2K Games yesterday has announced the next game being made by Firaxis Games, which is none other than their flagship series: Civilization VI. The announcement has also come with a cinematic trailer, release date of October 21, 2016, and the Steam store page is already up with the basic overview of the game. Exact details are still sparse but there have been a few interviews that popped up, though they all share the same basic information.
Civilization VI has been long awaited by the fans and some in the community have been predicting it will come soon. However, the announcement does come with a bit of a surprise, especially since the release date is close but this seems to be standard for Firaxis now. They did this both for XCOM 2 and Beyond Earth. XCOM 2 was delayed, but initially it was also announced not too long before it was supposed to be released.
The question a lot of have is what will the improvements be, Beyond Earth though far from a bad game did not live up to the standard one would expect from a new Civilization game. Civilization VI will have even higher expectations to surpass but is also closer to what they are used to.
The potential good news is that Ed Beach is the lead designer and a lot of the people on Civilization VI are from same the team that pushed Civilization V to Brave New World. The expansion is highly regarded by many, SpaceSector included. Hopefully, that standard translates to Civilization VI as well.
“A lot of this development team is the same development team that pushed Civ 5 through to the Brave New World expansion. We’re very proud of the work we did there.” – Ed Beach, Lead Designer for Civilization VI. Courtesy of Phil Savage, PCGamer.
Here is the trailer:
Yes, that is the voice of Sean Bean. It’s not confirmed if he will be voicing anything in the game or he is just used for the trailer. (Disclosure: I am a huge Sean Bean fan.)
List of Game Features (from the official website):
- EXPANSIVE EMPIRES: See the marvels of your empire spread across the map like never before. Each city spans multiple tiles so you can custom build your cities to take full advantage of the local terrain.
- ACTIVE RESEARCH: Unlock boosts that speed your civilization’s progress through history. To advance more quickly, use your units to actively explore, develop your environment, and discover new cultures.
- DYNAMIC DIPLOMACY: Interactions with other civilizations change over the course of the game, from primitive first interactions where conflict is a fact of life, to late game alliances and negotiations.
- COMBINED ARMS: Expanding on the “one unit per tile” design, support units can now be embedded with other units, like anti-tank support with infantry, or a warrior with settlers. Similar units can also be combined to form powerful “Corps” units.
- ENHANCED MULTIPLAYER: In addition to traditional multiplayer modes, cooperate and compete with your friends in a wide variety of situations all designed to be easily completed in a single session.
- A CIV FOR ALL PLAYERS: Civilization VI provides veteran players new ways to build and tune their civilization for the greatest chance of success. New tutorial systems introduce new players to the underlying concepts so they can easily get started.
A Bit of Details
Three things caught my attention which was thankfully teased about in the released interviews. These are limited unit stacking, city districts, and the active Tech system. (Information discussed here is courtesy of the answers from the Ed Beach, Lead Designer for Civilization VI, in the PCGamesN article.)
The game will still use the 1-UPH (1-unit per hex) system but it seems like they’re trying to address the issues with the “carpet of doom” or being chock-pointed too easily by terrain. Later in the game the player will be able to merge units of the same type together to form a Corp (2) or an Army (3). They will also be able to attach support units like anti-tank and anti-air to normal unit.
It also seems you’ll get bonuses to researching techs if you perform a certain task in the game. Like building a harbor will improve research that unlocks naval units, or building a quarry will help research another tech, while fighting barbarians will boost your military techs. You can still research techs you haven’t had a chance to perform a task for, but they will take longer.
This system for technology seems to encourage players to react to their environment, but also if they want a certain tech faster they need to proactively do something on the map. So if you want to push for more naval tech, then settling more cities along the coast and developing them along the coastline would be wise.
This leads to the city district system. It seems now your cities will place down districts similar to what we’ve seen in Endless Legend from Amplitude. However, the districts are also specialized and it’s where you’ll build your city buildings as well. So this is not just a matter of expanding the size of your city but what your city can potentially do. Wonders will also be placed directly on the map as well.
These districts can also be the targets of wars and be pillaged by the enemy, so it will be possible to cripple the opponent’s industry, science, or food production individually. This includes using bombers as well to target these districts, while military districts will give more support to the defense of a city for the defender.
They also mentioned diplomacy is getting a face-lift, and they’re playing around with the victory conditions as well. Espionage was mentioned but no details have been given.
It’s expected that more information will become available in the coming weeks, and if Firaxis continues what they did with Beyond Earth then preview streams of the game will start popping up soon. We will keep you informed as more information becomes available.
Civilization VI can be pre-ordered from Steam and the 2K Store for $59.99 USD, due to be released on October 21, 2016. A Digital Deluxe edition is also available, offering the 25th Anniversary Digital Soundtrack and four DLC packs to be released post-launch, being sold for $79.99 USD.
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Meh.
Come back after the 2nd DLC.
Hopefully they can….
A) Solve the “carpet of doom” problem.
B) Teach the AI to actually use it properly. Or failing that, use it at all.
Both reasons I gave up Civ V for dead long ago.
Looks really exciting . Looks like I am going to be busy over christmas.
Interesting development – I can only assume that by announcing this now the Alien crossfire expansion pack for Beyond Earth has been cancelled. I was hoping to have the Alien Crossfire like update – but bearing in mind that Beyond Earth wasn’t a patch on Alpha Centauri I can see why it tanked.
There were some very good third party mods for civ IV. So there is always hope for the next CIV game.
I don’t know anything first hand but if you watch Firaxis at their conferences at their table they don’t inspire confidence in their future.
I used to pre-order new Civ titles, but after Civ V, I decided to wait on Civ: BE. I’m glad I did, and I still haven’t bought BE. There are no pre-order incentives for Civ VI, so there’s really no need to pre-purchase it. I’ll be waiting for reviews to see if Civ VI is worth buying.
Well X-COM2 saved Firaxis for me as it was pretty much spot on for me at least I put about 70hrs in it so I think that was pretty good value for money. So I might give Civ VI a change. Although compared to Civ IV I played Civ V far far less. Don’t even start talking about BE (which was a major disappointment for me) So they really need to bring something to the table worth considering, maybe by expanding the near future a bit which I always found very lacklustre in Civ vanilla, especially compared to Call to Power
It will be hard to make something better than Civ4 – Realism Invictus.
That is the sad thing about Firaxis – they have lost so much good will that we are saying what will it look like after the 2nd expansion rather than how the game is on release.
Beyond Earth was not a true successor to Alpha Centauri and is still a far from outstanding game.
I personally intend to wait until the 2nd expansion and for the 75% off deals.
Companies may think they’ve hit the jackpot with DLCs but the way they are going about it atm, some consumers will eventually adopt this ‘wait for GOTY edition’ mentality.
Personally, unless the base game can stand on it’s own, I wouldn’t even look at it. Companies like Firaxis might trade in their reputation once or twice (like V and BE), but no large group of potential buyers like to be tricked every time hence the lukewarm reception about VI. All it takes is someone like CDProject to come along and show people what consumer-friendly means and people will flock to them in droves.
Stupid short term thinking bean counters.
I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple. Believe me, I wish it was.
Had it been, my list of complaints about modern gaming would have been shrinking and not constantly being added to.
I always say that the golden age of gaming was between ’95 and ’05 because after that is where steam started to take off and gamers stopped owning their games and it all went downhill after that.
I didn’t think gamers would let companies take away their ability to play a game where and whenever they chose.
I was wrong.
You really have to search around today to find a game that doesn’t utilize some form of online activation. A practice that depend upon internet-based company-owned servers.
What happens when they go down do you think?
Then we have quicktime events, console controls, 30fps, engines tied to framerates, PC gamepads, etc…the list can be made long.
I can count on two hand the number of games I’ve bought since ’05 and they have gotten fewer and fewer.
$60 for a reskin of CIV5. Taking a play out of Stardock’s GALCIV3 handbook I see.
I think it will take them a few years to drudge up enough new creative ideas before I can warrant another purchase. I guess I’ll just wait for Civ 7 or Civ 8.
Is spacesector dead? Sure looks like it, no updates in two months. A shame, this was one of my favorite gaming news sites.
I sure hope not.
It might just be because of a lull in releases having to do with 4X games and taking the time to test a game and review it.
This is a rather niche site after all.
One could hope that they expand out into other Space and Sci-Fi games but that takes more writers than they might be able to afford.
Still, valid question. I hope we get an answer. ,)
Oh, SpaceSector’s not dead, at least not yet :) Yeah, there haven’t been updates in a while. Part of it is due to a bit less activity around the games we tend to cover, like Vendor-Lazarus said, but I’m positive we’ll see more updates later in the year.
The other reason for the low site activity is due to less availability from my part due to my day job, which has been consuming all of my time for quite a while and will be for some time to come, which leaves zero time for editing and helping out my colleagues.
Hang on in there though. The site activity has been low, but I’m sure you still have a lot to gain by sticking around, with probably a few surprises on the way ;)