Even great developers hit a speed bump every now and again. And while Firaxis have continued to do a great job with the XCOM series, the last couple of Civilization launches — namely Civilization 5 and Civilization: Beyond Earth — didn’t go down that well.
Good news: that’s not the case with Civilization 6.
Amidst all the drama surrounding the Nintendo NX, it’s easy to forget that a few video games have come out this week. It’s the launch day for Battlefield 1, for a start, although people have been playing early thanks to pre-order bonuses.
It’s also the launch day for Civilization 6 — and so far, it’s doing very, very well. It’s got a 92% user rating on Steam at the time of rating from more than 600 reviews, making it the highest rated game from Firaxis on Steam and 2K’s second highest rated game on Steam.
We’ll have our full thoughts on the game sometime next week — review copies weren’t supplied until late in the piece — but the general vibe is that Civilization 6 has all of the features that Civ 5 didn’t get until two expansions were released. Firaxis is getting praise for the level of optimisation as well, which is always good to see (especially considering that the Civ series is a popular game for playing on laptops).
Users have already started putting together cheat sheets and guides to help get to grips with the new systems. Here’s a handy primer on the district system:
It’s also knocked off Skyrim, Fallout 4, Rust, GTA 5, ARK: Survival Evolved and Rocket League off their perch in the top games list on Steam, according to Steam Charts.
The Steam price for Australians is still an exorbitant $US69.95, but you can get some better offerings through third-party retailers like Green Man Gaming and Amazon. Brick and mortar retailers are also selling the new Civ for around $79, which isn’t fantastic but still better than paying over $90.
Comments
19 responses to “People Are Pretty Happy With Civilization 6 So Far”
I’ve played 40 minutes @alexwalker and was ready to pull a sickie. It’s so good. I enjoyed Civ V immensely but it always felt like it was missing things until the final expansion. This has none of that. So far it’s fantastic 😀
Have not purchased yet, but the region locking is… wired…
This is, for example, the British region lock for keys:
Warning! This product is region locked and it CANNOT be activated and played in the following countries: Asia/Pacific Region, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Bolivia, Brazil, Bhutan, Canada, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Christmas Island, Ecuador, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), French Guiana, Guyana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, British Indian Ocean Territory, Japan, Cambodia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Mongolia, Macau, Maldives, Mexico, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Pakistan, Paraguay, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Taiwan, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam.
And due to this over done of regional locking, a patch that’s come out to fix a few minor, but annoying issues, is out in some places but not others…
That looks like a description from a sale page from a Steam key reseller. You can’t really blame the publisher if they want to users to buy their stuff from more reputable places, or at least storefronts where Firaxis/2K will get their fair cut of the sale.
its only 2k that do it because they want to force us to pay their bullshit asking price. remember alex, the bullied Green Man Gaming to screw us over and they were the publisher that tried to to do the same thing to GoG and CDPR. They were also the very first Publisher to Increase the price we pay when our Dollar was gaining strength against the US Dollar.
If there is one publisher that you should screw over when it comes to buying a game its 2K. Having said that you can bypass the region lock by using a VPN to ACTIVATE the game. I did that with my copy of Mafia 3 as the site i brought it through tested it first ( they did the same thing with the Stick of Truth to bypass the censoring)
does it have a spectator mode (ie set all spots to be ai players so we can sit back and watch the mayhem unfold)?
Looks like not. It does have hotstead, internet and LAN modes, but no spectator-only mode.
That said, there was an AI-only game run by the devs as marketing, so it should be possible to make a mod to let you do it without much difficulty. They streamed it here – https://www.twitch.tv/2k/v/95936655
Yay, glad I pulled the trigger and purchased it now. hopefully it holds up. I only clocked about 1-2 hours in vanilla Civ V and never purchased the expansions. Now if I can just get home from work.
I played more hours than that in vanilla Civ V but it soured me on the whole thing enough I also didn’t purchase the expansions or really get as deep into it as past Civs… if anything is going to lure me back to PC gaming it might be a great new Civ game. Waiting to hear some reports after people have had it longer, though. I loved Civ V the first day or two…
update… I played quite a few hours over the weekend and it seems pretty good so far. most of the changes seem for the better so far. Still getting used to them mostly but no major complaints as yet.
Wow you missed out. Vanilla Civ V was really good I thought, but it was excellent with the expansions. Easily one of the best games ever in my opinion when you add the expansions.
Yeah I heard that, I think the problem was too many other games coming out and due to my early experience I just…..never went back to it. I thought about picking up the bundle for all DLC etc, but then I heard Civ VI was coming out and just waited for that.
I am finding it visually really hard to look it, not sure why it is. The map feels cluttered and the units seem too small to me. Its weird been playing CIV games for like ever but I find this one a strain to look at. Dont get me wrong I love the design etc, just cant work out why. Its very strange. Its just gives me a headache. Sigh.
I do love some of the changes.
I’ve missed playing CIV. When I upgraded to Win10 CIV was getting a memory leak and would crash my system after a few turns. Tried everything but reinstalling the OS but couldn’t get it running. So I can’t wait to get in and play this.
Its getting Australia tax again. Its listed as USD $59.99 in US. https://steamdb.info/app/289070/
Never ever ever pay full price for games from 2k.
Via Australia it’s $69.95 (USD) on Steam. What’s extra insulting is Civ V is also the same price???
Jump on Humble bundle and VI is $59.99 (USD) but V is $69.95???
My brain hurts.
Just bought it – reminded me of buying Civ2 almost 20 years to the day – can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.
that steam chart just makes me facepalm…. so low any game really other than top 2
I’m enjoying the way it forces you to specialise cities as well as the great people revamp.
Just got John Monash as a great general, makes me wonder if any other Aussies are in it.