Which Civilization?

[LittleArmadillo0]

Sid Meier's Civilization

 

It's a game series that I've wanted to get into but was never sure which iteration to start with. I would be open to suggestion for any who've played any of the game which one would be best for a beginner in the series.

[Malcador]

Play 4. And only 4.

[Hurlshort]

You can't really go wrong with 4-6, but 4 will be the steepest learning curve. I would say 5 is the easiest to jump into. There are also a load of expansions with each one, some being dramatically different, like Colonization.

[Lexx]

It's funny because I always only played the very first civilization and never any other. It was fun and now makes me nostalgic.

[Katphood]

I have III and V in my Steam library but haven't tried any of them yet.

[Lexx]

Just looked it up again. What I have actually played was Civilisation 2, because it had this windows interface all around.

[Starwars]

IV is easily the best one I think. V is a bit of a snore if you ask me (though I did play it a lot when the last expansion was released) and VI has a lot of fun mechanics but is also the most broken.

 

V and VI are pretty different than the ones before. The change to having one unit per tile makes a big difference in how the game plays out (mostly negative in my opinion).

 

IV is definitely my choice overall.

[neotemplar]

At the moment 5 is the best for newcomers.

 

6 has good potential but is very raw it will take 1 more huge DLC (coming 14.02.2019) + some patch period to complete it. Better try it in spring/summer.

 

4 is very hardcore, has some doubtful mechanics I don't like and looks a bit out-of-date. Still it is the deepest and the most mature one.

 

I suggest 5. France, Korea or Russia are very solid.

[IndiraLightfoot]

At the moment 5 is the best for newcomers.

 

6 has good potential but is very raw it will take 1 more huge DLC (coming 14.02.2019) + some patch period to complete it. Better try it in spring/summer.

 

4 is very hardcore, has some doubtful mechanics I don't like and looks a bit out-of-date. Still it is the deepest and the most mature one.

 

I suggest 5. France, Korea or Russia are very solid.

As a huge fan of the Civilization series, where I have played each iteration almost religiously, I approve of this analysis.

[Sarex]

I mean all are good (only played 3 and up), I remember 4 being hard and 5 being very easy to win. The 6th one is solid, but the thing that annoys me to no end is that everything you build is permanently there. Oh and unit stacking in 4 was very boring and annoying when you reached end game.

[injurai]

V Complete is probably the best overall.

 

Though I think VI could be the best very soon with Gathering storm. The best part of VI is they have finally unstacked cities and made land-development finally a meaningful task.

 

I really don't agree that 4 was the pinnacle of design, it just had a lot of sub-par features which made it over all more complex. But V Complete is feature rich, and VI launched with most of V's features and has since added in the rest and is now expanding.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, I have such high hopes for Gathering Storm - heck, I even preordered it, and I've watched Ed Beach's introductory vids with the new civs and features with whetted appetite.

[Chilloutman]

Civ 5 is da best, get community mod/patch and you are good to go

[Starwars]

I thought Civ V's way of penalizing expansion is one of the most... downright boring things they could ever do to a civilization game. Best thing they did in VI is actually making it a good thing to actually expand beyond 4 cities again.

There are optimal ways to play VI and IV as well of course but yeah... expanding is GOOD.

[IndiraLightfoot]

@Starwars Totally agree.

[Leferd]

Civ IV because Mr. Spock and

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

I didn't really appreciate the stacks of doom (lots of units in one group) in Civ4 either, and one unit per hex in Civ5 was too scrimpy, Civ 6 has struck a nice balance, methinks.

[injurai]

So Vanilla V was a hot mess, though I agreed with the shift to hexes, and city-states are one of the best features to be introduced to the series and has only gotten better over time. Gods & Kings was really cool, but still a bit lacking, and Brave New World was incredible. Ed Beach was the lead-designer on both those expansions and is now the lead-designer on Civ VI and all it's expansions.

 

Civ VI fixes a TON of bad design from V. It just has some really stupid AI behavior, probably because they hadn't yet internalized all the new system mechanics. World Congress for example was intentionally deferred to be an expansion feature because it's implementation is so dependent on it being tuned around the rest of the game. But AI that has to be there day one just suffers. At least warmongering penalties/bonuses and agendas improve the depth of diplomacy even if flaky at the moment.

 

Besieging cities in V was no fun because you are trying to wrap single tile units around a single tile. Though open field combat was better since stacks were gone. Civ VI legion feature is a fantastic middle ground. Now you can sanely escort settlers/workers and even pair with support units like a battering ram for a siege. Plus now cities are spread out so that pain-point is far less anyways and combat is noticeably more dynamic in all forms. Districts improve the actually planning of your Civ which was previously rote and dry and usually had a right answer based on what your long term build was supposed to be. The harbor district is great as you don't have to have your city right on the water to have a navy. This as defensive implications and opens up land invasions as being more important. Workers being single use is nicer as you don't end up with a bunch of idle unites that you feel you need to spend your resources keeping occupied. Roads being automatically generated based on trade routes is secretly the best feature.

 

Separating Civics into their own tree which progresses with culture is way better, and makes culture finally more meaningful all game long. Government policies are super fantastic, and really enrich the game. Religion has way more sane mechanics than it did in V. Really the best part of religion in V was it was another system by which you could dominate, but it was also really poorly envisioned at the time. Happiness and golden ages in V are much better handled in VI with Ages. The fact that you can rise out of a dark age is cool. Emergencies are a nice feature that came out of Beyond Earths more quest oriented design, which helps give rewarding objectives to the player beyond coming up with your own strategic goals.

 

Yeah, check out Civ V for sure if you can't wait. Gathering Storm though just looks immaculate and I haven't even mentioned the features that it will be bringing to Civ VI, well other than World Congress coming back.

Edited January 5, 2019 by injurai

[pmp10]

For a beginner Civ IV would be easiest.

Unless you are strongly into warfare in which case try Civ V.

[Chilloutman]

dont like civ 6 districts, cities spanning half continent is just stupid

[Starwars]

dont like civ 6 districts, cities spanning half continent is just stupid

 

In Civ V (and VI for that matter) your archers can fire over a whole tile. How far would that be translated into real life?

 

Not saying you're wrong of course but... it's not exactly a realistic series, neither in terms of how history plays out or how things work in general.

[InsaneCommander]

Playing the Giant World map with real locations in Civ 5 was quite memorable. It took a lot of time. I did it with England once and tried again twice, with Spain and Russia. But didn't get to the "20th century" in these last two games.

 

I also used the ingame editor to provide units and cities when Europe was supposed to be colonizing the Americas. And for WWI and II.

[Malcador]

I really don't agree that 4 was the pinnacle of design, it just had a lot of sub-par features which made it over all more complex

 

 

Like what?

[injurai]

Well, I'm speaking more in relation to how a lot of it's features have been made deeper in later entries. So when you look back, IV has a lot of systems but the mechanics of each is shallower. In VI systems are richer but you have a bit less off them. In IV, you as the player make less meaningful decisions and less interesting variation unfolds from game to game. Systems that basically give you rote chores to make optimal choices gets old pretty fast. Outside if exploration, choosing where to settle, and your basic victory path, the rest played itself. Stacked units and workers were always such a boring part of the game to me. Civ V sort of inverted the issue by having one unit per tile, which made open combat more interesting but frustrated siege efforts. Also just working the map with workers is always a really boring exercise in chores. So Civ VI in my mind really fixed a lot of the foundational issues in creating interesting map play, and breaking from the more optimal build strategies that dominated IV and V.

[Malcador]

Guess specific examples were too much to hope for.  I should get around to trying Civ VI, maybe when it's not so expensive.  Or maybe just wait until they go with Civ VII and get it all for cheap