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

[InsidiousMage]

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

Two things. One, the decision to port release Civ7 on consoles day and date with the PC release was probably made when the game became successful on consoles, which is probably well before NFP was released since it also had a simultaneous release on console and PC. Two, given that Firaxis does both the console and PC versions X-Com, I'm guessing that would have done the port themselves regardless of what kind of job Aspyr did because they would have full control and end up with a better product by doing everything in-house.

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

This is an incredibility weak example and barely counts as an inconvenience, much less "suffering."

 

[bbbt]

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.

It could be a performance increase if they increased the number of parameters for the AI to make a decision and/or increased the number of decisions. Examples would be having the AI look at ramifications multiple turns in the future, analyzing the players options, having more varied AI behaviors in general in a given situation.

b) Since Aspyr was an unreliable partner for porting Civ VI, Firaxis was obliged to take on this new mandate in-house

I very much suspect b) is the case, and that was part of the whole issue with the Leader Pack where they basically were like "we can't say if it's coming to console at this point". Asypr had likely just been told they were getting dropped for the console ports of 7 and there were negotiations going on...

Though I'd guess Aspyr would still do the Mac ports

 

[pokiehl]

It could be a performance increase if they increased the number of parameters for the AI to make a decision and/or increased the number of decisions. Examples would be having the AI look at ramifications multiple turns in the future, analyzing the players options, having more varied AI behaviors in general in a given situation.

I didn't say it couldn't. I said it didn't have to be. I don't think anyone here has much insight into what actually makes the Civ 6 AI disappointing, but you can look at mods like Real Strategy which update existing parameters to great effect to better understand the point I'm making.

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.

Unless you can precisely articulate what is wrong with Civ 6's AI, you're speculating here.

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.

No way. There's no chance that they didn't have the console ports in mind from the beginning. (And if they DIDN'T and you're correct, then that invalidates this debate).

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

That sucks for you. I googled this to see if my experience was an anomaly and I can't even find any threads where people complain about this. In fact, there are turn time optimizations in Vox Populi. Maybe you have a really bad PC or you're not perceiving it correctly.

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.

And yet that's exactly what Civ 6 and CK3 have: different UIs for the console ports.

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.


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.


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


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

Ultimately you are sidestepping here and still not providing even 1 single example to back up your claim, just like I said you couldn't do.

All you're doing is taking a baseless assumption as fact because it intuitively seems correct to you, but you have no proof and no insights into AI programming, how it actually affects performance in games like Civ, and the port process in general. You have no ground to be speaking so authoritatively here. (None of us do, but I'm not the one making the claims)

 

[Kwami]

Unless you can precisely articulate what is wrong with Civ 6's AI, you're speculating here.

Again, bull. More information leads to better decisions and more information requires more computing resources. Do you want to know why the AI isn't "better" in current titles? That's why.

No way. There's no chance that they didn't have the console ports in mind from the beginning. (And if they DIDN'T and you're correct, then that invalidates this debate).

You have no way of knowing this. Since the console ports came well after release and were made by a third party, they likely weren't planned from the beginning.

That sucks for you. I googled this to see if my experience was an anomaly and I can't even find any threads where people complain about this. In fact, there are turn time optimizations in Vox Populi. Maybe you have a really bad PC or you're not perceiving it correctly.

Two things.

1. Almost all of us have much better hardware than we did when V was released. That alone would make turn times better.
2. The turn times in V were terribly long compared to IV and VI. If VP managed to fix some of those problems while adding their own new stuff, then great.

But turn times were definitely slower when I tried VP, which was quite some time ago.

And yet that's exactly what Civ 6 and CK3 have: different UIs for the console ports.

Which requires more development time than creating only one UI. Time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Ultimately you are sidestepping here and still not providing even 1 single example to back up your claim, just like I said you couldn't do.

I'm not going to play Google for you. There are countless examples of "bad console port" PC games that have terrible, console-friendly, but PC-unfriendly interfaces, lower-resolution textures, limited graphics options, capped frame rates, and other limitations. Sometimes, these problems get fixed later. Sometimes, they don't.

All you're doing is taking a baseless assumption as fact because it intuitively seems correct to you, but you have no proof and no insights into AI programming, how it actually affects performance in games like Civ, and the port process in general. You have no ground to be speaking so authoritatively here. (None of us do, but I'm not the one making the claims)

I have a PhD in computer engineering, I've studied AI (largely before the recent generative AI phenomenon and specifically for games), and I regularly work on highly parallel signal processing systems. I have some authority, even if I don't know much about the Civilization AI specifically.

But you do you.

 

[Arcaian]

Again, bull. More information leads to better decisions and more information requires more computing resources. Do you want to know why the AI isn't "better" in current titles? That's why.

While it's true that for the sorts of changes in AI people are hoping for, computing power would have to increase relative to civ 6 (or game complexity would have to decrease), it's also true that you can simply have badly parameterized AI which can be improved without any increase in computational resources. If the AI in Civ 6 were coded to accidentally value Entertainment Complexes more than any other district in all eras (like they did for an extended period of time with campuses by mistake), the AI would be objectively less competitive with the player than it is now. It would not be cheaper computationally, and reverting the change to allow them to build other districts first would be a significant improvement in the AI, and it would not have a meaningful computational cost in it. It is possible to improve AI without more information being used or decisions being made so long as the current AI is making inefficient use of those resources (like weighting objectively worse gameplay choices as equal in value).

 

[Kwami]

While it's true that for the sorts of changes in AI people are hoping for, computing power would have to increase relative to civ 6 (or game complexity would have to decrease), it's also true that you can simply have badly parameterized AI which can be improved without any increase in computational resources. If the AI in Civ 6 were coded to accidentally value Entertainment Complexes more than any other district in all eras (like they did for an extended period of time with campuses by mistake), the AI would be objectively less competitive with the player than it is now. It would not be cheaper computationally, and reverting the change to allow them to build other districts first would be a significant improvement in the AI, and it would not have a meaningful computational cost in it. It is possible to improve AI without more information being used or decisions being made so long as the current AI is making inefficient use of those resources (like weighting objectively worse gameplay choices as equal in value).

Yes, of course. I don't disagree with this. I just don't think that the current AI is so poorly designed that all of the existing problems can be solved with better parameterization.

 

[pokiehl]

I'm not going to play Google for you. There are countless examples of "bad console port" PC games that have terrible, console-friendly, but PC-unfriendly interfaces, lower-resolution textures, limited graphics options, capped frame rates, and other limitations. Sometimes, these problems get fixed later. Sometimes, they don't.

I’m not saying there are no flawed ports…I have no idea where that came from.

I am specifically saying there is no proof that PC Civ 6 was “dumbed down” from the get go to accommodate the later console ports. That’s literally my only point in all this.

 

[Gedemon]

While it's true that for the sorts of changes in AI people are hoping for, computing power would have to increase relative to civ 6 (or game complexity would have to decrease), it's also true that you can simply have badly parameterized AI which can be improved without any increase in computational resources. If the AI in Civ 6 were coded to accidentally value Entertainment Complexes more than any other district in all eras (like they did for an extended period of time with campuses by mistake), the AI would be objectively less competitive with the player than it is now. It would not be cheaper computationally, and reverting the change to allow them to build other districts first would be a significant improvement in the AI, and it would not have a meaningful computational cost in it. It is possible to improve AI without more information being used or decisions being made so long as the current AI is making inefficient use of those resources (like weighting objectively worse gameplay choices as equal in value).

yes, up to a limit, once you have near-perfect parameters.

the question is how well an AI with near-perfect parameters that can run on a Switch hardware will handle Civ's 7 gameplay ?

If the answer is "well enough", fine. If not, one need to either change the gameplay, raise the hardware requirement so the AI can use more data to handle the gameplay or accept that the AI won't be good.

 

[Kwami]

I am specifically saying there is no proof that PC Civ 6 was “dumbed down” from the get go to accommodate the later console ports. That’s literally my only point in all this.

I never said that it was. VI was designed for the PC and only later ported to consoles. That's very different from designing a game to accommodate all platforms, which is the case for VII.

 

[pokiehl]

I never said that it was. VI was designed for the PC and only later ported to consoles. That's very different from designing a game to accommodate all platforms, which is the case for VII.

Ultimately we can only agree to disagree here. I don’t think it’s a concern for all the reasons we’ve gone over already, and I’m hopeful Civ 7 will have a satisfying AI, better than 6’s.

 

[TreVor_ish]

Making CIV VII with ps4/xbox one or even switch in mind does however raise some concerns.
Not only about AI performance, which will make the turns on those much longer (not necessarily dumber).
My bigger concern is scale of the game world. There is a limit of things a cpu can go through at a given time (even if You use mutually exclusive flags all over the place). I really would like to see a big world map, and if the game is smaller because it has to be able to run on Tegra X1, I'm not gonna be impressed. (Kinda feel like I already answered my own question;/)

 

[ls612]

The problem will be that being on the Switch will limit what it can do for gameplay mechanics on PC, anything too computationally expensive is out the door. Graphics can scale up and down to an absurd degree (they got Hogwarts Legacy to run on switch!) but for strategy games the mechanics demand a lot of CPU power.

 

[Hull tyyp]

I don't get all the console hate here. Keep in mind this is Firaxis thats developing the game. We should have a bit more trust.
I have been playing since civ 4 and the turn loading times have definitely improved every game.

Releasing civ 6 on consoles have definitely had a positive effect on the popularity of the game and increased accessibility.
Remember, modern consoles (starting from ps4 era) are just weak computers. And that is good news if you actually have a weak computer.

My wife has one of those Yoga thin and light laptops with an integrated GPU and it plays civ 6 just fine. We had so much fun playing together. Now if civ 7 was going to be realeased only on ps5/xbox series, then you would probably need a dedicated gpu in your pc also, drastically cutting the pc playerbase.

Beauty of civ 6 is that its a high quality AAA strategy game that can be played on a variety of devices and I bet Firaxis can deliver that again.

 

[Leyrann]

I have been playing since civ 4 and the turn loading times have definitely improved every game.

Surely you can't say that with a straight face?

I've hardly known Civ 4 turn times to exceed 10 seconds (outside of playing Caveman2Cosmos, which is an outlier and should not be counted), meanwhile on large maps Civ 6 turn times can take as long as a minute.

And while it's almost a decade ago that I last played Civ 5, I'm pretty sure I remember it being as bad as, maybe even worse than, Civ 6 when it came to turn times. (note: relative terms; I don't think it's actually terrible)

 

[Nikolai II]

Surely you can't say that with a straight face?

I've hardly known Civ 4 turn times to exceed 10 seconds (outside of playing Caveman2Cosmos, which is an outlier and should not be counted), meanwhile on large maps Civ 6 turn times can take as long as a minute.

What PC are you playing Civ6 on? A potato?

Also, remember to compare Civ4 and 6 to PCs of their generation. Civ4 was slow back then.

 

[Kwami]

And while it's almost a decade ago that I last played Civ 5, I'm pretty sure I remember it being as bad as, maybe even worse than, Civ 6 when it came to turn times. (note: relative terms; I don't think it's actually terrible)

Turn times in V were much longer than in VI.

 

[pokiehl]

Turn times in V were much longer than in VI.

And multiplayer was way less stable in V, IMO. I remember getting disconnected with my friends a lot. Civ 6 was a huge upgrade in both turn time and that regard.

 

[fantsu]

Nice to have portable option again. Wasnt really impressed what Aspyr did with VI. Maybe this time its better.

 

[xphantomx]

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.

Not really shocking to have a Switch. Huge active userbase on the Switch. You should be more shocked it’s on the Xbox one, tbh.

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 it’s 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.

The Switch is not a pervasively online device. Many games skip it for that reason. The fact it’s on the Switch means this isn’t even in the cards for Civ 7. No need to worry about it, like you said.

The problem will be that being on the Switch will limit what it can do for gameplay mechanics on PC

Let’s not pretend the 12 year old Jaguar CPU’s in the ps4/one are much better.

Their choice to dev for the ps4/one/Switch means civ 7 is a very scalable engine design that isnt taxing the cpu any more than Civ 6.

Hopefully the fundamentals of the design lend itself to better AI decision making and functions. I’m willing to wait and see before I complain too much about them not utilizing modern tech to advance the way the series plays

 

[Gorbles]

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.

Yes and no. Like this gets ridiculously complex, fast, and I haven't studied AI formally in some time (my development experience took me on a wildly different career path - I build features and services for educational software), but it very much depends on what the data is, how it is stored, where it is processed, and so on.

For example, take pathfinding. Pathfinding is basically "AI" in its purest terms (most modern pathfinding uses some variant of A*, but I'm sure there are isolated use cases for depth-first and other algorithms that give a better return in very specific contexts). The "information" needed for effective pathfinding is basically map vision. It has less to do with what is on the tiles, vs. how many tiles there are, because all tiles need to be scanned to see if there's a viable movement path. Ten tiles with one unit on each is the same as ten tiles with a theoretical hundred units on each. There's more data, but most of that data is irrelevant to the algorithm's decision.

So let's take a combat AI. The principle of "you need more information" is true, but in video game terms there are distinct differences in processing more data on an individual entity, and multiples of that individual entity. In Java terms (sorry, that's where I learned to program), adding ten attributes to a class is probably more performant / less impactful on performance than having two instances of that class at runtime. Ultimately, "it depends", and I can't begin to guess at the performance constraints that a complex and mature game engine like Civ's has to deal with (and / or what Firaxis are able to iterate on, replace each generation, etc). But "more information requires more processing power" is a truism that only works superficially, because technically you're correct. But in real terms, one addition might require 0.0001% more processing power, and another might require 0.5%. You can have many more of the former additions for the price of one of the latter, right?

Again, bull. More information leads to better decisions and more information requires more computing resources. Do you want to know why the AI isn't "better" in current titles? That's why.

Generally-speaking, the AI isn't better in a lot of games because it's a hard problem to solve, and the attitude to games development as a business doesn't incentivise investing more than the required amount to get it functional. AI in strategy games is a problem across the space, from 4X to grand strategy to RTS and beyond. Some games do it better, some games do it worse.

But if you look at the fixes that modders were able to apply during the course of Civ VI's lifetime (e.g. without the mythical DLL access, so purely within the scope of data provided by the game accessible to anyone with the official tools) before the devs were able to (and this applies to general bugs, not just AI issues), it becomes clear that assigned resource is more of a factor than the potential of the platform's hardware that the game runs from.