7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[UWHabs]

Actually, "very powerful entities" just has to be tweaked to include 'very powerful Events and Forces' to apply to a historicalish 4X like Civ:

The Industrial Revolution introduced an entirely new social/population class, the Industrial Worker, which took a century or more for governments and societies to come to terms with (if then), and it up-ended politics and society and led to the 'Ideology' crisis that wracked the early 20th century with warfare.

Ideologies, already used as an excuse for disliking your neighbors in Civ VII, could be expanded to show their real impact, as they warped governments and societies both. While the impact of Fascism and Communism were obvious on Germany and Russia, FDR's New Deal of government intervention in the USA was almost equally radical, and a new American civil war or revolution was avoided by a smaller margin than is usually suspected.

The growth of and interdependance of Governments and NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) is nothing new, but getting more intrusive recently: international bankers and traders started warping government decisions by at least the 15th century CE, and kings and governments borrowing from international bankers and then not paying their debts brought massive instability to both governments and the banks. And the series of financial 'crisis' events occurring almost like clockwork since the early 19th century that disrupt society show that no government controls them, no matter how they 'tweak' their control over their economies - there are too many Outside The Government factors at work

The impact of humans on the planet expanded and accelerated in the past century, and even if the overall planetary impact is ignored (as many are attempting to do today) local impacts have been massive in things like the Dust Bowl in the USA or the on-going drought and starvation in north-central Africa. Climate Change, even temporary, has been a factor in human settlement since the beginning of the Neolithic, with major disruptions or contributions to making the disruptions worse for societies and governments from the 5th to the 17th centuries CE.

So there are a lot of ways to provide an End Game Crisis or set of calamities to challenge the gamer - some on-going throughout the game, like the planetary or semi-planetary climate/ecological variations, and some Unique to the late game as individual Civs and governments become more susceptible to Outside Factors they cannot ignore.

If you want a sort of "end game crisis" system, you could set it up I almost want to say more like the Colonization end game, where basically you get to a certain level, and then you basically "claim" your victory, but then you have a set limit afterwards to "prove" your victory (there it was working towards declaring independence, and then having to fight).

In civ terms, the 2 that make the most sense to me as potential "victory conditions" would be for military and space. For military, maybe when you get to the modern era, and have accumulated those points towards the Ideology track, you can be given the option to basically declare a World War. When you do that, I think every civ should either ally for you, or declare against you. Everyone who declares against you will immediately ally together. The opposition could be given a level of free units, bonus to building military units, bonus combat strength, etc... (maybe they get "crisis" policy cards to decide). I don't know exactly what the victory conditions should be there, maybe you just have a target number of settlements you and your allies need to conquer net of your current status. Or maybe it's a "hold on to what you have for the next 20 turns".
For science, you could trigger it after the satellite launch, and basically create a "Space Race" victory. You could set up a number of projects and criteria, and basically create a challenge to be the first civ to land on the moon. Other civs would get some bonuses to building their aerodromes/launch pads.
Not sure what econ/culture would be..

But in each case, basically you need to build out to not just be the first civ, but you potentially need to be well ahead of the game, so that when the others get their bonuses, you can hang on. So like I'm way ahead in my game, but if every AI civ was given 2 free commanders, +100% production to building military, and +10 combat strength on all their units in their home territory, would I still have enough power to conquer the world?

 

[McSpank01]

Most 4X type games, and paradox strategy games, have this issue. The player is rewarded for outplaying the AI at every stage of the game, and inevitably that means they open up a huge gap by the end if they play well early. "I know the game is already over" is just as common a reason for players not finishing as "it's too much micro." The only way you can solve this is by constraining how big a gap there is between civs/factions/etc.

I think the devs were right to include rubberband mechanics in civ7. I advocated for them years ago. But the issue is always that you can't really show players that's what you're doing, because for whatever reason it drives people crazy if they notice it.

Sure, snowballing is a real issue and I totally understand why the devs thought this was the issue to fix. I don't really like 'rubberbanding' as a concept though, because there is nothing worse than feeling like you have lost stuff you did, or being punished for no real reason, just for fairness. It might make sense logically to restrict how far ahead any person can get, but it feels bad.

The current system just feels like a simplistic answer to a complex problem.

Surely the better mechanic is to make it so it's actually very hard to race away from other players, to create multi faceted constrictions on how far any one player can get. Settlement limits is one way to do that, though they just are not impactful enough if you can use camels to basically break the system and have no happiness penalties.

I imagine a system or gameplay loop where players have to make real choices as to what route they want to go down. If choose to pursue a Science victory, or really become a Civ that specialises in science, then that should make it much harder to get culture or money etc. These should be difficult choices. Therefore you are constantly making sacrifices every time you make a choice. This would mean that I might get getting far ahead on science, but other players can choose to pursue Culture and maybe beat me that way. So even if I get really far ahead on Science, my civ is vulnerable to other players and it causes me to be more cautious.

I don't know, either way I feel like right now you don't really need to make tough choices, and the mechanics are far too simplistic, which means they have brought in a sledgehammer to fix a delicate problem.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I imagine a system or gameplay loop where players have to make real choices as to what route they want to go down. If choose to pursue a Science victory, or really become a Civ that specialises in science, then that should make it much harder to get culture or money etc. These should be difficult choices.

Going that way would be a disaster. The main problem of Civ5 or Civ6 is that you choose your path early and just streamline towards it. One of the best things about ages is that you don't make this decision until the last age.

The game should force players to constantly make meaningful decisions and adapt to changes coming from map reveal or other player actions. Any big path choices restrict those things a lot.

 

[McSpank01]

Going that way would be a disaster. The main problem of Civ5 or Civ6 is that you choose your path early and just streamline towards it. One of the best things about ages is that you don't make this decision until the last age.

The game should force players to constantly make meaningful decisions and adapt to changes coming from map reveal or other player actions. Any big path choices restrict those things a lot.

Sure, but one of the best things Civ as a franchise has done is given us the ability to specialise. Right now there is no incentive to really specialise and it is quite simple, at least in the first 2 ages, to construct a civ that can do it all. I can easily create a civ that has amazing culture and science, whilst at the same time bring in a load of resources and expand out both militarily and through religion. I can play tall and wide all at the same time.

Yes I agree that the player should need to be adapting to circumstances and the map, and making decisions too early is restrictive. I want it to be much harder, if not impossible to just go for every time of legacy path at the same time. If I want to choose between building an ampitheatre or an observatory, well it needs to be a really hard choice. Right now.. I just do both and it works fine. I can make all my cities pretty great at culture and science, I can make them production powerhouses and economic hubs. There isn't much decision making, I can just build it all. And I can just go for every legacy path, there is no choice to be made.

I think one thing I would do is really rebalance adjacencies. If I don't have a good location for a culture building, then it should be next to pointless building it. Right now I can still build it and it will be pretty good. I would make adjacency much more important, and a lack of it much more restrictive.

I think I would also consider making legacy paths and victory conditions much more multi faceted. Think about Tourism in Civ 6. Yes the goal was to get more tourism than other civs, and it was too convoluted and hard to understand. However, you could complete that goal in many different ways. There were lots of ways to get tourism, there were ways to attack the other players with tourism. Making it as simple as 'collect X number of things' is very simplistic and not very interesting. Also making your civ more tourist friendly was something you could plan for, but also ramped up massively in the modern era. I think there is a lot to be learnt from the tourism victory path and how it worked. I like that progressing legacy paths can happen by doing stuff, like building the right kind of building or unit, and really the legacy paths should lean into that more. So completing the path should be the culmination of making your civ highly cultural or scientific, which is more than how many codicies or relics you collect.

 

[UWHabs]

Sure, but one of the best things Civ as a franchise has done is given us the ability to specialise. Right now there is no incentive to really specialise and it is quite simple, at least in the first 2 ages, to construct a civ that can do it all. I can easily create a civ that has amazing culture and science, whilst at the same time bring in a load of resources and expand out both militarily and through religion. I can play tall and wide all at the same time.

Yes I agree that the player should need to be adapting to circumstances and the map, and making decisions too early is restrictive. I want it to be much harder, if not impossible to just go for every time of legacy path at the same time. If I want to choose between building an ampitheatre or an observatory, well it needs to be a really hard choice. Right now.. I just do both and it works fine. I can make all my cities pretty great at culture and science, I can make them production powerhouses and economic hubs. There isn't much decision making, I can just build it all. And I can just go for every legacy path, there is no choice to be made.

I think one thing I would do is really rebalance adjacencies. If I don't have a good location for a culture building, then it should be next to pointless building it. Right now I can still build it and it will be pretty good. I would make adjacency much more important, and a lack of it much more restrictive.

I think I would also consider making legacy paths and victory conditions much more multi faceted. Think about Tourism in Civ 6. Yes the goal was to get more tourism than other civs, and it was too convoluted and hard to understand. However, you could complete that goal in many different ways. There were lots of ways to get tourism, there were ways to attack the other players with tourism. Making it as simple as 'collect X number of things' is very simplistic and not very interesting. Also making your civ more tourist friendly was something you could plan for, but also ramped up massively in the modern era. I think there is a lot to be learnt from the tourism victory path and how it worked. I like that progressing legacy paths can happen by doing stuff, like building the right kind of building or unit, and really the legacy paths should lean into that more. So completing the path should be the culmination of making your civ highly cultural or scientific, which is more than how many codicies or relics you collect.

IMO I think the gold and silver bonuses are too strong, if you get a couple bonuses like that around, it can make all your buildings pretty cheap to build. I can definitely see that if I get like 3 gold resources, it makes it super cheap to buy whatever buildings I need. If it actually took you 10 turns to build something, then your choices would be more impactful. Gold should probably give you like a 5% bonus to purchasing buildings, not 20%.

I think if you trimmed down some of those bonuses, that would shift a lot. Right now, what seems to happen for me is that I get enough bonuses to those buildings that I really don't struggle to get all the warehouse buildings in a city, which also gives you another leg up on building everything else. Other than some island cities, I really don't struggle to get everything down.

I do think you could also rebalance specialists too. If you can go "tall" and get a bunch of specialists down, you can get some pretty big culture yields even if you don't have adjacencies, just from the passive yields. Even just shrinking specialists to +1 culture/+1 science as a base yield would really make sure they're only worth it to place when you have a good adjacency. You could give them a little something else - maybe they could get a base +1 of whatever building is on the tile, so a specialist on a Kiln tile is +2 culture/+1 science, plus half the Kiln adjacency.

 

[misesfan]

One of the best things about ages is that you don't make this decision until the last age.

Then why not always play at the Modern Age and skip the first two ages and be done with it? Since the legacy paths dont really matter in how you focus your game, you might as well skip them. But the modern age is a terrible mess at this time right? Just shows that the dev team should have focused on creating an empire builder instead of whatever this mess of a game is.

 

[Gorbles]

Then why not always play at the Modern Age and skip the first two ages and be done with it?

Because the other two Ages have different decisions associated with strategy and empire growth.

But the modern age is a terrible mess at this time right?

Even if it is (I think it's more "not exciting / pretty straightforward" than a "terrible mess"), that has nothing to do with liking what decisions anyone makes in Modern.

What do you do? What will you do, when the next patch drops?

 

[misesfan]

What do you do? What will you do, when the next patch drops?

I wont be playing this terrible game.

 

[Kwami]

I wont be playing this terrible game.

So then why do you have to keep telling us how much you hate this game? I don't understand.

Have you ever played the game at all?

 

[Gorbles]

I wont be playing this terrible game.

So what are you basing your opinions of Legacy Points and the Modern age on? Why ask the questions you're asking about how other people play the game? I don't understand.

 

[misesfan]

So then why do you have to keep telling us how much you hate this game? I don't understand.

You know what? You are right - I have more fun *****ing about the game then actually playing it. Its sad, but true.

 

[CliffCo]

You know what? You are right - I have more fun *****ing about the game then actually playing it. Its sad, but true.

If as you stated you're not going to be playing Civ7 after the patch, as you believe it's terrible why don't you just go back to playing an earlier version that you did have fun playing. for those of us who love playing it the negativity from those who don't is getting old.

 

[misesfan]

If as you stated you're not going to be playing Civ7 after the patch, as you believe it's terrible why don't you just go back to playing an earlier version that you did have fun playing. for those of us who love playing it the negativity from those who don't is getting old.

Dont ask questions, just consume product! Then wait for next product!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Dont ask questions, just consume product! Then wait for next product!

Yes, Dog Forbid we should actually respond to negativity and purposeless carping.

Frankly, the only negative posts worth reading are those that actually propose changes to the system they dislike. Those, at least, provide a basis for discussion and, just possibly, an improved game.

- And anybody who posts that he "has more fun *****ing about the game than actually playing it" says far more about himself and his problems than the game and its problems.

 

[misesfan]

Yes, Dog Forbid we should actually respond to negativity and purposeless carping.

Frankly, the only negative posts worth reading are those that actually propose changes to the system they dislike. Those, at least, provide a basis for discussion and, just possibly, an improved game.

- And anybody who posts that he "has more fun *****ing about the game than actually playing it" says far more about himself and his problems than the game and its problems.

I expected this kind of reply. Attack me, not the crappy game. I am not going to reiterate the posts that I have made in the last three months on this forum about how flawed the game design is. But I will say this - if you enjoy playing the game, that's cool for you, everyone has their own preferences and tolerances for slop.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Most 4X type games, and paradox strategy games, have this issue. The player is rewarded for outplaying the AI at every stage of the game, and inevitably that means they open up a huge gap by the end if they play well early. "I know the game is already over" is just as common a reason for players not finishing as "it's too much micro." The only way you can solve this is by constraining how big a gap there is between civs/factions/etc.

I think the devs were right to include rubberband mechanics in civ7. I advocated for them years ago. But the issue is always that you can't really show players that's what you're doing, because for whatever reason it drives people crazy if they notice it.

And yet, this was one of the aspects of civ6 that got a lot of public hate. There were people who didn't even buy the game because of the art style. It was so commonplace they released a civ5 tileset for civ6 so you could make it look more like the previous game.

I would hope it is clear with hindsight why the devs made civ6 look that way - for readability. But why couldn't players see that in 2016? Good design is often easy to miss. In my opinion a lot of the game mechanics people are heavily criticizing in civ7 are not inherently flawed mechanics. They simply aren't presented the right way or lack polish. Just like civ6's art style, many of the good design decisions in civ7 are hard for us to notice right now.

Art and visuals is pretty subjective. Some people just do not like the bright simple primary colours style that Civ6 has. I kinda like it subjectively (or at least don’t hate it) but more importantly for me it’s very, very functional.

The good decisions in Civ7 like finally, finally getting rid of workers are heavily overshadowed by ones like the era resets and civ switching and the awful distant lands maps that for many people make the game an automatic pass.

I wish Civ didn't go in the direction of "gameboard" mechanics. I very much prefer Civ IV style, especially the Realism mod. Realism mod for me is peak Civ. Every nation is uniquely flavored. It has an interesting logistics system that prevents doom stacks and revolutionary mechanics. that naturally slow down snowballing. Buildings, wonders, and civics all nicely work together. Also, clever use of resources, like turning your prime timber into naval supplies. Basically, creating value chains with your resources, nothing too extreme but just enough to make it intermeeting. Sadly, I don't think Civ will ever return to the Civ IV days

If interested, check out the realism mod here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/

As much as I love Civ4 and how deep that mod goes, it’s going to be unplayable for anyone not already a Civ Grognard.

 

[Kwami]

I wish Civ didn't go in the direction of "gameboard" mechanics. I very much prefer Civ IV style, especially the Realism mod. Realism mod for me is peak Civ. Every nation is uniquely flavored. It has an interesting logistics system that prevents doom stacks and revolutionary mechanics. that naturally slow down snowballing. Buildings, wonders, and civics all nicely work together. Also, clever use of resources, like turning your prime timber into naval supplies. Basically, creating value chains with your resources, nothing too extreme but just enough to make it intermeeting. Sadly, I don't think Civ will ever return to the Civ IV days

If interested, check out the realism mod here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/

But that's not really "Civ IV", though. That's a very highly modified game. If Firaxis releases the right tools, then you could probably make something similar in Civ VII.

 

[LeanArcticWolf]

As much as I love Civ4 and how deep that mod goes, it’s going to be unplayable for anyone not already a Civ Grognard.

But that's not really "Civ IV", though. That's a very highly modified game. If Firaxis releases the right tools, then you could probably make something similar in Civ VII.

Hmmm, not sure if it would be that difficult with a proper tutorial. When I tried Civ 6, I found it more difficult than Civ IV. The mechanics of Civ have changed a lot. Civ 6 and 7 are almost unrecognizable compared to Civ IV. It's more that the modern Civ player is now playing with mechanics that are quite different from Civ IV. Realism doesn't really add new mechanics, everything in it is a very natural extension from Civ IV. To me, Realism is more what Civ V should have been, continuing the same philosophy from Civ IV onward. Don't get me wrong, I like what Civ V for what it is (it's the best looking game in my opinion) and certainly had fun with it, but at the end of the day Civ IV Realism is peak Civ.

I think the best course for Firaxis is to have two lines of Civ. One series that continues the Civ IV philosophy with Realism as a great starting point; nations are properly flavored and unique. Strategy is more about a holistic approach to managing your nation (as opposed to hyper focusing on a victory condition). And the other series continues with their gameboard philosophy and optimization for phones.

Many companies do this. Total War has a line of fantasy games and a line of historical games. They aren't making one type of series. Paradox has Victoria with a focus on global markets, crusaders have a strong focus on the individuals, EUIV is more on national ideas and managing the factions, and Hearts of Iron is more about war and logistics. They don't have one line of games that try to appeal to everyone. Firaxis would benefit with adopting a similar approach with their titles.

 

[Sostratus]

Surely the better mechanic is to make it so it's actually very hard to race away from other players, to create multi faceted constrictions on how far any one player can get. Settlement limits is one way to do that, though they just are not impactful enough if you can use camels to basically break the system and have no happiness penalties.

The ages system does do this mechanically, although, like many things, the numbers could be tuned better. The simple fact that you cannot research ahead of the era is massive. Notice what parts of "rubberbanding" players complain about - it's whenever they feel something is being taken away from them. Not when they are prevented from doing something nor when the opponent is given something (since all civs start an age at the same tech level, everyone is "given" missing techs.) Yet they all enjoy the games where there's a competitive rival and it's a close-run thing. This is a problem of presentation and design and it's not easy to solve.

I imagine a system or gameplay loop where players have to make real choices as to what route they want to go down. If choose to pursue a Science victory, or really become a Civ that specialises in science, then that should make it much harder to get culture or money etc. These should be difficult choices. Therefore you are constantly making sacrifices every time you make a choice. This would mean that I might get getting far ahead on science, but other players can choose to pursue Culture and maybe beat me that way. So even if I get really far ahead on Science, my civ is vulnerable to other players and it causes me to be more cautious.

I do agree that in the current state of the game, civs have too much "juice" - legacy paths aren't really mutually exclusive because we can build and maintain everything. Additionally, I happen to think the way specialists actually function is part of the issue. With simple growth, you can generate massive science and culture output just by using the +2 yield cards. I think a return to actual specialists tied to what the building in that quarter is would be better for balancing this out. As in, building a forge gives you an engineer slot and building a theater gives you an artist slot, that sort of thing. Specialists right now are very one dimensional. There's almost nothing to think about you either want the science/culture output or a rural tile. Once you've reached your borders it's just clicking on the biggest number.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think a return to actual specialists tied to what the building in that quarter is would be better for balancing this out. As in, building a forge gives you an engineer slot and building a theater gives you an artist slot, that sort of thing. Specialists right now are very one dimensional. There's almost nothing to think about you either want the science/culture output or a rural tile. Once you've reached your borders it's just clicking on the biggest number.

Emphatically agree.

There is, at the moment, no specialization in specialists: they are just another + X added to a tile, and always of the same types of + Xs regardless of the actual type of structure, resource, or terrain in the tile.

I suppose we could imagine that the specialist adding 'culture' to a Sawmill is actually producing highly decorated wooden furniture and objects with the blades, but it's a stretch . . .

I can't remember if you were on the other end, but I do remember quite a discussion of Specialists and potential ways of implementing them better back in Civ VI days a couple of years ago: Specialists adding more or related bonuses based on what was already built in the tile, including production, gold, culture, science, influence, happiness - all the 'currencies' in the game already boosted or provided by buildings or combinations of buildings, terrain and resources. Specialists could, and should, be at least as important as adjacencies in adding all kinds of bonuses to the tile, not just the same bonuese regardless

Right now, like too much else in the game, 'Specialists' have only a fraction of the importance they could have to city and Civ construction.