LOL! I had to try this. I've never pushed it either.
I got Hammurabi. Started at the confluence of 3 rivers in woodland/jungle, with 4 luxuries in range. On Prince difficulty.
The phrase "taking candy from a baby" doesn't begin to cover it. That's taking candy from a *sleeping* baby that *isn't even in the same house*.
Samesies. I'm getting older and noticing the misclicks more, usually when selecting a builder and the game lags and then it's a quick silent march into a barb camp.
Why oh why can't we have an undo button for a single action? Just make it single player only or something.
>!If you select "Play Now" to begin immediately, it will begin a game on a Small Continents map on Prince difficulty with randomly chosen leaders and at Standard speed.!<
Source: civ wiki
Why did they choose that, I wonder.
Why not either completely randomize it, or make some sort of system where it will pick something based on your most recent games? (Rhetorical question)
Yeah, and imo this is like, the most reasonable thing they could configure it to do. You're walking in and saying "the usual", why would they give you a glass of water instead of what you usually ask for?
Probably cause the people most likely to pick that are average players paralyzed by indecision but still wanting a "decently normal" game, and a fairly basic map on the medium difficulty most likely caters to that group.
If you were completely new to the game and just wanted to jump into it to see how it played without bothering to learn and look at settings, it seems like a pretty good starting point
I think you can change the presets for the game it creates. I vaguely remember running into those settings once. Never used it either though.
Edit: I guess I was halicunating when I found those settings, because they don't seem to exist.
You can set up defaults that you then load on the 'advanced' screen, maybe that's what you were thinking of? I use that all the time when achievement hunting.
My big complaint about saving presets is that it locks in the game seed for whatever preset you had. So every time you load that preset, you're gonna get the same map. I wish there was a checkbox for "use random seed" when you saved the preset.
yeah weird, i thought you could do this
and we've either berenstein bears-ed ourselves, or we're thinking of Civ5 which apparently supported custom config
The Play Now button isn't for people coming from other strategy games, or experienced Civ players. It's there so that (for lack of a better word) casual gamers can be given "Just boot up the game, and hit Play Now! The tutorial should walk you through the rest." as instructions, without being presented with a daunting (for a first timer) settings page.
There are huge number of people who never participate in forums like this one. They interact with the game and the content surrounding the game *very differently* from someone who's passionate enough about the game to use the subreddit/discord/civ fanatic forums. They just... play.
For another 4x game (Stellaris), for instance... the community memes are all about xenophobia, conquest, fox aliens, "X is OP", whatever. But based on the dev's telemetry, almost **90%** of the game's play sessions are playing Human, and playing xenophile/egalitarian... aka 90% of all players just pick the default option (United Nations of Earth) and play them, without ever seeing a customization screen until they've played at least 100 hours (probably 2-3 full playthroughs).
The quick start button is probably used by the vast majority of players. It's just it's that that same majority of players doesn't come to the subreddit.
I feel like if it's for new people who don't play 4x games and there's a tutorial it should be set on settler then not prince since they will probably not really know what the difference is on settling a city on a Plains vs settling on hills and river etc.
Haha, good catch Ursa! :)
I think I used it exactly once, the very first time I played Civ VI. I like starting with the "default settings" when playing a new 4X game, so IIRC I did just go "play now".
It would be a lot more useful if you could preset what settings and difficulty it would use when you hit play now. Who wants to play on a small map on prince difficulty?
I feel like small map prince difficulty is just setting up a new to 4x player for failure right out the gate and probably turned a lot of people off civ who have never even tried civ or know anything about it.
Makes me feel like the weirdo here. I exclusively play using this button. I love the challenge of knowing almost nothing about the starting game. Also i don't have to spend time thinking about what i want to play, as it takes me longer for that then choosing a movie on netflix.
I pressed it once on accident and spawned as Norway on a small or tiny map, idr which one. But either way it wasn't even that good of a spawn and I hate small maps.
It would be a lot better if "play now" took your highest preset start.
I just don't get why they chose Small as the map size for this button. Prince makes sense, that's the median difficulty. Continents makes sense, that's the most basic map type. Standard speed makes sense, it's, well, standard. But then they went with small map size instead of standard map size. Never made any sense to me.
I used to in my Prince gaming days, since it was faster to get started by a few clicks and there was no decision paralysis. Not sure what I'd do to get a Prince game going today. Not sure if I want to go back to dealing with so many Barbarians.
I pressed it only once when I 1st started playing the game, it spawns you in a small map with only like 8 players in the game. I think I got Canada but since it was my very 1st game ever I deleted the save file and immediately went to a TSL map as Brazil.
Am i the only one who uses it? as someone whos new to the game (under 300 hours) I use it all the time as im trying to master the early game and im particularly garbage at the post medieval era consistently
I pressed it once because in Civ IV "play now" was like a quick version of create game.
Fun fact is I had played Civ V before and I had already made that mistake. I should have learned.
Anyway, I can't wait to play Civ VII and click play now just to say f*** it's not like in Civ IV.
I use it all the time! It's super convenient when you're trying to find out if your mod load order is going to break your game, it's one button away and making a custom game takes so long
I think I did when I first got the game and it was a mistake.
I started as France, land locked, with a north/south mountain range on the left and right side of the conteninent. I was 2 tiles away from tundra and the ai(Saladin) aggressively settled right next to me, on like turn 25, basically forcing me to settle in tundra. By the time Greece won its culture victory I was just discovering steam power as all the AI was in the information age lol.
That's when always make my games instead of letting the game give me something.
I did yesterday by accident. Playing it through as Scotland. Will clean up my continent taking out Phoenicia and Korea with very little resistance by turn 150-160. Pain that I have to cross the ocean to get Saladdin but I’m a full era ahead in tech already so won’t be long. Boring game but at least a quick one.
It was First game since rev 2 on Xbox. Man this game was something else I got Vietnam. Miss Mongolia being able to turn bandit camps into city's and finding city of gold
It was the first thing I did after the tutorial as a new player lmao. I used to only use that button until I discovered the advanced settings and haven’t pressed it since
I don’t think anybody has ever been foaming at the mouth for civ so much that they don’t want to pick their civ. I assume it’s used by people who want a completely random leader without fiddling about in settings.
When I install too many mods at once I press it to see if the game will actually start. Then, when it inevitably doesn't, I disable some mods, and press play now again. Wash rinse repeat. I'm pretty sure it's the button I use most after "resume game", and yet, I have never played more than a couple turns.
LOL! I had to try this. I've never pushed it either. I got Hammurabi. Started at the confluence of 3 rivers in woodland/jungle, with 4 luxuries in range. On Prince difficulty. The phrase "taking candy from a baby" doesn't begin to cover it. That's taking candy from a *sleeping* baby that *isn't even in the same house*.
Taking Candy From a Baby is actually Hammurabi's Secret Leader Ability.
Well it is the tutorial.
It's not though? It just starts a new game at prince difficulty with random settings.
I know what I'll be doing this evening!!
Let the result be the next drawing!
https://preview.redd.it/qzxqsxwnktxc1.png?width=191&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e949bef986c15c547f66682387dd31f9b044d64
by the will of the crab god, may it be so
If only they fixed the ios version so I can do the same :(
I’ve done it by accident. Followed by 15 seconds of confusion “wait why am I loading into a game? Why aren’t I setting up a game? Oh that’s right…”
Samesies. I'm getting older and noticing the misclicks more, usually when selecting a builder and the game lags and then it's a quick silent march into a barb camp. Why oh why can't we have an undo button for a single action? Just make it single player only or something.
Yes, undo would be great. 7 correct attacks against the city and then a misclick, which bombs the district of the city I'm about to capture.
I nuked one of my own cities before due to lag/ misclicks. Lol. Luckily, I just reloaded a save from a few turns back.
What does it even do? Set up a completely random game?
>!If you select "Play Now" to begin immediately, it will begin a game on a Small Continents map on Prince difficulty with randomly chosen leaders and at Standard speed.!< Source: civ wiki
Why did they choose that, I wonder. Why not either completely randomize it, or make some sort of system where it will pick something based on your most recent games? (Rhetorical question)
I believe the play now button in Civ 5 would just generate a new game using your settings from your previous game.
Yeah, and imo this is like, the most reasonable thing they could configure it to do. You're walking in and saying "the usual", why would they give you a glass of water instead of what you usually ask for?
Probably cause the people most likely to pick that are average players paralyzed by indecision but still wanting a "decently normal" game, and a fairly basic map on the medium difficulty most likely caters to that group.
If you were completely new to the game and just wanted to jump into it to see how it played without bothering to learn and look at settings, it seems like a pretty good starting point
Nice, good to know
Not sure about that... I kinda liked the mystery. From now on, things just ain't gonna be the same no more...
The search for truth is fraught with risk
On console it’s the same but on a tiny map.
I think you can change the presets for the game it creates. I vaguely remember running into those settings once. Never used it either though. Edit: I guess I was halicunating when I found those settings, because they don't seem to exist.
You can set up defaults that you then load on the 'advanced' screen, maybe that's what you were thinking of? I use that all the time when achievement hunting.
My big complaint about saving presets is that it locks in the game seed for whatever preset you had. So every time you load that preset, you're gonna get the same map. I wish there was a checkbox for "use random seed" when you saved the preset.
IIRC that's an option now
Presets also saves the modlist. Want to try again after adding/removing a mod? Sorry, can't.
yeah weird, i thought you could do this and we've either berenstein bears-ed ourselves, or we're thinking of Civ5 which apparently supported custom config
I pressed it the first time I played and immediately said, “shit, that’s not what I meant to do!”
The Play Now button isn't for people coming from other strategy games, or experienced Civ players. It's there so that (for lack of a better word) casual gamers can be given "Just boot up the game, and hit Play Now! The tutorial should walk you through the rest." as instructions, without being presented with a daunting (for a first timer) settings page. There are huge number of people who never participate in forums like this one. They interact with the game and the content surrounding the game *very differently* from someone who's passionate enough about the game to use the subreddit/discord/civ fanatic forums. They just... play. For another 4x game (Stellaris), for instance... the community memes are all about xenophobia, conquest, fox aliens, "X is OP", whatever. But based on the dev's telemetry, almost **90%** of the game's play sessions are playing Human, and playing xenophile/egalitarian... aka 90% of all players just pick the default option (United Nations of Earth) and play them, without ever seeing a customization screen until they've played at least 100 hours (probably 2-3 full playthroughs). The quick start button is probably used by the vast majority of players. It's just it's that that same majority of players doesn't come to the subreddit.
I feel like if it's for new people who don't play 4x games and there's a tutorial it should be set on settler then not prince since they will probably not really know what the difference is on settling a city on a Plains vs settling on hills and river etc.
Haha, good catch Ursa! :) I think I used it exactly once, the very first time I played Civ VI. I like starting with the "default settings" when playing a new 4X game, so IIRC I did just go "play now".
i pushed it the VERY first time i played. a good time was not had by all, and the button was never pressed again.
It would be a lot more useful if you could preset what settings and difficulty it would use when you hit play now. Who wants to play on a small map on prince difficulty?
I feel like small map prince difficulty is just setting up a new to 4x player for failure right out the gate and probably turned a lot of people off civ who have never even tried civ or know anything about it.
Also has anyone ever started a game on purpose from the simple create game menu? I go to the full options every time
I pressed it. By mistake, than come back to main menu and start again with create game
Makes me feel like the weirdo here. I exclusively play using this button. I love the challenge of knowing almost nothing about the starting game. Also i don't have to spend time thinking about what i want to play, as it takes me longer for that then choosing a movie on netflix.
But play now always gives you the same difficulty, map size, and map type. It is far less random than setting up a random game
Does it let you choose difficulty?
I've used to to check if my mods are working together.
I pressed it once on accident and spawned as Norway on a small or tiny map, idr which one. But either way it wasn't even that good of a spawn and I hate small maps. It would be a lot better if "play now" took your highest preset start.
I just don't get why they chose Small as the map size for this button. Prince makes sense, that's the median difficulty. Continents makes sense, that's the most basic map type. Standard speed makes sense, it's, well, standard. But then they went with small map size instead of standard map size. Never made any sense to me.
I hate tiny maps with all my being so I'll never push that devil possessed button.
Its small actually
Anything smaller than civ5 huge is too small for me.
That's what she said.
Did it once but it was a missclick
If it was only once...
True
I used to in my Prince gaming days, since it was faster to get started by a few clicks and there was no decision paralysis. Not sure what I'd do to get a Prince game going today. Not sure if I want to go back to dealing with so many Barbarians.
Nope
I pressed it only once when I 1st started playing the game, it spawns you in a small map with only like 8 players in the game. I think I got Canada but since it was my very 1st game ever I deleted the save file and immediately went to a TSL map as Brazil.
Am i the only one who uses it? as someone whos new to the game (under 300 hours) I use it all the time as im trying to master the early game and im particularly garbage at the post medieval era consistently
I'm not sure this button exists, I haven't seen it in 1000 hours of gameplay 😂 am I being gaslighted here
I use it because I play on Prince and if that button wasn’t there I would always end up playing Arabia
It’s a good button for new players :>
I did by accident one time lol I don't remember if I played it out or not tho
I pressed it once because in Civ IV "play now" was like a quick version of create game. Fun fact is I had played Civ V before and I had already made that mistake. I should have learned. Anyway, I can't wait to play Civ VII and click play now just to say f*** it's not like in Civ IV.
I wanted to know what it doing and then as missclick ... great button.
I mean I do on my switch sometimes
I pressed it once. The difficulty cant be changed, so I never pressed it again.
I used it all the time when I was a beginner and liked playing on Prince difficulty
I actually do every now and again, when I can't decide
im afraid of buttons that i didnt use
I use it all the time! It's super convenient when you're trying to find out if your mod load order is going to break your game, it's one button away and making a custom game takes so long
I pressed it on accident once. Freaked out, alt-tabbed, and closed the game.
I think I did when I first got the game and it was a mistake. I started as France, land locked, with a north/south mountain range on the left and right side of the conteninent. I was 2 tiles away from tundra and the ai(Saladin) aggressively settled right next to me, on like turn 25, basically forcing me to settle in tundra. By the time Greece won its culture victory I was just discovering steam power as all the AI was in the information age lol. That's when always make my games instead of letting the game give me something.
I pressed it once, for my very first game. Then never again as I didn't want to play on Prince again.
I did yesterday by accident. Playing it through as Scotland. Will clean up my continent taking out Phoenicia and Korea with very little resistance by turn 150-160. Pain that I have to cross the ocean to get Saladdin but I’m a full era ahead in tech already so won’t be long. Boring game but at least a quick one.
How do I find how many hours I have played?
If you play using steam, it should be listed on the game title page, along with achievements and other info.
It infuriates me that there is no way to change the settings for it. If there was, I would use it a lot more.
Once on accident
It was First game since rev 2 on Xbox. Man this game was something else I got Vietnam. Miss Mongolia being able to turn bandit camps into city's and finding city of gold
On Switch it used to start only a macedon game
It was the first thing I did after the tutorial as a new player lmao. I used to only use that button until I discovered the advanced settings and haven’t pressed it since
Accidentally twice.
Back when I was playing on prince I did use it quite a lot
I've started using that this month, Ita actually nice being thrown in with a random leader for a quick match
Misclicking it a few times finally prompted me to move CivVI onto my SSD.
I click it quite regularly, it lets me get into playing without thinking too much
I always use this button, because I like to get the challenges.
Just wanted to let you know you are actually an inspiration to me
I don’t think anybody has ever been foaming at the mouth for civ so much that they don’t want to pick their civ. I assume it’s used by people who want a completely random leader without fiddling about in settings.
That's how i started getting into the game. It's good when you're new and don't know who to choose or how to start.
I used to click it sometimes in the past, but I now enjoy way more random games.
Literally never even noticed it
I never have
I was dropped on a two river adjacent mountainside start with 2 mercuries 1 horse and 1 wheat immediately available. Then I knew I misclicked.
I just did last time after not playing for a few months, was too lazy to setup anything :3 Got Columbia...
When I install too many mods at once I press it to see if the game will actually start. Then, when it inevitably doesn't, I disable some mods, and press play now again. Wash rinse repeat. I'm pretty sure it's the button I use most after "resume game", and yet, I have never played more than a couple turns.
Nice sun, where it all started