Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Gori the Grey]

I suspect that would lead to more radical changes, not less.

Actually, I think a lot of the elements that we have seen in most of the games would quickly go onto the whiteboard.

"You have to be able to conquer the entire world."
"Ok, but let's not have that be the only way to win."
"A big part of it will be getting access to resources." "Yeah, and some of them will be primarily on one portion of the map, like oil is in our world."
"You would gradually get more sophisticated technologies." "And each one would let you do some new things in the game."
"Major cities would be the primary building blocks of your civilization." "Yeah, and they should have as a primary goal to grow in population."
"The other civilizations would be your competitors, but there should also be ways of cooperating: alliances, trade."
"When should it start?" "I don't know. Dawn of civilization?"
"And when should it end?" "Ha, ha, history hasn't ended. Yet." "Maybe the best we can do is make modern times the end point."
Etc.

Something that I think no one would say: "Let's split it into three distinct phases." Cuz that would just feel too random and out-of-the-blue, not intrinsic to the thing you're trying to get designed.

Like if you put yourself through the exercise of re-inventing the genre as though from scratch, it would be a check on elements that aren't fundamental to the success of a turn-based, historical-flavored, god-game. And if a notion that we (players of now 7 actual versions of this thing) were to regard as radical did emerge, it would be emerging at the right stage of the process.

I'll give an example. If I were in this meeting, I'd say, "well, the economic systems will have to run on supply and demand." No Civ game has yet really tried to incorporate that. Each lux sells for exactly the same price (back when you could sell them). I understand the difficulties it would introduce to build supply and demand into the game. But the right time in the development sequence to agree that it could make for a fun game dynamic would be this early brainstorming session.

 

[Core Imposter]

I watched that whole thing and took four pages of notes. All negative reactions. Rather than insta-regurgitate all of that here I am going to refrain because I might not have reacted that negatively before the game was launched.

 

[Krikkit1]

Something that I think no one would say: "Let's split it into three distinct phases." Cuz that would just feel too random and out-of-the-blue, not intrinsic to the thing you're trying to get designed.

That is not out of the blue... its obviously later than the "should be able to conquer the world" stage, but the idea that the game would play in the same way from stone age to space feels wrong, different feels should be there in a global super power battle and a growing collection of city states... some can be emergent, but others get gated and made obsolete and having phases Could help that a lot.

With Civ 7 its mostly Religion and Global travel that are really distinct between ages. But if they made more processes more distinct it could make that system work well.

 

[Skojardu]

Actually, I think a lot of the elements that we have seen in most of the games would quickly go onto the whiteboard.

"You have to be able to conquer the entire world."
"Ok, but let's not have that be the only way to win."
"A big part of it will be getting access to resources." "Yeah, and some of them will be primarily on one portion of the map, like oil is in our world."
"You would gradually get more sophisticated technologies." "And each one would let you do some new things in the game."
"Major cities would be the primary building blocks of your civilization." "Yeah, and they should have as a primary goal to grow in population."
"The other civilizations would be your competitors, but there should also be ways of cooperating: alliances, trade."
"When should it start?" "I don't know. Dawn of civilization?"
"And when should it end?" "Ha, ha, history hasn't ended. Yet." "Maybe the best we can do is make modern times the end point."
Etc.

Something that I think no one would say: "Let's split it into three distinct phases." Cuz that would just feel too random and out-of-the-blue, not intrinsic to the thing you're trying to get designed.

Like if you put yourself through the exercise of re-inventing the genre as though from scratch, it would be a check on elements that aren't fundamental to the success of a turn-based, historical-flavored, god-game. And if a notion that we (players of now 7 actual versions of this thing) were to regard as radical did emerge, it would be emerging at the right stage of the process.

I'll give an example. If I were in this meeting, I'd say, "well, the economic systems will have to run on supply and demand." No Civ game has yet really tried to incorporate that. Each lux sells for exactly the same price (back when you could sell them). I understand the difficulties it would introduce to build supply and demand into the game. But the right time in the development sequence to agree that it could make for a fun game dynamic would be this early brainstorming session.

I like the resource market of Old World, but I also would like nations to be able to speculate on stuff, real market behaviors. In 6, any excess iron or horses went into the ether. What if, once a tech was unlocked, perhaps, they were sold into a market of neighboring nations that gradually broadened over time? You could shut yourself off from the market with the penalty of not being able to access it (only trade with neighboring civs), but you might do that in order to protect a monopoly on a certain resource. I dunno, just spitballing here, but I like marrying the stock market with Seven Wonders' localized trading ideas. We already had a market of sorts in (of course my favorite reference point) Civ Colonization...

 

[Kenshiro70]

Its about rewriting history, and making your empire better than any version of any real one

You start with just a Settler and a Warrior in the middle of nothing, and you end going to Space, and you can do that with everyone. You can prevent Rome from falling, you can prevent Egypcians from being conquered, you can make Carthage prevail, you can make all of them stand the Test of Time

That is why Civ was superior to any other 4x game, because it allows that. Its a bigger reason of its success than any of the ones youn listed as soul of Civilizaztion.

Building a Civilization to stand the Test of time is actually, in my opinion, THE SOUL of the Civilization franchise, above everything else, and tis the main reason of its success

Agreed. It's now at the top of the list, with credit to you and Foulweather for articulating it so well.

 

[notNamed]

Its about rewriting history, and making your empire better than any version of any real one

You start with just a Settler and a Warrior in the middle of nothing, and you end going to Space, and you can do that with everyone. You can prevent Rome from falling, you can prevent Egypcians from being conquered, you can make Carthage prevail, you can make all of them stand the Test of Time

That is why Civ was superior to any other 4x game, because it allows that. Its a bigger reason of its success than any of the ones youn listed as soul of Civilizaztion.

Building a Civilization to stand the Test of time is actually, in my opinion, THE SOUL of the Civilization franchise, above everything else, and tis the main reason of its success

Agreed. It's now at the top of the list, with credit to you and Foulweather for articulating it so well.

Just a note but taking Egyptians/Romans/Carthaginians to space cannot be the reason why Civ is superior to every other 4X game since it's something you can explicitly do in Humankind and most people here would agree it's not the pinnacle of historical 4X games.

See the main banner of the game, of an Ancient Egyptian astronaut on the Moon:

Minor update:

• Added quotes from Sid's presentations into related areas along with deep links.
• Added picture of a holy plane (link).
• Embedded Philomena Cunk video. Favorite quote: "Did they build the Pyramids from the bottom up or the top down?"

On the topic of Philomena Cunk, one thing to keep in mind is that people overwhelming respond negatively to comedic quotes in these games. Both Civ 6 and Humankind took that approach and both received flak over it.

Civ6
"They're really keen on using the goofiest quotes in Civ VI."
"This is by far one of the most stupid quotes in game.

What happened to them using witty, intelligent, famous quotes?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58ro6j/who_is_nancy_bonds_from_the_mt_kilimanjaro_quote

Humankind
"His one-liners are funny and all, I enjoy listing to him a lot, but most of what he says tends to be a little bit patronising."

More Options for Cool(er) Narrator - Humankind

I've said it elsewhere, but this deserves its own thread.We need more narrators and different types/characters.His one-liners are funny and all, I enjoy listing to him a lot, but most of what he says tends to be a little bit patronising.Why pick a culture? I want to be able to pick my narrator.I

community.amplitude-studios.com

The flipside is that while unpopular with some, humor is easier to pick up for localiser teams if left without any direction (as per @cuk's experience with the lackluster CN localisation in Civ 7), but I would say that's more of an organisational problem, rather than an innate one. If you're going as far as to provide a dub for a certain audience, you really shouldn't treat it as a throwaway project with no support or oversight.

 

[stealth_nsk]

On the topic of Philomena Cunk, one thing to keep in mind is that people overwhelming respond negatively to comedic quotes in these games. Both Civ 6 and Humankind took that approach and both received flak over it.

Civ6
"They're really keen on using the goofiest quotes in Civ VI."
"This is by far one of the most stupid quotes in game.

What happened to them using witty, intelligent, famous quotes?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58ro6j/who_is_nancy_bonds_from_the_mt_kilimanjaro_quote

Humankind
"His one-liners are funny and all, I enjoy listing to him a lot, but most of what he says tends to be a little bit patronising."

More Options for Cool(er) Narrator - Humankind

I've said it elsewhere, but this deserves its own thread.We need more narrators and different types/characters.His one-liners are funny and all, I enjoy listing to him a lot, but most of what he says tends to be a little bit patronising.Why pick a culture? I want to be able to pick my narrator.I

community.amplitude-studios.com

The flipside is that while unpopular with some, humor is easier to pick up for localiser teams if left without any direction (as per @cuk's experience with the lackluster CN localisation in Civ 7), but I would say that's more of an organisational problem, rather than an innate one. If you're going as far as to provide a dub for a certain audience, you really shouldn't treat it as a throwaway project with no support or oversight.

I think it also depends on what kind of humor they have.

I found HK trying too hard to make funny jokes. Like they have 2 jokes about how bad English cuisine is, in 2 different places, come on... Civ6 is generally ok. And, of course, we have SMAC, which is full of joke quotes and as far as I know they are received positively, I think because the humor there is actually quite intellectual.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I think consistency of tone is the key thing. If you're going for humourous and silly, keep with humourous and silly. If you are going for serious keep with serious.

Equally you can have a serious topic and play it humourously, or take a silly topic and play it straight.

I think Civ has traditionally mostly done the latter. The premise is silly. Up until Civ VI, it was essentially "who would come out on top if we extracted the top Civilizations and their best leaders from history, made them immortal and plopped them in an alternate earth in 4000 BC". But then everything from that point is played straight, and taken reasonably seriously. There's the odd quote of levity here and there, "the only thing saving us from the bureaucracy is it's inefficiency" in Civ V comes to mind.

I don't know about Civ VII. It feels like is tried to be more serious about it's premise, even though it's still a silly premise. That it's being sold as more accurate to history I think undercuts what a lot of people expect when they come to play the game.

 

[Kenshiro70]

On the topic of Philomena Cunk, one thing to keep in mind is that people overwhelming respond negatively to comedic quotes in these games. Both Civ 6 and Humankind took that approach and both received flak over it.

More Options for Cool(er) Narrator - Humankind

I've said it elsewhere, but this deserves its own thread.We need more narrators and different types/characters.His one-liners are funny and all, I enjoy listing to him a lot, but most of what he says tends to be a little bit patronising.Why pick a culture? I want to be able to pick my narrator.I

community.amplitude-studios.com

I think you've got the makings of a great poll on the balance of humor. Civ IV made it look easy, but Leonard Nimoy could make the phone book sound fascinating.

I do love the idea of the switchable narrator packs.

I am going to play around with the (URL unfurl="true") tag you used - that looks really neat!

I think Civ has traditionally mostly done the latter. The premise is silly. Up until Civ VI, it was essentially "who would come out on top if we extracted the top Civilizations and their best leaders from history, made them immortal and plopped them in an alternate earth in 4000 BC". But then everything from that point is played straight, and taken reasonably seriously. There's the odd quote of levity here and there, "the only thing saving us from the bureaucracy is it's inefficiency" in Civ V comes to mind.

Reminds me of Leslie Nielsen. They key to his comedy was that he played the role straight.

I don't know about Civ VII. It feels like is tried to be more serious about it's premise, even though it's still a silly premise. That it's being sold as more accurate to history I think undercuts what a lot of people expect when they come to play the game.

@Emotional Husky had a quote in one of his videos that stuck with me - "History for history lover's sake". It's almost like they over-corrected from Civ VI. Or as Sid would say, they listened a little too much to Mr. History.