Fans of the long-running franchise from Sid Meier will be happy with the new announcement from Take-Two Interactive and Firaxis Games. Come Oct. 21, a new title will be coming to the 25-year-old franchise, by way of “Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.”

The people who were behind “Civilization V” will be moving forward onto this new project. But even with the same team working on the title, the developer has confirmed that there will be changes ahead for “Civilization VI.”

Speaking to Venture Beat, Firaxis’ Dennis Shirk confirmed that the military units for “Civilization VI” will now be more spread out in bunches all over the map. This is not isolated to just the units, but also for the rest of the cities.

Instead of bunching together the districts of the cities, the tiles for cities will now be spread across different hexagons. The developer is looking at letting players spread the stretch of their cities and design. However, this does not mean a free-rein, far-reaching city building

The maps will not be huge, but rather the goal is to spread the districts across cities, taking into consideration support for population, defense for the cities and the advantages of a particular kind of terrain. This incorporates strategy on a whole new level.

“You have to make these decisions city by city. We are unstacking the cities and taking that to the nth degree,” said Shirk to Venture Beat.

“Civilization VI” players will have the extra challenge of using the terrain to their advantage. There are some hidden ways to boost the progress of the civilization, since building on a specific terrain—quarry, fields, coast side—will progress much faster a specific type of technology.

What’s more AIs are now smarter, in that they have their actions are agenda-based. This makes use of leaders that are both historically-based and random, and this can drive how certain types of people will respond to a particular leader.

What is retained is the ability to rule a particular group of people and grow a city. Players can still go to war, progress the culture and choose from a multitude of ways to win through the game.

The design philosophy that the developer takes on for “Civilization” has been evolving with every game. In an interview with Polygon, Sid Meier, designer and co-founder of Firaxis Games, revealed that the keeps on playing with the formula with every iteration. From the culture-centric “Civilization 3” to the unit-per-tile scheme in “Civilization 5,” Firaxis has been developing the game’s overall mechanics.

“We developed a confidence in our players. We could change things and it still would be fun the world was ready for one unit per tile and hexes, perhaps. Some people liked it and some people thought it was not the way they imagined Civ,” said Meier to Polygon.

The official trailer for “Civilization VI” is already out, as seen below. This is mostly a teaser announcement trailer, so don’t expect to find any gameplay scenes.

"Sid Meier's Civilization VI" announcement (Credit: YouTube/Sid Meier's Civilization)

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