Does it feel as though Civilization V could use one final expansion?

They've stated before that there's enough content to make expansions for years to come (well, given the game covers 6000 years of human history you'd hope so,) but the key to it is deciding when is enough and when to move on. They could keep expanding on Civ 5 and adding more and more content, but then they'd never be able to release another game. At some point they need to move on to the next game in the series, which allows for a new engine and more drastic changes. For example, the current civ 5 engine doesn't allow for tiles to change from sea to land in the game, which rules out reclamation and terraforming. Moving from Civ 5 to a new game with an engine which allows it would potentially mean that such a feature could be made possible, which otherwise couldn't be

If it were up to me Civilization VI would ship with all core game mechanics included. I don't really like the fact that Vanilla, G&K, and BNW are so drastically different as to be essentially different games. For that matter, so were "vanilla" Civ IV, Play The World, and Beyond The Sword.

The base game could ship with a core group of civilizations that would cover all the nations that everyone agrees ought to be in the game. Instead of introducing new game mechanics, the expansions could be tailored to different regions of the world and/or periods of history. Each expansion could include new civs, new Wonders, and scenarios geared to that particular era or region. There could be expansions for the ancient world, Europe, Asia, Middle East & Africa, the Americas, the colonial and modern era, etc. This would also cut down on the griping we hear from people who think that certain civs don't "deserve" to be included, especially when their own personal favorite wasn't included -- "How can they include Freedonia, but not Sylvania?"

It doesn't really matter of course. They will probably just do the same kind of thing all over again.

Pouakai said:

For example, the current civ 5 engine doesn't allow for tiles to change from sea to land in the game, which rules out reclamation and terraforming. Moving from Civ 5 to a new game with an engine which allows it would potentially mean that such a feature could be made possible, which otherwise couldn't be

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Or they could bring back the global warming feature from Civilization I and II. Of course that disappeared because it wasn't "fun" -- and if land tiles could turn to water, that would mean whole cities could get destroyed...

Kirin Rider said:

If it were up to me Civilization VI would ship with all core game mechanics included.

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I neither feel that's a fair nor a wise wish. Not fair, because if developers are to fully invest in making all game features before getting any money in return, it might not be economically feasible to develop the game, and after all, they are not running a charity. And not wise, because I fear if they indeed did that, we'd get a game with many half-developed and half-fleshed out features instead of a game with fewer but fully developed and fleshed out features. And between the two, I would rather get a slimmer but better game that can then be expanded through subsequent expansions than a broad but poor game!

I believe natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and volcanoes could play a significant role in the game. Dams could be created on a river for flood control, which would increase ones tourism with a recreational lake. Preparations for a coming hurricane could include secluding workers in the city, or better a neighboring city to prevent their destruction. Earthquakes could change the course of a river, after all, the rivers we have today on earth are not in the same location they were 6,000 years ago. The destruction of some buildings and infrastructure could cause cities to have to rebuild, but a science technology could be added to reduce the damage. If one chooses, you could send diplomatic missions to other disaster stricken nations that may include sending workers, gold or military units, or you could take advantage of their difficulties and invade.


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Does it feel as though Civilization V could use one final expansion?


I think there is still room for more expansions and patches to fix Civ5 (balancing, historical accuracy, realism) and to add new content and features (e.g. different leaders per nation, more nations, bigger world size, corporations, etc.), but since there is already "Civilization 5 : the complete Edition" for sale, I suppose there won't be another Civ5 addon. If you consider the (un)likeliness of a Civ6, there will probably also be no Civ6 in the next years. It will be best to concentrate on modding Civ5 or programming your own vision of a civ game.

The biggest problem with Civ6 is that there is not much room for Civ6 to distinguish from Civ5 to economically justify development of Civ6. Civ6 will probably look the same as Civ5 since for a tile based, turn based, global strategy game the graphics of Civ5 are already more than sufficient. Civ5 actually uses as much ressources as a high end 1st person shooter which is also the reason why Civ5 cannot support map-sizes which were supported in Civ3 or Civ4. From Civ3 (2d-iso) to Civ4 (3d) to Civ5 there was a constant development in gameplay and graphics, but the mapsizes had to be reduced due to the increased number of details (polygons) per tile / unit. There is not much room to improve the graphics unless you want to limit the game to small duel-size maps.

Parallel with map-size the number of cities a player should have to win the game was reduced. In Civ3 it was common to have up to 100 cities (= China), in Civ4 it was more like 8+ (= Europe), in Civ5 for most games it is only 1-4 (= Singapore). If this trend continues, in Civ6 the player will probably only control one city (e.g. a capital with buildings as in Imperialism 1/2 or an abstract deck of cards in a Hearthstone-like Civilization Trading Card Game.

So Civ6 would probably have about the same graphics as Civ5 but smaller maps and less cities. As a civ game, Civ6 would have to feature the basic "Civ" content (cities, technologies, units, tiles, ressources, wonders / projects, ...). Only way to distinguish from Civ5 would be a new scenario (e.g. SF = Beyond Earth / Alpha Centauri, Fantasy) or new features / game rules (e.g. as introduced in previous versions : culture (Civ3), great persons (Civ3), religion (Civ4), corporations (Civ4), social policies (Civ5), city states (Civ5), faith (Civ5) ...). If the developers come up with new features, it would be definetely cheaper to add them by mod, patch or addon instead of creating a complete new game around them.

So I suppose there won't be another Civ5 addon and there will be no Civ6. Maybe it is possible to mod Beyond Earth to become a "Civ6" ...

historix69 said:

Parallel with map-size the number of cities a player should have to win the game was reduced. In Civ3 it was common to have up to 100 cities (= China), in Civ4 it was more like 8+ (= Europe), in Civ5 for most games it is only 1-4 (= Singapore). If this trend continues, in Civ6 the player will probably only control one city...

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The trend away from ICS from Civ 3 through Civ 4 and into Civ 5 was a good thing. In Civ 3 and Civ 4, there was a point where people had to automate cities/workers when the number of cities got too high. In MP in particular, it is both more interesting and more challenging to compete with people who are able to keep track of every city in their empire. I think 3-4 cities is the new Civ sweet spot. I seriously doubt it will evolve into a dedicated OCC Civ based upon somewhat pessimistic slippery slope logic.

We first need support for mods in multiplayer, thanks. I'd rather they'd put some resources into that instead of another expansion.

Although, technically it might not be good business practice to extend a game's lifetime by adding support for mods in multiplayer. After all, Civ VI might just be in development.

It's Firaxis choice, nothing I can do about it. I believe they will do what''s best in their interests.

Just focus on Civ VI.

Get a quality 64 bit game engine and the sky is the limit. Gigantic maps won't be a problem as the game engine will be able to handle it. Modding will be much, much easier.

As to whether Civilization 5 still feels unfinished, it is what it is. Time to move on, IMHO.

historix69 said:

(...) If this trend continues, in Civ6 the player will probably only control one city (e.g. a capital with buildings as in Imperialism 1/2 or an abstract deck of cards in a Hearthstone-like Civilization Trading Card Game.

So Civ6 would probably have about the same graphics as Civ5 but smaller maps and less cities. (...)

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I was kind of with you up to this point, but as you argue yourself, there has been no major changes in graphics, which is exactly why there is NO reason to believe that maps should get smaller in Civ 6 than in Civ 5. Like you said yourself, those reduced map sizes were fueled by greater graphic demands, and if graphics are more or less unchanged (like you say) and graphic cards and processors get more powerful with time (like they do) then if anything, maps should get bigger in Civ 6.

kaspergm said:

I was kind of with you up to this point, but as you argue yourself, there has been no major changes in graphics, which is exactly why there is NO reason to believe that maps should get smaller in Civ 6 than in Civ 5. Like you said yourself, those reduced map sizes were fueled by greater graphic demands, and if graphics are more or less unchanged (like you say) and graphic cards and processors get more powerful with time (like they do) then if anything, maps should get bigger in Civ 6.

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A better game engine that is 64 bit should do wonders. That way you can have gigantic maps along with great graphics.

No need for another expansion, there really is enough to do in a game. I'm just disappointed there was never another balance patch. Better production bonuses or gold for honor, nix the free gold from tradition (should've been gotten rid of when river and coastal gold was removed), add some culture to piety (lack of culture in the tree forces you to make up for it in your religion limiting your options).

A lot of work needs to be done on the units. Buff mounted vs. ranged and nerf bow types vs. cities. Fix the rotten lancer and its upgrade path. The lancer was actually better pre-BNW when cavalry had a penalty vs. mounted that made it so lancers>cavalry. That penalty was mysteriously removed making lancers totally pointless for a really really long time. I'd even put cover and medic back into one promotion so melee units would be more viable.

There's just a lot of balancing that could be done to make multiple strategies more viable which would really help its replay value. Too often I feel like each game is "choose tradition or liberty, settle 3-4 cities, pump out a handful of ranged units and plug away at your VC." A little more balance in the units, SPs and more reward for expansion would really give the game more variety. There was a lot of stuff I loved about BNW but I do feel like the trade mechanics and ICS nerfs kind of limit your options rather than add variety. Maybe if there were more reward from the trade system based on empire size I'd be a lot happier, say every 5 cities awarded you with a bonus trade route or maybe a bonus modifier to trade based on empire size. Even something as simple as moving trading posts back to trapping would make going wide early a decent option again.

I wouldn't say I feel like it needs an expansion to be complete but no more patches really makes me feel like they abandoned the game too early. I took a break from the game for a few months hoping I'd come back to a patched game but unfortunately there's nothing new.

Acken said:

It could use a balance/bug_fix patch but it doesn't really need an expansion

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Yes, this is my feeling as well. It feels like a lot of stuff they added in the expansions really needed a few goings-over, especially things like the religious beliefs - there are some real gems in there, but also some complete stinkers, and the AI just seems to pick from the list at random.

kingfish101 said:

If they created a Civ 6.





"If"

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they will. civ5 did well and it's firaxis's flagship.

DarkestOnion said:

The trend away from ICS from Civ 3 through Civ 4 and into Civ 5 was a good thing. In Civ 3 and Civ 4, there was a point where people had to automate cities/workers when the number of cities got too high. In MP in particular, it is both more interesting and more challenging to compete with people who are able to keep track of every city in their empire. I think 3-4 cities is the new Civ sweet spot. I seriously doubt it will evolve into a dedicated OCC Civ based upon somewhat pessimistic slippery slope logic.

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Civilization games always were a hybrid of
- game (make interesting choices in context of given set of abstract game rules) and
- historical simulation (recreate human history).
Civ5 supports singleplayer and multiplayer. Civ5 supports mapsizes from duel (40 x 24 = 960) to giant (190 x 94 = 16.920). Civ5 supports different victory conditions as science (space race), domination, culture (tourism) and diplomatic victory. Limiting the game to 3-4 cities per player by designing the game rules so that 3-4 cities (Tradition, National Wonders) for the first half of the game are the optimal strategy for winning the game fast is overemphasizing multiplayer and the peaceful player on standard map size. 3-4 cities doesn't work that good for conquest and on bigger map sizes.

World history is a history of huge empires and nations with military, economically and scientific power, e.g. the Roman Empire, British (Colonial) Empire, Russian Empire, the United States, China, etc.. By constraining yourself to 4 cities you no longer can recreate the huge empires from ancient history and you loose the simulation character of Civ and a lot of fun. On bigger (giant) map sizes it just feels bad and unhistoric to leave all those fertile land and ressources unclaimed and unsettled just because you have reached your strategic 4 cities limit. I think optimal number of cities should scale with world size. People who like to play multiplayer with 3-4 cities could use their (standard) map size while people who like huge ancient empires would play huge or giant with 8-12 cities.


ICS is a strategy based on game rules going back to design of Civ1 exploiting the free ressources per city / building (e.g. free city tile) and the lower food cost for population growth in small cities. (In Civ it is easier to grow 2 cities to size 20 than 1 city to 40.) The strategy is boosted by the fact that research, production and income of the cities in civ games are mostly additive quantities which means more cities are better. In Civ5 there are a number of ICS-counter-measures implemented as global happiness, increased Tech Costs (by 2% per city), increased Social Policy Costs (by 5-15% per city) and increased National Wonders costs (by ca. 25% per City).

By adjusting game rules to real world (history) rules it should be possible to limit the benefit of ICS to make it irelevant. (The game developers had 20+ years time to fix the ICS problem.)

- In real history ICS correlates with claiming unsettled (fertile) land and ressources before your neighbours do until there is no more free land to claim. Claiming as much (useful) land as possible is humanely. Today Antarctica is the only (partly) unclaimed and unsettled continent left on earth.
Until the age of industrialisation (and the associated urbanisation) humans tried to settle every fertile spot on earth (subsistence economy). However density of population varied. (Today it varies from 1,77 inhabitants per km^2 (Mongolia) to 18000 inhabitants per km^2 (Monaco Citystate).)
In Civ games it is not possible to politically or military claim territory. You need to found cities and produce culture / use culture-bomb or you need to conquer cities to claim territory. Population density of non-city-tiles in Civ is binary (0 or 1).

- Population in Civ is restricted to cities. Population Growth in a city is based on surplus food production with increased costs based on city size.
(In real history, fertility was high, especially in the countryside, while mortality was based on available food, disease, health, etc. In unhealthy cities mortality rate often excelled fertility rate and the cities depended on immigrants from the countryside. Population Growth = (Fertility - Mortality) * Population.)
To allow food-based population growth in a new founded, not improved city, the free city tile (in some versions +2 food independant from terrain) was introduced in Civ1. Without the free city tile most cities would have zero growth or would even starve right after foundation of the city.
Implement a realistic population growth in Civ (based on population and health, not only on food) and you can remove the free city tile ...

- Remove all flat boni per city / building.

- Population in Civ5 cannot be moved from one city to another. You can only build/buy settlers who found a new city with size 1 (or higher with certain sp). Building a settler stops population growth in the city but it does not reduce population. If you buy a settler in Civ5, you can even avoid the population growth stop and you get extra population for gold. (In Civ3 a worker cost 1 population and a settler cost 2 population. It was possible to build workers (-1 pop) and later add them to the population of the same or another city (+1 pop) (until a certain city size was reached.) When razing a city in Civ3 the population was transformed into ethnic workers which could be used to build infrastructure, be traded or be added to your cities as population.)
Food and production in Civ are also restricted to cities cannot be moved from one city to another (except for the caravan in Civ1). (The Civ5-BNW-Traderoute does not move production or food between cities but instead gives a flat bonus. The player can choose between an income-bonus or a food-bonus or a production-bonus.)
In real world, working population, production ressources, luxuries and food are movable commodities.
Change population to a global movable population which can move from city to city and the player can decide on his own if he wants to found 100 size-1-cities with lots of ressources (ICS), 10 size-10-cities or 1 size-100-city (if he can employ all 100 workers in that city). Add tile-improvements / buildings which allow multiple workers (pop) to work highly productive tiles / buildings and the benefit of founding a new city becomes a tradeoff with the highly productive worker you loose in your major city.
(This population and employment model is inspired by Colonization but population growth should not be based on food production.)
It also should be possible to move or delete cities if a city-location no longer is beneficial.

- Research in Civ is simplified. Research in Civ is an additive number. Research roughly scales with Empire-size. If you have a city which generates 100 Research Points per turn and a technology costs 3.000 Research Points, it takes 30 turns to research the technology. If you have 30 cities with 100 Research Points, it takes you 1 turn and if you have 300 cities you would make 10 technologies that turn. (Civ5 has a cap of around 1 tech per turn but research overflow is stored.) This Research modelling is unrealistic, e.g. communication effort between your research teams in different cities is completely ignored, there are no minimum research times, etc. (In Civ3, minimum research time was 4 turns, maximum research time was 40 turns, techs could be traded for Gold per missing Research-Point.)
Compare it with game development :
If a Firaxis-team of 40 developers might develop Civ6 in 30 months (?), it is not said that a team of 400 developers can do it in 3 months or 4000 developers can do it in 9 days. It is more likely that 4.000 developers in 20 teams would produce 20 different Civ6 games in 6 months.
So in real live science output of a strong 100 city empire might be slightly better than that of a strong 10 city nation but it probably won't be 10 times better.
ICS in terms of research would become completely irrelevant if every city would have its own research programm (= tech). The tech-tree usually only features 6-8 different techs at a time and so the player would only need to build 6-8 Research-Cities or less if there is a dominant Super-Science-City. It would not matter if there are 100 minor cities in the background since they would not contribute to research. Research progress would become more predictable if it would not scale with number of cities.

- If you play Civ games with a 100+ city Empire and compare your empire with historical empires, you quickly notice that elements like administration and bureaucracy are missing and you cannot establish even a primitive hierarchy, e.g. distinguish cities between military / colonial / trade outpost, city, provincial capital, capital. In Civ games you just distinguish between capital and normal cities, in Civ5 also between puppets and non-puppets. There is no administrative hierarchy, no complex structure. Every city can build most of the available buildings.
In a more complex model, there would be separate buildings for capitals, provincial capitals and cities, e.g. build schools everywhere but universities only in capitals and provincial capitals. Minor cities would expand the area of their provincial capitals and would provide food, ressources and working population for the provincial capital.

- A wide empire might have higher administration costs. In Civ1-Civ3 the cost of a wide empire were called corruption and reduced income and production in peripheral cities. Courthouses could reduce corruption. In Civ3 there was also a specialist to further reduce corruption in a city. Communism in Civ1 provided a flat corruption in all cities. Democracy in Civ1 eliminated corruption at the cost of unhappiness per military units and limited belligerence. In Civ4 the upkeep for buildings in cities, corruption and empire administration costs were replaced by a new empire upkeep cost based on number of cities, city size, distance, colonies, etc....
In Civ5 the upkeep for buildings in cities came back but global administration costs were removed. Instead global happiness and unhappiness per city was introduced, which can be neutralized by certain social policies. (So Civ5 supports late game ICS / Conquest more than previous versions of Civ, but usually it means war and if you are winning anyway late game expansion becomes optional.)

Administration of real empires usually increase bureaucracy. In a civ game bureaucracy could be implemented by having a special administrative building in capital were officers (specialists) control the minor cities. If your empire expands, the capital will instead control a set of provincial capitals while the provincial capitals will control the minor cities etc. Cities which are not controlled would not contribute to empire income. Officers would consume food and gold and do not produce any ressources on their own.

That are just some ideas how to make ICS less relevant.

kaspergm said:

I was kind of with you up to this point, but as you argue yourself, there has been no major changes in graphics, which is exactly why there is NO reason to believe that maps should get smaller in Civ 6 than in Civ 5. Like you said yourself, those reduced map sizes were fueled by greater graphic demands, and if graphics are more or less unchanged (like you say) and graphic cards and processors get more powerful with time (like they do) then if anything, maps should get bigger in Civ 6.

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My statement about Civ5 / Civ6 graphics was a bit unclear.
I think that Civ5 graphics are looking much better than Civ4 graphics and that Civ5 graphics are sufficient for a turn based strategy game. I fear that for Civ6 they will use the additional ressources to increase the level of detail, e.g. that you can zoom into a tile until it covers the complete screen and still looks detailed. If you do not zoom in or even zoom out, the tile might look similar to respective tile in Civ5. And in a strategy game you usually zoom out for better overview.

According to polls most people play on standard map size so the developers will probably concentrate on making a good looking game which can handle ressources for a standard map size or slightly above on expected minimum hardware. Since giant maps are 4 times bigger than standard maps, there is always the risk that ressource management does not support giant maps at all since it is out of development focus ...

Civ 5 is so much fun and make a lot of sense compared to Civ 4. However there are still some areas that can be improved such as religions, smarter AI, clearer difference between civilization units/buildings, better communication with city states (for example it would be fun if you can tell ur allied city states to attack a certain city)

VicRatlhead5199 said:

No need for another expansion, there really is enough to do in a game. I'm just disappointed there was never another balance patch. Better production bonuses or gold for honor, nix the free gold from tradition (should've been gotten rid of when river and coastal gold was removed), add some culture to piety (lack of culture in the tree forces you to make up for it in your religion limiting your options).

A lot of work needs to be done on the units. Buff mounted vs. ranged and nerf bow types vs. cities. Fix the rotten lancer and its upgrade path. The lancer was actually better pre-BNW when cavalry had a penalty vs. mounted that made it so lancers>cavalry. That penalty was mysteriously removed making lancers totally pointless for a really really long time. I'd even put cover and medic back into one promotion so melee units would be more viable.

There's just a lot of balancing that could be done to make multiple strategies more viable which would really help its replay value. Too often I feel like each game is "choose tradition or liberty, settle 3-4 cities, pump out a handful of ranged units and plug away at your VC." A little more balance in the units, SPs and more reward for expansion would really give the game more variety. There was a lot of stuff I loved about BNW but I do feel like the trade mechanics and ICS nerfs kind of limit your options rather than add variety. Maybe if there were more reward from the trade system based on empire size I'd be a lot happier, say every 5 cities awarded you with a bonus trade route or maybe a bonus modifier to trade based on empire size. Even something as simple as moving trading posts back to trapping would make going wide early a decent option again.

I wouldn't say I feel like it needs an expansion to be complete but no more patches really makes me feel like they abandoned the game too early. I took a break from the game for a few months hoping I'd come back to a patched game but unfortunately there's nothing new.

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I think this was a really good post that is very accurate on almost every single detail with the possible exception of the statement that there really is enough to do in the game.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

...
There was a lot of stuff I loved about BNW but I do feel like the trade mechanics and ICS nerfs kind of limit your options rather than add variety. Maybe if there were more reward from the trade system based on empire size I'd be a lot happier, say every 5 cities awarded you with a bonus trade route or maybe a bonus modifier to trade based on empire size. ...

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It should be easy to do a mod which adds a Traderoute per certain building, e.g. per marketplace, caravansary, stables, harbour or seaport. If you use marketplace, you will have one traderoute per city. An additional traderoute for every 5 cities is difficult.

For coding check Petra or the Colossus :

I would like an expansion. They can outsource it. Let the market speak.

For Civ6, personally I wouldn't mind sticking to 1upt but I would like to change the scale of what one tile is. More, smalller tiles. And redo the UI to recognize dual monitor setups.

For expansion, things I like are fairly simple. Better AI (okay, not so simple to implement, but doesn't require a game rearchitecture). Natural events, which are impacted by your faith. Require trading posts be on/adjacent to a road. Plant Great Merchants to yield gold+tourism tiles (like waterparks, amusement parks, malls--not just custom houses). More natural wonders, this time make some passable. Post-industrial UU's which generate faith (one of which is unlocked by picking the Reformation belief). Give each ideology a UU just for picking the ideology. Resources like hemp and coca which are banned by default and you have to go to WC to legalize them. All-in-all, just stuff that's not too hard to add, but does some rebalancing and enriches your strategic options.

I agree that combat is an issue, but where I would really like to see Civilization improve is in micromanagement, particularly in regards to the economy. So basically, we have three options - Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism (Freedom, Order, Autocracy) - but other than opening social policies that add particular bonuses, it really doesn't change the way the game is played in any meaningful way.

For instance, if you opt for Fascism, then you should be able to create National Syndicates that benefit your nation in certain ways (with clear economic benefits and repercussions) that, you know, actually affect the way the game is played. National unity would increase, which would make it easier to mobilize for war, and your production would go off the charts ... but, as with Communism (which would also have it's own unique playstyle), research would take a major hit due to the lack of motivation brought on by Statism (whereas the opposite would be true of Capitalism, where research and economy would increase but national unity would suffer).

I just feel that these ideologies should act more like different playstyles (sort of like in Starcraft with Terran, Protoss, and Zerg), that actually change the the way the game is played, each offering different strategies and appealing to different gamers - instead of this paper-thin facade of depth that the current system offers.