Teaser trailer

From the steam announcement:

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, set to launch on PC on October 21, 2016, offers new ways to interact with your world, expand your empire across the map, advance your culture and compete against history’s greatest leaders to build a civilization that will truly stand the test of time. Your story begins later this year!

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI includes: 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 are designed to introduce new players to the underlying concepts of Civilization so they can easily get started on a path to victory.


There seems to be a new artstyle too.



More reading:
Polygon
The Verge
Digital Trends
RockPaperShotgun
PCGamer

 

The art style looks kinda atrocious.

 

Art looks revolting. Is it meant to be some kind of tablet game or something?

 

It looks like an city builder mobile game.

Reminds me of Age of Empires Online.

 

I always like to hear the Sunshine soundtrack getting used, so that's a plus.

Without having seen any actual gameplay I'm not sure there's much here to comment about. Yes, the art style is different but it's not like I played Civ for its art style. I'd like to see how certain gameplay elements (multi-tile cities or the combined arms, mostly) work so I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

 

I agree with redlibertyx

I hated the style of Sims 4 when it was first announced. I thought it was very cartoonish and awful compared to Sims 3. Then I saw it being played after release and it was like a completely different game, even though the graphics barely changed. It ended up working for what they were going for.

I am waiting until I see actual gameplay that isn't in alpha stages before I say anything about the art style.

 

Between this and Stellaris, I think Gizmore is set for the next few years of gaming

 

From duplicate topic thread (now deleted).

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I actually quite like the new art style. There's a lot of detail in there - and that coupled with the visible representation of each district you build onto the city is probably going to feel quite satisfying. The colours are cheerful and I enjoy that: probably the main reason I couldn't get through much Beyond Earth was that the palette was so drab I didn't really feel like exploring much.

What I haven't seen yet is a screenshot of what the game looks like zoomed out - because really, how much time do you spend that zoomed in in a civ game?

I'm quite excited for the new gameplay aspects. Polygon (once you get past the waffle) lists them as:

• City improvements are now built on the terrain:
• Specific technology develops more quickly depending on where your cities are:
  
• You'll be able to drop labels on the terrain:
• Wonders can only be built on correct terrain types:
• AI players will be specific goal-oriented:
  
• Some units will be able to stack with each other:

All the gameplay changes sound like they'll be great to play with.

 

Below is an IGN article on Firaxis's decision making regarding the art style. Basically, most people play the game zoomed out, so they want the art style to look good zoomed out and zoomed in. However, if that is the case, I don't understand why I've only seen zoomed in screenshots.

I do not care for the art style from the screenshots I've seen, but I don't play Civ for the graphics.


http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05...ne-civilizations-art-style-in-civ-6-ign-first

“When we went into this, we looked into how people play the game,” says Busatti. He and his team combed through as many community screenshots of Civilization 4 and 5 as they could find, and the results taught them some important lessons. “Typically in a Civ game you want to see the world as a whole, so you’re pulling out a lot. That doesn’t mean people don’t zoom in, but for the most part. Some people even zoom all the way out and play in tactical mode.”

 

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the artwork, but if they get the game play right, and the artwork gets across the info that needs getting, then I'll have no problem with it.

I usually play with resource icons and etc all turned on for maximum info, so I barely see the art anyways!

 

"The happiness level will be focused on a city level, rather than on a global basis across your civilization."

This might be the best I've seen so far!

 

Really excited for this - already bought it through steam.

The whole city-centric focus is really intriguing, and I think the changes will prevent as they say "doing the usual x,y,z buildings for each city" with a few deviations pending on nearby resources. I love civ for its ability to craft a different game each play through, and this will only add to that variability.

My only concern is that due to this being a more city-centric game, players will inevitably be more "zoomed in" than previous versions, and hence more involved with the art. And as others have noted, the art pays attention to detail (shadows, contours, etc), but the cartoonish feel to it is definitely off-putting.

This is just nitpicking though, I have no real complaints.

 

I'm hoping it means the opposite, really: That the multi-tile cities sets up a larger scale for the game, meaning a more zoomed out POV, and the art has been scaled back to make that technically feasible.

My biggest problem with Civ V is that it always felt like the scale was much smaller than in previous titles.

 

Question: What's going to happen to our weekly Civ V forays once this is released? Are we going to migrate over, or continue until Civ VI is a little more fleshed out (with expansions and the like)?

 

Wonders now having terrain requirements means a one-city challenge is going to get a lot harder, if good wonders have conflicting requirements.

 

Didn't wonders have some terrain requirements before? I distinctly remember Machu Picchu as having to be built on an existing mountain.

 

I hope they revert back to the old wonder system, where wonders would actually become obsolete. Like, right now the only one that happens to is the Great Wall. In the past, the vast majority would only last for a few eras and it created an interesting dynamic, yet also meant you weren't completely screwed if Brazil managed to get Sistine Chapel and Alhambra

 

Looking forward to this game even though the art style, as so many others pointed out is pretty bad, but who am I to judge the whole game on that.

 

MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY. I haven't played any of the previous installments, but had the game recommended to me and had a general idea about the look of Civ 5 from Google Images, and the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw that screenshot was, "this game is undergoing Sims4-ification".

I wonder whether it would be a good introduction to the series for a new player... Others have said that Civ 4 was the best of all. Dunno. City-based gameplay sounds nice, but I assume you don't get to micromanage it like in a city simulator, right? I imagined the game as basically Rise of Nations modulo Age of Empires in terms of gameplay focus, but then again that probably doesn't do it justice, and what the bleep do I know anyway...

 

There is some micromanagement in the city view. You can choose what tile each of your workers (population) is on for the turn, whether you want any of said workers to become specialists like bankers or artists (for various bonuses) and whether to destroy any of the buildings you've built.

It gets fairly important on Deity difficulty and when you're playing a One City Challenge (or Venice) because you need to get the absolute most you can out of your tiles.