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[j51]

Unfortunately not only good news - AI more peaceful, prince difficulty easier than in Civ5

It should be easy enough to turn up everyone's warmongering in a mod though.

 

[rpgalon]

Extensive list of late(ish) list of government policies

Spoiler :

holy ****, so you can have 2x a 100% adjacency bonus for something, like a campus district.

so if you have a +6 adjacency bonus for campus and use the natural philosophy you get a +12 bonus.... but with the five-year plan you get another 100% district adjacency bonus for campus... the question now is:

does it goes to +18 or it doubles again going to +24 bonus? or even, does it have no effect?

 

[Olleus]

Bonuses in Civ always add, rather than being multiplicative. So +100% and another +100% makes +200% rather than +400%.

 

[rpgalon]

Bonuses in Civ always add, rather than being multiplicative. So +100% and another +100% makes +200% rather than +400%.

TIL, guess that was to be expected since there is also clear lack of multiplying effects in Civ6 compared to Civ5.

 

[V. Soma]

Trusted Reviews:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/civilization-6-review

PCInvasion
http://www.pcinvasion.com/civilization-vi-preview

US Gamer
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/civilization-vi-preview-what-we-think-after-a-week-with-the-game

PC Mag
http://www.pcmag.com/review/348301/civilization-vi-for-pc

they don't really like it...

Financial Post
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/post-arcade/300-turns-and-a-crushing-defeat-at-the-hands-of-religious-zealots-in-sid-meiers-civilization-vi

TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/heres-how-civilization-vi-brings-new-life-to-the-epic-game-series/?ncid=rss

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

PC Mag
http://www.pcmag.com/review/348301/civilization-vi-for-pc

they don't really like it...

Their complaints:

CONS
Cartoonish art style is at odds with the themes and action of the game. Not all metrics are well integrated. Some interface oddities interfere with smooth gameplay. Some functionality and rule changes may irk veteran players. Seems too easy.

 

[V. Soma]

Their complaints:

and towards the end:

it never envelops me the way the best games in the series (for my money, the first, second, and fourth, with the excellent Alpha Centauri an honorable mention only because of its spin-off status) do. It just doesn't have their bend of breadth and depth, and thus it never becomes quite the same focus of obsessive lust.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Gamecrate has a concern that religious victory might be too easy. Also, the AI still has the same annoying habit of settling extremely marginal cities in any empty pocket you leave between your cities, going by the screenshots.

It's mostly positive stuff, but I thought it was worth pointing out areas where things aren't all sunshine and rainbows.

I noticed this too, especially in the Gamecrate preview. I've always found this behaviour hugely immersion-breaking, so it's pretty disappointing to see that the AI still behaves in this way. I was also somewhat turned-off by the Spanish AI in his game agreeing not to settle near his territory but then doing so anyway. Ugh. Yes, backstabby behaviour is to be expected but I really hope it's not going to be normal.

I happen to think the allegedly more peaceful AI is a good thing, however

 

[Magil]

I mean, I can understand not liking the art style, but:

I found the art highly unappealing, especially compared with the stately and intelligent look of pretty much every other Civilization game.

Uh... I wonder if he actually remembers what the graphics looked like pre-V?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

holy ****, so you can have 2x a 100% adjacency bonus for something, like a campus district.

so if you have a +6 adjacency bonus for campus and use the natural philosophy you get a +12 bonus.... but with the five-year plan you get another 100% district adjacency bonus for campus... the question now is:

does it goes to +18 or it doubles again going to +24 bonus? or even, does it have no effect?

Actually you can't have both ...policies become obsolete.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I mean, I can understand not liking the art style, but:

(snip)

Uh... I wonder if he actually remembers what the graphics looked like pre-V?

Yeah, I don't really get people criticising the art style. It's quite reminiscent of Civ4 in its charming chunkiness.

Civ3 and Civ5 were about the only installments of the series which sought "realistic" art styles, and that wasn't necessarily the better choice.

 

[rastak]

I mean, I can understand not liking the art style, but:



Uh... I wonder if he actually remembers what the graphics looked like pre-V?

Civ 1 graphics were quite striking!

 

[Quintillus]

PC Mag
http://www.pcmag.com/review/348301/c...tion-vi-for-pc

they don't really like it...

As someone who liked III/IV but not V, that was actually the most interesting review I've read yet, since it was from someone with a similar Civ background... and I didn't consider it that negative considering not being a fan of V. OK, yes, compared to most AAA game reviews it's remarkably non-totally-positive, but there are quite a few positives too, such as districts and government policies, and the conclusion is somewhat positive:

That said, Civilization VI does do something I'd previously considered impossible: It makes me rethink the way I play. I've almost always been a Wonder hoarder, loading as many of them as possible into as many of my cities as I could. Now that I can no longer do that, I've found myself more reliant on combat and resource rationing, and going after only the Wonders that I can't live without. If I'm not yet at the point that I can say I'm glad about this, I am legitimately thrilled to be discovering something new about a tactic I thought I had down pat. Breaking down the one-city-one-tile barrier is the kind of positive stride—revolutionary, yet comfortable—that Civilization VI needs a lot more of.

That change alone makes Civilization VI worth playing, and I can't wait to see how the final game moves and works—if some of the technical and interface issues are ironed out, it could be lusciously slick and as dynamic as possible within the sphere Firaxis has chosen for it.

Which tells me that, as a IV >>> V fan, while I probably won't like the things I suspect I won't like (city states, super-cartoony leader graphics, etc.), I probably should pick up Civ VI for what it does differently at some point, even if not next month.

I've also read the Ars Technica review, but didn't find it that unique versus what I'd already read from official Firaxis stuff, and it didn't seem as if the reviewer had played as much as the PC Mag reviewer (part of two games versus "weeklong testing period"). What I'm wondering now is which review goes most in-depth on things such as combat and diplomacy. The former in particular I found to be a weak point in V compared to III/IV, due to both the tediousness of 1 UPT and the lackluster combat AI, and diplomacy has never been a strong suit in Civ, although the personalities and so forth in VI sound like they could change that. PC Mag's conclusion that Prince was "astonishingly easy" doesn't inspire confidence, but it doesn't go into the why of that very much. Although the reviewer said he typically finds Prince to be a bit challenging in V, and I've found King to be quite easy there, so that probably isn't good.

Still, I'm glad to see a Civ5-skeptic review that was somewhat positive, but clearly not bought... I really didn't expect a mixed professional review, and those are usually the most informative. If the Civ3/4 community agrees with it on the balance, I'll probably pick it up within a year, and hopefully have a lot of fun with the new mechanics.

Edit: Read the same author's review of Civ5... he's definitely in the prefers-IV crowd, which gives him credibility for me in whether the review is relevant for me. And his V review is actually much more harsh than the VI preview review. Although it is interesting that while he initially thought city-states were a positive, that changed over time. On the whole, I agree, as even with the expansions I never found them worth the while or much better than money sinks... I agree that they'd be far more interesting as smaller, initially-slower-growing Civs that could eventually become semi-major players on the world stage - not dissimilarly from the Minor Civs in a number of Civ4 mods, such as Rhye's of Civilization.

 

[PhilBowles]

Unfortunately not only good news - AI more peaceful, prince difficulty easier than in Civ5

Ars Technica makes the pertinent point that the game looks likely to be in a better state "at release" than Civ V - given how extensively that was patched and made playable prior to its expansions, it seems reasonable to allow leeway for some lapses and expect them to be fixed.

Though lowering difficulty levels is a concern as that is too often a deliberate design direction, and Civ V was a bit more forgiving than it could have been. Sometimes feedback can fix games deliberately made too easy (see Total War Rome 2), but it's never good to set the difficulty level too low.

 

[PhilBowles]

PC Gamer: http://www.pcgamer.com/analyzing-the-five-biggest-changes-in-civilization-6/

Mostly positive, but also some qualms, especially on religion.

"Tom: I like that religion has a victory condition, but the whole system currently feels like one of those things that is waiting to be “fixed” in an expansion. I don’t know about you, but I found the theological combat to be extremely one-dimensional and dull, especially when the AI decides to start massing religious units the storm your empire. It’s almost exactly what was wrong with Civ 4’s unit stacking that Civ 5 tried to fix and Civ 6 has expanded upon. Civ 6’s actual combat has increased nuance through the new support units and combining units into Corps and Armies, while spreading and defending your religion is just “spam a bunch of dudes and walk towards your opponent.”

 

[isau]

I am slightly weirded out that someone would find the blocky cartoon leaderheads in Civ IV appealing but reject the more dynamic renderings in Civ VI. IMO Civ VI's leaders are the best they've ever looked.

V is the major outlier in terms of going for a "serious" tone, and at the time that decision was just as controversial.

 

[Siptah]

GameStar (german) video critic points:

Interface is crowded. Some informations are missing and others are irrelevant. You can get used to it.
ICS is a problem if you want to do it, expanding is too easy.
Building roads uses Military Engineers up and for building a long road you easily need 3+ military engineers. They said it feels very strange, since it's so easy with trade routes. You often use trade routes that are really bad just to get roads (also in the late game) since this is still cheaper than 5 military engineers...
Still blank spots on the map in the late game. Some civs did very well, others not so much.
AI: Agendas seem to work quite good. In a game Pericles against Barbarossa you need to be fast, otherwise Barbarossa just conquers all city states.

 

[Uberfrog]

I am slightly weirded out that someone would find the blocky cartoon leaderheads in Civ IV appealing

I think the words you are looking for are stately and intelligent.

Spoiler :

 

[PhilBowles]

I am slightly weirded out that someone would find the blocky cartoon leaderheads in Civ IV appealing but reject the more dynamic renderings in Civ VI. IMO Civ VI's leaders are the best they've ever looked.

V is the major outlier in terms of going for a "serious" tone, and at the time that decision was just as controversial.

I don't think the leaderheads in Civ IV are what people are registering - Civ IV had well-rendered landscapes, if cartoony units. The leaderheads were small and unobtrusive. When you have full-screen intrusions, Civ V-style, you really want them to look at least as polished as Civ V's.

And while I dislike the Civ VI leader and unit graphics, it's the animation - not the graphics themselves - that I truly loathe.

 

[anandus]

Thanks for the links (especially V.Soma), I've updated the topic start