Are we still ‘playing the map’?

acluewithout

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Civ 6 was all about ‘playing the map’.

Playing the map means player should expect to decide and adjust strategy based on the actual terrain being played. Districts (particularly adjacency bonuses) were a big part of this, as was 1UPT. But builders / improvement, water / housing, tech / Eurekas, resources, disasters, governors, and other mechanics all reinforced this.

Playing the map was meant to drive another core idea - interesting decisions. Players had two tech trees to chase, different resources that worked in different ways (hammer, gold, & faith could all buy units, but in very different ways), policy cards they could swap in or out but limited by the type of government etc etc. These choices weren’t simply good or bad, or +2 this but -1 this, but were generally more ‘spikey’ meaning a choice could be good or bad or both depending on the exact situation. The idea was that all these choices would be driven by players having to adapt to their environment. No four city tall Civ 5 clicking click until rocket launch every game - instead, tough choices. Do I keep the governor here to keep leveraging adjacency yield, or move them to reduce disloyalty, or can I just handle disloyalty with more population or raising that encroaching city.

In Civ 7, District appear to be simplified. I don’t improve land, just allocate population, and no choice on improvements. Resources seem to be all the same. Governments appear simplified, each government can seeming slot any card. I’m getting bonuses by leveling up my Civ or leader, almost like Civ 5 policies / tenets, which comes with the risk that like Civ 5 that you just have one or a few always good optimal strategies.

And then on top of that, every Age every Civ seemingly gets levelled up to the next tech level and has to replace all their buildings etc - it’s not clear choices will have long term consequences or payoffs. Instead, it seems like you’re just in a loop of having to hustle / grind every Age.

I’m not saying Civ 7 has been dumbed down or anything. I’m just seeing it looks less ‘play the map’ at the moment, and more fundamentally less hard situational choices, and instead more just endless short term grind and or optimise + more ‘just pick how you want to win’ decisions rather than genuine hard choices and trade-offs.

I wasn’t worried until I listen to some YouTubers that had played the game. They were all super excited about all the QOL changes and getting rid of restrictions that let them leverage abilities and units. But I think part of the greater QOL and freedom they are enjoying is the flip side of not having to take trade-offs to pursue certain strategies.

I’m not panicking just yet. And I’m not calling out any particular mechanic as a deal breaker either. But at the moment, the overall feel is the game it’s going to be less ‘map’, less ‘puzzle’, less ‘hard, situational choices’, and more ‘every strategy is viable all the time’ and then just picking the right things to stack on top of each other again and again.

Early days. Not much information, and all very work in progress. But is anyone else getting the same vibe?
 
It's an interesting question; certainly if you oversimplify too much then it reduces the tactical choices that the player has. Hard to say at this stage, it could just be that you now have different choices to make, and so far it seems that these could be more macro than micro. I do share some of your concern about how Ages work.

On the flip side, whilst I love VI and have played it a great deal, a lot of these "tough choices" are an illusion, really.
 
Civ 6 was all about ‘playing the map’.

Playing the map means player should expect to decide and adjust strategy based on the actual terrain being played. Districts (particularly adjacency bonuses) were a big part of this, as was 1UPT. But builders / improvement, water / housing, tech / Eurekas, resources, disasters, governors, and other mechanics all reinforced this.

Playing the map was meant to drive another core idea - interesting decisions. Players had two tech trees to chase, different resources that worked in different ways (hammer, gold, & faith could all buy units, but in very different ways), policy cards they could swap in or out but limited by the type of government etc etc. These choices weren’t simply good or bad, or +2 this but -1 this, but were generally more ‘spikey’ meaning a choice could be good or bad or both depending on the exact situation. The idea was that all these choices would be driven by players having to adapt to their environment. No four city tall Civ 5 clicking click until rocket launch every game - instead, tough choices. Do I keep the governor here to keep leveraging adjacency yield, or move them to reduce disloyalty, or can I just handle disloyalty with more population or raising that encroaching city.

In Civ 7, District appear to be simplified. I don’t improve land, just allocate population, and no choice on improvements. Resources seem to be all the same. Governments appear simplified, each government can seeming slot any card. I’m getting bonuses by leveling up my Civ or leader, almost like Civ 5 policies / tenets, which comes with the risk that like Civ 5 that you just have one or a few always good optimal strategies.

And then on top of that, every Age every Civ seemingly gets levelled up to the next tech level and has to replace all their buildings etc - it’s not clear choices will have long term consequences or payoffs. Instead, it seems like you’re just in a loop of having to hustle / grind every Age.

I’m not saying Civ 7 has been dumbed down or anything. I’m just seeing it looks less ‘play the map’ at the moment, and more fundamentally less hard situational choices, and instead more just endless short term grind and or optimise + more ‘just pick how you want to win’ decisions rather than genuine hard choices and trade-offs.

I wasn’t worried until I listen to some YouTubers that had played the game. They were all super excited about all the QOL changes and getting rid of restrictions that let them leverage abilities and units. But I think part of the greater QOL and freedom they are enjoying is the flip side of not having to take trade-offs to pursue certain strategies.

I’m not panicking just yet. And I’m not calling out any particular mechanic as a deal breaker either. But at the moment, the overall feel is the game it’s going to be less ‘map’, less ‘puzzle’, less ‘hard, situational choices’, and more ‘every strategy is viable all the time’ and then just picking the right things to stack on top of each other again and again.

Early days. Not much information, and all very work in progress. But is anyone else getting the same vibe?

My initial reaction (not having seen any gameplay videos, of course) is that the game seems to be more 5 than Civ VI.

That does worry me as I thought 5 was horrendous.

I am concerned about things looking pretty straightforward. However, typically Civ games start simpler then add complexity. So maybe that's the case here.

Perhaps they are chasing a bigger audience and perhaps us Fanatics aren't the target audience? Possible, too.

Whatever the case, simplified and streamlined may help the AI, at the very least.
 
Civs don’t replace All their buildings, some are “Ageless” or “Persistent.”

And the Urban Districts seem more interesting, limit to number of buildings…but no limits to type of building by type of district.

The improvements (Rural Districts) do seem simplified but probably because the Urban Districts take up any different “improvements” that aren’t the standard farm/mine.
 
My initial reaction (not having seen any gameplay videos, of course) is that the game seems to be more 5 than Civ VI.

That does worry me as I thought 5 was horrendous.
My thoughts exactly.
 
I loved Civ 5, I don't know what you lot are on about. Less invasive districts, less micro, less reading, all good things for Civ7
And it fixed people's concerns with 1UPT. If it weren't for Civ switching this would be the best game already
 
If I understand correctly the city borders no longer automatically grow and you can't buy tiles, instead you need to place districts and improvements on tiles and it would claim the surrounding tiles. So, for example, you would need to decide if you want to get the tile with more food on it, or a less useful tile, but it would then open for you a tile with a sea access or some resource. So the decisions are still there, player still have to decide how their city grow and make choices between immediate results or investments into future development.
 
I think there was comment that district adjacency still exists but without chopping etc you are limited to where you can place urban districts.

So you are forced to play the map more -- you can debate whether limits on creating your perfect micro-managed district arrangement are a good thing.
 
I think it's too early to tell for Civ 6. In general though, the idea of "playing the map" is very appealing to me, and a good way to provide some variety between playthroughs. It is why I was initially enthusiastic about the eureka-system. The idea that your Civ would be shaped in part by its surroundings is a good one. Unfortunately, as with so much else in Civ 6, the initially good idea was let down by a poor implementation that was never meaningfully refined.

By the way, I liked Civ 5 more than 6, by quite a lot if you count Vox Populi. Civ 7 being closer to 5 than 6 is a good thing in my book...depending on which parts they draw from of course.
 
I think it all comes down to how the different ages will play. I would be fine with less important decisions in the antiquity age if that means we’ll have some meaningful decisions to take in the later ages. In civ 6 the more interesting gameplay is in the first 100 turns, maybe civ 7 will manage to make the late game as interesting as the early game
 
I think it all comes down to how the different ages will play. I would be fine with less important decisions in the antiquity age if that means we’ll have some meaningful decisions to take in the later ages. In civ 6 the more interesting gameplay is in the first 100 turns, maybe civ 7 will manage to make the late game as interesting as the early game

It's still way too early to tell.

One good thing I can see is that you are not as forced later on based on some of your earlier decisions. In that, if you place an early industrial zone in 6, and then later on discover a bunch of niter nearby that would give you a better IZ adjacency, you're stuck. But in 7, where you place your initial workshop doesn't dictate where you can place the later factory.

I think it's still too early to really know how it will balance and play out. I do think in 6 you can sometimes get a little too restrictive, in that you can skip districts entirely depending on your area, or you end up in a case where it's just too valuable to keep placing campuses down. I get the sense that in 7 things will be a bit more mixed. We'll be back to being able to put a library/market/theatre in every city if we want it. At an initial glance, it feels like we may lose some of that specialization.

But I think you also will have to "play the map" in that you are limited by your terrain for buildings. So some setups, like settling small island cities, or trying to squeeze a city in a mountain pass, are going to struggle more than others. At least one of the youtuber streams had someone mention that they got so many food bonuses that they had a city up to like size 20 in the first era. So it's also possible that "play the map" might also be a case of trying to get your cities set up in the best spot to succeed, and to try to maximize your bonuses.

And then being able to more or less pivot your civ a few times in the game means you could re-adjust. So maybe you start off as Maya, but then quickly discover you have a lot of coastline and lands nearby, and want a mid-game Viking pivot to better take advantage of those waterways. That's a level of playing the map we've never had in a civ game before.
 
the map is still very much a factor but I am hoping we can take a step away from Civ 6's district & improvement micro

may I never have to count out factory placement tiles again inshallah

agreed. also, I really don't like treating so many things as "units." let me manage espionage from an espionage screen. I'm okay with this.
 
I hope the map is still a factor as it adds a lot of variety to the game. Maybe Civ 6 was too map dependent, though? I know I restarted plenty of games and often blamed it on the map.

Ideally the map encourages the player a certain direction (doubling down on strengths and all that) but doesn’t give any one player a huge advantage / disadvantage.

The map expansion maybe adds a flavor of this? Everyone has an equalish shot at the new areas as it enters exploration age.
 
In my opinion, Civ VI has a lot of arbitrary complexity and too many ways to do the same thing. It definitely is a lot of freedom of choice for the player, and although people are claiming Civ6 had false choices (like placing mines on hills), I don't think that's the correct way to criticize it. I don't see it as a false choice, rather I say it's a "low quality" choice.

If they can lower the amount of low quality choices, I'll be happy, regardless of where they take it from. I think there's too much "playing the map" in Civ VI, and I like playing the map. So long as they don't remove too many player choices, or the most interesting ones, I think it will be fine. But mostly I agree that it's too early to tell.
 
Civ 6 was all about ‘playing the map’.

Playing the map means player should expect to decide and adjust strategy based on the actual terrain being played. Districts (particularly adjacency bonuses) were a big part of this, as was 1UPT. But builders / improvement, water / housing, tech / Eurekas, resources, disasters, governors, and other mechanics all reinforced this.

Playing the map was meant to drive another core idea - interesting decisions. Players had two tech trees to chase, different resources that worked in different ways (hammer, gold, & faith could all buy units, but in very different ways), policy cards they could swap in or out but limited by the type of government etc etc. These choices weren’t simply good or bad, or +2 this but -1 this, but were generally more ‘spikey’ meaning a choice could be good or bad or both depending on the exact situation. The idea was that all these choices would be driven by players having to adapt to their environment. No four city tall Civ 5 clicking click until rocket launch every game - instead, tough choices. Do I keep the governor here to keep leveraging adjacency yield, or move them to reduce disloyalty, or can I just handle disloyalty with more population or raising that encroaching city.

In Civ 7, District appear to be simplified. I don’t improve land, just allocate population, and no choice on improvements. Resources seem to be all the same. Governments appear simplified, each government can seeming slot any card. I’m getting bonuses by leveling up my Civ or leader, almost like Civ 5 policies / tenets, which comes with the risk that like Civ 5 that you just have one or a few always good optimal strategies.

And then on top of that, every Age every Civ seemingly gets levelled up to the next tech level and has to replace all their buildings etc - it’s not clear choices will have long term consequences or payoffs. Instead, it seems like you’re just in a loop of having to hustle / grind every Age.

I’m not saying Civ 7 has been dumbed down or anything. I’m just seeing it looks less ‘play the map’ at the moment, and more fundamentally less hard situational choices, and instead more just endless short term grind and or optimise + more ‘just pick how you want to win’ decisions rather than genuine hard choices and trade-offs.

I wasn’t worried until I listen to some YouTubers that had played the game. They were all super excited about all the QOL changes and getting rid of restrictions that let them leverage abilities and units. But I think part of the greater QOL and freedom they are enjoying is the flip side of not having to take trade-offs to pursue certain strategies.

I’m not panicking just yet. And I’m not calling out any particular mechanic as a deal breaker either. But at the moment, the overall feel is the game it’s going to be less ‘map’, less ‘puzzle’, less ‘hard, situational choices’, and more ‘every strategy is viable all the time’ and then just picking the right things to stack on top of each other again and again.

Early days. Not much information, and all very work in progress. But is anyone else getting the same vibe?
You're right on the money, I think.

I'm excited for the game, but it's a matter of great concern that they seem to be running down the road of extreme freedom, which is actually not a good thing at all, which game devs should have learned in the late 2010s.

Navigating constraints successfully is what makes the game - and life - entertaining and meaningful, I hope it doesn't turn out as bad as it seems.
 
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