Just one more turn. Hardly any time at all.

I am one more turning really hard this week.

I finally got around to installing Civilization 6, and it is a beast of a game.  Unlike Civ 5, 6 is actually super complicated right out of the gate.  5 had fairly simple mechanics, not much more challenging than the earliest Civ games, and had some really enormous balance problems.  6, on the other hand, is ridiculously complicated in all kinds of ways.  I am a veteran gamer, played 5 for 1500 hours, and I am struggling to keep everything straight.

It is marvellous.

Hell, there are still a couple of major mechanics and victory conditions that I have absolutely no idea how to handle.  Starting a religion and having religious battles is a core mechanic in the game and yet because I didn't get in quickly to found a religion I can't do any of that stuff at all.  There is an entire subgame that the AIs are playing against one another involving pushing their various religions and while I can see them bashing away at one another with religious units I have no idea how all that works.

There is this thing about tourism that is apparently a win condition and I have no idea how that works.  How 'come visit my booth' is a win condition on par with 'conquer every other civilization on the planet' I don't know, but even if you set aside how bizarre it feels I don't know how it works.  I know how to hang paintings in my buildings, and apparently people like to come look at those, but there is all this stuff about stealing tourism from other people and trade routes and geez I have no idea what I am doing.

I decided to just go for a scientific victory since that seemed at least vaguely similar to previous Civ games.  Just stack a lot of science, build a spaceship, win.  Doing this made sure I would have competitive units at least, so if I get attacked I won't be sitting there with a bunch of fancy artwork and books while the enemies burn my cities to the ground.

There are just so many things to think about.  Some districts want to be near mountains, some near rivers, some near other districts.  Some like pretty settings, and others want to be nestled in the mines.  Farms want to be in tight groups, and every city needs a mix of production and food to go along with all the districts.  Plus you have to factor in which districts your cities each want based on your win conditions and what tiles they currently have access to and which they will eventually have access to... it is just so much.

I have to keep in mind also all the random stuff the city states are demanding and the Eureka criteria for all of my scientific advances and my cultural stuff.  Some of these rewards are building related and some are about using specific units.

Usually when I play a Civ game I can figure out how everything works.  Finding the optimal strategy can take time, but the mechanics themselves have mostly been easy.  6 is not like that.  I have multipliers all over the place for various things and I just don't know where it all comes from.

This complexity is overwhelming, especially when I consider that I am playing on easymode - Prince difficulty should be a cakewalk for anyone with the amount of hours invested into Civ that I have.

I think this is a worthy entry into the Civ lineup.  Anyone itching for more complex gameplay is going to find it here.  There are so many things to think about and to do - you could spend an hour analyzing a single city placement to consider every thing it might build in the future to pick the perfect location.  Whether or not the numbers are all correct isn't something I can figure out with not even a single playthrough under my belt, but so far nothing felt egregiously wrong.

Civ 6 feels like a game I will need one hundred hours of play in before I will really know how things work.  That is a good feeling, to be delving deep into something really challenging to master.

So far, two big thumbs up.