Deacsfan27
Well-known member
It's unique to ME.
I think I've started about 40 Civ games, played a combined 200 hours or so hours and finished maybe 1. Good times.
Civ is great, and I've played them since 3... I even took the day off for 6's release!
But I've also gotten way into Paradox games over the past couple of years, and I'm not sure I can go back to Civ now. It feels a little like Baby's First 4x Game. The nostalgia's still there, and I enjoy it, but between the dogshit AI in 6 and the streamlining of features, I dunno. It seems more like a board game now than anything else.
I'd be interested to hear if any of the Civ fans here have opinions on Stellaris or CK2 or EU4.
I tried to get into CK2, but it was just so dense I couldn't do it. CK3 is supposed to be a bit easier to roll in to, so I'm looking forward to that.
I did put some time into Stellaris when it first came out and enjoyed it quite a bit, but haven't kept up with the updates, which i understand have mixed reactions and have substantially changed the nature of the game.
Yeah, CK2 is real dense when you start out. The difficulty curve is no joke, but things really come together once you get your bearings. CK3 looks more streamlined, yeah. Not sure yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but early hands-on previews have been positive.
Stellaris is interesting. It uses the same DLC structure that Paradox does with their other games (i.e., release significant expansions every 6 months or so, resulting in 10+ expansions for a game when all is said and done), but Stellaris' expansions have been mostly great, and a lot of the features have been added in with the free game patches, too. You're right that the gameplay has changed substantially since 1.0, though.
I think a lot of the "mixed" reactions were just people initially resisting change (I remember this specifically when Stellaris went to its 2.0 patch), but Steam reviews for most of the expansions are positive these days. The two notable exceptions seem to be Apocalypse (which is a tick overpriced, but still pretty cool IMO) and MegaCorp (which I still haven't tried)... Utopia and Leviathans were both legit great, and the smaller story packs (Synthetic Dawn, Ancient Relics) are both really cool.
I'd definitely encourage you to give it another go