Civilisation 6

[Marchettus]

I am having a huge issue getting into Civ 6.  I tried twice over the weekend, and both Monday and Tuesday night this week.  I feel like I'm hitting an uncanny valley where everything is close enough to what I know but I can't understand/figure out all the systems or what to do to grow.  What is strange is that this feeling isn't even "Fun" and the end turn button feels more like "Well, I could stop here and go to bed".  Is anyone else having this problem?  For context, the first Civ game I played was 2 and 4 is my favorite by far.

This year I've had 2-3 games that I've wanted to stay up way too late playing (X-com 2, Total Warhammer, Rimworld) even if I didn't play them for over 200 hours.  Am I broken?  Has something happened where I can't Civ anymore?  Below are just some initial thoughts:

1)  Lots of personal things have changed since the last Civ release (wife/kid/new job) that prevent me from setting aside the 300 hours that I would play over the next year > counterpoint -  You play a ton of paradox games still

2)  I can't figure out what's different from Civ 5 and don't see a reason to find out.  I really don't like that everything seems to give a bonus and my training from older Civ games say "You better know right now if you want to get a cultural victory".  If exploring how to play the game isn't fun that's a really bad sign for wanting to play the game long term.  I really feel like every choice has 3-5 branches and I can't figure out what any of it means.

3)  The game runs very slowly.  I have a pretty good computer and I feel a lag and sluggishness between turns that brings to a stopping point.  This is a strategy game and I think that it shouldn't be that sluggish.
 

[sclpls]

Sounds like you just didn't gel with it? On the other hand, you might want to wait for a performance patch because I know I've played a lot of games that I thought weren't fun, but once I checked on them once they were running better I suddenly had a much better impression of them. A game being sluggish and unresponsive really does make it less fun to play (I had that issue with Civ 5 in the early days).

[Dewar]

I ordered a boxed copy from Amazon (which requires steam activation anyway, so it's probably just going to be a code in a box) since I could still get the 20% off deal from Amazon Prime.

[skamakazi]

I just got physical copy. Looks like contains DVD and Steam code that is required to redeem. Maybe they use Steam authentication for DRM but will let you load resources of DVD install if you prefer?

[baekgom84]

On ‎26‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 8:33 PM, Marchettus said:

I am having a huge issue getting into Civ 6.  I tried twice over the weekend, and both Monday and Tuesday night this week.  I feel like I'm hitting an uncanny valley where everything is close enough to what I know but I can't understand/figure out all the systems or what to do to grow.  What is strange is that this feeling isn't even "Fun" and the end turn button feels more like "Well, I could stop here and go to bed".  Is anyone else having this problem?  For context, the first Civ game I played was 2 and 4 is my favorite by far.

 

I'm having the same issue, and it seems like there's this common criticism of, 'The game seems fine, but maybe it's just me,' when it comes to Civ 6. I was thinking that maybe it came out too soon after Civ 5 and so didn't seem as fresh as previous Civs, but apparently my memory is all wrong and there's more of a gap between 5 and 6 than there is between 4 and 5! Still, this really just feels like an evolution of 5, whereas both 4 and 5 were very different from their predecessors.

 

It's funny... nobody cheered harder than me when Civ 5 implemented one-unit-per-tile, but I think that game also demonstrated the flaws of that particular system (the AI is rubbish at 1UPT warfare, and co-ordinating large armies is extremely tedious for the player). I would like to have seen a hybrid system, where you have certain units that can stack together, and can create different types of armies based on the composition (for example, attaching an archer unit to a swordsman unit would boost its defence, attaching a cavalry unit would boost offence, etc.) which would make warfare much more manageable for both the player and the AI, without reverting to the old stacks of doom.

 

I do have faith that expansions will fix a lot of the core issues with the game, but when you consider that there are now a lot of other 4X/grand strategy games that are doing really interesting things, this Civ needed to be a little more ambitious. I really hope they can improve things, as I find the Paradox grand strategy games a bit too aimless, and I wasn't really able to get into Endless Legend.

[Dewar]

Later in the game, you do have the ability to create corps and armies which are double and triple units.

 

I really felt that Civ6 actually did a ton of things new to the series, especially around city building, but then I didn't really like Civ5 that much so I might be coming to the table with less to compare.

[baekgom84]

Yeah, I was excited to hear about limited stacking when the details were being announced, but pretty disappointed to hear that it's only something that happens late in the game. I would love to see them play around with a more robust stacking system in patches or expansions, but I imagine they are still pretty committed to 1UPT.

[Nappi]

I played a campaign of this between Christmas and New Year. Quite a pleasant time sink.

 

Compared to vanilla Civ V (the civilization game, I have probably played the most), this game sure has systems. It was impossible to parse which perks to choose for your religion, which policies to adopt, which victory to pursue and how early on. It took me ridiculously long time to figure out what to do with religion points, and once I figured out I could by a shitload of apostles, I used them to slowly convert my own cities back to "my" religion, even though inquisitors would have been much better for that job.

 

In the end, I decided to go for science or religious victory, and ended up getting a cultural victory. The last dozen or so turns were quite hectic, as I realized that germany was already two milestones out of three towards science victory, and that I only needed about 50 more tourists to get a culture victory. I focused all my energy towards culture by buying archeologists, constructing culture buildings, choosing culture benefitting policies, etc. Two or three turns before my victory, three nations declared a war on me (which is a thing I guess), but luckily they had no troops that could rival mine and the status of war doesn't seem to ruin turism. (I was playing on prince difficulty.)

 

Is the AI broken when it comes to handling religious units? I had a really interesting war with Germany, where there was only a narrow "valley" (although between city states and not mountains) through which the units could funnel. The situation was greatly complicated by seemingly strategically positioned Norwegian apostles who did not move at all, and thus prevented me from placing units at those positions. Later on I saw a gathering of at least 4 apostles (again Norwegian), at the polar region. I could not figure out what they were doing.

[Dewar]

I've seen AI using religious units extremely sneakily and tactically, but other times I've seen the sort of stuff that you're describing. I think it might have something to do with the AI deciding that it is no longer able to achieve a religious victory, but isn't willing to disband the units that it has created either? That's just supposition really.

 

The sheer number of systems in Civ6 seems to be a reaction to all the folks that play Civ5 for thousands of hours and complain that they've mastered it. I can say that each game I've played so far, I've gotten noticeably better at balancing these systems and, while I found my first game frustrating, my fourth game was very interesting and satisfying. Also, having watched some multiplayer games on YouTube, the way the various system interact provides different (and sometimes surprising) avenues of attack against other human players.

[Sorbicol]

On 1/5/2017 at 7:17 AM, Nappi said:

Compared to vanilla Civ V (the civilization game, I have probably played the most), this game sure has systems. It was impossible to parse which perks to choose for your religion, which policies to adopt, which victory to pursue and how early on. It took me ridiculously long time to figure out what to do with religion points, and once I figured out I could by a shitload of apostles, I used them to slowly convert my own cities back to "my" religion, even though inquisitors would have been much better for that job.

 

I'm just nearing the final stages of my first serious campaign of Civ VI, playing as the Sumerians aiming, more or less, for a Scientific Victory.

 

Like you I agree the game now has a lot more systems in it that are quite a lot to take in. The city and districts system in the main one I've struggled with a little, not so much with the concept of it but with recognising what a good placement for a district might be and when to concentrate you efforts. It strikes me that this is a method of forcing the player to consider city specialisation in a way Civ hasn't really done before. By and large I don't mind that too much although it isn't always immediately clear what would (or would not be) a good placement for a district, and future consideration of where to place neighbourhoods, for example, needs to be considered at the start of your city placement even though they are a late game mechanic.  I do like the balance between housing and amenities as a replacement for unhappiness when managing your city populations - that feels a like a nicely balanced system (once I'd got my head around it) that doesn't feel half as arbitrary as population unhappiness did. 

 

Unlike Civ V this game clearly does not expect you to know what victory you want (although playing to your Civ's strengths is clearly still a factor) and it certainly gives you a lot more opportunities to get a feel for the lay of the land  before picking a condition to aim for. That said I certainly get the impression that some victories are easier to achieve than others - a culture based Civ is probably going to struggle slightly to win anything other than a culture victory unless they are really trying. 

 

18 hours ago, Dewar said:

The sheer number of systems in Civ6 seems to be a reaction to all the folks that play Civ5 for thousands of hours and complain that they've mastered it. I can say that each game I've played so far, I've gotten noticeably better at balancing these systems and, while I found my first game frustrating, my fourth game was very interesting and satisfying. Also, having watched some multiplayer games on YouTube, the way the various system interact provides different (and sometimes surprising) avenues of attack against other human players.

 

This is very much my feeling of what they have done as well - there is a ot more in this game to explore than there was in Vanilla Civ V that's for sure. 

 

Quote

Is the AI broken when it comes to handling religious units? I had a really interesting war with Germany, where there was only a narrow "valley" (although between city states and not mountains) through which the units could funnel. The situation was greatly complicated by seemingly strategically positioned Norwegian apostles who did not move at all, and thus prevented me from placing units at those positions. Later on I saw a gathering of at least 4 apostles (again Norwegian), at the polar region. I could not figure out what they were doing.

 

The AI in my game been a little disappointing I have to say - it appears incapable of upgrading units at all (I still see some level 3 warrior units meandering around when I'm rocking mobile infantry and modern tanks, and that civ is capable of building it's own tanks) I've also had a couple of instances of Civ with whom I have maintained good relations throughout the game suddenly just declare war on me when their crossbowmen and knights don't have a hope in hell against my tanks and helicopters and bombers etc. It definitely still needs some work. I also very much dislike that you get excessive warmonger penalties when you are attacked and take city in retaliation (i.e, forcing the AI to surrender) - that needs to be sorted out. I can understanding taking a hit if you raze a city, but occupying one when you are not the aggressor should really shouldn't carry any penalty at all.  

 

All in all I've quite enjoyed it, there is plenty to explore and it feels a lot more polished than the last couple of Civ games at release. I also need to remember how to get to bed before 2am again! 

[Gorbles]

r.e. warmongering, I used to think that Sorbicol, but you can make the AI surrender without taking one of their Cities. When making peace, you can also cede their Cities back to them (I think? I haven't tried that side of it, I usually just take the Warmongerer hit). Being able to accrue effectively "free" Cities in terms of warmongering is rather exploitable even if you didn't start the war (because it's pretty easy to craft your actions so at least one AI kicks off at you. The visible Agendas alone, nevermind parking four units on their borders and waiting for them to get uppity).

[Gatazhk]

On 1/6/2017 at 6:02 AM, Sorbicol said:

The AI in my game been a little disappointing I have to say - it appears incapable of upgrading units at all (I still see some level 3 warrior units meandering around when I'm rocking mobile infantry and modern tanks, and that civ is capable of building it's own tanks) I've also had a couple of instances of Civ with whom I have maintained good relations throughout the game suddenly just declare war on me when their crossbowmen and knights don't have a hope in hell against my tanks and helicopters and bombers etc. It definitely still needs some work.

This has been my experience.  The AI, especially with respect to maintaining units and fighting is basically broken.  This spoils the game for me because once you realize there's no AI military threat it's too easy to manage. If they can bring a Civ 4 level military threat into the game through patches, it could be  one of the best Civs ever.  I really do hope they get into fixing  the AI so I can return to the game and lose myself in multiple play throughs. 

[Dewar]

It's been a long time since I've played a grand strategy game with AI that can keep up without cheating. I blame it on the general impatience of players not wanting to wait for extensive calculations. In the GalCiv 2 days, we used to wait a minute or more for CPU turns, and we liked it! </oldman>

[baekgom84]

Just on the housing/amenities thing, I really hate how the housing penalties kick in when you are one population away from max capacity, as opposed to when you actually exceed the capacity. Maybe for some people it's not a big deal, but it just feels so unintuitive to me, and I find that I often unwittingly incur penalties because I failed to notice that the limit was about to be exceeded. I don't know why they did it this way, instead of just reducing the maximum by two and applying the growth penalties only once that number was exceeded. Maybe there's a balance issue that this addresses that I'm just not seeing, but until they can convince me otherwise, I would love to see them change this system in a patch. I've not heard of anyone else complaining about it though, so maybe it's just me.

[Dewar]

I noticed that as well, but I ended up chalking up the housing system as something that I can pretty much ignore. I feel like I can't do enough about it early in the game, and I don't have time for it later in the game (once neighborhoods are available) when I'm aiming for a victory condition.

[SamKD]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a PC that would be able to handle the maximum load of this game without making a whole ton of fan noise? my 2013 mac mini chugs at 14fps and the fan is super loud trying to run this.  Not sure I'm ready to drop $2k on a machine at the moment, but if there's anything out there that people recommend I'm willing to take a look.

[Gorbles]

I was getting reasonable performance on my aging setup (i5-3570k, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, GeForce 660 Ti); performance naturally degrading with map size / turns played / units in-play. Map size and AI player count is the biggest hit as end-of-turn calculations start dragging on turn time more than it does general (frame) performance.

 

I put another 8GB in and swapped up for a GeForce 1070 and I'm getting 50+ at most stages of most games for the average map size. Game is still CPU-bound though, but now my rig is CPU-bound (it wasn't before), which is an interesting benchmark to run from.

 

tl:dr; go for as much RAM as you can feasibly slot into your motherboard. It's the cheapest component and it gives your OS a lot of space to sit back and think if you've got a few things running at once. After that, if your GPU is within a reasonable generational gap (900-series for example), look at the CPU. Relative strength of the model within the generation is better than going up a generation at this point (i.e. my 3570K is top-end of its generation for the i5 chip, sitting below the custom i7 chips of the third generation Intels. It beats out most lower-end chips for the next three generations).

 

EDIT

Ten years on web forums and I still suck at tl;drs.

[SamKD]

4 hours ago, Gorbles said:

I was getting reasonable performance on my aging setup (i5-3570k, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, GeForce 660 Ti); performance naturally degrading with map size / turns played / units in-play. Map size and AI player count is the biggest hit as end-of-turn calculations start dragging on turn time more than it does general (frame) performance.

 

I put another 8GB in and swapped up for a GeForce 1070 and I'm getting 50+ at most stages of most games for the average map size. Game is still CPU-bound though, but now my rig is CPU-bound (it wasn't before), which is an interesting benchmark to run from.

 

tl:dr; go for as much RAM as you can feasibly slot into your motherboard. It's the cheapest component and it gives your OS a lot of space to sit back and think if you've got a few things running at once. After that, if your GPU is within a reasonable generational gap (900-series for example), look at the CPU. Relative strength of the model within the generation is better than going up a generation at this point (i.e. my 3570K is top-end of its generation for the i5 chip, sitting below the custom i7 chips of the third generation Intels. It beats out most lower-end chips for the next three generations).

 

EDIT

Ten years on web forums and I still suck at tl;drs.

Thanks! this really helps with considering what I should get.  I was worried I'd need to buy a monster of a machine, but hearing that a lower processor with slightly higher RAM and a 1070 GPU will work well makes things easier to tell where I should aim my price point.  Thanks for the advice.

[Tencore]

Just to let anyone know who has not bought this game yet, it is super cheap right now. You get Civ VI + 2 DLC packs + 6 other steam games for only $12. https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly?refc=iGMznY (note this is a referral link) 

[vagrantscout]

So I feel like I am having the same problem as everyone else with not "getting it" or having trouble building ... is there an optimal way to set up systems when you are beginning to help build a more solid base?

[gophergaming]

It's better than a lot of people say.