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

[Thormodr]

Ultimately, it is the anti consumer Denuvo drm that will prevent me from buying the game. At least for PC, anyway.

Moderator Action: There is an entire thread devoted to that topic. Please discuss it there. leif

iPad, I am not sure. Civ switching could be fixed or at least made tolerable with mods. No mods for the iPad, as far as I know.

 

[Thormodr]

I’ve already pre-purchased Civ 7 but I feel they need to flip it from being Leader centric to Civilization centric. In other words, the Civilization you pick remains constant throughout the ages, undergoing societal change as needed but your Leader is what you change after every Era. This would require generating Leaders for each Civ for each Era but given that each Civ starts on roughly equal footing, consider it a challenge. Take for example America. Antiquity age would have Founding Father leaders like Ben Franklin. Exploration Era would have a leader like Andrew Jackson, who authorized several Exploration expeditions. Then for Modern age, it could be anyone: JFK or maybe a recent President. Other 4x games have Leaders change as did Civs in real life. Why not in Civ 7?

Agreed. Civ centric instead of leader centric.

 

[DeutschDachs]

I am extremely worried about it. Maybe a little less so now that they've showed some more natural transitions between Civs - perhaps with expansions things like Egypt to Songhai will get less weird.

But I've always loved Civ and while I might not like this direction they're going, I'm at least going to give their idea a chance because they've never really let me down before. Maybe this is the first time, but I won't know for sure unless I try it

 

[Gorbles]

Play all the semantics games you want, the bottom line is that Civ had always been a sandbox, and now it’s a forced narrative.

I feel like this is an opinion, not a fact.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

it is still a very questionable game mechanic.

I think its quality as a game mechanic is separate to whether you can accept it from a flavour perspective.

Forget about the complexity of nations, culture and civilizations: mechanically, all they're doing is making sure that in every Age you have unique bonuses, units, and infrastructure that are tailored to that specific Age. The need for an Age structure is an open question, but once they've decided to implement such a thing, it seems rather sensible to ensure you have new bonuses etc. for each Age.

 

[Trengilly]

Play all the semantics games you want, the bottom line is that Civ had always been a sandbox, and now it’s a forced narrative.

I feel like this is an opinion, not a fact.

Yeah, forcing you to evolve your Civ . . . in whatever way YOU choose. (oh the horror!) The only thing being forced are the three ages which is being done to eliminate the tedium of mid and late game Civ where there has typically been almost NO narrative (forced or otherwise).

And I would argue that some 'forced narrative' is going to be a good thing. People like narrative . . . games in all genres have been going out of their way to include MORE narrative (with stories, epilogues, events, NPCs, etc).

And Civ has always had narrative, its never been a pure 'sandbox' game.

 

[IgorS]

I think its quality as a game mechanic is separate to whether you can accept it from a flavour perspective.

Forget about the complexity of nations, culture and civilizations: mechanically, all they're doing is making sure that in every Age you have unique bonuses, units, and infrastructure that are tailored to that specific Age. The need for an Age structure is an open question, but once they've decided to implement such a thing, it seems rather sensible to ensure you have new bonuses etc. for each Age.

This could have been done without forcing us to switch civs every age, but this time the devs were lazy, and copied whatever Humankind did. Again, they may be successful in implementing this game mechanic, but this is no longer going to be a "Civilization" game. It is just a spin-off, like "Colonization". Can be a fun game, but not something the entire "Civ" community is going to play.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

This could have been done without forcing us to switch civs every age, but this time the devs were lazy, and copied whatever Humankind did. Again, they may be successful in implementing this game mechanic, but this is no longer going to be a "Civilization" game. It is just a spin-off, like "Colonization". Can be a fun game, but not something the entire "Civ" community is going to play.

Yes, it could have been done without a switching mechanic, and you are, of course, entitled to your opinion on the design choices that have been made.

But I have seen so many posts since the announcement using words like "lazy", "stupid", "nonsensical", words implying that the design team are incompetent or idiotic or simply don't care about/understand the Civ franchise.

Why do people think this is necessary? You only have to listen to them for 5 minutes to realise that this is not true.

They have made some contentious decisions about the game they want to make - and you don't have to like these decisions, clearly many people do not - but that does not mean that the designers have been stupid or lazy.

They must have spent countless hours discussing and brainstorming ideas for Civ VII; it's impossible to imagine that none of these discussions involved the idea of players keeping one civ from start to finish. Ultimately, they decided to go with a switching mechanic instead.

We can only guess at why they made this decision, but I don't see any reason to conclude anything other than because they thought it was the best choice for the game they wanted to make.

Again, you can disagree, and we can have an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of this decision (of which there are many of both and of which there have already been many interesting discussions), but that does not mean that the designers have been lazy or stupid.

For reference, I think we have a pretty clear timeline indicating that the idea was not copied from Humankind.

 

[IgorS]

Yes, it could have been done without a switching mechanic, and you are, of course, entitled to your opinion on the design choices that have been made.

But I have seen so many posts since the announcement using words like "lazy", "stupid", "nonsensical", words implying that the design team are incompetent or idiotic or simply don't care about/understand the Civ franchise.

Why do people think this is necessary? You only have to listen to them for 5 minutes to realise that this is not true.

They have made some contentious decisions about the game they want to make - and you don't have to like these decisions, clearly many people do not - but that does not mean that the designers have been stupid or lazy.

They must have spent countless hours discussing and brainstorming ideas for Civ VII; it's impossible to imagine that none of these discussions involved the idea of players keeping one civ from start to finish. Ultimately, they decided to go with a switching mechanic instead.

We can only guess at why they made this decision, but I don't see any reason to conclude anything other than because they thought it was the best choice for the game they wanted to make.

Again, you can disagree, and we can have an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of this decision (of which there are many of both and of which there have already been many interesting discussions), but that does not mean that the designers have been lazy or stupid.

For reference, I think we have a pretty clear timeline indicating that the idea was not copied from Humankind.

Well, I did not call them "stupid". And "lazy" does mean they are incompetent. It means that they could have come up with better ideas, but instead they went for something that is simpler and has already been done in Humankind (it does not matter when this idea was conceived, as Humankind did its thing, they could observe and learn from it as they were designing their game). Instead of solving the issues without breaking the main concept of the game, they have decided to create a different game. Instead of thinking how to make a civ with early game bonuses be good in the late game, and vice versa, they just decided that early game civs will be available early, and late game civs will only be available late. So you cannot start the game with, say the English or the French, you have to play some other civ first, and you also cannot finish the game with those civs either, as you have to switch to late game civs.
And this is what bothers me, that never has the split in the Civ community been so big between people who like the new game and those who don't. I hope the devs are at least self aware, and they took the decision knowing this is what would happen, and that a large portion of their fans will not buy this game. Not that it will hurt them financially, as the number of people who will get this game is more than enough, I'm sure. But it does hurt their reputation. The number of negative comments under the video of the first showcase (I barely found any positive ones) just shows how many people do not like this direction.

 

[Civinator]

New civ slogan: "Create a leader, who can stand the test of time!"
What a nonsense, if the leader is immortal per definition and therefore stands "the test of time" even before the game is started.

 

[Mezmorizor]

I think its quality as a game mechanic is separate to whether you can accept it from a flavour perspective.

Forget about the complexity of nations, culture and civilizations: mechanically, all they're doing is making sure that in every Age you have unique bonuses, units, and infrastructure that are tailored to that specific Age. The need for an Age structure is an open question, but once they've decided to implement such a thing, it seems rather sensible to ensure you have new bonuses etc. for each Age.

I strongly disagree and it's my biggest source of consternation about it. I don't like the mechanic flavor and immersion wise, I really don't care about it being more historically accurate (which is debatable outside of civilizations that were conquered by empires that genocided their conquests to maintain control and even that is debatable given that Abrahamic religions dominate the world despite Israel and Judah getting conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively who do that), but choosing the bonus that is best in this portion of the game is a much, much less interesting game mechanic than choosing what phase of the game you're going to be good in and how specifically you're going to be good at it. Humankind was really imbalanced overall, but you saw this there. Every yield becomes a vertical line in the medieval era if you pick the appropriate civ, and the best civ in the game by a mile was the Khmer followed by Mughals because production is just way better than food, science, influence, or military strength in midgame to the end of the game, so you'd be dumb to pick anything but the two civs that make production become a vertical line. While you can do better than humankind did here, it's not really reasonable to expect your yields to be of similar strength in all stages of the game. It'd also probably be a bad thing if you did because it'd homogenize the gameplay experience throughout the game.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Well, I did not call them "stupid". And "lazy" does mean they are incompetent. It means that they could have come up with better ideas, but instead they went for something that is simpler and has already been done in Humankind (it does not matter when this idea was conceived, as Humankind did its thing, they could observe and learn from it as they were designing their game). Instead of solving the issues without breaking the main concept of the game, they have decided to create a different game. Instead of thinking how to make a civ with early game bonuses be good in the late game, and vice versa, they just decided that early game civs will be available early, and late game civs will only be available late. So you cannot start the game with, say the English or the French, you have to play some other civ first, and you also cannot finish the game with those civs either, as you have to switch to late game civs.
And this is what bothers me, that never has the split in the Civ community been so big between people who like the new game and those who don't. I hope the devs are at least self aware, and they took the decision knowing this is what would happen, and that a large portion of their fans will not buy this game. Not that it will hurt them financially, as the number of people who will get this game is more than enough, I'm sure. But it does hurt their reputation. The number of negative comments under the video of the first showcase (I barely found any positive ones) just shows how many people do not like this direction.

"Better ideas" is entirely subjective, of course. They could have decided on a different idea, one that appeals more to you (and many others), but they didn't. That doesn't indicate incompetence or laziness or a lack of creativity, though.

I think the timeline regarding Humankind does matter. If they did copy Humankind, this would be genuine grounds to criticise them as lazy.

As to whether it breaks the main concept of the game - this is quite interesting. I disagree (they haven't broken my concept of the game) but it seems to be a common complaint. Subjective again though, isn't it? We all have a slightly different concept of what makes a Civ game, and this looks like one, to me, from what I've seen so far. If it doesn't look like one to you, and you've loved the series before, I can completely understand why it is difficult to accept. Although I think how it feels when you play it is more important than how it sounds from a short gameplay reveal and a few interviews.

I know I'm getting very boring (sorry) but there shouldn't yet be a divide between those "who like the new game and those who don't", because we've seen so little and played none. More time needed. I'm optimistic, but I couldn't claim to like the game yet - I've no idea!

Anyway, I'll stop now; this isn't solely directed at you, I just get triggered by language that I consider to be unfair or unreasonable. I think we can discuss what we like or dislike without such language.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I’ve already pre-purchased Civ 7 but I feel they need to flip it from being Leader centric to Civilization centric. In other words, the Civilization you pick remains constant throughout the ages, undergoing societal change as needed but your Leader is what you change after every Era. This would require generating Leaders for each Civ for each Era but given that each Civ starts on roughly equal footing, consider it a challenge. Take for example America. Antiquity age would have Founding Father leaders like Ben Franklin. Exploration Era would have a leader like Andrew Jackson, who authorized several Exploration expeditions. Then for Modern age, it could be anyone: JFK or maybe a recent President. Other 4x games have Leaders change as did Civs in real life. Why not in Civ 7?

I would have preferred this setup as well. Though I'd still have a problem with the idea that you are forced to switch leaders, and them being locked by ages. For civs like Greece would Alexander have to be a Modern leader, coming after leaders like Pericles and Solon?

I'd much rather a game where you choose your any civilization, and any playable leader from that civilization, from the start of the game and then have the choice to switch to another as the game goes on.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I strongly disagree and it's my biggest source of consternation about it. I don't like the mechanic flavor and immersion wise, I really don't care about it being more historically accurate (which is debatable outside of civilizations that were conquered by empires that genocided their conquests to maintain control and even that is debatable given that Abrahamic religions dominate the world despite Israel and Judah getting conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively who do that), but choosing the bonus that is best in this portion of the game is a much, much less interesting game mechanic than choosing what phase of the game you're going to be good in and how specifically you're going to be good at it. Humankind was really imbalanced overall, but you saw this there. Every yield becomes a vertical line in the medieval era if you pick the appropriate civ, and the best civ in the game by a mile was the Khmer followed by Mughals because production is just way better than food, science, influence, or military strength in midgame to the end of the game, so you'd be dumb to pick anything but the two civs that make production become a vertical line. While you can do better than humankind did here, it's not really reasonable to expect your yields to be of similar strength in all stages of the game. It'd also probably be a bad thing if you did because it'd homogenize the gameplay experience throughout the game.

Interesting point. Is this a fundamental issue with the mechanic, though, or just concern because it requires careful implementation and balance? One thing I am definitely not concerned about is a homogenous experience throughout the game (given that there are going to be different mechanics in each Age), but I do expect some wonky balance issues, especially at the beginning.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah, forcing you to evolve your Civ . . . in whatever way YOU choose. (oh the horror!) The only thing being forced are the three ages which is being done to eliminate the tedium of mid and late game Civ where there has typically been almost NO narrative (forced or otherwise).

And I would argue that some 'forced narrative' is going to be a good thing. People like narrative . . . games in all genres have been going out of their way to include MORE narrative (with stories, epilogues, events, NPCs, etc).

And Civ has always had narrative, its never been a pure 'sandbox' game.

You are forced to evolve your Civ according to either the “historical” default take the Devs decide, which gives us things like Eqypt into Songhai, or you may or may not be able to pick others depending on arbitrary resource spawns or other conditions.

And you thought the “no copper or iron start in Civ4” was bad.

It goes beyond this, the map scripts are forced to give you an isolated region at start, with other areas only opening up at an arbitrary era change. Goodbye Pangea and TSL.

Each era change is accompanied by a soft restart, and it seems like rubber banding happens as well.

This is a dramatic change from how Civ has always been “here is your starting units, here is a map, go forth!”

 

[President Skroob]

I would have preferred this setup as well. Though I'd still have a problem with the idea that you are forced to switch leaders, and them being locked by ages. For civs like Greece would Alexander have to be a Modern leader, coming after leaders like Pericles and Solon?

I'd much rather a game where you choose your any civilization, and any playable leader from that civilization, from the start of the game and then have the choice to switch to another as the game goes on.

My way of thinking was that you pick a Civilization and then a Leader. When moving from Antiquity to Exploration, a new Leader option becomes available. You could then opt to keep your old Leader(who may not be ideally suited for the Exploration age) or swap to the new Leader. Leaders will have their levels "reset" upon entering a new age so those who opt to keep their Antiquity Leader have no advantage over those who switch. However, those who do keep their Antiquity Leader would gain a Legacy bonus(akin to having a form of Government for x years in the old base game of Civ 6 that became Legacy Policy cards). What that bonus would be, I don't know. Then when moving into the Modern Age, you'd have the option to switch again(whereupon the Modern Age Leader will be the most ideal Leader to have).

TLDR: Give players the option to switch as opposed to mandating that they switch.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

You are forced to evolve your Civ according to either the “historical” default take the Devs decide, which gives us things like Eqypt into Songhai, or you may or may not be able to pick others depending on arbitrary resource spawns or other conditions.

And you thought the “no copper or iron start in Civ4” was bad.

It goes beyond this, the map scripts are forced to give you an isolated region at start, with other areas only opening up at an arbitrary era change. Goodbye Pangea and TSL.

Each era change is accompanied by a soft restart, and it seems like rubber banding happens as well.

This is a dramatic change from how Civ has always been “here is your starting units, here is a map, go forth!”

The question is, does any of this matter if the game is fun, varied, strategically deep, and engaging throughout?

 

[aieeegrunt]

The question is, does any of this matter if the game is fun, varied, strategically deep, and engaging throughout?

That all depends on what you are looking for in your Civ experience.

If I don’t want it on rails, then it won’t be.

 

[Trengilly]

Well, I did not call them "stupid". And "lazy" does mean they are incompetent. It means that they could have come up with better ideas, but instead they went for something that is simpler and has already been done in Humankind (it does not matter when this idea was conceived, as Humankind did its thing, they could observe and learn from it as they were designing their game). Instead of solving the issues without breaking the main concept of the game, they have decided to create a different game. Instead of thinking how to make a civ with early game bonuses be good in the late game, and vice versa, they just decided that early game civs will be available early, and late game civs will only be available late. So you cannot start the game with, say the English or the French, you have to play some other civ first, and you also cannot finish the game with those civs either, as you have to switch to late game civs.
And this is what bothers me, that never has the split in the Civ community been so big between people who like the new game and those who don't. I hope the devs are at least self aware, and they took the decision knowing this is what would happen, and that a large portion of their fans will not buy this game. Not that it will hurt them financially, as the number of people who will get this game is more than enough, I'm sure. But it does hurt their reputation. The number of negative comments under the video of the first showcase (I barely found any positive ones) just shows how many people do not like this direction.

Ed Breach/Firaxis have specifically said they did not want to just make an iterative Civ 6.5, but instead wanted to make something new, different, and hopefully more fun.

Its entirely possible that they screwed it up and Civ 7 will suck. But I applaud their courage to try.

Far too often in the gaming industry companies just try to make the most widely appealing 'safe' games, that often end up being lifeless and lacking any soul. Its rare for companies to risk large amounts of money on something new.

Its pretty clear from all the discussion on the forums that the Civ fanbase is far from unified in what it expects or wants from a new game, not to mention the even wider pool of new gamers that could be brought into the fanbase. Firaxis have made a game they think people will like . . . we'll know soon enough if they made the right decisions, but they certainly haven't been 'lazy'.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

That all depends on what you are looking for in your Civ experience.

If I don’t want it on rails, then it won’t be.

Fair. I don't want it on rails either. Does it really look and sound to you like VII will be "on rails" though?

If you'll forgive me for the tangent, and the rather long post, I have many thoughts and had fun thinking this through, feel free to ignore me. I do get back to switching in the end, I promise.

In VI, your rails are the turn timer, tech tree, and civics tree. There is no going backwards or sideways here, only forwards.

As you progress, you have choices about what you do. In the early-game (generally accepted to be pre-feudalism?), these choices are primarily about where to scout, where (and how aggressively) to settle, what to build, and how to deal with your neighbours (incl. barbs and city states). These are mostly exciting and interesting choices, in my opinion it is the best part of the game.

In the mid-game, your choices change slightly. There is a second wave of settling, but a lot of this part of the game is about building the infrastructure you need. Beyond where to settle, choices tend to be around government policies, which districts you need and where to put them, pursuing critical great people or critical wonders, and what to do with your neighbours now. Generally, the focus shifts from early exploration to building the empire that you want, whether that be peacefully or through conquest.

In the end-game, none of your choices matter.

The sandbox side of it, as far as I can tell, comes down to how much you want to role play or mess around vs plot the optimal route through each stage of the game. It's about the narrative, and the stories you tell yourself along the way. You're still tied to the rails of the turn timer, tech tree, and civics tree, but you're free to beeline specific wonders or strategies that contribute to your story, as you wish.

I can't see any reason to believe that this will be different in VII, what am I missing? The rails remain the same; turn timer, tech tree, civics tree, with only forward momentum possible.

They've replaced the loosely defined early/mid/late-game phases with the three Ages; this is undeniably more structured, since everyone must do these Ages together, and there is no accelerating over the rails like a steam train whilst everyone else is still using horses. There are also now three tech and civics trees, and if you fall too far behind in one Age, you'll be back to the beginning with everyone else at the start of the next. This is certainly different, but you are still tied to going forwards through these trees, tied to the same rails.

Does this structure impact the choices that you can make along the way? The choices you'll be making in Antiquity are going to be very similar to the early-game choices of VI, aren't they? As for the later Ages, we don't know yet, but it seems to me that their is potential for a more diverse range of choices than the linear path of VI allows, with the added benefit that perhaps your end-game choices will matter.

I can think of some specific gameplay things that you won't be able to do, such as focus everything on circumnavigating the world before everyone else, but I can't think of many. And you've got to think that, whilst some choices will be gone, and others changed, there will be new choices to make in VII. I recognise, for example, that the Ages structure most likely eliminates the winning in 38 turns shenanigans of VI, but that's more about hyper-optimal play with perfect conditions, not a sandbox in the slightest.

And then we get back to switching. As we understand it, you are forced to change. We have an unavoidable crisis at the end of each Age that precipitates this change, but from a gameplay perspective, isn't this just another (hopefully interesting) choice to make?

I think the issue a lot of people have is not with the gameplay mechanics but that the narrative is forced. I'm not sure this is different to past games either, though:

- In VI, the narrative is that your civilization WILL stand the test of time, unless you lose. You can roleplay within that, based on the choices you make, but the overarching narrative never changes.
- In VII, the narrative is that your civilization will NOT stand the test of time, but your empire will, unless you lose. You can roleplay within that, based on the choices you make, but the overarching narrative never changes.

We can debate whether empire is the right word but it doesn't really matter which word you choose. I simply mean that your position on and influence over the map remains constant throughout the course of the game, unless you lose. For me, the core concept of Civ VII therefore remains the same as past games in the series. For others, this change of overarching narrative is too much, but I'm not convinced the game will feel like it is "on rails" as a result of this change.