Thank you for a well thought out reply! I agree on some points, disagree on others, but it's nice to see another point of view in more detail.
I don't think it's very simple at all. There are a few good reasons for the current design.
First, it addresses balance somewhat. I know that balance isn't super important in a single-player game, but it's not entirely unimportant, either. Civilizations with early game bonuses are almost always more powerful than civilizations with late game bonuses. The rubber banding introduced by the era system alleviates this problem somewhat, but it's still a problem.
Hmm... I'd argue that Civ switching as implemented seems to enable a lot of compounding, creating balance issues. Civ7 is very much a game of stacking bonuses to make number go up. Picking Maya gives you good science, picking Abassid on top compounds it into the stratosphere, in a way that going from, say, Aksum into Abassid doesn't. Similar combinations are out there for Culture, City State stacking, etc... And this becomes very obvious with leaders who are biased towards some of the civ evolution paths which synergize with each other. I don't neccessarily think this is an insurmountable issue, but at the moment I think civ switching is a net negative on balance.
And there's no reason you can't scale the bonuses from civs to each era... So later civs don't
have to be more powerful...
Second, it allows the developers to introduce civilizations and leaders that otherwise wouldn't be in the game. It's true that we could have mix & match civilizations and leaders without the switching system, but I think that it would be harder to justify. If each civilization was played for a full game, then everyone would expect that civilization to have a leader tied to it, just as there was in Civilization I-VI. I'm sure that some players and some of the loud complainers around here would actually prefer that, but I wouldn't. I like that we can have Machiavelli as a leader and the Mississippians as a civilization. We probably couldn't have either one if we had to tie a leader to a civilization.
I absolutely
love mixing and matching leaders. Out of the new innovations in Civ7 this is by far and away the best thing they have added. I just don't see why you need civ switching to have this? Honestly, the main blowback against leader mixing seems to be culture war chest thumping, and is coming from a minority. I doubt Firaxis care. I expect this is evergreen now as a feature with or without civ switching. But I absolutely agree with you that it's great we have civs like the Mississippians and leaders like Machiavelli.
Third, it supports the narrative. A crisis brings down existing governments and peoples and then new ones rise in those same places. Without the switching, the whole narrative falls apart, right? And it's hard to think of any people that have survived since 4000 BCE, so that narrative makes some historical sense. It's an interesting idea and I'd like to see where the developers can go with it.
Crises are a mess. They don't really do anything other than mildly irritate a competent player, while the AI frequently gets bodied. I don't know how Firaxis fix it without making them harsher on the player but not the AI, which probably wouldn't feel good either and is meaningless in multiplayer. I get the idea they were aiming for, but their implementation works way better in Stellaris, where you can far more convincingly just dump a msssive threat at the player to match their snowball. I don't think it's a good use of dev time to try and fix a feature which a large chunk of the player base just switch off... So I'm not sure if Civ 7 will have the narrative that you think it does for a lot of the player base.
Also, there's plenty of regions with a high degree of cultural continuity back into the mists of time, even if the rulership has inevitably shifted. China and India stand out in particular, so I don't really agree with that being an issue...
Finally, it gives the player a new kit to play with every so often. In previous Civilization games, you got your bonuses on turn 1 and then... that was it. You played with the same bonuses and incentives for the entire game. That's fine. But getting new stuff to play with in each era keeps the game feeling somewhat fresh. I get new units, new buildings, new civics and traditions, new music, new graphics. Maybe that sort of thing doesn't matter to some players, but it matters to me. I find myself finishing games much more often than I used to because of this.
I've seen the mod and some of the other proposals, but I'm not satisfied with those solutions. Generic civics trees aren't interesting to me. Having some civilizations get traditions in the first era while others have to wait until the second or third era doesn't seem like a good design, either. And some civilizations would need pretty big changes to make them work at all in other eras. I'd rather developer time be spent on new civilizations instead of redesigning the ones that we already have.
I'm not against civs evolving over time. This seems to be the direction of travel for 4X games, and I agree that generic changes have the potential to feel flavourless. I don't think the right answer is clear yet, but from Humankind and Civ7 it seems as if confusion, disconnection and identity issues are if not inherent to, then difficult to solve in civ switching. I agree that the solution to evolution over time in Civ is worth trying to find, so I don't begrudge Firaxis for trying, but I think civ switching has issues that make it a bad choice for the task at hand, and I would love to see Firaxis go back to the drawing board.
Could the switching system be optional? Probably not. That would really limit what sorts of bonuses a civilization could have or else it would require two designs for one civilization. I don't think that's a good use of development resources.
Civ 7's civs are very well designed to work in all ages. It's kind of ironic. I'd argue Firaxis needs to make a big change to the game to win people back, and switching is probably the lowest hanging fruit to cull.
I actually had a similar reaction at first. I really tried to like Humankind, but the switching system was just really bad in that game and I worried about how it would work out in Civ7. But then I read some more about it and saw some developer videos and decided that it looked a lot better, so I gave it a try. And... it is better. A lot better. It's not perfect! I expect to continue seeing improvements over the next few patches and eventually some bigger changes in an expansion. But overall, I think that it's fun. I actually like it. It would be even better with about three times as many civilizations to choose, though. When you go through three in one game, you run out much faster than you did with previous Civilization games.
If I was feeling melodramatic I'd say it's better in the same way that a guillotine is more humane than hanging... But I'm sure that melodrama is to come from other posters.
Fun is subjective, I find I finish far fewer games of 7 than I did in 6. A personal grudge is that I like far more civs in antiquity than in exploration, and the only modern civ I really enjoy is Nepal, so my desire to continue playing drops very rapidly with civ switches. I almost always feel that it's a loss. And for players who love more modern civs, having to wade through earlier eras to get where you want isn't a great feeling.
I would love to see stats on how many players had a "main" civ (or couple of civs) in Civ6, and what proportion of games they played with it. I definitely had a shortlist and didn't rotate much. My suspicion is that players in that camp are likely to be far more hostile to civ switching.
I guess the takeaway is that Civ switching triggers an emotional response. Firaxis needed that response to be excitement and anticipation, but for too many players the reaction seems to be "ugh!" Is that something that can be fixed? Civ as player identity is a big driving force in Civ games. I think only Alpha Centauri ever maybe made me identify more with my leader than the civ... And that's still a stretch.
Agreed. We need many more civilizations to play with!
Frustratingly Firaxis seem to have known 7 was launching with far less civs than would feel good... While wanting to charge premium prices to get to where they needed to be at launch. I think we're all lying if we say that isn't annoying.
I wonder if that's possible to fix at all. Probably not. Firaxis made three choices that improved on the situation. They made everyone switch eras at the same time, which primes the player to see who's who at the start of each era. They made only three eras, which means fewer overall changes. And the made recognizable, interesting avatars (leaders) instead of... well, I guess some of Humankind's avatars are famous figures, but most of them are forgettable. Some of them are YouTube and Twitch players. Ugh.
Firaxis improved civ switching enough that I've been able to play and tolerate it, but not enough that I'll pass up an opportunity to vent about it to other fanatics. I agree with you on what the improvements are.
I somewhat agree with this. I don't like the way they've handled suggested paths and unlocks at all. I'm OK with a leader always unlocking one particular civilization if there's an obvious choice. Isabella always unlocks Spain, for example, and Tecumseh always unlocks Shawnee. And I'm OK with unlocks based on stuff that you do in game. If you settle a bunch of islands, then you can be Majapahit. If you settle lots of tundra, then you can be Russia.
But... I don't like the ones where playing one civilization always unlocks another. And I'm not entirely sold on the resource-based ones, either. Reducing France to "wine" or the Abbasids to "camels" is weird.
There's room for some customization. But ultimately, switching civilizations is just part of this game and it's one feature that I really, really hope the developers don't give up on. Tripling the number of available civilizations to play would be a good start. Revamping the unlock system to make it more responsive to what players do instead of relying on tenuous historical connections and weird stereotypes would help. They've already added the "everything is unlocked" option that some players requested. We'll have to see what else they come up with!
I definitely was glad they removed all unlock criteria. It's a permanently-on option for me. I don't like that they effectively released a product with not enough civs and expect us to pay to make the product playable. At this point, me buying expansions is definitely contingent on them showing signs of being willing to re-evaluate their core design. I'm not happy to pay if it's just "stay the course," and with games like EU5 on the horizon... I don't want to give up yet, but my playtime has definitely nosedived.
