ArsTechnica: Why Civilization VII is the way it is, and how its devs plan to win critics back

[The_J]

ArsTechnica has published an article to go along with the upcoming anniversary, titled "Why Civilization VII is the way it is, and how its devs plan to win critics back".
In the article they talk about the changes which happened with Civ7, the things we did and did not like, and the 1/3, 1/3 , 1/3 formula.
They also talk about the coming change that you don't need to change , and the reworked victories.

An excerpt:

Shirk said this is a big departure from how things were done in the Civ V and Civ VI eras. With V, the team would release an update, then browse Reddit and sites like CivFanatics to see the reception. “In VI, we actually got to introduce more data and telemetry just to see how players were playing, but still a lot of us just looking at the forums,” he added.

Read the full article here.

 

[Krikkit1]

Really good to hear about a connections view being worked on (maybe with something that makes them more rational)

 

[BackseatTyrant]

“We wanted to tackle that late game problem of the combinatorial explosion,” he explained—referring to how some players of prior Civ games felt that the amount of things to control becomes unwieldy toward the end of a long playthrough, thanks to “so many cities to manage, so many units to manage, too much micromanagement.”


“We just saw a lot of data about people never finishing games and just deciding at some point, I’ve gotten what I can out of this game, this game is now a chore,” he said.

Honestly, I think that issue is just fundamentally baked into the game series' core conceit. Civilization is all about empire-building, it treats any political entity that can't be regarded as an empire as inherently lesser, one incapable of winning the game. Thus, the player is conditioned to only get enjoyment out of the game from whenever they get to do an imperialism, with any mechanical setback reflecting actual history just ending up frustrating the player to no end, so FXS end up never making those setback mechanics impactful enough, and snowballing becomes inevitable. Dividing the game into three minigames is a solution to the late game rote, but the late game rote is a symptom, not a disease.

I could go into detail over what I think would've been better solutions, but one, that's more for the Ideas & Suggestions forum, and two, again, they would transform the game so much that it would no longer be recognized as civ, even less so that civ vii

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

I could go into detail over what I think would've been better solutions, but one, that's more for the Ideas & Suggestions forum, and two, again, they would transform the game so much that it would no longer be recognized as civ, even less so that civ vii

I would happily and enthusiastically read this

 

[tman2000]

Honestly, I think that issue is just fundamentally baked into the game series' core conceit. Civilization is all about empire-building, it treats any political entity that can't be regarded as an empire as inherently lesser, one incapable of winning the game. Thus, the player is conditioned to only get enjoyment out of the game from whenever they get to do an imperialism, with any mechanical setback reflecting actual history just ending up frustrating the player to no end, so FXS end up never making those setback mechanics impactful enough, and snowballing becomes inevitable. Dividing the game into three minigames is a solution to the late game rote, but the late game rote is a symptom, not a disease.

I could go into detail over what I think would've been better solutions, but one, that's more for the Ideas & Suggestions forum, and two, again, they would transform the game so much that it would no longer be recognized as civ, even less so that civ vii

What you'd have to do is serious disrupt balancing. So, in general, population produces yields. Tiles and buildings have what you'd colloquially call a linear relationship to yield expansion. This in turn balances production so that powers are matched in military terms and one faction doesn't end up randomly steamrolling everyone.

What you'd have to do to make "non-military powers" is allow players with small populations and smaller production yields to make choices (that trade off with production) which massively inflate culture yields. Then you'd also have to allow culture to be spent on things other than policy progression (which is among the progression meters).

One way to imagine this is using cultural hegemony to induce war weariness, or to add economic buffs, or to sometimes convert entire cities.

So what you have is a parallel way to:

1) Capture cities
2) Boost gold yields
3) Manage states of war

You make it hard for people to invade you, but if you're too much of a problem and they really commit to invasion, you have few means to stop them.

It's just really hard to imagine balancing this. The question becomes "at what point can I tell that I'm 'over the hump' and have the set up to successfully invade?" The basic intuition of that, balanced across multiple asymmetric strategies, being generally clear to all players would be a very difficult design achievement.

 

[SG-17]

The Test of Time update might finally get me to buy the game, I still don't like the detached leaders, but being forced to switch civs in a match was a dealbreaker for me.

 

[tman2000]

The Test of Time update might finally get me to buy the game, I still don't like the detached leaders, but being forced to switch civs in a match was a dealbreaker for me.

I wonder if Firaxis can implement a full classic mode that locks leaders to their historic civs and prevents the AI from civ-switching. Seems trivial with the new changes. If that's all it takes to bring disaffected players in, why not just implement it?

 

[Siptah]

I wonder if Firaxis can implement a full classic mode that locks leaders to their historic civs and prevents the AI from civ-switching. Seems trivial with the new changes. If that's all it takes to bring disaffected players in, why not just implement it?

It doesn‘t make sense as an official game mode imho, if you lose some civs and leaders from the total pool.

But it should be a) fairly easy to mod with the incoming changes and b) less of an issue if you play anachronistic, because then there are enough European civs for all that leaders (i.e., no more Frederick of Egypt in Antiquity).

 

[Krikkit1]

I wonder if Firaxis can implement a full classic mode that locks leaders to their historic civs and prevents the AI from civ-switching. Seems trivial with the new changes. If that's all it takes to bring disaffected players in, why not just implement it?

You should be able to do this already.
-Leaders at default choose their preferred civs
-you can set a “Anachronistic” mode where they don’t switch (and can choose Anachronistic to start)

So you have exactly what you want…unless
-The Leader doesn’t have any civ that truly matches them (Machiavelli/Rizal)
or
-2 or more Leaders want the same civ (Napoleon + Lafeyette probably won’t both be France, Franklin+Tubman won’t both be America)…there could be an easy game setting to allow duplicates though.

 

[Quintillus]

I found this part most interesting, about Sid's classic 33% the same, 33% improved, 33% new rule:

“I actually was challenged by my design team, and they wanted to change even more, way blowing past that 33-33-33 rule,” said Beach. “I would actually numerically try to add up how much change we were talking about and demonstrate to them that we had blown way past those guidelines and start to try to rein them in and say, well, out of these systems that we want to make updates to, let’s pull back a couple of these and keep a couple of them the same because we’re just overdoing it in terms of how innovative we want to be here.”

He said that in the end, “we still probably violated the 33-33-33 rule by going a little bit heavier into a new approach to everything, but there were some things we really wanted to tackle.”

The exact numbers might vary a bit, but I think there is wisdom in Sid's rule. I had already believed Firaxis overshot the "new" part with Civ VII, with civilization switching alone accounting for a good chunk of the 33% from an emotional (if not mechanical) standpoint.

What I couldn't have known is that the lead designer also had concerns that they were blowing past the 33% new rule, and was pushing back on other designers who thought it was a good thing to go well past that.

 

[Gorbles]

What I couldn't have known is that the lead designer also had concerns that they were blowing past the 33% new rule, and was pushing back on other designers who thought it was a good thing to go well past that.

Yeah, a lot of people in fact blamed Beach (with some still calling for him to be fired or otherwise let go). A common problem with judgements made on a lack of information.

I'll be honest, I'd probably be someone pushing to go past that rule. I like dramatic changes But that's why I write regular software, and why I don't work on a thirty year old game franchise*.

*pushing past something isn't necessarily a negative either - if you have an idea and it's rejected, how you grow as a result depends on how you take that rejection. It can simply be about finding a better line to compromise on innovation with, or saving deeper reworks for different systems where notable improvements are needed. Think Legacy Paths into Triumphs.

 

[Quintillus]

I'll be honest, I'd probably be someone pushing to go past that rule. I like dramatic changes But that's why I write regular software, and why I don't work on a thirty year old game franchise*.

*pushing past something isn't necessarily a negative either - if you have an idea and it's rejected, how you grow as a result depends on how you take that rejection. It can simply be about finding a better line to compromise on innovation with, or saving deeper reworks for different systems where notable improvements are needed. Think Legacy Paths into Triumphs.

And that's exactly it - there are established expectations by the established customer base. They expect a larger change from game to game than sportsball games that release each year with little more than roster updates, but also want some familiarity.

Dennis Shirk put it this way in the interview:

“We introduced all these great new mechanics because we wanted to give our players something new to chew on because they had something very similar from IV or V to VI,” said Shirk. “It was like if we were making Madden and we decided they’re going to play with a soccer ball instead of a football.”

I loved it when Rocket League introduced an optional mode that replaced the soccer ball with a hockey puck, but 98% of the players continued playing the soccer ball mode. It would have been fascinating to see what would have happened if that hadn't been an optional mode, but instead the mandatory mode in Rocket League 2.

I suppose a real-world example would be if your favorite local Mexican restaurant revamped their menu and no longer offered tacos. Would you keep going there? Or would having tacos be such a core part of your expectations that you'd find a new restaurant so you could continue to order tacos? It's often prudent for restaurants to evolve their menu a bit over time, but too drastic of changes risks losing customers whose favorites are no longer available.

I also agree with "how you grow as a result depends on how you take that rejection". For a while it looked like the reaction to the rejection of civ switching by a sizeable part of the audience was to double down on it as a core part of the vision. Now it looks like Firaxis is thinking, "how can we give players their football back and still have the rest of the game work with a football?"

 

[untitledjuan]

The Test of Time update might finally get me to buy the game, I still don't like the detached leaders, but being forced to switch civs in a match was a dealbreaker for me.

The should probably release in the future a civilization for the in-game leaders that currently do not have one. We would need the Hausa for Amina, the Franks for Charlemagne, Sumer for Gilgamesh, Morocco for Ibn Battuta and Sayyida al Hurra, the Philippines for José Rizal, Florence for Machiavelli, the Marathas for Lakshmibai and Colombia for Simón Bolívar. That could be a way to solve the issue and have a corresponding civilization for each leader.

 

[MutilationWave]

The should probably release in the future a civilization for the in-game leaders that currently do not have one. We would need the Hausa for Amina, the Franks for Charlemagne, Sumer for Gilgamesh, Morocco for Ibn Battuta and Sayyida al Hurra, the Philippines for José Rizal, Florence for Machiavelli, the Marathas for Lakshmibai and Colombia for Simón Bolívar. That could be a way to solve the issue and have a corresponding civilization for each leader.

It still leaves some orphan civs but I'm pretty sure that's less important to people. I learned about Spearthrower Owl here on CFC and I'd love to see him to lead Maya.

 

[Krikkit1]

The should probably release in the future a civilization for the in-game leaders that currently do not have one. We would need the Hausa for Amina, the Franks for Charlemagne, Sumer for Gilgamesh, Morocco for Ibn Battuta and Sayyida al Hurra, the Philippines for José Rizal, Florence for Machiavelli, the Marathas for Lakshmibai and Colombia for Simón Bolívar. That could be a way to solve the issue and have a corresponding civilization for each leader.

The only ones of those that are serious orphans (no civ comes close to lining up with the leader) are Rizal, Sayyida, and Machiavelli.
Songhai, Norman, Mughal, Assyria, Abbasid, Mexico all get reasonably close conceptually, culturally, and geographically

 

[Xandinho]

I think we should have at least one Polynesian and one Mesoamerican leader. Hawaii and Tonga feel completely isolated without a nearby leader. The Maya also feel quite strange without a Mesoamerican leader.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think we should have at least one Polynesian and one Mesoamerican leader. Hawaii and Tonga feel completely isolated without a nearby leader. The Maya also feel quite strange without a Mesoamerican leader.

Those will probably wait for the Aztec and the Maori civs. I'm far more interested in them getting more civs from Africa and the Americas though than Leaders.

 

[Xandinho]

Those will probably wait for the Aztec and the Maori civs. I'm far more interested in them getting more civs from Africa and the Americas though than Leaders.

I agree. Aside from a few specific cases here and there, such as Mesoamerica and Polynesia, I think the overall global distribution of leaders is acceptable. It’s the distribution of civilizations that needs special attention, especially considering that the Americas and Africa have been almost entirely overlooked in every DLC release so far. Even if one were to consider Pirates an acceptable representation of an American civilization, the continent would still be far below a reasonable level of representation.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The exact numbers might vary a bit, but I think there is wisdom in Sid's rule. I had already believed Firaxis overshot the "new" part with Civ VII, with civilization switching alone accounting for a good chunk of the 33% from an emotional (if not mechanical) standpoint.

Yeah Civ switching should have been the 33% bit on it's own!!

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

somebody report back and tell me when this game isn't trash.