Civilization VI

I really do hope they get larger empires back in. In Civ IV I would regularly end the game with over 60 cities, but in Civ 5, anything above 10 or so and the whole empire seems to break. I often found myself 'stuck' at 5 cities, which placed 5 firmly below 4 in my order of preference.

Can't wait for more information/videos etc. The graphics don't bother me either way really, as long as the empire-building, science and expansion/war/conquering is done well. Sure, if given the choice I wouldn't opt for cartoon-y, but it's a secondary requirement in my Strategy games these days.

Cheap ploy using the Sunshine theme in the trailer. It worked! I mean, I may be inspired to give Civ5 a whirl finally .

Yeah I do like that the gave Ed Beach a central role in Civ VI. I loved Brave New World, probably my favourite Civ expansion of all time. Im a big cultural victory lover so that was perfect for me. I also loved how they made Religion feel organic, springing from the geographic conditions of a tribal society rather than some almighty (me) just deciding a religion.

What the... Fifty quid is the steam price for this. That's... A lot! Who's setting this price, Is it steam, firaxis or 2k? Because it's horrible.

Yeah, I've not spent £50 on a single game in a long time. It'd be fine if there was going to be absolutely no DLC and this was the full package from the start.

Greenmangaming will probably have 20% off available, but even then.

kergguz wrote:

What the... Fifty quid is the steam price for this. That's... A lot! Who's setting this price, Is it steam, firaxis or 2k? Because it's horrible.

Its release day pricing. Really nothing new with that.

Balthezor wrote:
kergguz wrote:

What the... Fifty quid is the steam price for this. That's... A lot! Who's setting this price, Is it steam, firaxis or 2k? Because it's horrible.

Its release day pricing. Really nothing new with that.

What's new is how high the price is. Over the last 2 years in the UK a £40 release price for the big games has become more and more the norm, and has been accepted by most. That said, I've never paid that much. So, £50 is a 25% increase because..... because it's civ? After Beyond Earth I really don't have that level of faith in the team anymore. Anyway, for me it just means I either wait for a deep sale next year (I can totally deal with that given my backlog), or as Omni pointed out, shop at GMG, or even one of the key resellers.

Here is a good side by side comparison of Civ V and VI graphics. I do like the CIV VI transition from plains to mountains and the cities have a bit more character which is nice and its ok that things are a bit brighter but in general I prefer Civ V art style. The map looks more classic, mountains look real and forebodingly high, forests dark and serious. It's a serious game of global supremacy.

That said I think game mechanics will be a lot more important than mere graphics for a game like Civ.

I have nothing against the Civ V graphics, but compared to Civ VI they look drab and lifeless. Civ VI looks livelier and fun.

But yes, game mechanics are the most important thing. I dislike the tedious late game problem in the Civ series due mostly to controlling a billion different cities, so this new city mechanic looks interesting to me. I'm excited to hear more.

kergguz wrote:
Balthezor wrote:
kergguz wrote:

What the... Fifty quid is the steam price for this. That's... A lot! Who's setting this price, Is it steam, firaxis or 2k? Because it's horrible.

Its release day pricing. Really nothing new with that.

What's new is how high the price is. Over the last 2 years in the UK a £40 release price for the big games has become more and more the norm, and has been accepted by most. That said, I've never paid that much. So, £50 is a 25% increase because..... because it's civ? After Beyond Earth I really don't have that level of faith in the team anymore. Anyway, for me it just means I either wait for a deep sale next year (I can totally deal with that given my backlog), or as Omni pointed out, shop at GMG, or even one of the key resellers.

Totally agree with you. I never buy these PC games full price because GMG usually have a 20% coupon for them.

Djinn wrote:

I have nothing against the Civ V graphics, but compared to Civ VI they look drab and lifeless. Civ VI looks livelier and fun.

But yes, game mechanics are the most important thing. I dislike the tedious late game problem in the Civ series due mostly to controlling a billion different cities, so this new city mechanic looks interesting to me. I'm excited to hear more.

I like it too. It does look like Civ Rev 2 on the iOS a little but hopefully the gameplay is true on Civ and not the Rev lite stuff. I'm pumped for this. Always been a fan of Firaxis and Sid. Even went to the Firaxicon last year which was fun.

I'm so excited! I probably won't get to play until 2017, but still!!! And loved Sean Bean in that trailer!

Rob Zacny gets some more details. Sounds sweet.

http://www.pcgamer.com/what-the-chan...

kergguz wrote:
Balthezor wrote:
kergguz wrote:

What the... Fifty quid is the steam price for this. That's... A lot! Who's setting this price, Is it steam, firaxis or 2k? Because it's horrible.

Its release day pricing. Really nothing new with that.

What's new is how high the price is. Over the last 2 years in the UK a £40 release price for the big games has become more and more the norm, and has been accepted by most. That said, I've never paid that much. So, £50 is a 25% increase because..... because it's civ? After Beyond Earth I really don't have that level of faith in the team anymore. Anyway, for me it just means I either wait for a deep sale next year (I can totally deal with that given my backlog), or as Omni pointed out, shop at GMG, or even one of the key resellers.

It's $60 here, which is $10 higher than the usual on PC, but other titles are already at that price point (ie. CoD). I'm okay with this personally.

GreenManGaming, as mentioned, is where you'll best get a decent % off ahead of time.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Rob Zacny gets some more details. Sounds sweet.

http://www.pcgamer.com/what-the-chan...

In a word, civilizations aren't just a collection of special abilities, units, and stat bonuses anymore. They're also about the places they settle and the things they do, much like real civilizations themselves.

Finally.

What I like about the direction of this new Civilization is that the design seems to encourage feeling things out. When you send your explorers out, you're not necessarily going to be looking for the right places to facilitate the One True Strategy for your civ and its optimal win condition. You'll be able to find cool places, settle them, and let those change the arc of your game.

Finally.

The stuff they're changing is all the stuff that's bored me to tears with Civ.

I must admit apart from the cartoony graphics everything else I am hearing about this CIV VI is so spot on and perfect.

pricewise it (regular edition) is 600,000rp here (bali) which is $ 45usd, pretty standard for games in the Singapore/SE Asia region pricing area for Steam games.
Greenman gaming has it for a standard international price of $ 59.99usd

Some of the civs did have location specific bonuses - and religions had lots of location specific bonuses - but building upon it could be nice.
Though it can also become frustrating, if your civ is overly dependent on one strategy/location, and you cant find any such locations.

Really agree with the articles 'one way to play' though. I mean, there are a handful of ways to play, depending on the win condition you aim for, but they are really set in stone the moment you start the game. Having 1) strategy be more fluid depending on what happens in your game and 2) multiple ways to accomplish the same thing would be huge.

Especially hoping for both Few cities and Lots of cities as equally viable strategies. It is always one or the other in these games.

Looking at that size by side comparison of the graphics I am looking the general more lively feel of civ6 but the forests are too sparse. We need denser forests!

Eleima wrote:

And loved Sean Bean in that trailer!

It was inauthentic. He didn't die before the end.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Rob Zacny gets some more details. Sounds sweet.

http://www.pcgamer.com/what-the-chan...

Really loved this bit...

What really got me excited was hearing that the city is not treated as a single entity from a military perspective, either. While the city stands or falls depends on who controls the city center, armies can do battle within the city borders, with an impact on the city's production abilities. You might cede farmland and science buildings in one part of the city while your army clings to a Stalingrad-like chain of factories so that you can keep producing fresh units as you try to stem the tide.

I'm in the camp that's wary of the screenshots, but I'm really optimistic about the gameplay details shared so far.

An hour of Civ VI with quill18!

Yippee!

Have only watched the first video of the two, but seeing a lot to be encouraged by in there. The districting usage is promising, the idea that the aesthetic beauty of a tile will play a role (tourism?) is a cool idea, the fact that in-game actions/events can give you logical bonuses to certain avenues of research... the list goes on. And I agree with Quill's assertion that the cartoony-ish nature of the map becomes less an issue as you zoom out. Being able to see it in motion helps a lot too, which isn't surprising.

October is suddenly a long wait.

I don't think they're going Endless Legend on the city mechanics. Endless Legend was nice, but all it did on the map was express the city's population in tiles around it - that is, it claimed resources and harvest based purely on how many tiles you took over and in what shape you did it. Apart from that, it didn't really matter what you did.

I think they're trying to do Warlock, because that's where the entire Great People with Great Buildings thing was headed - so you kind of work the land with its base output like you normally would for a Civ game, but then you can improve the output of the tile by constructing buildings directly on the tile. What buildings are eligible to build depend on the size of the city and which tiles it has to command. This is actually a direct offshoot of tile development mechanics in Beyond Earth. In BE, you could improve a tile with a Biowell, a Node, a Farm, or a Generator depending on where it was and what you wanted to do with the city. Adding a healthy list of building to what you could do with a tile sounds pretty nice. I hope they also add Great Wonders to what's built on the tile. Of course, some Great Wonders like the Great Wall or Statue of Liberty would either be on the City Tile itself or tile-agnostic.

That's the primary reason for why the graphics look the way they do. When your output and city development is plainly visible on the world map, you want simple and distinctive icons to tell you what each tile does and which building is on it. They can do this best with stylized symbols and simple solid lines.

It would be nice if they could include corruption mechanics or expansion capability as part of the "tweakable" settings in the main menu. Some people like a varied geopolitical landscape with reasonably sized nation-states. Others dream of the World State. Both are enjoyable past times and both should be accommodated in the new game. A check on something like "World State" or something might enable more snowball-type games where the final battle is between two world-spanning empires.

There's also rumor that the military aspect of Civ will find some inspiration from CivRev, which is a good thing. CivRev's military is a little bit of Civ V and a little bit of Civ IV. That is, you CAN stack units on each other to form "armies," but you can only stack the same unit, and there's a three unit maximum. This allows strong Civs to express their manufacturing advantage in a way that's not a massive sprawling rug of units. You'll want to form armies with most units early on, but some units for specific purposes do better in singletons - you wouldn't want a Scout army, that would defeat the entire purpose of having Scouts in the first place.

CivRev is also more CivIV in that the 3-unit armies can also be stacked with each other in the same tile. Presumably, Civ VI will only allow 1UPT, which means that having 3-unit armies is much more significant.

I've been playing Civ since the first and am somewhat disappointed with 5, but I have to say the changes for 6 look amazing so far. I can't believe how excited I am for this.

Wait, Teddy freakin Roosevelt leads the Americans?

That's awesome!

Seeing the new gameplay videos out, I'm liking the art style even more now that I've seen it in motion. Everything's clean but detailed, and touches like the map turning hand-drawn when you don't have units in an area are really nice looking. Really excited for this.

beanman101283 wrote:

Seeing the new gameplay videos out, I'm liking the art style even more now that I've seen it in motion. Everything's clean but detailed, and touches like the map turning hand-drawn when you don't have units in an area are really nice looking. Really excited for this.

Agreed. I don't know if Firaxis turned down the saturation and/or brightness before giving quil18 this demo footage, but it looks significantly better than the screenshots they released.

Yeah, it's growing on me as well.