Monday, October 24, 2016

One More Turn (Again): Civilization VI

The Mac version of Civilization VI came out today, three days after the Windows release. I need to get used to the new mechanics.

I am playing as Gorgo (Greece, Spartans). My second city is Rhodes, though when my slinger covered the "RH", it looked like "ODES" rather than "RHODES". I wanted to change the city name to "ODEs", but I couldn't figure out how to do it. (I have also been having some trouble picking up some of the commands for simple things.) Given the set of leaders and civs, clearly there are now going to be multiple leaders within a given civ. Two examples of this were available so far, but given these examples and other descriptions (e.g., of the Americans), there will be more. Given the "Selfie" achievement, one's opponents can also include the same leader.

Thus far, I have picked up the "Escort Service" achievement (unsurprisingly). Two achievements that I want to acquire are "Luftballons" and "Missed That Day in History Class" — the former because it's a gratuitous Nena reference (with an associated nice combination of things to get it) and the latter simply because it's highly amusing. Other cultural references in the achievement list so far include the B-52's song "Roam" and the Lego movie.

I'm not yet sure what I think about the Civ VI way of doing things. Clearly I'll need to play more and find out. (It will probably also be beneficial to do a multiplayer game to accelerate learning, but I don't know if the Mac and Windows are ready to interface with each other yet.) I also need to get work done, and I have a very large backlog of papers to finish and other things with hard deadlines to do. And I have a couple of novels I really want to read, and the World Series starts tomorrow. :)

Update (10/27/16): Also, I really hope that Civ VI is still making fun of Dan Quayle. :) This is having a significant effect on his legacy in history. If not for Civ, many people would never have heard of him and he'd be all but forgotten by many others by now. Civ may actually help give him a more "permanent" legacy!

Update (11/06/16): I won a Culture Victory and achieved the level of Emperor Nero. I can also confirm that Civ is still making fun of Dan Quayle (25 years later...), which is again the lowest level of achievement in the game. Eventually, people playing this series of games will probably wonder if he was ever a real person. :)

3 comments:

Zifnab said...

I've had a good time so far in Civ VI! We should definitely try to do some multiplayer at some point.

I don't think you can rename cities (yet), which is odd but it's been commented on by others. I like that you can see some of what motivates the other Civs, and oh man can the barbarians destroy you now in the early game if you are not careful. In fact, there's a lot of carnage in the early game, and it's likely because there are no longer walls/ranged attacks from cities until you get the right tech, and there's low or no warmonger penalties in the early eras. Exciting!

Mason said...

I got a chance to continue my game yesterday (I didn't in the intervening night), and I was figuring out things a bit more yesterday. I noticed the bit with needing to get city walls and other civilizations just being allowed to enter my lands. I also am getting used to movement costs working differently and creating roads differently. (I got screwed over on the latter when I chose a trade route between two of my cities to get a road, even though other choices were more lucrative, and then it got pillaged after a couple of turns.)

I guess builders have an expiration time now? I have had some trouble with barbarians (which I probably set to raging) in this game, even though I am playing in chieftain level. I wanted to do a low-level game because I knew that I'd need to get my feet wet with some of the changes. (I just got the "Everything is Awesome!!!" achievement last night.

And, indeed: I very much want to do some multiplayer. I wanted to start out with my own game a bit first, as I figured I could use a bit of practice with training wheels. (I need more.) But it will be great to do some multiplayer soon!

Also, last night I noticed that the picture of Gorgo makes her look like Celine Dion. Bizarre.

Also, I really hope that Civ VI is still making fun of Dan Quayle. :) This is having a significant effect on his legacy in history. If not for Civ, many people would never have heard of him and he'd be all but forgot by many others by now. Civ may actually help give him a more "permanent" legacy!

Mason said...

And I forgot to mention that I also like the explicit display of leader agendas.