How is everyone liking it?

I still trying get my mind around the new systems. But i'm enjoying it so far. I really liked civ 5, but i kept falling back into the same pattern of how i won, so it got a bit boring (of course, after playing it for 300 hours :) )

Merika!

I thought this game comes out tomorrow?

Yeah I'm pretty sure my copy unlocks at 9pm tonight. A bit jealous...

It's already out in Oceania and Asia.

I just VPN'n to japan to unlock it. Getting old sucks, my feelings for stuff that i don't "get" quickly turns to dislike. I have to keep reminding myself that the feeling that not knowing the path is part of the fun.. not dislike. :)

Loving it so far. Lots of new systems to learn in regards to planning your cities and government. And with no warmongering in the ancient era, civs can be really aggressive. Can't wait to dig in this weekend.

It'll be a while before I know what I feel about some of the game's systems, but I do love the interface. It seems everything important is available without opening up sub-menus and the like.

A bit disappointed I can't rename cities and leaders though. I guess this design choice was informed by the new importance being placed on the different civs being unique.

You can't rename cities? That is a shame... Me and my friends always had such wonderful, crass names for our cities when we played online.

@sackmanjones said:

That's what I thought but I just looked at the Steam page and now it says tomorrow... v.v Shame because I wanted to play it tonight before starting my work week tomorrow. Oh well.

@opusofthemagnum: If you can, they've hidden it well. Aye, leaving my mark across the landscape is part of what make's the game fun.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Districts and Wonder placement add a whole new complexity to city layout that is pretty interesting. The city state system seems quite a bit better then Civ 5 and doing their quests finally seem worth it since you get a free envoy to them and the bonuses for that.

Not sure. Before I hit 50 turns there was a damned Barbarian horde at my doorstep. I was able to drive them off with a few skirmishes which was actually pretty cool, AI in the past never really had a sense of self preservation.

Really like the interface, I used to downsample from 4K just to get things to my liking with 5. Early on, the turns seem to be taking forever. I need to find the movement animation stuff and turn it off and see how that changes things. I've had some turns just sit and churn for a couple minutes though.

There's definitely a lot going on. The game throws systems at you pretty rapidly, and it seems like it's going to lead to a lot of really cool depth.

it's full of Bean-y goodness.

(just started right now *stratches neck and twitches* )

Just finished my first game and my big take-away so far is being surprised at how different it is. So far I'm liking it a lot and I'm eager to jump back in and check out the new win conditions (did a science run). From what I had seen earlier I was afraid they had turned it even more into "military or die", but it's mostly just an early-game change. I wonder if the difficulty of this game is more akin to Beyond Earth though, as I chickened out and played King for my first game which was a total walk-over. The AI was attacking me with spearmen and catapults in the 1800s.

Still much to learn though. Just this one game had a bunch of "oh, it does that" moments. So it's gonna take some time to figure out how good it will be in the long run. There is unfortunately some technical issues though, but it's mostly lacking features you would expect or a few "half-cooked" ones (like the key-bindings being fairly limited and edge scrolling being disrupted by UI). Performance is generally fine, although I'm still dismayed at how long turns sometimes take in the end-game. The music was also somewhat of a disappointment. Not that it's bad, but I played as Germany (side note, Hansa is WAY better than I expected) and most of the game it was playing very Asian sounding music.

I loaded it up just to test it out tonight. Next thing you know it's 2 hours later. Seems to have the same Civ hooks so far. I need the built in alarm from Civ IV to be reintroduced.

I only 50 turns into my first game, and I play on the Epic game speed, so I haven't seen much of the systems yet. So far I'm really liking it though, it feels very different from Civ5 but not really a return to Civ4 either. I think its going to take some adjusting to get used to the effective strategies for playing the game on the harder difficulties.

Obvi it's going to be while before we really sink our teeth into it, but I've played 75 turns and what I can say is the UI/presentation is AMAZING. The visuals are so clean, the design so pretty and it all runs smooth as butter (gameplay flow wise, though my FPS are fine too). I also am very interested in how city design/layout works now. Spending builders like points makes me really consider where to put improvements and when. Plus the new districts/wonders system make me think about how I don't want to mess up now and want to make sure I leave room for district improvements in the future.

Haven't gotten into a war yet, so don't know how that it. Minor things missing include not being able to name cities and the lack of a small continents map option, but I'm sure mods will fix that in no time. All in all, very excite.

Man, they need to do some work on their civilopedia for the "new" victory types. I was pleasantly surprised about some new stuff they had done to make things easier to find when I played a "normal" game, but trying to figure out what to build and how to approach a culture victory there was little help to find.

All I got a chance to look at last night was the options menu, but I really liked that. You can disable the opening cutscene in-game, which is a neat touch. I'm looking forward to having a refresh on the systems, I'd reached the point with Civ V where it had really started to feel like I was going down the same few paths every game. Excited for things to be mixed up - even the slightest of tweaks will make it all feel fresh again. Glad to hear almost universal positivity coming out about it so far from what I've seen people saying.

Am I missing something obvious or is there really no build que?

What The Fuck

(also top edge scrolling is the most bizzare design decision I've seen in a game in a loooong time)

Yeah, top edge scrolling triggers when your cursor hits the menu bar rather than the actual screen edge. Talk about fiddly shit. I kinda doubt that was a design decision. More like a bug they didn't have time to fix before release.

I opened a ticket with 2K and I see lots of other people complaining about it in forums, so hopefully it'll get patched out soon.

@tennmuerti: Ye, I couldn't deal with it, and ended up turning it off to get used to click and drag instead.

Barring any misfortune, this is probably going to become my GOTY. It's pretty slick.

The presentation is so pleasant. I can't speak to depth or meta or anything like that but I'm just having a great time playing.

I'm liking it a lot so far. Brazil seems really strong as long as they don't get starved for rain forests on their start. The amount of great people and adjacency bonuses they pump out is incredible.

I've played 14 hours so far and I think I'm enjoying it. It feels like there is more going on than in Civ V which I can appreciate but, at times, it also makes it hard to keep track of everything. One of the most interesting things so far is the new district system; it makes the geography of your civs matter even more than it already did in previous games.

Things I don't like: things already start to slog around the mid game in terms of the computing time when ending turns (of course this is CPU dependent, but on a fairly high end CPU the lag between turns is definitely noticeable); barbarians can be insane in the very early stages of the game; the fact that this game can be bought in a bundle with the Steam controller gave me hope that the UI would scale in a way that everything is legible when sitting on the couch and playing on a TV but it's not; the AI is different from Civ V but I don't think it's better.

Haven't had much time to play it, but I love the UI & Presentation

I dig it so far. It's taking some figuring out to get used to how it works, but it's pretty fun so far. It looks amazing.

It's like they took all the good stuff from Civ V and the expansions, and cleaned out all the cruft.

i'm surprised things are so quiet here :( we should set up a GB game or something. i think this may grow to become my favorite civ though. i agree i love the look, very vibrant/crisp and nothing like a mobile game like everyone feared. already feels polished as fuck.

barbarians seem to be a really big thorn in my side this time out, though.

also help i'm at work and can't stop thinking about this fucking game.

I doubt I'm the only person to notice this, but I'm almost mid way through my first game and it seems production is everything. In Civ 5 and Civ Rev I would hammer out population as fast as I could. You cant spam population growth and wonders any more but there is no reason not to have as much production as possible. You're always going to want districts and builders. If it's true it will inform how I play from now on.

Your # of districts is tied to your max pop I believe.

@alistercat: It definitely feels like production is really strong. I've mainly been growing my cities up to near their housing cap and then switching over to production until I can raise the housing cap up more significantly later on. Everything feels like it costs so many hammers. I've had a couple games where there wasn't much production available in my starting land, and it really sucks when your districts all cost 20+ turns to build (on standard speed at least).

Early war feels pretty powerful right now as well. No warmonger penalties if you do it early enough, and the AI doesn't seem particularly great at defending. They kind of just spam a bunch of units and hope to overwhelm you.

Barbarians have been some serious assholes in the early game for me. They beat my early game units then other civilizations declare war on me.

I haven't been following this games development at all, so I was really surprised by how many changes there were. I felt the jump between Civ 4 and 5 wasn't super huge - combat was refined and they switched the tile formats. Outside of that, it played pretty similar.

This seems to have a lot more, smart changes. I really appreciate the city/worked(builder) changes. I was a civ player that automated his workers and would only make manual changes every now and then for specific reasons. Having to plan out each city is really fun and completely changes the early/mid game.

The civic/government changes are interesting, but I think its going to take a couple of more games until I fully take advantage of it.

Last thing I will say is I love the new look. It's a great mix between Civ 5 and Civ Rev. Also, as always, the UI is just fantastic. Its amazing how they manage to convey so much information without making this game one big shit show of menus.

Most of it is pretty good, but the Diplomacy is infuriating. Over 3/4ths of the AIs have now Denounced me, my standing with them is dropping 7-14 per turn, and when I mouse over them to find out why, it merely spits out "Unknown Trait". Thanks, that's very informative. I wonder if the hidden trait is randomized each match, or if you just need to memorize it.

Has anyone else been having major issues with the AI just not wanting to interact with you at all? I wrote it off as me not paying enough attention to them and knowing how to work them since it was a new game, but I'm on my 5th game now. I still can't keep everyone from getting that frown on their pic and DoWing me condtantly. It wouldnt bother me so much, but it keeps me from ever being able to send delegates or explore the joint war and alliance aspects of the game. Even if I play up to their agenda to gain favor, they just say "hey good job, still don't like you though". Meanwhile breaking their agenda while you are lucky to be on their good side completely flips them to disliking you.

The tool tips say to establish trading posts, open borders, and favorable trades to buddy up with them. However, half the times I've tried I ended up just giving them free stuff (open borders, amenities for basically nothing) to not much of an effect. Worse case scenario they still attacked me shortly after.

It's random. The relation stuff is basically one of the difficulty tuners they use though. At emperor and higher the AI is more or less hard coded to go to war if it has a chance to hurt you. Also, more than ever the early game in this one is all about conquering. Most win conditions doesn't really come online in any way before the mid-game (with the exception of religion), and the longer into the game you get the more punished you get for being at war. So up until the medieval age or so it's mostly just unit spam.

I haven't played much, as every time I go to fire up a game, I just get stuck listening to the main menu for ten hours. Seriously, I can see how the meeting went:

"Man, everyone loved Civ 4's theme, but we didn't get nearly the same amount of praise for Civ 5. It didn't even get a Grammy! How about we just call the Baba Yetu guy and get him back?"

Christopher Tin is the bomb, and even if you don't have much interest in playing Civ 6, you should check the theme out because it's dope:

@mirado: Yeah, the main theme is amazing. The variant of the theme that plays during the opening movie is also pretty legit:

And for those who can't get enough of the main theme, here's a pretty good live version with Tin himself as the conductor:

I'm really happy that Firaxis commissioned him for the music. It really puts the game in a league of its own.

I unfortunately disable the music in Civ because I'm usually doing something else at the same time. It doesn't come close to Baba Yetu but that's unfair because nothing does.

So far enjoying it but only played around 4 hours. Barbarian heavy early but that has gone mid game. I haven't got much of a military but I'm fairly isolated in my location. Enjoying it overall, I love the Civ series and this one seems really solid. Way better than Civ V at launch (by the end after expansions I think Civ V is my favourite or second favourite Civ game), so I'm excited to play it more. I have no sense of how I'm going to win the current game I'm playing. I'm first in Science so maybe that?

@mikelemmer: Hidden Trait is randomized. You need to gain Intel by delegates, traders or spies.

Is there a way for me to bin the civic perks I have no interest in? Reading the perks is giving me a headache as I try to spot ones I want.

I can't use WASD for camera control...

@yesiamaduck: You can filter by type rather than read them all. The top of the screen has different tabs you can select. Might mitigate your issue slightly.

Absolutely a necessary addition, indeed. Some of the policy cards are applicable only to ancient and classical era features but they are still in the rapidly increasing stack for the rest of the game. It would be great if we could individually hide specific cards.

I haven't tried this myself, but it appears this thread has some answers for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58q3qj/psa_guide_on_how_to_enable_wasd_andor_other/

I just lost my entire Saturday this game and I can't recommend it enough. It may be confusing and have added a lot of complication, but I believe there's real depth there.

I've seen some people complaining about early barbarians, but I think that's great - the game needed something to keep you from going 100% economy until you meet someone, and the barbarians aren't really strong enough to take your towns, but what they will do is pillage all your builder improvements and buildings, so you still have to deal with them even if they're not an existential threat.

Early vote is that China is very strong. Having access to extra build actions on those builders in the early game gives them a really powerful start. Also the way the handle the Great Wall is super cool

They seem to have made the empires far more complex in how they work, while making them far easier to interact with. It's seriously fucking great.

The diplomacy, which I hated in Civ 5, has been so much improved...

2 / 5: can't rename cities.

It needs some fine tuning, but I'm enjoying the getting-to-know-you phase.

I like the districts, though I've seen them before in Endless Legend. It's an interesting mechanic, so good on them for recognizing that. The districts themselves seem tuned to an early-mid game to solid-mid game mechanic that tends toward specialization. I also like the change to city states and builders. That said...

What I think could use some fine tuning:

• Mini-map colorization needs a change. Using brown for both explored and unexplored land is regrettable.
• Map scrolling and no WASD options are odd choices. There are workarounds, but Firaxis should have seen that coming.
• The UI overall is pretty, but feels like a lot of options are missing.
• Ranged units are still overly strong, especially early-to-mid game.
• Feels like tech researches way too fast. My first game, where I was still learning everything, I hit the modern era in the 1500s. Perhaps the ubiquitous tech boosts could be tuned down a bit. 25% instead of 50%?
• Early game production feels slow, but I can't tell if that is simply relative to how fast tech is researched.
• Unit cycling needs an in-game option to turn off.
• The warmonger system has a major snowball effect. It doesn't take much to become instantly hated by everyone.

I look forward to putting some time into this game and getting to know all the systems and quirks. I can't tell yet if I'll put the same amount of time into this game that I put into Civ4, but I'm willing to give it a shot.