Permanently a City-State

ELRACj · Sep 9, 2016

Back in CIV V, some vanilla city-states were able to become full fledged Civilizations (Seoul, Venice, and Edinburgh to name a few), but this time things are different. In Civ V, city-states were only describe by a personality (hostile, friendly, etc..), type, and resources. For the most part, the only thing that mattered was the type and their resources (which was not fixed). They could have left the name spot completely blank and it would have not mattered.

CIV VI is a little a different. Each city-state is unique. They still fall under certain categories like Cultural or Mercantile(Commercial) but they now have their own bonuses. For example, Lisbon is a commercial city-state whose trade routes cannot be pillaged and another commercial city-state Zanzibar gives you access to cloves and cinnamon. Each city-state also has their own symbol to represent them.

Now it begs the question! If city-states are so personalized, does that mean we will not see these city-states become Civs? IMO, I believe that the developers picked civilizations that were not planned for DLC. Its less work than coming up with new city-states with their own abilities but of course I could be totally wrong.

Thanks to another civfanatics post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=567144) for listing all city-state information and more.

TheMarshmallowBear · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
Back in CIV V, some vanilla city-states were able to become full fledged Civilizations (Seoul, Venice, and Edinburgh to name a few), but this time things are different. In Civ V, city-states were only describe by a personality (hostile, friendly, etc..), type, and resources. For the most part, the only thing that mattered was the type and their resources (which was not fixed). They could have left the name spot completely blank and it would have not mattered.

CIV VI is a little a different. Each city-state is unique. They still fall under certain categories like Cultural or Mercantile(Commercial) but they now have their own bonuses. For example, Lisbon is a commercial city-state whose trade routes cannot be pillaged and another commercial city-state Zanzibar gives you access to cloves and cinnamon. Each city-state also has their own symbol to represent them.

Now it begs the question! If city-states are so personalized, does that mean we will not see these city-states become Civs? IMO, I believe that the developers picked civilizations that were not planned for DLC. Its less work than coming up with new city-states with their own abilities but of course I could be totally wrong.

Thanks to another civfanatics post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=567144) for listing all city-state information and more.

Absolutely not. It wouldn't make sense. Several of their bonuses are just that. Bonuses and random modifiers. It dose not shout "THIS IS SO STOCKHOLM" and coudl very easily be moved to a new civ.

Take Jerusalem, for example.

Their bonus afaik is that it converts to the Suzerain's Dominant Religion and exerts the pressure equal to that of a Holy City.

If Israel is added, that bonus could very easily be made into Vatican City, which would make just as much sense (given that it's got the Apostolic Palace and is often regarded as the centre of Catholic Christianity)

ELRACj · Sep 9, 2016

TheMarshmallowBear said:
Absolutely not. It wouldn't make sense. Several of their bonuses are just that. Bonuses and random modifiers. It dose not shout "THIS IS SO STOCKHOLM" and coudl very easily be moved to a new civ.

Take Jerusalem, for example.

Their bonus afaik is that it converts to the Suzerain's Dominant Religion and exerts the pressure equal to that of a Holy City.

If Israel is added, that bonus could very easily be made into Vatican City, which would make just as much sense (given that it's got the Apostolic Palace and is often regarded as the centre of Catholic Christianity)

I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

Ebrim · Sep 9, 2016

I understand your concern but I still think that no, city-states won't lock out potential civs. Even if the Dutch were in the game as a civ, it would still make sense to have a city-state Amsterdam that can appear which the Dutch civ isn't present. But, I do think that if we did not have the leaks we have had, we could probably infer which civs were not going to be in the initial release by knowing which city-states were.

RisingSun · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

For the same reason they had city states that later became Civilizations in Civ5: they add diversity without too much effort. When Korea, Sweden and Kilwa (just making an example there...) will be promoted to civilizations the can change their names and keep the bonus (maybe spice it up a little): Seoul will become techno-oriented Taipei, Stockholm will become Reykyavik, and Zanzibar will become Colombo.

Nothing easier, really.

Haggbart · Sep 9, 2016

There are two parts of the question.

1) Are there city states from already planned DLC civs?
- No, that would make no sense. If they have som DLCs lined up for the coming months, they would not give themselves extra work to replace them so soon.

2) Will they avoid using civs that have city states now, in later expansions or DLCs that are not already plannes?
- No. We saw that several times in CiV, and the extra work of making some new bonuses or reassigning them to another city name isn't really THAT big. The only thing they would need to do is design a new symbol and (maybe) make up a new bonus. If someone has a brilliant idea for a new civ for a DLC/expansion, that's not going to stop them from using that idea.

Eagle Pursuit · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

You already observed that they converted many city-states to civs in V. You could have asked the same question then. It doesn't matter why they would make them city-states prior to upgrading them.

The barrier to entry may have been increased slightly, but it is hardly insurmountable. If they want to bump city-states up to big leagues, the only limit is their desire to do so.

cazaderonus · Sep 9, 2016

The real question is: have they already decided which civilization they will add over the course of CiVI lifespan ?

Probably not. So then, i dont see them being blocked by vanilla CSes if they decide to add a civilization that would require removing one down the road.

By that logic though we can easily suppose that no civs already planned as future DLCs would step on the existing CSes.

Eagle Pursuit · Sep 9, 2016

cazaderonus said:
The real question is: have they already decided which civilization they will add over the course of CiVI lifespan ?

Probably not. So then, i dont see them being blocked by vanilla CSes if they decide to add a civilization that would require removing one down the road.

By that logic though we can easily suppose that no civs already planned as future DLCs would step on the existing CSes.

If any credit can be given to the leaked leader poster, it appears that they have at least planned a Poland DLC and an Isabella leader DLC. That was as far ahead as they seem to have planned at that point in development. I doubt they have anything beyond that planned at the moment because they are in a critical phase of development for the vanilla game and it needs their full attention.

Ryoga · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

I don't think they plan that far ahead. For example I doubt they would have included "Honolulu" as an American city if they had planned to release Polynesia from the beginning.

nitedemon · Sep 9, 2016

The bonus are more unique this time, but far from personal to the city states. The only one that's personal is La Venta's colossal heads, the other ones can easily be renamed.

Krajzen · Sep 9, 2016

Meh. All those bonuses (while cool) are also minor enough to be easily given to other CS, changed or even removed from the game (that happened to few obscolete icons in civ5).

Among confirmed city states in civ6 so far there is Lisbon, Amsterdam, Carthage and Seoul. All those civs were in the series in civ3, civ4 and civ5 and are almost certainly going to return, as they are among 'core' civs (big, distinctive, popular and important). No way they wouldn't return just because of some silly short numerical bonus.

On top of that some other CS are cities or capitals of some very legit potential civs (Jakarta-Indonesia,Stockholm-Sweden, Preslav-Bulgarian Empire, Kabul-Afghanistan, Kumasi-Ashanti, Zanzibar-Swahilli).

Sorry but I think that theory is nonsense, minor adjustable bonuses are not enough to stop firaxis from replacing city states if necessary as they did in civ5).

The only city state that has really personalized bonus is La Venta, but it just happens to be one of those minor cultures that are perfect as city states and unlikely to appear as major civs anyway.

BrokenSky · Sep 9, 2016

Ebrim said:
I understand your concern but I still think that no, city-states won't lock out potential civs. Even if the Dutch were in the game as a civ, it would still make sense to have a city-state Amsterdam that can appear which the Dutch civ isn't present. But, I do think that if we did not have the leaks we have had, we could probably infer which civs were not going to be in the initial release by knowing which city-states were.

That would actually be really cool IMO, to have a city state tied to some (maybe every?) civs which could only spawn in games they weren't in.

Xen · Sep 9, 2016

We will get a Carthage DLC one day- and my biggest hope is that its bundled with Scipio as a Roman leader, who introduces some sort of cool thematic bonuses for a Roman republic, and perhaps a different sort ofblegionary UU (ie lets say the legions of Trajan build roads. The Legions of the Punic wars werent engineering much of anything yet, so they should a pilum throw ability instead, assuming that the vanilla legions dont already do that.

UnknownHuman · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

They probably have a good idea of the civilizations to be added in the dlcs, and clearly those potential playable civilizations made into city-states are not in the list.

Nevertheless it doesn’t mean we won’t see them in future extension, simply because the developers don’t plan in advance what civilizations will be released in an extension, extension which won’t come before one year or so.

Moreover as said earlier the suzerain bonuses are pretty much generic, Amsterdam can become Venice and Lisbon can become Genoa, at worst changing the suzerain bonuses won't take a lot of time, maybe one hour of brainstorming, one hour for the art department to make new icons, and one hour of coding, plus few hours for reviewing it alongside other mechanics. I know nothing about development by the way so this is pure speculation, but you get the idea.

Eagle Pursuit · Sep 9, 2016

BrokenSky said:
That would actually be really cool IMO, to have a city state tied to some (maybe every?) civs which could only spawn in games they weren't in.

It would be neat in the sense that "it's present in this version of history, but for whatever circumstances it never progresses into a major player".

But the downside is that you will see it as a city-state and it will inform you that it isn't present as a civ, which is kind of immersion breaking.

BrokenSky · Sep 9, 2016

Eagle Pursuit said:
It would be neat in the sense that "it's present in this version of history, but for whatever circumstances it never progresses into a major player".

But the downside is that you will see it as a city-state and it will inform you that it isn't present as a civ, which is kind of immersion breaking.

Yeah i guess that's true...

Absolution · Sep 9, 2016

What I don't like about many of the city-states they picked is that much of them were never really characterized by being a city-state.
It's just important cities of civilizations they didn't want to include.
And I speak of Stockholm, Toronto, Seoul, Libson, Hattusa(!), and maybe Buenos Aires.

SJSerio · Sep 9, 2016

ELRACj said:
I see what you are saying. But if they planned on adding Israel as DLC why wouldn't they make Vatican City the city-state from the beginning.

It is not necessarily that they are planning certain civs for the future. In fact, with the exception of the first few DLC, it is unlikely that they have a list of civilizations that they plan to use in the future. That said, any City-State could be "upgraded" in the future.

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Thormodr · Sep 9, 2016

Korea is a massive cash cow for Firaxis/2K Games. Hypernationalistic + large gaming population = $$$$$!!!

Seoul being a city state won't preclude them from becoming a full fledged civilization down the road.

I also expect the Dutch (Amsterdam) to be in the game as a full fledged civ as well as a number of others.

Permanently a City-State

If city-states are so personalized, are city-states stuck being city-states?

Yes

No

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