Apparently in Multiplayer you can switch to any civ with no rules, like in Humankind. That's very disappointing to hear.

[Takfloyd]

From this interview:

I think for a lot of us, the civ switching sounds more acceptable in Civ VII thanks to the historical restrictions, avoiding the immersion-breaking transformations from Humankind. But in multiplayer it seems all that goes away, and Ed Beach basically says players have to come up with their own rules. As someone who exclusively plays multiplayer but cares strongly about historical authenticity, that is a huge bummer. It also just dumbs down the strategic element, because you can always just pick the best civ in the game for the victory condition you are doing best at so far. We'll probably see a lot less variety in what civs are picked because of that.

I hope for this to be resolved with a game setup option, where historical civ evolutions can be enforced or unrestricted. It should be an easy fix.

 

[AriochIV]

Who chooses what civs is going to be up to local player rules... so you can impose any limitations you want on your group.

If you're playing a shorter single-Age game with strangers, you're not going to be switching civs anyway.

 

[Siptah]

I'm actually happy about this. I don't see the downside at all. If you want to play a restricted game, set some rules in the game or in the chat. I'm also not convinced that it either dumbs down the strategic element to have more choices nor that the transformations are more immersion-breaking. VII's catchphrase is the multi-meaning "build something you believe in" after all. Opening up choices gets you closer to this in whatever meaning you want to highlight.

 

[Arent11]

From this interview:

I think for a lot of us, the civ switching sounds more acceptable in Civ VII thanks to the historical restrictions, avoiding the immersion-breaking transformations from Humankind. But in multiplayer it seems all that goes away, and Ed Beach basically says players have to come up with their own rules. As someone who exclusively plays multiplayer but cares strongly about historical authenticity, that is a huge bummer. It also just dumbs down the strategic element, because you can always just pick the best civ in the game for the victory condition you are doing best at so far. We'll probably see a lot less variety in what civs are picked because of that.

I hope for this to be resolved with a game setup option, where historical civ evolutions can be enforced or unrestricted. It should be an easy fix.

I assume there will be mods 2 days after publication that allow me to play Rome -> Rome -> Rome.

The problem is - I should obviously pay the modders to give me the game I want. And buy the game once those mods exist Which might be fast.

Btw., Ara History Untold is coming out next week and it has the classical 1 civ for the whole game. I dislike the regions a little, but maybe they are ok. Discarding the hex map is a big move, but I can't judge yet whether this works better or not.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Surely it's the only way to do switching in multiplayer?

 

[Kev1916]

As MP will have a Meta progess , the aim of the new game will be to rack up as many games as poss, in the shortest time with the more sessions you play the better the gameplay will get…

"historical authenticity" will be for the dedicated few

 

[Siptah]

"historical authenticity" does per definition not exist in computer games about human history

Fixed that for you

 

[Kev1916]

Fixed that for you

Well done you enjoy your night

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

They want you to use house rules. Given that MP is more about min-maxing than history, I don't see a problem here.

 

[Siptah]

How is it currently in civ VI MP? Are most games played with house rules, such as banned civs?

 

[pokiehl]

I think there’s enough ambiguity behind what Ed said that we can’t be 100% sure what the case is. I kind of took it to mean there would be game setup options we could choose that would dictate stuff like that.

 

[Takfloyd]

They want you to use house rules. Given that MP is more about min-maxing than history, I don't see a problem here.

According to whom is MP more about min-maxing than history?

Competitive multiplayer sure, but what about the much larger majority of us who only play casual multiplayer with friends? I've played Civ with dozens of people, and not one of them ever played competitively with strangers.

And if our house rule is playing by the actual rules as defined in single player, we would have to laboriously look up all the requirements for each civ for each age, and also spoil those progressions when part of the fun is to discover what civs you can become when reaching the new age. And what if two players want to become the same civ? With no in-game rules for who gets to pick first (the one with the highest score so far?) that's just bound to cause trouble.

It shouldn't be too much to ask to simply be able to have the same experience in single player and multiplayer. Reminds me of Civ V, which I quit playing after one game because it was impossible to have combat animations in multiplayer, which just broke my immersion. I don't play Civ to have a soulless speedy chess-like experience, I simply want to play those epic 100-hour Civ games that you can have in single player, with my friends.

 

[chaosprophet]

Surely it's the only way to do switching in multiplayer?

I think people may be mixing two things. In MP, you likely still have the same system: Being civ X and leader Y means a couple or so civs will be automatically unlocked for next era, but the other options need some requirements to be met to unlock, and the player can choose any option from the ones they unlocked for next age. So a human player stay the same in MP, but now as all or many are humans players, they all have the option, different from the AI that pics historical path whenever available.

So players would work the same in MP, just that in single player, if you want everything to go the more historical path, then you need to also follow it yourself when choosing you pick at age transition, and so would need every human player do the same on an MP match, hence house rules.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I think people may be mixing two things. In MP, you likely still have the same system: Being civ X and leader Y means a couple or so civs will be automatically unlocked for next era, but the other options need some requirements to be met to unlock, and the player can choose any option from the ones they unlocked for next age. So a human player stay the same in MP, but now as all or many are humans players, they all have the option, different from the AI that pics historical path whenever available.

So players would work the same in MP, just that in single player, if you want everything to go the more historical path, then you need to also follow it yourself when choosing you pick at age transition, and so would need every human player do the same on an MP match, hence house rules.

Right, that's how I understood it. The experience for the player will be identical, you will still be restricted based on your leader/civ choice and whatever you unlock through gameplay. It's just that you can't control what your friends do, whereas the AI have been coded to default down an available historical path.

The only open question for me is how they determine who picks first, don't think that has been addressed yet.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Right, that's how I understood it. The experience for the player will be identical, you will still be restricted based on your leader/civ choice and whatever you unlock through gameplay. It's just that you can't control what your friends do, whereas the AI have been coded to default down an available historical path.

The only open question for me is how they determine who picks first, don't think that has been addressed yet.

That's not how I understood the interview

 

[pokiehl]

According to whom is MP more about min-maxing than history?

Competitive multiplayer sure, but what about the much larger majority of us who only play casual multiplayer with friends? I've played Civ with dozens of people, and not one of them ever played competitively with strangers.

And if our house rule is playing by the actual rules as defined in single player, we would have to laboriously look up all the requirements for each civ for each age, and also spoil those progressions when part of the fun is to discover what civs you can become when reaching the new age. And what if two players want to become the same civ? With no in-game rules for who gets to pick first (the one with the highest score so far?) that's just bound to cause trouble.

It shouldn't be too much to ask to simply be able to have the same experience in single player and multiplayer. Reminds me of Civ V, which I quit playing after one game because it was impossible to have combat animations in multiplayer, which just broke my immersion. I don't play Civ to have a soulless speedy chess-like experience, I simply want to play those epic 100-hour Civ games that you can have in single player, with my friends.

I agree with your sentiment: MP to me is about bringing that same great single player experience to games with our friends.

Civ 6 also had annoying limitations: wonder videos, natural wonder videos, eureka pop-ups, etc. were all disabled.

I just want the MP experience to mirror single player as much as possible.

 

[Takfloyd]

I think people may be mixing two things. In MP, you likely still have the same system: Being civ X and leader Y means a couple or so civs will be automatically unlocked for next era, but the other options need some requirements to be met to unlock, and the player can choose any option from the ones they unlocked for next age. So a human player stay the same in MP, but now as all or many are humans players, they all have the option, different from the AI that pics historical path whenever available.

So players would work the same in MP, just that in single player, if you want everything to go the more historical path, then you need to also follow it yourself when choosing you pick at age transition, and so would need every human player do the same on an MP match, hence house rules.

This is most definitely not what Ed Beach said.

I agree with your sentiment: MP to me is about bringing that same great single player experience to games with our friends.

Civ 6 also had annoying limitations: wonder videos, natural wonder videos, eureka pop-ups, etc. were all disabled.

I just want the MP experience to mirror single player as much as possible.

Yes, all those limitations suck as well. My favourite multiplayer Civ game is IV, and we still need to use mods there simply to have wonder videos and tech popups. It's understandable, even essential, that the developers have features to cut the "chaff" from the multiplayer to speed things up for competitive players, but those need to be optional!

It's always felt like the devs believe single player and multiplayer Civ are fundamentally different things, when I'm certain the majority of multiplayer Civ players simply want to play the exact same game, but with friends.

 

[chaosprophet]

And if our house rule is playing by the actual rules as defined in single player, we would have to laboriously look up all the requirements for each civ for each age, and also spoil those progressions when part of the fun is to discover what civs you can become when reaching the new age. And what if two players want to become the same civ? With no in-game rules for who gets to pick first (the one with the highest score so far?) that's just bound to cause trouble.

It shouldn't be too much to ask to simply be able to have the same experience in single player and multiplayer. Reminds me of Civ V, which I quit playing after one game because it was impossible to have combat animations in multiplayer, which just broke my immersion. I don't play Civ to have a soulless speedy chess-like experience, I simply want to play those epic 100-hour Civ games that you can have in single player, with my friends.

The single player experience does allow the player to pick any civilization they want for the next age, the historical/regional ones being only the free unlocks.

From what was said before, there is apparently a screen that shows what civs you unlocked for the next age so far, but they haven't shown that screen in any video so far because that would spoil tons of civs in the game that they want to reveal little by little. Also from what we saw on the age transition screen in the antiquity gameplay, the screen where you pick the next civ does have a list for each of what unlocks it, so you could see then which says "Play as Y" to know then which ones are the historical paths for you.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The only open question for me is how they determine who picks first, don't think that has been addressed yet.

I would do it based on previous era score. With two options - forward (leader picks first) and backward (leader picks last).

That's not how I understood the interview

Yep, they said there are no limit, but, on the other hand, I really expect some MP settings there. And "only unlocked civs if available" is highly probably to be there.

 

[Krikkit1]

I see a few game options with regard to civ switching

AI prioritises “historical” civ choices (default on)
AI avoids duplicates if possible (default on)
AI will choose locked civ if only duplicates available (default ?)

Human players only get historical unlocks (default off) (Egypt can't go Mongols or Songhai, only Abbassids)
Human players unlock all civs (default off)
Human players can choose duplicate civs (default on)*** maybe not an option just always on.

So if I start Greeks and another Human player picks Rome we can both choose Normans (doesn't matter "who goes First")... although we won't both get the White Tower.