My first game and impressions

[Le Sage]

Now I've been playing for a bit and come to the conclusion that I don't like it. I'm really saddened, because I thought this would be a turning point from Civ5 which also disappointed me. Really, really sad! I won't ever pre-order anything from Firaxis anymore, because this game is clearly not ready yet. Maybe it'll take two pricey expansions to make it work. Again. Lesson learned.

Civilization's glory days are clearly over. Cheers.

 

[Gorbles]

That's just part of why I don't like the game. I dislike the game mechanics a lot more

Well I can definitely say a lot of your issues in gameplay simply come from not being good enough at it yet. Or not as familiar with the game mechanics, sorry, I don't mean offense by that.

Which is why I focused on the ideological point you started your post off on.

 

[Hyronymus]

Now I've been playing for a bit and come to the conclusion that I don't like it. I'm really saddened, because I thought this would be a turning point from Civ5 which also disappointed me. Really, really sad! I won't ever pre-order anything from Firaxis anymore, because this game is clearly not ready yet. Maybe it'll take two pricey expansions to make it work. Again. Lesson learned.

Civilization's glory days are clearly over. Cheers.

I disagree and that is no offense, different opinions make the world go round. I am curious what saddens you aboput Civ6 though.

 

[dexters]

I'm most of the way through my first game, Brazil, Epic speed, King difficulty, normal size, continents map.

Here are a few thoughts.
- Gold cost of buying tiles is absurdly high. Already in midgame, I'd pay more than 300 gold for one tile in the outer ring, late game it was over 450. For one tile. Seriously?
- Gold cost of upgrading units is absurdly high. 300 gold to upgrade an Archer to a Crosbowman. Again, seriously?
- Gold cost of buying units or building is (take a guess) absurdly high. Buying a modern era building is about 3000 gold. lol?.

I'm playing Classical Republic> merchant Republic and I'm rolling in the cash. With the proper economic cards, and trade routes, it can really pay off.
I've basically bought almost all of my builders, several lower tier buildings and units as well as all my caravans everytime a trade route is added. Given how long things take to build (districts/wonders/improvements) and City-states no longer hoovering up my gold, the relative value of gold has dropped, which makes rush buying anything with gold worth a lot more because there's almost nothing else to spend it on. The price inflation makes sense.

But 3k for a modern building may be a bit much; but Merchant republic does offer a discount to that. I haven't hit Democracy yet, and it looks like I'll make even more gold with the boost to districts.

The game may have been balanced with that strategy in-mind

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

As someone who loved four and couldn't get into five, my first six hours in six have been positive. Love the map style and cities are no longer bastions from inception. Also being able to double stack siege just makes sense.

 

[Vajrajina]

Well I can definitely say a lot of your issues in gameplay simply come from not being good enough at it yet. Or not as familiar with the game mechanics, sorry, I don't mean offense by that.

Which is why I focused on the ideological point you started your post off on.

You are right, a mounted barbarian army turning up at my borders at turn 15 and immediately 'defeating' me is clearly my fault, right?

I beat Civ 5 on Immortal if you're gonna say I suck at Civ you are very wrong. The mechanics of 6 are just lame, especially roads. I fudging hate roads.

 

[Gorbles]

You are right, a mounted barbarian army turning up at my borders at turn 15 and immediately 'defeating' me is clearly my fault, right?

I beat Civ 5 on Immortal if you're gonna say I suck at Civ you are very wrong. The mechanics of 6 are just lame, especially roads. I ****ing hate roads.

Lotta people saying the AI is easily-handled.

So, uh, yeah. Civilisation 5 is a different game. You need to start treating it like one.

 

[Vajrajina]

Lotta people saying the AI is easily-handled.

So, uh, yeah. Civilisation 5 is a different game. You need to start treating it like one.

Who's talking about AI? I'm talking about a mounted Barb army turning up at my border before I could research my second technology or build anything apart from a scout. There is no way for me to prevent this from happening, and once it does happen I have to start a new game because I cannot improve any tiles or expand.

 

[Nikolai II]

At turn 15 you should have already had your starting warrior at the barb camp and probably also defeated it, if it was so close as to send a raiding party already.

 

[Fierro]

I lost my first game on King to Brazil because of stupid religious victory. Pedro spammed the whole world with his apostles and missionaries, converting every single city into Catholicism, while his capital had been taken by superpower army of Kongolese warriors. In general I enjoyed the game much, it's addictive. But i should play a couple more matches before I understand if it's replayble enough.

So far my main concerns and problems are:
1) Many techs and civics seem to be useless. It's always hard to choose in which direction on the tree I should move because I don't need most of closest techs/civics at certain moment of game. Sometimes my choice is just random (or I click on the cheapest ones).
2) Again about techs. I can be in the Industrial era having some undiscovered techs from Middle Ages because I still don't need them and many ones from previous eras. These gaps sometimes are too big.
3) Religion doesn't seem to be that important as in V. At least for me. I can totaly forget to do religious actions - the only thing reminding me about religion it is the hundreds of AI apostles hanging around.
4) Too expensive production costs for most of things in cities.
5) I don't like some ingame sounds, they are too cheap (like music playing when spy captured).
6) I had to fully turn off music because I was on map with Russia and that russian melody Kalinka-Malinka repeated too often. First it was enjoyable but after many iterations this song became very painful to my ears.
7) UI. I really lack info about available or previous trade routes, recources that I acquire from deals etc. I think that will be fixed asap.

What I liked the most:
1) Strategic view. My computer cannot afford Civ VI because of integrated graphic chipset, so I often turn this mode on. It's really convenient and much better than in Civ V. Though it sucks when I try to do micromanagement in cities. The citizen icons are too big and overlay tile yields.
2) Leader agendas. I have much fun from it - it actually encourages me to roleplay, though AI behaviour still needs much work to be done on it.
3) Great People having unique abilities.
4) City State system - well, i think this is my favourite change! It's now very exciting to ally CS's and carefully choose which bonuses from them you need atm.

I will continue playing and hopefully the game will still be exciting as I try different strategies.

 

[Socratatus]

Oh, a thread on "political correctness" in Civ. leaders. We haven't had one of those in a while.

What`s the point. the sheep will just shout down anyone trying to make a valid point. As always and nothing changes for the better.

 

[Stalker0]

I lost my first game on King to Brazil because of stupid religious victory. Pedro spammed the whole world with his apostles and missionaries, converting every single city into Catholicism, while his capital had been taken by superpower army of Kongolese warriors. In general I enjoyed the game much, it's addictive. But i should play a couple more matches before I understand if it's replayble enough.

So far my main concerns and problems are:
1) Many techs and civics seem to be useless. It's always hard to choose in which direction on the tree I should move because I don't need most of closest techs/civics at certain moment of game. Sometimes my choice is just random (or I click on the cheapest ones).
2) Again about techs. I can be in the Industrial era having some undiscovered techs from Middle Ages because I still don't need them and many ones from previous eras. These gaps sometimes are too big.

Just a few notes. To number 1, I definately agree that many techs don't give enough oomph. Especially late game, my god late game techs are just more units....you new or interesting buildings/abilities. However, that said, several techs have hidden advantages. If you hover over them in the tech tree (away from the icons) you will see them. For example, mathematics gives +1 speed to naval units (until I knew that I thought it was utterly worthless).

To number 2, also very much agree. In one game I had infantry crazy early in the game. I didn't have gunpower or half the other military techs....but had full out infantry.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Finished a full game and played around with other starts for a bit.

Overall, I quit like it, lots of good ideas, definitely a very complete feeling Civ. Districts and the overall relevancy of the map are great. I actually enjoy how useful gold is now, making buying stuff genuinely a requirement is great. The corps/army system together with support units is a really good take on 1UPT. I just wish the unit graphics would reflect that more on the map with more unit models.

The UI... needs work. Edge scrolling is wonky. I can't sort trade routes by yield. It doesn't tell me which previous trade route I just completed (for internal feeding routes, I just really want auto renew). Leader screen animations feel slow, the game is definitely spending too much time doing nothing - not even an animation, just fading to black.

Game play is decent but has issues. Production feels too important, especially in the late game. I get that the escalating district costs are supposed to forced specialisation, but it really just makes industrial zones mandatory. Same with building units in the later game, production costs scale faster than production does - exacerbated by the tech speed. Medieval and Renaissance just whoosh by, I really with they were longer and there were less modern eras. Would fit their calendar better, too. Reminds me a bit of Civ5 at launch but less boring and more innovative.

 

[whatever61]

So I almost finished my first game.
I liked the game more or less same as the previous versions.

However, I want to share my disappointments and maybe you have some ideas how to solve/workaround them:

1. The new concept of workers.. well, it is original, but I find it annoying to do all these microtasks. Especially many basics are missing:

1A. Not possible to command a worker to MOVE and BUILD the improvement together.. so first I have to do MOVE and then when the unit arrived do BUILD.
2. I don't know which cells are being used by citizens and don't have an improvement.. so I have to check city by city what to improve.. "fun".

2. Movement in the modern era is still very primitive. The new concept with the roads is weird.. since I don't have any control of it. Since I need to move units over roads and not just trade, it doesn't make sense that I cannot build the roads manually..

2A. This is probably a bug, but I cannot force the trade route to go over neutral/my territory.. as a result it goes through another players' territory with whom I don't have OPEN BORDERS and then I have to go around it without a road and that's extra 7 turns..

3. Production:
3A. There's no option to queue improvements?
3B. As in the previous versions, you cannot hide units that you will never need.. do I really need to have an option to build a spearman when I can build a tank? come on.. such a basic UI thing.
3C. no way to automate anything, like set some rules after building this build that..

4. Diplomacy was something I always hated.. leaders just randomly love me/hate me. absolutely no logic whatsoever. Yes, I checked the reasons for our relationship and most of it says "Unknown reason". Is that a bug? am I playing a strategy or a bingo game?

4A. I cannot fix most of these relationships in any way.. they don't accept my gifts and I cannot offer anything better once it's bad. The fact that I cannot change the relationship in most cases makes the diplomacy game kinda unplayable and just annoying.
4B. Constantly these complaints about settling too close to them.. it doesn't matter where I settle I always get this complaint, but this is the beginning of the game so that's the point to settle around.. this is just an annoying concept.

5. Resources: I think that I don't get above 1 strategic resource no matter how many I have (even with built improvements). A bug?

6. Disappointed for the 6th time about about that there's nothing about quality of life mechanism! The most important factor of civilization success in the real world today is measured by quality of life in the country, but in the game this is COMPLETELY ignored and so the amount of money you have is like used for the wrong purposes. Like buying land and units.. is that really the only thing money can be used on.. come on.

7. Growth that depends on food.. well, that also not very smart, Definitely not in the modern era..

8. Many of the most modern technologies give ridiculous extras. Computers gives only something related to spies and tourism. Really? That's all the benefits of computers? nothing on productivity for example? Telecommunications allows you to build a nuclear submarine? O_o

Please share your thoughts about the points I mentioned above
As I said, I liked the game overall, but most of the annoyances stayed, some things were improved, some were made worse.

Moderator Action: Merged with existing first impressions thread

 

[Lord Tirian]

Yes, I checked the reasons for our relationship and most of it says "Unknown reason". Is that a bug? am I playing a strategy or a bingo game?

Only realised that in my second game but it's unknown because you have no information about them by default. You need to use delegations, embassies, trade routes and spies to gain that information - the more of these you have, the more precise information you get. I quite like that information actually requires investment.

 

[lamaros]

I'll share my first game here too.

Immortal difficulty, Standard map on shuffle, Epic speed. I got Norway.

I was near China and Egypt to the south and east, with Scythia to the north west. It turns out were were the only ones on the continent.

I get attacked after I've built my third city, and lose my second to China for some time. I lose a lot of ground warring to get it back but eventually stabalise.

I have no idea what I'm doing but my third city is a dream spot for Petra, so I head in that direction. But get snaked.

I eventually find another two continents, one a small one uninhabited bar city states, and the other the huge stomping ground of the game's heavy hitters, Pericles and America. I expand to the galapagos islands off the coast of the empty continent to try and boost some science and gold (crabs) going for myself.

Around halfway through I realise that my culture has been really really bad and that's why I'm struggling with basic government while everyone else is pushing Democracy. That lightbulb took a long time to click.

Eventually I note that Pericles is going for the space victory, and my only hope is to use the power of the two wonders I've got in my capital. Eiffel Tower and Terracotta Army.

I throw up more cities on the small continent and my homeland and quickly get some powerful industrial centres going, while throwing up entertainment districts in my tall original towns.

Eventually, though the power of stolen artifacts of other cultures, and the joy of national parks and seaside resorts, I get the culture victory in 1990.

It was very very close as Pericles was building the final stage of the space victory, and had been for a few turns. If it wasn't for America often trading their great works of writing for my looted artifacts I don't think I would have got there. I had a bunch of spies trying to dismantle their spaceport, but none succeeded.

 

[lamaros]

So I almost finished my first game.
I liked the game more or less same as the previous versions.

However, I want to share my disappointments and maybe you have some ideas how to solve/workaround them:

1. The new concept of workers.. well, it is original, but I find it annoying to do all these microtasks. Especially many basics are missing:

1A. Not possible to command a worker to MOVE and BUILD the improvement together.. so first I have to do MOVE and then when the unit arrived do BUILD.
2. I don't know which cells are being used by citizens and don't have an improvement.. so I have to check city by city what to improve.. "fun".

2. Movement in the modern era is still very primitive. The new concept with the roads is weird.. since I don't have any control of it. Since I need to move units over roads and not just trade, it doesn't make sense that I cannot build the roads manually..

2A. This is probably a bug, but I cannot force the trade route to go over neutral/my territory.. as a result it goes through another players' territory with whom I don't have OPEN BORDERS and then I have to go around it without a road and that's extra 7 turns..

3. Production:
3A. There's no option to queue improvements?
3B. As in the previous versions, you cannot hide units that you will never need.. do I really need to have an option to build a spearman when I can build a tank? come on.. such a basic UI thing.
3C. no way to automate anything, like set some rules after building this build that..

4. Diplomacy was something I always hated.. leaders just randomly love me/hate me. absolutely no logic whatsoever. Yes, I checked the reasons for our relationship and most of it says "Unknown reason". Is that a bug? am I playing a strategy or a bingo game?

4A. I cannot fix most of these relationships in any way.. they don't accept my gifts and I cannot offer anything better once it's bad. The fact that I cannot change the relationship in most cases makes the diplomacy game kinda unplayable and just annoying.
4B. Constantly these complaints about settling too close to them.. it doesn't matter where I settle I always get this complaint, but this is the beginning of the game so that's the point to settle around.. this is just an annoying concept.

5. Resources: I think that I don't get above 1 strategic resource no matter how many I have (even with built improvements). A bug?

6. Disappointed for the 6th time about about that there's nothing about quality of life mechanism! The most important factor of civilization success in the real world today is measured by quality of life in the country, but in the game this is COMPLETELY ignored and so the amount of money you have is like used for the wrong purposes. Like buying land and units.. is that really the only thing money can be used on.. come on.

7. Growth that depends on food.. well, that also not very smart, Definitely not in the modern era..

8. Many of the most modern technologies give ridiculous extras. Computers gives only something related to spies and tourism. Really? That's all the benefits of computers? nothing on productivity for example? Telecommunications allows you to build a nuclear submarine? O_o

Please share your thoughts about the points I mentioned above
As I said, I liked the game overall, but most of the annoyances stayed, some things were improved, some were made worse.

Moderator Action: Merged with existing first impressions thread

1. I love the new workers. They can move and build, depending on the terrain.

2. Modern era movement could maybe use some development, but generally I like the movement.

3. UI stuff sure. I don't mind too much about automation though.

4. Diplomacy has some strong and weak points at the moment. So far no worse than previous games, though.

5. I've got more than 1 for sure, a number of times.

6. Huh? Isn't this what amenities are.

7. Disagree on this. A city can't survive without food to support its inhabitants.

8. Late tech tree in particular seems like it was rushed.

 

[lamaros]

General thoughts from me:

1. The game is, fundamentally, great.

2. A few balance issues (and exploits) around that should hopefully get addressed.

3. A few UI issues that should hopefully get addressed.

4. The religion game is better, but still a bit too micromanaged. I'd like to see it move away from the 'charges' system and require less unit spam.

5. Tourism system is good but I look forward to it having a few more tools.

6. I found the trade system a bit spammy and bland still. Early game it works, but I think it gets a little messy late game. I think I might be interesting if some point (tech?) moved you from city to city trade to nation to nation (or nation to state) trade, with a more nuanced system. Something for an expansion, perhaps.

7. I love the strategy view and played most of the game in it.

 

[ViterboKnight]

Well, after a total of 2 whole hours of playing (my baby daughter is not willing to give me more time!!), I've had my first impressions of the game, and the first hints for possible improvements of the game.

1. introduction. Well, IMO introduction of Civ5 vanilla is possibly the best. But Civ is still Civ, what can you invent for it? Whatsmore, after 5 installments and I-dont-know-how-many expansions? Difficult to figure out something new. However, this introduction, although not exceptional, is nice and original.
2. Main menu. I like the new layout, and the new feature to open submenus next to each other ("Single player" - "Play now"). However (civ5 heritage), there's still the misleading "Play now" option, that randomizes the civ-leader and doesn't let you choose the difficulty. I'd have liked to play Romans in my first game, and I found myself playing as Gandhi. Maybe this feature would require a clearer behavior, or a subchoice ("Play Now" and then choose bethween "Choose settings" and "I said Play Now!", thus moving the "Chooose settings" in this submenu).
3. The Dawn of Man screen is similar to Civ5s, thus nice. However, the lack of possibility to preview details of the uniques (eg unique unit) is confusing. Maybe a tooltip (a la Civ5) could be nice.
4. waiting time: ok, here we are. Well, my PC has an Intel i7-6700HQ, 8GB Ram and a GeForce GTX 960M, I'd have expected the game to run like hell. Even the first turns require 10 seconds of waiting for the AIs turn!!!! Is it just me, or a general issue? To be improved, and urgently!!!!!!
5. game interface: I find it to be ok and nice. However (Civ5 heritage) it is still not possible to see when a moving unit is currently going to. Whatsmore, it seems to me that a "Wait" command is missing.
6. Civilopedia. Still not sure for the completeness of information. I am not sure if it's well designed. A "back" button is missing. Besides, I loved the civilization pages of units with the current units graphic preview; this has gone with Civ5. When I tried to see info about India unique unit, it seemed it was a cavalry unit; no clue it is an elephant instead. I'd like the graphical preview of units, or at least, a clearer picture and not an abstract clipart.
7. city screen: quite confusing. Always to hunt for the needed information. No clear indication of city needs: housing, amenities, etc, and existing buildings and their effect (Civ4 interface was the best at this purpose).
8. units preview on the map. I admit I still have to figure out the statistics previews of combat: which one is me and which one is him? initial strength? chance of victory and possible damage? Maybe I just have to get used to it. Besides, it's not possible to hover the mouse on an enemy unit to see its statistics, even the basic ones (I have found a spearman; this is my first game so I don't know the whole civilization by heart: how strong is the spearman compared to my warrior?); this is also confusing.
9. new unit movement limitations: new feature, therefore I have to get used to it. Entering hills/forests requires full movement, thus early exploration with warriors is going to be very very slow. This enhances the usefulness for scouts. Could be a nice idea, but I still have to get used to it!
10. use of function keys and hotkeys. Since 1991's Civ1, function keys open advisors screens, so it's natural to me to try them out. Some Fs (F5, or F6, don't know) cause a Quick Load without any warning, with the risk of losing your current game. Also, why not implement the ESC key to close one-by-one the screens and panels you have opened? Sometimes it's not fun to have to click on the various X to close the panels, and some panels don't even have an X, and you have to go back to the previous panel in some other way.

For all the other game features, well, I've been reading forum posts for months so some things are quite familiar (like districts). I can't judge them now, I have to play longer for a better opinion.
Generally, the game looks fine and interesting. However, in my opinion, several things (interface, most of all, and performance) must have to be improved, or it risks to end being a "potential nice game, but unfriendly to play".

 

[Myth and Legend]

The + will accouint for my failed starts. All games on Deity/Continents/Standard/Standard

Tried a peaceful game with Arabia twice, wanted to see how religion would hold up compared to Civ 5. I had NOT seen any livestreams or let's plays, essentially just relied on my Civ 5 knowledge and the civlopedia.

The randomness of the starts can be mind boggling. First game ever I got wiped out by barbarians due to 2 camps sending a total of 7 units before turn 15. Second game I abandoned after I saw I hadn't quite figured out districts/housing/placement and I had Russia as a neighbor 3 times my size and outpacing me severely.

Third game ended up like the first one, this one it was just 1 barb camp that was right next door, the scout returned in 2-3 turns (couldnt' stop it) and the camp spawned saka horse archers and horsemen.

Fourth game I abandoned when I saw there was no hill in my starting area and only a few forests.

Fifth game as Gorgo gave me enough impressions to start the thread.

I had Kongo as my immediate neighbor to the north and I rushed him with archers and hoplites, steadily mowing down his army untill he ran out of steam. I then took his cities, using two offers of peace he made to drain gold/take free cities from him. Continued with Teddy Rosevelt in the same fashion.

Currently, the AI will accept completely mind bogglingly bad deals. You take its capital and it sues for peace -you ask for 2-3 cities, all luxurues, all lump gold and all its income per turn. Maybe a relic even. You then heal, move up to its next city. By this time it would have accumulated some gold. Ask for all its lump sum gold, offer lux per turn and gpt, then declare war. Instant gold for nothing!

Melee units still seem to just be meat shields for your archers/crossbows. Early hoplites with a siege tower did help a bit, but not significantly. I did upgrade them to pikemen but in the later stages i just attacekd with field cannons and captured wtih a knight, later on adding an artilery piece because the archer tier units don't do that much damage to cities unless they outrank them era wise.

The peace gifts from the Ai let me snowball severely, and Gorgo's culture from kills let me keep up with the runaways ont the other continent. I CANNOT fathom how anyone without free culture from kills would keep up with the Deity AI on culture.

Great Persons are a lost cause - I couldn't get a single great general despite warring to clear an entire continent AND running the 2 GG ppt policy for a time. The only great people I got was a GE from the fact that I have 10 cities all with industrial districts+workshops+factories, and a GS for much the same reason with Campuses.

Internal trade routes are CivBE level broken, but this time they are made mandatory by the obscene hammer costs lategame.

The Deity AI cannot figure out how to plan district placement and tile improvements, thus MANY of the wonders are up for grabs. I built the Terracota Army in the Atomic era and got promotions for all my units, for example. I also built the Venetian Dockyards or some such, that gives you a free ship every time you build one, since i fear I will have to warmonger some more with the other continent.

Speaking of bad deals, after meeting with the other civs i saw that Brazil was the cultural runaway and we were tied for sceince. I offered him some extra copies of my lux resources and some GPT and In return got ALL of its relics and great works! If i wanted to really cheat I would declare a proforma war from the other side of the world and just end all payments... Needless to say I'm the cultural/tourism leader now.

After clearing out Kongo completely, I dreaded a war with America, but it was an unmigitated slaughter. Despite making 250 gpt, he had not upgraded past swordsmen and crossbowmen, thus my field canons oblitherated him, I even went so far as to get the gold on units killed if they are from a previous era policy. So each kill got me culture and gold.

Haven't won the game yet but I'm blitzing through the tech tree, and I'm one or two good nukes away from dominating the other continent if I feel like it.