Day-To-Night Cycle Could Come To Civilization
Time is a key element of the Civilization games. As you advancing through the various stages of history dictate what technology you have and what you are able to do. However, aesthetically, the days and nights don’t change on screen. The only exception is through the Wonder movies. However, as Brian Busatti revealed to IGN, this could change:
“We’ve been experimenting. We’d also like to do a setting where you literally you see the sun rise when you start the game. But we’ve also had a setting where you can just keep rotating through. It doesn’t make sense to tie it to turns, but a looping two or three-minute cycle. And we also want to give people the option to set certain times, just say ‘6pm!’ and play that way.”
Busatti also says a feature like time-of-day lighting could find other purposes. “There are plenty of ways to tie it in for the modding community. I could see someone making a Gettysburg game where the time of the day actually indicates when the game’s going to be over. So you start your battle at sunrise, and it gets incrementally darker every turn until it’s night time, and that’s the end of the game.”
Civilization VI comes out October 21st.
I would love this! It would make the game feel a lot more immersive, and I think it would look graphically really cool. It would be awesome to see how the day-to-night cycle affects other dynamics in the game like trade or war. I just imagine sneak attacks getting a bonus on "sleeping" cities.
@YaBoyJoey Not going to happen, Busatti clearly states it will work only for aesthetic purposes in the game, and perhaps will be expanded by mods. Which is very fine by me, it's always good for modders to get more tools, but night-and-day cycle wouldn't really work with vanilla Civilization. Turns represent years, after all.
A lot of games nowadays have dynamic weather and time, so this seems like a normal feature that should be added. I hope they do add a day-to-night cycle.
The only problem is the time-scale of the actual game. It makes no sense for a turn to signify a year, and then have day/night last 5 turns or whatever. Of course the year=turn stuff seemed silly when it took you a year to move a combat unit one tile.
Would be really cool to see a real day and night cycle in a Civ game. I wonder how the cycle will affect your Civ in general.
That's actually very cool! Putting such feature into this game will surely increase it's sales and it's so worth it! I can't wait to buy this game.I expect allot from it, since I've been playing since the early Civilization's, and I must say, I'm loving the new concepts they are introducing.
It will be mostly for aesthetic purposes – changing the way buildings and units look, not work. The devs leave it to modders to add strategic value for it.
That sounds pretty cool. I haven't played Civilization since Civ 3, so I'm curious at how far the game has gone in over a decade of progress in gameplay and graphics. Is it still turn based though? If so, day and night wouldn't really be needed, because the turns are yearly, and I highly doubt they would make nights last, since that's not very realistic. Pretty cool concept though.
Would be cool if this was added as there would be a lot more content to come with the addition of the cycles. Hopefully it is implemented but I don't really see the sense of it other than for graphical purposes as it is a turn based game.
Yeah, it wouldn't be Civilization anymore otherwise :p As I've said, night and day will be relevant only for displaying the looks of your cities, wonders etc. but develoeprs believe there will be mods using this effect for deeper purpose.
I think it would be pretty cool, so long as it doesn't make the screen too dark. It would be neat to see them add other features on top of this day night cycle, for example, giving certain units advantages during a specific time of the day!
Oh I would love this. Would be awesome to see the lighting of your city change from day to night, especially in modern eras. Civ is tough to make "immersive" because it's really a god game but the little details like this are what make it.
If I understood Brian Busatti correctly, this is just a cosmetic feature with no impact on game mechanics. Players get an extra feature they can play around with and that's it: no spying bonus at night, no infiltration and assassination units or stuff like that.
CIV III and IV did get a bit tedious after a while and some sort of day-to-night cycle would have done them good. However, CIV V was a lot more complex in comparison and I was entertained for longer periods of time. I reckon CIV VI is going to be a step forward in that direction, too. If so, there is no need for useless cosmetics. I approve of this addition only if it introduces new game mechanics (like assassinations of city mayors, easier technological espionage etc.).
I mean it would be easy to have a day/night cycle and have it affect food production, or have it give an advantage or disadvantage to certain troops, or allow things like spying to be more effective.
They could always just go the game of thrones route, where a ´winter´ didn´t necessarily mean 1/4 of a year.
This is something I would be very interested in seeing. Perhaps even natural disasters and freak weather to spice things up!
oh god I hope not, That is one of the things that turned me off about the SimCity games. These games are about strategy and long term planning and adapting those plans as you go. But having Godzilla or a meteor strike just destroy all your work and plans just is annoying. It is funny for the moment, but overall it removes a big part of the gameplay.
OH PLEASE NO. If that was to ever be a feature, it should be optional. I can think of few things more infuriating than being on the verge of victory in a war, only to have your army wiped out by a swarm of tornadoes and heavy rain.
On the idea of a day and night cycle, I think this could be really cool. I can already imagine seeing my unit groups having torches and the like lit, illuminating their little tiles. I don't know if a day and night cycle would change the strategy of the game at all, but it would certainly be a neat feature.
While graphically cool, I sincerely hope it holds no function as far as the gameplay goes. I remember being excited for day/night cycles in Cities: Skylines, but in the end it just bothered me so I turned it off. It definitely made the game look prettier, I'm not denying that, but that a part of that game is to be pretty, while that's not the case for Civilization.
I agree with you. It world be really awesome. I am just waiting for it. I hope they would do it pretty soon.
Yes, you are right. It would be very interesting. Do you know when will it happen?
It would really wonderful. I don't believe the people who dislike this feature. Well, most of the people will actually like it.
I don't know if this is at all needed and I am wondering how they want to do it, as you often jump a lot from a certain time to another time, it isn't just a game on a day/night basis in my opinion.
It has been confirmed that there is a day/night cycle, complete with your cities lighting changing. It looks really sweet and all the different wonders have their own kind of lighting at least from what was shown (Eiffel Tower, Big Ben). I assume that after each turn it will be a random time of day, but not really sure of that.
Link of the day/night:
Thanks for the video, it was really insightful and showed loads of info!
Meh, if the only goal of this update is to be aesthetically pleasing.. I don´t know if I´m happy about this. I feel like they could be using this developing money on cooler features that actually affect gameplay.
I'm feeling the same way. I don't really see any use for it. Civilization is a turn-based game and I can't imagine how the day-night cycle would affect anything. If they'll create bonuses like having a greater chance to win the battle if you start it at night, then it won't be good to attack during the day time anymore. But maybe they've got some kind of great idea how to make use of it, we will see in October.
I would love a day-to-night cycle! I've always loved those little atmospheric touches that make the game come to life, so seeing different times of day in Civ would be really wonderful. I have to wonder though, since the time that passes in Civiliation games is so fluid and often passes through years at a time, I wonder how they're going to work in the cycle, since logically it wouldn't be night time for a year and then daytime for another. Perhaps it's just flavor for the player, and won't really mean anything in-game.
A dynamic day/night cycle for Civilization would be a neat idea, in my opinion. If done correctly, it has the potential to make the game more graphically pleasing and immersive.
It's about time, it can really change the game. There are so many games out there that already do this, it's a pity that they didn't think of this earlier. This does mean on the other hand that they game will take longer to play.
Humm I guess a couple more sleepless nights won't be the end of the world.
The more I think about this concept of day-night cycle the more I am able to see how this could turn out to be a great addition to the game. Or maybe it could be a feature used to represent the current status of your turn: morning – the start of your turn, day – your turn, evening – the end of your turn, night – other player's turn. This would automatically influence the game immersion and add to it more than anything. I don't understand why this should be a mod (made by a fan), rather than just have it implemented from the start by the developers. Maybe they chose for it to be like this due to the fact that they haven't found a concrete functionality to the day-night cycle, which is a pity considering that the fans have quite warmed up to the idea of this new possible addition.
Oh I would for day-night cycles, since it would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me. I've played a lot of games that have it and then games that don't, and I feel that it adds a lot more to a game even if it is just a time change. It'd be cool if they also added events based on what time it was.
This seems like a minor change, but I think it'll make a significant difference. When given the choice between style and graphics, I'd definitely go for style, and little touches such as this one make the difference between good art styles and truly memorable ones. It might even have some practical sense, perhaps it could be used to implement a weather system, which would cause storms during night in, let's say, times when the empire isn't happy – or during wars and such. I can only see this as a nice addition, and one that doesn't have a big hit on the performance of the game.
*I just imagined being nuked by Gandhi in the middle of the night and during a storm. That's a sight to behold
This would be a great feature for the game and it would look super cool. It probably wouldn't change the strategy of the game, but it still would be awesome to see how the day-to-night cycle would affect the other aspects of the game.
You guys all seem to love this feature, but I'm gonna go on a bit of a rant here, please don't hate me!
So, they said this is cosmetic and has no effect on gameplay and that's pretty great because if it did then it would be a real issue (which it isn't). But what gets me is that they said they did it for Immersion and for the life of me I can't think how a night lasting years can make the game more immersive…
The correct way for this feature to work would be to add a key that you press to make it nightime and if you press it again then it would be daytime, that way you can play the same in the setting you want and see your cities during nighttime without it being a nonsensical feature that works in an arbitrary way.
That's a feature I would certainly like to see in this game. I wonder how it would work. Maybe you could press a button to make it nighttime like AgentD22 suggests – that would really be fun…
Well I have to say that I am all for it. When it comes to new features and tools for the game I say pile them on and it just makes it that much more fun to play, in my opinion. This is really one game that I think does not get cluttered if there are a lot of different actions of features, because it is a game meant to last a awhile. I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us.
I personally consider it as a good addition and also a plus for strategy improvement and development in the game itself, choosing the right time to attack might be a really good feature, it would also make the game more interesting and therefore funnier for most players, it's going to be a great thing indeed.
I hope so too. I don't know how much I'd enjoy the feature if it were just aesthetic so I really do think they should try and add weather and night cycles into the mechanics.
Many of the games have adopted the day and night cycle. It is a great way to make the game more realistic and a great opportunity to make the graphics of game even more visually appealing.
It would be great if they could put more options depending on whether it is day or night, like certain things which you would be able to do only during the day. That would increase the competitiveness of the game and also, make it more challenging.
Even some small yet logical additions like limiting unit's range of view when it's dark (with exceptions) would immediately make the game more immersive in my opinion.
I would rather wait until the day/night cycle has some meaning and influences the game play rather than have it there just for aesthetic reasons, else it would simply feel like a wasted opportunity to introduce some interesting new mechanics.
Civilization would benefit from a day-to-night cycle. You'll have to adapt your strategy because ambushing someone at night can be really risky and you can fall in a trap, it would add more depth to the game on top of being more realistic. We'll have to see.
I think a day and night cycle would be an interesting addition to the game but I am not sure if it works in spirit because each Civ turn is suppose to represent years not days. I agree it would add to the game because you would have to adjust your strategy depending on if you are attacking/defending in the day or night. I think you would have to add some sort of sleep cycle so you do not have soldiers that have been up all night. But then that would add another stat to units and may get too much to deal with late game, so though it sounds good in theory I think the implementation would fail and I am not sure if it stays in theme for this kind of game.
They are going to include much more features than you think. They are one of the best gaming developers on this planet. I hope they would include more features in this game.
Yeah, you are right. It will make the game more fun to play. I really want these features as soon as possible because the niche of the game is really amazing and I love it.
This would be a really cool addition, I think.
It'd definitely add a lot more to the immersion of the game; though, I'm not sure what effects it would have on the mechanics of the game, as Civ played on a day-to-day rather than year-to-year basis would take an ungodly amount of time. It would probably just be for aesthetics, wouldn't it?
It sounds cool from a looks aspect, but I think I may have to agree with TangPau and say that, if this Civilization is anything like past Civilization games, it won't make much difference because the game goes on a yearly cycle rather than a daily one.
Seasons, however, would be very interesting and provide a much more historical aspect to strategy. That would include regional variations like monsoon season around the warmer countries, and longer winters in Russia. Civilization IV touched on this a bit with random events, but it could certainly be expanded.
Thanks for very helpful information bro!
I think that as long as it does not slow things down or really interrupt anything than it is fine. The issue is when it starts to frustrate me.