Hint at 3rd expansion from Firaxis??

[Archon_Wing]

ICS is actually a meme.

Yes, more cities is better due to district count and overly restrictive amenity/housing mechanics, but it does not mean that settling cities all with minimal distance is inherently optimal. My hint is that cities do not come with districts if you settle them.

The disease lies elsewhere, and also why "tall vs wide" is nonsense and will not solve anything. Espeically not Civ 5's 3-4 city model, which is a joke that it was ever considered meta. There's a reason why every meta that consists of turtling/bunkering is a boring, garbage meta.

Case in point, Firaxis increased settler cost, and it made the problem worse. It did nothing to balance tall vs wide, and in fact made wide even better. If you're reading this and still don't get why, well, maybe slow down a bit and think about it.

 

[steveg700]

There isn't a single correct way to game and trying to force your playstyle onto others as the "objective" only way to play isn't very constructive.

Well, that's been churned through many times in this thread. The thing is, a "correct" or "objective" way to play is not being advocated. Indeed, it was more the converse.

What was discussed here in the context of a Civ VI expansion or even Civ VII was a design that better supports different strategies for playing Civ, rather than one strategy being overly rewarded and leading to the one optimal strategy that reduces the value of other options. The responses in question effectively defended over-rewarding gameplay by suggesting that in the face of imbalance, players would just go into a kind of sandbox mode and impose purely self-imposed structure. Or at least, so they seemed to me.

ICS is actually a meme.

Yes, more cities is better due to district count and overly restrictive amenity/housing mechanics, but it does not mean that settling cities all with minimal distance is inherently optimal. My hint is that cities do not come with districts if you settle them.

The disease lies elsewhere, and also why "tall vs wide" is nonsense and will not solve anything. Espeically not Civ 5's 3-4 city model, which is a joke that it was ever considered meta. There's a reason why every meta that consists of turtling/bunkering is a boring, garbage meta.

Before the whole subjectivism refrain took root in this discussion, there was a stab at discussing an inconsistency in Firaxis' design of Civ VI. As you say, in previous games, iteration was everything. In Civ VI in particular, much of the design seems to be built for city diversification, but holding onto the familiar victory conditions instead lead to iteration.

Growing your population unlocks more districts, allowing for greater diversity. If you want to build the same district ad nauseum, you need to settle another city. With the victory conditions being what they are, is one currently more rewarding?

For instance, if you are pursuing a science or culture victory, should you emphasize having a city with a lot of diversified districts? Should your focus be on getting out more cities with campuses or theater districts? Is it better to focus on having as many districts of one type as possible?

I know one avoid leaning either by saying there's a false dichotomy there or somesuch, but at the end of the day I think you've largely answered this. What I would hope for is that cities will be settled based on some meaningful choice having to do with the location being worth the cost. That cost currently isn't coming from amenities, which ostensibly exist only for the purpose of attaching a cost that should lend itself to making choices.

The ultimate reinvention of Civ comes from taking another pass at how the game provides a finish line. I think R&F's historical moments system is a good starting point.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Growing your population unlocks more districts, allowing for greater diversity. If you want to build the same district ad nauseum, you need to settle another city. With the victory conditions being what they are, is one currently more rewarding?

For instance, if you are pursuing a science or culture victory, should you emphasize having a city with a lot of diversified districts? Should your focus be on getting out more cities with campuses or theater districts? Is it better to focus on having as many districts of one type as possible?

That is hard to say since in Rise and Fall, science and culture syergize strongly with each other and having strong culture is crucial for science and vice versa. And trade districts are pretty strong. Encampments are situational, leaving the remaining districts just being too weak.

In the end we don't just build campus spam because it is for science victory. Rather we build it simply because it is too good. Look at the cost of a library and then look at the cost of a workshop and note what a joke that is. In fact campus spam is optimal for all victory conditions. It simply is too overbearing.

I actually think there is not enough specialization since every city becomes a pesudo hybrid. There is no science or industrial city. Only cities that do it a little better. Specialists and wonders should really be buffed for customization as well as national wonders.

 

[Ziad]

I think a health system to manage tall cities and a distress/order system to manage wide empires would be pretty cool for a third expansion.

They can fit both in a colonial themed expansion with the possible introduction of corporations and resource monopolies.

 

[steveg700]

That is hard to say since in Rise and Fall, science and culture syergize strongly with each other and having strong culture is crucial for science and vice versa. And trade districts are pretty strong. Encampments are situational, leaving the remaining districts just being too weak.

In the end we don't just build campus spam because it is for science victory. Rather we build it simply because it is too good. Look at the cost of a library and then look at the cost of a workshop and note what a joke that is. In fact campus spam is optimal for all victory conditions. It simply is too overbearing.

I actually think there is not enough specialization since every city becomes a pesudo hybrid. There is no science or industrial city. Only cities that do it a little better. Specialists and wonders should really be buffed for customization as well as national wonders.

City specialization is another touchstone tangent in the search for actual "multiple ways to win".

I don't get why IZ's are as they are, workshops clearly being a poor return, other than being a symptom of a design where the devs seem to be of a mindset that production should be held in a constant, sttrangled trickle. Larges stretches of pretty much every map can provide virtually no production. Huge production dumps from bunching-up trade routes are a permitted exception, which is vexing as it encourages hub spam and is not tied to anything the sending or receiving city is good at. For reasons I don't quite appreciate, huge bursts of production from chops are deemed a more desirable design rather than a steady stream of production.

Specialization would seem to be a product of a city's location, or extended growth within that city via population and construction (the "exploit" X). Both of which would provide player's with meaningful choices, and focus on quality of cities over quantity of districts. I think to some extent the initial design was supposed to encourage specialization through adjacency bonuses linked to terrain types. So, we wouldn't be inclined to build libraries where there weren't mountains or jungles or what have you. It's not where the game landed, to be sure.

 

[Casworon]

Thats really interesting actually. If you modified all the buildings to instead improve adjacency bonuses rather than giving flat yields i wonder how it would effect the game.

Then you would really have to play the map since adjacency would be everything.

You could also buff tall by making the buildings give via population aswell.

I think these two changes would really improve the game actually. Make the location and quality of the city much more important

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

So, we wouldn't be inclined to build libraries where there weren't mountains or jungles or what have you. It's not where the game landed, to be sure.

Science is so important, that with the benefit of hindsight, I think the game would have been better off with multiple districts that contribute some science, rather than a science-focussed district. Commercial Hubs and Harbours already offer a route to Science, through trade routes. Maybe the Encampment should have a Military Academy or some such building that provided some science. The Holy Site could have some science boosts (there are lots of examples of religious communities being a hotbed for inquiry and discovery). The Industrial Zone could have a commercially-oriented science building.

In other words, different routes to getting science, which you choose based on the map/game-style, rather than a Campus district, which is extremely important regardless of whether it gets any adjacency bonus or not.

The same is true for Culture, which given how "Faith" is depicted in the game (see Rock Bands and Naturalists), is ripe to have the Theatre Square turned into multi-purpose district instead of a Culture and Tourism only district.

 

[mitsho]

Yeah, there are too many districts You could also argue the same for production since it seems strange to invest so much production only to get more production. But they won't change that so forget it. I do hope that the next civ will have "general" districts with building slots that specialize depending on what buildings you put in there (for adjacency) and the ability to move those buildings around the districts. Seems more flexible than the current approach.

But as for the third expansion, I am sure they already know exactly what they want to do.

 

[steveg700]

Science is so important, that with the benefit of hindsight, I think the game would have been better off with multiple districts that contribute some science, rather than a science-focussed district. Commercial Hubs and Harbours already offer a route to Science, through trade routes. Maybe the Encampment should have a Military Academy or some such building that provided some science. The Holy Site could have some science boosts (there are lots of examples of religious communities being a hotbed for inquiry and discovery). The Industrial Zone could have a commercially-oriented science building.

In other words, different routes to getting science, which you choose based on the map/game-style, rather than a Campus district, which is extremely important regardless of whether it gets any adjacency bonus or not.

The same is true for Culture, which given how "Faith" is depicted in the game (see Rock Bands and Naturalists), is ripe to have the Theatre Square turned into multi-purpose district instead of a Culture and Tourism only district.

Sure. You know how you can now in neighborhoods you can now choose to build a shopping mall or a food center? Why not embrace that model on a larger scale, selecting different types of buildings with different benefits?

To the designers' credit, the eureka/inspiration idea was a pretty cool innovation, at least in premise. Tie science not to some per-turn income, but rather to things that actually constitute gaining knowledge and making breakthroughs. Another half-baked idea I had for a 4X game I'll never have is where you actually make discoveries by running a project. Like, if you have sugar and cotton near your cities, you can run projects in them to discover the ability to build plantations.

 

[Ziad]

Science is so important, that with the benefit of hindsight, I think the game would have been better off with multiple districts that contribute some science, rather than a science-focussed district. Commercial Hubs and Harbours already offer a route to Science, through trade routes. Maybe the Encampment should have a Military Academy or some such building that provided some science. The Holy Site could have some science boosts (there are lots of examples of religious communities being a hotbed for inquiry and discovery). The Industrial Zone could have a commercially-oriented science building.

In other words, different routes to getting science, which you choose based on the map/game-style, rather than a Campus district, which is extremely important regardless of whether it gets any adjacency bonus or not.

The same is true for Culture, which given how "Faith" is depicted in the game (see Rock Bands and Naturalists), is ripe to have the Theatre Square turned into multi-purpose district instead of a Culture and Tourism only district.

They would have to remove yields from population.

 

[acluewithout]

Science is so important, that with the benefit of hindsight, I think the game would have been better off with multiple districts that contribute some science, rather than a science-focussed district. Commercial Hubs and Harbours already offer a route to Science, through trade routes. Maybe the Encampment should have a Military Academy or some such building that provided some science. The Holy Site could have some science boosts (there are lots of examples of religious communities being a hotbed for inquiry and discovery). The Industrial Zone could have a commercially-oriented science building.

In other words, different routes to getting science, which you choose based on the map/game-style, rather than a Campus district, which is extremely important regardless of whether it gets any adjacency bonus or not.

The same is true for Culture, which given how "Faith" is depicted in the game (see Rock Bands and Naturalists), is ripe to have the Theatre Square turned into multi-purpose district instead of a Culture and Tourism only district.

Yeah, that’s probably right.

I think a relatively simple rework for the current game would be (1) cap Campuses based on total Empire Population and or Government Level or something similar; basically, put a break on Campus spam; (2) nerf Universities - maybe they give Science based on appeal or only if you slot certain policy cards; (3) give Specialists a slight buff - either they get buffed when you research some late game Civics (a bit like improvements) or by Governor promotions.

Overall, you should have to work harder for science. Campuses just make it way, way to easy to pump your science, particularly when you combine them with projects.

 

[footslogger]

I hope they resist the temptation to go for another expansion. With GS the game is going to be full to capacity with systems and other content and it will just be unwieldy and intimidating to casual players beyond that (it may be too intimidating already). I just want them to hurry on to civ 7 and concentrate on what surely to goodness must be the top priority - a new combat system which the AI can actually use reasonably well.

 

[Casworon]

I think one unit per tile is here to stay. I also think civ vII will keep districts.

The game is moving in a direction that will make it harder for the AI to play

 

[Josephias]

I hope they resist the temptation to go for another expansion. With GS the game is going to be full to capacity with systems and other content and it will just be unwieldy and intimidating to casual players beyond that (it may be too intimidating already). I just want them to hurry on to civ 7 and concentrate on what surely to goodness must be the top priority - a new combat system which the AI can actually use reasonably well.

I'll sabe my judgement until I play GS, but I think a third expansión is still posible. Some things may need to be simplified (and they could be), to give room for some additional systems to be tried. I think we have not reached the top of complexity set by Civ IV BtS (I don't know if they want to reach it or not, but I think there is still posible). As commented, it seems an Economic Victory path would round the victory conditions, and there are quite a bunch of Civs missing (specially the "mandatory" Maya and Babylon. And while center europe is covered, and Barbarossa is there as well so our germany is not Prussia, it also feels missing having Hungary without Austria).

Not to say there are a lot of streamlining and improvements that cannot be made without going to a new game, but nowadays I think it can be a viable strategy pushing both a round-it-all expansión (and maybe some extra DLC: leaders, scenarios,...) and establishing the design for a new game. It all depends how sustainable the franchise ecosystem turns with all the product lines, but further expansión may provide more funding for VII, which should not be bad - I think its the balance effort/profit what Will make 2K decide. If the game keeps being played, probably expansions tilt the balance to profit, which allow more effort to be put in the new game… if it feels like expansions get too boring/complex and have decreased sales, effort on Civ VI Will be stopped to concentrate in other games (be it Civ VII, or other XCOM, or a new option)

IMHO, Beyond Earth, in example, still asked for a third expansión - barring starships. Rising Tide name asked for a "Falling Sky / Skyfall" continuation, maybe involving the introduction of harmony-focused and supremacy-focused alien factions (which would have, of course, the "purity" route, in their own alien way), and a greater exploitation of the orbital layer. But it did not catch enough momentum and player base to allow for it. Base "Earth Civ" is much stronger, and can go on to two and three expansions easily.

 

[ChocolateShake]

There isn't a single correct way to game and trying to force your playstyle onto others as the "objective" only way to play isn't very constructive.

Exactly. I'm glad civ has a wide audience and has returned to its roots with Civ 6, encouraging multiple playstyles while still being true to the 4x genre.

The disease lies elsewhere, and also why "tall vs wide" is nonsense and will not solve anything. Espeically not Civ 5's 3-4 city model, which is a joke that it was ever considered meta. There's a reason why every meta that consists of turtling/bunkering is a boring, garbage meta.

Although I enjoyed the final version of Civ 5 I never really got used to 3-4 cities being optimal in most cases. Why would building a new city suddenly cause my civilization to become suddenly unhappy? It was an attempt to limit the core part of 4x that caused Civ 5 to really stand out from the previous entries.

I'm glad Civ 6 reversed that direction. Expansion is now in a pretty great spot I feel. We have more reasons to want to settle, but we also have to consider where to settle much more carefully and we also have more control on how to increase our settling limit through amenity/housing boosts.

I think its the balance effort/profit what Will make 2K decide.

I agree, I think if GS meet or exceeds sales expectations, a third expansion could be in the works, or maybe a mini-expansion sort of like the one XCOM2 got recently. Otherwise I think they'd probably decide to hibernate for a bit as they work on Civ 7. I think though if they decide that they'll still release a fall or maybe spring patch.

I definitely would like to see an economic victory as well. I'd also like to see the AI being more protective of its science and cultural victory progress.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think a health system to manage tall cities and a distress/order system to manage wide empires would be pretty cool for a third expansion.

They can fit both in a colonial themed expansion with the possible introduction of corporations and resource monopolies.

I mean the Maya and Portugal would fit in great with these new mechanics.

 

[Siptah]

I think its the balance effort/profit what Will make 2K decide.

I know that many companies are thought of to be solely pursuing maximum profit, but I just want to add that it doesn't have to be that way (no company I have insight in has profit as highest priority as long as there is some, but of course my experience is incredibly limited). Besides factors like employee and customer satisfaction, or product quality, growth is certainly a major economic factor for most companies.

FXS is a relatively small company and it doesn't develop a lot of games. Developing a new game (civ VII or a spin-off) creates more employment/work load than doing a third expansion.This might allow FXS to grow, while a third expansion might even lead to shrinking, since some people might not be needed for that. FXS has only a limited ability to reassign employees to other games, since there aren't that many other games (unlike PDX for example, where the devs shift to another game). That might also be why they prefer larger expansions compared to smaller ones. I have, of course, no proof for this, but to me, it seems logical. If you are only hiring for a limited time or constantly dismiss/rehire workers, you are not an attractive employer for the highly qualified workers an AAA games company is seeking. So I think "milking" the player base with more expansions because those are cheaper to develop than a new game and thus generate more profit isn't the only logical consequence for FXS/2K. But it is the only logical consequence if you have a very pessimistic view about companies

 

[Browd]

FXS is a relatively small company and it doesn't develop a lot of games.

Keep in mind that FXS is a wholly owned subsidiary of a publicly traded global entertainment company that had, in 2017, over $1.7 billion in net revenue and $3.7 billion in assets. It's most recent reported market capitalization (the aggregate trading value of its stock) was about $11.9 billion. So, FXS itself may be relatively small, but it is part of a very significant, publicly traded enterprise that (one can assume) is laser-beam focused on profitability and return on investment.

 

[God of Kings]

To elaborate, Firaxis is part of Take-Two Interactive, which is one of the largest video game companies in the world.

 

[Josephias]

To elaborate, Firaxis is part of Take-Two Interactive, which is one of the largest video game companies in the world.

And just to wrap it all, that's why I think economy will drive the decisión, because most surely 2K will take it, not FXS.

(note FXS might have something to say in NOT doing a third expansion, but I think they are still having fun building on Civ VI)