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[Civilization] New civs, leaders, game features announced as a new season. Vampires!
Aldo
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
Sid Meier’s Civilization: one of the greatest gaming series in world history.
The concept is straightforward: imagine running a historical civilization from its most humble beginnings all the way to world domination with you at the helm.
Read more about the history and details of the series on the Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series) or the official site http://franchise.civilization.com/en/games/
The most recent addition in the series is Civ VI, released on 10/21/2016 on Steam. The first expansion Rise & Fall was released on 2/8/2018, the latest, Gathering Storm was released on 2/14/2019.
Rise & Fall improves a bunch of stuff from Civ VI. The following stood out.
Obviously it comes with new civs, leaders, wonders, units, etc. But more exciting: new features!
Leaders and Diplomacy: improvements upon the base game’s AI silliness.
Internal shit to deal with: maybe the AI won’t pose a challenge, but there’s new bonuses to acquire or difficulties to work around.
So Civ VI was released with a lot of promises, unfortunately not everything worked as well as we had hoped. It is still a strong game and the patches and expansion have really improved the base game. If you haven’t paid attention to the last year of content, the below is a short summary:
New leaders and Scenarios: Every major patch came with one or two new civs. These can be purchased as DLC or came with the DeLuxe edition. These cvis are: Poland, Australia, Persia, Macedon, Nubia, Khmer and Indonesia. The packs also come with scenarios, most of these were combat focused, but the Australia pack had an Outback Tycoon scenario which has zero combat which makes it my favourite.
Religion view: In the base game a religion victory could come as a surprise, because it was hard to see how far along a religion was to becoming the world religion. Improvements to the UI have reduced these issues.
Alert for units: base game lacked this feature, but it is back now. Just plop down a unit on Alert, and it will automatically awaken when an enemy approaches.
Older Civ games can still be played, and they’re widely available for modern systems through Steam. Heck, you might even like them better than the latest instalment, because Firaxis is amazing with support and has been patching and adding stuff to their previous titles for years after initial release. There are three titles that I consider relevant to the modern gamer:
Civ V including two expansions: Gods & Kings and Brave New World. The first game to use hexagons instead of squares, which is a change that wasn’t cheered on by everyone. The game comes with lots of DLC and makes full use of the Steam Workshop. It has a big and diverse following: ranging from people, like me, who play a game every other week against the AI up to people who play multiple 6 to 8 hrs long multiplayer games per week. The beauty of Civ V is that it offers so many options to tweak the difficulty and complexity to nearly any level, without ever taking away the core “civ-feeling”.
Civ V: Beyond Earth including one expansion: Rising Tides. A spin-off from Civ V running on the same engine but taking the base game to an alien planet. With fictional civilizations, resources and aliens it allows for completely new concepts to be introduced, such as taming aliens or merging humans with robots. The game isn’t as big as Civ V and is a bit difficult to get into because there is no frame of reference to fall back on. Many people were left with a sour taste after the initial release and even in its current form it just is not as elaborate or as smooth as Civ V.
Civ IV including two expansions: Warlords and Beyond the Sword. The last Civ to feature square tiles and unit stacking. It improves on many concepts from the previous three games and allowed for a lot of customization. I haven’t played this one as much as Civ V and BE, but the soundtrack by Christopher Tin (see start of OP) I have listened to over and over.
USEFUL STUFF:
Cheat sheet for district/wonders placement
Some edits to the options file that can't be edited in-game. Thank you Inquisitor77!
Mods as recommended in this thread:
https://youtu.be/IOT9T15mkX0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1AThe concept is straightforward: imagine running a historical civilization from its most humble beginnings all the way to world domination with you at the helm.
Read more about the history and details of the series on the Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series) or the official site http://franchise.civilization.com/en/games/
The most recent addition in the series is Civ VI, released on 10/21/2016 on Steam. The first expansion Rise & Fall was released on 2/8/2018, the latest, Gathering Storm was released on 2/14/2019.
Rise & Fall improves a bunch of stuff from Civ VI. The following stood out.
Obviously it comes with new civs, leaders, wonders, units, etc. But more exciting: new features!
Leaders and Diplomacy: improvements upon the base game’s AI silliness.
- Enhanced Alliances: they took steps to fix the stupid AI this time fo’real. There are extra bonuses for having allies now, and the AI seems a bit more predictable than where it was at release..
- Emergencies: when a civ is really freaky then other civs can band together and deal with that specific threat. Think “the enemy of my enemy…”
Internal shit to deal with: maybe the AI won’t pose a challenge, but there’s new bonuses to acquire or difficulties to work around.
- Golden ages are back from CivV! When you’re doing well, you trigger golden ages with bonuses.
- Dark ages and coming out of them leading to Heroic ages: When you’re not doing well, your civ will enter a dark age, with the challenge to come out on top. If you do well you will enter a “heroic” age, which is like a stronger golden age.
- Loyalty: also making a return from Civ V: when things are not going well your cities might rebel and even flip sides or decide to continue on as an independent state. Just conquering a city is not enough, the population won't stand for it.
- Governors: recruit characters that can manage cities for you, they will gain experience, unlock specific bonuses and improve loyalty.
So Civ VI was released with a lot of promises, unfortunately not everything worked as well as we had hoped. It is still a strong game and the patches and expansion have really improved the base game. If you haven’t paid attention to the last year of content, the below is a short summary:
New leaders and Scenarios: Every major patch came with one or two new civs. These can be purchased as DLC or came with the DeLuxe edition. These cvis are: Poland, Australia, Persia, Macedon, Nubia, Khmer and Indonesia. The packs also come with scenarios, most of these were combat focused, but the Australia pack had an Outback Tycoon scenario which has zero combat which makes it my favourite.
Religion view: In the base game a religion victory could come as a surprise, because it was hard to see how far along a religion was to becoming the world religion. Improvements to the UI have reduced these issues.
Alert for units: base game lacked this feature, but it is back now. Just plop down a unit on Alert, and it will automatically awaken when an enemy approaches.
Older Civ games can still be played, and they’re widely available for modern systems through Steam. Heck, you might even like them better than the latest instalment, because Firaxis is amazing with support and has been patching and adding stuff to their previous titles for years after initial release. There are three titles that I consider relevant to the modern gamer:
Civ V including two expansions: Gods & Kings and Brave New World. The first game to use hexagons instead of squares, which is a change that wasn’t cheered on by everyone. The game comes with lots of DLC and makes full use of the Steam Workshop. It has a big and diverse following: ranging from people, like me, who play a game every other week against the AI up to people who play multiple 6 to 8 hrs long multiplayer games per week. The beauty of Civ V is that it offers so many options to tweak the difficulty and complexity to nearly any level, without ever taking away the core “civ-feeling”.
Civ V: Beyond Earth including one expansion: Rising Tides. A spin-off from Civ V running on the same engine but taking the base game to an alien planet. With fictional civilizations, resources and aliens it allows for completely new concepts to be introduced, such as taming aliens or merging humans with robots. The game isn’t as big as Civ V and is a bit difficult to get into because there is no frame of reference to fall back on. Many people were left with a sour taste after the initial release and even in its current form it just is not as elaborate or as smooth as Civ V.
Civ IV including two expansions: Warlords and Beyond the Sword. The last Civ to feature square tiles and unit stacking. It improves on many concepts from the previous three games and allowed for a lot of customization. I haven’t played this one as much as Civ V and BE, but the soundtrack by Christopher Tin (see start of OP) I have listened to over and over.
USEFUL STUFF:
Cheat sheet for district/wonders placement
Some edits to the options file that can't be edited in-game. Thank you Inquisitor77!
Inquisitor77 wrote: »[…]
Make Fog of War Look Amazing and Distinguishable from Unexplored Terrain
Go to: [Your Civ VI Install Folder]\Base\ArtDefs
Copy: FOW.artdef (in case you mess up)
Open: FOW.artdef
Find:Set: 0.70000 to 0.10000<Element class="AssetObjects::FloatValue">
<m_fValue>0.700000</m_fValue>
<m_ParamName text="Models_ParchmentWeight"/>
</Element>
[…]
Jealous Deva wrote: »Some mods I use:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1292617460
Steel and Thunder Unit Expansion: By default, unit types (anti-cav, light cavalry, seige, etc) have an age gap between upgrades. This mod fills in some of those gaps, and makes some minor balance changes to accommodate the additions, so that the player has more options and the AI can keep its units up to date better.
For example, by default, for melee infantry you have swordsman --> musketman --> infantry. So it's not uncommon for swordsmen to be running around into the gunpowder era before an upgrade becomes available, or musketmen to be fighting beside modern tanks and infantry. This mod makes the upgrade sequence swordsman -->longswordsman -->musketman --> rifleman -->infantry, more like Civ 5, so units can stay more up to date. All unit categories have similar additions, it ends up feeling a lot more like civ 5's upgrade sequences. There is also a companion mod which adds an additional unique unit for every civ, but I feel it is a bit less essential.
Sukritact's resources:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1150492115
Adds a few more resources, including Camels, Gold, Obsidian, etc. I think this is a good balance of variety without overdoing it, and like his work in general.
He also has some new natural wonders in his workshop which are good as well (grand canyon is one off the top of my head). Also 2 new animated leader civs in Iceland and Gauls, they are very nice but probably a bit unbalanced.
A few random bug fix mods by Fearsunn:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1333457772
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1386554385
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1387045386
Those are what I can remember using off the top of my head, I will check when I get home and see if there is anything else I really recommend.
Some Mods I use and would recommend: (All steam workshop links)
Combat and Gossip Log:Moves the gossip and combat messages from a somewhat hard to read floating text to windows in the top left of the screen (under the science/culture info)
Quick Start:Removes the annoying 2k and firaxis pop ups and takes you right to the game menus when you start Civ6
Numpad Unit Controls:Name kind of says it all.
Double Natural Wonders:Just doubles how many wonders will be on the map.
Buffed Natural Wonders or Terra Mirabilis: The first just adds extra resources to wonder outputs, while the second adds 13 wonders and adds a civ wide bonus to any civ that controls the wonder (or at least 1 tile of the wonder for a multi tiled wonder).
Extended Diplomacy Ribbon: Adds info to the top panel of the game screen so you don't have to go into the diplomacy screen to see, for example, how many luxuries a civ has.
Civitas Resources: Adds 4 new resources, pairs well with Sukritacts resource mod
Edit: Gold Resource: Just adds the Gold resource that is in the DLC that includes Australia, but for some reason firaxis only had the resource appear in the Outback Tycoon scenario. Gold is also a part of Sukritact's resource mod, but his has gold add +2gold and +1Culture while the Gold from this mod adds +4gold (1 more than Silver's +3gold).
Civitas City-States: Adds 40 city-states and 4 new city-state types (Agricultural, Consular, Entertainment, and Maritime)
Population Notification: Lets you know when a city gains or loses. Mod maker also has separate mods for notifications for religion, border changes, when deals with another civ end, and when a barbarian camp spawns.
Historicity++: Small changes to make names and info more historically accurate. Also changes the district help text to be more helpful
Policy Manager: Adds a better way to select which policy you want to use.
Edit: While getting these links I saw a new mod, New Random Agendas
Claims to adds 40 new agendas for the leaders to randomly use. No idea how effective or good they are, but I am intrigued.
Jealous Deva wrote: »Sorry for the double post, I was going to throw one more mod recommendation in.
Real tech tree;
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=871465857
What this does is add more prereqs the the tech tree to get rid of dead end techs and keep players from beelining more than 2 eras ahead. [...]
Aldo on
+3
Posts
here's Quill18 from Youtube/Twitch talking about his hands on impressions and showing off some of the changes.
and Polygon's take on the same early game demo.
http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/5/25/11761306/hands-on-with-civilization-6-as-the-emperor-of-china
am sure there are other videos, but since everyone got the same demo scenario i'm not sure much else will be taken from what was on offer. still good to see it in action though. look forward to seeing more at E3.
EDIT: added a link to Polygon's article on the early game preview.
"If it ain't broke..." as the saying goes.
And Ive played with http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392543 and that completely shifts the gameplay and makes distance far more important for city state allies than it currently is.
I guess civ v Beyond Earth is also like a total conversion mod, but thats me being pedantic.
One of the criticisms I've sometimes heard regarding Civ 5 is that the civs don't play differently enough. Some have suggested that the game might be more interesting if each civ had more unique features to help differentiate them.
Which made me think that it might be interesting if there was a mode where you could create combo civs which would have the combined unique features of every civ they're made up from. This means your civ could have multiple unique abilities, unique units, unique buildings, and unique improvements. The only restriction would be that you can't combine civs that replace the same unit or building. For example, you can't combine the Aztecs and the Polynesians because they both have a unit that replaces the warrior, and you can't combine the Chinese and the Assyrians because they both have a building that replaces the library.
Of course, it would be hilariously unbalanced (I doubt anything could beat a combo civ that includes both Babylon and Korea). But It still seems like it would be fun as a casual mode.
The name would be taken from a randomly selected city from any civ involved, appended depending on the type of action it was. So a peace agreement might be the Berlin Armistice, a research agreement might be the Delhi Agreement, and the formation of an alliance could perhaps take the first letters from each participating civ (eg. IKA Defence Treaty). All players would receive notification that such-and-such treaty has been signed, but only in the Industrial Era onward (or link it to a social policy tech, embassies, whatever).
I really dig anything that helps create a cohesive narrative from a match.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
"World peace has at last been achieved, thanks to the historic Dickbutt Accords."
and AC
and Colonization
I don't think it's necessary to go over the entire history of a long running series every time we make a new thread. OPs are hard enough to write as it is.
Most of those are a bit out of date.
If you are using city state diplomacy you may as well go ahead and use the community balance patch, they are designed to work together.
I also really like the nqmod. Its multiplayer focused but makes a decent single player experience too. Its meant to be played on quick and it a bit more streamlined than vanilla.
Could you not in V? Because you definitely could in IV.
I was just making a joke about the thread title :bzz:
I deliberately put that in the title as the older titles are bit too much of a retro-experience, whereas CivIV is a lot easier on our modern senses (and modern OS and hardware).
And I've never played them, so I'm not nostalgic about them, otherwise this OP would be multiple posts long and full of cool stories about fucking over Mao and Stalin and weird-ass games with JFK leading the USA.
I really like the card thing for policies and change in the city state mechanics for permanent (?) cumulative (?) envoys, although I'm iffier on some of the other things. Namely the pillaging stuff that sounds like it could destroy buildings by wiping out districts, the increased barbarian aggressiveness and whatnot, and the mini-quests attached to apparently almost every single tech, both science and civic, sounds like way too much fiddliness to keep track of. The Great Wall thing with China also sounds really bizarre.
Ambivalent on city-states too, but they're too integral to some of the civs to turn off and keep game balance.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Well, if you didn't watch the above vids, apparently a change is that now they send out scouting parties, and if they detect you, they go running back home to spawn raiding parties to make actual concentrated attacks on your cities. And are much more aggressive.
So... that's an obnoxious thing. It sounds like the encampment district thing (basically a second quasi-city that can protect and bombard and where military buildings go) is going to be super required early game with the extra aggressive barbs around.
NOTABLE MODS THAT WERE IN PLAY:
JFD's Enlightenment Era
Machiavelli's Reform and Rule
Machiavelli's Separate Great Person Counters
MaX-Nor's 50% off Units
ryanjames' County of the Palatinate
Colonialist Legacies' Wabanaki
Colonialist Legacies' Mexico
Colonialist Legacies' Canada
After Action Report Type Thing I Guess:
So I didn't know what civ to pick, 'cause I have a lot of modded civs downloaded, so I picked 'random' and came up with ryanjames' County of the Palatinate, under Otto Henry. Okay. I was cool with that. Looking over the civ, I judged it to be more of a science civ than I should have — it's squarely a religion-based diplomatic civ. Electors, while being really fucking powerful, are still Great Merchant replacements, and should be treated as such. However, since the UA mentioned science buildings and the Unique National Wonder (!?) is a replacement for Oxford University, I thought the Palatinate was going to be a science-focused civ. I was wrong.
It also didn't help that I had a pretty shitty capital city. There was a LOT of jungle, and production was going to be a nightmare anyway. I should've chopped all of it down (or just restarted), but since I was thinking about a science win, I left the jungle up for the university science. I was placed on a peninsula with a couple of There were a couple of decent second-city placement options, one of which was gobbled up by Mexico. (Curse you Benito!)
My neighbors were Mexico, as already mentioned, and the Wabanaki. Henry Membertou seemed like a nice guy at first. A peaceful, all-loving sort. He started to get to me when he founded one of the first religions (Catholicism) and it turned out to be the dominant religion. By the time I bailed, two of my cities had already converted, and there was more Catholic religious pressure on my capital than from my own religion. Thankfully, there wasn't much missionary spam, as far as I could tell.
However, a part of that lies with me. Looking back, a lot of what makes the Palatinate powerful is their religion, and they need to get some strong faith gain up and running in order to start making cities convert. I just did not do that. To be fair, I was thinking more about science, which is still one of the most important aspects in any good civ. But religion and faith were an afterthought, and one that shouldn't have been an afterthought. I had two city-states RIGHT THERE and I only briefly had one of them as an ally.
What started my downfall at first seemed like the start of my ascension: Memebertou offered to team up with me in order to take down Mexico. Wanting to try out my new army of musketmen, I agreed to Membertou's plan. I absolutely MOWED through Mexico's defenses. Benito still had composite bowmen! I easily outteched him, and with some prime trebuchet-ing from Membertou, I easily took Monterrey (in that prime city-building place from earlier) and was on my way to contesting Guadalajara before realizing I could just negotiate with Benito for a peace treaty. He gladly gave me Guadalajara, and left me with a disasterous happiness problem. I quickly sold off the city to Lester B. Pearson, thinking that I had got a good deal. Nope.
I had been getting a few notices from the espionage-world that Membertou wanted me dead. My own spies reported it and a few other civs did, too. But I didn't think too much of it, since Membertou seemed like a nice guy and we were on friendly terms. Sure I had been a bit irritating to him, considering that I forward-settled him and stolen a few of his technologies. But hey, what's a few irritations between friends? I had also not been keeping up with my army — while I had bulldozed through Mexico, Membertou was by far and away the most powerful civ on the block. He had long been the tech leader, and while I had caught up, we seemed to still be comparable. But he was an AI, and AIs usually don't neglect the military as much as I had. And, in my experience, AIs like preying on players who neglect their military.
And so I got ambushed by Membertou, with a side helping of Lester B. Pearson. I guess I just warmongered a bit too much for them. I was all ready to defend, confident in my musketmen army, but Membertou had privateers while I only had carracks. In terms of military force, the Wabs were a whole tech level ahead of me, and they had a bunch of units. There was no way I was going to fight them all off (especially those privateers), so I threw in the towel and started a new game as the Murri.
So, in short:
* Location, location, location
* Be sure to read the description
* Don't neglect the army
* Always be watching your back
As for barbs, they're not my favorite part of the game either, but I also acknowledge that that they serve a necessary purpose. If there were no barbs, I would pretty much never make any military units ever.
Hmm. Maybe do away with the concept of barbarians, and introduce a Security mechanic? If you don't build a military to control your territory, bandits and pirate might start popping up around improved tiles and/or trade routes. You could station a small number of separate military units around your empire to deal with it, build a tile improvement like a Fortress or Watchtower to pacify a certain tile range (ie. invest capital and forsake the tile improvement). As the game progresses into later eras, have techs that ameliorate the problem (like researching Civilian Police civic tech, or taking the social policy Iron Fist) so that by the Modern Era, other mechanics (like ideology and world congress) can take over instead of inside security.
Basically try to riff off real historical issues that plagued early civilisation instead of generic barbarians being littered about.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Still working on my Civ 5 achievements - I broke the 50% barrier, which I'm happy with due to the vast number of them...
I really don't have the strategic ability to pull that off. Considering science bugs out and you can't effectively research anything… nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Sounds like hordes in attilla, something like that could work.
Delete your starting settler, raze all cities except capitals and city states, which you puppet instead.
so all you have is that warrior?
Yes, until you use Germany's unique ability to build up an army by clearing barb camps.
can watch here.
and a breakdown of districts:
nothing too in depth but hopefully we'll get a steady stream of videos like this letting us know what to expect from the game.
I mean, we won't know how fun or good it is until we actually play the game, but it seems a bit premature to say point-blank that you don't like something about the game given it isn't even out yet. There's a lot of context missing given the fundamental changes to the game which might make the diplomacy changes make more sense.
Should you prioritize districts relevant to the victory type you're going for (campuses for science, theater squares for culture, encampments for domination, etc)?
Or should you always prioritize whatever districts will give you the most yield overall, even if that yield type isn't super relevant to the victory type you're shooting for?
Edit:
As said, you can find videos, but felt this was a good explanation of what to expect.
The big take aways are: