Latest news with #Firaxis
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Civilization 7's first in-game event postponed so Firaxis can 'prioritize quality-of-life improvements'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Civilization 7 had a rougher-than-expected launch, thanks largely to changes that made it, as we said in our 76% review, "the most streamlined and pared-back the series has been in a long time"—and not always in a good way. The backlash was strong enough that developer Firaxis committed to fixes and improvements before Civ 7 was even in full release, and in a "check-in" posted today it shared details on what players can look forward to over the next couple months. The 1.1.0 update is set to go live on March 4 and will make further adjustments and fixes to Civilization 7's UI, which Firaxis said in February was the studio's "top priority." A number of gameplay changes will also be made, including "significant changes to the Modern Age's Cultural Legacy Path and Victory," and AI leaders will be better able to complete Cultural Victories. The update will also see the first half of the Crossroads of the World Collection go live, adding the new leader Ada Lovelace, the new civs Great Britain (Modern Age) and Carthage (Antiquity Age), and the Natural Wonder Pack including four new Natural Wonders: Machapuchare, Mount Fuji, Vihren, and Vinicunca to the game. All of this unfortunately means that the first in-game event, "Natural Wonder Battle," which was set to go live with the update on March 4, has been postponed "to allow us more time to prioritize quality-of-life improvements for players worldwide." A new date for the event hasn't been set but Firaxis said it will share more information when it can. The 1.1.1 update is scheduled to follow on March 25, and will include further UI updates and other changes. "Ongoing improvements to the User Interface continues to be a top priority for the development team," Firaxis wrote. "The updates being introduced on March 25 are just one part of a much larger plan that aims to improve the UI over the next several months." Bigger changes are also in the works: New map sizes, resource types, support for teams in multiplayer, a "One More Turn" button that will let players continue past the end of the Modern Age, mod tools and Steam Workshop support, and—you guessed it—still more UI improvements. Firaxis said it's currently "scoping the work" required to get it all done, and while some could arrive as early as April, other promised features and changes will take longer: "As always in development, plans can change and we'll have more details to share here in the weeks and months ahead as plans solidify." To be clear, Civilization 7 isn't a bad game, but it is something of a letdown, at least at this stage. As PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde pointed out, our 76% review score marks it as a good and recommended game, but it's a far cry from the 93% scores we bestowed on Civilization 5 and Civ 6, marking them both as among the best of the best. A more pronounced ambivalence is visible on Steam: Civilization 7's user rating remains stubbornly "mixed" and has actually been in a very slight decline through most of February, and there are still more people playing Civilization 6 on Steam than Civ 7. So there's no cause for panic at this point, but there's definitely work to be done. Civilization 7 review: Our verdictCiv 7 performance analysis: How it runsCiv 7 victory guide: All win conditionsHow Civ 7 towns/cities work: Settlements guideCiv 7 age transitions guide: Everything that changesView Deal
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Yahoo
There are already Civilization 7 mods that improve the UI, unlock all civs, and add 'ludicrous'-sized maps
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Civilization 7 is officially here, and with it comes (at least for now) a "Mixed" review status on Steam and a lot of complaints about the 4X strategy's UI. While we're keeping up with all the latest Civ 7 news and developments, the community has been busy too: the first Civ 7 mods have arrived on the same day as the game's global launch. This is the rare occasion where I'm not directing you to Nexus Mods: the early mods that have appeared for Civ 7 are over at the forums. There aren't a ton of them yet, but there are definitely a few to point out. Right out of the gate, there are a couple of mods that address one of the biggest complaints about Civ 7: the UI. Civ 7's interface is taking a serious pounding: I've seen Steam reviewers calling it "buggy," "inconsistent," "junk," "a total disaster," and most damningly, "somehow worse than Civ 6." Firaxis has already issued a patch to address a few of the complaints about the UI and I suspect there will be more coming, but in the meantime you might check out Sukritact's Simple UI Adjustments. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it's got nothing but 5-star ratings in the forums. Here's a quick rundown on its features: Diplomacy with other Civs and IPs can now be initiated by clicking on the city banner (provided you have met them). Plot Yield icons are smaller on tiles that are not improved/worked Tooltips are enhanced. The default improvement is now shown on unimproved tiles. All Constructibles now display their icon. Wonders receive a large fancy icon with description. Buildings now note if they are damaged or in-progress or ageless. Another mod is also focused on improving the UI: TCS Improved Plot Tooltop adds tons more info so it's easier to find what you need, including leader relationship status, settlement ownership, flags for obsolete or unique buildings, district types, and other useful tidbits you can spy at a glance. If you're an eager beaver and are interested in instant gratification, check out the Civ 7 Unlock All Civs mod. With it, you no longer have to meet the requirements to access civilizations when you reach the Exploration and Modern Ages, they're all immediately available to you. Work is already underway on bringing you bigger maps, with a beta of Larger Map, TSL, Continents++ available to download. It unlocks "large" and "huge" map sizes and adds a "massive" (128x80) map. The mod also lists experimental (not playable) "giant" maps (180x94) and "ludicrous" maps (230x116) to test out. That's not bad for a game that only just came out, and you can find more mods at the Civ Fanatic forums. Make sure you carefully read the installation instructions on each mod's page before downloading. Civilization 7 review: Our verdictCiv 7 performance analysis: How it runsCiv 7 victory guide: All win conditionsHow Civ 7 towns/cities work: Settlements guideCiv 7 age transitions guide: Everything that changesView Deal
New York Times
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Civilization VII, Empires Rise and Stereotypes Start to Fall
You awaken on a hexagonal tile. It is the year 4,000 B.C. You can see just a few tiles beyond yours: to the north a desert; to the south a shoreline; to the east, alarmingly, an angry-looking volcano. The tiles beyond are shrouded in shadow. Over the next 6,000 years you will explore tile by tile until you have uncovered the whole globe, expanding your empire, waging war and making peace with your neighbors, inventing hydroelectric dams and space shuttles and nuclear arms. This is the basic structure of every installment in the turn-based strategy game series Sid Meier's Civilization since its debut in 1991 (although in the earliest games, the tiles were square). For each iteration, the designers follow a rough formula: One-third of the game's rules and mechanics are the same as in previous games, one-third are altered, and one-third are new. Sid Meier's Civilization VII, which was released on Tuesday for PCs, Macs and consoles, had the designers struggling to contain the new to just one-third. 'Right out of the gate we had some big, bold ideas,' said Ed Beach, creative director at Firaxis Games. One big change is that the new game is split into three distinct 'ages' — antiquity, exploration and modern — that have their own dynamics and mechanics. The leader characters are also now fully decoupled from their historically accurate homelands; in Civilization VII, you can make Benjamin Franklin lead Meiji Japan, or put Charlemagne in charge of the Shawnee. Previous games in the franchise mostly pit heads of state against each other. Civilization VII broadens that choice to leaders with much wider skills. 'No one explores better than Ibn Battuta,' said Dennis Shirk, the executive producer at Firaxis. 'No one does diplomacy better than Machiavelli. No one can set up a government better than Confucius.' It was important not to change too much, Shirk said, emphasizing that the core game loop always needs to feel like Civilization. The balance between novelty and consistency is important, agreed Nikhil Murthy, an independent game developer who has played the game for as long as he can remember. 'Many players have played the previous version into the ground,' Murthy said. He estimates that his father, who plays no video games other than Civilization, has devoted 3,000 to 4,000 hours to each version. Playing Civilization is a form of meditation for Murthy — 'something to do with your hands while you think' — who said it can be fun to play as a dominant empire. Sometimes, though, Civilization unnerves Murthy. In one version, a slavery option stopped him short. In others, it was the way the game pitted civilizations against 'barbarians.' 'That's a dichotomy that, historically, I know which side I'd be on,' said Murthy, who is Indian. One day, while Murthy was reading the novel 'Ulysses,' he came upon a passage where an Irish nationalist mocks British civilization as 'syphilisation.' That very Joycean pun inspired him to create an elaborate parody-tribute game that he released last year: Nikhil Murthy's Syphilisation, in which a group of Indian students try to collaborate on a group project about Gandhi and Churchill in a world made of hexagonal tiles. The Civilization games have attracted considerable academic and philosophical attention because of their popularity and their attempts to tackle all of human history. Murthy cited a favorite passage about Civilization from the book 'Gamer Theory' by McKenzie Wark, a New School professor of culture and media: 'Whoever wins is America, in that the logic of the game itself is America.' You can play as whomever you like, Murthy said, but the victorious nation always resembles the United States immediately after the Cold War, a moment when pundits spoke of the 'end of history.' It is no coincidence that the first Civilization game came out the same year the Soviet Union fell. Some new features in Civilization VII seem designed to address those types of academic complaints. Barbarians have been reframed as 'independent powers,' and their actions are more nuanced. The game's historical veneer is much more lovingly detailed than in previous installments. There is a palpable and sincere appreciation of the art, music and architectural styles of cultures and societies wherever they originate. If you play as the Chola Empire, you get access to ships specific to South India with names in Tamil. When researching the original Civilization, Sid Meier consulted the children's section of his local library; Civilization VII has two Ph.D. historians on its design team, and they consulted with other experts to incorporate accurate details of each of the game's dozens of nation-states and historical figures. But Murthy said that no matter how many changes are made to character selection and rule sets, the Civilization series maintains a deeply colonialist worldview at its core. 'It's winner take all,' he said. 'It's growth for the sake of growth. And it's history from above, not below. All three of these pillars have remained entirely intact throughout the series.' Those stubborn ideas are right there in the name of the game genre that Civilization originated: 4X, which is an abbreviation for explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. One of the points of Syphilisation, Murthy said, was to demonstrate that a cooperative approach to a 4X game (and, by extension, real-world geopolitics) is entirely possible, if only the developers were willing to try it. When he plays Civilization, though, he feels a certain obligation to play it as designed. 'I want the Giant Death Robot,' he said, referring to a technology that becomes available near the end of Civilization V and VI. 'And if I've unlocked the Giant Death Robot, I want to use the Giant Death Robot.' Civilization VII is an empire-expanding simulator that arrives as President Trump is threatening to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and Gaza. Some players feel aligned with the game's worldview and real-life parallels; others experience dissonance between what they believe about the world and how the game guides them; still others view Civilization as a math problem that just happens to have a historical surface. A game this complex can be enjoyed in many ways. The philosopher Bernard Suits put gamers in four categories: players, triflers, cheats and spoilsports. 'The one that interests me is trifling, where you don't really care about winning,' Wark, the New School professor, said in an interview. 'You're just interested in exploring the rule set. So your civilization inevitably gets defeated, but you find little affordances as you go along.' Beach and Shirk, the lead developers at Firaxis, said that Civilization VI was the first game in the series for which they got detailed metrics about player patterns. They were shocked to learn that under 40 percent of Civilization players ever finish a single game. For many Civilization players, it seems, winning isn't everything. But maybe winning at Civilization would mean more, Murthy argues, if there were more ways to win — such as an option to work with your neighbors to make a better society for all. 'It doesn't need to eliminate the rest of the win conditions,' he said. 'They could add a cooperative win condition at very little game design cost. And the payoff is still tremendous.'
Express Tribune
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Civilization' returns this month
PARIS: Fans have waited more than eight years for the new instalment in heavyweight strategy game Civilization, with the release of the seventh instalment on February 11 promising to get budding philosopher-kings thinking more about the consequences of their actions. At first glance, little has changed since the very first title released in 1991: players are presented with a top-down view of the game world in which they build up their society turn by turn from the Neolithic period to the modern era. Virtual rulers can exert their will over opponents either by diplomacy or war – a formula that brought sales over the whole series to 73 million by summer 2024, according to Take Two, parent company of publisher 2K Games. Civilization spawned a whole genre known to gamers as 4X, for its core gameplay activities: Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. Comparable titles include Paradox Interactive's starfaring Stellaris (2016) or French developer Amplitude's Humankind (2021). That range of alternatives is one reason why fans "don't just want the same game with a new coat of paint, with fancier graphics," Ed Beach, creative director for the Civilization franchise, told AFP in August at Germany's Gamescom trade fair. "We need to do something new each time... something that is going to really improve the game." Civilization is still developed by US studio Firaxis, which has run the franchise since its third instalment. Its seventh edition, available on PC and console, allows players to set any historically-inspired ruler at the head of any empire – allowing Charlemagne to govern Egypt, for example. A match is now divided into three acts, each wrapped up with a major crisis such as the collapse of an empire or a foreign invasion. The way players cope with the challenge defines how their civilisation will adapt as they enter the next age. That is one way the developers wanted to confront player-governors with the consequences of their actions. "We're not trying to say you have to play a certain way," Beach said. "There are times I play as a very bad guy, and that's an interesting way for me to look at the world and look at history as well." Nevertheless, topics tackled in Civilization such as climate change or the battle of democracy versus autocracy – are hot issues out in the everyday world. "It's not getting political, it's just we're always thoughtful about what the human journey has been," Beach said. Firaxis itself brought in historians to advise on keeping gameplay plausible and modelling civilisations in the new structure – all while allowing the player as much freedom as possible.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Firaxis celebrates Civilization 7's launch with the Civ World Summit, a live streamed five-way strategy showdown with 'an exciting announcement' planned
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. We're weeks away from the launch of Civilization 7, officially PC Gamer's Most Wanted game of 2025. We all intend to celebrate the game's release in our own way. Personally, I'm thinking about conquering a small nation. Luxembourg perhaps, or possibly Andorra. Firaxis' own plans for marking the occasion are less megalomaniacal, though conquest will likely still feature heavily. On February 8, the studio will host the Civ World Summit—a live Civilization 7 tournament that will be streamed online. Announced on the Civilization website, the Civ world summit will be hosted at the Xperion gaming zone in Hamburg, and involve a multiplayer showdown in Civilization 7 between "five prominent members of the Civ community". Firaxis doesn't explain who these prominent community members are, but does specify who will be hosting it—namely Firaxis' community manager Sarah Engel and "famed Civ creator" PotatoMcWhiskey, in partnership with Rocket Beans TV (there's a collection of nouns for you). For viewers on Twitch, Firaxis has arranged a Twitch drop to "commemorate" the event, in the form of a 'cavalry charge banner' cosmetic for players' in-game profiles. This can be earned by "watching the Firaxis Games channel or one of the partnered channels". Apparently, Firaxis also has "an exciting announcement" planned for the livestream. I haven't the slightest idea what this could be. It seems a tad early to reveal Civilization VIII, so perhaps it relates to post-launch plans for Civ 7. Firaxis will provide more information about the Civ World Summit in the "upcoming weeks", though I doubt we'll have to wait too long since we're only three weeks out from the event itself. In any case, if you're in or around Hamburg and you fancy attending the event in person, tickets can be purchased here for the princely sum of five Euros. Otherwise, the event can be viewed on the Firaxis Games Twitch Channel, the Civilization YouTube Channel, or the Civilization Facebook page. Civilization 7 launches three days after the event on February 11. Early impressions on Firaxis' latest alt-history generator suggest a pretty transformative entry. Robert Zak recently played 20 hours of it, and described its age transitions as "the series' most radical and disruptive mechanic yet".
