More Civ6 Observations

I’m playing Civ6 steadily; a distraction from work-life combined with a hobby when the house is quiet. As such my frustrations with Civ-like games has returned a little because:

• The starting click through movies and “click to continue” screens are horrid. This game’s UX is so bad that you need to click “OK” to get to the starting menu! Who does that!
• The UX for political interaction is shite too – you click teh bottom left hand buttons to make choices and then close the screen with the top right! That’s UX fail.
• I hate using and defending Spys. I’d love a mod which removes them from the game.The in-game interface is ugly, constantly re-allocating the is a pain, and I want more detail on what they are doing and their success ratios. I give up trying to promote them.
• I’m now trying to learn the ins and outs of a Religious victory. Its nonsense at present. I’ll learn the Tourism one after I get the religious one down.
• The Domination victory is by far the easiest. By far.
• The starting position, presence of barbarian, and leader choice makes all teh difference. Those three factors are huge levers for success or failure. Yes that makes sense, but it also means some games are just dead from the start.

Anyway, on a lighter note – here is what happens in a sim game – a launch pad is next to sheep. Those poor sheep.

Civ6 update and benefit of DLC expansion

I’ve played around 320 hours of Civ now and still consider myself a novice. A key out-take from play so many hours as a novice is – this game has high replayability as a base game and does not need DLC to be worth buying. That’s excellent.

The new DLC expansion was released recently, again adding new content and also new game mechanics for Civ6. It introduces Eras, City Leaders, and a range of new sub-mechanics which will make the gameplay more complex. I’m holding off on buyig the expansion until I get a better grasp of the game as is.

PCGames – “Historic Moments award Era Score, and this is what determines what Age you will fall into as the era transitions. Reaching a certain threshold will trigger a Golden Age, but failing to do so will trigger a Dark Age. After receiving a Golden Age, the threshold is changed, and the next one is harder to achieve. But after receiving a Dark Age, the threshold is changed to make it a bit easier to get a Golden Age next time.”

The studio who creates civ6 has said they like DLC and microtransactions for their games, and can foresee doing more in the future (uptake is apparently very high for the DLC). I’d hate microtransactions to be in Civ but like the DLC small segments.

Refs:

• The announcement of Rise and Fall expansion
• Firaxis likes DLC fo Civ6 and will continue to make it.
• Overview of the “Rise and Fal”l DLC expansion

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. 

You Sir, Yeah, You Are Being Hunted

I picked up Sir, You Are Being Hunted on a sale for a lazy $17, and I kind of like the adhoc short play style of the game.

Death One – shot to death by a random robot patrol on the main island. To my credit I did figure out what the baloon was doing, but I think I didn’t move far enough away. Found one fragment next to the stones, but spend much of mu short life looking at the inventory, trying to understand how food works.

Death Two – ran out of Vitality and starved to death. Interesting that I was trying to play it safe, but as my character stated to really drop I ran everywhere and was spotted a heap of times.

Death Three – Afk and I assume slaughtered by a host of nasty robots.

I’m really enjoying it.

Fire from the sky has ended

To postpone the hungry cadre of gamers trying to install Diablo 3, the system declared that the fire from the sky had not ended. We waited. None patiently.

Now the great zerg to play D3 has begun. A few updates and patches, some apologies for errors, and a lot of persistence has players now enjoying the game. My take – well I’ve created a toon and entered the world, but I’ll only be commenting on major stuff in the first ten levels which is different from the beta, or where something is darn odd. I’m pleased to say that it is exactly as expected so far. It’s entertaining.

The class intro media were very good too, which was new to be from beta. It does feel forced to have such a strange mix of heroes from all over the world converging, and that was always going to feel a bit forced. At least we didn’t meet at an inn, with a fight breaking out like a D&D game. Well, ahem, perhaps that bit is in the starter story too.

A few thoughts from around the web worth reading too, Tobold has an observation about D3’s pricing, and Keen and Graev have 5 Things We Like and Dislike about Diablo 3.

Happy killing.

Excellent D3 Prequel Cartoon

D3 is only a week away, and Blizzard has released a darn good 6 minute cartoon which tells the pre-story to Diablo. More games should be released with this style and flavour of side-material. It shows (at least to me) that Blizzard understand the audience who arekeen to play Diablo 3, and that they are really aiming to create something worthy of the lore we have grown to love.

We have also had the “End of Days” tv spot / promo for the game too, which is also very good, but not a cartoon akin to the one above. The animation in End of days is more realistic than the prequel, but it only shows a smattering of the video we know is included. It’s a good hash of the full video.

I really looking forward to D3.

Hands shaking, need better pc (joke)

The “back-up laptop” is not all I’d hoped or remember. True it is a significant step down from the old MacBook Pro that my old work gave me, sheesh its slow. Was the Internet ever this slow? Celeron 1.4 gighz, 256mb ram, Windows XP.

I’m going mad.