Civ Switching - Will it prevent you from buying Civ 7?

[chaosprophet]

All the changes in previous iterations were truly natural and truly tried to address issues with the game or add some new interesting elements. Some were successful, some were not

Reading the Dev Diary, they are trying to address issues with the game and add interesting new elements, whether it will be successful or not or if they crossed a line it wasn't worth crossing on your opinion.

You guide your people from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Then you guide some other people. Not to mention that you can pick Augustus and lead Axum, so you are not really guiding your people in the first place.
Now, I am not against mixing civs and leaders, but only as an optional feature you can select when you set up your game, just if you want to have some fun and experiment, not as a main part of the game itself.

You will still control the same civilization/empire until the end of the game, it is not like what you built simply disappear on the ages transitions. The difference is that the label you will give to your empire changes. It is a different approach from a constant label, but gameplay wise it just means you have a lot more of unique civ abilities through all the game, adding on new when going to a new age.

"Story" wise, it means you went from a constant culture representation, to an evolving one. People can see it as their civ suddenly transforming or being conquered by the new one if they want, but that is clearly not the intended view the devs have for it, and things in gameplay even reflect on that with how the unique infrastructure of each age is kept and you get the traditions cards to keep.

It does have some abstractions and some non historical elements to it, but nothing that is particularly more than what the series already did. For example, you now have a very non historical situation where a civ, while evolving it's culture, just keep growing for 6000 years without being conquered, divided or collapsed. While before you had the same non historical situation just without the evolving culture part.

 

[Uberfrog]

Unimportant Ramble about myself: I am partial to Greece because as a kid I used to always pick Alexander the Great in Civ 1 on my SNES. I thought Alexander was so cool when I was a kid and even more so for the war game Civ 1 basically was. When Civ 2 came out, I just continued playing as him. Then 3 brought in unique units and leader traits. This had me start branching away from Greece and trying different Civs. Now I play my first couple games as Greece and then set my civ pick to Random on game creation. (I did appreciate Leader Pools in 6 as sometimes the RNG likes to give duplicate picks oddly.)

EDIT: So even as someone who doesn't mind the civ switching mechanic, this first playthrough is going to feel very different for me this iteration. My intimate trip down memory lane with Greece now must be shared with France and the Normans. 2/3 of the game is "civs I do not want to play as". Now, as I have said this isn't a deal breaker for me but I have also voiced that I would rather Civ leave Civ switching alone. I don't think it suits the franchise well. I would rather have Greece "level up" in the second Era and I get a new UU, UB, and perhaps be able to pick a new trait. However, I still remain Greece. This does pose questions for civs at different stages in the game as to what their UU and UB could be. But considering that Civ is more of a caricature of history more than a portrait I say make some stuff up. Just look at balance in gameplay and flavor in design and give us "Liberty Chariots" for America in the Ancient Era. But that is just my tastes.

I think this is a key challenge the devs have. Civ is a series with a lot of baggage and expectations of players who have been playing the franchise for up to three decades. There is a sense among some players of how they have always played the game in a particular way, and what the series means to them. Whether that’s always playing the same civ, always exploring the ocean in age 1, always playing a pangaea map, always playing a TSL, etc

I understand how as big a change as civ-switching leads to some players feeling left behind. But I think this is probably necessary for innovation. Civilization was new once, and people approached it with no such rigid expectations. We need to approach Civ 7 on its own terms, civ-switching and all. It probably requires us to shake up our preconceptions of what we expect, but the alternative was a probably much more boring game that didn’t address the series’ main flaws.

 

[ColtSeavers]

Hoping getting the game back on track is not the party line thou and this new Civ may ruin the series all by itself .
I dont think PC sales will effect the long term outcome IMHO it will be how it sell's on the mobile and console's

Anyhow you can always play millenia on the PC

Never really tried Millenia, from what I have seen, it is not quiet comparable with Civ, since it apparently focusses more on trade and micromanagement and the opponents look rather generic (doesn't feel more immersive than playing against Genghis of Austria... ). Anyway, I wouldn't underestimate PC Sales for strategy games, and for mobile I still have a hard time understanding how one plays seriously Civ on a smartphone either.

 

[Voidwalkin]

I understand how as big a change as civ-switching leads to some players feeling left behind. But I think this is probably necessary for innovation

The way they've done it is brute force.

The idea of a civ evolving over thousands of years is not earth shaking. They do. They respond to politics, internal and external, climate, geography. The natural representation of that would be your civ evolving according to terrain, improvements, cultural exchange with your neighbors.

But that isn't what we're getting. We're getting "historical" paths, often dubious, arbitrary crises meant to represent political events that are unavoidable, regardless of circumstance. Cultural exchange with actual neighbors not at all represented(Egypt would not plausibly morph into Abbasids if they border Chola). Interaction with terrain seems pretty limited, things like 3 horses, can be Mongol, doesn't make much sense if the vast majority of your food still comes from agriculture, and so on.

The alt history you create doesn't seem particularly relevant to the course your civ takes. Imo this is a consequence of using real identities. The player comes into this thinking well wait, how can X morph into Y, if Z does not happen? Suspension of disbelief is necessary. The aftertaste of arcade-yness lingers even with it in play.

It seems Firaxis wants to profit from nationalism and real loyalties to real identities, while simultaneously implementing a system that uses them in implausible ways, diminishing immersion. There's an inherent conflict in that that I don't think is ever gonna really disappear.

 

[stealth_nsk]

But that isn't what we're getting. We're getting "historical" paths, often dubious, arbitrary crises meant to represent political events that are unavoidable, regardless of circumstance. Cultural exchange with actual neighbors not at all represented(Egypt would not plausibly morph into Abbasids if they border Chola). Interaction with terrain seems pretty limited, things like 3 horses, can be Mongol, doesn't make much sense if the vast majority of your food still comes from agriculture, and so on.

I wrote multiple times - historical paths seem to be overfocused on this forum. Based on what developers show so far, they see those paths as a minor feature mostly designed for AI civs to have some roleplay. With historical, regional, leader and unlockable access, I expect human players to be able to access any civ they actually want

 

[ColtSeavers]

I understand how as big a change as civ-switching leads to some players feeling left behind. But I think this is probably necessary for innovation.

I don't mind the Age system or that it changes the look and attributes of your Civ. I just find it unappealing to change from Greece into the Normans, there would have been a much way to achieve this. Just "level up the respective Civs", make the Gauls (instead of Greece) become Modern France, and a lot of the outrage could have been avoided => Referring to what King Flevance elaborated above!

 

[Voidwalkin]

I wrote multiple times - historical paths seem to be overfocused on this forum. Based on what developers show so far, they see those paths as a minor feature mostly designed for AI civs to have some roleplay. With historical, regional, leader and unlockable access, I expect human players to be able to access any civ they actually want

I agree people are effectively gonna get whatever civ they want from the available options. I expect pretty trivial game difficulty, and clearing that bar pretty easy consequently. The limited options available on release is what will hurt players most. There are going to be multiple cases where the civ the player actually wants isn't even in game, and it might be years before they get it. There will be at least some permanent loss of interest in that timeframe. Some player migration is sure to happen.

But the paths aren't overfocused imo. The AI will still take them, which will matter to the players relationship to their in game world, even presuming they're totally content with the civ they have(I don't think many will be honestly)

If you're dealing with the Spanish armada and then the Grande Armee the next it's gonna change relationship to the world in ways not everybody is gonna just shrug off. Real identities involved there people have pre-existing relationships to.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I did not come here yesterday, I've been playing Civ since the first game, and I remember well the uproar in the community regarding 1UPT. I was one of the people in favour of that change since I hated the stacks of doom in previous games. But regardless of whether I liked it or not, this change did not break the main principle of the game. I just can't understand how people say that civ switching is not a very significant change, and I also don't see anything natural about it either. All the changes in previous iterations were truly natural and truly tried to address issues with the game or add some new interesting elements. Some were successful, some were not, but they did not alter the main concept of the game - you pick a civ (or a civ and a leader in IV and VI) and play as them from the stone age to the space age while adapting to your environment, and not becoming a totally different civ midgame.

There are some who realy like to pretend that the uproar to popular changes like introducing hexes and removing stacks of dooms was anywhere near the same levels of contention and revolt we're seeing from the fanbase regarding civ swapping and eras. You can pull up any poll after poll from before and after V's release that shows that majority of fans here were excited for these changes and someone will try to convince you that you're wrong and that half the fanbase really hated 1 unit per tile and if Civ V was showcased today the stream would erupt into Ls

 

[ColtSeavers]

I wrote multiple times - historical paths seem to be overfocused on this forum. Based on what developers show so far, they see those paths as a minor feature mostly designed for AI civs to have some roleplay. With historical, regional, leader and unlockable access, I expect human players to be able to access any civ they actually want

You might seem "historical paths to be overfocused", others don't. That's basically the whole point of this thread. We are discussing whether we like the way the Devs approached this and come up with alternative ideas. Just because you think the Devs "see the historical paths as a minor feature", doesn't mean we can't criticize this. I don't get what your problem is here?

 

[TheGrayFox]

I wrote multiple times - historical paths seem to be overfocused on this forum. Based on what developers show so far, they see those paths as a minor feature mostly designed for AI civs to have some roleplay. With historical, regional, leader and unlockable access, I expect human players to be able to access any civ they actually want

If the devolopers views these historical aths as such a minor feature, then they wouldn't have specifically advertised that the AI would be following these paths by defualt

Human players being able to pick any civ they want, doesn't matter to the people complaining about civ swapping

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I just can't understand how people say that civ switching is not a very significant change,

You guide your people from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Then you guide some other people.

It's not a significant change, mechanics wise, because mechanically all that is happening is that your uniques change from era to era. And some of the game rules also now change from era to era, which is an even a bigger change, and the unique changes may well be required to align with these rule changes.

"Your people" don't cease to exist and then get replaced by "some other people". All that is changing is a text file (civ name) and maybe the unit graphics. From a gameplay perspective, both of those things are meaningless; they're pure flavour, they have no impact on how the game plays. You still have continuity of everything else.

What is unknown at this time is the potential impact of the crisis events and transition turns. We know there's gameplay associated with them, but we don't know how it works. This is a change from past versions of the series, and could be a big change or a small change. But the civ-switching itself is close to a nothing-burger from a pure gameplay perspective.

 

[King Flevance]

I think being able to retain Greece (read: ALL Ancient Civs) as an option may be a good implementation. So Greece, Khmer, Mississipian, and Egypt could last all through the game by simply retaining their identity on civ select and only getting a small boost into the next age. Similar to HK's system of retaining your civ on selection. This allows for pivoting if you choose to and welcomes things like America breaking off from England also. But it also allows you to double down and invest on that civ's identity and primary strategy.

 

[TheGrayFox]

It's not a significant change, mechanics wise, because mechanically all that is happening is that your uniques change from era to era. And some of the game rules also now change from era to era, which is an even a bigger change, and the unique changes may well be required to align with these rule changes.

"Your people" don't cease to exist and then get replaced by "some other people". All that is changing is a text file (civ name) and maybe the unit graphics. From a gameplay perspective, both of those things are meaningless; they're pure flavour, they have no impact on how the game plays. You still have continuity of everything else.

Again this game series is built on its abstractions of human history and creating a game around those abstractions and connections. If this game didn't have its historical themeing, it would've never been series it is today

Nobody plays Civilization for its cold text files and values. The historical flavour and the sandbox immersion is part of the series' game play. Even then splitting the entire game into three seperated campaigns and completely changing how players interact with unique units/abilities over the course of the game is a HUGE gameplay change mechanically

 

[stealth_nsk]

You might seem "historical paths to be overfocused", others don't. That's basically the whole point of this thread. We are discussing whether we like the way the Devs approached this and come up with alternative ideas. Just because you think the Devs "see the historical paths as a minor feature", doesn't mean we can't criticize this. I don't get what your problem is here?

It's not about my estimation of the feature importance. The problem here is what it's a thing mentioned once or twice by developers and people try to predict civ roster based on it and consider historical paths as a hard restriction on civ choice (as in the post I was replying to). Nothing in what developers said suggests they are going to limit civ unlocks or overall focus on historical paths.

If the devolopers views these historical aths as such a minor feature, then they wouldn't have specifically advertised that the AI would be following these paths by defualt

They did it, because that's what players were asking about during the initial backlash against civ switching.

 

[TheGrayFox]

They did it, because that's what players were asking about during the initial backlash against civ switching.

But they said that there would be a default historical path the AI to follow by default in their very first show case of the mechanic before there was even any large scale backlash

and they did this because they knew very few would want their Greece AI turning into Indonesia, So for you to say that its "not important" seems weird

 

[Kev1916]

Again this game series is built on its abstractions of human history and creating a game around those abstractions and connections. If this game didn't have its historical themeing, it would've never been series it is today

Nobody plays Civilization for its cold text files and values. The historical flavour and the sandbox immersion is part of the series' game play. Even then splitting the entire game into three seperated campaigns and completely changing how players interact with unique units/abilities over the course of the game is a HUGE gameplay change mechanically

Civ as a series and with each indivuals unique play through and set up is based on there own choice of who to play and how to set up there opponents .
Civ Switching denies a player choice which previously was always available .

How Denying and restricting choice in a basic function of all Civ's games is deemed not a major changed is well more than bizarre

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

It's not a significant change, mechanics wise, because mechanically all that is happening is that your uniques change from era to era. And some of the game rules also now change from era to era, which is an even a bigger change, and the unique changes may well be required to align with these rule changes.

"Your people" don't cease to exist and then get replaced by "some other people". All that is changing is a text file (civ name) and maybe the unit graphics. From a gameplay perspective, both of those things are meaningless; they're pure flavour, they have no impact on how the game plays. You still have continuity of everything else.

Absolutely! Not to mention that Civ has never been about the people anyway, it's about building stuff! SimCity was one of the major inspirations, lest we forget. What do you do in every Civ game? Put stuff on a big old fictional map. You don't have to worry about ethnicity, migration, the minutiae of everyday life, you have to worry about granaries and markets, roads and farms, wonders and palaces.

If we're talking about the "core concept" of the franchise, let's look back to Civ 1. For a start, the tag line is "build an empire to stand the test of time", not a civilization. Secondly, the civilizations in that game are essentially identical, aside from their name. They are as basic as you can imagine, differentiated primarily by their famous world leaders. It is the leaders that we remember from Civ 1. As the franchise has progressed, the civilizations have become more and more complex, more and more differentiated - and switching feels like a logical continuation of that - but they have retained the idea of competing against famous world leaders.

And then we could ask Sid himself; none of this has been removed from Civ VII, none of it:

"In your mind, what defines a Civilization game? You mentioned that original third you need to keep, but is there anything that jumps out to you that describes what Civilization is?

Sid Meier: I'd like it to be a game, where at the end, you look back to your starting point and feel that there's an incredible distance between where you started and where you ended up. That you've gone on this really interesting journey. That, to me, is the feel of Civilization. I started with this little city and all of this stuff happened and it's unique to me, this story will never be told again. And I want to go back and do another one and see what the next story is.

That sense of having gone through an epic adventure is what we're trying to create with the Civ experience. Everything else is a mechanic and a feature and an asset and things like that, but we want you to leave the real world and live in our world for a little while and feel that you've had this epic adventure while you were there."

Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/25-years-of-civilization-we-talk-with-sid-meier

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Again this game series is built on its abstractions of human history and creating a game around those abstractions and connections. If this game didn't have its historical themeing, it would've never been series it is today

Nobody plays Civilization for its cold text files and values. The historical flavour and the sandbox immersion is part of the series' game play. Even then splitting the entire game into three seperated campaigns and completely changing how players interact with unique units/abilities over the course of the game is a HUGE gameplay change mechanically

Pretty much day one there will be mods that allow you keep your civ name and use whatever unit/building graphics you want for your civ each era. Those are surface things, which is why I don't see them as impactful as true mechanical changes like introducing 1UPT. Age-specific uniques is an important mechanical change, as I'd noted previously, but not so material as to warrant claims that "this is no longer a Civ game". Nobody would be making that claim if each civ had specific uniques per age, they're making that claim because they don't like the name text file changing. Which is totally fair and legitimate, but that's a flavour thing that'll be addressed by modders, not a mechanical thing you have to live with.

I also doubt that the game will be "three separated campaigns". It'll be a single campaign punctuated with twos sets of crisis events along the way. However, depending on how the crisis turns and transitions actually play out, maybe it will feel like the exploration age had nothing to do with the ancient age you just finished. I'd be shocked if the dev team was so incompetent that this was the case, but until we see transitions in action, we won't know for sure.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Absolutely! Not to mention that Civ has never been about the people anyway, it's about building stuff! SimCity was one of the major inspirations, lest we forget. What do you do in every Civ game? Put stuff on a big old fictional map. You don't have to worry about ethnicity, migration, the minutiae of everyday life, you have to worry about granaries and markets, roads and farms, wonders and palaces.

If we're talking about the "core concept" of the franchise, let's look back to Civ 1. For a start, the tag line is "build an empire to stand the test of time", not a civilization. Secondly, the civilizations in that game are essentially identical, aside from their name. They are as basic as you can imagine, differentiated primarily by their famous world leaders. It is the leaders that we remember from Civ 1. As the franchise has progressed, the civilizations have become more and more complex, more and more differentiated - and switching feels like a logical continuation of that - but they have retained the idea of competing against famous world leaders.

If we were going by this incredibly simplistic and reductive definition of what makes a civilization game was then suddenly games like Minecraft, City Skylines, Mount and Blade, and EU4 could be considered Civ games after all "What do you do in every Civ game? Put stuff on a big old fictional map."?

And then we could ask Sid himself; none of this has been removed from Civ VII, none of it:

"In your mind, what defines a Civilization game? You mentioned that original third you need to keep, but is there anything that jumps out to you that describes what Civilization is?

Sid Meier: I'd like it to be a game, where at the end, you look back to your starting point and feel that there's an incredible distance between where you started and where you ended up. That you've gone on this really interesting journey. That, to me, is the feel of Civilization. I started with this little city and all of this stuff happened and it's unique to me, this story will never be told again. And I want to go back and do another one and see what the next story is.

That sense of having gone through an epic adventure is what we're trying to create with the Civ experience. Everything else is a mechanic and a feature and an asset and things like that, but we want you to leave the real world and live in our world for a little while and feel that you've had this epic adventure while you were there."

Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/25-years-of-civilization-we-talk-with-sid-meier

I know some aren't going to like to hear this but I wouldn't take the words of a dude who hasn't even been a lead devoloper on a series bearing his own name in decades as the gospel. By Sid's definition in this interview, many action-adventure sandbox games could be Civilization titles.

 

[Gedemon]

Civ as a series and with each indivuals unique play through and set up is based on there own choice of who to play and how to set up there opponents .
Civ Switching denies a player choice which previously was always available .

How Denying and restricting choice in a basic function of all Civ's games is deemed not a major changed is well more than bizarre

In my country some people like to eat oysters. Bizarre. But, hey, they like it.

Similarly, while I'm reserved on the actual implementation combined with the number of civilizations at release, I'm pretty excited* to see how we'll be able to play and mod this mechanism, I feel it gives more choices for the player to build their story, not less, and I find it a lesser change to the franchise than 1UPT or post-civ4 diplomacy. So you must find me bizarre.

But that's fine, I still find bizarre that some people think there is no middle ground between 1UPT and SOD, or even more bizarre that some people do not think civ4 was the greatest of all civ game.

*and believe me, having me excited over a civ game after civ6 deception wasn't a small task