Civilization 6 - coming October 2016.

[Borgholio]

http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/5/ ... te-preview

[Crossroads Inc.]

Oh look, yet another game franchise that is making a game CLEARLY Designed for Smartphones and tablets and will no doubt dump down and "Cartoon-ize" a game we have loved for decades..

BLARG

[InsaneTD]

Where are you getting that from?

[AniThyng]

Where are you getting that from?

I'm assuming he's being sarcastic.

That said, this comment on the pc gamer article nails it too

Joe331 • 12 hours ago
I heard Firaxis is aware of the complain from PC community about the visual looking like mobile games so they plan a special treatment for PC release by providing a visual that's more natural to PC scene. The dev team in charge for that was very impressed by Undertale's recent success in PC scene and he planned to give Civ6 the same visual style as seen in Undertale.

Full article

http://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-6-e ... d-to-know/

Civilization 6: everything you need to know
By Phil Savage 4 days ago

Firaxis on city districts, active research and Gandhi's dark side.






Firaxis has announced Civilization VI, the next game in the long-running 4X series. I ask lead designer Ed Beach about the sequel's new features, from revamped cities to a more active research system.

"A lot of this development team is the same development team that pushed Civ 5 through to the Brave New World expansion," says Ed Beach, lead designer of Civilization VI. "We're very proud of the work we did there." At the same time, that familiarity meant Beach and his team were aware of how players approached Civ 5. "We noticed that there are certain key approaches that people all share in common. We're sort of in a rut, where all the players are playing Civ 5 the same way. Everyone says go for four cities, but probably not too much more than that. There are certain policy trees that are well worth it, other policy trees that they don't find that they're using."

With Civilization VI, Firaxis wants a game that doesn't settle into an established meta. "We want players to have to think on their feet more," says Beach. "We want a situation where you have to react to what the game is presenting for you. What the map is giving you, your starting position, what it means to have certain leaders next to you." It's all designed to provide a more varied, improvisational campaign.





Cities are made up of districts

In Civilization VI, each building type is part of a district, and each district exists as a separate tile. "You have a campus tile, and that's where all your research is going on – you have your library, university and research lab all in that campus tile." Similarly, there will be military tiles, industrial tiles and harbours. "There are 10 to 12 different types of tile that you'll put around your city," says Beach, "and the player now has this intricate layout puzzle, where they decide where districts go around their city. That becomes a cool, fun way to develop your empire that has a layer of depth that we didn't have before."

District placement is more than just an aesthetic choice. Some map tiles will convey bonuses to specific districts. Mountains are great for studying the skies, so offer bonuses to your science campus. Mountains are also an imposing spot for worship – providing a boost to your faith. "Every district has a good place to put it. You're trying to manage where those go with where all the resource tiles are. It becomes a fun layout puzzle of trying to maximise your bonuses."

District tiles also convey information. By looking at a city's districts you can easily tell what that city does. At a glance, you'll be able to see which of your cities is dedicated to which resource. The same holds true for rival civilizations. From the main map screen, you'll be able to easily identify the city that, if captured or destroyed, could cripple an enemy's production.



Research is more active

Unlike in previous Civilizations, research speed isn't based purely on your civilisation's science output. "Now there are things, for pretty much every technology in the game, that you can do out in the game world to push you in that direction," says Beach. "So if you want to push masonry or construction because you want to build walls, you better go out and establish a quarry. That's going to teach your citizens the skills they need to become good at masonry." Your empire learns by doing.

"If you want to develop a navy, in previous games of Civilization you could research all the technology for that without even having settled a city along the coast. Here you actually get a significant boost towards sailing when you put that city on the coast. You can get further boosts for other naval technologies by creating fishing boats and starting to harvest naval resources."

Some research boosts will be available based on the terrain around you – feeding into Firaxis's aim of incentivising specific strategies based on your starting location. "Players are going to have to think through: 'look at this start position, this is a great one for me to push on horseback riding and develop a very mobile military. I'm going to push this direction and go through that part of the tree this time.'"



AI leaders have an agenda

Firaxis wants diplomacy to feel more dynamic, and to force players to work out the political landscape on the fly. "Each AI leader has a historical agenda that's appropriate to their historical personality," says Beach. "We've chosen for each of them to have a play style that's unique but appropriate for their role in leading their country in history."

One leader might be fanatical about allying with city states. That forces you into a decision: back off from city states and potentially be friends, or compete over a state's affection and maybe come to blows. "You have to adjust to the different personalities that you meet and find out what makes them happy and what's going to anger them. That's going to vary from one leader to the next, and give each civilisation a very different feel."

Of course, these historical traits can be learned by the player and applied to future playthroughs. To combat that, Firaxis takes traits that aren't historically tied to leaders and secretly assigns them at the beginning of each game. "As you go through the game, you can discover what they are by spying on them or trying to learn more secrets about them. Once you've learn that about other leaders, you can fully unlock the diplomatic landscape."

I ask what is, to my mind, the most important question of all. If a leader's traits are historical, will Gandhi be less fond of nuclear armageddon? "We have a special way of handling him. Initially he's going to seem very peaceful, but he'll have a dark side."



Support units can be embedded into other units

Civilization VI isn't removing Civ 5's one unit per tile rule, but Firaxis is dialling back on some of the harsher restrictions. "One thing we wanted to do was make sure you could tie units together. In Civ 5, it was tough to escort your settlers across the map because you couldn't tie them to a military unit," says Beach. Additionally, Beach notes, armies were perhaps a little too spread out. "When you need to concentrate your force to take out a city, everything being on its own tile was a problem at that point."

Beach describes support units as, "something that was part of your military force before, that really shouldn't have had to take up a tile." As the name suggests, it's supporting equipment: battering rams, siege towers, anti-tank guns and anti-air guns. "All the stuff that's like special equipment for you units. In Civ 5 you had to have a separate tile, but we've gone away from that."

Multiplayer won't take all day

"That's been the bane of Civilization multiplayer's existence for quite a while – the sessions can be so long," says Beach. To combat this, Firaxis has implemented not just a quicker multiplayer game speed, but also a specific scenarios and unique victory sets designed for a shorter game. "You can have a meaningful [multiplayer] session with a very clear goal, and we're trying to set it up so it's a one or two hour session."

For example, a campaign that starts at the beginning of the middle ages, and runs until the end of the Renaissance. From there, a specific victory condition is added – for instance, the player with the strongest religion wins. "We have a system where we can roll conditions like that, and each of those can be a multiplayer scenario that we can present to players. We can quickly develop a whole bunch of those and offer them." Such scenarios won't be exclusive to multiplayer, either. They'll also be available in solo campaigns.

Civiliztion VI will be out on October 21, 2016.

[Simon_Jester]

The "special equipment" idea reminds me of brigades in the early iterations of Hearts of Iron, where you could attach engineer or artillery or whatever brigades to reinforce an otherwise generic division.

No doubt they'll make it mechanically simpler than Hearts of Iron did (a sentence which is nearly always true).

But that DOES strike me as a good way to address the 'one tile per' restriction.

[Purple]

I don't have high hopes for this to be honest. For me Civilization IV BTS with mods, and to a lesser extent SMAC were the pinnacle of the series. It's really been downhill from there.

[AniThyng]

I don't have high hopes for this to be honest. For me Civilization IV BTS with mods, and to a lesser extent SMAC were the pinnacle of the series. It's really been downhill from there.

Well FWIW Civ V + BNW is definitely superior to Civ III so it's not rock bottom yet!

Though I agree CIv IV + BTS is the highwater mark

[Simon_Jester]

Civ II is best viewed as the evolved pinnacle of Civ I- adding no new major mechanics, but rebalancing and elaborating on what was already there to make a superior game. Note that Civ I had, in some sense, an 'expansion pack' version in CivNet, so there's a pattern there: game, one expansion, then updated version. Arguably, Test of Time can be viewed as a further expansion upon that, since it had almost identical mechanics except for the "multiple parallel maps" feature.

...

Civ III modified the basic game mechanics of Civ II radically enough as to constitute a new evolutionary chain (leader traits, unique units, cultural borders, and strategic resources represent a huge gameplay departure from the 'build anything, move anywhere not blocked by ZOC' model of Civ II). Predictably, the first game built with all these new features was a bit crude and in many ways less 'polished' than Civ II despite being in many ways a more detailed and quasi-realistic civilization simulator.

Civ IV took it upon itself to further expand upon the new mechanics in Civ III (such as SMAC-style mix-and-match government systems), and to refine the mechanics already in place. But it preserved many of the basic gameplay elements from Civ III while fixing some of the fundamental problems (handling unit strength differently so hit points were less granular, making resources more common and plentiful on the map).

A couple of expansions to further refine that and you had a really great version of what was, essentially, still an evolved form of Civilization III... namely, Civilization IV Beyond the Sword. Note that much of this gameplay change COULD have happened earlier and/or as an expansion to Civ III, except that they also made the change to 3D graphics rather than 2D sprites, which took a significant leap in computing power.

Again, the pattern- early game, several successive refinements at least one of which was published as an entirely new game, final definitive form.

...

Then they decided to start fresh and radically change the gameplay in Civ V (differences in how upkeep is calculated, one unit per tile, prominent role of ranged combat between tiles, et cetera, et cetera). It's not surprising that they're still in the middle of their update/improvement cycle. You can expect the definitive form of the "Civ V-type" civilization game some time a few years from now, just as the "Civ III-type" reached full maturity around 2008 (Beyond the Sword, with mods), and the "Civ I/II-type" reached its highest point around 1998 (Civ II Gold, with active modding community to improve on things).

[Purple]

Whilst I agree with your analysis, personally I just think that the new direction they've taken things in is fundamentally flawed. So in my view even if they make Civ 6 the best of the best of what the Civ 5 model can be it's still going to be worse than Civ 4 BTS.

[RogueIce]

For me, Civ3->Civ4 was something like three steps forward, one back. While I appreciate a lot of the improvements, there's still aspects that bug me. Like in 3, you could blow up railroads and roads with bombers, artillery and ships. This was vital what with the instant transport speed, as otherwise naval landings in the modern age were suicidal. Unfortunately, Civ4 took that away (or at least made it so difficult I've never managed it) which means that by the Modern Age, on an archipelago map, invasions are basically impossible since they can instantly throw their entire national army at my landing site(s), which means I literally have to defeat them just by showing up or it was all a waste of time and resources. Whereas in Cv3 I could bomb out enough of their road and rail network to give myself a buffer, at least, and continued use of artillery on the march would prevent me from getting instantly overwhelmed.

(I know it's not instant anymore in Civ4, but on an island map it might as well be by the Modern Age)

In any case, it looks ugly as shit to have railroads covering every inch of my land so that's a negative on both games.

For me, the peak was actually Call to Power II, a Civ-knockoff game. Like take the one unit stack thing. I have no idea why Firaxis thinks there's this binary choice between 1 and infinity. CTP2 managed it quite nicely: you can stack units, but only up to 12 on a single tile. By putting a cap on it, they allowed you to have useful stacks without the Stack o' Doom problem in Civ3/4. To me, it would be more productive to play with that cap than this all-or-one approach (though to be fair they're at least being slightly less terrible now with the 'support unit' thing). Also the way they handled roads and railroads in CTP2 was much better than just spamming them all over the damn place, but that's just me.

[Purple]

As far as army sizes go I think the best version is what was done in the "The History of Three Kingdoms" mod for BTS. That mod has no limits on army sizes and units per tile or anything. Instead they introduced a whole new mechanic of armies lead by generals that make small focused forces far more capable than the traditional stack of doom. And since the AI understands it too you suddenly get a very enjoyable combat system.

[Solauren]

I was disappointed in Civ 5, so I'll pass.

[Flagg]

CivV was the best thing to happen to the franchise since CivII. Until CivV they were all essentially the same with graphics updates, tweaks to existing systems, and a new system like religions every few sequels. So far it's the best of the series.

I wanted to like Beyond Earth but it was just too similar, though the tech web was a great concept, just not one I got in to very much because I never got past the part of the game that was exactly like CivV which I'd already put 200+ hours into.

But this looks absolutely amazing, and I love the bright, vibrant look. I love that taking cities will be more complicated now, too.

[InsaneTD]

I think a lot of people have that complaint about BE. Which I think is the reason it's not seeming to get the support most Civs get. One major DLC and a couple map packs. It's disappointing cause while mechanically, it's very 5, it had some interesting ideas I would of liked to have seen worked on.

[Flagg]

I think a lot of people have that complaint about BE. Which I think is the reason it's not seeming to get the support most Civs get. One major DLC and a couple map packs. It's disappointing cause while mechanically, it's very 5, it had some interesting ideas I would of liked to have seen worked on.

Same here. I was waiting for another expansion or something to be announced that might make me get into it like I was with CivV, because it had some really great shit going for it, like the tech web that made different civs more than just the same as the rest with one or 2 unique units and different leader portraits. So it sounds like they are keeping some version of that along with multi-tiled cities which sounds great.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

To be honest, I can't understand why people love Civ 4 so much. I found the combat to endlessly frustrating and unrealistic. The lack of any viable defensive strategies due to the removal of Civ 2's zone of control meant that unstoppable doom stacks can snake around your defensive units rendering them useless. Yet they are all-but-impossible to attack if their own defenders had the right terrain bonuses so they can raze all your roads and improvements and there's nothing you can do about it. When fighting did occur, I found it to be far too random and felt that strategy took a backseat to the simple roll of the dice. The AI would attack with rabid genocidal fury after millenia of friendship even when they had nothing to gain, and I hated that city spam was so effective. There were a lot of cool ideas, but for me they were built on a rotten foundation that prevented me from enjoying it without mods, and I don't see how anyone can prefer Civ 3 / 4 to 2, which had none of the combat problems.

Civ 5 certainly had its flaws, especially before G&K and BNW, but the fact that it bid good riddance to bullshit doom stacks and unassailable defensive bonuses won it a million points in my eyes, even if the AI was completely feckless and a lot of features were stripped out. I know a lot of people consider Civ 4 to be the pinnacle of the series, but I just don't see it.

[Purple]

To be honest, I can't understand why people love Civ 4 so much.

I loved it pretty much for the same reasons you hated it. So much so that quoting you piece by piece and explaining might be the only way to bring that point across and give you a bit of perspective of the opposite end of the spectrum.

I found the combat to endlessly frustrating and unrealistic. The lack of any viable defensive strategies due to the removal of Civ 2's zone of control meant that unstoppable doom stacks can snake around your defensive units rendering them useless. Yet they are all-but-impossible to attack if their own defenders had the right terrain bonuses so they can raze all your roads and improvements and there's nothing you can do about it. When fighting did occur, I found it to be far too random and felt that strategy took a backseat to the simple roll of the dice.

I am a builder at heart when it comes to X4 games, not a warrior. This is in no small part because I prefer tactics to strategy and generally find zero fun in abstracted battles.

The only games of the genre where I really had any enjoyment out of combat are the Space Empires series and only because they let you fight the battle it self. Every other game where it's abstracted in any way, shape or form its just a chore where you have to shuffle your units back and forth so that they clash with the other units until one side runs out of men.

So if it's already a chore I'd rather it be one with pretty pictures (like the battle animations in Civ 4) and a relatively simplistic and easy to figure out system (again, Civ 4) than something more complex like the horror that is the Hearts of Iron combat system.

The AI would attack with rabid genocidal fury after millenia of friendship even when they had nothing to gain

This is something I've only ever seen if the game was set to Aggressive AI. Although I did tend to stack my games with less warlike leaders so that might be a factor.

and I hated that city spam was so effective.

And I loved it. Being a builder at heart I spend hours upon days upon weeks playing long games of Civ 4 where I would do nothing but go through each of my 20+ cities on each and every turn making minute adjustments. That is where the entirety of the fun of the game was for me.

There were a lot of cool ideas, but for me they were built on a rotten foundation that prevented me from enjoying it without mods, and I don't see how anyone can prefer Civ 3 / 4 to 2, which had none of the combat problems.

Honestly to me Civ 4 was infinitely superior to 3. 3 was visually bland and had far less options for the discerning builder. To put it simply, there is nothing in 3 that I miss when playing 4, but there are plenty of things in 4 that I miss when I go back to 3.

This said, SMAC is still basically the best of the games on account of the insane lore and the general way it plays. And that's based on 2 so yea.

Civ 5 certainly had its flaws, especially before G&K and BNW, but the fact that it bid good riddance to bullshit doom stacks and unassailable defensive bonuses won it a million points in my eyes, even if the AI was completely feckless and a lot of features were stripped out. I know a lot of people consider Civ 4 to be the pinnacle of the series, but I just don't see it.

Stripping features from a game is like stripping body parts from a child. No good ever comes of it.

[MKSheppard]

I'm kind of burned out on a lot of new games now.

There's nothing stunningly new; like we saw from Civ I (first game, lo res 320px VGA) to II (isometric upgrade, Windows based SVGA, easier to play, modding support) to III (16/32 bit graphics) to IV (polygonal) here.

[Tribble]

I'm post a link to Sulla's review of Civ V BNW, since his opinion matches my own and he writes a lot better than I do:

http://www.sullla.com/Civ5/bnwreview.html

In a nutshell, the main problems with Civ V were:

1 UPT system, which a lot of other flaws (such as the A.I.'s very poor combat ability) ultimately stem from. Note that many of these issues could have been addressed by setting the UPT cap higher, like 3-5 (there are mods out there that do that which drastically improve game play) while still avoiding stacks of doom.

Random A.I. diplomacy system - you might as well kill them all right away, unlike in civ IV it's impossible to have a meaningful relationship

Maintenance / Happiness system is fundamentally broken and impossible to balance. As of BNW, the optimal number of cities on most maps is 3-5, which is sad considering that this is supposedly a 4X game.

Policy choices make you much more "locked in" to a strategy than previous civ games, and are unbalanced (such as tradition vs liberty or piety).

Gameplay tends to be more passive and reactive than previous civ games. The early game in particular suffers from this, and there really isn't much to do apart from hit the "end turn" button for the first 50-100 turns.

That's not to say that Civ V is a bad game by any means, but it's flaws take away a lot of its potential. Hopefully Civ 6 will be better, though this time I'm waiting until the expansions so that the major bugs can be ironed out.

[AniThyng]

Once all the bugs were ironed out I found civ iv AI diplomacy, at least on the mid + 1 difficulties to be rather logical. Weak or under pressure AI would grovel to me for protection, and when a close ally backstabs me, it made sense for him to try, otherwise I'd win ouf of hand.

[Purple]

Also I despise the hexes. They just feel completely wrong for a Civ game.

[Alferd Packer]

I think a lot of people have that complaint about BE. Which I think is the reason it's not seeming to get the support most Civs get. One major DLC and a couple map packs. It's disappointing cause while mechanically, it's very 5, it had some interesting ideas I would of liked to have seen worked on.

Same here. I was waiting for another expansion or something to be announced that might make me get into it like I was with CivV, because it had some really great shit going for it, like the tech web that made different civs more than just the same as the rest with one or 2 unique units and different leader portraits. So it sounds like they are keeping some version of that along with multi-tiled cities which sounds great.

I think the real flaw of the tech web is that it made the games too predictable. A human player can analyze the resources he has, beeline for the appropriate endgame techs, and win reliably within 250 turns. Even on the hardest difficulty, the AI is still faffing about in the midgame at turn 250.

I have heard tell of a total conversion patch, similar to Civ V's CBP, that fixes a great deal of the problems with BE, including the AI's handling of the tech web. I haven't tried it out yet, though, as Stellaris is currently scratching my 4X itch.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Also I despise the hexes. They just feel completely wrong for a Civ game.

Really? I can't imagine anyone preferring squares and their weird diagonal issues, but it seems our tastes run opposite of each other.

*snip previous post*
That does make sense, thanks for shedding light on that!

[InsaneTD]

@Civ5 Maint/Happy; I must be doing something very wrong then, I regularly get 10+ cities and still have ungodly amounts of happiness and little issue with maintenance. Then again, I build my religion to generate happiness and spread like crazy so that might be it.


Edit: spelling.

[Purple]

Really? I can't imagine anyone preferring squares and their weird diagonal issues, but it seems our tastes run opposite of each other.

Literally.

Simply put, hexes are superior for the tactician but squares are superior to the builder.
The average good old Civ square city looks like this:

That's a beautifully simple little stencil I can stamp all over a square grid with zero effort and use to optimize my cities for minimum overlap, maximum resource acquisition and tile yield and generally just maximum outcome. And as a builder that's what I want and need.

You might see the advantages in a hex grid because it lets you play more tactically. And that is true, hexes are good for that. But to me fighting wars in Civ was newer about cleverly outdoing the AI by pulling Napoleonic maneuvers. It was about building up a big industry that lets me build a bigger stick than theirs and than clumsily bashing the AI over the head with said big stick until it stops twitching.


To give you an example still recent in my head.
I just won a game of SMAC some few hours ago. In this game I essentially isolated my self on a separate continent* and my self from all diplomacy. So as the world fought and squabbled and warred I just sat back, expanded my cities and teched away patiently. Than, as the game deadline was reaching 50ish turns I unleashed my fleet of gravships** to swiftly conquer my most populous rival and vote my self into a diplomatic victory on account of "I have enough subjects to outvote the rest of you suckers".

It's the most fun I've had with a video game this year.

*Thanks to terraforming land bridges down into the sea
**The ultimate game unit in SMAC the gravship is basically a flying tank that can cross water without needing a transport and ignores all terrain movement penalties.