Civilization VI

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...

The districts and housing mechanics take some getting used to.

There's an amusing variety of quote sources, as there always is, from Heinlein to NdG-T to Mark Twain to....uh...Scott Adams.

So should I continue to get used to the general concepts of this game via Civ V for a while before i get this? I'm stillgetting my head round it all.

First game ever and with not long to go (I'm up to 194something) I am in second place, trying to get a cultural victory. No idea what I'm doing.

I just hope they've solved the endgame slowness on large maps.

spotted courtney cox being quoted too. finished my first game, sumerians on mars in 1993. looked like I was going to win a science victory from about 1750, although there was a fun moment of panic when I realised that the Japanese focus on religion (which I’d ignored) might pay off and I had to use all my units to surround the last Hindu city I had to block their apostles (during a war as well) and rush a holy site so I could spam enough apostles to counter them. Going to try a religion game next.

AI turns are a lot faster if you turn on quick movement and combat. it’s quicker than V, but it still gets slower as the game goes on. I would probably dive into VI rather than practice on V. although it is a bit more complicated there are quite a lot of things that function differently so you’d have to unlearn a lot of habits

bought it and downloaded it

have yet to play it

hoping for a quick session tonight!

fuckin lorne michaels is the quote when you discover the wheel

xxxp: 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

For a more refined take on gal civ, try Stellaris, which is Paradox Games's (Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings) entry into the space 4x genre. It borrows many ideas from Gal Civ, which in turn borrowed them from MOO, but presents them in a real-time with pause format. The third update which dramatically improved combat came out this week, and if anything like past Paradox games, they're continue supporting and fleshing out the game for years til the game is radically remade.

played my first civ6 game last night. trajan, small map, quick speed, prince level

thoughts:

*graphics/illustrations are not too cartoony, so i could get used to them

*using a macbook pro 2015. graphics were set to high, but didn't like the excessive fan spinning/noise, so i turned the graphics to low. graphics didn't suffer much, fan was slightly less quieter but not by much

*kind of easy to win a war. mvemba was settling near to me, then i blocked him from expanding by settling right next to him. could already tell this dude wanted to destroy me so i focused on army/war traits (civics, units, etc). even after killing about 10 of his units, i couldn't figure out how to offer him a deal, til he finally did. it was a sweet deal too

*victoria loves me. sending envoys left, right and centre to la venta (city state), not sure what this does yet

*founded a religion -- pretty neat because you can make your own or choose a preexisting one. was gonna go with catholicism as i'm rome, and do the whole holy war/jesuit thing but decided on a more practical approach and chose buddhism. you can modify what your religion does and how you benefit from it, which is pretty cool

*i'm in either second or third place depending on the type of victory. not sure which way to go as i'm figuring everything out for now, but i might beef up my army and take over mvemba's cities

*districts are neat, helping with amenities

*overall i seem to be cruising at a fun pace in prince level. not too exciting/hard, but not too dull/easy

*i have the opportunity to increase my culture, which i will probably end up doing. i have so much gold, but that's just my style (i tend to sometimes focus too much on gold), but i'll need it as i grow my army. might go for a world dom victory, but want to see how it goes after i take over mvemba's cities, as he is currently winning culturally

anyway, cool first game

for newcomers/beginners, i would definitely jump right in to civ6 because there is a bit of a learning curve

some things are the same, like my cheap archers do well to destroy early horseback units. and spearmen are better at fighting chariots

but generally, it is different enough that you'll want to start learning the new civ6 system instead of picking up previous ones (unless you don't want to transfer over to civ6)

prince is v easy. clobbered rome + paris last night bc they both kept picking wars w/ me (that they couldn't win). they begged every turn for a peace deal for all their assets but i was rolling (had knights, crossbowmen + samurais and their legacy armies still had flingers or whatever the early archers are called) so i rejected the deals and now have conquered my entire continent. they have apparently gotten rid of the "too many cities" negatives which is good bc there's nothing i like more than having a thousand cities all over the place. also essential for grabbing needed resources. only competition is saladin has the second biggest religion (buddhism vs. my native judaism) and he keeps trying to missionary spam my cities - luckily my acolytes can pretty easily destroy them. thinking after this game i'll probably move up to a higher difficulty level bc i was barely paying attention and certainly not employing any micro strategies and i'm dominating.

ya getting that feeling too

i kinda rushed through it and i'm only on turn 100 or something

I'm amazed people are able to play "quick" installments of this game!

o i'm not done with it

quick games usually take me about 20-24 hours i believe

they have done away with expansion penalties? as frustrating as those have been to play with they have seemed essential after spamming cities being way op in early civ versions

it seems like it?

the cost of districts, science and culture all scale I think. the diplomacy seems like the clunkiest area so far but the underlying mechanics behind it are more interesting/sophisticated

Come on, dammit, where's that patch

yeah -- u have any specific complaints?

Balancing and AI bits, mainly. As a game, this far exceeds what vanilla Civ V was right out of the gate.

I'm right on the border conditions of Civ VI's hardware requirements. Is Civ VI manageable in some minimal graphics mode?

as long as you don't mind missing out on the leader animations I think you'll be fine

I'm not sure what I'd change balance-wise yet. some of the civs seem obviously better/worse but that's always the case. some of the AI diplomacy decisions/warmonger stuff esp with joint wars maybe

I'm playing on a technically unsupported machine (2012 pre-Retina MBP), but it's been perfectly playable on low settings. Very stable, very little lag.

i like the idea of scout barbarians alerting camp barbarians to attack but in practice it just becomes busy work. i still think there shd be a late-game version of barbarians where u have to protect them in the way ppl leave the deep amazon tribes alone

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.