Civ 6

Yeah- I'm actually having a really good time with it. I usually have these sorts of complaints when a Civ game is released, but they are pretty good about fixing most things in time. I feel like the foundation is pretty solid here.

It's great, I'm loving it.

However, the AI does seem to be even dumber than in Civ 5. I think it's because there are more elements to juggle in Civ 6.

I have a feeling the AI sucks with boost optimization in particular. For optimal progress, you have to regularly research techs and civics up to 50% and then switch to something else in anticipation of future boosts. You also have to actively plan for the boosts - a few are random but most aren't. It's all really quite situational and complicated and I kinda get why it would be difficult to code into flexible and intelligent AI behaviour. The AI also sucks with military strategy and tactics but at least that's nothing new. All things considered, single player remains as in Civ V - to have a real challenge against the AI, one will have to play at emperor or deity and minmax and abuse the fuck out of everything. Of course, that's not a big surprise.


A major balance gripe I have is that some crucial earlygame boosts are unreliable. To boost irrigation, you have to farm a resource. I've had a number of starts where I didn't have a farmable resource within reach, even with a quick expand, and two or even three of the resources near my capital required irrigation. Same story with boosting The Wheel - you have to mine a resource but I've had games where there was no mineable resource within reasonable reach. And let's not even talk on isolated island starts.

Of course, this randomness is what prevents you from having a strategic blueprint - you have to stay flexible and adapt to the circumstances in every game. That's a huge step forward from previous civ games where the optimal strategy was usually well-known and most games followed the same early patterns. I just think they should do something about Irrigation, it's a crucial earlygame upgrade and it is way too random. You can play around missing some other boosts but you'll often end up having to bruteforce Irrigation, which means wasting multiple earlygame turns, which is super fucking bad.

"

Bars wrote:

The AI also sucks with military strategy and tactics but at least that's nothing new.

You know what I've noticed... The AI seems to spam the crap out of classical units (spearmen in general) and then never upgrade them. All my games so far seem to take the same general shape; So many fucking spearmen running around that I can't get settlers/builders to where I need them. I end up declaring war on other civs not because there's any tangible benefit to doing so, but because there's too many goddamn units running around and the AI can't seem to get rid of them.

City-states have the same problem. They spam units really hard throughout the classical/ren era, and then they just wander aimlessly the whole game.

I've also noticed that the AI tends to make tons of missionary units. Then they either a) send them wandering through your territory aimlessly or b) send literally all of them to any brand new cities you settle, and convert that city (and only that city) turn after turn.

To be fair, it's actually a goddamn miracle that the AI can even function at all in a game as complex as this. Seriously, have you ever sat down to think about that?

"

Antnee wrote:

To be fair, it's actually a goddamn miracle that the AI can even function at all in a game as complex as this. Seriously, have you ever sat down to think about that?

I believe I have. This is exactly what I wrote about in my previous post. Regardless, there are some glaring issues with the AI which I hope will be solved, like the pointless unit spam you mentioned. Some aggressive AIs will sometimes even spam warriors and try to earlygame rush you, then you fortify a few archers and they start running around like headless chickens.

I also think they should enable unit stacking from much earlier in the game. It doesn't make sense from an immersion standpoint and it doesn't make sense from a quality of play or game balance standpoint. I get having armies must be a task to work for, but they've pushed this way, way too late in the game.


The reason AI spams spearmen and other earlygame units is probably that their maintenance cost is 1 gold so they become essentially free with the -1 gold per unit policy.

"

The reason AI spams spearmen and other earlygame units is probably that their maintenance cost is 1 gold so they become essentially free with the -1 gold per unit policy.

Shit, you're probably right about that.

I think the issues will be solved. Civ 5 is absolutely solid IMO, but the launch was an unmitigated disaster if you remember. At least, for me it was. I remember loving some of the changes (I actually like hex tiles, and I guess that's a minority opinion) but it had no religion on launch!

I didn't actually play Civ V when it launched, I got into it with the expansions. Yes, if we judge by the franchise's previous history, Civ 6 is off to a promising start :)

So uh, apparently nuking people has absolutely no consequences at all. Get it while it lasts!

I wasn't going to get Civ 6 because I don't think any have lived up to Civ 2, but I couldn't resist trying it out just in case. There were enough interesting changes teased to give it a shot.

Only half way through my first game, but so far so good. I've spread Bazingaism through the entirety of my starting landmass. It was an interesting religious war with the Germans trying to spread Catholicism and skirmishing with my apostles, but a religious nuke in their capital left them spreading Bazingaism with me through the remaining few cities. My apostles need to learn to swim.

I play in 2560x1600 on a Dell U3011. Love the GUI. There is an option (I don't use it) to scale the GUI for high resolutions.. have you tried it before messing with XML files?

I like how the City States work now, but I'm a bit annoyed that I can't protect those I'm interested in early on from allies who want to capture them.

I love the Casus Belli addition to diplomacy.

One of my declared friends with vastly overwhelming positive relations and nothing significant against me declared a surprise war on me. I easily beat him back (with practically nothing), ignored his territory (because I had practically nothing), and before long he gave me a bunch of stuff for a peace deal and was back to being friendly. o.O

The AIs don't seem to know how to attack cities unless they have vastly overwhelming forces or they're taking an undefended city. They seem to want to surround a city or focus on pillaging a tile or two while they're being cut up by a couple archers and/or a city wall. Ultimately their forces are destroyed or retreat and they beg for peace, giving up far more than they pillaged.

I've always loved playing culture, so the new civics tree is really appealing to me. Being able to boost/inspire research leads to more thoughtful progress and development especially since the game saves research progress when switching between techs. Customizing my government and religion is very nice.

Not sure what I think about the districts yet, but that's probably because I haven't really wrapped my head around all the bonuses and stuff associated with them. They complicate city planning, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given how there used to come a point where I'd just build everything everywhere because I could.

No more swarms of automated or micromanaged builders! Having roads built by trade routes is pretty cool.

Bit early to tell, but we may have finally been given a worthy successor to Civ 2, at least by my opinion.

"

Durentis wrote:

Not sure what I think about the districts yet, but that's probably because I haven't really wrapped my head around all the bonuses and stuff associated with them. They complicate city planning, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given how there used to come a point where I'd just build everything everywhere because I could.

only two issues with the game so far

districts take a ridiculously long time to build

AI hates you if you just have a different gov't type than them..