[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I personally strongly opposed the traits systems, having never felt any personality when playing as a civ in IV and earlier.

That said, I would be good with only leader bonuses instead of both civ and leader. (More akin to V, but also enabling multiple leaders). Them bring back the personality table.

If that gets in more leaders/civs I agree that I would rather every leader having their own bonus without an overall civ bonus. Those overall bonuses can be the UU/unique infrastructure.
It might make the replayability more interesting as the abilities would be totally different for an Elizabethan England as opposed to a Victorian England.

 

[notNamed]

As long as adding even an Alternate Leader requires a major investment of graphic design resources for a fully animated Leader Board (even when re-using elements of previous animations) most of the suggestions will remain just that: suggestions.

Making a single stylised character is not, in any shape or form, a major investment of graphics design resources. Your average game has about a thousand of these. Civ, by far the biggest and most profitable of all 4X games out there, barely has a couple dozen. A normal game has to pay special attention for these to look good under different lighting conditions. Civ does not, the lighting is always static. A normal game needs to create blending animation methods to accomodate for different inputs. Civ does not. All the animations are pre-baked and in a completely open environment. A normal game has to give them inverse kinematics to have them accomodate uneven terrain, bumping into things, picking up items, etc. Nothing like that exists in Civ.

Compare the number of units and distinct animations with something like Total War or 3D AoE games and it comes out as downright laughable. Yet Civ makes several times the money these games do. It also doesn't suffer from quick development cycles, either. Composing and orchestrating 4 major and a bunch of minor music pieces, translations of text into all sorts of not commonly translated languages (and then finding a voice actor for that, booking a studio in a foreign country or flying them over), implementing, bug fixing and most importantly iterating on the gameplay design of a civ... these are the things which take significant resources and planning. Designing, rigging and animating a single dude(tte) is peanuts for any development studio which actually employs professionals (instead of having to make do as indie titles do).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Making a single stylised character is not, in any shape or form, a major investment of graphics design resources. Your average game has about a thousand of these. Civ, by far the biggest and most profitable of all 4X games out there, barely has a couple dozen. A normal game has to pay special attention for these to look good under different lighting conditions. Civ does not, the lighting is always static. A normal game needs to create blending animation methods to accomodate for different inputs. Civ does not. All the animations are pre-baked and in a completely open environment. A normal game has to give them inverse kinematics to have them accomodate uneven terrain, bumping into things, picking up items, etc. Nothing like that exists in Civ.

Compare the number of units and distinct animations with something like Total War or 3D AoE games and it comes out as downright laughable. Yet Civ makes several times the money these games do. It also doesn't suffer from quick development cycles, either. Composing and orchestrating 4 major and a bunch of minor music pieces, translations of text into all sorts of not commonly translated languages (and then finding a voice actor for that, booking a studio in a foreign country or flying them over), implementing, bug fixing and most importantly iterating on the gameplay design of a civ... these are the things which take significant resources and planning. Designing, rigging and animating a single dude(tte) is peanuts for any development studio which actually employs professionals (instead of having to make do as indie titles do).

Thank you for the clarification. I'm afraid my own experience in game design has been entirely with board games and miniatures rule writing and development, not computer games.

But if I understand you correctly, if I remove the words 'graphic design' from resources in my statement everything else is still valid: the perceived requirement to have Leaders speaking 'authentic dialogue' with 'authentic music' by linguistically-talented articulators and the organization, acquisition and coordination of same is the resource sink, not the animations?

That also means that we should have much more variety in the Unit Animations, since they don't require any voice at all. And potentially a lot better looking terrain and more variety of buildings, improvement and Wonder graphics, since still and animated art work is not a major design bottleneck.

 

[DivodAsa]

I can clearly see where you're coming from. However, I can only say that the perception there is some inherent quality that Scotland has that the Mughal state does not is flawed. Because there is not, it really comes down to subjective perceptions. For which, I should add, Scotland has a distinct and romantic ideal of people who speak an ancient language, men proudly wearing skirts, playing bagpipes and eating disgusting medieval food. I'd say that rather than looking at history or facts about the polities, you should instead be looking for these romanticisms (China - the ancient/unchanging country of a non-descript kung-fu movie, Japan - the land of samurai and modern technology, Gallia - tribal barbarians who venerated nature and put up a fight against Rome at its height,...) to see what does and does not constitute a candidate for civ inclusion. In the case of India, Maurya gets the closest to getting special treatment because it has this sort of stroy attached. The birthplace of Buddha, the state that opposed and repulsed Alexander the Great. You easily have a well known and "connected" story right there, distinct from India (which would by most people be glossed as something like: "the orient, land of rajas, spice trade, tuk-tuks, yoga, kama-sutra, tuk-tuks and a British ex-colony").

I really thought people were having genuine, historical,objective discussion on this forum. I wasn't expecting answer of this kind at all.
In short,u just said I have a view about your country & u cannot go against it.

Because there is not, it really comes down to subjective perceptions. For which, I should add, Scotland has a distinct and romantic ideal of people who speak an ancient language, men proudly wearing skirts, playing bagpipes and eating disgusting medieval food. I'd say that rather than looking at history or facts about the polities, you should instead be looking for these romanticisms (China - the ancient/unchanging country of a non-descript kung-fu movie, Japan - the land of samurai and modern technology, Gallia - tribal barbarians who venerated nature and put up a fight against Rome at its height,...) to see what does and does not constitute a candidate for civ inclusion. In the case of India, Maurya gets the closest to getting special treatment because it has this sort of stroy attached. The birthplace of Buddha, the state that opposed and repulsed Alexander the Great. You easily have a well known and "connected" story right there, distinct from India (which would by most people be glossed as something like: "the orient, land of rajas, spice trade, tuk-tuks, yoga, kama-sutra, tuk-tuks and a British ex-colony").

If it really comes down to subjective perception.Why should your's matter, why shouldn't mine.
Infact, when I was going thru the forum I found 2,3 Indian guys completely against deblobing India.

So u have a "perception" about India TukTuk,Yoga, Kamasutra. Hmmm, all the historical inaccuracy aside like birth of Buddha in Mauryan state, yoga,Kamasutra & Maurya repulsion of Alexander,( thou here a advice get rid of this Alexander-Indian hipe,Indian sources doesn't even recorded him)

Guess what,I (an Indian) also have a "subjective perception" of India.
In mine, Indians not only repulsed Alexander but also Persians,Scythians,Huns,Arabs,Turks & even after falling under rule of Turkic,Mughal,British rule they kept their Identity alive.
So I can today speak an Indo-Aryan language, follow laws of Yajnavalkya Manu,pray to Vedic gods, follow my Varna(caste for u) Dharma(i.e social stratification), practice ancient Yoga(of all kinds not only bend dog pose of which only u seem to be aware of) & call my country Bharat along with India & yes sometimes take Tuk-Tuk to.

So I know where u coming from & despite how much creepy ur "subjective perception" sounds to me, I respect ur right to have it,but don't expect me to become Reek from Theon Grejoy for it.

Anyway If this is the level of this discussion, I m out of it.

 

[SMcM]

Making a single stylised character is not, in any shape or form, a major investment of graphics design resources. Your average game has about a thousand of these. Civ, by far the biggest and most profitable of all 4X games out there, barely has a couple dozen. A normal game has to pay special attention for these to look good under different lighting conditions. Civ does not, the lighting is always static. A normal game needs to create blending animation methods to accomodate for different inputs. Civ does not. All the animations are pre-baked and in a completely open environment. A normal game has to give them inverse kinematics to have them accomodate uneven terrain, bumping into things, picking up items, etc. Nothing like that exists in Civ.

Well on paper maybe, but I'm not sure how large the team Firaxis has working on the game is and I think probably they want to minimise costs as much as possible. I would say it is clear they do consider making leaders a major investment of their time and resources- otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't have released a lot more dlc (besides the problem of running out of possibilities for unique abilities). I wouldn't exactly class Civ 6 as a AAA game in terms of budget and etc., I think they are trying their best to make a decent profit from not spending too much money. Civ 6 certainly isn't the leap form Civ 5 that 5 was from 4 in my opinion.

It is also true that the leaders in Civ 6 are very detailed, and so there's potentially a lot more work going into them compared to characters moving around game worlds in other games- which makes sense since you are looking at them when they are stationary and so any minor imperfections might stand out and be distracting.

I really appreciate how different civs feel from one another, but given the balance issues and ever-increasing art/presentation burden, I wouldn't mind the following:

1. The series goes back to simple leader portrayals (the leader animations and stuff are nice but to be quite honest I skip past everything after watching it once; I imagine many players are the same)
2. The series takes a step back with regards to civ design complexity. I'm talking like Civ IV - where civs share from a pool of "Traits" and their distinguishing features are their UUs and unique infrastructures.

I think we'd be likely to see more leaders if we went back to a Civ IV style for leader portraits- obviously improved graphics from than that, but only having a 'leader head' instead of a 'leader scene'. That game actually allowed for more 'conversation' with leaders anyway- e.g. 'what do you think of (x)?'. Expanding options like that to make leaders feel more like actual personalities in the game would be nice.

 

[notNamed]

But if I understand you correctly, if I remove the words 'graphic design' from resources in my statement everything else is still valid: the perceived requirement to have Leaders speaking 'authentic dialogue' with 'authentic music' by linguistically-talented articulators and the organization, acquisition and coordination of same is the resource sink, not the animations?

Well on paper maybe, but I'm not sure how large the team Firaxis has working on the game is and I think probably they want to minimise costs as much as possible. I would say it is clear they do consider making leaders a major investment of their time and resources- otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't have released a lot more dlc (besides the problem of running out of possibilities for unique abilities). I wouldn't exactly class Civ 6 as a AAA game in terms of budget and etc., I think they are trying their best to make a decent profit from not spending too much money. Civ 6 certainly isn't the leap form Civ 5 that 5 was from 4 in my opinion.

I can't say for certain which of the things take the most time in Firaxis' case. My main point is that it's not really a feasibility problem. They have a major publisher and a very successful IP behind them, which means that if they wanted, they could very well make a game with 100 different civ leaders.
It's really not technical or budgetary constraints which make this scenario unlikely, but the project's inherent design. Maybe it's because they fear redundancy, bloated design, people simply ignoring most of the choices (like how FPS games switched from 100 maps per release of which 5 are played by any number of people to simply making 5 maps per iteration and adding more only to reinvigorate the experience from time to time), balance or recognition, and other concerns of this nature. Ultimately, if Civ6's leaders truly are the single most time-consuming element of the game, it's not because they couldn't be done faster. The lead developers simply agreed the game will never need to have that many of them and they can thus take their sweet time (it's honestly not even *that* slow, the initial waves of DLC gave the game 18 leaders in a span of 15 months including 2 holiday seasons and all the surrounding scenario and R&F work).

 

[sukritact]

Total War or 3D AoE

3D AoE? Are you seriously comparing a bunch of tiny units that don't even have a modeled mouth cavity to fully articulated leaders with facial expressions? As for Total War, I think you're over estimating the number of unique animations there. Like basically all the spear infantry can reuse all the same animations, and you just add a couple of distinct ones for the higher tier units. And few of those need facial animations beyond the same "Ouch that hurt", and "Argh! I'm angry". The pipelines used for those "thousands" of character is a lot more akin to the pipeline Civ uses for units, a few new pieces of armor, same base human mesh, maybe two or three new animations, and for the most part you're done.

Well on paper maybe, but I'm not sure how large the team Firaxis has working on the game is and I think probably they want to minimise costs as much as possible. I would say it is clear they do consider making leaders a major investment of their time and resources- otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't have released a lot more dlc (besides the problem of running out of possibilities for unique abilities).

It is also true that the leaders in Civ 6 are very detailed, and so there's potentially a lot more work going into them compared to characters moving around game worlds in other games- which makes sense since you are looking at them when they are stationary and so any minor imperfections might stand out and be distracting.

To add to that it's very clear that the pipeline Firaxis has set up with regards to creating leaders isn't very robust, compared to something like an RPG (which given the level of detail on the leaders is a better comparison). Each of the leaders have their own unique rig (less true for New Frontier Leaders admittedly, since they're clearly adjusting old ones, and people are already complaining at them doing that). Physics is baked in rather than simulated in real-time (so hair, cloth, and even the champagne in that glass Catherine is holding is rigged). This is different from RPGs where many of the characters will share the same rig, the same animations; where cloth and hair are delegated to real-time physics systems. In an RPG, once you get that fancy Inverse Kinetic system set up, it's basically done for everyone, you don't have to redo that a thousand times. Each leader in civ requires a new rig (even if a modified one), a whole new set of animations, a whole new set of audio lines translated to god-knows what language, a whole bunch of man-hours cleaning up that newly rigged cloth so it doesn't clip through the guy's shoulders (I've experienced that particular pain first hand).

We also don't know how Firaxis is set up, but well, they're a developer of Strategy games, is it really a surprise they're less adept at mass producing characters than a studio that focuses on making RPGs? Why would they have the same number of character artists?

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

3D AoE? Are you seriously comparing a bunch of tiny units that don't even have a modeled mouth cavity to fully articulated leaders with facial expressions? As for Total War, I think you're over estimating the number of unique animations there. Like basically all the spear infantry can reuse all the same animations, and you just add a couple of distinct ones for the higher tier units. And few of those need facial animations beyond the same "Ouch that hurt", and "Argh! I'm angry". The pipelines used for those "thousands" of character is a lot more akin to the pipeline Civ uses for units, a few new pieces of armor, same base human mesh, maybe two or three new animations, and for the most part you're done.

To add to that it's very clear that the pipeline Firaxis has set up with regards to creating leaders isn't very robust, compared to something like an RPG (which given the level of detail on the leaders is a better comparison). Each of the leaders have their own unique rig (less true for New Frontier Leaders admittedly, since they're clearly adjusting old ones, and people are already complaining at them doing that). Physics is baked in rather than simulated in real-time (so hair, cloth, and even the champagne in that glass Catherine is holding is rigged). This is different from RPGs where many of the characters will share the same rig, the same animations; where cloth and hair are delegated to real-time physics systems. In an RPG, once you get that fancy Inverse Kinetic system set up, it's basically done for everyone, you don't have to redo that a thousand times.

We also don't know how Firaxis is set up, but well, they're a developer of Strategy games, is it really a surprise they're less adept at mass producing characters than a studio that focuses on making RPGs, why would they have the same number of character artists?

I agree with you on many of these points, Sukritact. Especially considering Total War animations, they've been dumbed down in the past few years. In Three Kingdoms, we don't even get to see the soldiers decapitate or stab the other soldiers, it's just the same, generic falling-down animations over and over again. No hate to anyone who disagrees.

I also do not get the hate towards the reused animations. I mean, come on! Should that bother anyone? NO! Civ 6 isn't affected by the leaders' animations, so why the hell would this matter??!! DO WE PLAY CIV 6 FOR THE BLOODY ANIMATIONS??!! NO!! Sorry about that, rant, just needed to type that out loud. No bad faith to anyone who believes otherwise, I just STRONGLY disagree with them.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

. . . Ultimately, if Civ6's leaders truly are the single most time-consuming element of the game, it's not because they couldn't be done faster. The lead developers simply agreed the game will never need to have that many of them and they can thus take their sweet time (it's honestly not even *that* slow, the initial waves of DLC gave the game 18 leaders in a span of 15 months including 2 holiday seasons and all the surrounding scenario and R&F work).

Now, here I think we are agreed: the animated Leaders are in fact totally unnecessary to the game: they are a marketing device, a "nice to have" feature but have no bearing on the play of the game itself. The 'Uniques' attached to the Leaders are there whether they are completely animated portrayals or still cartoons. That means, whatever resources of whatever kinds are available to the game design team, there are better places to use any of them to make a better game than on an animated, articulate, linguistically complex Leader.

And, @sukritact, your comments in a way reinforce my thoughts on this: they could get a lot more 'bang for their buck' by allocating more of the resources to better and more variety of Unit animations, terrain/map, buildings, wonders and Improvement graphics and animations. As an example already commented on elsewhere, Humankind's herds of deer and occasional elephant wandering the landscape - no apparent effect on game play, but much more visible as a graphic Bonus as you play the game than an intermittent Leader Board.

 

[mitsho]

What I personally dislike most about the Leaders is that they take you to their own distinct leader screens. It just takes up time and you out of your immersion. That‘s also why I think they will go a dramatically different route with leaders in the next civ game. I just feel there‘s a lot of room for optimization there. I can‘t imagine that the graphics will be the bottle neck anymore (if they set it up like that again, that‘s entirely on them). If Crusader Kings 3 can create a wide range of okish looking people, so can civ. It‘s just a question of what‘s the goal there (gameplay and „making the customer buy the DLC“-wise).

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

As an example already commented on elsewhere, Humankind's herds of deer and occasional elephant wandering the landscape - no apparent effect on game play, but much more visible as a graphic Bonus as you play the game than an intermittent Leader Board.

Herds of deer and elephants have an impact on gameplay. They're the first "barbarians" you encounter, generally peaceful but can be killed in combat. They're a gameplay experience and so having their graphics polished makes sense because the design serves the gameplay (except if we speak about different elephants and deer in which case I withdraw my comment)

 

[sukritact]

Herds of deer and elephants have an impact on gameplay. They're the first "barbarians" you encounter, generally peaceful but can be killed in combat. They're a gameplay experience and so having their graphics polished makes sense because the design serves the gameplay (except if we speak about different elephants and deer in which case I withdraw my comment)

He’s speaking about the tiny non-unit animal herds that flee from your cursor.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

He’s speaking about the tiny non-unit animal herds that flee from your cursor.

That would be a nice addition. Random packs of animals moving away from your cursor as you move across a Civ map... What about dolphin and whale pods as well Sukritact, you have a lot of work to do.

 

[spacedinosaur]

Portugal Confirmed??


Playing the game just now, as the Byzantines, two Portuguese Rivers showed up on a map I explored..

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Douro River :

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Tagus River :

 

[Potworny]

Portugal Confirmed??


Playing the game just now, as the Byzantines, two Portuguese Rivers showed up on a map I explored..

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Douro River :

View attachment 576493

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Tagus River :

View attachment 576491

Yeah, so how many unique ways did we have a civ leaked as of now?
In all seriousness, I feel weird with that, I want Portugal included because I love Portugal, but its inclusion makes me disappointed, because I want more civs

 

[God of Kings]

Portugal Confirmed??


Playing the game just now, as the Byzantines, two Portuguese Rivers showed up on a map I explored..

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Douro River :

View attachment 576493

Spoiler Portugal Confirmed? Tagus River :

View attachment 576491

Both of those rivers have their sources in Spain.

 

[spacedinosaur]

Both of those rivers have their sources in Spain.

I know, however these rivers are on opposite sides of the map with me in the middle & so far only the Ottomans in sight...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Both of those rivers have their sources in Spain.

Are they in the Spain River list? @bite would know.

 

[AntSou]

Are they in the Spain River list? @bite would know.

Both are:
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/River_(Civ6)

 

[spacedinosaur]

The Nile tributaries are not in Egypt but we still associate the river with them. The Tejo (Tagus) & Douro are both core to the Portuguese existence. I'm almost certain the devs have been looking at my data to get ideas for this expansion. Certain things I've been researching have appeared in this game & Portugal is my favorite. I'm hoping to will this into existence like I did in Civ V when they announced them last.

Spain is still not in this game of mine. Here's a current screenshot of the Douro:

Spoiler Douro River? :

Spoiler Tagus River? :

I'll update once I explore the south, but so far the Douro is isolated & between Byzantium, Nubia & Sumer, I cannot explain this glitch.