3rd party DRM

Good news is no Denuvo. Bad news is they still appear to be releasing on time. The game I played last month was nowhere near release quality. I remember playing Civ 4 betas that were just bug hunts two months before release, not in need of major balancing rework. I guess we'll get what essentially will be an early access version and not get a finished product for a year or so.

 

You mean, just like Civ VI?

My take is that a lot of the problems with the OpenDev versions were balance issues based largely on numbers and factors, and those are the easiest things to change in a computer. I would strongly suspect that since the last revealed version there have been several 'balance passes' of those numbers. Remember, they have a NDA-confined group of "VIP" testers that apparently are there to do little else but test such things and provide "internal" feedback to supplement what they got from trhe OpenDev games.

Now, as posted above, I am not saying I expect everything to be completely balanced and Perfect on Release - just the myriad combinations of Factions have too many variations to be completely tested, unless they have a small city's worth of Beta Testers beavering away at it, so I'm sure we'll see some Howlers that slipped through.

 

And brag about it. Seriously, those VIP testers never stop reminding everyone that they're VIP testers. So annoying!

Anyway, Civ VI was much better at release than Humankind was in Poe. It's not even in the same league. The problems aren't just balance changes, either. They need some substantial work on the UI, which is somehow even worse than Civ VI's. They need to really rethink and redesign some major parts of the game, like religion, civics, diplomacy, vassals, war, era stars, ... None of it really works right now. And certainly none of it works together. The game just feels like a bunch of unfinished ideas. Kind of like Civ VI after NFP, but without the strong base to keep it mostly together.

Amplitude's games are always like this, though.

 

Glad they got rid of Denevo - should help sales. Game is set to be an instant classic!