Civilization VI : in the making ?

[Eagle Pursuit]

Well, we know they are still working on stuff for Civ V. A few map packs came out a few months ago, and Bison, in the Steam database, has turned out to be a renovated scenario and should be out soonish. So they are still making money off this iteration. If they are working on VI, it's still a long way off.

I'm sort of on the fence. I feel Civ V has reach the threshold of feature bloat. If they add anything else, the game experience will get bogged down in minutiae. On the other hand, it's still pretty fresh as far as graphics and gameplay are concerned. I don't feel like a successor is required at the moment. Perhaps they will come out with a spin off for Civ V like Colonization or Alpha Centauri. Who knows?

If and when Civ VI vanilla comes out, it will be more comparable to Civ V vanilla than BNW. It will be stripped down to the basic features with maybe a hand full of innovations and probably in need of balance and bug fixing patches. Expansions will add complexity and features later on. That's their tried and true business model for the series. To expect anything else would be ignorant of the series history.

 

[Kurtbob]

I think there is some juice left in CiV. I'm not sure if the Devs will continue to produce more DLCs (though I don't see any reason why they wouldn't) but I welcome new content. It would be nice if the Devs improved the balance between Tall vs wide, the tech tree, policy trees, unit upgrade paths, and the AI.

Before Civ VI does come around, I would love to play a full mod on the same level as Rise of Mankind for Civ V. I just want more immersion. More units, more buildings, more wonders, a longer tech tree, ect ect. However, CiV's graphics are great and I really don't see the need to further develop them for Civ VI (which the devs will do). I wouldn't mind wonder vids (Civ II vids, not Civ IV vids) and victory vids being reintroduced. Dropping 3D leaderscreens wouldn't be a loss in my opinion.

I'm hoping for a 2015-2016 Civ VI release, unless CiV is continuously spruced up and refined by the Devs and the Modding community.

 

[jokii]

AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIII

I hope they will improve AI in Civ 6. I hope they will improve it significantly.
But, I am afraid they will not touch it. We will insted, get new civilizations, or new game concept.
More complicated game mechanic, with same stupid AI.

If they would sold me Civ 5 again with competative AI, I would buy it, again.
But if they put the same stupid AI in a new game, then it might be a GAME OVER for this game...

 

[APCY]

AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIII

I hope they will improve AI in Civ 6. I hope they will improve it significantly.
But, I am afraid they will not touch it. We will insted, get new civilizations, or new game concept.
More complicated game mechanic, with same stupid AI.

If they would sold me Civ 5 again with competative AI, I would buy it, again.
But if they put the same stupid AI in a new game, then it is game over , as far as I'm concerned.

Its actually not that easy to make smart AI for that big game.

 

[Barghaest]

Its actually not that easy to make smart AI for that big game.

Nothing worth doing is ever easy. It's not as hard as some people believe either, the trick is getting it to work on less powerful machines (since complex AI requires a lot of resources and processing power) but good AI has been around for quite a while now.

 

[J-man]

Good chance Firaxis is actually working on it. Personally I don't like civ V as much as civ IV, so I hope firaxis does a better job this time.

 

[rkade8583]

Update the graphics? Those are probably the LAST thing that needs updating. Civ isnt a game about mouth-watering explosion spectacle graphics. They only bog down a game and ensure lower end PC's cannot play it - Civ V initially fell prey to this, right now it's at a good point.
A better AI, on the other hand...

Legally blind. Play strategic mode because it's easier on my eye and my computer. Totally agree about the AI.

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

I didn't start playing Civ 4 until 2008, got BtS in 2009, and then didn't get Civ 5 vanilla until mid 2013, and got BNW a few months ago. If Civ 6 comes out next year, I probably won't get it until 2017.

Also, I really liked how getting BtS also included Warlords, but it irritated me when I got BNW and it didn't come with the civs from GnK. Then again, Firaxis really wants another $30 out of me...

 

[awetzel]

I think the better question is when will civ 6 be playable. It might come out in 2015 but if civ 5 is any proper gauge, it will be a year of patches, two expansions, and numerous player mods before it will be truly playable.

 

[Playsoneasy]

I feel like I bought Civ 5 at just the right time, and if the release of Civ 6 is anything like that of Civ 5 (assuming a 2015 release) I won't be getting no 6 until 2018...

Still, there's plenty more to enjoy in the current game yet!

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm sort of on the fence. I feel Civ V has reach the threshold of feature bloat. If they add anything else, the game experience will get bogged down in minutiae.

I think there's room in the game to remove or revise features, not just add stuff - BNW didn't simply add trade routes to the existing game, it completely changed the economic system and most buildings and policies linked to it were revised. There's definitely room in Civ V for something that revisits the public order or science generation systems and reinvents them instead of adding anything all-new on top of existing features which in some cases sit badly with the direction the game has gone in since its release.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, global happiness is no longer the useful constraint it once was - other game systems do a more appropriate job of constraining ICS and favouring taller play than was favoured in vanilla. The National Wonder system is obsolete on similar grounds. Vanilla punished wide empires; the newer expansions reward tall empires. You don't need both kinds of incentive in the game, and having them is what leads to the current imbalance. Civ V feels like a game with the baggage of a weaker, older implementation clinging to it, which results in a whole suite of weirdly dualistic systems (GS/GE/GM implementation vs. GWAMs, the pyramid structure of the ideology trees vs. the cruder fixed policy sequence of the other social policies) - the best thing either a future expansion or Civ VI can do is look at the game in the context of BNW and revise the vanilla systems that are no longer welcome.

 

[Boygor]

Me too.

Yes, me too! Just picked up the original again from GOG. Amazing game.

 

[Helmling]

Me too.

Well, Civ IV had a follow-up/expansion for Colonization. Wouldn't it be great if they used the Civ V engine to release an updated SMAC?

(Yeah, keep dreaming. EA owns the rights as I understand it. Firaxis can't develop it without them putting skin in the game.)

 

[sendos]

Not to change the subject but I seem to put civ 5 into the same category as mc and tf2 (both games I have). Both these games are very popular and I can't imagine a minecraft 2 or tf3. All the progress made in those games, the items in tf2, the projects in mc will sort of all go to waste as the next best thing rolls in. You end up alienating/dividing the gaming community by literally creating a quasi-political divide between gaming conservatives (stick with current game) and progressives (MORE and NEW stuff!).

Now enter CoD/MW. Hearing a new CoD coming out every year to me is like hearing someone scratch the blackboard. It screeches of pandering to a gaming community that desires a new version of CoD every year, which to me is just childish. Civilization is not like that (notice the time gaps between each series compared to CoD) and I am happy that Firaxis is relying on expansions to improve civ 5.

If civ 6 is being considered, I suggest to Firaxis: wait for 2020 or something. Develop civ 6 carefully and slowly for like 5 years to address every single problem mentioned. In the meantime, release 1 more expansion to reap in more sales, because we know the basics of the game and we'll eventually get used to its new features. Maybe 5 years is considered too long, but I'd put that open to question.

 

[Barghaest]

Both these games are very popular and I can't imagine a minecraft 2 or tf3.

I'm considering EQ Next Landmark as a successor to Minecraft (love Minecraft, by the way). Not replacing it, but offering a potentially more enjoyable experience. They're using less rigid building materials than blocks (voxiles, I believe they're called - used by other construction games in development/early release as well) allowing spheres or other non-blocky structures to be easily simulated.

Been looking forward to the EQ successor (and Landmark in particular) since I heard about it close to a year ago because building/creating things (structures, crafted items, empires) is one of my great loves and the reason I am drawn to games like Civilization.

 

[AmericanDestiny]

Civ 6 should not be developed until Civ 5 is complete. We still need some pollution mechanic, vassals, Industrial age wonders (Only Big Ben now), and some improvements to tundra to make it equal to desert starts. I think this can be done in a $9.99 mini expansion.

 

[Reus]

Napoleon, Gandhi, Oda, Alexander, and Genghis, and Hiawatha are all random field leaders, each with varying degrees of emptiness. And yes, Gajah has a bland random field as well.

Gajah Mada's field is very Indonesian and is sufficient to represent him.
+ he have a Candi in his background.

I assure you that. Trust me, I'm Indonesian

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, Civ IV had a follow-up/expansion for Colonization. Wouldn't it be great if they used the Civ V engine to release an updated SMAC?

(Yeah, keep dreaming. EA owns the rights as I understand it. Firaxis can't develop it without them putting skin in the game.)

How did EA get the rights? From recollection, Alpha Centauri was the first title released under the Firaxis label, and the game was published by Microprose.

It's always a bit unclear what happens with rights in these situations, and why they can't just be bought back from a rightholder with no interest in developing a game in that franchise - Master of Orion's been in this kind of limbo pretty much since Microprose died, I think.

Not sure why no one seems to have made the connection between "Civilization IV: Colonization" and "Civilization V: Conquest of the New World Deluxe", since it's more or less the same thing in scope and historical setting. Sure, the latter is a 'scenario pack', but ultimately what was Colonization in either the original or Civ IV forms if not an overly-elaborate scenario for the associated Civ game? Given that Civ V has the tools to make "scenarios" as divergent from the main title as Scramble for Africa or Smokey Skies, the new Conquest of the New World could be pretty close to being Colonization III in all but name (I presume Firaxis still has the rights to that name, so why not simply call it Colonization in that case is a puzzle).

Civ 6 should not be developed until Civ 5 is complete. We still need some pollution mechanic, vassals, Industrial age wonders (Only Big Ben now), and some improvements to tundra to make it equal to desert starts. I think this can be done in a $9.99 mini expansion.

I doubt a pollution mechanic will make a return - Firaxis seems to be pandering to American populism: Civ IV lost references to evolution, Civ V to global warming and pollution, probably in an effort to avoid upsetting a vocal minority of mainly American cranks - even variables like world age are no longer visible in the main interface, as though to avoid any implication that the world is more than 6,000 years old.

There's no need for any of the others either. Tundra has been useless in all versions of Civ, and different terrain types should vary in their utility - Civ V just needs to ditch tundra start biases (EDIT: And improve rivers now they've lost their gold bonus so they're useful for something other than one or two trade cities - that way tundra would still be colonisable along a river).

I played Civ IV again recently and seeing Genghis vassalise his neighbours was great, however it just wouldn't usefully work with the way the domination victory condition works in Civ V. Civ V's victory conditions generally need revision, and in most cases along the lines of the older games to make them more dynamic (three of the four are static "Get X of Y", with Y being capitals, spaceship parts, or votes, and the number needed fixed from the game's start - except for diplo, which however can only change downwards while in past games the number of votes needed increased as the game went on), however this is validly a change to reserve for Civ VI.

While such things as the Golden Gate Bridge and Empire State Building may make sense as Industrial Wonders, I don't see any particular need for Wonders from that era - Wonders are mostly well-placed in the tech tree (and if necessary some of the existing ones could be moved - Statue of Liberty, Broadway, Eiffel Tower, Cristo Redentor and others that are Industrial-era structures in reality. Technically the Great Mosque of Djenne in the form depicted is industrial-era, but there's little value to an Industrial-era faith Wonder). The game has enough - if not too many - Wonders; it could do with changing the identity of some of the more questionable ones, but we don't need any more.

 

[notyourtypical]

Civ 6 should not be developed until Civ 5 is complete. We still need some pollution mechanic, vassals, Industrial age wonders (Only Big Ben now), and some improvements to tundra to make it equal to desert starts. I think this can be done in a $9.99 mini expansion.

Louvre and Brandenburg Gate say hi.

 

[dexters]

I kind of want a 3rd expansion for Civ5 after BNW, because surprisingly, it feels like Firaxis can do more and they've done a great job of really making Civ5 an amazing experience.

G&K expanded on the early game with religion, BNW ostensibly expands on the latter half but really, Atomic/Information era is more or less the same as before, BNW just re-aligns the politics at Modern era inflection and there's now tourism to manage.


If it its going to be a later game mechanic post ideologies, they can bring back Corporations but with something that isn't just a reskinned religion mechanic, and perhaps more substantive that interacts with your diplomacy. ideology, soft power and economy. There could also be information war mechanics and more UN shenanigans, especially around City state influence/pledges to protect and how they could relate to modern diplomacy vis-a-vis what's going on in Syria right now.

I even have a title for it!

Civilization V: Into the Future