Civilization VI: Just another knowledge check 4X game
So after eight years since VI's release, it decided to get into Civilization VI. People were often talking about how innovative this game was, and it knew the Civilization Players League had a ton of cool balancing tools to make the game really engaging.
And obviously, the fact that there's a league for competing at all means a lot of people have found a lot of meaning in competing in the game.
The main worry it had was that 4X games are often all about knowledge checks, and you can often win with next to no experience against people who've played the game for years by just looking up strategies that dominate the meta if they haven't already done so. For those who are used to competing with strategy board games that throw you into a new, random situation every game and understanding principles is more important than knowing all the knowledge checks, it can be very frustrating to play strategy video games that add a ton of complexity just to make it hard to know all the things you're "supposed" to know.
Unfortunately, despite all the talk of innovations, Civilization VI was not much different. Just like how you had to know to Radio->Ideology in Civilization V, or that Great Scientists, Engineers, and Merchants are pooled together and so Merchants harm your science and production, you have to "just know" all kinds of things in Civilization VI and it makes for a very unpleasant experience with friends, competing over who knows more specific facts rather than whose intuition is better calibrated to the game's underlying patterns.
Not every game needs to be almost entirely principled like Spirit Island, Sidereal Confluence, or Go, but as an example, you can make up for a lack of knowledge in games like Twilight Imperium in all kinds of ways. It's just a very frustrating experience to know that to get to that point of making clever decisions, you and your friends are going to have to commit to like a year of doing homework so that you're not just one-upping one another on the basis of who happened to find the best resource for understanding the game.
And then if you want to play competitively, the main competitive leagues harbor tons of abusers who regularly try and drive vulnerable members in the league out, and refuse to do anything about harassment campaigns against minorities in their community because "this is just for gaming, we won't pick political sides" or whatever.
After playing with friends for about six months and feeling like any victories were awarded to whoever found the better tutorial for how to play the game, like it was rarely a matter of who found the insight necessary at a critical point to win, it was hard to keep going. The innovations of Civilization VI didn't make a meaningful difference between its experience of VI and V.
If you don't like dealing with abusers who face no consequences in CPL while those who call them out get punished, if you want to very quickly get up to date on all of the mechanics of a game and how they tie together and start just seeing who can outpace who in terms of decision-making, then Civilization VI is largely going to be a big waste of time. Obviously there are plenty of people outside of that demographic.
But for it and its friends, well, back to trying out new strategy board games. Been meaning to try out Brass: Birmingham from six years back.
One alternative strategy video game that's really fun is Red Alert 2 (Mental Omega mod) with a fairly low required APM much like 4X games, a thriving community and easy to get friends into, and a fairly low knowledge check barrier with a lot of room for experimenting and sharpening one's intuition.
Also, one thing not included here is the AI problem. The 4X games with the best and most challenging, clever AIs, perfect for training competitively when you can't get together with all your friends, are also single-player. Ditto for 4X games that randomize tech trees and policy trees and the like to make the game more principled.
If you want a really good 4X game, try Stellaris. It's where I went after 1000+ hours of Civ 5 (and coming to Civ 6 to be disappointed by it, played only like 80 hours), and I've been ̶t̶e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶i̶z̶i̶n̶g̶ liberating the galaxy ever since. I especially like the additional nuances to diplomacy, which are further enhanced by mods -- Civ's AI has always been a bit ham-fisted.
OP seems to want a very competitively focused tightly balanced experience, and Stellaris is absolutely anything but that. I enjoy the game, it's fun, but I can't imagine anyone considering it to be particularly balanced or enjoyable as a PvP/Versus experience.
Thank you to both you and @db0@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com for discussing this. This does match with what others have said. That said, it's okay with roleplaying too, it often hosts roleplaying-only Twilight Imperium IV games, or one-shot TTRPGs (D&D is banned, Pathfinder is banned, any other system is okay).
But yes, a much bigger hole in its heart is competition. Girls just like to have fun, and for some girls, that means merciless (but trauma-informed and respect towards boundaries around competition) competition.
There are some multiplayer roleplaying video games. Baldur's Gate 3 has been quite engaging. Sometimes just one of us watching the other play Disco Elysium is enough. But competing strategically without it becoming unpleasant...that's a harder find outside of board games.
Use it/its and not you/your, please. its heard Stellaris has great narrative elements but it's very hard to play in a reasonable amount of time and there's some balance issues that can make competition feel really unfair. Maybe will still get around to it some day.
I consider myself pretty progressive and am friends with nothing but progressives. And lots of people in the LGBTQ+ community. This is the first time I've ever seen someone want to have their second-person pronouns changed... It does not make communication easy.
It doesn't really make any sense since first and second person pronouns aren't gendered. When I refer to "you" it means "whoever I'm talking to" without implying anything about the person or persons other than that I intend my message for them. There's just no reason to change that. Not "no good reason" but "no reason".
They even refer to themselves as 'it' in the first person, which just breaks comprehensibility entirely if you don't already know what they're talking about.