The Civilization series has been with us so long that it can sometimes feel like part of the furniture. A game comes out, is played for years, another follows, repeat until the heat death of the universe. But it has actually been a very long time since the last game!
Here’s a timeline of the main releases in the series:
Civilization (1991)
Civilization II (1996)
Civilization III (2001)
Civilization IV (2005)
Civilization V (2010)
Civilization VI (2016)
As you can see, this is currently the longest stretch we’ve had between games in Civilization history, at seven years and counting. It’s a drought that has been pronounced in recent years; while Firaxis have been doing stuff like releasing leader packs as DLC, Civ VI itself has become a tired old thing, and has found its place atop the 4X strategy pile challenged by everything from Stellaris to Humankind.
Perhaps sensing this, the series’ Twitter account posted this over the weekend:
The rational part of me knows this was the case. It would have been the case, to some degree, not long after Civ VI shipped all those years ago. That’s just how these long-running series go, as soon as one game is done, even when they get/need long-running support like Civ VI has received, there’s somebody writing down notes for what comes next.
The emotional part of me, meanwhile, is ecstatic. Like many of you I’ve been a fan of this series for life, and like many of you (or so the vibes seem) I’ve grown increasingly despairing of Civ VI, a game that initially seemed to try some genuinely interesting things to set it apart from its predecessors, but which has ultimately fallen prey to an obsession with its district-improvement meta, that has come at the expense of more important stuff like enemy AI and combat.
I know this isn’t a proper announcement. There’s not even a Civilization VII logo to slap on that tweet. But it does at least publicly herald that Civ VI’s days are finally coming to a close, and that it’s hopefully not too long before we see something that shows us how the series plans to tackle its fourth decade of existence.
UPDATE: Good tweet: