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

[Eagle Pursuit]

You asked for benefits, but I can't think of any benefits to me. It's probably nice for Firaxis because they won't have to worry so much about porting their games to other platforms. But for me, playing on a Windows PC, it's just going to be another game that has performance problems because of the Unreal 4 engine.

I really hope that they don't add Denuvo like they did with Midnight Suns.

Portability is probably a huge attraction for them to an existing engine, considering the problems they (and/or Asypr) had with ports for Civ 6 over the years and still have to this day.

 

[Kwami]

Portability is probably a huge attraction for them to an existing engine, considering the problems they (and/or Asypr) had with ports for Civ 6 over the years and still have to this day.

Probably. I hope that they're able to give us at least as much flexibility for mods and maps as they did with V and VI, though.

 

[Leucarum]

Yikes what happened with Victoria 3?

Echoing that low replayability was what stopped me playing...

 

[Thormodr]

Victoria 3 is going to be a wonderful game. It has oodles of potential. I've had a lot of fun playing as Central America, Canada, Paraguay and Siam. Will be playing again once 1.2 is released.

At least until Civ VII is released.

Although, I may have a fling with hexarchy.

 

[PiR]

I think it's a false dilemma to propose that it was some choice between "game modes" and "bug fixes." Getting that additional content was some devil's bargain in lieu of "easy bug fixes." Adding zombies didn't make them not fix bugs.

Besides, your comment misses my point. You seem to be responding to some statement like "I don't know why people are upset about the game modes" - which I didn't say.

I disagree, the stability of the game (not talking crashes but bugs like 999+ production) and the modes are linked for me.
At the time, when they announced the modes, we were not sure if anything new would come to the game, and could content with polishing updates only. When the modes were launched, it sounded like a promise than, in exchange for the money generated by the new content, the game would be taken care of. That it would be refined, with final patches, as for the previous games. But the opposite happened and the modes actually decreased the quality of the game and left the game with more bugs than before they were developed.

About the content of the modes, I think many people here including me made the mistake of paying in advance something that turned out very different than they expected. I won't do it again personnaly.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I don't think the modes are to blame for the bugs. In my eyes, both are the result of 2K meddling.

2K wanted a longer tail for the Civ franchise, but they wanted it on the cheap. Where the NFP might have been a full-blown expansion, it was walked back to a mere flight of DLCs. Everything about NFP was sloppy. The art. The civ abilities. The bugs. And all the various silly ideas that had collected over the years were implemented as modes to pad it out.

So instead of Modes = Bugs, it's more like 2K meddling = sloppiness + bugs + modes.

 

[PiR]

Yes, I guess my expectation was that paying for the modes would ensure less sloppiness and that was very naive.

 

[Gorbles]

Yes, I suppose the premise was to prevent forward settling. But...

Have you played any of the TSL Earth maps?

Europe tends to fall into dark ages (free states).
Loyalty was so half baked.

It forces you to expand wider, taller, faster.
Then your enemies just fall into your hands.

I've been play testing the new Leader Pass TSLs on my map/mod UN Earth Maps.

Ptolemaic Cleo just took all of northern Europe though loyalty after it fell rather rapidly into dark ages. (This is with Dramatic Ages on BTW).
This was basically just a rollover. Took out Rome and Sundiata. Game over.

Dramatic Ages do skew the risk-reward dramatically. I'm not sure that it invalidates the intended premise, though.

Lua, XML. Even some graphics tech?

That's how there's a Civ V skin mod for Civ VI (produced by a FXS engineer)

The maps are ported.
(My most recent map/mod Scrambled China is a straight port of the Civ V map)

Etc.

If you scratch the surface, there maybe code in Civ VI that is from all the way back Civ IV(?).

Civ VI is the Windows of 4X.

I promise I'm not picking on you here

But all games do this. Investing in and maintaining a game engine takes an unholy amount of expertise. Even games that rely on third-party engines like Unreal or Unity do a lot of custom implementation over the top that (if turned into a franchise) persists between entries.

It's not that VI is the Windows of 4X. All games - especially ones with in-house engines (which is very common in the strategy genres, from turn-based to real-time) - are Windows

I don't expect VII to be any different. Even if they managed to come out with "hey, we've rebuilt everything in Unreal", the key point there is rebuilding. Existing designs would need to be replicated. Existing algorithms as well. To borrow an example from my work, if I have a service that needs to deliver a specific XML or JSON payload, but we update our Java version from some horrifically ancient version to a modern, supported LTS, that service would benefit from being refactored. But it'd still produce the same output, and from that requirement this will in turn require that existing logic is reproduced in some form. In short, we'd still use a fair bit of the old code.

 

[Pistol90]

One thing I am thinking about is --- they will probably left some mechanics in initial release of the game, and then put it back in DLC/Expansions.

No way they start Civ7 where Civ6 ended.

So probably they will kick out mechanic's which aren't really good or deep enough in Civ6 to be reworked during Civ7 lifespan.

My guesses are:

1. Loyalty (probably most unfinished mechanic in Civ6)
2. Disasters (add disease, earthquakes, some kind of famine - crops failed etc)
3. World congress (as always)
4. Emergency (blend into world congress, or kick out completly)

Base game Civ7 will surely have (if you ask me):

1. Reworked religion
2. Some adjustments to culture
3. Two-trees (Science and Social) will remain
4. Basic Civ6 combat/movement with maybe some adjustments

 

[TreVor_ish]

One thing I am thinking about is --- they will probably left some mechanics in initial release of the game, and then put it back in DLC/Expansions.

I can't believe people are ok with it.

 

[pokiehl]

I can't believe people are ok with it.

It's pretty cynical of anyone to think that they are withholding content on purpose for more sales. More likely is that developing a brand new game takes a ton of effort and time, it's simply not feasible to include all of those systems at once. Plus, having the game out for a while allows them to gather more fan feedback and iterate on those systems.

 

[blackbutterfly]

I don't expect VII to be any different. Even if they managed to come out with "hey, we've rebuilt everything in Unreal", the key point there is rebuilding. Existing designs would need to be replicated. Existing algorithms as well. To borrow an example from my work, if I have a service that needs to deliver a specific XML or JSON payload, but we update our Java version from some horrifically ancient version to a modern, supported LTS, that service would benefit from being refactored. But it'd still produce the same output, and from that requirement this will in turn require that existing logic is reproduced in some form. In short, we'd still use a fair bit of the old code.

Not re-engineering for the sake of it.

Unity uses YaML instead of XML.
There is no editing of the markup directly.
That's +1.

From modding maps for Civ VI for 6+(?) years now, I can see they need a lead developer who knows something about concurrency.

In Java you know the conventions you must maintain for your code to be compliant.
There seems to have been no coding conventions in Civ VI code. And that's the result of legacy.

In a language like Scala most of these concurrency coding conventions (for Java) are built into the language.

 

[Gorbles]

Not re-engineering for the sake of it.

Unity uses YaML instead of XML.
There is no editing of the markup directly.
That's +1.

From modding maps for Civ VI for 6+(?) years now, I can see they need a lead developer who knows something about concurrency.

In Java you know the conventions you must maintain for your code to be compliant.
There seems to have been no coding conventions in Civ VI code. And that's the result of legacy.

In a language like Scala most of these concurrency coding conventions (for Java) are built into the language.

I'll keep this short to minimise off-topic, but code is rarely perfectly designed. Far from it. Production-ready code is code that works. Conventions are nice-to-have, not necessary to have (in a world where shipping a product to sell is the primary motivator).

I have a billion things I can and do suggest at work. A minority are actioned on, because of the cost-benefit analysis of spending time on things that have a monetary return vs. things that doesn't (as immediately). The same goes for games development, because ultimately a for-profit enterprise (in which Firaxis' hands are completely tied, because it isn't up to them).

I really wouldn't make assumptions on what Firaxis' developers know based on the final state of the production-ready code. I used to play a game called Heroes of Newerth, that was stuck with an x86 executable for years. There was eventually a 64-bit version of the project, but it took a lot of collaboration with the community due to the dev's scant resources. It wasn't that the developers didn't know how to do it. It was that the work involved was so significant that there was never time for it, vs. pushing out content and improvements that kept the game alive (being a live service / MOBA title).

(YAML, XML, JSON, etc . . . these all have people who like them, and people who don't. I know people who hate YAML, others who hate JSON, and others who hate XML - there are good and bad ways to use all three of these markup languages, even if JSON isn't strictly a markup language)

 

[TreVor_ish]

It's pretty cynical of anyone to think that they are withholding content on purpose for more sales. More likely is that developing a brand new game takes a ton of effort and time, it's simply not feasible to include all of those systems at once. Plus, having the game out for a while allows them to gather more fan feedback and iterate on those systems.

Making more money is making more money, doesn't matter if one thinks it's cynical or just pure evil way of developing content that looks slightly different.
Looking at Fifa games, where they also change much of an engine every couple of years, and then just update rosters every year - which btw is quite a hassle to do having so many teams. And then removing and bringing back gameplay parts. However EA makes a lot from lootboxes on those games and fans are ok with it, looking at numbers. Doesn't matter that people playing single player for years made this possible.
In terms of CIV, taking away disasters from new iteration and bringing it back as DLC with new ones that would be togglable as game mode for instance would be fine. We know nothing for now how the game will look like.

 

[pokiehl]

Making more money is making more money, doesn't matter if one thinks it's cynical or just pure evil way of developing content that looks slightly different.
Looking at Fifa games, where they also change much of an engine every couple of years, and then just update rosters every year - which btw is quite a hassle to do having so many teams. And then removing and bringing back gameplay parts. However EA makes a lot from lootboxes on those games and fans are ok with it, looking at numbers. Doesn't matter that people playing single player for years made this possible.

No doubt about that. But in my experience, it’s more nakedly obvious when it’s a simple cash grab (like your FIFA example). For Civ, my gut feeling is that it’s simply unreasonable to expect Civ 7 on release have everything Civ 6 had after 6+ years of development, while at the same innovating new gameplay and refining those systems.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I would prefer fewer but much better and more intertwined features.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

No doubt about that. But in my experience, it’s more nakedly obvious when it’s a simple cash grab (like your FIFA example). For Civ, my gut feeling is that it’s simply unreasonable to expect Civ 7 on release have everything Civ 6 had after 6+ years of development, while at the same innovating new gameplay and refining those systems.

Quite right. If you want to get the equivalent of Civ 6 vanilla + RnF + GS worth of content WITH 1/3 changed and 1/3 new, then you should expect to pay in excess of what it cost to buy Civ 6 vanilla + RnF + GS all at once.

It turns out that not many people are going to drop over $100 for a game at once, even if it's loaded to the gills with features.

 

[pokiehl]

Quite right. If you want to get the equivalent of Civ 6 vanilla + RnF + GS worth of content WITH 1/3 changed and 1/3 new, then you should expect to pay in excess of what it cost to buy Civ 6 vanilla + RnF + GS all at once.

It turns out that not many people are going to drop over $100 for a game at once, even if it's loaded to the gills with features.

Yep. Plus Civ 7 will take more time and money to make than Civ 6, which took more time and money to make than Civ 5, which took more time and money to make than Civ 4...Even if every Civ fan were willing to pay those prices for a "fully featured" game at release, with how long games take to develop nowadays, it feels like it would take close to a decade for the game to come out.

My overall point is that the same amount of content will take more time and money to make for Civ 7 than it did for Civ 6.

 

[Kwami]

Also, Civ VI shipped as a pretty damn good game with most of the features from Civ V and a bunch of new stuff, too. Sure, some things were cut and eventually added later (e.g. World Congress), but there weren't many features like that. I don't see why we should be expecting anything less from VII.

 

[Xur]

Also, Civ VI shipped as a pretty damn good game with most of the features from Civ V and a bunch of new stuff, too. Sure, some things were cut and eventually added later (e.g. World Congress), but there weren't many features like that. I don't see why we should be expecting anything less from VII.

Civ6 was the most feature complete release, but those features and systems were also among the worst implemented. I’d rather have a few good features/system than a lot of poor ones.