Speculation - Government, Policies, or Civics

[Kobra]

I would prefer a Government/Civics system, but I think they will use a enhanced social policy system. I think they look on MMORPG's side : you choose a character, then you choose a job and finally you specialize it. They could create a similar way : you start with your civ and then have to choose a social policy (Army for example). Finally, in the military policy, you can't have all bonuses so you have to choose between 3 ways : Defense bonuses / Attack bonuses / Less expansive armies.

So you would have to choose which type of army, trade, culture, growth ... you want.

 

[Matthew.]

I kind of hope you won't get access to policies right away.

 

[Heinage]

You summed it up well with progressive policies vs dynamic civics. When you go with a progressive system that can't be changed then you'll always get people picking the best policy and not much game variety. Cus there's no switching depending on the situation.

In civ4 you would switch into specific civics for specific things at that time. Most simplistic would be choosing state property vs free market and corporations. That would be the closest decision to policies in civ5 like choosing tradition vs liberty, it defines your empire. But others would be swapped back and forth all the time like dipping into theocracy and nationalism to draft units and train with experience, the swapping into caste system for some gp boosts, then out later for emancipation and cottage boosting. Civ4 civics are not deeper than civ5 policies but they're more flexible and strategic where civ5 feels like just a bunch of +1 mechanics.

So I hope they implement both in some way. Something that can be swapped piecemeal or totally as strategy requires, as well as accumulating bonuses.

^This exactly. Plus...

I hope they bring back some form of government system. For me, it adds immersion to see that my civ has a certain government type. I also expect that civ5's social policy and ideology system will be back. Although, I assume they will make major tweaks to them, especially considering that the devs have lamented the fact that players had certain go-to SPs. In fact, the sense I get it so far is that civ6 is all about changing the civ5 formula to make the game less predictable.

^This too.

Pretty much what I'd like as the cornerstones, combined into a new system:

• Immersion (specific governments with their relevant differences)
• Tactical choices (dynamic changes rather than progressive, i.e. civic type behaviour)
• Situation specific options (as other people have mentioned, your surroundings/environment/actions have an impact on which policies you may choose)

Of course, they've probably already designed the new system and we'll find out in the next few weeks

 

[isau]

The one thing I did like about Policies is they made Culture a relevant currency.

I'm skeptical about how much they can do to eliminate "best choices" though. Pretty much all games have best skills/spells/abilities. It's a very difficult thing to balance.

 

[LDiCesare]

Ifthey take inspiration from MMORPGs and the like, I hope they realise all RPGs have some respec option now. Let people change and revolutionise their civilization. It's important both for fun and for immersion.

 

[Hail]

Ifthey take inspiration from MMORPGs and the like, I hope they realise all RPGs have some respec option now. Let people change and revolutionise their civilization. It's important both for fun and for immersion.

Ed Beach is a big fan of the "fill up a bucket of X and get bonus Y" mechanic.

fill up the bulb bucket -> research the tech.
likewise fill up the culture bucket -> choose a new policy.

I highly doubt that there will be any analogues of government types or the choice to "respec" social policies.

 

[MatteM]

As many have suggested, there should be trade offs and different paths, not like a social policy power up/achievement-system. The choice of policy/civic should of course affect AI-attitude and diplomacy.

 

[mitsho]

1) They want more variety from game to game -> fixed small trees (sp) seems like the antithesis to that, a single "tech-web" policy tree a la Beyond Earth could work here.
2) A system should however not be too similar to another one, in this case science -> changeable governments according to your needs would achieve that and...
3) Dependence on terrain is a big focus for the devs -> interaction with the map seems key, but the map can't decide your action completely here, as it already has a big influence in science.
4) It needs to interact with other systems -> especially the "peaceful non-science" victory condition (whatever that may be), maybe it needs to be distinct from the culture/tourism system as well?

that seems to be the conditions for the gov-system I can read into what has been published so far. I'd start with these and look what system this results in

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The policy system actually had more opportunity cost then the civic system of Civilization IV as you could always pick the best civic for your current need while you are stuck with what policies you have picked.

 

[Sirotnikov]

I think that any kind of "set in stone" tree is detrimental to Civ.

Mechanically, variety from game to game does not increase by making all your choices upfront having them set in stone. It arises from the ability to adapt and improvise. The most interesting games do not happen when I slowly but surely lead my way to a victory I planned and comitted to in the early game. They happenned when my culture plan fell to shambles, and I had to go fanatic and switch to military domination. They hapenned when my military domination plan was coming short, and I had to suddenly switch to spaceship.

In every way, an exciting game is a game where the variety comes within a single game, not *between* games.

Stylistically, it makes even less sense. Civ is supposed to cover a time span of several epochs. Is there any nation which did not change for 3000 years? For 300? While I could understand set-in-stone specialization in an RTS game (or even a short-span TBS) but even those actually let you reshuffle and change builds and specializations.

Civilization is about adapting to your environment and overcoming challenges. It's about seeing your plan shatter, and making new plans. It should not be about slowly working your way towards a preset destiny.

 

[unpossible251]

I think that any kind of "set in stone" tree is detrimental to Civ.

y.

Yeah i agree. I would like policies that are optional, and you will adopt them based on what you have.

Example: "one true faith" (autocracy) gives you a combat bonus for military units built from units from a holy city, while "secularism" (autocracy) gives a science boost from all cities that arent a holy city.

Both in autocracy, but naturally you would choose one or the other

 

[Frank327]

I think (and hope) that there's going to be a split in government and social policies again. So government can be done like the old days of just picking one from a list of available ones (depending on technology and other stuff). Then the social policies could work just like the religious system in Civ V where there's a list of enhancements to your civ that you can pick, and a lot of them could only be available when you meet certain conditions like what terrain is around you and what buildings you've built already.

This would also qualify for what they've said already about giving your civ a unique flavour each time and compensating for having less technologies.

 

[Heinage]

In light of today's info dump, including the awesome new civic cards within governments model, I just want to say I'm proud of each and every one of us who contributed to this speculation thread.
If you just read back here, there are tonnes of posts which show how what we really wanted to see in any new system almost exactly describes what we're getting (in general terms, not intricate details) and it's just so cool that the devs are so in synch with the community on this.

So well done us fans and well done firaxis/Ed Beach and co. and thank you!

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[Krajzen]

I love the concept of new system.

 

[dexters]

In light of today's info dump, including the awesome new civic cards within governments model, I just want to say I'm proud of each and every one of us who contributed to this speculation thread.
If you just read back here, there are tonnes of posts which show how what we really wanted to see in any new system almost exactly describes what we're getting (in general terms, not intricate details) and it's just so cool that the devs are so in synch with the community on this.

So well done us fans and well done firaxis/Ed Beach and co. and thank you!

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Yeah. It's surprising how close it is to my wishlist civic/SP hybrid. They essentially turned the SP tree sideways and made one giant tree turning it into a civic tree.

The progression is still largely similar to SP in its sense of building upon previous achievements as some civics will unlock units and buildings while others unlock cards and government.

So you still get the feeling of progression but the government's a d cards system provides the flexibility and customization people wanted. Governments provide the stability as it appears they provide some basic bonus plus card slots and we get to swap out civic cards for free when we discover a new civic card and pay gold otherwise. We're also unlikely to see anachronistic civics like sticking to classic republic in the late game to game some bonus for min maxing. We're almost assuredly going to settle on 3 or 4 major ideological factions kitted out with the plethora of civic cards unlocked.

I'm guessing ararchy might still be a mechanic for changing governments.

 

[LDiCesare]

The new system seems pretty interesting indeed. Trees that unlock governments and then you pick cards so you can have a kind of revolution, but in line with what you researched. Sounds neat.