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It's September, I'm back at university, studying for my Software Engineering degree. We're still studying remotely.
The fun thing about Software Engineering is that a lot of lectures are useless. What really matters is that you do your homework and you write good programs, and most info related to programming can be easily Googled or Stack Overflow'd. Most teachers record their lectures and upload videos, or presentations, for us to look at whenever we want.
But, I still have to connect to Zoom calls, because attendance matters. And because most of them are useless, I like to play video games during calls.
The best games to play during lectures are games which don't require any reading, or processing text. I can't process in-game text while also (pretending) to listen to a teacher. So I usually play something like Minecraft, or maybe racing games.
But now, I've gotten addicted to *Civilization*!
It's Civilization! Probably the most famous strategy game series in the world. More specifically, I'm talking about the latest installment - Civilization VI. Even more specifically, I'm talking about *Gathering Storm*, which is a paid DLC which adds new mechanics, such as climate change, the city Loyalty system, the World Congress, Dark and Golden ages, Barbarian clans, and so on.
Yes, it's so addictive, and so good! Previously, I played the regular version of Civ 6, without the expansion packs. The base game was also very addictive, but it did feel unrealistic. Like, it was extremely easy, and extremely cheap, to just research shipbuilding and cartography as quickly as possible, and then colonize another continent. On the other hand, *Gathering Storm* makes colonizing much harder thanks to the Loyalty system: if you establish a city too far away from your other territories, the citizens will lose loyalty, and will eventually rebel against you and leave your nation. It takes effort and planning (or a lot of military force) to successfully colonize. This is both more realistic, and also adds just a bit of extra depth for me to enjoy.
The climate change mechanic is unrealistic, my playthrough got all the way to *4 degrees Celsius warming (!)* and I literally did not feel any effects... Just for comparison, in real life, we're already feeling its effects at /1 degree/ warming, and things will get exponentially worse as we go up. Then again, in Civilization, I was playing as Russia, and most of my cities were in snowy areas on the far North, so maybe that's why I didn't notice anything. :D Either way, good to know that the game mechanic exists at least.
The base game got a 9/10 from me, but *the expansions push the game to 10/10* for me.
The AI in Civilization 6 is very unoptimized for some reason. I was playing on a Huge map, and in the more modern eras, the AI turns sometimes took up to 5 minutes! And now consider that my game lasted for more than 200 turns... Meanwhile, on a tiny map with just 3 computer opponents, their turns lasted a few seconds at worst. *Also, the Linux version has an issue with broken libraries, and the graphics and sound are also unoptimized.* I hear that it's much better to play the Windows version through Proton. Even then, *do not play on big maps unless you have a very powerful computer.*
