Where's the joy in civ6?

[Naokaukodem]

To have less of a "board game feeling", Civ should first become a sandbox instead of a game with victories. Or the victory should not be dependent of systems like science/tourism beakers and the like. It should invent something based on storytelling, or emergent storytelling like we can already see in the series. Something that doesn't make you think "I should have done this instead of that to maximize the beakers", but I "should have done this or that to win", which is not the same as far as you burn a step. Maybe it should just be that : stand the test of time including your mutations and even names mutations. Meaningful events. Or a diary that analyzes your actions and put it in words. (ChatGPT ?) Or even s space where you can write your own inputs. (that could be analized by an AI and propose a follow up in events) In my whole experience with the series, it happened only once or twice games that I had something worth to tell. Like, a city-State playing a central role in the game, or my impies jumping from cities to cities in the jungle with that wonderful Civ3 music.

Or stay the same board-like game it has ever been. (minus the annoying calculations in charge of the players, but even there I don't trust the programmers, Civ5 had way too many happiness jumps seemingly unexplainable...) A game with immersion could also be a game where the computer makes massive calculation for you, it is to say you would rely on intuition rather than maths, except if your the kind of pokemon weirdo that plays with a calculator, and to be perfectly unpredictable it should bring RNG too, at least a scale of RNG, not brute RNG where it can be 0 or 100 equally for example)

 

[Horizons]

FWIW and my two cents:

Civ games (like games in general) have just become too intense. It's more about shoving in as many new features as possible without balancing the features you already have.

I started playing Civ2 recently to see where Civ started going wrong. First of all, Civ6 has far too much being thrown at you in the beginning that is anachronistic and detracts from the value of playing a 'history simulator' - from turn 1 you have to figure out what districts are going where, and you even have to consider 'climate change' (and you will know exactly how 'climate change' affects you, because in Civ6 'climate change' only refers to man-made climate change) and things like world diplomacy very early in the game.

Already a lot of fun is lost there because it is abundantly obvious that you need to strategize and optimize from the very beginning. Other factors like swapping policies in and out like game cards just make this unbearable.

Another unbearable aspect of Civ that has been there from the very beginning is the total emphasis on the need for science. And that means you need a big happy population. Following this logic, in real life China should have raced ahead of Europe by the 18th century but in reality is was the other way around. Every civ game has handled science in a crude and 'un-fun' manner, resulting in most units being obsolete by the time you can build them, war not being fun, enormous defenders' advantage and so on.

Maybe it's just broken and can't be fixed, so the only thing left to do is add on even more obnoxious 'layers', civ-specific benefits (which make no sense because they are based on what civs did in real life, and don't evolve with in-game conditions - you can play as Rome and start your game on an island all of your own without iron and so on which totally ruins the whole element of civ-specific abilities), and 'hardcore optimization' so that people can feel a sense of accomplishment when they beat a defective AI at higher levels by following iron-clad builds orders and the like.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I have come to appreciate Civ5. Before Civ6 was released I had a wish list of what I wanted added to the game. The developers mostly fulfilled my wishes with Civ6. But just because they managed to achieve this it hasn't resulted in a better experience. I enjoy many of the changes in Civ6 but for some reason whenever I play I just find myself annoyed. I used to complain about how Civ5 was so streamlined. But despite this supposed deficiency it's actually a satisfying experience.

Most of the time in any design process less is more

The most annoying part about civ 6 is districts imo. They're a good concept on paper, but I hate how you have to plan everything ahead or risk permanently messing up your city. Same with wonders. In V and previous games, you could always tear down improvements and early game building/wonder decisions wouldn't come back to bite you 300 turns later. A simple QoL change like being able to tear down/move districts and wonders would make them so much less frustrating.

Districts are what finally pushed me away from 6. It is the absolute essence of board gamey board gameyness that a key skill in this game is pre planning where you’re “industrial” district is going to be built three eras from now

You say that like board games were a bad thing.

They are not, but why bother with a computer if you are basically going to ignore it’s capabilities

To say that Civ 5 is more "immersive" than Civ 6 seems to me to be very subjective and arbitrary. One can equally well be immersed in a Civ 6 game. What I understand is that you like Civ 5 more than Civ 6. Each to their taste. Some of the mechanics of Civ 5 I prefer to Civ 6, and some the other way round. Overall I think 6 has the edge.

Civ5 is far far more immersive.

Just look at social policies vs policy cards. One is a growing organic process that gives your civ a distinct “personality” depending on what policy tree you focus on, that does not allow you to have your cake and eat it too.

6 has arbitrary cards you swap in and out based on what numbers they boost on specific turns. You can be a democracy that somehow has serfdom side by side with liberty.

FWIW and my two cents:

Civ games (like games in general) have just become too intense. It's more about shoving in as many new features as possible without balancing the features you already have.

I started playing Civ2 recently to see where Civ started going wrong. First of all, Civ6 has far too much being thrown at you in the beginning that is anachronistic and detracts from the value of playing a 'history simulator' - from turn 1 you have to figure out what districts are going where, and you even have to consider 'climate change' (and you will know exactly how 'climate change' affects you, because in Civ6 'climate change' only refers to man-made climate change) and things like world diplomacy very early in the game.

Already a lot of fun is lost there because it is abundantly obvious that you need to strategize and optimize from the very beginning. Other factors like swapping policies in and out like game cards just make this unbearable.

Another unbearable aspect of Civ that has been there from the very beginning is the total emphasis on the need for science. And that means you need a big happy population. Following this logic, in real life China should have raced ahead of Europe by the 18th century but in reality is was the other way around. Every civ game has handled science in a crude and 'un-fun' manner, resulting in most units being obsolete by the time you can build them, war not being fun, enormous defenders' advantage and so on.

Maybe it's just broken and can't be fixed, so the only thing left to do is add on even more obnoxious 'layers', civ-specific benefits (which make no sense because they are based on what civs did in real life, and don't evolve with in-game conditions - you can play as Rome and start your game on an island all of your own without iron and so on which totally ruins the whole element of civ-specific abilities), and 'hardcore optimization' so that people can feel a sense of accomplishment when they beat a defective AI at higher levels by following iron-clad builds orders and the like.

Civ5 handled that way better. Part of the Tall vs Wide dichotomy that made expansion not always the 100% correct answer always like it is in 6 was the fact that the cost of social and science advancements went up as you added more cities and more population.

6 more cities and more population is always better always, which makes Mindless Borg Snowball the only viable strategy

It is terrible gameplay (because it’s simplistic AND runaway snowball) and terrible history immersion because if population blobs scaled directly like that then for just about all of history the dominant superpowers would have been China and India, with Indonesia as a runner up

OOPS.

Turns out GNP per capita is what matters.

 

[Kwami]

Civ5 is far far more immersive.

Just look at social policies vs policy cards. One is a growing organic process that gives your civ a distinct “personality” depending on what policy tree you focus on, that does not allow you to have your cake and eat it too.

6 has arbitrary cards you swap in and out based on what numbers they boost on specific turns. You can be a democracy that somehow has serfdom side by side with liberty.

This is disingenuous. In Civ V, there was a correct set of policy choices for each victory type and taking any other policies was pretty much pointless. I do miss the pen scratching sound that played when you selected a social policy, though. That was the best sound in the game. I hope that it comes back in Civ VII.

Civ5 handled that way better. Part of the Tall vs Wide dichotomy that made expansion not always the 100% correct answer always like it is in 6 was the fact that the cost of social and science advancements went up as you added more cities and more population.

6 more cities and more population is always better always, which makes Mindless Borg Snowball the only viable strategy

It is terrible gameplay (because it’s simplistic AND runaway snowball) and terrible history immersion because if population blobs scaled directly like that then for just about all of history the dominant superpowers would have been China and India, with Indonesia as a runner up

OOPS.

Turns out GNP per capita is what matters.

And in Civ V, building exactly four cities was almost always the optimal play. Expanding beyond four cities was almost never a good idea unless you were trying to win through conquest, in which case you still only built a few cities and then conquered the rest. There was no tall vs. wide gameplay in Civ V. There was tall gameplay. Always.

 

[reddishrecue]

This is disingenuous. In Civ V, there was a correct set of policy choices for each victory type and taking any other policies was pretty much pointless. I do miss the pen scratching sound that played when you selected a social policy, though. That was the best sound in the game. I hope that it comes back in Civ VII.

And in Civ V, building exactly four cities was almost always the optimal play. Expanding beyond four cities was almost never a good idea unless you were trying to win through conquest, in which case you still only built a few cities and then conquered the rest. There was no tall vs. wide gameplay in Civ V. There was tall gameplay. Always.

I could agree since tall was usually overpowered. Wide can be victorious sometimes though in a few cases but I haven't been able to manage a wide and did much better with tall. I've lost to both and losing to a wide with faith and uniqueness could be better.. I remember I tried a wide after getting a few cities and unhappiness got better when I finally got meritocracy and going wide wasn't always as easy as others made it seem since wonder spamming on tall doesn't always get you the victory.

 

[Naokaukodem]

A Civ game where tall is the master strategy is not a good Civ game IMO. At least, not to me. Why ? Because I want that X from 4X which is expanding. Even in Civ6 we can't always expand on our own, unless we capture cities. (No fresh water, mountain ranges, deserts, snow, water, sometimes - often, too often - all this at the same time) Compared to Civ2 where all lands were relatively equally viable, and you had space to expand, it's very annoying and game quitters. Of course, I probably milited for more land diversity and necessity to adapt, but i have to say that in 2023, as a 44 years old player, it's not my cup of tea.

 

[Gorbles]

When we complain about about the game being boardgame like, we generally are advocating for a return to more immersive and less gamey systems.

Wonder stacking isn't game-y?

Don't get me wrong, I agree that "realism vs. boardgame" isn't it. But I also don't agree that "immersive vs. game-y" is it, either. Immersion is an incredibly subjective thing that most games bend (if not outright break) the rules with in order to advance the game aspect of the, well, game. When I'm rolling a die, or many dice, in any boardgame or tabletop game, it's not really immersive. It's pretty fundamentally game-y. But it's game-y on a board, and is often core to the entire mechanics that underpin the game in question (Risk without any dice, Snakes and Ladders without any dice, Warhammer without any dice, etc).

Civilization as a franchise has the same problem all franchises that have a certain longevity to them have. The problem that the playerbase, on the whole, ends up being pretty fractured between different iterations. And it's not really fractured, because look at the player numbers on Civ 6. I didn't realise 4x was that big until I saw those numbers (and Civ 5's numbers before it). But it really emphasises the issue in games design of there being multiple ways to solve a bunch of problems. And that not all solutions are better or worse than other options.

To me, personally, immersion is SMAC. And no Civilization game is likely to come close to that, because not only was it a game that really connected the dots for me mentally, but it also came at the right time in my life to really appreciate these things. I still read science fiction. I still enjoy sci-fi on average more than most other genres (when it comes to books, movies and games, really). But the way the game clicked for me was both the game itself, and the time in my life in which it clicked. Now, if something as right for me as SMAC came along, I wouldn't be 10 anymore. I wouldn't have the free time I did then. I wouldn't have the ability to spend all night looking up fiction around sentient planets.

So "immersion" is tricky. And storytelling in general in video games is a very difficult thing to get right, for a lot of reasons that have no place in this thread.

I also don't consider Civ 1 that immersive. Or Civ 5, even. Maybe there was something in the middle (when I was majorly getting into RTS games) where II, III or IV really made something that resonated in a non-gamified manner but . . . I doubt it. I know too much design at this point. I watch GDC talks, I read (dumbed down) technical abstracts. It's all game-y, all the way down. It always has been.

Immersive vs. game-y isn't it, but maybe visible vs. invisible is. And that's an endless question. Numbers go brrr, and all that. Yields are intrinsic to knowing how well you're doing in Civ, and I don't see that changing. And the numbers game isn't immersive. It's explicitly anti-immersion, because you're running numbers. So the aim, for any future Civ game, would be to reduce the tension between seeing those numbers, and knowing you need to check those numbers. If you need to check something all the time, you're not playing. And if you're not playing, odds are it's going to be less immersive for you on average, even if the levels of immersion vary immensely across the playerbase.

Some people think the District system did a bad job at that. It certainly highlighted a bunch of numbers. But it also unpacked the 30-mile high city-structure-megalith that dominated Civ 5 (and earlier games). We go back to "there are many ways to solve a problem". There are very few, if any, silver bullets.

 

[UWHabs]

Wonder stacking isn't game-y?

Don't get me wrong, I agree that "realism vs. boardgame" isn't it. But I also don't agree that "immersive vs. game-y" is it, either. Immersion is an incredibly subjective thing that most games bend (if not outright break) the rules with in order to advance the game aspect of the, well, game. When I'm rolling a die, or many dice, in any boardgame or tabletop game, it's not really immersive. It's pretty fundamentally game-y. But it's game-y on a board, and is often core to the entire mechanics that underpin the game in question (Risk without any dice, Snakes and Ladders without any dice, Warhammer without any dice, etc).

Civilization as a franchise has the same problem all franchises that have a certain longevity to them have. The problem that the playerbase, on the whole, ends up being pretty fractured between different iterations. And it's not really fractured, because look at the player numbers on Civ 6. I didn't realise 4x was that big until I saw those numbers (and Civ 5's numbers before it). But it really emphasises the issue in games design of there being multiple ways to solve a bunch of problems. And that not all solutions are better or worse than other options.

To me, personally, immersion is SMAC. And no Civilization game is likely to come close to that, because not only was it a game that really connected the dots for me mentally, but it also came at the right time in my life to really appreciate these things. I still read science fiction. I still enjoy sci-fi on average more than most other genres (when it comes to books, movies and games, really). But the way the game clicked for me was both the game itself, and the time in my life in which it clicked. Now, if something as right for me as SMAC came along, I wouldn't be 10 anymore. I wouldn't have the free time I did then. I wouldn't have the ability to spend all night looking up fiction around sentient planets.

So "immersion" is tricky. And storytelling in general in video games is a very difficult thing to get right, for a lot of reasons that have no place in this thread.

I also don't consider Civ 1 that immersive. Or Civ 5, even. Maybe there was something in the middle (when I was majorly getting into RTS games) where II, III or IV really made something that resonated in a non-gamified manner but . . . I doubt it. I know too much design at this point. I watch GDC talks, I read (dumbed down) technical abstracts. It's all game-y, all the way down. It always has been.

Immersive vs. game-y isn't it, but maybe visible vs. invisible is. And that's an endless question. Numbers go brrr, and all that. Yields are intrinsic to knowing how well you're doing in Civ, and I don't see that changing. And the numbers game isn't immersive. It's explicitly anti-immersion, because you're running numbers. So the aim, for any future Civ game, would be to reduce the tension between seeing those numbers, and knowing you need to check those numbers. If you need to check something all the time, you're not playing. And if you're not playing, odds are it's going to be less immersive for you on average, even if the levels of immersion vary immensely across the playerbase.

Some people think the District system did a bad job at that. It certainly highlighted a bunch of numbers. But it also unpacked the 30-mile high city-structure-megalith that dominated Civ 5 (and earlier games). We go back to "there are many ways to solve a problem". There are very few, if any, silver bullets.

Civ always struggles to balance how historical it should be. This version did attempt to try some immersion by not letting you build the pyramids in a tundra city, and making an effort to change your play depending on the terrain.

The districts to me are both joy and pain. As you said, unpacking cities is a fantastic change, and really forces you to make some choices. The problem is that things are still not balanced very well, and again, you still have too much knowledge of the future. So I'm going to place my industrial zone in the spot that's going to be best for me 500 years from now, and not the spot that's best for me right now. And I do think the game still heavily struggles with some core balance issues. Especially early game, if you can slap down a +4 campus vs placing a +1 campus, your civ could literally be twice as far ahead at the end of the first era. If you get lucky with some city-states, vs you're forced to fight off that barbarian raid, again it can all be the difference between rage-quitting vs rushing an era ahead of everyone else.

Where I think civ 6 does things very well is that the civs have unique abilities, that if you want to roleplay things, you can lean into. I play my Khmer games vastly differently than I play as Byzantium, even if both of them have a religious focus. Is it the most efficient for an early victory? Nope. And can you really cheese things in some setups? Oh definitely. But because of that, at least the game has replay ability.

It does lean a little too much towards the board game setup, though, as people have said. There's too much of the game that just comes in fixed bonuses and placement rules - it's too obvious what the best spot for your campus is, and the best campus spot in the ancient era is 99% of the time the best campus spot in the modern era too. It's also annoying that in most games, there's not really a lot of actual choice in setting up your land. If you have resources, there's only one improvement you can build on them most of the time. Yeah, you can harvest some bonus resources, and late game you start getting some more choices where you can farm hills or plant forests. But if you don't have a unique improvement, for most of the game and most of the tiles, you just have one thing you can do on the tile. I think that's also where SMAC really shined - you had so much control to change things. Like you could plant a river, or raise a tile which would turn a section of land into a desert. You could really mold and craft things, and everything responded to your choices. While the civ map might shift how you build out in some ways, there are very few ways that you can force the map to play your way, you are always reacting to what you're given.

 

[Gorbles]

I think that's also where SMAC really shined - you had so much control to change things. Like you could plant a river, or raise a tile which would turn a section of land into a desert. You could really mold and craft things, and everything responded to your choices. While the civ map might shift how you build out in some ways, there are very few ways that you can force the map to play your way, you are always reacting to what you're given.

Yeah, I love that to this day. As I understand it (to a limited extent, mainly based on historical examples), technically-speaking, terrain deformation has historically been a very compute-intensive thing (in any game), and generating art assets for any level of terrain is a resource-hog in a different way (for the devs upfront, vs. on our machines playing the game). I'd love to see Civ. lean (back) into this, though.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

And I do think the game still heavily struggles with some core balance issues. Especially early game, if you can slap down a +4 campus vs placing a +1 campus, your civ could literally be twice as far ahead at the end of the first era. If you get lucky with some city-states, vs you're forced to fight off that barbarian raid, again it can all be the difference between rage-quitting vs rushing an era ahead of everyone else.

Sometimes I enjoy that randomness of civ 6 and sometimes not. There is an "intent" behind the design and enjoyment of the game is dependent on if that intent fits what you are looking for.

 

[Kwami]

I'm not sure that SMAC-style terraforming makes any sense for a Civilization game, regardless of the tech cost to implement it. Even today, we have very limited ability to "change the map". Historically, we had even less. The most common sorts of transformations involve moving water around, which I think Civ models well enough with dams, canals, and droughts, and de/reforestation, which Civ also handles well enough.

 

[pokiehl]

Wonder stacking isn't game-y?

You’re talking about one single small thing here, and if all the things to nitpick Civ 5 about (which there are many), this doesn’t even register on my radar. Overall I greatly prefer the diplomacy, policy tree, and focus on population that Civ 5 has.

I hope Civ 7 can successfully combine the best aspects of 5 and 6 while thoughtfully innovating.

 

[Gorbles]

You’re talking about one single small thing here, and if all the things to nitpick Civ 5 about (which there are many), this doesn’t even register on my radar. Overall I greatly prefer the diplomacy, policy tree, and focus on population that Civ 5 has.

I hope Civ 7 can successfully combine the best aspects of 5 and 6 while thoughtfully innovating.

I gave an example, much like Districts are one example (of unpacking). Or if you wanted to focus it; Wonder placement. My post got long enough as it was

Wonder placement registers on my own radar, which is kinda part of my point about putting "game-y" and "immersive" on a scale. I don't think we can impose a 2D axis which goes from "realistic empire management sim" to "board game". Paradox games aim more for immersive simulations (at a higher level of abstraction than Civ), and still comes out massively like a board game.

To me, it seems to be a combination of a) how the abstraction is controlled, and b) when do players feel like they're doing maths. Counting dice, for example, is always doing maths. But so are yields. I hate the yields game. I play as much as I can around thinking too much about the yields game. Ironically, this helps me get on with Civ 6, because Districts make some of that more upfront and I don't need to think too heavily about it (also, District planning is tied to a focus on population, pretty concretely - I've never thought about my population more than when playing Civ 6).

I'm not sure that SMAC-style terraforming makes any sense for a Civilization game, regardless of the tech cost to implement it. Even today, we have very limited ability to "change the map". Historically, we had even less. The most common sorts of transformations involve moving water around, which I think Civ models well enough with dams, canals, and droughts, and de/reforestation, which Civ also handles well enough.

Giant Death Robots aren't exactly historical either. This isn't a nitpick, this is one example among many (immortal leaders being my usual go-to). Cleaving strictly to history (like @UWHabs said) introduces its own set of problems that games often struggle to find a balance with. The game abstracts. It always has, and likely always will. The problem is "how much abstraction" (for any given system).

Which brings us back to immersion again. People rationalise immortal leaders a bunch of different ways. They've always stuck out to me. That doesn't make them bad, I just notice them as being an ahistorical representation of the player avatar, and my brain kinda switches off (in terms of history) when thinking about that. I personally can accept a bunch of things in the name of interesting game mechanics r.e. useful choices, when I'm already accepting immortal leaders. It's not an argument to absurdity ("oh, if you accept this, then maybe you accept flying monkeys from Oz?!") - it's me describing what I find immersive on a scale of "accepts" to "sticks out".

And just an aside, but I would've thought that "dams, canals and deforestation" can cover a wild range of changes to the map and general landscape. Humanity is very good at using terrain in the way it already exists, but we're also very good at bulldozing and excavating the heck out of it if it serves our purposes at the time.

 

[Kwami]

Giant Death Robots aren't exactly historical either. This isn't a nitpick, this is one example among many (immortal leaders being my usual go-to). Cleaving strictly to history (like @UWHabs said) introduces its own set of problems that games often struggle to find a balance with. The game abstracts. It always has, and likely always will. The problem is "how much abstraction" (for any given system).

Which brings us back to immersion again. People rationalise immortal leaders a bunch of different ways. They've always stuck out to me. That doesn't make them bad, I just notice them as being an ahistorical representation of the player avatar, and my brain kinda switches off (in terms of history) when thinking about that. I personally can accept a bunch of things in the name of interesting game mechanics r.e. useful choices, when I'm already accepting immortal leaders. It's not an argument to absurdity ("oh, if you accept this, then maybe you accept flying monkeys from Oz?!") - it's me describing what I find immersive on a scale of "accepts" to "sticks out".

And just an aside, but I would've thought that "dams, canals and deforestation" can cover a wild range of changes to the map and general landscape. Humanity is very good at using terrain in the way it already exists, but we're also very good at bulldozing and excavating the heck out of it if it serves our purposes at the time.

Sure, but terraforming is just way out there. We can do it at a very small scale, like diverting a river or digging out a canal. But large-scale terraforming is way in the future. There's no place for it in Civilization games.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I'm not sure, but I would guess that the SMAC terraforming was based on the Civ2 terraforming, from the same era.

Digging back into the resources on this forum, several of the "terraforming" options are very familiar.
- Chopping a forest to reveal plains or grassland underneath
- Planting trees to create a forest
- Swamps and Jungles could be cleared, converted into grasslands or plains

Other options were also interesting
- Mountains could be modified into hills, hills could be brought down to plains. No building up, only grinding down
- Tundra could be modified into deserts, deserts could be modified to plains. Lots of modern irrigation, perhaps?

Not exactly advanced science fiction, but IMHO interesting for gameplay. I've wished for a way to do something more with tundra in several Civ games since Civ2. The more drastic changes were only available in the late game, after several industrial technologies had been discovered to upgrade "settler/workers" into "engineers".

 

[SirNovelty]

This is disingenuous. In Civ V, there was a correct set of policy choices for each victory type and taking any other policies was pretty much pointless.

...I mean, yeah, the game had builds? This is not really a problem, the game only has 9 policy trees plus three ideologies, obviously certain combinations are going to make more sense for certain conditions than others. If you wanna complain about V's balance, the real weakness was how overwhelming Tradition and Rationalism both were, to the point the optimal line of play was usually to avoid having a third tree in the middle. After that you had HCA as a reasonable combo for dom, and everything else was more niche, so the choices are far from infinite or free-form, but it's not disingenuous to say that they are there and shaped your empire. Also, how balanced a game is doesn't really have anything to do with how immersive it is, once the player uses their meta-knowledge they're already operating outside the sphere of atmospheric immersion. While the V's Policy Tree was far from perfectly immersive, it seems almost impossible to argue it's not more so than VI's Policy Cards. I say "seems", because I've never seen anybody try to argue for the immersive merits of policy cards, and honestly I haven't even seen much praise for them as a game mechanic, although that might be at least partially attributed to the persistently negative tone of this forum.

And in Civ V, building exactly four cities was almost always the optimal play. Expanding beyond four cities was almost never a good idea unless you were trying to win through conquest, in which case you still only built a few cities and then conquered the rest.

Well that's just wrong. Settling fifth and further cities was almost always bad, but conquering a few more could be very strong for Science or Diplo, especially if they had Wonders. That said, I think that Civ VI rewarding expansion is a positive; you still need good reasons for lategame Settlers simply because District costs balloon and all the good land should be gone. This has come with a much more tedious lategame however that Civ VII is going to have a tough task solving.

 

[Ita Bear]

To have less of a "board game feeling", Civ should first become a sandbox instead of a game with victories.

I must strongly disagree with this. This trend towards sandbox games is, in my opinion, leading to the demise of the 4X and strategy genres as we know it. I think every developer is now trying to chase after Paradox and their sandbox style games. These games are fine if you enjoy messing around in a world and seeing what would happen, but without firm end goals the need for any strategy breaks down quickly. When I think of good 4X games, I think of Civilization IV, Old World, SMAC etc. All of these games have clearly defined victories for the player to focus on, encouraging you to engage with the game's mechanics and exploit your enemies to get there. These games also do not feel like board games at all, whereas Europa Universalis IV, one of the most sandbox-y titles on the market, reeks of board game.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[UWHabs]

I'm not sure, but I would guess that the SMAC terraforming was based on the Civ2 terraforming, from the same era.

Digging back into the resources on this forum, several of the "terraforming" options are very familiar.
- Chopping a forest to reveal plains or grassland underneath
- Planting trees to create a forest
- Swamps and Jungles could be cleared, converted into grasslands or plains

Other options were also interesting
- Mountains could be modified into hills, hills could be brought down to plains. No building up, only grinding down
- Tundra could be modified into deserts, deserts could be modified to plains. Lots of modern irrigation, perhaps?

Not exactly advanced science fiction, but IMHO interesting for gameplay. I've wished for a way to do something more with tundra in several Civ games since Civ2. The more drastic changes were only available in the late game, after several industrial technologies had been discovered to upgrade "settler/workers" into "engineers".

Yeah, I'm not saying that the level of terraforming in SMAC is right for civ. But in civ terms, I think modifying the land would be more along the lines of maybe planting wheat or sheep, maybe. Or even simply letting you place a pasture on a tile without a resource if you want things to come that way.

On the flipside, Marsh and Jungle should probably be more inhospitable until much later in the game. I mean we're in the modern world now and there's plenty of swamplands around the world which couldn't support much, if any, development on them.

Dams and Canals have been a good start. In some ways, Preserves as well added a slightly different way to work the map (although they have a ton of other problems, not least of all the AI being absolutely incapable of using them). And the way you lay out district can impact how the rest of things develop (once I start crushing a farm triangle, the rest of it usually is ripe for replacement). And even stuff like when you clearcut a large area, suddenly that area is more likely to trigger droughts as well is a small part.
Maybe in the end it's not that bad. I do like how you get some variety. If you're lucky enough to have Nazca nearby, you can make some really nice desert cities. If you don't, then those cities are barren wastelands. I guess part of it for me too is that I like building out the map (everyone loves their yield porn), so the more options you have, I think the more fun the game is.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I must strongly disagree with this. This trend towards sandbox games is, in my opinion, leading to the demise of the 4X and strategy genres as we know it. I think every developer is now trying to chase after Paradox and their sandbox style games. These games are fine if you enjoy messing around in a world and seeing what would happen, but without firm end goals the need for any strategy breaks down quickly. When I think of good 4X games, I think of Civilization IV, Old World, SMAC etc. All of these games have clearly defined victories for the player to focus on, encouraging you to engage with the game's mechanics and exploit your enemies to get there. These games also do not feel like board games at all, whereas Europa Universalis IV, one of the most sandbox-y titles on the market, reeks of board game.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I didn't know Paradox games were sandbox ones, I mean without victories.

and strategy genres

but without firm end goals the need for any strategy breaks down quickly.

encouraging you to engage with the game's mechanics and exploit your enemies to get there.

For me Civ isn't a strategy game first. It's more of an experience. The strategy comes when you beat the settler difficulty mode, or say the Prince mode in a new iteration for a familiar player. Then you begin to think about what you're doing. But that's not the funniest part for me at all. I love to discover how the world is depicted, what i can do, what is the new vision of the developers, but that's all. When it comes to beat the highest difficulty levels, It might be the worst part of it. Example : Civ3. It's fine and eye/ear-candy, but in Deity you must have those massive stacks of artillery that do no damage to enemy cities. I remember having pain playing with all these units. Same with 5 and 6 : Deity isn't really a good slice of fun. It's a lot of stress. OK it's all good when you win, but it's a deliverance, not fun. As to 4, I don't think I beat it past Emperor. See, fun is very different from strategy to me, especially in a Civ game. Strategy for me is way to put an end to my plays at the higher difficulty level (Deity). Once done, I prefer to follow with another game. That's why I'm not fan either of this GaaS path Civ6 has taken.

 

[shapecharge]

What is GaaS?