Civilization 6 Review (PS4)

History's greatest nations.  World domination.  This is Civilization 6

Civilization 6 is the next in the excellent series of Civilization games.  Once again, you get to choose from a number of history's greatest rulers and the nation they ruled over.  I must admit, it made me happy to see nations like Australia and the Scythians get representation, while Greece taking up TWO spots made me not so happy.  They could have easily brought another civilization or swapped in one of the DLC civs instead if they were low on ideas.  Also, a lot of the civilizations from previous games feel weird.  The Aztecs and Russians feel like total garbage, totally unrecognizable from their Civ 5 representations.  Whoever you choose, your mission is to beat out the other rulers become the greatest nation in the world.

The inclusion of Australia makes me happy.

After hours of play, I still don't know what to make of some returning civs.

There are many ways to become the most powerful nation to ever exist.  Culture, science, and religion are peaceful methods.  Of course, you can try to whup everyone's ass for a domination victory.  If none of those appeal to you, the ability to go the distance and win with the highest score is also possible.

Civ 5 was my introduction to the Civilization series and I loved the heck out of it.  At first I thought this game would be Civ 5 with a fresh coat of paint, but the this game does a lot of things quite a bit differently.  Exploration is the only thing that seems similar to the previous game, but even that is different.

I hate exploration for one reason; movement.  Movement is trash in this game, a fact compounded by how your primary exploration unit, scouts, are handled.  In the past, scouts were bad fighters, but could climb hills and cross rivers with no problems.  In this game, scouts can still do those things...if you level them up.  It's weird.  Even weirder is how movement works across all units.  In the past, a unit could move is they still had movement points.  In this game, if you move and come to an obstacle, you'll need two movement points to go forward or you can't make the move. For example, let's say you're walking in same hills with three movement points. In the past, you could use two points to cross one hill and use your remain point to make another move.  In this game, if you don't have at least two movement points, you have to wait until the next turn.  This needless change makes exploring feel shitty and overly complicated.

Scouts and movement in general piss me off in this game.

The most obvious thing the game does differently is building up cities.  You are heavily encouraged to build Districts, or specialized zone, to strengthen your cities.  These enable you to gain major boosts as well as gain those ever-important Great People.  You'll still be building granaries and monuments, but Districts should be a major part of your plans.  Make no mistake, you WILL be planning your cities.

Districts are the name of the game for city-building.

In the same vein as city-building, the builders are handled MUCH differently.  Each one can improve three tiles before dropping dead and needing to be replaced.  The improvements are immediate, but this makes building cities much slower because you have to take the time to create another one of these bums instead of building more important things, like soldiers or useful buildings.  True, you no longer have a bunch of do-nothings wasting space during the late game, but I like the Civ 5 method better.

Not really a fan of builders only getting three uses per unit.

With builders dropping dead in three uses, how will you build roads?  With your Traders.  Traders automatically build roads between the cities they connect.  Roads aren't as godly as they used to be, but they do negate those irritating movement penalties.  It's quite useful for connecting your own cities, especially for military purposes, so get a trader as soon as you can.

Need a road.  Build a trader.

Government progression seems more restrictive than ever, mainly because of how early you have to pick the type of government you want.  There are many policies you can use to customize your government.  You start off only able to select two of them, but can equip more as you progress through the game.  When selecting a government type, you could cut yourself off from using certain policies, so be careful which one you choose.

The Government system is robust, but restrictive.

Barbarians start off MUCH stronger than in previous entries, starting off with a spearman in each encampment.  They seem to also spawn more frequently.  Gone are the days of raiding those encampments with a single warrior.  You'll have to bring three or four guys to take them down.  They also seem to actively target scouts, who will be raped if they are caught.  On top of that, barbarians have their own scouts.  On the whole, I like what they've done with the barbarians, because they are more of a threat.  You really have to watch out for them now.

City-States work differently than before, as well.  The thing you might notice at a glance is that they field bigger militaries.  It's not unusual to see a City-State with four or five warriors patrolling.  In other words, you won't be steamrolling these guys like you could in the past.  Also, you'll need to complete tasks to earn envoys to gain favor and earn rewards.  Personally, I prefer Civ 5's system of dealing with them, so this change kind of sucks.

City-states come prepared this time around.

The map types are a personal problem I have.  I like to play huge maps with lots of civs and city-states.  Unfortunately, the huge option isn't available for every map I don't know why.  The game also maxes out at 24 city-states.  Perhaps it's only a PS4 issue or maybe it's every version of Civ 6.  However, this combined with the fact that other always civs seem to generate too close to you indicates that even the huge maps are too small.  In the past, I could max out civs and city-states but sometimes still get the entirety of North or South America to myself.  In this game, no way that's happening unless you keep civs to a max of perhaps four or use the True Start maps and pick a civ that's not even in the same hemisphere as the others.

Speaking of the other civs, my goodness, the stupidity.  They will settle near you, then complain that you're to close.  They'll denounce you for reasons that can only be described as retarded.  I once had a civ denounce me because I explored too much.  No joke.  Worst of all, they don't shut up.  In previous games, when a civ kept talking to you, it was a sign that you were about to get your ass kicked.  In this game, they seem to talk just for the sake of hearing themselves talk.  There's usually not any pending ass-whuppin'.  When there is an war in the making, it just suddenly happens, sometimes for no reason.  No denouncement, no talking.  Just a foot in the ass unless you load up on military units early on.

I did nothing to him and I'm on the other side of the continent, yet he still denounced me.

It's tiring when civs talk to you every three turns for no good reason.

There are too many nuances in a Civilaztion game to tackle in one short review, so I will move on to the little things.  The graphics don't seem as good as Civ 5's.  It could be because I'm playing it on a console, but they definitely seem a little worse than Civ 5.  And there are performance issues.  Stuttering and brief freezing are issues you'll be dealing with every few turns.  I do, however, like the parchment effect on the map, so that's a positive.

The music is forgettable.  Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but the soundtrack is simply too bland to notice while playing.  A huge step down from Civ 5.

On the DLC front, there is a bunch of it to be found.  Gathering Storm and Rise and Fall are huge, game-changing additions that really change the way the game is played.  You'll have to deal with things like natural disasters, governors, city loyalty, and more things than I can say here.  Then, you have more civs, some which have never been represented before, like Vietnam.  It's quite impressive, really.  This is how DLC is done.

Disasters are just some of the DLC you can obtain.

In the end Civilization 6 is a step down from Civilization 5.  Civilization 6 had (and still has) the potential to be a step up from Civ 5, especially if the great DLC continues.  Unfortunately, they made weird changes that make the game not as good as its predecessor.  Moving units around is more painful than it needs to be, draining a great deal of fun out of exploring.  AI opponents are bipolar, stupider than dogshit, and twice as annoying to deal with.  The graphics and music are a clear step down.  It's addictive for an hour or two, unlike Civ 5, which was so good I can still drop 4-5 hours into per session.  It still has a "one more turn" feeling, even if it's not for as many turns.  Get the Anthology if you can so you can get all that sweet DLC with the base game.  This one is solidly a Play It.