Civ 6 is ripe for sliders

[Nefelia]

...snip...

Simply put, there is no need for a mechanic like a resource slider. Aside from Civ IV nostalgia (which I frankly don't share), there is no issue with Civ VI that calls for such a mechanic. The game seems to be designed to function quite well without it. In Civ IV it was a central economic feature.

There are already several mechanics in place for converting resources: citizens get pulled off tiles to generate a specific resource; projects convert production into a specific resource; research agreements convert gold into science. I would not be opposed to the introduction of more such mechanisms, but a return to the slider-a-la-Civ-IV would be a regression rather than progress.

I know many on this board are deeply opposed to sliders (for some reason), but what do you think? Shouldn't we have control over a national budget again?

We do, but just not at the 'turn of a knob' (moving a slider). I wouldn't mind having more options, such as stronger projects or more options similar to scientific agreements. More policy cards perhaps, such as Tax Hike (+x or +x% gold per city at the exchange of -x amenities). More flexibility with trade routes (or is it flexible enough already)?

Lots of avenues to explore before brining back the Slider of Doom.

 

[jjkrause84]

I don't get the fascinating effect of sliders. Aren't the policies much more interesting?

....why is it an either-or in your mind?

 

[LDiCesare]

Sliders were a low-micro solution to choosing where you output your resources. You could put lots of cottages and decide what they produced by just tweaking one UI element.
If you want to do this now, you have to build lots of different stuff on various tiles and readjust your citizens one by one.
So you don't need sliders to produce the same effect, you just need lots of lands, builders and micromanagement.

 

[Siptah]

....why is it an either-or in your mind?

Because having both weakens the effect of both in my opinion. You'd have to make the slider's effect smaller or the policies harder to change. I don't see the use.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

No thanks. Whether it's actually true or not, the sliders give the impression that all of the other things you do for your economy don't really matter that much. Make a crucial, game-breaking mistake that plunges your civ deep into debt? That's okay--fix it with the turn of a dial.

 

[Uberfrog]

....why would sliders mean you AREN'T building specific things to advance certain yields?

It doesn't. But that doesn't mean that you need both. When (re)introducing a new mechanic, your first thought should be "why are we adding this?" In my opinion, it isn't necessary to add them.

 

[RealHuhn]

Not true at all. Leaving aside the fact that exclusively building cottages might not leave you with enough food or production not all sliders in the world have to work on the Civ 4 model. Watch:

Let's assume that all our current Civ V/VI outputs are sliders all on 100%, and let's make all the sliders independent of each other. If you make one small change (reducing the amount of money the player takes in and giving outputs a monetary cost) then players could not run all three sliders (sci/culture/faith) at 100% all the time. It should be too expensive. By having purely subtractive sliders you could never manipulate your way out of poor long-term planning, but you could decide how much emphasis you want to place on making money. In Civ 5 you always had way too much of everything, especially gold. Civ VI will probably be the same. Budgets should not only ever go up....they should fluctuate (the way real budgets do). Introducing subtractive sliders opens up room for genuine scarcity. The player will have to prioritise multiple outputs at multiple levels (i.e. granularity). A player can choose how much surplus they generate (trading odd between building cash reserves for slower tech/faith advancement), or even choose to run a temporary deficit to spur progress on a bit more quickly. These are all the sorts of decisions government (in theory) make about spending and priorities. They do not, in any way, obviate the need for long-term planning and the careful control of citizens/tiles.

Heck, you could even do interesting things like barring sliders for faith if you don't have a state religion. Could open up all sorts of interesting possibilities.


Besides, in the real world is there not really just one generic resource: money? An abstract measurement of value that is applied to everything? I don't see why having some form of this in Civ would be a 'bad' thing.

I've read your posts multiple times and still don't really know what you want to change in comparison to CIV4 or how my opinion is "not true at all". You are only talking about the management of a budget/gold which is exactly what I criticized about sliders (based on ONE resource). If you want to turn CIV into an RL economy simulator, fine, but I don't see how it would be more fun.
If you had too much gold in CIV5 you were doing it wrong. You can never have enough gold and can burn thousands in a second just by buying a few research labs or upgrading/buying troops.

In CIV4, you usually had one great person farm (farm spam), multiple cottage cities (cottage spam) and a couple of production cities (hammer/farm spam). I just don't see how this is more tactical than CIV6, with the addition of yield-specific districts, trade routes etc.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I don't get the fascinating effect of sliders. Aren't the policies much more interesting?

Exactly this. Sliders are boring and too easy.

 

[Atlas627]

Ok, so you're suggesting that the "combined" resource be the output, rather than the input? So the input is science/faith/culture/gold and the output is gold only? But since you still produce the science/faith/culture that you chose not to convert into gold, that requires planning?

Well that's slightly better than the Civ4 system, but I still think it has some of the same problems. Now Gold is inherently ALWAYS worse than the other resources, because you never have to commit to it. Anything that produces Science is actually producing Science-or-Gold. Since you don't ever need to produce Gold, you run into the same problem: each point of Science you produce is one point of Science you don't have to turn into Gold, which means one point of Culture you do have to turn into Gold. Alternatively, since you still had to have those points anyway, now its one point of Culture you don't have to turn into Gold for one Science you do have to turn into Gold. Oh look, Culture and Science are basically converting into each other again.

The only difference is that you can never produce more Science than you built, which is definitely an improvement. But for the most part, you're still aiming to get the most total yields possible so that you free up your options as much as possible. Once again, the system turns "get different resources in different ways, then spend them in different ways but only in the proportions you managed to acquire" to "usually get whatever resource you can (but occasionally pick a specific type over quantity), then convert them all into whatever you need and spend it".

 

[Lyoncet]

TBH, I just think having that degree of fluidity between resources doesn't make the game better. It bugged me in Civ IV, and I was glad to see it changed in Civ V. My guess is that's pretty much what the objections boil down to.

I can definitely see a good case for setting civ-wide focuses to make it easier and quicker to shift to massing science, culture, or gold. But I'd rather it stay on the interface side.

 

[jozef57]

sliders have been in civ untill 4 i think i played all versions, i would not mind that