Resources give you boosts of various kinds. If you have lots of horses your cavalry will kick ass, for instance, but if you have none you can still make cavalry. And you get access to all the resources produced by any city you have a trade route to, so it becomes about choosing between multiple good options than about managing scarcity.
I am playing on a laptop using NVDIA G-Force.
I’ve only played one Modern Era, but saw no sign of aircraft.
I can’t get beyond Civ 4 BTS. I’ve had Civ V for a few years, tried to play it but lost interest. I might try V again, then if I like it I’ll try VI. To me, IV is the best of the first 4 but I miss the advisors from II: the swishy science guy “All the world MAH-vels at our superior IN-tellect sire” and Elvis “The people…they can’t help fallin’ in love with you”.
I’ve tried the Pirate game but lost interest- what the hell I’ve gotta learn to dance? Colonization didn’t do it for me either. How about Railroad Tycoon- is that worth the effort?
Can you elaborate on the mechanic a little? In old Civ games having 1 horse resource (or one trade route to them) essentially gave you unlimited horses. Are you suggesting that having many horse tiles (or trade routes to multiple horse-having civs) somehow makes your units perform better? Or do the production costs decline when you go from 0 to 1 to more tiles?
Instead of gatekeeping access to a unit, resources give you a bonus to all units of a particular type. Having access to a horse resource gives all your cavalry units a +1 to combat (+2 versus infantry). Resource bonuses stack, so if you have two horse resources, you get +2/+4, if you have three you get +3/+6, and so forth.
Wow, that is an interesting change. Not sure it makes narrative sense, but it’s an interesting mechanic. I assume you can still promote units via XP as well.
Do resources acquired through trade offer any bonuses?
I can imagine that this would change your priorities when settling towns or expanding borders by quite a lot.
Actually, no. Individual units don’t receive xp anymore. Instead, you have “General” units who gain xp from being adjacent to combat. The general levels up, and gives bonuses to adjacent units. They can also carry 4-6 other units as an army. They can’t fight while in an army, but it makes moving a lot of units around the map a lot easier.
Yeah, there’s a resource allocation screen now. Resources are either empire-wide, or city specific. Empire-wide resources (like horses, or marble) give a bonus to your whole empire. City resources (like wheat or fish) need to be allocated to a city, and give only that city bonuses. They also stack, so having two wheat bonuses on the same city gives you twice as much. Traded resources are also allocated on this screen. Also (I think) trading a resource doesn’t prevent you from using it yourself.
Maybe you’d prefer the 1987 upgraded version of the original game? There’s also a pirate game which uses the engine from Mount & Blade: Warband but I don’t like the mechanic which requires docking fees to enter port. Very similar to Sid Meier’s games otherwise, minus the dancing.
Honestly, I’d prefer an upgraded version of RT1 and/or 2 for modern resolutions.
I played the original Pirates! on Commodore 64 and Live the Life on Wii. The addition of mini- Dance Dance Revolution to the wooing of governors’ daughters was a welcome upgrade from text “conversations.” Sneaking into towns, not so much. Anything is better than the old land battle system, though.
Personally, Civ-V is my favorite but only with ALL the DLC added. The game was not great upon release but the DLC added a lot. That said, it is probably the most micromanaging of all the Civs. I like getting in the weeds a bit but I know it is not for everyone. I also think it is by far the best looking. Civ-VI was more cartoony and made with consoles in mind and suffered for it.
Railroad Tycoon 2 is excellent and still one of my all-time favorite games. Newer, 3d versions and copycats were released but RR Tycoon 2 is still the best of them I think. That said, it is old and not made for modern resolution monitors and suffers some for it.
I keep hoping some newer games that have tried the same thing will be as good but none quite get there for me. Not bad but not as good.
Completely agree.
That addition also made sense but should have been better implemented.
Sometimes I’ll forget how small the build window is at the highest zoom and try playing again. A zoom level at 3½ would have been a big help.
Railroads! is pretty good but the maps are too small, making it feel more like “Model Railroad Tycoon”. The random map generator there is a nice touch.
Hopefully not much more of a topic derail, but Mashinky is modern with great detailed graphics.
The General mechanic sounds like an improvement. Micromanaging promotions (and then risking the loss of promoted units) always became a nightmare in the late game. Having units all inherit them from the leader seems like a really logical fix. I never liked the stacks of death, so I think I understand the reason they can’t attack as a stack, but if it’s capped at 4-6 units that seems like it should mitigate the issue already. Wonder if they’ll revise this and allow these smaller stacks to attack at some point.
As an aside, are the “Generals” just that one rank? Do they start as Colonel or Majors?
This sounds like an improvement as well. Jumping in and out of every city in your empire every turn was a nuisance. Making sure you were making the most of your tiles was a thing that I tended to let slip in the midgame to my detriment. A single dashboard with more fungible resources seems like a no-brainer. I wonder if the empire-wide resources require connections via roads or if they are just universally linked everywhere once acquired.
They’re actually called “Commanders,” not generals. I think some cultures have unique versions, but they don’t have ranks like that.
There’s actually more of that, since they got rid of the Worker unit. Instead, every time a city’s population increases, you choose a tile in its production radius, and automatically build whatever structures are appropriate for it.
Urban buildings (stuff built in a city’s build queue) are also placed on the world map, now. Each hex around your city can hold two structures, including the city center (which starts with one slot filled with your palace/city hall). Hexes that you’ve improved through growing your population are “rural” hexes, hexes that you’ve improved by building a structure there are “urban” hexes, and some abilities interact differently with each type of hex.
Universal. Roads increase your trade range, which gives you access to more foreign cities and therefore more goods, but they don’t affect where you assign goods, or which cities get the empire-wide bonus.
Eliminating workers seems like another net improvement. I’m sure growing and improving cities is still a major part of the game, but at least based on your description these all sound like positive changes on paper.
Looking forward to giving it a go.
Steam reviews are currently 51-49 positive, which is, ironically, not positive.
I have not yet played, but I am a longtime Civ fan, having started with Civ 1 on my Mom’s Packard Bell PC in 1994, and have played every iteration since.
I also played Humankind, and several others.
From the reading here, and what I have seen online, it looks like Civ VII is trying to pitck and choose the “best” of the various 4X games that fit the mold, and remake Civ into something that is more modern and different enough to attract new players. I can respect that.
My 2 sons and I have taken to a bi-weekly evening of playing games together, and we are all waiting for Civ 7, but I admin I am nervous that it won’t be the game we are hoping for. I’ll probably buy it for myself and them, and then play alone if they aren’t feeling it (we are currently getting our asses kicked in Valheim, which is fun and infuriating).
For my money, I would love to see the “Civil War” and Partisans of Civ 2, modern video capture advisors with a lot more dialogue, and a few other bits and pieces of previous versions added to a Civ release rather than starting from scratch each time…
Have you tried Transport Fever 2 (I think). It’s a “spiritual successor” to the old Transport Tycoon game from the 90s and very similar to Railroad Tycoon, but with boats, trucks, planes (and of course trains).
I’ve been thinking of jumping back into Civilization (I played I up until around III IIRC), but I’m not sure about the reviews so far for VII.
I started playing when it was just Train Fever but I somehow can’t achieve the same level of success with the most recent games.