Civ 6 is ripe for sliders

[jjkrause84]

One of the things that I'm very excited about for Civ 6 is how culture, science, faith and gold are all somewhat equally important. This makes me wonder: what would it be like to have sliders for them all? I think it would introduce a really interesting granularity into the game. Producing enough culture, but need more science? You can partially address that. Feel like building up gold for a purchasing spree? Accept lower culture and science and faith for a few turns. Wanna bee-line a key tech? Over-invest in science for a while. Strategic trade-offs, prioritization, flexibility, dynamic control.....all there.

If done right it could take the of control and customization a player has over their Civ to the next level without really introducing anything that would be too complicated mechanically.

I know many on this board are deeply opposed to sliders (for some reason), but what do you think? Shouldn't we have control over a national budget again?

 

[Zantetsuken]

I'm open to the idea

 

[narmox]

Sliders were part of the game all the way from Civ1 to Civ4. I'm not opposed to them.

Funny I had a similar thought as yours last night, too. Since each population unit in a city produces 0.7 science and 0.3 culture, that almost sounds like a 70%/30% split.. What if that was adjustable? Then I remembered all about sliders (not the TV show) in previous versions.

Back then, you would produce "commerce" (alternatively represented by arrow triangles, arrows or gold pieces) which would then be fed into your sliders - initially it was just a %science, with the rest going to gold, then eventually culture was added to the mix, and in Civ4:BtS the espionnage was also added.

I think it's yet one more idea that was removed in Civ5 in favor of other ideas, which is fair enough. Instead in Civ5 I suppose we got to play with citizen slots in buildings that produced extra yields and great people points.

No idea if the sliders could make sense once again, but it's still something I remember very well from older games. That and, when they stopped or capped overflow, having to micromanage the slider every turn to maximize and never lose a single beaker/gold/culture/etc.

 

[Atlas627]

I DESPISED sliders, and I very rarely have such a strong emotional reaction to a game mechanic. To me, sliders mean all of my other choices had no consequences, because I could readjust with the sliders at any time. So my preferred solution to each of the questions you propose would not be sliders. I'll provide some examples.

Producing enough culture, but need more science?

Well, build more science now or plan ahead for it better.

Feel like building up gold for a purchasing spree?

Then save your gold. You should be losing *gold* for saving up, not other yields. Losing other yields is the choice you made when investing in gold production. Changing it now just means that investing in gold production never had an opportunity cost all along.

Wanna bee-line a key tech?

Choose a key tech to research and deal with the fact that you invested in other things instead of science. Or build more science now instead of investing in other things.

Food already has a conversion rate into all other yields, given time and use of tiles. Production is converted into all other yields, given time and use of units. Gold is converted into Production at a reduced rate in exchange for being flexible. Science and Culture convert back into all of those yields by unlocking things, but you don't always get to choose exactly how you want.

These different rules for how you spend yields makes them different, creates real choices between them. The fact that they can't just convert into each other on a whim means you have to plan ahead and make commitments. That's real opportunity cost. If you incorporate them all into the same slider system, then you really just have 1 giant "power" resource that you allocate in whatever proportions you want, wherever you want.

 

[Zantetsuken]

I DESPISED sliders, and I very rarely have such a strong emotional reaction to a game mechanic. To me, sliders mean all of my other choices had no consequences, because I could readjust with the sliders at any time. So my preferred solution to each of the questions you propose would not be sliders. I'll provide some examples.

Well, build more science now or plan ahead for it better.

Then save your gold. You should be losing *gold* for saving up, not other yields. Losing other yields is the choice you made when investing in gold production. Changing it now just means that investing in gold production never had an opportunity cost all along.

Choose a key tech to research and deal with the fact that you invested in other things instead of science. Or build more science now instead of investing in other things.

Food already has a conversion rate into all other yields, given time and use of tiles. Production is converted into all other yields, given time and use of units. Gold is converted into Production at a reduced rate in exchange for being flexible. Science and Culture convert back into all of those yields by unlocking things, but you don't always get to choose exactly how you want.

These different rules for how you spend yields makes them different, creates real choices between them. The fact that they can't just convert into each other on a whim means you have to plan ahead and make commitments. That's real opportunity cost. If you incorporate them all into the same slider system, then you really just have 1 giant "power" resource that you allocate in whatever proportions you want, wherever you want.

Well I'm certainly conflicted now, I like the idea of sliders in some ways, but I can see why it could really invalidate proper planning as well

 

[Atlas627]

Well I'm certainly conflicted now, I like the idea of sliders in some ways, but I can see why it could really invalidate proper planning as well

Another issue I have with sliders is that, in Civ4 for example, the sliders are TOO granular. Why do I have the choice to have a 63/24/13 split vs a 66/19/15 split? And I get that choice every turn? That doesn't feel impactful at all. Give me High/Low/Lowest vs High/Medium/None or something instead, at least. And only let me change it once every 10 turns so there's some commitment.

Oh wait, thats the Policy and Government system! Choose a government to get High military slots, Low economic slots, and Zero diplomatic slots. Every few turns, you get a shot at adjusting the exact amounts and types of each bonus by swapping the cards.

Furthermore, sliders aren't just invalidating planning ahead. It actually reduces the puzzle of "which yield do I want and how can I get it" to "how do I get the most yields total", because it all feeds into the same system. Lets say, for example, that Gold feeds into the slider system, and you can get Science, Culture, and Gold out of it. Lets say you have a tile you are wondering what to do with. You can make it produce +2 Science, +1 Culture, or +1 Gold. As long as you have SOME tiles to turn into the other yields, you definitely want to choose +2 Science. Even if you really want less Science at some point, every point of direct Science you produce is one less point of Gold you have to turn into Science, which means one more point you can turn into Culture/Gold (whatever you need). In this way, +2 Science is basically +2 Points, and you can shift it all to be (almost) whatever you want. There are very few exceptions to this, but they do exist.

 

[Haggbart]

The slider worked fairly well in cIV because of the intermediate yield of commerce that had to be converted to other things.

Since cVI has only direct yields, and even buildings that give direct yields rather than %-modifiers, I think the slider would be a really bad idea. Consider how the devs have tried to make the different yields truly unique by even requering seperate districts for the different type of buildings. If all this could be changed by the slider, it would effectively destroy the whole design choice of the game.

They could off course make the use of the slider possible with a poor exchange rate, but that would make the function useless. It's really hard to balance this without ruining the whole design strategy.

 

[Uberfrog]

I much prefer the idea of tailoring my civ towards either science or culture by building the right districts, buildings, and choosing the right policies, than by setting arbitrary sliders on the fly.

 

[Nefelia]

Please no. I've played Civ IV for several years. I'd like to play Civ VI now.

 

[Lyoncet]

I also really dislike sliders, and I think that like V before it, VI actually does a pretty decent job of letting you tailor your outputs on the fly through specialist slots. (OK, they're called Citizens now, but IMO that's a terribly confusing name.) Need quick cash? Run your economic districts. Need to beeline a tech? Run scientists. That you need to have the infrastructure is a plus, IMO, as it requires strategic planning on the player's part.

 

[jjkrause84]

I DESPISED sliders, and I very rarely have such a strong emotional reaction to a game mechanic. To me, sliders mean all of my other choices had no consequences, because I could readjust with the sliders at any time. So my preferred solution to each of the questions you propose would not be sliders. I'll provide some examples.

Well, build more science now or plan ahead for it better.

Then save your gold. You should be losing *gold* for saving up, not other yields. Losing other yields is the choice you made when investing in gold production. Changing it now just means that investing in gold production never had an opportunity cost all along.

Choose a key tech to research and deal with the fact that you invested in other things instead of science. Or build more science now instead of investing in other things.

Food already has a conversion rate into all other yields, given time and use of tiles. Production is converted into all other yields, given time and use of units. Gold is converted into Production at a reduced rate in exchange for being flexible. Science and Culture convert back into all of those yields by unlocking things, but you don't always get to choose exactly how you want.

These different rules for how you spend yields makes them different, creates real choices between them. The fact that they can't just convert into each other on a whim means you have to plan ahead and make commitments. That's real opportunity cost. If you incorporate them all into the same slider system, then you really just have 1 giant "power" resource that you allocate in whatever proportions you want, wherever you want.

Sliders are for fine tuning. They should not allow you to completely ignore core components in the game. You'll never have great science without libraries, for example.

I don't know what Civ you were playing, but the slider never, ever substituted for good long-term planning.

Think of them as purely subtractive. You can never use the slider to create more science than you produce naturally. You can, however choose to prioritise different things in the short-term, alongside other longer term decisions.

 

[Ranbir]

Make Civ Great Again. With Sliders!

 

[jjkrause84]

I much prefer the idea of tailoring my civ towards either science or culture by building the right districts, buildings, and choosing the right policies, than by setting arbitrary sliders on the fly.

How are sliders 'arbitrary'? They don't exist out of thin air. They represent your output based on your buildings, wonders, citizen management, etc.

It is NOT an either-or....

 

[RealHuhn]

But sliders also mean that everything is decided by only one resource (for example gold like in CIV4, hello brainless cottage spam). Without sliders you actually have to decide how you want to improve your land and optimize tech paths in order to maximize a certain yield.
A mixture of both systems could work but imo, it would simply make the game more complicated instead of actually making decisions more meaningful.

 

[Katakanja]

Funny I had a similar thought as yours last night, too. Since each population unit in a city produces 0.7 science and 0.3 culture, that almost sounds like a 70%/30% split.. What if that was adjustable? Then I remembered all about sliders (not the TV show) in previous versions.

I don't know about sliders, but a change to the ratio of science-to-culture per population totally sounds like something they would use as a civ or leader ability further down the line, so I guess that could at least let you try out a playstyle similar to being able to adjust the values on the fly, albeit in a more limited way?

 

[Uberfrog]

How are sliders 'arbitrary'? They don't exist out of thin air. They represent your output based on your buildings, wonders, citizen management, etc.

It is NOT an either-or....

Arbitrary was perhaps the wrong word, but my point is that having an ingame resource like gold or production directly converted into scalable amounts of culture or science is not an interesting game mechanic for me. I'd rather have a Civ game where I build specific things to advance certain yields than have an X->Y converter.

I agree there is no need for them to be exclusive. I just never found it a particularly satisfying mechanic in Civ IV so don't see why thy should bring it back, especially since city yield specialisation has already been improved with districts.

 

[jjkrause84]

But sliders also mean that everything is decided by only one resource (for example gold like in CIV4, hello brainless cottage spam). Without sliders you actually have to decide how you want to improve your land and optimize tech paths in order to maximize a certain yield.
A mixture of both systems could work but imo, it would simply make the game more complicated instead of actually making decisions more meaningful.

Not true at all. Leaving aside the fact that exclusively building cottages might not leave you with enough food or production not all sliders in the world have to work on the Civ 4 model. Watch:

Let's assume that all our current Civ V/VI outputs are sliders all on 100%, and let's make all the sliders independent of each other. If you make one small change (reducing the amount of money the player takes in and giving outputs a monetary cost) then players could not run all three sliders (sci/culture/faith) at 100% all the time. It should be too expensive. By having purely subtractive sliders you could never manipulate your way out of poor long-term planning, but you could decide how much emphasis you want to place on making money. In Civ 5 you always had way too much of everything, especially gold. Civ VI will probably be the same. Budgets should not only ever go up....they should fluctuate (the way real budgets do). Introducing subtractive sliders opens up room for genuine scarcity. The player will have to prioritise multiple outputs at multiple levels (i.e. granularity). A player can choose how much surplus they generate (trading odd between building cash reserves for slower tech/faith advancement), or even choose to run a temporary deficit to spur progress on a bit more quickly. These are all the sorts of decisions government (in theory) make about spending and priorities. They do not, in any way, obviate the need for long-term planning and the careful control of citizens/tiles.

Heck, you could even do interesting things like barring sliders for faith if you don't have a state religion. Could open up all sorts of interesting possibilities.


Besides, in the real world is there not really just one generic resource: money? An abstract measurement of value that is applied to everything? I don't see why having some form of this in Civ would be a 'bad' thing.

 

[jjkrause84]

Arbitrary was perhaps the wrong word, but my point is that having an ingame resource like gold or production directly converted into scalable amounts of culture or science is not an interesting game mechanic for me. I'd rather have a Civ game where I build specific things to advance certain yields than have an X->Y converter.

I agree there is no need for them to be exclusive. I just never found it a particularly satisfying mechanic in Civ IV so don't see why thy should bring it back, especially since city yield specialisation has already been improved with districts.

....why would sliders mean you AREN'T building specific things to advance certain yields?

 

[Siptah]

I don't get the fascinating effect of sliders. Aren't the policies much more interesting?

 

[Nefelia]

...snip...

Simply put, there is no need for a mechanic like a resource slider. Aside from Civ IV nostalgia (which I frankly don't share), there is no issue with Civ VI that calls for such a mechanic. The game seems to be designed to function quite well without it. In Civ IV it was a central economic feature.

There are already several mechanics in place for converting resources: citizens get pulled off tiles to generate a specific resource; projects convert production into a specific resource; research agreements convert gold into science. I would not be opposed to the introduction of more such mechanisms, but a return to the slider-a-la-Civ-IV would be a regression rather than progress.

I know many on this board are deeply opposed to sliders (for some reason), but what do you think? Shouldn't we have control over a national budget again?

We do, but just not at the 'turn of a knob' (moving a slider). I wouldn't mind having more options, such as stronger projects or more options similar to scientific agreements. More policy cards perhaps, such as Tax Hike (+x or +x% gold per city at the exchange of -x amenities). More flexibility with trade routes (or is it flexible enough already)?

Lots of avenues to explore before brining back the Slider of Doom.