Team Liquid is on a roll now as they just recently received new investors. One of the first and leading e-sports organisations out there, Liquid is looking to expand its horizon with a new team for a new game. That game is Civilization VI.
This news is both huge, and baffling in some ways. The official news piece looks like Team Liquid knows what they are doing by signing up MrGameTheory, who used to play Civ competitively back in Civ IV and once played Clash Royale for Team Liquid. Interestingly, Liquid’s co-founder and co-CEO has a background in competitive Civ as well, which probably ushered the move. Team Liquid is set to start organising Civ VI tournaments and recruiting more players into the roster in the near future.
But here’s the baffling part. For one thing, the series’ multiplayer offering in each of its games has been spotty so far, though Civ VI promises to add more options to allow more flexibility to multiplayer. Another thing is there was no mention of the Civ V No Quiters group, a dedicated bunch of competitive Civ V players that had to make some huge changes via a custom-made patch, and enforce specific rules like civ drafting to keep make the game worth playing at a high level setting with other players. No word from publishers 2K and developers Firaxis whether they will help push this initiative, as based on past history they never pushed the game towards competitive multiplayer. The responses and reactions over at Team Liquid’s forums are also mixed. Some are astonished and optimistic of this new venture, while some showed skepticism since their plans do not involved the existing community.
Plus, with the game just released in a week time, how viable is the multiplayer? The post at Team Liquid made a convincing post detailing how competitive Civ VI is viable, talking about efficiency and pure decision making without the test of mechanical skill involved in most e-sports. Most reviews that are out right now mostly focuses on the main single-player experience.
We will see if Team Liquid is pushing in the right direction with this one, as it would be interesting to see how the format of competitive Civ will take. And hopefully it can reach out the many small competitive Civ communities around.