In their bid to make Civilization 6 a complete overhaul on Civilization 5, 2K and Firaxis Games are really upping their game.
Not only have they decided to unstack cities, and given new leaders to lead various civilizations. The latest news coming out from the civilization camp is that they are removing automated scouts from the game and replaced them with entirely new units called the Builders. You can check out the trailer an how this would affect the game below:
Automation is a mechanic where Civilization players could let the game take over for a particular unit, thus submitting all choice and interaction with that unit to the game’s AI. In Civilization V, you can automate scouts to explore the map for you or automate your workers to improve your city’s tiles all on their own. While this feature is fine for some players, one of the chief concerns is that it puts players in a state of autopilot, eroding away the immersion and investment of the Civilization experience.
That all changes in Civilization VI, which has eliminated almost all aspects of automation.
Talking on the official Civilization VI website, Ed Beach, lead designer of Civilization VI, tells us that:
“Because the world is unique each time you play the game, we want to really emphasize the players’ interactions with it,” Beach continues “This means having players make very deliberate choices, rather than setting important parts of their game on autopilot.”
Builders, which replace Civilization V’s Worker units, provide an excellent example of how the “autopilot” mentality of automation has been addressed in Civilization VI. “In previous Civilization games you had Workers, which took their time going around the map, taking a number of turns to make each improvement. Automation was a way for players to get a benefit out of their Workers without manually controlling them each turn, which was often difficult because you would forget what it was you had planned when it came time for your Worker to move on to a new project.” By replacing them with Builders, who construct improvements instantly and have a set number of charges before they are all used up, the player is now presented with more immediate decisions requiring full participation.
Beach doesn’t discount automation as a viable tool in some situations, though – specifically when exploring oceans and coastlines. “In those cases you’re mostly interested in gaining information about what lies out there in the world, and so specific turn-to-turn control might not be an interesting decision for players.” And so auto-exploring with land and sea units will remain in, but in a more limited capacity.
“When an exploring land unit finds a goody hut, we break his movement to let you pop that reward yourself. We found that Civilization V players would get a bonus from a goody hut and not realize where this bonus was coming from. Similarly we break out of auto-exploring when an enemy comes in sight.”
What do you make of these changes? As a returning player do all these changes sound for better or for worse? As a new player will these changes attract you to buy the game? Let us know in the comments.