A neolithic age for Civ VII?

[Shadowhal]

I want to make a pitch for a brief Neolithic age for Civ VII, similar to what Humankind did.

I don't particularly expect this to be realised at this point in the design cycle but maybe it can become a game mode or mod. Civ VI had a lot of modes towards the end of its lifecycle.

So what does it actually involve?
Well, in Humankind it meant that you didn't start the game with the ability to found a city and thus "properly" start the game. You started with nomands and gained the ability to found a city by discovering (their version of) goodie huts and hunting wild animals. You also only chose your Civilization/ Culture at that point.
One slightly less drastic option for Civ VII could be to start with the founder but to get some benefits from waiting to found the city, eg additional population or some saved-up production. It could also be interesting to start with only a leader chosen and you pick your antiquity age Civ a few turns in. The delayed founding isn't as radical as it might seem, as the Polynesians (?) in Civ VI started in open water and had to find land first. So effectively a similar mechanic. And in Civ BE, some rivals arrived a few turns later.


Ok, I get what but ... why?!
The major advantage I'd see is a more natural opportunity to explore the immediate surroundings and feel less pressured to pick the ideal capital city spot. That was a really cool aspect of Humankind's very early game. I personally also liked the tension of how long to stay Neolothic vs when to settle down but that may be more divisive.
As for delaying civ choice, similar reason really. More of an opportunity to play the map, see what's there and how you want to let that influence your strategy. Or not, and just pick what you wanted to. It just sometimes feels frustrating to have large parameters of your strategy determined by starting choice and before the map even loads. Though that is less of an issue in VII with its changing civs. And ofc there is the counter-argument that if things become too homogeneous and in-game determined, game sessions tend to become more similar. While upfront uniqueness can railroad, it can also add more variation.


Anyway, just a post for others to come in and support the idea, to let it get traction. Or destroy it as an abomination on the franchise

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I really, really liked the idea of a 'wandering pre-city' age when it was first broached in Humankind.

Unfortunately, as in so many other good ideas they had, they did not apply it well.

One of the things that any early age should address, I've come to realize, is not just the pre-city settlement/exploration, but the pre-city Technologies. Humankind's Neolithic gave you mild bonuses to researching some techs once you settled into a city, but n chance to research anything in their Neolithic Age itself.

This is flat wrong.

Agriculture, Animal Husbandry/Domestication, low-temperature Pottery, Weaving, Fishing (from boats with nets) all came beore 'cities' were irst established in most of the world. To assume nothing will change in the way people make and do things until they are clustered together in cities is a complete misreading of the reality. Cities seem to have accelerated change in some areas of endeavor,j but it was non-city-dwelling and building central Asian pastorals who seem to have invented the spoked wheel chariot, the composite bow, domestication of horses and may have invented lost wax casting, a very sophisticated metal-working technique, and weaving. Having a city was NOT a requirement for Technological advance, as every Civ or Civ-like game seems to assume.

Getting that right would make a 'Neolithic' Pre-Age important enough to be a good addition to the game. Merely allowing more exploration of the map is minor by comparison.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm very interested in the pre-history period, but unfortunately I don't think it fits well into the scale of Civilization, either in terms of time or space. Prior to the development of agriculture there was earlier tech development, but it developed over thousands or tens of thousands of years. It's hard to have meaningful movement puttering around a potential city site for that amount of time on the Civilization scale. You can scale turns even more than is done currently, but that gets kind of silly at some point (we made camp! It took 500 years).

There's also the question of how interesting the Neolithic tech tree would be on the Civilization scale. In Master of Orion, there was an option to start pre-starflight, and there was a small set of pre-starflight techs that could be researched. It sounds like a cool idea, but it was a pointless waste of 10-20 minutes hitting the End Turn button, and no choices made during that period had any significant impact on later gameplay.

I think that in order to be really interesting, a pre-history era needs to be a game of its own with different scale and rules. I guess that with Civ7's Age system it's possible to shoe-horn it in as a new Age, but I think it would probably be better suited to a full standalone game, akin to Colonization or Beyond Earth.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I've quite liked the idea of it just as a brief preamble to the antiquity age, add a few extra "minus" turns so you've got some time for early map exploration until you research agriculture or something and unlock settling.

I also quite like the idea of having the option to remain nomadic and play the game out an alternative way a la the Huns or the Mongols until later in the game when you finally do decide to settle. It could be a really interesting different way to play that shakes things up in the earlier ages and makes more of a threat / competition for space, but it would be a really tricky thing to balance

 

[Evolena]

I don't think it would fit well with
* the new way the map is generated, from the Leader and Civ starting bias, instead of placing the settler on a pre-generated map somewhere somewhat fitting
* the fact that you start without any unit besides the founder, and you can fast-build (in a city) the one of your choice in 1 turn.

So a pre-age would shake a lot of these new paradigms.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

What could be interresting is to give 3-4 turns with the initial settler. Settling your capital would end the age instantly.

This would allow to move a few tiles awy from the initial spot to optimize your first turns. You lose a lot compared to other players if you have to spend 1-2 turns to find an adequate spot (because you have to cross a river or a hill), the first turns being essentials for a good start. Therefore if you have to move your settler you are already hindered...

Those 3-4 "preturns" would put everyone on the same footing. Once you settle it ends the "neolitic age" for you, and the antiquity begins once everyone has settled (or exhausted their moves).

 

[Krajzen]

I want to make a pitch for a brief Neolithic age for Civ VII, similar to what Humankind did.

I don't particularly expect this to be realised at this point in the design cycle but maybe it can become a game mode or mod. Civ VI had a lot of modes towards the end of its lifecycle.

So what does it actually involve?
Well, in Humankind it meant that you didn't start the game with the ability to found a city and thus "properly" start the game. You started with nomands and gained the ability to found a city by discovering (their version of) goodie huts and hunting wild animals. You also only chose your Civilization/ Culture at that point.
One slightly less drastic option for Civ VII could be to start with the founder but to get some benefits from waiting to found the city, eg additional population or some saved-up production. It could also be interesting to start with only a leader chosen and you pick your antiquity age Civ a few turns in. The delayed founding isn't as radical as it might seem, as the Polynesians (?) in Civ VI started in open water and had to find land first. So effectively a similar mechanic. And in Civ BE, some rivals arrived a few turns later.


Ok, I get what but ... why?!
The major advantage I'd see is a more natural opportunity to explore the immediate surroundings and feel less pressured to pick the ideal capital city spot. That was a really cool aspect of Humankind's very early game. I personally also liked the tension of how long to stay Neolothic vs when to settle down but that may be more divisive.
As for delaying civ choice, similar reason really. More of an opportunity to play the map, see what's there and how you want to let that influence your strategy. Or not, and just pick what you wanted to. It just sometimes feels frustrating to have large parameters of your strategy determined by starting choice and before the map even loads. Though that is less of an issue in VII with its changing civs. And ofc there is the counter-argument that if things become too homogeneous and in-game determined, game sessions tend to become more similar. While upfront uniqueness can railroad, it can also add more variation.


Anyway, just a post for others to come in and support the idea, to let it get traction. Or destroy it as an abomination on the franchise

I like your argumentation for tiny Neolithic era as simply the time for a player to choose comfortable location for the capital. It would actually work better in civ7 without starting warrior and instant always chaotic evil barbarian swarms, as it would disable a ton of possibly frustrating or gamey mess early game has always generated bc of that (stealing settlers and workers from other players by tricking their escorts, for example).

The problem I see now is that, well, nothing really stops you from doing this already, without slapping like microscopic 10 turn long "neolithic era" on top of it Meanwhile AIs really shouldn't do this at all as that would inevitably lead them to settling cities in terrible locations and engaging in dumb crippling misadventures (see the ordeals of AI Maori in civ6), their initial settling spots should be pre-determined in the locations optimal for development and fitting their civs strengths.

I also wanted to point out that a lot of neolithic era exploration kinda ruins the exploring pacing of the 4X games like this, because in Humankind context it meant you can discover like half of huge continent even before finding your first city, which felt really bizarre (it's as if builders of Catal Huyuk or Stonehenge knew what's going on in India and each other's spots).

 

[I was NC]

Meanwhile AIs really shouldn't do this at all as that would inevitably lead them to settling cities in terrible locations and engaging in dumb crippling misadventures...

What I hate most in Civ is founding a city on the not-best spot, which is especially true for the capital. Admittedly my approach (before only playing TSL) was to
-save immediately,
-wander around,
-reload after finding the best location (at most 1 or 2 tiles away),
-actually start for real or go back to the main menu to try again.

So the idea in the OP of formalizing and even expanding that practice sounded great! The game only improves when players have more real, consequential choices. However the above quote does raise a valid concern. Is the AI better at picking a starting point than finding spots later?

 

[UWHabs]

What could be interresting is to give 3-4 turns with the initial settler. Settling your capital would end the age instantly.

This would allow to move a few tiles awy from the initial spot to optimize your first turns. You lose a lot compared to other players if you have to spend 1-2 turns to find an adequate spot (because you have to cross a river or a hill), the first turns being essentials for a good start. Therefore if you have to move your settler you are already hindered...

Those 3-4 "preturns" would put everyone on the same footing. Once you settle it ends the "neolitic age" for you, and the antiquity begins once everyone has settled (or exhausted their moves).

Yeah, I wouldn't hate that. The way early turns work, every turn you skip settling just is so valuable at that point, I'd love to have like a 3ish turn grace period to consider an alternate. But at that point, you may as well just run it in the BE style where you get a wider view of the start location, and you basically click which tile you want your settler (founder) to start on.

 

[chaosprophet]

What could be interresting is to give 3-4 turns with the initial settler. Settling your capital would end the age instantly.

This would allow to move a few tiles awy from the initial spot to optimize your first turns. You lose a lot compared to other players if you have to spend 1-2 turns to find an adequate spot (because you have to cross a river or a hill), the first turns being essentials for a good start. Therefore if you have to move your settler you are already hindered...

Those 3-4 "preturns" would put everyone on the same footing. Once you settle it ends the "neolitic age" for you, and the antiquity begins once everyone has settled (or exhausted their moves).

Something on these lines I think it would be nice, basically just a a few turns to decide a best spot around your initial point to settle and then have everyone start where they settle at the same point.

I don't think it would fit well with
* the new way the map is generated, from the Leader and Civ starting bias, instead of placing the settler on a pre-generated map somewhere somewhat fitting
* the fact that you start without any unit besides the founder, and you can fast-build (in a city) the one of your choice in 1 turn.

So a pre-age would shake a lot of these new paradigms.

You have a point there. Especially, iirc, they said ine one stream they even considered not having the founder unit and instead just have the capital city established, but did it anyway because thinks players like to click to found their capital. Which means they are at least very confident on their new map generation to make the starting location be really the best point to settle, at least in the few tiles around you.

 

[pokiehl]

I don't really want to see a Neolithic Age in Civ.

It amounted to an artificial way to extend the game in Humankind and just felt boring.

What could be interresting is to give 3-4 turns with the initial settler. Settling your capital would end the age instantly.

This would allow to move a few tiles awy from the initial spot to optimize your first turns. You lose a lot compared to other players if you have to spend 1-2 turns to find an adequate spot (because you have to cross a river or a hill), the first turns being essentials for a good start. Therefore if you have to move your settler you are already hindered...

Those 3-4 "preturns" would put everyone on the same footing. Once you settle it ends the "neolitic age" for you, and the antiquity begins once everyone has settled (or exhausted their moves).

As Krazjen pointed out, we can already do this. You have the freedom to just not settle on turn 1.

I think putting in this beginning phase of the game where you have the luxury to find the perfect spot is a bad idea. It removes a huge chunk of the fun tension of the early game. You're supposed to feel uneasy about taking the risk of not settling on turn 1. Otherwise, you're free to save scum and get the best spot if you want to play that way.

 

[Krikkit1]

The founder unit looked as if it had a move of 3.
Just reveal the terrain within 5 tiles (so all the areas that can be part of your 3 radius capital if you move 2 and then settle…let the founder ignore terrain stops like the scout)

 

[kaspergm]

I don't really see the point of this either. I do agree, however, that we should know the terrain around the location where we start, at least 5 hex radius.

 

[pokiehl]

One cool side effect of the starting settler being its own unique unit ("Founder") is that it makes modding bonuses for it that much easier, meaning future settlers won't get affected. It'll likely be trivial to do something like increase the Founder's vision to more hexes, increase movement, etc.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think it would be an interesting concept to have several free turns of scouting. Like you start with Founder and one Warrior units and have Agriculture in development for 5 turns, during which you could scout and pick the best position without losing any turns to others. Could be fun, but requires careful testing, because I foresee common cases where two civs start moving towards each other, messing the map.

 

[uppi]

In my opinion, the problem with free turns of scouting would be that you are only doing that and nothing else that makes civ civ. You are not researching anything, you are not producing anything, you are not managing a city, and so on

Maybe you could at first have a camp, which works like a city, except that you can move it (maybe at a const?) until you start building the first permanent building?

 

[Venceslau Pietro Pietra]

Neolithic era in humankind only served to give me a chance to lose my desired civ to ai in ancient age, feeling like playing a harrapans game today? good lucky trying to get them in first place,

 

[The Fanatical]

I would have preferred a Bronze Age before the Antiquity Age (or it could have been named Classical), where civilizations before 1000 BC would have been included. This would have allowed both Phoenicia and Carthage to be part of the game, or both the Mycenaeans and Classical Greece. That's one thing Humankind did that I liked a lot because some gaming studios tend to categorize together the Bronze and Iron ages.

Unfortunately, such an inclusion not only is highly unlikely based on the game's design of fewer eras, but a lot of early technologies and civics will need to be rearranged or replaced in the ages of Antiquity and Exploration, so it's out of the question. I don't know about a Neolithic Age, though. The only thing interesting from Humankind's Neolithic Era was the combatable wild prehistoric animals, and the main focus of such an age will be the exploration of the map, which is limited in the beginning anyway.

 

[Uberfrog]

This was not a good feature in Humankind and I would not want to see it in Civ 7.

The problem is that Civ is fundamentally a game about cities. Any phase of the game without a settlement is just playing an exploration minigame while waiting for the real game to begin. It adds very little and does little justice to the long period of history it attempts to represent.

Issues about random starts and optimal first city spots are best viewed as a strategic question for the player. Is it better to settle in place or spend a turn or two moving the settler? This is the whole reason for giving the player a starting settler instead of a starting city. It’s supposed to be a choice.

If the player wishes to reload the seed after exploring for a few turns that is obviously quite alright; they are effectively just cheating at solitaire.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The problem is that Civ is fundamentally a game about cities.

This statement pretty much sums it up. As long as Civ remains a game centered on the City as the source of everything you do in the game, a 'pre-city' option is just window-dressing and, all too frequently, a waste of game time.

For those who want to get a taste of a Civilization Game pre-city option that actually works on the game's terms, there are trwo Mods available for Civ VI:

Faster Starting Settlers
Expanded Initial Vision.

These two give your starting Settler basically a double move largely ignoring terrain on the first turn, while also giving you about twice the vision distance over the terrain at the start.

This, basically, recreates your 'initial exploration' without wasting time moving an initial unit around the map for several turns, and allows you to move your Settler in a radius over about 6 - 8 tiles around the nominal starting position to find a better one.

I have not played Civ VI without these two Mods for years now, and would not even consider playing the game without them. It eliminates a great deal of Civ VI's idiotic starting positions (England or Norway 5 tiles from the coast, Nubia in plains 6 tiles from the nearest desert, etc) and the blind ignorance of the usual starting position - as if your digital people just arrived on the continent and nobody ever strayed more than a few kilometers from the rest of the tribe, even when hunting.

Until Civ changes it's entire outlook on cities and civilization (fat chance) something like this is all the game needs. I would strenuously argue that an initial Tech advantage based on Civ characteristics or starting position is also needed, but as long as everybody starts Equal, I can live without it - until maybe Civ VIII.