All Rise and no Fall

[acluewithout]

Sorry for the long post. But I think there are four things here, although they’re all related. There’s climate change, there’s human driven climate change, then there’s pollution, and lastly there’s exhausting resources.

Going in reverse order: Exhausting Reaources. I think game adequately deals with resources. Bonus resources and features can be harvested, and once they are their gone. Strategic resources can’t be harvested, but their availability is often limited (which theoretically could be a source or war or expansion). I don’t think having coal, oil or other resources exhausting would be either fun or accurate. I say accurate, because despite dire predictions, we haven’t actually run out of real world strategic resources. It seems to me that ‘running out of oil’ etc really only makes sense of Civ extended significantly into the future (which it doesn’t).

Pollution. While it doesn’t cover every nuance, I think Appeal does a good job of covering pollution, in the same way as I think housing does a good job of covering health / disease.

Man made climate change. I don’t think Civ should cover this, except maybe as a scenario. I don’t think it would be fun as a mechanic. And it would only be relevant so late in the game that I don’t think it matters.

Climate change. Okay. Leaving aside whether Civ should represent climate change or how it would do it, I think there’s a broader point.

Leaving out climate change is a huge gap in the game. First, the game is currently all about ‘playing the map’. That’s cool, but then having a completely static map (IMO) is a real missed opportunity.

Second, and more importantly, leaving out climate change is a pretty big thing to leave out of a strategic history game.

Look, Civ is not a simulation. But it does try to have analogues of real world things. So, you get warmonger penalties, have gold, have governments whatever. None of these things work the way they work in real life, but the mechanics do try to capture something of the feeling or sense of those things. That’s why we just got loyalty and flipping and Era scores - analogues for how civilisations in the real world was and wane.

Climate change is a huge gap. People mention slavery or disease as other things Civ doesn’t represent, but I think it does: ‘slavery’ to me is adequately covered by eg making cities production focused or whatever (basically, I just assume some slavery is going on in my early empire) and disease is covered by housing. But there is nothing which reflects climate change at all - there is no analogue.

And maybe there shouldn’t be. I can see how climate change could really screw up the game. But I do think it’s a big gap and one which feels more and more glaring as time goes on.

 

[acluewithout]

... The real question that the article raises which I think is a far better question is should the game do more with the rise and fall idea? I think civ has always been very conservative when it comes to implementing rise and fall mechanics for fear that it would demoralize the player too much...

This. (I also like some of posters suggestions.)

I don’t think that conservatism is wrong either- just look how miserable global happiness made people. But this conservatism does mean the game leaves out certain aspects of human history you might otherwise think would be covered.

More generally, I think there should be a way to fine tune difficulty more in the options - specifically AI agression and how tough loyalty and Era scores are. It shouldn’t be left to mods.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

But this conservatism does mean the game leaves out certain aspects of human history you might otherwise think would be covered.

Yeah, I feel like civ does not do enough with the concepts of popular uprisings, civil wars, rebellions, revolutions which have played huge roles in human history. I would love for those things to be better simulated in the game. If done in a cool way, I don't think they would cause the player to quit. I think the key would be that if the player "loses" a rebellion or revolution, that it does not mean that they lose the game or their empire. What I would do is give the player a choice to peacefully given in to the demands of the revolution or fight. The demands could be things like changing to a certain government or changing policy cards. So the player would get a pop up saying "the people are demanding that we change government to X. Do you agree? If you refuse, it will spark a revolution". If the player chooses "yes, give in to the demands", the government would change. If the player says "no", then X number of partisan units would appear on the map and would try to attack your capital. If they take the capital, the game would force you to change governments. That could be a neat way of implementing revolutions.

And frankly, the game should not be so afraid of having things like slavery, plagues or terrorists. Those are important parts of history too.

 

[Equilin]

Things about controversial features (like slavery) is that the game could be branded as encouraging it and that can really hurt the sales when the media jumps on it.
And RNG features can really demoralize players when things go wrong and the factors causing it are beyond their control (a few hours on EU4 and that feeling already hits me).

 

[killmeplease]

i dont get it why people abhor some random mechanics like climate change
but at the same time feel ok about e.g. meeting an agressive AI neighbour early in the game -- which is obviously random too and makes a huge impact on the game

 

[acluewithout]

I think the current “deal” is that there are really only two sources of RNG: the map and your opponents (other Civs and to a lesser extent barbarians).

This fits with the ‘board game’ design - think Settlers of Catan. Any RNG beyond that might feel more computer game than board game.

Obviously though there is some other minor RNG from great people, goody huts, and combat (within degrees), but this is pretty minor.