@Trav'ling Canuck I’ve always assumed the “people like Civ V over Civ VI” thing was overblown, but maybe you’re right. If you are, then yes, a new version to relaunch Civ would make sense a lot of sense.
Also, when I say I don’t know what Civ VII would do differently, it’s on the assumption FXS would not back away from the “boardgame” design of Civ. Once you’re locked into that design, then 1UPT and unpacking cities and some other mechanics just naturally flow from that, and some other mechanics (like more complex modelling of political factions in your empire) just aren’t consistent with that. I’m not sure there’s much left that’s big that you’d obviously want to add to a “historical boardgame”, and most of the other big things Civ could do wouldn't work as a boardgame.
But there are two points I’d make.
First, although I can’t see lots of change around the core mechanics, good grief the game needs a lot of tweaking. AI, Navy, Air Combat, Religion... Civ feels like this first draft of pretty good novel, but which some ruthless editor with thick ruby red glasses and too much coffee and gin needs to hack back to something amazing (“darling, we just have to lose the husband, he’s such a bore”). Better integration. Better balance. Better flavour and colour.
(Two places to start. More than one science victory path and no religious victory. Going to Mars
every time somehow makes “going to Mars” feel underwhelming. And religion is unnecessarily nerfed by the need to balance it against other victory conditions.)
Second, while I think Civ VI has basically nailed the core Civ mechanics, in doing so it’s also made clear to me there is a real gap in the market. I really, really want to play a deep “simulation” empire game, taking my tribe from the ancient world to the near future. Something with a hard edge, including proper war, conquest, governance, and maybe even environment change. More sim city (with war, domestic politics, trade, and culture/ science / social stuff) than a civ like boardgame. Something with maybe much more simplified (even pixelated) graphics but much deeper game play. No “immortal rulers” etc. A proper sim.
EU4 is sort of along these lines and is pretty close to what I mean. The problem with EU4 is just that it isn’t expansive enough in terms of history, and combat is a little too abstracted.
I’m not sure this “gap” is very big - perhaps too few people would want to play something like this to justify the development cost. But as much as I love Civ VI and the franchise - and I really do - I think a much deeper game like I’m suggesting is totally out of scope. Indeed, I’m not even saying I’d like Civ to move in that direction. It would be a bit sad if it did, because equally I do like the more simple take Civ has on the historical strategy game thing.
I do think the driving force of dissatisfaction here is, as someone else pointed out, how games are paid for. This is already a long post, and I can’t do this topic justice. But games just don’t seem to generate enough money. The result is either bland or derivative AAA or fantastic indie stuff that is often a little too niche or circumscribed because of limited funding (and often relies a bit too much on retro or nostalgia too). You see a similar pattern with movies, comics and roleplaying games (with the last two sort of not even having a AAA equivalent any more). Civ is actually pretty special, in that it’s a relatively big studio model, but still produces games with at least some character and ambition.
Besides we dont have any data confirming that people who bought Civ VI now are playing Civ V. I think we rather have two separate groups with a narrow intersection group.
