Will there actually be a Civ 7?

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well, TOW has historical leaders. Playing Alexander is possible. They grow old and die tho.

Ok. I didn't know as I've actually never played it. I knew that each faction was ruled by noble families but I didn't know the extend of them being historical or fictional.

Just don't add any kind of regions or sectors or anything like that please. I dislike the concept in general (only Age of Wonders: Planetfall had any kind of decent execution, and that felt rather embedded in the sci-fi nature of the game), and it quite simply doesn't fit Civilization in my opinion. This is probably my biggest worry, as these seem to be all the hype right now.

As long as they have the concept of a city spanning a certain number of tiles, I'm sure that's what will continue to constitute a "region".

 

[Pistol90]

I also work in IT, and work from home didnt really impact productivity.

But, I think that gamedevelopment is exception in IT --- because its hard to make it work-from-home while maintaining productivity. Its different thing one man developing some API's or database, and another game development where a lot of people need to come together to make it really work (some parts like motion-capture, sound desing etc you cant make from home at all)

 

[Leyrann]

As long as they have the concept of a city spanning a certain number of tiles, I'm sure that's what will continue to constitute a "region".

Yeah, I just don't want them to be predetermined on the map.

 

[steveg700]

Yeah, I just don't want them to be predetermined on the map.

Agree here. My big beef with HMNKND is that cities feel way samier than in Civ.

The map needs be a major hero in any terrestrial 4X game. There has to be a reason to claim land. A city center can't simply be a placeholder for a science or theater district. There need to be choice spots to settle, sweetspots well worth fighting over.

And then there need to be defensible positions to protect those places worth fighting over. Not every city needs to be a sprawling metropolis. There can be little desert kasbah fortress. Or a mining post to get vital materials. Or farm belts.

Kinda like the difference between a canvas and a coloring book.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'd suggesting changing calculations to the last release of content (DLC, EP) vs release of next iteraition.

Using "last release of content" for the previous game in the series gives us less to compare with, because the original Civilization game had no 'additional content' - at least not officially. Civilization II had two Expansion Packs, but both were a combination of 'official' content (from the development team) and Mod content, so really cannot be compared to later 'All Official' Packs.

Of the remaining games, here are the figures for the last Expansion Packs:

Civilization III: Conquests - released in November 2003, 25 months after the original game, 23 months before Civ IV came out
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword - released in July 2007, 21 months after the original game, 38 months before Civ V was released
Civilization V: Brave New World - released in March 2013, 30 months after the original game, 42 months before Civ VI was released
Civilization VI: Gathering Storm - released February 2019, 28 months after the original game,
Civilization VI: New Frontier - released May 2020, 43 months after the original game

Note that New Frontier was billed as a 'Season Pass' rather than an Expansion Pack

Also note that there is remarkable consistency in the timing of the second Expansion Pack for all the games: 21 - 30 months, average 26 months with 2 out of 4 being within 2 months of the average, and the latest span at 28 months actually being shorter than the previous game's (30 months)

Finally, there is much less consistency on the time between the Expansion Pack and the next game: 23 to 42 months, average 34.3 months with individual times between 4 and 11 months different from the average. On the other hand, New Frontier Pass came out almost exactly when one might have expected the next Civ game to be released based on the previous intervals.

What any of this actually means is harder to determine. The game industry is by no means the same in 2022 as it was in 1991 (the original Civilization) or 2003, the earliest date in this set. Based on the times here, and especially the timing for NFP, I suspect that Civ VII development may have started as far back as 2019 but ran into problems even before the COVID distractions - that would be consistent with the development/release cycles of the previous games and expansion packs in the series.

 

[pokiehl]

Just don't add any kind of regions or sectors or anything like that please. I dislike the concept in general (only Age of Wonders: Planetfall had any kind of decent execution, and that felt rather embedded in the sci-fi nature of the game), and it quite simply doesn't fit Civilization in my opinion. This is probably my biggest worry, as these seem to be all the hype right now.

That's actually the thing I most want for them to take up! To me, it is a great way to limit city spam and make settling far more meaningful.

Humankind and Old World both do it. I like Humankind's method better; Old World feels too limited (only certain hexes can be settled).

 

[bene_legionary]

I'd like to add that having historical leaders are something that other games, like Humankind and Old World, did not have which is what I like.

Unfortunately it's such a staple of the franchise that leaving leaders out would be like having no Gandhi for India. I don't think it will happen. The benefits of having a leader to personify the empire outweighs removing what most people think of as Sid Meier's Civilization. I'd love to have a Civilization game without leaders because leaders don't make sense to me historically, but I'm convinced that's not going to happen.

I believe Paradox explicitly stated Covid as reason for Crusader Kings III content moving slower.

Paradox studios are in Sweden where they tried the herd immunity strategy. That would mean more developers were sick, compared to other countries. I don't know if Paradox made everyone go home and work though, but that doesn't mean that more of them didn't get sick because of Sweden's flawed strategy.

Regions would be great, but I think it's alright now and I wouldn't care whatever makes it into Civ 7. I'm only worried about how seas and islands work with regions because they look very weird to me in Humankind. Coastal sovereignty is more of a modern issue and it doesn't make sense to me that I can't sail through a few hexes through a strait because a few tiles were bought by the AI in the classical era. It would make sense if there were a fleet of ships in the way, but most of the time there isn't anything.

 

[Leyrann]

That's actually the thing I most want for them to take up! To me, it is a great way to limit city spam and make settling far more meaningful.

Humankind and Old World both do it. I like Humankind's method better; Old World feels too limited (only certain hexes can be settled).

Why are there always these weird complaints about city spam? The number of cities is limited by the map, and that's how it should be. You can settle further apart for more tiles, or closer together for more cities.

I don't want to be arbitrarily limited because of something that people randomly decided is an issue despite no one ever explaining why it would be an issue.

Coastal sovereignty is more of a modern issue and it doesn't make sense to me that I can't sail through a few hexes through a strait because a few tiles were bought by the AI in the classical era. It would make sense if there were a fleet of ships in the way, but most of the time there isn't anything.

I disagree on that, actually. Control of coastal waters has historically been very important, and I'm pretty sure naval blockades were already a thing in classical times.

But yes, outside of war it's unlikely that a strait would be blocked for passage. I suppose that's what open borders are for though.

 

[kaspergm]

Coastal sovereignty is more of a modern issue and it doesn't make sense to me that I can't sail through a few hexes through a strait because a few tiles were bought by the AI in the classical era. It would make sense if there were a fleet of ships in the way, but most of the time there isn't anything.

Slightly off topic, but there is a mod that fixes this, allowing you to go through but not end your turn in coast and ocean tiles owned by a civ or city state you don’t have open borders with. It’s one of the mods I consider essential. I think it’s called “Open waters redone” or something like that.

 

[bene_legionary]

Why are there always these weird complaints about city spam?

City spam is a boring and tedious strategy that pretty much guarantees victory. It is an issue. It's not fun, but it's optimal. Why would you play a game that's not fun? But if you don't play optimally, then it's not a big deal.

I'm pretty sure naval blockades were already a thing in classical times.

I never said there weren't naval blockades in antiquity. If there was a ship blocking my way and I couldn't get through to the other side of that strait, then good! There's a tangible reason to why I can't get through and I'll happily move to another place where I can go through.

What I meant with coastal soverignty, was that with satellite imagery, multinational treaties, fishing rights, co-ordinate systems, nuclear powered vessels, and international waters defined by ink on a piece of paper, a bit of water means a whole lot more now than before because you can tell where you are and you can say that this unremarkable bit of sea is definitely yours. You can actually enforce that today, with tangible sheets of paper placed on tables and mounted on walls showing intangible bits of land, and a boat with a cannon on it.

In antiquity, if you didn't know where you were and you had no ships or land to mark where you are, you might as well be on the moon. The only time when you knew this bit of sea wasn't yours to go through was when there was a big ship in the way that didn't like you. The boat is what really defines coastal sovereignty especially when there isn't satellite imagery or reliable mapping. You won't be able to go through with that boat in the way. Where I want to go, there are no boats. Only sea (supposedly) controlled by some empire which has really nothing stopping me going through except arbitrary game rules that make it a fundamental law of nature.

Anyway I think that Civ 7 is coming. Not sure when, but I guess within a couple of years. Surely two years isn't that long to wait?

 

[Leyrann]

City spam is a boring and tedious strategy that pretty much guarantees victory. It is an issue. It's not fun, but it's optimal. Why would you play a game that's not fun? But if you don't play optimally, then it's not a big deal.

What makes it boring and tedious? Make sure to match the map size and number of civs appropriately so that once everyone is done expanding to the size they should be, the map is filled. Just like the real world. It's not in human nature to leave any corner of the world empty, and if Civilization wants to advertise itself as a game of playing through human history, this is an absolutely essential thing to at least depict somewhat correctly.

I never said there weren't naval blockades in antiquity. If there was a ship blocking my way and I couldn't get through to the other side of that strait, then good! There's a tangible reason to why I can't get through and I'll happily move to another place where I can go through.

What I meant with coastal soverignty, was that with satellite imagery, multinational treaties, fishing rights, co-ordinate systems, nuclear powered vessels, and international waters defined by ink on a piece of paper, a bit of water means a whole lot more now than before because you can tell where you are and you can say that this unremarkable bit of sea is definitely yours. You can actually enforce that today, with tangible sheets of paper placed on tables and mounted on walls showing intangible bits of land, and a boat with a cannon on it.

In antiquity, if you didn't know where you were and you had no ships or land to mark where you are, you might as well be on the moon. The only time when you knew this bit of sea wasn't yours to go through was when there was a big ship in the way that didn't like you. The boat is what really defines coastal sovereignty especially when there isn't satellite imagery or reliable mapping. You won't be able to go through with that boat in the way. Where I want to go, there are no boats. Only sea (supposedly) controlled by some empire which has really nothing stopping me going through except arbitrary game rules that make it a fundamental law of nature.

There could be patrol boats that aren't depicted because of the game's simplification. If even a single fishing boat sees your fleet passing and tells the king who hasn't given you permission to pass, that could mean a declaration of war.

We're talking about straits and coastal waters here, not oceans, right?

 

[Gedemon]

relatively to a real world map, we're speaking of 100 to 300km wide "straits".

 

[bene_legionary]

Have you tried doing production for over 50 cities? I've done that and a bit more before, but it was on a Seven Seas map, which makes sense It isn't fun though. Now I play without expanding at breakneck speed, because after managing all those cities it took all the fun. I usually have more civs than the map size gives me because I like the interactions with empires right next to me. In the early game nothing usually happens but with more civs I can have more fun.

I won't be angry if Civ 7 has the same system for sea hex control as civ 6, but I just thought it was annoying now. It's not game breaking, and there's other things I'd rather argue about for Civ 7...

For perspective... the Straits of Malacca are 38km at its narrowest, The Cook Strait is around 20km, and the Danish Belts are even shorter, there are bridges over them today.

 

[Leyrann]

Have you tried doing production for over 50 cities? I've done that and a bit more before, but it was on a Seven Seas map, which makes sense It isn't fun though. Now I play without expanding at breakneck speed, because after managing all those cities it took all the fun. I usually have more civs than the map size gives me because I like the interactions with empires right next to me. In the early game nothing usually happens but with more civs I can have more fun.

If you end up with more cities than you enjoy managing, the solution isn't to force civilizations to leave part of the map empty. The solution is to play on smaller maps, or with more civs (the latter only works if you don't go domination).

 

[steveg700]

That's actually the thing I most want for them to take up! To me, it is a great way to limit city spam and make settling far more meaningful.

Humankind and Old World both do it. I like Humankind's method better; Old World feels too limited (only certain hexes can be settled).

Yes, I agree there needs to be some mechanism for handling city spam. However, the region system is a ham-fisted way of doing it. Expansion needs to be managed by the player, not by the map.

I don't know why 4X games impose hard caps for things like settles or fleet size. Instead of a hard cap, give the civ a rating and if they exceed it they start to experience strain in the form of lowered efficiency and negative events. Granted, we see that penalizing system sometimes in 4X games. However, the other thing to do (that we don't see often) is to provide benefits for staying below the rating. Now it's not simply a limiter. Now there are choices for the player where expansion isn't constant and rampant. It more likely transpires in managed, thoughtful waves.

And again, I'd like to see a philosophy that doesn't presume every settle should bloom into a metropolis. I sometimes settle to grab a resource or two. And in games other than Civ, I might settle defensively to create a choke point. Can't do that in these one-per-region systems.

 

[valerislysander]

Unfortunately it's such a staple of the franchise that leaving leaders out would be like having no Gandhi for India. I don't think it will happen. The benefits of having a leader to personify the empire outweighs removing what most people think of as Sid Meier's Civilization. I'd love to have a Civilization game without leaders because leaders don't make sense to me historically, but I'm convinced that's not going to happen.


Paradox studios are in Sweden where they tried the herd immunity strategy. That would mean more developers were sick, compared to other countries. I don't know if Paradox made everyone go home and work though, but that doesn't mean that more of them didn't get sick because of Sweden's flawed strategy.

Regions would be great, but I think it's alright now and I wouldn't care whatever makes it into Civ 7. I'm only worried about how seas and islands work with regions because they look very weird to me in Humankind. Coastal sovereignty is more of a modern issue and it doesn't make sense to me that I can't sail through a few hexes through a strait because a few tiles were bought by the AI in the classical era. It would make sense if there were a fleet of ships in the way, but most of the time there isn't anything.

Had to laugh and comment back on this one. You mean immunity is a thing lol. Even if you believe in the flawed testing, Sweden did rather better than other countries according to all the statistics. Paradox also like most companies moved to home working the entire time. That im pretty sure would have been the cause of slower development not staff illnesses.

 

[Zegangani]

I have nothing against a Region system if done well, but not if it's done the same way as it's implemented in OldWorld and Humankind.
In OldWorld it's done that way mainly for balance purposes, but as P0kiehl said, it's too limited, and settling is not fun at all, where in Civ it's always a fun and interesting thing to do, so I actually consider it (the settling game) another feature that Civ has managed to, not perfect, but make an essential part of it (just like the immortal Leaders and as was mentioned here; the Wonder Race).
Humankind on the other hand has a better region system than OldWorld, but for some reason, the regions and Cities in Humankind kinda make the Map (no matter the size) feel small to me, so I don't have a feeling of exploring an unknown area where I don't know what I will encounter there. The borders are set and never-changing. So, it makes exploration less fun to me, where in Civ Borders are constantly changing, Cities get razed and new ones settled throughout the whole game. And another thing that impairs at the cost of regions is colonialism. If you have complete control over a region once you settle a city in it, there is no feeling of colonizing the territory. And these are also things that speak against a region system if it's similar to the one in OldWorld or Humankind:

I sometimes settle to grab a resource or two. And in games other than Civ, I might settle defensively to create a choke point. Can't do that in these one-per-region systems.

tl;dr, Civ's Map without a region system feels more dynamic and the settling game is always fun and interesting thanks to the everchanging borders. And it's far from being unbalanced, so we don't necessarilly need a region system in Civ.

EDIT: the only thing I would like to have that may resemble a region system, is having an option in the late-game to merge 2-3 Cities that are close to each other into 1 Metropolis.

 

[jdevo]

Have you tried doing production for over 50 cities? I've done that and a bit more before, but it was on a Seven Seas map, which makes sense It isn't fun though. Now I play without expanding at breakneck speed, because after managing all those cities it took all the fun. I usually have more civs than the map size gives me because I like the interactions with empires right next to me. In the early game nothing usually happens but with more civs I can have more fun.

I won't be angry if Civ 7 has the same system for sea hex control as civ 6, but I just thought it was annoying now. It's not game breaking, and there's other things I'd rather argue about for Civ 7...

For perspective... the Straits of Malacca are 38km at its narrowest, The Cook Strait is around 20km, and the Danish Belts are even shorter, there are bridges over them today.

Managing a ton of cities in civ5/6 isn't fun but I think it's due to the fact that the UI is so bad. With a decent UI and some options to turn production and city management over to the AI would solve this.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I have nothing against a Region system if done well, but not if it's done the same way as it's implemented in OldWorld and Humankind.

EDIT: the only thing I would like to have that may resemble a region system, is having an option in the late-game to merge 2-3 Cities that are close to each other into 1 Metropolis.

This can be done with a properly-designed set of City Radius mechanics without having to resort to 'pre-set' regional boundaries.
If Social Policies, Civics, or even inherent 'cultural' characteristics of the city population allow City Radius to be changed within the game, then merging two or more expanding City Radii will give you the modern Megalopolis without needing regional boundaries.
Likewise, allowing Less-Than-City-Size (limited to a single tile each?) Settlements on the map allows City Radius to be enlarged simply by incorporating such Settlements into the city. IF the mechanism also requires that all city Districts normally be contiguous, Settlements would be the mechanic to allow 'isolated' Districts such as Harbors or Holy Sites to be built and later incorporated into the expanding city.

Along these same lines, if Humankind had allowed more modification of Regional Boundaries within the game I think the region system would have worked far better in that game. The sheer variety of ways that people have organized their landscape and control of that landscape requires any game system of map boundaries - whether regional, city radius or whatever - to be very flexible to even begin to show all the IRL possibilities.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Why are there always these weird complaints about city spam? The number of cities is limited by the map, and that's how it should be. You can settle further apart for more tiles, or closer together for more cities.

It's a reaction to the ICS problems of days of yore.

If a setter/worker cost one pop (r doesn't cost a pop iirc in CivII), and a city size one works two tiles (the city tile and one other) than barring other barriers there's no reason to ever do anything other than just make another city right next to another over and over and over and over and over . . .

Everything since has been finding a way to clamp down on that, and I don't think there will ever be consensus on the best way to do it.