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.'

Linux port doesn’t have denuvo
Don’t ask me how I know.

I remember being very frustrated in that game, but I was also probably like 12 and dumb. So I can take your word for it. I'll count it!

Civilization 4 was good at launch. Naturally it got even better over time.

Worth a mention that 4 is the most recent of these games released primary on physical hardware. That meant patching was a more difficult process so they actually had to hire a bunch of play testers to test stuff (and fix the problems they found). Contrast that to the approach of the most recent three games, which had their customers pay $70 for the privilege of being beta testers.

This is a shitty way to develop games. We should be mad about it because we deserve better.

I think a lot of people are waiting for the first Civ7 expansion pack to be released, whenever that may be.

Civ 6 without R+F, GS feels like a completely different game. As an example, in vanilla you can expand anywhere right up to someone's borders whereas with the expansion straying too far from your territory you could just lose it to influential pressure from neighbouring cities.

Do you know who made the port?

Civ6 still isn't in a state that I'm happy with playing it over civ 5, or even civ4. What makes them think I'd give civ7 the time of day?

also no hotseat multiplayer

I mean, each of these games are just the same as the previous but with less content more or less?

You should replay it. It is imho the highlight of the series because of a few changes compared to other civ games:

• Focusing on the terraforming and colonisation of alpha Centauri allowed them to have an actual story where you uncovered stuff about the planet and its indigenous lifeforms while you played. It's from the 90s, so there is no branching storylines, alternative endings or stuff like that, but even after repeated playthroughs it's nice to have some progression that's more than a tech tree.
• Having only seven leaders (and having them all in every game, no smaller or larger games) might seem weird and tbh, larger maps feel a bit empty. However, each technology, city improvement or wonder gives you some (well narrated) text bits of one of them, giving them so much more character than the leaders in your average game of civ. The hatred for Miriam has become a meme, which wouldn't have happened if these characters weren't extremely well written. Ironically this is imho of of the reasons why the add on didn't work as well - the few bits that were added for each of the new factions just weren't enough.

Although there are more differences, like eg a unit design workshop, the game loop feels quite similar to civ. It's like they took civ 4, polished it and just decided to make it... Dunno, meaningful. And while that's not per se relevant for in game decisions such as "where to settle" or "what to build", it just makes the whole experience so much better. It's still my comfort game that I boot up for another play on my deck every now and then.

They do make changes throughout the series, but every new game is a complete reset to a basic game so they can sell you all the DLC and expansions to make it into a full game.