By: Jack Almond
Sid Meier's Civilization VI is a turn-based strategy video game where you compete against AI to build your civilization from a basic tribe to a world conquering force to be reckoned with. Throughout your path to conquest, you must develop cities, research innovations, develop religions, cooperate with neighboring empires and so much more. The game is really what you make it. If you want to develop a peaceful empire, you can develop beautiful architecture, create bountiful farms, and explore the terrains and the wonders within. If you prefer a more chaotic and ruthless empire, you can focus on researching your land and sea warfare, develop different variations of troops, build strong city defenses, and wage war on all of your neighboring civilizations. Regardless, you must develop a strategy - something I learned the hard way after my first playthrough.
My first playthrough didn't last very long. Being confident in my video game abilities and wanting to see how I would fair on my own, I decided to not play the tutorial and avoided any YouTube walkthroughs which I heavily regretted - realistically how hard can a turn-based game really be? I chose America as my empire and was ready to take on the world, but was quickly overwhelmed with the amount of different paths and requirements to choose. Science, faith, culture, gold, research, and so much more being thrown at me, I was quite lost. I followed a basic research path, focused on developing sources for food, primarily farms, and a creating mines - then I started training troops. I realized quickly that these troops are crucial for protecting myself from barbarian attacks, so I trained lots and lots of warriors and slingers (the ancient era troops) and had them move along with a scout until I found another civilization. Eventually I found the Cree civilization and its leader Poundmaker. Without knowing the repercussions of my actions, as well as being curious to what would happen I began an attack. Unfortunately due to my troops being under trained and out numbered they were quickly disassembled and I also received a large warmongering penalty. After this series of events I was quite disappointed with my performance and quit the game to restart.
After my previous session, I was determined to figure the game out a bit more and determine a strategy to success. I watched a few YouTube tutorials, one of them being Civilization 6 Tutorial - The Basics! (A Beginner's Guide) - Vanilla Friendly by Normul8or. I also completed a portion of the tutorial offered in game to try and gain my bearings. After my research and practice, I started another session as Peter the leader of Russia. Their extra 5 tiles per founded city, as well as their extra production and faith from Tundra tiles was extremely enticing. I quickly started the game with founding two cities, focusing on the quick development of science, faith, gold, and production. Rather than waging war on my neighbors, I quickly developed a positive relationship with Harald Hardrada the leader of the Norwegian empire and built a trade route between my major city and one of his. With his troops help I was able to clear out one of the multiple barbarian outposts. I developed a theatre, a market, barracks, founded Catholicism, created a city around the natural wonder Pamukkale, and so much more. The peaceful pace of play allowed me to further understand the different mechanics within the game and fall in love with its gameplay. As of right now I am 180+ turns in and am aiming to complete a culture/religion win, avoiding conflict for as long as possible.
Throughout my sessions of Sid Meier's Civilization VI there were many moments I thought were historically accurate, while there were others that weren't. A great example of a moment that was not historically accurate was the war mongering penalty I received in my first session. After I received it for attacking the Cree empire, I was surprised as I attacked them during the ancient era. Historically, there were obviously repercussions to your actions, but there was no United Nations type entity that gave you penalties for attacking other nations - it would make more sense for these types of penalties during Atomic and/or Information eras. To contrast, I found the development of troops and technology throughout the eras seemed quite accurate. Although there were times where technology was kind of inaccurate (learning to sail before the learning the wheel), the overall progression of the tech tree was quite accurate. The troops seemed historically accurate with their upgrades and developments. I believe all in all, Civilization VI is best described as an expression of mimesis, an imitation of factual history in art, specifically video games. Although it is not always accurate or sensible, the player understands this expression and can appreciate Firaxis Games' attempt at recreating the impossible.
Kommentare