Civ VI reviews on Steam

[smvalentine]

Watch some playthroughs on YouTube or Twitch to get a flavor of the game. Just be aware that most predate the Summer Patch that broke the improved UI mod that most use and introduced bugs that still are not fixed. The UI mod is mostly working again. We're hoping for another patch in late October to fix the new bugs and add other improvements. Of course they'll probably break the UI mod again, so maybe check back around Christmas when Steam will probably have it on sale.

 

[agonistes]

Like @bbbt said, if you like empire building, you'll love the game. This is probably the most fun version for just building. For me, it easily is. But there isn't a challenge to straight-up winning. It's probably the easiest version to win.

There are many goofy issues, but I find the game still immensely enjoyable. For my playstyle, the biggest issue is probably the shallow diplomacy. That said, I've read that Ed loves diplomacy, and I expect big things diplomacy-wise come the first expansion.

Probably another pet grievance of mine is the unfortunate knot of no hot fixes combined with lack of communication from the devs.

Overall, I find the game awesome, worth every penny, and there are many cool small details.

 

[ggalindo001]

My $.02.

The game does have issues, similar to where Civ V IMO was at the same place. Game mechanics are different and the first few games will be challenging just getting used to them.

AI is getting better, but is still far from satisfactory. For the most part, once you gain the ascendency - it is all over.

There is one AI mod that I would recommend picking up -- AI+. It helps.

UI is also atrocious. There are two mods that work on the UI, but are in various states of dis-repair due to the most recent patch.

In fact, until the most recent patch, every update was making the game better. Last update took a step back as many have commented.

Despite that, I have not gone back or even thought about going back to Civ V. My last game on Immortal was very challenging (with AI+) and I ended up losing a close space race.

So, to echo the preponderance here....if you like Civ V, you will likely like Civ VI, despite the limitations. Not perfect, but no Civ game has been.

If you are looking for the toughest military challenge, Civ VI isn't it. But if you like the challenge of building an empire and really driving beyond military, Civ VI is a strong game.

 

[Acken]

The game is getting blasted in the reviews because it was not that great to begin with and then got a patch that increased the amount of bugs and hasnt been fixed since then.

You dont need much more to get 50% on recent reviews.

Wait for them to at least wait for bugs to be fixed before even considering it would be my advice.

 

[ZubieMaster]

My explanation when people ask if Civ VI is good is to ask what they like about the Lord of the Rings. Some find Lord of the Rings enjoyable primarily because of the battles where thousands of troops clash in epic warfare where the fate of good v. evil hangs in the balance and you don't know who will win until the very last breath. Others find it more enjoyable because it creates a beautiful world of Middle Earth where they can picture the Shire, what the Hobbits wear and how they frolic around the festival pole. Civ VI is for the latter type fans; if you are the former type you will not like Civ VI because the AI is incapable of war.

 

[Acken]

I give Firaxis more credit than this, even though my patience too is wearing thin. After Civ: Beyond Earth, Firaxis should be wary that their positive capital among Civ players is getting quickly worn through. Civ:BE was a disaster from beginning through its miserable end.

In general, though, I do think Firaxis is a company that is more likely to identify its mistakes and try to fix them.

To be fair Firaxis has been killing it with XCOM.

 

[gettingfat]

Civ 6 has some very interesting and promising ideas, but imho none of them are implemented well.

• Districts: It is a great idea but the AI can't handle well so they rarely build commercial hubs, build too many holy sites and have horrible planning. The cost scale up formula is quite silly, forcing players to artificially slow down the tech and civic advances to avoid expensive districts, which is not fun. Any cities found after 100 turns also develop ridiculously slow because of the expensive districts after mid-game.
  
• Support units? Another great idea, but horribly implemented. Units like military engineers are rarely built except for the eureka.
  
• Talk about eureka, another very good idea that gives human players unfair advantage because it's hard to code the AI to plan for triggering them. Interesting at the beginning but too inflexible, they are more like chores after playing a few games.
  
• About AI, the game really has not much AI to speak of. After so many patches, my army is knocking at their capitals and the AIs' armies are still busy sieging some city states or barb camps, or they will start to build a settler and send it out..... Crazy things like these are almost comical sometimes. Most of the time the AIs don't know how to leverage their production bonus, so they can't even use the quantity beats quality strategy to cover up their poor handling of the military units.
  
• Diplomacy....it is quite messy. The agenda system is another good idea but seriously backfires in my opinion. In reality all great politicians in history, while they were all stubborn in some ways, they typically cared more about actual gain and loss, not something like cutting down a tree in my own land in medieval era. The agenda system makes these highly successful historical figures all look like a bunch of paranoid self-centered teenagers. The AI leaders in this version has not much "personality" to speak of...definitely not as immersion friendly as in Civ4 and 5.
  
• Warmongering points are still somewhat excessive and inflexible. Who cared another nation taking the smaller states on another continent a thousand years ago? Even in modern time, USA have been the biggest warmonger in the past few decades and how many countries denounced them so far?
• Playing wide.... Civ5 somewhat discourages playing wide a bit too much, Civ6 clearly wants to address this issue but has gone too far. I seldom get into trouble for expanding VERY wide, like 15-20 cities at 150 turns. The devs clearly ignored the inefficiency and risk of instability of a huge empire. There is a reason Mongol empire collapsed within a century but it seemed not a real issue in this game. This sort of discourage diversity of playing style. One city challenge is virtually impossible at higher levels.
  
• Not much surprise after 150 turns....no world congress/United Nation, nothing else...
  
• UI... bad, period.

 

[Captain Pugwash]

I played 750 hours so far on Civ6. It is definitely not "Broken".
It depends on what you would regard as a showstopper for you.
For a £50 game, 750 hours of fun (and still rising) is good value for money imho.
Just buy it if you are a civ fan.

 

[Abaxial]

Many thanks for all these helpful replies. I will definitely put the game on the watch list for the time being.

My play style tends towards the empire building rather than fighting, and as I am playing for relaxation I tend not to bother too much about efficiency or maximising production, or micromanagement generally. I play at Prince level despite the fact that I can beat it each time, because I hate the idea that the higher difficulty levels are only more difficult because of handicaps. There should be a level playing field; higher levels should be more difficult only because the AI is smarter, and that's obviously not going to happen. If the Civ 6 AI is totally dumb, that does make the game much less interesting, even if one is concentrating on the building side of things.

Regarding the UI, I'm wedded to the enhanced UI mod for Civ 5 downloaded from here, and couldn't go back to the standard Civ 5 UI now.

 

[Victoria]

... empire building rather than fighting, and as I am playing for relaxation ...... I play at Prince level ....

Considering what you are saying... I would recommend you play the game, you would love it with the playstyle you quote. but you would need an enhanced GUI add on to cope.

 

[bcaiko]

Be that as it may: I'm certainly not pre-ordering another game from Firaxis, I'll wait for the reviews.

I think that's a very fair stance to take, especially with evidence being what it is at this point.

Civ 6 has some very interesting and promising ideas, but imho none of them are implemented well.
Playing wide.... Civ5 somewhat discourages playing wide a bit too much, Civ6 clearly wants to address this issue but has gone too far. I seldom get into trouble for expanding VERY wide, like 15-20 cities at 150 turns. The devs clearly ignored the inefficiency and risk of instability of a huge empire. There is a reason Mongol empire collapsed within a century but it seemed not a real issue in this game. This sort of discourage diversity of playing style. One city challenge is virtually impossible at higher levels.

This is a good point I'd like to expand upon. The devs seemingly ignored that their insistence on an "expand or die" mentality + all the inane decisions they force the player to make would inevitably lead to too many cities and too many decisions to make. All with no overhead tool to help you guide the decisions on a macro level. It's simultaneously overwhelming and exceedingly boring.

 

[Rosty K]

Considering what you are saying... I would recommend you play the game, you would love it with the playstyle you quote. but you would need an enhanced GUI add on to cope.

I have to say that the Eureka system brings some fun into certain aspects of micromanagement too. I like the relaxed peaceful style of play on moderate difficulty (though Prince in Civ6 is way too easy), but I'm finding more and more enjoyment in timing things so that the correct techs/civics pop up exactly at the right time (e.g. 2 galleys -> 2 harbors -> upgrade to 2 caravels -> Merchant Republic while researching half of everything and sticking other research somewhere inbetween, and there are a few other nice sequences like this). Actually, is there a mod with 'you have researched half of the X' notification?

 

[Ovidious]

Ramblings of a player since Civ 1 back in 1992 I think was the year,

I bought the deluxe version of the game when it was released, tried playing it a while, and disliked it so much that I quit for, I think, three months. Then I started playing it and forced myself to wade through it. The UI was so, so horrible. If I had had the CQ UI mod from the get go I do not think I would have quit. I sometimes wonder if any of the developers had ever played Civ5. If, from the start, I had pretended that Civ 6 was a game created by a competitor to the Civ franchise, I may not have been so harsh in my feelings about it.

The CQUI made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. One example is that I finally could see my units in a window tab, instead of only being able to find them in the tiny window on the lower right that only came up if you had clicked on a unit name.

I do currently like playing the game, even though I had to use the #$@%#@$ UI from the basic game after the summer patch ruined the CQUI one, but I now am using a version of that CQUI that is almost like the pre-patch one.

It took me a while to get used to always being denounced for the slightest offense.. "you have more wonders than me" "you have a different government than I". I just ignore them, and if they bug me too much I just wipe them out.

Wars are different too. In previous versions of Civ, if they declared war on you, then that meant they were close to one of your cities with a good sized army. In Civ 6 I have had random wars declared on me, then later wondered "Where are they?" after not seeing hide nor hair of the enemy. It was so strange to be at war but not see any of the enemy near my cities.

The barbarians in this version are on Meth or something. They suicide at you from all directions. Reminds me of the raging barbarian option in Civ 5 and then some.

There are many things I do like about Civ 6. Builders having charges and insta-building improvements, being able to go wide without being punished by having your science neutered or something. and other things I cannot think of at the moment.

 

[stinkubus]

I have to say that the Eureka system brings some fun into certain aspects of micromanagement too. I like the relaxed peaceful style of play on moderate difficulty (though Prince in Civ6 is way too easy), but I'm finding more and more enjoyment in timing things so that the correct techs/civics pop up exactly at the right time (e.g. 2 galleys -> 2 harbors -> upgrade to 2 caravels -> Merchant Republic while researching half of everything and sticking other research somewhere inbetween, and there are a few other nice sequences like this). Actually, is there a mod with 'you have researched half of the X' notification?

I very much agree. You can tell there are certain paths that were intended by the devs because it's just so easy to line up every eureka and inspiration on the way. The Cartography bee-line is one, and so is Gunpowder. You can get to Gunpowder really fast even without any campuses because every eurkea is very easy to hit and only a few of them aren't things you would do anyway.

 

[Victoria]

but I'm finding more and more enjoyment in timing things

Playing GOTM today I got knights and mercs on the same turn, 1 turn after digging my first iron mine. Was a weirdly nice feeling, more of relief.

 

[nzcamel]

For me, the main bugs have to do with AI trade deals, and lack of declaring war on each other.

Trade logic currently breaks the game.

I'm with these guys ^^^
The game was great and very playable until the most recent bugs. Prior bugs were annoying, but not game breaking - these ones are as they pretty much remove the entire trade/diplomatic side of the game.

Not to say that other criticism here isn't valid either - the AI def needs work! But the vast majority of us of us could still find a level where the game was challenging for us regardless.

 

[MooFreaky]

Civ games always seem to release to divided opinions. The vanilla is always less than the sum of it's predecessor + the expansions. But it generally takes the game in a new direction.
Civ6 is definitely enjoyable and far from broken. But I (and I know many others fall into the same boat) have a clear cycle when it comes to Civ games. Play a reasonable amount upon release then drift away because it doesn't have enough to hold me for ages. Then I return for a bit longer after the first expansion, but begin to drift again. Then when the final expansion comes BOOM I play it consistently. I will eventually stop for a bit, but always return for more before too long. It's not until the game is really rounded out that I really begin my grand Civ endeavours in an obsessive way.

 

[Victoria]

It's not until the game is really rounded out that I really begin my grand Civ endeavours in an obsessive way

I normally come late to the party when it's really rockin but I am really enjoying the journey of civ 6. As someone in the software world I just find the whole thing is quite comical. The journey is certainly bumpy and fun -funny

 

[Xur]

No, wait. It is obvious that this game requires expansions to be worth anything - UI continues to be a mess, the AI continues to suck and worst of all, it isn't fun. Too clicky and too repetative. It's the SimCity societies of civs. It doesnt feel like an Empire builder.

My problem is civ6 DOES improve on some things, so I have a hard time going back to civ5. The franchise is in a weird limbo for me, and I just hope that Firaxis Can salvage it.

 

[HEF]

Judging by the 'Let's Play..." videos that I've seen on YouTube of Sid Meier's Civilization VI, what I believe is very innovative for a modern strategy/war game is how the fog o' war is handled.

I also love the character design & animation of the historic world leaders. The interactions with the world leaders is the main draw for me next to the intricate strategy portions.

Sid Meier's Civilization VI is unquestionably on my future buy list once all of the bugs have finally been ironed out and all of the expansions sets have been made available for retail.