Civilization VI

[WaldoWallace]

So I'm thinking of picking up Civ VI. How do people rate it compared to IV and V? I skipped V because it seemed to have been over-simplified since IV.

[FobManX]

AI spamming monks IS the way to spread your religion. What you wanna do is find out where the.. erm, monks are coming from and build a holy site close by. Then only recruit apostles, never missionaries as they are 100% useless and if youre lucky and get debaters, plant them on the holy site. Now wait till the missionaries roll in and kill them with your apostles. It should be pretty easy, especially if youre lucky enough and got debaters. Then watch the enemy cities around convert. Each time you kill one, it eliminates their religion in 6 hex radius and boosts your own. Oh and in case you didnt know, your faith units heal by sleeping on or 1 hex from your holy sites. The more faith the site provides, the faster the heal.

Another way is to declare a holy war and pillage all their holy sites or take the cities and use inquisitors to remove their religion. You can give them back after and they actually start spreading your religion

I feel like religion just isn't worth it. Religion victory is too annoying as its a pain in the ass to try to convert religions. With that much effort you're better off just going for plain old domination victory. In my Emperor victory I just ignored religion and used faith to buy great people in the endgame.

[Faldric]

So I'm thinking of picking up Civ VI. How do people rate it compared to IV and V? I skipped V because it seemed to have been over-simplified since IV.

I rate it slightly below Civ 5 with expansions. Some of the new ideas like great people, districts, etc. are really nice and fresh up the game. I also like the agenda system of the ai in theory. But the AI and the balancing is not yet there. And some features need a little bit more love like religion victory.

[Deleted]

I feel like religion just isn't worth it. Religion victory is too annoying as its a pain in the ass to try to convert religions. With that much effort you're better off just going for plain old domination victory. In my Emperor victory I just ignored religion and used faith to buy great people in the endgame.

You should never ignore religion though. Even if you don't want to spread it, you will want your own cities following yours. If Im not mistaken, the bonuses are pretty insane. For example work ethic. It increases your production by 1% per follower so all it takes is like 5 cities with 20 pop and your production is doubled, not to mention other bonuses like culture or gold. Keeping your own cities following your religion is easy unlike in civ 5. First, it only takes one inquisitor charge to convert almost any city back if the other civs try anything and second, Ive noticed the other civs usually leave your cities that are already following your religion alone and only try to convert non-religious cities or focus on civs without their own religion. So once you get the critical mass going, your religion just spreads naturally to all your cities and you only need an odd inquisitor here and there to convert a some newer cities back. Doing this also denies the other civs religious victory.

[Faldric]

You should never ignore religion though. Even if you don't want to spread it, you will want your own cities following yours. If Im not mistaken, the bonuses are pretty insane. For example work ethic. It increases your production by 1% per follower so all it takes is like 5 cities with 20 pop and your production is doubled, not to mention other bonuses like culture or gold. Keeping your own cities following your religion is easy unlike in civ 5. First, it only takes one inquisitor charge to convert almost any city back if the other civs try anything and second, Ive noticed the other civs usually leave your cities that are already following your religion alone and only try to convert non-religious cities or focus on civs without their own religion. So once you get the critical mass going, your religion just spreads naturally to all your cities and you only need an odd inquisitor here and there to convert a some newer cities back. Doing this also denies the other civs religious victory.

I am pretty sure its calculated per city. City has 10 followers? 10% boost. Still a very good bonus.

[Deleted]

It's a follower belief (at least in Civ5), which means you don't have to own the religion, you just have to follow it/your pop needs to be converted to it.

Importing religions is a thing.

I believe you even get the Pantheon believes of your main religion (even if it's not your own)

which means you'll only not get the "+x gold for every y follower" and other empire-wide bonuses such as "+x gold for every city following your religion". So called "Founder Beliefs"

So if you are not going for a religious victory, and you choose the +1% production for each follower (which is a "per city" not empire wide bonus) and you start to spread it, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Overall, it's always wise to get the religion game going early, and either commit 100% to it, or completely ignore it (other than maintaining it in your own cities) afterwards. You don't want to grab the best beliefs first, just to give it for free to everyone else. Worship beliefes like building a Pagoda/Meeting house is something only you want to have, if possible.

[Kolvarg]

So I'm thinking of picking up Civ VI. How do people rate it compared to IV and V? I skipped V because it seemed to have been over-simplified since IV.

I'm not really a hardcore Civ player/fan (Played almost nothing of III, maybe 50 to 150 hours between IV and V), but I've got pretty into VI, at the very least as much as I got into IV and V when I played them for the first time. If I have to pick one to play currently, I'll pick VI.

The bigger reason? The difference in visual (both graphics and UI) polish is quite high. Even though I don't particularly like they took the cartoon-ish direction, I must say the end result is very easy on the eyes, and I absolutely love the new map-style fog of war. Even if for a more invested player civ VI is a worse / less interesting game at the moment, to me it defenitely is the most pleasant to play, especially as some mods start to come out.

It has some issues, the most glaring ones being with the AI and some unfinished/missing features that may or may not be fixed with patches. There is already one patch released that handles some bugs and is supposed to improve the AI and other things, but I haven't tried it yet.

TLDR: Very fun and pleasing, and probably my favorite as a pretty casual Civ player. See if you can try it before buying to make up your mind.

[Deleted]

It has some issues, the most glaring ones being with the AI and some unfinished/missing features that may or may not be fixed with patches. There is already one patch released that handles some bugs and is supposed to improve the AI and other things, but I haven't tried it yet.

I have to agree, the AI is really bad. For example smaller civs, especially if they are a few eras behind should really act more cautious and a lot more friendlier towards superpowers. Instead, some constantly denounce you and give you reasons to go to war with them like converting your cities or even settling in the middle of your empire.

Another thing is warmonger. Why would you get any warmonger penalties from crushing the civ who declared war on you or with your ally in a joint war? It doesn't make sense. Oh and why would your long time ally try to sabotage your production facilities? Espionage sure but trying to blow up your factories if you've been friends since stone age seems weird.

Oh and another thing. Prehistoric military units and weird progression of eras. I think units that are 2 or more eras behind should automatically disband if you havent upgraded them. Having catapults, battering rams and archers in a modern city with skyscrapers .. ok Also I think the Middle Age should last far longer. Same with Renaissance. I always play marathon and even on the slowest speed they just breeze by.

[Faldric]

I feel going wide should have at least some drawbacks. Currently there is no reason to not go for as many cities as you can. The amenities are easy to come by.

[Kolvarg]

I have to agree, the AI is really bad. For example smaller civs, especially if they are a few eras behind should really act more cautious and a lot more friendlier towards superpowers. Instead, some constantly denounce you and give you reasons to go to war with them like converting your cities or even settling in the middle of your empire.

Another thing is warmonger. Why would you get any warmonger penalties from crushing the civ who declared war on you or with your ally in a joint war? It doesn't make sense. Oh and why would your long time ally try to sabotage your production facilities? Espionage sure but trying to blow up your factories if you've been friends since stone age seems weird.

Oh and another thing. Prehistoric military units and weird progression of eras. I think units that are 2 or more eras behind should automatically disband if you havent upgraded them. Having catapults, battering rams and archers in a modern city with skyscrapers .. ok Also I think the Middle Age should last far longer. Same with Renaissance. I always play marathon and even on the slowest speed they just breeze by.

Yes! The last game I was playing and Scythia going full military power, and even before I started murdering everyone, and even though I already had enough military and industry power to sustain a war agaisnt every other civilization combined, multiple civs kept converting my cities, everyone I knew except Gorgo kept dennouncing me, declaring war without any means to even attempt to attack me, demanding gifts (even after losing most cities to me), and when I went to check info on them, pretty much everyone hated/dennounced everyone else xD

It's defenitely weird that I'll get dennounced for conquering cities from a civ that attacked me first, but not any more for destroying an entire civ with nukes, among other things.

Then there's also the problem that higher difficulties only reduce how fast you can do things / give unfair advantages to the AI, instead of actually making them smarter.

But hopefully these things might be improved with patches / expansions.


For the progression I'm using a mod that increases research / civics cost without affect production and it really suits me (fast-ish production times, but long research times, so you can actually have interesting big wars in early ages without troops becoming outdated before they reach an enemy city).

My main issue with Civ6 is what they did with Builders, that's the only thing I truly disliked changes-wise, as I prefer having them relatively easy to come by and able to start developing road systems early on - Thankfully that's also fixed by a mod (Improved Builder Mod 1.0)

[Deleted]

For the progression I'm using a mod that increases research / civics cost without affect production and it really suits me (fast-ish production times, but long research times, so you can actually have interesting big wars in early ages without troops becoming outdated before they reach an enemy city).

I need to get that mod! Playing against higher difficulty AI who cheat like crazy, its actually really needed, I think. In my current Aztec playthrough, I had caravels and musketmen in 400 BC. So much for fun sieges with knights and junk in the Middle Age.. bah. Can't really take is slow either as the AI would have advanced tech anyway.

When playing marathon, the troops dont really get outdated that quickly, however some ages still skip by unreasonably fast, I think. For me its usually relatively short Ancient Age but it makes sense as time still passes 15 years at a time and technology doesnt change much. Then very long Classical age. Also fine as I can have wars and enough cities and armies that it actually resembles an empire. However this also means Campuses and science really speeds up so middle age is almost non-existent, same with renaissance.
Also, it's kinda funny how, when you reach the Information Age in the 1200s-1400s, it still takes 50 years for units to move from one city to another.

My main issue with Civ6 is what they did with Builders, that's the only thing I truly disliked changes-wise, as I prefer having them relatively easy to come by and able to start developing road systems early on - Thankfully that's also fixed by a mod (Improved Builder Mod 1.0)

I actually really like what they did with builders. Also you dont need them for roads any more. A single caravan can automatically develop all the roads between your cities you need and much faster than builders building them in Civ 5.

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I feel going wide should have at least some drawbacks. Currently there is no reason to not go for as many cities as you can. The amenities are easy to come by.

It has some but not as many as in Civ 5. For example settlers take a long time to build and you lose 1 pop instead of having that city doing something more useful.

Then barbarians. Cities dont automatically come with walls any more and cant shoot at them so more cities also means your army will have to be bigger and more divided to keep them protected. Barbarians pillaging your districts and killing traders is really bad. Those camps can spawn right between your cities too when theyre still small.

And finally, new cities take resources away from your bigger ones to get developed. You have to spend workers to improve their tiles, send caravans etc. and theyll still be useless for a long time.

I think balanced approach works best. Overextending means your empire will stagnate as you cant afford to both spam settlers and builders and develop your districts.

[falagar112]

Kongo is a bit silly actually.

Won game (emperor) at ~1200 AD without ever noticing I was .. that close, lol?
Culture victory when I haven't even met all civs in the game yet?

That stacking +2 to all on relics is crazy

[Faldric]

Kongo is a bit silly actually.

Won game (emperor) at ~1200 AD without ever noticing I was .. that close, lol?
Culture victory when I haven't even met all civs in the game yet?

That stacking +2 to all on relics is crazy

I once found a relic in my first tribal village on round 2. It doesn't happen often but when it does its stupidly op with Kongo.

[Deleted]

I once found a relic in my first tribal village on round 2. It doesn't happen often but when it does its stupidly op with Kongo.

Nah, Aztecs are like the godmode civ. I tried deity with them just for fun. Large map, marathon. And was leading in every field except for religion(I didn't try to spread it into other civs, just defended my cities and city states) till the end of the game. What makes them so good is that you don't need to get a lucky start. Any start will do. Ancient-Classical, maybe even medieval you get hordes of workers from kills. Even if you dont care about conquering, you can still be at war with all your neighbors and kill their units with eagle warriors. Being able to spam districts, not spend any time or energy to build your own workers and improve every tile early gives a huge advantage.

[falagar112]

Nah, Aztecs are like the godmode civ. I tried deity with them just for fun. Large map, marathon. And was leading in every field except for religion(I didn't try to spread it into other civs, just defended my cities and city states) till the end of the game. What makes them so good is that you don't need to get a lucky start. Any start will do. Ancient-Classical, maybe even medieval you get hordes of workers from kills. Even if you dont care about conquering, you can still be at war with all your neighbors and kill their units with eagle warriors. Being able to spam districts, not spend any time or energy to build your own workers and improve every tile early gives a huge advantage.

Do you also get workers from killing/converting barbarians?

[FobManX]

So I tried an Immortal run...holy shit the AI is absurd. Japan was in Industrial Era when we were still in BC. Of course he declares war on me with an army of Horsemen that I'm easily able to fend off but it causes me to fall so far behind I just quit.

[falagar112]

Ok, I didn't have much success with Montezuma before but I think this is because I don't normally play on marathon speed. On marathon is it kinda god mode indeed - my jaguar warriors just phased out (people starting to get swordsmen..) but im sitting on 12 cities, half the continent conquered, fully build industrial district+campus district in everything, still swimming in builders..... and it is 1200 BC, lol

edit, some AI sniped both pyramids and great library, but.. whatever, doesn't matter - i'm light years ahead..

[Selastan]

Do you also get workers from killing/converting barbarians?

I have yet to get one from barbs, assuming no.

[Deleted]

Do you also get workers from killing/converting barbarians?

Nope, but you do get them from city states. Starting a war with them early doesn't really have any setbacks as far as I know. Especially the ones you didn't discover first. If you don't want to invade them, you can just keep farming them for workers forever... or well, at least till the eagle warriors become too outdates.

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Ok, I didn't have much success with Montezuma before but I think this is because I don't normally play on marathon speed. On marathon is it kinda god mode indeed - my jaguar warriors just phased out (people starting to get swordsmen..) but im sitting on 12 cities, half the continent conquered, fully build industrial district+campus district in everything, still swimming in builders..... and it is 1200 BC, lol

edit, some AI sniped both pyramids and great library, but.. whatever, doesn't matter - i'm light years ahead..

Well, you don't really need to actually build the pyramids. You can always take the city that has them if you want that extra build option But yes, as Aztecs, I wouldn't even bother with the early wonders. On higher difficulties, you won't get them or will sacrifice too much in other areas and get left behind. I usually only focus on getting the Forbidden City, Alhambra, Potala Palace and if possible the Colosseum and then future wonders. The religious ones aren't very useful anyway.. oh and almost forget. I usually get Terracotta Army too.. the AI doesn't build that for some reason and its very nice when you have a big army.


On another note. 2 very odd things about this game.

First, to get along with the AI civs, it's useful to piss them off as much as possible, then promise to not do it again till the promise expires. Settle near them, dig up their artifacts, bring armies to their border, convert their cities. The promise kept bonus is permanent and can stack infinitely.

And another thing. The most difficult thing I've found was blocking their settlers without starting a war with everyone or burning down those cities later to avoid massive warmonger penalties. The AI really wants to squeeze them in the worst places possible, like that one available tile in the middle of your empire or the 4 tiles I had near a river between 2 cities. This is why I never have open borders with even the friendly Civs any more.

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my jaguar warriors just phased out (people starting to get swordsmen..)
.

Oh yea and that, well those eagle warriors are still useful even against swordmen if you soften them up with ranged units first. They get more powerful the more resources you improve so they kinda scale a bit. For example I use crossbowmen and eagle warriors till gunpowder, then upgrade them straight to musketman. I actually even kept one eagle warrior army till the very end last playthrough:P

[johnhoftb]