Civilizations - How many?

[portuguese7]

Is CIV4 going to come up with just a few Civs to allow expansion packs?

I sure hope not. Since MP is granted, I hope civs, govs,... are also.

If the publishers want to sell expansions, I, as an economist, completelly agree with the "milking" of it but... not with the same things again.

Try sending out the best game possible and then after some weeks start working or an expansion from new ideas based on forums or game-experience ideas.

And it seems that the new system won't have the hardcode problems (32 max civs, or some uneditable graphics...), so that is clarly a plus.

PS: Just hope the Portuguese Civ is in.

[Brent]

It sounds like the initial release will probably have at least ten, and I'm guessing no more than 25. I hope there will be more civs per expansion than for Civ4. An idea that I liked that at least one person had was a Civ Library sort of expansion, which would sound like it would hopefully have at bare minimum 50 but 100 or more would be nice. However, it may well take more effort to create new civs than in Civ3. So they may come up with fewer all together including expansions, and hopefully they'll release fanmodded civs on disc and make it suitably available. Maybe I'll be able to create my own more easily than I think, and I hope so. I want expansions to be based around new civs as well as new Scenarios. I reluctantly accept that they should focus on other things instead for the initial release. I really look forward to playing civs that I have a connection to (Scandinavians, Native Americans), but I think I can adjust to choosing my civ by other criteria.

I think at least if we have 40 or more civs the Portuguese will be in eventually, and there's a good chance with 35.

[Jon Shafer]

The 3D leaderheads require a couple of weeks each to do, so I wouldn't expect to see too many civs in the game from the start - not because they're trying to "milk" things, but just because there's not enough hours in the day.

[Brent]

So there's no chance they're using any sort of technology that will use the same programming to animate each of them, and thus not require that much time? And is one person doing all the leaderheads, or does it take two weeks for everyone available to work together? And what about including incomplete civs, with only what they have the opportunity to do, and maybe allow the game to function with leaderheads turned off? I'm worried that if it takes two weeks to do a leaderhead, that will severely limit the number of civs we ever see even in expansions. Surely with the advanced modding we can edit the game to not need the leaderheads?

[Jon Shafer]

2 weeks for one person.

I don't know the techniques used, but whatever is done it takes about 2 weeks.

I personally expect a number of civs similar to what Civ 3 and its expansions had.