Advice For Someone Who Has Never Played a Civilization Game...?

[bgray9054]

Hi Guys - just curious from those of you who have played these types of games before - is it relatively easy to learn how to play, etc. or is there a really steep learning curve with it where hours and hours and hours have to be invested just to become a functional player?

Thanks in advance. When this goes live in about 10 days, please feel free to post back in this thread and let me know if it's worth it as I've never played any of these games but am interested.

[bgray9054]

Thanks again folks for all the responses. I am quite interested and may give Civ6 a shot.

[The Renderer]

My 2 cents: It will take you a while to get all he intricacies and understand everything. That said, you can jump right into the game, play it and have fun. You don't have to spend hours studying the manual and learning the game before even starting. There's an extensive tutorial system which basically takes you by the hand, and if you play on a lower difficulty level you can't really lose either.

If you are unsure whether you actually like the game/genre, though, you might want to start with one of the older Civ games (maybe Civ5), since you can get those a lot cheaper and they are more polished due to patches and expansions.

[Xuande]

Most PC 4x/Grand Strategy games assume that the player is willing to jump in with minimal to no tutorial and spend 100+ hours learning the basics of their game. Civilization is not one of those series - between the Civilopedia (reference to most mechanics of the game) and the in-game advisors/tutorial settings (to warn you when you're about to do something stupid, like make a bad attack) a player can feel like they're learning how to play on the first run, without it being tedious. There's a wide variety of difficulty settings too (the AI is dumb, but made even dumber on the lowest settings, then there's also a variety of handicapping for the player and AI based on difficulty).

Its why I end up playing Civ instead of the stuff Paradox puts out. It respects the time I put into it from the get go.

[Red Dragon]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Xuande:

Its why I end up playing Civ instead of the stuff Paradox puts out. It respects the time I put into it from the get go.

You're missing out big time with that attitude though. Diplomacy is by far Civs worst and most tedious and underdeveloped feature, while I would say Europa Universaliy IV is by far the deepest and best game about geopolitical diplomacy ever made. Yeah it takes a half time job to learn it, but the act of learning the interactions of a very complex system is definitely part of the fun for me. If you understand the sytems better you eventually see all the ways the gears interact and all the ways you can influence things according to your plan indirectly through other means and you feel like a genius when you make a strong play or avert imminent disaster by tweaking the system in juuust the right way.

[Xuande]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Red Dragon:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Xuande:

Its why I end up playing Civ instead of the stuff Paradox puts out. It respects the time I put into it from the get go.

You're missing out big time with that attitude though. Diplomacy is by far Civs worst and most tedious and underdeveloped feature, while I would say Europa Universaliy IV is by far the deepest and best game about geopolitical diplomacy ever made. Yeah it takes a half time job to learn it, but the act of learning the interactions of a very complex system is definitely part of the fun for me. If you understand the sytems better you eventually see all the ways the gears interact and all the ways you can influence things according to your plan indirectly through other means and you feel like a genius when you make a strong play or avert imminent disaster by tweaking the system in juuust the right way.

This works if you're spending most of your 4x/Grand Strategy time either solo or in a dedicated group. But the problem for me is, I'm most commonly playing on LAN (which Paradox doesn't support, which means buying 3-4 copies of the game and 3-4 copies of all DLC...I have three gaming-tier setups plus two notebooks at home) with players who don't have the kind of spare time I do (which means a 100+ hour learning curve is a no-go). I actually have CKII on this account via humble bundle, but basically no playtime on it because I saw it was account-based.

That's without going into the real-time nature of games like EU/CK versus the turn-based nature of non-NQ Civ. While turn-based comes with its own issues at time (Age of Wonders 3 freezing all play any time a manual battle takes place made it unplayable after awhile, which is a shame. Civ Hybrid mode has its own netcode issues, forcing us to use house rules regarding war to prevent first/last/shift/simultaneous move issues), I'd rather deal with those than with the problems that come introducing mechanical/APM skill.

[solops1]

Get Civ4 and its expansions, they can be had cheap. Skip Civ5 and watch Civ 6 for a while to see if it is any good, then pick it up on sale.

[Abisha]

videogames are getting more and more easy which each passing year i think someone that's half brain death can play most games this day's

[Jon M]

Civ is a game that is easy to learn, but hard to master.

If you really want to get into it, check out FilthyRobot or Anzleon, the two top ranked civ players.

Stay away from youtubers mentioned above unless you only want to learn how to play casually.

[Xuande]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jon M:

Civ is a game that is easy to learn, but hard to master.

If you really want to get into it, check out FilthyRobot or Anzleon, the two top ranked civ players.

Stay away from youtubers mentioned above unless you only want to learn how to play casually.

Not that this is a bad suggestion, but keep in mind that watching Civ V at this point from someone like FR involves watching a heavily modded game with a ruleset that most Civ V players never touch.