My philosophy is that Civ 5 and Civ 6 are just fine. My friend was going to buy 7 on release and I was like "yeah, but you can just go play Civ 6. It's not like it's a bad game just because the new one is out." And I'm glad I convinced him otherwise because of how "okay" Civ 7 has been so far. Nothing against the game, I just already have the last three Civ games with all DLC and there is still a mountain of content that we already have to play with each other.

I honestly forgot about civ 7. Wow what a crazy long month it's been..

I'm not the person that you asked, but I do hold the same opinion. My biggest reasons are:

• Civs are far more incentivised to expand in VI, resulting in more conflict
• Districts make city placement a much more complicated question
• The city state influence game is both much more interesting than just a spending race and also has more game-changing rewards
• The culture and science victories are much more interactive with other civs now, rather than just hiding away and waiting for a bar to fill

I don't think V is bad by any means. It was the one that got me into the series after bouncing off III and IV. I just think that most of the changes in VI were improvements

puts on flame resistant hazmat suit

... Civ 7 is the Civ series shitty attempt at copying Humankind, Humankind is currently $12.50 USD, $25 for all DLC + base game, and is a way better deal than Civ 7 at $70, if not just actually a better game than Civ 5 or Civ 6 + all their existing DLC/expansions.

Are you including Brave New World in that comparison? I've never played Civ 5 without it.

I'm still playing 4

Thanks for the tip, any chance it runs natively on Linux?

Has there even been a Civ release that was great at the start?

Does Alpha Centauri count as a civ game?

Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper

Requires 3rd-Party Account: 2K Account for Online Interactions

Somebody please wake me up when these atrocities are gone. (And thanks, Steam, for making them easy to discover.)

Yes, and Gods & Kings. I did technically play the game without them but it was long enough ago now that I don't really remember it without them

Thanks for the perspective.

Natively? I don't think so.

But I've been running it via proton on my steam deck for... over a year now, only real problem is the HUD is a bit smallish.

Haven't played Humankind, but Amplitude's previous Civ-like "Endless Legend" was amazing and very fresh take on the genre. And it looked like Firaxis were already trying to copy some of it in Civ 6, so I'm not surprised if this trend continues.

Bring back the UI team from 6 and I'm sold.

Or the 1996 Colonization?

should have kept that Luigi kid as QA

Me too. It's still the best and the most moddable.

I'll pick up Civ 7 in a few years when I can get the full pack for a reasonable price. It's the way Civ works.

When this game came out, took it as my cue to buy Civ 6 + the DLCs.

Civ peaked at Civ 4 and all its expansions for me.

Yes, doomstacks were a problem, but hard pivoting all the way over to Civ 5's only one unit per tile led to a whole bunch of other bullshit in the opposite direction.

Humankind ... just has better inter game system synergy, and those individual systems seem better thought out, more engaging and less... cheesable, exploitable, to a great extent due to how everything meshes together.

The first few months after launch absolutely were rough, with some pretty significant bugs in specific, but often crucial scenarios... but they got ironed out, and the result is great.

Also a lot of the initial backlash was from the pollution / global warming mechanic... they quickly added an option to just turn most of its effects off, but to me the entire thing read as a bunch of people being used to massively colonizing, industrializing and war mongering and then being angry that ... that has consequences.

Guess those people have trouble grasping the concept of an externality.

Oh well, they've all been filtered, recent steam reviews are 'very positive.'