worth buying?

[RoddyVR]

Been over a decade since i've played a civ game.

A couple days ago saw an ad on some site for a preview of civ6, at first though it was due to launch oct 2017, only later realized that i'm a year late.
Early reviews seem to mark the game as buggy, and i've lately had my fill with Alpha games that are full of bugs and problems, and was looking for a finished game to sink into.

How finished is Civ6 at this stage, in the sence that most bugs are fixed and anything that's left is rarely occuring and non fatal?

also, this will be the most expensive game i've bought in god knows how long, is it really worth the investment?
Did they really make the AI worth playing against? or is it another game that is either easy to beat at fair levels, and the AI becomes a challange only if the difficult settings give it an insane unfair advantage?
Do experienced players ever encounter a surprise turn of the game after the mid game? or is every game a forgone conclussion (either you've clearly won, or your only chance is to sqeak a win by a certain condition) by somewhere in the middle and the second half of the game is just a monotonous cleanup operation?

And also, how likely am i go get my wife interested in this game? i know that's a wierd question (you dont know my wife), but it boils down to how interesting is the game to watch from the side?

 

[Leyrann]

Right now it wins over Civ V by having far fewer annoying mechanics, and it's getting close to Civ IV because of some absolutely great ideas, but it's not quite there yet because the AI is a bit on the weak side, though it has seen real improvements in past patches and there is no reason to assume that is not going to continue in future patches. It most certainly has the potential to become the best installment of the series, considering that there's a few years and two expansions still coming and the release version is almost universally considered better than IV and V's release versions.

 

[unpossible251]

i'll comment on the "spectator" angle and say its not likely to impress. The player is the one who gets sucked into the dramatic, emergent story of treachery, corruption, ambition... theres a sort of grim triumph associated with finally taking that city, getting that great person, building that wonder, that all becomes part of the story in your head. but, to a spectator (even if they know the game) it all sounds like demented gibberish when u explain what youre doing.

as for the game itself, its quite good, drags in the late game, peruse the recent "civ 6 better than civ 5" and u will probably decide if u wanna plunge or not.

 

[liv]

the steam sale will be starting on the 22nd. Civ6 may get a small discount.

I would not be interested in watching the game. You could play Hotseat teams

 

[Victoria]

as you looking for a mostly finished game with a challenging AI and it will be your most expensive game I would say no. There are still plenty of things wrong with this game, especially in the UI.

I am a fan of the game and one of its more positive advocates but I am not going to mislead you.

To me the best thing about the game is it has a lot of choices that are not clear cut so it is not simple but also on the other side of the coin the domination aspect means you get the fastest victories just by beating everyone up.

 

[Turrdy]

steam summer sale starts tonight! at least wait until it's on discount.
imho, it's not worth the 70 bucks it costs now (at least in my country) but if it gets a 25% or 33% discount or even more, i think it's worth it.

Oh and watching the game is not as fun as playing it in multiplayer! (multiplayer is extra cool because you get a real challenge instead of borderline crappy AI)

 

[God of Kings]

Civ VI is a very interesting game. However, it would be best to install various mods such as AI+ and Quo's Rocketboots.

 

[Turrdy]

40% discount! it's your time to shine!

 

[DeutschDachs]

If you haven't played the series in a while I'd say just get the complete edition of Civ IV or V. They'll be cheaper and give you many hours of entertainment. Civ VI has a solid base for a good game, but it doesn't have the same sort of addictive quality that kept me coming back to IV and V after they received all their expansions.

 

[Leyrann]

If you haven't played the series in a while I'd say just get the complete edition of Civ IV or V. They'll be cheaper and give you many hours of entertainment. Civ VI has a solid base for a good game, but it doesn't have the same sort of addictive quality that kept me coming back to IV and V after they received all their expansions.

Even though I've come (back) into the series at Civ V, I would very very very much recommend IV over V. V has a number of counterintuitive mechanics, like building an additional city being a bad choice even though you're at peace, your current cities are developed, etc. They also make the game very unfun, in my opinion.

 

[stormerne]

All the following is personal opinion from playing Civ6 for around 500 hours and having played all the others in years previous.

How finished is Civ6 at this stage, in the sence that most bugs are fixed and anything that's left is rarely occuring and non fatal?

I would say it's in a far better state after 8 months than Civ V was 8 months after its release. All my crashes went away when I ensured I always ran in DX12 mode.

also, this will be the most expensive game i've bought in god knows how long, is it really worth the investment?

Buy it on Steam in the summer sale by itself for $36 or in a combo deal with XCOM 2 for $41.83. Undiscounted it's $60. On discount I'd say it was without question worth it. Base price you'd need to be a CivFanatic.

Did they really make the AI worth playing against? or is it another game that is either easy to beat at fair levels, and the AI becomes a challange only if the difficult settings give it an insane unfair advantage?

It's the same as Civ has always been and probably will always be. It uses heuristics and advantages (listed here). It cannot do any better because it would take too long between turns otherwise on average hardware, especially as Civ6 is arguably the most complex yet in the series. It could use some improvements, but I've played against far worse. It's enjoyable as it is unless you want a pure war game.

Do experienced players ever encounter a surprise turn of the game after the mid game? or is every game a forgone conclussion (either you've clearly won, or your only chance is to sqeak a win by a certain condition) by somewhere in the middle and the second half of the game is just a monotonous cleanup operation?

I have indeed been surprised. My own fault for not paying attention. For example, while going for a science victory, one civ nearly got a surprise runaway religious victory and I had to change course and wipe him out completely, ending up with over 30 cities before going on to win as planned. Some other games have been nail-biters. Often I've had to change strategy mid-game. I find the science victory far less monotonous than in Civ V. The complexity of Civ6 means it's never clear cut and there are always delicate balances, unknowns and surprises.

And also, how likely am i go get my wife interested in this game? i know that's a wierd question (you dont know my wife), but it boils down to how interesting is the game to watch from the side?

There is a true Hot Seat multiplayer mode in Civ6, so your wife can watch by actually participating and playing as a civ herself! If she doesn't take part, she would have to like the aesthetic, which is different from previous Civs (colors and models) but very easy to get used to if you give it a chance. The new district system (unstacking of cities) adds a lot of visual interest.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Civ games aren't really good for watch unless you are interested in the mechanics.

The sale isn't too impressive, as it's only a few dollars less than what Amazon's been selling it for quite a while. I'd suggest buying Civ IV for $8 for now, but snag VI if you can get it for less than $30.It doesn't seem too buggy

At the moment, this isn't a bad game. It lacks polish but at least it's working on its way quite fast.

FYI, I gifted a friend 4 and 6; we'll see how that goes.

 

[DeutschDachs]

Even though I've come (back) into the series at Civ V, I would very very very much recommend IV over V. V has a number of counterintuitive mechanics, like building an additional city being a bad choice even though you're at peace, your current cities are developed, etc. They also make the game very unfun, in my opinion.

That is the one thing that always bugged me about Civ V. It's very frustrating that in an empire building game having only 4-5 cities is ideal. I still really enjoyed V once BNW came out though and it has far and away the most hours I have on any game in Steam (had IV before steam though). IV is the best for actual empire building I will say. V would be best if the OP is considering getting VI down the line as it will introduce him to many of the mechanics

 

[joncnunn]

40% discount! it's your time to shine!

Notes:
While both the standard version & the deluxe version are 40% off, all of the DLC are at full price. Consequently, the Deluxe note that it's cheaper than buying DLC a la carte is finally true.

 

[LDiCesare]

Did they really make the AI worth playing against? or is it another game that is either easy to beat at fair levels, and the AI becomes a challange only if the difficult settings give it an insane unfair advantage?
Do experienced players ever encounter a surprise turn of the game after the mid game? or is every game a forgone conclussion (either you've clearly won, or your only chance is to sqeak a win by a certain condition) by somewhere in the middle and the second half of the game is just a monotonous cleanup operation?

No.
You might lose to religion if you didn't pay attention but that means you're not experienced.
The AI is really very bad tactically.

 

[RoddyVR]

Thanks for all your replies. Finally got around to getting onto steam to look at the sale, and decided to get civ 5 for now. at something like 4 dollars for a "comlete" pack, its pretty much free. Will get 6 when its finished and cheaper.

 

[Xur]

Thanks for all your replies. Finally got around to getting onto steam to look at the sale, and decided to get civ 5 for now. at something like 4 dollars for a "comlete" pack, its pretty much free. Will get 6 when its finished and cheaper.

Good choice. I was disappointed with civ5 at launch, but still played it. I eventually got to enjoy civ5 with expansions. I was intrigued with civ6 and thought that Firaxis had fixed a lot of what I didn't like about civ5. I played over 200 hours of civ6, and finally just dropped it entirely because the game is simply not fun - I tried to like it though.

Firaxis should do a "quality-of-life" patch to remove a lot of the unnecessary mouseclicking and leaderhead popups. It's more work than fun at the moment. I don't really care about the AI when there's so much other nonsence that needs fixing.

Oh, and I don't like the cartoony graphics or the horrible brown turd of war (fog of war)... minor things though.

 

[joncnunn]

Firaxis should do a "quality-of-life" patch to remove a lot of the unnecessary mouseclicking and leaderhead popups. It's more work than fun at the moment. I don't really care about the AI when there's so much other nonsence that needs fixing.

Most of that is in the CQUI mod. The rough equivalent for this in Civ V was EUI.

 

[Wallis]

I would like my $100 back. Civ5 was horrible. I thought Civ6 would be an extension of CIv4. You know, the game that was designed to meet whatever game style the player wanted to set up. There is so much wrong with Civ6 that just playing the game was misery. The Civilopedia was incomplete. The online manual was incomplete. In fact, both the Civilopedia and the manual just repeated each other. No explanation on how the tech tree worked or anything. Then the graphics! Oh, my Lord! You could not see the units because they were buried in the graphics. And only one unit per hexagon??? Come on! War? I gave up after 150 plus turns. The only good thing was the character depicted: an upgraded from the cartoonish style of CIv4 (which, for some reason that fails me did not upgrade the personage from one era to the next, as in Civ3, if I correctly recall).

I fear that the developers have gone the way of other developers who, instead of designing a game that gamers want to play, designed a restrictive game that the developers wanted the gamers to play. And cheats? Without cheats, the gamers cannot fashion the games they want to play, and that single premise is what I thought made CIv1 through 4 a great game and Firaxis a great company to come back to.

 

[Tech Osen]

I think the game itself is pretty well done with interesting ideas and mechanics, but the AI is not competent enough to play it. And for me this is not the kind of game I like for multiplayer, takes too long. Stopped playing, I might pick it up again if someone here gives proof that the (standard) AI builds airplanes and uses them properly.