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Civilisation Thread

Started by bgmnts, May 18, 2020, 08:57:51 PM

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bgmnts

A thread dedicated to any Civ chat, if anyone here plays this game series.

I bought Civ VI on Xbone 2 months ago and have almost finished with my first game, in which I just got dragged into a joint war against the Scythians thanks to my Australian allies.

It's a bit more in depth than the main Civ Rev game on consoles and I quite like that but good god does it drag!

Dewt


bgmnts

Civ II is probably the best one but laptop gaming is a ballache.

Mobius

Played a lot of Civ 6 on the PS4 recently. Really enjoyed it but after a few games, it just becomes so samey. I guess you need mods for more variety. Base building is fun, although once you get to nuclear power and have to worry about them melting down I usually get bored.


bgmnts

Yeah i'm playing the scenarios because they are short and a bit more exciting.

Pink Gregory

People always talk about needing to improve the late game; but I find it's the mid game (medieval to early industrial) that's the tedious part.

You're largely done with settlers, there aren't any major grabs for resources until coal (nitre I suppose), maybe there's religion going on, just a slow upwards tick of civics and technologies, with nothing much more than the standard melee/cavalry/ranged stuff from the ancient era.  Maybe it's supposed to be more for consolidating your empire, but I always find it a slog.  But then I barely ever play aggressive.

Currently going for a diplomatic victory with Sweden (Civ VI), world congress always seems to propose knocking the points off me at a greater rate than I can gain them, so that's probably not going to happen.  I'm very behind on the ol' military, so hoping I can churn out some reasonably modern defensive units and hold on for a culture victory.  Feller I play with always plays aggressive and expansionist though, kind of has an unbreakable head of steam by dint of owning three different Civ's cities.  Oh well.

Pink Gregory

I'm also earning a Great Writer about every 7 turns that I can't do anything with.  Am I being an idiot, or have you not been able to gift units to allies since Civ IV?

Dewt


druss

Civ IV with expansions seemed the best balanced and most fun to me. Civ II was great but rapid city expansion was too exploitable.

Cold Meat Platter

Civ 6 is free for PC on the Epic Game store now.

bgmnts

Necrobump but trying Civ VI on Deity difficulty.

FUCKING HELL.

Also, I havent played V, so do 2k games have form for removing huge amounts of content from their games just to sell for even more money? The game actually feels complete with the diplomacy UN stuff you have to download.

Pink Gregory

From what I can tell, V and VI had the same complaints of being very bare bones at release (V more so than VI, I think) and somewhat incomplete without a few expansions.

That being said, at least VI rolled the religion system into the main game from V, and the expansions do actually seem to be expansions rather than missing elements. 

Zetetic

I think V was a fuller base game after updates in some ways, substantial improvement though Gods and Kings is.

It seemed fairly clear from the state of the Lua APIs that VI was a bit rushed to release - so I really don't think it's that they ripped a bunch of fully-formed mechanics out to withhold for the expansions.


Povidone

I agree wholeheartedly with Dewt

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: bgmnts on February 14, 2021, 05:28:25 PM
Necrobump but trying Civ VI on Deity difficulty.

FUCKING HELL.

There's an easy way to get the achievement if you want, it involves a 2-player map and a faith victory (basically just rush yours), but the AI multipliers on 7-8 difficulty are just fucking stupid too

NoSleep

Civ II is great but I prefer Civ III, which is pretty much the same game with some useful tweaks and better UI. Going for pennies on Steam and thanks to Tall Paul's Porting Kit the Windows version can be played on a Mac.

YouTube channel based on Civ III, Suede CivIII do regular livestreams of games (with themes: "The Rise of the British Empire Except it's Civ 3 and Britain is a Dry, Desolate Rock") as well as discuss strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvJNJ8HF5BWrErL-RpvqbYQ/videos

And I've just discovered a Civ III league: https://civplayersciv3league.com Looks like Suede CivIII is one of the top players there.

bgmnts

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on February 15, 2021, 10:59:03 AM
There's an easy way to get the achievement if you want, it involves a 2-player map and a faith victory (basically just rush yours), but the AI multipliers on 7-8 difficulty are just fucking stupid too

I'm doing a full game with AI. I got so lucky as I picked Gorgo and used real locations and the map included Alexander. The settlers spawned literally within a tile of each other as a result, so I knocked out Macedon in the first turn. I am now almost halfway through and I've taken St Petereburg and Russia but I think China is going to win a tech victory very soon. So I'm gutted!

Zetetic

Any interest in a Civ VI game against other humans? It looks like the play-by-email type mode in Civ VI might be fairly robust...

Pink Gregory


Mr Trumpet

Maybe. I've owned and played every iteration of Civ since the original but i'm still rubbish at it.

As mentioned above CIV 2 was the best, not least for its easy and extensive moddability.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Pink Gregory on May 19, 2020, 07:58:32 PM
People always talk about needing to improve the late game; but I find it's the mid game (medieval to early industrial) that's the tedious part.

You're largely done with settlers, there aren't any major grabs for resources until coal (nitre I suppose), maybe there's religion going on, just a slow upwards tick of civics and technologies, with nothing much more than the standard melee/cavalry/ranged stuff from the ancient era.  Maybe it's supposed to be more for consolidating your empire, but I always find it a slog.  But then I barely ever play aggressive.

Currently going for a diplomatic victory with Sweden (Civ VI), world congress always seems to propose knocking the points off me at a greater rate than I can gain them, so that's probably not going to happen.  I'm very behind on the ol' military, so hoping I can churn out some reasonably modern defensive units and hold on for a culture victory.  Feller I play with always plays aggressive and expansionist though, kind of has an unbreakable head of steam by dint of owning three different Civ's cities.  Oh well.


In Civ 6, I think the leader's abilities/bonuses affects how I play my mid-game a lot.

In the base game/R&F version of Victoria's Pax Brittania, it's mid-game that I'll be aiming for rapid expansion via settlers. Amongst other things, the free unit you get mid-game is has utility for a decent amount of time without the need for upgrading, particularly if Redcoats are unlocked sooner than later.

I've just played as Canada (first time that I've tried it) and mid-game was able to expand without conquering or threatening others. The AI avoids tundra/snow areas, but Canada's make these viable albeit with slow growth so could extend into areas that there was no competition for. The pantheon pick I made was +1 faith for every tundra

re: diplomatic victory - did you have any joy?


Quote from: bgmnts on February 14, 2021, 05:28:25 PM...Also, I havent played V, so do 2k games have form for removing huge amounts of content from their games just to sell for even more money? The game actually feels complete with the diplomacy UN stuff you have to download.

No, versions are quite different - for example, the base game of Civ 6 favours rapid expansion more than 5 and it included elements like civics cards and districts.

Also, DLC can change existing things not just add new content. For example, Victoria plays differently in Gathering Storm compared to Civ 6 vanilla or Rise and Fall, In the latter two, Pax Britannia means that when a settler founds a city on a continent other than the one where the capital is, a free melee unit is generated - and another one if a royal dockyard is built.

In GS, you 'only' get a free unit with the first city on a new continent but also an extra trade route; and when building a harbour/royal dockyard on any continent, you get a free naval unit instead.

Another change to Victoria was that archaeological museums had double the capacity for artefacts and they were automatically themed. This was scrapped in GS and a new bonus added. Personally, I liked the former but my impression is that a lot of people didn't. The new bonus fitted the new mechanics in GS, but it feels to me (like the change to Pax Brittania) that 2K thought an overhaul was needed after considering rather than content always planned being withheld.

bgmnts

Has there ever been a game of civ where the first hundred turns or so isn't the most exciting? It does seem to suffer from that.

Rev+

Nope, you save with the intention of carrying on another day, but it's more appealing to just start over again.  It's been that way since the beginning.

I've really fancied a go at Civ in recent months, but can't possibly buy Civ 6 after what they did to 5 on Steam.  They'll do the same thing again.

bgmnts

Got to turn 500 and launched mars probe and that and then Chinese went and won a science victory. On deity.


GUTTED.

Mr Trumpet

Have to say the Frontier Pass has been enjoyable - it's very rare that i'll pay face value for anything gaming related but a whole years' worth of mini-expansions has been interesting and shaken up the game a bit. The new civs are all very good and encourage taking different approaches to the game, e.g. the Maya who don't get much value from fresh water but love mountains.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: bgmnts on February 15, 2021, 09:39:22 PM
Has there ever been a game of civ where the first hundred turns or so isn't the most exciting? It does seem to suffer from that.

It's like I said before, it's not the endgame that's the issue, it's the mid game.  The tech-race and culture elements all take a bit of a back seat until the industrial age, and it's all about entrenchment or war for expansion, leaning hardest on the weakest part of the Civ formula, which is the strategy wargame part.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Can't believe I never got around to whining like a fucking old cunt about how much better Civ II and III are than anything that came afterwards and what a shitty piece of classless wank they turned the game into.

Zetetic

Quote from: Mr Trumpet on February 15, 2021, 07:31:09 PM
not least for its easy and extensive moddability.
Aren't 4 onwards far easier to mod 'extensively'? (Setting aside VI's issues with the Lua API at launch.)

Zetetic

Quote from: bgmnts on February 15, 2021, 09:39:22 PM
Has there ever been a game of civ where the first hundred turns or so isn't the most exciting?
I'm looking forward to Rhye's and Fall appearing for Civ 5.

I think , the base game - if you're going to keep remaking it with different ideas every few years - could do with trying out an mechanic to split oversized Civilisations in the late game, allowing new Civs to be born from old ones. I can see there's a lot of problems making that player-friendly.

I wonder if someone's had a go at something like that already for VI, building on the city-flip mechanic (which I don't think works terribly well in some ways, but at least helps minimise the AI doing mid-late game gap-filling).

Quote from: Ignatius_S on February 15, 2021, 09:37:47 PM
In Civ 6, I think the leader's abilities/bonuses affects how I play my mid-game a lot.

I think they're an interesting idea, but I don't really like the doubling-down on Civ's weird concept of a 'civilisation' with innate characteristics.

I wish stuff like the terrain-related abilities were made available as difficult choices during the course of the game somehow. Maybe in the form of mutually exclusive expensive Science/Culture projects. (Even have them unique within the game, so there's a racing-other-players element, as with Religion - although I don't really care for that.)

Mr Trumpet

Quote from: Zetetic on February 16, 2021, 07:17:19 PM
Aren't 4 onwards far easier to mod 'extensively'? (Setting aside VI's issues with the Lua API at launch.)

When I think of Civ 2 I think of the amazing Fantastic Worlds scenario pack, retooling the game as a space sim, an X-COM sequel, a Martian colonisation/terraforming game, a weird Jules Verne thing where you could discover Atlantis and Captain Nemo etc. The only thing that came close in the sequels was the excellent Fall From Heaven fantasy mod in Civ 4. I think the increased complexity of the games makes total conversions like that harder to pull off.

QuoteI think they're an interesting idea, but I don't really like the doubling-down on Civ's weird concept of a 'civilisation' with innate characteristics.

I'm waiting for them to make an emergent version of the game, where you start with the very basics (cultural aesthetic, language/naming system) and each civilisation develops based on what happens to it in gameplay and choices by the player. So a civ with a lot of coastline would become a great naval power even if they happened to be the Egyptians or something*. It would be neat if the leaders' clothing and appearance changed to reflect which civilisations were dominating culturally as well.

*I know this is kind of what already happens, but still it's weird to have e.g. a tundra-oriented Canada floundering uselessly on an equatorial start, or a hyper-militaristic Mongol empire that's all alone on a continent with no neighbours and minimal threats.