When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Sid Meier's Civilization VI, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best Strategy games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 3rd while Sid Meier's Civilization VI is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires II HD is:
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Awesome ambiance with a great finish
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Pro Runs on very old computers
As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue.
Pro Facilitates the user's preferred pace
This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slowly and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (given a little planning).
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 A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse
While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate.
On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be.
Con Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics
With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise.
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.