Diplomacy And Leader Relationships Made More Personal In Civ VI
If you were to break down Civilization into three parts, it would be expansion, battles, and diplomacy. But in previous Civilization games, the diplomacy aspects seemed random, and thus many preferred a military victory as it was easier to predict and obtain. With Civilization VI, accuracy of personality, as well as uniqueness of character was key in the remaking of the world leaders.
“In Civ 5, different civilizations felt very different when you were playing as them, but when they were AI opponents they felt very similar in that they had the same way they go about playing the game. You didn’t have to react as strongly as we would’ve liked to the fact that, wow, Ghengis is next to me, or one of these leaders who might have a crazy idea about what might be a nice thing to do in the Civilization world. We had Gandhi and a few other people that definitely have some quirks to them, but not as far as we wanted,” says Lead Designer Ed Beach to IGN.
Now though, it’s not that simple.
“We have a leader who’s obsessed with building Wonders. He’s good at it, but he’s pretty insistent that every game he needs to have more Wonders than every other single player in the game. If you suddenly are out-producing him in Wonders, he’s going to be irritable. You can pretty much guarantee that if you’re going to out-Wonder the Wonder-obsessed guy, you’re going to go to war with him.”
Furthermore, the way Diplomacy will be handled on screen has been changed for the better:
“The Diplomacy system in Civ 5 was kind of existing in a box. You went in, there was no information, so you left (or you used one of those amazing mods). “But the new Diplomacy UI is beautiful – there’s a plethora of information so you can make informed decisions when you’re going through a trade or just need information on the fly.”
Civilization VI arrives October 21st.
This mechanic would make diplomacy so much more fun. I feel like giving personalities to other leaders would make the game way more fun to play with AI. I love this idea.
Good thing they will add more to diplomacy. One thing the franchise lacked, was a complex diplomacy system.
GOOD. Now you can actually feel the emotional and social effect of your actions rather than just "your scouts when into my land, I'm going to kill you" and then you go to war. The more like Game of Thrones the better.
That sounds awesome. Back in Civ 3, you can just bribe invaders, or ask for a ransom for countries you are about to invade. It was pretty monotonous, it's either you are with them or against them, and for a turn based game, it made it completely boring at times. Hopefully this time, those problems would be fixed and we can enjoy the game more.
Yes! I love the emotional aspect that this would add to the game! It would also be pretty hilarious to have sassy AI to deal with. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I always wished they would add some sort of dynamic like this so I wouldn't feel sort of guilty for invading another civilization for zero reason whatsoever. I'm really looking forward to this game!
Oh man, this should be a lot of fun when Civilization VI comes out! I always loved to ally with other countries and form an alliance, I wouldn't mind getting to be friends with another leader at all. 😀
This should be a nice change. As someone that's played Crusader Kings, I've always felt like the diplomacy in Civilization was a little bit too simplistic. I'd also agree that the AI players all seemed way too samey, so having some behavior variety will be a nice change from the usual.
Would love to hear some more details about the new and improved system. Introducing variation and leader quirks is all fine and well, but it isn't really a major step forward. In order to improve the somewhat reduntant diplomacy function (you could win the game easily without having to interact with other factions), they will need to add new limits to military expansionism or serious handicaps for overaggression.
@ Vladimir Logos: I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it, however, diplomacy has never been a central feature fo Civilization, and you can't really expect it to change. Compared with the Crusader Kings, for instance, there is only one and the same leader for each nation who is never replaced throughout the whole game, and the number of factions is a fraction of what you get in CK or Europa Universalis (even when taking city-states into account).
Definitely looking forward to this feature. I too think that diplomacy is going to be way more interesting in comparison to what it's like now.
That's some great news. Adding new mechanics that actually mean anything to the gameplay like this may only make it more interesting. Civilization VI looks better and better with every news.
Diplomacy and interactions between leaders were some of my favorite parts of Civ games, I'm really glad they're improving that aspect of interaction between civs. However, I wish there was more detail on this. Will there simply be more dialogue or trade agreement options? Only time will tell…I'm excited to hear this news, though!
Cool, I'm glad to see they're doing something like this. The diplomacy mechanics in previous games always felt a bit weak to me, even when they updated them through expansions and what not. So I look forward to see the changes in action.
There's always room for improvement in this regard. Something about Civ 5's way of trading with other leaderes always seemed a bit lacking, if not random. One random thing that I loved was the random personalities option though. I always freaked not to have a Gandhi wannabe in my neighbourhood during the Atomic Era, plus you never knew who liked what and what would get you in trouble. In some way, it kept me on my toes, and it helped spice things up. More refined personalities are great, but I sincerly hope they won't remove the random personalities option.
That's why civilizations is one of the best strategy games out there if not the best. I don't know of any other game that even comes close to it in this respect.
I love the fact that there will now be more emotional interaction between the civs effects in the game. It will make diplomacy and interactions between the leaders more interesting and I can't wait till I can be a part of all that.
Looking back on everything I cannot even really say that I saw much of a difference here, but I guess maybe if I was looking for it more I would have spotted something.