Official announcement: Hot off the presses. Next Civ game in development!!!!!!!

[PiR]

On the topic of civilizations to include : just make the 200+ actual countries of the world for more appeal, and the past ones too (how many ?).

Hmm. Is Taiwan in the list? Is Hong Kong? Is Catalonia? That's gotta be a political nightmare!

But I'm truly unsure that leader heads are that attractive to people, they serve well to fill space in promotional videos, but that's it.

Most promotional videos & tweets are entirely based on the faces alone: https://twitter.com/CivGame

 

[InsidiousMage]

I can definitely see them starting after GS, considering that was supposed to be the original end of Civ 6 content.

I managed to find the quote from the Paradox developer! Long story short, CK3 was in development for at least five years before it was released and was actively being worked on three years before the game's last big DLC came out. GS came out in February 2019 so I feel like the next Civ installment coming out by the end of the year is a real possibility, assuming a similar time scale.

 

[Thormodr]

Hmm. Is Taiwan in the list? Is Hong Kong? Is Catalonia? That's gotta be a political nightmare!

Most promotional videos & tweets are entirely based on the faces alone: https://twitter.com/CivGame

Free Steam codes for Sid's Birthday. Cool!

 

[Naokaukodem]

Hmm. Is Taiwan in the list? Is Hong Kong? Is Catalonia? That's gotta be a political nightmare!

Most promotional videos & tweets are entirely based on the faces alone: https://twitter.com/CivGame

Any entity that can be depicted as a "State" should be in, although the name of the game is Civilization and not State. A culture that got organized and united. I don't know about Catalonia too much even though Spain is my neighbour.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think by mid to late April we should be able to tell if the game is coming out in 2023 or not.

Any announcement after April 1st should be viable.

 

[queenpea]

I’m not looking forward to the Civ Twitter feed on April 1.

I suppose they could wait until E3 to formally announce the game with a trailer, etc., and still have enough time marketing wise to release by the end of the year.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I would find it hilarious if they would casually post the teaser/annoucement on April First, fully knowing that no one would believe it. Only to be like April Fools, it is real.

Like that scene from that movie.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

April feels too soon to me. I think May is the sweet spot. But if they don't announce anything by the close of June, I'd say 2023 isn't in the cards.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I have two suggestions for the developers: First burn down a library or clear cut a forest. Anything to get finish the game sooner.

Second, don't include the modern era at game release. Put it out a year later as an expansion. Give me the a Renaissance era science victory.

 

[Patine]

The Muisca had a small "empire" in the highlands of Colombia. They were artistically gifted, yes.

Versus:

The Guarani who had a much bigger area where they lived, have actual historical leaders they can use and still have a strong influence on a modern country. 70-80% of Paraguayans speak Guarani.

To each their own but I find the Guarani much more interesting.

As far as the Inuit building no cities, Firaxis is clever. They can work something out with a mechanic.

The Guarani lived in mud huts and plant-material lean-tos. The Muisca are far more interesting.

And I the limits of Firaxis' cleverness are tighter than you seem to believe.

The population could still resist as in -I already mentioned this- the Total War games, where even a conquered city from a culture or religion with no autonomous political entities can revolt and even set up a new mini-faction of its own.

I've never liked the Total War games, though I won't rant on, or debate why. Thus, I'm not familiar with this mechanic.

If anything, they should go for gameplay. With games with a tradition of modding stretching back decades, such as the civ series, you can always count on some crazy modder making something pretty anyway.

Yes, the most easily modded iteration of Civ, and one that started Civ modding. But you don't like when I compared my favourite iteration to yours.

But regardless, I cannot disagree more with the idea that graphics and appearance should be neglected for "modders" to pick up the slack. First of all, that leaves all players who cannot or do not use mods in the lurch. Second of all, no matter how great modders are, they simply cannot compete with an actual professional art team with the financial backing of the biggest videogame publisher on the planet.

Well, maybe in later editions, but the great majority of Civ2, and Civ3, fan-made scenarios and mods blow those from MPS and Firaxis, respectively, right out of the water.

II would add the Olmecs and some of the pre-Incan civilizations in the area (Moche, Paracas, etc.) as being more advanced.

Who have no known leader or city names, or even a single, verified word in their languages (the terms they're referred to by are OBVIOUSLY not endonyms).

Free Steam codes for Sid's Birthday. Cool!

How old is the old boy? He must be getting up there. Civ1 game out about 30 years ago (imagine that!)

I’m not looking forward to the Civ Twitter feed on April 1.

I don't have a Twitter account, and never have. I hear all these announcement here.

 

[Kjimmet]

I would find it hilarious if they would casually post the teaser/annoucement on April First, fully knowing that no one would believe it. Only to be like April Fools, it is real.

Like that scene from that movie.

Reminds how Plants vs Zombies were announced! During April Fools with a silly music video.

 

[Patine]

Reminds how Plants vs Zombies were announced! During April Fools with a silly music video.

The Mists of Pandaria Expansion, for World of Warcraft, was initially widely believed to be a joke when first announced.

 

[Thormodr]

The Guarani lived in mud huts and plant-material lean-tos. The Muisca are far more interesting.

And I the limits of Firaxis' cleverness are tighter than you seem to believe.

I've never liked the Total War games, though I won't rant on, or debate why. Thus, I'm not familiar with this mechanic.

Yes, the most easily modded iteration of Civ, and one that started Civ modding. But you don't like when I compared my favourite iteration to yours.

Well, maybe in later editions, but the great majority of Civ2, and Civ3, fan-made scenarios and mods blow those from MPS and Firaxis, respectively, right out of the water.


Who have no known leader or city names, or even a single, verified word in their languages (the terms they're referred to by are OBVIOUSLY not endonyms).

How old is the old boy? He must be getting up there. Civ1 game out about 30 years ago (imagine that!)

I don't have a Twitter account, and never have. I hear all these announcement here.

For someone who is championing diversity, the bit about mud huts and plant material is borderline racist. You are insinuating that they were primitive or beneath another culture because of that. Do better.

BTW, the Muisca didn't live in stone houses, either, and they actually used clay and canes as a prime building material. This in spite of abundant stone resources in the area.

The Guarani have stood the test of time. They are still around and their language is still widely spoken. (2.8 million people worldwide have Guarani as their native tongue) That's a lot more than many older civs in the game can say.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Reminds how Plants vs Zombies were announced! During April Fools with a silly music video.

Bioware announced a rock star minstrel character for Dragon Age Inquisition multi-player on April 1st. It was so over the top, everyone thought it was a joke. It was not a joke.

 

[UWHabs]

I have two suggestions for the developers: First burn down a library or clear cut a forest. Anything to get finish the game sooner.

Second, don't include the modern era at game release. Put it out a year later as an expansion. Give me the a Renaissance era science victory.

Isn't it like that every game

I will always say, every civ iteration has struggled with how to handle the modern era. Do you veer into sci-fi with GDR and space lasers? Or do you try to "end" the game at what the current world technology is like. And every game has always had the annoying problem where you just get this endlessly repeating "future tech", which ends up basically giving you nothing of use, and takes this big science and tech race that you have used the whole game and basically renders it useless.

Now, one option they could conceivably think about if they want to change away from the space race being the science victory, and it might be cheesy, but I wonder if they could make researching the Internet be the science goal? That would cut out all the future tech parts of it. But given that you still have the space race leading up to that, you would really ramp out the development of computers into basically being what the whole era is about. It wouldn't quite be the renaissance era, and it wouldn't shorten the dev cycle since they'd still need to build out the tree for the era, but would be a change in how you win.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Now, one option they could conceivably think about if they want to change away from the space race being the science victory, and it might be cheesy, but I wonder if they could make researching the Internet be the science goal? That would cut out all the future tech parts of it. But given that you still have the space race leading up to that, you would really ramp out the development of computers into basically being what the whole era is about. It wouldn't quite be the renaissance era, and it wouldn't shorten the dev cycle since they'd still need to build out the tree for the era, but would be a change in how you win.

If they involve the Internet that feels like it would be a hybrid science/cultural victory, considering the role the Internet has played out in globalization and social media. I don't how the specific victory would work?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Isn't it like that every game

I will always say, every civ iteration has struggled with how to handle the modern era. Do you veer into sci-fi with GDR and space lasers? Or do you try to "end" the game at what the current world technology is like. And every game has always had the annoying problem where you just get this endlessly repeating "future tech", which ends up basically giving you nothing of use, and takes this big science and tech race that you have used the whole game and basically renders it useless.

The problem with the Technological Endgame is that we have been very bad at predicting the specifics of 'Future Tech'. My favorite examples are Lasers and Radar, two of the most high-tech features of the 1960s. NOBODY predicted that by the 1980s they would also be two of the most common household appliances - microwave ovens (Radar tech) and CD players (Laser tech). And in all the Science Fiction stories written about going to the moon, nobody ever predicted that the first moon landing would be Televised, or that we would get there and then not bother going back for decades.
Predicting scientific advances and their applications is almost a recipe for Getting It Wrong, which is why we keep winding up with a generic Future Tech repeating itself.

The other problem is Game Definition. Civ has always been about 'building a Civilization to stand the test of Time' - not extend Time forward into the Future. For all the Fantasy inherent in the game, adding Science Fiction seems to be a step Too Far in the general perception of the game.

As a final observation, Civ has also been very bad at even including the Current Technology in the game: witness the important weapons and technologies in use in Ukraine (and many of which have been in available for decades) compared to those in the Information Era of Civ VI: the impact of satellite communications on coordination and mobility, massive anti-air defenses and electronics, precision added to ordinary artillery and rocket artillery weapons, extremely effective anti-armor weapons in the hands of virtually every infantry unit down to companies: Civ VI effectively stops the application of most technological military developments at about 2001, a generation in the Past

And as a Post-Final Observation, most games IMHO are effectively over long before the Information Era in any case, so until they can get the balance right, getting the last Era right is much, much less important. I think I played Civ VI for over 4 years before I built my first Information Era unit, and I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of games that have lasted into the Information Era out of thousands of hours played.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Even the present state of warfare is advancing at a surprising rate.

Weaponized mini-drones are a thing that didn't exist except in the fevered minds of sci-fi writers as of a year ago. Now they are a new weapon that defies categorization. As mobile and cheap as scouts with the capacity to eliminate an APC or older MBTs. There are also seaborne drones that have yet to be demonstrated at full capacity, but can all but certainly pull off a modern Pearl Harbor in the right situation.

 

[Krajzen]

What's funny is that we are completely terrible at predicting future tech in both directions: we utterly fail at predicting what tech will transform the world, while in the same time we utterly fail at overhyping tech which doesn't end up transforming the world.

Two great examples are AI and space travel. In 50s it was fairly common in sci fi and futurology to expect colonizaton of other celestial bodies in the early 2000s, as well as superhuman AIs. And I ain't talking about no pulp fiction stuff here, but Clarke's Space Odyssey 2001.
AI is a microcosm of this tendency in itself, since it turned out we have completely failed to predict which human - like skills are very easy and which are very hard for AI to reproduce.

The exception from this is Stanisław Lem of course - some time ago I've read his book written in like 1965 in which he casually imagined social issues of future mass access wireless communication networks, almost word by word predicting social media echo chambers and political danger of such discourse

 

[j51]

A science victory that could work in almost any era: If you're X number of eras ahead of every other civ in tech you win. That would prevent the game from dragging on once its clearly in the bag. Like in Old World how you win if you have double the victory points of anyone else.