So far Civ VI is the best civ experience I've had in 17 years

[korn469]

So I preordered because all of the gameplay videos looked good after the NDA lifted. I preloaded the other day, and I'm in the US so it didn't unlock until midnight eastern time here. Although I was up at 3:30 a.m. yesterday for work, I took a 3 hour long nap and started playing at 1 a.m. It is now 4:36 a.m.

So far I haven't encountered a single glitch. The graphics aren't realistic but they are easy to understand, it's not too cluttered and the animations look good. It's much better than just a screen shot. I'm still trying to get a handle on city districts and building wonders on the map. The eureka system is good. The government system is great. I like how civic and tech are now two separate fields. I just recently founded a religion. We worship Khorne, the greatest of the ruinous powers around here. With everything that's going on I feel like I'm roleplaying my civilization (currently I'm the Americans). I haven't felt this much sense of wonder since first playing SMAC back in 1999.

Granted I'm not blown away like I was when I first played Civ I circa 1993, but the standard by which I judged games was far, far, FAR lower then than it is today.

My only problem is that I have to go to work soon, then come home and do a paper for grad school. FML!!!!!

[Lorizael]

Blood for the Blood God!

[Grandpa Troll]

I also agree!

All the experts, please keep posting and those of us who still enjoy thye series after all these years but are not as indepth with their experience, please post away as well!!!

Off for date night then back for a long game tonight!!

Gramps

[Ellestar]

Multiplayer is as usual. They disabled team games, no city elimination limit, no MP scenarios that they promised.

[self biased]

don't worry. those grapes were probably sour anyway.

[Proteus_MST]

O.K., those positive comments have convinced me to buy it as well.
Although I guess I won't be able to pülay it all too often.

Chose Kaiser Rotbart lobesam as my first ruler

Interesting new graphics style.

[Stuie]

I have to agree with Korn. I've played them all since 1992, and this is the best "out-of-the-box" Civ game since Civ 2. Civ 3 always felt like a proof of concept to me. Civ 4 and 5 both felt like games waiting for the rest of the pieces to be released. Civ 6 actually feels like a complete game. Sure they'll add stuff, but you can play it and enjoy it as is.

Managed to find 20 hours to play over a busy weekend, and had just one CTD around hour 18, and one freeze when exiting the game after I had won. Other than that, no technical glitches.

Gameplay was engaging and fun, with lots of cost/benefit type decisions to make; what districts to build, what policies to enact, which city states to pursue. I still don't have a good enough handle on districts and adjacency bonuses, but happy to keep playing and learning.

[mkorin]

I hate to be the voice of reason. However I have also played since the nineties and I caution people to not purchase until the first patch. As usual they took away all the useful minor things like using h for heal. C for center a for sleep until an enemy is near. Zoom and unzoom which is critical as when you build a wonder you it zooms you all the way in and you have to save and reload. It's also slower than heck. I do like the overall major changes but to me the gameplay is substandard. There are many more examples I could make. On the flip side if anyone knows a way to do what I detailed please let me know.

Mike

[Grandpa Troll]

I hate to be the voice of reason. However I have also played since the nineties and I caution people to not purchase until the first patch. As usual they took away all the useful minor things like using h for heal. C for center a for sleep until an enemy is near. Zoom and unzoom which is critical as when you build a wonder you it zooms you all the way in and you have to save and reload. It's also slower than heck. I do like the overall major changes but to me the gameplay is substandard. There are many more examples I could make. On the flip side if anyone knows a way to do what I detailed please let me know.

Mike

I have built several wonders, build them and keep on getting it...why do you have to save and reload?

I find it a little slow upon startup..but nothing unreasonable, what are your delays and when are you experiencing them?

Regards

Gramps

[mkorin]

Gramps
When I build a wonder it zooms me so I can see three tiles. As I didn't know how to unzoom, that was a problem. Thanks to a little help I can now unzoom. However my complaint still stands zoom and unzoom where the same two keystrokes for years. Why change it for no reason.

As to speed. I'm close to a minute between turns.

Mike

[Dinner]

How does multiplayer stalk up to Civ4?

[Ming]

How does multiplayer stalk up to Civ4?

With 1UP, it would be tough to match up. Civ4 was quick and very playable. MP Combat was a joke in CivV. Can anybody say if it's any better in CivVI?

[korn469]

Here's a short update.

So right after I typed my first post on Friday, I played a few turns and Hammurabi, which was the ONLY AI leader I had good relations with, captured a scientific city state that I was part of my hegemony. I denounced him, but the war would have to wait until Sunday evening. I walked into work that morning without shaving, a few minutes late and all bleary-eyed. Oh well, it was worth it.

So in my war, I conquered Hammurabi because I had hit knights. Scythia then declared war on me and it took me a bit longer, but all of their cities also fell under my sway. I only went to war to free my city state, but before I knew it, half of the continent was under my control. This has propelled me to a fairly large scientific advantage over my opponents who just recently started colonizing the other side of my continent. Russia, barbarians and a mountain chain stands between me and German colonists. I lead in science, Germany has a cultural advantage (I just hit the atomic age and I'm just now getting my first theater district up and running) and we're about even in religion. Japan is slightly behind Germany. Russia and England are mostly hopeless compared to the rest. I'm thinking about developing nuclear weapons, nuking Germany and England back to the stone age, Japan too if they get in my way and assimilating Russia.

There is some kind of inflation going on in the game, so that my late game cities take FOREVER to build anything. I'm not sure if I like that or not. I'm still trying to grasp the district system. I'm sure at some point there will be an in-depth strategy guide for it, but for now I'm just stumbling through the game on prince. One thing that hurt me is I put a lot of early wonders close to my capital, and now prime hexes are tied up. I do think the district system coupled with the government system will make Civ 6 the most open ended civilization game. In previous Civs, you might specialize a city, but normally there was only a few ways to do that. In Civ 6 I think there will be many more ways to specialize a given landmass than there was in earlier games. This may prove to be the best thing about the game if it's well balanced. If not, then it could become more tedious than managing just a city center. I love the new worker system though. It's a great improvement on how it used to be. The trade route system, I'm not sure about. I am still figuring it out, and sometimes, maybe when a trader makes a trading post you can choose a new route ... or maybe not. I'm not sure yet. It's after midnight though, and I've only had about 11 hours of sleep since waking up on Saturday. I am trying to decide if I can go and pick back up where I left off on Sunday. I'm not sure.

Here a few other miscellaneous thoughts

-I built a TON of knights. They don't seem to be able to upgrade to cavalry or rough riders. I haven't found an upgrade list either.
-Crossbowmen on the other hand seem to upgrade to field artillery without any problems.
-I've came across two glitches. First, sometimes my great general and knight combo would say they had moves left but wouldn't let me move. It's a bit wonky.
-Second is rather annoying. Civ 6 won't shut down. It run great until I hit exit and then it freezes and not even control-alt delete or alt-tab or hitting the exit button a million times will work. Trust me game, I'm not putting it down because I am bored. I have to work and eventually roll into bed and try to get an hour of sleep and I have to show the wife and kids I know they are still alive.
-The UI could use a few updates. Like being able to rename (or at least easily rename) conquered cities. Show me unit experience. Show upgrade paths somewhere. Great people screen could use a few tweaks.
-I'm iffy about the inflation mechanic.
-There are few penalties to having tons of cities. You also seem to need them.
-Speaking of tons of cities, I wish the game had colonies like civ 3 or civ 4, whichever of those games had colonies. I shouldn't always have to build a city to get those sweet, sweet strategic resources.
-Governments and policies are a great mechanic
-Diplomacy is underwhelming
-Because of the inflation mechanic, it looks like mid-game wars are the way to win this game. Wait to the other civs do a decent job of building up several cities and then you go and take them.
-It looks like once you are militarily outmatched, then you are doomed. I don't think it's possible to hold off a mass assault with a much smaller, equal tech force. Higher tech, you're probably fine. As long as you are big and have some money or faith you always have a chance of stopping an invasion. I would LOVE to see partisans/guerillas come back though. Possibly refugees like SMAX had.
-I haven't played any multiplayer and cannot comment on it for now

That's all for now.

[Proteus_MST]

Yes, the only mounted troops that upgrades well are the horsemen.
They upgrade to (light) Cavalry (and later to helicopters)

According to the Civilopedia, Knights upgrade into tanks.
Perhaps it would have made sense to have Cuirassiers as a form of heavy cavalry (into which knights upgrade) and have those cuirassiers then upgrade into tanks

[Brutus66]

I haven't bought the game yet, but I had the chance to try it, and I have to agree with Korn's points.
It's a decent game, better than Civ 5 (which isn't a great compliment). Hopefully it will be adjusted and fine-tuned just like previous versions.

Negative things that stood out in my brief hands-on were the trade routes and the espionage.
I ended up having quite a few trade caravans, and in the later stages of the game I was continually nagged to renew or redirect them. After the hundredth time, I no longer cared where they went or what they earned.
Espionage was a decent concept, but the counter-spying needs to be fixed. Way too many potential targets in each city that need to be defended and assigning an agent to each would be enormously impractical.