Civilization 7

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Did you see that somewhere other than the Wikipedia page? I’m not sure where they came up with that point, and it seems Ike it would’ve been big news, especially to all of us, if Brian returned to Firaxis at some point. I couldn’t find anything when I saw that, and iirc the article that is linked didn’t say that.

Edit: I think I see what happened. This is at the bottom of the article that is linked:

Correction/Clarification
This story has been updated to reflect that Steve Martin spoke to this reporter, not Brian Reynolds.

So I guess the article originally said they were talking to Reynolds, and someone noticed that and put it in the wikipedia page.

Cursed image.

The 1200 turns package needs a “BEST VALUE!” sticker though. :)

First thing I thought of.

$0.02 - 1 more turn (most popular)

Well we can quantify it, because he made Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends after leaving. Further, his leaving meant Soren Johnson got to step into the spotlight, and that was also amazingly beneficial to gamers while Reynolds was making two amazing games for gamers (and then Johnson left and made some amazing stuff, etc, while that paved the way for others, world without end).

Big Huge wasn’t a big success financially (tragically). But Reynolds could have moved on to something else in the PC space. Or gone back to Firaxis. Or anything but go into mobile. But he chose to go into mobile, deliberately (weird as it may seem). He was outspoken and passionate about being in mobile games (often talking about how to foster big creative talent on the mobile side so that there could be “Mobile Sid Meyers” and things like that). There’s no reason to think if he had stayed at Firaxis he would have just stayed and made their next ten games and they would have all been amazing, versus some other outcome (slowly fading back the way Sid did; eventually leaving for Mobile as it grew anyway; “blocking/delaying” the rise of other talents; misfires). All of this stuff is interconnected and none of it can be viewed in isolation.

While all of this happened, Firaxis has evolved into something different as a company, while having clearly talented people there (Solomon). The “game turns” microtransaction isn’t going to happen, obviously, but it’s a bit too close to the current version of Firaxis for comfort IMO. Firaxis was in a cushy situation but chose to sell to Take 2 or whomever way back when. That was always going to impact their development, no matter who was in charge of a given project (Meyer to Solomon and everyone in between).

Fun fact: Jake and I started the same week at Firaxis. My (perhaps shaky) memory is meeting him in the elevator on the way up to our first day working on Civ3. (In retrospect, it seems crazy that they handed the franchise to a couple kids just out of college.) At any rate, Jake is awesome and a great guy, and I’m looking forward to what he is going to do next.

Ha, that’s awesome!

Yeah, Jake has made some of my favorite strategy games, so wherever he lands (and I assume he had something lined up or planned before leaving, or I hope so anyway) and whatever his next project is, I’m going to be following with great interest.

Unless, I guess, he’s retiring from the business of making video games - in which case, booo!

My guess is Jake leaving was probably in the cards no matter how Midnight Suns did. He was the rare case of someone who hadn’t gone on to do their own thing, right? Bruce went off and did Ensemble. Brian did BHG. We have Soren doing his wonderful stuff with Mohawk. Jon went to Stardock I think, and then did At the Gates (did he end up at Paradox or somewhere a few years ago?). It seems only natural that Jake would move on at some point. What an amazing family tree of designers that is.

Shafer briefly partnered with Paradox, but they separated.

When I last talked with Jon, he was still at Conifer Games (his company).

I hope he is doing well. I know that development process for At the Gates was really hard on him.

Will keep an eye on it, but Civ6 killed my love of the series. I’m probably not the audience for it anymore.

Yeah same for me. I would describe it as fatigue.
The Civ series has become overburdened by too many too cancerously sprawling systems that in the end are just annoying busywork.
It really needs a proper trim and the courage to just throw a lot of the accumulated baggage away outright.

Me, too. But it’s not fatigue. It’s just VI was not a good game. I never could figure out that damn city growth mechanic. And the scale felt too small. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in every other Civ game. Steam tells me I have 74.4 hours in VI.

agreed

agreed

(Just hoping whatever 22-year-old they underpay to make Civ 7 reads this forum :) )

I wish Civilization would go in the non vaporware direction of this game:

Too soon.

My favorite Civ games are Alpha Centauri, Civ II, and Old World. Civ IV was fantastic as well. I never really got into V or VI.

I wonder if they tweet was just so people didn’t worry Firaxis was being turned into a shooter company or something after Midnight Suns.

(Hoping Midnight Suns has a long tail; maybe word of mouth with the current sale will help. It’s one of the most fun games I’ve played in a couple of years.)

Yeah, I think the part of the game that’s always been the most fun for me is the early game rush to get yourself established. Which is maybe why I liked Fall from Heaven so much. It wasn’t just that it had spells and monsters and weird civs, it was that it blended a kind of roguelike play into the classic Civ formula, which kept me interested in the micro rather than overwhelmed by it. Also why I loved playing on Earth maps where there were no civs in the Americas, so you could get that second wind of the colonization gold rush. And, now that I think of it, it’s also what I loved about the religion system: a different way of “colonizing”.

I wonder if they could create a mechanism like that, where there’s an old world colonization/conquest phase, then a political faction/religion evangelism phase, then a new world colonization phase, then an economic/trade evangelism phase, then a solar system / orbital colonization phase, etc., back and forth between expansion and evangelism, with wars fought as adjuncts to the phases rather than as the main means of expansion past a certain point. If each of these phases kept the small start and steady discovery process of that first expansion phase, it would be really cool and make the later game much more manageable. Like yeah you could produce a thousand musketeers, but what you really want is to create and support one businessperson as they establish a key company and its supply chain.