, here you just click most of them away as you will never use them.
- No proper replay feature...
- Great artists/writers/musicians are not a solid as in CivV. If you don't have slots (and you generally have fewer slots here), they are useless. In CivV all of them at least had and alternate use like e.g. writers creating a political thesis that boosts your path to the next social perk. The other great people skills are on one hand fun, as they are usually fitting and add variety, but on the other hand you will find many that are hard to use or useless for your situation. As such, the system feels inconsistent right now.
- Faith is worth gold! (and the other way around).
Kiwi the TORT joins the Shining Force!
Re: Sid Meier's Civilization VI
I'll definitely be waiting for expansions and patches this time around.
I did hear that this was one of the better vanilla civ games, but that doesn't say much when basically every vanilla civ game was pretty much shit.
Based on what I've seen, I definitely agree with you on Civ V's social policies being better than Civ VI's...system. Social policies had flaws. They were generally imbalanced and some felt useless in contrast to others. Tradition was almost always the best option, with Liberty being an alternate/situational route. Honor was good only as a supplement to tradition or liberty, and piety was utter crap. In the later game, it was all about rationalism with the other options ranging from decent to useless. With all that said though, you're absolutely right that any policies you got tended to be highly useful boosts. I haven't heard good things about Civ VI's replacement system.
It seems like this game has a more hardcore religious game, which does seem interesting to me. That said, I find the apostles battling each other with lightning to be hilariously absurd. I saw that in a trailer and couldn't help but laugh.
To be honest, I can't even get too mad at something like that.
I did hear that this was one of the better vanilla civ games, but that doesn't say much when basically every vanilla civ game was pretty much shit.
Based on what I've seen, I definitely agree with you on Civ V's social policies being better than Civ VI's...system. Social policies had flaws. They were generally imbalanced and some felt useless in contrast to others. Tradition was almost always the best option, with Liberty being an alternate/situational route. Honor was good only as a supplement to tradition or liberty, and piety was utter crap. In the later game, it was all about rationalism with the other options ranging from decent to useless. With all that said though, you're absolutely right that any policies you got tended to be highly useful boosts. I haven't heard good things about Civ VI's replacement system.
It seems like this game has a more hardcore religious game, which does seem interesting to me. That said, I find the apostles battling each other with lightning to be hilariously absurd. I saw that in a trailer and couldn't help but laugh.
To be honest, I can't even get too mad at something like that.