Civilization VI

I'd figured out (more like read up on) the early game strategy -- I didn't realize how critical early expansion is, whereas I'd been thinking that organic growth was the way to go, even though it happens very slowly (I guess I thought it would accelerate over time). I also didn't know that parking my units on the borders of other nations would provoke them into war.

And actually, technically, my game is still going on -- I was close to launching a satellite when I actually reached a cultural victory.

I haven't played VI yet, but building a load of cities as early as you can has always been.the best strategy

I'd figured out (more like read up on) the early game strategy -- I didn't realize how critical early expansion is, whereas I'd been thinking that organic growth was the way to go, even though it happens very slowly (I guess I thought it would accelerate over time). I also didn't know that parking my units on the borders of other nations would provoke them into war.

That was a learning curve for me as well, as I tended to play V with Civs that got by with just three or four cities. VI seems also to encourage more early skirmishing as a result. I tend to play relatively peaceful games so it took me a bit to adjust, as it felt like I was spending the early game pumping out combat units and settlers rather than doing the building I was interested in.

some of the disasters are so overpowered, wtf. i was playing a game with default settings and a blizzard killed a quarter of a city's population and pillaged all of its tiles when i was in the information age. that same game i had tornadoes take out the industrial zone that was powering half my civ and killed a bunch of population in the city i was building a spaceport in.

Its so real

on extra-real mode, sometimes half of your citizens just choose to kill themselves, and no matter how hard you try to get them to stop doing it, they keep doing it. these death cult citizens are not only annoying, but they are also very loud and you can't turn them down. any time you scroll over your part of the world, it's just these loud people complaining and dying

luckily you can use new diplomatic measures to convince another empire to let you join them and wage war on the republic of whiners that you once had to oversee

i had to re-install civ 6 and now i get these weird dark vertical lines coming up out of land that's in shadow. i vaguely remember this happening in the past but i totally don't remember what settings i tweaked to make it go away, v annoying.

Civ VI is on a DEEP discount on Steam at present - I got the Anthology bundle which is every single DLC and expansion country, for like $35.

I was reluctant to bother with 6 - I'm used to 5, I like how it looks (the cartoonyness of 6 is mildly offputting) and I'm still learning even after whats apparently 6 years according to when i last posted lol.

Even after all this time I've only ever had one culture win. Its such a timesink of a game I only pick it up in lulls between other big games and Elden Ring/BOTW/TOTK got in the way the last few years.

Anyway visuals aside I'm already intrigued by the more complex system so we shall see!

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

I had assumed so, yeah.

bought this (five quid!) and giving it a go, any tips? seems like loads of extra new stuff and I'm not sure what's really important to get used to. on first look barbarians seem to be a much bigger deal, I can't automate my "builders", roads just seem to appear without being built and there are city states around which I should probably try to capture using culture or sth?

For context I am only used to civ IV and (decades ago) civ II

Roads get automatically built once a trade route has been established, either by yourself, one of the other civs or a city state. So if you're planning to move troops good idea to link the cities up first.

City states can be conquered, I don't *think* you can convert them using culture? As you get diplomacy points you can send envoys to them, and if you send enough you become their suzerain. You can then levvy their military and move through their territory as well as other benefits.

Some random advice that I don't know whether it's VI specific, having only played Revolutions before this: always a good idea to have some cities on the coast, as eventually you'll have to explore beyond your continent; a lot of resources only get discovered midgame (coal, oil, eventually plutonium), so get ready to rush to certain spots to found a city or to gather your troops and attack someone who already has those fields; the Council of Nations or whatever it's called is really dull but you have to look out so an adversary doesn't get a diplomatic victory, make sure to use your diplomacy to vote against giving the person winning in that category more points, also if you want some easy diplomacy points vote for units to spend less production, as that is something the AI always goes for.

One big difference with Revolutions is you can't send units into ships, so you have to send them on their own across the ocean and have them be protected by warships around them. Be aware land units have very little health when offshore.

Do you have a preferred kind of victory?

I always preferred the space race victory, bit sad that's gone, but I suppose science is almost the same. domination works for me too, score/time seems a bit arbitrary, but guess that's ok. diplomacy and religion are strange and unsettling and I don't want to go there.

I recommend checking this user’s guides if you’re playing a specific Civ: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Zigzagzigal/myworkshopfiles/?appid=289070§ion=guides . I found them to be useful to get my bearings, especially as I’m not a player who is inclined to study the game like homework and figure out all the optimizations and tile yield bonuses etc.

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.