Civilization VI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_VI

October!

i was reading a preview of VI the other day and it seemed like a nice incremental improvement on V (which i liked a lot). one of the more noticeable changes is that workers will complete tile improvements immediately rather than over the course of several turns, and that after a set amount of tile improvements they'll disappear. seemed like a nice way to streamline the mid-to-late game

hell, it's a nice way to speed up the early game. Also interested in the combined arms unit stacking and to see what lessons they brought from After Earth

my biggest hope is that they fix multiplayer. i had a beautiful 8-player game going on with a bunch of my friends, and it was a complete fucking blast...until about 50 turns in, when every turn took at least 5 minutes to load and it started crashing so often that it became impossible to play. but while it was working, it was some of the most fun i've ever had playing videogames.

and take it from me, a guy who has a LOT of fun playing videogames

*winks at camera 2*

the lead designer for this one oversaw the expansions for civ5, which came close to salvaging it, so i am tentatively interested

i didnt really care for brave new world - trade routes in particular just seemed so ham-fisted and poorly integrated into game play and it made the game very easy imo

fwiw the fan-made multiplayer for the og civ is really good. its probably the best multiplayer xp ive had w/ civ

i still play civ 2 every once in a while

i don't really want a challenge, tho -- i just like building it

Watching a guy play this on Twitch. I think maybe tap-to-farm tablet games (incl. Anno?) are catching up, except instead of spending $$$ on premium farming swag, you pay for it all up front and then there's a frisson of strategy / trade-offs built in to Civ. IMHO I would totally pay premium mobile dollars for a Tiny Pixel Tower People - Civ mashup.

having never played any tablet games idk how similar the gameplay is but it has certainly borrowed the cartoon style. it seems like they're resolving the less satisfying elements by copying their own success: unstacking cities as they did with units in V; turning culture into another research tree; having religious conflict take place on the map as with military units. the government card system, new builders, trade and combined arms all look promising. if it makes the game more about adapting to the contingencies of your situation rather than imposing a generic playstyle then it will be good. I'm keen, anyway

from what i've seen, 6 looks really good -- still not used to the more cartoony graphics, but whatevs

i'm hoping they port this to mac around the same time as the pc release

i've not played any civs (or any games) in a really long time, maybe over 7 years? but really excited about this new one

cannot wait for this - mac version already in the works

i know but no release date yet

i like the art style a lot (i think) -- thought civ5 was weirdly ugly and monotonous and am really taken by the way in 6's screenshots fog-of-warred land looks like a drawing on a map.

i didnt really care for brave new world - trade routes in particular just seemed so ham-fisted and poorly integrated into game play and it made the game very easy imo

agree that much of it felt pasted atop mechanics it maybe would rather have changed (tho the game was already trivially easy, because the ai couldn't play it), but that's why i'm optimistic about its designer making a civ from scratch. haven't kept up with its features because of a weird sense of spoilage but

turning culture into another research tree; having religious conflict take place on the map as with military units

sounds promising because it sounds like it reduces a thing i hated about civ5, that everything is a giant global variable:

a lot of the new mechanics are just new numbers tho. those big ugly numbers that add to themselves endlessly. i read a negative review of the original civ5 that said "huge numbers perch at the top of the screen like crows" and i can never forget that image when i play. it's not a very elegant game in some ways. the new diplomatic stuff tho is way fun: being able to spend the ~20 turns before a congress sending diplomats to capitals and bargaining for delegates and counting votes. it's more robust than SMAC actually. more of those kinds of numbers please, less "you have 3765 culture out of 4221."

― """""""""""""stalin""""""""""" (difficult listening hour), Saturday, July 13, 2013 8:45 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whatever, fuck this, played 4 today for the first time in a while and it was balm. ultimately you do nothing in 5 but wait for numbers to accrue, and you can't even give firaxis $5 to make them accrue faster.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, May 5, 2014 4:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

happy w anything that makes a physical thing on a map (or even, like, a fluctuating variable! or a set of local variables like civ4's happiness/health) out of what in civ5 was just a thing you had more of every turn. think this is where adaptability to contingencies comes from, too.

yes, I think making more of the map is the right way to go. when you say it's trivially easy, do you mean beasting it on deity easy?

ha no fair cop i didn't play it enough. but feel like anyone who found it very easy on deity in brave new world would have found it easy already. high difficulties gave the comp cheats (making nonmilitary victories particularly harder) but idk that they ever taught it to field armies.

yeah it's just buffs for the AI but the higher difficulty levels so end up changing the game a lot, shortening it, the margins becoming so fine, diplomacy is crucial & you have to be very flexible and responsive. but yes the comp is not amazing at unit placement, especially at sea. I generally really liked V but that's at least partly bc I got a lot better at civ playing it.

i disagree with dlh - part of the reason civ v ended up so easy was because the ratcheted back ai aggression and tinkered with build priorities. i actually think the difference btw deity and immortal or w/e the next lowest difficulty setting was werent that big, at least post g&k. civ v on deity was extremely challenging on release or maybe one patch post-release (i think the one that removed scientist slots from libraries?) where almost every ai went four cities - unit spam - dow you. i remember kinda liking that period because were super map dependent and there were reasons to go both liberty and tradition but it was very punishing. it slowly became the easiest and least interesting civ game as the added more features, none of which obscured the games essential sloth.

ive been watching filthy and marbozir stream some early access games and excited to give civ 6 a try but dont necessarily love some of the balancing theyve done. real test will be playing with higher level ai settings tho

oh i defer on the difficulty question then, def don't have exp at a similar level. think we agree abt "the game's essential sloth" tho.

the one civ game i can function in turned up all the way (to "transcend" iirc) is alpha centauri. love civ4 but don't play it well.

essential sloth is a nice way of describing it. civ v definitely had a off-putting feeling of inertia about it. i just felt like there were always things i had to do vs what i might've wanted to do so it felt more on rails than previously. idk i think that is partly a change in how i play games too tho, if i am comparing all the way back to say civ 2. haven't really thought about it. i was so excited for v to come out and now my enthusiasm is kind of burned away, although it's not like i really disliked it. hoping i get excited in the coming weeks. for some reason 6 is reminding me of endless legend.

How hard is it to transition from Starcraft to Civ?

totally different games but if you could learn starcraft there's no reason you couldn't learn civ

if you like the idea of civ but are into space and scifi, try out galactic civilizations (II or III). i played II for a bit and it was entertaining. smaller compared to civ, though

civ's learning curve isn't as steep as, say, europa universalis, so you're good. but wait til 6 comes out

part of what made early civ v so difficult was that the higher-complexity units like naval and air didnt matter because they ai just leveraged its production bonuses to swarm you with swordsmen. also swordsmens power relative to natural city defenses made holding out against an early rush v challenging. i remember some of the og high score guys regularly finishing all their games win or lose before turn 80. none of this is probably particularly good game design but i think they ended up giving players too much time to do these 3-city tradition opens and then turtle up and pursue more optimized builds/unit use and beat the ai.

or endless space maybe xp

my space 4x rec is still master of orion 2, tho i also enjoy getting high enough to be patient with the micromanagement in space empires 4.

starcraft is more like jet dogfighting than it is like a 4x game. all about rapid adaptability and constant rationing of attention. you'll be fine.

(not counting alpha centauri as "space" in the sense of moo and galciv but it is sf and is the best thing ever.)

i think they ended up giving players too much time to do these 3-city tradition opens and then turtle up and pursue more optimized builds/unit use and beat the ai

adding the composite bowman made it so much easier to turtle if you had aggressive neighbours. the diplomacy was easy to exploit too: AIs would start early wars with no clear plan and once their initial wave was repulsed they'd be quick to sue for peace. I did enjoy persuading AIs to attack each other tho & it'll be interesting to see how much these new agendas nerf that

I had a friend who was heavy into Diety level Civ II, who ended up like a chess grandmaster - the stuff you have to do at the start, a few (dozen) significant moves, the great brow furrows, an impressed nod, then close it down and start again.

i've got 80 dollars in my pocket and it's rainy af outside and this game isn't out for mac

I've got two twenties and two tens in my wallet and I was afraid they'd be there til next April

I followed a Dealzon link and got it for $48 USD from GMG. Here we go!

i want to play this so bad

Hey, Sean Bean is the announcer in this one!

I'm stuck waiting for the Mac version too. Apparently they're promising to roll it out quicker than they usually do.

Will become increasingly more useful over time, no doubt:

https://m.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58u6hp/civ_vi_fixes_megathread/

So Team Liquid has officially hired a pro Civ 6 player, I look forward to this because at least it isn't Hearthstone eSports

is team liquid moving into civ? does civ even have competitive multiplayer? why would a civ 6 player be useful for an LOL team?

Well I didn't make it up

http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/23/13372408/civilization-6-pro-gaming-esports-team-liquid

oh don't misunderstand - i think competitive civ 6 is a fantastic idea. just had no idea it existed (and acc to that link apparently this will be the first tournament so kinda it doesn't yet)

GUYS GUYS IT'S TIME

https://m.popkey.co/0c01b3/dZwYR.gif

link?

steam

https://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meier-s-civilization-vi

shweet

should just leave work and play this all day

thanks man

dang, looks like it requires capitan or sierra.

it's for the best, i probably should not be allowed to play a new Civ until i get a job.

this is the only game i have been fantasizing about playing

I can't even get into this until my move is done... And then...

I've got this on the ps4 but found it hard going using a ps controller after originally playing it on a pc.

I'm slowly getting used to this compared to V - its a completely different game. I couldnt work out why the barbs were just reducing me to paste repeatedly because I didnt know about the scout mechanic and how you had to especially kill any that spotted your city and were heading back to base. The fucking civopedia is useless. I just kept restarting over and over til I'd get a bit better then realise where I'd fucked up then start again. I've only gotten to about 500AD on any given try so far and I'm sick to death of Ned Stark droning on about how far I've come every time I restart hahaha.

Oh god yeah the Stark quotes are the worst, really hammering it home that much as I love this game it's def made by libertarians.

I was surprised how early I got attacked by another civ too. I barely had any military as I tend to play turtle/culture/diplomatic type games, I dont like war battles. WHich lol prob defeats the whole point of this bloody game but anyway. I got SUPRISE!!! attacked by Arabia for no reason really early in my most recent game. No coin to buy spare troops, I had to just queue up a bunch of em in production and hope they spat out in time to defend myself.
Somehow I actually won/stole Baghdad off the guy.

(TBF I am playing on Cheiftan mode)

Got some mates coming over from Melbourne tomorrow night for our annual civ and beers session. Will report back with the match commentary (spoilers, I'm going to surprise nuke the bastards all to hell and back and claim the throne )

Two acquaintances became very close friends a decade ago when we collectively found out we all play civ. Videogame nukes bring blokes together

Ha nice. I'd like to give multiplayer a try some day but I need to git way more gud before I can even consider it.

yeah, the technology quotations in civ 6 are bad, they seem a lot worse than the ones in 4 and 5. I know they’re all from 2016, but they have one from fuckin scott adams for christssakes!

The qutes in 5 often seemed to be from rather obscure old poets and stuff from like Persia and India. The ones in 6 are frequently really silly. And why are so many Mark Twain?

I barely had any military as I tend to play turtle/culture/diplomatic type games, I dont like war battles. WHich lol prob defeats the whole point of this bloody game but anyway.

Disagree! One of the things I love about Civ is that unlike most games of this nature it can grasp the idea that you could create an important civilization by means other than just pillaging and enslaving all your neighbours. I mostly play as a pacifist, with just some troops for defense if someone invades me (the fact that the game has no way to make peace with barbarians and basically you have to genocide them is...not great, of course).

I think the AI is most likely to attack you when it has placed too many civs on the same continent and so your presence impedes another civ's expansion.

Civ VI is definitely more aggressive the V. Even just the barbarians at the start will absolutely mess you up if you only have two units. Can still play pacifist, but definitely have to give yourself a nice little protective military at the start, to deal with those pesky barbs at the very least

I got confused when at one point I coulnt buy more units because the game was telling me I had "too many of same type in the area" or something???

I am interested to see how the climate change stuff works vis a vis coal vs windfarms etc later inthe game.

Ah you probably had a unit stationed in the city when you were trying to buy? there's gotta be room for the unit to spawn when you buy it and units can't be placed on top of each other

Ah bugger you might be right! I fell into the same trap in V.

lately for early game defense I’ve been gold purchasing slingers, which frees up production for builders/settlers/holy site if I’m trying to get a religion. esp since killing a barb with a slinger gives you the archery boost, it’s only 60 gold to upgrade to archers, and 3 archers gets you the machinery boost. I also always go for the +5 combat bonus vs barbs card asap

I am interested to see how the climate change stuff works vis a vis coal vs windfarms etc later inthe game.

You get renewable energy via wind and solar power, also you can make a carbon recapture plant (think you need a canal?). There's a diplomacy mission where everyone competes to lower their emissions, you can convert your factories to renewable power during this (but annoyingly not otherwise, suggesting the only reason a civ would do that would be for clout which, gulp, maybe quite realistic?). What really annoys me about the climate change stuff is if it progresses too far before you build coastal defenses against it tiles get flooded and unsuable, so sometimes it'll tell you it'll take 500 turns or something crazy like that to build and basically that means those fields are donzo. Can understand a penalty but think there should at least be an option to abandon the city and bring your populations to other cities.

We did it again. Built up a nice little bit of science in the early game, had the two computer civ’s declare war on me simultaneously, and then my “mate” declared war as well a few turns later. The two computer civ’s did literally nothing besides steal one of my builders and bate my mate into being an absolute jerk. Anyways, ended up pushing him all the way back to his capital and taking it because I knew it was coming by him having units on my borders for like 15 turns straight. My other friend joined in on the war halfway a show of solidarity that declaring war on someone that is already in a defensive war against two civ’s isn’t the nicest thing to do (even if those civ’s weren’t consequential).

Love this game

I dont rly like how punitive it is when you extend a war of defense to neuter an opponent. Like bitch dont attack me.

I have also thought that barbarian villages should go from something to be eliminated/managed to something to be protected/respected as the game goes on but idk

what I always enjoyed most about this game was upgrading military tech/units and warmongering, am probably doing it wrong. It's sort of amusing, becoming a sprawling continent dominating, purely evil, high-tech nuclear warfare empire, with military robots of destruction, and you still have horseback cavalry units waiting for an upgrade. I feel like playing this again but it sucks with a PS controller and am not even sure if my crap pc is good enough to run it.

nah calz I don't think that's "doing it wrong", I like that civ doesn't pitch that as the only option like many similar games do but it's certainly AN option

look i love a good game of civ but talking about moral issues w/r/t it is kind of absurd. 4x games are literally imperialism. "explore, expand, exploit, exterminate". if you're going to treat civilization (small c) as a "game" to be "won" you might as well just kill everybody! i find it to be a great power fantasy, a great way to get out my aggressive urges towards the concept of post-westphalian nation-states.

That's a great deal. I wonder if the discounting is in advance of a Civ VII announcement sometime soon?

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, December 10, 2023 2:12 PM (five months ago)

And sure enough:

https://civilization.2k.com/seven/

Just the announcement for now. Gameplay trailer in August.

I'm heaps better at this now, Ive had a few culture and sci victories though havent played any harder than on Prince.

Early look at Civ VII
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/civilization-vii-preview-a-new-age-for-a-storied-franchise/

Do any of the mainline games have modes that don't take forever? Preferably under 2 hours for a campaign. I'm back into 4X from Avianos in UFO 50. My favorite older Civ game was Civ Revolution mainly because the games were shorter. I haven't played 4 through 6.

Civ VII is out now on Steam at full price. I want to get into it, but I can't help but believe it's going to be discounted when I have a chance to devote some hours to it.

Yeah I cannot justify $200 for the full kit, thats just mental. Also ppl are kvetching, though only about UI really. It'll take time for the usual crew of obsessives to find all the tricks and bits and pieces and put em up on wiki pages.

I wanna get into this. I tried playing VI on Switch but the tiny screen and a long tutorial section meant I just couldn't get my head round it. I'm guessing it takes a bit if dedication and time

How do people feel about these sorts of games in 2025?
I used to love playing stuff like Sim City and Command & Conquer decades ago on friends' PCs.

More recent attempts to get into them on console (PS, Switch) have been mixed. I tried Dawn of Man but got frustrated at my slow progression, and just as I felt like I was getting somewhere my entire tribe died for some reason.

Similar story with Cities: Skyline which i had a couple of attempts at doing. At first I was impressed and entertained at being able to design these beautiful cities, but trying to make the infrastructure work was confusing and sooner or later whole neighbourhoods were either on fire or without power or both and I just couldn't figure out how to stop them - I had the peculiar feeling I was trying to look after six screaming babies and an empty fridge.

I guess I should give Civ VI another go, but the tutorial is quite long and feels like an info-dump. I get itchy to play the game so I ended up glossing over the tutorial, but then finding myself in situations where I literally don't have a clue what's happening. I realise that's my fault more than the game's

Overall I wonder if these games are better enjoyed on a desktop than on a console perhaps.

CIV is deffo a desktop game imo, personally, I couldn't play it on the PS4.

yup, comfortably clicking in and out of menus and sinking into keyboard shortcuts is essential for entering full Civ hypnosis imo.

Even on laptop it's a bit awkward but I just couldn't do it on console.

Yeah I can't decide it it's cognitive decline on my part or if just doesn't work on console but I can't be faffed nowadays

The animations are sloooooooooooooooow

dog latin, they're a bit older now, but you might really enjoy the Civilization Revolution games! they're designed for console, and they're also much more lightweight, games are quicker, decisions are streamlined. you get the thrill of going from wandering violent murderers to being elon musk at the end, all in like 5-10 hours, rather than the 50+++ hours it takes to play a normal civ game

I have so many hours logged into civ vi on the switch, prob the game I've played the most of in my life tbh

Ah nice ill see if those are available on PS Plus

Daniel_Rf, that's impressive. The small screen and the info on there was driving me a bit nuts but maybe if I played on a bigger screen first to get my bearings it might work

My good eyesight is the only thing I can still brag about now I've hit 40 - well also I have great memory, but it's very selective, mostly there to go "I thought you didn't like Herbie Hancock?" to a friend because of some off the cuff statement he made when we were 25.

It also helps that I played tons of Civ: Revolutions on ps3, and that I am not afraid to start at the baby levels (still only at king after all these years!).

Real talk tho I'll admit there's plenty units and resources where I STILL don't know what their deal is.

I feel seen by DL's mystification. I've cracked this open a bunch of times, on a Macbook, and on the Switch, and I just get bored and confused really quickly. And then it's like one of those Monopoly games where you're losing and it goes on forever and nothng changes.

And yet I still want to crack it. Someday!

Yeah I found this game insurmountably hard when I started - I could tell it had a chess-like way of thinking that I don't normally do well at, but I've perservered. I would never say I'm good. I don't play it with real strategic focus, and I've never played harder than price (normal) level. But I've had wins, so I must be getting something right!

My only sticking point is still war wins. I just cant get my shit together enough to defeat more than one capital. And when you do, everyone else hates you!? How do people do those!?

Yesterday I was setting a new game up and scrolling down the list of civs. I said aloud "what advantages does Cambodia have?" and my bf started chuckling to himself because he *knew* I was then going to say "...compared to, say, a train? Which I could also afford"

Bring on the mods

My only sticking point is still war wins. I just cant get my shit together enough to defeat more than one capital. And when you do, everyone else hates you!? How do people do those!?

The easiest domination victory is probably Hungary at marathon speed. You need to build next to no infrastructure, or even military units, just scrape together enough money to levy your first city-state. Send your new troops to plunder your neighbors, invest the loot in levying another city-state, and so on. If you conquer a city with a campus, immediately run the research project, aided by chopping wood if possible. Focus on researching Masonry first (for the walls and the battering ram), then on upgrading your infantry. Unless you're on an island map, fail to meet any city-states, or spawn next to Teddy, you should be able to win before the medieval era.

Oh I don’t have the mod with Hungary guess I should invest. War absolutely wins every time and for me the real brute is Scythia. Double production for horse archers and instant recovery is brutal. I spend most of the first half of my game managing bots so that involves a lot of scouts for me and geography is probably more important than which civilization I play. I usually choose the civ randomly but there are some like Egypt that don’t suit my strategy because I start with a team of chariots and then upgrade to knights and then tanks if necessary.

(Managing “bots” = managing barbarians)

Civ VII has insane lag on the switch now. Makes the final era nigh unplayable.