Civilization VI - Rise and Fall Expansion Coming February 8

[RandV]

The global happiness thing makes me curious. Civ usually has a method to prevent you from spamming settlers and becoming too big too early. In Civ III (and earlier I believe), that was production. The farther away from the capital you settled, the more 'corruption' a city had losing hammers. To mitigate this you had to build court houses, and had a single national wonder the Forbidden Palace(?) that acted as a second capital. I think there was also a world wonder that did the same thine (Kremlin?).

In Civ IV, the determining factor was gold. When settling a new city, it dropped your gold production. Go to low, and you'd have to drop science to accommodate. So until you could get some gold production up you had to stay smaller.

Civ V of course the factor was happiness, which was kind of a soft limit but settling more cities also made research and culture costlier. But if they're taking that out in Civ VI, don't they need to replace it with something else.

 

[Jumptheshark]

I am still in love with Civ 2--pissed off none of the modern Computers can play it

 

[Osprey]

The global happiness thing makes me curious. Civ usually has a method to prevent you from spamming settlers and becoming too big too early.

...

Civ V of course the factor was happiness, which was kind of a soft limit but settling more cities also made research and culture costlier. But if they're taking that out in Civ VI, don't they need to replace it with something else.

That's a good point. I would hope, though, that they keep things simple and not implement something that affects the whole game like happiness did. If the issue is spamming settlers early on, then implement a limit specifically on settlers. You could do what other 4X games (like Master of Orion) do and simply make settlers take a great deal of turns, though that hurts the fun of early games. Perhaps a better solution is that you can't create a settler unless you have a population level of at least 2. That way, you can't start creating a new settler as soon as you lay down any city, including your capital. You might also do a cooldown (like not being able to create a settler for 10 turns after you finished creating one), so that you can't just have your capital pump out settler after settler.

Regardless of the exact implementation, the idea is for the limitation to be on actually creating the settlers, rather than on the consequences of establishing cities. I sort of feel that, if you get past these initial restrictions and do create a settler, you shouldn't be penalized too much for founding a city with him. It makes total sense that that city be unhappy and/or corrupt until you build it up, but I just hate when I have to try to calculate whether I can even afford to establish a city because it'll hurt my overall happiness/production/culture/etc scores.

I am still in love with Civ 2--pissed off none of the modern Computers can play it

That's probably because the original was a Win16 application. You might have much better luck with Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition or Civilization II: Test of Time, which both require at least Windows 95, so they're probably Win32 applications. Test of Time is probably your best bet, since it's a remake, so it was ostensibly written from the ground up to be a Win95-supporting Win32 application. You can probably get that to work, at least by employing Windows 95 or 98 compatibility mode.

You could also play FreeCiv, which mimics the look and gameplay of Civ II and is constantly updated (Wikipedia says that the last stable build was released less than two weeks ago).

 

[RandV]

That's a good point. I would hope, though, that they keep things simple and not implement something that affects the whole game like happiness did. If the issue is spamming settlers early on, then implement a limit specifically on settlers. You could do what other 4X games (like Master of Orion) do and simply make settlers take a great deal of turns, though that hurts the fun of early games. Perhaps a better solution is that you can't create a settler unless you have a population level of at least 2. That way, you can't start creating a new settler as soon as you lay down any city, including your capital. You might also do a cooldown (like not being able to create a settler for 10 turns after you finished creating one), so that you can't just have your capital pump out settler after settler.

My favorite system waz actually a total conversion mod for Civ IV (Total realism I think, from a Total War mod team) which used city health as the limiter. You could build as many cities as you wanted without penalty, but if population level exceeded health level the city would be hit with plague and 1 population would die.

This method let you build big sprawling ancient empires, but city sizes were limited until you researched and built buildings to increase health letting you take a jump in growth at each point. Probably the most sensible and realistic setup i've seen.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

I have to say, I'm genuinely interested in what I've seen so far. Quill18's videos have certainly made me think this is a game I want. Remain to be convinced on the graphics, mind.

Still gunna wait till after it's released though, if the response is positive I'll probably get it for Christmas.

 

[Frederick Stanley]

Which voice is that in the trailer?

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Sean Bean

 

[RandV]

System specs are out:

CPU specs are rather ambiguous to me, I have an older Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (6M Cache, 3.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB). That should be good enough right?

 

[mouser]

Civ is usually pretty tame on CPU, unless they're introducing something new this time around where frame rates become important.

 

[Osprey]

CPU specs are rather ambiguous to me, I have an older Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (6M Cache, 3.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB). That should be good enough right?

It's two years older than the minimum spec (2008, whereas the Core i3 was introduced in 2010), so, technically, it doesn't meet them. That said, it's likely that that's not a hard requirement, just what they found was the minimum for acceptable performance on low quality settings if you also have the other minimum hardware. If you have a better video card than the listed minimum, that should compensate for having a slightly below-spec CPU.

 

[RandV]

It's two years older than the minimum spec (2008, whereas the Core i3 was introduced in 2010), so, technically, it doesn't meet them. That said, it's likely that that's not a hard requirement, just what they found was the minimum for acceptable performance on low quality settings if you also have the other minimum hardware. If you have a better video card than the listed minimum, that should compensate for having a slightly below-spec CPU.

Yeah my video card is much newer, I have a NVidia Geforce GTX 750 Ti. I'm just confused by the CPU because it doesn't really give any hard specs, just a model number.

New graphics card aside, I actually built my current machine specifically to play Civ V. So now would be a great time to get an upgrade... whenever I'm able to.

 

[SniperHF]

System specs are out:


CPU specs are rather ambiguous to me, I have an older Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (6M Cache, 3.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB). That should be good enough right?

CPU required specs are almost always garbage. The ones listed aren't even specific parts. They made Phenom II's at 2.6ghz that were all over the map in performance.


That said an E8400 is crusty as hell and I wouldn't count on it running well. Potentially even at all if the game requires 4 threads.

You could always refund it though I guess if it doesn't run well enough.

 

[Osprey]

New graphics card aside, I actually built my current machine specifically to play Civ V. So now would be a great time to get an upgrade... whenever I'm able to.

You could always upgrade just your CPU. You might be able to put a Core 2 Quad or Core 2 Extreme in your current motherboard. It still wouldn't be a Core i3, but it'd get you closer to it. Look on eBay for a used one. I don't know about Intel, but I recently looked at Phenoms from approximately the same era and they were going for only $10-15.

That said an E8400 is crusty as hell and I wouldn't count on it running well. Potentially even at all if the game requires 4 threads.

The Core i3 2.5GHz is listed as a dual-core processor, so the latter shouldn't be the case.

 

[SniperHF]

The Core i3 2.5GHz is a dual-core processor, so the latter shouldn't be the case.

4 thread though.

This is probably moot anyway because it's pretty rare that games actually require 4 threads. Farcry 4 does, DA:I did but I think they patched it.

 

[Osprey]

4 thread though.

I was assuming that the Core 2 Duo supported hyper-threading, but, apparently, it doesn't. So, you were right in your concern.

 

[Jasper]

Easily my most anticipated game release of the year. Less than a month to go.

 

[Belamorte]

I have pre-ordered it and am really looking forward to it. I just hope it does not take 2 expansions and 2 years for it to become a complete/playable game. I have a feeling it will though, as that is the pattern Firaxis follows.

 

[SniperHF]

I have a feeling it will though, as that is the pattern Firaxis follows.

They get most of the criticism for that, deservedly; but just about every strategy game follows this trajectory. It's annoying.

 

[Belamorte]

They get most of the criticism for that, deservedly; but just about every strategy game follows this trajectory. It's annoying.

Yeah, the one redeeming factor about Firaxis is that they release 'full expansions' (sure a little-unneeded DLC thrown here and there), unlike Paradox (I like their games though) where it is DLC hell and by the end of the cycle you do not know what is good/bad/needed or indifferent. That said, I agree it is annoying.

 

[Jasper]

They get most of the criticism for that, deservedly; but just about every strategy game follows this trajectory. It's annoying.

Do you expect to see it have some late game balancing issues? That's pretty much what makes Civ 5 blow other games away with the expansions. I've been a 4X fan since the original Civ and Master of Magic but I skipped a few iterations of Civ so I'm not sure what to expect.

 

[RandV]

I have pre-ordered it and am really looking forward to it. I just hope it does not take 2 expansions and 2 years for it to become a complete/playable game. I have a feeling it will though, as that is the pattern Firaxis follows.

I'm sure they're keeping the same model, but from what we've seen so far I don't think it will be a problem.

Personally I started in the series with the gold version of Civ III, so went through the full iteration of Civ IV and Civ V. Vanilla Civ IV was perfectly fine, but on the other hand V was bad because they did such a big redesign of the game that a lot got stripped out. The two expansions were as much about putting things back into the game as they were expanding it.

With what we have so far of Civ VI, it feels like they're building off the complete Civ V experience. I'm sure problems will pop up but the only thing that seems to be missing at the moment is the world congress... which is hardly a big loss.

 

[RandV]

Yeah, the one redeeming factor about Firaxis is that they release 'full expansions' (sure a little-unneeded DLC thrown here and there), unlike Paradox (I like their games though) where it is DLC hell and by the end of the cycle you do not know what is good/bad/needed or indifferent. That said, I agree it is annoying.

And the biggest factor in my opinion is that that Firaxis/Civ embraces modders. It doesn't get mentioned as much but probably the worst aspect of 'DLC culture' is when the devs kill the modding community so they can peddle a bunch of cheap DLC. We saw this happen with the Total War series, for example. Civilization may sell a couple unique leaders through $5 DLC, but at the same time you can easily find hundreds of other options through mods.

One thing in particular I'm looking forward to in the Civ VI modding community are city states. Each city state providing a unique bonus now throws the door wide open for modders.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Regarding specs, Firaxis usually release a Demo of the Civ game, so you should be able to try that first.

 

[Seedtype]

Let's get some hype going here, shall we?



I have to say, the new city changes sound really exciting. Usually I only care about cities from a strategic perspective(ie. area denial usage so AI can't pass through, coastal location, etc) but it seems you really have to consider it now.

I also appreciate Totalbiscuit's point about how the vanilla version feels in comparison to previous Civs. Civilization V's vanilla was really bad at first when comparing to Civ IV at its final point.

Looks like a day one purchase for me at this point.

Edit: Also, a lot of people early on were complaining about the look, I think it's looks great for turn-based strategy game.

 

[Jasper]

Edit: Also, a lot of people early on were complaining about the look, I think it's looks great for turn-based strategy game.

I like it too. I don't know what people would prefer it to even look like.