Octopus Overlords

Jeff V wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2017 6:01 pm No mention of a Hall of Fame.

That was the first thing I looked for, too. Hard to believe they're not going to add it.

I'm cautiously looking forward to an expansion. I've nearly finished going through the leader roster -- I think I have two more games left before I've played each civ once. All of my games play out more or less the same. Unique buildings/units are a minor consideration. Leader bonuses make a little more difference, but your strategy is still determined mainly by the map, resources, and neighbor positions. And I end up taking the Religion victory way, way too often because it's the easiest.

Lagom Lite wrote: ↑Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:43 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:40 am

Lagom Lite wrote:The announcement cinematic is very nice, a bit tear-jerking towards the end even...

Wow, agree. That was fantastic. Imagine the amount of man hours put into that, and just for an expansion!

I’m still not at the point from switching from V yet, though. Have not heard enough “NOW, VI is better than V” comments yet, from players that own both. No doubt it will happen, maybe even with this expansion.

Oh absolutely, no kidding. Civ6 is much less of game than Civ5 + expansions currently. The gameplay is slow, the AI needs a hefty handicap to compete and the tech tree micromanagement with eurekas and inspirations is really tedious.

I expect Civ6 to become a fun game after the second or third expansion...

6's main attraction (for me) is that it's unquestionably a deeper strategy game, especially if you're more of a builder than a fighter. I look forward to it reaching its full potential. Now that I'm used to it, I can't go back to V.

I too can never go back. My time with 5 is done.

I'm at Pericles on the progression. I find science victories to be the easiest...Jesus victories require dispatching lots of pimps. I'll fall back on it at times, though, it's amusing when my Snake Oil Salesmen conquer the world.

Well, dammit. You guys and your massive play hours in both games, and your definitive statements about VI.

Krakens builder vs warlord comment is especially interesting since I’m definitely in the former camp in terms of play style.

OTOH I don’t feel like I’ve squeezed all my playtime out of V yet, like I did with IV (honestly I never thought I would tire of IV, but I did seem to hit some kind of wall after playing a completely irresponsible and ridiculous number of hours).

Maybe by the time I hit a wall in V, both expansions for VI will be out, and there will be lots of chatter and previews of VII.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:48 am
Maybe by the time I hit a wall in V, both expansions for VI will be out, and there will be lots of chatter and previews of VII.

6 finally reached the just-one-more-turn stage, but it has its frustrations and could stand more time in the oven. If you're still enjoying V, stick with it. Once you make the jump you probably won't want to go back. V is a beer-and-pretzels wargame compared to 6.

Still unsolved is late-game tedium. The main attractions of military or Jesus victories (is there a difference?) is that every turn you need to be engaged. On the more passive science or culture victories, I wish I could make the game just run until the next event requiring my attention (and have the ability to queue things to make those events as rare as possible).

One thing that helps is the archaeological digs. Eventually those run out too, though, there probably needs to be more such things to serve as distractions (or avenues for certain types of victory). I also think victory conditions need to be relative and not absolute...it should be possible, for example, to calculate the instant you have an overwhelmingly dominant force and not require the grind of conquering every single capitol. If I'm going for a science victory and no one else is close to having a space program AND it's very unlikely another player will fulfill an alternate victory condition, the milestones should complete more rapidly.

I don't have countless hours in 6 like others, but the one thing that I love about it (and why I can't go back to V) is how roads & trade routes are integrated.

Jeff V wrote: ↑Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:57 pm Still unsolved is late-game tedium. The main attractions of military or Jesus victories (is there a difference?) is that every turn you need to be engaged. On the more passive science or culture victories, I wish I could make the game just run until the next event requiring my attention (and have the ability to queue things to make those events as rare as possible).

One thing that helps is the archaeological digs. Eventually those run out too, though, there probably needs to be more such things to serve as distractions (or avenues for certain types of victory). I also think victory conditions need to be relative and not absolute...it should be possible, for example, to calculate the instant you have an overwhelmingly dominant force and not require the grind of conquering every single capitol. If I'm going for a science victory and no one else is close to having a space program AND it's very unlikely another player will fulfill an alternate victory condition, the milestones should complete more rapidly.

Fully agree. The religious path is as active as the conquest path, but it's less resource intensive and requires fewer units. The new healer unit lets you sweep the map with one good god squad. You don't need to use very many prophet charges as long as you can keep slaughtering enemy clerics and flip their cities that way.

I usually take the religious victory just for something to do while I'm ever-so-slowly inching toward Mars -- in fact, those victory types often end up being just a few turns apart in my games.

I probably should disable the religious victory condition. After winning my last 3 games that way, I resolved to win either science or culture with the Americans. Then my next-door neighbor decided to harass me with prophets, so I ended up converting him and parking my god squad. Somehow he managed to un-convert, even though I'd taken all of his known cities, so I had to sweep through and do it again...and by then I had such a juggernaut that it only made sense to keep it rolling. Right now 1/3 of the world is Pastafarian, and it looks like it's going to be yet another another religious victory unless I decide to pull back just because I don't want to win that way.

The Emergency feature in Rise and Fall seems like it might help with the late game tedium. Assuming it works. If you are running away from the AI, the others will (hopefully) ally to bring you down. If an AI is running away, the same thing could happen. It has potential to bring excitement to the click until you win phase of the game and to make quitting unnecessary if behind.

That feature will probably kids me off rather than make the game more interesting. Wonderful, so now I have 8 players sacrificing their knights and crossbows to my tanks. Outcome doesn't change...once the enemy armies are defeated, it's still a drag to conquer cities.

Way back in the old AH Civilization game, I was always amused and annoyed by the "holy shit, he's about to become CIVILIZED! WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN! Invariably some game mechanic would break in the player's favor and he'd win anyway. Once, I was successfully reduced to less than 2 cities (meaning I go backwards on the civilization track) only to be the beneficiary of a civil war (I had almost nothing on the board) and won that way. Another time, a fellow Jeff who I refused to take action against in the previous game turned on me along with the rest. My not inconsiderable force on the board targeted only this Jeff and completely knocked him out of contention. The message was received, he stood down the rest of the game which allowed me to win and has been a staunch ally in MP games ever since.

With us all being groomed to waiting for "major expansion x+2" to make this game playable/good/great/wow, I kick myself more each day for making this a day 1 purchase.

Jolor wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 10:57 pm With us all being groomed to waiting for "major expansion x+2" to make this game playable/good/great/wow, I kick myself more each day for making this a day 1 purchase.

+1000

Jolor wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 10:57 pm With us all being groomed to waiting for "major expansion x+2" to make this game playable/good/great/wow, I kick myself more each day for making this a day 1 purchase.

No regrets. Pennies per hour. I've always fully supported the Civ franchise, and while I'm sure the end product of 6 will be most complete, I still enjoy the intermediate steps and in the end I pay about one cent per hour. I'm all ears if you wish to suggest a cheaper form of entertainment.

I would prefer to have a better form of entertainment, not necessarily a dirt cheap one. Obviously YMMV, and I am not going to argue away your personal reasons for enjoying it. There's just too much to do in life, for fun or otherwise, than invest it in a very lengthy game that, IMO, provides me with more frustration than joy.

Yeah, not about the money per hour for me either. But it's also a very personal stance I guess, that I want to play (not just Civ, either), the best form of that game possible when I play it (as opposed to Jeff V's preference of enjoying the iterations). And for the Civ franchise specifically, based on the last three versions, we know that the best version of the game is by far the one post-expansion (or two).

All it really means for me is that I wait for that second expansion to hit before buying, so I am not really bummed about it personally (especially when as I mentioned above, I have plenty of play time left in V before I get bored with that version).

So I'm trying to play a round of Civ VI, and I keep getting the notification bug, where the news on the right hand side only shows the "!" but not the info. Googling hasn't really gotten me anywhere. Does the OO hivemind know anything more about this? What causes it? Certain mods? Or any fixes?

Going to try one more time, with different ruler/options/etc. Will hope for the best.

Ok - in trying to diagnose that bug, and trying to get things to work right, I've made a mess. Added some steam workshop subscriptions and apparently, last time, I downloaded mods outside of steam, and so now I just have a mess. (Ex. - CQUI overlay was on my screen at the start of a new game, but there was no way to get it off the screen. Googling didn't help there either).

Yes, I know. I'm stupid for creating this mess. SO: New question.

1) I'm going to go back to a clean install. What mods are still "must have" mods?
Before, I was using AI+, CQUI (though wary of it now), Unit Report Screen, and I think some Warmongering Penalty Reducing mod, though can't find it.

2) Steam workshop doesn't seem to be the best place to get Civ VI mods. Where should I be grabbing them from?

Thanks guys. This is one of those cases where I wasn't itching to play another round of Civ. Until I couldn't & now it's driving me crazy.

The only on quill18 uses is the community mod. I downloaded it but haven't tried a game with it yet.

Lorini wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2017 9:40 am The only on quill18 uses is the community mod. I downloaded it but haven't tried a game with it yet.

Which is the community mod? I was just trying a game with CQUI and AI+ as Baroquen suggested, but I'd like to try other options as well.

The CQUI mod is the community mod.

Ah, got it. Thanks!

Jolor wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 10:57 pm With us all being groomed to waiting for "major expansion x+2" to make this game playable/good/great/wow, I kick myself more each day for making this a day 1 purchase.

There are games that I trust to go through changes and I am glad that I was on board from day one to actually see these changes and experience the growth. Civ 5 for example, it is almost like I got a new game over the course of its life. I also appreciate the changes that are good because I played with an overpowered unit that eventually was corrected downward, or even better being able to play with a unit that was useless but finally powered up and made useful. I am reminded of the development path I experienced with both Civ 4 and Civ 5 from "good" to "stellar" game. I enjoy Civ 6 now but I can't wait for the change. They are already happening. I can appreciate what it has become because of where it was in the start.

I am finally getting into Beyond Earth. Should I abandon it and buy Civ6? Is it a better game by far, or should I enjoy BE for a while and wait for Civ6 to get another DLC/update?

I did not enjoy Beyond Earth at all. It was a poorly conceived, soulless attempt to channel the magic of SMAC.

Never bought or played Beyond Earth. I think it's the first Civ game I ever passed on entirely.

Just as an aside, does Civ6 still crash on you when you exit? The game locks up my machine 75% of the time, regardless of whether I exit directly to desktop or exit to the main menu first (which used to be the workaround). Task Manager is inaccessible behind a black screen. As Windows is shutting down, it shows Steam's screenshot uploader as the app that won't close. I'm guessing that's the culprit, even though I don't have this problem with any other games.

The internet says selecting "Always on top" for Task Manager will let me close the game from there without rebooting, so I'll try that. Apparently it's still a common complaint.

I never had a problem with it crashing on exit, just the periodic random crash which autosave renders no big deal. Then again, I don't exit the game normally all that often.

For anyone interested, they just ported Civ VI in it's entirety over to iPad. Not a half-ass, slimmed down mobile version, but the actual full-fledged game. And it appears to be remarkably well done.

I was thinking about getting it for PC, but might go the mobile route instead. Being able to spend 4 hours flights playing Civ VI sounds pretty damn awesome.

Does "Remarkably well done" include a useful AI? Maybe they will port that to the PC.

Freyland wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:14 pm Does "Remarkably well done" include a useful AI? Maybe they will port that to the PC.

Since I'm the guy who will likely lose if it's set on anything above Settler, I'll let others argue over the merits of the current AI.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:23 pm

Freyland wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:14 pm Does "Remarkably well done" include a useful AI? Maybe they will port that to the PC.

Since I'm the guy who will likely lose if it's set on anything above Settler, I'll let others argue over the merits of the current AI.

I play on King. The early game, while barbarians rule the earth, is quite challenging. Barbs are tough and aggressive and even have some tactical smarts, and while you're dealing with them the AI is good at the initial land rush. This challenge of getting established is what's kept me from bumping it up to Emperor -- the AI's starting advantage (its "cheat") increases as the difficulty level goes up, and it already starts out strong enough. I don't want the early game to be any harder. Once the barbs are knocked back and you've planted a few good cities, though, it's pretty easy to subdue your neighbors, and the AIs won't come at you unless you rack up a big warmonger penalty or fail to build a home defense force. Even if one has a big tech lead, it won't take advantage of that.

It needs to recognize when it has a strategic advantage, and it needs to get better tactically, because from the mid-game on conquest is mainly a matter of slogging over speed bumps. The main thing discouraging military victory is that it's tedious to conquer large maps and manage dozens of cities (especially with no build queue, one of my pet gripes). Even if multiple AIs declare war due to your warmonger reputation, they don't coordinate and therefore never pose much of a threat.

The diplomatic AI is reasonably good apart from knowing when and how to wage war, it seems to build up its cities intelligently enough, and one or more players usually have an aggressive religious conquest strategy, so you're constantly fighting off missionaries and prophets who will convert your cities otherwise. If you play Civ mainly as a wargame, though, the AI still mostly sucks.

Downloading the IPad version now. Note that it's $30 to go past 60 turns, and it will be $60 after January 3rd.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 4:38 pm For anyone interested, they just ported Civ VI in it's entirety over to iPad. Not a half-ass, slimmed down mobile version, but the actual full-fledged game. And it appears to be remarkably well done.

I was thinking about getting it for PC, but might go the mobile route instead. Being able to spend 4 hours flights playing Civ VI sounds pretty damn awesome.

Whoa! I'm a huge fan of some types of games on iPad v. PC (adventure, TBS, tower defense), and I bet this would be amazing. Especially on the larger pro models. I assume they won't be doing this for Civ V.

Actually, I’ve read that the game looks worse on the larger iPad Pros as they graphics don’t scale well for the bigger screens.

You can enable retina mode.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:06 pm matter of slogging over speed bumps. The main thing discouraging military victory is that it's tedious to conquer large maps and manage dozens of cities (especially with no build queue, one of my pet gripes).

I think CQUI also adds build queues.

abr wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:30 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:06 pm matter of slogging over speed bumps. The main thing discouraging military victory is that it's tedious to conquer large maps and manage dozens of cities (especially with no build queue, one of my pet gripes).

I think CQUI also adds build queues.

Every time I look at that mod, I'm dissuaded by complaints in the comments section. Build queues aren't in their feature list, but man, they'd be a powerful inducement to take a chance on the mod.

Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:19 pm

abr wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:30 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:06 pm matter of slogging over speed bumps. The main thing discouraging military victory is that it's tedious to conquer large maps and manage dozens of cities (especially with no build queue, one of my pet gripes).

I think CQUI also adds build queues.

Every time I look at that mod, I'm dissuaded by complaints in the comments section. Build queues aren't in their feature list, but man, they'd be a powerful inducement to take a chance on the mod.

I like watching let's plays by quill18 and he recommended it. Didn't read the comments, didn't notice any issues. YMMV.

Well I finally subscribed to it, so I'll activate it for my next game and make up my own mind.

I've always sort of enjoyed the Civ games, but honestly have never really understood how everything worked. I got some of the very high level basics of production, food, resources, etc., but not any of the real nuance of how to use them. So I'd set it on the easiest difficulty and just fumble around for a while without any real challenge. It was fun, but I always burned out pretty quickly.

After grabbing Civ VI for iPad (an incredible port, btw), I decided to bite the bullet and actually try to learn how to play at something other than a surface level. I came across this guy's series of "Civ VI Tutorial for Complete Beginners". I've watched the first three episodes, and have learned more about this game in 90 minutes than in all my hours of fumbling around by myself and going through the game's shitty tutorials. He's a bit all over the place in his presentation, but the info he provides is really, really good for those of us who have never quite groked what's going on under the hood. Highly recommended if you're not already a wily Civ veteran.

Welcome to the world of quill18. He's one of the better (informative, entertaining) strategy let's players on youtube.

Yeah, quill's good people. He still posts over at Qt3 I believe.