Is a Civ4 modern successor possible?

[Marla_Singer]

It’s clear that Firaxis has moved away from what Civ used to be 20 years ago. Many of you have been asking for a Civ4 remake or spiritual successor, and I would love that too. But do you think that it can be considered?

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Firaxis would be interested in developing such a spin-off, as it risks parasitizing Civ7, on which they will necessarily focus on for in the coming years. Could it come from another studio, though? With multiple Civ-like games releasing recently, why not add another?

Some argue that old-school empire-builders are too niche to attract enough players. However, I’m not convinced it would require a AAA budget to be successful. Transport Fever, developed by an independent Swiss studio as a successor to Transport Tycoon, exceeded one million players in 2023, proving itself profitable. Similarly, Colossal Order, a small Finnish studio, revived the city-building genre with Cities: Skylines, inspired by SimCity 4. Is there a fundamental reason I’m missing why a Civ4 spiritual successor couldn’t be developed by any indie studio?

What do you think?

 

[Tecumseh1]

The spiritual successor might be Old World. In my short time playing it seems closer to civ4 than civ5 or civ6 is. The lead game designer is the guy who designed civ4 (and he worked worked on end of civ3 as well). It focuses on a specific period which is probably easier to design and balance a game around. All of human history is too much scope. I think it's time to move on from hoping Firaxis comes out with another game like civ4 for a long time.

My goal next month is give Old World a good 50 hours kicking around and see how I feel.

 

[Marla_Singer]

The spiritual successor might be Old World. In my short time playing it seems closer to civ4 than civ5 or civ6 is. The lead game designer is the guy who designed civ4 (and he worked worked on end of civ3 as well). It focuses on a specific period which is probably easier to design and balance a game around. All of human history is too much scope. I think it's time to move on from hoping Firaxis comes out with another game like civ4 for a long time.

My goal next month is give Old World a good 50 hours kicking around and see how I feel.

I agree Firaxis will never go back to previous Civs. I don't believe though that all of human history is too much scope. If that could be done on the crappy computers of the late 1980's, there no reason it couldn't be done today.

I think the scope limitation is mostly a matter of interface, or more precisely the idea that everything should happen at the same scale on the same map. This is what is limiting the scope. And as much as working on different scales was a problem in the past, it is perfectly possible nowadays to do it smoothly on mouse roll.

 

[Quintillus]

I agree with Tecumseh1 that Old World is, IMO, the closest game I've played to a spiritual successor to Civ3 and Civ4. Personally, I think it was a smart decision by Mohawk (Soren's studio) to focus on one time period and do it well, rather than stretch themselves too thin. True, Civ 1 dates from the early '90s, but production standards are different today. The #1 criticism of Millennia as that its battle interface looked like it was from the late '90s. Millennia went for wide scope, arguably at the cost of production standards. Still, it's another game I should revisit as it also is a potential spiritual successor.

Spiritual successors may also vary in terms of which game each player considers the true successor. No argument that Cities: Skylines revived the city building genre, but for me it didn't hit the mark well enough in terms of gameplay to result in moving on from Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4. For a lot of people it did, for me it lost essential senses of the passage of time and character (i.e. Chirper was a very poor and rather annoying replacement for advisors, petitioners, and the scrolling ticker, IMO). The same could happen with spiritual successor(s) to pre-Civ-V games, one might satisfy 40% of people, another might satisfy half of people (including some of that first 40%), etc.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I agree with Tecumseh1 that Old World is, IMO, the closest game I've played to a spiritual successor to Civ3 and Civ4. Personally, I think it was a smart decision by Mohawk (Soren's studio) to focus on one time period and do it well, rather than stretch themselves too thin. True, Civ 1 dates from the early '90s, but production standards are different today. The #1 criticism of Millennia as that its battle interface looked like it was from the late '90s. Millennia went for wide scope, arguably at the cost of production standards. Still, it's another game I should revisit as it also is a potential spiritual successor.

Oh that is for sure, but it's not because it was poorly done in Millennia that it means it cannot be better done. I'm deeply convinced that you can get a visually pleasing experience while keeping the Empire feel of earlier civs. I just can't see why that wouldn't be possible.

Spiritual successors may also vary in terms of which game each player considers the true successor. No argument that Cities: Skylines revived the city building genre, but for me it didn't hit the mark well enough in terms of gameplay to result in moving on from Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4. For a lot of people it did, for me it lost essential senses of the passage of time and character (i.e. Chirper was a very poor and rather annoying replacement for advisors, petitioners, and the scrolling ticker, IMO). The same could happen with spiritual successor(s) to pre-Civ-V games, one might satisfy 40% of people, another might satisfy half of people (including some of that first 40%), etc.

I had my own problems as well with Cities: Skylines, but I found in that game the freedom to build cities as I wanted that I enjoyed. My main problem was that it just took a lot of time.

I think Cities: Skylines remain a good example because the Sim builder genre was dominated during 10 years by people who desperately wanted to make of it a multiplayer experience, whereas it's pretty obvious that there's hardly anything more sandboxy than building your own city. It's been also told, when Simcity 2013 was released, that in order to get more detailed cities, we needed to reduce their size. Cities: Skylines proved that wasn't the case, and it sold 12 million copies.

 

[1SDANi]

It's honestly annoying watching the Rhye's mods year after year fade further into gaming history. For mods as innovative and addictive as they are it's amazing there hasn't been any standalone games that've tried to capture their unique blend of detailed history sim and big picture 4X sandbox.

 

[Slaughter]

For the people saying Old World is the closest thing to a Cvilization IV sucessor: How's the modding?

All of human history is too much scope. I think it's time to move on from hoping Firaxis comes out with another game like civ4 for a long time.

My goal next month is give Old World a good 50 hours kicking around and see how I feel.

Could always do it the Paradox way - multiple games, one time period each, add a feature to port games so you can do megacampaigns.

(I'm actually playing one, started in CKIII went to EUIV. Sadly I don't own Victoria 3, so I will probably dip out until the HOI4 part)

 

[Core Imposter]

So, I recently read a quote from a Firaxis staffer saying that Civ IV (and some of the other old titles) are infinitely replayable and therefore do not need a sequel. I don't think we would want a remaster or sequel from the group of people now on staff. I don't think they would have the first clue of what we'd want.

They have, after all, the company at least, pivoted away from what we cherish and with each iteration they seem to be getting farther away. What passes for a viable release in their eyes isn't close to what Civ IV is.

The market today is something like: softcore strategy (safe spaces-sandbox), pretty graphics, small scale, esoteric rather than organic gameplay, relatively simple mechanics that can be released on multiple platforms. Replayability is not a goal, structuring for downloadable content is mandated. Socially compatible, which in itself makes historical flavor tricky. Civ IV is none of those things. There may be less than two people alive that I would trust to create a sequel of the game that is pretty clearly the pinnacle in the field.

 

[Core Imposter]

We should dig up some old threads that list the things that we would want to have in a Civ IV remaster. I am sure they must exist somewhere. We might be surprised to find that we don't have consensus.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I guarantee you if they released CIV IV but just with a remaster (and actually polished up the game rather than overhauling it and shipping it out with loads of bugs... looking at you, Warcraft III), it would sell massively well. Add some more civs, scenarios, etc, but kept the core mechanics the same? It'd be amazing.

Which is why they're not going to do it.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Which is why they're not going to do it.

That makes no sense - if they thought it would be a commercial success they would do it in a heartbeat.

 

[Plains-Cow]

That makes no sense - if they thought it would be a commercial success they would do it in a heartbeat.

It was a joke because it feels like they learn the wrong lessons each time they release a new CIV game.

 

[AcaMetis]

I'm reminded of something that happened many moons ago, during the height of the "make an uninspired Bioshock/Dishonored/Uncharted/Arkham/etc. clone and slap an existing IP's name on it" era of PC gaming, when one more company decided to go that route with the vintage (and long starved for any sort of remake or re-release or anything since its DOS heyday) X-Com name. When asked why the decision was made to turn a venerated strategy IP into a yet another instance of an oversaturated genre, which was shown such incredible respect they did not bother to even spell the original name correctly, the publisher responded that "strategy games are just not contemporary".

Said publisher? 2K. The same guys who publish the Civilization series.

Fortunately that was one case where the uninspired clone game - later renamed The Bureau, I believe - was entirely forgotten by history while X-Com got its long overdue second wind and even sequel to boot, alongside a Steam re-release of the original game offering an easy avenue to fire up the comminuty made OpenXCom (and all of the features, modding opportunites, etc. that implies). That said unless Civ IV is able to go the OpenXCom route I don't see much if any hope for a proper successor or even just re-release. The sheer normality of selling tiny packets of DLC piecemeal, and to a much larger audience by ensuring the game is more accessible for casual players at that, just cannot be beat. Why focus on an infinitely replayable, complex system when you can sell a simple system for four times the price over time, and when that well has run its course, move on to the next sequel?

Old school strategy games like Civ IV are, in the modern era of ever wider audiences and ever more normalized DLC schemes, just not contemporary.

 

[Slaughter]

Why focus on an infinitely replayable, complex system when you can sell a simple system for four times the price over time, and when that well has run its course, move on to the next sequel?

To be fair, Paradox rakes dough on that kind of game. Yeah you can criticize the newer Pdox entries for their problems (DLC bloat, mana system, simplification, optimization issues and other stuff) but if anyone can say "Strategy Sells", its Paradox. And they're one of the most mod-friendly devs around, too. The venn diagram of GSG gamers and 4X gamers is quite intersecting (see: Stellaris).

That said unless Civ IV is able to go the OpenXCom route I don't see much if any hope for a proper successor or even just re-release.

I think this is The Way, myself. Essentially Civilization IV's engine 2.0, even more modabble, made to run on modern systems with all it brings, etc.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

As others have said a Civ IV remake would need to be so different it probably wouldn't be popular with the intended target - some of the Leaders would be regarded as problematic now and as for Slavery as a civic ......

 

[Fippy]

It was a joke because it feels like they learn the wrong lessons each time they release a new CIV game.

Even with steam reviews being negative - peoples buy first, then complain about unfinished games etc.
I have given up on that personally..nothing will change until questionable games result in less revenue.
These days they need some social hype and nothing else.

But how would they create that hype for a IV remake, with the consoles crowd etc?

 

[Plains-Cow]

Even with steam reviews being negative - peoples buy first, then complain about unfinished games etc.
I have given up on that personally..nothing will change until questionable games result in less revenue.
These days they need some social hype and nothing else.

But how would they create that hype for a IV remake, with the consoles crowd etc?

Why can't they just make it a PC game? Why does it need to be both when CIV IV was a pure computer game anyway? If it's actually good, it will sell well for years rather than just to the "current thing" crowd for a season.

 

[Fippy]

It's a small market now, PC.
Also just going from personal experience. Back then all my friends and internet contacts had a PC.
Now i am the only one left with that for gaming.
Everybody either has consoles, some crappy laptop only good for mobile games, or just smartphones.

These decisions are made by their top managers.
They look at income, and PC prolly plays a very small role now.
Times did change..my favorite cow

 

[lymond]

The audience for a Civ IV "Remaster" would be existing players. It might bring back some older players, though, and by virtue of initial advertisement, inspire some new gamers. I don't think these remasters are generally considered cash cow (teehee) moves, but I think they can be moderately profitable.

 

[Fippy]

Now convince them to put some Devs on remakes, when 10 millions buy new $300 games (increased for fun, but prolly not that far off with all dlc)..good luck