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.

 

[McSpank01]

That means horses take up an enormous percentage of your arable (rural tiles) land, and cavalry should take up an enormous percentage of your Civ resources to maintain - unless your civ is all pasturage/grazing like the Mongolian or other pastoral societies, and then you have a tiny fraction of the overall population that agricultural societies can maintain.

The tactical benefits of mounted cavalry come with a potentially-crippling price tag which the game has NEVER imposed.

Also, Civ 7 taking away resource requirements for building units just removes a lot of the variety and tactical thinking involved. Sure I might get a tiny bonus from having horses if I want cavalry, but in previous games I literally could not build cavalry if I didn't have horses. So there was an advantage to building somewhere near horses, because it gives you a tactical and tech lead over opponents. It would also mean you might have some civs who excel with men at arms, or units that need iron, coming up against ones who specialise in cavalry armies, because they have cities in specific areas. It makes the game more interesting.

There is just no variety now, everything has been simplified to such a crude degree.

 

[King of Prussia]

Also, Civ 7 taking away resource requirements for building units just removes a lot of the variety and tactical thinking involved. Sure I might get a tiny bonus from having horses if I want cavalry, but in previous games I literally could not build cavalry if I didn't have horses. So there was an advantage to building somewhere near horses, because it gives you a tactical and tech lead over opponents. It would also mean you might have some civs who excel with men at arms, or units that need iron, coming up against ones who specialise in cavalry armies, because they have cities in specific areas. It makes the game more interesting.

There is just no variety now, everything has been simplified to such a crude degree.

Removing resource requirements to make units is one of the best changes in Civ 7. It would ruin a run if you wanted to play a certain civ and not any or enough resources to make your UU. The late game was super dull as no one had enough resources to make a decent army. The AI was even easier to kill. You as the player would be far better at finding and securing them. Having resource upkeep only magnified this in Civ 6.

Having them provide bonuses still makes them worthwhile to secure. They could even go further and make certain special buildings require a city to have them, making them more worthwhile to have.(civ 5 did this)

 

[UWHabs]

Removing resource requirements to make units is one of the best changes in Civ 7. It would ruin a run if you wanted to play a certain civ and not any or enough resources to make your UU. The late game was super dull as no one had enough resources to make a decent army. The AI was even easier to kill. You as the player would be far better at finding and securing them. Having resource upkeep only magnified this in Civ 6.

Having them provide bonuses still makes them worthwhile to secure. They could even go further and make certain special buildings require a city to have them, making them more worthwhile to have.(civ 5 did this)

Yeah, a little more passive bonus to them wouldn't be the end of the world. Even if it was just horses giving +1 food to Granaries, and Iron giving +1 production to brickyards, for example. Or even just a local bonus too, like having production buildings gain an extra adjacency for being next to those strategic resources, could give you at least a little extra tweak to want to chase them.

 

[McSpank01]

It would ruin a run if you wanted to play a certain civ and not any or enough resources to make your UU

Isn't that why for many UU they removed the resource requirement for UU, because it kind of messed up your games. However, I don't really agree with doing that. I think one of the more interesting decisions was trying to expand out to resources, making sure you have Iron for your Legions etc. You also need to give a player alternative plans. If I am not near iron, then maybe I am near horses etc. I think giving players the ability to react to the map is one of Civ 6s best abilities.

The late game was super dull as no one had enough resources to make a decent army. The AI was even easier to kill. You as the player would be far better at finding and securing them.

True, but the answer shouldn't be to simplify the game to such an extent that the AI can understand the map and make plans. It should be to improve the AI.

 

[Evie]

It straitjacketed you into certain strategies based on random luck (you were forced to expand in certain directions if you weren't lucky enough to get the right resource in your territory.
It created wild difficulty swings that should be left to the difficulty level (if you had the right resource vs if you had to fight a war with under-powered units to try and get it)
And it was wholly and entirely ahistorical - the "strategic resources" of the pre-industrial period were all material that no civilizations, once they developed the technology and had reason to use it, would have any difficulty acquiring in sufficient amounts to make an army with.

Mandatory resources (pre-indudstrial) was just bad design in every way (post-industrial was bad design in most ways).

 

[McSpank01]

It straitjacketed you into certain strategies based on random luck (you were forced to expand in certain directions if you weren't lucky enough to get the right resource in your territory.
It created wild difficulty swings that should be left to the difficulty level (if you had the right resource vs if you had to fight a war with under-powered units to try and get it)
And it was wholly and entirely ahistorical - the "strategic resources" of the pre-industrial period were all material that no civilizations, once they developed the technology and had reason to use it, would have any difficulty acquiring in sufficient amounts to make an army with.

Mandatory resources (pre-indudstrial) was just bad design in every way (post-industrial was bad design in most ways).

I don't agree. It made you act flexibly. You don't need those resources to build a good army, but it might change the composition of that army and mean you need to rely on other units. Many unit types had no resource requirements. What you call 'random luck' is in fact 'reacting to the map'. Now players don't need to react to the map at all. Resources, outside of maybe camels and gold are so unimpactful you could basically forget about them, you certainly rarely need to base your strategy around obtaining them.

It's not even historical, WW2 armies simply couldn't operate without oil for instance. Whole wars have been started with the goal of obtaining resources, you could in fact say most wars are because of it.

 

[Evie]

Which part of "pre-industrial" applies to WW2 exactly?

The iron/saltpeter/etc strategic resources nonsense was entirely and wholly ahistorical.

Fuel/Energy resources, yeah, those are as important as the game portrayed strategic resources. But the game took that model and expanded it to every strategic resource in history, and that was grossly ahistorical.

 

[King of Prussia]

Isn't that why for many UU they removed the resource requirement for UU, because it kind of messed up your games. However, I don't really agree with doing that. I think one of the more interesting decisions was trying to expand out to resources, making sure you have Iron for your Legions etc. You also need to give a player alternative plans. If I am not near iron, then maybe I am near horses etc. I think giving players the ability to react to the map is one of Civ 6s best abilities.



True, but the answer shouldn't be to simplify the game to such an extent that the AI can understand the map and make plans. It should be to improve the AI.

Indeed, they removed them for that reason in 6. You still want to expand to as many resources as possible, including strategic ones. IMO, you still play the map just like you did in Civ 6. In some ways, its even more important due to the trade system.

Easier said then done, when it comes to AI. Every hurdle you add to the game, the less likely the AI will be able to get to its destination. This is one of the main reasons you never see AI use planes in Civ 6. Old world is a game that gets a lot of praise on these forums, and rightfully so. Its a solid game. It massively simplified settling by only allowing certain spots on the map that are able to found cities. You can still do things to add player agency that is fun while also making the game easier for the AI to play.

 

[Kwami]

Fuel/Energy resources, yeah, those are as important as the game portrayed strategic resources.

But, unfortunately, they messed up that system, too. The restrictions on late game units were terrible.

If you had a decent amount of oil, then you could field a good army and go and conquer more oil. If you lacked oil, then you couldn't make any good units and getting any oil was tough. Same for the other late-game strategic resources. It was a win-more implementation

(And then your oil-using units would set the world on fire, too. That also wasn't great for gameplay.)

 

[McSpank01]

Which part of "pre-industrial" applies to WW2 exactly?

The iron/saltpeter/etc strategic resources nonsense was entirely and wholly ahistorical.

Fuel/Energy resources, yeah, those are as important as the game portrayed strategic resources. But the game took that model and expanded it to every strategic resource in history, and that was grossly ahistorical.

How did the Mongols build huge cavalry armies without massive herds of horses behind them? One of the reasons they developed in the way they did was because of geography and resources. Sure for something like Iron, it was easier to access for many nations, but they also traded a lot as well. Either way, I think removing this from the game has made decision making too simplistic.

 

[Evie]

Horses are about the worst example you could think of, because horses can be bred. Access to horses doens't depend on controlling a piece of land where horses naturally appear, it depends on taking the time and effort to actually breed and raise horses.

Which most everyone in most every non-jungle, non-complete-desert part of the world can do, though some cultures (eg, pastoral cultures) are better suited to than other - but this is about cultural lifestyle being better suited to raising large horse herds, not about "having better access to a natural resource".

(And in direct relation, the fundamental problem with all those strategic resources was that if you didn't have them in your territory, your rival country could prevent you from getting them. Which would never have happened historically, because all those resources were so commonplace that trying to deny them to a rival was a waste of effort).

As to the "either way", I wholly and entirely disagree with you ; removing it from the game is one of the best change the series has ever implemented.

 

[McSpank01]

Horses are about the worst example you could think of, because horses can be bred. Access to horses doens't depend on controlling a piece of land where horses naturally appear, it depends on taking the time and effort to actually breed and raise horses.

Which is easier to do for nomadic pastoral societies (the mongols) who travel around following herds than for settled ones, but which most everyone in most every non-jungle, non-complete-desert part of the world can do.

Not really, you need space to herd horses. The reason the Mongols had so many horses was because they had enormous herds, they lived on the Steppes and their entire culture was based around herding them. Many medieval armies were limited to how many horses they could field.

 

[Evie]

Again, that's a cultural (pastoral nomadism vs settled society) question, not a question of access to natural resources.

Doubly so because a large part of the cultural difference was between traditions leaning toward heavy cavalry (larger, more powerful horses that required vastly more (and higher quality) fodder that steppe grass just could not provide), versus the short, stocky Mongolian horses built for endurance and able to live on steppe grass alone - one horse was suited to nomadic pastoralism, another to settled heavy cavalry warfare. The European could not have raised more of their horses on the Steppe (actually, they would have raised even less), and the Mongolian could have raised even more horses if they had been allowed to practice their pastoral nomadism on rich farmland rather than semi-arid grass.

 

[McSpank01]

Again, that's a cultural (pastoral nomadism vs settled society) question, not a question of access to natural resources.

Doubly so because a large part of the cultural difference was between traditions leaning toward heavy cavalry (larger, more powerful horses that required vastly more (and higher quality) fodder that steppe grass just could not provide), versus the short, stocky Mongolian horses built for endurance and able to live on steppe grass alone - one horse was suited to nomadic pastoralism, another to settled heavy cavalry warfare. The European could not have raised more of their horses on the Steppe (actually, they would have raised even less), and the Mongolian could have raised even more horses if they had been allowed to practice their pastoral nomadism on rich farmland rather than semi-arid grass.

What you are describing is a complex relationship between culture and resources and geography, all interplaying to create a unique faction that has to leverage it's own advantages in battle. That is exactly what a Civ game should be aiming to replicate, and I think Civ 6 did an 'ok' job at that. Certainly it did it far better than Civ 7. Right now I can play as Mongolia because I collected some horses? Meh. It's just so basic.

 

[Evie]

No, it's not. You,re trying to fit the square peg of geographic determinism into the round hole of cultural differences.

If anything, historically, pastoral people end up on marginal land not because it's better suited to pastoralism or to raising horses, but because settled agrarian society tend to take the best, most fertile land (which they need, since you cannot do settled agrarianism on marginal land without massive land-use technology) and leave the marginal lands to pastoralist society that can survive there, but cannot even come close to achieving the same population density as the settled agrarian people. It's not the land that create the pastoral nomads, it's the pastoral nomads that end up on that land (because they get pushed out of all the better land).

Trying to use that to justify the in-game strategic resource system of III-VI is just...a joke.

 

[Kwami]

Right now I can play as Mongolia because I collected some horses? Meh. It's just so basic.

You know what's worse?

Playing Mongolia and finding out that you don't get any horses because the map says so. That's Civ VI.