Grinding Out the Win

[The Civs 6]

In Civ 4, if you fell behind (in terms of your overall game), you were toast. If you didn't have a game plan or exit strategy out of the situation, you would be eaten up and/or beaten to whatever objective. Even if you did have a game plan and you didn't stick to it, you could lose a surprise culture victory.

In Civ 5, you could get stuck in these fail states - for example, you could be losing money AND have a necessary army AND have no happiness. There was a lot more breathing room in 5 than in 4, but if you didn't get out of a fail state quickly you could easily lose a space victory. The AI weren't really competitive as far as the other types go.

In Civ 6, on the other hand, I feel like you don't really need a gameplan. As long as you don't screw up the early game, you can muddle out a victory. The AI just doesn't seem interested in honing in on a victory (despite the repeated messages that tiny 5-city Georgia is "no longer seeking a domination victory". I can recount a single game, in about 500 hours of playing 6, where the AI actually almost got me by a surprise RV. So even if you have a bad and inefficient game, you can grind out a win by simply out-focusing the AI on religion/culture/space (or diplomatic victory points, if you hate yourself).

This isn't a difficulty issue either. I have played all of the games on a range of difficulty levels. 6 is, by far, the game I can go the highest difficulty on.

I have a few things I would like to discuss based on this (and of course, if you disagree with these premises, feel free to bring that up):

• Is it worth it to play out a game where you can muddle out a win, even if the game isn't fun?
• Have you experienced situations where the AI has been surprisingly effective at one of the victory conditions?
• Is Civ 6 really a first 150 turn game? As in, should I even be complaining - because the true "game" is in surviving the first part of the game?
• And as a follow up to that question, do you find the challenge of overcoming the enormous early leads the AI has to be a fun one?

 

[Planktonic]

1. I do this sometimes, especially if I feel like I made it this far with a generally "weaker" civ and just want the satisfaction of recording the win for the HoF.
2. The only 2 victory conditions I've ever seen the AI pull off are science and diplomacy. By far the biggest problem for me is a runaway science civ.
3. For me, turn 150 is not usually a point where the game is already won. I play Deity, but am no minmaxer; I'd say the chances of my winning if I'm reasonably competitive at turn 150 are 50:50, maybe even 2 out of 3, but in any case there is still real doubt as to the final win.
4. Yes.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Is it worth it to play out a game where you can muddle out a win, even if the game isn't fun?

Unless I'm going for a diplo win, not really. I tried grinding out a win as Eleanor during my first GS culture attempt when I didn't fully understand all of the changes and it was mindbogglingly dull. Civ6 is so biased to the early game that you are kind of locked in by the time you get the point where you would need to grind out win and can't really do anything to change that. Diplo can be the same way and if the game has been kind of boring I'll just stop after I fail a major attempt to win the WC vote.

Have you experienced situations where the AI has been surprisingly effective at one of the victory conditions?

I lost some games to an AI science victory when I first started with the base game but by now I'm good enough that the AI never comes close to winning before I can playing on Emperor.

Is Civ 6 really a first 150 turn game? As in, should I even be complaining - because the true "game" is in surviving the first part of the game?

And as a follow up to that question, do you find the challenge of overcoming the enormous early leads the AI has to be a fun one?

This has started becoming a real problem for me because in most other video games its the opposite, early easiness and late game challenge as the game ramps up introduces more mechanics and ups the challenge difficulty. The main reason I'm hesitant to go up on higher levels is that even if I overcome the early game AI advantages it's not going to change the same late game dull grind the game has kind of become for me and why finish something that is dull and predictable. The early to mid game is still fun and challenging but I no longer really feel the sense of accomplishment from actually finishing a game. Leader and Civ abilities really matter less and less as the game goes on outside of something like the Film Studio that really has some late game impact but even then it doesn't fundamentally change the game.

Given that less than half of the Steam player base have finished a game on Settler and less than a third on Prince, I'm not sure what the answer to the challenge question is. I feel like there needs to be some kind of scalable difficulty that increases as the game goes on or some kind of late game friction that isn't just RNG that affects only the player but I don't know what that would look like.

 

[kaspergm]

1. I do this to unlock the civ achievements ... just because. Thankfully by cheating on the world congress votes, I can normally grab a DV before game becomes too boring and prolonged, something I have no qualms doing because endgame is so tedious.
2. No. As in, never.Of course I have been victim of early warrior (or war cart, lol) rushes, but I won't call that effective AI but just the AI playing blindly and randomly getting lucky.
3. Yes, I think in many ways it's fair to call Civ6 a first 150 turns game. Not because I'm a fast winner - I far from am - but it does feel like once you hit industrial era, the fun rapidly seeps out of the game, and it's just a matter of doing a lot of repetitive actions to get to next turn (and often feeling that if I could just have the game auto-run the next 100 turns, I'd win the game no matter what).
4. To some extent it can be fun to try to overcome AI advantages, but for me at this point, Civ 6 has become more of a builder game than a competitive game. I like building a nice empire, building nice cities with good placement of districts and wonders, etc. However once my empire is build, it feels like the game hasn't got a lot more to offer.

 

[EgonSpengler]

3. Yes, I think in many ways it's fair to call Civ6 a first 150 turns game. Not because I'm a fast winner - I far from am - but it does feel like once you hit industrial era, the fun rapidly seeps out of the game, and it's just a matter of doing a lot of repetitive actions to get to next turn (and often feeling that if I could just have the game auto-run the next 100 turns, I'd win the game no matter what).
4. To some extent it can be fun to try to overcome AI advantages, but for me at this point, Civ 6 has become more of a builder game than a competitive game. I like building a nice empire, building nice cities with good placement of districts and wonders, etc. However once my empire is build, it feels like the game hasn't got a lot more to offer.

This is it for me, too. Once I've built my nation and I'm on my way to a victory, that game is over, unless there's something specific I still want to do, like finish building a Wonder I've almost got done. I don't think I've formally finished a game of Civ VI in years. The "endgame" - if we can even call it that without laughing - is just a slog, and life's too short.

 

[iammaxhailme]

This is it for me, too. Once I've built my nation and I'm on my way to a victory, that game is over, unless there's something specific I still want to do, like finish building a Wonder I've almost got done. I don't think I've formally finished a game of Civ VI in years. The "endgame" - if we can even call it that without laughing - is just a slog, and life's too short.

While I do finish most of my games (partially because I rarely go for the victory types I dislike doing), I agree that the fun exponentially drops off around the industrial or modern era, about 2/3rds through the game (in terms of turns, not time; for time it's more like half, maybe). I honestly don't know why I bother finishing so many games especially becuase it's quite clear that I'm very much ahead in science or tourism at this point, and the AI is terrible at catching up

 

[Nassim]

2. I'm surprised to sometimes feel like I'm in the minority here... but I often see AI seek RV fairly effectively : early religion, good faith output, lot of religious units.
There is also usually one civ doing well on science, though never enough to worry me except on Deity or that one time I decided to go for diplo victory. They never get close to Culture victory, that's for sure.... and they are so terrible at domination.
Diplo victory I would say they get close to more by luck or through the design of some civs than by really aiming at it, but I have seen civs at 17 or 18 a few times.

 

[Vargas1]

The only victory condition I reliably finish a game with is cultural, since there are so many ways to build culture/tourism that I still find it entertaining to build up my empire even when I know I'm on the way to victory. I love playing science games and games with science-oriented civs (Australia, Inca, Arabia, etc.), but I end up rarely finishing them - at any given time I probably have a half-dozen games saved somewhere between turns 150 and 200 where I know I'm on my way to victory but just don't have the interest in killing it off. I also play on Switch, which I think makes a difference - the time for the AI to take its turns gets so long as the game goes on that I really have to be committed to want to get to the finish.
I rarely go for a religious victory, but the games I have I have tended to finish them just because it's so unusual for me. Domination I've only ever finished once, and that's because I realized I had never finished it so decided I wanted to get at least one in.

 

[The Civs 6]

2. I'm surprised to sometimes feel like I'm in the minority here... but I often see AI seek RV fairly effectively : early religion, good faith output, lot of religious units.
There is also usually one civ doing well on science, though never enough to worry me except on Deity or that one time I decided to go for diplo victory. They never get close to Culture victory, that's for sure.... and they are so terrible at domination.
Diplo victory I would say they get close to more by luck or through the design of some civs than by really aiming at it, but I have seen civs at 17 or 18 a few times.

Addressing the RV victory thing.

I have a hard time seeing an AI able to compete with a human who has set out to do a RV from the start. Now, the AI focuses on getting a religion up and running early, and has all the early game advantages. So unless you are playing a RV civ like Russia, your ability to get one is in serious doubt. But usually if I am going RV from the outset and I don't get religion, that's just a fail state that is only caused by the AI having enormous advantages early - because after all, your path to getting a religion is narrow and brooks no deviations. A game where I went astrology, went a holy site, went holy site prayers - and didn't get a religion - is a game I lost in the first 50 turns. Just exit and try again.

On the other hand, if you just aren't playing with religion at all, I can see how RV becomes an issue. It is very easy to just completely ignore faith production, which has pretty much no benefit if you are going for a science victory. In the RV threat I referred to in my OP, all the civs that had viable religions were small neighbors - except Georgia which was on the other side of the continent (Pangea). My non-faith game was so dominant that I wiped out those little neighbors leaving just me, the Georgians, and the Inca (who had no faith game). Georgia converts the Inca to their religion. Soon, they had converted a lot of my cities. Only then did the alarm bell trigger and I basically started a faith game from scratch at the end of the tech tree.

In other words, because I was so good at science and military, I almost caused an RV to happen against me. That's pretty cool. Rather, it was a cool moment that has never happened again.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Unless I'm going for a diplo win, not really. I tried grinding out a win as Eleanor during my first GS culture attempt when I didn't fully understand all of the changes and it was mindbogglingly dull. Civ6 is so biased to the early game that you are kind of locked in by the time you get the point where you would need to grind out win and can't really do anything to change that. Diplo can be the same way and if the game has been kind of boring I'll just stop after I fail a major attempt to win the WC vote.



I lost some games to an AI science victory when I first started with the base game but by now I'm good enough that the AI never comes close to winning before I can playing on Emperor.



This has started becoming a real problem for me because in most other video games its the opposite, early easiness and late game challenge as the game ramps up introduces more mechanics and ups the challenge difficulty. The main reason I'm hesitant to go up on higher levels is that even if I overcome the early game AI advantages it's not going to change the same late game dull grind the game has kind of become for me and why finish something that is dull and predictable. The early to mid game is still fun and challenging but I no longer really feel the sense of accomplishment from actually finishing a game. Leader and Civ abilities really matter less and less as the game goes on outside of something like the Film Studio that really has some late game impact but even then it doesn't fundamentally change the game.

Given that less than half of the Steam player base have finished a game on Settler and less than a third on Prince, I'm not sure what the answer to the challenge question is. I feel like there needs to be some kind of scalable difficulty that increases as the game goes on or some kind of late game friction that isn't just RNG that affects only the player but I don't know what that would look like.

I turn off all victory conditions except score, and set the game to be 250 turns, because it’s almost always decided at that point

 

[Deadly Dog]

I like this topic and its something I think about every time I start a new game

1. Civ 6 is like 2 games for me. Most of my games are deity level starts, most of my games are abandoned, and so most of my hours of play are from the ancient-renaissance eras. This is my competitive play (well technically it is, I'm not saying I'm a competitive deity player ).

The other game I play is the sandbox, the rare late game from a handful of starts where I got a civ to a point I'm really happy about, or the occasional emperor start or Terra Map or Russia game. So I guess this is how I enjoy a game where the snowball effect creates this watershed moment where the challenge from AI dissipates and pursuing victory becomes tedium. I look for something special or interesting to play around with while muddling through the later eras, and if it isn't there I just start a new game.

2. Long time ago on a small map Victoria stole the game from me with a RV in the Medieval. Obviously I wasn't paying attention.

Another time I played Maori on a Terra Map but didn't settle a single city until after 900 CE, just to see what was possible, and it was very weird but in the end I couldn't get a SV or CV before the AI was poised for DV, and so had to steal the DV for myself. Japan had 2 GDR's but hadn't launched a rocket and everyone was sending rock bands all over the place.

But if you consider the AI has an additional Victory Condition called "eliminate Player One" then sure, AI is ruthlessly effective, if not the most efficient, in my games

3. Yep, 150 turns or 225 on Epic speed. Then its a world-builder exercise. Make up your own victory (a National Park and an Airport in every city?)

4. Yes, often enough, oddly enough. Because of the huge number of civs, city states, and maps, I keep finding new ways to play through that challenge. The fact that very few of those challenges result in an actual victory matters nothing to me. I like how my thinly populated HoF has games that I can remember quite clearly, because they were the most fun to play if they made it that far.

 

[Baigan]

Is it worth it to play out a game where you can muddle out a win, even if the game isn't fun?

Each victory condition has gotten something (or things) to make the endgame more interesting than it was when the game first released. Mindlessly refreshing each city's project and pushing Next Turn was not fun. They haven't solved the issue of late-game decisions being less impactful than early game, but it's better than before. The changes combined with the satisfaction I feel from finishing a game make it worthwhile for me to wrap things up when I play.

Have you experienced situations where the AI has been surprisingly effective at one of the victory conditions?

The AI is always able to wipe out early religions with Missionary spam if you're not careful. Runaway civs that start on another landmass can keep space races competitive late if you're just muddling. I've seen the AI win the world congress resolution and follow-up with Statue of Liberty, putting them close to a Diplomatic victory.

I'm not claiming these things happen every game, but the Immortal AI can compete in sub-300 (but probably not sub-250) victories. Since you're talking about muddling through the game, I assume we don't need to consider sub-200.

The AI's not good at all good at pursuing Domination or Culture victories, though.

Is Civ 6 really a first 150 turn game? As in, should I even be complaining - because the true "game" is in surviving the first part of the game?

The most impactful decisions are made in the first 150 turns. None of the content they've released—Power Plants, Rock Bands, global warming, Governors, game modes, etc.—change that, unfortunately. But having all those levers gives the player different ways to play the game and, hence, different ways to play a game that's fun for him/her. Isn't the true game the fun we had along the way?

And as a follow up to that question, do you find the challenge of overcoming the enormous early leads the AI has to be a fun one?

No. That's why I usually don't play Deity. But also, I have more fun playing against the map than playing against the AI. Overcoming a bad start on a lower difficulty level is far more engaging to me than overcoming large AI multipliers after rerolling for an excellent start.

 

[KayAU]

• Is it worth it to play out a game where you can muddle out a win, even if the game isn't fun?
• Have you experienced situations where the AI has been surprisingly effective at one of the victory conditions?
• Is Civ 6 really a first 150 turn game? As in, should I even be complaining - because the true "game" is in surviving the first part of the game?
• And as a follow up to that question, do you find the challenge of overcoming the enormous early leads the AI has to be a fun one?

My view:

1. No, I don't think so. I used to compulsively finish games, but I'm over that now. I just quit my last Cree game in the Classical Era, because I was winning clearly, and it looked like I was going to end up very wide. I just can't stomach the mid- to late game of Civ 6 when I have many cities to manage.
2. Only once has the AI won, and it was just because I was playing as Kongo and forgot to check on religion. I could have easily blocked it, but I'm not used to the AI effectively pursuing any victory condition. I think the only other time I've been surprised was a long time ago when Russia unexpectedly ran away with a decent tech lead. This forced me to eliminate them militarily, which was still easy to do.
3. I don't think it should be, there is a lot of content in the late game, and the game seems to be designed with victory conditions as the ultimate goal. I do think the late game is really tedious, though. There's a lot more to do, but most of it matters very little.
4. I don't. I have played on Deity just to prove to myself that I can win it, but it mostly just comes down to abusing the AIs lack of military skill. My ideal game would be with the AI and player following the same rules, with manual saving/loading disabled (ironman), and the AI smart enough to play effectively. A lot of people seem to think this is unrealistic, but I don't think it is. Vox Populi proves that you can make decent AI by traditional means. It might also be possible to do something interesting with machine learning. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect anything along these lines. It's just what I would have liked.

 

[lilnev!]

Right now, I am on the cusp of my first actual civ 6 victory ever: Mvemba, cultural. And it's still fun because (1) this is the first time I've gone for CV, and I'm learning the mechanics as I go along. (2) the ending is still in doubt. Not because of the AI (the best of them stayed peers in science to ~atomic), but because of Apocalypse mode: tooltips tell me that I need ~40 turns to reach CV, but the last level of global warming arrives in ~15 (marathon speed).

In general, I lose interest once the outcome is decided, unless I'm specifically exploring the power of a mechanism and the enjoyment is in the learning. I reach a state that I consider a victory often by ~industrial or modern, though sometimes it takes almost until the end. I like that. (I also abandon a lot of games, winning losing or undecided, for various reasons)

I play large maps, so there is usually an AI or two who do well in a distant part of the world. That sets the clock -- I either need to win first or intervene.

 

[Linklite]

The AI's not good at all good at pursuing Domination or Culture victories, though.

Dunno, the only time I've actually been beaten by the AInwas via a Cultural Victory. One of my first games, but they did it.

 

[Baigan]

Right now, I am on the cusp of my first actual civ 6 victory ever: Mvemba, cultural.

Awesome! Hope you can finish it out.

Dunno, the only time I've actually been beaten by the AInwas via a Cultural Victory. One of my first games, but they did it.

Yeah, I also lost to culture in my early games. Maybe that wasn't a fair comment on my part. Better to say that once you understand how culture victories work (and the importance of getting through the Civics tree regardless of victory condition), AI culture victories become much less scary.

 

[comatosedragon]

At the time of this posting, Steam lists me as 675 played hours. I purchased the game on launch day (October 21, 2016). I have completed (won by victory screen) exactly three (3) games.

To me, that sums up my feelings about "grinding out the win".

 

[Tech Osen]

I'm surprised to sometimes feel like I'm in the minority here... but I often see AI seek RV fairly effectively : early religion, good faith output, lot of religious units.

To me it seems the threat of a RV loss is directly related to the size of the map. The smaller the map, the bigger the risk. Since I started playing on huge maps I haven't seen an AI getting even close. I used to watch the RV stats like a hawk to not get caught with my pants down but not anymore.

 

[kaspergm]

While I said above I don't enjoy grinding out the win, I had one of my more fun games this weekend as Chandra, had what I thought looked like an interesting start right next to Gobustan and then got completely locked on growth and missing golden age in medieval and renaissance by 2 and 3 points respectively, which stalled my game even further. In Renaissance I start a war against my only neighbor, Eleanor (France), who is in a dark age, only to find myself grinding to a halt against her renaissance walls and then ending up in a dark industrial era against her heroic era ... whoops. However I manage to get to artilleries and get a couple of artillery armies which turns the tide, and after several of her cities switching back to her after 2-3 turns because of loyalty pressure I manage to get to Paris and start to get a stable hold of her land. After taking out Eleanor, liberating a couple of Dutch cities to earn a bit of good favor, I could win a diplomatic victory (three turns before I would get a cultural victory, thank you corporations), but this game was definitely less cruise control and more fun than my normal games.