
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI free until May 28th - tosh
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/sid-meiers-civilization-vi/home
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riazrizvi
You can't make a price low enough if the product isn't good enough.

Civ is the only game I've played consistently since college, 1994. Civ VI
breaks the balance a good strategy game has between aesthetics and efficient
movement. It's become too inefficient to enable committed game play.

One possible progression of Civ would be to enable players to script movement
or trade or war, to make it even more efficient, so that game play scales with
the size of your empire, which indeed reflects the way leaders increasingly
rule larger organizations through policy rather than direct action...

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AcerbicZero
Bingo. I'm pretty sure this is just an attempt to move more DLC and pump the
Civ franchise for a few extra bucks.

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jldugger
Maybe, but it's only free on windows, on Epic Games' store, which has a
monthly free game apparently. They seem to be trying to buy their way into the
user count steam has, and it might even be working.

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koheripbal
The CEO has specifically said that he wants to convert all Take-Two games (of
which 2K is owned by) into subscription models.

This was driven by the seemingly "easy" profits from the GTAV Online
marketplace, and also why Grand Theft Auto V has also gone free, with bi-
yearly "big crimes" that players can buy into.

Same is true of XCOM, which they also own and has been releasing yearly DLC
for.

I find this sort of thing a bit short-sighted because although I loved all
three of these games, I still get bored of the same mechanics and would rather
dive into something new.

If they're putting DLC deployment ahead of fresh IP development (which they
seem to be), then I guess that's why I sold my TTWO shares yesterday.

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rraghur
Aah.. I fear for KSP2 then

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duxup
Has the AI gotten any better?

Civilization has never been a bastion of great computer opponent strategy, but
it typically was good enough to suspend disbelief and enjoy. However, VI was
just horrific. I played a lot of VI and stuck with it for a few years but the
AI still would declare war... not attack, put little to no effort into
defense.

It was a fun game and I got my value out of it but eventually it just became
frustrating with the AI sort of rage quits and almost behaves like a human
greifer just taking random actions that make no sense at all / kill the fun of
the game.

I've played civ games constantly since civ but unlike the previous games I
just had to quit VI because the AI made it seem so pointless when it ruins a
perfectly good game by just going bonkers after you've put hours into it...

Unless it has gotten better, if you have a low tolerance for wonky AI, you
might want to pass on this one.

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anjc
> I played a lot of VI and stuck with it for a few years

> It was a fun game and I got my value out of it

> you might want to pass on this [game that I played for years which is
> temporarily free]

?

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D13Fd
I had the same reaction to that comment. I bought Civ VI for the iPad for
maybe $40. I played it for probably 80 hours total, and felt like I got my
money’s worth.

It’s hard to imagine the mindset where you play a game for “years” and then
say it wasn’t worth the $50 or so it cost.

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pyrophane
Late game Civ 6 is nearly unplayable. Civ 6, in particular, really encourages
a "wide" play style, where you need to own many cities to win. Improving tiles
and planning districts in all of those cities requires so much micro-
management. Throw in a war on top of that where you have to move individual
units around and it is just all too much, especially as the time it takes to
calculate each turn increases. Does anyone know a good empire building game
that doesn't have this problem?

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dmoy
> Does anyone know a good empire building game that doesn't have this problem?

Stellaris, lets you put colonies on autopilot. It's ripe with _other_
problems, but handling late game scale isn't an issue unless you like to hyper
optimize.

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redisman
I've been trying Stellaris for a bit but it's very slow paced. It feels like
theres no tension of any kind at least in the first 1-2h of a game.

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dmoy
You can tweak the settings on the galaxy size or whatever to make things
smaller, or at least closer together

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AcerbicZero
I loved the earlier Civ games, and almost everything else with Sid Meier's
name attached, but these new ones feel so focused on being pretty that they
forget to have good mechanics. I honestly can't remember anything special
about Civ 4/5/6, or anything that would make me want to play one of them more
than the others.

Plus they've been putting so much of the interesting content behind a DLC wall
that giving away the base game is basically pure profit for them. Paradox
proved this business model with CK2 and EU4, which is why CK2 is like a $400
game now.

I think I'll just go play Alpha Centauri again instead.

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jointpdf
> _I honestly can’t remember anything special about Civ4 /5/6_

Aww c’mon, not even one thing? What about the greatest video game song ever
produced (Baba Yetu):
[https://youtu.be/IJiHDmyhE1A](https://youtu.be/IJiHDmyhE1A)

Agree on Alpha Centauri—definitely recommend picking up a copy on GOG for
anyone in the mood for a classic strategy game timesink.

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kyuudou
Add my vote to SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)

I played up to 5 and while I enjoyed it, was more like a 3/5 meh not bad
experience. I haven't even bothered with 6 and based on the comments here not
going to either.

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geraltofrivia
This seems like a very interesting move from Epic's side. Their giveaways had
some pretty nice giveaway games in the past (Assassins Creed Syndicate,
Darksiders 1 and 2, Amnesia, Into the Breach and Towerfall)[1], but recently
they've started giving away far bigger games like GTA V, and now Civ 6.

I wonder if this'll actually kickstart their market share.

[1] Source -
[https://old.reddit.com/r/EpicGamesPC/comments/e9vj2c/updated...](https://old.reddit.com/r/EpicGamesPC/comments/e9vj2c/updated_list_of_games_epic_gave_away_for_free/)

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INTPenis
Big games but also relatively old games.

That doesn't matter to me because I'm such a casual gamer I waited for the
first steam sale before I bought RDR2 on PC. Out of principle as a cheapskate
PC user.

But to most gamers GTA V and Civ VI are old games by now.

Either way, clearly Epic are trying to buy into the market share of Steam.
Well needed competition.

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arpa
No! No, no! Nicotine is less addictive than Civilisation. One person I
accidentally introduced to Civ burned her PSU on the first game - which lasted
16 hours - all she could muster was "one. More. Turn"....

Then again it's been so long since I played it. One quick game won't hurt.
It's just a few turns, is it not?..

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BurningFrog
Back in the Civ 3 days, I would lose weight playing it.

I'd play for 10-15 hours, and get hungrier and hungrier. But I just _had_ to
play one more turn.

~~~
iso1631
When Civ 3 came out I had to install windows on a new partition, lasted about
2 years -- that was last time I had windows at home

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mayank
Been playing Civ since Civ 1. Unfortunately, 6 was a bit of a miss in my
opinion. Civ 5 is still as addictive as nicotine.

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kcarter80
Civ 6 is deeper and better balanced than anything before it. What is your
specific complaint?

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Tomte
I played a little bit, but what really made the beginning hard for me was that
Barbarians suddenly "get away" from you. In V and earlier, a Barbarian came,
your warrior killed him, fine.

In VI the Barbarian is faster than you, so it gets out of sight quick, and
from then on you get one wave of Barbarians after another.

Also, I didn't understand the mechanics of the new religion system, but I
think I got it on a basic level at least by now.

In some ways, I like VI (the district system can be infuriating, but is
basically a good idea), I like the graphics, as well, but I never got "into"
it as I did with V.

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jldugger
Indeed, early game is hard because barbarians spawn repeatedly and out tech
you. They only spawn from camps, so once you expand your area of influence
it's less a problem but you need some way of dealing with spearmen early to
really clear them out.

The way it the barbarians work though is somewhat clever: they send out
scouts, and it seems like until their scout spots your city they won't spawn
attackers. So you're incentivized to harass their scouts early on at least,
but it's not really explained in any fashion beyond perhaps a visual ding.

After that the AI is so bad that you've basically won once the barbs are no
longer threatening. I got back into civ 6 last month after a two year break
and had forgotten this dynamic and kept starting over when the barbs felt
overwhelming and killed a slinger or captured a cheeky unprotected settler.

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qppo
The barb mechanic would be cool if it weren't for the fact that it's nigh
impossible to catch the scouts due to movement and terrain mechanics.

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wnevets
CIV6 was the first civ game I've played that I wasn't hooked on. I don't know
if its the gameplay, the AI or what but I just didn't care and regret my
purchase.

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danharaj
It's my heartfelt opinion that Beyond The Sword is the peak of the series by a
large margin. Cool though.

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aganame
On the Epic store? Too expensive.

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paulryanrogers
Why? Is more than one store client a bridge too far?

Would Steam have been preferred?

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falcolas
Personally, supporting Epic's anti-customer activities by purchasing from
their store is the bridge too far for me.

Buying exclusivity over finished games, the lack of common customer-friendly
features in their store (like reviews), and their past interactions with indy
developers (not allowing some non-exclusive new releases on EGS) have all
joined into one intolerably heavy load of straw.

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ohyeshedid
I have a different view. I'm not on an epic supported platform, so I don't and
can't use their launcher. I wouldn't buy anything directly from them, but I
will log in and claim my free copies, in hopes that it cost them money in
licensing fees.

I don't know if they make bulk licensing deals, or pay a reduced price per
copy claimed, but I hope it's the latter and I'm just a drain on their
budgets.

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ksec
Is EPIC store a Windows platform only? CIV VI had macOS version but doesn't
seems to be available on EPIC store.

Still a little sad with the current state of Mac Gaming. macOS install base
went from 10-20M to now 100M and yet things hasn't changed a bit.

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drbw
I spent most of the money I'd saved from my summer job during my first year at
university on a 42MB hard drive for my Amiga just so I could play Civ I
without continually swapping floppies.

... and now I feel old.

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Medicalidiot
I am a massive Civ VI fan even though I understand the criticism. Running it
on Linux is a far better experience for me than V, but both are phenomenal
strategy games in their own right.

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GeekyBear
Not supported on MacOS.

You'll have to load Windows on Boot Camp to play.

Annoyingly, you aren't informed of the limitation until after you sign up for
an account and install their store and client software.

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cameronbrown
Or Linux/Proton. Can't stand Epic for this.

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koolba
What's the install format / DRM for this?

Any chance that it runs on Wine?

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fermentation
EGS, so windows only DRM. Steam has a Linux port available but it runs pretty
terribly (I got maybe 20fps with a Titan XP SE on Ubuntu). ProtonDB lists this
game as "bronze" so it probably doesn't run very well.

So in general this game does not work well outside of Windows.

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badRNG
Have you tried running it in Proton? I've noticed Proton seems to run at
higher FPS than a lot of the Linux specific ports

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downerending
Cool. Can't quite tell, but it looks like this is only for the Windows
platform?

Also, "free until" seems to mean "and then you can run it free forever"?

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natosaichek
It runs fine on linux.

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iso1631
Through Steam sure.

This seems to be free through epic's own system. I signed up and it gave me an
MSI to download. Fail.

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chrstphrhrt
Too bad it got hobbled on the last Mac update. With Metal I find it completely
unplayable and it doesn't do fullscreen.

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totalZero
I think the Epic store offering doesn't support Mac, but...

Switch back to OpenGL. It's an option available in the Aspyr splash screen
that pops up when you try to launch the game from Steam.

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downerending
Argh, tried this and after messing with it for 20 minutes, it simply won't
install on my year-old, completely up-to-date Windows 10 Dell laptop. Fie on
Epic.

This is why I don't buy games any more.

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paulryanrogers
Friendly reminder FreeCiv is free forever--albeit with less glam

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pluc
It's not free, it's a trade for your identity.

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mavhc
now they know my email address! I am but a faceless drone now

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ra7
I just got Civ 6 a few weeks ago. I've never played it before. Does anyone
know good resources (websites, videos) to learn basics of the game?

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fsociety
Gamer Grampz has some really good videos, and full playthroughs, if you want
to learn it more. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaGxTImj_nhq-
EZ7VAhaukA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaGxTImj_nhq-EZ7VAhaukA)

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bondolo
Yay, GTA 5 a few days ago and now another AAA game.

I've claimed them both but don't actually have a Windows PC to play them on.

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PureParadigm
It looks like the strategy here is to use free Civ Vi to try to get you to
install the Epic Games store. If you have Windows, this may be compelling, but
it also comes without a lot of the extra content that you'll need to play with
friends if they use the extra content.

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lavp
Civ V is where it's at

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reddotX
platform Windows.. meh

wake me up when it's available on Linux

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HomeDeLaPot
The Steam version is available on Linux

