Civilization 6

Civilization 6

The latest offering in the influential Civilization franchise.

History

Except for Civ 3, I have put many hours into all of the different Civilization games. They helped formed the 4X genre and continue to redefine it.  Each release has innovation while remaining true to it's roots. 

Review

There is a lot of breadth to Civilization 6. You can play a very different game from one to the next but even if your play a similar style, the game will certainly evolve in a different fashion. The replayability is endless. 

However, despite the replayability, I found myself increasingly bored with the game. Part of it is the learning curve. To play efficiently you need to know how systems interact, and looking that up can be tedious. The poor automation is another factor. For example, exploring manually is fairly slow but autoexplore does a bad job. 

I found the AI to be extremely lackluster. I wasn't playing on a very hard difficulty level but the reviews say the AI is bad at all levels. It is unsatisfying to build up forces for a complicated battle just to have the enemy do something dumb to give you an unearned victory.

Should You Buy It?

For me, this game was not worth while. It made me want to play Civ 4 and I stopped in the middle of my second real game. However, there is a lot going for it. It looks great and there is a lot going on. I suspect the game is quite fun for someone new to the franchise or someone who puts in the hours to learn how they want to play the game. I wish I could give a clear yes/no answer to this one, but I can't.