Yesterday I was playing CIV VI (my 4th play-through, this time with Pericles the Greek) and I just realized halfway through that the other civilizations are a bunch of assholes to me, no matter how many gifts I offer… no matter the favors I am willing to do. This seemed like a great opportunity to write about my experience with the CIV series, one of my all time favorites.

I played my first CIV game (1991) back in the nineties with my older brother (I was like 7 years old). You might think that CIV is kind of boring for a 7 years old kid but in absence of any other option, CIV seemed like the most awesome and amazing game ever. Anyway, I was amazed with the game and the way I could create more and more cities in any available piece of land using those ugly settler sprites (to this day i’m still wondering what the hell those are supposed to be).

I am that CIV player that never starts a war, I like to please my opponents and my only wish is to build my empire within a context of total relaxation and happiness. I often choose the Cultural Victory win condition, in a Huge Map shared with that group of assholes that rule the other civilizations. In CIV IV, V and VI I tried the religion victory but those armies of apostles and missionaries in every game was more violent than a war! Actually, on that note i will begin this opinion taking a look at religion in CIV VI. I like the concept and I like to create and spread my own religion (that is why I never play with Mvemba a Nzinga, the Congolese emperor). But then…then comes the nightmare: after 5 turns I have an army of apostles and missionaries spamming my city-capital. And these guys are way stronger than mine (why do I need a legion of expensive apostles to take care of two annoying apostles that keep trying to convert my people?!). Of course in the harder modes it is (almost) impossible to create your own religion.. And there is more: My opponents keep spamming me with apostles but if I try to spread my religion they immediately respond with threats, denouncing me as if I was some kind of religious terrorist… Not to mention the fact that they seem to enjoy occupying hexagons that I need to improve. What about when you want to create a city because there is a nice oil or uranium source in the middle of the tundra at turn 500? Brace yourselves… and bring a settler, 2 guys to escort him and… 10 priests to defend the settlement from the religious predators! I often find myself starting a new game saying “I should ignore religion, chill out, work on culture and science and enjoy, right?”. Wrong! Instead of having one or two religions in your territory you can get as many as 6! You can barely find your own units in the middle of the chaos. And I am too obsessive and stubborn to let that happen to my game (yes, I am the kind of player that builds the same road 10 times in Cities: Skyline [2015] because the angle is not 100% correct but i will leave that to another post…).

So, religion is the first problem between me and my opponents. This is a problem for our “relationship” during the whole game specially because I have trade routes with them and religion spreads naturally and after many turns they adopt it involuntarily it and throw the blame my way. In CIV V Brave New World, the previous installment of this series this happened with culture and tourism and it is a shame CIV VI does not have this feature. It was always fun to see cities asking to become part of my empire.

Anyways, and continuing my thoughts, I really cannot make any friends ingame. I offer money and resources (luxury and strategic). They thank me and that is it. In CIV VI always answer money requests of my neighbors but again, they just thank me and that is it. What about building a simple embassy? Oh Christ, takes like 20 attemps, a lof of money and gifts (but I always accept theirs..maybe I am just a lonely idiot that wants some friends). Not to mention when they attack me just because they are bored. Only by about turn 500 I can actually make some friends because, in fact, I end up buying their friendship with a large amount of money. In my opinion, the game would improve if this “diplomacy” mechanic was a little easier and more adjusted to peaceful builders like me.

Another feature that improved the game a lot from previous installments, in my opinion, were the district and spy system. The district system made me more organised when dealing with urban planning: instead of improving all the available land with all sort of things, now I need to think where to build my improvement and districts according to land features, resources, etc.. And as a gamer that likes to build things, districts allow you to have many buildings in your city. The spy system linked to the districts is also very funny because within my non-offensive game-style I play I need to place them, mostly, in my commercial and industrial hubs (districts) that are constantly under attack. There is one thing though that I miss from the previous series: the pollution feature. In advanced civilizations, pollution becomes a problem and I need to plan my territory in order to protect or create forests. I know we have the naturalist unit in CIV VI but it is so hard to find a suitable place for the national park that after many turns I just give up and kill the unit.

In general, Civilization games are great. The exclusive perks of each civilization allow the player to play a different game with all of them without getting tired. Before CIV VI’s release, I use to play CIV V: Brave New World a lot and I was very happy with the trailer of CIV VI. And 2K, thank you for using Sean Bean to narrate the game! It is awesome to listen to Ned Stark saying the amazing quotes.

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

– Winston S. Churchill

And to finish this post I just want to comment one thing about the barbarians. It is just me or we cannot never get that annoying barbarian scout that is always wandering in our lands?!