Civilization VI

2 and 3 are too old. 5 was a system hog in 2010. 4 lets you zoom out until the map turns into a globe.

the real remain in light dad answer tho, and the correct answer, is alpha centauri.

i wish my dad would have bought me alpha centauri. still have never played it!

Civ 4 seems like a good way to get your kid into classical music.
Or to have her drop out of school, glued to the screen, muttering "the people are the heroes now, Behemoth pulls the peasants plow" forever and ever.

These are beautifully on-point parenting observations - I have already ruined her pop culture currency by showing her endless episodes of The Goodies and The Mighty Boosh, and she's into the new Breeders album.
Civ 4 sounds like it would be graphically interesting but not a resource hog - older versions may look too visually creaky, but then Minecraft and Undertale are good enough for today's hip kids.

just bought Civ 6 on PS4. Haven't played Civ or any other strategy type game since the early 2000s. Have I made a good decision? Is there anything I should know before starting?

i've been trying to branch out beyond Civ V - i haven't even tried Civ VI because it seems like it has all the problems that V did and possibly more. i'm really not sure i'm cut out for 4X games though. I tried one of those Paradox games and I just had to nope out, too ridiculously complex for me. I'm trying a game called "Endless Legend" now that seems not quite as bad but it still took me an hour to do the tutorial and I was left so utterly exhausted I just want to play Cat Quest instead.

If you haven't played in that long, you should be fine, as you're starting fresh: I came to VI after V (and IV before that) and had to forget all the strategies and habits I'd had from V. I highly recommend these guides for each civ, really helped me.

I think, after a decade of these games, I love them more in theory than in practice. I just don't have the patience or time anymore to sit down and study strategies for each civ, watch youtube videos, etc. Feels too much like studying for a test. And if I just set it on super easy, it gets boring. I've been playing the 7 Wonders Duel with my girlfriend and it's essentially Civ in card game form, and it scratches the itch nicely.

VI has more blunt force strategy going for it than V which I think was a little more subtle

I just started playing VI last month, never played V or really any Civ since II, and I've been losing (playing on Prince and even Warlord). I don't want to hack out a big war so I've gone for science & religion & culture but keep getting whacked by some thug when I'm approaching these victories. I guess I need to build up a defense army. I've played as France, Australia, and India so far.

xp Definitely--I preferred "tall" cultural victories in V, and barely had to create military units on lower difficulties, aside from defeating barbarians in the initial scouting phase. Aside from barbarians being more aggressive in VI, the game seems to encourage more territorial wars during play, even if a domination victory isn't your endgame.

I like the precepts behind some of the choices of VI, to encourage approaching each play as unique rather than V's tendency of "always go for this Liberty/Tradition for this playstyle, do this opener". In practice, though, eras go by so fast that policy cards tend to pile up without me really using them.

925 hours into Gathering Storm and the game still manages to surprise me. I started an assault on China and they retaliated with a Betrayal Emergency, so all the other leaders, my former level 3 allies, are now pouring troops in the direction of my capital for the next fifty turns, while my own forces are on the other end of the map, fighting with -3 combat strength. And I can do nothing to boost their power because I've been at war non-stop for 118 turns and need all the policy slots to counteract rampant war weariness and the escalating troop budget.

https://i.imgur.com/PT6zDBq.png

Well I won't lie, I'm loving it.

Diplomacy has got so much better in civ 6, haven't really tried out the new diplomatic district but Ethiopia have ridiculous faith generation and I love the rock hewn churches

This is my first Civ game, and I stayed up waaaaay too late last night playing it.

you may lose your job. but that might be a good thing! listen to civ and don't go to bed!!

i listened to civ, and these days i'm feeling great :D

i'm curious about your thoughts about it, Leee, on first impression!

The slow-drip of "Oh my research/unit production is about to finish in a few turns, let's just just play through that" happened like a hundred times last night!

I didn't see that the game has a dedicated tutorial on the main menu and so when I started I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (the in-game tutorial is laughably unhelpful) -- and part of the reason that I kept playing was because I was trying to figure out how to get my builders to make fishing boats.

Also, one impetus for playing was because a bunch of players in my trivia league have mentioned that they've gotten questions right thanks to the series... although when I play video games, I have little patience for reading, and I'm afraid that I won't get the salutary effects of KNOWLEDGE that comes with sleep deprivation.

The diplomacy dynamic surprised me, too! Cleopatra reached out to me and I was like, "HI DERE!" And after maybe one turn, she denounced me! (Apparently she doesn't get down with Classical Republics?)

If you can, make a trade deal the second you meet a CIV if you’re not a very powerful one. You’ll get a better return before they decide you suck and it will get your relationship off to a decent enough start they might not denounce you at all. For a bit.

and if you meet gandhi, do not assume he will be peaceful. that guy is crazy

i thought they fixed that whole "nukey" quirk?!

they did

They did, but I think it’s good for the community to keep spreading the rumor because it used to be so good :)

it's just what Gandhi wants us to believe.

So I just found out about the win conditions and to see my score compared to other cities, and I'm losing on basically all fronts! I kind of screwed myself a little bit -- I'm boxed in, I've pissed off all the other big cities -- I wonder if I should restart the campaign or just play the tutorial?

I bet you could just restart, skip the tutorial and just take a look at the Civilopedia for a bit. there might be some concepts/rules that are new to you that you'll find in there (like how combat works and stuff like that) but in general you're good to go

I restarted my game and only played till 11pm, which is progress! I thought I was doing pretty well till another leader declared war on me -- I hadn't bothered building up ANY defenses, and what military troops I bothered to train were all over the continent, so that's going to be take 3 sometime this weekend.

I won my first game! Unfortunately I played from 4pm to 8am.

:D congrats! Classic

That’s a very quick game!

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)