[NFP] Fewer than 40% of players have a won a game - RE-REVISITED

[Pushead]

I'm a Civ player since the first version, though I drifted away from gaming through most of the Civ 5 run. Around holiday time last year I saw some playthroughs of Civ 6 and bought it and the DLC. I've had a lot of fun with the game again, so I've added to some of the percentages (and dropped some as well, I guess.)

Of all the time I've spent with Civ (I've put hundreds of hours in all of the games except 5), this week was the first time I played any scenario (Conquests of Alexander.)

Since November, I've play between Prince or King level and have won every option except for time. (That seems like a difficult one to get.) I try to pick a new leader every game. I'd like to kick out a win with each leader. So far, I'm up to:

Alexander
Catherine
Chandragupta
Cleopatra
Dido
Eleanor (England)
Frederick
Gilgamesh
Hojo
Jayavarman
Kristina
Mansa Musa
Matthias
Montezuma
Mvemba
Perecles
Peter
Poundmaker
Saladin
Seondeok
Trajan

After typing that list up, it tells me two things; I'm not even half-way through playing each civ once, and I've had way too much free time in the last 8 or 9 months.

 

[Uberfrog]

Of all the time I've spent with Civ (I've
Since November, I've play between Prince or King level and have won every option except for time. (That seems like a difficult one to get.) I try to pick a new leader every game. I'd like to kick out a win with each leader. So far, I'm up to:

Alexander
Catherine
Chandragupta
Cleopatra
Dido
Eleanor (England)
Frederick
Gilgamesh
Hojo
Jayavarman
Kristina
Mansa Musa
Matthias
Montezuma
Mvemba
Perecles
Peter
Poundmaker
Saladin
Seondeok
Trajan

After typing that list up, it tells me two things; I'm not even half-way through playing each civ once, and I've had way too much free time in the last 8 or 9 months.

Score Victory is difficult mainly because the default turn limit is bizarrely high, and you really should have won by turn 500 on standard speed!

I generally set it to 250-300 turns... makes a Score win considerably more achievable and an even lower setting can force you to focus on your chosen victory to win against the clock.

 

[Pushead]

Yeah, I think my longest time to win has been in the 380 range, and it's usually near 300. I think my quickest win is 211. I like building big, I've only once done a big rush for domination. I was held back by the continents map.

 

[Loderingo]

I'm a Civ player since the first version, though I drifted away from gaming through most of the Civ 5 run. Around holiday time last year I saw some playthroughs of Civ 6 and bought it and the DLC. I've had a lot of fun with the game again, so I've added to some of the percentages (and dropped some as well, I guess.)

Of all the time I've spent with Civ (I've put hundreds of hours in all of the games except 5), this week was the first time I played any scenario (Conquests of Alexander.)

Since November, I've play between Prince or King level and have won every option except for time. (That seems like a difficult one to get.) I try to pick a new leader every game. I'd like to kick out a win with each leader. So far, I'm up to:

Alexander
Catherine
Chandragupta
Cleopatra
Dido
Eleanor (England)
Frederick
Gilgamesh
Hojo
Jayavarman
Kristina
Mansa Musa
Matthias
Montezuma
Mvemba
Perecles
Peter
Poundmaker
Saladin
Seondeok
Trajan

After typing that list up, it tells me two things; I'm not even half-way through playing each civ once, and I've had way too much free time in the last 8 or 9 months.

That's really interesting Pushead. I keep a spreadsheet and when i'm going to play a new game I use a random number generator to come up with 3 civs I haven't played with and then I pick one of the 3.

So I have won with 23 leaders, have 7 not finished, 5 losses and 13 not played.

I did wonder if one of the issues with Prince players is that the game takes a long time to complete due to all the extra turns. On deity I would say it takes me around 10 hours to complete the game. I'm guessing for Prince players it is maybe nearer 15. If it takes you 15 hours to win a game then it would take 720 hours to win with all leaders. A lot of casual players may not have that sort of time.

Another issue is that some Prince level players may find it hard to win the game, even though many people on this forum think it is too easy. For example, 2.8% of players have won an emergency as Canada but only 1.7% have won a game as Canada.

 

[Josephias]

Score Victory is difficult mainly because the default turn limit is bizarrely high, and you really should have won by turn 500 on standard speed!

I generally set it to 250-300 turns... makes a Score win considerably more achievable and an even lower setting can force you to focus on your chosen victory to win against the clock.

Actually, is it because the turn limit is high? or because science/culture are not balanced for that turn time?. Civ V had the same turn limit and I have several time victories because I did not manage to build the last part of the spaceship/get the last culture points to turn the last remaining things in time... it often was a matter of several turns up/down on the 500 number. In that sense, I'd say Civ V was more balanced in the victory conditions.

 

[Uberfrog]

Actually, is it because the turn limit is high? or because science/culture are not balanced for that turn time?

Well that’s two sides of the same coin, but if you’re suggesting the game should take longer to win, I completely disagree.

Most likely 500 was chosen arbitrarily (probably a carryover from Civ 5), with no thought at all as to how long victories actually took.

 

[Josephias]

Well that’s two sides of the same coin, but if you’re suggesting the game should take longer to win, I completely disagree.

Most likely 500 was chosen arbitrarily (probably a carryover from Civ 5), with no thought at all as to how long victories actually took.

Maybe that’s the case, and I agree the game should’nt drag that long, but also there is the feeling there is little time to savour each era with the current tech progression so, in that sense maybe it actally should take a bit longer.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Most likely 500 was chosen arbitrarily

500 has been the default for a standard game since at least Civ III perhaps even all the way back to Civ I.

 

[Linklite]

Maybe that’s the case, and I agree the game should’nt drag that long, but also there is the feeling there is little time to savour each era with the current tech progression so, in that sense maybe it actally should take a bit longer.

I'm conflicted about that. At the moment it feels like each particular unit has little impact. The only units I look forward to are catapults (so I can start attack cities again once they're too strong for units to attack by themselves) and bombards (there's a period where walls are too powerful for catapults, and you need bombards to overcome them). Other than those, maybe aircraft carriers or GDRs? But most of the others kind of blur together because they don't hang around long enough to form memories.

On the other hand, with SVs I end up just sitting on my hands for most of the game waiting to be able to build spaceports, and I really don't want to drag those out longer.

So I'm not sure how they could improve that, short of cutting unit variety, which has its own drawbacks.

 

[Icicle]

Civ 6 achievements are weird.

My rarest steam achievement is for using a nuke as Chandragupta. It's not even a remotely difficult or taxing achievement, but it's been done by only .4% of civ 6 players. I sometimes think that difficult achievements are done more simply because they are difficult and a badge of honor to pull off - winning on deity for instance probably makes people want to get it. But nobody is going to do a video guide on how to get this achievement or going around bragging to their friends about it.

And there are pages of achievements below it that even less people have done, mostly involving scenarios.

On a similar note, I've apparently never won a game as Sumeria, or Pericles, or many other civs. This doesn't mean I've never won though, it means I've never processed turns until I see the victory screen.

 

[God of Kings]

Why Rome is the civ with the highest percentage of victories:

• Rome is a quintessential civilization in human history.
• Rome is a vanilla civ.
• Rome has the easiest win condition of all civs: if you disable all victory conditions except score victory and set the game to one turn, all you have to do is to settle on spot. You automatically win, giving you the achievement. This also works on the deity difficulty, also giving you the deity victory achievement.

 

[Icicle]

Why Rome is the civ with the highest percentage of victories:

• Rome is a quintessential civilization in human history.
• Rome is a vanilla civ.
• Rome has the easiest win condition of all civs: if you disable all victory conditions except score victory and set the game to one turn, all you have to do is to settle on spot. You automatically win, giving you the achievement. This also works on the deity difficulty, also giving you the deity victory achievement.

I agree on the first two points wholeheartedly. I think for the typical western-educated gamer playing an impactful and important civilization from history makes Rome pop right to mind.

The third though, I think is rather beyond the typical civ 6 player in that the vast majority of people who play popular, relaxed games like civ 6 don't bother going online and finding all the super secret strategies. The possibility of it may inflate the deity win rate but I have a hard time believing that many people care about faking the ability to win at deity for a steam achievement. If you can google enough to learn this trick you can also google enough to learn how to win on deity legitimately fairly easily too.

Also you can do the same with Russia.

 

[God of Kings]

Also you can do the same with Russia.

Interesting.

 

[Depravo]

I have at least 731 hours in the game and have only finished one game, unless we count scenarios. And that was mainly just to check out the new late game stuff introduced in GS.

 

[Pushead]

That's really interesting Pushead. I keep a spreadsheet and when i'm going to play a new game I use a random number generator to come up with 3 civs I haven't played with and then I pick one of the 3..

I just look at the Hall of Fame screen and pick one that I haven't won with yet. I started alphabetically, but that seemed boring, so I started zig-zagging.

I won my first diety game over the weekend. I'm typically a prince/king game player, and I took the "easy" way out in the diety game after seeing a series by PotatoMcWhiskey using the Mali. But I learned a lot about diplomacy and war as a part of that game, and think I'm ready to try Emperor or Immortal in my next game.