Recent reviews by GIGAKUBICA

Best launch release of a Civ game in a long time, but considering the state Civ 5 and 6 released in, that's really not saying much. The core fundamentals of the game are fun and enjoyable and the changes they made to Civs, leaders and ages are genuinely not that bad once you start playing the game. My only recommendation is that you play on the longer age length setting possible because normal feels way too short, and a mode where you can play on indefinitely in the modern age would be nice. Combat is a lot better with the addition of the new commanders and the way towns and cities work is fantastic, no notes. Diplomacy is a massive improvement as well. Diplomacy in civ has always been poor due to a lack of interactivity with the AI. You can easily go the entire game without interacting with the AI in 5 and 6 and be fine. Now there are good reasons to interact with the AI and be the one initiating agreements with them, and you have a lot more control over your relationship with an AI civ, which is always nice.

The only standout, god awful thing about this game is the UI. I would not blame you if you didn't get this game for the God awful UI alone. it is that bad. For example, if you want to find out why a city is unhappy, you only get "minus deductions" as the reason why and you can't see what those minus deductions are, and considering that unhappy cities start blowing up tiles and can rebel, it would be nice to know what is causing the unhappiness in detail. Knowing which buildings you're overbuilding or are out of date would also be nice because it's next to impossible to tell unless you're already familiar with the game.

Having a binary "Do you recommend this game?" doesn't really paint the full picture. Right now, it's ok, but there is still a lot of work to be done. War is infuriating, diplomacy is painful and my god passing laws is a mess, but the core, fundamental game play loop around the economy is good, and hopefully with a lot more frequent and consistent updates, this game can be great, but it's got a long way to go.

I genuinely want to like this game but I can't. I really can't. From the broken PVE promises to the inept developers, to the non existent balance and ball breakingly bad metas, to the greedy monetisation, to the awful competitive mode it's just not fun. Go play literally any other hero/class shooter out there. Maybe not Valorant because that is somehow worse but for the love of God save your time and money and play something that is fun and engaging.

I mean baring the stupid forced advertisement that the Devs just pushed out, it's actually still a solid game.

Can't say the same about it's sequel tho

Although the DLC policy of this game is atrocious (Get the founders pack on sale), and at points it just turns into a x5 speed button clicking simulator, it's still a fun game to play with a lot of depth, a lot more than it's competitors in Civ and Total War.

10/10 would allow AI to destroy me again.

I cannot recommend this game at all. There is a myriad of reasons why and I'm not even going to mention the new EULA.

Unintuitive and unbalanced is a great way to describe this game. There are a lot of things in this game that make little to no sense at all. No Tech or Civic should be a dead end, Looking at you celestial navigation, military training, naval tradition and all of the late game government civics as well as the the ones for merchant republic and theocracy.

Unique units are too good. Thank god they're revamping strategic resources and making the unique units require them because before that, any Swordsman unique unit instantly becomes the best unit in the game since they didn't require Iron. Stack that with Oligarchy and good lord did you have a strong unit in the early game and could conquer anything. Unique Units should be strong but not gamebreaking. cough Legions. cough The fact that they now require strategic resources is great since you can't just ROFLstomp plebs when you don't have Iron, as well as them, anymore but why wasn't this done on launch? Why has it taken nearly 3 years to do this?

Unit upgrades are also pretty poorly thought out. Without R&F, there is no reason to use Pikemen since you couldn't upgrade them into anything until you hit AT-CREWS WHICH IS IN THE MODERN ERA. The Addition of Pike and Shot makes the upgrade jump a little better but there is still a gap in the Industrial Era.

Scouts are pretty useless in this game after the Medieval era and just become an annoyance to manage.

The Balancing of the Civs is extremely bad. Civ 5's balancing was better but not perfect by far (I still have Babylon and Poland flashbacks). I've also noticed that the majority of the best civs in the game come from DLCs, and with Gathering Storm, that trend seems to continue with Civs like Sweden looking like they're going to dominate Culture and the new Diplomatic Victories and the Ottomans look insane in terms of Domination. Notice how Germany is the only base game Civ that is consistently put in the top tier bracket in nearly all tier lists out there (and for good reason Jesus Christ) with Rome and Arabia being put in that bracket in some lists.

At this rate, it's going to take a decade for the devs to get this game up to par with Civ 5. You can get Civ 5 and all the DLC for £10 more than base Civ 6 and have a tonne more fun. The fact that the two big DLCs cost combined cost more than the base game is an issue (I know it's the same as Civ 5 but compre 2 £20 DLC for Civ 5 to 1 £25 DLC and 1 £35 DLC for Civ 6) and I haven't even metioned those BS nation pack DLCs.