Civilization 6

It's 2015. Soren Johnson's Civilization IV will be a 10 year old game in October. It's also very likely that Firaxis will release Civilization 6 this year. Will Civ6 be what we hoped 5 would be or have Civ5s success ruined all hope?

I just have two wishes for Civ6:

- Make it fast! Civ5 is so painfully slow. It's so ...... boring.
- There's five hundred wargames out there and dozens of 4X's with tactical combat on the market. Civ shouldn't be a copycat.

To be honest I don't expect any of them to come through and if Civ6 ends up like the Civ5-disaster I don't know what to do.

K-Mod have given Civ4 some new life for me, but I need a new main game :\

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While a 6 discussion certainly has merit, I doubt we see it in 2015. Otherwise, it would have been announced or even hinted at. I expect Firaxis has some more to do with BE first, including an expansion. I'm sure 6 at least has a proof of concept and is certainly being considered, but I doubt much development, if at all. I predict a more mid to late 2016 date.

If there is a Civ 6 then my prediction is that it will

- be download only and require a permanent internet connection mad: <- people with slow internet and people who play on the move)
- be full of bugs and be virtually unplayable for the first 6 months, since the devs figure they'll just patch it later
- have half the playable content only available as DLC, at extra cost
- be aimed squarely at brain-dead 14-year-olds
- have a cut-down single player mode since everyone wants to play MMO games these days
- unsubtly steal lots of ideas from Minecraft
- retain most of the crappy things about Civ 5 like 1UPT
- require 8 GB of RAM, an i7 processor and a super-powerful graphics card to splutter along at basic settings
- have cut-price production values hence no more famous actors reading the technology quotes
- generally suck. Sorry for my pessimism but Civ 5 killed my spirit. On the upside, maybe I can do something more constructive than spend years playing a computer game!

lymond said:

While a 6 discussion certainly has merit, I doubt we see it in 2015. Otherwise, it would have been announced or even hinted at. I expect Firaxis has some more to do with BE first, including an expansion. I'm sure 6 at least has a proof of concept and is certainly being considered, but I doubt much development, if at all. I predict a more mid to late 2016 date.

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Civ5 got announced february 2010 with release fall 2010, not a single hint was given before.

They might delay Civ6 until 2016, but that leaves a pretty long gap. I don't see how more stuff for CivBE is enough for 2015. They might of course do something with the Pirates or Railroads IPs, but my money is on Civ6. Civ6 being in full development I'm pretty sure of, even if they plan to release 2016 it would be in development now.

Guess we'll see in the next few months. They need to announce in Q1 of 2015 if the game will be released this year.

But of course, my main fear isn't that Civ6 wouldn't come out until 2016, but that I'll end up not liking it.

I have no hope for civ 6. The road they have chosen was just wrong (to me), and I'm not interested at all in any followups.

Civilization Online! The new Civ MMO! Play with "friends" in parties of 30 - 1UPT - and chat in the town square. City buildings and unit upgrades purchased as microtransactions.

(PC game are going full download fairly soon. You can cry about it, but that is just the way it is going to be. As for permanent connections, I doubt that very much.)

I got betrayed and painstakingly scarred for life after pre ordering Civ BE. Firaxis have gone down the gutter of game developers that used to be good.

I would actually be really interested in a MMO type Civilisation provided it wasn't a free to play - pay to win type situation. I can see a timed turns situation working and have been playing around with a few ideas for simultaneous turn based combat and I think that it has potential to be really interesting. The challenge would be how to integrate empire building and tech races into a MMO format and remain Civ enough to still be Civ.

At any rate I would love to see Civ 6 implement simultaneous turns (not a first in best dressed situation as in existing Civ 4 multiplayer simultaneous turns) but a situation where all Civs play their turn and the actions/results are resolved simultaneously afterwards. I think this has the potential for much more interesting combat than the existing sequential turns model used in Civ 4 and 5 (although I only played 5 briefly so not totally sure on how it works)

Id like to be able to set science / gold / culture / espionage sliders separately per city. That would make city specialization much more fun.

lymond said:

Civilization Online! The new Civ MMO! Play with "friends" in parties of 30 - 1UPT - and chat in the town square. City buildings and unit upgrades purchased as microtransactions.

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You are joking, but completely seriously, I would not be at all surprised if something very similar is in the works. The management have heard the buzzwords, and the commands have been issued!

PC game are going full download fairly soon. You can cry about it, but that is just the way it is going to be.

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Software companies (and many others) just don't seem to understand that not everyone lives in a town and has a fast connection. We country-dwellers are a minority for sure, but it's just not possible to download gigabytes of data on a connection that maxes out at 1 Mbps and has a monthly cap of 10 GB. I don't see why there can't be the choice between physical media or download.

I liked it much better in the 90s when you got a ridiculously oversized cardboard box, a manual, and often other goodies to go with it, like maps or posters. Nothing was more exciting than buying Last Ninja 2 and finding a ninja mask and rubber shuriken in the box... OK maybe we could do without that, but having a physical piece of artwork that you could hold in your hands, and a finished game that wasn't still effectively in beta test, made buying a game much more of a satisfying and exciting experience than these days.

(There are exceptions to the trend. I don't buy a lot of games, but The Witcher 2 did a really good job with its boxed product. It even contained a specially minted coin, similar to the one I got years ago with with Chaos Strikes Back. )

As for permanent connections, I doubt that very much.

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Tell that to the Sim City folks...

Macksideshow said:

At any rate I would love to see Civ 6 implement simultaneous turns (not a first in best dressed situation as in existing Civ 4 multiplayer simultaneous turns) but a situation where all Civs play their turn and the actions/results are resolved simultaneously afterwards.

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I'd also like to see simultaneous turns. There's a lot of reasons why that's better than sequential (and a few reasons why its worse ). But will it happen? I really don't think so.

If you want to try a fun little simultaneous turn game, try Castle Vox

bhavv said:

Id like to be able to set science / gold / culture / espionage sliders separately per city. That would make city specialization much more fun.

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Let's keep it real. The sliders are gone. They will not return. None of the civ-designers have ever liked it. Its just been one of those systems that "works" but doesn't feel very elegant.

Civ6 will have hexes and no sliders. That's two things I'm 100% sure of. I'm perfectly fine with both of those things.

On CivBE: Notice thats Ananda Gupta(lead design XCOM) didn't do CivBE. His linkedin page currently says "Working on an unannounced project." I'm guessing he is lead designer of Civ6.

rbj2001 said:

You are joking, but completely seriously, I would not be at all surprised if something very similar is in the works. The management have heard the buzzwords, and the commands have been issued!

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Civilization Online is not a joke, that's official: http://www.civilizationonline.com

Windsor said:

I'd also like to see simultaneous turns. There's a lot of reasons why that's better than sequential (and a few reasons why its worse ). But will it happen? I really don't think so.

If you want to try a fun little simultaneous turn game, try Castle Vox

Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the link Windsor, I will check that out. I've been playing around with the idea (mostly in my head) and I would be interested to see it implemented. I'd also be interested in your reasons for and against if you feel like going into that?

You know what I would throw my money after?

A Civ4 reprogrammed to take fully advantage of 64bit, changed siege (and later ships) to do a prober range attack (instead of the stupid suicide sieges), and a working (AI understands) max 25 UPT. Lastly the obvious bugs should be fixed (K-Mod'ish). Thats all it takes to make a super game imho.
Of course I wouldn't mind if they picked one or two features from my VIP mod, but honestly I wouldn't mind creating a new mod on top of the above changes

edit : oh, and a better AI experience with more diplomatic options, such as Unions.

I want sliders back, or at least more complexity in that regard. Commerce back. Relegating science to basically having more citizens and bulbing blew donkey nuggets.

Yeah, V diplo was a complete abortion. Needs to be more transparent and at least allow the human to do something about it. Not saying it should be easy, but manageable.

RBJ - can't you get those cow droppings to power your internets

Windsor said:

Civilization Online is not a joke, that's official: http://www.civilizationonline.com

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Oh s***
Well I was right, I guess.

Macksideshow said:

Hey thanks for the link Windsor, I will check that out. I've been playing around with the idea (mostly in my head) and I would be interested to see it implemented. I'd also be interested in your reasons for and against if you feel like going into that?

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I'll try to sum up some of my thoughts. I theorycrafted quite a bit on a simultaneous turn-based Civ-game back in 2011. I was so disappointed by Civ5 that I considered leaving my job and start making a game myself

First thing first: As you pointed out, this is not simultaneous turns the way Civ4 and a lot of TBS does it. That's just a really bad compromise to speed up multiplayer.

Some advantages:
+ You get one model that works in both SP and MP.
+ Adding more players (humans/AI) doesn't increase time between turns.
+ You can potentially make really cool combat animations since planes, infantry, cavalry is on the move at the same time rather than the 1v1 unit fight "Archer vs Swordsman"

Main disadvantages:
- More complex and difficult rules. There's a lot of situation where its not clear what will happen. Here's just a few of the most obvious scenarios, do these units fight or not?

- Clarity on the map. You need to show where a unit is ordered to move. This can become a mess on the map.
- Less precise feedback. When you order a unit to attack in sequential turns you get the result immediately. This seems very minor, but its all about the feeling of satisfaction for the player
- Even though you don't have "time between turns" in the sense that you wait for other players to finish, you still need to show where units moved etc. This makes the player sit idle, often for longer than what just waiting for the AI to take its turn would have.

Then there's quite a few neutral differences. Simultaneous turns offer a less clear gamestate. You need to think "what will the other player(s) do?" on a whole different level.

To me the crucial point is that you need to succeed in making the resolve phase engaging and fun to watch. It also needs to be 100% clear what happened so it doesn't feel like some random stuff the player can't control.

Windsor said:

Civilization Online is not a joke, that's official: http://www.civilizationonline.com

Click to expand...

I think I threw up in my mouth a little

Macksideshow said:

Hey thanks for the link Windsor, I will check that out. I've been playing around with the idea (mostly in my head) and I would be interested to see it implemented. I'd also be interested in your reasons for and against if you feel like going into that?

Click to expand...

Before internet games there were TBS games played by mail (as in postal). Everyone would have their own game board and pieces. Someone would be the game master, not a player. For each turn all players would send their moves to the game master by a deadline date. The game master would implement all the moves and resolve all battles, etc. He would then send the results, including new piece positions to the players, along with the deadline for the next turn. There were even companies that were in the business of being the game master. Although I never played that way, I had a friend who did. I still have the info for the company that he used for the game master. I suppose those companies don't exist anymore but it was a simultaneous move approach. So it is viable for a future Civ, if they want to implement it.

s.bernbaum said:

Before internet games there were TBS games played by mail (as in postal). Everyone would have their own game board and pieces. Someone would be the game master, not a player. For each turn all players would send their moves to the game master by a deadline date. The game master would implement all the moves and resolve all battles, etc. He would then send the results, including new piece positions to the players, along with the deadline for the next turn. There were even companies that were in the business of being the game master. Although I never played that way, I had a friend who did. I still have the info for the company that he used for the game master. I suppose those companies don't exist anymore but it was a simultaneous move approach. So it is viable for a future Civ, if they want to implement it.

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I played Diplomacy by mail back in the day.