Things that work, things to fix

Economic wins should deduct at least half of the gold. I'm seeing a lot of "X won era by econ, X won era by econ, X won era by buying science/wonders with gold". Bam, three eras at once.
 
I think deducting half is a bit harsh, Khaim, but having a reduced rate of gold income for the next era (due to "inflation") might work. That way you get balance and some nice real world flavor.

I think one major problem right now is that people just join the most popular/powerful civs, there should be a cap on members in each civ until they're all more equal in numbers. For example, let's say the Japanese Shogunate has 2 members, and Grecian States has 15. Grecian States should be temporarily locked out until the Shogunate gets more members.

Also, battles should occur faster, and not take 3 eras to wage, lol.
 
I think deducting half is a bit harsh, Khaim, but having a reduced rate of gold income for the next era (due to "inflation") might work. That way you get balance and some nice real world flavor.

I think one major problem right now is that people just join the most popular/powerful civs, there should be a cap on members in each civ until they're all more equal in numbers. For example, let's say the Japanese Shogunate has 2 members, and Grecian States has 15. Grecian States should be temporarily locked out until the Shogunate gets more members.

Also, battles should occur faster, and not take 3 eras to wage, lol.

Well a simple way to do it might be to have penalites for larger civs....
1. adding to a larger civ might give you a lower rank in it
2. Larger civs might have less happiness (less production) in their member cities
 
I'm pretty sure you always join a civ as the lowest rank, so that's already in place.
 
Works: A civ needing active players to win.

Doesn't: This:

Every civ but one has closed borders. There's literally no way for a new player to get in.
 
Except in the civ which they can join :hmm:

Yeah, but having one option for new / independent players is dumb. Also, if that civ fills up, it becomes literally impossible to join a civ, which completely defeats the purpose of an online civ game, wouldn't you say?
 
More players doesn't mean that you have a stronger team. It is easier when you are on a small team and abuse mini wonders.
 
Ministers who are off-line should be replaced temporary by the King/Queen and when
he/she is also off-line the number 2 should take the position of the minister.
The current situation doesn't work in real-time.

The eras should become fixed. One era a day or 12 hours or another different timeline.
In one game 7 eras passed in 17 years according to CivWorld calendar.

Maybe the wonder events should not be civ related but only reward the player at the cost of 1 great person.

The price of the great persons is insane high.
In a game the price of a Great Artist was more than 100000 gold.

Food for each new house and culture for each new great person should not grow exponentially.
It doesn't make the great persons more important, it makes a game mechanic almost complete useless.

The current civics system should be changed at most points.
No more penalties. A civic should be splitted into a team/civ part and individual/player part.
The repealing part is annoying. It should be removed or players should be able to start voting for a second/new civic.
And most of all the voting process takes too long.

The reward in the caravan game needs a huge boost. Maybe 5000 gold or so.
 
Yeah, but having one option for new / independent players is dumb. Also, if that civ fills up, it becomes literally impossible to join a civ, which completely defeats the purpose of an online civ game, wouldn't you say?

so at least until that civilization fills up, it would be practically impossible, not literally. nitpicky, sure, but still.

anyway, the chat needs time stamps. that would help a lot.
 
In the late game (advanced techs), maze moves are ridiculous expensive.
To get a maze move you'll have to generate 500-1000 science.
Using 1 civ buck you can get 5 moves and that is game breaking.
Most mazes require at least 20 moves, not counting the flacs, to finish.

Sigh :shake:
Is it so difficult to create any balance with the wonders + wonder events, developers?

Current game :
Max civ; 10 players
Wonder events cost already 6 GPs :eek:

Stonehenge costs 5 GPs
It has been built 3 or 4 times

The tech rushing by manipulating the system should be removed.
When a civ is at 15% researching a tech, it shouldn't be possible to finish it
a few seconds later, because all science has been spread in that civ to other techs.
It gives a false impression in the world screen to other civs having a chance to finish that tech first.

This the formula for the size of a civ :

Maximum Civilization size = the number of all players in Civilizations / 3, but never less than ten

In the game 218 the next domination victory requires a civ with 25 players.
There's only 1 civ left with 25 players and there won't be more 25 player civs, because
most inactive players will be become independent.
This game has another civ with max players, but it has only the size 24.

When a tech has been researched the science overflow is wasted.
A solution could be to turn the overflow into gold at a ratio of 1:1 or
a refund based on the current market price for science.

This should also count for the maze moves which will be resetted to 5 when
a tech has been rsearched.

At last, the lost culture swaps, because a GP has been born, should also give a refund in gold.
 
- Losing medals (including fame points) if a player switches between civs.
A player can only keep the medals he/she 100% has earned when left.

- The voting process should take max 1 day or less.
Players who didn't vote, those votes will be lost. Just like in real-life.

- Auto-boot of inactive players after 1 day. Starting at the bottom of a civ and with an 6-8 hour cycle.

- Great persons costs should more dynamic.
They should become more expensive when a civ and/or a player already has a lot of GPs.
Currently the GPs are too expensive to get or to buy and a lot of GPs are required to finish wonders and wonder events.

- It shouldn't be possible anymore to use the harvest button to win harvest contests.
 
Lots of good comments here. I agree with basically everything that has already been said. This could develop into a really wicked game if they keep improving it.

Here are some things I have found are difficult:

A lot of the buttons and menus are very awkward to use. I find it difficult to actually make my choices, eg which civilisation I want to be a part of, which tech I want to research. A lot of the times I click and click and my selection is never registered. In both the games I have been playing so far I have fallen into civilisations randomly. You should be able to pick what sort of civilization you want to have, eg nationality, and administer your own local civics. The game in general runs very slowly - it runs in the browser, and yet is visibly resource-heavy! This is no-doubt due to all the floaty bubbles that keep appearing and having to be rendered...but really, Iḿ sure an elegant text interface would solve a lof of problems.

It is very difficult to produce reasonable amounts of any resource. Unless I plan my food-production very carefully I find that I will never grow fast enough to keep up with the leaders. Once you are behind it is very difficult to catch up. This is not really fair, because other people can spend all day logged in and grind. I want the game to be about strategy rather than brute force clicking. Sometimes you produce a lot of a certain resource, and sometimes you get very little (even after taking into account happiness, era bonus, and building upgrades). Why should I ever assign people to be scientists? Even with a Ginormous library they only produce 9-11 science. I can just produce the same amount of food/hammers and sell that to buy science. There is not enough information about how the game handles these things, and how we should be playing. It is not clear if I should build a small, compact city, or spread out to find suitable spots for harvesting resources. Location does seem to affect things, but I am not sure how.

There are too many players in each game. I would like the option to play a much smaller game with perhaps 10-30 people. There should also be a map, and peopleś locations with respect to each other should affect gameplay. I should be able to start games with my friends, or join games with my friends in my civilisation.

Wonders keep popping up again and again, even though they have been built and in different eras. The process of building them was not obvious - this is also the only use I have found so far for great people - are there others? Awards and prizes keep getting re-awarded, which is annoying. Sometimes you can race to research a tech and then someone else gets all the credit/prizes. Research is not very transparent either - am I researching something alone, or with some or all of my fellow civ-members.

The game often doesn't connect. The game screen is very small.

I find it hard to find out what is happening in the game,and what has changed since I last logged in.

The minigames were fun at first, but are now chores.I don't like other people solving the art puzzles at the same time as me and preventing me from getting a good bonus :mad: They should also have a larger range of pictures! I never seem to have enough moves to solve the science mazes - lots of times I will have 15-20, and when I log back in this is reduced to 0. I understand that this is because the game has moved on, but I basically never have a chance to solve the maze - this is one of the parts of the game where you actually use your brain, so it is less than ideal to miss out on it! The trade routes game is boring and doesn't yield enough gold to be worthwhile. They should have different types of games, eg quizzes for science, etc.

Thatś all I can think of for now. Iḿ sure there will be plenty more to say, but will leave that for others to contribute!
 
Teams: This is by and large the element of the game that needs the most tweaking. At least in the game I am playing, the first few hours make or break the whole thing. If one team makes a few good/lucky decisions early on, their success snowballs, which encourages people to leave losing civs and join the winning civ. Civics like Closed Borders do nothing to keep teams small, as there seems to be no disadvantage to having more players.

In a recent game, I didn't seriously join a team until late-to mid-game, because I was testing out the Naughty Stair (diplomacy penalty), and I still ended up #4 overall. I have also played a couple games where I switched civs in mid or late game. Hollywood can make a huge difference to final standings.

That said, a small committed team who gets together early and closes borders will absolutely run away with the game.
 
I have created this thread so that us CivWorld players might communicate which aspects of CivWorld we think work well, and which aspects need improvement.

WORKS:
Minigames: I think these provide players with different gameplay opportunities, so that the primary collect-build cycle is broken up a bit. I also think they provide a great way to chain resource collection, and I feel that they are balanced.


NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:
Battles: There isn't enough transparency with how battles work. I do not yet understand the battle mechanics, and many players seem similarly confused. No comments yet on combat balance.

Teams: This is by and large the element of the game that needs the most tweaking. At least in the game I am playing, the first few hours make or break the whole thing. If one team makes a few good/lucky decisions early on, their success snowballs, which encourages people to leave losing civs and join the winning civ. Civics like Closed Borders do nothing to keep teams small, as there seems to be no disadvantage to having more players.

*

These are my comments, pick them apart or add on as you wish.


There is a benefit to a smaller civ: Agility.

In order to pass a resolution (for a civic or to invade) everyone has to weigh in on that. That means that that civic that you proposed in the middle ages might not get enacted until the renisance, at which point there might be a better civic out there. However you now have to repeal the original civic and vote on the new one; two whole votes there.

For a huge civ with some dedicated players and some casuals, those votes can drag on forever. Even if you get the "boot inactive players after 48 hours" vote, that still leaves you with 48 hours between resolutions, assuming someone goes stale between each vote.


Meanwhile, you get a 5-person civ with closed borders, assuming all 5 people login regularly, they can get resolutions passed very quickly. Like a spiritual civ, they can change their civics on the fly depending on what era they're in or what techs they have unlocked. They can invade at the drop of a hat and generally react much better to changing game conditions.
 
My observations about the game (I understand its beta but these must be fixed)

#1: Bugs are a big issue but I can see one of the biggest for a new player being the way roads interact with the move building feature. This shouldn't happen the way it happens. Roads should be a permanent addition to the map much like the way existing forests and stone and things are. Buildings moving over them should not alter them once they've been placed. Other bugs are obvious: misapplication of rewards, wonders, victories, changing civs, joining wrong civ, civs being over capacity, etc.

#2: Unclear game mechanics.Warnings need to be issued for actions that have consequences. Examples: some buildings return 100% and some do not. Give a warning box first so players know "You spent 800 to build this ginormous granary and will get 375 back. continue?" "You won't be able to join another civ for 1 hour. continue?" etc. would really go a long way.

#3: Fame seems to be the point of the game but fame award has nothing to do with contributing to a civ's progress much of the time. Winning the contest should definitely give you 1 but the way contributions is working and the way the king and ministers work and their respective fame bonuses is not designed such that the person contributing the most to the objectives of the civ at the moment gets the most fame - and frankly it needs to be that way.

#4 resource bubbles. I think this game would be GREAT if you could start it up, play a bit, then log in later and play a bit more and face opponents doing the same thing. I think that the bubble thing is only meant to encourage more active playing - which is great IF that's the environment you want. Why not have 2 game types - active and passive? And as an aside - the bubble thing is completely exploitable and is game breaking. Bubbles, if consistently popped, provide a massive lead and there's no point playing with them in the game. A very simple macro program means that any player can pop every bubble 24 hours a day and you can't compete against that. Any mechanic which encourages macroing or would even make a player consider sitting there for hours at a time clicking something is broken. Monotonous chore like activities don't make games. What needs to replace bubble pops would be some task (sort of like the caravan but less lame) you could do every few minutes (and save up like harvests) to get a resource boost, that is skillbased, that would encourage players not to spend more time in the game but to try to improve at something. Most games work on the idea of improving at things - not doing the same mindless action 10000000 times. (and yes, bubbles are macro able and provide an unbelievable amount of resources per hour, trust me, 1 person doing this can take any civ to victory alone with ease).


Aside from all of that I think the fundamental problem with every game I've played is that they became a battle for supremacy between 2 civs, or, more likely, 1 civ becomes completely dominant and just gets every victory the entire game. Which has everything to do with how much time 1 or 2 people in that civ are playing (that's all it takes) and by playing I mean macroing bubble pops for insane resource points.

I think a much better mechanic would be a ladder system between games. When a civ in game 310 or w/e earns an era victory, the game pauses until that same era is won by another civ around the same year. Then the 2 winning civs enter a new game against each other. Players from the losing civs get to choose if they want to continue playing that game or they can start a new game. this encourages people to work on their early game skill, keeps games competitive, but allows people who have become attached to their city to continue working on it. If there are still slots open then players should be able to join (which means players don't always have to start in the ancient era if they don't want) and when they join they should be given some medium level of resources determined by some form of algorithm based on the 2 winning civs' players. this will keep games active and full and also allow players to work on their mid game and late game if they tire of the early game.

As a further aside: the victory conditions for eras need to be fleshed out more and players need to be made very aware of what they should be doing (and rewarded for) to help their civ win. I think the king should propose which of the victory conditions the civ is trying to achieve and the ministers should vote on it. Once that happens it should be made very large on the screen somewhere "We're trying to finish 5 wonders! Help build them!" with an arrow that goes to the appropriate button and a tutorial on how to help your team achieve their goal (many players simply don't understand how the great people and wonders even work because it is very unclear). Then if your team wins an era via wonder it should assign the victory medals based on how much each player contributed to that win method. Bonus categories (most military units at the end of the era, etc.) should also exist so that those facets of the game are not ignored.

Anyway those are my thoughts.
 
That said, a small committed team who gets together early and closes borders will absolutely run away with the game.

^ This. We did it in our game. and the early game juggernauts are in tatters now. both of them. ANd two civs with 10 and 11 players are the powerhouses.

The early game giants had 18 and 22 players when we had only 4.
 
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