What do we know about the next expansion?

[row2infinity]

I think they would be a great way to spice up the game, especially if there were ways for the player to understand and control the risk. Say, settling near places where continents intersect makes earthquakes more likely, and this is communicated to the player.

At any rate, I would love to see them (infixo's mod was a great proof of concept) and an easy solution for players who don't like them would be a toggle to turn them on or off.

Volcanos would be especially exciting because the game mechanics around district placement encourage settling near mountains, but at the same time, you gonna get some Lava in that Granary one day! hahaha

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

A lot of people didn't care for the way their carefully laid plans could be wrecked on the fickle whim of a RNG.

I think they would be a great way to spice up the game, especially if there were ways for the player to understand and control the risk. Say, settling near places where continents intersect makes earthquakes more likely, and this is communicated to the player.

Volcanos would be especially exciting because the game mechanics around district placement encourage settling near mountains, but at the same time, you gonna get some Lava in that Granary one day! hahaha

Anyone who's played the original Civilization board game will remember that:

• Some city sites were marked as being on Flood Plains and near Volcanos. You could choose to build a city in an adjacent, safer location instead, but that cost twice as many resources. Cities came and went in that game, though (it truly featured rise & fall even though the general course was forward), so you expected to lose cities eventually and generally built underneath all those pretty sparking lights.
• You could avoid natural disasters by not trading with others, but then you lost out on the benefit of trade and if you suddenly did try to trade yourself, everyone knew it was because you were trying to unload a disaster. Absolutely silly but it worked totally fine

Not saying Civ 6 should adopt anything remotely like this, but you can implement risk and uncertainty to a game design in a way that presents the player with interesting choices (build here or there, trade or don't trade) and where taking the completely risk-free approach is suboptimal.

 

[Vahnstad]

I'm afraid Muisca and Maya's won't make the cut. Even with that new expansion, we won't have enough New World civs... Especially when you also know they'll likely add Hungary, Portugal and Italy (or a Venice like state) from Europe, and the Ottomans and the Inca's. Maybe Babylon or Mali/Ethiopia/different African civ. Although Sumeria might have taken Babylon's spot, but it would surprise me if they only would add the Ottomans from Asia (and some might even argue, it's not Asia, or only partly Asia). It worries me a lot.

There were just simply some stupid additions in the previous exp packs / DLC and base game, and that makes it now all worse... How are the places of Australia or Scotland even warranted? The game is way too Anglocentric when you think about it... And imagine that so many people are even asking for Canada.

 

[Naktis]

Since we got no DLC's so far , and if we don't get it till next expanssion , then next one expanssion wont be last one(but my guess is next x-pac is last one). I really expected some Civ DLC for R&F rules , plus multi-leaders are underused. OFC they can play this card , bring next expanssion with 12+ civs and some new game mechanics and maybe new victory condition , and then for next 1-2years they release DLC's once 2-3 months period. Dont forget DLC can have more then one Civs.

 

[Vahnstad]

Since we got no DLC's so far , and if we don't get it till next expanssion , then next one expanssion wont be last one(but my guess is next x-pac is last one). I really expected some Civ DLC for R&F rules , plus multi-leaders are underused. OFC they can play this card , bring next expanssion with 12+ civs and some new game mechanics and maybe new victory condition , and then for next 1-2years they release DLC's once 2-3 months period. Dont forget DLC can have more then one Civs.

Why would they release DLC's after the 2nd exp, if they stopped releasing DLC's between exp packs 1 and 2. It's just going to be 8 civs and 1 alternate leaders for the next exp pack.

 

[acluewithout]

It seems very unlikely we’ll get more dlc after the next expansion, which I think would be a huge pity.

I mean, we’ll have to see what the next expansion brings. It could be awesome - who knows? But either way, it seems to me unlikely it’ll cover everything the game should ideally have or address. And even if it did, there would still be huge scope for expansion given the basic rule set (IMO) is actually pretty robust.

I really think FXS could get a lot of millage making / packaging Vanilla + 2 expansions as “the base game” and then having maybe 12 - 18 months of themed DLC expanding key areas of the game (and also allowing for more balancing and patching).

They could even sell sort of “supersized” dlc scenarios riffing on previous spin-offs, e.g. Colonization or Alpha Centuri, so people would be encouraged to buy the base to play those spin-offs (although I accept that maybe financially it make more sense to make these standalone games to enable beginner entry easier).

Really, I just think the development cycle for these games is so, so long, that I can’t see the point of starting the cycle again for a Civ 7. Surely it gets harder and harder to get people to buy new additions of a game? Surely it’s more profitable to keep spinning out your existing game via dlc (which in turn makes it harder and harder for other newer game makers to compete with you, because they won’t be able to offer the whole range of features you offer).

Honestly. After the next expansion, I think if they wanted to FXS could probably fund further dlc through Kickstarter and tonnes of people would sign up. I really do. So, so many people love this series and want the game to expand and get deeper and richer, rather than just repeating the endless cycle of “new version” them 1 to 2 years of expansions before the game gets “as good” as the previous version(s). They would definitely support dlc - I mean, look at how much time people put into mods for heavens sake.

 

[TahamiTsunami]

As some other people have said, I highly doubt this would be the first game in the series to have less civs than the previous game, especially with so many classic civs plus a few more brand new ones to add. Since I believe we'll have at least 50 or more civs in the final game, I'm fairly certain we'll at least have either have 2 expansion packs, 1 really large expansion pack, or 1 'normal-sized' expansion pack plus many dlcs.

@Vahnstad I've personally enjoyed all the new additions we have so far though I would probably would've waited until more classics were added to please the fans before surprising them with some of the dark horses.

 

[row2infinity]

I'm assuming the next and final expansion is nothing but Throne Room art. hahahahah *trolling*

 

[Cagarustus]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Nothing on the 2nd year anniversary of release!

 

[ferenginar]

Whatever it is, I certainly hope it is not World Congress, that was worse than religion. The additional feature I would like is a bit off the wall, the option to switch mid game to one of the AI Civs and complete from there.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Whatever it is, I certainly hope it is not World Congress, that was worse than religion. The additional feature I would like is a bit off the wall, the option to switch mid game to one of the AI Civs and complete from there.

If anybody remembers the old Rise & Fall boardgame, that was a ton of fun. Worst box art ever for a game, but great mechanics. One or two players would start as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Someone could start as the Kingdom of Parthia, if they wanted to. Everyone else started as a barbarian horde. You'd plow into one or more of the Empires, try to carve out a nice little Kingdom for yourself, then drop that Kingdom once it stagnated and grab a new barbarian horde and try again. Even the Roman players could eventually say "enough" and grab their own barbarians to plow into the new kingdoms that had been carved out of their former empire.

 

[kaspergm]

Whatever it is, I certainly hope it is not World Congress, that was worse than religion.

I personally disagree. Civ5 WC certainly wasn't perfect, but it did add a sense of rebooting the game mid-game and some much needed late game activity. The new city state system has already come a long way to secure that you can't just outright buy voting majority by buying up all city states. There will need to be put some thought into exactly what the WC should do, and how a possible diplomatic victory should work, but I still would like this feature to return.

I have to agree, however, that the fact that the 2nd anniversary passed in complete silence does make me somewhat worried. There's been a conspicuous lack of communication after RnF release, but I felt fairly confident that they would come out of the bush at this point to somehow mark that the game is still alive.

 

[Leyrann]

I personally disagree. Civ5 WC certainly wasn't perfect, but it did add a sense of rebooting the game mid-game and some much needed late game activity. The new city state system has already come a long way to secure that you can't just outright buy voting majority by buying up all city states. There will need to be put some thought into exactly what the WC should do, and how a possible diplomatic victory should work, but I still would like this feature to return.

I actually had some thoughts on that yesterday, which can be found in the link in my signature. The gist of it is to replace the WC with Diplomatic Leagues, which can be founded by Civilizations and to which other civs and city-states can be invited. Each of them will count as a mini-World Congress, but it's decisions only apply to it's members, and it's members call meetings rather than have a forced meeting every X turns and no meetings otherwise. You win Diplomatic Victory by at least 80% of the world's population being in your League and having been the leader of that League for at least Y turns, where Y is longer than the minimum time between leader changes (so if you end up with rotating leaders because of how civs and city-states are voting, a Diplomatic Victory won't occur).

 

[sixty4half]

Ideologies is definitely something I miss just because of how they redrew the diplomatic landscape in the modern era. I feel like the lategame is where the game feels most hollow. I still find it strange that tourism has zero use unless your going for culture victory

If by "redrew the diplomatic landscape" you mean "turned all my allies to enemies while all my old enemies stay enemies" then sure. The only thing Ideologies did is make the strongest AIs counterpick you because they'd get a stronger bonus by picking an Ideology that hadn't been picked yet, thereby, putting them ideologically at odds with you. If you had managed to ally the strongest of the AI, then all your early game work was wasted. This made alliances at any point in the game other then very early game, and maintaining those alliances, worthless. As a side note, this problem is exacerbated by the benefits of early game warmongering, but that's a different topic...

I personally disagree. Civ5 WC certainly wasn't perfect, but it did add a sense of rebooting the game mid-game and some much needed late game activity. The new city state system has already come a long way to secure that you can't just outright buy voting majority by buying up all city states. There will need to be put some thought into exactly what the WC should do, and how a possible diplomatic victory should work, but I still would like this feature to return.

I have to agree, however, that the fact that the 2nd anniversary passed in complete silence does make me somewhat worried. There's been a conspicuous lack of communication after RnF release, but I felt fairly confident that they would come out of the bush at this point to somehow mark that the game is still alive.

In concept, yes. In actual function, no. All it did was lead to more snowballing (trade embargos, lux bans) and more "default decisions."

You're either picking the same resolutions every time, or you're forcing the world to bend to your will because you've wrapped up all the CSs by that time. Sometimes both. If it were more dynamic, and some resolutions actually ended up helping the "little guys" of the world as a World Congress should then yes, it's a good concept. Unfortunately Firexis has yet to show us that they can create a World Congress that doesn't just end the game faster than it already was going to.

 

[Zuizgond]

The next expansion will be entirely based on improving AI.

True story.

 

[Sherlock]

The next expansion will be entirely based on improving AI.

True story.

The next expansion won't touch the AI.

 

[Zuizgond]

Thanks Sherlock

 

[darkace77450]

I actually had some thoughts on that yesterday, which can be found in the link in my signature. The gist of it is to replace the WC with Diplomatic Leagues, which can be founded by Civilizations and to which other civs and city-states can be invited. Each of them will count as a mini-World Congress, but it's decisions only apply to it's members, and it's members call meetings rather than have a forced meeting every X turns and no meetings otherwise. You win Diplomatic Victory by at least 80% of the world's population being in your League and having been the leader of that League for at least Y turns, where Y is longer than the minimum time between leader changes (so if you end up with rotating leaders because of how civs and city-states are voting, a Diplomatic Victory won't occur).

This sounds fine for the single player aspect of Civ6, but I don't see it working in MP. I don't know that any iteration of a Diplomatic Victory will work in MP though, so maybe this is one of those situations were we accept it for what it is.

Unfortunately Firexis has yet to show us that they can create a World Congress that doesn't just end the game faster than it already was going to.

They haven't showed us they can program an AI that can wage war effectively either, but I'd rather they keep trying than scrap Domination Victories.

 

[DWilson]

Supposed leak on Reddit, from another source, called it Vesuvius. It claimed a release date of 2/14/19. It included a screenshot of a leader render suspected to be Polynesian. At a distance and close up. I bet someone will identify similar artistic depiction soon. It also showed some stuff in the water, such as floating windmills.

Maori have been photographed with similar looking tops to the vest he is depicted in.

 

[Mobfire]

Closest match I could find so far is Hongi Hika:

But he's not an exact fit and one would expect at least some of the face tattoos to appear.
Hotu Matua of Rapa Nui is another fit. We don't have any images or art of him but the possibility is certainly there. I couldn't find a fit for the necklace but it does have a very Rapa Nui vibe to it. Here's some Rapa Nui chiefs wearing similar clothing:

Plus Easter Island would certainly fit in with an expansion based around natural disasters and ecology.