What after the New Frontier Pass - the end or more

Anton recently twitted this:



Maybe it's just me, but considering how careful Firaxis are with what they reveal, they wouldn't just casually hint at the next title like this, would they? The fact Anton feels comfortable making such a tweet leads me to believe they are not currently working on a "story-driven, experimental 4x in [Alpha Centauri's] vein".

To put it the other way around, just imagine Firaxis were working on a new Sci-Fi title. What are the chances Anton would make this tweet? I'd expect complete silence on the subject.
 
Anton recently twitted this:



Maybe it's just me, but considering how careful Firaxis are with what they reveal, they wouldn't just casually hint at the next title like this, would they? The fact Anton feels comfortable making such a tweet leads me to believe they are not currently working on a "story-driven, experimental 4x in [Alpha Centauri's] vein".

To put it the other way around, just imagine Firaxis were working on a new Sci-Fi title. What are the chances Anton would make this tweet? I'd expect complete silence on the subject.
With all the "fantasy" elements being released in Civ 6 game modes recently I'd be surprised if a spin-off game would not be a 4X fantasy game either set in the real world and have civs with mythological components, or a completely original world with fantasy races.
 
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I'd love to see a SMAC2 with the Civ6 engine. SMAC really pioneered a lot of the concepts that would appear in later Civ games - it's really the "real" Civ3 (with everything else being incremented numerically up by 1).

I'm kind of confused how Firaxis would no longer own the SMAC IP though. Why would they sell that, and also who would have bought it?
 
I'm kind of confused how Firaxis would no longer own the SMAC IP though. Why would they sell that, and also who would have bought it?
It was published by EA. EA owns the rights.
 
Extraordinary Avarice could ask an arm and a leg for Firaxis to have the rights to publish SMAC2.
Though as I said elsewhere, they did allow Tim Schaffer to remaster several LucasArts adventure games after they obtained the rights as part of their license from Disney so who knows.
 
One thing to think about when speculating about Civ VI’s future.

First, FXS have added a lot of “modular” content to the game that seems designed to let them add more stuff fairly easily. Game Modes are an obvious example. But also Districts, separating Civs and Leaders, expanded tech tree (particularly future tech), policy cards, governors etc etc etc. You can even see that in the recent addition of “Persona Packs”. If FXS is adding stuff that makes it easy for them to keep expanding the game, then surely that’s so they can, you know, add more stuff to the game?

Second, at various points, FXS do seem to have held back certain mechanics or elements (particularly Civs) for future expansions. Some of this may have in part because particularly things weren’t ready for “prime time”, eg World Congress. But I think part of this is so that they always have “fan favourite” stuff they can drop into future content to drive sales. Given this, I do find it funny that we seem to have all the mechanics needed for some very Civ 5-ish ideology mechanics, ie Governments, Tourism, Loyalty, World Congress, Governors (which are mechanically very similar to Social Policies / Tenets), but... yet we still don’t have Ideology in the game. I think even some of the unit gaps are a bit telling here too - eg where’s my Trebuchet?

Third, Civ VI is clearly designed to be the “Civiest-Civ that ever Cived”. I find it hard to believe FXS would now go “oh well, we’re done”, when there is still clearly stuff left they can do and people are still willing to buy. I think there’s a genuine question how much any new content would really shake up the game. Corporations Mode is probably a good example of where FXS is at - they knew people wanted Corporations, they totally delivered that and it works pretty well, but it’s also really just an “add on” to the existing game rather than really changing how the game plays.

I’m fairly hopeful we’ll get more stuff. I’m also fairly hopeful it’ll cover some of the stuff I’ve been hoping will get added. I doubt it’ll be a full expansion though. Maybe another season pass. Maybe a “mini” expansion or “mini” season pass. I may well be wrong, but I just can’t see FXS totally really walking away from Civ VI at this point, even if they are working on eg a new franchise.
 
One point to take into consideration abot civ6 future, is the engine and how much they can add to it without completely breaking it.

I mean the stability of the game has gone down since the initial release, and it seems to be even worse since the NFP monthly patches.

At some point, either they take a deep breath and work on fixing what they've broken, or they do a clean start with a new iteration, on a base that can support their plans (remember how they mentioned that adding climate changes and events had been a challenge for the graphic engine, with the results all users of YnAMP know of)
 
All this talk about Beyond Earth made me want to go back and play it again. Then I remembered why I have not played in a few years, the game refuses to launch through Steam. :undecide:

Oh well, give me BE2 or Civ 7 I guess.
Works just fine for me on Windows 7 Steam.
What issues are you getting? I do recall it was very flaky with Mods - these had to get enabled before starting to even try & load or create a game, as running a mod even gave you a modded load screen.
 
I’m fairly hopeful we’ll get more stuff. I’m also fairly hopeful it’ll cover some of the stuff I’ve been hoping will get added. I doubt it’ll be a full expansion though. Maybe another season pass. Maybe a “mini” expansion or “mini” season pass. I may well be wrong, but I just can’t see FXS totally really walking away from Civ VI at this point, even if they are working on eg a new franchise.

All your points saying that what i was hoping for, that they would add more, like smash does now with the season pass.
But at the same time, @Gedemon has absoluty right. At one point they have to fix the problems they made.
Since, I guess bvut can clearly be wrong, GS there is no was to play Biggest World Map over turn 300, without crashing it. Befor that update it worked fine.
 
One thing to think about when speculating about Civ VI’s future.

First, FXS have added a lot of “modular” content to the game that seems designed to let them add more stuff fairly easily. Game Modes are an obvious example. But also Districts, separating Civs and Leaders, expanded tech tree (particularly future tech), policy cards, governors etc etc etc. You can even see that in the recent addition of “Persona Packs”. If FXS is adding stuff that makes it easy for them to keep expanding the game, then surely that’s so they can, you know, add more stuff to the game?

Second, at various points, FXS do seem to have held back certain mechanics or elements (particularly Civs) for future expansions. Some of this may have in part because particularly things weren’t ready for “prime time”, eg World Congress. But I think part of this is so that they always have “fan favourite” stuff they can drop into future content to drive sales. Given this, I do find it funny that we seem to have all the mechanics needed for some very Civ 5-ish ideology mechanics, ie Governments, Tourism, Loyalty, World Congress, Governors (which are mechanically very similar to Social Policies / Tenets), but... yet we still don’t have Ideology in the game. I think even some of the unit gaps are a bit telling here too - eg where’s my Trebuchet?

Third, Civ VI is clearly designed to be the “Civiest-Civ that ever Cived”. I find it hard to believe FXS would now go “oh well, we’re done”, when there is still clearly stuff left they can do and people are still willing to buy. I think there’s a genuine question how much any new content would really shake up the game. Corporations Mode is probably a good example of where FXS is at - they knew people wanted Corporations, they totally delivered that and it works pretty well, but it’s also really just an “add on” to the existing game rather than really changing how the game plays.

I’m fairly hopeful we’ll get more stuff. I’m also fairly hopeful it’ll cover some of the stuff I’ve been hoping will get added. I doubt it’ll be a full expansion though. Maybe another season pass. Maybe a “mini” expansion or “mini” season pass. I may well be wrong, but I just can’t see FXS totally really walking away from Civ VI at this point, even if they are working on eg a new franchise.

I agree with the thrust of this, generally, even despite all evidence suggesting that Portugal is wrapping everything up. They only just got the game onto all platforms, and it could clearly support more content if they wanted it to. Plus, there is a huge balancing act between building on the game/playerbase they already have, or abandoning it for a new game that, like V and VI, will probably split the playerbase and not gain sales momentum until several expansions in. Plus, it's really boring to have to redesign the same staple civs time and time again; they would need a massive mechanical overhaul to make the effort appealing to both developers and players.

I think others have observed that the civic tree has a bottleneck around ideology that suggests something was planned. Personally I think ideology is already sufficiently covered by policy cards, but the evidence of something is still there. Plus, again, we have the absence of city-states representing Austria and Assyria (and Denmark until it is likely replacing Lisbon), no library UB, no shrine UB, very sparse western US and Africa representation...there are a lot of conspicuous holes.

At any rate, I think it's more likely that if the devs are moving on to the next game, it won't be Civ VII. We need a palate cleanser before we go back to "the same, but slightly different." Something high concept like Beyond Earth, most likely.
 
Put me in the "NFP wraps up Civ 6" camp. I know the format of the NFP was a bit weird - getting content in dribs and drabs - but it is pretty much the 3rd expansion. I think three expansions is about enough to flesh out Civ 6. There's lots of optional goodies in there and plenty of replayability to be had.

I don't know what kind of time frame Firaxis would be looking at to release the seventh iteration of Civilization. Hey they might surprise us all and say "show's over, folks" and close the door on the Civ franchise for good. But never say never. : )
 

If FXS wanted to do another season pass or dlc, I think there is a pretty long list of stuff they could play around with for game modes and or new districts etc. that would be pretty easy to drop in or which they could update and bring back from previous Civ games.
  1. Ideological Pressure. We have all the building blocks for Civ B style Ideological Pressure - eg ideologies, tourism, loyalty, amenities / happiness. They could also fold in stuff like Governors, World Congress, Dark / Golden Ages. Seems like a really easy one to do that would be pretty popular.
  2. Late Game Governors. The existing Govenors basically mirror Civ B Social Policies. It would be pretty easy for FXS to add late game governors that mirror Civ V Ideological Tenets. And FXS have clearly thought about what else they can do with Governors and Governor titles given Secret Societies.
  3. Spies. Surely there’s at least one game mode that could be done around Spies. Civ V also had the ability to send Spies as Ambassadors, which FXS haven’t touched yet. Maybe there’s room to revisit spying on allies with maybe some ally focused spy / ambassador spy missions?
  4. Religion. Surely there is at least one game mode around Religion. Civ B also had another tier of beliefs called Reformation Beliefs, which FXS haven’t touched yet.
  5. Plagues and Health. I hear Pandemic is a pretty popular Board Game. Surely there is at least one game mode around Plagues.
  6. Sci-Fi. NFP kinda hit all the obvious fantasy genre tropes. But FXS haven’t touched Sci-Fi, and they have a whole Future Tech Tree, and two Sci-Fi Franchises (XCOM and Beyond Earth) to draw on.
  7. Colonialism. We got a Diplomatic Quarter. What’s the chances at some point we get a Colonial District you can only build of foreign continents. How about some Governors you can only place on foreign continents.
  8. War. Surely there’s a game mode to be had around global war. I mean, there’s at least some room for some more units in the tech tree. Trebuchets, Longswordsmen and Riflemen anyone?
  9. Wonders. At some point, do we think maybe FXS might make it so there is a pool of World Wonders, and only some of them are available randomnly each game? Or maybe Wonders limited to certain Ideological Governments?
  10. Economic Victory. Surely adding an economic victory is an easy win. I think there are people that would buy a dlc with just that if you let them. Just ask Reddit.
Leaving aside specific mechanics FXS still have room to play with, there are still plenty of Civs people would still be interested in seeing - Austria and Italy spring to mind, but there are plenty of less Eurocentric ones too - heaps and heaps of Alt leaders people would be interested in, and loads of overarching themes (eg future / sci-fi, Cold War, WWI and WWII).

IMO, NFP was a pretty canny mix of new maybe slightly fantasy / left field content and fan favourite or fan requested content. I don’t see any reason why FXS would don another season pass when it seems like there is room for at least one more pass that does the same thing, ie mix new and maybe non-historical stuff with more Civ as usual or Civ as expected content.
 
Surely adding an economic victory is an easy win

You have an economic victory - it's just called a cultural victory, which is pretty much the same thing. "Tourists" in this game are not just people wandering around with Hawaiian shirts and video cameras - it's a more nebulous representation of cultural/economic influence.
 
You have an economic victory - it's just called a cultural victory, which is pretty much the same thing. "Tourists" in this game are not just people wandering around with Hawaiian shirts and video cameras - it's a more nebulous representation of cultural/economic influence.
There is more to Economy than just Tourism (Culture). You (I'm speeking generally, and not to you Abaxial) can't submet an Economic Victory as part of Culture Victory. They're completely different things. The only things that they have in Common is the Tourism and "cultural" things that you can find in a Civ and not in the others, and you can't say that one's economy is one's culture, as we have enough evidence IRL to deny that as a fact.
Economy involves your Agriculture, Production, Trade...etc. Resource management in general. It was such a missed opportunity for an Economic Victory with the introduction of Industries&Monopolies, and especially because we have specialty Disticts in Civ VI. Specialization would have been the Key for Monopolies and hence an Economic Victory Type.

If the Economic Victory is part of the Culture Victory, why not also include the Religion Victory too? or in the Domination Victory, as it's really all about religious domination?
 
There is more to Economy than just Tourism (Culture). You (I'm speeking generally, and not to you Abaxial) can't submet an Economic Victory as part of Culture Victory. They're completely different things. The only things that they have in Common is the Tourism and "cultural" things that you can find in a Civ and not in the others, and you can't say that one's economy is one's culture, as we have enough evidence IRL to deny that as a fact.
Economy involves your Agriculture, Production, Trade...etc. Resource management in general. It was such a missed opportunity for an Economic Victory with the introduction of Industries&Monopolies, and especially because we have specialty Disticts in Civ VI. Specialization would have been the Key for Monopolies and hence an Economic Victory Type.

If the Economic Victory is part of the Culture Victory, why not also include the Religion Victory too? or in the Domination Victory, as it's really all about religious domination?
What would you propose as the win conditions for an Economic Victory?
 
What would you propose as the win conditions for an Economic Victory?
I'm not a Designer to answer that. But as an Economy Student, I think Monopolies are one good condition to that. They just have to be fleshed out more in the C&M Mode, tackling other Things in the Game. A good ecomomy is a properly functioning systeme, that is as effecient as possible.
Having a Civ with unhappy Citizens and many underworked Districts that could improve one's economy, but enough culture to win the Culture Victory, can't be seen as an Economic Victory.
 
I'm not a Designer to answer that. But as an Economy Student, I think Monopolies are one good condition to that. They just have to be fleshed out more in the C&M Mode, tackling other Things in the Game. A good ecomomy is a properly functioning systeme, that is as effecient as possible.
Having a Civ with unhappy Citizens and many underworked Districts that could improve one's economy, but enough culture to win the Culture Victory, can't be seen as an Economic Victory.
I do think controlling most of the world's resources is a good start. But there probably has to be more that can't necessarily work with the Monopolies Corporations mode in it's current state to be able to achieve an Economic Victory.
l can see it an Economic Victory with fleshed out monopolies and corporations being added for Civ 7 along with Barbarian Clans in the base game.
 
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