Recent reviews by Ceph

I should just have listened to the reviews and not bought it, but my Civ-Addiction kicked in. And now i realise, its that type of sh. you buy in a back alley and instead of getting a high you crash down pretty low.

Ok lets be fair and not talk about game mechanics ( like age change etc.) Lets talk about things i havent expected to have to talk about in a 70€ Civ Game.

The Ui.... it's broken. Intern Steve could have programmed it better. It's an absolute mess and no amount of alcoholic bevrages will make it better. You can actually see bad programming (no boundrys, no padding, .....) in a releasedd game. Good luck if you are looking for an easy way to check certain values (which no one ever does in a Numbers go up game). Good luck when you reach 2nd Age and try missionaries.... there the ui makes you want to throw the Monitor out the window. I cant even believe, that got through QC in any form. Like literally its not bad, its a complete joke. I honestly believe i can do a better Ui in 1 week and im not a programmer.
TLDR: UI needs a complete makeover.

The Ai is as intellligent as my good friend Tom. I dont trust Tom enough to give him a fork, if he is in a room with an Power Outlet.

I personally can play the game only as Cathrine the Great, because the Map generation ALWAYS put me in a Tundra start regardless what Civilization and Leader im playing. Hatschepsut playing as Egyptians, lets give him a Tundra Start. Augustus with Maya guess what? Tundra start. Napoleon with Persia... well i think you get it. Map Generation is broken and there`s no "restart button" it's back to main menue and pick everything again.

While these are issues that are annoying i can't even tell you much the bad UI kills that game for me. You have to interact with that UI 99% of the time you are playing and its not designed to be good. Its designed that you are able to use it on Console so that the can make a few bucks more and not to be good. Honestly its a big big Middle Finger into the Face of PC Gamers. BIG BIG NONO.

TLDR: Wait till UI is fixed or game is in a sale for around 35€. Thats how much i honestly would pay for it in its current form.

At the moment I can't recommend the game.

There are multiple Problems with the biggest ones being the missing "challenge" the game offers (at least in campaign). I quit after prospecting for 4 Hours in act4 of the Campaign and still not finding an iron mine. This also shows the point the weak point of the game. Playtime is generated with time gates on certain action. It takes me around 15 minutes to set up a railroad network that generates millions and then the waiting for the completion of campaign objective begins.

I like the research tree (I don't like it to be gated behind campaign progressions, would have killed for a faster train in act 2 to get the objective done faster), I like the graphics.
Mechanic wise its really bare bone (you can't put signals on certain crosspoints on rails, so when 1 train is on the rail, the rail is completely blocked, even if the other train would only use a small part of that rail and never encounter the other train.) At the moment I can't recommend, as I can't see how the developers are going to add a challenge and "replayability to it".