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I spent most of today playing Civ6 which was on sale (I’m on vacation) I played the tutorial and then one and a half games against the AI. It took 8 hours and

I spent most of today playing Civ6 which was on sale (I’m on vacation) I played the tutorial and then one and a half games against the AI. It took 8 hours and not much happened. It had a fairly overwhelming UI and was really slow for each turn (even on fastest speed, tiny map, two players). I’ll probably never play it again, it wasn’t fun.

throwaway56034 6y ago
Perhaps Civ6 just isn't your thing, but your experience could also be exactly what Sid Meier describes: You have to grasp the different mechanics to get to the fun, strategic part of the game - which takes a while. Like in chess, where learning the game doesn't end, but actually only really starts once you know the basic rules of piece movement. As a non-native speaker, I sometimes have a similar experience when reading English books written in a rather ornate style, i.e. where I don't know some of the vocabulary: I can follow along just fine, I get the story arc etc., but the book just isn't fun because lacking the vocabulary I can't grasp the fine details of the atmosphere, the character descriptions etc.
- freeAgent 6y ago
  I think a big difference between Civ games and chess is that chess has very easy-to-learn mechanics. There are only a half dozen different pieces and the rules are pretty simple. A beginner can start playing almost immediately and have fun from the start. I think Civ’s mechanics are several orders of magnitude more complex.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Yes - chess has a relatively simple and limited ruleset, the complexity comes from the combinations possible. Civ6 has a crazy amount of complexity to do basic actions - the complexity comes from the UI and all the rules, each city has a ton of things to build which each take many turns, there’s multiple skill trees of unclear benefits, there’s governments and policies, where you can build and what you need to build isn’t clear. During all of this kind of tedious action nothing interesting is happening. I’d guess there’s a baked in assumption that people playing are already familiar with the game. The tutorial and in game recommended actions were not great. I don’t mind some complexity (I like KSP, Starcraft) - Civ6 feels like a bad design problem.
    - throwaway56034 6y ago
      > Civ6 feels like a bad design problem. Definitely! Multiple core mechanics are downright broken. Religion for example is a complete waste of time, as it has practically zero consequences outside of the mechanic itself. I can routinely beat the game while completely ignoring religion.
epse 6y ago
Personally, I prefer a small map, to have some more players to interact with. Only one opponent seems boring to me as well
adventured 6y ago
I've been playing Civilization V for ten years. I'm skeptical they're going to be able to build a new Civ that will pull me off of it. I consider it the nearly perfected version of the franchise (opinions widely differ of course). Maybe in another ten years. Everything I've read about Civ VI indicates the overall gameplay is inferior (although obviously not graphically), there's no great reason to move on to it. I'm still playing Age of Empires and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, so I may just be trapped in a time vortex.
orbifold 6y ago
Playing against a lot of AI opponents is part of the fun. I would start on some easy mode on a standard map with the standard number of opponents and city states . That will be much more representative of the actual game experience.

throwaway56034 6y ago

Perhaps Civ6 just isn't your thing, but your experience could also be exactly what Sid Meier describes: You have to grasp the different mechanics to get to the fun, strategic part of the game - which takes a while. Like in chess, where learning the game doesn't end, but actually only really starts once you know the basic rules of piece movement. As a non-native speaker, I sometimes have a similar experience when reading English books written in a rather ornate style, i.e. where I don't know some of the vocabulary: I can follow along just fine, I get the story arc etc., but the book just isn't fun because lacking the vocabulary I can't grasp the fine details of the atmosphere, the character descriptions etc.

freeAgent 6y ago
I think a big difference between Civ games and chess is that chess has very easy-to-learn mechanics. There are only a half dozen different pieces and the rules are pretty simple. A beginner can start playing almost immediately and have fun from the start. I think Civ’s mechanics are several orders of magnitude more complex.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yes - chess has a relatively simple and limited ruleset, the complexity comes from the combinations possible. Civ6 has a crazy amount of complexity to do basic actions - the complexity comes from the UI and all the rules, each city has a ton of things to build which each take many turns, there’s multiple skill trees of unclear benefits, there’s governments and policies, where you can build and what you need to build isn’t clear. During all of this kind of tedious action nothing interesting is happening. I’d guess there’s a baked in assumption that people playing are already familiar with the game. The tutorial and in game recommended actions were not great. I don’t mind some complexity (I like KSP, Starcraft) - Civ6 feels like a bad design problem.
  - throwaway56034 6y ago
    > Civ6 feels like a bad design problem. Definitely! Multiple core mechanics are downright broken. Religion for example is a complete waste of time, as it has practically zero consequences outside of the mechanic itself. I can routinely beat the game while completely ignoring religion.

epse 6y ago

Personally, I prefer a small map, to have some more players to interact with. Only one opponent seems boring to me as well

adventured 6y ago

I've been playing Civilization V for ten years. I'm skeptical they're going to be able to build a new Civ that will pull me off of it. I consider it the nearly perfected version of the franchise (opinions widely differ of course). Maybe in another ten years. Everything I've read about Civ VI indicates the overall gameplay is inferior (although obviously not graphically), there's no great reason to move on to it. I'm still playing Age of Empires and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, so I may just be trapped in a time vortex.

orbifold 6y ago

Playing against a lot of AI opponents is part of the fun. I would start on some easy mode on a standard map with the standard number of opponents and city states . That will be much more representative of the actual game experience.