It's been eight years since the launch of Firaxis Civilization VIBut creative director Ed Beach hasn’t stopped mulling over what the studio could have done differently.
“Civilization VI “It was very successful,” he says, speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom 2024, “but that didn’t mean the design team loved it when we finished it. We’re self-critical and we’re happy to dissect and disassemble our creation and see the flaws.”
Beach looked to the past to explain how Firaxis is approaching the future, which is important to understand given that it was just revealed Civilization VIIHe explains that Firaxis uses a formula that requires each new entry in the franchise to incorporate equal parts new content, updated content, and existing content.
It's a rule of thirds that allows the studio to innovate without completely alienating players, while also avoiding the expansion of the scope. Delving into how this equation has affected production on Civilization VIIwhich is scheduled to launch in February 2025, Beach says the main problem was that players simply wouldn't finish matches.
“The number [of people who completed a game of Civ VI] it was shockingly, depressingly—whatever adjective you want to use—low. It was less than 50 percent. So why is this happening?” he asks.
The short answer is “pace.” He says the average Civilization player could spend 15 to 20 hours completing a single game. As the hours go by and empires grow, the management elements become more pronounced, leaving players forced to complete an exponentially growing list of tasks just to get to the end of a turn.
Beach claims players “hated” the pace of Civilization VIIt's an admission that led Firaxis to conduct individual autopsies of each system to figure out when they were pushing “important strategic decisions that you don't have to make more than every five or ten minutes” and when they were asking players to make “boring 'click here, click here, click here' decisions that just aren't very interesting.”
A sequel for the ages
That inquisition saw Firaxis reconfigure itself Civilization VII to ensure more people felt empowered to cross the finish line. “The biggest thing we wanted to do was break the game up into chapters,” Beach explains. “We’re calling them ‘ages’ this time. We only have three ages to complete the game, because there’s a lot of remodeling around the map that happens between the two age transitions. We wanted to make sure we could reset the board a little bit, simplify things, and change the rules. [For instance]Our trading system works differently in every era.”
Exploration has also been tweaked to preserve the fun of discovery. “I think a big part of 4X games is exploration, and that's one of the reasons why players don't want to get all the way through the game and start over. It's because those first 50 turns of figuring out where you are on the map and who's around you are inherently fun. We've done a few things [this time] to capture that fun and distribute it throughout the game,” Beach says.
Going deeper, he explains Civilization VII is divided into chapters, starting with the “Ancient Age.” During that era, players will only be allowed to explore the landmass they start on. “Even if you invest in a lot of naval technology, we won’t let you cross the ocean,” Beach adds.
When asked how the team will substantially limit players without causing frustration, he explained that the technique has been used in past titles on 70-80 percent of maps. Now, it is applied without exception.
Referring again to the formula mentioned above, Beach says the team hasn't been shy about coming up with new ideas, but sometimes you have to know how to adapt the dress to your style.
“The design team was so self-critical,” he says. “They were like, ‘We want to change this, and this, and this.’ So I would take out that rule of thumb and say, ‘You want to do something completely different here, another completely different thing here. These two areas, the foundation is the same but they’re falling into our ‘one-third modified.’ There were times when I could see that the trajectory was so radically different that it violated that formula.”
Beach created a spreadsheet that he pulled out during two design meetings to demonstrate that his colleagues were over-indexing and violating the formula.[I said] “You basically get 33 percent total change, and then another 33 percent you can tweak,” he adds. “So you have a 50 percent budget to change the game, and you’re all the way at 60 percent, and we’re not done with all that yet.”
When deciding what aspects of the franchise to change, Firaxis uses a technique called “ripples.” It’s a process that requires the team to figure out “the minimum viable amount of implementation you need to get to the core idea of something you can then experiment with.” Testing is a key part of that process.
“We have single-player playtests and multiplayer playtests on a scheduled cadence,” Beach continues. “So, everything that’s ready to be tried in the next playtest session [is included]. Then the whole design team gets together and discusses [the feedback].”
Stressing the importance of variety during playtests, he notes that combat becomes more visible in multiplayer tests because people “like to criticize each other.” In contrast, single-player tests are better for evaluating systems like building and diplomacy.
Looking ahead to the launch, Beach explains that Firaxis currently has hundreds of developers working on Civilization VII and “is taking full responsibility for shipping to all platforms in-house.” The move was made to ensure that all versions of the title, which is based on a proprietary engine, will work as intended. He says it's a move that has left the studio in a “more comfortable position” as it looks to wrap up production.