Clint  Kelly

      This morning, as I woke up, I saw the telltale sign that Firaxis had once again released an update on their upcoming release, Civilization VI. Now, those of you who haven't heard of it yet (which rock are you living under, by the way? And did you have booze? Rock booze?) Civilization 6 was announced at E3 this year. It features staples of the series, where you play as one of several leaders and lead a civilization through history, with the hopes of "creating a civilization that stands the test of time". It's a turn-based strategy game, and it's kind of a big deal. A really big deal. I bet you that you can ask random people on the street if they've at least HEARD of Sid Meier's Civilization, and you can be sure that they'll say "Yes. Also, who the hell are you?", to which you'll definitely reply "I'm one classy son of a bitch." But I digress.

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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       The sixth installment of the series introduces what I find to be a fascinating new way to construct and manage cities. Rather than cities being stacked into a single tile as they have been for five games, Cities have been expanded into a series of districts. Now, anyone who has played Civilization as a military game (specifically, Civ 5), knows that this completely changes the way that the game is played. Now, rather than siege simply being a matter of surrounding a city with 1 layer of melee units and 1 or 2 layers of ranged units and beating it until it collapses, siege has become more of a surgical matter. Sure, you can raze the entire city, but it might be more beneficial to burn your opponent's campus and religious districts, then leave them crippled. Barbarians have also become smarter. Much like ants swarming your picnic and ruining your day, if a barbarian scout finds your civilization and you let them live? You'll soon be up to your armpits in barbarians faster than you can say "Hannibal!". Players of older Civ games will also note the return of unit stacking (albeit more limited), with the creation of corps, armies, and fleets.

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      However, Civilization's improvements don't stop at conquest. The tech tree has been split into two separate trees, Technology and Civics, which has honestly been a long time coming. It has never made sense to me that things like civil service and religion would be developed with scientific research, rather that it would develop organically via cultural means. And now, in Civ VI, this can finally be adequately addressed. The Technology tree consists of techs like Iron Working, Electricity, the Internet, usually things that lead to your nation having lasers and giant death robots. And XCom (admit it, you loved having that teensy cross-over in Civ V). Civics, on the other hand, will include things like civil service, monotheism, humanitarian efforts. Civics also plays an important role in how your government develops. 

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      Expanding on how the Civics Tree impacts the development of your government, Social Policies have been replaced with a series of cards. Depending on your civics level, the amount of cards, along with the types of cards you can use changes. And what I think is really cool is that this rolls the old Ideology system and the Social Policy system together into this broad marriage. It's great. One thing that many players should know is that Firaxis doesn't REALLY make video games. They craft beautiful digital board games. I think that the new team at Firaxis is starting to embrace that, and it shows. The closer that a Firaxis game resembles a board game, the higher the quality of that game will be. 

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      Those of you who know me KNOW I predicted this latest revelation months ago. This morning, Firaxis announced that civilizations in Civ VI will have multiple leaders to choose from. This is a huge deal, but how did I predict this, you ask? It's very simple. When America was announced, with Theodore Roosevelt as its (first) leader, the word choice was very deliberate. Rather than calling his ability his "Unique ability", they referred to it as his "Leader ability". Now, why would you have to specify that it's a Leader ability if there is only a single leader for each playable civ? The answer is you wouldn't. Word choice is direly important in PR of any kind, but especially in the game industry, where you have millions of rabid fans chomping at the bit to find a reason to criticize your work, as they should (Don't you worry, I'll address this in another post). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Seriously, why are you still reading? Go watch those videos, you know you want to now!

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