What the map is giving you, your starting position, what it means to have certain leaders next to you.' It's all designed to provide a more varied, improvisational campaign.įiraxis wants diplomacy to feel more dynamic, and to force players to work out the political landscape on the fly. 'We want a situation where you have to react to what the game is presenting for you. 'We want players to have to think on their feet more,' says Beach. With Civilization VI, Firaxis wants a game that doesn't settle into an established meta. There are certain policy trees that are well worth it, other policy trees that they don't find that they're using.'

Everyone says go for four cities, but probably not too much more than that. We're sort of in a rut, where all the players are playing Civ 5 the same way.

'We noticed that there are certain key approaches that people all share in common. 'We're very proud of the work we did there.' At the same time, that familiarity meant Beach and his team were aware of how players approached Civ 5. 'A lot of this development team is the same development team that pushed Civ 5 through to the Brave New World expansion,' says Ed Beach, lead designer of Civilization VI.