Is six Civilization games one too many? How much more can the 4X genre get stretched around the core Civ concept before it breaks?
I think Firaxis deserves the benefit of the doubt. The only Civ iteration that really didn't fully live up to the revered name was Civ III, and that was because Brian Reynolds quit development in the middle to go off and make his own company. Civ IV was amazing and introduced culture, borders, religion, social policies, corporations--any one of which was enough to redefine the game. Civ V moved to hexes and one unit per tile, and don't forget V was the first to have ranged units that were actually ranged, revolutionizing combat. Civ V also refined some of the new Civ IV concepts, although you had to buy the expansions to get all of them.
The promises they're making with VI sound potentially good. Cities take up more than one tile. A new evolutionary diplomacy model. Some kind of new research system. Obviously, we have to wait until we see more, but these sound like decent changes to the old formula. I am concerned about the new art style, which seems like it might fit right on a mobile phone screen....
And after all, the 4X genre is definitely well explored, no pun intended. There are a few innovative designers in this space, though, working in the shadow of the Civ colossus. For example, Stellaris (a new space-centric 4X game) just launched yesterday that got rave reviews. The biggest weakness in 4X is probably that the eXplore phase is the most fun. In just about every Civ game, you can tell whether you'll win or lose about halfway through the game, and the latter half of each playthrough is too often just going through the motions. Let's hope some of the new features in VI deal with that durable problem in the genre.
