Firaxis cannot control for all possible Civ/Leader Combos, and multiplayer gaming might reach a new peak as a consequence.

[GeneralZift]

Such a low limit for player count is probably related to some gameplay reason rather than CPU performance. Let's be honest, there's nothing they could have possibly done to the game to the point where a good computer or a PS5 couldn't handle, say, 8 players or 10 players.

I am fairly certain it's to do with their new gameplay design. To do with Ages, Civ switching, crisis systems, this is probably the only way they could keep it balanced. Basically, I imagine they designed this game around that player count.

 

[Voidwalkin]

It's gonna be possible to use meta more with switching. Should you be inclined.

The prerequisites to allow you to morph are probably trivially met by good players. If your leader allows access to a civ by default, you should be able to pick the most powerful civ for all three eras without much difficulty.

If Egypt gets op infra, Mongolia gets op horsemen, and America gets op gold/infra, you'd pick Roosevelt or whomever leading Egypt, snag a city with 2 horse resources, on top of the one in your capital, morph to Mongolia and exploit mobility, then morph to America and reap gold advantages of your huge empire.

Basically, switching civs allows you to have focused, active OP bonuses in all eras. Prior versions only ancient bonuses could be said to do that(greater early investment power leads to better roi throughout the duration). Those became inactive post ancient era. Here, doesn't matter: simply switch to the civ with meta for the era, building on past improvements.

They said the game should be reset to even on era switch. In practice, I don't think that's really possible if the player retains all their cities. You should be able to compound massive advantages in ways not really possible before.

 

[aieeegrunt]

A stupidly broken meta seems to be the norm for multiplayer in this era of gaming.

Hopefully it won’t be as bad as Overwatch, where prominent streamers literally had a direct pipeline to the devs and could lobby for balance change favoring their mains.

 

[Voidwalkin]

I'm just pretty skeptical that each era will reset to near parity. As long as you keep the cities from the past era, you're still going to have an overwhelming advantage if you were expansionistic.

Unless they're forfeit, because of tech parity, other disparities will become more important. Barring some civ 5 style penalties, wide will be more meta than it was previously.

 

[Krikkit1]

It's gonna be possible to use meta more with switching. Should you be inclined.

The prerequisites to allow you to morph are probably trivially met by good players. If your leader allows access to a civ by default, you should be able to pick the most powerful civ for all three eras without much difficulty.

If Egypt gets op infra, Mongolia gets op horsemen, and America gets op gold/infra, you'd pick Roosevelt or whomever leading Egypt, snag a city with 2 horse resources, on top of the one in your capital, morph to Mongolia and exploit mobility, then morph to America and reap gold advantages of your huge empire.

Basically, switching civs allows you to have focused, active OP bonuses in all eras. Prior versions only ancient bonuses could be said to do that(greater early investment power leads to better roi throughout the duration). Those became inactive post ancient era. Here, doesn't matter: simply switch to the civ with meta for the era, building on past improvements.

They said the game should be reset to even on era switch. In practice, I don't think that's really possible if the player retains all their cities. You should be able to compound massive advantages in ways not really possible before.

Who says there are any horse resources on your continent? (horse resources aren’t required for anything anymore, just a bonus)

I agree players will chase the civ unlocks, but they might not be easy.