7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[Askia Muhammad]

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me, though. Role-play, sure, but having Rome collapse and give way to Normans/HRE/Byzantines/whatever and then into modern-day European nations is more historically immersive than it was before. Obviously not a perfect 1:1 representation of real world history, and the leaders potentially not lining up is still weird, but closer to reality than how things were previously. Surely seeing Rome led by an immortal Caesar neighbouring Lincoln's America is very immersion breaking?

Not to say people can't dislike the ages system; everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just that the specific historical immersion point hasn't made much sense to me.

The immersion breaking for me has more to do with losing things arbitrarily between ages and there being a massive loading screen. I also don’t like that leaders aren’t attached to civs.

 

[Chiyo]

The immersion breaking for me has more to do with losing things arbitrarily between ages and there being a massive loading screen. I also don’t like that leaders aren’t attached to civs.

I think some people in this discussion are mixing up the terms immersion and realism. Immersion means that you feel part of the world the game is presenting to you. That does not have to be realistic and in terms of Civ will probably never be. There is only a very low percentage of countries represented in the game and these never really change. Even in Civ7 for bonus reasons they get a new name but they remain the exact same empire as before with the same cities and the same borders. Realistic would be that empires grow and get parted or vanish completely just to be replaced by new ones, often smaller in the beginning of which some than might grow again. For a game like Civ that is impratical, though, as you would not compete for victory conditions anymore. It works in games like EU or Crusader Kings as these are not there to be won but just to be played.
Immersion means you can feel yourself part of the world. Before Civ7 the series had done that really well. You are the leader of a Civ for about 6.000 years. In order to interact with other Civs they need a leader as well who is your counterpart on their side. He is not an immortal human being from that Civ but he is exactly like you playing the game. The solution so far has been that it is a recognizable figure from that Civ`s history that you could identify that Civ with. This is gone now. If you meet Harriet Tubman, Ada Lovelace or Macchiavelli you can have no idea which Civ they are leading. I remember the first Civ7 lets play I watched. The player was in a war with Rome but never realized it as he was deaing with Spanish speaking Isabella and thus thought he was being attacked by Spain. That is what kills immersions to me and obviously a lot of other players as well. Losing control of your civ after a global crisis and then being a new Civ kills immersion as well. As long as these two things are in the game I am pretty sure I will not be able to enjoy it.

 

[Gorbles]

I think some people in this discussion are mixing up the terms immersion and realism. Immersion means that you feel part of the world the game is presenting to you. That does not have to be realistic and in terms of Civ will probably never be. There is only a very low percentage of countries represented in the game and these never really change. Even in Civ7 for bonus reasons they get a new name but they remain the exact same empire as before with the same cities and the same borders. Realistic would be that empires grow and get parted or vanish completely just to be replaced by new ones, often smaller in the beginning of which some than might grow again. For a game like Civ that is impratical, though, as you would not compete for victory conditions anymore. It works in games like EU or Crusader Kings as these are not there to be won but just to be played.
Immersion means you can feel yourself part of the world. Before Civ7 the series had done that really well. You are the leader of a Civ for about 6.000 years. In order to interact with other Civs they need a leader as well who is your counterpart on their side. He is not an immortal human being from that Civ but he is exactly like you playing the game. The solution so far has been that it is a recognizable figure from that Civ`s history that you could identify that Civ with. This is gone now. If you meet Harriet Tubman, Ada Lovelace or Macchiavelli you can have no idea which Civ they are leading. I remember the first Civ7 lets play I watched. The player was in a war with Rome but never realized it as he was deaing with Spanish speaking Isabella and thus thought he was being attacked by Spain. That is what kills immersions to me and obviously a lot of other players as well. Losing control of your civ after a global crisis and then being a new Civ kills immersion as well. As long as these two things are in the game I am pretty sure I will not be able to enjoy it.

That's fine. I have no interest in CiV (or older titles, baring SMAC) these days.

Not every game is for everyone.

This doesn't mean that VII shouldn't be improved so it appeals to more players. But if certain core components are absolutely critical to your immersion, then imo the game should not be remade to attempt to please you. Maybe they won't do it this way in the next game. Or maybe they will, but the polish and variety of content will be there (to allow more players to engage with it), and that's simply the direction the franchise is moving in.

I'm a big fan of Dawn of War II, a rather niche RTS (but pretty well known as the brand goes). But it was very different to vDoW (vanilla DoW; the original). So much so that 21 years after the original Dawn of War was released, plenty of people are still playing it, and literally never moved on to DoW II.

 

[UWHabs]

I think higher production cost for advanced buildings (with some big benefits for having them in the next age…say 20% of their production cost of their yield type)
and
higher gold costs Exploration and Modern units
and
higher gold costs for maintenance of units in neutral or enemy territory

Yeah, I think in general, civ tends to play it pretty safe. It's not too expensive to build an academy, that even in a city where you don't have a great adjacency for it, it's still worth it. I wouldn't necessarily hate seeing the T1 buildings be the generic ones that every city (and soon urban town) needs and can get easily, but you could make an academy and the other T2 buildings most wonder-level in their power.
And similar with units - make it cost you to send an army out, make it cost you to upgrade, make it cost you to run an army of knights. Especially since units are pretty fungible, I wouldn't hate it if it actually was the "correct" strategy where if you're not having another conflict for 20-30 turns, that the correct action would be to disband your units, and rebuild new ones at the next tier in the leadup.

Realistic? It's Civ combat. It's never been realistic.

Besides, you can still lose your commanders and that hurts a lot.

Per-unit promotions is just more micro work with very little payoff. Promoting commanders makes much more sense to me.

The fact that you get the commanders back after a time when they die means that you can live with that most. I think the worst part before was how much you'd have to guard those level 7 troops in civ 6, or like in civ 4 days whoever you attached your general to. It's a weird case where they're your strongest troops, but you have a mental block about losing them, so you can't use them to their potential. At least now when I have my level 9 commander, they've got all my best promotions, so they're the commander I want to lead in the battle.