who can be blamed for thVIs mes6 ? [civ6 review]

[Elok]

SHUT UP WE KNOW YOU HAVE WMD

[rah]

Yes in IV it was specific, well thought out, and made sense. So much so that the player was able to manipulate it. Well we can't have that, so we'll just make it arbitrary and senseless. That will show em.

[Elok]

I could enjoy a game where, say, one player was consistently insane. Like if Caligula commanded Rome. It adds spice if there's no telling what the hell that one dude is thinking. I don't think I want a game where they're ALL like that.

[Elok]

So, summing up what I've heard from various people so far:

GOOD

District system is quite fun and interesting
They've streamlined the 1UPT limitations
There's a lot to do every turn
The tech miniquests are fun

BAD

Balance, automation and interface issues need fixing
New diplomacy and espionage features are asinine and/or infuriating
Religion is lame
A lot of the stuff to do is tedious MM
AI is utter crap
Dang is it slowwwwww in the endgame

Does that about cover it? Anything else to add?

[rah]

I've heard the districts get more expensive throughout the game to the point that if you start a city late in the game you can't afford to build districts.
Any truth to that.

[Proteus_MST]

I've heard the districts get more expensive throughout the game to the point that if you start a city late in the game you can't afford to build districts.
Any truth to that.

Yes, the costzs seem to rise.
On the other hand there is a way to help your new cities:
If one ofr your cities establishes a trade route to another city of your own civ, one of the thing it can get (if the target city is alreadys well established with districts) os production.
ALso, if a city produces a trade caravan, you can send it to another city.

So, you can produce a few treade caravans, send them to your newest founded city and let the city establish trade routes to other big cities within your empire.

This helps a lot in speeding up the growth of the new city.
(there is a limit on total trade routes that are allowed for your empire, but in the later stages (when expensiveness of districts becomes an issue) the limit is rather high)


One issue with trade routes on my current (large) map btw. is, that the range of the trade ships seems to be too short to establish trade rouites with the civ s on the other continent. The only civ I can trade with are the chinese, which is the only remaining other civ on my own continent
(well, I also had the egypt and the spanish as neighbors, but the spanish first (unsuccessfully) tried to attack me (1. spanish german war) and then spammed missionaries for their religion (thereby breaking their promise, not to convert my cities) which let me denounce them and afterweards declare war on them (and take all their cities) ... unfortunmately the 2nd spanish-german war pissed of Cleopatra (who doesn't like rulers who declare war) ... and therefore a while after she also declared war on me (which was rather short, considering that she only had a single city ). Now it is just me and the chinese (well, Emperor Quin also waged war on me for a time, despite initially being friends with me (reason: He doesn't like civs whiuch have more military and more world wondrs than him ), but I made peace after taking half of his empire and now there has been an uneasy peace for a long time ... although I guess there will be war again, over short or long))


Another issue I have discovered:
It is much too easy to lose access to your own religion.
I founded my religion in my capital, but unfortunately, before I was able to fully convert other cities, am Apostle or Missionary of Emperor Quin appeared at my capital and took care that my religion isn't dominant enough anymore, to be declared the dominant religion of the city (it now had no dominant religion anymore)
Now I cannot buy any apostles or missionaries of my religion anymore (because to do this, the religion must be the dominant religion of the city) and despite it has been a very long time it seems like the number of followers of my religion in this city (orother citiers in my empire) also hasn't grown a bit (funny enough, I can use my faith to buy apostles and missionaries of the spanish and chinese religions (and have both of their holy cities in mny empire) ... but not for the one I founded myself )

[rah]

All the stuff I'm hearing about trade routes is really bothersome. I don't want to go back to civ II.

[Wiglaf]

I've heard the districts get more expensive throughout the game to the point that if you start a city late in the game you can't afford to build districts.
Any truth to that.

This explains how districts get more expensive (it's very confusing and it looks like it has implications for whether to research technologies) https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comment...oduction_cost/

[Proteus_MST]

Thanks. So it may be beneficial to plan mutltiple districts for your cities as early as possible, even if you don't want to build them yet

[Egbert]

Yes in IV it was specific, well thought out, and made sense. So much so that the player was able to manipulate it. Well we can't have that, so we'll just make it arbitrary and senseless. That will show em.

True. The diplomacy in Civ IV was well thought out, made sense and could be manipulated.

However I suggest that those of us who became sufficiently familiar with each the AI leaders (to manipulate) probably plqay too much.

I don't think the casual gamer (who are a much bigger market) would play enough to get on top of "manipulating" the diplomacy.

I don't see a problem with the potential for manipulation of diplomacy in the Civ IV model.

It was far superior to the raging psychopath diplomacy of CivII and Civ III which actually did a lot to nerf diplomacy.

"Randomness" could completely nerf diplomacy.

[Boris Godunov]

So far VI is better out of the box than V was. In many ways it feels like what V should have been to start with. I guess kinda how IV was what III should have been. Takes a weaker intermediary to produce a better iteration.

I've only finished 1 game and didn't experience the late game bog down Sava indicated, only because I won a cultural victory in the 1700s. And it was on a small sized map. I was a bit shocked when I won, there wasn't really much build up to the victory, such as messages like "You will win a cultural victory in X turns," which was in V. Kinda felt like a letdown, there was nothing about the pacing that was telling me the end of the game was near.

Overall I do really like it, but my beefs so far are:

-AI unit spam. Both City-States and main Civs will have scads of club men/chariots swarming around their territory which they never upgrade. Swatting down AI armies is easy-peasy, as their units tend to be 2 eras behind and thus get obliterated fast.
-The soundtrack is repetitive and not as immersive as V, IMO. I had Kongo as a neighbor, and I swear to GOD I hate their steel drum festival music or whatever it is meant to be. I really miss era-specific music that was also specific to your civ.
-Having to churn out inquisitors/apostles just to forestall the AI from converting my cities (they always agreed not to but always broke the promise the next ****ing turn, every last one of the bastards). Since "Religious Victory" is now a thing, I can't just ignore religious conversions. BTW, I think that's a stupid victory condition entirely. I realize the Diplo victory in V was problematic, but this isn't a step up.
-City-state of which I'm suzerain is under attack by AI civs. Why can't I tell them to stop? Negotiate peace? Earn a casus belli against them at least, and get mondo credit for liberating an allied city-state that got conquered? I get a measly +5 for freeing people who were unjustly conquered? Stingy.
-OH MY GOD stop contacting me to tell me how much you don't like how I'm running my empire, you meddling ****s.
-The necessary requirements to do certain things are astoundingly obscure and need to be better explained. I built two archaeologists in cities w/ the necessary museums, they went out and got artifacts, great. Wait, why can't I build more? No grayed-out archaeologist option on the build screen w/ an intuitive tool tip saying "You can't build this because X reason." Nope, instead had to figure out it's because I don't have empty slots for artifacts in any of my cities. Well why can't I build the units and then just not be able to work the artifact tiles until I got the space? That makes more sense to me, and I'd like to build up the units while other cities are making the buildings to create the slots. Another frustrating thing is trying to find a place for a Naturalist to build a National Park. The requirements are so finicky, and not well-stated in the civilopedia.

I'm not sure yet about the social policy cards mechanic. With the Civ V social policies, it felt more like you were building a society with a unique culture. With the cards, whatever you picked 300 years ago doesn't matter one bit in the current turn, you can swap out every card whenever you discover a new cultural advancement. There's no sense of a lasting legacy, that policies I chose to follow in the beginning really shape what my culture becomes. It's totally a board game mechanic now where all that matters is what's useful in your current situation.

I did have a cool war w/ Harald in my game where he launched a 3-pronged invasion of my coastline. I'd concentrate my units at the point of his initial attack and fend him off, only to have him hit a weak spot up the coast, and then another. If he'd been using something more advanced than chariots while I defended with bombards and musketmen, he might have had a chance.

[ZEE]

lol Civ 6 sucks.

[Elok]

-OH MY GOD stop contacting me to tell me how much you don't like how I'm running my empire, you meddling ****s

I vaguely recall they did something like that in II. Especially if they'd beaten you to a tech. Man, were they annoying little turd-goblins about that. It was doubly annoying if you were on a land map and they'd beaten you to Seafaring, or some similarly useless rubbish.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yeah that Civ2 AI 'diplomacy' was something else.