Civilization 6: The most in-depth Civ to date

After 15 hours and several hundred turns, <em>Civ VI</em> is clearly something special.

Read the whole story

 

[Wickwrack]

Firaxis' attention to art/color has come a long, long way since Alpha Centauri.

 

[Rene Gollent]

But the real question remains, is Gandhi still a nuke-toting warlord?

 

[Hesster56]

Well, it was just a matter of time, but I am hype.

This preview is going to make it real hard to not buy it on day one.

 

[EvanIsAnArs]

Welp. I know what I'm doing all winter. Bring on October 21st, indeed.

 

[ziegler]

Oct 21.... I can already feel the flu setting in.

And yeah, why is Ghandi more aggressive than Atilla or Ghengis? little skinny bastard.

 

[DarthSlack]

Any comment on hardware requirements? Or was the preview too early to really tell?

 

[puppies]

Rene Gollent[/url]":2uagppeo]But the real question remains, is Gandhi still a nuke-toting warlord?

I think we all know that's a certainty.

Already, when looking at that picture in the article demonstrating the fog of war, I couldn't help but imagine an Indian tank column building up for a sneak attack just beyond those hills and nukes flying out of Mumbai.

 

[puppies]

ziegler[/url]":3vhhb9tq]Oct 21.... I can already feel the flu setting in.

And yeah, why is Ghandi more aggressive than Atilla or Ghengis? little skinny bastard.

It's a throw-back to a bug from the original civ

 

[JonSlade]

DarthSlack[/url]"ktnu8id]Any comment on hardware requirements? Or was the preview too early to really tell?

Minimum
OS: Windows 7 64bit / 8.1 64bit / 10 64bit
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i3 2.5 Ghz or AMD Phenom II 2.6 Ghz or greater
MEMORY: 4 GB RAM
HARD DRIVE: 12 GB or more
DVD-ROM: Required for disc-based installation
VIDEO CAR 1 GB DirectX 11 Video Card (AMD 5570 or nVidia 450)

Recommended
OS: Windows 7 64bit / 8.1 64bit / 10 64bit
PROCESSOR: Fourth generation Intel Core i5 2.5 Ghz or AMD FX8350 4.0 Ghz or greater
MEMORY: 8 GB RAM
HARD DRIVE: 12 GB or more
DVD-ROM: Required for disc-based installation
VIDEO CAR 2 GB DirectX 11 Video Card (AMD 7970 or nVidia 770 or greater)

 

[Eurynom0s]

This sounds great, but after Civ V got released as a buggy incomplete mess and then preordering beyond Earth despite my better judgment (I'd resolved to stop preordering Firaxis games after Civ V)...I'm just not spending money on this until it's actually out and I see what people think after spending some decent time with the game.

It's kind of sad because up through Civ V, Civ games had been no-brainer preorders for me.

 

[RuhRoh]

This greatly improved my religious standing, quickly spreading my “Gamesjournalism” religion across the world, though the sacred consumption of Doritos was sadly not a tenet that I could choose from the lengthy list of beliefs that can be used to define a religion.

This new religion sounds scary. I think we need to have a discussion about ethics in Gamesjournalism.



edit: *hopefully the tongue-in-cheek is obvious...

 

[snoopy.369]

I have no idea how I'm going to get enough sleep to prepare for my 15k on Oct. 30 while simultaneously not sleeping for the week before it playing this

 

[ten91]

puppies[/url]":36qn3wna]

ziegler[/url]":36qn3wna]Oct 21.... I can already feel the flu setting in.

And yeah, why is Ghandi more aggressive than Atilla or Ghengis? little skinny bastard.

It's a throw-back to a bug from the original civ

The tl:dr version of the programming bug.
Ghandi had a 1 agressive rating. AI's got a -2 to aggression when they get democracy. Ghandi rolled back to a 255 aggressive rating.

 

[Rene Gollent]

I think we all know that's a certainty.

Already, when looking at that picture in the article demonstrating the fog of war, I couldn't help but imagine an Indian tank column building up for a sneak attack just beyond those hills and nukes flying out of Mumbai.

I dunno, I can never look at the Civ logo (as pictured in the article), and not think of the version below instead.

Spoiler

 

[foreignreign]

Wow, completely forgot about this. Guess I've got something to look forward to next month!

 

[puppies]

snoopy.369[/url]":2dctvi9b]I have no idea how I'm going to get enough sleep to prepare for my 15k on Oct. 30 while simultaneously not sleeping for the week before it playing this

It's important to have your priorities in order. You can build a globe-spanning empire, or you can run a silly race.

 

[Hesster56]

RuhRoh[/url]":1s874iak]

This greatly improved my religious standing, quickly spreading my “Gamesjournalism” religion across the world, though the sacred consumption of Doritos was sadly not a tenet that I could choose from the lengthy list of beliefs that can be used to define a religion.

This new religion sounds scary. I think we need to have a discussion about ethics in Gamesjournalism.



edit: *hopefully the tongue-in-cheek is obvious...

I was just thinking it would be fun to be able to mandate religions for other Civs to have to follow. The Trekkers and the Warsies, for instance. Or the first Kirkian Order running up against the Sacred Picardians (Reformed) Orthodoxy. Could be fun.

 

[murst]

I think I spent about 800 hours playing Civ V. I'm super excited about Civ VI, but a little worried about how much time I'll be spending playing this game.

 

[Haerthan]

Rene Gollent[/url]":1jiny22x]

snip

snipped

Spoiler

Dude I was laughing for like a straight minute, waking my dog up when I saw that pic. Too bad I never got far or let anyone get far enough to get nukes. As soon as I got nukes, I nuked the shit out of Asia, Africa and Europe, cause I wanted to conquer EVERYONE. Right before the stupid culture victory kicked in lol.

 

[Rene Gollent]

Dude I was laughing for like a straight minute, waking my dog up when I saw that pic. Too bad I never got far or let anyone get far enough to get nukes. As soon as I got nukes, I nuked the shit out of Asia, Africa and Europe, cause I wanted to conquer EVERYONE. Right before the stupid culture victory kicked in lol.

Yeah, if I ever met the guy who went to the trouble of making that image, I'd totally buy him a beer.

 

[karadoc]

For me, Civ V was a disappointment. From my point of view there were some serious design flaws which made it a bit of a dead-end civ game. (It's still not a bad game; but I don't think it's better than a good Civ4 mod.)

I haven't been closely following Civ 6; but what I do know about it seems much more promising. I'll be in the 'wait and see' camp.

 

[JstAnthrBstrd]

Well since no one else has said it yet....




"Just one more turn"

 

[shelbystripes]

Bring on October 21.

Winter is coming.

 

[Kalazar]

shelbystripes[/url]":1ihttssx]

Bring on October 21.

Winter is coming.

Of the Nuclear variety, if Ghandi has any say in the matter...

 

[ten91]

JstAnthrBstrd[/url]":2r6ycft5]Well since no one else has said it yet....




"Just one more turn"

Just one more epoch

 

[shelbystripes]

On a serious note... I hope they've done something about unit management. One of the worst things about Civ V and Beyond Earth is, as you get toward the end of the game, you can have a lot of military units, and it can take four evers to set them all individually and complete each turn.

Like, even something simple where you can put a unit on alert, but it won't wake automatically if you have other units between you and the enemy unit. That way you can leave your second-wave units on alert in case you get flanked, but not have to command them every single turn while you're attacking a city.

This can't be a hard thing to implement. Call it the "rear guard" setting if you don't want to change the existing alert behavior. But that way I can avoid commanding my second-wave/rear guard units each turn, without putting them to sleep.

 

[noodz]

What i want to know: just how modable is Civ VI?

This might sound like a small detail, but it is what gives Civ IV it's incredible longevity when compared to the now outdated V. I am particularly fond of Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, and all modmods it spawned, but there is an incredible number of mods to play around.

Rhye (the maker of Rhye's and Fall, of course) was working on a mod for Civ V, however, he gave up when he saw just how hard modding was on Civ V. From what i know, existing mods for Civ V are far less bold than Civ IV mods, which felt more like entirely new games.

Civilization is a good game, and will always be. However, as good as vanilla civ is, it's never going to be as thorough or as rich as what a modder can do.

 

[shelbystripes]

Kalazar[/url]":1u2icomy]

shelbystripes[/url]":1u2icomy]

Bring on October 21.

Winter is coming.

Of the Nuclear variety, if Ghandi has any say in the matter...

Man, I totally wasted that. "Nuclear winter is coming" would've been much better.

 

[Alfonse]

I don't know.

The only edition of Civ V I played was vanilla. To me, the main problem with that game was not the lack of Civ IV's religion mechanic. Or less specifically, it wasn't that there wasn't enough stuff to do in the game.

The main problem was with AIs and their approach to combat. Civ V's combat could have been great and strategic. But because AIs absolutely sucked at combat, fighting felt really broken.

The description of Civ VI here seems to gloss over this. Furthermore, it seems like they added a lot more stuff to do in Civ VI: two tech trees (presumably fueled by separate resources), religion spreading, etc. It seems like the game has too much stuff to be doing.

Civ 4 felt that way to me somewhat. The route mechanical aspects of manually spreading religions to my cities so that I could build more temples and keep them in order was just annoying. Even trying to use my religion(s) "offensively" wasn't very enjoyable. It felt like Caravans from Civ 2; just something you've got to do.

 

[mrboba1]

Oh hell. I was hoping that it would be an "ok" game and I wouldn't waste my life away...

But this review fixes nearly every issue I had with the earlier games, and now I fear my 4Q2016-1Q2017 productivity will be measurable with a toothpick.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Need to know more about the AI and diplomacy. Is there espionage? Diplomacy and brain dead AI have been the biggest problem with Civ since 4. I want the game to be hard because other leaders are shrewd effective managers of their empire, not because they have an arbitrary advantage.

 

[BioTurboNick]

PhlUnion[/url]":1mqhhhqj]Civ has been a great series. Played every one since the beginning to different degrees. I will not be buying a new one other than on steep discount until they work on thier AI and combat.

They keep releasing new CIV titles with better graphics, a few new things to build and a new little twist but they don't fix the underlying issues. The AI is simple and stupid. It doesn't outplay you it just cheats. Combat units limited to mostly one unit at a time witb this level of an AI is just annoying.

It would be ok I suppose if multiplayer workers but it breaks before most games end.

I don't see anything in the article about the AI but I did skim it.

Yeah, that's the one remaining issue that the review doesn't cover. I thought I had heard there would be limited combined arms, as well?

 

[bytegod]

I never have a problem with Gandhi in Civilisation...

Spoiler

I play as India

 

[baobrain]

Eurynom0s[/url]":2a2udzoe]This sounds great, but after Civ V got released as a buggy incomplete mess and then preordering beyond Earth despite my better judgment (I'd resolved to stop preordering Firaxis games after Civ V)...I'm just not spending money on this until it's actually out and I see what people think after spending some decent time with the game.

It's kind of sad because up through Civ V, Civ games had been no-brainer preorders for me.

They seem to have learnt their lesson this time around, but I agree, don't preorder folks!. This preview is quite promising, though I do hope that ars hasn't fallen victim to the same thing that other media did for NMS

 

[PhlUnion]

BioTurboNick[/url]":3p2x0vlt]

PhlUnion[/url]":3p2x0vlt]Civ has been a great series. Played every one since the beginning to different degrees. I will not be buying a new one other than on steep discount until they work on thier AI and combat.

They keep releasing new CIV titles with better graphics, a few new things to build and a new little twist but they don't fix the underlying issues. The AI is simple and stupid. It doesn't outplay you it just cheats. Combat units limited to mostly one unit at a time witb this level of an AI is just annoying.

It would be ok I suppose if multiplayer workers but it breaks before most games end.

I don't see anything in the article about the AI but I did skim it.

Yeah, that's the one remaining issue that the review doesn't cover. I thought I had heard there would be limited combined arms, as well?

Yeah there is apparently a few units that you can stack but they are special cases. Like AA units with a tank.

It isn't just combat though. It is trade and diplomacy. No trades ever make sense. No AI ever tries to out play you. They make crappy offers and then get pissed off when they are not accepted. Alliances are broken or made over nothing.

 

[breze]

Has there been a change of hands for Civ? I thought Firaxis was the company that made Alpha Centauri, but they were an offshoot of the Civ people. Or something like that?

If that is the case... it sounds like the new government is like a more fleshed out version of the (awesome) Alpha Centauri one. Which is great, that (and unit design, which is still sadly missing, I guess) made AC the best in the series for a long time (the unit management was really terrible, have they improved that in recent iterations?)

Also, the idea of a sprawling city is cool. I don't know who came up with it, but I first saw it in Endless Legend. It seems like in the last couple years there was a sudden burst of really pretty good Civ style 4x games. It is neat to see the genre progenitor integrate the best features of the it's children.

 

[Soothsayer786]

Civilization VI and Battlefield 1 released on the same day. I'm going to have to quit my job.

 

[caf-fiend]

breze[/url]":wuiwl20h]Has there been a change of hands for Civ? I thought Firaxis was the company that made Alpha Centauri, but they were an offshoot of the Civ people. Or something like that?

The guy in charge of Civ 6 is Ed Beach, who was also in charge of the expansions for Civ 5, but not for vanilla 5. It's all still Firaxis, though.