Pic relevant. I’ve tried playing the new Civ games several times, and quickly end up quitting because I find them too overwhelming and find it hard to want to deal with the learning curve.
It occurred to me that part of the problem might be that I was jumping into a very old franchise that has been getting increasingly complicated over the years. Had a hunch I would have better luck with the original, so I went onto one of those play-dos-in-your-browser sites, dove in, and sure enough I am hooked!
Do I know what I’m doing? Not really, but stuff is happening and my civilization is growing, and it’s a good time.
I mean they have been rolling out updates and fixes since launch, couple of content packs, balance tweaks, reworked a number of systems…
They’re currently working on a scenario, WW2 Pacific, sounds at least broadly similar to the kinds of scenarios in earlier Civ games, in concept.
I would hope that after that, they can eventually get to something approaching proper mod tools.
Yeah, it was a bit of a buggy mess of a launch, no arguing that, but they have been and are still just slowly refining and improving the game.
Of the seemingly fairly small number of people still playing it… Recent Reviews = Mostly Positive.
Personally, I don’t know why you’d play any deep strategy game multiplayer.
Every time I’ve tried multiplayer, in any 4X / Grand Strategy game… everyone is annoyed that I am taking too long, to, you know, evaluate this considerably complex strategy game, with tons of potential upside to taking your time to micro manage things.
If I am able to take my time, I tend to snowball and by mid or late game, be either winning to the point everyone else quits, or be the only reason why a group of players vs group of AIs game has not totally fallen apart yet.
But I am one of those apparently rare people who plays single player on the biggest maps and slowest time scales my system can manage…
… I just have way more enjoyment that way, and I appreciate that the AI in Humankind at least seems to me to be generally better at playing the game than most AIs in most 4X / Grand Strat games, when the player and AIs are on an equal footing in terms of bonuses/maluses.
My partner and I love to sit next to each other and play these kinds of games co-op — or mostly co-op since they have a bad habit of going Gandhi in 4X games. It’s us versus the world, as it’s always been. ❤️
Ah, well, I’ve never had a partner with any interest in strategy games.
Foreign concept to me.
That is a pretty good reason to care about multiplayer tho, lol.