Civ1-Civ6 with one Game-Engine?

[historix69]

The following is an idea I have since release of Civ5.

The Civilization Series is a time-less classic. Even today there are people playing 25-years-old Civ1 with DOS-box.

It may take Firaxis 2-3 years to develop a new game engine and design the game rules for a new version of Civ, but when everything is done, it should be possible for Firaxis to implement for example a Civ1 on the new engine in a rather short time since most of the assets, objects, graphics, animation, music, UI and game mechanics are already there and differences are mostly in game rules which are known and constant for previous versions of Civ.

All Civ versions share the same main theme. The player founds cities, builds city improvements, military units, wonders, researches civilization advances, all on a tile-based world map with ice, tundra, plains, grassland, etc. Most of the units, buildings, wonders, techs, terrain types, resources are present in most of the Civ games. So far each new version of Civ improved graphics (from 2D -> 2D iso -> 3D) and representation (graphics, animation, music, UI), slightly changed existing rules/game mechanics, removed some features and added new ones, but overall the intersection in game objects (assets) and game-rules/game-mechanics is huge, maybe 50% or higher for the complete series.

So the idea is that Firaxis unites all the game features of Civ1 - Civ6 (and maybe also CtP, AC, Col) in a flexible engine, which allows the players to play Civ1 - Civ6 with the original rules with the new improved engine (graphics, animation, music, UI), but also lets the players customize their own Civ version by mixing features from different versions of Civ via modding, e.g. play Civ1 on a hex map with 1upt or Civ5 with stacks and a Palace feature. (Having Maps of Square Tiles (Civ1-4) and Maps of Hex Tiles (Civ5-6) should not be a problem for the engine if considered in design from the beginning. Maybe they could later also add a spherical map.) The design should also allow to later transfer Civ1-Civ6 features to a new Civ7-engine with minimum effort.

Note : I really disliked the redesign of Colonization game rules for CIVCol (Civ4-based Col). So when I write about Civ1-6, I mean using the original rules and maybe only adjust things like supported map size, number of civs in game, number of cities or units, e.g. original Civ1 was limited to 7 civs (out of 14) + barbarians, one map size and ca. 128 cities due to technical limits in early 90s.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

If anything, I would like to play Civ VI with the graphics of Civ II. Imo, Civ II had the best graphics of any game in the series. It's a timeless, 'painterly' look that lets you see a big area of the map at once. All units and improvements are instantly recognizable. It's like a mix between the Strategic View of Civ V and the regular graphics. Civ VI seems promising in this regard, but it's a bit too cartoony for my tastes. Plus there's the nostalgia factor to consider. I'm not sure if this could be modded or not, but I'd probably have to do it myself, since I doubt there's that many people interested in such a project... It would seem like a downgrade in graphics to most modern players.
EDIT: Hexes vs tiles seems like a pretty big bottleneck, because you couldn't just 'lift' the graphics from one game to another, but would have to account for the different 'border areas' between tiles in the two games. Oh well. It's a nice dream, but probably too much work to make it happen.

EDIT2: As for your idea, I'd imagine that if all those rules were made modular, the AI would be a real nightmare to program. Even the difference between tiles and hexes would require entirely different combat AIs, not to mention many other aspects of the games involved. If otoh every project were to be treated as its own closed environment, then it becomes more feasible. Civ I though is so simple compared to the later titles that I doubt there'd be interest in a remake like this... For the other games though, I guess it's possible. For me though, altering Civ II's graphics towards 'modernity' would amount to sacriledge.

 

[historix69]

EDIT: Hexes vs tiles seems like a pretty big bottleneck, because you couldn't just 'lift' the graphics from one game to another, but would have to account for the different 'border areas' between tiles in the two games. Oh well. It's a nice dream, but probably too much work to make it happen.

Going back to square tiles should be no problem but the graphics might look downgraded compared to the hex tiles. On the other side squares tiles in 2D-iso almost look like hex tiles.

Even the difference between tiles and hexes would require entirely different combat AIs, ...

I think for the AI the difference would be more between stacks and 1upt. If the map has squares or hexes or pentagons should be of no concern to a flexible AI, e.g. if evaluating a position instead of calculating neighbours on its own, the AI may just call a method to return a list of adjacent tiles which might contain 5, 6 or 8 elements, ...

 

[Ryika]

Hex to Square is a BIG deal, it requires a completely different coordinate system. You can't go back to Squares without rewriting everything that has to do with positioning.

It also requires a completely different AI to work on Squares.
And maps would once again be re-written to work with Squares.

Squares will not exist in the Civ6-engine.

I like the general idea though, but it won't be possible to "faithfully" represent older games because of limitations like that. But I assume we'll probably have Conversion Mods that try to merge the best things of old and new Civ games in interesting ways if the modding tools allow for more freedom than they did in Civ 5.

 

[Felis Renidens]

For me old games on new engine will lose the nostalgia factor, which is a main reason for playing them. If there was some sort of a wrapper to let me run civ2 on 64bit windows and will give all the features without the need of CD I will buy it. But it should look and feel exactly like Civ2.