The Hidden and Unused content of Civilization VI

[Potworny]

With a renewed interest in research of Firaxis logos hidden among Civ VI leaders, @AriaLyric and myself have found quite a batch of new info in the SDK Assets downloadable from Steam. Among our new discoveries weren't only logos - we have actually uncovered some more complex content that doesn't seem to ever have been shown to us.

As the assets appear to come from different stages of development of the game, there's a lot of things pointing to various interesting processes that may have happened during the development of Civ VI. There's a lot of small, unexpected details, like an unused background for Teddy Roosevelt or this weird placeholder of 22 Montezumas :

Spoiler :

There's also plenty of other things related to the Aztecs, more than you'd expect. Among the most interesting is perhaps the two-headed snake, which the game uses as Aztec's in-game logo, labeled as 'CivPoland'. All this seems to suggest that the leader and civ roster that we know from our final game may have been different at some stage, with Aztecs possibly not being a preorder bonus. 22 was also the number of leaders found on the leaked leader chart (the one that famously didn't include Tamar of Georgia)

But there are also some bigger discoveries. The most interesting to me is what may be textures for a completely unused leader. I have posted them earlier in the logo thread, and here they are again.

Spoiler :

There's a theory I had on the leader in the logo thread:
The 'test' in the filename possibly indicates that the texture could be the very first that was made for any Civ VI leader model, and therefore it could be unrelated to our final roster. It may have been made for a potential DLC leader, which would fit my theory from the 2016, when I thought that the colors of duplicate civs that would appear in the game were related to DLC civs. There's a post I've made on the topic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/5vq8y2/ive_made_a_little_investigation_into_the_topic_of/
Before the first DLC releases there were four color schemes that would appear consistently: the first two ones exactly matched what would become Poland and Australia's colors (from their First Look videos), the other two didn't end up matching Persia and Macedon, however the purple-orange one almost exactly matches Cyrus' gown:


This green texture of our unknown test leader may actually corespond with the last duplicate jersey that appeared in the game back in 2016. The dev assets indicate that there were some shuffles with the roster, and all this evidence may point to the most radical change that occured during the development process. Perhaps it may even explain why the Viking DLC was the only one not to contain an additional civ? remember the wooden leaderheads? could our guy be Charlie the Great? It may all depend on who this guy is. I can't quite put my finger on it, but he really does seem familiar to me.

There's probably much more that I have no idea how to access, maybe even a model and animations for the guy that we have found. There was an interesting thread on r/civ around the release of R&F, which showcased an alpha build that somebody seemed to have somehow accidentaly downloaded: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/7ws623/accidentally_got_an_alpha_build_of_the_expansion/
With the SDK Assets, we have a huge database with potentially dozens of things like this to find. I think it's worth a thread and an investigation.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

But there are also some bigger discoveries. The most interesting to me is what may be textures for a completely unused leader. I have posted them earlier in the logo thread, and here they are again.

Genoa was found in the game files as a potentially playable civilization in the base game. That leader looks like he could be an Italian in the Medieval/Renaissance era and concept art for them.

This green texture of our unknown test leader may actually corespond with the last duplicate jersey that appeared in the game back in 2016. The dev assets indicate that there were some shuffles with the roster, and all this evidence may point to the most radical change that occured during the development process. Perhaps it may even explain why the Viking DLC was the only one not to contain an additional civ? remember the wooden leaderheads? could our guy be Charlie the Great? It may all depend on who this guy is. I can't quite put my finger on it, but he really does seem familiar to me.

I always felt like Norway might have originally been in the Vikings DLC and for whatever reason they decided to move it into the bae game.

 

[Myomoto]

22 Montezumas seems like an entirely excessive amount of Montezumas.

 

[Haig]

Would be interesting to hear about the designers what would Genoa's bonuses been like. Or maybe Genoa arrives on NFP.

 

[tsf4]

Interesting, makes me think of perhaps a unique point system for native civs in a New world Scenario.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Genoa was found in the game files as a potentially playable civilization in the base game. That leader looks like he could be an Italian in the Medieval/Renaissance era and concept art for them.

Yeah I said in the other thread that looks like a Pope to me, maybe Innocent III.

Although Genoa seems a lot more likely given that we know it was in development.

 

[Potworny]

Yeah I said in the other thread that looks like a Pope to me, maybe Innocent III.

He does seem quite papal, I agree, but Innocent III probably died a little too young to realistically have eye wrinkles this crazy.

I've also found Sang Han's leader/advisor concept art in the SDK Assets, in a series of files labeled with 'AdvisorRibbon'

Spoiler :

There are also textures for another advisor (the daughter from the cinematics). She would even appear to have a Firaxis logo on her:

Spoiler :

The green unused clothing in the files also seem to have the first letters of the latin alphabet on them!:

Spoiler :

If you want to investigate this, download the Civ VI Development Assets available in the Steam Library Tool tab. I can't really do anything with those but search the textures and there is plenty of other types of files. Asking the devs could yield results too, I guess. Anyway, I'm too intrigued to give this up.

 

[Haig]

Thanks for digging these cool details, please keep it up!

 

[8housesofelixir]

Yeah I said in the other thread that looks like a Pope to me, maybe Innocent III.

He does seem quite papal, I agree, but Innocent III probably died a little too young to realistically have eye wrinkles this crazy.

I don't know, the clothing in the second picture looks like a 19-century waistcoat to me...

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I don't know, the clothing in the second picture looks like a 19-century waistcoat to me...

I'm seeing a medieval Italian overcoat, looks a bit thicker and drapier, but my guess is about as good as yours. I can't place that quatrefoil symbol that the Firaxis logo is on...

 

[Lord Lakely]

It kinda looks like peters outfit to me. Doesn't he also wear a dark green coat.

 

[Vandlys]

22 Montezumas seems like an entirely excessive amount of Montezumas.

Any number of Montezumas over 5 is called a Montezumass.

It kinda looks like peters outfit to me. Doesn't he also wear a dark green coat.

I always thought it was more of a dark grey/black.

 

[Linklite]

Looks green to me, but it is quite dark, so could easily emsee why you might remember it as grey/black.

https://www.google.com/search?q=civ...=3#imgrc=CHhPkRrlokv-RM&imgdii=aqSFwGQY7SVnWM

 

[Potworny]

The face and the clothes I presented in the first post may actually be related to two separate models, so keep that in mind. The face file is called kiran_test_pete_skin_BASE, which would suggest its relation to Peter the Great, but the appearance seems completely different. On the other hand, clothing textures' names (kiran_test_clothing_.) don't point to anything specific. And I don't know where did these latin alphabet letters come from. Here's a better and uncropped version of the texture:

Spoiler :

I've also found more evidence pointing to a leader I didn't recognise. There are Asset files for them ('artie'; 'frank'; 'franky'; 'franky3'), which seem to refer to them as 'archie' or 'frank' or 'franky'. They even appear to have animations somewhere (01_FIRST_MEET and 02_DECLARE_WAR_FROM_HUMAN are specified, with names 'Panther' and 'DarkDank' attributed to them across different files - both of those can be found in the Animations folder). There are also geometry and material files for them which I don't know what to do about and skin textures. I couldn't find clothing for them.

Spoiler :

With my lacking programming abiities I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of data there is, and I feel very inefficient with what I'm doing. I think there are enough jigsaw pieces to put something interesting together, but it's not something that I can do. The ''artie'' asset is probably something that should be easy enough to open with the Asset Editor, but I have no access to it at the moment. So, we currently have some leads to research with varying levels of difficulty. I need help from anybody that can find their bearings around these files.

 

[fy00sh]

So I've been trying to learn how to use the asset previewer to look at the models, and while I haven't yet figured out how to actually move and rotate the models I can confirm that Gandhi's pocketwatch, which @Potworny found the textures for, is always hanging on his right hip, probably just off screen in-game. It's also interesting to note that the bottom of his staff actually sticks further down than his feet in most animations, so it looks like he's constantly ramming it into the ground. Also, his feet get the same treatment as Mvemba's and porbably most other leaders' feet, just looking like generic brown flat-bottomed boots... despite the fact that Gandhi seemingly isn't actually wearing any footwear. Ends up looking like Gandhi just doesn't have any toes, like a Sonic character. XD

Spoiler images :

 

[Potworny]

To navigate the Asset previewer I think you have to hold down shift, alt or ctrl (I don't exactly remember) and mousewheel or the left mouse button. If that works, try giving 'artie' a go Unfortunately, I don't know how to load the assets from the EPs in it.

Good work on the pocket watch, makes me wonder if it was ever meant to be used, along with its textured face.

 

[fy00sh]

Potworny thank you so much you were right, it really was that simple ( ^_^ ; )

So! Now I'm gonna spend a while compiling all the interesting stuff I can find and sharing it here (and in the logo thread if it's logo-related)

Went ahead and looked into Artie and Frank, and it turns out they're both floating heads! There's actually three instances of Frank, named "frank", "franky", and "franky3". As far as I can tell, frank and franky are identical except that they have different animations assigned to them, while loading the franky3 asset doesn't yield anything visible.

Spoiler Artie :

Spoiler Frank :

I can still only rotate the camera around a set point, which is where these guy's feet would presumably be, so in order to look at them head-on I have to be very zoomed out.

There's also two animationless (I think) models for Catherine de Medici named "Catherine_Market" and "catherinemarketing", and a model for an improvement titled "Automagical Assignment" which appears as a white orb half-submerged in the ground that emits light from one side.

Spoiler Catherine_Market :

Spoiler catherinemarketing :

Spoiler Automagical Assignment :

I'll keep looking thru the files, feel free to lemme know if there's anything in particular you guys want me to look for!

 

[bbbt]

Artie and Frank were perhaps alt rock band models with those dos?

 

[Revanchist]

Maybe they were just base models for artists to work off of? I don't know of any specific archibalds or franks, but I could be missing something big. I don't know why, but the way Artie looks makes me think he was some sort of planned Gallic leader with the hair and all.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I suspect they were just early placeholders.