It's not even that long ago, when Epic Games offered CIV VI for free for a limited time period. I was always a fan of the CIV games and I think CIV IV is the best one by far. It's a masterpiece and with the Realism Invictus community mod. It's very deep, complex and with a lot of features.
I obviously wanted to try how good CIV VI is in comparison. There are no demos or anything anymore so without Epic Games I wouldn't even be able to test it out. Thank you Epic.
Anyway, the version that was given for free on the Epic Games store was without the two expansion packs that added a lot of missing features to the game, but the pricing of these expansion is set in a way, that they are kind of pricey in my opinion for the "small" amounts of things they add.
So I installed the game and made a custom game. I played a large map, I kept all the victory conditions and there was no turn limit. I started in an ancient era as I wanted to enjoy all the eras and progress to the last era this way.
I won by dominating everyone.
It was quite enjoyable, but quite tiring.
So now onto the review. I am not even going to talk about the graphics because that was never something that interested me in the games like these. There are other important things that I want to talk about.
Let's start with the biggest problem of CIV VI - the AI. I am not sure if the AI was this dumb because I was playing on the prince difficulty or if it's this dumb in general. They can't even properly siege and are simply dying to walls or they don't even use the range attacks, even when they are able to. What's the point for the AI not to do it? I don't know. Maybe the AI just can't work properly with the 1 unit per tile system.
I think the AI really needs bonuses to resources, units and so on because without it the AI is really lost. On prince difficulty their bonus is zero I think so I was competing with the AI in equal terms. Maybe that's why it was so easy. They need "cheats".
After having more than 3 cities and good relationships with city-states, I was pretty much just fighting everyone till the end of the game. As we progressed the eras it became more and more easy because the units were just getting a lot stronger too.
The AI will also always denounce you for almost any reason so there is no way to be friends with anyone. Let's say someone surprisedly attacked me and I retaliated by wiping his whole civilization. I am denouced for the rest of the game by everyone.
Diplomacy in this game is a catastrophy.
What's surely new to CIV VI are districts. Districts are tile improvements built by the city and they take up a tile like any other improvement. Some districts, such as "Encampment" is really useful because you need less resources to build units and they get all kind of bonuses if you also have the proper buildings such as Barracks or Armory. It can also perform a ranged attack if the enemies are close so it's very cool for defense too.
What I really like are the trading routes, but I guess those were in CIV V too. With traders you can amass a lot of gold/production/culture/faith by sending them to correct cities. This way if you miss production or gold you can get it this way.
With Merchant Republic and good economic policies, traders can become even stronger part of your playstyle. Traders are very important. I use trading routes for getting a lot of gold as I can just buy my units, not waiting many turns for cities to produce them.
Another new thing that was added and is really cool are eureka moments. They act as a specific way to progress down the technology or civics tree at a much faster rate. For example, the goal for Nuclear Fusion is to boost through Great Scientist or Spy, while the goal for Nanotechnology is to build an aluminum mine. Every technology has different boost and don't change.
The boost may be activated at any time while the tech is not yet completed and will apply to the progress. You can also get some eureka moments by activating Great People. You can strategize with this in mind and research things that are boosted to progress in the game faster. Sometimes though there is no other way than to research technologies that are not boosted.
The eureka moments make it sometimes very weird even when playing the standard pace game because to be honest the tech tree is not really that big. It happens quite often that you don't even enjoy some of the eras because you just complete a few different techs from the tech tree and you are in another era already. When I was having tanks the city-state near me was still owning crossbowman units.
It's kind of sad because tech tree and progress is for me the most entertaining part of CIV games.
In the end I want to say that I will actually have to try and play one more map on higher difficulty because I just can't comprehend why the AI is so dumb in this game. Honestly I am not a very good Civilization player, but in comparison with the prince difficulty in CIV IV, when playing Realism Invictus mod, is CIV VI prince difficulty a joke.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading my review.
Thank you.