{"id":50008,"date":"2020-05-21T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50008"},"modified":"2020-05-21T23:47:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T03:47:08","slug":"civilization-vi-part-1-this-game-hates-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50008","title":{"rendered":"Civilization Part 1: Civ VI Hates Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was originally going to title this post “I Hate Civilization VI”, but then I realized that this was a backwards way of looking at it. The hate goes the other direction. This game seems to have been designed to be deliberately hostile to my playstyle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then as I did more research into the franchise, this series grew into being a sort of retrospective on how these games have evolved over the years. We’ll talk about Civ VI eventually, but it’s going to take me a while to work through all of these observations and digressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like I’ve said in the past: I am a very casual fan of the Civilization series. I’ve played about half of them, but\u00a0 aside from Alpha Centauri<\/a>Obviously Alpha Centauri isn’t part of the Civilization franchise proper, but it was made by Civ creator Sid Meier and is pretty much a Civ game game in everything but name. Also, it’s my favorite entry in the entire genre.<\/span> I’ve never played any of them for a particularly long time. I’ve never done a deep analysis of the mechanics, I’ve never messed around with the higher difficulty levels, I’ve never spent any serious time with the multiplayer, and I typically play the games for a few weeks and then never touch them againAlpha Centauri was the exception, but the 90s were a weird time for me. I only played one or two games a year, so when I did get one I tried to make it last.<\/span>. I’m something of an interloper to this genre, and I’m willing to bet a lot of fans would say that I’m playing the game “wrong”.<\/p>\n

And that’s fine.<\/p>\n

I’m making this clear up front because I’m (eventually) going to criticize Civ VI and I don’t want fans to feel obligated to defend their territory. I’m not demanding that the designers change things to suit my preferences, I’m just describing why I had a miserable time with Civilization VI. Everything I say here should be taken as descriptive, not proscriptive.<\/p>\n

But before we commence with the bitching and moaning, let’s talk about…<\/p>\n

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The 4X Genre<\/h3>\n

Look, just because I genocided \/ enslaved six other spacefaring species doesn't make me a tyrant! I'm actually VERY generous and friendly towards the members of my own species!<\/div>
Look, just because I genocided \/ enslaved six other spacefaring species doesn't make me a tyrant! I'm actually VERY generous and friendly towards the members of my own species!<\/div><\/p>\n

Civilization games belong to the 4X genre<\/a>. For you youngsters, when we talk about 4X we’re talking about a game where you…<\/p>\n