Sid Meier's Civilization VI

 PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 1628 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 947 out of 1628
  2. Mixed: 376 out of 1628
  3. Negative: 305 out of 1628
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  1. Wulfrune
    Oct 30, 2016
    2
    I've waited years for this game, years. Being a devote fan of Civ 5, I couldn't wait for the day to come for the release, but when it came, my initial thoughts were one of disappointment and disappointment turned to loathing. The ridiculous load times, the lighting which beggars belief... I mean why would you have what appears to be "day / night" lighting in a game that spans time periodsI've waited years for this game, years. Being a devote fan of Civ 5, I couldn't wait for the day to come for the release, but when it came, my initial thoughts were one of disappointment and disappointment turned to loathing. The ridiculous load times, the lighting which beggars belief... I mean why would you have what appears to be "day / night" lighting in a game that spans time periods in years? Awful twee cartoon graphics of leaders that I just want to punch, let alone play with. Untidy menus, overzealous space bar where you click to end the turn of one unit only to jump through multiple ones. The AI is frankly laughable making odd choices. Oh my god, I so wanted to love this game but to be quite frank, I doubt that I'll even complete one game with it, it's that bad. They had every chance to make this ground breaking and honestly you SHOULD break new ground with this game, as you bury it away, forget about it and go back to playing CIV 5. If Sid Meier's isn't holding his head down in shame at this travesty, he isn't the gaming god I thought he was. An awful game, avoid.… Expand
  2. 11Deadface
    Oct 30, 2016
    1
    Disgusting PC game.on computers disgusting retarded graphics,awkward control,piracy is rampant.Games crash,they need to spend hours installing,downloading updates and always buy the video card.
  3. tomxxx
    Oct 25, 2016
    0
    The game has amazing graphics and music. And now the good things end. The game receives from me 0 as grphics may increase playability, but you won't ge any ponits for that only. It is not strategy game, it is a game for Sims lovers. Funny, nice and not demanding. AI is so stupid, incompetent and ridiculous that I stopped playing it after one day.

    To devs - make more units per tile and    The game has amazing graphics and music. And now the good things end. The game receives from me 0 as grphics may increase playability, but you won't ge any ponits for that only. It is not strategy game, it is a game for Sims lovers. Funny, nice and not demanding. AI is so stupid, incompetent and ridiculous that I stopped playing it after one day.

    To devs - make more units per tile and it wil solve AI war waging (and it will be more interesting and realistic than wars taking two eras). Make dipplomatic actions more viable for AI, ie coalitions against stronger civs, you wont need to buff AI so strongly. The game is very bad.    … Expand
  4. Braggi
    Oct 25, 2016
    6
    Flickering UI was in the end resolved by a simple driver update.
    First impression: a chatty tutorial that can not be saved (ORLY, Firaxis??).
    Very old issue: Lack of special resources still completely prevents combat unit production. Stupid. STUPID. My Civi immersion once died long time ago when being forced to build horse carriages instead of tanks ... Overall enough fresh ideas for    Flickering UI was in the end resolved by a simple driver update.
    First impression: a chatty tutorial that can not be saved (ORLY, Firaxis??).
    Very old issue: Lack of special resources still completely prevents combat unit production. Stupid. STUPID. My Civi immersion once died long time ago when being forced to build horse carriages instead of tanks ...

    Overall enough fresh ideas for someone who quit after III. Cities now grow organically over the map, no dedicated screen. Craftsmen with limited actions are ok with me, a consequence of playing on the main map only.
    I may tinker my own religion. There are now two trees to explore - science and culture, the second for social progress. Fine tuning your own government with policies is nice, the execution as text cards in boardgame style in not. Leaders are generated, providing small boosts but often needing very specific requirements to be triggered.
    Overall interesting dimensions, but too much micromanagement for the gain.

    There seems to be no limit to a civi's expansion, which IMO is a balance issue. Spamming settlers seems a valid strategy. Minor Civs to interact with, good. Initial survival pressure comes from barbarians roaming the lands, manageable.

    New techs pop up very fast from the start, especially as two trees trigger in parallel. Pacing feels strange.
    Treasury became an issue for me, with lots of tradeoff, felt ok. Compared to the old CIV also keept troop count lower, good. Units gain experience and may level with a small tree of improvements.

    AI seems stupid; sorry. Not impressed by diplomacy or war strategy yet.

    Overall: Tons of details, but hard to get the big picture.
    Will be a nice detraction to explore casually, but I don't see me spending lots of time with it.    … Expand
  5. Dictat0R
    Jan 6, 2017
    4
    It wasn't very fun for me. I couldn't make much sense in many things, I tried for 4 hours. I don't play it any more it's boring. And the AI didn't make any sense after one encounter I had....
  6. Silverzapper
    Jul 14, 2017
    4
    This review is coming from someone who has enjoyed Civilization in the past. I would rate Civ5 an 8 or 9. So it isn't that I don't like Civilization. I just have a problem with this one. I want to like this game, I really do. Every so often I try to play, hoping for a fun and enjoyable experience, and every time I come out disappointed. There are many things that the game does really well,This review is coming from someone who has enjoyed Civilization in the past. I would rate Civ5 an 8 or 9. So it isn't that I don't like Civilization. I just have a problem with this one. I want to like this game, I really do. Every so often I try to play, hoping for a fun and enjoyable experience, and every time I come out disappointed. There are many things that the game does really well, but the AI utterly ruins it. If you are familiar with the Civilization series, you should be familiar with the AI and how it is well, lacking to say the least. Well it's still horrid here. What makes this AI ruin the entire game for me is that it knows everything you do. Try to build a wonder? The AI knows you started building that and will not only begin building it as well, but it will specifically wait until the last possible turn to start. Just so it can beat you to it by one turn, losing you both the wonder and the 20+ turns of production you used to build it. You can't see what the AI does so you have no idea if they just started building Stonehenge. They can. Based on this, I bet the AI probably sees inside your territory without even so much as meeting you first. Maybe even the entire map. Even if they don't, should I even have to be asking these questions? Like I said in the beginning, there are good things about it and if you can get past an AI that blatantly cheats you might like this game. I can't rate it anything above red because I simply get little enjoyment out of playing it.… Expand
  7. bumarco
    Nov 4, 2016
    5
    Single player is pretty good. Really enjoying it.

    Tried to set up a multiplayer game with my wife - terrible. Should be ashamed of yourselves as game makers. I think, the reason it won't work is mac/PC, but FFS make an error message that says that. Don't let me invite her. Don't have her "visit profile" to accept. And sure as sh@t don't respond with some ambiguous version mismatch with    Single player is pretty good. Really enjoying it.

    Tried to set up a multiplayer game with my wife - terrible. Should be ashamed of yourselves as game makers. I think, the reason it won't work is mac/PC, but FFS make an error message that says that. Don't let me invite her. Don't have her "visit profile" to accept. And sure as sh@t don't respond with some ambiguous version mismatch with host message when she does.

    Fix it. It's 2016.    … Expand
  8. Mascalzone
    Oct 29, 2016
    4
    Better graphic and animations. And that's all. Slow as hell to load games and go to next, even with an SSD, always the same useless diplomacy and no intel at all, as usual... A real mess.
  9. gamerINchief
    Oct 22, 2016
    6
    In almost every way, this is a step back from Civilization V. It actually plays and feels like it should have come before Civilization V and not after.

    It really is hard to not compare VI to V. Civilization V (Vanilla) is such an exceptional game in its fundamentals, mechanics, combat, accessibility, replayability, learning curve, engagement, user interface, etc. The only aspects in    In almost every way, this is a step back from Civilization V. It actually plays and feels like it should have come before Civilization V and not after.

    It really is hard to not compare VI to V. Civilization V (Vanilla) is such an exceptional game in its fundamentals, mechanics, combat, accessibility, replayability, learning curve, engagement, user interface, etc. The only aspects in which VI outshines V is in a much deeper diplomacy. Almost everything else falls flat.

    The atmosphere in this game is non-existent. Wonders don't feel rare or great, or give you that sense of accomplishment after completing them. User Interface is absolutely terrible. I should not have to battle the UI when trying to play through the game. If anyone has spent at least 100 turns playing the game you know exactly what I mean. The game feels so dull and dare I say just boring. Who cares if the civic system is more "complex" than Civ V's social policy system if I can't even feign interest in continuing to play one more turn? The graphics is just inexcusable for a 2016 AAA series backed by a AAA publisher. I don't have a problem with the style but the quality is so poor. Its like the graphics were developed by a low budget indie developer. I'm a devout fan of Civ but any review for this game above a 7 is simply not accurate.

    You have to be able to draw and capture the interest of a gamer. This game is not at all accessible for new comers or even many old fans. It has a slow, complex learning curve, and for those with not the interest to keep playing the game they will never learn it because the atmosphere of the game is too uninteresting/unaccesible to get to the intricacies of the new features.

    I would go back to playing Civ V if I hadn't already spent the past six years playing it. I wasn't expecting VI to be exactly like V or to even be better than V. I was however expecting it to uphold the exceptional quality the series has made for itself. All of these perfect scores and near perfect scores from both user reviews and critic reviews I have to shake my head at. I can guarantee these are from die-hard Civ fans with just a slight bias. I'm as big a fan of Civ as the next guy on here but I will reiterate this again: any review for this game above a 7 is simply not accurate.    … Expand
  10. Johny179
    Oct 28, 2016
    4
    + graphics
    + atmosphere

    - AI
    - Terrible AI
    - 1 unit per tile - boring, annoying, in late phase it is not fun but misery
    - builders

    Instead of graphics should Firaxis invest to AI and gameplay, change 1 UPT
  11. SecondRateOp
    Oct 25, 2016
    5
    You cannot queue production in cities (wtf???).

    Workers can only do a limited number of improvements, then disappear (wtf???). I overall don't like the feel of it. The pace is weird. The flow is terrible. It's slow and messed up. Maybe it's the inability to be able to queue production. Maybe it's the fact that you have to constantly interrupt your production to make workers for your    You cannot queue production in cities (wtf???).

    Workers can only do a limited number of improvements, then disappear (wtf???).

    I overall don't like the feel of it. The pace is weird. The flow is terrible. It's slow and messed up. Maybe it's the inability to be able to queue production. Maybe it's the fact that you have to constantly interrupt your production to make workers for your neighboring low production cities because they only last a limited number of improvements. Maybe it's the fact that you have to build districts before you start reaping benefits and feel some sense of progress. Maybe it's the terrible housing system.

    I hate the housing system that stunts your population growth. You don't get 1 citizen per tile anymore, no. You start with between 1 to 3 housing capacity depending on conditions and get 0.5 housing per SOME tile improvements (not mines), then SOME buildings will give you few additional housing. Housing is SCARCE in early game. When your number of citizens reaches your housing limit minus 1, the growth rate is reduced. Good luck if you have land with little production, because it then becomes a vicious circle of production deficiency : You need population for more production and you need more production to build housing units to get more population. If you start in a tundra or a desert, you might as well start over.

    Districts aren't a well executed idea. The concept causes great balance problems. All the buildings you could build in previous games that would allow you to make up for low food and low production environments are gated behind... *drumroll*... population (which is gated by food and housing) and production! Building districts at an acceptable rate requires production, which requires population, which requires food and housing, which requires production. And then, as if that wasn't enough, districts are gated behind population minimums. Tundra and desert tiles are very hard to play for that reason. Other than the ONE trade route you can get in early game to get more food and production from another of your cities (which is a very bad thing to depend on for food), I really don't know what to do about that. Nothing in the policies helps with that either. Oh... and you can't build farms on tundra and hills next to freshwater anymore.

    Great people are given out like candy.

    Civics are weird, annoying and a little too much to think of for very little reward ; The bonuses are plenty in numbers, but they don't really feel significant or relevant. Everyone is going to have access to the same ones and progress roughly the same way. There is no specialization. There is little punishment if you don't plan ahead, don't think things through or make mistakes. You are forced to research civics that you do not want or need, as prerequisites to others that you might want. Being prompted to look at them and switch them every time you are done researching one (often) is annoying. I liked Civ V's way of doing it better. The buffs were fewer and more significant within the game balance and the choice you made really mattered.

    Eventually, you realize that civilizations have been at war and you were not notified. Well you were, among the 3 messages that last 5 seconds that pop on your screen at the beginning of a turn then disappear. AND THERE ARE NO LOGS for these things. If you miss it, it's gone. Forever.

    There is no diplomacy overview that I could find. You have to check each civ for its relations with others. THERE IS NO OVERVIEW TO SEE EACH CIV'S RESOURCES & WONDERS.

    The UI is a mess and all over the place.

    There is no indication of how long until border expansion, nor which tile the city is going for.

    The fog of war and unlit terrain are way too much alike. It is way too difficult to see resources on unlit terrain.

    Friendly civs can have units in each other's territory without open border which makes moving your units around even more tedious and can block your workers from making improvements. This is BS.

    There seems to be no way to tell a civ to piss off with their religion so be prepared to protect your cities with units. There is a new system with religious units that can attack each other... like normal wars weren't enough and we needed even more warring BS in this game.

    BORING. 3rd game trying to have fun. Can't get past renaissance without being bored out of my mind.    … Expand
  12. SRKNZ
    Nov 18, 2016
    2
    For me the biggest let down in this game is its lack of usability and odd ball game play. The interface for the game is counter intuitive and simply annoying. Its quite clear why you get an advisor constantly parroting in your ear as its about as clear as mud as to how you are supposed use the the thing. Worse still its unclear why you are doing certain things or what they mean. ByFor me the biggest let down in this game is its lack of usability and odd ball game play. The interface for the game is counter intuitive and simply annoying. Its quite clear why you get an advisor constantly parroting in your ear as its about as clear as mud as to how you are supposed use the the thing. Worse still its unclear why you are doing certain things or what they mean. By contrast Civilization V was a pleasure. It was easy to make selections production, etc and see where they take you.

    The game play is peculiar too with other sims declaring war for no obvious reason. Even when you have established a good relationship. Warfare itself is also odd with cities often left untouched. Which is we look at most warfare down through history makes no sense at all.

    Its graphically pretty so I'm giving it a couple of points for that but this on its own is not enough to redeem its other fundamental flaws.

    In summary for me this game is reminiscent of Windows 8. It made no sense after the Windows 7 and this monstrosity makes no sense after Civ V.    … Expand
  13. TsukasaHiiragi
    Jun 6, 2021
    0
    After several years and two major expansions, the game has actually gone in the opposite direction, the expansions cause more problems and create unnecessary issues and even take away gameplay and tactical options, because of new elements like loyalty, and gathering storm tries to fix the horrendous diplomatic system and only succeeds in making it more convoluted and the natural disastersAfter several years and two major expansions, the game has actually gone in the opposite direction, the expansions cause more problems and create unnecessary issues and even take away gameplay and tactical options, because of new elements like loyalty, and gathering storm tries to fix the horrendous diplomatic system and only succeeds in making it more convoluted and the natural disasters look cool, but ultimately cause the player more harm than the AI speaking of which, the AI seems to cheat even more now - more one turn wonder stealing and worse!! Also, reduced map size as well!!

    Next up, the game has become much more unstable over the years with crashing a very serious issue, the new April update completely broke the game for many people and 2K are silent on this issue, which can be somewhat bypassed if you completely avoid using the new launcher, the game still criminally unstable though and it will crash, just a matter of what and usually the first crash is a forebear of more frequent crashes usually making it nearly impossible to finish a larger game, this issue is even worse on consoles.

    I can honestly say now, after the poor expansions and the typical milking of paid DLC..cough...new civilizations and the very poor stability of the game in general, this is easily my pick of the worst in the entire series, avoid this version and play Civilization V instead...lets hope they learn from their mistakes when Civ VII is released, these mistakes should never be repeated.

    Civilization games are properly reviewed after putting hundreds of hours in, not a merely a few dozen that obviously some of the reviewers, and even critic reviews are obviously not played enough to see the glaring issues that Civ 6 has, don't get me wrong here in the fact I do like Civilization 6 its just >right now< its not nearly as good as Civilization 5, but with time and alot of balancing and fixes it could be just as good, I doubt it'll be better, but it can be just as good imho, and that comes from a hardcore Civer since Civ 1.

    The problems with Civilization 6 are numerous, from limited options - to bland and highly predictable A.I and unfortunately, the god awful cheating scripts are back on higher difficulties to fake increased difficulty. So, lets start - Barbarians need better options, currently its off or 'rampage mode' since they all have a high spawn rate, they need a more options. Next up is the slow paced gameplay, standard modes pacing is very odd, at times it feels like a Marathon game then quickly speeds up then slows down..the pacing feels all over the place, and because of that - the A.I which tends to follow the date is terms of advancement can suffer too, a classic example of this would be;

    Player increases research and lets say enters industrial period, the date per turn will usually increase/decrease depending on the date, lets say its 1500AD, the DpT will increase for a while until its more in-line with the era, for some reason that seems to give the A.I huge buffs and they'll rapidly increase in research and power sometimes, heck - I've seen them jump from renaissance period to modern period extremely fast defying all logic, but since I've seen England get Ironclads as early as the 1200AD...honestly it doesn't surprise me since the pacing is definitely way off the mark.

    A.I is stupid, obvious and stupidly good, the latter is the problem because it will attack with better strategies than the previous games, however the major problems is that alot of the times its rather obvious what its trying to do - such as Sumeria spawning 20 war wagons and then slowly moving them to your civilization to launch a surprise attack...well *I'm* surprised the A.I did that - wow! Another problem is the fact the AI hates human players, to a point there isn't any reason to be nice to them, they'll break every single promise you make with them, they'll attack you relentlessly and the diplomacy is plain weird to a point it just feels broken, don't get me started on how broken the warmonger system is - essentially by late game the world threatre is pretty much everyone hates everyone and denouncing is just rife.

    Another major problem is the fact that the game feels so slow paced compared to previous games, districts take way to long to build, especially late in game where its not uncommon for it to take 30+ turns for one district, because of the pacing issues, making spawling and large civilizations is nearly impossible to do now. I could go on and on here about all the issues, from nitpicking about special ability balance such as Electronics Factory, or how the game suffers from strange bugs that cause input lag, especially late game so I'll just close with this statement again;

    Civilization 6 right now, is no way near as good as Civilization 5 at this present time. With patches and some expansion packs it could be great - but Firaxis needs to fix alot of the mechanics and do some balancing.    … Expand
  14. andrewbrown
    Oct 28, 2016
    5
    PROS:
    * no more micromanging workers, improving a tile in one turn is wonderful.
    * no more building roads, roads are laid with trade routes * can levy city state armies CONS: * No end screen with stats, making losing or winning worthless on reflection * When you lose, they don't tell you why, and its the same video regardless of ending * AI doesn't get smarter, just get bonuses on    PROS:
    * no more micromanging workers, improving a tile in one turn is wonderful.
    * no more building roads, roads are laid with trade routes
    * can levy city state armies

    CONS:
    * No end screen with stats, making losing or winning worthless on reflection
    * When you lose, they don't tell you why, and its the same video regardless of ending
    * AI doesn't get smarter, just get bonuses on harder difficulties
    * Religion is another layer tedious to manging addtional units
    * You have to buiild Wide, Tall is not an option
    * Civics have no impact to create unique style of play

    What I want out of CIV is being able to win with different play styles depending
    on Sceince, Religon, Culture, Domination, Economics (Money), or Dipolmacy. So I really want
    6 games in 1. The depth of most these subgame is simplistic, and you'd think by now with 5 previous
    games under their belt they would have fleshed out these subgames.

    Not everything has to play out as units on the board. Religion is so unfun because you are just
    slowly moving units across the board to convert other cities. Religon could be played out totally
    in UI Panels. Last thing I want is more units to move around the board.

    What they did to SimCity is what they are doing to Civ6. Instead of having large cities,
    they want you to have small meaniful cities. When what we wanted was what City Skylines
    produced. We just have to wait till someone makes the City Skylines for Civ.PROS:
    * no more micromanging workers, improving a tile in one turn is wonderful.
    * no more building roads, roads are laid with trade routes
    * can levy city state armies

    CONS:
    * No end screen with stats, making losing or winning worthless on reflection
    * When you lose, they don't tell you why, and its the same video regardless of ending
    * AI doesn't get smarter, just get bonuses on harder difficulties
    * Religion is another layer tedious to manging addtional units
    * You have to buiild Wide, Tall is not an option
    * Civics have no impact to create unique style of play

    What I want out of CIV is being able to win with different play styles depending
    on Sceince, Religon, Culture, Domination, Economics (Money), or Dipolmacy. So I really want
    6 games in 1. The depth of most these subgame is simplistic, and you'd think by now with 5 previous
    games under their belt they would have fleshed out these subgames.

    Not everything has to play out as units on the board. Religion is so unfun because you are just
    slowly moving units across the board to convert other cities. Religon could be played out totally
    in UI Panels. Last thing I want is more units to move around the board.

    What they did to SimCity is what they are doing to Civ6. Instead of having large cities,
    they want you to have small meaniful cities. When what we wanted was what City Skylines
    produced. We just have to wait till someone makes the City Skylines for Civ.    … Expand
  15. RodrigoLolli
    Nov 4, 2016
    6
    Civilization is my prefered game. I play it since civilization 1.
    I aways like to feel like I was in the game and been the comander of that people. But I think the caricature drawnning is not good for it.
    I expected more of the AI, graphics more realistic, imagens showing in the conquest of a city like in CIV2. The Palace been contructed by people happyness, and some think new, like    Civilization is my prefered game. I play it since civilization 1.
    I aways like to feel like I was in the game and been the comander of that people. But I think the caricature drawnning is not good for it.
    I expected more of the AI, graphics more realistic, imagens showing in the conquest of a city like in CIV2.
    The Palace been contructed by people happyness, and some think new, like newspaper telling the results of the wars. The concel of ministers should be more elaborated, with faces expressions like in the pasts civilizations.
    For me, Civilization 4 is still the best. and civ5 is still better then 6.

    I liked the roads and workes sistem, because we wast less time working roads.
    I will play civ 6, but I begin to wait for civ 7    … Expand
  16. Makarsoso
    Oct 27, 2016
    0
    0/10 worst clash of clans clone ever, PC sucks again, graphics is worse than any ps1 games' one, AI as stupid as any pc player from Kingisepp also I want notice than Makar zarazitsa vich c vame klykov sychari beach.
  17. mithraldragon
    Oct 25, 2016
    0
    This game is objectively worse than Civ V in so many areas.

    - Static, blurry painted backgrounds when talking to leaders instead of the beautiful, dynamic 3d backgrounds we had in Civ V. - No unique soundtrack when talking to leaders - Animations have to be turned on in the menu, are repetitive, and run at lower fps than Civ V. - AI is worse than Civ V. Just to give you an    This game is objectively worse than Civ V in so many areas.

    - Static, blurry painted backgrounds when talking to leaders instead of the beautiful, dynamic 3d backgrounds we had in Civ V.

    - No unique soundtrack when talking to leaders

    - Animations have to be turned on in the menu, are repetitive, and run at lower fps than Civ V.

    - AI is worse than Civ V. Just to give you an example, if France declares war on Japan, and you're friendly with Japan, and you declare war on France to defend Japan, France and Japan will just ally and gang up on you. In Civ V if you declared war on a warmonger in order to protect another civ they would act grateful. Not here.

    - Barbarians are far too aggressive and you pretty much have to go for Domination because if you stop producing military units to make anything else you get overrun.

    - Civics tech tree is crap, most of it is irrelevant and it's pretty much linear with only two branches. Social policies were better, their bonuses meant something it reflected the personality/playstyle of your civ. There was a lot of diversity in what policies different leaders chose. With the civics tree everyone pretty much gets the exact thing with minor differences which the AI will go to war over.

    - Science tech tree is practically gutted and unbalanced compared to Civ V. Like the civics tree it is very linear now, you can just research techs in a straight line to the next era without having to ever research all the ancient era techs. It has probably 1/4th the techs it used to.

    - The new District system is gimmicky and cumbersome.

    - Builders are stupid, they get consumed after building 3 improvements. You'll spend half the game making builders.

    - The art style is a downgrade. Some people might like it and say it's a matter of preference but the realistic models and dynamic 3d environments along with the unique soundtracks in Civ V obviously costed a lot more to make.    … Expand
  18. Silverfish1983
    Oct 23, 2016
    5
    Simply cannot understand those citing 'gorgeous graphics'. This is the art style you get from FTP's or £3 tablet games. So disappointing when Civ V was a thing of such beauty. Everything else seems 'okay', but for me I simply can't get past the lazy and cheap feeling art style.
  19. peterus
    Oct 24, 2016
    5
    It's barely a strategy game - it is more of a cowclicker. Different strategic elements are jumbled together and grossly unbalanced. Player can't optimize the big picture to win. Instead it's about optimizing the minute details like planning out every move (literally in everything - from unit movements, through tech, policy to buildings) to get the achievement like inspirations for yourIt's barely a strategy game - it is more of a cowclicker. Different strategic elements are jumbled together and grossly unbalanced. Player can't optimize the big picture to win. Instead it's about optimizing the minute details like planning out every move (literally in everything - from unit movements, through tech, policy to buildings) to get the achievement like inspirations for your path on the tech tree, or planning out a city 3 wonders and 5 districts in advance... and than doing the same for 2nd city, 3rd city and so on.

    Graphics are very good, cartoony but it fits the casual feel of the game and music is average. AI is terribly idiotic, diplomacy is meh. It has a minimalistic, streamlined interface which lacks a LOT of important information but it's also easy to use. All in all, if you just go with the flow and build yourself a farm... I mean a civilization that I think you'll enjoy it. But if you are for the deeper substance - you won't find any in this game.    … Expand
  20. huginatree
    Oct 29, 2016
    0
    Have you critics lost your marbles,this game stinks.the only thing that is better is the smoother start menu.THATS IT.The list of things wrong with this game is to long ....its unmod able,unless you have god like hands on a keyboard to create a brand new game.Even the graphics are laughable,who do they think are the people who are going to play this long winded game that makes hardly anyHave you critics lost your marbles,this game stinks.the only thing that is better is the smoother start menu.THATS IT.The list of things wrong with this game is to long ....its unmod able,unless you have god like hands on a keyboard to create a brand new game.Even the graphics are laughable,who do they think are the people who are going to play this long winded game that makes hardly any sense.Cartoon graphics are good fun on your average tablet when your borred .This game deserves much more than this rubbish attempt,Sid and the gang need to move on to tablet games if this is the best they can do.just wish i could get my money back.On the plus side civ V is still here.THANK GOD for that… Expand
  21. dex8172
    Oct 26, 2016
    0
    I played all Civ games since the original, but this one I won't. Not until they fix absolutely horrible UI, unacceptable loading times, useless Civilopedia without back button (!!!), and whatnot. Very disappointed.
  22. Truovy
    Jan 14, 2018
    0
    Its the same like with CivBE. Just a product. No love for the game. You see this in countless bugs, often totally messed up starting positions, dlc policy, loading times, no real new ideas, bad AI...
  23. JohnKR
    Jan 28, 2018
    10
    Really, why all this bashing on Civilization VI? Does any of you played Civ V without expansions and DLC? In its initial release? It was one of the worst Civilization to date and most of the people were saying how they preferred Civ IV (With all expansions again) than Civ V (Without Expansions)... it was justified cause Civ V was just a skeleton of a game in it's release (No Religion?!).Really, why all this bashing on Civilization VI? Does any of you played Civ V without expansions and DLC? In its initial release? It was one of the worst Civilization to date and most of the people were saying how they preferred Civ IV (With all expansions again) than Civ V (Without Expansions)... it was justified cause Civ V was just a skeleton of a game in it's release (No Religion?!). Although the new skeleton (no stacks of Doom) was better and so it grow to be better than it's predecessors.
    Now it's the same for VI...though it's not justified. Cause it's the best initial release of civilization until now! It's the first one that not only revolutionize like V (Unstacking Cities) but also having almost every feature of it's predecessors(with expansion) without expansions!
    So please be mature and stop talking about the unit graphics and clash of clans and see the essence of this game which is much more strategic and full in its release. It has the best skeleton to build upon.
    Also except units, which for the first time have different looks in different civilizations (without mods), the map and cities are gorgeous and much, much better than Civ V with it's chaotic and ugly architecture of super, one ultimate type cities and labyrinth of roads, simplistic wonders in wrong place (pyramids inside a frozen lake! :P ), with useless worker in every hex.

    P.S. If you learn to play with unstacked cities you can never go back to the old mess. Same as when we learnt to play with unstacked units we couldn't go back.    … Expand
  24. iseeall
    Dec 6, 2016
    7
    I've played all games in the Civ series, and all the derivatives. My fav is Alpha Centauri, and from the pure Civs, Civ 2. Civ 6 is basically Civ 5 with its 2 addons, plus even more unneeded stuff added on top. The series is moving in a direction which I don't like, piling up features that I don't want. They are tuning for dumber and dumber audience, trying to cash in on converts fromI've played all games in the Civ series, and all the derivatives. My fav is Alpha Centauri, and from the pure Civs, Civ 2. Civ 6 is basically Civ 5 with its 2 addons, plus even more unneeded stuff added on top. The series is moving in a direction which I don't like, piling up features that I don't want. They are tuning for dumber and dumber audience, trying to cash in on converts from mobile.

    The good:
    - well, it's still Civ. If you haven't played any of the Civ games, Civ 6 is a Civ game, and the tutorial is so friendly and accessible that you will even learn what a turn-based game is, in case you didn't know
    - like in Civ 5, combat is interesting, with units not dying after a single fight, there are adjacency bonuses and exp accumulation like in tactical wargames, just simpler

    The so-so:
    - the districts system (taken from Endless Legends), not that it was needed or adds much
    - the 2 separate trees for cultural and scientific advances - could have worked easier with a single tree, each tech just costing culture+sci.
    - graphics are obviously made for iPad players and kids, from which I suspect a planned port to mobile. I don't care about graphics much, but I can imagine this will upset many PC gamers
    - dragging cards to determine government and social policies - ok but i found bonuses of certain governments pretty strange. And I don't like trading cards games, so the whole aesthetic of cards being put in slots feels inappropriate here, at least to me.
    - city states - didn't like them in Civ 5 with their "quests" and attitude, though I know some people like the feature
    - workers can now only build 3 tile improvements after which they get "spent", and roads are built automatically by "trader" units - this apparently only slows down construction of tile improvements which isn't a bad thing but isn't good either
    - some techs get researched faster if a certain prereq is met (e.g. develop Archery faster if killed 1 unit with a slinger) - a good idea at first glance, but adds immensely to the rules bloat (more about that below)

    The bad:
    - in general, this plays too much like Civ 5 with its 2 addons, barely justifying the purchase ("why not just play Civ 5"?), and sadly carries over all the bad features added in those addons
    - still only 1 unit can be on a tile (annoying traffic jams)
    - tons of minor effects various things give which are hard to keep track of and which don't really change the game much. It almost feels like an RPG game where a chest piece gives +0.5% to fire resistance. The multitude of factors to consider doesn't make it a strategy game where you decide something but rather a tedious simulation with unclear, bloated rules which you mostly forget the next time you start a new game. Apparently the abundance of tiny rules makes the game simpler and takes away decision making. This game is so bloated that I wonder they could even bring it to release! It must have been a nightmare to test, debug and balance
    - religion is beneficial, even can be a victory type now, and there are tons of religions to pick from where you customize their tiny bonuses. You produce a "faith" resource which you can use (like gold) to buy things. This is ridiculous. Let temples make 2 citizens content and reduce that to 1 citizen after discovery of Scientific Method or something, that's just about how much attention religion should get in this type of game. I'm deeply saddened by the fact that they gave in to the political correctness train and started catering these complex games to religious market segments (do they even play Civ?)
    - tourism? Even a victory type for it (make more ppl in other countries come to you for a vacation rather than stay home)? This absurdity came in the 2nd Civ 5's addon, together with a minigame of putting great works of art into slots. But I get it: millions of Chinese are now cruising the world making selfies, so why not make a feature for them specifically.
    - the voiced-over texts for different countries which are shown/spoken each time you start or load the game. They aren't as idiotic as in Civ 5 but the overall feel of "glorifying" the player and praising him for something he hasn't even done (just picked up the game, haven't even won it) is stupid. Just check how little you get in Alpha Centauri for winning the game - a simple popup, and a score breakdown list. To me, that feels much more rewarding than this empty pathos.

    As I wrote in other reviews of other Civ games, Bryan Raynolds is not involved anymore (and he is the genius behind AC and Civ2 - the games I like the most). Civ 6 isn't a game made by passionate geeks who had tons of ideas. It's a franchise driven by market research. They want more players to buy the game, so they see what's popular now (e.g. Clash of Clans) and add that. It's the same thing that happened to the XCom, Fallout and many other games. My only hope lies with indies now. And it seems I won't have to uninstall Alpha Centauri any time soon.    … Expand
  25. Violett
    Dec 25, 2016
    6
    Another Civilization ... Yawn
    Well, I didn't rate this game low, because actually the game is quite good for step-by-step strategy game - with one BUT. This game is great BUT only for those who play Civ for the first time.
    Graphics is good, the game has its depth, but we saw it already - in Civ 5, Civ 4, and so on. For me the best Civs was Civ 2 and 3 - Civ 5 was good also, but this is    Another Civilization ... Yawn
    Well, I didn't rate this game low, because actually the game is quite good for step-by-step strategy game - with one BUT. This game is great BUT only for those who play Civ for the first time.
    Graphics is good, the game has its depth, but we saw it already - in Civ 5, Civ 4, and so on. For me the best Civs was Civ 2 and 3 - Civ 5 was good also, but this is another Civ with updated graphics and slightly updated gameplay. AI is still stupid as a trunk. Same units, same technologies. I understand there is nothing to replace tank and spearman in Civ games, but why to make another same game then? What next? Civ 7, Civ 8, Civ 9?    … Expand
  26. Artur_
    May 26, 2017
    7
    Plus:
    - City districts - a very good idea about city planning, management.
    - Great people having unique skills. - Corps and armies - a nice improvement. - Good reorganization of ideas. - Eurekas. - Sentiment ;-) Minus: - Infantile graphics (I know, childs play too, but an average "child" is 30 years, probably). - Removal of production queue. - Removal of statistics used to    Plus:
    - City districts - a very good idea about city planning, management.
    - Great people having unique skills.
    - Corps and armies - a nice improvement.
    - Good reorganization of ideas.
    - Eurekas.
    - Sentiment ;-)

    Minus:
    - Infantile graphics (I know, childs play too, but an average "child" is 30 years, probably).
    - Removal of production queue.
    - Removal of statistics used to compare civilisations status.
    - Quite often right-click to choose a movement target does not work.
    - Auto-jumping between units across whole map.
    - Diplomacy:
    > Pointless requests or "offers" from a weak civs.
    > They often declare war and just wait to be invaded and to lose a few cities, then make peace offer. Such a "war" may lasts centuries.
    > What is the point of constant condemnations?
    - Disappearing animations.
    - Spy task resets without information about previous task.

    There are crazy AI boosts/downturns sometimes - 1st game on lowest settler difficulty ended having modern tanks against catapults and archers and a few arquebuses, 2nd on prince : same tanks against same catapults and archers. Third game, imperator level, I didn't exit medieval age while others got to industrial one. Fourth one on imperator too - again modern tanks against catapults, but few countries had WWI infantry, at least. Can't remember something like that from Civilisation V, there were usually similar units, not several ages back.    … Expand
  27. Generalgameman
    May 21, 2020
    3
    Nice game, and fun to play BUT.... Civ 5 was better (imo ofc), Civ 6 still has awful AI, no map editor, and worst of all, it has became a SeasonPass/DLC nightmare!!! They are copying Paradox and milking the fans for every penny!
    I gave it a 3 because it can be fun. It would have had more if they fixed the dumb AI and stopped exploiting the fans in the name of greed. If they need cash,    Nice game, and fun to play BUT.... Civ 5 was better (imo ofc), Civ 6 still has awful AI, no map editor, and worst of all, it has became a SeasonPass/DLC nightmare!!! They are copying Paradox and milking the fans for every penny!
    I gave it a 3 because it can be fun. It would have had more if they fixed the dumb AI and stopped exploiting the fans in the name of greed. If they need cash, release a Civ 7 or add features, NOT silly nations no one will play (unless your from the Hellhole!).    … Expand
  28. yrcrazy
    Oct 23, 2016
    3
    Utterly laughable that the developers saw fit to leave Persia, one of the greatest, widest spanning and most important civilizations in the history of mankind out of the basic game. Whats more is that for obvious reasons of political correctness they then include the Kongolese.
  29. jmdenver
    Oct 23, 2016
    0
    Dunno, seemed like garbage at first glance- graphics, city spamming, AI- kind of has grown on me- change isn't always so bad; BUT losing in both games that I played to 1800 or so with no indication why, and leading in all victory condition categories - makes it a 0/10.
  30. SiLNOR3KI
    Oct 23, 2016
    0
    I don't buy it ! In my country CIV6 is worth 60EUR when minimal pay is about 300 ! ITS EVEN COMPLETE GAME !

    I spend my cash on better mouse or headset and wait, until game is complete with all CUT dlc with price 10-15EUR. Now back to CIV 5...
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Awards & Rankings

10
#10 Best PC Game of 2016
9
#9 Most Discussed PC Game of 2016
20
#20 Most Shared PC Game of 2016

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
88

Generally favorable reviews - based on 84 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 79 out of 84
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 84
  3. Negative: 1 out of 84
  1. CD-Action
    Jan 12, 2017
    90
    You don’t want to spend your night in front of the computer? You have a wife and kids? You cherish your friendships and enjoy parties? Beware of this game. It’s that good. [13/2016, p.44]
  2. The Overpowered Noobs
    Jan 11, 2017
    90
    It's a more playful, fun feel to the franchise, perhaps, but all that's wrapped around a deeply nuanced game. If you've ever enjoyed playing a multi-layered, immersive and strategic board game with a bunch of funny characters, get in here.
    Read full review
  3. Games Master UK
    Jan 1, 2017
    74
    Firaxis has made some significant, exciting changes, but has also obscured vital information. [Christmas 2016, p.70]
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