7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[Gorbles]

The beauty of the game is that it wasn't guaranteed, and you need to be able to think on your feet if it doesn't happen, and change your strategy.. yes STRATEGY.

I disagree that this is in any way "beauty". It's also compounded by the fact that later-era resource unlocks in VI required empty hexes. I can see why it was done, coming from the earlier games, and I respect people who have a different opinion, but I don't think it's anywhere near clear-cut to spell out STRATEGY in allcaps given the drawbacks of how resource allocation worked in VI. The devs chose another approach. The resource game has been quite heavily reworked (and ties into both trade and diplomacy, which are moderately-to-substantially different here too. And that's before I even start on Happiness).

I'm not even convinced by the argument that if you aren't playing with horses you aren't playing Mongolia.

That was something someone else said. But I can see their argument, given the many and varied discussions about immersion, and how leaders vs. civs detract from what you feel you're playing as. For players for which that feeling is a concern, it'd be surprising if not being able to use Horses wasn't immersion-breaking (especially as the only way to "fix" it is to reload with a different seed). But it's impossible to know for sure, given how personal immersion tends to be.

Anyway, the whole theme of Civ 6 was 'Play the map'. There was a lot of thinking put in, to making sure that players need to adapt to the map, that there really was an interplay between geography and shaping your civ. Landlocked civs would struggle to get sailing techs because its much harder to get eurekas, and coastal civs could accelerate their progress by focusing on naval tech. It was a good system, and it applied to resources as well.

I do very much miss that and Civ 7 is a big step backwards when it comes to the map, which seems much less relevant.

I think the map is absolutely still important, because you still want resources. Having to trade or go to war with someone because I want their resources is still a minigame you engage in (literally, if you're interested in Legacy Paths).

Eurekas were important in their own way. They didn't require strategic resources in any way, shape or form, and that interplay would've existed (mainly thanks to how strong Eurekas were) regardless.

 

[Evie]

Again, you're ignoring the part where this would result in very wild swings in difficulty levels - something that should be left to chosing your difficulty, not the result of random map generation slapping you in the face.

 

[McSpank01]

I disagree that this is in any way "beauty". It's also compounded by the fact that later-era resource unlocks in VI required empty hexes. I can see why it was done, coming from the earlier games, and I respect people who have a different opinion, but I don't think it's anywhere near clear-cut to spell out STRATEGY in allcaps given the drawbacks of how resource allocation worked in VI. The devs chose another approach. The resource game has been quite heavily reworked (and ties into both trade and diplomacy, which are moderately-to-substantially different here too. And that's before I even start on Happiness).

I'm not saying there weren't flaws in the way resources spawned, but it certainly led to a system where you needed to actually make decisions based on what was in front of you, not just blindly playing the automatic strategy you were planning from turn 1.

For players for which that feeling is a concern, it'd be surprising if not being able to use Horses wasn't immersion-breaking (especially as the only way to "fix" it is to reload with a different seed). But it's impossible to know for sure, given how personal immersion tends to be.

Yeah but it would be very rare for it to happen, every player had a start bias. If you can't handle the one time it does happen and have to rage quit because of it, then i'm sorry.

I think the map is absolutely still important, because you still want resources. Having to trade or go to war with someone because I want their resources is still a minigame you engage in (literally, if you're interested in Legacy Paths).

There are maybe 2 or 3 resources that have any real relevance to city planning in Civ 7.

Eurekas were important in their own way. They didn't require strategic resources in any way, shape or form, and that interplay would've existed (mainly thanks to how strong Eurekas were) regardless.

Iron working did for starters.

Again, you're ignoring the part where this would result in very wild swings in difficulty levels - something that should be left to chosing your difficulty, not the result of random map generation slapping you in the face.

So if you didn't get horses as Mongolia you literally cannot think of another way to win the game?

 

[Evie]

It's not about whether I can think of a way to win or not. It's about whether winning is harder or not.

If players want easier game setting, they shouldn't get RNGd into significantly harder games. Whether they can think of a way to win or not.

 

[McSpank01]

It's not about whether I can think of a way to win or not. It's about whether winning is harder or not.

If players want easier game setting, they shouldn't get RNGd into significantly harder games. Whether they can think of a way to win or not.

1. Most likely you will get horses for your UU
2. If not find a way to get them, you aren’t limited to resources directly next to you
3. Your whole strategy can’t be so simplified as ‘get UU = win’ if that is how you play then you need to get better

 

[Gorbles]

I'm not saying there weren't flaws in the way resources spawned, but it certainly led to a system where you needed to actually make decisions based on what was in front of you, not just blindly playing the automatic strategy you were planning from turn 1.

And?

Is that rationale enough to keep it? Does that mean no complexity or strategic depth can be added elsewhere (see: Independent Powers actually being a choice vs. razing Barbs or farming City-States, for a single example off of the top of my head).

Yeah but it would be very rare for it to happen, every player had a start bias. If you can't handle the one time it does happen and have to rage quit because of it, then i'm sorry.

I'd say "rare" more than "very rare", given the amount of starts I've had disrupted, but I get the feeling that characterising player preference as "rage quitting" is inherently unproductive.

You seem to be weighting preference you disagree with differently to preference that you agree with. I can't help there. The design remains flawed in VI, nomatter how much you like it.

There are maybe 2 or 3 resources that have any real relevance to city planning in Civ 7.

Literally anything that gives Happiness is relevant. The fact some are city-only are relevant. The fact that there are slotted vs. unslotted bonuses are relevant.

Iron working did for starters.

Yes, and that works in a fundamentally different way to Horses (it's generated upon a particular research), and comes early enough in the game that spare hexes are guaranteed (unlike Modern resources like Aluminium or Uranium)

 

[King of Prussia]

So if you didn't get horses as Mongolia you literally cannot think of another way to win the game?

Why are you playing Mongolia if you arent going to use any of their unique mechanics/troops/abilities? Can you win the game? Sure. Is it fun? Not particularly. Why play them over someone else then? Why not just play a civ with nothing to it? If RNG gives you no horses, are you going to reroll or play it out? If i was a betting man, Id wager most would just reroll/quit rather than play mongolia with 0 horses.

You keep bringing up playing the map and adapting, as if that isnt something you do in Civ 7 but did in 6. You very much play the map in 7, trying to get as many resources as possible. Just like in 6, you are looking for the best adjacency for your buildings/districts. You are looking for ideal ground to defend against possible attacks. You look for strategics to give you an upper hand in combat.

 

[Evie]

1. Most likely you will get horses for your UU
2. If not find a way to get them, you aren’t limited to resources directly next to you
3. Your whole strategy can’t be so simplified as ‘get UU = win’ if that is how you play then you need to get better

No. Nobody "needs" to get better. Easier difficulty levels exist precisely to accomodate people who want a chill, easily planned game that they can use to relax. Not everyone who plays a game is looking for a challenge.

The one thing here this game doesn't need is this brand of "git gud" elitist gatekeeping.

 

[Core Imposter]

No. Nobody "needs" to get better. Easier difficulty levels exist precisely to accomodate people who want a chill, easily planned game that they can use to relax. Not everyone who plays a game is looking for a challenge.

The one thing here this game doesn't need is this brand of "git gud" elitist gatekeeping.

I think that all Civ games should have a mode for casual players, but the whole point of Civ is to put pressure on the player and to eat them up and spit them out if they can't cut it.

Moderator Action: Edited post to use less pointed language. -lymond

 

[protocol7]

It’s kind of like chess in that regard, some people like playing low Elo bots and some people like playing the highest rated people who will play with them.

Both are cool and there’s no need to characterise one as better or worse, they are just different styles, different commitment levels, different personalities. There can be room for everyone. I just appreciate (in that example) that people like the game of chess.

I play both chess and civ on the hardest levels I can and enjoy studying the game to play my best. But that’s just my personality, nothing to feel superior about vs someone who wouldn’t have fun that way and it would be kind of toxic to act like that.

It does make some conversations tricky though as people expect different things out of the game and have wholly different experiences playing depending on where they are on that spectrum, and it’s common for people from far ends to not even realise they are misunderstanding each other. Normally we have the strategy forum for deep dive strategic analysis but with civ7 it’s dead for whatever reason and everyone is bumping into each other here in general, when otherwise people might have filtered out into different subforums more.

 

[Kwami]

I'm not even convinced by the argument that if you aren't playing with horses you aren't playing Mongolia. What are you doing for the 80% of the game where your UU is either not available or not relevant? What do you do when horses become obselete? Do you just quit, because it's not Mongolia any more? I don't see how that really makes sense. Apply the same logic to all other civs.

This is exactly the problem that the developers attempted to solve in VII with eras and civ switching!

Anyway, the whole theme of Civ 6 was 'Play the map'. There was a lot of thinking put in, to making sure that players need to adapt to the map, that there really was an interplay between geography and shaping your civ. Landlocked civs would struggle to get sailing techs because its much harder to get eurekas, and coastal civs could accelerate their progress by focusing on naval tech. It was a good system, and it applied to resources as well.

That was a neat idea, but it didn't really matter all that much. You could get almost all of the eurekas in almost every game if you wanted to. And if you didn't, it didn't really matter. You'd still win.

Why are you playing Mongolia if you arent going to use any of their unique mechanics/troops/abilities? Can you win the game? Sure. Is it fun? Not particularly. Why play them over someone else then? Why not just play a civ with nothing to it? If RNG gives you no horses, are you going to reroll or play it out? If i was a betting man, Id wager most would just reroll/quit rather than play mongolia with 0 horses.

Precisely.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think that all Civ games should have a wimp mode for wimps and noodles but the whole point of Civ is to put pressure on the player and to eat them up and spit them out if they can't cut it.

That's not the point of civ... that's the point of Higher difficulty levels in civ.
If a player that could easily win on Deity for CivN decides to play on Settler because they find that more fun.... then that is fine. and Settler should give a different experience than Deity.

 

[socratic]

Maybe locking units behind resources like Civ6 is a bit much, but there should definitely be some map effect on units. Right now most militaries feel samey. Buffing the bonuses we get from resources like Iron can encourage variety without limiting what units you can build

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Maybe locking units behind resources like Civ6 is a bit much, but there should definitely be some map effect on units. Right now most militaries feel samey. Buffing the bonuses we get from resources like Iron can encourage variety without limiting what units you can build

The AI militaries, at least,"feel samey" because Cavalry has all the capabilities of infantry - they can attack walls, fortify on defense, get combat bonuses from resources - but also have better mobility and slightly higher base combat factors. That makes them the default Best Choice from Exploration Age on.

I have faced AI armies in Exploration that were all cavalry, all cavalry reinforcements, all cavalry garrisons, all cavalry all the time.

The other problem is that the AI will build its UU in favor of any other unit - Rome, for example, in my last game built all Legions and built no ranged or cavalry units at all. The Legion is a good unit, but doesn't defend a settlement well without any ranged support, making for a very short, very one-sided war with them.

The answer to these practices is to properly balance infantry - cavalry - ranged units as to their cost and capabilities vis-a-vis the terrain and tactical use so that each has something resembling its historical effect, and then do the same to Unique Units so that the AI does not prefer them even when they are not appropriate.

Resources and their effects may be part of that, but not necessarily, since relating anything to resource availability risks horrendous problems with map generation of resources - see the discussions on the current Exploration Age Treasure Fleet problems, almost all of which are based on the bad programming of Distant Lands resource availability for the Fleets.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Anyway, the whole theme of Civ 6 was 'Play the map'. There was a lot of thinking put in, to making sure that players need to adapt to the map, that there really was an interplay between geography and shaping your civ.

Starting with desert north, ocean east, ice south and an aggressive civ west or some city-States is a no brainer : crank out units as quickly as possible and conquer all what's in sight. If you can. (principally dependent on the game difficulty settings) If you cannot, then it's game over. That's not what I call a fair map generator. It's pretty crazy even. Just see how many "impossible" starts there is in the Strange/Funny Screenshots topic. Enlarge the possibility a little bit, it still says the map generator is crazy. Civ7 is a bit better on that side, I say a bit because I rarely could see a juicy location to build a city on, I mean like "very exciting and my empire will grow nicely", like in Civ4 or even 5. I launched Civ4 again a year ago and one thing I did notice is that the map has nearly very regularly good food spots to settle, on the basis on merely overlapping big fat cross with some exceptions. Hey, maybe it's mechanical, but at least the player felt rewarded for expanding. I've been told that the designer of Civ4 has made Old World. I tried it and saw presets of cities on the map and nowhere else ! That's called going into the heart of your subject. And I do agree with him : I think he got the thing right.
Choosing a city location in 6 or even 7 has always been... embarrassing to me. Now I probably didn't put enough thinking into it, but it was basically evil or less evil. Not very exciting.

 

[Kev1916]

Preferring to not get stuffed by mapgen doesn't mean I or anyone prefers it "easier". You preferring an (RNG) challenge that only arises due to issues in resource allocation during the mapgen step is nothing more than preference. It's not something that reliably presents a challenge.

Short version: you can like it, but that doesn't make it good design, or what is in VII inferior.
—

The vast majority of decent 4X games have resources in it to collect and monopolise.

Many are used to build or maintain military units , what your looking at is more of a board game effect.

Anyway civ vii could have kept resources as a means of building certain types of units with a few tweaks to the trader system and allow the player to buy horses.

Then again just less detail to code in and a few more clicks , can’t be having more depth.
Anyways you don’t start as Mongolia any more , plenty time to get horses , and you only play them for one act

 

[McSpank01]

I

Why are you playing Mongolia if you arent going to use any of their unique mechanics/troops/abilities? Can you win the game? Sure. Is it fun? Not particularly. Why play them over someone else then? Why not just play a civ with nothing to it? If RNG gives you no horses, are you going to reroll or play it out? If i was a betting man, Id wager most would just reroll/quit rather than play mongolia with 0 horses.

You can play as Genghis Khan of Mongolia and do plenty well without any horses. He has unique abilities, a unique building, there are units like chariots that don’t even need horses, and later cavalry tech units don’t need horses either. The idea that Mongolia was only defined by its ability to use one unit is nonsense. That is why Firaxis designed their leaders and civs in the way they did, so they weren’t totally one dimensional.

You keep bringing up playing the map and adapting, as if that isnt something you do in Civ 7 but did in 6. You very much play the map in 7, trying to get as many resources as possible. Just like in 6, you are looking for the best adjacency for your buildings/districts.

Of all the games I’ve played in Civ 7 I barely even notice many features on the map. The only major thing to pay attention to is the coast line so I can build ships later. Adjacency is not impactful enough to build around and you can make anything work in any location. Individual resources don’t do much and certainly are not worth changing your plans over. You can pretty much play an entire game and not worry about the map

 

[Gorbles]

Anyway civ vii could have kept resources as a means of building certain types of units with a few tweaks to the trader system and allow the player to buy horses.

Could've done. Still wouldn't have made it a good design. Relying on pRNG for primary access to a feature usually isn't.

 

[protocol7]

I don't know, I'd have liked it if it was required and would install a mod that implemented it. The only thing I do with civ7 maps is look for camels and build cities there, otherwise doesn't matter. So maybe it's not a clear cut good design/bad design thing. Dwarf Fortress is an example of a fun, well designed game that will screw you with RNG. Most roguelikes/roguelites as well. I wouldn't say all those games have bad design because they gate features behind pRNG. I essentially play Civ games as a roguelite, and I know from comments in other strategy forums others do too.

I think this is one of those things that come down to what you're trying to get out of the game, what difficulty level you play at, and other considerations. Neither kind of player is wrong (at least in my opinion) but their desires are at cross-purposes. And there's more than two kinds of players so it's a multidimensional thing Hopefully they continue to embrace optionality as they seem to be in the delayed patch and through making the "balanced" map option not the default, and then everyone can find their own fun. Otherwise, good design is when they make features I like, and bad design is when they make features other people like is probably overly reductive.

 

[Kev1916]

Could've done. Still wouldn't have made it a good design. Relying on pRNG for primary access to a feature usually isn't.

Yea sure your right and other games got it wrong .
Civ vii ofc nailed it and it’s just better to forget all about Genghis Khan .