Civilization VI

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Jinjer

^ on the other hand, at least everyone has to contend with barbarians now (and you get an advantage for playing tall since there's less territory to police

Actually the best way to deal with the barbarian problem is to civilize any terrain around you. This is true in VI as it was in V.
Expand everywhere and there will be nothing to "police" anymore. Leave some nearby land untaken and you're just inviting barbarians to knock at your door.

Though it might be actually convenient to get extra money from razing their camps if you can afford the military units.

[ChuckE]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Though it might be actually convenient to get extra money from razing their camps if you can afford the military units.

Indeed. Leave couple of units and repeatably raid their lairs

Though I prefer to clean the fog out of the whole map, leaving watchdogs here and there.

[Dist]

Originally Posted by VDZ

Be prepared to wait forever, then. Because I doubt that's coming, ever.

It involves tons of work, and most people are satisfied (as in, no significantly negative effect on their experience) with Civ V-level AI. Those that aren't will likely also be disappointed in the improved AI. It makes no financial sense to invest development time into producing actually good AI, and Civ is a commercial game series.

Forever? Hardly.

What Firaxis won't add, the community will. There is a lot of mods available for Civ VI already, and the mod-tools aren't even released yet. There's few AI improvement mods already and they do work, though it's nowhere the level it could be. But without the mod-tools, the level of mods the community can create is very limited.

[MrTerrorist]

So now Poland can go into Space?

[felix]

Maybe it's just me but that sounded really OP.

[Dist]

Originally Posted by felix

Maybe it's just me but that sounded really OP.

It is OP . Not sure what Firaxis is thinking with these "balance" changes introducted in the Winter Patch, but then they release clearly un-balanced Civs like this.

What the video failed to mention also is that you can destroy buildings under construction if the land is stolen. It's pretty obvious if you think about it but I didn't realize it until a friend told me .. So imagine this: Playing on a slower speed, building a wonder for a LONG time and then a Polish settler+Military Engineer comes next to your wonder, plops down a city + fort and kaboom .. Wonder gone.

Troll-y as fuck.

[Jaden]

I'd be OK with it if you got to declare war without penalties after Poland steals your territory. It's worrying that they didn't mention any diplomatic impact in the video...

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Dist

It is OP . Not sure what Firaxis is thinking with these "balance" changes introducted in the Winter Patch, but then they release clearly un-balanced Civs like this.

What the video failed to mention also is that you can destroy buildings under construction if the land is stolen. It's pretty obvious if you think about it but I didn't realize it until a friend told me .. So imagine this: Playing on a slower speed, building a wonder for a LONG time and then a Polish settler+Military Engineer comes next to your wonder, plops down a city + fort and kaboom .. Wonder gone.

Troll-y as fuck.

Wait, what if you let them finish the wonder and then annex the tile?

[Triple_R]

My favorite video game franchise of all-time is probably the Civilization franchise. Mostly due to its game mechanics, this is one Civilization game I wanted to thoroughly review.

I should make clear where I'm coming from - I've played Civ II (for the original Playstation), Civ III, at least one of the Call to Powers, various freeciv versions, Civ IV, Civ V, Beyond Earth, and now Civ VI. While I am an experienced Civ gamer, I'm far from an expert one or a PtP one (my old buddy Archon_Wing is probably a good guy to turn to for that). I typically play at Prince/King difficulty (or whatever I feel is closest to "normal"), and I've never played the game against human opponents. So this experience will definitely color and shape my review.

I received Civ VI as a Christmas gift, and have played it a lot over the past week. I've tried out a few different leader/civilization options, and I've successfully finished one playthrough as Rome/Trajan, achieving Cultural Victory.

The remainder of the review will be in spoiler space below, and will be spoilerrific in a sense.

Spoiler for Civ VI review:

I'm going to break this down into the following categories - Game Mechanics, Visuals, Audio, Story, AI Quality. I will start with Game Mechanics.

Game Mechanics:

Here is where Civilization has made its biggest jump forward, very fittingly like its new "Eureka!" system. A simply superb system. The "Eureka!" system is incredibly cool the first time I saw it in action. It gives me the same feeling that getting a nice little gift from ancient ruins/tribal settlements does. Let's be honest, most of us veteran Civ players love those little "huts"; they spice up the early game, and are often missed in the late game, unless we find one in a remote location in 1900 and laugh loudly at discovering "nuclear fission" or the like in a tribal hut.

The Eureka system is like that, except on steroids and made a more essential part of the game. The Eureka system also rewards players for being adventurous, and diversifying their activity, so it's not entirely random. The next game mechanic I will look at is governments/policies.

This as well I love. So far, I much prefer it to the more locked-in policy options that Civ V gave you. And I like how it's well-balanced between the various types of governments - Communism vs. Democracy vs. Fascism largely being a question of what basic policy type (economic, diplomatic, military) you like the most. Indeed, the governments/policies aspect of the game offers a generally good mix of rock-solid game mechanics and historical realism. Next I'll move to districts.

I was iffy on the district system at first, as I felt it might be over-complicating the game, especially given everything else that was now going on (such as the Eureka system). But after a few Civ VI games, and one long complete one, I think the district system represents an improvement. It provides truly interesting choices from one city to the next to the next.

The various game mechanic changes made by Civ VI represent, in total, a genuinely worthwhile and even dramatic shift from Civ V to Civ VI. This has been a pleasant surprise to me. While there's still good familiarity there, especially after I get used to these changes, there's also a lot of freshness and newness to Civ VI's mechanics. The leap forward is great enough that I want to give kudos to the Civ VI game makers. Civ V is a pretty solid game, and is part of a very lengthy and popular series, and it can't be easy to keep finding good ways to push the franchise forward in new/interesting game mechanics. Civ VI has accomplished exactly this, and in flying colors.

Other game mechanics I'll discuss in following sections.


Visuals

This was easily the biggest hurdle for me to overcome. On my very first time playing Civ VI, I was actually astounded, in a bad way, by what I was looking at after I had picked my leader and was playing the game. Keep in mind that Civ VI was a gift to me, and I never researched it much before playing it. I was stunned by the visuals.

While the game mechanics represent a large leap forward, the visuals actually struck me as a regression, of all things. Early game terrain looked less realistic to me, with little symbols on every useful resource tile rather than just a naturalistic image of fish swimming or cattle grazing. And even as someone who likes bright colorful imagery, I found the terrain almost impossibly bright/colorful. In total, my initial thought was "This can't be for real, can it? This can't be a new Civ game.This looks like a school-based educational game for kids between the ages of 5 and 12!". What also contributed to this is the leaders going from super-realistic in Civ V to looking like Pixar 3D models in Civ VI.

One bit of good news is that I kinda get used to the visuals over time. The bad news is that, on the whole, I still feel like Civ VI is unusually weak here. My early hope for Civilization SEVEN is that it takes much of what works here in VI (and upgrades it) while going back to a much more Civ V-like visuals.

One factor that helps some here - I love how each major city improvement gets its own tile. I love how each Wonder gets its own tile. I like this for both visuals, and game mechanics. No longer can you just spam wonders in your main city with its amped-up production. And now Wonders can only be built on certain tiles. This adds nice complexity and realism to the game, in my view. It also can provide some beautiful late-game visuals of wonders standing next to each other. The wonders themselves look glorious, and help the visuals wonderfully late game.


Audio

This is an area of considerable improvement. I find Civ VI's audio a lot more stirring and nicely diverse than Civ V's. I honestly can't remember the audio that well for pre-Civ V civ games, so Civ VI may well have the best audio of them all!

Each civilization has its own audio, and the audio changes from one age to the next. I found the audio particularly good late-game.

As a Star Trek fan, I won't lie - I miss Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy, the Civ voiceover stars of Civ V and Civ IV respectively. But what the new voice-over lacks in celebrity and familiarity, he makes up for in simply sounding solid. His tone decently captures gravitas without feeling overdone.

The main advisor's voice/character is nice enough, and the sound effects are solid, especially for combat and "Eureka!" moments. On the whole, a big thumbs up for Civ VI's audio!


Story

Certain little touches give a good story feeling to Civilization VI. The first is a beautiful opening cinematic that's on-par with a great anime OP for getting me pumped up for what is to come.

Distinct leader personalities come through a little bit more clearly here. Each leader has certain things they admire in other leaders, and certain things that they despise. Some of this comes down to simple jealousy, but a lot of it is philosophical and/or policy-based. Gorgo, for example, disliked my minimalistic approach to military matters, and frequently insulted me about it. I found this slightly annoying at first, but after awhile I felt it gave the game a good sense of character and story.

Other things that help - Actual cinematics for creating wonders (yay!), the amusing spy system, end-game cinematics for different win conditions, and a nice little touch at the load screen. The load screen's voice-over says something different to you based on what age your saved game is set in, and this made the game feel more immersive and epic to me.

As for that amusing spy system - It actually did make me laugh. My first failed spy mission resulted in me having to choose an exit route for my spy, which made visions of James Bond dance in my head. I later captured a Spain spy, and had him trade gold and resources to me to get his jailed spy back. There's this little icon for the jailed spy, and that put this whole scenario over the top, making me laugh again.


AI Quality

Along with visuals, one of the game's two weakest areas. The AI quality is passable for non-military matters. There's little nitpicks I could make even here, but nothing major. But the way the AI starts and conducts wars is frequently, well, stupid.

Still, this isn't something game-destroying for me, largely since I very rarely aim for military victory in Civ games anyway. I admit I don't fully understand why people would play Civ for the military side of things. Civ's military side of things is typically far inferior to the Command and Conquer series of games, the Starcraft series of games, the Age of Empires series of games, the Heroes of Might and Magic series of games, and... I could probably go on and on.

As usual, the military side of a Civ game kinda sucks. Except the combat looks/sounds good, I'll give it that. And units are decently balanced.


Odds and Ends:

I hate that Canada still isn't a default playable civilization. Canada is one of the two/three largest countries in the world, geographically-speaking. And Canada is a modern successful 1st world G8 nation with a rich heritage and history. A good number of Civ players are Canadians, like myself. Why can't Canada get a default playable civilization in a Civ game? As much issue as I have with CiV VI's visuals, they don't bother me as much as Canada getting shafted again by a Civ game. And no, Toronto or Vancouver getting a city-state doesn't make up for this. I also want to speak up for my Australian cousins here - It's also high-time for Australia to have its own default playable civilization.

Civ V does have an edge on convenient mod-grabbing, unless I missed something. Civ VI doesn't go directly online to download mods, whereas Civ V does for me.

Overall: My overall rating for Civ VI is 87%, an A.

There's definitely room for improvement in future Civ games, particular on visuals, AI quality, and GETTING CANADA AS A DEFAULT PLAYABLE CIVILIZATION ALREADY! I'd love to see a Civ VII that has the visuals of Civ V, an upgraded version of Civ VI's game mechanics with a couple new features, and John A MacDonald or Pierre Trudeau staring at me on the "choose your leader" screen.

tl;dr Fantastically fun forward-thinking game mechanics, stirring audio, improved use of Wonders, and solid storytelling combine to make this a very good video game, in spite of its flaws with respect to visuals and AI quality and in various other areas.

I highly recommend this game to anybody who likes the Civ franchise but wants to experience something new.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Canada has the problem of being a relatively YOUNG country.

Now, obviously USA is just as young if not younger. But USA had the benefit of being a world power in real life.

Canada has very similar origins with the US, with a mix of French and British history. But the main issue is that it is still a part of the Commonwealth. Yes, India technically is too, but India's history is much older than Canada.

Canada didn't have an identity outside of the native peoples, before it became Commonwealth. In the end the issues is Canada isn't u8nique enough from America, and not old enough as a culture to be distinct.

Frankly, if Canada get a Civ then so should New Zealand. I don't see that happening. Lots of small nations in Europe get a Civ because, once again, long history. Poland had been around for a long while. (1000 years old.)

This is basically the same problem as trying to make Pluto a planet; they couldn't do that because then there are at least three other "planets" they would have to add. To add Canada would mean adding many others, way beyond the capacity of the devs.

Appreciate the thought about adding Australia, but I have a feeling most Australians would struggle to come up with Civ details that works in the game.

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Appreciate the thought about adding Australia, but I have a feeling most Australians would struggle to come up with Civ details that works in the game.

The real issue would be finding a leader of days gone by that people would agree on. Trust me - you wouldn't. You'd be more likely to get someone like Ned Kelly or Russell Coight to be accepted in that role than anyone that actually was a leader.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

The real issue would be finding a leader of days gone by that people would agree on. Trust me - you wouldn't. You'd be more likely to get someone like Ned Kelly or Russell Coight to be accepted in that role than anyone that actually was a leader.

It takes a long time for a nation to develop its own mythology.

I guess America is unusual in being able to so readily worship their "Founding Fathers" as deities in all but name, despite it not being that long ago.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Canada has the problem of being a relatively YOUNG country.

Even so, Canada is a very large country geographically and is a G8 nation. If you're going to make an age exception for the USA, I think the next most logical exceptions are Canada and Australia, with sheer size being a factor in both cases. Nothing against New Zealand, but it is a small country, both geographically and population-wise (relative to both Canada and Australia).

Size, both geographic and population, does matter. It matters in the Civ game itself after all! I think it should matter just as much as how OLD a country is.

And honestly, I think you understate how unique Canada is from the United States. Canada's political culture has been significantly different overall in recent decades. I also can think of fitting unique buildings and units that would work well for Canada. The Mountie as an upgraded calvary unit, perhaps with a bonus against barbarians and/or a terrain-traveling bonus, would work very smoothly. Hudson's Bay Company as an upgraded trading post, or an upgraded marketplace, would work well.

It should be noted that there's a good number of Civ V mods for Canada leader/civilizations. Clearly there is a desire among many Civ players to play as Canada. One could argue that this should be the biggest factor of all.

Anyway, I still like Civ VI, clearly. I just think that Canada should be a default playable civilization. I hope it is if/when Civilization VII comes along.

[Keila]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

It takes a long time for a nation to develop its own mythology.

I guess America is unusual in being able to so readily worship their "Founding Fathers" as deities in all but name, despite it not being that long ago.

Australia has plenty of mythology ... if you care to look into it (Aboriginal). It just so turns out that very few people care enough about it.

[Archon_Wing]

So how's the multiplayer for Civ VI? Always loved the series but the multiplayer's been lacking. Do teams work?

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Keila

Australia has plenty of mythology ... if you care to look into it (Aboriginal). It just so turns out that very few people care enough about it.

The native people did NOT have an identity of being "Australians", because they are split into a myriad of small nations with their own language and culture. It is the honest truth that Australia is a young country for that reason. It is impossible to represent the original population as "One People", and I understand they don't like to be grouped together either.

[MrTerrorist]

Here comes Australia. Here comes Australia.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

The real issue would be finding a leader of days gone by that people would agree on. Trust me - you wouldn't. You'd be more likely to get someone like Ned Kelly or Russell Coight to be accepted in that role than anyone that actually was a leader.

Edmund Barton? First Prime Minister and one of the founders of the Australian judicial system? Could give Australia some sort of law or security based civ boosts. Also perhaps colonial ties for better trade with neighbors on the same continent or city states.

edit: nvm, didn't read the latest posts, lol. Curtin huh, that is also an equally valid choice and was my initial though, but figured maybe something a little more obscure would work. Also, jesus christ the comment section on that video is literally cancer, wow. On the plus, I'm hoping to get to see Quill18 play some Australia, since I think he'd like what it can do.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

Here comes Australia. Here comes Australia.

Yeah, I came here as soon as I found out. It certainly makes it amusing that I kept insisting that Australia is impossible...

[MrTerrorist]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Yeah, I came here as soon as I found out. It certainly makes it amusing that I kept insisting that Australia is impossible...

Actually i was just singing "Waltzing Matilda" but changed the lyrics to "Here comes Australia".