Poll: Are Civ players happy with the amount of variation between civilizations

For Civilization 6 would you like to see Civ's have even more variety to make them more uniquely distinguished from each other or are you happy the current amount of variation or do you think there is too much and it should be reduced?

Currently every Civilization in Civ 5 has 3 unique attributes
1 unique ability and 2 unique units/buildings/tile improvements

Would you like to see Civ 6 give each civilization 4 or maybe up to 5 unique traits?

An example is Rome: Currently has a UA that boosts the production to buildings by 25% if they exist in the capital and 2 unique units. Adding more unique features could see Civ 6 Rome getting new buildings like a Roman Forum or Roman Bathes? Or reducing the variety to make Civs more equal to each other could see the UA and ballista removed just leaving Rome with the Legion.

Personally I think more variety is good so long as it adds to the game experience and enjoyment. Although once you get to point you start moving toward a Starcraft system where terrans, zergs and protoss had completely different gameplay strategies.

I don't think making each civ as different as say zerg from terran is necessary or even remotely achievable if Fireaxis intend to include a large variety of Civs like there is now. Lets face it, it's not how Civilization works.
And Civ5 uses social policies, religion and AI personalities to further distinguish Civ A from Civ B. But that said I think the experience of Civilization may be enhanced with some additional variation between civs. Part of what it can offer is potentially more synergy between one civs unique attributes than there right now. I feel this can definitely enhance each civilizations unique flavour.

Take Byzantine for instance, there is a very interesting UA and 2 decent early unique units but there is little synergy between these and while it may provide good flexibility for your strategy i.e. you can focus on early naval expansion with Dromons, early land domination with Cataphracts or heavily into religion it is very difficult to achieve all 3. But if a Basilica building was added as the 4th unique attribute for Byzantine that could boost faith generation than it improves synergy with the UA without removing the unique units?

So what would people like to see for Civ 6?

Voted fine as is. I greatly prefer Civ V's UA's to Civ IV's ridiculously OP starting abilities, since it makes the game more strategic. An extra UB or UU might be nice synergy-wise like in the case of Byzantium, though it seems unnecessary overall. I feel like your social policies and empire type should be much more important than your chosen Civ in the grand scheme of the game.

The large number of Civs is actually a reason why adding more uniqueness would collapse on itself and make the civs, well, less unique. There's really only so much you can do with units and buildings before things start to repeat and get samey.

I think what we have now is where it should be. The Byzantine problem is better solved by, y'know, ensuring there is some synergy between the uniques.

I am on the "fine as it is" bandwagon.

SYKOJAK said:

I am on the "fine as it is" bandwagon.

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Room for one more on this bandwagon?

From a game perspective, it doesn't take much of a difference to steer a civ when everything else on the table is the same. Take the Jaguar for an example. Anyone rolling up Aztec will know that they'll have to leverage that early super unit + UA into an advantage that will hold them the rest of the game. Someone playing as the Zulu will obviously be trying to gain an advantage from the Ikanda, followed by a death-wave of Impi. Spain will aggressively pursue early scouting, and will often follow up with an aggressive push to control natural wonders.

Trying to squeeze in and balance any more units would be a headache and a half.

Argh, I think about this all the time. I'm stuck between fine as is and more diversity. I would like to see 2 more slots for UU's, UI's and UB's per civ. It would be nice if all civs have a UU and a UB on the top of either additional UU, UB or UI. On the other hand, it could be too much and if the new stuff is not balanced, then some civs could become too powerful. I guess I'll vote more diversity in this case, unless someone persuades me that too much diversity is bad.

EDIT: also pretty glad that less diversity option has no votes yet. If you want less diversity, play the earlier civs.

Civ V has done a great job at making the civs all play a little different and feel more unique compared to past civ games so I voted the "fine as is" option because it's what's kept me playing V much longer than the previous installments.

The only thing I wouldn't mind seeing is 2 UUs paired with 1 UB/UI for each civ. That's not so much because I feel like the game needs more variety but more to balance out the military/civil aspects of the civs a little better. Playing civs with 2 UUs that come and go without making a big impact feels like just playing with a UA (Byzantium, Greece, sometimes Rome) and playing a civ with 1 so so UU feels like not having one at all (Maya, Inca, Babylon, Egypt). Going with a standard 2UU 1UB/UI setup would help ensure each civ has advantages in both war and peace and enjoys its advantages for more than one era. Except maybe heavy war flavored civs like Mongolia, Assyria and the Zulu but I think that's kind of acceptable in some cases. Sometimes you do just start a game planning to go all out war from the beginning.

I'm quite happy. Adds flavour to most of the civs. Though I got a little upset when the Minuteman copied the Pracinha's thing

What's implied in the poll as it is written is the key to increasing differentiation/flavor among the different civilizations is to increase or decrease the number of unique attributes, and I disagree with this. One UA and 2 unique "slots" is fine, and I'm pretty happy with the UA's, I'd like to see the two unique slots, in general, be much more powerful but also much more polarizing.

I like it the way it is. I've been trying to play some 4x space games recently where each race had things like:

+10% stealth technology research
+5 laser damage
+45% agriculture build time
--something else
--something else
--something else

And it's annoying because adding too many different abilities end up making everyone play nearly the same.

Civ 5 gives you just enough that you can play the game as normal, but you have the option of exploiting a small subset of rules for each civ.

It's good as it is; all they need to do in Civ VI is make sure there's synergy within the Civ.

cpm4001 said:

It's good as it is; all they need to do in Civ VI is make sure there's synergy within the Civ.

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This.

I beg to differ here. Synergy is nice, but too much synergy tends to point you down one victory path.

I'd like to see enough Uniques that offer each civ two preferred victory paths. Some civs already have something like this, others are very focused on one condition.

Having said that, I think there are a lot of other things Civ should implement before adding more Uniques. The endgame needs to be better, and I think Independence movements (something that simulates breakaway countries like United States, and anti-colonial movements like French West Africa), Indigenous claims/sovereignty movemets (see Canada's Idle No More), and larger-scope quests/achievements that come with concrete in-game bonuses (Choose one of quest A, B, or C.)

I voted for more variation, but I would be ok with sticking with what we have now. I think the big thing is that I want the civs to feel different from each other while I'm playing them. I think that works for civs like the Shoshone, Portugal, Venice, and Assyria, all of which feel exceptionally unique, but then other civs don't have that unique feeling. Babylon is like other civs but better, pre-patch Japan was barely different from a vanilla civ for most of the game, and America feels like a very non-special civ.

As for the victory condition argument, I think any non-cultural victory condition oriented civ can win in many different ways. Domination focused civs can crush their continent and any scientific competitors to get a science lead, gold focused civs can buy their way to great cities, armies, and science, and science focused civs can get their tourism up by building wonders before anyone else. With the patch, tourism focused civs can even focus on late game domination with fewer penalties. I think while it's easy to put civs in a focused victory condition, even the most focused civs are also pretty good at using their specialty to get another type of vc.

I like how each civ has its own "flavor", but I've always felt uncomfortable with it because it runs contrary to actual historical examples. For instance, as distinctive as they were, the Romans were notorious for adopting tech and techniques that worked well for their opponents. In game, if something works well for another civ, why would any other civ choose to NOT adopt that unit organization or technique?

I'd like to see a true design-your-own-civ mechanism. Select ONE UA, ONE UU, and ONE UB and -- voila! -- you've got a unique new civ. (If you happen to select a mix that already exists, have the AI nudge you by saying, "It seems that you selected the _____. Did you simply want to rename that civilization?")

I was thinking about how there could be slightly different tech trees for each region (as in continent, corresponding with city styles), or differing policy trees or something.

But this got me thinking about a different type of science altogether and then i sort of abandoned the idea since i prefer my new one, which i'll probably slap on the forums some time.

truenarnian said:

I beg to differ here. Synergy is nice, but too much synergy tends to point you down one victory path.

I'd like to see enough Uniques that offer each civ two preferred victory paths. Some civs already have something like this, others are very focused on one condition.

Having said that, I think there are a lot of other things Civ should implement before adding more Uniques. The endgame needs to be better, and I think Independence movements (something that simulates breakaway countries like United States, and anti-colonial movements like French West Africa), Indigenous claims/sovereignty movemets (see Canada's Idle No More), and larger-scope quests/achievements that come with concrete in-game bonuses (Choose one of quest A, B, or C.)

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Oh don't get me wrong, I completely agree with this. I'm as unhappy with Brazil's design as I am Byzantium's. I'd rather see synergy that doesn't point to any specific victory condition; I think the Maya are the perfect example of this: the pyramid is the big unique that sets it apart from the other civs. It encourages you to go wide (extremely wide if playing Gods and Kings, even). Going wide has a problem of you not getting as much food as you normally would, which means you have to wait a bit longer to get your specialists up; the Long Count solves this by providing you with free Great People! Furthermore, the Atlatist allows you to ignore Archery and move towards Theology to kick out the Long Count earlier.

So that's a civ where all three uniques synergize perfectly, and I haven't even mentioned a victory condition yet. The Maya are good at all of them; any Liberty civ is obviously going to be good for domination. You can also go left side liberty full piety for a Holy Site centric culture victory; the Pyramid's science boost mitigates the penalty for not going tall and the faith bonus allows you to pop more post-Industrial scientists while the Long Count gives you your first Academy earlier than anyone except Babylon. Maya doesn't have any specific bonuses towards diplo but then again who needs one???

Thanks everyone for adding to the discussion.

There are several good points raised here

DarthSheldon makes a valid argument. I guess the poll should have been asked for more variation without relying on a specific number of attributes. You could have 10 unique attributes per civilization but if they are things like +5% growth, or -5% unhappiness than I agree that is really boring and uncreative. You could probably have a civ with 1 unique trait that is just as powerful and a lot more fun than another civ with 4 attributes.
A simple example of that could be one civ that is focused entirely on specialists and each specialist building contains additional specialist slots that provide unique bonuses....

That said I don't think every Civ's unique attributes need to be generic, i.e. not focused toward 1 particular victory type. I think it would be hard to accomplish this and well it would actually reduce civilization uniqueness quite substantially. Personally I found Brazil's UA interesting. It is something quite different from any other civilization and its worth playing Brazil with Chichen Itza and the Freedom Ideology just to get +100% length in golden ages. That said I don't think Brazil has to played for a cultural victory. You could for instance use your Great Artists to keep producing Great Writers which you use to write a treatise to unlock a lot of social policies. In a sense that sortof makes Brazil like Poland but I haven't tried this.

Trunarnian makes a good point also, synergy between attributes can work nicely in making you optimise one strategy but its good to see attributes reward different strategies.
That's one reason why I like Rome, the UA isn't particularly interesting but the legions are great for allowing you to build roads to other cities to siege with ballista's. Once you finish the classical age ideally you should have captured lots of cities so now you can focus on building upwards and shift your strategy to science, culture or diplomatic victory or continue warmongering. That said I wish Rome had something else that shows it off as the quintessential classical civilization.

A much more unique feeling to every civ would be nice. There are many small things beside the traits. Like units responding in the language of your civ, like in Civ4. The looks of your cities, terrain improvements and units could be more civ specific, for example chinese looking or german looking. I was really surprised and disappointed with the concept of only one leader for every civ to choose from. Felt like a step back from Civ4.

While I know it's a pain from a game production angle, I liked the old multiple-leaders per some civs approach.

Ideally each civ might have two leaders. The UI/UB/UU of the civ would always be the same, but the UA would be attached to the leader, and synergize differently/and for different victory types (i.e. one leader could be more war focused and one more cultural focused).