review 16:00 CET

Generally, I feel like Acken. I don't expect a flawless or even polished game, but I'll try not to whine about it.
I'll only get angry if the game turns out so flawed that it isn't fun even after a patch or two (like BE was). I still remember how modders frustratedly gave up their efforts to create an early balance patch for BE - the game had so severe problems that changing a few numbers in the XML files didn't help much.

 

Isn't this exactly what Firaxis have been doing for months? At least that is what Ed keeps saying they were doing in July, August, September etc. Every new demo from Firaxis has shown the game to become more and more complete.

So far the beta testing has been mainly in house and we don't know the reports from these testings. That Firaxis was able to give a prerelease version to a lot of Youtube testers shows that they are pretty confident with what they have made so far. The Youtube testers will be able to play to the very end. So later today we will know a lot more about the state of Civ 6.

The AI and balancing will never be 100% on release date. Real players will be much better at finding exploits and balance issues than any developer. So expect patches to be released on a regular basis after release, just as for most other games.

What don't you find polished? What I've seen so far looks quite polished to me, especially in the last demo from Ed Beach. The versions they played in the Summer wasn't that polished and lacked quite a bit of graphics, info, functionality etc.

If you base your conclusion about what the Youtube testers have seen earlier then you may be in for a surprise when the same testers release brand new playing sessions today. We can't conclude on something we haven't seen. So there is every chance that the prerelease version is pretty polished.

Firaxis is a professional company. If they knew that Civ 6 was behind schedule they would have delayed the game instead of releasing an unfinished product. The best way to kill a potentially great game is to release it too early. Most game companies know that. Fortunately it's 2K and not Electronic Arts who are distributing Civ 6.

 

They must be done with crunch time because Anton Strenger and Sarah Darney (dating?) are vacationing in Florida.

 

As it was said before, the disabled civilizations isn't because they're behind schedule or its broken in anyway. It's because they hadn't revealed those civilizations at the time that the press-copy was sent out to Youtubers. They didn't want to risk another leak.

And disabling a civ was something that was done with a single line of code in Civ5, i did it for some of my older mods, and i doubt it's much different in Civ6.

 

I really like your attitude Acken (not only in this post, but overall)

And even though I lack your experience (didn't play Civ 4 and Civ 5 at release), I fully agree. Game mechanics will be great, but unpolished at the beginning. I know I will play the game a lot, and love it regardless. Over time it will get polished, and be even better.

What scares me is another thing you mention - tons of whines and rants. I know I can ignore them, don't read them and esp. don't reply to them, but I just can't help myself and it tilts me to see everybody whining over every single detail they don't like. It was happening quite a lot so far, but I expect it to get much worse once the game is on.

I just hope that mods will merge all rants into some major rant thread or something.

 

One thing is to be pessimistic and then be positively surprised if the fears don't turn out to be true. However, do we really have a reason is be pessimistic or is it just that we expect computer games to be unpolished at release?

I'm sure some civs will have a better score record than others, but that is unavoidable. For me the main thing is that the game mechanisms work as expected and that every AI can give me some challenge. Multiplayer is less important for me at the moment.

I'm certain that the game will need balance tweaks and AI improvements after release, but so what. It can still be fun to play. If the game is buggy and has big design flaws then it's a different situation, but I don't think that is true in this case.

The biggest worry I have was from Ed's latest play session where the human player was so much ahead on tech compared to the AI's we could worry about how the AI upgrades units. Having warriors still in year 1600 was strange. That is what I want to figure out the most from the Youtube videos that will be posted later today. I hope and expect the AI to be able to keep up tech wise with a human player on prince difficulty.

If the AI was unable to upgrade units properly then the game wouldn't have been release worthy in my opinion so I don't believe this to be true. I hope and believe it's more likely the demo games we saw last week from Ed had been doctored a bit to ensure they were able to show what they wanted to. Maybe they played at chieftain difficulty?

 

Its unlikely for a prince AI to match a human with experience in tech.
But you are right that warriors in 1600ad is too much. The prince AI in civ 5 is usually in the renaissance and has longswords or muskets.

 

Soooo...where are the reviews? All I see is a couple previews

 

The game isn't out until the 21st of october. No reviews until then

 

Huh, I could've sworn I saw that the review embargo was today but apparently I misunderstood. It isn't unprecedented for reviews to come out far before release, though...Civ V's reviews came out like 2 weeks before the game, IIRC.

 

Everyone got a limited game. Like a demo.
Limited settings (difficulty, map, etc.), only 10 civs, etc.

That was the embargo lifted today.

 

Hmm at least it looks more polished than what I was expecting when it comes to UI and performance. If they managed to make Immortal/Deity interesting then it may very well be the best vanilla version. Now please just remove stealable settlers so that challenges/gotm/hof does not become an abuse fest.

 

Thing is that it seems that if you are a decent Civ 5 player then you can't lose Civ 6 on Prince even by an accident. So hopefully higher levels will be really much tougher.

 

Early game looks quite great to me!

I think, maybe someone who wants to make a good review should play for a longer time? (and a full version)

 

Well, then what good are you, my friend? Huh? What good are you to us?

 

I'll be playing. Maybe making videos while the storm of idiotic threads rages on !

 

Pffft. Enough with this "playing" nonsense.