Civilization 6

First review @ PC Gamer:
http://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-6-review/

The storied series has crowned a new king.

9.3/10

Lemme grab a grain of salt. It's a review from a site that crowned MGS5 as GOTY.

EDIT:
Powered up Steam - the game is downloading something.
Did they unlock it already?!

pre-load; they unlocked pre-load a few days ago.

btw will this have a gazillion dlc like all the other civs ?

I think you are thinking about that other strategy game that has 100 dlcs. Civ seems to go with more expansions. Looks like they will be adding new nations so maybe they will do a crap load of dlcs.

Well, Civ 5 had a couple of DLCs, but it was somewhat reasonable.

I am very thrilled to play civ 6 tomorrow but a couple of things I fear could be problematic. Of course I didn't play the game yet, but let's see if I am right here:

-value difference between flatland and tiles. In Civ 5 they had same value, now hills are much more powerful. Which adds further importance of starting area which can be problematic for a balanced start in multiplayer (player with lots of hills will have a huge advantage over someone with no hills)
-Building wide is now a more valid option as in civ 5 where you the sience and culture you needed increased for each city built. That's not the case in civ 6, though the district costs rises. But overall creating lots of cities is abig advantage and might create a bigger and faster snowball effect.
-in Civ 5 you had to focus on your capital. if your capital location sucked or was really great you had a huge disadvantage or advantage. Because building wide becomes increasingly important in Civ 6 it's not so much the location of the first city, but the area around your city. If you don't have much space to expand while your opponents (players have) you might be screwed early on.
-science can now be boosted by eurekas. So for example by killing someone with slingers you get an eureka which basically gives you 50% sience for archers for free.
This was initially apparently advertised as bonuses which lead your path. But that doesn't seem to be so much the case now as eurekas are extremely easy to get. So it's basically that you try to get all eurekas. And then it's not a bonus anymore to get one, but a malus if you don't get one. Could be an additional hassle without real gameplay value
-the second issue this brings with it, is that you often will not want to research something for more than 50% but there is no way to automatically stop it.
So let's say you are at Archers 46% and you get 5% each turn, you should stop immediately to research archers if you plan on getting the eureka, which you should in most cases. Becase if you get 66% of archers and then the eureka you basically wasted 3 turns of science. So each turn you need to check "will I get over 50% in this research next turn", which is not a nice mechanic.
-You can now unlock government types and fill them with card slots with different policies. But these can be swapped out each tile you finish one "culture research". But having so many policy "cards" to chose from might become a hassle to maximize it. Also there are some policies like reducing tile costs when buying them. Ideally you'd research two policies to 99% then get the policy, buy all tiles, then finish the other culture "research" to swap it out again. Very weird game mechanics.


So as I mentioned I am thrilled about the game, but there seem to be a lot of potential cracks in the game design. Besides of potentially weak AI, especially trading AI.

From the depiction of it, the eureka mechanism looks like come back mechanics. It is thought for MU. It breaks the linearity of the science research process and ensures that falling behind is not terminal and that rushing up the tech tree is no longer that viable.

It seems to confirm that Civ 6 was designed with MU first in mind.

You also get random techs halved turns through great persons and wonders. Great persons are possible to buy with religion points.

But not everything is random, eventually someone will make an optimal route to some desirable point because doing something "improves" specific research.

So after 17 hours my main two issues are now:

-AI: The AI is really bad and not much of a challenge. I didn't play on Deity yet, but Even on the second highest difficulty setting it's not very good.
--Often it keeps standing next to goodie huts without taking them
--Sending out Settlers without escorts
--Not upgrading units properly. Normally you can run over them when you have the first major upgrade. For example Swordsman

-Civ Balance: Some Civs are just balanced horribly. Especially when playing Multiplayer this is a huge issue. Scythia is just so absurdly strong with always building two light kavallery instead of one (which you can build very early in the game). In addition all units heal on each kill by 50 Hitpoints. That's just insanely strong.
I played a MP game with a friend, against him and 6 other civs (you can now add additional AI civs on MP maps as well, beyond normal map limit). I built like 20-30 Horsemen asap (which is I build like 10-15, but they appear twice). And with that I headed north, Overrun the Sumerian AI, Chinese AI, and Norwegian AI, without losing any units. Didn not have to build any more units, it was just a wave of insanity washing over the earth.

Haha, and I just read the AI part in the Gamestar Review about Civ 6 (German unfortunately):
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/civili…t-lebensfaehig

Titling this Chapter: "Die KI: Reich, aber nicht lebensfähig"
Translating to: "Rich but not non-viable"

Mentioning various situations where the AI shows it is unable to do any reasonable warfare.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
--Often it keeps standing next to goodie huts without taking them
--Sending out Settlers without escorts
--Not upgrading units properly. Normally you can run over them when you have the first major upgrade. For example Swordsman

First two don't happen if you're on duel map. Another civ AI will take huts and will escort settlers. Citystate units however do not take huts, maybe you mixed them up with normal civs?

About upgrading units I'm not sure if it's AI or me taking away strategic resources and refusing to deal with them. But it's true, AI seems not upgrading units at all. Maybe they use gold to build stuff instead of upgrading?

Originally Posted by Kordanor
-Civ Balance: Some Civs are just balanced horribly. Especially when playing Multiplayer

Civs seem balanced for singleplayer. When playing multiplayer of course nonAI will abuse certain stuff AI is not even aware of. Because of that I'd wait for a few balancing patches before trying MMO.

Originally Posted by joxer
First two don't happen if you're on duel map. Another civ AI will take huts and will escort settlers. Citystate units however do not take huts, maybe you mixed them up with normal civs?

Nope, I just played another game in Multiplayer with deity AI. Stole Egypt one of his first settlers in turn 10-15 or so.
And parallel to that I an doing a Let's Play, only on King though as it's the very first game I started.
Turn 118, I just conquered the first city of the second nation, and look what I found next to their border:

Civs seem balanced for singleplayer. When playing multiplayer of course nonAI will abuse certain stuff AI is not even aware of. Because of that I'd wait for a few balancing patches before trying MMO.

Well in that case it's balanced neither for Single Player nor Multiplayer. Scythia is just much stronger than most others. And Norway on the other end seems to start with a horrible starting bias, letting them often start without fresh water as it seems.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
And parallel to that I an doing a Let's Play, only on King though as it's the very first game I started.

I watched most of your Lets Play. I think I'll be buying Civ 6 eventually.

Originally Posted by Wisdom
I watched most of your Lets Play. I think I'll be buying Civ 6 eventually.

Thanks for watching. I'd say it currently really depends on what difficulty you expect and if you are ok if the AI is cheating hard to be able to compete.
Technically it's quite a polished game. Even featuring hotseat right from release.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Well in that case it's balanced neither for Single Player nor Multiplayer. Scythia is just much stronger than most others. And Norway on the other end seems to start with a horrible starting bias, letting them often start without fresh water as it seems.

It is thought for MU.

When AI is involved in a MU game, usually, the winner is determined by the efficiency at farming the AI.

Games might be designed including that feature: players compete over farming the AI to win. It is an essential component.

CIV 6 is not that. It is full PvP in MU.

As to civs having a strong early, mid or late game, it is compulsory since players are expected to stay until the end.

I still haven't seen Scythia in duel singleplayer maps so can't say anything about her in singleplayer.
But so far everyone I did meet feel pretty much balanced. Till a point I just jump over them with everything, but well, it's AI.

There is something odd though, I win a few matches a bit after 100 turns with culture. So I disabled that winning option and while disabling it a tooltip appeared that it's the hardest way to win? Hardest my arse.

One mechanic which is broken is the selling of units:

Formulars are:
Unit Cost = 80
Cost to buy = Unit/ Building Cost * 4 = 240
Gold on sale = Unit Cost * 2 = 120

So now couple that with the early game policy which gives you 100% production on horses.

What you can do with that is:
Build Light Kavallery in your capital. Then sell it. This essentially translates into purchase cost due to the policy. Now you can buy anything you want in other cities.
Essentially producing your buildings and units in your capital.

Of course with Scythia you would even dupe that money due to building two horseman at once. Doubling your overall production efficiency.


Btw: When building units without encampment you need 2 ressources of iron/horse.
If you have an encampment you only need 1.
You can also just ignore that, and upgrade your unit with gold. Which only needs 1 as well.

That exploit is probably valid only for double unit scythia leader. With other leaders you can't waste turns on waiting for a mass of units to be built that also need gold upkeep which scythia can afford by selling the second unit every once in a while and because those are fastmove horse units. You can't buy just any building with gold, so it's good only to build a massive army and afford a few great persons before everyone else.
I have no idea how to play against that as it's a horror earlygame if on the other side is a human player. As I don't play MMO, and AI will not do it.

But at a certain point of the game I did get something that on building a ship makes two instantly instead of one. It's not leader based, was it a card, a wonder or a great person bonus? Can't remember. But that's something anyone can use to pile up gold, although not early. The thing is, each time I see it, I don't want it as I'm already filthy rich.

Regularily! I'm not abusing builders chop everything exploit!

But I can suggest you to wipe out the floor with these before they realize the abuse possibility:
http://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-…arts-new-team/

Well, you can do that with everyone. There is no upkeep if you sell them immediately and it translates 1 to 1. Scythia just doubles her production via converting it to gold.

The wonder you had in mind is the Venetian Arsenal btw.

So you know what doubles ships… One could suspect you're actively searching for exploits.

In any case, that doubleproduction/$ exploit and builders plunder everything horror need to be fixed ASAP. There is this guy who numbered all those things… QA failed miserably, so many exploits are not surprising after no way to rename settlements:
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comment…a_hotfix_asap/

Btw: There is another one not mentioned there

As you probably now the prices of districts scale and also become more expensive over time.

To exploit that you can just start and abandon all of them right away. The costs then stay the same. You save huge amount of production.

I am playing in multiplayer with a friend most of the time (played 40h+ yet) and we are testing out things, researching some stuff, theorycrafting about others and making some houserules for ourselves. E.g. Scythia is banned, snapshotting and selling is not allowed.

I would really like to see a hotfix but as I think I mentioned before Firaxis was always incredibly slow with these things.