Initial thoughts

[qadams]

I've played about 20 hours so far, and I'm really enjoying it. Civ 6 is a great game, aside from a few obvious and very annoying issues:

1. No way to reroll a new map at the start without exiting to the initial setup menu.
2. Previous choices are not remembered when returning to the setup menu. What the?
3. Right-clicking on a unit does not take you to the Civilopedia entry.
4. Right-clicking on the production item in the City Screen does not go to the Civilopedia entry.
   
5. There's no back button in the Civilopedia.
6. A lot more, but that's enough for now...

All of the above things are really stupid. It's kind of surprising they would release the game in what feels like an incomplete condition.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

I'm really sad to say I'm beyond dissapointed with this game. There Are so many things that seems off that I don't have the time to write about IT all. Butikk here Are a few: 1: The obvious. The AI can't handle the game and so all your "strategic" and "tactical" efforts feel hollow and unimportant.
2: The map looks horrible. It's really cluttered and in my opinion does not look clean and informative alot thanks to 1upt, bad UI and graphics. Which brings me to 3: 1upt is a disaster. Units Are everywhere blocking up the game, making the map look horrible and leaving the AI clueless. It's like looking at an ant hive in slow motion. 4: the whole vibe og the game is in my opinion really bad. The music sounds like one of those hourly bell-songs From old-school clocks making the game feel like a wait at a reception father than a strategy game. And the sound effex Are really off and feel out og place most og the time. 5: no sense og danger. I know bringing up civ4 stirs a lot og heat on this forum, but one thing that game got right (along with a Great many other things) was giving the player a real sense og danger. 6: balance issues, broken mechanics and things left out. This has been discussed in many threads. And the list goes on. For now I'm not going to waste my life on this game. I'm sorry i bought it.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Wow, this is new--being down on Prince players, but saying the difficulty somehow changes the way the game looks, visually....

The two main initial thoughts I had:
1. I do not like the new movement system. Maybe it's just a "new" thing, but I feel more annoyed with it now than when I started.
2. Why are so many bars (XP and scroll), and the city "target" icon so small?

I wasn't trying to be down on Prince players. I just meant that on Prince it is kinda like a sandbox game for me so the problems I face when I play on higher levels doesn't really bother me because I just build a few units and go take everyones cities. For my experience when I play on Deity, things are more involved and I am having a hard time visually seeing all the units, resources, terrain... etc. You were calling us players who hate the new look and fog of war Weirdos and I was saying I wouldn't be such a Weirdo if I was playing on Prince because nothing would really matter to me cause like I said before... I would just build some Calvary and go crush the world

To me that can't possibly be true with the AI the way it is. Not even taking into account all the other poor balance and design choices at the moment, with the AI where it is, this game is basically a fancy SimCity.

I keep thinking this is not a Civ game when I play it and now I know why... it is basically a fancy Sim City game... I knew I wasn't playing Civ

 

[Ben Vimes]

Finished a game on Prince yesterday. I enjoyed it, but there are a lot of things that need to be improved:

1. There is no way to save settings when starting a game, or restart using the same settings from in-game. If you roll a terrible starting location, you have to exit to main menu and set up the parameters again.

2. There is no way to turn off the unit auto-cycle from in-game menus.

3. The barbarians may be a bit much in some cases. It can be fun as it makes for a more interesting early game, but sometimes a camp spawns in a difficult location and by the time you get around to clearing it there are 38 strength Horsemen popping out every couple of turns.

4. The AI also seems to have problems with army compositions and coordination. Both times I was attacked it was with masses of Horseman. The first time was okay, as I didn't yet have Pikes. The second time was laughable, as I had Field Cannons (and Caravels, which racked up kills as the waves of units tried to cross the ocean), and I'm sure they must have had access to something stronger than Classical era light cavalry. The were also hoards of them - I think I must have killed 3 dozen Horseman in that second war - and they spent most of their time shuffling around instead of moving in to attack me.

5. City States require special notice in regards to armies. They also spam units, but because they tend to lack strategic resources they also can't upgrade anything. I've seen city states running around with 8 or 10 Warriors when everyone else is at least in the Renaissance, simply because they don't have Iron or Niter for upgrades. This makes them very easy to conquer later, and also makes them easy pickings for more advanced barbarians. I think it may behove the devs to limit the unit production in City States to Spearman and Slingers or to give City States access to the strategic resources of their suzerains.

6. The explanation for War Weariness is entirely opaque. I had a city continue to gain War Weariness even after I made peace (and none of the fighting happened anywhere near the city), until it bottomed out at -9 total Amenities. Only then did it crawl back up. Maybe it was caused by all the theological combat going on around the city (even though I wasn't participating in it)?

7. Likewise, the explanation for National Parks is misleading. I had a Naturalist standing on a tile with an appeal of "Breathtaking (5)" surrounded by 3 mountains. They were in a diamond shape (i.e. two tiles border the other three, the other two border the first two on opposite sides), and they all belong to the same city. However, this "diamond" was running NE-SW, and the park needs to be north-south (maybe east-west would work too?). This really annoyed me as I was going for a culture victory, but couldn't figure out how to use one of the new components of that. Also, the graphic for a National Park is disappointing.

8. I really, REALLY don't like the fact that districts can't be removed. If you misclick or have a momentary lapse in judgement and put your Commercial Hub in your only Aqueduct tile, well then you are SOL.

9. Diplomacy is a bit dodgy. They AI is more likely to give you deals, but sometimes trying to get a good deal is cumbersome due to the lack of manual input in the flat gold/GPT. Peace deals are equally suspect. In my second war above, I was desperately trying to get out because War Weariness was starting to destroy my growth, however Pericles kept refusing even a white peace (and this is after I've killed dozens of his units). Then on his turn, he suddenly surrenders all his luxuries and all his great works to me. Finally, the fact that the Escape key sometimes skips a Diplomatic animation and sometimes exits out of a choice (e.g. offers of embassies) is frustrating.

10. The upgrade path seems a bit sparse on the Horseman tree - it feels like there should be something in between Horsemen and Cavalry.


On some more positive note:

1. I really like the new espionage system. I like being able to hold spies hostage and ransom them. I like that there's more to do than just gather intelligence or steal technology (I love art heists). I like the various promotions. It all feels far more interactive and varied.

2. Similarly, I like the new City State system. It's again more interactive and varied - it doesn't feel like richest player wins anymore

3. The new Trade Routes are cool as well, though I think it would be nice if there was a late game Technology/Civic/Policy that made them move faster

4 The AI seems far more likely to declare wars, especially early, though it's no less subtle about it (it still piles a bunch of units on your doorstep and then "surprises" you with a DOW). This is a nice change of pace for people who play on easier settings, where the AI would rarely DOW you because you tended to be quite far ahead technologically. My game saw Gilgamesh mop the floor with Teddy very early too, so it was nice to see the AI sometimes recognizing when it has an advantage (War Carts, in this case) and pressing it, though I have a sneaking suspicion it still may just be doing a flat comparison of raw Combat Strength.

 

[Xger]

I wasn't trying to be down on Prince players. I just meant that on Prince it is kinda like a sandbox game for me so the problems I face when I play on higher levels doesn't really bother me because I just build a few units and go take everyones cities. For my experience when I play on Deity, things are more involved and I am having a hard time visually seeing all the units, resources, terrain... etc. You were calling us players who hate the new look and fog of war Weirdos and I was saying I wouldn't be such a Weirdo if I was playing on Prince because nothing would really matter to me cause like I said before... I would just build some Calvary and go crush the world

I keep thinking this is not a Civ game when I play it and now I know why... it is basically a fancy Sim City game... I knew I wasn't playing Civ

I wasn't the original poster. I just get a little annoyed that at each new Civ anything (game, expansion, patch) if anyone says anything, but didn't play on Deity, others feel the need to come in and say they are wrong, or the only explanation is the lower difficulty. I occasionally played on Deity in CiV, but it wasn't as fun to me, because it is simply a raw numbers advantage, not a change in the coding (which seems is something multiple people in this thread would like to be different here, and I agree).

The SimCity comparison seems particularly poor, I just do not see how the games are remotely similar as a whole.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

To give an executive summary:

CIV 6 is a vibrant entertainment with thoughtful design and seasoned art work. I am going to love this game.


After waiting for over months, I finally got a box of it from a retail outlet down town. It says it comes with the Aztec Civilization pack. The reason I didn't buy the anniversary edition is because I do not actually have enough cash to acquire it, I know I am going to regret it, but life is full of regrets at some stage and it's not that unbearable in the end. So after having my late supper, I took a shower, and ate a little snack plate. Then that was what I have planned for earlier in the day, a nice cup of English Tea, intentionally missed during the afternoon and postponed it until the time when I was about to start the game. Ah, the installation, how did it go? Very well actually, more clockwork than I have thought before. Then I went for all the preparation work for a career in CIV 6 gaming; registering on the forum getting a seat so that I can spread this message. Then I create all new ID in Steam and get set for launching.

Call me stupid if you like, maybe I am really stupid however, I thought I should jump right into MP and see if the game does really hook up, whether it really works. And it does, like clockwork. Back in CIV 5, I never ever had battle experience in MP because I bought it just a little while ago from the SALE in Amazon, all expansions in one pack, good deal. For a game almost 6 years old, most online players are gone. Well, I blame reality. After learning the lesson, very punctual this time round, buying CIV 6 right on launch day. Back to my first MP game, before I hit the button I thought some personal flavor music for celebrating a special occasion on a weekend evening Jumped to youtube and as luck could have it, I bumped into this one

.
Admirer of classical music.

I hosted my first CIV 6 game, online, really crazy enough. This chap having no single player experience of a new game, doesn't know a thing about district, civics and lots lots more dare challenging others online, very silly of me. But then, for a test ride, the reason is already good enough.

I love the main menu, the background color is my favorite blue and it's animating, cool! And look, there is a benchmark; how novel! Now, I have seen benchmark programs in other genres, everyone, well almost everyone would have thought one that is not necessary, coz it's just a board game with computerizations and a bit of slight touch on the graphics. Why would someone need a benchmark, for what? I think not. Well, it's more than that, I'll come to that later about the graphics.

Hurrah! The MP works flawlessly. I was very lucky because it was something like 5 minutes of waiting and I got a nice chap joining the game so we rushed to the small party. Now looking back, I was very novice, the settings were Continent, 8 players, PRINCE and that's all. Actually, I should have set it on KING. But having got someone on the other side of the world to play with me has already got me really hot, I shouldn't ask for the whole world. So we venture into the new game.

Online playing could be very depressing some times if you go with someone who is reticent. Very luckily, this chap is also a new comer to CIV 6 because we exchanged questions, and friendly, responsive and communicating, I quite like that. And I think my chosen music also plays a part in it, making the whole 3 hours very enjoyable. Had it not because of bedtime, we would have gone way way further. Wanted to add him to the friend list but in vain. Steam got me into trouble and stopped me from doing that, annoying really.

About the graphics, which many thread have talked about here. All I can say is: I like the graphics very much, years of PC gaming makes me a fanatics and my expectations on gaming graphics is very high. My capital is built near a great mountain and it does catch my eyes, the mountain I mean. It's truly stereo 3D, to my amazement. Now given the overall graphics of the game is anime oriented, one would tend to believe that everything is being displayed with 2D effects, but it's completely not the case. It's highly 3D friendly. And does anyone here ever remember a good old game called Team Fortress 2? I am not a great player of it, but the graphics of CIV 6 is rendered amidst that of TF2. The blood splashes animation works vividly and is witty, making me smile from my heart. A very good twist of the game.

One new features I find very handy is the "borrowing" of city states military units upon request. I at the south west of my kingdom was swarmed with barbarian invasions, and I was giving out 10 points (?) to one of the CSs, the warriors just came at the right time, fence off the barbarians. Another good thing is the changeable policies, which is not possible in CIV 5. Though it might increase micromanagement, but it gives you what you need at the right time and you need not to wait for ever.

I have no complaints about the UI except that unit auto-cycling, having said that I can bear with it. It's not hard to adapt to. As the time of this post, I haven't really explored the whole game yet, but overall, my experience is very positive and I enjoy the game very much. Had I decided to postpone after reading many of the negative posts on this forum, I would have regret again!

Happy Civ'ing

 

[dexters]

Hi, welcome to CivFanatics forums.

Glad to hear you are having fun. Initial impressions thread can be found here,
http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/initial-thoughts.600340/

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Threads merged.

 

[ToothedBomb]

So I just started a game with the Aztecs. I declared war on Germany and Gandhi and beat some of their units. Where's my builders?
I've not gotten any. How do you get them? I don't see a passive bonus on my Eagle Warriors, so what's up? Is it just a chance to convert them? Something else I'm missing?

E. So it's just a chance. Well that's just great. Doesn't even say how likely it is to convert an enemy. This match is ruined now.

 

[elitetroops]

E. So it's just a chance. Well that's just great. Doesn't even say how likely it is to convert an enemy. This match is ruined now.

It does say, it's mentioned together with the combat bonuses bottom right of the screen when you hover over the enemy to attack. I think it was usually something like 69.3% chance. I got a ton of builders when I played the first 70 turns of a game as Aztecs. So much in fact that it felt totally over powered and I started a new game with another civ.

 

[parallox]

Summary: Here is my honest feedback, 5/10. To be fair, I think I rated Civ 5 about a 6/10, until the last couple of updates rounded out completed the game. I really think they need to make 2 or 3 expansions to fix the game dynamic, cause I don't think it works particularly well.

Graphics:
Are those cows, or do I need new glasses? - Everyone has complained about the graphics, and being I am an older player, I really can't tell what resources I am finding. In Civ 5, I could easily tell there were cows, sheep, crab, truffles, etc. But with this I really can't tell anything unless I see the little tile improvement icon, and that takes away from the game.

Did I improve the tile or should I mouse over for 5 minutes? - Along with seeing a resource tile, it's a lot harder to see if I actually made an improvement to it. I have to mouse over the tile over it just right to see if I actually have anything improved there or not.

Religion:
Who do you have to kill to get a religion? (Abraham Reference - Religions just kind of happened in Civ 5, with Civ 6 it's not so intuitive. Furthermore, you can get left out, which is a really poor dynamic. Furthermore, seems like the AI will spam 20 missionary units to convert you, and it's really poorly implemented.

Unit Speed:
Do you even road bro? - In Civ 5, roads had a cost, but they gave you something... SPEED! I can understand that traders build roads for economic reasons, but when builders or military units really don't get any real speed bonus once they are built. I have yet to play when railroads are built, but it seems like it doesn't really give any movement bonus, and that just isn't right. Plus you really have no way to plan them. Maybe I want them to go over a particular resource so I can move units there quicker to defend them. Its a bad dynamic.

Strategic Resources:
My Kingdom for a horse! - Seems like there are a ton luxury and food resources, but strategic resources are incredibly RARE! I think the only one I got in my first game was a horse. I had to trade for anything else. They shouldn't be that difficult to find. Even Civ 5 wasn't this bad.

Districts:
Why do districts take so LOOOOONG to build? My real life city can redistrict faster than this game does. - I feel like the whole dynamic with Districts are just broken. If I had a city, with little hammers, I would rush to get factories built there to quicken the build speed. There is no such dynamic in Civ 6. If you happen to have a city with no hammers, you are just stuck with a non-developing city. In real life, setting a district is relatively quick, and building within it takes LONG. I kind of view it more as zoning, you make an industrial zone (quick), then build a workshop (which takes longer).

Game Play:
I want to play the Civ they way I want to, NOT you say they should - I think the thought was that you should play certain Civs in Civ6 to play a particular path to victory. But when I played a Civ in Civ5, it was because I wanted a particular Civ bonus, but what I did with that bonus fell on me. It kind of locks you in to a particular play style which you may not want to play.

Please fix this game Fireaxis, it still needs a lot of work!!!

 

[EpicWestern]

Game 3:

Played with Norway on Immortal, suddenly got attacked by adjacent Japan and got my capital overrun by ~6 chariots very early in the game. Was thinking about quitting but given that I was unbeaten (2-0) in civ6 I didn't really want to give up without a fight. Due to the extremely poor AI, my small coastal cities were able to hold off the attacks of a different civ while Japan decided to just top moving forward. Eventually I massed archers, which are great vs the poor micro AI, and was able to retake my capital, and since I was already massing military I decided at that point to just go for a domination victory. Before I said that I was pleased that the penalty for taking cities was reduced compared to the last two civ games but I take that back. The penalty is actually quite severe and there really isn't any type of workaround. So while I battled back and was able to take over one civ, every other civ in the game was far ahead in both tech and culture. At first I thought my main threat was Germany on another continent that seemed to be going for the science victory, but as others have pointed out, the civs just somehow aren't smart enough to complete it especially if their spaceport was disrupted. So after seeing Germany just not progress, it turned out my actual main threat was Kongo (also on another continent) racing toward a culture victory. Since losing my capital early had me way behind in weaponry, and since Kongo's capital was inland I didn't really have a full military assault as an option. Again, I felt the game was lost but since I still didn't want to give up without a fight, I decided if I was going down at least I was gonna nuke someone. It turns out, nukes are overpowered. Not only will even a large city's health and defense be reduced to zero, but it actually stays that way. So a nuke, followed by a helicopter swooping in and I was able to take the inland capital in just one turn. So after nuking and razing two more of Kongo's cities, while meanwhile catching up in tech to everyone (actually completed the tech tree), I felt I had a pretty clear path to victory. Still it was going to be close. For some reason despite losing 3 main cities, Kongo's tourists per turn gained wasn't really reduced. It was about 20 turns away from victory and had about 4 cities left. So I figured I had to eliminate Kongo completely but with nukes, bombers, and the capital as an operations point it was doable. Problem is, when I took over their next city the game crashed. Ugh. Maybe its just a memory leak of some sort? Nope, restarted the game, crashed again in same spot. Restarted game, waited a few turns, still crashed. Took over a different city, still crashed. Restarted my computer and put everything on lowest graphic settings, still crashed. Honestly spent 15+ hours on that single game so I have to say I'm more than a little peeved that it ended that way. So staying away from domination for a while, if I decide to keep playing at all, at least till Firaxis gets their **** together.

 

[Jeckel]

We started a new game with some specific goals in mind. We were doing decent, met the goals we set pretty well, but when we decided to start spreading our religion it turned out to be impossible. Apparently once your religion is no longer dominant in your cities, you are just boned and there is no way to regain dominance because you can only build religious units of the dominant religion. This is a bunch of bullcrap.

Brings me to something I haven't brought up yet. Why are Great Prophets only used to found religions now? Kinda makes all the Great Prophet bonuses pointless. I was liking religion at first. As with many things in this game it seems great on the surface, but once you get down to the details things start falling apart very quickly. These patches that are suppose to be coming better be amazing, because as it is I'm becoming less and less enthused the more I see the game played.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Yes this game looks really Great on paper. On a computer? Not so sure.

 

[ThERat]

It seems a little like the new shiny games for phones and tablets. Lots of shiny features but when you want to use it for a deep, strategic approach, it falls apart. Hope this isn't really the case.
It did serve its purpose though, all those reviewers that spend a few hours on it, hail it as the bestest game ever possibly

 

[LDiCesare]

The gameplay is quite good.
The AI is bad.
The UI is really bad.

 

[Chuma]

I ended up with a dogpile of great writers as they could not complete their great works even when there was meant to be slots open for them (might have just been in the tutorial as a lot of the buttons did not work.)

I tried to play a game on Prince difficultly and got whalloped by barbarians and even the other civs being cheeky bastards and settling right next to my city. Is more of an incentive to go to war at the higher difficulties just to get them out of your face.

I have never run out of money in a CIV game before, seems to be easier to do here if you don't pay attention to upkeep and the trade routes and stuff like managing policies.

I am trying to ration my play time as I would not do anything else otherwise, will play more when I have time.

 

[narmox]

The "View reports" screens, while intimidating at first, is really useful to figure out amenities/housing/war weariness/cities yield, btw. Not the prettiest of interfaces but at least it's there.

 

[EpicWestern]

It seems a little like the new shiny games for phones and tablets. Lots of shiny features but when you want to use it for a deep, strategic approach, it falls apart.

Actually think the game is incredible deep, its just the execution that's poor. I just think Firaxis would spend more time debugging their game instead of developing new convoluted features like amenities and housing.

 

[Council 13]

So after a little over 21 hours of play, I have to completely agree with what seems to be the general sentiment in this thread. The game feels pretty rich and packed with features out of the box, but quickly seems to become unbalanced, confusing and pretty disorganized. It really does feel that the game has great depth, but you really have to try pretty hard and be very forgiving to be able to appreciate it. The single thing that bothers me the most I think, is that Firaxis continues to make the same exact mistakes with every release -

- AI dumb and frustrating
- UI and gameplay bugs everywhere you look
- Severe balancing issues

We, the players, are always the beta testers for them. How is it that it takes me less than 4 short games to realize that the tech/civ tree's are far too easy to get through, production is far too lacking, and that the UI has bugs almost everywhere. You can't even make the screen scroll correctly? And what is UP with the notifications?? I can barely click on them or get them to display the information they are supposed to provide me. C'mon guys... c'mon.

Will I stop playing? No. But that is more likely because of the love I have for the franchise and due to a real lack of alternatives. I just have to be honest and say that I would have been happy with less content, but with a more polished delivery worthy of a $60 pricetag. At the very least, have things work that were not previously ever broken. The tech tree's and policies always felt like the one cornerstone of the game that Firaxis always got right. Now even they feel like they were created by some kid who's Adderral prescription ran out. Which must be the same kid who is throwing out all these 9/10, 90%+ review scores.

I hope that most if not all of these issues are indeed fixable and Firaxis gets on it very soon.