Initial thoughts

Yeah, I saw it too. But as I said, no "intuitive" way. Will go to tweaking now.

 

Lol I thought easy reading was the whole point of Civ 6's cartoony art style.

 

Personally I like contrast a lot. I don't mind cartoon style or realism (though my favorite is clearly Civ 3 in this respect). But I should have a clear picture of the tactical positioning of troops. Let's hope some modders will help out

 

Oh nice. I had yet to see that screen. Glad someone showed it off. Pleased to see some customization is in there.

 

I wonder how HoF will work with the seed thing considering you can technically just always play on the same OP maps.

 

Gandhi seriously just told me, in Indian English, that "There is no shame in deterrence. Having a weapon is different from actually using it"? Damn.

The amount of active AI diplomacy is pretty impressive - the AI comes and offer gifts to us now.

 

King

 

I saw Quill's first game and he got owned in 30 minutes on Immortal

 

Yeah but this seems to be mostly an early game thing. From what I've seen once you survive the early game, immortal/deity isn't that scary.

 

My initial thoughts:

- I thought I was prepared, but I have no idea what I am doing
- auto-cycling is weird, but I am getting used to it. Other UI features make me bigger problems, it is somehow completely different than in Civ5
- I play on King, and I really think this game will be more than OK on higher difficulties. If my neighbors had settlers sooner, I would have problems to set up good cities.
- It took me 54 turns and quite a have scouting to discover a new continent! I thought it has to be a bug, until I finally discovered one On standard pangea as Teddy.

 

He had a setback, but I think he could've built up his one city and made progress eventually. He gave up too quickly.

 

The best games are the ones where you come from behind and feel all the better about a victory

 

My very first thoughts (marathon speed, turn 3300 BC or thereabouts):

The introduction movie is very nice.
The song is actually less nice than I thought it'd be.
The loading times are surprisingly long, when launching the game, starting a game, and exiting to desktop.
Continents might be a bit silly (I discovered a new one on turn two).
It takes a second for tile information to load.
The resource icons are hard to see at a glance.
I cannot see on which tile a citizen is working without opening citizen management.
I cannot see how long it takes until a city's culture expands - but that may be my fault, for surely such information cannot be absent?
Scrolling with the mouse is extremely inconvenient; it works just below the top of the screen, but not on the top, and it causes me to scroll upwards as I hover over various buttons.
The visuals are very nice, with a lot of attention paid to them... But then there is also the terrain - such as hills - which doesn't look nice at all. It's odd.
Barbarians are very present; I met a scout on turn three.
City states are also very present - I didn't see an option to change their amount? - and perhaps they are too present, for envoys grant fancy bonuses (+2 science, for example), and you get an envoy by simply being the first to meet a city state. That's a nifty system though!
I have never heard of 'gypsum' before, nor did I know of the board game 'Senet'. Thank you, Civilization VI.
The initial four government policies are excellent. Civilization V sorely lacked strategical choices here, but VI seems to have them.
Pressing 'Enter' doesn't close windows, which is silly.
I predict tech (science and culture) choices will be ruled by 'which eureka do I already have'. Eurekas aren't a nice mechanic (both way too easy - you get them randomly - and way too impacting; I would change the former, so that they are very specialised things, almost like quests).
Don't randomly press on the F? keys; I tried finding the Civilopedia (F12 seemed sensible), and discovered that F5 quick loads (or perhaps F5 saves it and F6 loads it) the game. This is silly, for the F? keys are known to provide information, and people will press them to try them out.
I didn't understand the embassy-esque thing at first; after meeting an AI, you get a second message, and if you say 'yes', you reveal the AI's capital to yourself. That could have been clearer.
I lack a lot of information in general, from 'extra production' (what is that? +1? +100?) to 'fortify until healed' (how many turns?) and ever so on.
The diplomacy text is abhorrent; leaders mention places that don't exist, Philip's text literally contains 'etc.' (please...), and translations are inaccurate ('... is to dance with the dead' was translated as '... is to invite death'), for example.
On the other hand, Saladin's translated text rhymes nicely - I wonder if that was intentional? It'd fit him very well.
AI's randomly pop up with unskippable (?) cutscenes to tell me random things about what they like or dislike that I am doing.
You can't properly zoom out, and so, there is no overview.
A city's production speed and citizen growth and all doesn't update while in the turn; if I'm working a tile with two food and change this citizen to work on a tile with one food, the growth rate stays the same until I go to the next turn.
The day and night cycle is nice and fancy, but I eventually turned it off and put the time at 12:03 (why can't I type in a precise time?).
The music is very nicely crafted, from what I have heard so far. Really.

Later thoughts:

The maps are way, way, way too tiny. Huge with eighteen civilisations is completely cluttered by city-states and civilisations - there's room to build two to three cities per civilisation at most. In Civilization IV, meanwhile, huge maps with 30 or so civilisations wouldn't feel cluttered at all.

The AI is irrational as ever, and the warmonger penalty is a way too limited mechanic here; the penalties are too excessive, the possibilities too limited, and all in all it leads to the whole world hating the whole world.

That also goes for agendas - there are conflicting agendas, by the way - that lead to the whole world hating the whole world.

Surprisingly, I would say one unit per tile isn't thát bad - yet - but, well, I just entered the Classical era (though, on Standard game speed with techs that take as long as Marathon in the Ancient era and progressively longer in every later era).

What are the trade delegation diplomacy pop-ups for? And why do I need all these diplomacy pop-ups that aren't instantly skippable? And why are the diplomacy screens so huge and useless, with all useful information crammed in a tiny window? There's a lack of overview and a need to scroll, despite the fact that most of the screen isn't used!

Why, actually, does the game not instantly exit to desktop when I tell it to?

And as for diplomacy; how come people are unfriendly despite me having much more positive modifiers (added together) than negative modifiers (added together)?

Why is it so hard to go back to Civilization IV regarding AI's? AI's have a peace-value (Genghis Khan would have it near zero, Gandhi at ten), AI's like other AI's with the same peace value (as well as a plethora of other diplomatic modifiers, of course), and the only kind of warmonger penalty is that for declaring war upon one's friend. That system worked perfectly.

The UI in general is a mess, as I already stated; the city screen lacks vital information and is extremely inaccessible - again, what was wrong with Civilization IV?

So, too, for things such as selecting civilisations to play with, when setting up a new game; the boxes are large (for they contain a whole icon instead of a name), you can't type in a letter to quickly go to there (pressing 'Q' should lead me to 'Qin Shi Huang'), the scrollbar is too tiny to be of much use, and the differences between the selection box and the selected box (does that make sense?) are way, way too hard to see.

Why can't I press 'M' to stop the movement command (why was this ever changed from 'G' to 'M', on that note? Nothing wrong with 'Go to', is there? Consistency is important)?

It's nice to play on Standard speed with technology being researched at Marathon speed (200% slower) in the ancient era, 300% slower in the classical era, and 400% slower in all the following eras.

The explored-but-not-visible fog of war should be in the colour of the explored-but-visible parts, and should look exactly like those parts except for being shaded. Like in Civilization IV. I mean, this fog of war was a great idea, and it looks very nice - but functionality is more important.

Why can't I rename cities? Nor units - and requiring a promotion doesn't count - nor my leader, nor my civilisation?

Why do districts not display their yields?

Why can't I destroy my own districts?

Why can't I see where my borders will grow (or when, as I already mentioned)?

The tech trees (culture and science) lack overview; the buttons are too large.

Why are Sleep and Fortify different buttons with different hotkeys? That is pure nonsense.

Why is there no overview of trade deals and the amenities I currently get from which resources and whatnot?

Why is there no build queue?

Why does the Civilopedia not contain hotlinks, and why is it so terribly uninformative in general (that goes for the whole game, mind; 'extra production' is meaningless, write '+1 production' or such - there are so many ambiguities)?

Why am I forced to use that terrible Settler lens when I have one selected (same with Missionaries and Apostles, but they're less annoying)?

Why can I not see where units are going when I select them?

Why do I not care overtly much about which technology I'm researching (because of eurekas and because there is often no real need to research something now or later, be it because the technology doesn't unlock much or because there is no challenge)?

Why do I not care about where my citizens are working (because the interface is terrible and I can't be bothered opening the citizen manager - I can't even see where citizens are working without entering the citizen manager!)?

Why do I not care about which great people I am getting, randomly getting a message to randomly grab a person and forgetting him or her a moment later?

Why are so many of my city's tiles unimproved - why do I find myself to not care too much about them (because I might put down districts there later, because Builders have a finite amount of charges and need to be rebuilt, because improvements have rather meagre yields, because I am miles ahead of anyone anyway)?

Why is the sea completely and utterly useless?

Why are units so completely messed up? Why would I choose a swordsman over a horseman (spears aren't very relevant)? Why are the upgrade paths so messed up? How can you possibly make knights upgrade to tanks, musketmen to infantry...?

 

1st 100 turns, Epic, King....Theme Song was amazing, suitably amped up by the beginning. No restart map option , Good Performance out the gate, Unit Cycling Sux , movement feels so slow but fine of course) , Initial barb fight is pretty fun, got stuck with horseman right next to my capital, lucky i had a river in between, it took a bit of defensive work with a slinger, warrior and scout to to protect my stuff. Chopp'n nerfed ....only 30 hammers from a chop... i was expecting more, still useful of coure but not the supercharged game changer i thought it was going to be(maybe Epic speed had something to do with it.) Got DOW'd quite early...for no real reason by Germany and Arabia(got a feeling Arabia was pissed because i stole his city spot and encouraged to Germany to fight). Rome's cultural advantage with REX is ridiculous, no way in hell i could get Early Empire Inspiration before hard Teching it. Political Philosophy at Turn 50 on Epic, War wasn't too bad, at least they built a lot of units but only Warriors and only a couple of slingers, still it wasn't terribad, at least Saladin tried. @ Turn 100 i have 7 Cities(stole 2 from Saladin) with a Settler on the way. About to get Legion's but there is no rush anymore, probably stay with 8 cities for a little while and get these Baths cranki ng, and start getting the trade routes running.

 

After playing for two hours (Sumeria in Prince, epic speed in continents), I have to say that the game is pretty impressive, I love it.
But, yeah there's always a "but", there are few issues that I noticed:

1. Can't change the name of the civ nor the leader. Not a biggie IMHO.
2. Can't change the name of the cities (or I haven't figured how). It may be a little detail, but it's quite annoying. I hope Firaxis implements the option soon.
3. There's no "earth" nor "terra" maps. This one is quite annoying too, although it'll be corrected fast when Firaxis releases a map editor. No big worries with this one.

 

I think it is extremely slow, unit animations and leaderscreens. Don't like the fog of war of discovered territory. There's no reroll button of map as far as I can tell.

 

Thought so too. Unfortunately,

• Map navigation pins are in the same color as unit pins. So if you plan using the map pins, your view is full of these same-color same-size pins and you start losing track of your units.
• Map pins cover yield icons and so do unit pins. Even resource icons sometimes overlap a little with the yield icon. In general the map navigation pin doesn't feel like something designed to help people. It feels like a complete after-thought. Something done just to shut people up.
• Also the map pins are bugged. Often, out of the blue, text you entered for a new pin will replace a particular other pin, and the new pin will appear as un-named and using the default pin icon. As you accumulate more pins, it becomes impossible to know which pin was replaced, unless you number every single pin with some convention that make odd ones stand out. This one problem alone is making map pins useless for urban planning.
• Fog of war being a completely different color set. So you get used to the color-coded visible world, then right next to you (especially in early exploration and city location planning) you have to wrap your head around identifying texture instead of color for tiles in the fog of war. This constant flip-flop of map convention turns out to make the map harder to read.
• Strategic view grid lines are wriggly wiggly stylized distorted lines, making it extremely difficult to see the hex tile grid in your mind. In my opinion the Civ VI strategic view completely defeats the whole reason to have the view, all just because of that stylized grid.

 

I like it so far. Do not neglect your military... I focused mainly on military units and techs and wasn't aggressive and still could barely fend everything off.

 

Reminiscent of Civ4

 

Played my first game for 2 hours. Chose random leader and got China on King difficulty. Great stuff. My thoughts:
1) I got lost, so many options early game and i chose one of the worst lol. Also playing every turn involves a lot of decision making which is great for strategy game, the "map" unfolds with much dynamic.
2) Inspirations and Eureka boosts are too big - i think they will nerf them.
3) I lost to barbarians basically, they harassed my city effectively and killed 5 units. Was my fault, i neglected barbarian scout and let him bring friends. Its more embarassing to be honest considering that i am a veteran CIV player.
4) I decided to start a new game after i finish typing this, going for random again. But i realized that i missed so many opportunities in my first game that probably this time it will go smother.
5) by turn 50 2 AI got eliminated, including my neighbor (Japan payed due tribute to Rome, that was a slasher).
6) Interface is pretty intuitive and friendly (some bugs here and there like mouse screen scroll when scrolling to the upper edge) but overall i enjoyed it.
7) Didnt find culture borders expansion info, lost 75 gold to it (had to buy a tile
8) AI beat me both at science and civics which is, again, embarassing. I noticed that some AI really striving to get more Science (havnt checked Civics yet).
Overall - very, very cool game. WIth future expansions i forsee it to be the strategy of the decade.