Old timer's, what are your thoughts so far?

[Ryika]

Well, I only played 2, (a bit of) 4 and 5... but 2 was for months the only game I played on my PlayStation back then, so do I count as old timer?

If so: I love the mechanics and changes that they have announced. It very much sounds like a completely new and yet very familiar game at the same time.

 

[Vrenir]

When I was in junior high, Civ II was out, but my outdated computer could only handle Civ I, and my dad gave it to me on a series of floppy disks. I was hooked from then on and have owned every version of the game except Civ II Test of Time (including Alpha Centauri and Beyond Earth).

I've never been hyper-competitive with Civ though, and am definitely not a min-max type. I've always loved to explore, to choose names and locations for cities (often based on how epic they look amid the surrounding terrain). I like to race ahead in science or culture, drift toward one or another victory condition until focusing about halfway through the game, and tend to turtle while I craft my nation with specific tile improvements and wonders.

All of that said, Civ V was my least favorite in the series. While it made improvements more fun than in any previous version, it focused too much on the goal of winning. For example, you couldn't really pick policies for role-playing purposes - you picked them to augment your overall strategy, which you had to choose pretty early in the game in order to have a chance of winning (even on a lower difficulty).

I really like what I am seeing for Civ VI. The district system is right up my alley. The civics tree is promising too, offering potentially a ton of customization with trade-offs and no 'right' answer. The ability to custom name units and landmarks is also icing on the cake. The new city-state interaction sounds much more about decision making and much less about number-crunching.

I do wish that they would return to multiple leaders as in Civ IV, preferably different leaders representing different eras in each nation's history.

 

[Decius]

Started with Civ I in '91. I loved them all until V.
My initial reaction was dismissive because it looked like more V and little else.
But the hands-on preview article at RPS suggests there is more to this than a rehashed V. Also, Ed Beach and Dennis Shirk have done good work in the past. So now I'm hopeful ... sort of ... well, a little bit.

I have no problem with the price. People who like Civ games get an immense amount out of them.

 

[Roxlimn]

Played Civ I as a teen. Played all the Civs and a variety of Civ-alikes since then. I've liked most of them, but I do remember their sore points. Civ 2's pollution whack-a-mole still annoys me after all this time. I liked V and BE about as much as any of them, and more than most. IV started out strong, and I liked BtS for a while, but the corporation spamming at the end of the game was about as bad as Civ2's pollution-worker spam.

I'm liking what I see of Civ VI. I like that Firaxis is taking what's worked and feedback from the community to make a stronger game. I like the AI Agendas. That's a nice touch to add personality and engagement with AI during a SP game.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Started playing Civ2 in Elementary School. Played SMAC. Civ3 was the first Civ I truly "got" at a strategy game level. Played Civ4 and Civ5. Have to say, hell yeah, this looks to be a blast.

 

[Thormodr]

I started playing Civ I the first month it came out.

As far as Civ VI goes, it looks genuinely promising.

I loved Civ I and adored Civ II. Wasn't a big fan of Civ III but loved cIV. I bought Fantastic Worlds for Civ II and played SMAC and Colonization and played them all heavily. I've pretty well bought every Civ product there is until Civilization 5 came out.

Didn't care for Civilization 5 at all. I found it boring and uninspired. Civ should be a series of interesting decisions. Civilization 5 didn't have that at all. Even the expansions, although they added some interesting things such as religion being developed further, didn't address the problems with the game's core.

Thankfully, the community stepped forward and the Community Balance Patch (Vox Populi) has addressed many of the problems. Ditching global happiness was an excellent decision, for example. So, I owe the community a debt of gratitude for what they've done. I'll likely play it in the future so Civilization 5 has been redeemed for me, somewhat.

So, the community here has given me hope and seeing that Civ VI seems to be backing away from Civilization 5 somewhat is quite promising. Ditching global happiness, for example. The impression I get so far is that there are a lot more interesting decisions to be made and that has me excited.

Now, after the disastrous launch of Civilization 5 when the game clearly wasn't ready, I won't be a day 1 customer. I will wait to see what shape the game is in, let the hype die down, and wait for some honest reviews (not the rubbish that 90% of the sycophantic media puts out) to make my decision.

 

[Buccaneer]

All you youngsters with late Join Dates.

Any Civ game that builds upon and adds to the brilliance that was Civ5 BNW can only be a good thing. I see this as a great progression from G&K to BNW to Civ6.

 

[daft]

I have been playing since 1 and while I am not sold on the art style, all the info I am hear about it have me really excited

Since CIV I, back in 1992-from what I recall.
Preferred CIII to IV, it let me build large empires, then finally switched to CIV, until BNW got me to switch over to CV.
Not at all ready to switch to the new iteration, however, the more I'm hearing about CIV VI the more eagerly I await it, although, like you posted, the graphics put me off at first.

 

[dexters]

Since CIV I, back in 1992-from what I recall.
Preferred CIII to IV, it let me build large empires, then finally switched to CIV, until BNW got me to switch over to CV.
Not at all ready to switch to the new iteration, however, the more I'm hearing about CIV VI the more eagerly I await it, although, like you posted, the graphics put me off at first.

Civ4 is more refined, but there's something about Soren's first outing with the franchise. All his systems were super loose and meant to create emergent interactions. Civ4's were far too restrictive and tight for its own good. It felt like a game, not interactions with the AI.

Only in Civ3 can you have a situation where your neighbour trespasses with a settler and spear, you tell them to Get off your land, and have them declare on you.

Five turns later, you realize it's really a waste of time fighting this AI and you had wanted to grab some land on the opposite side of your empire. You declare peace on turn 10.

The next turn, he sends his units, this time his army that was only a few turns ago besieging your cities, traipsing through part of your land again to get to 2 of his cities he settled oppose your empire.

You let him pass. Because it's not worth the heartache.

That's realpolitik at work. That's real power. Don't need graphs or charts. AI got its way.

 

[daft]

Yes, I hated when they would just send the units back in, you warn, they back off, then send them right back again...warning...back off...in again....warning-drove me nuts.
CI's combat vs CII's was like paper birds and real airplanes.
I spent so much time playing CII probably lost my near-perfect vision on that one, loved watching the Tribal Council bicker over what's needed for the good of my empire, on lower difficulty levels I'd conquer the whole world, just leave 1 city for AI and watch my incredibly large empire grow, except no building queue, no Unique Units.
Good ol' times.

 

[Lucius_]

Started with Civ I, albeit not when it was relevant. I picked it up off an abandonware site and played dozens of games. Loved it so much, I got Civ II, again from abandonware. After a few games there I bought C3:C and played hundreds of hours. Never played IV as I did not have a PC capable at the time and V I played since just before G&K was released.

As for VI, it keeps the tactical combat that I enjoyed from V and local happiness which seems like it will be similar to III. I hated global happiness and 4 city empires. So far VI sounds promising.

 

[primem0ver]

I have been playing Civ from the 1st Call To Power release. I much preferred that take on the Civ franchise until Civ IV came out. I absolutely loved Civ IV.

I hated Civ V when it first came out. #1 Reason was because of Steam. I did not like the game play either because of the significant drop in realism. Mods have made it a better game but I still much prefer the old game were it not for the lack of support for modern tech. Civ V wasn't much better when it came to multi-core support.

I don't have any idea whether I will like Civ VI or not. Without providing support for multi cores and for more realism when it comes to armies I seriously doubt it. If they do a better job with modding support this time, I might come around (as long as multi-cores are supported).

 

[gcm4738]

Civ II for me. Loved 2 and 4. Really hoping that 6 continues the cycle!

I like that gameplay has been shown weeks after announcement. That says the product is mature and Firaxis are happy with how it looks and how it plays. I think that it will be a far more finished product at release that 4 or 5 were. Probably that's also why it's taken an extra year...

I like most of the gameplay changes from V that I've seen so far. I would have liked to see a little more limited unit stacking to allow some flexibility in combat. Other than that it SEEMS to be designed for MEANINGFUL and creative strategy decisions.

I was cautiously optimistic for V though - so what I learned was - you never know until you sit down and play a few times for yourself, whether you get that #onemoreturn or not. I'll come back here on 22 Oct and tell you

 

[The_Reckoning]

multi-core support

oh boy, they've said it's a new engine - an engine built from scratch. If it's not 64bit only with full multicore support then I'll be dismayed.

https://youtu.be/K0RGfYAiuR8?t=26m11s

Marbozir asked when he was at his press event (Answer given was that game is 64 bit).

 

[AriochIV]

I'm very intrigued by the new features and the new UI. The graphics look less silly at an appropriate zoom level and with the (relatively dense) UI on top of it.

I like what I'm seeing.

 

[j51]

Yeah, been playing since I back in the day. Loved all of them except III. Not sure why, something just felt off about it. This looks really good gameplay wise so far. Hopefully, there are no more Cleopatra sized head smackers.

 

[Sgtslick]

< Join date

I liked civ2, civ 3 was meh, SMAC & SMACX I played 1000's of hours I reckon, maybe even 10's of thousands. I played SMACX instead of Civ4 > until BTS and its MODS - like Rise of mankind A New Dawn which had enough depth that I played it instead of SMACX.

CIV5 I played a bit but never even bothered to finish a SP game, MP was not bad with the expansions but because im from Australia I could never play in US games (they wouldn't let me) so there weren't enough games going around to bother too much, so I continued playing civ4 mods like caveman2cosmos single player and rise of mankind a new dawn MP which are both 100% better than civ5, but were sometimes buggy.

As far as this game goes, few steps in the right direction imo. On paper I was excited about the 1 unit per tile change coming to civ5, but in practice, I didn't like it. In civ4 (in MP in particular) people would just build huge stacks of doom (mainly coz slavery was so OP), and so any move away from that was good imo. The way they did it tho made it so really there was only 1 viable way to play the game, and that was with artillery, they were stupidly good imo. The reason they were so good was because of the game mechanics of 1UPT, units would always bottleneck and without them it was stupid. So anyway, this addition of support units sounds exactly what they need.

Support units also remind me a bit of the fantastic unit design feature in SMAC. Where you could take your generic prototype (like horseman) from civ or needlejets in SMAC and then give them special features. These features were mainly determined by your tech (what was available), but you could also do things like give something that would normally have little defensive capability and give it lots of armor. This was balanced by the fact that it would heavily inflate the units production cost. To the point where it was often better to build 2 separate units, one offensive one defensive. You could also do things like take a standard infantry unit and give it anti air capability, you could take a ship and give it espionage ability (spy ships) etc etc. It was FUN is my point!

When you combine SMAC's unit workshop option with the terraforming options and a similar version of great people (compared to civ4) it made SMAC the best game in terms of depth and being able to adapt to situations creatively. My biggest dislike about civ5 was the lack of depth particularly in micromanaging ur cities. It seems 6 is improving this. Civ5 needed either to have way more buildings and a lowered building cost. Or a whole new way to micromanage your cities, kinda like great people in civ4. I also want to see way more resources compared to civ5. Have a look at great mods in civ4 - they show that having a sh1tload of different resources doesn't make the game unbalanced, it adds spice to the game. I would also like to see special resources, like they have done in stellaris (new Orion based game), make them very rare - like certain fruits and vegetables where - like in real life, they are native to one area of the world. In the game, these resources can lead to unique techs that were only available to those civ(s) that had that particular resource.

Also I didn't like how they combined the government/culture system in civ5. I thought SMAC did it well, whereby certain governments had +'s and -'s and exclusions depending on your civ (leader). So Ghandi couldn't run a dictatorship etc. So whatever system they come up with, the key is depth. Even if it's simple on the surface, as long as all options are viable and its effect on gameplay is profound / diverse, ill be happy.

No more dumbing the game down, trying to appeal to the 11-15 year old demographic please.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Played since Civ1. So far, it looks like the best Civ game, but some minor things worry or disappoint me:
- I prefer clean and simple game design to pile of features. On the other hand, having all these features from release could be better than trying to fit them into game design in expansions.
- I'm a bit sad about purely SP diplomacy, although I have to admit - I didn't play Civ multiplayer for eternity.
- I would be happy to see minor wars for late game, but so far there's no indication of anything about it. Could be just lack of info, but I'm not optimistic here.

The rest looks good and especially the best UI we saw in Civ even 5 months before release.

 

[elniallo]

Played since civ 2, played bits of pieces of 3 and IV. Have played V heavily over the years. Will probably not buy until about this time next year though, doing an MSc and working full time does not leave much time for Civ these days.
I like 1UPT better than stacs of doom and the new mechanics for that seems like a good compromise. Cautiously optimistic.

 

[kaltorak]

Playing since civ1 and I am very excited.

For me, land grabbing and city placement is one of the most fun parts of the game, and with city tiles, terrain requirements for wonders and building bonuses for adjacent tiles, I think this part will be much better.

Also, I'm a big fan of leaders having personalities and objectives instead of just trying to win a game, so the changes in diplomacy look perfect for me.