I can’t claim to be the most well-versed Civ player in history. I’ve never played a competitive multiplayer match, and out of the 600 hours I’ve logged in the game, 599 of those hours were played with Jadwiga of Poland (don’t ask me why, I’m not entirely sure myself.
With Civilization 7 fast approaching, it feels like just about the right time to produce one last article on my beloved Civ 6 and put a period at the end of my final impressions with the title.
In General;
I find Civilization 6 to be a game that sacrifices immersion for complicated gameplay. This is neither a strength nor a weakness, but when I think back to Civ 5, I remember being engulfed in a student’s way with the game’s art style, voice overs, and audio design. Not to mention the music (Brave New World’s main menu theme is the best Civ has to offer,) which sat just right with me.
With Civ 6, the art style was significantly more cartoonish, the music was hit and miss, but the gameplay was noticeably more involved. As for the art style, I couldn’t care much for another Civ game with the same leader art. It’s just too childish for me. And the music shouldn’t replay itself ad-nauseum after meeting another Civ. But the gameplay: let’s talk about that.
All Things Gameplay
Districts make all the difference in the world.
Civilization 6 introduced tile-based districts to the series. Instead of buildings being tied to the tile on which a city stands, districts in Civ 6 are put directly on tiles by the player, sacrificing the natural yields of those tiles for the yields of the district.
By itself, this change created a huge shift in gameplay for the series. No longer did city planning stop at “tile yields good.” On the contrary, Civ 6’s district-based gameplay meant that cities could be placed for positional advantage, tile yields, reliable district adjacencies, or simply to acquire strategic resources that aren’t spawning in your cities.
A Civ 6 player will find themselves placing cities down that aren’t meant to even be good cities on their own, but are there to eventually pop out one or two districts strictly for their yields.
Again, this change isn’t a strict positive for all players, but for me, it is. I love this aspect of the gameplay, and when I revisit Civ 5, I find myself easily bored with acquiring building after building, with no real changes being made to the tiles around my city aside from builder improvements.
The depth in Civ 6 is just infinitely… depth-er. Deeper? It’s better. Me like city planning. Me like when number go up.
And the culture tree: also much better in Civ 6 than the culture bonuses featured in Civ 5. I absolutely love the culture cards in Civilization 6. Being able to role-play as a democratic ally-bot or a scientifically focused communist regime with just the culture tree is, simply, fun.
The fun doesn’t just stem from actually playing the game, either. I find myself daydreaming at the grocery store: “Suppose I made a bunch of trade routes with Elizabeth, put culture bonuses that apply to those trade routes, and then rushed Suffrage to make my cities massive?” Not that I actually end up playing with England, mind you. But you get my point.
Call me a nerd, but yeah, I love that Civ 6 sticks in my craw no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It just has so many possible ways to become overpowered, so many combinations, so many possibilities. So much FUN.
Things I Hate
When I play video games, I don’t like playing on easy difficulties. In general, I don’t like playing with any settings that give me cheesy advantages. Indeed, when I open up a Youtube video of a Civ 6 game and the player informs me that they’re playing a trade-civ with a bunch of mods that improve trade routes, I close the video.
I firmly believe that the best way to play Civ 6, the right way, and the way that gives the most satisfaction, is to play it on the latest patch, with all of the DLCs; Balanced start, no game-altering mods (Things like quicker trades is fine), random opponents, random city-states, and Deity difficulty.
With this setup, every win feels earned. With this setup, every win is generally pretty damn annoying. This might seem like a contradiction, but I assure you, the two are one in the same in Civ 6.
This is because Deity difficulty in Civ 6 is essentially just Prince difficulty, except the AI is always ahead of you until the very end of the game: they have bonuses to yields, military and settler starts, and combat ratings.
I would liken this to Skyrim’s difficulty settings, where the differences between them just alter the damage dealt / damage received. And just like in Civ 6, I need to play Skyrim at the highest difficulty settings to feel accomplished at the end of it all. And just like Civ 6, I find the process necessary but annoying.
So I hate the difficulty settings. I’d rather the AI play smarter and with much more punitive a mindset and less yield bonuses/lower city starts at deity, but instead Firaxis has turned the difficulty settings into a number’s game. Again, this is akin to Skyrim’s difficulty modifiers, and I hate it.
Other things I hate include the fact that Poland is insanely weak, but I can’t help but play them exclusively (again, don’t ask me why), I hate that the art style is cartoonish, I hate that when I meet Kupe I’m forced to listen to his music for the next 10 hours, and I hate that there is no way to properly siege a city without engaging in near-suicidal combat. And when I say properly siege a city, I mean Lannisters sieging Riverrun, Bannerlord-esque months-long sieges where the enemy either breaks your camp or they starve to death, no-friendly-units-lost sieges.
Welcome, Civilization 7
I’m excited to sink my teeth into the new addition to the series, and I thank Firaxis for the hundreds of hours of fun that Civilization 6 gave me. I’m not entirely sure what it is that I want in specific out of Civ 7, but I’m glad that what I’ve seen so far isn’t anything that looks too safe, but makes an effort to advance the medium into a Brave New World.
GLHF,
-E