Civilization VI announced, will support Linux & SteamOS

There's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design...

Yes, but which political leanings are those? I've heard gamers accuse Firaxis of using the Civilization series to promote both liberalism and conservatism.

I think their political conservatism is pretty blatant. (How else would they stomach that G.W. Bush quote for the Future Techs? :P )

There's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design...

Yes, but which political leanings are those? I've heard gamers accuse Firaxis of using the Civilization series to promote both liberalism and conservatism.

I think their political conservatism is pretty blatant. (How else would they stomach that G.W. Bush quote for the Future Techs? :P )

Conservatives can consider it a tribute. Liberals can consider it mockery. :D

At any rate, if Firaxis' last few Civ games (Civ 4, Civ 5, and Beyond Earth) are any indication, Civ 6 won't be worth buying until at least the first expansion.

Oh awesome!

It certainly won't be cheap, as it will go for $59.99/£49.99/€59.99 at release.

While I would still argue we should all be buying both DRM free and directly from the company responsible for the port if possible, it is worth at least informing others that if you preorder it from Amazon and are an Amazon prime subscriber, it will only be $48 at launch. Just a heads up. http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=13584215011

Size = power isn't really true. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but we certainly aren't the second most powerful. I'd say it's more of a combination of size, population and perceived economic & military clout that defines power.

The goal of a nation like Switzerland would be to survive and prosper despite their geographical limitations.

I meant size as in size of population, not area. The US is four times larger in terms of population than the second largest western nation (Germany), so that's THE source of its power. And really - Civ reflects the "size matters" reality just nicely. Go large or go home. Like in real life. What Civ could do better is translating different population -density- to the game. Germany actually appears much smaller on a map than it really is (in terms of population). In Civ, nations tend to be pretty much evenly dense, which is not the case in reality.

Btw. Civ already has the "just survive" goal. You get the "ok, you made it" message. It just...doesn't feel like a victory. :D

They announce Civ VI & I realised I haven't even played Civ III yet, it's the Tropico games all over again for me, I have them all & played none of them.

Size = power isn't really true. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but we certainly aren't the second most powerful. I'd say it's more of a combination of size, population and perceived economic & military clout that defines power.

The goal of a nation like Switzerland would be to survive and prosper despite their geographical limitations.

I meant size as in size of population, not area. The US is four times larger in terms of population than the second largest western nation (Germany), so that's THE source of its power.

With your logic India is the second most powerful country in the world. Do you really believe it?

They announce Civ VI & I realised I haven't even played Civ III yet, it's the Tropico games all over again for me, I have them all & played none of them.

It's not like you have to play them in order or anything.

At any rate, if Firaxis' last few Civ games (Civ 4, Civ 5, and Beyond Earth) are any indication, Civ 6 won't be worth buying until at least the first expansion.

Sad but true. I might even wait 2 expansions. And we're not alone, all civ fanatics knows this to well.

Ironic how the DLC business model created to rip customers of their money ultimately ends with them making less earnings.

I am however, genuinely curious what can still done to Civ to improve it.

Fix the AI – so it is a challenging opponent without so much cheating.

It seems like the AI is as dumb in Civ V, if not dumber, as it was in the first Civilization. The only reason AI wins on higher difficulty levels is because it has more resources, gentler rules, more game knowledge and artificially aggressive „diplomacy” (everyone against you whatever diplomacy you did). Yes, computer is not an intelligent person and may need some help, but game would be much more fun if they felt a bit more 'real'.

Great. Instant buy for me.

It's not like you have to play them in order or anything.

Good thing too or I'd never get to the latest game. :D

Well, knowing the Civ tradition of waiting until the second or even third expansion when the game is actually worth playing, there seems no motivation to buy what to me is a ridiculous price for what doesn't seem to be more than a refinement of the previous games. $80 CDN for support units on the same hex, some graphical improvement and maybe a less boring tech tree? And $105 CDN for the soundtrack and season pass equivalent? No thank you!

I reall doubted they wouldn't release it for Linux - CivV was highly successful on Linux/SteamOS after all. As not being on release - as it is not in-house port, that's understandable. Also with Civ having known issues at release usually it most people will wait for first DLC to drop anyway.

What bothers me a bit that at this point having same OpenGL port for Mac and Linux might drag us down a bit. OpenGL on Mac is in effective limbo state and Apple seems have deemed it to silent, silent death there.

What with OpenGL rotting and refusing to go for Vulkan, Apple is fast becoming a less viable gaming platform than Linux.

I am however, genuinely curious what can still done to Civ to improve it.

It's hardly an immaculate concept -- from the ground up, there's so much to improve, to make it worthy of the name 'civilization', as it were. Sure, the core design has to 'gameify' a huge range of social-political dynamics; nevertheless it takes a bit too much for granted.

To begin with, you assume a godlike dictatorship of a nation-state back in 4000BC. Money pretty much has its 20th century significance from the start.

There's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design -- in one of the past Civs, the stock exchange increased overall happiness in a city, for instance. And unless you're building an expansionist empire, you can't really aspire to any of the victory types.

You can argue for sure that the game glorifies both capitalism and imperialism with some of its designs. And yes, to make your civilization able to prosper you need to expand. But tbh, size DOES matter in real life international relations. The US is powerful, Switzerland isn't. For the simple reason that one country is large and the other isn't. Power in real life has nothing to do with how "great" a nation is. It's just a function of size. Translating this simple truth into a game where you compete against other nations to become the most powerful one, it makes sense that expansion is needed, no? They sure could relax the ultimate goal to be the "best" nation, but what would the new victory conditions be, then? What would be the goal in Civ for a nation like Switzerland?

I do agree with it being silly that the stock exchange creates happiness. It should create wealth and that's all.

If that. I would be interested to see a Civ-type game in which some of the technologies seemed like a good idea at the time but adopting them ended up causing more problems than they were worth (except maybe if your setup was in other ways just right for them). So if you build stock exchanges, they generate money . . . at first . . . but then a while later you start getting reports about losing tax to corruption and havens . . . on the other hand, if you don't build stock exchanges, other countries that do gradually get more hostile with you and won't trade . . .
Extending that idea, one of the keys to a well-working civilization would be to go with a technique set that worked together. So for instance, in Civilization (as of V) you have these ideologies and such. Presumably if you adopt Communism, stock exchanges are not going to do good things for you since they undermine your whole system (even assuming they ever do good things for anyone other than stock traders).
This all might work better in science fictional games like Alpha C, where there are technologies that you don't really know what they do or what the implications might be.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 12 May 2016 at 4:55 pm UTC

Incidentally, does anyone else find the core mechanic in recent Civ that every time you found a new city, your people get significantly unhappier, to be kind of silly?

Incidentally, does anyone else find the core mechanic in recent Civ that every time you found a new city, your people get significantly unhappier, to be kind of silly?

It's perfectly logical: They get jealous. Like a small child, when he/she gets a baby sibling.

With your logic India is the second most powerful country in the world. Do you really believe it?

I said "Size matters", not "ONLY size matters". India is lagging behind in development, that's the only reason why they are not considered a world power. Yet. They will be one day with absolute certainty. Like China, that's arguably now the second most powerful country in the world and will be #1 very soon - but has been a developing nation only a few decades ago.
You can safely say that size is -prerequisite- for being powerful, though. All major powers in the world are also large in terms of population. You can be large without being powerful (India, Brazil, Indonesia etc), but you cannot be powerful without being reasonably large.


Last edited by Kimyrielle on 12 May 2016 at 6:21 pm UTC

Well, I own Civ V, I own Civ BE, so I guess I now need to buy Civ VI when it releases, for customer loyalty purposes and all that...

(And to show that yes, Linux madmen do in fact buy games!)

Being a fan of the series since 1993, it's pretty much a mandatory purchase for me -- though this time I'll wait for the expansions to come out & possibly a price drop, unless the reviews tell me that the core gameplay is already more advanced than BNW.