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How Civilization VI’s new cities change the game
Senior producer Dennis Shirk goes in depth on the biggest shift to the Civilization formula yet.
Civilization VI changes a lot
© 2K
Despite being almost six years old, Civilization V remains one of the most played games on Steam. Millions of copies have been sold and hundreds of thousands of people still try and guide their people through the ages to total world domination each week. But soon that will all change, as Civilization VI is heading our way on 21 October, and is sure to unseat its predecessor in the Steam charts.
Promising a ton of new and improved features, Civ VI is certainly shaping up to be one of, if not the best, entry in the long running franchise. There’s a new art style, the tech tree has been split, city states now require you to complete tasks instead of just pumping gold their way, there are new Civ leaders, and the new government system makes changing your desired win condition a whole lot easier. All of that just scratches the surface of Civilization VI, and of course there is all of the standard gameplay that remains from the old game.
“We have brought almost every system from Civilization V: Brave New World over,” says Dennis Shirk, senior producer on Civilization VI, when talking about just how much content will be in the upcoming title. “It's all tuned for the way Civ VI plays, but whether its great works or espionage it’s in there. I think everything, apart from world congress, from the past two expansions exists in this one as well.”
But out of all the new features heading our way with Civ VI, perhaps the biggest is the unstacking of cities. In previous titles every part of your city would be on one tile, regardless of what it was. Wonders would be on the same tile as libraries or harbours, and there was no real limit to how much each city could house.
“There wasn't really any choice with the cities any more,” says Shirk. “You might have a production city where you built all the wonders, as long as you had time and production you could do it. If you got invaded the only thing they could really do is pillage your improvements, but they couldn't touch anything else of yours without actually taking the city.”
If I put down too many districts my city is eventually going to stop growing because it is going to reach that housing cap.
Now that has all changed, as each different area of the city requires a district. The campus district can house your libraries and universities, while a military district will house your barracks and is essential for a good defense. This creates a whole extra layer to the city building aspect, making location and strategic planning more important than ever.
“You have to specialise,” explains Shirk. “Even with my biggest city I can't put down all of the districts, I might be able to put down some districts and some wonders, but then I have to remember I still need farms. If I put down too many districts my city is eventually going to stop growing because it is going to reach that housing cap, or they are not going to be happy because there are too many people, but not enough food coming in. Or maybe there isn’t enough production, so I can't defend myself because I can't build enough military units if I get invaded.”
A couple of unstacked cities
© 2K
But even just specialising in each city isn’t quite enough, as districts have adjacency bonuses. If you place your campus next to some mountains then it gets a significant boost that it otherwise wouldn't receive. Likewise some districts have to be adjacent to your city centre, while others need other terrain based features such as rivers or flat land to receive a boost. You must consider all of these possible bonuses when planning your city, otherwise you are losing out on what are essentially free boosts to your Civilization.
“When I'm walking around looking for a place to put my city down, I’m looking for the mountains, wondering where that perfect place is going to be for the campus and the great library I am probably going to put beside it,” says Shirk. “I’m looking for that river access, because I need fresh water to be able to service this and this, and the commercial district gets bonuses from river access, so your commercial district should always be near a river. So you are looking at all this stuff now and it makes game play so much more compelling in terms of pulling you into the world.”
Unstacking the cities, and forcing them out onto the map has changed more than just the building aspect of Civilization. Even combat has changed significantly as a result, because now there are even more important areas to defend from attacks. In Civ V, attackers couldn't really do too much damage to you unless they took your city; sure, they could destroy a few trading posts and potentially steal some workers, but that was about it. In Civ VI however that has totally changed, and even a small assault on a single district can trigger catastrophic events.
If you get invaded you have to make a decision about what you defend.
“If you get invaded you have to make a decision about what you defend,” says Shirk. “You can camp in the city centre and watch as the invaders burn down your entire campus, your library, university, they might take even out your production. That could be their goal, they just want to hit you scientifically and not take your city. So you think, maybe I have to come out and defend different areas of my landscape.”
It’s not just the gameplay that has changed as a result of the tweaks to cities and bringing districts outside of the city center; the art style of Civ has also received a makeover. Gone is the fairly realistic, quite dark and earthy look and in its place is a slightly more cartoonish style, with bigger, clearer features and more colour.
“One big challenge with Civ VI is that because the cities got put out onto the map, everything has to be visually readable,” says Shirk. “Now you can be walking by an opponent's city and you can automatically see the blue roofs on his campus district buildings, and you can see the library and the university. You can recognize where the industrialised bit is just by glancing at it, you don't need to be looking at the tool tips or opening up panels, everything is readable. Even if you are zoomed out you can see the pockets of colour and you can see what the shapes are communicating and you couldn't get that in Civ V. It would have been a challenge for us to go more realistic, like Civ V, and actually have it be readable and serve the new gameplay.”
By making just one small change to the way cities work in the world of Civilization, the team has totally changed both how the game plays and looks. It’s a risky move, and one that could have easily backfired, however the new system makes an impact right from the start of any Civ game and adds an extra layer of depth, making it a worthy addition. Shirk is confident that once fans get their hands on the final game they will love the new cities.
“I think hands down the district's system is going to be the bit fans like instantly,” says Shirk. “That game area comes online almost immediately and has the biggest impact in terms of placing the districts, wonders taking up space and the adjacency bonuses, people will dive deep into that. You don't have to play smartly if you are a new player, you can just put stuff down and watch things happen, it's never going to completely gimp you, it's just that things are going to slow down. Once you learn to play the game and learn those adjacency bonuses and really start looking at all those matches that can happen, that's when you can start to get all of the power out of it.”
With just a few months until Civilization VI is in our hands on October 21, there isn’t long to wait before we can dive deep into the new cities and discover all the adjacency bonuses. When we played just the first 100 turns of a game at a preview event recently it became clear how much of an impact strategically placing districts has, and how a few wrong choices can ruin a city. It may be the biggest change to the Civ formula in quite a while, but it certainly seems like it could be one of the most important and best yet.
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