Civilization VI

[Solmyr]

What difficulty are you playing on? I can't imagine being this much behind on science on anything below Immortal. Are you building good science districts everywhere you can?

[Syt]

Prince

I was doing quite well, and I'm way ahead in military strength (but built my army around defense, not conquest), and I'm ahead in culture, gold income, and score, and only slightly behind on science (two dark ages in a row didn't help). I did well in the early expansion, but I feel mid-game I didn't balance units vs. wonders vs. buildings well. I thought I would be going for a culture victory, but I've not been pushing enough. Also, without fighting wars, I feel my empire has stagnated.

(the battleship was dispatched by a land based field cannon and a promoted Iron Clad)

[Darth Wagtaros]

Its right out of Civilization, the original Civilization.

[DGuller]

  Pirate battleships. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Pirate battleships. 

needs more phalanxes

[Syt]

Well, I somehow managed to stumble into a diplo victory. 

[Zanza]

Diplo victory seems to the easiest, especially if you target it. The AI only starts downvoting you after you reach like 15 points.

[Syt]

Yeah, but I had Statue of Liberty (+4 points), had 6 or 7 city states under me, and spend resources on emergencies and olympics. I was downvoted twice, the other times the AI had nowhere enough votes to stop me.

Just as well, because I had almost no oil, coal, aluminium, or uranium, with some island colonies to get at least some of those.

[Syt]

Civ6 still doesn't quite draw me in like previous titles did, and I'm struggling to pinpoint it.

Maybe it's that it feels more "game-y"? Civ always had a bit of a board game feel, but I feel that maybe the mechanics are a bit overloaded with abstract interdependencies? In theory this added complexity should make the gameplay more interesting, but I feel more constrained between trying to trigger research bonuses and min/maxing city and district placement and managing my various resources, a lot more than in previous titles.

It's a similar feeling to what I have in EU4 where I get the impression there's only few ways to play the game successfully and if you stray too much you are quickly running into big problems that will kill or seriously hamper your playthrough. I guess that's why I like Stellaris and CK2/3 much better these days, because they have a bigger variety of how you can approach the game.

Or maybe "I'm just not getting it."

[Solmyr]

You really only should need to min/max on high difficulty levels, Emperor or above. I've usually played on King and tried to play to my civilization's strengths, but in no way optimally taking every single thing into account.

[DGuller]

Civ6 still doesn't quite draw me in like previous titles did, and I'm struggling to pinpoint it.

Maybe it's that it feels more "game-y"? Civ always had a bit of a board game feel, but I feel that maybe the mechanics are a bit overloaded with abstract interdependencies? In theory this added complexity should make the gameplay more interesting, but I feel more constrained between trying to trigger research bonuses and min/maxing city and district placement and managing my various resources, a lot more than in previous titles.

It's a similar feeling to what I have in EU4 where I get the impression there's only few ways to play the game successfully and if you stray too much you are quickly running into big problems that will kill or seriously hamper your playthrough. I guess that's why I like Stellaris and CK2/3 much better these days, because they have a bigger variety of how you can approach the game.

Or maybe "I'm just not getting it."

I feel the same way, and I think the issue is the need to plan out everything about the city way ahead of time, due to the new district system.  With every city, it's just too much of a puzzle to figure out where the research district goes, where the industrial district goes, what tiles can be used for which wonders, and etc.  It's almost like all the decisions are made upfront when you found the city, and then you're just spending the rest of the game playing them out mechanically.

[Syt]

I feel the same way, and I think the issue is the need to plan out everything about the city way ahead of time, due to the new district system.  With every city, it's just too much of a puzzle to figure out where the research district goes, where the industrial district goes, what tiles can be used for which wonders, and etc.  It's almost like all the decisions are made upfront when you found the city, and then you're just spending the rest of the game playing them out mechanically.

That's actually a very good point. You're right that there's usually an optimal way to plan out a city. Granted, choosing settlement spots becomes much more involved to maximize these bonuses and it's a nice way to try to get the player to actually choose city spots for actually being good settlement spots as opposed to just to spread them out so that space is optimally utilized with no overlap or gaps like in previous games. But after that it becomes a case of ticking off boxes.

There's a lot of those boxes in gameplay. Killing a barbarian with a slinger to get the Archery Bonus, kill three barbarians for the bronze working bonus, beelining for Foreign Trade for the trader slot and Political Philosophy for the first proper government, etc. The tech tree also seems less "branchy" than in previous iterations. In older games you could occasionally ignore a branch for a long time if it didn't fit into your game. I like having two tech trees for development of culture/thought and real world applications, but I feel it might have been more interesting to find a way to merge these into one wider tree with more branches and freedom, with techs having a cost of both culture and science, and some requiring more of one than the other resource. I also appreciate the idea of tech boosts triggered by certain actions in game, but this - to me, anyways - feels too repetitive after a number of games.

One thing I do appreciate is their increased effort to make nations distinct with their own mechanics, bonuses and buildings, even if some of it is cartoony (golf courses!).

[Zanza]

If you play with the randomized tech tree, bee lining is much harder to do. But it makes the game unpredictable as you sometimes don't get the necessary techs from either tree to proceed.

[Syt]

Barbarians get an (optional) overhaul:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/civilization-6-will-soon-let-you-cooperate-with-your-friendly-neighbourhood-barbarians

Civilization 6 will soon let you cooperate with your friendly neighbourhood barbarians

Civilization 6's barbarians have always been depicted as the brutish sort. Kill them before they kill you, and all that. This won't be the case for much longer, though. The strategy game's next update adds a Barbarian Clans mode, which will let players interact with the barbarians with more than just their swords - like raiding or hiring them. I mean, the new interactions are still mostly sword-related, but they don't all involve stabbing each other.

The free update goes live on February 25th, adding the optional Barbarian Clans game mode. This introduces six clans into the world, each specialising in a different type of unit, and they can all eventually evolve into a city-state with a little help from the player.

Here's a dev update from Firaxis going into a bit more detail:

https://youtu.be/m7rQ-x2iJYU

You can just demolish a Barbarian Clan as usual, and that will make them gone forever. However, the new mode gives you the option to raid them instead, nicking some gold and knocking them down a peg on their city-state progress. You'll be able to bribe clans to stop them attacking you, or hire a clan to nab their strongest units as well.

Barbarians can also be given gold to incite them into attacking another civilisation. Or, if a clan kidnaps one of your units, you can pay a ransom to get them back. A press release says that exchanging gold in these "civilised" encounters will boost the clan's city-state progress. I don't know that I'd personally call inciting war and abducting people "civilised", though in comparison to just fighting them all the time, yeah, I guess.

The February update also adds a Leader Selection Pool. As the name implies, it lets you customise the pool of leaders for your game - helpful if you're looking to play against a leader you haven't before. On top of that, there'll be AI adjustments and balance changes aplenty.

We reckon Civ 6 is one of the best strategy games and one of the best ultrawide games on PC. Adam Smith (RPS in peace) liked it very much when it came out in 2016, calling it "a thing of wonder" in his Civilization 6 review.

[crazy canuck]

customization of leaders - iirc you can already choose which leaders you play against