Warmongering has been completely revamped in VI. There's casus belli and no more unfair bonuses in the end game for early wars. And you can expand to your heart's content again. Breath of fresh air really.

Yeah, WMS did an excellent job in Civ V.

There's still fish and water resources.

Load times will be CPU constrained. Remember that under all this, it is just a gigantic spreadsheet. SSD would only help with assets load of which Civ games don't require a lot of from turn to turn.

I play the game very much as you say, an advance zen garden. It's got this meditative quality about it that very few games have (SimCity 2000 comes to mind). And yet, I've pulled 1200 hours in Civ V over five years. That's some return on investment for an entertainment product.

Yes, it's probably for you. One of the great strengths of the Civ series is balancing engaging systems and not having you micromanage minutiae ala Europa Universalis. On regular difficulty there's not much punishment for just doing what you want and not go into hyperspecialised strategies.

Uhm yeah. When was the last time the "Johnny Depp is cute and dream-boaty so let's go see his movie, 'kay girlfriend" demographic ever existed? Chocolat?

Another upvote for "sad sad truth".

Can someone please explain to a Lost/Heroes/comic book damaged audience that mystery and enjoyment of such is not incompatible with linear story telling?

If there is one thing this comment thread utterly proves, is how damaging comic books and Lost has been to the perception and enjoyment of a bulletproof and linear narrative to the general public.

Upvoted badger for truth about comic book movies.

Lost is a terrible show. And I the lessons learnt from it, is why Westworld is not a "multi-timeline flashback flash sideways convoluted because we have no fucking idea what we are doing and also we lied" type of show.

Nope. Up until this episode, where they did go all out with nudity, there has been little sexual nudity of either gender. This had plenty and equal amounts of both male and female clinical and sexual nudity. And it was great.

Not at all obscured. That was some ultra high def in focus black dong.

No no no. Her being aware of "tropes" is part of her awakening. It was explicitly referenced at least three times. The others were "I thought you were meant to ignore that" and "I think she might be aware of that [referring to her being talked about as being a doll]".

The FX here was remarkably better than the jerky freeze frames from the pilot (?)

It was on the nose and not. Yes, it is obvious that he is the greyhound and that reaching AI sentience is the cat. But the layering here is him being aware of this at the same time, and the futility/humanity of him telling this to an old creaky automaton as way of introspection.

The way she can act AI modes and the switch between them is truly phenomenal. No other cues than her modulation and tics needed to see where she "switches".

This is not a show where there are villains. It is very much a show where they would imply villains. And crucially it is more subtle about implying villains, than say Game of Thrones or Rome, who forged these paths before where you end up reversing or compounding empathy for the characters you assumed were villains.

Could not agree more. Zack seems slightly detuned to the show with this review. This was by far the most on point episode so far. Lots to unpack, lots to confirm or destabilise your conceptions of what is going on. This was like the very peaks of Carnivale and X-files could get: A real mystery that could also reward…