Conglomoblog Update: Civ, Gears, WoW, Business

I’m sorry for the record slowdown around here. This past week was crazy with a few game launches and RL stuff.

Civilization VI

Graev and I both picked up Civ 6. I’ll be the very first to admit that I’m not as familiar with Civ as I thought I was from playing Civ 4. I get the general idea of how to play, how to take a turn, the general ideas, etc. What I don’t have down at all are the strategies or “best practices” of how to play.

My games are always SO DANG LONG. Is that normal? Right now I chalk it up to not having a strategy, therefore spending hours going in multiple directions when I should be focusing on one solid victory.

Gears of War 4

I think Graev and I are making good progress in Gear 4. We’ve come across a few major reveals in the story, and I can tell they’ve definitely set themselves up for a new trilogy.

This is one I still plan to more formally write my thoughts on, but for now I’m happy to say it’s fun and I recommend it for fans of the previous games.

WoW

KGC is still progressing in raids. We’ve moved into Heroics now, and plan to pick up the pace now that 7.1 is coming out tomorrow. I’m actually going to write another post on 7.1 here this morning.

  • Civ playthroughs are long, you might not be doing anything wrong. Unless your goal is to go for a quick Domination victory of course (that’s capturing all capitals). I wouldn’t say you are at disadvantages not having played the series in a long time. While the general principles are the same, there are enough fundamental changes in Civ6 to review all past strategies and not blindly adopt them.

    I haven’t seen a lot of bugs so far, but I do expect a bug fix patch to be release in 6-8 weeks. There a few minor annoyances that might be easy to fix.

  • A typical game of Civ5 on a standard map at standard speed for me would last about 14 hours in total.

    I haven’t actually finished a standard sized map game in Civ6 yet, but my current game on such a map has been about 7 hours now and I’m barely at turn 240 (out of 500 possible, assuming no victory by then).

    Yes, Civ is long. “Online” speed is the fastest (I’m told. I’ve never actually used it). “Quick” is 30% faster than “Standard” (says so in the tooltip). so if you think standard is taking too long… make you next game quick or online?

  • I suppose the idea of a “long” game has to be considered relative it being a world build strategy game where one progresses for a single tribe struggling to learn how to make a pot to hold food in, up to a final conflict helidropping in giant fusion powered killer robots onto an international foe’s Mars project launching facility, which probably should be a relatively long process.

    I haven’t picked up Civ6 yet as I want to see if the price drops in the next Steam holiday sale, but check to see if there is a accelerated technology research feature under options.

    For me some of the best moments of playing Civ have been discovering what research approaches work out the best for various civilizations through trial and error, so what might seem a labor to muddle through still can have moments of wonder in discovery.