I think they’re falling into the same trap Bioware fell into, whereby they have a couple of critically acclaimed franchises under their belt and are universally praised and all is well, but then obviously that can’t last forever so as soon as the wheels start to wobble a bit, they start over-thinking, over-developing and over-managing their games because the next one needs to be a massive hit, but then what inevitably happens is they end up sabotaging development as they keep throwing out ideas and polishing all the rough edges off. So you actually end up with something that feels under-developed and bland because it’s all designed by committees and middle-managers, and built by underpaid devs on a crunch who just want to be done with it.

Also Microsoft bought them in the meantime, which can’t be helpful.

The A is for “Actually this game is $90 now instead of $60.”

I could, but even the base version here is $90. I’m good to just wait, honestly.

Yeah I feel like you could tie these crises into player actions pretty organically - like if there’s a war and a big enough percentage of Civs get involved, then it triggers a World War crisis, or they could tie something into the global warming mechanic from Civ VI, or have a Cold War come up from excessive espionage actions, stuff like that.

Which is a weird move IMO, 'cause normally you’re supposed to steal the homework of someone who’s doing a better job than you are.

I don’t like denuvo but for me it’s the price that’s the deal-breaker. Nearly $170CAD for the full version is absolutely bonkers, and I simply can’t justify it. So I guess I’m picking it up in a Steam sale in 2028 or something when it’s $40 with all the DLC.

My first impressions:

• I like the art style, I’ll have to see about the leaders.
• Gwendolyn Christie is a really good choice for the narrator.
• I don’t like the sound of there only being three ages, but maybe there’s more to it.
• Also not sure about switching civs mid-game, but being able to do things like a French Cleopatra might be fun.
• Are they going to restrict this to avoid potentially offensive combos, especially in multiplayer? I’m thinking of things like using real-world colonizers for leaders of places they occupied (like an English ruler in charge of India and stuff like that.) At the very least it seems like they’re inviting trouble unnecessarily.
• The prices are completely bonkers, nearly $170 CAD for the Founders Edition! This is gonna be the first Civ game in a long time that I don’t pick up on launch day.

Well then I’m not pirating anything, I’m just downloading data and if it happens to correlate to the new Aliens movie then that’s not my problem. 😮