iammaxhailme
Emperor
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2015
- Messages
- 1,999
I think R&F made more significant changes, but I stil like GS
[GS] Your first impression score of this expansion
- Thread starter Disgustipated
- Start date
Isengardtom
Warlord
I gave it 9
I love it. Some tweaking is needed but I always feel that’s the case. A patch or two after release of an expansion makes it better
- New civs are great
- I love the storms, volcanoes, floods
- I like the new way emergencies are implemented. In R&F they almost never came up and the AI never did anything with them
- I actually like the power system. Boosts the use for later game buildings a lot. I do find that the time between getting the coal plant and say solar farms is too short.
- climate change mechanic improves late game but impact could be a bit more at first impression
- game visuals are great. Leader animations, and small visual details make the difference. The art team of this game should win an award.
- World congress is mostly fun too, some resolutions are more impactful than others
So overall great. Now I liked R&F too, and I agree with the above post that R&F introduced more impactful game mechanics but GS added a lot more flavour, improved on R&F mechanics (esp governors, emergencies) and introduced us to some really interesting civs, whereas those in R&F were a bit more generic I think.
I love it. Some tweaking is needed but I always feel that’s the case. A patch or two after release of an expansion makes it better
- New civs are great
- I love the storms, volcanoes, floods
- I like the new way emergencies are implemented. In R&F they almost never came up and the AI never did anything with them
- I actually like the power system. Boosts the use for later game buildings a lot. I do find that the time between getting the coal plant and say solar farms is too short.
- climate change mechanic improves late game but impact could be a bit more at first impression
- game visuals are great. Leader animations, and small visual details make the difference. The art team of this game should win an award.
- World congress is mostly fun too, some resolutions are more impactful than others
So overall great. Now I liked R&F too, and I agree with the above post that R&F introduced more impactful game mechanics but GS added a lot more flavour, improved on R&F mechanics (esp governors, emergencies) and introduced us to some really interesting civs, whereas those in R&F were a bit more generic I think.
greenblade
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2018
- Messages
- 17
8/10
Good:
1. Fixed a number of annoying issues, like chopping overflow with policy cards, clearing science/culture overflow upon eureka/inspiration, and many smaller ones.
2. Noticeable improvement on graphics, UI and performance.
3. Changes to strategic resources makes sense to me.
4. Like the disaster system. Default setting (2) working perfect for me: enough to keep in mind, but not annoying.
5. Grievances mechanic makes sense to me, although I'm playing (mostly) peacefully so far.
6. Most new features work smoothly (more or less) with existing mechanisms.
7. New civ are fun!
8. World Congress and Diplomatic Victory are absolutely needed.
9. Glad to see efforts (power, rock band) to improve late game experience.
Bad (Disappointment):
1. Coastal cities (tiles) are still weak. There are a few minor buffs, like commercial CSs applies to Harbor buildings, sea trade routes make more money. But production still sucks unless you have Auckland, and Harbor is still inferior to Commercial Hub. And now I need to worry about sea level rising!
2. Religion is still weak since there is no major improvement. Weak religion really limits the ways to play the game and reduces the fun.
3. Diplomatic victory takes too much turns to be relevant in my games.
4. Map generation is probably better than RnF. But you can easily get too much or too few mountains/hills (on Pangea), or been sandwiched by tundras and deserts. And there are way too much volcanoes.
5. The pillage problem. In general, I think the number of tech/civic is the wrong metric for cost/benefit progress. Sad to see Firaxis doubles down on it.
Overall, I think this expansion is better than Rise and Fall. Hope Firaxis will refine existing features before introducing new ones in the next major update.
Good:
1. Fixed a number of annoying issues, like chopping overflow with policy cards, clearing science/culture overflow upon eureka/inspiration, and many smaller ones.
2. Noticeable improvement on graphics, UI and performance.
3. Changes to strategic resources makes sense to me.
4. Like the disaster system. Default setting (2) working perfect for me: enough to keep in mind, but not annoying.
5. Grievances mechanic makes sense to me, although I'm playing (mostly) peacefully so far.
6. Most new features work smoothly (more or less) with existing mechanisms.
7. New civ are fun!
8. World Congress and Diplomatic Victory are absolutely needed.
9. Glad to see efforts (power, rock band) to improve late game experience.
Bad (Disappointment):
1. Coastal cities (tiles) are still weak. There are a few minor buffs, like commercial CSs applies to Harbor buildings, sea trade routes make more money. But production still sucks unless you have Auckland, and Harbor is still inferior to Commercial Hub. And now I need to worry about sea level rising!
2. Religion is still weak since there is no major improvement. Weak religion really limits the ways to play the game and reduces the fun.
3. Diplomatic victory takes too much turns to be relevant in my games.
4. Map generation is probably better than RnF. But you can easily get too much or too few mountains/hills (on Pangea), or been sandwiched by tundras and deserts. And there are way too much volcanoes.
5. The pillage problem. In general, I think the number of tech/civic is the wrong metric for cost/benefit progress. Sad to see Firaxis doubles down on it.
Overall, I think this expansion is better than Rise and Fall. Hope Firaxis will refine existing features before introducing new ones in the next major update.
Troy Bruckner
Prince
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2019
- Messages
- 433
I love how resources are done now.
Diplomacy is good, but the Ai voting is a bit off since they seem to value trivial things and leave good things to the player.
Nobel Prize should be standard in all games and not based on if Sweden is in the game or not.
I love all the new city states, but there is no longer the possibility to have them all in game. I go into a game with a strategy based on getting certain Suzerain bonuses and Kumasi seems to be a no show almost every game.
Rock Bands can have a 50% chance to convert a city to your religion is a bit much.
Diplomacy is good, but the Ai voting is a bit off since they seem to value trivial things and leave good things to the player.
Nobel Prize should be standard in all games and not based on if Sweden is in the game or not.
I love all the new city states, but there is no longer the possibility to have them all in game. I go into a game with a strategy based on getting certain Suzerain bonuses and Kumasi seems to be a no show almost every game.
Rock Bands can have a 50% chance to convert a city to your religion is a bit much.
3/10. Subject to change with future patches, but so far, it's not the improvement I expected as a lot of things aren't implemented very well and seem like hasty additions and changes. I think it's potentially something like 7/10 for me if they make it "work".
Btw. I think it's strange to label 10/10 as nearly perfect. 10/10 should be perfect.
Btw. I think it's strange to label 10/10 as nearly perfect. 10/10 should be perfect.
Last edited:
sonicmyst
Emperor
8.5 for me (8 in your choices)
Many positive things but there are few bugs and imbalances
Many positive things but there are few bugs and imbalances
Hans Castorp
Prince
8. Natural disasters are fun in the early game, and I've come to enjoy the more assertive barbarians. The late game feels significantly revivified by the industrialization phase. Needs some tweaking on various points, and it is way too easy to walk a culture victory before you get anywhere near the future era, but overall very satisfying so far.
StrideColossus
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2010
- Messages
- 277
Agreed, I barely played R&F, the features changes were minor and the new civs uninteresting IMHO.
My score: 7
Positives:
- maps look and play a lot better now as far as I can tell
- less insane forward settling by the AI and generally a little more room in the early game (though only started a few games thus far)
- WC works a lot better than I'd imagined
- the newly introduced civs are very different and interesting
- choosing governors is now a tricky decision (as opposed to the previous default of Magnus and OP chopping exploits)
- disasters are fun!
Negatives:
- diplomatic victory looks like a backward step, basically just clicking next turn until the next WC
- game still suffers from the fact that it's either won or lost in the first 50 turns or so and the end-game is still tedious micro-management
- the production queue is a very welcome addition but it's totally non-intuitive to use (for me at least)
- why on earth does dismissing the notifications at the bottom-right cause your units to move FFS!
Timothy001
Prince
I went 8. Haven't been this excited to play in a long time. With GS its like an addiction. I just can't wait to play more. It lost 2 points for bug fixes/balance changes needed.
marvelharvey
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2010
- Messages
- 34
4
My first GS game was incredibly boring and soured my initial impression. Although I'm sure I'll like it more and more as games go by. Why was my game so boring? Well basically RNG/quirks meant that I wasn't able to utilize my leader's special abilities.
-Chose Hungary, but found very few locations where districts were best placed across the river from a city centre.
-When at war, whenever I levied a city state's military, the opposing Civ would send 6 envoys to the city state, losing me control of the units and have them attack me instead.
-Despite owning a 1/3rd of the landmass when my unique units came online, there was no nitre within my borders. No other civ had it to trade with either. The nearest possible nitre was in the middle of my strongest rival and I pushed through his land methodically with my small band of non levied units. took his capital after a very long drawn out war and finally claimed two nitre tiles! Then a few turns later, I was past nitre units in the research tree.
So basically I never touched a city state's units, never built any of Hungary's unique units and saw little benefit from the 50% district/building bonus due to map RNG.
I'm sure my next game will be far superior (the new toys do look fun), but the first one left a bad taste in my mouth.
My first GS game was incredibly boring and soured my initial impression. Although I'm sure I'll like it more and more as games go by. Why was my game so boring? Well basically RNG/quirks meant that I wasn't able to utilize my leader's special abilities.
-Chose Hungary, but found very few locations where districts were best placed across the river from a city centre.
-When at war, whenever I levied a city state's military, the opposing Civ would send 6 envoys to the city state, losing me control of the units and have them attack me instead.
-Despite owning a 1/3rd of the landmass when my unique units came online, there was no nitre within my borders. No other civ had it to trade with either. The nearest possible nitre was in the middle of my strongest rival and I pushed through his land methodically with my small band of non levied units. took his capital after a very long drawn out war and finally claimed two nitre tiles! Then a few turns later, I was past nitre units in the research tree.
So basically I never touched a city state's units, never built any of Hungary's unique units and saw little benefit from the 50% district/building bonus due to map RNG.
I'm sure my next game will be far superior (the new toys do look fun), but the first one left a bad taste in my mouth.
4/10 from me.
Feels very buggy to me, especially map generation is bad (barbarians and city state spawns).
World congress is too random.
Addition of future era just busy-work, adds little to game.
Disasters are good, except that Climate Change is meh (and too focused on sea level instead of desertification).
Balancing of districts is still bad. Balancing of Civs is a joke.
Feels very buggy to me, especially map generation is bad (barbarians and city state spawns).
World congress is too random.
Addition of future era just busy-work, adds little to game.
Disasters are good, except that Climate Change is meh (and too focused on sea level instead of desertification).
Balancing of districts is still bad. Balancing of Civs is a joke.
Onii-chan
King
Maybe 8 or so. I think GS as a whole feels a bit... gimmicky? Like it has a lot of fun features but not very many of them feel mandatory. It's like you can ignore most of the new things and do just fine anyway. World Congress feels a bit... random and global warming is mostly ignorable since it affects everyone and is thus not worth thinking much about since the positives from burning coal and oil etc are local
Also it is a bit imbalanced and the AI has not been improved, but nevertheless it's a lot of fun, and ultimately that's the most important thing
I do think that Culture Victory needs an overhaul by now though. I feel like you win by culture almost accidentally half the time by now. It should be extended somehow to reflect the added future era at least. Instead, with the implementation of Rock Bands which are kinda like Great Musicians in Civ V, you can get them even faster now when it ought to be slower, not to mention there are more things that boost tourism now. But I'm sure someone can mod the tourism numbers throughout the game to nerf it a little
Ironically I think the best improvement of GS was actually the map generation. The world looks awesome now in a way Civ never has before
Also it is a bit imbalanced and the AI has not been improved, but nevertheless it's a lot of fun, and ultimately that's the most important thing
I do think that Culture Victory needs an overhaul by now though. I feel like you win by culture almost accidentally half the time by now. It should be extended somehow to reflect the added future era at least. Instead, with the implementation of Rock Bands which are kinda like Great Musicians in Civ V, you can get them even faster now when it ought to be slower, not to mention there are more things that boost tourism now. But I'm sure someone can mod the tourism numbers throughout the game to nerf it a little
Ironically I think the best improvement of GS was actually the map generation. The world looks awesome now in a way Civ never has before
NorthernPalmyra
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2019
- Messages
- 66
I like what Ive seen so far 
I started an Aquitane game last night (after an Ottoman start). I was planning on just using loyalty to flip any obnoxious cities. Playing on colossal size (@ the size of the giant earth map). I selected my opponents. Russia is one of them (read: good luck getting great works). I had decided while loading to NOT go for an early religion - which is WAY outside my normal playbook. Instead, I was going to settler spam.
Turn 1. Desert and plains everywhere, tundra south of me. Plenty of hills. 2 jade and 1 forested plains hill amber. My plans for rapid growth are not looking good.
Find Russia. About 12 hexes west of me, also on plains hills, squished between desert and tundra.
Hmmm.
So I start building warriors, sell my 2 jade and 1 amber, to end up gold popping 4 warriors, take St. Pete's and Tula (and Armagh), great works problem solved. And Russia had built two lavras, Armagh one, so I got the second religion anyway. + food from shrines and temples, problem solved.
I did have to flee from a terrifying tornado though. "Run! Run for your lives!"
Really enjoyed what I've seen so far. Its holding my interest.
Turn 1. Desert and plains everywhere, tundra south of me. Plenty of hills. 2 jade and 1 forested plains hill amber. My plans for rapid growth are not looking good.
Find Russia. About 12 hexes west of me, also on plains hills, squished between desert and tundra.
Hmmm.
So I start building warriors, sell my 2 jade and 1 amber, to end up gold popping 4 warriors, take St. Pete's and Tula (and Armagh), great works problem solved. And Russia had built two lavras, Armagh one, so I got the second religion anyway. + food from shrines and temples, problem solved.
I did have to flee from a terrifying tornado though. "Run! Run for your lives!"
Really enjoyed what I've seen so far. Its holding my interest.
MrRadar
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2014
- Messages
- 2,215
6/10
The glamorous:
Reworked visuals and new music. Seriously, now I could sit and look at the map for hours, just listening to the wonderful themes and other sounds. Art and musical team - top marks, absolutely fabulous.
The good, including iterative improvements:
No more chopping abuse, yay!
Continents make sense now! Much more prone to coincide with respective landmasses, and when sharing the landmass, now there are actually mountain ranges nearby. Nice!
General rebalance of Governors seems to be nice.
I really dig the disasters!
Strategic resources also seem quite good, now they push you into much more interaction with other AI.
I dreaded the return of WC, but so far I like this implementation more than not. Duplicate voting seems interesting and not too predictable so far.
AI acts much more on emergencies, it now actually sends in units, although still very erratically, siege w/o melee support etc. They need to be taught tactics now.
Climate change and rising sea levels is exciting, needs further finetuning though. It takes too little to trigger it, too little time between the first stages. I think, add more stages and double the number of potentially flooded tiles.
Grievances seem so much better than WM, but need more aggressive games to evaluate. In my second game I'm warring, but also managing to keep friends, and other AIs come back to their senses much faster than before, a definite improvement!
Rockbands are fun so far, but when you think about it, they probably just add more busywork pushing them around. But I won't deny, staging "Modern Questions" on the Stonehenge site is fun
Power seems fun too, but the problem is that in principle you still do not need factories.
Long awaited railroads are a bit underwhelming, although added mobility seems nice, they come almost too late to make real impact. The industrial revolution remains without a spark.
I still hadn't the chance or need to build a canal or a mountain tunnel or a solar plant or a seastead, etc. can't comment on that. Or a neighbourhood. To say nothing about GDR.
The bad, to downright ugly:
New pillaging yields. This is just pure nonsense, absurd. Please, make it go.
In relation, the general tech/civic pace. I completed one game so far, played on Emperor for pure fun and won CV before even touching the new last era. Progression is still way way too fast.
And for conclusion - the old "friend" - the User Interface. Still awful, rock bottom of the franchise, booo! UI mods imperative if you want to save you sanity and time. It seems, that UI is lost cause at this point.
The glamorous:
Reworked visuals and new music. Seriously, now I could sit and look at the map for hours, just listening to the wonderful themes and other sounds. Art and musical team - top marks, absolutely fabulous.
The good, including iterative improvements:
No more chopping abuse, yay!
Continents make sense now! Much more prone to coincide with respective landmasses, and when sharing the landmass, now there are actually mountain ranges nearby. Nice!
General rebalance of Governors seems to be nice.
I really dig the disasters!
Strategic resources also seem quite good, now they push you into much more interaction with other AI.
I dreaded the return of WC, but so far I like this implementation more than not. Duplicate voting seems interesting and not too predictable so far.
AI acts much more on emergencies, it now actually sends in units, although still very erratically, siege w/o melee support etc. They need to be taught tactics now.
Climate change and rising sea levels is exciting, needs further finetuning though. It takes too little to trigger it, too little time between the first stages. I think, add more stages and double the number of potentially flooded tiles.
Grievances seem so much better than WM, but need more aggressive games to evaluate. In my second game I'm warring, but also managing to keep friends, and other AIs come back to their senses much faster than before, a definite improvement!
Rockbands are fun so far, but when you think about it, they probably just add more busywork pushing them around. But I won't deny, staging "Modern Questions" on the Stonehenge site is fun
Power seems fun too, but the problem is that in principle you still do not need factories.
Long awaited railroads are a bit underwhelming, although added mobility seems nice, they come almost too late to make real impact. The industrial revolution remains without a spark.
I still hadn't the chance or need to build a canal or a mountain tunnel or a solar plant or a seastead, etc. can't comment on that. Or a neighbourhood. To say nothing about GDR.
The bad, to downright ugly:
New pillaging yields. This is just pure nonsense, absurd. Please, make it go.
In relation, the general tech/civic pace. I completed one game so far, played on Emperor for pure fun and won CV before even touching the new last era. Progression is still way way too fast.
And for conclusion - the old "friend" - the User Interface. Still awful, rock bottom of the franchise, booo! UI mods imperative if you want to save you sanity and time. It seems, that UI is lost cause at this point.
Uncle_Joe
Prince
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2005
- Messages
- 482
Now that the shiny has worn off a bit for me, I find myself much more critical of the experience with GS. Granted that my interest in Civ6 had already waned once but I was hoping that GS would revive it and inspire me to play it more often. And the beginning of the first game seemed to be heading in that direction. The new environmental effects are cool, the first handful of WC pop-ups were interesting, and the immersion level seemed to increase.
But as I played a few long nights, the same old criticism came back and my reasons for losing interest in the game returned. As others have commented, there is just no GAME here. It's still just a sandbox and everything just feels flat and incremental. There are way too many 'wonders' and way too many 'natural wonders'. They mostly have VERY muted effects such that I don't even bother with the great majority of them (ie, they don't feel 'wonderful'). Techs still feel lackluster (again, not many 'OMG, I need to get to that!). Great people? The same...a few are important but most are very inconsequential (my land is littered with unemployed artists etc that I don't have slots for and my ports of full of 'Great' Admirals that I really couldn't find uses for. And then the AI...I started on the southern part of a continent separated from the rest by a mountain range. I dealt with a pile of Barbarians but I'm all the way into early Modern and not one AI has even sniffed in my direction (despite me continuously snubbing their overly frequent requests for every piece of art and trash I've accumulated lol). I had a good start next to some mountains so I got off to a good science start and now my lead is insurmountable.
So I can just sit there and mash 'End Turn' for the next 100 turns or so but that doesn't seem all the appealing. Sure, I can crank the AI up next game (that was on King to learn the mechanics) but if the Ais are simply getting more crutches and there isn't any more interaction other than constantly brushing off the myriad of 'requests' then it's still just a sandbox.
By the end, the WC pop-ups had become just an annoyance (very little overall effect) and the environmental events became the same (oh look, I lost a few more farms that I have to replace...OK). The 'power' mechanic seems to have fallen flat (I haven't seen the need to actually provide 'power' to my cities so that whole 'decision' is lost). Of course much of that stems from the AI not providing any push. It just spins it's wheels and pretends to be playing but I don't feel like I'm in any competition whatsoever (ie, not militarily or otherwise).
I REALLY wanted to get back into Civ6 and i was REALLY hoping that GS would be that missing part that makes the game fall into place. But in the end, it feels like it just added some additional subsystems to the mix without doing anything to really address the fundamental issue I've had with Civ6 all along...it's just not a game and there is no drive to the game-play (and so it loses out on that 'One More Turn!' feeling). I'm glad other folks are enjoying it and I might try one more time at a higher difficulty but I'm really not holding my breath anymore that Civ6 will ever be more than what it was on a launch...a pretty sandbox.
But as I played a few long nights, the same old criticism came back and my reasons for losing interest in the game returned. As others have commented, there is just no GAME here. It's still just a sandbox and everything just feels flat and incremental. There are way too many 'wonders' and way too many 'natural wonders'. They mostly have VERY muted effects such that I don't even bother with the great majority of them (ie, they don't feel 'wonderful'). Techs still feel lackluster (again, not many 'OMG, I need to get to that!). Great people? The same...a few are important but most are very inconsequential (my land is littered with unemployed artists etc that I don't have slots for and my ports of full of 'Great' Admirals that I really couldn't find uses for. And then the AI...I started on the southern part of a continent separated from the rest by a mountain range. I dealt with a pile of Barbarians but I'm all the way into early Modern and not one AI has even sniffed in my direction (despite me continuously snubbing their overly frequent requests for every piece of art and trash I've accumulated lol). I had a good start next to some mountains so I got off to a good science start and now my lead is insurmountable.
So I can just sit there and mash 'End Turn' for the next 100 turns or so but that doesn't seem all the appealing. Sure, I can crank the AI up next game (that was on King to learn the mechanics) but if the Ais are simply getting more crutches and there isn't any more interaction other than constantly brushing off the myriad of 'requests' then it's still just a sandbox.
By the end, the WC pop-ups had become just an annoyance (very little overall effect) and the environmental events became the same (oh look, I lost a few more farms that I have to replace...OK). The 'power' mechanic seems to have fallen flat (I haven't seen the need to actually provide 'power' to my cities so that whole 'decision' is lost). Of course much of that stems from the AI not providing any push. It just spins it's wheels and pretends to be playing but I don't feel like I'm in any competition whatsoever (ie, not militarily or otherwise).
I REALLY wanted to get back into Civ6 and i was REALLY hoping that GS would be that missing part that makes the game fall into place. But in the end, it feels like it just added some additional subsystems to the mix without doing anything to really address the fundamental issue I've had with Civ6 all along...it's just not a game and there is no drive to the game-play (and so it loses out on that 'One More Turn!' feeling). I'm glad other folks are enjoying it and I might try one more time at a higher difficulty but I'm really not holding my breath anymore that Civ6 will ever be more than what it was on a launch...a pretty sandbox.
youngsteve
Prince
What do you mean most people? What you mean a few dozen enthusiasts on these forums. Hardly a representation of the players base is it.
