izigame.me

I've played every Civ since the first one. This game has the chance be great - maybe in a few months with updates and mods, but right now, it's not great. It has some fatal flaws.
The game doesn't lack features - it is FULL of mechanics and depth - but the game is set up in such a way that prevents you from fully enjoying all these mechanics and depth.
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THE POSITIVES:
1) The city growth system is really smart and fun. I absolutely love how they removed workers and changed it into a system where you pick tiles to improve when your city grows. Same with specialists - they are very powerful and important additions to the city. I overall really like the quarters system.
2) Commanders are cool and very powerful. Units are no longer upgraded but their air, land, or fleet commanders are. This adds a very powerful unit that can "load" units into it for transport and also provides buffs. The commanders are very powerful and carry over through ages, so they add a new unit that is important to protect through the whole game. Fantastic.
3) Related to both combat and the growth mechanic is how cities are captured. Now, you have to capture not just the city center but also all urban quarters of the city to capture it. This is a really interesting idea because you can now imagine massive armies fighting through mega-cities. Imagine a city with quarters on both sides of a river. Your army capture the city on one side, but the river gives the defender a line of defense. Interesting dilemma that adds a lot of depth.
4) The town/city dynamic is SUCH A SMART IDEA - I can now build settlements without making them full cities if I want to just control certain resources, chokepoints, etc. And the towns can be used to support cities by specialization that spreads their food, science, production, etc to the full fledged cities. I am loving this mechanic because it lets you mix and match playing tall and wide. You can play tall in a few key cities and have your "wide" empire of towns support the cities.
5) Definitely has the "one more turn..." feel!!
6) The AI used air power!! The AI seems perfectly serviceable. Definitely not perfect but absolutely playable and a reasonable base to build on.
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THE NEGATIVES:
1) This is HUGE. Any Civ game that doesn't let me play an infinite number of turns isn't a Civ game. The game just ends at the end of the modern age. No one more turn option. This is a deal breaker for me. Whatever else, please fix this!
2) The ages system is clearly meant to make it so the human player can't just win by the renaissance or whatever. They want to perhaps handicap the human player to an extent so the whole game is engaging. And there's some merit to this. I am finding the late game enjoyable in a way because it's challenging. BUT - THIS IS HUGE - the system is so abrupt that you're not playing a whole Civ game. You're playing three separate mini-games that are connected by the cities you own. I simply can't believe FIraxis chose to do this, but for example - your military units CHANGE LOCATION when an age transitions. So if you're in a war, too bad - units move. You can't research techs from an age after the transition to the next or choose to finish a prior age wonder. This is a flaw that really affects the gameplay.
3) I agree that the UI is barebones. And there are small annoyances - for example, if the AI offers me a city, I can't look at the map to see where it is because if I close the negotiation screen, it counts as rejecting the offer. There is just an overall lack of information, and things feel like a blackbox.
4 The modern age ends with battleships and tanks. I am guessing they're adding more ages/units with future DLCs, but the game doesn't really run to the present. No helicopters, missile destroyers, etc
5) Overbuilding seems cool - but how do I know what I'm losing? It's not clear what the effects of removing prior age buildings is.
6) Pacing seems a bit off. I am going to play a game with extended age length to see if that helps.
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NEUTRAL - these are things where I am withholding judgement for now and these could be positives or negatives long-term:
1) Leader attributes, ideology, civics, religion - these mechanics feel... incomplete? I cannot articulate my issues here. There's depth here (the leader attributes have a lot of impact for example) but I'm having a hard time immersing myself in them. Religion is extremely barebones. I put this as neutral because it could just be me and it's likely these will be expanded in the future.
2) No great people? This feels very incomplete, and the mechanic it's replaced with is really unclear (I was playing China and this mechanic basically disappeared after ancient age??). Again, this could be a me problem.
3) Trade...this grants you powerful resources that give yields. I think I like this but ... there's no trade screen unless I have a merchant, so I can't see my trade overview? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so, and it goes back to the UI not giving enough info. Also, no companies! You have factories, but they don't function like companies as far as I can tell but I'll need to play more with it. I hope companies come back.
4) There is now no more resource requirement to build certain units. For example, everyone can build tanks - but if you own oil, your tanks add attack points. I am unsure how I feel about this. I really like the strategic dilemma of needing to capture resources in Civ VI to build a modern army/buildings, so I do miss that part. I can see the arguments for and against, so I put this in neutral. Maybe the effects of owning the resource need to be more powerful/impactful? So owning oil would make your tanks much better, not just a little better, and owning rubber makes them even better.
5) The decoupling of the leader and civilization means I am playing a game where Confucius is currently leading the United States of America in the Modern Age. I go back and forth on this mechanic. I have no problem with the idea of a culture "evolving" from an ancient one to modern (i.e., Norman to French) - but the total decoupling of the leader from the Civ does take out some historical immersion. Overall I think this is a mechanic the community just needs to play more with to get a sense of. I am holding judgement right now. But it's not a dealbreaker from me, and I could imagine enjoying the game with this mechanic remaining the same.
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Overall, I bought the $140 ($130 plus $10 tax) Founders Edition because it's Civ and I always buy the full version of Civ - but this isn't quite the game I was hoping for. It has a lot of potential to grow, and the city growth mechanics (where workers are removed) and city/town dichotomy are fantastic changes that Firaxis should be applauded for. And the combat changes - the commanders and the idea of all city quarters needing to be captured - add so much depth.
And that's a theme of the game - it DOES have depth. This isn't a game without features - it has SO many features. The problem is you can't fully enjoy them because of the abrupt age transitions and the inability to play endlessly (no "just one more turn...").
I personally think the best solution to this problem would be to let the player decide when to move to the next age - for example, let's say I want to build a few more treasure fleets in the exploration age before moving to the modern. Why does the game force me into the modern age - why can't I stay in the exploration and leave at my pace?
Firaxis, you have a fantastic base of a game with so many features and so much depth! Now please let me play it at my pace without railroading me through the ages!