Author Topic: Civilization VI Analyst: Overview (Read 2628 times)

Buster's Uncle · « **on:** June 19, 2016, 02:04:50 AM »

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ6_overview.html#prclt-Gh18oYt4

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Civilization VI Analyst: Overview
Well of Souls

*This page last updated: 18 June, 2016 12:23 PST. (Log of recent changes)
Disclaimer: The information listed below is about a game that is still under development, and so is incomplete and subject to change.

Sid Meier's CIVILIZATION VI

On May 11, 2016 2K announced a new title in the Civilization series: Sid Meier's Civilization VI, to be released on October 21, 2016 for the PC. The lead designer is Ed Beach, who performed the same role for both the Gods & Kings and Brave New World expansions for Civilization V. The Art Director is Brian Busatti, who has worked on several Civilization iterations including Civilization Revolution, for which he was also Art Director.
• Features ◦City Planning
◦Technology
◦Civics
◦Religion
◦Diplomacy
◦Trade Routes
◦Victory Conditions
◦User Interface

•Civilizations ◦City-States

•Cities ◦Districts and Buildings
◦Improvements
◦Wonders

•Units ◦Great People

•Terrain ◦Resources
◦Natural Wonders

•Links to Previews

Features

Civilization VI is being completely re-built from the ground up using a new engine. Unlike most previous "vanilla" iterations of Civilization, Civ VI will include a number of features in the core game that previously required multiple expansions, including trade routes, religion, archaeology, espionage, city-states, tourism and Great Works. Though all features have been rebuilt for the new engine, most are based on the gameplay of Civilization V, with some notable changes and improvments.

"Everything that Civilization players have loved in Civilization V, we’re bringing forward, in addition to putting on the new gameplay from Civilization VI." - Dennis Shirk.

“The number one thing to know is that Civilization VI is not built on the previous engine. All of the gameplay systems have been entirely rewritten and re-architected. We’ve specifically set it up to be very modifiable. And we’ve rewritten the A.I. from the ground up, learning all the lessons that we had from Civilization V, so we know how best to solve some of these problems in military combat and so forth.” - Ed Beach

City Planning

Cities are now "unstacked" and sprawl across the entire city radius. A few buildings can be built within the city center, but the rest must be constructed in Districts which compete for space with Improvements and Wonders in tiles around the city. For details, see the Cities page.

Technology

Research works much as before, but each technology has a "Eureka" objective attached to it. This objective is a mini-quest (such as "Meet another Civilization" or "Build a Quarry") that, when completed, will award a research credit worth 50% (!) of the science needed to unlock that tech. You will get this research credit whether or not you are currently researching the technology in question. As with Civ V, there is no tech trading.

Technological progress will now be more closely tied to a nation's geography, available resources and activities. Coastal cities with boat and harbor improvements will earn naval technologies more quickly, Masonry will be more quickly researched by a city with a Quarry improvement and stone to mine, and nations fighting barbarians will more quickly learn military technologies.

The research tree is smaller than in Civ V, because a number of items have been moved to the new Civics tree (see below). Taken together, these two trees have about 40 more items than the Civ V tech tree.

“We wanted to make sure your progress in the tech tree was something you had more control over, something where you could push your progress if necessary. So what we’ve done is, for pretty much every technology in the tech tree, we’ve associated a specific activity that’s sort of like a quest. And if you finish that activity, boom, we give you a big credit, about 50% of the science that you need to unlock that particular technology is granted to you. So the tech tree is now set up so that it adjusts itself based on your play style. If you’re playing the game militaristically, all of a sudden the militaristic path through the tree is going to open up and be easy for you. If you’re playing the game building a navy, all of a sudden all of these maritime technologies are going to open up for you. It rewards you for being active in certain parts of the game.” - Ed Beach

Known technology Eureka boost conditions:
•Irrigation: Farm a Resource
•Archery: Kill an enemy unit or barbarian with a Slinger
•Masonry: Build a Quarry
•Writing: Meet another Civilization
•Sailing: Found a city on the coast
•Bronze Working: (Destroy a barbarian camp)?
•Iron Working: Recruit three Spearmen

Civics

Civics now behave very much like a second technology tree, with each new civic gradually unlocked by accumulated Culture. Each Civic unlocks one or more items, including policies, district or building types, wonders, and government types. Each government type has a varying number of color-coded slots for policies, and you can mix and match which policies to place in which slot. The starting "Chiefdom" government type has one military slot and one economic slot; later government types have more and different slot types. There are at least four policy slot types: Military, Economic, Diplomatic, and Wildcard (which is apparently a policy type, not a slot for any type).

The "Eureka" objective system that applies to research also applies to Civics; completing these objectives will add huge culture credits toward earning that particular civic.

"There were always a lot of things in the tech tree like 'chivalry' that weren't really a technology." - Ed Beach

Known civics Eureka boost conditions:
•Military Tradition: Clear a Barbarian Outpost
•Code of Laws: ?
•Early Empire: Grow your civilization to at least 6 population
•State Workforce: Build any district
•Craftsmanship: Improve 3 tiles
•Foreign Trade: Discover a second continent

Governments

Known government types and their associated bonuses and policy slot types:

Government Bonus Social Policy Slot Types
Chiefdom (none?) 1 military, 1 economic
Classical Republic bonus to Amenities and Great People generation 1 military, 1 economic, 1 diplomatic, 1 wildcard
Oligarchy bonus to yields in capital and Wonder production 2 economic, 1 diplomatic, 1 wildcard
Autocracy bonus to unit melee strength and XP 2 military, 1 economic, 1 wildcard
Monarchy ? ?
Theocracy ? ?
(Merchant/Plutocracy) ? ?
Democracy ? ?
Communism ? ?
Fascism ? ?

All government and social policy changes are free on the turn that a new Civic is completed.

"We allow you to re-slot policies for free every time you complete a Civic. You can do it anytime you want, it just costs some gold if you're doing it between turns. For a culture player, there's a large amount of Military-specific policies that you can get. If you're a Military-focused player, you might not have as deep a lineup of policies, because you're mainly playing science. As a culture player, you'll have those abilities. You'll be able to produce units 25 percent faster as an example. You can react to stuff pretty quickly. If you're really far behind there may be no hope, but there's a lot of knobs a player can turn to get a lot more defensive ability." - Dennis Shirk

Policies

•Military◦Survey: Double experience for Recon Units.
◦Maritime Industries: +100% Production towards Ancient and Classical era naval units.
◦Retainers: +1 Amenity for cities with a garrisoned unit.
◦Discipline: +5 Combat Strength when fighting Barbarians.

•Diplomatic◦Diplomatic League: The first Envoy you send to each city-state counts as two Envoys.
◦Charismatic Leader: +2 Influence points per turn towards earning city-state Envoys.

•Economic◦Meritocracy: Each city receives +1 Culture for each specialty district it constructs.
◦Caravansaries: +2 Gold from all Trade Routes
◦Colonization: +50% Production towards Settlers
◦Urban Planning: +1 Production in all cities.
◦Land Surveyors: Reduces cost of purchasing a plot by 20%
◦God King: +1 Faith and +1 Gold in the Capital.

•Wildcard◦Inspiration: +2 Great Scientist points per turn.
◦Literary Tradition: +2 Great Artist points per turn.
◦Revelation: +2 Great Prophet points per turn.

Religion

Religion appears to operate similarly to the system in Civ V; Pantheons precede formal religions, which are founded by Great Prophets. You can still choose or customize a name and select from an increased number of symbols. You can choose from different beliefs with different attributes. And you can choose the type building where your faith is professed. That can be a church, mosque or synagogue, or a simpler Meeting House. Each building gives a different bonus.

Religions still spread by exerting pressure, and the Holy City (the founding place of each religion) exerts additional pressure.

According to GadgetHelpLine, there is now a Religious Victory, and religion allows you to breed Inquisitors, apostles, and gives the ability to conquer foreign cities through religious fervor alone.

“Aside from custom cathedrals, meeting houses, etc. that you can put into your holy site now based on a belief, you can also have powers, For example, being able to purchase theater districts or commercial hubs with faith alone. You're going to have religious combat now, you're going to have inquisitions, you can have inquisitors, apostles, there's a whole different level if you want to play that aggressive religion-versus-religion game.” - Dennis Shirk

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.

Civ VI uses a "casus belli" system; in other words, you will incur less of diplomatic penalty if you have cause to go to war. If you declare war without first Denouncing the target civilization, this will be considered a "surprise war" and will incur additional diplomatic penalties.

There is no World Congress. It's one of the few features from Civ V BNW that's not in Civ VI.

“We’ve changed the way leaders work in diplomacy. In previous versions, all of the leaders approached the game in basically the same way. Here you have very different key triggers, with A.I. that’s now driven by what we call leader agendas. A leader agenda is a specific historical way of approaching the world that we assign to each of the leaders based on what they were good at when they were ruling their empire. Each leader has a historical agenda that you’ll learn as you play the game repeatedly. But we also assign secret agendas to the leaders that you have to uncover through espionage. And so the diplomatic landscape is much richer. The more you mix all the different personalities into a big soup, the more you end up with a very interesting diplomatic landscape.” - Ed Beach

"A hidden agenda may be just 'fan of industry' or 'fan of culture,' some of those basic things. If you’re generating a lot of science they might admire you for it. It could be stuff as simple as you have more wonders than them, and they want the wonders. Stuff like that.” - Dennis Shirk

Gossip

Traders, delegations and spies can all collect gossip, similar to "intrigue" in Civ V, which may reveal clues about a rival civilization's activities and intentions (and Hidden Agendas).

"Eventually you'll be hearing gossip about everything he's doing as an AI routine in his civilization. You've got great relations, but that's not stopping you from spying on your allies to make sure you're getting all the information." - Dennis Shirk

Trade Routes

Civilization VI uses a Trade Route system similar to that introduced in Civilization V: Brave New World. Trader units can each create and sustain a trade route between two cities. Trade route yields will vary based on what districts each city has.

One chief difference is that the Trader will create a road as it travels along its route. Also, the UI appears to indicate that trade routes have a Melee Strength value, suggesting that the Trader has a limited capacity to defend itself.

Victory Conditions

According to the sketchy information we have thus far, it appears that there are four victory conditions:
•Domination
•Science (Space Race)
•Cultural
•Religious

There are no details as yet. Ed Beach has said that there is no World Congress in Civ VI.

User Interface

The game is in an early state, but it has confirmed that Civ VI will have the much-asked-for 2D hexmap Strategic View, as well as map data overlays called Lenses.

Day-Night Cycle

The engine has the capability to display a day-night cycle, complete with shifting shadows and lights on buildings. It looks like this may be configurable, to cycle through times of day as turns pass.

Fancy Fog

Unexplored territory and fog of war (tiles not directly in the view of your units or cities) now appear with a special renderer that makes them look like a parchment map.

Civilizations

Civ VI will ship with 18 civilizations. Each civilization has five unique elements: a fixed historical Agenda (as well as a second randomly-generated hidden agenda), a unique ability, a unique unit, a leader bonus (which can be an ability or another unique unit), and a unique infrastructure item (which can be a building, improvement, or district).

Civilization Icon Leader Agenda Unique Unit Unique Infrastructure Leader
Bonus Unique Ability
America Teddy Roosevelt Big Stick P-51 Mustang Film Studio Rough Rider
China Qin Shi Huang (Wonder Envy) Great Wall improvement Builders gain +1 charge, Can rush Ancient & Classical Wonders with Builders
Egypt Cleopatra Queen of the Nile (War Chariot?)
Japan ? Samurai

Montezuma (Aztecs) and Gandhi (India) have been specifically mentioned by developers in interviews, but have not been officially confirmed. The following civilizations have been represented in every initial release of the Civilization series and so can probably be expected in Civ VI: England, France, Germany, Greece, Rome, Russia.

Agendas
•Big Stick (America): Teddy will act aggressively toward anyone who starts a war or bullies City-States on his continent.
•Queen of the Nile (Egypt): Cleopatra will respect someone with a strong military, but despise someone without one.
•(Wonder Envy) (China): Qin Shi Huang will dislike you if you build more Wonders than him.

Barbarians

Barbarian encampments look very similar to those in Civ V, but they periodically send out scouts, which, if they spot your cities and are allowed to return to camp, will trigger a raiding party.

“Barbarians can generate scouts now. You may have seen some of those around. If you leave a camp around long enough, it generates a scout. The scout explores the map just like you do. But what it’s looking for is targets. If a scout comes up to the outskirts of your city, that means he knows you’re there, and he’s going back to his camp to tell his buddies that they have a target. It’s important to watch that. You can know, ‘OK, if the scout came from four turns away, it’ll take him four turns to go home and five or six more to build an army.’ But eventually, 10 or 15 turns down the line, that scout reporting back is going to be bad news for you. You can prepare for that, though. You can see the scout and have some fast forces block him from getting home. He’s not that strong. It’s more strategic. They’re not just randomly wandering guys like the barbarians of the past. They’re a bit more intelligent. When they come back, they come back with a collection of both ranged and melee units. They can give you a hard time.” - Ed Beach

City-States

City-States no longer have an Influence bar, but rather a set of influence states. Each City-State has a set of goals that can be accomplished in any order, such as destroying a nearby barbarian encampment or establishing a trade route with them. Accomplishing one or two of these tasks earns you increasing bonuses from that City-State, but accomplishing three makes you that City-State’s ally (or "Suzerain"), for a larger bonus that can go only to one civ at a time. In order to displace another civ as a City-State’s ally, you have to get one more point than they have.

City-States are of three (known) types: Religious, Trade, and Scientific. It appears that there is also a Militaristic type (represented by a shield icon), but no details are known. Each type gives a bonus for each level of influence based on type, and each individual City-State gives a unique bonus to its Suzerain. City-states follow their Suzerain into war and peace with other players. The Suzerain receives all resources the city-state owns, and may also pay Gold to temporarily take control of the city-state's units.

City-State influence bonuses by type:

Type 1 Envoy 3 Envoys 6 Envoys
Trade +4 Gold in Capital +4 Gold in every Commercial Hub district Additional +4 Gold in every Commercial Hub district
Religious Envoy: +2 Faith in Capital +2 Faith in every Holy Site district Additional +2 Faith in every Holy Site district
Scientific +2 Science in Capital +2 Science in every Campus district (Additional +2 Science in every Campus district)

Known City-States, Types, and Unique Bonuses:

City-State Type Unique Bonus
Hattusa Scientific Provides you with 1 of each Strategic resource you have revealed but do not own.
Jerusalem Religious Automatically converts to the Religion you founded, and exerts pressure for that religion as if it were a Holy City.
La Venta Religious ?
Zanzibar Trade Receive the Cinnamon and Cloves luxury resources. The cannot be earned any other way in the game, and provide 6 Amenities each.

Envoys

Envoys are a type of emissary that players can send to City-States for the purpose of furthering their agenda in Civilization VI. Envoys earn resources over time and, the more Envoys you send to a particular City-State, the greater the influence you have over that City-State. With enough influence, you can become Suzerain of that City-State, which yields unique bonuses and guarantees allegiance during times of peace and war. Suzerains can even pay gold to levy the City-State’s military units for a limited time. Players can even send an Envoy to a City-State they are at war with, potentially changing the City-State’s allegiance in the middle of the conflict. Declaring war on a City-State removes all Envoys the player has there; otherwise, Envoys stay on a City-State permanently. Envoys can be removed from a City-State under certain (undisclosed) conditions.

Units

Civilization VI still uses a "1 Unit Per Tile" system as in Civilization V. There is now a limited ability to link military and support units, and to combine

Preview Links

5/11 2K Official Site
5/11 Take 2 Civilization VI press release
5/11 Civilization VI Official Announcement Trailer (YouTube)
5/11 Rock Paper Shotgun: Civilization VI Details
5/11 PCGamer: Civilization 6: everything you need to know
5/11 Polygon: Civilization 6 release date preview
5/11 IGN: Three ways Civilization 6 radically reinvents itself: city-building, science and diplomacy
5/11 Venture Beat: Civilization VI debuts this fall with a new take on cities
5/11 TIME: 6 Reasons Civilization 6 sounds totally different from past games
5/11 The Verge: Civilization VI is launching in October
5/11 Mashable: How Civilization VI aims to improve upon perfection
5/13 IGN: How Firaxis will redefine Civilization's art style in Civ VI
5/25 Civilization.com: Theodore Roosevelt Leads the Americans
5/25 Polygon: Civilization 6 Gameplay first look (YouTube)
5/25 quill18's Gameplay Footage Breakdown (YouTube)
5/25 IGN: Civilization 6's New Game-changer features
5/25 GameRevolution: Civilization VI preview
5/25 Marbozir's Civilization 6 Gameplay Preview (YouTube)
5/25 Game Informer: Civilization 6 Making All the Right Moves
5/25 GameCrate: Hands-on: Civilization VI Adds Teddy Roosevelt, Ditches Workers, and Feels Great
5/25 PCGamer: 60 turns of Civilization 6
5/25 Rock Paper Shotgun: Hands On: Civilization VI Is Exciting, Complex & Aggressive
5/25 BA Start Gaming: Ed Beach interview (YouTube)
5/25 Polygon: Hands On With Civilization 6
5/25 Venture Beat: Hands-on: This is a very different game
5/25 Venture Beat: Ed Beach interview
5/25 USGamer: Rebuilding an Empire
5/25 PCGamesN: Dennis Shirk interview
5/25 PCGamesN: Everything you need to know
5/25 Gamestar.de: Hands-on preview (German)
5/25 Tweakers: Civilization VI Preview (Dutch)
5/25 Tom's Hardware: Hands on gamplay
5/25 Gameskult: Preview (German)
5/27 PCGames.de: Hands-on preview (German)
5/27 GadgetHelpLine: What's Changed?
6/02 Civilization.com: Envoys and City-States
6/14 Twitch E3 video and Ed Beach commentary (YouTube)
6/14 E3 video GameSpot version (YouTube)
6/15 E3 video IGN version 1080p (YouTube)

This is more like a wiki than an article - it's hyperlinked all to heck, which I didn't try to follow, so check the page for a lot more information...