Will Civ VI Stand The Test of Time?/Rant

[Gorbles]

As well

- Brand new Engine, all Civ 5 code was recycled from Civ 4, you could find remains in the files.

- Increase the limitations of the engine. I mean, I think to this day the graphical engine for Civ 5 is rather quirky, with grey tiles and several other aspects still slowing down the game.

I'm not disagreeing with you on the point you're getting at, but no game engine from a studio that manages a franchise is truly "brand-new". It simply isn't feasible.

You'll probably find CiV code in the Civ VI engine, nomatter how well-built it ends up being, or how fantastically it performs. I remember reading an article pointing out that Civ 1 code was still knocking around the codebase.

Regardless of how it was made though, here's hoping for something that's definitely a new version compared to CiV.

 

[Schuesseled]

Obviously new Civilization games have always make us go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBdSqk78nHw, and this was no different for me. Civilization has one of the biggest and most devoted communities for a casual game franchise I've ever seen. What's that? Beyond Earth? Never heard of it. I saw the trailers for Civilization VI and they look really freakin' good, but a thought crept into my head while watching the gameplay trailer. One that I was hoping wouldn't happen but seemed inevitable.

The game just looks like a retextured Civ V. Sure, they had the little extra things like the districts (an idea that I am in love with, by the way), but it just seemed like there wasn't much else. Now, don't get me wrong, the game looks fantastic. It reminds me of a mix of Warcraft and Prince of Persia, and that alone gives me a silly grin. It looks so much more upbeat than the games before it, since they all had a gritty, realistic art style.

The only thing I'm wondering is if that's enough to buy it. The only three features that I've seen so far (gameplay-wise) are the district system, the new world wonders, and a new war mechanic that I haven't seen much of, just that when an AI declares war, it'll sometimes say "(SURPRISE WAR)". Those things alone are barely enough to warrant an expansion pack, let alone an entire game.

There's a lot more features than just that, there's eureka moments, the division of the tech tree and civic trees, lots of stuff going on, looks really interesting.

 

[Sobornost]

I don't know if Civ 6 will be as much of a break from Civ 5 as 5 was from 4, but it'll definitely be more than any games up to 4 were from each other.

The whole economy and government systems are totally shaken up and those are the core of the game.

 

[Kid R]

Lol we have discussed how Civ 6 looks, then we devised strategies, we complained about balance, we planned out mods, now we have a thread considering the game's future legacy, I think the cycle is near complete. Now taking bets on a "Civ 7 wish list" before the end of summer! You wonder whether Firaxis were smart to announce so far ahead of release - who needs the actual game?!

 

[toft]

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[ProMeTheus112]

To me from the way the developers talk about the game, it sounds like they have found creative ways to give better strategic depth to the game in general, that directly translates into fun. Towns districts spreading over the map and the way it is handled seem to give plenty of interesting choices (plus visually interesting too). So do eurekas and a revamped hexagonal notExactlyOneUPT, and the revamped AI is a big thing thats needed for more interesting strategic games too that was a weak point in 5 as I remember, it is important when you plan a free for all game against many AI opponents, and for the relevance/coherence of high difficulty modes too (not just fighting your handicap but actually doing masterful handling of complex relationship with everyone). The civilizations unique stuff sounds well built overall.. builders and traders.. tidbits of information paint a good picture for a deep and balaned game full of possibilities, everything working well together. I get a good vibe in general, Im hopeful for this game to be the best Civ. Civ5 I liked some of what they tried but other things felt too simple, straightforward or even tedious(?) so I played it little. If they get Civ6 really good and right it could be quite amazing I think :] and then it would stand the test of time for sure!

For me to play Civ6 it just needs to give me a better experience than 5, and signs are positive so far.
Civ2 did anything the original game did only better and with more stuff, so I don't think I returned too much to the original.
Civ3 had some good concepts but was very restricting, so I played sometimes 2 and sometimes 3
Civ4 added many interesting things and was much less restricting than 3. I returned to 3 from time to time because I didn't like how the leaders looked in 4.
I think I switched a little between 5 and 4 (mainly because I could finish 4 in 2-3 hours) but when I dot G&K I remained with 5. I like the new religion system 1UPT and cities that can defend themselves (I don't think I like tourism too much though, I prefer to win by building a project rather than accumulating points)
The way 6 looks it improves over 5 (the same way that 2 improved over 1 and 4 over 3). It's possible that it will have something that will annoy me enough to go to 5 from time to time (and like leader portraits did in 4 it can be just a tiny thing).

From what I see not much reason to worry.

I agree with you!

Let´s see, definitely keeping a close eye on this. Wonder about system requirements but may finally be time to buy new PC hope the game is fast!
btw thats something about combat, animations are way too long. Ok, so we can deactivate the long animations right, but then do you get absolutely zero animation? no middle ground, something like a 4 times shorter simple stuff? will see. Efficient systems..

 

[Larsenex]

As well

- Brand new Engine, all Civ 5 code was recycled from Civ 4, you could find remains in the files.

- Increase the limitations of the engine. I mean, I think to this day the graphical engine for Civ 5 is rather quirky, with grey tiles and several other aspects still slowing down the game.

So we're literally complaining that they didn't streamline anything and we're complaining that they are trying to produce a base game without any features missing, because believe me if none of the BNW mechanics came with Civ 6 there'd be a fury among everyone, but no, we complain that they actually implemented them.

Although I am glad that I have seen very few people complain about "But this is Civ 5 EP" line.

^^^ As someone who pointed earlier, it could be exactly the same as Civ 5, if it had a new 64bit engine I would buy it in a hot second. This new single fact alone will help with memory issue and stability 10x over. I love Civ5 but at end game it stutters, and icons go missing and if you load up on mods it will crash simply due to running out of resources as its a lame ass 32 bit engine.

Just having a new Civ game based on a 64 bit engine alone should be causing all of us to jump for joy. So much more head room so to speak!

<can you tell I am getting the game?>

 

[Babri]

I do not understand people who say this looks like a re-skin of CiV.

That's just nuts.

Agreed. Such comments remind me of this post on reddit.

Listen man, my wants are simple - I just want a game that looks exactly like civ v. Well not exactly because then I'd just accuse them of releasing an expansion as a stand alone game. So I want a game that feels the same but looks different. But not really the same because if they use the old civ v engine that'll just be lazy so it needs to look different and feel different but still be the same as civ v. But not civ be because that changed too much and the colors were too muted. So it needs to be the same as civ v but look and feel different but be brighter but also more muted.
Is that really too much to ask?

Link

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I'm not disagreeing with you on the point you're getting at, but no game engine from a studio that manages a franchise is truly "brand-new". It simply isn't feasible.

You'll probably find CiV code in the Civ VI engine, nomatter how well-built it ends up being, or how fantastically it performs. I remember reading an article pointing out that Civ 1 code was still knocking around the codebase.

Regardless of how it was made though, here's hoping for something that's definitely a new version compared to CiV.

Well, engine might not be the best word, but as far as I know they have re-written everything from scratch instead of carrying stuff over between games like I believe they did Civ 4 and 5.

 

[Socrates99]

Agreed. Such comments remind me of this post on reddit.



Link

Lol, that kind of sounds like the ramblings of a stoned person. "I want it to be the same but different, man. I mean needs to look and play different but still be the same game, ya know what I mean man? Seriously it's gotta be a completely different game but without too many drastic changes. Whoa! I just blew my own mind man! Like I'm thinking on a whole new plane, in the ether man!"

 

[Felis Renidens]

And the funny thing is that I think he may well get what he wants.

 

[Jaybe]

And the funny thing is that I think he may well get what he wants.

NOT funny!

 

[Magil]

The whole economy and government systems are totally shaken up and those are the core of the game.

I honestly don't feel like the government system is actually that different from IV's, when you think about it. It seems like IV's with a small blend of V's design philosophy.

The biggest shake-up I see right now is the improvement/district placing game, where you look for an optimal setup. It seems different enough to warrant its own iteration, and indeed, "spreading out the city" seems to be the core of their new philosophy in the design for VI, so they're taking steps to make that interesting.

 

[Babri]

I honestly don't feel like the government system is actually that different from IV's, when you think about it. It seems like IV's with a small blend of V's design philosophy.

IMHO many of these small/medium changes are what differentiates between a good game & a great game. By combining the best of both worlds the government system could possibly be more fun than you may give it credit for on paper.

For example BNW was awesome due to how much attention it paid to little details & intertwined well with the previous systems (trade routes with religion & barbarians for example). No matter how much we look through rose tinted glasses, many features in cIV like espionage & corporations were quite disjointed that made them quite boring despite being interesting ideas on paper.

 

[master__jj]

all the new systems look promising but are essentially pointless if the (combat) AI and/or diplomacy underperform

 

[Magil]

IMHO many of these small/medium changes are what differentiates between a good game & a great game. By combining the best of both worlds the government system could possibly be more fun than you may give it credit for on paper.

For example BNW was awesome due to how much attention it paid to little details & intertwined well with the previous systems (trade routes with religion & barbarians for example). No matter how much we look through rose tinted glasses, many features in cIV like espionage & corporations were quite disjointed that made them quite boring despite being interesting ideas on paper.

I don't mean to say that minor tweaks and adjustments and combining elements is bad or undesirable, but I do think some people are overstating how different the government/civics system is. It's quite different from social policies, but not from civics of Civ IV (which I suspect is one reason why they are going with the name civics rather than social policies this time around).

I'll agree that many of the mechanics added in CIV: Beyond the Sword were not very well-designed, like overseas colonies, corporations, espionage, etc. In a lot of ways, I think of BtS as a step backwards, while I rather like CV: Brave New World's additions of Tourism and Ideologies.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

Won't add more to what others have said about new features and why this is definitely not just a retextured civ5. But to me I think the fact that Ed Beach is leading design from the start is making me very optimistic. He's designed the wonderful Here I Stand and Virgin Queen board games and you can definitely see this philosophy implemented in virtually everything that is new in Civ 6 (e.g. many things now are represented in "cards" like civics and agendas, and buildings + wonders need physical placement somewhere).

To me the point is that in a board game you must design interesting and intuitive mechanics to balance a game and not just rely on coded variables/multipliers hidden in the background to force some balance. If this philosophy carried into everything else we're yet to learn about Civ6 then I think it will be a solid foundation for the series

 

[Gorbles]

Well, engine might not be the best word, but as far as I know they have re-written everything from scratch instead of carrying stuff over between games like I believe they did Civ 4 and 5.

No, I see where you're coming from, I do. It's just not guaranteed to be 100% new 100% from-scratch code. Making those kinds of rumours up is only going to let other people jump on Firaxis as soon as any of the modder-level code is exposed and people go I RECOGNISE THIS THREE-LINE BLOCK FROM CIV FIRAXIS HAVE OBVIOUSLY CUT CORNERS.

I just kinda want to put out that fire before it becomes a self-supposed fact (which is generally how these community rumours tend to go). I have no idea how much you know about software development, either, and I don't want to make any assumptions. But even if a lot of the code is rewritten, it will still share things with a previous codebase.

Game engines are modular, which is why writing one completely from scratch is a mammoth project (even for a simple game). What usually happens (especially in a franchise) is that the previous engine is used, and bits (the modules) are cut out one-by-one and then replaced. The renderer, the AI core, the map generator, etc, et al. So there will be structural similarities with the previous engine. Some parts of the engine might even hook together in the same way. Some methods might follow the same logic, having just been optimised. A lot of things will probably be called the same names (accounting for individual programmer taste and how much leeway they have on naming variables and methods in the codebase; see Hungarian notation).

This is something I know quite a bit about. But I definitely don't want people promising each other that Civ VI will be 100% written from scratch. If it is? Fantastic! All the more credit for Firaxis for achieving that and pushing out the amount of content the game apparently has (Governments, Districts, Espionage, Religion, etc . . . all the things they said were coming back from CiV Complete and the new things besides).

But people like to use these statements to try and make Firaxis look bad (for reasons?) and I'm just trying to temper claims that the new engine will run on chocolate sauce and feed the world's hungry and poor