It’s finally time for Sid Meier’s new Civilization game

the civilization The collection has been with us for so long that it can sometimes feel like part of the furniture. A graduated game, played for years, followed by another, repeating until the hot death of the universe. But it had actually been a very long time since the last game!

Here is a timeline of the major 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 our longest stretch among games civilization History in seven years and counting. It is a drought that has appeared in recent years; While Firaxis has been doing things like releasing boss packs like DLC, Sword VI itself became a tired old thing, and found its place at the top of the 4X strategy heap that everything from Stellaris to Humanity.

Perhaps you felt it, the series’ Twitter account posted this over the weekend:

The rational part of me knows this is the case. That would have been the case, in a sense, not long after Sword VI Shipped all those years ago. That’s the way this long run chain goes, once they finish one game, even when they get/need long term support like Sword VI received, there Somebody Take notes for what comes next.

Meanwhile, the emotional side of me is energetic. Like many of you, I’ve been a lifelong fan of the series, and like many of you (or so the sentiment seems) I’ve become increasingly desperate. Sword VIAnd A game that initially seemed like it tried some really interesting things to set it apart from its predecessorsHowever, she eventually fell prey to an obsession with the definition of zonal optimization, which came at the expense of more important things like enemy AI and combat.

I know this is not a file Salim advertisement. There is not even a file Civilization VII Smack logo on that tweet. But she foreshadows it publicly, at least Sword VI The days are finally drawing to a close, and hopefully it won’t be long before we see something that tells us how the series plans to handle its fourth decade of existence.

to update: Good tweet: