primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2022-08-17 09:58 pm
primeideal) wrote2022-08-17 09:58 pm
Entry tags:
Great Big Sieves (Doo-dah, doodah)
Intermittent adventures in Civ VI continue. (It turns out that a couple of my cousins are/were into it as well, so we should have a family game at some point!) I've won the base game (well, with various expansions, but no "scenarios") on difficulty levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 out of 8 (where 4 is "normal.") Which feels pretty good considering how much of III I did on easy mode. A friend says "it's such a complicated game you don't have to worry about getting overwhelmed, because the AI are unable to handle it all either." ;)
The individual civ specialties are a lot more nuanced in VI than III: like, before it was "there are a bunch of 'traits' like scientific/cultural/military, and each civ has 2, so there are like (6 choose 2) possible combos." Here, it's like, "the Zulu are good at forming formations, the Nubians are good at archery and long-ranged weaponry, Byzantium are religious proselytizers," so it's easier to play to your country's strengths instead of being like "I just want to do science why is everyone declaring war on me." (Or maybe I'm just more callous these days, heh.)
My most recent game, I was Byzantium. 8 civs (7 AI plus you) is a "normal" map, so that's what I went with, as well as the "continents" setup. I happened to spawn in the middle of a giant landmass, and pretty quickly got boxed in by the neighbors. So basically no seaports. (I had 5 main cities--there were two others I built later, but they rebelled due to cultural disloyalty and got conquered by Chandragupta "hates his neighbors," respectively.) Fortunately, religious units ignore borders, so I was spamming missionaries and sending them out to convert other cities but also explore the parts of the map I hadn't found yet. My continent started with 6 of the 8 civilizations, and all 5 religions (including ours), so it's like "try to wipe out the weak ones early, the other continent won't be converting us so we should try to get the upper hand there." But of course, others got there first. Still managed the win though! :D
There are three main modes--the base game, "Rise and Fall" (the "timeline" feature I talked about with the Zulu), and "Gathering Storm" (introduces a UN council where you can vote on world summits and go for a diplomatic victory, but also deals a lot with climate change, #tooreal). Plus lots of other mini-expansions you can toggle on and off, which I've been experimenting with. The "heroes" are special units like Mulan or Beowulf you can create and bring back in later ages--they're quite strong militarily, even as the game gets later. Perhaps to compensate for this, I felt like the "barbarian" tribes were more aggressive with this on, at least at first--you can't really try to spread out and crush city-states while the barbarians are nipping at your heels. If you're not going for a religious strategy, it's easy to bring them back with accumulated faith, but I mostly ignored this as Byzantium. I also tried the "secret societies" mode where early on you can discover various alchemy/vampire/spooky things and invest your Governors in those, but that wasn't as engaging. Felt mostly like "okay, the AI civs who are part of the same society as you are more inclined to be friendly, those who aren't, aren't," but I didn't really think the governors added much.
Strategy note: if someone is threatening to win the game, don't declare war on them to blow up their spaceports, that'll just make everyone dislike you. Use spies instead, this is what they are for. This probably says...something...about life.
Also I don't actually understand "modern" military (what are planes? how do they move? how do I...make them fight things?) there's a lot of random clicking and guessing in the dark but that was how I won with Nubia. So! Confidence!
The individual civ specialties are a lot more nuanced in VI than III: like, before it was "there are a bunch of 'traits' like scientific/cultural/military, and each civ has 2, so there are like (6 choose 2) possible combos." Here, it's like, "the Zulu are good at forming formations, the Nubians are good at archery and long-ranged weaponry, Byzantium are religious proselytizers," so it's easier to play to your country's strengths instead of being like "I just want to do science why is everyone declaring war on me." (Or maybe I'm just more callous these days, heh.)
My most recent game, I was Byzantium. 8 civs (7 AI plus you) is a "normal" map, so that's what I went with, as well as the "continents" setup. I happened to spawn in the middle of a giant landmass, and pretty quickly got boxed in by the neighbors. So basically no seaports. (I had 5 main cities--there were two others I built later, but they rebelled due to cultural disloyalty and got conquered by Chandragupta "hates his neighbors," respectively.) Fortunately, religious units ignore borders, so I was spamming missionaries and sending them out to convert other cities but also explore the parts of the map I hadn't found yet. My continent started with 6 of the 8 civilizations, and all 5 religions (including ours), so it's like "try to wipe out the weak ones early, the other continent won't be converting us so we should try to get the upper hand there." But of course, others got there first. Still managed the win though! :D
There are three main modes--the base game, "Rise and Fall" (the "timeline" feature I talked about with the Zulu), and "Gathering Storm" (introduces a UN council where you can vote on world summits and go for a diplomatic victory, but also deals a lot with climate change, #tooreal). Plus lots of other mini-expansions you can toggle on and off, which I've been experimenting with. The "heroes" are special units like Mulan or Beowulf you can create and bring back in later ages--they're quite strong militarily, even as the game gets later. Perhaps to compensate for this, I felt like the "barbarian" tribes were more aggressive with this on, at least at first--you can't really try to spread out and crush city-states while the barbarians are nipping at your heels. If you're not going for a religious strategy, it's easy to bring them back with accumulated faith, but I mostly ignored this as Byzantium. I also tried the "secret societies" mode where early on you can discover various alchemy/vampire/spooky things and invest your Governors in those, but that wasn't as engaging. Felt mostly like "okay, the AI civs who are part of the same society as you are more inclined to be friendly, those who aren't, aren't," but I didn't really think the governors added much.
Strategy note: if someone is threatening to win the game, don't declare war on them to blow up their spaceports, that'll just make everyone dislike you. Use spies instead, this is what they are for. This probably says...something...about life.
Also I don't actually understand "modern" military (what are planes? how do they move? how do I...make them fight things?) there's a lot of random clicking and guessing in the dark but that was how I won with Nubia. So! Confidence!