Just started playing... to rise, to fall, to gather, to storm?

subtledoctor

Warlord
Joined
Feb 6, 2014
Messages
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I just started playing Civ6 in my iPad, after however many years playing Civ5 on the PC. It's been a bit bewildering - right from the start, can I tell what is a good place to found a city? How many rings does a city get over time? 2 like Civ4, 3 like Civ5? How immediately do I need to be able to place districts? How close should I bee to mountains? How close to rivers? Apparently I can build a city away from the coast but still have a harbor and build ships? How does that work?

None of this is obvious. I started with Pericles, since I was a culture fiend in Civ5, on Prince difficulty. The district thing is super weird - I can't build a library or workshop until I've spent 20-40 turns* preparing a special place for them outside my city? But, other buildings can fit just fine in my city center. Why? Who knows. I founded a religion, almost by accident; what do I do with faith? How does religious pressure work? I took the religious texts founder's belief, like I used to in Civ5, but it doesn't seem to be effective. What the heck is "religious combat?" Should I care? Why are great people so weird and variable and often useless? How do you get them - basically just have the purple policy card for point generation?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

* I play on epic speed, on a large map, with 40% more civs and 20% more city-states, to create competition for land and resources. Somehow though, parts of the game still end up going too fast, while others are dog slow. It takes ages to build anything, but I'm going through the tech tree super fast. By the time I build some units they are obsolete. (Except the ones in the middle ages - crossbows and men-at-arms seem to rule the field for like 1500 years.) And it's not me - I am playing very inefficiently, I'm the 3rd or 4th civ behind the tech leader. I suspect it's just that science tends to whiz by in Civ games on lower difficulty.

Basically it seems like this game has about 50% more systems than Civ5 had, and some of the ways those systems work is no longer as visible or clear in the UI. Dealing with increased complexity on a 11-inch screen is... not the best.

Anyway, people around here have probably read similar first impressions about this game for years. (Last thing to say is, this optional mechanic of treating with barb camps and allowing them to bloom into city-states is a stroke of genius. I guess not great on a Terra map though...) But I do have a real question. As in-game purchases, it looks like I can get Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm for $30 each. 60 bucks seems like... a LOT of money to pay for expansions to a game I already own. Usually when buying the latest Civ games I have just waited until I can buy the combined final version, preferably on sale. But that is not possible in Apple pretty little walled iOS garden. Everything is always max price.

Don't get me wrong - it is amazing to be able to play a real Civ game on a half-inch-think screen I can hold in one hand on the crapper. (We'll politely ignore the CivRev garbage from last decade.) I wish I can play Civ5 on an iPad - that game seemed to be just a bit simpler so as to make it ideal for a tablet. But my question is, should I look at Rise and Fall and/or Gathering Storm? Would they just make things even more complex? Alternatively, would they still be manageable, but smooth out some of the balance issues in the game? In my past experience you couldn't pick one or the other - you needed Gods & Kings in order to play Brave New World, right? R&F and GS seem to be separately available to me. Any reasons I should consider one or the other, or both, or neither? $60 is pushing me toward "neither," but I prefer not to play a busted old unbalanced unpatched version of a game...

All thoughts & opinions appreciated!
 
First I would recommend to play with the vanilla Civ 6 before jumping into expansions, otherwise you could get overwhelmed with mechanics. The base game is fun too and has lots of going on. When you feel prepared then pick expansion!

The base vanilla Civ 6 has all the patches as well, it just doesnt have expansion mechanics.

You dont necessarily need to pick the both expansions, Gathering Storm has all the mechanics of Rise&Fall like loyalty, dark ages etc.

But not having Rise&Fall means you wont get that expansions civs, leaders and wonders.
 
I think the general consensus is that rise and fall is the top priority for an expansion to grab. Gathering Storm and new frontier pass are mostly for the additional civs...
 
Should also say: now that I am in the modern era and have explored most of the map... this Continents map script is absolute trash. Two perfect 'V'-shaped continents separated by a huge, featureless perfectly 'A'-shaped ocean. No interesting islands, nowhere to expand in the medieval-industrial eras. Once again spoiled by Civ5 (where, to be fair, I was using a custom map).
 
Any of the map types can get absolutely wild.

But I generally like the Continents and Islands map type.
 
How many rings does a city get over time? 2 like Civ4, 3 like Civ5?
Three.

How immediately do I need to be able to place districts?
As soon as possible.

How close should I bee to mountains?
Unlike previous games, mountains are desirable terrain because they add hefty adjacency bonuses to Campus and Holy Site districts. Some useful wonders also require mountains.

How close to rivers?
You'll want most of your cities on fresh water (rivers, lakes) as they suffer a growth penalty otherwise. This can be offset by Aqueducts, but Aqueducts take a while to build.

How does religious pressure work? I took the religious texts founder's belief, like I used to in Civ5, but it doesn't seem to be effective.
Passive spread got nerfed hard, unfortunately. :( You'll want to spread your religion with religious units; otherwise it's unlikely to spread past your first few cities.

What the heck is "religious combat?" Should I care?
Apostles can fight each other; if an Apostle is defeated, all nearby cities receive a large bomb of religious pressure from the victor's religion.

Why are great people so weird and variable and often useless? How do you get them - basically just have the purple policy card for point generation?
All Great People are unique in Civ6; Great People Points are generated by Districts, Buildings, city projects, some Wonders, and the aforementioned policy cards. You can also buy Great People with Faith or Gold.

I think the general consensus is that rise and fall is the top priority for an expansion to grab. Gathering Storm and new frontier pass are mostly for the additional civs...
I would have said the other way around. Gathering Storm includes Rise & Fall's mechanics, and, while R&F has a few interesting civs (and by "interesting civs" I mean the Cree and no one else :p ) and wonders, on the whole I'd say it was an inferior expansion to GS. If one were choosing one of them, it seems to me like GS would be the clear choice.
 
There will be black Friday sale next week on Steam, hopefully Civ 6 expansions will be on sale.
 
Personally I feel that vanilla is just a far worse product than having the new mechanics from R&F and GS. As mentioned, GS gets you up to date with those, and from there you could decide if you like the game enough to invest in other content.
 
There will be black Friday sale next week on Steam, hopefully Civ 6 expansions will be on sale.
Yeah Steam has sales all the time, and there are other stores that sell the game on Mac/Win. But on iOS the only way is through the single monolithic App Store, and content always seems to be max price there. It's almost like, if there is only one way to get a product, the price for that product is unusually high. Like the market for the product doesn't work properly, or something. So strange.
 
You can easily get plenty of mileage out of the vanilla version while you are learning the ropes. Once the dlcs are on sale you can take a punt then.
 
I'm into the digital era in my first game, playing Greeks on Prince difficulty... closed out both the tech and civic trees at around turn 400 out of 750 (playing on epic speed)... so the equivalent of turn ~225 out of 400 on normal speed? This seems crazy. Oh and I wasn't the tech leader - the AI was getting "future tech" a bit more than halfway through the game.(And even though everyone says you need to go wide to tech fast in Civ6, I played with +50% civs on the map and they were pretty pacifist, so the tech leader only had 7 or 8 cities.) On Prince difficulty! I can't even imagine what it is like on Emperor/Immortal/Deity.

I read somewhere that Civ used to be about "can you win?" and now it is about "how fast can you win" and I guess that seems right. What if I want to play a long game? Clearly I need to find a "50% tech speed" mod, and figure out how to install mods on the iPad.

I went back and played a game of Civ5, and man what a breath of fresh air. I know it has its flaws, but it is substantially simpler, the interface is *so* much cleaner... that game would be so great on an iPad, and Civ6 would probably be a lot better on my 27" display. Sigh...
 
Recently started 6 after skipping a few versions.

Wow is it detailed. Very impressive but damn it gets crowded on the default game screen and then there's a list of lenses to keep track of everything.
 
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