King Jason
Fleece-bearer
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2005
- Messages
- 2,040
Speculating on an upcoming civ game has essentially become a hobby unto itself around here. I did it with civ4, civ5... skipped BE because I was just utterly disinterested; but am very much anticipating the release of civ6. It seems a beautiful fusion of many good things of past civ games, while also introducing exciting new features.
The other day while speculating about buildings and districts in a different thread, I mentioned that I considered the Courthouse to be an Iconic building in civ, and hope it returns. It's a silly thing really, to think of buildings as Iconic - but I really get the sense that civ does have iconic buildings that are just series staples at this point. It's just not "Civ" if you're not building a granary, or beelining to Writing so you can build a Library. These things are less obvious than the inclusion of Civs and Leaders, but they're there.
So I decided to take a look back at the Buildings of the Civilization series and see what common threads I could tug. The following List is fairly complete. Omissions include all unique civ buildings, as they are mostly improvements upon existing buildings. Buildings that fall under specific types but have been enhanced via certain gameplay elements have been simplified, for example the religious buildings. In civ4, every religious had about 3 buildings each - So for civ4 in the chart, I simply stuck with "Temple and Cathedral", and added "shrine" to fill out the 3rd category. I did a similar thing for civ5; keeping shrine, temple, then having "cathedral" be representative of the bonus religious building(s) you could acquire through faith.
Other simplification were made where they made sense. Such as Public Transportation being moved to the "mass transit" category. Some buildings were omitted entirely, such as the Great artist guilds of civ5, the academy of civ4... or any other buildings that required special circumstances to build them other than simply... building them. Minor note; this list includes Civilization Revolution.
The guide;
GREEN - All of the Buildings that have made it into every civ game. Civrev included.
CYAN - All of the buildings that have only missed one game. (Note: often this game was CivRev, arguably for simplification sake)
Light orange - Buildings that have been in 4 games.
Dark orange - Buildings have been in 3 games.
Uncolored - Less than 3.
The number above each iteration is the rough number of how many buildings were in that game - again, not including uniques, specialist buildings, or spaceship parts, etc.
I enjoyed making this list because it really does highlight the iconic buildings of the franchise. Libraries, Aqueducts, Banks... These are things that have always been around. They'll probably be used forever. It might seem a silly thing, you may think; "Well of course a city needs a bank" - That might be true... but what about a Market? That could be called any number of things, they could change the name at any point - Bazaar, Trading post, whatever. You could probably come up with several alternatives for Libraries as well - but it isn't Civ.
The other thing about this list I found interesting is the strange Omissions - Civ1 did not have Harbors or Airports, The Stock Exchange is not as common as I remembered/assumed (nor should it be Orange, by the way)
The last part of this post : Rampant Speculation about civ6. The following information is things we know for sure, or are fairly certain of due to dev commentary;
-There are twelve different types of district
-Each district contains 3 buildings, or 3 "builds" (I will make note of this again)
-Districts follow specific themes; the buildings within them are related in purpose.
Most of this is pretty straightfoward. You build the Campus District, and that allows you to place the Library->University->Laboratory Build path that's been a part of the franchise forever. Really it's an elegant way to continue the whole concept of Upgrade paths. Not every civ game used build paths. Civ1 barely had any. Yet in civ5, nearly every building type was part of an upgrade path. Example, in civ5 factories required workshops, where in civ4 you could build a factory without needing a forge. You'd just build both in your production city because that's what made sense.
It's these build paths and the above list that lends itself to speculating on filling the remaining buildings of the districts we know (all but 1!), and of course to discover what the last district could possibly be.
Here's a look at our current best guess of civ6's buildings.
I'll run through each district briefly with my own speculations. Incoming Wall of Text;
Also, In case anyone was curious, Math tells us there should be somewhere around 60 buildings if you include the construction of the district itself in the build order as an actual building. If you don't, well then it's about 48 buildings. So the building count is in keeping with the last two installments in case anyone was thinking it looks light this time around. Again, that number does not include uniques.
The other day while speculating about buildings and districts in a different thread, I mentioned that I considered the Courthouse to be an Iconic building in civ, and hope it returns. It's a silly thing really, to think of buildings as Iconic - but I really get the sense that civ does have iconic buildings that are just series staples at this point. It's just not "Civ" if you're not building a granary, or beelining to Writing so you can build a Library. These things are less obvious than the inclusion of Civs and Leaders, but they're there.
So I decided to take a look back at the Buildings of the Civilization series and see what common threads I could tug. The following List is fairly complete. Omissions include all unique civ buildings, as they are mostly improvements upon existing buildings. Buildings that fall under specific types but have been enhanced via certain gameplay elements have been simplified, for example the religious buildings. In civ4, every religious had about 3 buildings each - So for civ4 in the chart, I simply stuck with "Temple and Cathedral", and added "shrine" to fill out the 3rd category. I did a similar thing for civ5; keeping shrine, temple, then having "cathedral" be representative of the bonus religious building(s) you could acquire through faith.
Other simplification were made where they made sense. Such as Public Transportation being moved to the "mass transit" category. Some buildings were omitted entirely, such as the Great artist guilds of civ5, the academy of civ4... or any other buildings that required special circumstances to build them other than simply... building them. Minor note; this list includes Civilization Revolution.
The guide;
GREEN - All of the Buildings that have made it into every civ game. Civrev included.
CYAN - All of the buildings that have only missed one game. (Note: often this game was CivRev, arguably for simplification sake)
Light orange - Buildings that have been in 4 games.
Dark orange - Buildings have been in 3 games.
Uncolored - Less than 3.
The number above each iteration is the rough number of how many buildings were in that game - again, not including uniques, specialist buildings, or spaceship parts, etc.
Spoiler :
I enjoyed making this list because it really does highlight the iconic buildings of the franchise. Libraries, Aqueducts, Banks... These are things that have always been around. They'll probably be used forever. It might seem a silly thing, you may think; "Well of course a city needs a bank" - That might be true... but what about a Market? That could be called any number of things, they could change the name at any point - Bazaar, Trading post, whatever. You could probably come up with several alternatives for Libraries as well - but it isn't Civ.
The other thing about this list I found interesting is the strange Omissions - Civ1 did not have Harbors or Airports, The Stock Exchange is not as common as I remembered/assumed (nor should it be Orange, by the way)
The last part of this post : Rampant Speculation about civ6. The following information is things we know for sure, or are fairly certain of due to dev commentary;
-There are twelve different types of district
-Each district contains 3 buildings, or 3 "builds" (I will make note of this again)
-Districts follow specific themes; the buildings within them are related in purpose.
Most of this is pretty straightfoward. You build the Campus District, and that allows you to place the Library->University->Laboratory Build path that's been a part of the franchise forever. Really it's an elegant way to continue the whole concept of Upgrade paths. Not every civ game used build paths. Civ1 barely had any. Yet in civ5, nearly every building type was part of an upgrade path. Example, in civ5 factories required workshops, where in civ4 you could build a factory without needing a forge. You'd just build both in your production city because that's what made sense.
It's these build paths and the above list that lends itself to speculating on filling the remaining buildings of the districts we know (all but 1!), and of course to discover what the last district could possibly be.
Here's a look at our current best guess of civ6's buildings.
Spoiler :
I'll run through each district briefly with my own speculations. Incoming Wall of Text;
Spoiler :
Also, In case anyone was curious, Math tells us there should be somewhere around 60 buildings if you include the construction of the district itself in the build order as an actual building. If you don't, well then it's about 48 buildings. So the building count is in keeping with the last two installments in case anyone was thinking it looks light this time around. Again, that number does not include uniques.
thanks for making that post! Very intrigued about the last district now
