Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[sunrise089]

@REM - my understanding is that V has sold well, generated lots of revenue, and has lots of hours played. It's just drastically worse for a few thousand hardcore players

The mini quest system sounds awful. It's fairly clueless to claim that that the tech system in past games lacked opportunities to 'push your progress'). It's likewise clueless to claim that allowing factories or whatnot to be attacked as a military counter didn't have a functional equivalent in at least IV.

The wonder system seems even worse.

I expect this to sell well and get good reviews. I've had two real-life non-civ-playing friends reach out to me about it today. 'Polished historical storytelling simulation' seems like an enjoyable time for the reviewer spending 10 hours and then moving on. Do we know if it will be possible to buy a physical copy?

PS - Hi LK!

[Gaspar]

Civ5 isn't really the most popular iteration of the franchise because of any particular gameplay decisions, its the most popular iteration because there are more pc gamers than ever before and the internet is continually making it easier for people to find those games. Civ6 will be the most popular iteration and then Civ7, etc etc. The idea of Civilization will always appeal so I don't suspect them to stop making new versions. Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did aren't made any longer, really, and we should expect that.

I have zero expectations for this game but much like Civ5 I look forward to watching the first batch of Let's Plays and Succession Games and the like and expect it to be pretty interesting at the start at least. Unlike Civ5, I won't be buying it on release day but I do expect to pick it up eventually (early on if I like what I see in the above, during some sort of sale if not.)

[Hail]

City improvements on the map is something I've been favoring for a long time. That's probably the part I'm most curious about how they do.

By the way, Seven, how would you see this working if it was something you could dictate yourself?

Well it's a big question, but I have part of an answer at least.

The main benefit of having improvements on a map is that they can care about the spacial relationships between them. So what I envision is some more basic improvements that are comparable to farms/mines in civ iv, with more advanced improvements (that are typically themed as buildings) also having special abilities. For example, Granary could be an improvement that boosts adjacent farms by 1 food. Market could be an improvement that's worth 1 commerce per different neighboring improvement. Quarries could make building improvements on adjacent tiles cheaper in addition to producing resources. Farming village could be an improvement that just creates farms on empty adjacent tiles over time. You can also add in stuff like a plaza that makes all adjacent tiles count as adjacent to each other. And obviously not all special abilities need to relate to adjacent tiles - you already know what that looks like from existing civ games.

Oh, and I think an important component of some of these ideas is you want to terrain-restrict at least some of the improvements. So like if there's something you can only build on a hill that makes adjacent Xs good, then you want to plan out your layout so that you can put Xs around a hill. And then that influences what shape you have left to put other improvements.

That sound's great to me too. I love the worker aspect of civ4, in terms of how efficiently managing them relates to your growth, but one thing that's always felt missing is that, at least from the perspective of your city, your tiles might as well just be in an unordered pile. Like, first your resources are improved, that's one's thing, ok. But what about your other 16-18 tiles? Maybe you say, "I want a couple farms for this city, and then a bunch of cottages", or "this will be a small city, so just a few mines is fine", or "I just want to spam workshops to cover whatever excess food I have." And it doesn't matter really where those farms/cottages/mines/workshops/whatever are (beyond perhaps sharing them with other cities) - a grassland to the south is the same as a grassland to the north, and a hill is a hill is a hill - so you just build them on whatever tiles are most convenient for your workers. Even whether an improvement is riverside or not (except for Fin or watermills) doesn't really make a difference. Thus, you sorta get the effect, when you zoom out a bit, of your empire just having various random improvements scattered around haphazardly.

Adding an extra layer on top of the worker aspect, where you have what you had before but now have an additional spatial planning aspect to consider, in a trade off with worker efficiency and perhaps even sharing tiles, sounds perfect.

GalCiv3 adjacency bonuses anyone?
spacial planning is a great idea. on par with civics (like cottages) increasing in benefit over time.

Getting back on track. Civ6's actual motivation for "unstacking the cities" revealed:

"When we unstacked the armies in Civ 5, all the tactical nuances of having cavalry and archers and melee units separated on separate tiles created little rock-paper-scissors combinations that were very clear for players to understand," says Beach. "That was a beautiful win."

it is a beautiful win. financially and socially, civ5 is a fantastic game. it probably sold more copies than all other civs combined and continues going strong on steam top played chart.

This is all fluff at this point. I'll just point out because buildings are on the map they cannot steal them from you when you take out the city which might make conquest overpowered.

No corruption system mentioned yet--probably the most important part in how the game plays.

I like the new art style.

there is a high possibility that food will be global. this may be the new expansion limiter.

[Jowy]

Civ5 isn't really the most popular iteration of the franchise because of any particular gameplay decisions, its the most popular iteration because there are more pc gamers than ever before and the internet is continually making it easier for people to find those games. Civ6 will be the most popular iteration and then Civ7, etc etc. The idea of Civilization will always appeal so I don't suspect them to stop making new versions. Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did aren't made any longer, really, and we should expect that.

I have zero expectations for this game but much like Civ5 I look forward to watching the first batch of Let's Plays and Succession Games and the like and expect it to be pretty interesting at the start at least. Unlike Civ5, I won't be buying it on release day but I do expect to pick it up eventually (early on if I like what I see in the above, during some sort of sale if not.)

Yeah I agree with the general idea. Civ4 was pretty damn popular too for its time. But that was before Steam or Reddit or Lets Plays or Twitch etc. word of mouth advertising is so much more effective when you can reach all these strangers sitting on their PC's. I do think that the game has to be good.. Civ5 is objectively good, even if it's not as good as Civ4 was. When people talk about Civ5 it gets near universal praise. If it was really bad, people would tell you that it's crap and they'd tell you to not buy it. These days with digital being the main sales platform, games don't have to be stocked on the shelves to be sold, so new players will still be joining in years after release. Civ Beyond Earth is a good example of how quickly a Civ game can be forgotten if it's not good.

[Old Harry]

I'm curious what their map-tile counts will look like. A lot of the stuff on their feature list describe using tiles for cities, tech, warfare, etc, but we all remember the traffic jams... if they took what was a hex in CIV V and made it 7 hexes in CIV VI, that might give them more space to work with...

Very much this, by the way. The scale of Civ5 always bugged the stew out of me.

Would a tactical layer allowing seven units on each strategic-layer-tile solve that problem? Something like this but nice-looking:

[Sirian]

The generous interpretation is "We have put extra effort into making sure that there is not one right strategy; more than ever, you'll have to adapt to the circumstances of your particular game situation, ensuring that the decisions players face are new each time."

The pessimistic interpretation is "We have made the differences in value due to circumstance super obvious so that even bad players will notice it. Experienced players might feel bludgeoned over the head with obvious 'choices', but new players will be challenged to follow their own path each game rather than following a single, prescribed strategy. Or at least it will feel like that - really it will be the path that we have chosen for them."

IMO this is something they could do well or poorly. It sounds poor so far (i.e. the situational bonuses sound too high) but I don't think we know enough yet. It might turn out to be just the kind of thing RB would appreciate.

Ed Beach has deep talent. He worked on board games for years before joining the Civ5 team and has a good sense of what does or does not work at a mechanical level. He oversaw the transition that carried Civ5 from "not ready at release" in to a polished product that still is loved by its new fan base and gets crazy numbers of hours played on Steam every day, despite being 5 years old now. Ed's the only Civ team member who (in the decade I worked on Civ) solved a core map generation problem better than I was able to do at the time. I incorporated and built upon his solution in the heart of the Civ5 map generation scripting. It was great working with him: I remember standing at the whiteboard in the hallway, Jon and Brian looking on, as Ed and I worked out the core design of Civ5 map generation together. I was only there for two days, but we put them to good use.

I'm sure Ed has had to bow to some outside forces in some ways and been limited in what he could do by game design physics, but I'm pretty sure his overall design will be sound. I don't intend to prebuy, but part of me is hopeful I'll be able to play Civ again as a player and actually enjoy it, since I've had nothing to do with making it this time around.

I have always felt that the map was a key element of Civ. That's how I carried the Civ maps from 3 flavors to multitudes. Civ3 had lots of problems in its maps, which I labored to fix over the years in 4 and 5, but 3 (as a design) had a better relationship with the map than 4 or 5 did. Civ4 added specialists and great people to the game and stacked these in the cities, where they had no relationship with the map at all -- and Civ5 continued that trend, although its 1UPT moved back toward the map on the military side.

"Unstacking the cities" and spreading them out over the map is the right evolutionary step for the franchise -- in my opinion. So much so, it seems obvious to me. This won't lead to a recreation of Civ3 or Civ4 -- or Civ5 -- but it has at least the potential to be something fun and evolutionary.

"Potential" is a dirty word to most game veterans. It usually is preceded by the word "unrealized", as fans can often imagine better games than companies can deliver. Companies, including Firaxis. have grown at better at marketing and hype than at making games, so caution is always wise. I'll be keeping an eye on it, curious to see what Ed has designed.


- Sirian

[Hail]

Ed Beach has deep talent.

Completely agree. I am eager to see what he comes up with.

Civ4 added specialists and great people to the game and stacked these in the cities, where they had no relationship with the map at all -- and Civ5 continued that trend, although its 1UPT moved back toward the map on the military side.

wat? great people in civ5 can build their special terrain improvement on a tile.

[Mardoc]

Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did aren't made any longer, really, and we should expect that.

I have a different take. I don't think it's a decline. I think that "Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did" have always been rare gems. There always has been, and always will be, a ton of games that are crap. Nothing you can do about these, it's Sturgeon's law.

There have always been, and always will be, another ton of games that are fun but get boring after you've played for a while. These are successes. A game maker should be proud of his work when he makes something that falls in this bucket. And, honestly, we should be happy to get a game like this. They're the bread and butter of the industry. Sure, it'll probably belong in the Gaming Table forum rather than get its own place, but we can have fun with one of these. It'll be worth the money, and then it'll be forgotten.

It really takes a lightning strike to produce a game that's fun and deep enough that it can still be fun ten or twenty years later. It's true that it seems like there are more of them looking backward than looking forward, but I submit that's the effect of all those forgettable games being, well, forgotten.

[Gaspar]

Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did aren't made any longer, really, and we should expect that.

I have a different take. I don't think it's a decline. I think that "Games that appeal to RB'ers the way Civ4 did" have always been rare gems. There always has been, and always will be, a ton of games that are crap. Nothing you can do about these, it's Sturgeon's law.

There have always been, and always will be, another ton of games that are fun but get boring after you've played for a while. These are successes. A game maker should be proud of his work when he makes something that falls in this bucket. And, honestly, we should be happy to get a game like this. They're the bread and butter of the industry. Sure, it'll probably belong in the Gaming Table forum rather than get its own place, but we can have fun with one of these. It'll be worth the money, and then it'll be forgotten.

It really takes a lightning strike to produce a game that's fun and deep enough that it can still be fun ten or twenty years later. It's true that it seems like there are more of them looking backward than looking forward, but I submit that's the effect of all those forgettable games being, well, forgotten.

I largely agree with what you say here, Mardoc. I didn't mean to imply a decline, I think quality games are still made every year. Thinking the only good stuff is in the past is sort of an old guys fallacy, which in fairness lots of us are, but I don't think most of us really think that way.

My statement was meant to be more specific - games with the type of depth and replayability that Civ4 offers aren't made any more - mostly because both 4x and TBS games are largely out of flavor. I think games with both depth and replayability are made every year and will continue to be made, but I don't think a game specifically like Civ4 will continue to be made.

I guess ultimately I just think we'll probably all be happier with the franchise if we're not looking for anything like Civ4 (or Civ3 if that's your cup of tea) and instead just take each game as it is and try and find the fun in it - sort of how T-hawk treated Civ5. I couldn't personally do this with Civ5 very well, though I'd wager I have more Civ5 hours played than most of the "old-timers," because it came right after Civ4. With Civ4 more years in the rearview, I think that will be easier for me this time around.

[Brian Shanahan]

Getting back on track. Civ6's actual motivation for "unstacking the cities" revealed:

"When we unstacked the armies in Civ 5, all the tactical nuances of having cavalry and archers and melee units separated on separate tiles created little rock-paper-scissors combinations that were very clear for players to understand," says Beach. "That was a beautiful win."

Oh dear. Looks like we've a game designer who doesn't understand the game he's making. If he can say rubbish like that about Civ 5's 1upt, I shudder to think what his design decisions for 6 were.