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

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Honestly I kinda hate the model where civs like Eqypt are the “deser/Floodplains bonus Civ” and Russia is the “Tundra” civ because it leads to situations where your spawn either screws you or makes you unstoppable.

Unique buildings/units have the problem where there is a massive, massive “time value” to them because it’s almost always better to have early ones than late ones

I’d rather see Civ bonuses develop naturally based on where you spawn and found cities.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, this design decision was made in Civ 3, and all subsequent versions of Civ have followed it. In Civ 1 and 2, the real world attributes of your civ did not come into play, the only thing that mattered was what your civ did in that game. Beginning with Civ 3, real world attributes of your civ became associated with your civ and excluded from all other civs, regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in that particular game. As Egypt, your people are the best at working the desert, even if you've never seen the desert; as Russia, your people will never figure out how to thrive in the desert, even if you start there.

I can't say this decision was wrong, as its been very popular. But it also didn't need to be done this way, either. Uniques could have been handed out based on in game play, rather than preassigned at the start.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Honestly I kinda hate the model where civs like Eqypt are the “deser/Floodplains bonus Civ” and Russia is the “Tundra” civ because it leads to situations where your spawn either screws you or makes you unstoppable.

Unique buildings/units have the problem where there is a massive, massive “time value” to them because it’s almost always better to have early ones than late ones

I’d rather see Civ bonuses develop naturally based on where you spawn and found cities.

I like the idea of bonuses developing naturally; wouldn't be surprised to see something like this in future Civs, it feels like a natural progression of the current system.

As for the rest, I guess they've kind of fixed some of this by equalising all the terrain, and as far as I can remember, there aren't many terrain specific bonuses in the civs announced so far (beyond coast and navigable rivers).

 

[aieeegrunt]

I like the idea of bonuses developing naturally; wouldn't be surprised to see something like this in future Civs, it feels like a natural progression of the current system.

As for the rest, I guess they've kind of fixed some of this by equalising all the terrain, and as far as I can remember, there aren't many terrain specific bonuses in the civs announced so far (beyond coast and navigable rivers).

There are several mods for Civ6 that do this, mostly through the Eureka/Inspiration system

 

[thecrazyscot]

Depending on how extensive the Legacy Option triggers and effects are you could probably already do a version of that by simply vastly expanding the number of bonuses available as Legacy Options. Have 4 settlements on Deserts? Unlock a Legacy Option to make your tiles immune to sandstorms. Etc etc. You could also unlock all sorts of unique Legacy Options via civ-specific Civic trees. You'd probably want to reduce the number of unique elements for each civ by default to reduce how complex this would get but potentially could be done. You'd have 2 big "break points" with the Age Transitions to customize your civ further.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It all comes down to implementation. Good implementation allows something like this:
1. Based on your initial situation you could decide, which next era civ fits your planned strategy best
2. The same initial situation allows you to make efforts to unlock this next era civ
3. This applies to all civs - so all civs fit some strategies and actions required from player fit this strategy

Those unlock requirements could be map-dependent or independent, both could work.
For example, requirement for Mongols to connect X horses is quite ok. You see enough horses, you could prioritize them, so you lead a cavalry conquest in exploration age. That's map-dependednt unlock.
Map-independent unlock could be something like building X commanders to unlock more universal conquest civ.

But, of course, there are a lot of ways to screw this system.

 

[Leucarum]

Honestly I kinda hate the model where civs like Eqypt are the “deser/Floodplains bonus Civ” and Russia is the “Tundra” civ because it leads to situations where your spawn either screws you or makes you unstoppable.

Unique buildings/units have the problem where there is a massive, massive “time value” to them because it’s almost always better to have early ones than late ones

I’d rather see Civ bonuses develop naturally based on where you spawn and found cities.

I agree to some extent though, tying civs to terrain made some sense for Civ6's "play the map."

In Civ7 though, I am much less a fan of this type of civ. Especially if they are age 2/3 Civs. To use your example, a player who wants to go for (a hypothetical tundra-themed) Russia but doesn't get a Tundra spawn is going to be a bit bummed I suspect. You can already see this with Shawnee and their need for navigable rivers, especially with them getting a malus...

 

[Psychotronics]

Sounds like a much healthier attitude than hoping it fails.

Well, being a member of this forum, I'm obviously a civfanatic. I think it's illogical to hope for a game in a series I love to be bad. I want it to be good and to put hundreds, thousands of hours into it. So far, I'm not convinced this will be the case, but that's always what I want to happen.