Recently the reviews being posted regarding this game have been quite strongly negative. I am inclined to disagree with a lot of whats been said and disagree that this game should be given a poor review.

Me and friends after playing civilization 5 to death using different multiplayer settings and exhausting the workshop were very pessimistic in trying out this latest installment due to all the negativity that was surrounding the game. After having purchased the game recently in a sale we thought to give it a shot and try out the multiplayer too which was said to be bug riddled.

Before we had the chance to start a multiplayer game, i thought i would start a game myself and get used to the new way the game is played. I picked the English and played on a true start location Earth map. Needless to say later on in the game i regretted this and with France also being chosen there was not much room to manouever. However my overall goal halfway through the game was a cultural victory, and well i wont this ridiciously easy. I was not shocked due to the difficulty i had placed the game at, but i was suprised at how much i had enjoyed actually winnning through culture. Previous cultural victories on the previous civ game, didnt feel rewarding or great when pulled off. However winning through actual tourism, i thought was satisfying.

Moving onto looking at all the victory types, i think the science victory has been worked substantially better than in any other previous civ game. Having to create a district (yes i will come to this later) to create the componenets for a space victory, having a city work on specific edicts to pass to progress in space exploration, just made the game feeling a bit more tactical and involving. Domination is the same as it always has been, and i maintain the bets way to play a multiplayer civ game. Score victory i just ignore as i think this is one that should be removed as it is meaningless. Finally coming to the Religious victory, this has been improved greatly, and everything to do with religion has had its improvements making it something actually useful and worthwhile rather than something i ignored because it felt like a bit of a gimmick in the previous civ game.

The new way to create and build up your civilzations cities is through districts. This way creates new challenges in running your civilization. Early on in the game you have to decide what is more important to you as you are only allowed to build some many districts depending on population. This adds a whole new element to the challenging strategy, especially when played against friends. For example a friend of mine is the English Empire with a stupidly large navy. This is countered however by a few of us building airports and aerodromes to house aircraft close to the coast and defend from sea attacks. Diplomacy could use a look at, but that isnt the be all and end all of the game, and to anyone who thinks they can just take everything for essentially nothing are wrong or havent played multiple games to see this isnt the case. The new way to build wonders is interesting and i for one love it. Requiring a stone resource in your empire and close by to build stonehenge is intuitive and also would be neccesary at the stage of the civilizations development.

The highest difficulty we have currently played on is having one civilization on Emperor, and while it starts off difficult it becomes mildly easier and frankly we were lucky it was the Russians who were the highest difficulty because they seemed to lack the capacity to build anything other than knights. A staple it seems onany civ game from them...

To the dlc point, while i agree the dlc for civ 6 is comparably poor and pricey to civ 5, dlc that create massive changes to the games core mechanic take time to produce. Funnily enough i dont buy a game expecting amazing dlc to be added to pay for later. Its always a nice bonus, but a game like this in its base form should provide more than enough entertainement.

The game takes a big step in adapting the core formula around building the cities, and creating armies where you can put multiple units together to create a stronger force. Changing from familliarity and something that works, to something that changes the way you think about the game is not always easy and i do think there is room for improvement in some aspects, such as maps avaliable, game settings and some of the victory types. I do believe however this is a good addition to the series and will not be going back to play the last generation fo the game. The best way for a game like this that relies on gamers input and feedback, is to suport and that is what i shall be doing and hope you will too!