Rob Zacny

Episode 374: Civilization VI

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Three Moves Ahead 374:

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Civilization VI
Troy "I hate that jerk-ass Montezuma" Goodfellow is joined by Rowan Kaiser, Fraser Brown, and David V. Heron to talk about one of the biggest strategy games of the year: Civilization VI. A new Civilization game is always a cause for celebration. But what has changed? What has remained? Is it a revolution or an evolution? In this case, it turns out to be more of the latter. It's a fun game, it has some great ideas, but at its core it remains the same Civilization game it has been for decades. But... is that a bad thing?

Civilization VI


 

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Having not played Civ6 I don't have anything about the game. I did enjoy the conversation but I was struck by one thing.

 

In the discussion about the things this Civ does well most (if not all) of what you enjoyed with minimal interaction with the AI. Exploring the geography, planning and founding cities, building up districts, and using Charles Darwin optimally on specific terrain.

 

It's of course not anything new for the series to have that be the most enjoyable part, but other than racing the AI for goodie huts or city sites the interaction there has always been minimal.

 

I also enjoyed Fraser anecdote about hunting for fun in his Rome game by making everyone angry. It was kind of reminiscent of the Rome II episode.

 

 

 

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I haven't played Civ 6 yet, and I suspect I won't for a good while yet. It is really amazing how wonderful a time this is to be a strategy gamer, compared to just 4-5 years ago. Cornucopia is almost an understatement.

 

I played such ungodly amounts of Civ 4, I think I kind of exhausted myself a bit. I've played a few games of Civ 5, but I don't think I ever finished a single vanilla Civ 5 games. Of course the game ran really badly for me at launch. Eventually I picked up the expansions and had a few nice games. But I never did have that need to challenge myself. I suppose for me Civ has become this Disneyland strategy game. I play it to see what cool things are hidden inside, and after I've been there a couple of times, I'm happy to take a few years off before the next round.

 

I do agree that I would love for Firaxis to try out something different. Still, excluding XCOM, the other things Firaxis has tried haven't been that successful, so I'm not really expecting them to do anything actually interesting.

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I'm not surprised by this, but this was kind of a disappointing podcast and a review of the Civ VI product. I think Troy said it best in there (I'm paraphrasing) where Civ V wasn't a game worth playing until Brave New World came out and finished it. I also found it interesting that the general theme that everyone was saying was, "What a beautiful game, but I'm not going to play it anymore." In other words, it will be a game worth playing in 2-3 years when they finally get around to "finishing" the game with the last expansion or patch. Again, despite the fact that Civ VI seems to be a better vanilla release than Civ V, it is still a game "not really worth playing" until everything gets balanced and ironed out over the next few years. Again, not surprising, but a little disappointing as I was hoping that Firaxis would have learned the lessons of the Civ V release better.

 

And guys, really? In the entirety of the broadcast, not 1 second was spent on multiplayer. Y'all must of spent 10 minutes on the lack of mod support, but nothing on Multiplayer? Does it even work?

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WRT to turn times, was that with or without movement/combat animations turned on? I found that disabling those animations reduced inter-turn time by something ridiculous (90% or so, eg. 5 minutes to process -> 30 seconds to process), which implies to me at least that it's not properly filtering out animations on things you "can't see".

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I myself never had the Civilization 'bug' - not with the first, second, third, fourth nor fifth ... - I buy them, incl. DLC, play a bit and - unlike many other people, I stop playing. I am probably missing out, but - at the moment - I enjoy other games. In fact, I always seem to have enjoyed other games more. 

Upcoming Oriental Empires speaks more to me. It is CIV-like in many ways, but leaves out the a-historical kumbaya-world view (we talked about it on the forums), instead focuses on one *culture* and the history. It will not be the mega-seller and probably cannot compete with CIV. It's smaller in scope. That's okay with me.

Still, always keen to hear knowledgeable voices talking about CIV games. Including this thread.

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I should probably only read Rowan's reviews for everything cause he highlights dxactly my problems with games but faster and more witty then I do. How can I stalk him? Anyway, some points I'd like to expand.

 

Civ indeed has this inherent problem of the actual game is not what you might think or what AI may think or what winning conditions imply. You still have military path and it's a zero sum game included in cooperative solitaire. I prefer peaceful play and recently saw my friend who isn't fan of strategy games playing civ6. He ignored most of the district stuff, went wide and built military. He conquered 3 civs till the medieval era and after that it was clear there's no point in playing afterwards. You still can decide much simpler game that brings you obvious victory instead of mastering complex rules in hope no one beats you to the finish.

 

I am peaceful player and I try to play against AI on even grounds. Civ AI doesn't know when to go to war and it's a common problem of 4x genre. Even worse, on lower difficulties AI won't go to war. This is why Civ always felt to me more like Anno games than Paradox games and districts are a logical step in direction of a citybuilder with fighting. Civ is stuck between trying to be aplike Hearthstone - elegant strategy where you try to do your best with a hand you've been dealt - and Dwarf Fortress - similation with tons of options that you should enjoy as a journey instead of destination which comes couple of hours later than an actual victory. I've recently played boardgame 7 Wonders of the World and it is what Civ should eventually become: a game with only point victory, but it has several different types of snowballing paths and very much about interaction with other players and predicting their strategies.

 

Clarity and AI are another thing. I still regard Civ4 as the best Civ because me and AI played the same game and AI looked competent and logical. It was predictable, yes, but it is how it should be ina game that is otherwise as complex as Civ. Of course, Civ4 was much simpler and didn't have victory conditions as complex as 5 or 6. You always played a conquest game and when conquest stalled or didn't work out you aimed for one of the closest victory conditions, usually spaceship. Such multitude of ways of competitions is deadly to AI in Civ5 or 6. And diplomacy is the most obvious place when it fails. As well as districts. As well as districts. But anyway, clarity!

 

I likeEuropa Univeraalis series more than Crusader Kings. In CK all the character stuff seemed like a sideshow to map painting. You never saw character stuff affect anything more than small bonuses to military or their health and chance to die. In rare occurances you cared about character morals when you'd want to involve them into plot. But this week I saw developer talking about how there's default behaviour for AI and how traits affect it. Typical person only attacks when has at least 20% military advantage, but some traits give characters additional courage. Dishonest people care less about agreements and so on. The thing is I've played hundreds of hours in CK2 and never noticed. It would've certainly enrich my experience if I'd known that certain relations with certai n rulers insure they'll never attack or something. EU recently added traits like that to rulers and those explocotly say how they affect AI. Hell, even Master of Orion did obvious traits. It turned obscure random AI decisions look like a pattern. Civ4 had that similar to Master of Orion plus each leader had his explicit favourite things. Civ5 had tons of stats for each leader but for player it only looked like Monty and Shaka are dicks. Civ6 tries to have very explicit preferences for rulers. And it fails. Kinda like CK2. They have an agenda. But the also hav tons of hidden parameters. In the end they all feel the same. Going against their agenda is just faster way to the confrontation. Unlike Civ4 leaders they play to win. 

 

Sorry for so dense wall of text, the podcast was THAT thought-provoking.

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I have really enjoyed it.  I agree with starting as Rome.  I have fought off an early rush from Scythia.  Boy were they surprised when 4 piddling warriors turned into 4 Roman legions.  I do really love the opening cinematic though

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I found the way religion is handled in Civ6 to be the disappointing aspect of the game. Mostly because I expected more from the designer of Here I Stand...

 

I think Dave Heron and others were right that basically Civ6 is an excellent game, but for people that have been playing the series since it first came out the games don't really offer any surprises anymore, so the game's ability to hold our attention and hearts is going to diminish. I still enjoy it, but I'm definitely ready for some other types of historically themed strategy games.

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I haven't pre-ordered Civ VI, mostly because Beyond Earth was such a disappointment that I wanted to be sure that it was a good Civ game before taking the plunge. I think I've made the right choice given the comments about the AI and how a cultural victory work. Still, once it's been patched or expanded I'm looking forward to it. Unstacking the cities is such an obvious idea for a game like Civ and it sounds like it's been well implemented. Something to look forward too in the New Year. 

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Very good episode!

 

The strangest thing I felt right now with civ, is while some form of disjointed timeline could happen due early researches, civ 6, have this to a extreme that sometimes I felt that everything can feel very disconnected. While I do agree with Troy, that having the game follow a rigid line of progress is bad, but now it can lead to the situation or sensation, that simple the timescale don´t match anything (this also maybe because, the tech tree allow you to rush to certain points). And here I like to point something I noticed last night while playing, while the UI and graphics improved a lot - there notification for era change is very hard to notice (as the current date), you might simple not notice when someone reach something (mostly because it would be buried between lots of rumors*) or even when you reach a new epoch - I my own game I reached atomic age, but I kind don´t remember even reaching the industrialization, because I simple might have missed the notice due the almost zero fanfare they do. The map while improved a lot, also don´t appear to reflect much epoch changes, or maybe it does, but with the cities more spread around is just hard to noticed, while the city hex is surrounded by other stuff.

 

The euraka system is great, since might at least help you to catch up if you start to fall behind, but in the other hand, while early ones make sense, late ones, became a bit random, like privateer improving electricity. Also one thing I read from Tom Chick´s review, is that maybe lead more fixed style of play, since you now have to perform those euraka moments.

 

That said, I do agree that overall, it could be said, that Civ 6 is kind one of the best "vanilla" or "core" civs.

 

* The rumor system is great, but kind generate stuff which don´t make sense, like me (playing as Japan) after sending a envoy to Germany, hear from my envoy (himself) has listen to a rumor about Germany receiving a envoy from Japan (so he heard a rumor about himself?)

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Enjoyable discussion, especially when comparing the series to the Paradox model. I think that the core concept is looking a bit primitive after so many years, but it's still such fun and I appreciate the variations and updates for modern systems. I really hope that Firaxis will have a playtesting methodology breakthrough that lets them make the last half of the game better. Then again, quitting after dominating the bronze age rather than finishing early might just be more fun!

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21 hours ago, Valorian Endymion said:

The euraka system is great, since might at least help you to catch up if you start to fall behind, but in the other hand, while early ones make sense, late ones, became a bit random, like privateer improving electricity. Also one thing I read from Tom Chick´s review, is that maybe lead more fixed style of play, since you now have to perform those euraka moments.
 

 

I'm with Tom Chick on this one. The eureka moments provide something like a 50% research buff is way OP. You want to get as many of these as possible if you're trying to play efficiently. That means memorizing a lot of random information since, as far as I can tell, these instances are not listed anywhere. Which is not a fun thing to do. I think the eureka moments are really neat as an expression of the idea that certain activities help shape and transform what a civilization looks like, but man does it not work as a game mechanic because there isn't any "interesting decision" there. I think you would have to rework how technology works or something, but then who knows if people would even consider it a Civ game at that point...

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45 minutes ago, sclpls said:

I'm with Tom Chick on this one. The eureka moments provide something like a 50% research buff is way OP. You want to get as many of these as possible if you're trying to play efficiently. That means memorizing a lot of random information since, as far as I can tell, these instances are not listed anywhere. Which is not a fun thing to do. I think the eureka moments are really neat as an expression of the idea that certain activities help shape and transform what a civilization looks like, but man does it not work as a game mechanic because there isn't any "interesting decision" there. I think you would have to rework how technology works or something, but then who knows if people would even consider it a Civ game at that point...

 

I think that Tom's proposed solution works fine: each technology has a stable of five or six "eureka" moments and one is randomly selected for each tech per game. Five moments each for seventy techs is too much for it to be optimal to memorize and, if the moments are designed around best practices for a player to be doing around the time in the game that the related tech is usually discovered, more the better. At that point, it becomes about rewarding behavior rather than driving it. My question is, why didn't Firaxis think of this? The natural response to "Build two galleys to get fifty percent off this tech" is "Do I have to do this every game," but... I don't know, I'm glad that the new Civilization is a success, but I'm seeing a lot of the half-baked design that made Beyond Earth and certain parts of the previous Civilization such a disappointment.

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I really don't find the culture victory boring - but I like seeing the great works and listening to the quotes and the music.  If you approach strategy games not worrying about graphics and such or thinking about them as extras I guess it would be boring.  I don't play strategy games to use excel files.  And wait you can steal the cealing of the cystine chapel... that is hilarious.  I also don't worry about speed as much - I spend the time between turns thinking.  I don't play RTS though and actively hate it.  And I am sorry we don't have to give trigger warnings for using strategies in games - don't lean into the crazy babyish millennials please.  Also really love to know the person whose mods for 4 you liked...as for a way forward I think they can go stories and RPG like scenarios.  The tutorial shows what they can do with this very well.  Go the story route of endless legend bring back RPG/strategy hybrid.

 

Also - suggestion for topic I would love to know mods that make BE fun along with things Firaxis could do to make the game actually fun.  Really want to love that game....also would be interested to see the letter paradox wrote about his problems with stellaris.  Also funny having a paradox guy on to talk about Civ given that could be seen as there biggest competitor.   

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