I still play civ v with a few friends pretty much weekly. A couple times a year one of our wives and kids go out of town and we lan party from 4pm to 6am and actually finish a game!
The steam page literally says that it requires a 3rd party account for online play (just not required for offline play). so I’m not sure if that’s what you’re referencing.
Ah, there’s the catch and confusion. Not required for single player but required for multi, I guess? Not sure how others play Civ but that’s not gonna affect me. I’ve only ever played these games solo besides a very rare duo game.
I'm a bit torn. On one hand it seems like a step back from the Civ 6 cartoon garbage. On the other hand the ground textures still look like blurry paint vomit. It's kinda weird because the foliage and mountains / rocks seem to be in a higher resolution and much more detailed. I guess it might be WIP and a remnant from Civ 6.
The unit sizes also seem gargantuan? I guess that part would not be as hard to fix via mods but that was already a compatibility nightmare before, especially when the mod authors quit.
So, graphically it might be a buyable Civ game again, but...
Picking a new civ or mismatching leaders makes me worry though, because that sounds awfully familiar to another game that had a similar terrible feature. The Aztecs turning into France while being led by some Japanese dude just does not feel right.
The FOMO unlocks to bait you into signing up AND buying the cartoon shit are a hard pass for me though. Selling that as a "thank you" is nothing but insolent.
From what I saw of the gameplay is that civilizations are sorta locked on a path, but you get a choice of similar civilisations. Unless you play in the style of a different civ and unlock certain milestones you could unlock other paths. At least from what I understand.
Didn’t even see the UI. Effectively an in-game cinematic trailer.
Hope there’s more forthcoming soon. Civ’s gotten to a point where I have to know if there’s enough to chew on in the vanilla game if I’m going to buy in early.