Civilization 6 is coming out this fall, and Firaxis is already on the media warpath, revealing a good deal of information about the new game. We’ve already gotten a sense of the critical new features in the game, the big departures from Civ V. And I’ve got good news—the “big ideas” in the game are better than the equivalent “big ideas” in Civ V, and that bodes very well.

Civilization 6 Has Better Ambitions Than Civ V

Every Civilization game brings major game-changing ideas to the tried-and-true formula of the series. Civ III brought culture and resources. Civ IV brought religion and robust diplomacy and civics and more. Civ V introduced city-states, one-unit-per-tile combat, social policies and empire-wide happiness, and eventually trade routes. Unfortunately, a lot of those systems had some problems, especially the combat and the empire-wide happiness, which discouraged large empires. There was lots of cool stuff in the game, but the big ideas just didn’t work well together.

Civ VI sounds like it’s going to be different. Empire-wide happiness is already gone, and other big ideas are coming in its place. Civics are back, but modernize and evolve over time. Diplomacy sounds like it blends Civ IV’s robustness with the unpredictability of Civ V. But the really big ideas are new—cities have Districts now, allowing for more specialization. Workers only have a limited number of uses. Actions you take influence what technologies you can research most quickly. It’s big stuff that will fundamentally change how Civilization will feel.

And I can’t speak to the execution, but these ideas work together in a way that Civ V’s didn’t. Civ V was focused on truly discouraging a large, sprawling empire—which seems like a weird call for a game about empires. And its systems, especially policies, initially felt freeing—but in truth locked you into a certain path relatively early on. The expansions fixed this to some degree, but Civ VI sounds like it’s going even further.

Civilization’s features should be all about synergy. They should work harmoniously together to create a game with a very different feel than the predecessor. Civ V felt very different and its big ideas somehow made the game feel smaller. Civ VI’s ideas—bigger, more specialized cities; deeper diplomacy; flexible civics that evolve over time—will make the game feel bigger. And that’s exactly what Civilization needs.