How moddable is Civ6 actually?

[Troller0001]

Since civ VI has been released for a few days now I was wondering how moddable it actually is in comparison to civ V. Are religions, spying, policies (or well, Civics now), the World Congress and trade units for example easier to mod right now, or are they still as hardcoded (in a way) as before?
What about changing terrain in-game, will that update or will it require you to reload to show you the changes as in Civ V?
And what about some new stuff such as Districts or the Housing mechanic, how moddable are those?
Lastly, are DLL mods already a thing, and if so, can multiple DLL's be active at the same time?

I have not bought the game yet, so these were some things I was wondering
(I think that's all, but if any other questions arise, I'll just comment them below )

 

[GPuzzle]

We don't know. It's shaping up to be more, but without the tools we don't know yet.

 

[JFD]

Although it's probably not fair to compare Civ VI now to Civ V now, I will anyway - it's definitely easier in some ways, harder in others.

The learning curve is a bit steep, particularly with modifiers being a radical departure for how effects are hooked up in Civ V. But it is undeniably a more flexible and more powerful system. Modding things is functionally the same, however.

There are limitations, of course, but they are in unusual and honestly unnecessary places. So far, I've found that legacy bonuses and policy slots are hardcoded, in the DLL and in the UI, respectively. But new governments and new policies can be added easily enough. I haven't looked into modding Housing or District mechanics.

Art is obviously the hardest part right now, because we don't have the tools to access the base art (and thus acquire the right dimensions, copy the exact style, etc.) nor to implement art. In addition, some of the decisions about how the database is set up seems questionable, probably rushed - it is not possible, for instance, to access the IconTextureAtlases or IconDefinitions tables; critical to adding new art via mod.

I haven't been paying too close attention to graphics modding, but adding new unit models seems be much more accessible. I don't think adding new wonder/building/districts/city-styles will be the same, but then I'm not as knowledgable on this front.

Finally, no, new DLL mods won't be possible until we have the source code, which we have no guarantee of getting. Multiple DLLs will not be possible to run at once; this is just the technology.

But it is all very promising, and with some improvements from Firaxis, I think in the long-run modding for Civ VI will become more accessible than V.

That said, its difficult to get far at this point without the official modding tools (or IGE ), but thats more a fault of our overeager selves.

IMO, if you're going to base your purchase decision on modding capabilities, I would say wait until the tools have been officially released. Working as is can be a bit... frustrating

 

[Troller0001]

We don't know. It's shaping up to be more, but without the tools we don't know yet.

I know I know, I'm impatient. Nevertheless I wanted to know what people's experiences were up to now

Although it's probably not fair to compare Civ VI now to Civ V now, I will anyway - it's definitely easier in some ways, harder in others.

The learning curve is a bit steep, particularly with modifiers being a radical departure for how effects are hooked up in Civ V. But it is undeniably a more flexible and more powerful system. Modding things is functionally the same, however.

There are limitations, of course, but they are in unusual and honestly unnecessary places. So far, I've found that legacy bonuses and policy slots are hardcoded, in the DLL and in the UI, respectively. But new governments and new policies can be added easily enough. I haven't looked into modding Housing or District mechanics.

This quote seems fitting:

"Weird" is Firaxis' middle name (along with "pointless", "inconsistent", ...)

Art is obviously the hardest part right now, because we don't have the tools to access the base art (and thus acquire the right dimensions, copy the exact style, etc.) nor to implement art. In addition, some of the decisions about how the database is set up seems questionable, probably rushed - it is not possible, for instance, to access the IconTextureAtlases or IconDefinitions tables; critical to adding new art via mod.

That is a shame (What I do wonder though is that if it will (ever) be possible to have custom leaderscreen animations. Be it via adding actual 3D animations or 'simply' via .mp4's)

I haven't been paying too close attention to graphics modding, but adding new unit models seems be much more accessible. I don't think adding new wonder/building/districts/city-styles will be the same, but then I'm not as knowledgable on this front.

Finally, no, new DLL mods won't be possible until we have the source code, which we have no guarantee of getting. Multiple DLLs will not be possible to run at once; this is just the technology.

We can always hope for the source code

But it is all very promising, and with some improvements from Firaxis, I think in the long-run modding for Civ VI will become more accessible than V.

That said, its difficult to get far at this point without the official modding tools (or IGE ), but thats more a fault of our overeager selves.

IGE has saved us so many time when modding civV. Let's hope it indeed returns to Civ VI ASAP *impatiently stares at the IGE-mod creators*

IMO, if you're going to base your purchase decision on modding capabilities, I would say wait until the tools have been officially released. Working as is can be a bit... frustrating

If I purchase (or should I say, once/when I purchase) civ VI, it's because of the game. Modding is just a fun extra thing that comes in the package

 

[Gedemon]

It's very promising, but without any tools released, it's a bit early to tell.

 

[Quoth the Raven]

Scenarios and mods are multiplayer, so that is a huge improvement over Civ V.

 

[Cyphose]

I took a break from modding after VI's announcement, but now that I'm back, I'm wondering the same thing.

I've dabbled here and there out of curiosity, but never really mustered the courage to try anything big before the proper mod tools released. I suppose that's the name of the game at the moment: waiting for mod tools and more details from Firaxis. Some of the more ambitious souls among us dove right in (and thank you for braving the unknown), but clueless little old me is content to sit it out until we've got official documentation and tools like the CiV SDK. Firaxis has mentioned that they made the game to be the most moddable Civ yet, but not only have we heard that rhetoric before, it's also not entirely too difficult a task given previous games' moddability was a measure of how many hoops you had to jump through to get something seemingly simple done. As others have pointed out though, it seems to hold a lot of potential, so knock on wood.

There's a lot of uncharted territory yet to be mapped, but hopefully Firaxis can deliver. Fingers crossed for source code, at the least, since that's what allowed the existence of stuff like the CP/VMC/Unified Yields for V, which provided some essential modding QoL changes back in CiV. Then, even if Firaxis drops the ball, at least we've got ourselves.

Something I did notice in my dabbling is that handling localization is easier, as it's now handled in its own database with specific fields for localization (en_US, for example, is no longer necessarily its own table in the database). I'm a stickler for tooltip consistency and usefulness, and Firaxis... well, isn't. Since I'll be spending far too much time modding them to meet my own neurotic standards, that's a welcome change, and I'm sure it's the same for anyone who wants to create new localizations or modify existing ones. It's a small but welcome change, at least.

 

[Shifted]

Just out of curiosity, what's the general AI architecture of a civ game? Is it a bunch of behavior trees? Some kind of tree search? A combination? I'm guessing it's divided by subsystems each with its own requirements and AI technique?

 

[GPuzzle]

Just out of curiosity, what's the general AI architecture of a civ game? Is it a bunch of behavior trees? Some kind of tree search? A combination? I'm guessing it's divided by subsystems each with its own requirements and AI technique?

Prioritizes specific items, such as certain tech, Wonders and similar.

 

[Troller0001]

Scenarios and mods are multiplayer, so that is a huge improvement over Civ V.

NO WAY, HOPES AND DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE. NEVER GIVE UP KIDS, KEEP HOPING

Spoiler :

I like how everyone is quite enthusiastic already, even without mod tools