Civ 6

[Zakilevo]

Does anyone play this game?

[Andrew]

Indeed.

[Zakilevo]

Pretty much all my friends are playing this except me at this point :o

[Andrew]

Clearly, there must be something wrong with you then.

In all honesty though, it's an alright Civ. It's not great, there are parts of it that annoy me, but it's an alright Civ game.

[Chenier]

Did they just take Civ5+expos, strip it bare to the bone, and add a random new feature not present in the last game? Like... every other previous civ game?

I liked Civ5's no stacking, but I really felt ripped off on it. I was playing that game since Civ2 (+spinoffs like Alpha Centauri), and every time they made a new version, it'd always be the same thing, removing a ton of good content for the obvious purpose of bringing it back in an expansion. Urgh.

[Vita`]

Clearly, there must be something wrong with you then.

One of us! One of us! One of us!

[Foxglove]

It is an okay version of Civilization. I'm not convinced that at its core it's better than Civ 5, though. The fact that you have to build cities by placing individual buildings into the city zone maybe adds a bit of added 'simcity' to the game, and adds some tactics into the way things are organised, but I'm not really sure that it actually improves the game. I don't mind the more cartoony leader visuals that some people seem to dislike.

Overall, it's okay. I've played hundreds of hours of Civ 5 and I could probably see myself doing the same with Civ 6 over time. But, as things stand at the moment, I personally still prefer Civ 5 with all the expansions installed.

[Andrew]

It's not as stripped of stuff as previous Civ titles were. Religions still exist for instance, and the way the game plays is a bit different as well.

The Diplomacy system is just dumb late game. It's almost impossible to keep allies, and the AI doesn't seem to realize that just because a city is (relatively) undefended, doesn't mean that it's owner doesn't still have the largest military in the game (this literally just happened to me). And these guys were the friendliest civ (that is, they were neutral on me) in the game relation wise. Stupid.

The maps got smaller too, even though cities require even more space. Not sure what the idea was there... for every civ to become a sprawling megalopolis maybe?

[Chenier]

I remember Civ5 AI at release... it was atrocious... everyone hated you for no reason at all times.

Then it got... less bad?

Seriously, you'd think they could just recycle the same AI core since the start of the franchise, but continuously improve it. Instead, every new release the AI seems worse than it was in the previous version's final state.

[Andrew]

The Civ V Vox Populi mod pack is pretty good, if you're looking for something fun and Civ-y to play. http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-patch-how-to-install.528034/

[GundamMerc]

I've played Civ a couple times, but being into Paradox games myself going from the level of complexity in EUIV, CKII, or HOI4 down to the Civ level it seems really dull to me. I just can't do it.

[Foxglove]

Speaking of CKII, most of the DLC is currently on around a 65% reduction in the Steam Hallowe'en sale until the 1st of November. They've excluded the (relatively) new Reaper expansion from the sale for some reason, though.

But, back in the world of Civ 6, I really don't know why the maps are smaller. I've always preferred playing on huge maps with the maximum number of civilizations. Perhaps it's taking something from Civilization Revolution where the smaller maps were partially designed to push the civilizations in to conflict sooner. Which is perhaps okay if you focus on military victories, but maybe not so much if you prefer to aim for other types of victory.