7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[SammyKhalifa]

Honestly, while playing I don't identify as either. I'm me, playing the game. I don't identify with civ or leader except for when I'm checking the rules to see what my abilities are.

Now the other AI players is a different story.

What is kind of strange to me is that for some, everything is ruined because the word "Germany" replaces the word "Rome" or whatever in a handful of text files partway though. Would that honestly make that big a difference? It seems to for some, and that's fine I Guess.

 

[Gori the Grey]

It's not even "identify" actually. The question should be "in what do you find the through-game continuity in Civ, the leader or the civilization? What do you think of as the entity whose progress you as the player are overseeing?"

And then I think it answers itself. Nobody ends a Civ game and says, "Man, Ghandi really flourished over those last 6000 years."

You don't end a Monopoly game thinking to yourself that the thimble sure did a great job. You think of the properties you acquired and hotels you built on them.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

According to that thread, the many that identify with the leader rather than the Civ is under 10%

I think this one is a pretty cut and dry total misunderstanding of their audience by Firaxis. There is an exception to a general rule, but the general rule is the fundamental opposite of what they've changed the game to be.

Thanks.

 

[lander]

I found this interesting video from "Emotional Husky's Civilization Stories" on youtube that discusses 7 myths that he believes the devs fell for and led them to make design mistakes in civ7.

Time stamps:

00:00 Intro
00:59 If it Ain't Broke Don't Fix It
01:52 Myth #1: civ players crave realism and accuracy.
04:21 Myth #2: peace is preferrable to war
05:46 Myth #3: single player and multi-player are the same
06:58 Myth #4: civilizations need to be balanced.
08:07 Myth #5: winning is the objective
09:06 Myth #6: late game fatigue
10:29 Myth #7: players don't finish games
11:05 Conclusion

------------

Personally, I don't agree with myth #6. I do think that late game fatigue is real. I've experienced it many times in my games of civ6. If we are honest, I think we have to admit that the religious and culture victories in civ6 did involve a lot of tedious clicking. So I think it is fair to look at ways to reduce unnecessary and tedious actions in order to make the late game more satisfying for players.

Im on the other side. I dont think late game fatigue was a thing. I could make a game as short or as long as I wanted, I much preferred dragging it out as long as possible to experience the full power available. I also loved the diplomacy in civ 6, there were problems with it and it did get boring and predictable but thats something I expected to be improved upon all these years later.

I think the video was accurate, the devs completely misunderstood what people enjoyed and what needed improved.

 

[lander]

Im on the other side. I dont think late game fatigue was a thing. I could make a game as short or as long as I wanted, I much preferred dragging it out as long as possible to experience the full power available. I also loved the diplomacy in civ 6, there were problems with it and it did get boring and predictable but thats something I expected to be improved upon all these years later.



I think the video was accurate, the devs completely misunderstood what people enjoyed and what needed improved.

They kind of removed all of the good bits instead of improving and upgrading the bad bits. They made a completely different game.

If this wasn't a cheap cash grab and they really did think that this is what players wanted then there must be a small and loud minority who seriously over analyzed things nobody cared about and made them problems. Small group of over analysers destroyed civ 7.

We need civ 8 and we need to go back to basics and focus on the best bits first then add on top of that.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

It's not even "identify" actually. The question should be "in what do you find the through-game continuity in Civ, the leader or the civilization? What do you think of as the entity whose progress you as the player are overseeing?"

And then I think it answers itself. Nobody ends a Civ game and says, "Man, Ghandi really flourished over those last 6000 years."

You don't end a Monopoly game thinking to yourself that the thimble sure did a great job. You think of the properties you acquired and hotels you built on them.

This is all false.

Nobdy ever finishes a monopoly game.

 

[disjointaccount]

I think @SammyKhalifa nailed it in that the "myths" are just things the YouTuber disagrees with (and I agree with @moondog385 that "civ players" is not one person), but for the sake of discussion, here is some anecdotal evidence in the form of my views on these statements (given that I am one of the many Civ players in question):

Myth #1: civ players crave realism and accuracy.

I have never seen civ as a serious history simulation/role-playing game. As long as I've been playing, the USA has been fighting Mesopotamians. Civ has never been that game for me. (The reaction to VII kinda makes me wonder if I'm in the minority on this, though, given that one of the most common critiques I see of civ-switching is that it's immersion-breaking. Ultimately just suibjective, which is fair.)

Myth #2: peace is preferable to war

Entirely dependent on the gameplay. I found land war incredibly tedious in VI but it's one of my favourite parts of VII. I think the devs nailed identifiying aspects of combat players didn't like engaging with and improving on them.

Myth #3: single player and multi-player are the same

I do not think this and I do not know anyone with even a vague familiarity with both who does.

Myth #4: civilizations need to be balanced.

"Balance" is nebulous. Civs can have very unique identities and play very differently (which I think is good), but one that's substantially more powerful than everyone else is objectively bad for the game.

Myth #5: winning is the objective

I mean, building an empire I like is definitely a big part of the game for me, but to say winning is not the, or at least an ultimate goal is objectively false, and I imagine that's true for most players.

Myth #6: late game fatigue

I was surprised by this when they brought it up but they're the ones with the data. People weren't finishing games in VI. And after paying some attention to reddit it's crazy how many people in the Civ subs have never finished a game of VI. I found the late game to be a bit more tedious than the early-to-mid-game, just due to an ever-increasing number of decisions that each individually mattered less and less (I think this is another area the devs have nailed with VII; to me the streamlining has hit a real sweet spot between removing tedium but not oversimplifying), but never to the point that I personally didn't finish games.

Myth #7: players don't finish games

See #6

 

[Gori the Grey]

Nobdy ever finishes a monopoly game.

Don't tell that to the Monopoly designers. They'll redesign the whole game. Have you start playing Chutes and Ladders one third of the way through. And finish with Candy Land.

And you'll lose all your Community Chest cards at the start of each new phase.

 

[firadin]

I have never seen civ as a serious history simulation/role-playing game.

I think you are in the majority, but many players at least claim that they care a lot about the history/realism of the game. That is why it is a myth. You'll often see people complain that X unit or Y mechanic is "historically inaccurate," but what they often mean is that they either: A. don't like it mechanically and need a justification, or B. are nitpicking. The Battersea Power Plant is a great example from Civ7, lots of people complained that the color scheme was inaccurate to real life - which might be true, but people just like to nitpick and no one is playing Civ because of how realistic the game pieces are.

"Balance" is nebulous. Civs can have very unique identities and play very differently (which I think is good), but one that's substantially more powerful than everyone else is objectively bad for the game.

Hard disagree. It's awful for multiplayer of course, but some of my favorite Civ5 games were as Babylon which was broken, or Korea in Civ6 which was definitely over-tuned. Civ is primarily a single-player game and having "unique but unbalanced" Civs is more important than "different but balanced." Varying (even wildly) power levels is totally fine in a game where you can choose who to play as and just not play the broken ones.

I mean, building an empire I like is definitely a big part of the game for me, but to say winning is not the, or at least an ultimate goal is objectively false, and I imagine that's true for most players.

The fact that so many players don't even finish a game suggests that the actual act of winning is irrelevant to most players, either because they're more interested in the empire-building than the objectives, or because they've won in their heads and are ready to move on. Personally, I often have my own mental checklist of what I want in a session, and that often implies but doesn't guarantee a victory. I might play until I have a dominating science lead, or play until I've effectively defeated all the Civs on my continent, but not actually bother trying to win the game itself.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

The historical accuracy point is a good one. And I think it means different things to different people. For me, when I load up a game of Civ I expect to be empire building in an alternate universe. I can forgive some styling details on wonders, and I'm even pro made up uniques to solve the problem of ancient America or future Maya, as long as they fit into the general look and feel and style of the Civ. I'd much rather than than being forced to change Civ.

My primary reason for loading up a game is for instance reading or watching something about Egypt and thinking "I fancy conquering the world as Egypt today". I want to play as the ancient Egyptians and be more successful as them than they were in real life by bringing them to the modern age, I don't want to experience their cultural death at the hands of the Greeks and the Romans and the Arabs like in real life. I want to build towards a polytheistic pyramid building modern society.

 

[firadin]

The historical accuracy point is a good one. And I think it means different things to different people. For me, when I load up a game of Civ I expect to be empire building in an alternate universe. I can forgive some styling details on wonders, and I'm even pro made up uniques to solve the problem of ancient America or future Maya, as long as they fit into the general look and feel and style of the Civ. I'd much rather than than being forced to change Civ.

My primary reason for loading up a game is for instance reading or watching something about Egypt and thinking "I fancy conquering the world as Egypt today". I want to play as the ancient Egyptians and be more successful as them than they were in real life by bringing them to the modern age, I don't want to experience their cultural death at the hands of the Greeks and the Romans and the Arabs like in real life. I want to build towards a polytheistic pyramid building modern society.

I'll go even further and say that I might boot up a game as Egypt and say "I want to build a desert empire where I get the major desert wonders and conquer my neighbors." And thats it. I'll get Pyramids, Petra, a few other wonders, and conquer my continent. I'll reroll until I get a good desert start, quit the game before I hit ocean-faring tech, and be happy with myself.

 

[stealth_nsk]

01:52 Myth #1: civ players crave realism and accuracy.

I don't know where author gets this idea. Civ7 is not more realistic than previous games.

04:21 Myth #2: peace is preferrable to war

Again where this comes from? Civ7 has huge combat improvements and bases the last age around world wars.

05:46 Myth #3: single player and multi-player are the same
06:58 Myth #4: civilizations need to be balanced.
08:07 Myth #5: winning is the objective

"Are the same" is a totally weird stating of this, especially considering Civ7 is the only game which has dedicated multiplayer-focused map generation setting.

More focus on multiplayer is that it does in both points and I don't think that's that Firaxis thinks about long-rime players - it's more about new audience.

09:06 Myth #6: late game fatigue
10:29 Myth #7: players don't finish games

Firaxis has access to precise numeric data about how players play and finish their games. Some random guy from Youtube calling this a myth is just ridiculous.

 

[itix]

Firaxis has access to precise numeric data about how players play and finish their games. Some random guy from Youtube calling this a myth is just ridiculous.

It is not about that. The myth is that this is a weakness in the game.

 

[GeneralZift]

It is not about that. The myth is that this is a weakness in the game.

Indeed. It seems to me, the reason people don't finish games is not because the game is terrible and needs an enormous rework, it's because the AI doesn't provide a sufficient challenge and players already know they've won before they reach the end, and the AI cannot stop them (or even try to stop them in Civ6 case)

Let me just say, in MP Civ, you are never 100% sure that you've won the game, because human players are far stronger than bots.

Maybe the solution wasn't to alienate their entire playerbase, but to actually focus on making the AI and the game itself challenge players even when they're winning.

The strongest nations on earth aren't without their difficulties. As history showcases time and again, the bigger they are, the harder they fall - and they always fall eventually.

So my advice to the developers is to focus on giving the players with the most, even tougher challenges than the players who need to catch-up, who should be getting catch-up mechanics.

 

[Kev1916]

Couple of replies are so true

This reminds me of the Mexican Restaurant Paradox. A new restaurant opens in town that's never had one. Half the people think the food is too spicy and complain. So the chef starts making the food less spicy. But the people who thought the food was too spicy don't come back, and the people who did like the food in the first place come back only to find it's now bland, so now they don't come back a third time. And with no customers, the restaurant quickly goes out of business. All because they "listened to their customers"

And for this version of "civ" the motto will be "Worse then players not finishing games of civ is players not starting them at all..

 

[stealth_nsk]

It is not about that. The myth is that this is a weakness in the game.

It depends on what you call "weakness". In my book, late game fatigue and not finishing games as a result is clearly a weakness, because I'm playing less than half of the game and become bored much faster. If it's not problem for author - that's some specific playstyle.

 

[evonannoredars]

This reminds me of the Mexican Restaurant Paradox. A new restaurant opens in town that's never had one. Half the people think the food is too spicy and complain. So the chef starts making the food less spicy. But the people who thought the food was too spicy don't come back, and the people who did like the food in the first place come back only to find it's now bland, so now they don't come back a third time. And with no customers, the restaurant quickly goes out of business. All because they "listened to their customers"

Exactly, they should stick to their guns and improve what they have instead of going back on civ-switching or any of the new things they've introduced

 

[user746383]

I've been playing since civ1, and never even noticed that I wasn't having fun because I started a new game when the current one became a sure thing.

 

[UWHabs]

Exactly, they should stick to their guns and improve what they have instead of going back on civ-switching or any of the new things they've introduced

Yeah, I mean I don't mind if they can get in some option to appease the people who don't like switching. But to me, I think they just need a few more options for each era to round out the paths, a little more tweaking on how you unlock (some are too easy, some are too hard), and then a little rebalance around the era transition, and hopefully that all will help.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

What is kind of strange to me is that for some, everything is ruined because the word "Germany" replaces the word "Rome" or whatever in a handful of text files partway though. Would that honestly make that big a difference? It seems to for some, and that's fine I Guess.

I think it matters for players who role-play history or care about a sense of historical immersion.