More impression of Civ6

Civ6 is a punishing (fun) game. I’m playing on the easiest level as a learner and the AI has a naggingly consistent propensity to totally wreck my beautiful plans. 

My biggest gripe is how shit the startup screens are. Huge ego stuffing symbols from the creators, then a single mouse click which you always need to do. 

Hey designers – if I don’t have a choice then just move on. Or allow me to click quickly through. IDGAF about your company name. I care about Civ. /grumble. 

I’ll say I’m generally winning or at least making good in roads but cripes – the AI is sometimes illogical. 

For example:

• NPC civ plonked a city between two of my cities because there was just a sliver of space. Who does that! Bastards. 
• Building walls is an almost must do, but they drain so much cash and production early on. Perhaps I need to build in close and not spread so far. 
• The barbarians appear about 10 turns after your units declare war and swing over the other side of the map. Bastards. 
• How do I reduce how many other NPC civs are present. So many contenders. Perhaps I need to start on a huge map. 
• Who in hell knows how to start a religious victory style game? 
• Why are the penalties for killing and razing a city so nasty in the early game? Isn’t this what civs did?

Good game though. 

Playing Civ6, newbie mistakes are great fun

I bought Civ6 a day ago and started playing. Wow, the game has changed since my old days of Civ and Civ2. The endeavours and strategies look like they will be the same but so much of the game interface has changed – for the better. Here are my impressions. 

• I sat clicking like an idiot for a long while wondering why my setteler wouldn’t make a city when I pressed the B button. Even moving him around didn’t work, till I saw the build button. 
• It took me ages to work out that Traders made roads. Good change, but tempting to use Romans as empire choice to get them automatically (so I read).
• I still don’t know how to use Envoys or all of the political levers. Do spies exist anymore?
• It starts so simple and ramps out of my comfort zone quickly. 
• I’m yet to change the assigned population tiles for the city. 
• I’m yet to suss how to use districts properly. 
• I still want to crush everyone on the map with hordes of units, so maybe I should be playing the barbarians. 
• I love and hate the new barbarians. Bastards are a pain but good for unit xp. 
• Being a single player turn based game suits the home life I have, as I can walk away anytime. I almost grabbed my copy of MOO3 out of the box but decided a new game would be more fun. 
• Getting the steam sale discount was ok, but I fear the ongoing temptation of DLC. 

I’m having so much fun discovering how to play a Civ game again. Just need to now get 60 hours in a day. 

A guide to learning how to gear a character

I’ve started thinking about one of my alts as the next character to play a bit, and realised that my knowledge on the class mechanics for almost all of them is well out of date. In digging for answers across many classes and roles, it turns out that I follow a set of very similar steps regardless of the character.

So here is my cheat-sheet / guide for learning about a class.

Start with the EJ forms landing page for your class.

This will be initially an overload of information, but it is best to jump into the deep end. Sometimes printing the first post and reading in spare time is better to get a grip on the information presented. Go to Elitist Jerks, click the class mechanics. Find the thread for the spec that you’re interested in. These will usually have a leading 25-30 lines of basic information on stats, gems, specs, and rotations. Skip any of the comments after the first ten.

 http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php

 Then jump into the class specific forums on the official forums. Generally you’ll not see anything as useful or detailed as in the EJ forums, but there is still sometimes a post that is “how to”, or “introduction” based. Generally skip the comments, as they will be less and less useful as you get further through them.

Things to establish first are: How to select a Talent Tree.

 Pick the tree which is suitable for the way you wish to play in a broad way of speaking, and confirm that it is useful for levelling by doing a quick Google search. Each class will have many ways to level, but one spec which is considered better than others. For almost all cases this means picking a tree which has high dps particularly if it is burst dps, and potentially either a good set of defensive or “oh-shit” buttons, or a spec which gains a pet.

Examples of the really solid levelling talent trees for classes are:

• Demonology Warlocks,
• Beast Master Hunters,
• Unholy Death Knights,
• Frost Mages,
• Shadow Priests,
• Ret Paladins,
• Feral-Cat Druids,

Basically any dps role if the class only has one dps talent tree. There are also very viable ways to level in almost any tree, these are just the most common, or easy.

For spending your points use the spec listed in some forums (below), but remember to only spend a maximum of 5 points per level. You do this so that you can select powers deeper in the tree, as the powers generally get much better the further down the tree you select. Be careful not to select abilities which are focused on either a lot of survival or reducing cool-downs on stuns and such, as they are generally for PvP, not for levelling. You’ll have an opportunity to grab some of them later anyway.