When comparing Endless Legend vs Sid Meier's Civilization VI, the Slant community recommends Sid Meier's Civilization VI for most people. In the question“What are the best Strategy games on Steam?” Sid Meier's Civilization VI is ranked 9th while Endless Legend is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Sid Meier's Civilization VI is:
Civilization VI utilizes a hexagonal grid for movement and combat. Each tile has six sides that connect to another tile, and units have a certain movement speed that is always depicted in tiles, which can be utilized in different ways. You can create stronger, slower units like catapults and pikemen, or decide to overwhelm and surround your enemies with faster units like cavalry. This adds a level of depth to the game that other turn-based strategies simply fall short of. There's a limit of one unit per tile, which really makes you take the strategic aspects into mind. Ranged units can often shoot over melee units, but not always. You'll have to figure out a few interactions like that in order to be the best commander you can be, but the good news is that it's very intuitive and easy to learn. Each leader has their own turn. Generally, the player goes first, then the computer players. This makes it much easier to plan your strategy, and you can take all the time you need.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Choice of faction meaningfully impacts gameplay
Each faction has strengths and weaknesses, but the best part is swapping out traits before the game starts. You have 80 points to spend, and traits are more or less expensive depending on how powerful they are. Each trait gives you something other factions probably won't have, so spend those points wisely. It might win or lose you the game.
Pro Highly customizable
Some specific traits are unique to each faction. Most, however, can be traded for when customizing a faction, with a point-buy limitation to balance it. The world generation options are all knobs to turn one way or another as you like. Very fun option to fiddle with that can make every game a new experience.
Pro Engrossing fantasy setting
If you've played Civ V, you know how much history they put into it. With Endless Legend, there's as much fantasy as Civ's history. Faction quest-lines give you a feel for the people you're leading, and the minor factions are all interesting enough to read the flavor text for.
Pro Beautiful art style
Endless Legend represents a unique art style in the 4x genre, and it stands up graphically even after a few years. The game looks and feels very pretty, and the official art for the game is nothing short of stunning.
Pro Excellent depth
If you like exploring a game's mechanics, this one will give you a lot to chew on. The battle mechanics in particular are a serious improvement compared to Civ V's take on war, with units able to stack together into armies instead of spreading out over one tile each.
Pro Region-based territory system shakes up the expansion game
The map is divided into pre-generated regions. Settling a region claims all of it (even if it's not explored). That city can't have districts outside its region, and only one city can be settled per region. This curtails city-spamming and aggressive city placement, and creates interesting decisions about resource access.
Pro Amazing soundtrack
The music for the game is very well composed and is great to listen to. Not to mention, it's also free.
Pro Approachable without sacrificing depth
It's pretty easy to learn and get into as turn based strategy but still complex enough to give those looking for depth their fix.
Pro Interesting races, leaders and character design
Pro Combat system is more skill based than RNG based
Pro Nearly all of the races are viable
Pro DLC is great and isn't a ripoff
Unlike other games that have pieces of the game completely removed to be used as a bargaining chip for DLC, the game feels complete without DLC. Although the offered DLC is fun and adds many more aspects to the game, such as espionage and control of the seasons. You don't feel like you're missing out by not buying the DLC, however, it is recommended if you want to grasp the true experience.
Pro Art is masterful
Pro Good diplomacy system
Pro Feeling of power
When you arrive in the late-game, you, along with other empires have become very powerful and will be able to amass many resources in a much shorter amount of time. Although this doesn't give you an advantage over anyone else, it is still pleasurable to have a feeling of such power.
Pro Everything is described in the lore
From how Dust (the in-game currency) can buyout construction to the biological functions that provide an advantage (or even disadvantage), the game is careful to fully explain gameplay mechanics with lore aspects, leaving few to no plotholes.
Pro Autosaves every turn
Although the game is prone to errors, some that crash the game albeit rarely, the game autosaves at the beginning of every turn, so that should the game crash, a recent instance of the game may be loaded and strategies replicated, or entirely new strategies to be used if one wishes.
Pro Great turn-based, strategic combat
Civilization VI utilizes a hexagonal grid for movement and combat. Each tile has six sides that connect to another tile, and units have a certain movement speed that is always depicted in tiles, which can be utilized in different ways. You can create stronger, slower units like catapults and pikemen, or decide to overwhelm and surround your enemies with faster units like cavalry. This adds a level of depth to the game that other turn-based strategies simply fall short of.
There's a limit of one unit per tile, which really makes you take the strategic aspects into mind. Ranged units can often shoot over melee units, but not always. You'll have to figure out a few interactions like that in order to be the best commander you can be, but the good news is that it's very intuitive and easy to learn.
Each leader has their own turn. Generally, the player goes first, then the computer players. This makes it much easier to plan your strategy, and you can take all the time you need.
Pro Endless scenarios and replayability
Sid Meier's Civilization VI has a large assortment of nation leaders to choose from that have an even bigger assortment of scenarios that are able to play out for said leaders. Each game can be quite unique in this way as each leader allows for a different nation to be controlled.
Pro The gameplay stays true to the Civilization series
Civilization VI is a turn-based game where players will vie over resources and land. In order to do this, each player starts with a settler to create their capitol city with, and the game progresses from that point on. While it can be a little daunting because there's so much to do and learn, a few minutes of reading through the suggestions of your in-game advisers (which are AIs) and experimenting with the user interface will cut that feeling of dread out and replace it with fun.
There are several different types of resources on the map, and they usually yield food, gold, or production. Players can devote turns to training a worker from their city in order to "work" these tiles, letting you reap whatever benefits they may bestow. Getting yourself more food allows you to grow your city faster because you are able to work more tiles, and it just keeps getting bigger from there. Gold allows you to buy various units (like workers and settlers) or even buildings (which will provide even more food, gold, and production). Production allows you to produce units and buildings faster, which can be another way to instigate your city's growth.
There are also strategic and luxury resources. Strategic resources like horses, iron, or oil, allow you to create different units and buildings that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Luxury resources provide "amenities" to your cities, which also helps to make them grow. Amenities represent how happy your citizens are with your rule.
While you're building your cities, you are also simultaneously researching different technologies which allow you to build new buildings or improve different resources.
The point of the game is taking as many resources as you can get your hands on, and then building your cities to amplify those gains so that you can achieve victory, which can be done in one of 5 ways. Culture, Domination, Religious, Science, and Time/Score victories are all possible win conditions.
To attain a Culture victory, players have to attract tourists by generating high amounts of culture and tourism. A Domination victory happens when you capture the capital of every other civilization. A religious victory comes when more than 50% of the world follows your religion. A Science victory is done by achieving 3 things: you must first launch a satellite, then land a human on the Moon, then establish a Martian colony. Last is the Time/Score victory: you can set a number of turns for the game to run, and at the end of that turn the game is over. If you desire that type of victory, you will want to control many wonders (unique buildings that only one player can build) and research high levels of technology.
Pro A ton of fun because it's so fast-paced
The computer opponents in this game are much more aggressive than they have been in the past iterations of Civilization (and in fact, more aggressive than in most turn-based games), which makes the game more fun all around. Because the AI is so bloodthirsty, you've got to make moves to solidify your position (or take theirs!), which leads to you amassing an army and numerous cities rather quickly.
Pro Beautiful graphics
From the players cities and armies to the lush landscape, Civilization is an astonishingly gorgeous game for those with systems powerful enough to push the graphics to the limit. However, even when on lower graphical settings the game still looks great and is well animated.
Unlike the previous games, Civilization VI has more of a cartoon-like feel to the environment, and that adds a more fun, less serious attribute to the game. It makes great use of colors and different landscapes in order to draw you into the game. It's also added background animations, for example, if you have a worker build an iron mine, then you'll actually see the mine being worked for the rest of the game. It certainly adds flavor to the game, and makes it feel more alive.
Cons
Con Multiplayer is glitchy and sometimes unplayable
Playing with friends can be difficult. Desyncing means you have to reload the game (it autosaves every turn so that's good). For a time it would desync after ever turn, so you had to play the game 1 turn at a time.
Con Very few multiplayer games
The most games you'll play of Endless Legend will be by yourself or with friends; it's highly unlikely you'll find an open lobby at all times. The overall online life of the game is low. When and If you find rooms, they are mostly private games and no one can join without an invite. Overall the community as a whole is small.
Con Steep learning curve
Even for a 4X game, Endless Legend consists of lots and lots of deep systems that can make approaching it difficult. Though it's worth noting that there are mods that remove or tone down the complexity of the game making it more accessible.
Con Confusing tutorial
This is a game that takes experience to learn rather than reading or learning in a similar fashion. Although the tutorial has you doing things, it does not explain the various ways you can do things, nor ensure you actually understand what it is you're actually doing. It is better to have someone you know explain the game to you.
Con Weak technology interaction
When researching a powerful technology, the game does not give any feedback to your growth in power other than statistics. For example, Dust Alchemy is a very good mid-game tech that drastically increases your currency gained per turn, but all you get from it is a higher number on your screen. The same can be said for virtually all technologies. The tech tree is simply very bland to progress through.
Con Race concepts are difficult to latch onto/have specific roads to victory
It does not make use of standard fantasy races such as elves and dwarves but creates an entirely new set. On the one hand, this is great since they are fresh ideas, but on the other, it comes off feeling alien and difficult to connect to. Additionally, each race has more or less one path to victory which makes you feel pigeon-holed.
Con Most victories won by timed or military victory
It can be pretty difficult to win by diplomacy, culture, or religion, which does add some challenge to the game but it can get tiresome if one keeps winning by only military or timed victories.