So anyway, place your bets: when will civ7 arrive?

[brewgod]

Ed....Pump out CIV 7 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Gorbles]

That would make seven years since Civ6 was released (2016 - 2023) which makes it even harder for me to believe we'd have to wait even longer. It is hard for me to believe that the pandemic work from home and video conferences would slow down the process more than a few months at most, it didn't slow down the rest of video game/Internet/entertainment industry that much. Do we even have some concrete examples of video game release X being pushed back explicitly Y amount of months because of covid? The entire industry was releasing massive hits during the freakin apocalyptic 2020. You know, little indie games such as Doom Eternal and its DLCs, Cyberpunk, Death Stranding, Crusader Kings III, Total War Troy, 15th Assasins Creed and 57th Call od Duty etc.

Tons of games releasing during the pandemic had most of their development done prior to the pandemic, or "benefited" from things such as workers being shunted back into the office as soon as it was feasible to do so (or weren't allowed to work from home until it was mandated by external forces). Games are still getting delayed now because of the knock-on impact to the games (and greater) software industry.

We'll never get a concrete reason for any game being pushed back unless the studio thinks it's a good idea to publicise it, so all we're left with is guesses. There are various ways companies in general handled the pandemic, and they range from "short term gain, long term pain" all the way to the opposite "short term pain (as the studio adjusts its tooling and remote capabilities), long term gain". It's impossible to guess at, really, and we also don't know what competing priorities publishers throw into the mix (with regards to games development specifically).

I work in software, and we transitioned to remote working very effectively and smoothly (in-house Microsoft ecosystem meant that cloud-side tools were already there, and we don't have much bespoke internal stuff that has to be done in the office, compared to something like games dev which have huge repositories full of 3D assets requiring specially-licensed tools). The pandemic still affected us as our teams were thrown about by constant illness (and still are), people having to relocate IRL, and so on, and so forth.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I have had a lot of fun with Civ 6 from day 1. Sure, it's more feature filled after 6 years of development than it was on day 1, but you don't know what you've missed until you actually have the new content.

I would much rather have Civ 7 sooner than additional DLC for Civ 6, especially given the noticable slippage in overall quality from New Frontier Pass onward.

I was msging a modder the other day and he said that from GS/NFP on it seemed like they deliberatly made it much harder to make mods work

I know you have a lot of experience in this area, and a number of excellent mods I am using, would you say this was your experience?

Nearly a year ago.


What are you talking about ? Civ4 is ugly even on a super-computer of the NASA. It was the beginning of the 3D (at least for the series) and graphics are absolute garbage and a step behind compared to Civ3. There's even a delay betweern actions, because 3D was alike at those times. I installed it lately, and I can tell you as much. By the way I bought this computer for Civ5 (with quality components, so not at ALDI ), and it runs smoothly. Civ6 too. And a good number of the recent games. I bought a PS5 499€ for games that require power. (and am a bit disappointed for now, I'm struggling with Demon's Souls for now, a bit hardcore and unfair, I'm lost in the prison past the arrows thing, and I felt some times in the void )

Ya after getting a pretty high end CAD laptop I decided to reinstall Civ4

It’s did not age well at all visually. Frankly it’s hideous. Some aspects of the gameplay are super tedious and micromanagy as well

In the end I modded Civ6 to have the best elements of 6 and 4

 

[darko82]

Maybe next year. Not earlier.

 

[pokiehl]

I was msging a modder the other day and he said that from GS/NFP on it seemed like they deliberatly made it much harder to make mods work

I know you have a lot of experience in this area, and a number of excellent mods I am using, would you say this was your experience?

That sounds like the reaction of someone who takes modding this game a little too seriously or personally.

The last thing I want to do is reignite the "moddability of civ 6" debate, but in terms of moddability over time, no, I don't feel that way. Have certain things been hardcoded? Yes, but that was the same with R&F too.

 

[aieeegrunt]

That sounds like the reaction of someone who takes modding this game a little too seriously or personally.

The last thing I want to do is reignite the "moddability of civ 6" debate, but in terms of moddability over time, no, I don't feel that way. Have certain things been hardcoded? Yes, but that was the same with R&F too.

OK thank you

 

[Bechhold]

Civilization VII should come out any month after Leader Pass. I think the earliest they could do in September/October 2023. Black Friday could be a good starting date for Civ VII.

How to tick off the Marketing department 101.

 

[Krajzen]

Ya after getting a pretty high end CAD laptop I decided to reinstall Civ4

It’s did not age well at all visually. Frankly it’s hideous. Some aspects of the gameplay are super tedious and micromanagy as well

I have to say, my first game in the series was Civ5, and I have attempted to play Civ4 in like 2017 after playing a ton of Civ5 and some amount of Civ6... Jesus, early 00's games made with early 3D graphics are a horrible sight to behold if one wasn't accustomed to them early enough for later nostalgia to cover that misery. Bring me 2d graphics at any day instead.

By the way, I weep in terror of civ7 system requirements, for my laptop's unability to carry even minimum requirements of last year's Elden Ring has been rude awakening call to the new era of graphics

 

[Zaarin]

I have to say, my first game in the series was Civ5, and I have attempted to play Civ4 in like 2017 after playing a ton of Civ5 and some amount of Civ6... Jesus, early 00's games made with early 3D graphics are a horrible sight to behold if one wasn't accustomed to them early enough for later nostalgia to cover that misery. Bring me 2d graphics at any day instead.

I started with Civ3 (I played some Civ2 at a friend's house, but Civ3 was the first one I played a lot of), and I have to say people remember Civ4 with some serious rose-tinted glasses. Was it a great game at its time? Yes, it absolutely was. Was it a better game, overall, than Civ5? Probably, though that's a low bar. There are ideas from Civ4 I'd certainly like to see revisited. But it's not the Holy Grail some people treat it as.

By the way, I weep in terror of civ7 system requirements, for my laptop's unability to carry even minimum requirements of last year's Elden Ring has been rude awakening call to the new era of graphics

I'm suddenly having fantasies about Civ7 being the first TBS game with raytracing. (I have an RTX 3070, and I still wouldn't want that. I don't need to set my computer on fire for Civ. )

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

At least they won't do something like making it a Meta Quest 2 exclusive. Right? RIGHT?

(full disclosure, I did actually try Civ 6 in VR and it's like playing with a 60 inch monitor.)

 

[Quintillus]

Considering Old World is almost a year old at this point and, going off Steam stats, its total units sold (57,150) is just slightly higher than the number of people that played Civ VI just yesterday (51,320 CIV vs 625 for OW), 7 years after release... I'm going to take "eating Civ VI for lunch" with the biggest grain of salt

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Old World launched as an Epic exclusive. So it's sales on Steam are going to be much lower than a game that launched as a Steam exclusive.

It also was the #3 top-selling game on GOG last year.

Now I'd agree that from a sales perspective, no strategy game is currently beating Civilization in cumulative sales, but Old World is doing better than your numbers suggest, likely much better.

Give Soren Johnson and the team behind Old World a few more years to build up their name recognition, and I'll be excited to see what they can do.

That would make seven years since Civ6 was released (2016 - 2023) which makes it even harder for me to believe we'd have to wait even longer. It is hard for me to believe that the pandemic work from home and video conferences would slow down the process more than a few months at most, it didn't slow down the rest of video game/Internet/entertainment industry that much. Do we even have some concrete examples of video game release X being pushed back explicitly Y amount of months because of covid? The entire industry was releasing massive hits during the freakin apocalyptic 2020. You know, little indie games such as Doom Eternal and its DLCs, Cyberpunk, Death Stranding, Crusader Kings III, Total War Troy, 15th Assasins Creed and 57th Call od Duty etc.

I work at a software company and can tell you that the pandemic definitely can cause major delays. The team I am on now lost all its developers in 2021-22, which caused productivity to plummet due to loss of knowledge; it's still not as high as it was previously. Software is not an industry where you can have someone new join and have them be super productive right away, there are ramp-up times even when they have industry experience.

And there was a lot of turnover in the software industry in 2020 - 2022. Some people prefer in-person, some hybrid, some remote, and there was a great reshuffling as people who found themselves at a work setup they didn't enjoy left their company in search of the setup they preferred. I personally left the company I was working at because they weren't introducing in-person or hybrid options, and I dislike remote. I know other people who did the opposite. That wasn't a reason that people were switching jobs pre-pandemic, or in 2020, and there was nothing companies could do to make everyone happy.

IMO, the switch to remote is also a switch that has a lag effect in terms of decreasing productivity. When things went remote in 2020, everyone was working with people they knew from the office and there was kind of a shared camaraderie around the new experience, you now your colleagues and were in it together. But it's a lot tougher to connect with and build good working relationships with people you never meet in person, after starting a new job while remote. They're a name and maybe a face on a screen. You don't learn about their family, or meet up for beers after work, or go off-site for lunch, especially if you aren't in the same city. If you aren't really happy with the creative project you are on, why bother staying? Whereas before, you might not be thrilled but if you like your colleagues you are more likely to stay.

Remote is especially bad for new white-collar professionals. You learn so much in the software industry by seeing what your colleagues are doing and asking questions. The hit to productivity from new employees not learning as quickly didn't happen in 2020, but a few years later. Now working at a local company that's hybrid-but-with-real-teams-in-office-most-days, we're seeing bumper crops of young candidates applying, looking to get that in-office experience they've been missing out on and which is not nearly as available as it was pre-pandemic.

Being remote also makes "quiet quitting" easier. It's hard to predict how long things will take in software, and if you're remote there's a lot less accountability for "did this take a long time because it really took a long time, or because they were playing FIFA 23 for half the day?" As one of my colleagues said of another colleague recently, "He's really smart when he works" - the implication being that on the "remote" days of our hybrid schedule, he didn't work very much. I'm also of the opinion that the social isolation of being remote increases the chance of "quiet quitting", especially among young workers who live by themselves and may be feeling lost at a job in a new career where they don't know any of their colleagues. I estimated at the time that I was half as productive at the remote job I started mid-pandemic as the one I worked at pre-pandemic. My colleagues still thought I was doing a great job, but I was only doing half as great of a job as I had been in the office or even in the first few months of the pandemic with people I knew from the office. The work itself wasn't harder, the management was fine, it was just hard to be motivated and easy to be distracted at home.

All that is to say there are a lot of reasons why the pandemic could slow things down, some of which wouldn't have been evident yet in 2020.

To be sure I also know other people who became workaholics when they went remote and didn't have the physical office/home separation to remind them of what they should be focusing on. But the effects would vary by company. I have no idea how it has affected Firaxis.

I'm going to say Thursday, then I have a 1 in 7 chance of being correct.

Good guess! I'll go for Tuesday!

Wouldn't be surprised if it's announced this fall. With the sales on Civ VI in the past half year it certainly seems like Firaxis wants everyone who's even thought about buying Civ VI to buy it, which seems the logical strategy if the successor is not far out.

 

[bbbt]

I worked for a tech company that was fully remote even before COVID, and we still took a productivity hit. Half the staff suddenly had kids at home they had to deal with

Like every where, Firaxis has a ton of open roles listed - and has for a while - so I'm guessing they are understaffed (like everyone). They've actually had open Xbox and Playstation development roles posted for a while, so maybe the LP isn't on consoles cause they can't hire anyone.

 

[DImensiondog]

It will be unplayable about 1-2 years cuz of empty Vanilla game with no content as usually

I only played civ 6 for a couple of months but I think the two major expansions didn’t add any new game mechanics that were really good. They were fun/novel at best. I think civ 5 expansions changed the game much more and were better.

 

[AntSou]

I worked for a tech company that was fully remote even before COVID, and we still took a productivity hit. Half the staff suddenly had kids at home they had to deal with

Like every where, Firaxis has a ton of open roles listed - and has for a while - so I'm guessing they are understaffed (like everyone). They've actually had open Xbox and Playstation development roles posted for a while, so maybe the LP isn't on consoles cause they can't hire anyone.

Maybe they just have those permanently listed? Why would a company like Firaxis have trouble finding the necessary talent?

Or maybe they prepare shortlists of staff for future titles well in advance (or for the eventuality of someone leaving the company)? I don't think we can conclude they are understaffed for their current projects, but I don't know how the hiring process works.

 

[Krajzen]

Okay, I have been convinced, now I understand how much Firaxis could have been severely hit by a pandemic.

This year it would be 7 years between Civ7 and Civ6 (2016), whereas it was 6 years between Civ5 (2010) and Civ6 and 5 years between Civ4 (2005) and Civ5. Incremental linear increase would make one more year of production time quite convincing, plus possible mess of Covid which could prolong it to more than 7 years. On the other hand there are factors which could have made production time shorter (bigger team, more resources, countless other factors).
Let's see what non - main - civ games has Firaxis released since BNW:

July 2014 - Civilization Revolution 2
October 2014 - Civ: Beyond Earth
March 2015 - Sid Meier's Starships (Jesus I have forgotten this debacle has ever existed)
October 2015 - Civ: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide
February 2016 - XCOM 2
------------after civ6-------
August 2017 - XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
April 2020 - XCOM: Chimera Squad
December 2022 - Midnight Suns

Looking at this, it would seem that Firaxis was more occupied between civ5 and civ6 than after civ6 since
a) Beyond Earth was very, very similar game, so it could siphon a lot of people and resources from main civ games development (iirc their tactical games have a separate team). Not to mention Civilization Revolution 2. Not to mention the misery of Starships
b) I may be wrong but it seems to me XCOM 2 was much bigger deal than either Chimera Squad or Midnight Suns (for example it had peak Steam players count at 130k whereas Chimera had 20k and Midnight Suns - 15k). With no other civ - like - spinoffs between civ6 and civ7, assuming XCOM 2 was significantly more resource intensive than latter two tactical games, and assuming Firaxis invested their money from civ6 and xcom2 properly, those factors could have balanced out pandemic impact on development time...

Honestly, now when I look how busy 2014 - 2016 period was, I wonder if the reason for several of those games being mediocre wasn't overstretching their resources between too many separate projects at once

 

[pokiehl]

On the other hand there are factors which could make production time faster (bigger team, more resources, clearer vision).

The general trend is that AAA game development is taking a lot more time and money than ever before. Even discounting Covid, I think it's only logical to assume Civ 7 would take more development time than any other game in the series.

Jason Schreier (currently the most well-known videogame journalist) notably observed last month that videogame development cycles have become so lengthy that any title that started development today would likely be a next-generation release (PS6, etc.). A lot of replies to that tweet from game developers were in agreement.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Why would a company like Firaxis have trouble finding the necessary talent?

Because everyone is having trouble finding the necessary talent nowadays. The video game industry generally has a bad reputation as a place to work in, no idea about Firaxis, and I image there are plenty of other opportunities for work outside the video game industry.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I started with Civ3 (I played some Civ2 at a friend's house, but Civ3 was the first one I played a lot of), and I have to say people remember Civ4 with some serious rose-tinted glasses. Was it a great game at its time? Yes, it absolutely was. Was it a better game, overall, than Civ5? Probably, though that's a low bar. There are ideas from Civ4 I'd certainly like to see revisited. But it's not the Holy Grail some people treat it as.


I'm suddenly having fantasies about Civ7 being the first TBS game with raytracing. (I have an RTX 3070, and I still wouldn't want that. I don't need to set my computer on fire for Civ. )

Ha younglings I started out with Civ1 on floppies.

Using Civ6 as a base and then using mods to chop out some of the more broken/annoying mechanics while modding in Civ4’s better ideas hits the sweet spot for me

 

[tedhebert]

Ha younglings I started out with Civ1 on floppies.

Using Civ6 as a base and then using mods to chop out some of the more broken/annoying mechanics while modding in Civ4’s better ideas hits the sweet spot for me

Civ 2 on floppies also for me… not civ 1 though, not THAT ancient

thing is, I also liked civ 3 but really completely skipped civ 4… bought it, played a little and gave up on civ forever (or so I thought)

Then came civ V and I got hooked again. I know 1UPT has much hatred on this forum, but for me it brought me back into the fold… I realized later that I just hated stack of dooms… didn’t understand that was the real reason until V and 1UPT came along and showed me a different way to do things.

With all it’s flaws, VI is my favorite… I guess that’s because I’m not much into playing old games when new ones are available, so I guess I’ll like VII better, but it!s certainly not guaranteed with the trend taken by video games companies in the last 5 years… hope CIV VII resists the trend, but what I’ve seen from NFP has made me wary…

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I started on Civ 1, but missed 2 and 3. I jumped back in with 4 and continued with 5 and 6.

I prefer 6 over all because it has complex ability suites that densely flavor the civs, more so than 5. I disdain 4's "2 generic traits" setup, although I do slightly prefer the Stack of Doom to the Carpet of Doom. I find maneuvering a swath of units through terrain and fighting wargame style to be a bit tedious.