Civ 7 Speculation: Fundamental changes.

I talked with someone and they said the problem is that the poles are never used, thus a spherical map has no functional purpose

 

Which is why a lot of player made earth maps don't include Antarctica. I mean sure it's rich in minerals no doubt it has strategic resources but really serves no real purpose game wise.

I like realism as much as possible in a game like Civ, but the only real need for a spherical map from my POV is realistic movement of units near the poles and I guess if you were playing in the atomic age or a cold war scenario involving nuclear weapons.

 

Plus if you want a proportional as possible map I'm sure it would have to be outside or normal parameters, even for Huge. The largest earth map I ever played on mostly as a gimmick was el_mencey's 362X362 map for civ 3 which was the largest maps could be modified for civ3 . Beautiful map, not very practical.

 

Firaxis has been focusing way too much on graphics instead of game play over the years.

It's interesting how only indie titles have gotten the message that you don't need great gameplay to be run a the latest and greatest specs.

 

Throw out 1UPT if it is not technically possible to create decent VANILLA RELEASE AI while preserving decent turn times. Replace it whatever else - Humankind amazing tactical battle system, Heroes - like battle map, chess - like minigame, card - like minigame, whatever just nor 1UPT. Bonus points for actually having the feeling of dramatic, climactic grand battles back in the series.

Do everything you can to make midgame and endgame fun.

Go back to historical inspirations instead of arcade board game.

Make rebellions and civil wars a threat.

Provide modding support this time.

Don't be afraid to challenge the player.

 

• If you can't get rid of 1UPT (and I don't think they will), my radical solution is to eliminate the range mechanic. Range is what gives human players such an enormous tactical advantage over the AI IMO, more than anything else. Plus range just feels OP and not at all flavorful
• I think there are two things they need to consider for mid/late game. I think they need to rework science to make a scientific lead less insurmountable (see Old World for an example of this). Also, they need to add stuff to mix up the diplomacy/foreign policy side of the game. Civ feels like it gets really static later. That was probably the biggest reason why ideology was such a great add in 5.
• Agreed no comment.
• For a game that allows you to literally shuffle the deck of 'policy cards', there sure is no sign of vested interests/resistance to change that we tend to see.
• Yup, IDK much about this.
• Yup! And not the challenge of facing down Shaka starting with 4 units by turn 15.

 

Insofar as a spherical map goes, outside of a space fantasy "Beyond Earth" reboot (a game which, IMO, had a lot of latent potential) I don't know what was so bad about a civ4 approach of simply projecting the flat map onto a sphere as you zoom out. The math behind this is not too complicated and at the zoom levels where you'd really need to make adjustments, you can't pick out features anyways, so no one should really notice if we toy with things a little. Few people would want to play a historical 4x with rules adapted to playing on a sphere. Like I said, for a beyond earth style thing, sure, you can have something like what Per Aspera does with tiles imposed. (And so much more!) So the only thing a spherical representation is bringing is the ability to look at the world as a globe - which is an aesthetic feature. Ergo, it need not be any more than aesthetic.

 

The talk about the Sphere reminded me of Super Mario Galaxy. Sure, it‘s a nice gimmick, but that‘s about it. It would be a nice marketing thing, but gameplay-wise or with regards to visuals - I don‘t see the need.

I‘d rather have a system that allows for larger maps. That way you can make the cities better, have more realistic maps and still combine the city and empire level on the same map. In civ6 that just felt cramped. I‘d leave it open how to handle combat then.

Civ 6 put the one single map into the center of its design by making everything react to it (adjacencies e.g.), civ 7 should do the same, but for the people living on the map (social movements, uncontrolled migration).

(A revolution on the way food is handled would also be in order, but I can‘t see them ditching the very easy to understand system for a realistic one. After all, that‘s practically a trope in strategy games)

 

One of the first things I remember noticing when Civ V came out was that the map size and potential number of cities had both decreased considerably - something I had never noticed in the transition from Civ II to III or III to IV. Civ VI just continued this trend, and it has several consequences that I consider very negative for the game:

1. Each individual city has become more important, because in most games it is 1 of 5 - 10 instead of 1 in 20. That means no game mechanism can make you lose a city: no volcano, earthquake, hurricane, Barbarian Invasion, nor anything else 'natural' (non formal AI Civ opponent) can do more than damage the city, because each city is Too Important.
2. The balance between the terrain and the city and units becomes even more unbalanced: a 'battle' involving several units stretches across a good percentage of your entire Empire, and the map has to make cities possible and viable even in Tundra (Taiga) terrain early in the game because there just isn't enough room otherwise.
3. The above, of course, is made even worse by adopting One Unit per Tile, which makes each tile even more critical as the total number of tiles per Unit shrinks.
4. City Growth is also stifled. I remember 25 - 30 pop cities in Civ IV and Civ III. You have to really work to get anything that big in Civ VI, because you Run Out of Room - and the game has to keep adding more and more per-tile bonuses even to make a 20 pop city possible. This isn't an unmixed Negative: really big cities did take extraordinary measures before the Industrial Era IRL, but the game now makes an Ancient/Classical/Medieval Mega-City like Babylon, Rome, or Chang-An practically impossible, not just difficult.
5. I suspect that the game has tried to compensate for all that by adding 'business' to each tile: animated Improvements are an obvious addition. But that in turn makes a larger map even more graphic-hungry and limits the ability of not-top-of-the-line computers to handle them: and so reinforces the trend towards a smaller overall map with all of its limitations.

Food has always been linked directly to population growth in Civ, but just as important, with the smaller maps it must be only rarely linked with actual Population Loss - anything that negative happening to your city has become too drastic as the total number of possible cities per game drops. Realistically (Aaaargh! He's using that word again!) most city growth came from people moving in from the countryside, not being born in the city, so 'real' population growth should be related to City Attractiveness - culture, religion, job opportunities, etc, with Enough Food being only one factor out of several.
But as you say, that would complicate what is now a very simple game system.

 

I don't percieve this too much of a bad thing. I like things more granular/unit-based with importance in each unit rather than sea of meaningless dots where you merely hoard many. Which is why I look at all concepts in gameplay as abstract imitations. I think of the city as having 5 Citizens, of course from realistic point there would be 5'000, but I'd rather each Citizen has proper impact than them being little exppoints generated by exppoints (Food) and you needing 1'000'000 of them where now you'd need 10-15. Likewise, I imagine Cities more like already mentoined Provinces/Regions/Countries/Counties or when palying on Europe-focused World Map even states within Federations/Empires. Then again, the solution many proposed last time we discussed this was to percieve Districts as Cities and your point still stands that those cannot be removed even thought they'd be the smaller unit.

I think simple system with clear purpose is better, but that doesn't need to ignore realistic features - you could always make Governor Promotion/Social Policy/Policy that represents one of these bonuses. If you focus on Culture and there'd be Culture Policy Tree, there could be 25% Culture is gained as Food benefit representing that. Another one for Tourism etc.

Funilly enough, I find Housing as too uninteresting name and should I re-mod my game that hard, I was thinking about renaming it into Employment, ramping it off Improvements and Districts.

 

A good 'catch-all' term might be "Opportunity", covering the opportunity to get a decent job, have access to Culture, Religion, or Power (the capital/palace should always have an Influence on Growth) have access to the 'bread and circuses' if there's any going around . . .

 

I would have thought the main purpose of a spherical or more spherical like map (eg eckert II hexagon projection) would be to essentially exchange snow/tundra tiles for jungle/grass tiles. Like you don't play with the poles on a sphere but are you playing with the poles on a rectangle anyway ?

There is also the pathfinding aspect which I've wondered about but I have a harder time understanding. Like, if you have to take a detour, under which system is the detour shorter/longer ? Longer detours would make stuff like canals/trading posts more valuable I imagine....

 

If your tile grid is well indexed, the algorithmic solutions to pathfinding on a sphere are going to be the same as on any other map. The advantage of a grid or some other geometric layout is that you can infer what the valid connecting tiles are, but at the end of the day, with the existence of things like impassable terrain, it's the same as mapping through something that isn't on a grid and is more jumbled.

Spheres seem cool. Like the future. Ergo, people want spheres. But usually people advocate keeping the poles and throwing ice there. The problem, of course, is that there's no reason to cross the poles on earth, but you technically would get a more accurate layout of a planet.
(And as has been addressed, that may not be desirable since spheres are not as easy to fudge with as rectangular maps when you want to make europe bigger or delete new zealand or something.)

 

Preserve opened my eyes to how Districts could be different in Civ 7, potentionally mitigating the problem some people have with them. Move buildings to City Center and keep Districts in style of Aqueducts, Dams, Canals, Preserves and expand them.

Basically, Buildings would be mostly bonus stats, they could keep their current model, you must have specific Pop to opt into a line, you upgrade the line, from Library to University and so on. Visually, there could be space reserved for one specialization displaying the highest-tier building in City Center.

Instead, Districts would be about adjacencies and should be based more around Facilities distant to City. Let's say that Observatory would be District that gives Science per adjacent Moutain. Some Research Station would give Science per adjacent Snow tile. Basically separate notion of "I want this city to focus on Science" (NOW: I must build Campus district, I pray I have Moutains; CHANGE: I opt into Science line) and "There are exploitable Moutains" (NOW: I must build Campus and focus this city on Science; CHANGE: I may build Observatory as one of this city's districts). You build districts based on the terrain and how to exploit it.

Part of it is already there. Mostly the no Pop required Districts. When you build Dams or Canals, you are not specializing the city in any way, you are not opting that much for Growth or Production or Science, you are mostly playing the map, exploiting the terrain, tactically adjusting the city to the area rather than area to the city. Preserve is too generalist for this system, but represents how it could be played. Some Districts would not require Pop and gain adjacency bonus, some would require Pop to work the tiles and would instead grant yields to adjacent tiles, some could have "buildings" inside to expand what they do or choose one of several uses (mutually exclusive buildings).

The base is already there, I'd just properly separate buildings of specialization (line of buildings) from district placement, mutually exclusive buuildings and buildings with benefits like Preserve buildings.

 

How do you represent them all on the map graphically?

My solution would be simpler: There is a new basic district, the neighborhood, which has 3-6 slots for buildings or wonders (who take up two slots). Depending on where you put the buildings and how you cluster them, you get special bonuses. F.e. all science in one place = science monster. Combining science and military buildings = military techs easier to research or units cheaper to update. You can move the buildings, and some - like a dam - require certain spots.

This frees up the landscape for other things, while simplifying the structure. That makes it easy to understand, but you can also optimize it endlessly if you so want to. Easy to get, hard to master. It allows for a lot of flexibility and strategic change, which wouldn't fit civ6 which quite railroads you into going for a victory condition. But this is about the next thing.

The preserve in this system would be a infrastructure (that can't be buils within x tiles of another preserve).

 

I would introduce District Expansions - ability to expand certain district (has to be adjacent to district or that district expansion). Remove tile improvements. Add more buildings for Districts and District Expansions (bonuses dependent on adjacency with other expansions/districts also certain terrain feature like expansion for industrial that has lumber mills with additional production when build on tiles with forest etc...).

Remove workable tile limits for cities (or at least be it more than 3, many times because of terrain this is an issue).

Let me build outposts if I only want a certain resource from certain place (let it be able to grow to a city if needed).

Power is great addition to CIV VI, but why can't I support cities that are further than 6 tiles from Power Plant? (can be expanded with Great Engineers sure, but that limit is not natural) Power Grid and supporting Power Plants are things rather natural. Let me be able to connect Solar and Wind Farms (and other) to grid.

1UPT turned into armies per tile.

Friendships/Alliances till one side decides otherwise. Same thing with sending trade routes (till something breaks that possibility). Also should be true when trading any resource, with addition to be it limited for certain turns, if I want it to.

Re: Spherical Maps, would be a nice touch, but I thing being able to play on larger maps is rather more important (CIV maps are getting smaller since III - this should not be happening).

 

By analyzing how the design of Civ VI went from release to the current season pass, it's clear for me that they are moving away from building stuff from cities in a list to placing improvements in the map itself. Maybe they'll go the Old World style of yields being global, with cities being hubs for territory control and population, but toned down on building things.