Earlier development of cultures and tourism (instead of the traditional late-blooming 20th Century Tourism).Less emphasis on war, more on culture and science.Social questions in your civilization (uproar, anarchism, strikes, Workers’ Unions).Economic ways of victory / make the economy more than just a way to fund your wars.A reinvigorated World Congress / United Nations where you can put resolutions to the table (Civ 4/5 style) and with a Security Council-like structure, with actual powers to de-arm, non-proliferate and sanction nations.

What do I want to see in Civ VII? My (incomplete) wishlist:

Whilst I don’t agree with her on all points, she does make some valid claims on how Civ still needs to step away from it’s Eurocentric / Westernized view and how it should be more harsh when it comes to climate change (which more of a nuisance than a real threat to civilization in the game). PC Gamer’s Leana Hafer took a head start with that, and stated how (she thinks) Civ VII could re-invigorate the series. It seems like 2K are indeed taking that route, especially as we’ve got no info on Civ VII (yet). This might suggest we are in for more Pass-like paths of reworks and new additions. It seemed like the devs left us with a bit of a cliffhanger, stating that we’re at ‘the end of the season’ of DLC. Whilst on the topic of Civilization, the end of the New Frontier Pass saw some speculations on the future of the series. Say what you want, at least Taleworld have worked on the game during the EA-period! But is it worth it? If you ask me, yes! But some others are still on the fence: Rock Paper Shotgun’s Sin Vega writes: ‘It’s certainly more enjoyable to play than it used to be, but I still can’t recommend it outright, and I suspect I won’t know how I feel about it until it’s finished.’ And I must concede: it is still hard to place a definitive verdict on the game, but seen as though the devs have progressed the game quite a bit (and have also listenend to the community), it will be even better in the future! The year also saw tweaks in the character building system, families and clans, battles, kingdoms and armies and the addition of multiplayer and a modding tool.

That decrease is more impressive if you also consider the fact they’ve added more art and audio to the game over the year. First and foremost, stabilty and performance has greatly been improved and optimized (with a big fps increase for battles) and a total 10GB shrink of the total game size. Taleworlds provided us with a nice overview of all the new stuffs in the game. It has been a year since Mount & Blade II Bannerlord was launched in Early Access! In that year, quite some things have changed.

Minecraft mount and blade