Civ 7 GOTM Poll (winning goal; civilization selection; mementos)

Three Questions

  • 7otM winning goal: Total Turns in All Ages (fewest turns goal)

    Votes: 12 48.0%
  • 7otM winning goal: Total Turns in All Ages divided by Total Legacy Points (lowest score goal)

    Votes: 7 28.0%
  • 7otM winning goal: Other

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • Civilizations: Set for all age (less freedom; better to learn and compare between games)

    Votes: 14 56.0%
  • Civilizations: Let me choose (more freedom)

    Votes: 7 28.0%
  • Civilizations: Other

    Votes: 2 8.0%
  • Mementos: Keep same whole game or very limited choices

    Votes: 18 72.0%
  • Mementos: Let me choose (more freedom, but not all players will have access to all)

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • Mementos: Other

    Votes: 3 12.0%

  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .

Eyswein

King
GOTM Staff
Joined
Nov 26, 2016
Messages
937
Taking a poll to see what the community prefers regarding 7otM winning goal, civilization selection, mementos). If other, please post in comments.
 
  • Goal. I voted other. I've never been much of a fan of fewest turns and i think for Civ7 it really doesn't work well but it creates a very different game from simply trying to get as much legacy points (maxing those isn't that hard, especially on lower difficulties). Eventually i think it might be a good idea to provide a variety of goals. Even for Civ5 and 6 GotM there have been occasional "score" games and score games fits Civ7 much better. Fewest turns, however, even if it creates it's own issues (such as almost removing the modern age from the game) brings it's own challenges and can be interesting. I think having a variety of objectives can only help keep every game fresh and fun and prevent players from always going for the same strategies (and possibly civilizations if you they are not fixed)
  • Civilizations. I voted "let me choose" as forcing us to follow a given path takes away a lot of the fun of Civ7, which is evolving and adapting our empire to our specific needs (or personal preferences). Having some games with a fixed path alternating with "free" games however could probably be a good idea, again changing the specificities of each game will help keep the experience fresh.
  • Mementos. Same as civilizations, i prefer the freedom to adapt my empire to my needs rather than follow a forced path that will force me to play in a specific way instead of playing my way and i would even be in favor of allowing us to choose our starting mementos (by using the game seed rather than save, as long as no update broke the map generation) but again having some games where we play with fixed mementos among "free" games would provide some variety (althought mementos won't be as impactful as civilizations)
TLDR : Varying the "rules" to provide a variety of goals and avoid falling into a simple routine seems like a good idea to me.

I will reiterate what i already said in other threads however, that with all the variability in Civ7 (Civilizations and Mementos are only the tip of the iceberg), maybe the whole idea of "ranking" players should be replaced by non-ranking objectives. You could be more creative then, having both a main objective (which might still be finishing within xxx turns or scoring xx legacy points ...) and optional "challenges" which could be just about everything from something related to the Civilization (don't produce any settler as Rome ... thus founding settlements only with Legatus) to anything silly you might imagine.
 
I voted for less turns. For me, civ is all about efficiency and legacies are just one more strategy to finish faster. Also I can see a situation where you are in Modern, 1 turn away from a science victory, and uselessly delaying it to get more legacy points.
Civs choice, again are just another strategy for faster finish, Civ unlocking is based on strategic player decision and skill to achieve the condition. In GoTM03, I made the mistake to choose America instead of Prussia and that cost me a few critical turns.
Mementos, nothing to do with skill. To be able to have comparable games we need the same mementos, in my opinion.
 
I went with Other for both the goal and civ choices.

I think picking speed or legacy points are both valid options, but they lead to contradictory gameplay. There always comes a point where it feels unnatural to either deliberately stall to get extra points, but it also feels bad to rush the age at the expense of points.

My preference would be to add different types of challenges or objectives. These could include unlocking specific civs, or completing specific challenges. Could be multiple goals, each worth some points, across different ages. This system of subchallenge could even lead to failed game states.

This would obviously require more work from the organizers of the game, as the idea would be for them to craft a “scenario” through these challenges.
 
To be able to have comparable games we need the same mementos, in my opinion.
To be able to have comparable games we need :
  • Railroaded civilization path or at least restriction from using DLC civs for those who have them since not everyone who plays the game will have access to those
  • Fixed mementos
  • Pre-settled capital (moving your founder changes which and where independent powers spawn and there's a big difference in challenge and opportunity if closest IP is a hostile military worth 100 prod when you raze it or a friendly economic)
  • None can use legend-unlocked attribute nodes or legacy cards
  • None can build DLC wonders
and even then the games won't be directly comparable because :
  • AIs might act very differently based on a combination of factors that are not under direct player control. One player might have to divert a considerable amount of resources to defend against a multi-front war (but might get free settlements from the peace deals if they are good at it) while another one might have a perfectly peaceful game
  • Later ages IP won't be the same for everyone. You can force the location of the first city but not where players and AIs place further settlements. As a result one player might be able to easily befriend 2 scientific CS while another one might see the only one on their continent razed by the AI on exploration turn 5
  • Later ages resources don't spawn on fixed locations. By replaying some games in different ways during the Antiquity i've seen some (but not all) resources appear at different locations after transitioning to the exploration. That might, or might not, influence Economic games since some factory resources are spawned in the modern age (coffee for sure, maybe others)
  • Culture games will be easier or harder based on where the limited number of artifacts spawn. When you research a continent, artifacts become available for everyone so if the 2 artifacts on your starting continent are right next to an AI or in the middle of your lands, the game won't be the same.
  • ... there's probably a lot more
Some of those variables will have a much bigger impact than others. None will help me finish faster than Acken 😉 Those who are interested in "ranking" can certainly see a trend after a couple dozen games but i don't think we'll be able to directly compare 2 players of roughly similar skill after a single game no matter how hard the team tries to limit the "background noise", there's just too much of it in Civ7
 
I chose 'Other' for winning goal.

I like to use as much of the antiquity and exploration ages as necessary to set up for a quick victory in the modern age.
I might for instance delay a legacy path on purpose in order to get one more academy up before antiquity ends to have one more Golden Academy at the start of exploration to boost science.

So I look at the two first ages as setup for the final age where the real competition is. So for me, I'd like 'Fewest Turns in Modern Age' as the GOTM goal.
 
To be able to have comparable games we need :
  • Railroaded civilization path or at least restriction from using DLC civs for those who have them since not everyone who plays the game will have access to those
  • Fixed mementos
  • Pre-settled capital (moving your founder changes which and where independent powers spawn and there's a big difference in challenge and opportunity if closest IP is a hostile military worth 100 prod when you raze it or a friendly economic)
  • None can use legend-unlocked attribute nodes or legacy cards
  • None can build DLC wonders
and even then the games won't be directly comparable because :
  • AIs might act very differently based on a combination of factors that are not under direct player control. One player might have to divert a considerable amount of resources to defend against a multi-front war (but might get free settlements from the peace deals if they are good at it) while another one might have a perfectly peaceful game
  • Later ages IP won't be the same for everyone. You can force the location of the first city but not where players and AIs place further settlements. As a result one player might be able to easily befriend 2 scientific CS while another one might see the only one on their continent razed by the AI on exploration turn 5
  • Later ages resources don't spawn on fixed locations. By replaying some games in different ways during the Antiquity i've seen some (but not all) resources appear at different locations after transitioning to the exploration. That might, or might not, influence Economic games since some factory resources are spawned in the modern age (coffee for sure, maybe others)
  • Culture games will be easier or harder based on where the limited number of artifacts spawn. When you research a continent, artifacts become available for everyone so if the 2 artifacts on your starting continent are right next to an AI or in the middle of your lands, the game won't be the same.
  • ... there's probably a lot more
Some of those variables will have a much bigger impact than others. None will help me finish faster than Acken 😉 Those who are interested in "ranking" can certainly see a trend after a couple dozen games but i don't think we'll be able to directly compare 2 players of roughly similar skill after a single game no matter how hard the team tries to limit the "background noise", there's just too much of it in Civ7
Yanaek, you are right that restricting DLCs and legend attribute nodes or legacy cards would help have more comparable games and I would support that. As for the rest, luck always plays a role in Civ (remember the settler goody hut:-). It is less about ranking, after a while in this site you know where you are, basically somewhere behind Acken:-). But I like the competition, the fact that on a good day and with luck on your side you can sometimes beat the superior player. So I don't mind a little bit of luck. Just not too much, or what the other players do becomes irrelevant for you and the game you played. I would hate that, I like reading other people posts and learning from them. It is true that in Civ 7, there are more "luck" factors than ever before, too many in my opinion, specially for culture.
 
–Both pure turn count and options that involve legacy points have their pluses and minuses. I’d like to see both tried for now. Variety is good. We can also see how the meta develops and see if either option has persistent problems that become apparent once people figure out how to approach them.

“Total turns minus total legacy points” has to be better than anything involving division, though. It’s easier to calculate, and it’s rarely going to have issues with delaying victory to get more points – realistically, the most that’s ever likely to happen is stalling by a single turn because you can get two more legacy points on the next one. With “total turns divided by total legacy points”, a bit of napkin math shows that stalling for points would actually be the default.


–I enjoyed the “full China” run in GotM 2. However, the game currently might not have enough civs for many defined runs that would feel cohesive and satisfying, rather than arbitrarily restrictive. As above, a mix of defined and freeform runs sounds good to me.


–I haven’t seen much serious discussion of memento strategy and balance. My own belief is that the attribute points are too good, and that the majority of unlockable mementos are flat-out unusable in comparison. I gather that support for locking mementos is mainly rooted in the idea that people could be unfairly advantaged/disadvantaged based on the mementos they’ve unlocked, but I just don’t think that’s likely to be a major issue.

The flip side of this is that I now have a bunch of unlocked mementos that are permanently collecting dust, because I can’t strategically justify using them. If locking mementos causes me to play with some I’d otherwise never use, that’s a point in the positive column.

(Can the GotM staff create save files using unlockable mementos that are usable by everyone who loads the save, regardless of whether they’ve actually unlocked them themselves? That would have a major impact on how much variety you can get in games with locked-in mementos.)
 
1. Fewest turns in Modern Age Victory sounds like a good idea. When there is a chosen victory type (e.g. Science), not all the legacy path/points will matter in the modern age. But in order to achieve the fastest vic in modern, it is better to max legacy points in the previous 2 ages hence deliberately delay in finishing turns. To me, the first 2 ages are more fun to play and it is more satisfying to be able to max legacy points (which requires a lot of strategic planning and good executions) rather than hurrying to complete these 2 ages. To award players who can acomplish the max legacy points in the first 2 ages, I would float the idea of:

GOTM Score = (number of turns in Ant age/number of legacy points in Ant age * 10) + (number of turns in Exp age/number of legacy points in Exp age * 10) + number of turns in Modern age

Whoever gets the lowest calculated score from the above formula is the winner of that GOTM.

2. As for choosing civs during age transitions, I believe it is better to have all the players play the same civs throughout all ages. For example, there are some very strong Exploration age civs that can unlock extra settlement limits and lower befriend costs, and it is very easy to unlock these civs in the Ant age. For a competitive format, we should stick to the same civs for everyone to have more comparable games. We can even set additional goals in GOTMs to enforce this, for example, in one game, everyone needs to befriend at least 2 IPs during Ant age in order to unlock Shawnee and choose Shawnee as the Exp age civ; and then everyone has to build at least 2 fleet commanders during Exp age to unlock Britian and play as Britian as the modern age civ.

3. Momemtos should be same throughout the game for everyone, or even eliminate them from GOTMs. We dont really need any boost as the AIs are already not that challenging.
 
Last edited:
1) lowest turns. dragging out ages for legacy points is not a lot fun. many of the objectives for the legacy paths are not what makes you a good civ player imho.
2) i'm okay with a mix, but aiming for a specific civ in a specific age should be rewarded
3) rather have it fixed, too many options here
 
I m really trying to like this game but the current format of GOTM(4) means you need to take out 1 civ atleast in the antiqity and 1 or 2 in the exploration game, + the ways the maps are designed you want a city on both coast for explo age and you need to do the same legacies every time.

And the soft res on age transition is just a cooler every time, i got 248 hours in the game and I only completed 4 games, I just keeps restarting or ending the game after the age ended, because i hate the start of a new era.

I like the mementoes but I really hate the fact that i dont have acces to all, When playing an MP game my oppponent could have som crazy combo i dont have acces to

I know the gonna change the food required to get pop, but atm prod is very much the king, but my god i wish we still had citizen to micro managene,

well the bottom line for me is I was very hyped and positive about this game, and I have stayed this way up until recently, but im slowly loosing interest
 
Back
Top Bottom