Civ 7 Is Failing And Only Radical Change Can Save It

[Civinator]

I don’t even think the other thread is a hate train thread. It’s just talking about the data we have, which ok sure is mostly negative, but that isn’t the point per se.

There is also the thread: Discussion On Why Civ 7 Doesn't Feel Like A "Civ" Game

 

[user746383]

I also don’t personally find that a hate train, but I guess I’m not even 100% sure what that means objectively.

 

[Civinator]

I also don’t personally find that a hate train

Because the base for that discussion is, that Civ 7 is not feeling like a "Civ" game. The discussion, when following the title of the thread, is only about the "why".

Personally I think and hope, that Civ 7 can be "rescued".

 

[aelf]

So I'm still trying to figure out what this thread is supposed to be about. Is it to discuss what "radical change" is needed to "save" the game? Is it to specifically discuss the OP's suggestions? Is it to discuss whether OP's suggestions will save the game?

We have a lot of missing basic information or explanations. For one, what constitutes radical change? OP assumes the Patch 1.2 is not. But there's no real explanation for this reasoning.

And then there are the 3 points:

1) A concession to major player concerns as an admission of failure

What about this point will save the game? The concession? The admission of failure? How would either of these save the game? This point also seems to have weak linkage with its elaboration.

2) Enlarge the scope of the the game

Okay. I guess we need to drill down into what this means.

3) actually complete the broken legacy paths

Are the legacy paths broken? What is meant by "broken" here? They don't seem broken at all. I can understand specific criticisms about them, but this headline seems to be a massive exaggeration or misrepresentation of the problems.

And then there's the elaboration:

For 1) this is conceding that the age transcription concept failed. You can’t completely get rid of it. Instead, just do two things. Let people keep their antiquity civs if they want, and also make age transition seamless. The way I’d do this is have the next age progression trees unlock during phase two of a crisis. Once you research two of the techs, and if phase three of the crisis is reached, you can civ transition. Once the crisis concludes, all players can civ transition and the old progression trees disappear. You can then civ transition at any time in the next age if you choose not to.

What is meant by "the age transcription concept failed"? Failed in what sense? Improving its seamlessness is a fair suggestion, so maybe that should be the focus of this entire point?

I don't think age transition into the next age when someone researches the next two techs would work because that would be an even ruder interruption for players who are behind the tech leader. Imagine an AI leader has insane yields and researches the next age's first two techs just as you got halfway through the current age's tech tree. It seems how Future Tech/Civic works is better balanced as it is.

As for letting people keep their Antiquity civ, this might be trickier than it seems at first. I suppose the civ wouldn't get any more UUs, UBs and unique civics going forward. I'm positive a lot of players would complain about that. Should it get a small bonus to make up for it? Would that be enough to satisfy people? If the bonus is too powerful, it might undermine the concept of civ switching.

For 2) this means leaning hard into the town concept. There are lots of ways to do this and I’ve discussed my ideas plenty. Still the idea overall is big big big maps. This means towns are easy to make. One concept is to have them not count toward settlement cap or at least double settlement caps and make cities cost two. Something like this. Fix the goddamn city connections system and make it more interesting and logical, then make the town specializations more useful and interesting where you would often prefer to keep a town a town than make it a city. Please don’t be lazy, and let us have some control over where food yields distribute. I have suggested that distance should govern a cap on how much food can be sent so only nearby cities can get 100% of a farming town’s food. Of course I also think settlement cap should be replaced by a distance from capital system and so managing city connections and bonuses to use roads to reduce distance cost would improve both. I digress. Just make civ 7 bigger and use cheap, abundant towns to do it. I have recognized the need for towns to be able to produce a weak militia unit to compensate for distant cities. I digress.

Why does enlarging the scope of the game mean "leaning hard into the town concept"? There's no apparent link here.

On the topic of towns, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, a big problem was food had rapidly diminishing returns, which makes converting all towns into cities once they hit a certain size a powerful option. Now that food has been rebalanced, is it still a problem? Why is there a necessity for all these extra changes to be made to towns?

Improving city connections and bigger maps are in the works, I believe.

For 3), guys, fix religion and modern age culture. There have been so many proposals but for the love of god just do more. More seriously, even the treasure fleet victory needs work and even culture in antiquity scales poorly with player count. Maybe just change these things up. People complain they’re two rigid. Maybe combine them. Maybe crusade could be a military-religious victory. Maybe colonization could be an economic-expansionist victory. Maybe enlightenment could be a cultural-scientific victory. Use the systems and yields you have and add nuance. I honestly don’t see why this would be so hard to do.

What are the issues that are supposed to be fixed?

There's been criticism that religion and culture victory are currently one-dimensional. Sure, I agree with such criticism. Does fixing mean adding more depth to them? It seems like this is a question of adding some alternative ways of getting the respective legacy points? For culture victory, bringing back great works has been mentioned a lot, and that's certainly a good way to provide an alternative and it doesn't sound overly complicated. As for religion, I don't remember a whole lot of ideas being thrown around. Bringing back the Civ6 system will alienate a significant proportion of players. So what can be done is an open question. Maybe how to expand on the legacy paths/victory conditions should be the focus of this entire point?


See, I had to do a lot of work to try and tease out any potential for discussion here. If only the OP was much better constructed, with clear reasoning and a focus on constructive ideas... Ironically, it seems comparable to how the Civ7 launch was bungled in how it derailed the subsequent conversation.

 

[aelf]

Well, I tried to help you extract some value out of this thread

Moderator Action: *SNIP* Again, stop attacking each other...here and everywhere. -lymond

 

[lymond]

Moderator Action: EDIT: Thread now closed permanently. -lymond