Civilization VII coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Switch day and date with PC

[SemiLazyGamer]

Taken from the teaser trailer.

Figured the Switch would be skipped over for the successor.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

I cannot believe it will come to the Switch... but I am guessing there is an embargo to reveal anything about the Switch2 yet.

 

[The_J]

Civ6 was on the Switch too, so... sounds alright .

 

[Naokaukodem]

Civ6 was on the Switch too, so... sounds alright .

Except for more complex AI that could take more power to compute its turn if it wasn't on Switch. Let's just hope that at least the graphics will be highly custumizable, because I have a PS5 and this time I really want wow effect. PS4/Switch 2 is still fine when one knows that the most impressive game I played on my PS5 is a PS4 game. (Uncharted 4)

 

[bbbt]

Except for more complex AI that could take more power to compute its turn if it wasn't on Switch.

Unless they are switching to always-online and a hosted-AI or something like that. I don't see that likely, as that seems very expensive, but it might be the way strategy games end up going in the future as they get more ml based AIs

 

[Leyrann]

Honestly, I'd take having to be online in exchange for an AI that can genuinely compete with me without requiring huge bonuses.

Like, Deity Civ VI isn't actually hard (in my opinion, at least), but you're pretty much barred from warring in the first two eras because the AI starts with so much more, and don't count on getting certain early wonders unless you turbo-rush them. And then in the lategame you're yawning while rolling over the AI and/or cruising to your victory condition 50-100 turns before the AI would ever get there.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Civ6 was on the Switch too, so... sounds alright .

The Switch could barely run the game and, honestly, was very glitchy. I'm kind of shocked Civ7 is coming out on a Nintendo console.

 

[pokiehl]

Except for more complex AI that could take more power to compute its turn if it wasn't on Switch.

That’s completely speculative. No evidence this was the case at all, and it doesn’t even make sense from a technical perspective.

Why exactly would a better AI make the game more CPU intensive? A better AI just means telling the AI to do different things.

This claim also incorrectly presupposes that ports have to be completely flawless and 1:1 versions of their PC counterparts, which has literally never been the case, going all the way back to console ports of arcade games.

Going off of that, Civ 6 on Switch is in fact missing a lot of features from the PC release, like online multiplayer and modding. The logic that the game should be brought down to the lowest common denominator of its platforms doesn’t hold.

 

[Gedemon]

A "better AI" is multiple things, people here often disagree on what it should be, but in all cases it does require processing time for an AI to decide what to do.

True you can make an AI better by better coding it for the same processing time, but there is always a processing time, so based on the type of AI you're using, the more time you're willing give it, the more different things you can ask it to weight before taking a decision.

that's why gameplay is important, if you have 1UPT on a cramped map, the AI will require more processing time to take a good decision than mUPT on the same map (civ5/6 vs civ4) or 1UPT on a less cramped map (civ5/6 vs Old World).

While you can limit that time by limiting the map sizes (pathfinding, computing a tile value for putting something on it, ...) and number of opponents based on the platform the game runs on, I doubt Aspyr had rewritten the AI code to make it more efficient.

So I'm afraid the decision making process of the AI on a PC is influenced by the decision making processing time that they decided to allow for it on the lower denominator on a small map with few opponents.

 

[cavysna]

Unless they are switching to always-online and a hosted-AI or something like that. I don't see that likely, as that seems very expensive, but it might be the way strategy games end up going in the future as they get more ml based AIs

I sure hope not, theres no way i would buy it or actually play it if thats the case. If they do something like that i hope its optional atleast, intended for lower end / weaker machines, and you could still have the (/same/) AI run locally if you wanted. Not good at all either because i think thats a slippery slope into eventually becoming fully live service, but id find it acceptable.

Though to be honest i really doubt theyd do that, itd be quite expensive, as you said.

 

[pokiehl]

A "better AI" is multiple things, people here often disagree on what it should be, but in all cases it does require processing time for an AI to decide what to do.

True you can make an AI better by better coding it for the same processing time, but there is always a processing time, so based on the type of AI you're using, the more time you're willing give it, the more different things you can ask it to weight before taking a decision.

I'm not sure that I'm following. The Switch version of Civ 6 definitely does not perform as well as the PC version (which in and of itself seems to throw away this notion that the PC game was "sacrificed" to make it acceptable on Switch). I'm not disputing that an AI that has more directions for decisions (ie, "a better AI") probably takes longer on worse hardware.

that's why gameplay is important, if you have 1UPT on a cramped map, the AI will require more processing time to take a good decision than mUPT on the same map (civ5/6 vs civ4) or 1UPT on a less cramped map (civ5/6 vs Old World).

While you can limit that time by limiting the map sizes (pathfinding, computing a tile value for putting something on it, ...) and number of opponents based on the platform the game runs on, I doubt Aspyr had rewritten the AI code to make it more efficient.

So I'm afraid the decision making process of the AI on a PC is influenced by the decision making processing time that they decided to allow for it on the lower denominator on a small map with few opponents.

I think I am even more confused by this portion of the post. I can't tell if you're talking about smaller map sizes (most map sizes in 6 are larger than their counterparts in 5...) or something else. At any rate, absent any actual evidence about how the AI is developed and what CPU resources its functions use, the conclusion here seems to be misled by the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

 

[Gedemon]

Let me rephrase: based on what you allow the AI to do each turn, the hardware you run it on will limit the size of the map and number of AI players in the game.

You'll then have a minimum number of player and a minimal map size you want the game played on, even on the lowest hardware (say 3 AI players on a small map), then you code your AI so it runs on that hardware with those parameters.

On the other hand, on a good PC you'll run 60 AI players on a huge map without issues, an old-gen console version is absolutely not going to limit that, your PC specs will (up to the max allowed in the code, but that's not console-dependent)

But the AI code will be the same, unless you make different versions of it, which is a huge amount of work.

 

[Naokaukodem]

That’s completely speculative. No evidence this was the case at all, and it doesn’t even make sense from a technical perspective.

??? How that, "speculative" ? I don't speculate here. I just use logic ,and not to predict anything. "this was the case" of what ? "Doesn't make sense" ? What ?

Why exactly would a better AI make the game more CPU intensive? A better AI just means telling the AI to do different things.

I said better AI but actually I was talking of an AI that can handle more stuff like new concepts and engine. Let's compare to Old World : here my computer took eons to make the AI turn, while in Civ6 it takes a perfectly reasonable time. It's not even a graphical issue, because the settings were put on lowest and it was really, really, really ugly. So everything that doesn't encompass graphics and takes time to run a turn, I call it AI.
And no, a better AI doesn't "just" mean telling the AI to do different things, otherwise Kasparov would have been beaten by an Atari 2600. (and yes, you can compare Chess to Civ to some extent)

This claim also incorrectly presupposes that ports have to be completely flawless and 1:1 versions of their PC counterparts, which has literally never been the case, going all the way back to console ports of arcade games.

No need to be 1:1 versions, you can always reduce the graphical complexity and it's better if you scale your graphical engine to doing so (I predicted a realease on phones at Civ6 reveal) otherwise you might have some problems. But in a case of an AI, you better rewrite all of it, doing a different game, because the game is not 1:1 like you say it might be a totally different game at this point. Some things have to be 1:1 (the gameplay for example), some not.

Going off of that, Civ 6 on Switch is in fact missing a lot of features from the PC release, like online multiplayer and modding. The logic that the game should be brought down to the lowest common denominator of its platforms doesn’t hold.

Multiplayer and modding are very bad examples to demonstrate your reasonning. They are basically totally separated parts of the game you can do without easily. They are not part of the base gameplay.

 

[Kwami]

Why exactly would a better AI make the game more CPU intensive? A better AI just means telling the AI to do different things.

I'm not disputing that an AI that has more directions for decisions (ie, "a better AI") probably takes longer on worse hardware.

These two statements are contradictory.

The short of it is that better AI requires better hardware. Full stop. The Switch is either going to take longer to process each turn or it will have to run with some reduced AI capabilities. The X-Box and Playstation, too, to a lesser degree.

Overall, I think that it's right to worry about a PC game that's releasing simultaneously on consoles. That very frequently results in the PC game being worse in order to accommodate the consoles. It doesn't have to be that way, but it very often is.

 

[pokiehl]

These two statements are contradictory.

They're not contradictory. If an AI is functioning poorly because it doesn't follow a good instruction for a given situation, then telling it do something else instead is not a net performance increase. It's just different.

The short of it is that better AI requires better hardware. Full stop. The Switch is either going to take longer to process each turn or it will have to run with some reduced AI capabilities. The X-Box and Playstation, too, to a lesser degree.

And the Switch does take longer to process turns than PC, which supports the point that the Civ 6 AI was not "dumbed down" to accommodate consoles.

There's a Civ-relevant example we have that disproves your claim. Civ 5 with Vox Populi has a much better AI than base game, yet there are no perceptible changes to turn times I've ever noticed. Nor have Civ 6 AI mods ever increased turn times for me.

Overall, I think that it's right to worry about a PC game that's releasing simultaneously on consoles. That very frequently results in the PC game being worse in order to accommodate the consoles. It doesn't have to be that way, but it very often is.

Again, this is an entirely baseless and speculative claim. I'm willing to bet you cannot name a single game where this is proven to be the case, and you are unable to offer a technical explanation either other than the simplistic misunderstanding above.

So without any proof, it's strange to claim to that this is a "very frequent" occurrence. You're just making stuff up.

 

[Leyrann]

Again, this is an entirely baseless and speculative claim. I'm willing to bet you cannot name a single game where this is proven to be the case, and you are unable to offer a technical explanation either other than the simplistic misunderstanding above.

There are definitely a number of UI elements in Age of Wonders IV that have suffered for the sake of the console release. For example, equipping any item requires you to click 'confirm', as you're only selecting the item otherwise (and you can't double-click either), and quite a few menus simply use more buttons/actions than is strictly necessary for PC. Also, UI elements such as icons are bigger than you'd expect for PC.

It's all a bit more clunky than it needs to be, and with the way it's more clunky, it's very clear that it was made that way to accommodate someone who only has a few keys (controller buttons) to navigate the screens, rather than a mouse.

 

[pokiehl]

There are definitely a number of UI elements in Age of Wonders IV that have suffered for the sake of the console release. For example, equipping any item requires you to click 'confirm', as you're only selecting the item otherwise (and you can't double-click either), and quite a few menus simply use more buttons/actions than is strictly necessary for PC. Also, UI elements such as icons are bigger than you'd expect for PC.

It's all a bit more clunky than it needs to be, and with the way it's more clunky, it's very clear that it was made that way to accommodate someone who only has a few keys (controller buttons) to navigate the screens, rather than a mouse.

For UI, console versions can just as easily have altered UIs, as is the case for Civ 6.

 

[Leyrann]

For UI, console versions can just as easily have altered UIs, as is the case for Civ 6.

Oh, sure.

But you asked for an example of a game where the PC version suffered because of the console release, so I gave you one.

 

[Kwami]

They're not contradictory. If an AI is functioning poorly because it doesn't follow a good instruction for a given situation, then telling it do something else instead is not a net performance increase. It's just different.

Sure, and that works up to a point, but ultimately, the AI needs more information to make better choices and more information requires more processing power. There's no way around that.

And the Switch does take longer to process turns than PC, which supports the point that the Civ 6 AI was not "dumbed down" to accommodate consoles.

But the console ports were an afterthought and the game was designed for the PC first. That doesn't seem to be the case for VII, which is releasing on all platforms simultaneously.

There's a Civ-relevant example we have that disproves your claim. Civ 5 with Vox Populi has a much better AI than base game, yet there are no perceptible changes to turn times I've ever noticed. Nor have Civ 6 AI mods ever increased turn times for me.

Bull. I played with VP a few times and turn times are definitely longer.

Again, this is an entirely baseless and speculative claim. I'm willing to bet you cannot name a single game where this is proven to be the case, and you are unable to offer a technical explanation either other than the simplistic misunderstanding above.

What? Look, you can put your head in the sand and pretend that reality isn't real, but that doesn't make it so.

Consoles have huge limitations because of their underpowered, aging hardware and simple controls. Content is restricted by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Patching cycles are slower because the process of getting patches approved on all three platforms takes time. The development team needs to create an interface that can work without a mouse or else spend development time on two different interfaces and that time could have been spent elsewhere. Developers also need to spend more time making sure that there aren't bugs on four platforms instead of one. Again, time that could be spent elsewhere. Features that might only work on the PC version (e.g. modding) might receive less attention because they won't be available to players on other platforms. Etc.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I have something of a highly speculative theory regarding the multi-platform release:

1) This is a mandate from 2K
a) It may have come in the middle of the development cycle
b) Since Aspyr was an unreliable partner for porting Civ VI, Firaxis was obliged to take on this new mandate in-house
c) It may have required a new engine, with a requisite learning curve

2) The net effect is that it's the main reason for the prolonged development cycle