Yes, that's the real Civilization VI on the App Store

Front Page Discussion
#1

Originally published at: http://statelyplay.com/2017/12/22/yes-thats-the-real-civilization-vi-on-the-app-store/

iPad, PC/Mac/Linux •


Yesterday saw one of the biggest surprise releases to ever land on the App Store, Civilization VI. Yes, THAT Civilization VI. The one with Sid Meier in the title and Boromir doing the voice-overs. The one that takes days to finish a game, with full tech trees, barbarians, city states, and enough different Civs to fill a tiny UN. It’s the real deal, with a real price, and it’s on the App Store.

We all know what Civilization is, so I won’t give you details about 4X games and yada, yada, yada. Instead, let’s talk about the app itself. First of all, don’t come knocking on the Civ door if your iPad is older than an Air 2; the app is only available for iPad Air 2 and later, including the iPad 2017 and iPad Pro. I have none of the above, so I’ll be waiting to play this until I get a real job which, let’s be real, isn’t happening any time soon.

If you do have one of the newer iPad models, however, Civ Vi on it is fairly incredible. For research purposes I went to a friend’s house to mess around with the game on their iPad Pro and it was a delight. The graphics aren’t turned up all the way, but I couldn’t really tell a difference between the iPad version and how it currently looks while playing it on my MacBook Pro. Everything was smooth as silk, including moving units with your fingertips and scrolling around the randomly generated world. The time between turns can get a bit long, but never got to the point of being unbearable. I was playing on a large world, but also didn’t make it all the way to the end game which is when turns get long even on the laptop. I’ve also been told by Nick who has one of the 12.9" iPad Pros that the game isn’t scaled right for that device. I haven’t seen it for myself to give more details, but you’ll want to download and try it out before hitting the buy button if you have one of those.

The iPad version has everything its big brother has, with the only thing missing being DLC. There is a small note on the bottom of the main menu telling you about the upcoming Rise and Fall expansion, so it would seem that they’re planning on bringing it to the app. If they do that, I don’t see why all the DLC currently available for the PC version wouldn’t make it to iPad as well.

We now need to talk about pricing. As amazing as it is to have a game like Civ VI on our iPads, the truly amazing thing might be the price. The game is free to download, but that will only get you the first 60 turns. If you want the full experience, you have to unlock it with cash: $60. It’s currently on sale for only $30, but that will end on January 4th when it will shoot up to its Steam-sized price point. Did Aspyr get confused and think they released it on the Switch store? Folks there and on PC will gladly pay $60 for a AAA title but, as you can imagine, there are already cries of outrage over the price on the App Store as if the folks at Aspyr don’t need to eat or buy clothing. I, for one, welcome the price and hope this sells like hotcakes, opening the door for other devs to release full-price ports of games for iPad. I’d much prefer to see a bunch of really well made $60 games released each year, rather than the thousands of free-to-play garbage that’s turned the App Store into a laughing stock. Maybe that’s just me, but I really hope not.

Off my soap box, let me point you to where you can pick up Civ VI for yourself. On the App Store. I still can’t believe I’m typing that.

https://youtu.be/mSe7xeceLYU
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#2

“I, for one, welcome the price and hope this sells like hotcakes, opening the door for other devs to release full-price ports of games for iPad. I’d much prefer to see a bunch of really well made $60 games released each year, rather than the thousands of free-to-play garbage that’s turned the App Store into a laughing stock. Maybe that’s just me, but I really hope not.”

So much this.

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#3

My biggest problem with the price isn’t so much its value, but its opportunity cost. Undoubtedly $30/$60 is a great value for a game of this magnitude on an iPad. However, with most games, I think to myself “if I skip my second coffee, I can buy that app.” With a price tag like this, I’m suddenly in a position where I have to decide between an app and a new PS4 game or board game.

I, too, welcome the idea of AAA games taking over the App Store even at AAA prices, but my impulse buys will go by the wayside.

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#4

In another forum thread, kennfusion mentioned that Aspyr is slow to port over the Civ 6 updates to the mac version. So I decided to check the version of iOS game which is 1.0.0.129. Assuming they use the same numbering scheme for their updates across platforms (I don’t see why they wouldn’t), this game has the Spring 2017 patch which was released in March. It is missing the summer and fall patches. I still bought the game but I will temper my expectations about this game getting timely updates if iOS version of the game was released with an update that occured 9 month ago and has had 2 major update since then.

#5

As I downloaded this I was thinking “Please be good, please be good, please be good…” And it really is.

If this works then could we see EUIV, Stellaris, XCOM 2 etc. on the iPad? Has to be better than Flappy Bird. I can’t be alone in the category of older gamers with some disposable income but no time to sit in front of a PC in the evening. I don’t really understand why it’s taken this long.

I just hope they get some success with the pricing strategy so we can break out of the cycle of people making ports for the iPad on the cheap that don’t quite work due to interface niggles (eg Darkest Dungeon).

4 Likes
#6

<raises hand>

#7

Right there with you.

#8

Just one other thought… It seems like a really strange strategy to release this with absolutely no build up whatsoever, particularly when it’s priced as a AAA game. That would never happen on PC - why are they trying it this way for mobile?

#9

@feederofgoats - because the discussion on most mobile sites is already negative around the price. Why market when people are just going to shit on it?

Overall, I’ve played through 80 turns on 2 games. 1 was 3 AI, small - one was 5 AI, large. Prince difficulty and the game was pretty damn smooth. Turns were taking a bit longer at the upper end, but it was still really playable.

Absolutely worth my $30.

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#10

I’ve played a tiny map/4 ai/one city challenge game right up to the space race and the ai turns have remained short and snappy. If I was at war or running multiple cities then my turn would take far far longer than the ai takes.

My biggest concern was that the game would bog down during ai turns. It seems that this is not the case, at least on smaller maps. Standard size earth map here I come!

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#11

I completely agree with you on the price point. Looks like a great implementation and well worth it.

I’m still not sure I agree with their marketing strategy. It’s entirely predictable that the vast majority of the iOS market will be outraged at the price - that would happen whatever they did. For this to be successful they have to tap into the market of people who see the iPad as a legitimate strategy gaming platform and without marketing I bet they miss a lot of people.

As a member of that target market I was initially very suspicious when I heard that it had been released with no build up. It gives the impression it was knocked out as an afterthought which was clearly not the case.

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#12

Yeah, not sure what the PR firm was thinking. Even behind the scenes we knew nothing about this until we received a press release yesterday. By that point, we already knew it was on the App Store.

I’m guessing you guys are right that they were trying to defer bad vibes about the price, but I think the smarter move would have been to announce it a long time ago and build up some hype among strategy gamers who could have flooded reviews with positive reviews before the price bitching started?

#13

Having worked in PR before, I’m thinking that mabye the port took longer than originally scheduled, and so the thought process likely was “it’s a couple of days before Christmas, nobody is going to pay attention if we start a campaign now. We’ll do the publicity thing after the holidays.”

Or, they really are just choosing to not allocate budget to promote it, which would be a shame.

#14

Yeah, I am protesting this game, and did so very vocally in the Official Mac Thread on Steam. I have 374 hours played on Civ 6 and over 1200 hours on Civ 5 on Steam. I play a LOT of Civ. As the owner of brand new iPad, I normally would have jumped on this to play on my frequent business flights, as it’s easier than taking out my laptop, especially if the jerk in front of me put their seat back. But Aspyr is having a lot of problems with communication with Firaxis, all of our Seasonal patches come significantly late, and then with additional bugs.

#15

What, exactly, is the issue, though? I get that you’re concerned about patches but is the current state of the iOS game in need of patches? Or are you just worried about their willingness to keep up with apple’s updates?

#16

Well considering the iPad app is already 2 patches behind, I don’t think they have any intention of keeping up with updates. For all I know, that version you have there is the final version. Summer and Fall updates have big balance changes in them.

#17

The last few installements in the franchise have benefited greatly from patching, balancing and expansions packs. I think the assumption is that a civ game isn’t really complete until the end of that process. While the games are excellent shortly after launch, it’s not until years later that they become the finely tuned machine they promised to be.

Personally I think the last few vanilla civ games have been great, but I also see how a player might need to updates to keep the game fresh and balanced.

#18

I’m post Christmas party drunk so this may make no sense(!) but isn’t this whole discussion missing the point. If we judge the acceptable standard as the current state of PC-Civ then I agree that the commitment to post release patching and refinement is important. As somebody who doesn’t own a PC that can play post-2013 games I relish the release of any Civ on iOS and am prepared to pay big $ for it. If there are enough people like me then market forces will prevail and we will have a well maintained game.

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#19

Did I miss it or did noone report the “needs iOS 11 to work”?
Or am I the last grumpy person that still did not upgrade? I was panning to upgrade my iPhone 6+ to iOS 11 but held back because people reported terrible slowdown issues on the first devices of 6th gen.

I was planning to upgrade my iPad 10,5 pro sometimes in the future (after I try to minimalize the hit I take from the APPocalype in finishing as many 32bit games as possible before upgrading now I have teh terrible decision to do it now to get the hefty launch price sale of Civ 6, or to wait how fast Aspyr is catching up on content (if at all) to the PC version.

I would gladly play this on iPad instead of PC as I have more time on hand for mobile gaming but the damn iOS 11 thing…

#20

You’re not the last, but like the rest, the complaining has gotten tiresome. I, at least, understand that iOS 11 is the devil to you and others, and that you don’t want to update because it slows down your devices and removes your apps. It’s been hashed and rehashed in so many threads at this point, I’m seeing the same exact arguments on all sides.

It sucks that you cannot update and cannot play Civ 6 because it requires iOS 11.

Why exactly are you posting in the thread with the same exact complaint about iOS 11?