"Build something that you believe in."... oh wait, let me play for you...

[Sagax]

Isn't that exactly what 7 is doing? I get people don't like the game but there's no reason to make up things.

Please don’t cut off their quote mid-sentence when they explain exactly why Civ 4 handled it better:

Civ IV had a better approach to outdated buildings - they may become obsolete and stop providing their main bonus, but still provide a culture bonus (that grows over time), in effect acting as a kind of memorial or cultural icon for your people.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Well...does it at least have the potential to mix things up a bit?

Yes, absolutely. There is a lot of room for improvement in the current system, later ages still need work, but it has a lot of potential. In its current form it is enjoyable but doesn't quite solve the issues that it set out to solve. That being said, the current anti snowball does work against human players.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If only the ages system actually stopped snowballing because I am doing it harder than ever lol

Nobody expected ages system to fully stop snowballing, that would be equal to early game being pointless. The idea was to slow it down and in my experience it was successful, compared to all previous civ games (Civ1-6, SMAC and BE)

 

[ThichN]

I can understand all of this. But yeah, to me it's sort of off-putting and way more of a fantasy when I see someone like Isabella being the personification of Egypt in a game, where before it made sense for her being the leader of only Spain.
This game definitely took it more to where the leaders as opponents are more pronounced and the civs that they lead are just in the background.

I hear what you mean by this, and see how it seems that way. I think they've leaned into almost a SMAC-like representation of leaders here; when you run into Harriet Tubman, for example, it has the same sort of dread as running into Miriam (I jest... sort of ). The leaders have a lot of personality this time around, especially if you spend time with them in different games. Sure, they don't look at you (never cared about this), and they grunt (also don't care), but you begin to associate them with certain playstyles and movements -- I think this is the most pronounced since Civ4. They feel capable of doing anything (as opposed to Civ6), but have certain tendencies.

But I'd say where the leader is the chassis, an unmoving bulwark, the civilization is the propellor -- and I know some people would prefer the opposite. These being separate generates a lot of computations, but so far, after a dozen or so games, they really mean something different. Isabella will always behave like Isabella, but the way she accomplishes her goals vary. This is fascinating to me. Instead of the civs being in the background, I'd say they are facilitators, nonetheless meaningful set design for a much larger theater of drama where the real actors and actresses are the leaders.

 

[Psychotronics]

To say that Rome existed in 'one form or another' is to ignore that those forms were radically different in culture, politics, and even language - The Byzantines famously used Greek as their basic official language instead of Latin (and there was a recent book written entirely on the Greek influence on Imperial Rome in philosophy, education, culture and technology: influence largely absent from Republican Rome and very different in Byzantium).

Hey, this sounds like a great read! What's the title of the book?

 

[StargazingDog]

I am completely against this type of approach and this is something that I would really like to be changed asap.

No need. Civ 3/4/5/6 already exist, are cheap, and are all still fun.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hey, this sounds like a great read! What's the title of the book?

The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in fhe Age of Rome: 150 BC - 400 AD by Charles Freeman, published by Pegasus Books (in hardback) in 2023.

It's probably out in paperback and/or electronic format by now.

Basically, it is a series of biographies of Greeks who introduced Greek philosophical thought to Romans in writings and teachings. I took a Masters in Classics back in the late 1960s and had still never even heard of most of them, because they were less original thinkers than translators and explainers, but Freeman hammers on the point that as a result Greek philosophical thought had huge influence on the Roman aristocracy/cultural and political leaders who were thoroughly indoctrinated with the Greek influence for centuries.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Two posts deleted. Please stop the personal attacks and sarcasm.

 

[Kwami]

For a future Civ game, I'd be game for a compromise between the classic approach and the Civ VII approach where you have an overarching "civilization" you pick at the start eg. Germanic, then from there you have options each age eg. Do you go Anglo Saxon, or Frank, or Teutonic, something like that. Reflecting more organic transitions with uniqueness to them that allows change and choice but not at the expense of pop history immersion fun which is what a lot of casuals come for.

The developers have said that they considered an approach like this, but decided against it because it's too limiting. They would only be able to include major cultural groups with a lot of subgroups and shared history with a system like that. Smaller cultures would never be included. And even the major cultural groups get all mixed together. How would you decide which ones are "Germanic" and "French" and "Latin" when they were all Rome and only became grouped that way later? How do you decide which cultures are "Chinese" when modern China is made of Han, Mongols, Turkmen, and more?

I don't think it would work.

 

[Gorbles]

Please don’t cut off their quote mid-sentence when they explain exactly why Civ 4 handled it better:

Disagree that a snowballing yield is in any way better, personally.

 

[Yzman]

No one is denying that empires and dynasties rise and fall and reorganise over time. What's ludicrous is that the game slaps down an arbitrary barrier, forces you to negotiate a lame "crisis" and then makes you evolve into a completely separate entity, distinct from the first. All civ games have had some form of civilisation-evolution going on throughout the game. No civ that started in 4000BC is the same in 2000AD - be it civics changing your government in Civ IV, social policies changing your direction in Civ V or the silly card game in Civ VI.

As they would in any Civ game, as I have described above.

It isnt distinct from the first. Where is this coming from? You keep traditions, wonders, buildings, unique improvements etc.

A Egypt songhai is going to look different than an Egypt anything else.

 

[Yzman]

I think in my next game I'm going to turn all victory types off. I hate getting railroaded into playing a certain way. Right now in Exploration my best choice would be to go raze half of Napoleon's civ in a giant epic war because he's running away completely on science and culture. But because of the penalty for razing I can't do that. Instead I'm

Please don’t cut off their quote mid-sentence when they explain exactly why Civ 4 handled it better:

The obsolete buildings still provide their yields, juat not adjacency...this is exactly what civ 4 did but better since an old science building at least still provides a little science.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

The developers have said that they considered an approach like this, but decided against it because it's too limiting. They would only be able to include major cultural groups with a lot of subgroups and shared history with a system like that. Smaller cultures would never be included. And even the major cultural groups get all mixed together. How would you decide which ones are "Germanic" and "French" and "Latin" when they were all Rome and only became grouped that way later? How do you decide which cultures are "Chinese" when modern China is made of Han, Mongols, Turkmen, and more?

I don't think it would work.

That's not quite right - the Devs said they considered full stacks ie. The china approach to all civs in game but abandoned that.

I think you just need some creativity to get an approach like this working. I could see something like a HOI4 tree for each civilization where you have branching paths representing different cultures within your overall civilization (including some alt history ones), and some civs could have common branches. I think that would be really fun, immersive and much more flexible than the current implementation

And PS Firaxis, DM me if you need a game director for Civ 8. You already stole eurakas from my post on this forum so clearly you rate my ideas

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That's not quite right - the Devs said they considered full stacks ie. The china approach to all civs in game but abandoned that.

I think you just need some creativity to get an approach like this working. I could see something like a HOI4 tree for each civilization where you have branching paths representing different cultures within your overall civilization (including some alt history ones), and some civs could have common branches. I think that would be really fun, immersive and much more flexible than the current implementation

They already have 'branching paths' in the sense that no Civ has only one path to it, and every Civ has some path to it based on how you've played up to that point in that particular game rather than any 'fixed' progression.

Examples:
Chola can be chosen if you've played Khmer or Maurya in the Antiquity Age - the 'geographical' progressions, or are playing with the leader Ashoka. But it can also be chosen if you have 3 settlements with City Centers on a coastal (sea) tile - in other words, Chola is sea/naval oriented, so if your Civ is already 'on the sea' it is a possible progression.

Mexico can be chosen in Modern Age if you've already played Maya, Inca, Shawnee or Spain as Civs, or are playing leaders Isabella or Tecumseh - basically, all about the Native American and Spanish traditions that make up modern Mexican culture. Or you can play Mexico if you have at least 3 Distant Lands settlements in Desert or Tropical terrain - in other words, in-game you've colonized a Mexican-type terrain regardless of what 'Old World' culture you played.

These are by no means perfect: you'd be hard put to find any Shawnee influence on modern Mexican culture, but that's a factor of the relatively limited number of world-wide choices available so far in the game.

More importantly, I think by building on the in-game developments as 'requirements' for progressions, both flexibility and some kind of believability can be obtained for all or at least most of the choices. No matter how you slice it, there simply is no coherent Antiquity 'Civ' as a predecessor of any Viking Exploration choice, nor has the game yet provided any Central Asian predecessor for Russia, Mongolia, or anybody else north of India between Rome and China. In fact, again, there is no northern eastern European coherent 'Civ' as a pre-Russian possibility.

On the other hand, if one presumes that Viking/Norse = seafaring then having Antiquity settlements on the coast or X number of ships at the end of the Age could allow almost any Civ an in-game path to 'Vikings' - they might exchange their helmets for bamboo hats, but they'd still have some legitimacy in how they got to the longships-raiding-trading-over the ocean to steal you blind aspects we've come to know and love in the Vikings - or, if not 'love', at least Expect.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

No matter how you slice it, there simply is no coherent Antiquity 'Civ' as a predecessor of any Viking Exploration choice, nor has the game yet provided any Central Asian predecessor for Russia, Mongolia, or anybody else north of India between Rome and China. In fact, again, there is no northern eastern European coherent 'Civ' as a pre-Russian possibility.

Do you think these people magicked into existence at some point in history? Presumably not. So it comes down to whether you deem it palatable to have peoples that weren't significant in their time but whose descendents became significant, or whether you think that's a waste of time and interest.

I'm in the first camp. I would take proto Germanic people in some form feeding into vikings in the medieval era every day of the week over what we have now

 

[Zaarin]

Do you think these people magicked into existence at some point in history? Presumably not. So it comes down to whether you deem it palatable to have peoples that weren't significant in their time but whose descendents became significant, or whether you think that's a waste of time and interest.

I'm in the first camp. I would take proto Germanic people in some form feeding into vikings in the medieval era every day of the week over what we have now

Civ7 doesn't suggest people "magic" into existence. For starters, it suggests that the land between empires is already inhabited (which makes sense; no part of the Earth was uninhabited 6,000 years ago except Antarctica and some remote islands). And more critically the way gameplay unlocks are framed is that either a culture shift has happened or a certain minority population has started to become influential, both of which are things that have happened many times in history. Unfortunately and notoriously, Civ7 is not always the best at communicating...anything really. At any rate, I feel like prioritizing giving everyone the China treatment suggests a kind of historical determinism that I'd find very uninteresting; that being said, for those who want their civs to align according to real world history, this will get easier eventually.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Civ7 doesn't suggest people "magic" into existence. For starters, it suggests that the land between empires is already inhabited (which makes sense; no part of the Earth was uninhabited 6,000 years ago except Antarctica and some remote islands). And more critically the way gameplay unlocks are framed is that either a culture shift has happened or a certain minority population has started to become influential, both of which are things that have happened many times in history. Unfortunately and notoriously, Civ7 is not always the best at communicating...anything really. At any rate, I feel like prioritizing giving everyone the China treatment suggests a kind of historical determinism that I'd find very uninteresting; that being said, for those who want their civs to align according to real world history, this will get easier eventually.

I didn't say it did, I presumed Boris was speaking in the context of my suggestion for Civ VIII, not related to how Civ VII is or isn't.

 

[RedCourtJester]

I don't hear anyone complaining the game is too challenging. One dude beat it on deity in is first game!

Given that the new meta progression really wants players to successfully complete a lot more games than I think many did, I think it was always going to be the case that the challenge curve would be flattened. The game's appeal is now shifted toward aesthetics and civ-building mechanical freedom versus hardline strategy, because that will theoretically sell to a much larger casual-to-mid audience.

And I think this absolutely has had an effect on the design of crises, which I hope get an overhaul in an expansion to be more dynamic.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I didn't say it did, I presumed Boris was speaking in the context of my suggestion for Civ VIII, not related to how Civ VII is or isn't.

I was less addressing the suggestion itself than what I consider to be the perceived problems with coming up with acceptable entities in certain areas and periods. I simply do not think that 'Tribal Scandinavians' or 'Eastern/Western Slavic Tribes' is going to be acceptable to most gamers as a predecessor for, say, Vikings, Norse, Swedes, Russia or any other Exploration Age or later north Europeans. And unfortunately, in that same area any other name is largely mythological - which is not to say Civ hasn't used mythology before and couldn't do it again, but I find that to be something of a gaming device: you might as well name their capital Ankh-Morpokh and go full-fledged Fantasy with it.

I will not directly address Civ VIII suggestions in any case, because I think there is still plenty to be done with Civ VII to fix, repair, resucitate or salvage (pick your verb) the game. To write it off within the first month is a waste of time: we aren't going to see Civ VIII for many years to come (if ever, if Civ VII cannot be salvaged, repaired, etc) and there is no telling even what structure that game or any game might have by then to comment on.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I simply do not think that 'Tribal Scandinavians' or 'Eastern/Western Slavic Tribes' is going to be acceptable to most gamers as a predecessor for, say, Vikings, Norse, Swedes, Russia or any other Exploration Age or later north Europeans.

It literally has been for 6 previous versions of civilization. I don't think this argument has any merit at all