DLC 05 anticipation thread

[Liufeng]

The only Firaxian associated with Civ that I know for sure is there is Kevin Schultz. He is a community manager for both games.

Well, I guess it means no Civ VI for this E3. People will have to be patient for the next news, ... unfortunately.

By the way EP, if you had to choose a SE Asia country which you would NOT like to go on vacation, which one would it be ? (yes, it looks like a desperate move to have a new clue)

 

[slyone14]

The only Firaxian associated with Civ that I know for sure is there is Kevin Schultz. He is a community manager for both games.

Hey EP. Question for you good sir. Now, we all know you are the single most reliable poster on these forums. So what im about to ask, is not to be misunderstood please. Hope this comes out right.

1. What is the chance that your source could be wrong about the SE Asian civ?
2. Also, is there any chance, we could possibly get 2 SE Asian civs? I mean, they did say 2 DLC, one could be a double se civ pack.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Hey EP. Question for you good sir. Now, we all know you are the single most reliable poster on these forums. So what im about to ask, is not to be misunderstood please. Hope this comes out right.

1. What is the chance that your source could be wrong about the SE Asian civ?
2. Also, is there any chance, we could possibly get 2 SE Asian civs? I mean, they did say 2 DLC, one could be a double se civ pack.

1) I don't think my source can be wrong per se. He is a very specific kind of professional, and has been contracted by Firaxis. That is pretty solid confirmation to me. It could be that he is mistaken; that his service to Firaxis is actually for a closely related civ to the one that is his expertise. It's also possible that Firaxis is going to put this civ in a future DLC or expansion rather than the one right now, but that seems unlikely to me.

2) I don't know. The chance of two SEA civs is the same as the chance of two African civs and the chance of an alternate leader. My knowledge does not exclude anything.

 

[Xandinho]

You speculating about Malaysia reminds me that Kuala Lumpur is strangely absent as a city-state in the base game, which thoughts about the inclusion of Malaysia gains strength, in my opinion.

 

[batusay]

I read somewhere (I think it's in this thread but I'm not sure and I can't remember anymore) that the devs at this point are unlikely to add civs that have cities which are currently city states because it would affect the AI of the CS. Am I recollecting things correctly? And if so, is there any truth to this?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I read somewhere (I think it's in this thread but I'm not sure and I can't remember anymore) that the devs at this point are unlikely to add civs that have cities which are currently city states because it would affect the AI of the CS. Am I recollecting things correctly? And if so, is there any truth to this?

That's the speculation.

In my opinion, some of the Suzerainty bonuses are so far removed from the city-states' histories that they are obviously designed to be shifted around.

Zanzibar's is nicely tied to its history, so it is likely a permanent city-state. Same with La Venta and its Colossal Heads. But Lisbon's and Amsterdam's are so detached and vague, that they could and probably will be transferred to a different city at some point.

I suggest examining the nature of the bonuses before coming to a conclusion on that.

EDIT: Also, 2kqa_a just updated again, continuing the pattern of updating the qa build every 2 business days.

 

[Uberfrog]

Given that they likely had DLCs on the drawing board before the game was released, it's unlikely that they would have added a city as a CS if they knew it was going to be a civ later. But which civs they had lined up and when is difficult to judge. Civ V featured Seoul as a city-state, for instance, and Korea turned up as a DLC just under a year later. It's not that hard for them to rename city states.

There are also conspicuously absent city-sates (notably the Italian ones) that, if this logic holds, could be on the cards for a future DLC or expansion.

But as Eagle Pursuit says, this is the limits of the speculation. We just don't know. But if you're interested in what that would mean for these DLCs, read on.

Given that we know the next civs are from Africa and Southeast Asia:-

Africa: the African CS we currently have are Carthage, Kumasi, Zanzibar and Antananarivo. Therefore the new African civ(s) is unlikely to be the Carthaginians, Ashanti, Swahili/Kilwa, or Madagascar (the latter three are decidedly long shots that almost no-one could have been expecting anyway...)

Southeast Asia: Jakarta and Hong Kong (barely in SEA) are all we have. So the field is wide open with the likely exception of Indonesia.

 

[Katakanja]

There's also the fact that Zanzibar is part of an achievement which would be rendered nonsensical if they were to remove it from the CS pool, Hattusa and Nan Madol are in a similar position. On a similar note, I feel like any CS that has a 'flavourful' suzerain bonus is less likely to ever be removed as it would be harder to find a suitable replacement - La Venta and it's giant heads for instance.

On the other hand we have Seoul with its ultra-generic 'earn a random eureka' bonus which we can probably take as proof that they wanted to keep it simple to rename when the inevitable Korean civ arrives.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Southeast Asia: Jakarta and Hong Kong (barely in SEA) are all we have. So the field is wide open with the likely exception of Indonesia.

Majapahit Empire does not require Jakarta to be in its city list. So it could still be a medieval kingdom that incorporates most of Indonesia.

 

[Uberfrog]

There's also the fact that Zanzibar is part of an achievement which would be rendered nonsensical if they were to remove it from the CS pool, Hattusa and Nan Madol are in a similar position. On a similar note, I feel like any CS that has a 'flavourful' suzerain bonus is less likely to ever be removed as it would be harder to find a suitable replacement - La Venta and it's giant heads for instance.

On the other hand we have Seoul with its ultra-generic 'earn a random eureka' bonus which we can probably take as proof that they wanted to keep it simple to rename when the inevitable Korean civ arrives.

I wasn't aware of those. And yeah the city-states in general are a lot more characterful than they were in Civ V. It'd be a shame to lose some of them if they did graduate to being full cities. The Olmecs were always highly unlikely, though.

Majapahit Empire does not require Jakarta to be in its city list. So it could still be a medieval kingdom that incorporates most of Indonesia.

Good point! So in short: we know even less!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Ed Beach "liked" my Tweet suggesting that there would be no Civ presence at the PC Gaming Show today. So I guess that answers that.

 

[slyone14]

EP, can you atleast tell us if the SE asia civ will be a totally new civ or One we have had previous? Please?

 

[batusay]

Southeast Asia: Jakarta and Hong Kong (barely in SEA) are all we have. So the field is wide open with the likely exception of Indonesia.

But if you take into consideration the eliminated civs per EP's posts i.e. Vietnam, Khmer, & Burma, the city-state angle still helps in narrowing down the possibilities.

 

[Katakanja]

EP, can you atleast tell us if the SE asia civ will be a totally new civ or One we have had previous? Please?

Spoiler :

 

[Uberfrog]

But if you take into consideration the eliminated civs per EP's posts i.e. Vietnam, Khmer, & Burma, the city-state angle still helps in narrowing down the possibilities.

Not really... EP's information is what narrows it down. As @Hakan-i Cihan pointed out above, the city-state angle doesn't even entirely remove an Indonesian civ from the equation.

If EP is correct we know it's not Vietnam, Khmer or Burma. CS just tells us it's probably not Indonesia (the modern country or combined civ). The Majapahit or Srivijaya Empires are still possible contenders, even if Jakarta remains a CS.

 

[Piruparka]

EDIT: Also, 2kqa_a just updated again, continuing the pattern of updating the qa build every 2 business days.

How does this affect your forecast for an announcement / release date?

 

[batusay]

EP, can you atleast tell us if the SE asia civ will be a totally new civ or One we have had previous? Please?

A more subtle way of asking the same question is whether the new civs would be as surprising as Australia...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

How does this affect your forecast for an announcement / release date?

It's still holding the course for mid-July. If they started doing daily updates or slow down again, I would have to reevaluate. I'm also waiting to see when they get Mac and Linux depots up and start qa testing them.

 

[Katakanja]

Anyway, its shortly time for the E3 PC show, so perhaps all our questions will soon be answered... or not

 

[durfal]

For the sake of speculation for the (or a) SE Asia civilization and that Eagle's source is trustworthy (including his tips it's not Vietnam, Khmer or Burma) and Firaxis don't use Jakarta (currently in Indonesia and from Sunda or Majapahit empires) the highest chances are they used the Melayu Kingdom or the Srivijaya as a source to make a civilization. Both Civ's had the same core region as their base empire.. Namely the Island Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. Difference is Melayu started around Jambi and Srivijaya in Palembang. Only 300 Km from each other on the Island of Sumatra. Or Firaxis uses a combination of the two. The core of these two include lands of modern day Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
From the Melayu Kingdom arent much Rulers known but Srivijaya had at least two worthy "Dharmasetu" expanded the territory a lot and Samaratungga (or Samaragrawira, some think he was the same person) who build the Borobodur on Java. Also they colonized Madagascar, the main language there is Malagasy which is Austronesian and so related to the languages from Malaysia , Indonesia and the Philippines.
The language from the South Sumatra region Old Malay became and is/was the Lingua Franca of a much bigger region nowadays. The only difference between modern Malay and Indonesian was that one was written down (much later) by the British (Modern Malay) and the other one by the Dutch (then called "Maleis", but after it's independence was renamed Indonesian). Main difference was the writing style "Oe" in stead of "U" like in Dutch for the same sound (but that was later changed back to U in Indonesian to make the languages more the same), and the amount of Dutch loanwords in Indonesian.
How they name such an empire in game is another question though. As was seen with the Majapahit turned into Indonesia I wouldn't be surprised if they turned either of these two into Malaysia. As modern Malaysia (and Singapore) are also growing gaming markets that would be nice too (for Firaxis).

Or it's just another version of Siam/Ayuthaya/Thailand.

Smaller chance but not impossible is that it is based on the Brunei empire or on a Philippine one or even the Champa.

All others empires are way to obscure before any of the above mentioned.