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Single player supremacy

I’m still enjoying civ5 without any DLC

FiniteBanjo OP ,

Something fun to mess with in Civ V is on small custom maps with designated start points, when start bias can’t take effect it will always place players on points starting from bottom right going left and then from bottom to top.

Example: Player 1 will always be placed on the lowest tile furthest to the right.

You can use this to get the deity achievment if you just don’t give the AI any workable tiles.

Zikeji ,
@Zikeji@programming.dev avatar

I had a friend that played civ, he invited me to multiplayer. Little did I know, he plays against the hardest bots on a regular basis. I had only done like, two single player games.

I don’t play with him anymore.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I like playing with my sister because we both regularly play on Deity difficulty and playing against each other is the only way either of us can be challenged anymore. Of course many times we just team up against the rest of the world.

nikita ,

That’s what sucks about Civ (and EU4, HOI4 and the like for that matter) — once you figure out how it works and you start winning it becomes boring in single player.

And then for multiplayer it’s hard to find someone committed to playing for long stretches of time consistently.

IMO games where losing is fun is where it’s at, like Crusader Kings, Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Speaking of DF and EU4: I just heard about Songs of Syx not too long ago that’s basically Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld combined with EU/HOI. A granular empire builder, where you also have other competing empires to conquer or ally with. It looks dope, and I might get it.

nikita ,

That sounds awesome. I’ll try it out some time.

Do you know about Timberborn? That’s another one that looks cool.

hakase ,

I’m still playing civ IV. With the direction the series has been going, it looks like I probably always will.

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

civ5 without any DLC

Utterly insane. 😳

Beanedwizard ,

Everyone shits on 6 but never actually gives a reason other than “5 iS bEtTeR!”. The mechanics in 6 are a massive improvement on 5; civics tree > social policies, city loyalty > happiness etc. It has a bigger and better roster of civs/leaders. Combat and religion are more fleshed out. I love both games but I can’t think of anything that 5 does better

FiniteBanjo OP ,

6 has many mechanics dumbed down, trade is just completely bugged, and it came wrapped in a very cartoonish style including several world leaders who were straight up mythological figures.

ChicoSuave ,

Comparing the Civs steals the joy they bring for their various reasons.

  • Civ 1 was unlike anything else and so legendary it created the 4X genre.
  • Civ 2 had the best espionage until an expansion for 4. Civ2 also defined the scope for all future Civs.
  • Civ 3 was fine. Resources were a good addition and tile quirks, like Floodplains on top of another base tile like desert, helped bring tons strategy and gave the ability to grow Tall.
  • Civ 4 was probably peak Civ for many people, especially including DLCs.
  • Civ 5 removed unit stacking and made happiness a resource.
  • Civ 6 emphasized the city development aspect and brought back the climate stuff from 2, 3, and 4.

They are all good but they are not collectively suitable for every person. Civ6 is amazing but it took me literally 30 hours to finally have it click. I also have 550 hours in Civ 6 and over 1200 in Civ 5. CiV is also a high water mark but it overshadows the real value and fun in 6.

It’s a shame most folks will ignore us and say 6 was bad for being too game like.

Blubber28 ,

Yeah I prefer 6 over 5 any day, but there are a few small things that 5 does do better imo. I do prefer the more serious art style of 5, and I noticed that there is a lot less actual dialogue in a civs respective language compared to 5. While I do like automatic road creation, I do also miss being able to build it manually to have more control over where units can go. Finally, I think the happiness system in Civ 6 is a bit too easy, as it can be mostly ignored and very easily fixed compared to 5. Keeping your citizens happy was much more of a challenge there.

Meron35 ,

Civ 6 was made much more to be a digital board game. The combination of little to no multiplicative bonuses and generally small adjacency bonuses means you have to micro manage city planning all the time. It bombards the player with so many individual decisions that each make little impact.

Civ 5 felt much more like an empire simulator. The biggest bonuses come from making “big” decisions, like which policy tree, who/when to war, which ideology. As the game progressed, there was typically no need to micromanage.

The combat in civ 6 is atrocious after they removed the ability to build roads offensively for war until you unlock military engies (way too late in the game). Civ 5’s road system took ages to get up and running, but the payoff was immense.

The civics tree system is better, but the policy card system is broken. It gives players too much flexibility, so everyone ends up running the same/similar set of cards every time. Tradition + Rationalism is a meme in Civ 5, but it did offer more esoteric strategies with different trees.

ryathal ,

5 had better pacing for mechanics, 6 bombards players with lots of things from the start and then goes a but flat.

prunerye ,

It’s the micromanagement. When earlier games became tedious, I could just pick a quicker game speed, and I would suddenly feel like I was playing with more momentum. But in VI, it actually kills momentum, as if driving the slightly faster route to work at the cost of particularly frustrating traffic, since the most tedious micro isn’t turn-based, but city-based. You only have to plan districts/improvements once per city, so I find I can still have fun with VI if I play suboptimally (i.e., tall) on tiny maps and with mods that let me cram more civilizations into the game. I’ve probably put in a few hundred hours this way.

But I’d rather just play IV or V.

ndondo ,

I like playing tall and I’m not a huge fan of the micromanagement that comes with the sprawling empires. Civ 5 limits this through happiness. Civ 6 doesnt. Throw in an artstyle that i dont like and i just dont want to play it as much

Etterra ,

Why anyone ever plays multiplayer is s confounding mystery to me. They must like being forced to rush and being abused.

FiniteBanjo OP ,

Ha, those friggin normies and their friendships. Whats up with that? Almost like spending time with people you trust and care about causes neuroendocrinal response of dopamine and endorphins resulting in feelings of happiness and fulfillment.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

causes neuroendocrinal response of dopamine and endorphins resulting in feelings of happiness and fulfillment.

Do people really feel that way? I’m just drained and glad to be home alone again.

FiniteBanjo OP ,

It’s not a constant 100% result, but yeah it’s kind of a well established natural phenomenon. Couldn’t stop it if you wanted to. Some people can get the same benefit solely from having their comments upvoted, we process it the same as regular human interaction. Bonus points exist for huggers.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

Some people can get the same benefit solely from having their comments upvoted

That’s about all the human interaction I can stand most days

Jakeroxs , (edited )

I consider myself to have a pretty small social battery, but gaming online on discord isn’t nearly as draining as being physically with people at someone’s house or something, maybe I’m just weird.

Even then, had some great times on Civ5 with everyone over at my place playing on our laptops and chillin/watching TV or just talking at the same time

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Do people really feel that way?

Being around people I know and like is incredibly pleasant and relaxing, particularly when we’re all engaged in an activity together - volleyball or board game night or watching a movie together.

The trick I’ve found is to do something everyone vibes with and that has incredibly low stakes. So, like, carving pumpkins during Halloween or splitting a bottle of wine and complaining about work together or visiting a museum.

Its nice to have people saying and doing things that you wouldn’t normally say or do. And its nice to have other people responding to your own thoughts and feelings.

Daxtron2 ,

Sounds like you have shitty friends lol, my group would never do that.

Etterra ,

Almost all my friends have kids now, so group anything is basically impossible, assuming we we even want to do the same thing at the same time.

Zoot ,
@Zoot@reddthat.com avatar

Doscord friends! You can make quite a few friend groups to play games with that way. I’ve got a group where we are either playing DnD, or were finding the next coolest game for us all to enjoy.

johannesvanderwhales ,

Seems like it’s a valid choice in a competitive game. Unless there’s an option to disable military victories or explicitly play coop.

Daxtron2 ,

I don’t consider abusing my friends because they’re slower than me in a turn based strategy a good thing to do.

johannesvanderwhales ,

…It occurs to me that I am interpreting “rush” in the RTS sense of attacking early before your opponent is ready, not in the sense of pressuring people to take their turns faster.

Daxtron2 ,

Haha yeah that makes sense why you would think that. Could definitely be taken either way.

Meron35 ,

Team Humans Vs Team AI is a very fun option. Lots of civs have really fun team synergy.

IzzyScissor ,

I’ve been playing couch co-op with my husband on both of our Switches. It’s not too bad if you don’t force a turn timer. The game will give you a ding when you’re the last one to play, but we both have ‘side games’ or play with our cats in the meantime if the other needs more time. I wouldn’t do it online or with a turn timer, though.

rtxn ,

I’ve got like 120 hours in Civ5. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the second match.

elvith ,

Wait, how did you even finish a single match in just 120 hours?!

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Set the speed to the fastest.

rtxn ,

Turbo button

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

4 is peak for me. The only thing I dislike about 4 is the unit stacking making it hard to know if a unit is just 1 unit or 20 dudes in the same spot.

kinther ,
@kinther@lemmy.world avatar

Back in the day I used to check out civfanatics.com for mods. There were tons for Civ4:BTS that made it so much cooler. After playing that and then playing Civ5, I was incredibly disappointed. Civ6 is better, but not by much. I still go back to Civ4 when I need my “one more turn” fix.

SuddenDownpour ,

Fall from Heaven 2? Rise of Mankind? Caveman to Cosmos? Rhyes and Falls of Civilization? Dawn of Mankind? Planetfall? Mars Now? How about all of them at once?

Civ 4 was a goddamn library of 4X games. I still reinstall it after every few years.

JackbyDev ,

I hated the stacks. Idk why, but it was always confusing how big they should be. When they can’t stack it makes more sense to me. How many troops do I need? As many as I can fit.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Just enough to encircle the thing I want to eliminate/capture. It actually works with a stack, too. Like 8 dudes is enough for the default difficulty most of the time.

razorwiregoatlick ,
@razorwiregoatlick@lemmy.world avatar

Who actually plays Civ multiplayer?

UnfortunateShort ,

I know this won’t help you a whole lot, but I do.

Thrashy ,
@Thrashy@lemmy.world avatar

The play-by-email mode was broken to the point of uselessness in Civ5 and I don’t think they fixed in it in 6 (you had to have an always-on Windows desktop system running the server, and because the game logic was integrated into the graphics engine you couldn’t run it headless, and then on top of that there was basically no working system to coordinate active DLCs between players so most of the time people couldn’t join even if you did get the damn thing running) so my friends and I tried once and gave up. I would love for 7 to have a robust PBEM system so that we can play together without needing to spend hours a week watching paint dry while everybody else plots their turns, but I’m not holding my breath.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

(you had to have an always-on Windows desktop system running the server, and because the game logic was integrated into the graphics engine you couldn’t run it headless, and then on top of that there was basically no working system to coordinate active DLCs between players so most of the time people couldn’t join even if you did get the damn thing running)

Jesus fuck. You should be able to run a game of Civ as a series of XML files, with the GUI being practically perfunctory. I am disappointed that the game isn’t backwards compatible, much less that you can’t integrate between DLCs.

What is functionally a feature-rich version of Diplomacy shouldn’t be this hard to integrate in Play-by-Post.

Blackmist ,

They should have it so if one player has DLC, everyone gets to use it in multiplayer. It Takes Two works for players that haven’t even bought the game, and that’s published by EA ffs.

2K really are the greediest mfs out there.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

They should have it so if one player has DLC, everyone gets to use it in multiplayer.

Or just gray-out DLC based options. I don’t even think that’s a big deal at the end of the day. The Total War series manages this just fine, and they’re a much heavier lift in terms of game structure.

2K really are the greediest mfs out there.

Blizzard is greedy, the way they shove “buy me! buy me! buy me!” links into every corner of their interface. But 2k is just sloppy, phoning it in on their catalog of accrued titles with marginal graphics improvements as stand-in for any kind of game play polish.

merari42 ,

I played all of civ 6 there is an I loved it. The add-ons were great and districts were definitely a cool idea. Civ 5 however had the better art style.

Lumisal ,

Well considering this ideas were taken from Endless Legend, you should give that a try. Or if you want something more Civ like, they also have Humankind, which is like Civ but better and the AI is really good (they made it even better now than before, and it was already way ahead of Civ’s NPC AIs). They also have a unique win condition with Fame.

halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

Thousands of hours in every Civ since Civ III Complete came with an old PC I bought.

I’ve never touched multiplayer and never intend to. Don’t need friends to want to play the same single player game.

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

I like the idea of playing with friends, but fuck me if people don’t take for-fucking-ever to do NOTHING! Click, skip, move!!! It’s the first four turns, FUCKING go!!!

recarsion ,

I had tons of fun with 5, I got bored of 6 after a few hours and regretted not refunding it within the 2 hour window. It felt like a board game and a very mediocre one at that.

Zikeji ,
@Zikeji@programming.dev avatar

For future reference, the two hour window is more of a suggestion not a requirement. Just last week I refunded a game with 4 hours.

FiniteBanjo OP ,

2 Hour is enforced by steam, beyond that is the publisher’s preference.

HornyOnMain ,

Steam will still override developers preferences if they feel the consumer wasn't given time to make an informed decision. For instance I played Detroit Beyond Human for about 10 hours. The majority of that time was spent loading shaders and trying to fix crashes, I eventually gave up when a friend suggested to reach out to steam support. They asked no follow up questions and refunded it, despite the page warning me they would only refund under 2 hours.

FiniteBanjo OP ,

When Monster Hunter World first launched, I tried to troubleshoot it for 2hrs 15min and they figuratively told me to go fuck myself.

HornyOnMain ,

Fair, sorry to hear that, hopefully that was due to that being the early days of refunding on steam. They only started in 2014, and monster hunter world launched in 2018. Here's hoping my experience isn't just anecdotal and they've actually improved in that time.

Zehzin ,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sorry, I’m that friend that gets really into Civ and spends way too long coming up with optimal strategies. I know it’s a problem and I won’t stop.

Land_Strider ,

Have you tried Googling everything and spending tens of hours making optimal progress flowcharts that require hours to read over instead of playing the game?

Or, you know, just pour everything into science and forget don’t dare about getting distracted by other game mechanics.

s/ in case.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I gave up on Civ after you couldn’t automate settlers anymore. I really don’t need to spend time manually connecting my cities with roads. That’s just unnecessary grinding.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

With Civ VI the traders build the roads, so you just send a trader between cities you want a road built on.

Works just about the same except the source city gets some resources

FlyingSquid , (edited )
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

That’s definitely a little better, although honestly even doing the farmland stuff with every settler per turn is a huge PITA. It’s just not what I play Civ games for. It’s always been possible to not have them automated if you don’t want them automated and not automated was the default. I don’t understand why they took that option away.

It just felt like V was a huge amount more about grinding. Sounds like that’s been somewhat rectified at least.

FiniteBanjo OP ,

On one hand it allowed you the freedom to manually decide if increasing tile upkeep was worth it and therefor gave rise to new strategies, but on the other hand it’s kind of not worth it 90% of the time.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

But didn’t you always have that freedom? You could always play without automating any settlers or automating some and not others. Or am I not understanding what you’re saying?

FiniteBanjo OP ,

Ah sorry, I always played manually in Civ V so I kind of assumed that wasn’t the case in earlier titles I haven’t played. My bad, I was confused.

kamen ,

Friends? You guys have friends?

psmgx ,

Still hasn’t been a better experience than Alpha Centauri

Decoy321 ,

That game was a fuckin masterpiece. I actually don’t want it remade because I worry it would never live up to the original.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Occasionally they just give games updated graphics and audio. I’d be fine if that was how they remade it. They did that with Grim Fandango and it was just as fun as the original.

Decoy321 ,

I can agree with that. In fact, I just played the System Shock remake and found it quite enjoyable. It kept the same vibe and feel while just updating the cosmetic aspects and having a few QoL changes for some of the mechanics. The maps and story felt the same, and I enjoyed the nostalgic feel of playing it again.

Maybe I wouldn’t mind an alpha centauri remake. They’d only have to update the cosmetics and the UI, after all.

hakase ,

And 5 was a significant downgrade from 4.

callouscomic ,

Better than a Paradox game.

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