# Civilization VI **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 18, 2016, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933 "2016-10-18T10:37:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/61 "2016-10-27T06:02:16Z")
Barbarians are back to being out of control. \ ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/62 "2016-10-27T14:44:22Z")
11pm last night - “I’ll just play for an hour and then go to sleep at a decent time” 1:45am - “Oh crap. Not again.” I’m having a blast in my first game, but my lack of knowledge of how districts worked and spending some time just cranking out legions to conquer China has significantly put me far back in the science race. Though now I’m focusing on the religious war, which is going ok I guess. I’m still trying to figure it out… my apostles have fought Scythia’s Hindu apostles a few times, while we try to bend some city states (and now Indian cities) to our wills. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/63 "2016-10-27T14:59:05Z")
I played the early game on Immortal and it seems like the unit production mechanics for the AI are totally out of whack. Both AI cities and barbarian camps were spawning a unit _every_ turn in the classical era. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to overcome that, since even with a perfectly-placed city and all focus on production and the right civics, you’re going to get a unit every 2 turns. And god help you if you’re trying to do anything other than produce units. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/64 "2016-10-27T15:12:55Z")
I haven’t played a civ game in forever, and was tempted to try this one, but my current laptop is at the very lower edge of the recommended minimum. Anyone playing this with a low spec computer, and does it make the game slow/limited/unplayable? ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/65 "2016-10-27T17:29:10Z")
Can someone explain how social policies work? I get these cards that I can swap in and out. Is there any penalty to switching? Can I swap them in as needed? ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/66 "2016-10-27T17:53:48Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > Can someone explain how social policies work? I get these cards that I can swap in and out. Is there any penalty to switching? Can I swap them in as needed? Civ VI is not good at explaining things, is it? My understanding is that they are modifiers for your empire. As noted, you can swap them in and out. You can do that for free when you unlock new cards. You can pay a fee in gold to unlock the cards on a turn where you did not unlock new cards. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/67 "2016-10-27T18:03:03Z")
> [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](#): > > Yes and yes. Traders are really good in this game, whenever you start a new city and need to get it going you can build a trader in one of your production powerhouse cities, relocate it to the new city and then send it to one of your cities with high production for big production bonus. You can also use them to make roads towards an AI civ you intend to attack so your troops can move faster. Roads can also be constructed by military engineers which are available much later in the game. They don’t appear to be very efficient about it though and are primarily a tactical and not strategic option. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/68 "2016-10-27T18:03:39Z")
> [@HookerChemical](#): > > Civ VI is not good at explaining things, is it? > > My understanding is that they are modifiers for your empire. As noted, you can swap them in and out. You can do that for free when you unlock new cards. You can pay a fee in gold to unlock the cards on a turn where you did not unlock new cards. Yeah, I didn’t see any evidence for that in the game. Thanks! So, when I unlock a new card, can I reshuffle anything I want for free, or just that new card? I’ve basically started three games and quit them trying to figure out the early game. I haven’t even really gotten into districts yet, which I imagine is going to completely throw me off. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/69 "2016-10-27T18:16:21Z")
I finished my first game this morning. It was a cultural victory as America on Prince (because it was my first game and I wanted to be able to screw up). Holy crap, some of the mechanics need a better explanation. Why could/couldn’t I build archaeologists at certain locations? Why can’t I build that wonder there, on the shore nest to the harbor, just like the requirements state I must do? How does tourism work? I won with it, but I can’t tell you why other than I built things that increased tourism. Culture is cumulative in that you advance down the culture track, but does that also apply for purposes of the cultural victory? P-51s seem cool. It’s really too bad they don’t explain what some of the air unit missions do. Maybe some of this is in the Civilopedia, but I got frustrated by early searches enough that I wasn’t diligent about it late game. I like some of the changes to the game. The separate culture and tech tracks are interesting and I’m going to reserve judgement until a couple games in for those. Districts are probably the biggest difference, and they’re going to require that you plan things out a lot more. In previous Civilization games, I rarely overlapped city areas, but Districts are going to make clustering a a benefit in some cases because you can share resources and some buildings have a radius of influence. The district bonuses and future wonder construction will also benefit from planning things out a little. Technically, I think it’s a massive improvement over Civ V. Load times for the game and saves are lower than Civ V was for me on launch. The UI takes some getting used to, but I think it’s a step forward when it shows the information I’m looking for. When I can’t find the information I’m looking for, it’s frustrating (see tourism). Figuring out how to get a list of my military units was a happy accident that resolved one of those frustrations, so I’m sure I’m missing things. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/70 "2016-10-27T18:17:01Z")
It looks like unlocking a new policy lets you change all of your policies if you like. I’m trying to wrap my head around district costs. The game has a mechanic where building a district makes subsequent districts of that type in other cities more expensive to build. Bleh. I’ve never liked that sort of balancing mechanic. Maybe I’ll try to figure out how to mod that out eventually. I think that for my next game I’ll try playing as Germany. I saw a few posts on Reddit detailing how their district-related abilities are quite powerful. The Hanse is reportedly not only cheaper to build than the standard industrial zone, but unique districts have their costs escalate more slowly. And apparently they don’t count toward a city’s district limit. And Germany gets an extra district per city, too. The recommended strategy boils down to prioritizing building arrays of Hanse and commercial districts; get the districts of multiple cities clustered together and you get massive synergy bonuses. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/71 "2016-10-27T18:17:26Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > So, when I unlock a new card, can I reshuffle anything I want for free, or just that new card? As far as I could tell, you can swap any and all cards when it’s unlocked without penalty. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/72 "2016-10-27T18:45:54Z")
How in depth is the tutorial? I may try to play through it to see how the heck you are supposed to use the apostle unit. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/73 "2016-10-27T19:38:42Z")
Oh for the old days, when how to use a game was explained in a comprehensive manual, which you thoroughly ignored because, well, just because. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/74 "2016-10-27T20:09:11Z")
Is the game really, really slow for everyone? Loading a game when you first start and between-turn pauses are really bad for me. Granted, I have an older computer, but it was a damn good gaming machine when I bought it, and I’ve upgraded video cards, memory, etc. over the years. I tried it last night on my laptop, a not-very-old pretty good machine, and it was hella slow there too. Is it running quickly on anyone’s machine? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/75 "2016-10-27T20:29:38Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > How in depth is the tutorial? I may try to play through it to see how the heck you are supposed to use the apostle unit. An apostle is like a missionary, with two differences. First, they can gain a promotion when first created; it’s random in that you can choose one of two promotions (there are five total apostle promotions). Second, they can initiate “theological combat”; they “attack” a foreign religious agent; if one of the agents dies, nearby cities are partly converted away from the loser’s religion and toward the victor’s religion. This can be very handy because theological combat does not use up any of the apostles spreads. This can all happen in peace time; in war, you can have a military unit kill a foreign religious agent, causing nearby cities to be converted away from the religious agent’s religion. > [@Athena](#): > > Is the game really, really slow for everyone? Loading a game when you first start and between-turn pauses are really bad for me. Granted, I have an older computer, but it was a damn good gaming machine when I bought it, and I’ve upgraded video cards, memory, etc. over the years. > > I tried it last night on my laptop, a not-very-old pretty good machine, and it was hella slow there too. > > Is it running quickly on anyone’s machine? Try enabling quick moves. It might just be a matter of the computer animating all of your rivals’ units’ moves, even off-camera. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/76 "2016-10-27T20:39:40Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Oh for the old days, when how to use a game was explained in a comprehensive manual, which you thoroughly ignored because, well, just because. 😛 Because Real Men don’t ask for directions ! They suck up being thoroughly lost, that’s what Real Men do. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/77 "2016-10-27T21:15:51Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > Is it running quickly on anyone’s machine? It’s running pretty fast on my Surface Pro 4. > [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > An apostle is like a missionary, with two differences. First, they can gain a promotion when first created; it’s random in that you can choose one of two promotions (there are five total apostle promotions). Second, they can initiate “theological combat”; they “attack” a foreign religious agent; if one of the agents dies, nearby cities are partly converted away from the loser’s religion and toward the victor’s religion. This can be very handy because theological combat does not use up any of the apostles spreads. This can all happen in peace time; in war, you can have a military unit kill a foreign religious agent, causing nearby cities to be converted away from the religious agent’s religion. They can also “Evangelize Beliefs” if you created the religion - basically allowing you to sacrifice the Apostle to add 2 other intrisic benefits to your religion. And then you can use them to start an Inquisition… which I’m not sure what that does (haven’t done it yet) except allows you to Faith build Inquisitors which are defensive Missionaries (in that they cost as much as Missionaries but are good at fighting back against other religion’s Missionaries or Apostles). ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/78 "2016-10-28T02:25:01Z")
So something’s happened in my game that’s making me mad. I’m absolutely besieged by barbarians-barely hanging on. And the AI Germany has a builder until just walking back and forth between my forces and the numerous barbarian. Like, there’s no reason for them not to attack the German unit. But no, he’s just hanging out there for twenty turns. It’s annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/79 "2016-10-28T09:10:35Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > 11pm last night - “I’ll just play for an hour and then go to sleep at a decent time” > > 1:45am - “Oh crap. Not again.” My personal best was telling myself I was ready for bed about that time. I achieved Space Victory about 10:45 the following morning. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Turble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933/80 "2016-10-28T15:37:09Z")
I’m done. Uninstalled. Game has all of the addiction and none of the fun that I remember from Civs past. Tossed and turned all night long, thinking that since I can’t sleep I’ll just get up and play a little. Realized I haven’t showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, done my Hearthstone daily quest, or gone for a walk or a bike ride in three days. A life disrupting game that isn’t even fun is no fun. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civilization-vi/768933.md?page=5)