We haven’t heard much about Civilization 6, certainly not anything as ridiculous as a release date, even now that Beyond Earth is available. But we know it’s in development, and it has been for a while. We even have a pretty good idea of who the lead developer is. And the game has been in development for long enough that we can expect an announcement of the new installment sooner rather than later--almost certainly this year.

Civilization 6 Release Date: 2015?

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Say what you want about Civilization V—and I will, and have—but the Civilization series still remains the benchmark for turn-based strategy, at least because it’s the series everyone knows best. The coming of Civ 6 will automatically and necessarily be a milestone in strategy gaming on PC, whatever direction developer Firaxis Games decides to take with it.

First off, though, seriously: Civ 6 has been in development for a while. It’s no secret that Firaxis starts working on the sequels to its flagship marque early on. It probably started some development and planning even before Civ V came out way back in 2010. Development certainly went into full speed after Civ V: Brave New World came out in the summer of 2013. Civilization: Beyond Earth, like the Civ 4 spinoff Colonization, was developed by a secondary team, rather than the primary development team at Firaxis.

It also looks like Civ 6 has a good chance of being better than vanilla Civ V, a deeply broken game that was vastly improved by the game’s two expansions, both of which were developed by Firaxis’s Ed Beach. It’s a tradition at Firaxis, at least since Civ 3, to give lead development of the next Civ game to the developer of the expansions for the prior game. Soren Johnson took the helm for Civ 4, the best game in the series, after doing the Civ 3 expansions. Same deal for Jon Shafer and Civ 5. Considering that the Civ 5 expansions were very well received and Ed Beach—unlike Jon Shafer—is still working at Firaxis on an unannounced project, it looks pretty likely that he’s championing Civ 6.

Question is, when will 2K Games pull back the veil? I have a feeling it will happen this year; indeed, I still expect that the Civilization 6 release date has a solid chance of actually coming out this year. The game’s development has apparently been in full swing since at least mid-2013, and probably even earlier. That’s a long time. And, with no other announced games on Firaxis’s 2015 or 2016 docket, what else do you think they’re working on?

I expect to see Civ 6 announced this year, possibly even at E3 2015. We shall see. What do you think?