Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Gori the Grey]

Ok, I think I've got a winner for a section on Immersion and the Diplomacy screen:

See my "Throne Room" thread in the general "Civ - Ideas & Suggestions" subforum for what I think of as a better way of handling the diplomacy screen.

Separate topic:

I've been thinking about the drift of our discussion to 1UPT in connection with this from the OP

Impactful actions: actions that are both perceptible and “move the needle” towards your goals. If your actions aren’t impactful, they are busywork.

and at least it can be said of 1UPT that it gives you lots of impactful choices to make during a turn. (Again Civ 5 is my reference point, but I think the following is true of 6 and 7). During a battle, you will often, say, shoot an opponent melee troop with two archers, attack it with a melee troop, then finish it off with a third archer. You do it in that order because you don't want the melee troop to deliver the kill, because that will advance it a hex and make it more vulnerable to opponent attack the next turn. Sometimes there's two opponents a ranged unit could hit. You hold back his shot. Another ranged unit takes its shot at a heavily-wounded unit; maybe it will kill it (it has 28 hit points and the screen is telling you you'll do 28 damage). If you don't kill it, that first archer will "waste" the 28 damage he could do on a different unit and just do the remaining 2 damage to kill the unit, because getting that unit entirely off the battlefield is more advantageous than doing maximum damage overall. You all know the kinds of situations I'm talking about.

This is what people who don't like 1UPT disparage as the "sliding puzzle" aspect of combat in 5 and 6 (and, I gather, use of Commanders in 7 in some ways only intensifies this).

But, in laying out the totality of one's attack in a turn with these considerations in mind, one is at the very least making a large number of decisions. And they can be impactful. If you advance that melee troop, and lose it, it can swing the battle. If you leave that guy with 2 hit points, you just know he's going to get a promotion next turn, use it for healing, and continue as a menace to that flank of your operations.

Challenge (how well the AI can handle such combat) is a separate issue, but just on the metric of "impactful actions," 1UPT has it in spades, on a turn-by-turn basis (when one is in a war, of course).

 

[itix]

Well I guess the point of their design is to have a unique aspect of being able to hit from range. If they had '0' tile range then they'd have to open themselves up to counter attacks from infantry when they fire.

Or I suppose this means that they'd be only good to act as turrets, stand still and punish whoever walks into range. But that's boring.

This may work for Slingers or whatever but generally speaking this would make the ranged units terrible as you get later into the game.

Needs stackable armies for it to be good. So that your hoplites could protect your archer for example.

Adding counters to a strong unit type and then teaching the AI to counter is not far fetched you know?

I feel that tile-based combat is no longer sufficient. Perhaps Civ should ditch individual battle units and have only armies.

 

[Core Imposter]

See my "Throne Room" thread in the general "Civ - Ideas & Suggestions" subforum for what I think of as a better way of handling the diplomacy screen.

Separate topic:

I've been thinking about the drift of our discussion to 1UPT in connection with this from the OP


and at least it can be said of 1UPT that it gives you lots of impactful choices to make during a turn. (Again Civ 5 is my reference point, but I think the following is true of 6 and 7). During a battle, you will often, say, shoot an opponent melee troop with two archers, attack it with a melee troop, then finish it off with a third archer. You do it in that order because you don't want the melee troop to deliver the kill, because that will advance it a hex and make it more vulnerable to opponent attack the next turn. Sometimes there's two opponents a ranged unit could hit. You hold back his shot. Another ranged unit takes its shot at a heavily-wounded unit; maybe it will kill it (it has 28 hit points and the screen is telling you you'll do 28 damage). If you don't kill it, that first archer will "waste" the 28 damage he could do on a different unit and just do the remaining 2 damage to kill the unit, because getting that unit entirely off the battlefield is more advantageous than doing maximum damage overall. You all know the kinds of situations I'm talking about.

This is what people who don't like 1UPT disparage as the "sliding puzzle" aspect of combat in 5 and 6 (and, I gather, use of Commanders in 7 in some ways only intensifies this).

But, in laying out the totality of one's attack in a turn with these considerations in mind, one is at the very least making a large number of decisions. And they can be impactful. If you advance that melee troop, and lose it, it can swing the battle. If you leave that guy with 2 hit points, you just know he's going to get a promotion next turn, use it for healing, and continue as a menace to that flank of your operations.

Challenge (how well the AI can handle such combat) is a separate issue, but just on the metric of "impactful actions," 1UPT has it in spades, on a turn-by-turn basis (when one is in a war, of course).

This is the worst wargame mechanic ever used in a major game release. And that is pretty damning when you are using it in a wargame. I don't really know what to say about them, when one is exposed-caught naked-in a humiliating position one should feel shame. But they have no shame. It is really a mockery of the player base. And they have done it three times now. If they go bust, they deserve it. If they end up living on the street it will be just. They have gotten the last cent out of me.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Keep in mind, I wasn't defending it as a "wargame mechanic," just counting the number of consequential-decisions-per-turn it occasions.

 

[Skojardu]

Keep in mind, I wasn't defending it as a "wargame mechanic," just counting the number of consequential-decisions-per-turn it occasions.

Soren talked about unit stacking (eg armies) working well in his eyes for Old World (as the father of the apotheosis of stacking Civ 4), but the play testers (who are probably youngsters raised on Civ V) rejected it, so he went with them for the final rules. I don't see why we should remain in thrall to Jon Shafer's love for Panzer General; it would have been bold for Civ 7 to bring back stacking; 3 units per tile in antiquity, 6 in exploration, 9 in modern, or *something* like that. That would solve 2 problems:

1) Shooting hundreds of miles (archers having range 2) has NO place in antiquity! This should be restricted to modern artillery only.

2) There are huge issues of scale with cities turning continents into Coruscant... the warped scale makes these civs feel like members of a neighborhood fighting a gang war, not the entire world. Civ 4 retains the feel of vastness that a planet-spanning game should have. They should have tried to recreate that instead of intensifying the claustrophobia.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Well I guess the point of their design is to have a unique aspect of being able to hit from range. If they had '0' tile range then they'd have to open themselves up to counter attacks from infantry when they fire.

Or I suppose this means that they'd be only good to act as turrets, stand still and punish whoever walks into range. But that's boring.

This may work for Slingers or whatever but generally speaking this would make the ranged units terrible as you get later into the game.

Needs stackable armies for it to be good. So that your hoplites could protect your archer for example.

Adding counters to a strong unit type and then teaching the AI to counter is not far fetched you know?

Think back to how it worked in 4. You stack ranged units with your actual combat units as a supporting function. That is the whole point

Look at that, combined arms.

See my "Throne Room" thread in the general "Civ - Ideas & Suggestions" subforum for what I think of as a better way of handling the diplomacy screen.

Separate topic:

I've been thinking about the drift of our discussion to 1UPT in connection with this from the OP


and at least it can be said of 1UPT that it gives you lots of impactful choices to make during a turn. (Again Civ 5 is my reference point, but I think the following is true of 6 and 7). During a battle, you will often, say, shoot an opponent melee troop with two archers, attack it with a melee troop, then finish it off with a third archer. You do it in that order because you don't want the melee troop to deliver the kill, because that will advance it a hex and make it more vulnerable to opponent attack the next turn. Sometimes there's two opponents a ranged unit could hit. You hold back his shot. Another ranged unit takes its shot at a heavily-wounded unit; maybe it will kill it (it has 28 hit points and the screen is telling you you'll do 28 damage). If you don't kill it, that first archer will "waste" the 28 damage he could do on a different unit and just do the remaining 2 damage to kill the unit, because getting that unit entirely off the battlefield is more advantageous than doing maximum damage overall. You all know the kinds of situations I'm talking about.

This is what people who don't like 1UPT disparage as the "sliding puzzle" aspect of combat in 5 and 6 (and, I gather, use of Commanders in 7 in some ways only intensifies this).

But, in laying out the totality of one's attack in a turn with these considerations in mind, one is at the very least making a large number of decisions. And they can be impactful. If you advance that melee troop, and lose it, it can swing the battle. If you leave that guy with 2 hit points, you just know he's going to get a promotion next turn, use it for healing, and continue as a menace to that flank of your operations.

Challenge (how well the AI can handle such combat) is a separate issue, but just on the metric of "impactful actions," 1UPT has it in spades, on a turn-by-turn basis (when one is in a war, of course).

Thank you for that excellent illustration of how stupidly overpowered ranged units with multi hex range and serious damage dealing potential is.

You are confusing busywork with making actual impactful stratetic decisions. There are none in Civ6’s combat. It’s just “lots of ranged units, just enough melee to slow down the enemy and take cities once your ranged units delete all the health”.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. The equally “terrible history and gameplay” of city strikes makes it even simpler.

I’ve played games as Gaul where I was able to turtle and obliterate vast enemy invasions with basically one melee and one ranger unit by builing walls, encampments and oppidum in my border cities and simply focus fired the enemy as they crawled from ZOC to ZOC. The only reason I had the melee and ranged unit was to max out city defence and ranged strike values.

Literally zero thought or decision making required

Frankly I think the combat AI in 6 was deliberatly kneecapped NOT to do this, because it would make them impregnable and every war becomes meme WW1 Western Front.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You are confusing busywork with making actual impactful stratetic decisions. There are none in Civ6’s combat. It’s just “lots of ranged units, just enough melee to slow down the enemy and take cities once your ranged units delete all the health”.

The decisions I was describing are tactical rather than strategic, absolutely. Because of the specific mechanics of combat, it is true that strategic decisions regarding army composition are perhaps less meaningful than in 3 and 4. Yes, heavy archer-to-melee ratio is the way to go.

But, again, my only point had to do with the number of decisions it compels you to make per turn. And those decisions (at least the way I play) are absolutely meaningful--make or break consequential--not busywork. I play on deity, where the AI are given much bigger armies (and, early game at least, more technologically advanced). Concocting a sequence of actions that maximizes the damage I do to them while minimizing the damage I will myself take in the next turn can be crucially consequential in whether my smaller army can prevail over the AI's bigger army (and feels fun when I do prevail).

(Maybe part of the difference in our experience has to do with attacking vs defending, although with the AI's numerical advantage, I've had cases where defending was also skin-of-the-teeth).

So for purposes of my comment, the strategic vs tactical distinction is irrelevant, although I know it is very important to players who favor 1-4 over 5-onward. I am just counting the sheer number of choices/decisions/involvements that I'm called on to make in a given turn, and with 1UPT that is a relatively high number.

 

[GeneralZift]

I feel that tile-based combat is no longer sufficient. Perhaps Civ should ditch individual battle units and have only armies.

I think this was absolutely suck to be honest. I like building variety of units.

Think back to how it worked in 4. You stack ranged units with your actual combat units as a supporting function. That is the whole point

Look at that, combined arms.



Thank you for that excellent illustration of how stupidly overpowered ranged units with multi hex range and serious damage dealing potential is.

You are confusing busywork with making actual impactful stratetic decisions. There are none in Civ6’s combat. It’s just “lots of ranged units, just enough melee to slow down the enemy and take cities once your ranged units delete all the health”.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. The equally “terrible history and gameplay” of city strikes makes it even simpler.

I’ve played games as Gaul where I was able to turtle and obliterate vast enemy invasions with basically one melee and one ranger unit by builing walls, encampments and oppidum in my border cities and simply focus fired the enemy as they crawled from ZOC to ZOC. The only reason I had the melee and ranged unit was to max out city defence and ranged strike values.

Literally zero thought or decision making required

Frankly I think the combat AI in 6 was deliberatly kneecapped NOT to do this, because it would make them impregnable and every war becomes meme WW1 Western Front.

I haven't played Civ4 to be clear. You may have a point. Although I don't think the current system is irredeemable because it's unrealistic, just that it needs tweaking. I hope we see some combat system that works for everyone in the future.
But you know, there's more pressing matters when it comes to 4X design nowadays

 

[Core Imposter]

There were plenty of issues with the combat in Civ 4, or another way to put it is -there was a lot of room for improvement of the systems for the next iteration. But that would have been work and might have required some creativity.

The designers have developed their excuses. Players don't really want a good AI. It is impossible to create a good AI. Players don't want micromanagement. Etcetera. None of it is really true. These are just excuses to avoid work. Slap a coat of paint on it (graphics and some voice acting) and call it soup. Or slop really and the public just laps it up. Well, the jig seems to be up.

 

[Core Imposter]

access denied

 

[Core Imposter]

A couple of thoughts to share. First, social and cultural norms seep into game designs. For example, tobacco as a resource wouldn't be included in some games made these days due to the modern taboo against it. Likewise, I think warfare is less a focus in some 4x games due to the whole post-modern ideal. Blood and guts are out of style. Which leads me to the second thought. Gameplay tends to have less zest in the absence of the constant historical tension of warfare. I think we may be experiencing something like 3 and a half X games due to this loss of focus on the element of war which has of course been the primary driver of human history (along with religion).

It should not be necessary to exterminate your rivals in a Civ game to win but a surviving Civ must be able to exterminate the constant threats that should be present if we are in any sense trying to mirror history. Conflict is a recipe for any form of entertainment. If they are to improve Civ 7 ...

 

[Krikkit1]

A couple of thoughts to share. First, social and cultural norms seep into game designs. For example, tobacco as a resource wouldn't be included in some games made these days due to the modern taboo against it. Likewise, I think warfare is less a focus in some 4x games due to the whole post-modern ideal. Blood and guts are out of style. Which leads me to the second thought. Gameplay tends to have less zest in the absence of the constant historical tension of warfare. I think we may be experiencing something like 3 and a half X games due to this loss of focus on the element of war which has of course been the primary driver of human history (along with religion).

It should not be necessary to exterminate your rivals in a Civ game to win but a surviving Civ must be able to exterminate the constant threats that should be present if we are in any sense trying to mirror history. Conflict is a recipe for any form of entertainment. If they are to improve Civ 7 ...

That is a problem with snowballing.

In game, if you are big enough to exterminate your major competitors nothing can oppose you.

IRL, you must be ready to exterminate
1. constant “whack a mole” minor opponents that keep appearing
2. any and all parts of your own empire (far more policemen than soldiers)

Either of those make for strong “anti-snowball” mechanics…but not for fun gameplay for most people (see: whack a mole, taking away my stuff, punishing for success complaints)

Which is why they need to go for the slightly less realistic. but more fun, path of strengthening major competition as an anti snowball mechanic.

 

[itix]

I think this was absolutely suck to be honest. I like building variety of units.

Doesn't it suck when the archer spam is currently the meta?

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Honestly I think like in real life the best snowball prevention is coalition / alliances. Where people see common threat they can put aside their differences to oppose it.

EU4 did this rather well with it's alliance and aggressive expansion / coalition mechanics.

Civ is too simplistic to replicate this. There are not enough polities on the game board to get effective dynamic alliance building going. I don't think snowballing can be effectively curtailed with the current Civ per game limitations

 

[GeneralZift]

Doesn't it suck when the archer spam is currently the meta?

LOL so we should just get rid of units. Yes. I think we should also get rid of Improvements because the Mine is pretty good.
Actually the meta for Counterstrike is the AK47 so we should get rid of all variety and make it just one gun. Perfectly balanced and very fun I'm certain.

 

[Gorbles]

Honestly I think like in real life the best snowball prevention is coalition / alliances. Where people see common threat they can put aside their differences to oppose it.

EU4 did this rather well with it's alliance and aggressive expansion / coalition mechanics.

Civ is too simplistic to replicate this. There are not enough polities on the game board to get effective dynamic alliance building going. I don't think snowballing can be effectively curtailed with the current Civ per game limitations

Civ games feature this, though. The AI relations, generally, from game to game, get worse the closer to any victory the human player gets. To the extent in multiple iterations (and as far back as SMAC in my experience), multiple factions will declare war simultaneously.

I'm not sure explicitly allying to do so helps much. Allying to oppose generally just means mass war. A more difficult approach would be allying to build faster together.

 

[itix]

LOL so we should just get rid of units. Yes. I think we should also get rid of Improvements because the Mine is pretty good.

Perhaps. I have been thinking it could be better if battles were fought on a separate, randomly generated tactical map. Something like in Steel Panthers, or Lords of the Realms.

 

[aieeegrunt]

LOL so we should just get rid of units. Yes. I think we should also get rid of Improvements because the Mine is pretty good.
Actually the meta for Counterstrike is the AK47 so we should get rid of all variety and make it just one gun. Perfectly balanced and very fun I'm certain.

Or instead of an all or nothing fallacy you could just properly balance your units

 

[Siptah]

In civ 7, the problem currently is that infantry is too weak, while cavalry and ranged seem fine. This is what I’d say, but I’m not sure whether this is a consensus?

An easy balance fix could be to make infantry cheaper and especially cavalry a bit more expensive. But I’m not sure if this really helps, because the limited theater for battles which are won within a few turns means that higher quality beats quantity in most cases (but ranged can actually challenge this). So, maybe ranged should either be more expensive as well or lose the ability to to move and shoot in the same turn? Or just make ranged much worse against walls and fortified units to make the game a bit more tactical?

 

[GeneralZift]

Or instead of an all or nothing fallacy you could just properly balance your units

Yeah dude I'm with you, it's just he literally said, screw the units let's just have 'Armies' it's not a fallacy it's what he said