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Rob Zacny

Episode 462: Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm

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Three Moves Ahead 462:

Three Moves Ahead 462


Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
The seas are rising. The air is getting worse. Rock bands are forming. Fraser, Sean Sands, and Troy "The Diplomatic Juggernaut" Goodfellow go for Just One More Turn (tm) with Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. In this, the "second Civ expansion that finally finishes the game", the player fights against other civilizations as well as an increasingly hostile Mother Earth. Gathering Storm is a worthy addition to the series, but where do we go from here? Certainly not beyond earth (cough), but with Civ as a whole?

Civilization VI, Gathering Storm

 

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A bit late there Troy. The show was released on a Tuesday and not on the weekend : p

 

I remember way back when the panel discussing CIV VI hidden curriculum and how it thinks that History is a linear progression based on technological advancements. This is noteworthy when looking at the way that CIV VI and it's expansions approaches the subject of climate change. By what the panel described of Gathering Storm, it says that Climate Change happens as a consequence of Humans doing some action which harm the Planet, and that climate change can only be stopped by Humans. The only agent of change, be it positive or negative is Humanity. Nature is a passive agent that gets destroyed more and more as the game progresses and has no hope for repairing the damage done to it without human intervention. 

 

Rock Bands costing faith is a lovely commentary on the nature of religion and music itself and, as Troy said, makes wonder for the late game.

 

About expansions, CIV VI got slammed early on for it's business model (to this day all of the pre-expansion DLC's have mixed or negative reviews on Steam). The fact that they didn't jumped ship and instead focused on delivering expansion packs more in line with the old retail expansions than what you'd expect from a DLC, to me, is very positive. I still hold hope that they'll remake Sid Meier Colonization--again--on CIV engine, just like they did as the last expansion for CIV IV (the third and last expansion I believe).

 

By the way, CIV will make 30 in 2 years.

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Another great show.

 

I played quite a bit of CIV6 Gathering Storm on a friend's laptop and it seems like a very well designed game, but I didn't enjoy the experience at all, in part due to the poor AI. The olders CIV (1-4) mecanisms are more suited to the limitations of an AI. The climate change is an excellent idea on paper, but I don't think it brings that much to the table compared to good old CIV1's pollution system (which could bring global warming). And CIV1 already had natural disaster events if your city was near certain terrain types.

 

I must admit that CIV1 is currently my favorite CIV, despite its many flaws : it manages to give the core CIV experience with fairly simple rules and short playing time compared to its sequels (never tried Civ : Revolution though). CIV4 used to be my favorite, but I have a hard time getting back to it : I'm more of a casual CIV gamer now !

 

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Haven't played the expansion and have no desire to (from what I've heard AI still doesn't care about winning the game so it's all about surviving the early game and then clicking end turn while looking for ways and reasons to entertain yourself) but this Rock Band business sounds great thematically to me.

 

Civ has this weird dichotomy between past and present. Past is Saturday Morning Cartoon with knights, samurai, turtle ships, whatever. But when we get to the modern era it's relatively sober and boring. You get tank and then better tank, WW1 era infantry, WW2 era infantry, modern era infantry. There are features and objects that developers include not for variety or complexity sake but because it's fresh in recent memory and interests people. But those Rock Bands make it all better cause they sound exactly like something people in 2500 would include in Civilization game to represent the 20th century. It's Saturday Morning Cartoon about recent history, and it's how it should be. I think Civ suffers from expanding modern era too much so that most people who play vs AI on big maps spend half of their playtime in recognizably modern times. I say throw out all types of infantry and tanks and planes, leave Rock Bands.

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I wonder if Civ is ever going to figure out how to change that eternal grind of the latter half of any game. This always kills me: the opening stages of Civ is GREAT (the rush of colonization), then there's a period of consolidation of power, and then just hours of pursuing your strategy until you finally win. At least the climate change mechanics (not to mention rock bands!) sound like they give you some interesting things to do in that part of the game.

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Speaking of possible mods/alternative game modes for an expansion, one pet peeve of mine is that all the work put into certain scenarios is never reused or available for use in non-scenario games. For example, the setting for the Empire of the Smoky Skies steampunk scenario from the Civ V Gods & Kings expansion.

 

That said, I'd love an Xcom scenario played out as a diplomatic/proxy fight between Xcom and the aliens trying to sway existing factions the way you would try to line up city-states in a normal game.

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