Sid Meier's Civilization VI is Free on Epic

I'm no great fan of Epic / Tencent and their anti-gamer exclusivity deals but swallowed my pride for The outer Worlds , just had to have it.
Since then I've built a decent library of free games , last week the gave away GTA V ,which already I own on Steam so didn't bother,but logged in today to see what the new free game is and to my surprise and joy it's only Civilization VI , love the Civ series but don't have Civ 6 ... well , didn't have Civ 6.


Civ 6 holds a very positive rating on Steam and my first hour or so with the game was very positive , Civilization is the daddy.
If you have an Epic account do yourself a favour and get this ... it's Free !

a reply to: gortex

Thanks! I've wanted this game for a long time!

Downloading it now!

a reply to: gortex

Great 😀... I paid £25 for it last week 😎

Nice. The Civ games are excellent. I'm trying to get a friend to sign up and get it right now.
Thanks for the notice!

DISCLAIMER: As someone who currently has 1,756 hours on this game, I believe I have enough knowledge to give an adequate mini-review. This post will not be the six-sentence norm of ATS.

Well prepare yourselves for probably one of the worst map generators I have ever seen. "Oh, you picked the Vikings? Coastal or lake start bias... we're gonna spawn you in the middle of the mountains with one lake tile, nerfing every bonus your civ give you." Fun.

And the game is a straight cheater in terms of barbarian spawning. It will work 10 turns in advance of you to pile spawn on top of spawn in one area to 100% checkmate a piece and murder it. It is somewhat realistic as barbarians, historically, show up at the worst time in the worst place and keep coming.

But this game can take it too far, to the point of being ridiculous. You have to strategize against grossly anti-user world AI, instead of strategizing in a more realistic manner. It feels like your always playing on higher difficulty because of world AI, but the Civ AI's themselves act like their mentally retarded. Makes lower difficulties almost unplayable.

BUT if you can get past these issues, the game is great. The Civs, for the most part, are well constructed and portrays the real thing quite well. To the point where I had to stop being Sumeria and Aztec because I'd become so militarily powerful that I'd have to shut it off because nothing can stop me by 1,800 bc. Never mind the Mongols...

The combat is EXCELLENT! I always play marathon as that mode make military far more important. On higher difficulty the AI isn't so ball-bustingly stupid at strategy. If you roll in with no plan this game will crush you, NO MERCY. You can no longer be one-dimensional in your tactics. Unless you're the Mongols.

Very realistic, as you can REALLY get a feel for how devastating the Mongols were when their Keshigs just roll past your defensive line and cruise up to your capital unopposed with Seige Towers in tow. If you spawn near Qaraqorum, either destroy them RIGHT AWAY, or get a new map. If they get horsemen up, that's your ass.

I got thousands of hours experience on this game, though I only play by myself. Playing against people gets unrealistic, very fast. Endless beelining. Takes all historical strategy from the game. No one had horsemen in 2,600 BC, except half the people you'll be playing against. Rome shouldn't have Legions at 2,350 BC, but they will if you play them online. No balance!

a reply to: DiddyC

Right?! Chapped my ass something fierce when I read it. But hey, it's a great game and most people are almost absolutely ignorant of history... which makes them ignorant of what is in the world and how it works. And they tend to be brain-dead in terms of tactical ability. This game can alieviate the first point, and WILL alleviate the second.

Gotta whip these peasants into shape somehow...

a reply to: gortex
Just a fair warning, its a highly likeable game that will suddenly suck three hours of your time in the blink of an eye. I bought it on PlayStation 4 back in December and really enjoyed the heck out of it.

One of my favorite parts of the game is finding the artifacts from your early clashes with barbarians or competing civs in a later era of your game. They only show up once you have unlocked a unit type. But if you had a lot of fighting early on, the map will be littered with artifacts you can put in your palaces and museums.

They make for great trading material with other civs. They tend to be very interested in any artifacts connected with their civ. Sometimes in early exploration they will have fights near your borders during exploration and you end up expanding into that land. When you find those artifacts, their leader will usually come knocking seeking to trade you for those artifacts.

Super fun, I love it! It also helps to paint a picture of how violent or peaceful the map has been during that play. Unless you turn it off in the custom settings, any map littered with artifacts illustrate a very violent game. The opposite of course is true when no artifacts are around, usually only barbarian fights and the rest of the players were peaceful with each other.

One of the few game franchises that just keeps getting better with each new addition, unlike call of duty which to me peaked at Black Ops 2. Technically it may have peaked at Black Ops 1, but I still love two the best.

a reply to: WorldUnderCeej
oh I absolutely love the religious war thing. It usually one of my early tactics is to crush any competing religion that is too close to me. My second game I played as the vikings, and in an alliance with America and I think it was Sumeria??? I ended up nearly dominating the entire large map. I tore Germany and macedonia in half and left them with only three or four cities each, destroyed my neighbor to the South and then wiped whatever religion China had from the face of the Earth. China was still there though, I left a buffer zone and just made sure only my religion was on the continent. The damn Russians though were very good at keeping me on my toes around the rest of the world in regards to religion until I finished off with an Economic victory.

Militarily, the Viking/American/Sumerian alliance dominated the globe, between the three of us very little of the map was any color but blue. I just did not have time left though in the game for a domination victory, as the Russian Capital was very well guarded. Not for a lack of effort, I sent quite the armada to ruin their coastline, but they had too many fortified defenders on the coastline while I was waging a three front war, two traditional and one religious around the world, I just did not have time left so I focused on the economic victory as China was going to beat us all to the space race.

Its amazing how quickly you can build your money when you end your wars of expansion and just accumulate wealth.

a reply to: gortex

got it... but I haven't used epic games since Subnautica…

where the hell is my library??!?

I was a hoping it was Control.
No , I will not buy the game unless it gets severely marked down .
Or free.

a reply to: gortex

Thank you so much for the heads up!

a reply to: gortex

No, I'd rather buy it than support epic. Besides, epic doesn't want any of my money or support. They choose not to support the operating system I run and remove support for said operating system from games they acquire. So....# epic and # their store.

I already own it.

There are some fun features they've added to it, but I find I still prefer Civ 5. For one thing, I find religious combat to be really annoying in Civ 6. It's like actually fighting now, and I tend to prefer trade and culture and science type victories. I used to occasionally run religious domination in Civ 5, but this new version sucks.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Yeah Russia has the strongest early religion around, it's not even close. Tundra bias, faith bonus to tundra, 1/2 cost holy site with extra prophet point AND GWAM points on top and huge territory expansion on founding cities... getting Dance of the Aurora will get you to 100+ faith-per-turn before most even break the double digits.

A nightmare to start near... unless you're the Aztecs! Let them get about 4 cities with llavras up then roll in with the Jags! There is no greater treat for Monty than starting next to the Khmer; let them get their religion going and make sure to kill their missionaries in religious combat to turn them into a Relic farm! Then roll in with the Jags!

Monty's ability works for religious units as well, making them the best Civ at religious attack until Spain gets the Conquistador. Make sure to get the Crusader belief for your religion; it greatly extends the life of your hoard of Jags. If you're lucky enough to be near the Giants Step, you'll literally have Swordsmen at turn 1.

That plus Oligarchy plus Crusader = 47 strength, WITHOUT the luxury bonus on attack. Then initiate a slew of Flower Wars with any city-states that are not essential to you. Your meta game will be unstoppable due to the Aztec district rushing making district costs mean nothing to you. Try to get the Pyramids up; no one benifits from it more, not even China.

I am excited to play the Maya soon, even though I feel they made the Civ wrong. Certainly chose the wrong leader. The story of Pacal brilliantly displays Mayan culture. Cleopatra (who is of Hellenic royalty) should be Hatshepsut or Ramses the Great. Catherine Medici should be Napoleon or Louis XIV. Victoria, they got right. Georgia should be Armenia. Swedes should be Adolphus, and not suck.

But if they don't pander to the Progressives, they won't allow the game to come out. to that shlt.

If anyone here has a question about how to play as this Civ, or that Civ... I'm the autistic nerd you're looking for. I can also do some mini-guides. Just know that your start location WILL dictate your strategy.

And play on either epic or marathon speeds; it's where the game finds it's best balance. Civ traits go a lot further, and military ventures are more balanced. On faster play, horses are overpowered; their speed will dictate war.

To the point where building up an infantry is frivolous. Anti-cavalry just can't keep up with them on the tech tree. Unless your Shaka. His meta game warfare is unmatched, especially if you can somehow get a tech advantage. Just sack your neighbors entire civ but one crap city. Then gift it back for absurd GPT. Helps pay for the Corps bloated cost post Impi.

See, I can't stop myself. Been in love with this series since getting Civ 3 on my first computer in the early 2000's. I'm gonna force myself off of this now.

Go on CJ! GO ON AND GET!!! YAWWWW!!!

I don’t trust the epic games store 😕

originally posted by: GreenGunther
I don’t trust the epic games store 😕

Cam't disagree with that but I've still got some pirate in my blood so prefer free games to paying for them , not sure Epic is any less trustworthy than Steam TBH , I try not to buy games from Epic and do prefer Steam but while Epic keep throwing good games at me I'll take their money.

a reply to: gortex
I hear you.
I’m considering doing an analysis of the epic games store, to see what meta data it’s sending back to tencent.

I remember when I had to install steam in 2004 for the first time to be able to play HL2. Every fibre of my being was screaming nooooo.

Then came Origin... the ‘origin web helper service’ is one that alway runs in the background, even if the origin client doesn’t start automatically. I disabled this service at startup though.

I know we’re just ‘data’ to them, no one cares about scrutinizing the individual, or so they say...
The epic games store is one I’ll never use, but I’m sure it can’t do to much in a VM? Although China probably thought about that...

All these free games... I yearn for they days where you had to go to a brick and mortar store to buy games. No updates, no dlc, just a game on a disc that was yours to own, with a manual printed on cold, hard paper...
Aahhh those were the days..

You know the old saying, if it’s free, you’re the commodity.

a reply to: GreenGunther

I remember when I had to install steam in 2004 for the first time to be able to play HL2. Every fibre of my being was screaming nooooo.

Yeah remember it well , day one purchase so the Steam servers were very busy and 12kb dial up speed didn't make the experience any less frustrating ... the end result was great though.


Sad truth is we're a commodity through anything we do online even here but at least being a commodity on Epic comes with weekly rewards , Ill keep clapping if they continue throwing fish.

I too miss the days of physical disks but at least these days if you buy a broken game (No Mans Sky) chances are it will get fixed and you have access to patches on day one rather than having to wait for a patch on a magazine cover disk , I think the Pro's of digital outweigh the negatives for the most part.

I'd be interested to know what data my PC is reporting back to base so if you decide to investigate please let us know the results.

a reply to: WorldUnderCeej
Thats funny, civ 3 is also where I was first introduced to the franchise. It was actually my ol lady that put me on it. My brother had let me play alpha centauri before, I had no idea it was part of the same franchise. But the AI never had any respect for borders until civ 4.