Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Gori the Grey]

The second thing in this post (glad to see it back) that squares with my own formulation is "blaze your own path."

And it's partly related to my earlier point about various of the "strands" of the game being partly fungible.

The game should have victory conditions, and then sub-systems, and the player should be able to find different paths, among those subsystems, to a given victory condition.

I gave an example of a domination victory (in 5, remember; that's what I play). Generally, you want to go for a couple of high-production cities that can punch out troops. But, as I mentioned, if one of the pantheons is Holy Warriors, then maybe you can get troops through faith. Or, if it's a particularly good economic site, maybe that's sufficient to buy your troops. Or, if you can get alliances with military city states, they will supply you with troops. If you have a science lead, you can produce fewer troops, but more advanced and win that way.

I'm thinking of the time when I fire up a game (I set the map on pangaea but have everything else be random). I'm intent on domination victory. It doesn't look like high production, but I'll sometimes think "hey, what if I tried it this other way this time?"

I just finished a game as France. I've never been able to make France work for me. They're suited for cultural victory, but to make use of them, by Renaissance, they have to be caught up in tech, so they can start on cultural wonders early, and also have super high production, so that they can get the wonders (whose theming bonus their UA doubles). I decided I was going to do a military-into-cultural game: conquer some cities early (hoping the one with Parthenon was nearby) and then rush toward tech and good production in my capital. I didn't pull it of, but the very fact that I could try something like that made it fun.

(None of my posts here will be in the spirit of a Civ 7 post-mortem, by the way, since I haven't played the game. They'll all be in the spirit of "let's identify as precisely as possible what game-design principles generate the one-more-turn experience").

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

That's a high quality post, kudos. Appreciate the time you've taken to share it!

I agree with a lot of what you say, particularly that Firaxis have been focussing on the wrong thing, and first and foremost should be trying to make the game fun - if they can solve that problem a lot of other things will fall into place.

However, theres 2 glaring omissions that I can't help but notice as a fellow product professional:

1) personas. The way I read your post it's like gamers come to Civ for 1 thing and 1 thing only, a good strategy game - a puzzle to solve. I think it's borne out quite thoroughly on social media since Civ VII that previous Civ games appealed to multiple personas, but this game alienates some before they even get to the point of finding out it's not fun.

That you are speaking to only one of these personas crystallised for me when you put forward the idea that a game without win conditions can't be considered 4x. I think that is demonstrably untrue from the number of players who had enormous fun with previous Civ titles without finishing games. 4X is not achieved when you finish the game, at least not for me, instead it's just imbued through gameplay, regardless of whether you finish it. Most people would say the age that is the most 4Xey and the age they have the most fun with is antiquity or the early game in prior titles, and those parts of the game do not have victory conditions. At some point the fun peters out, and I think it's because the game loses the Xpand aspect. Civ is not a historical simulator or a strategy game to me - it's a challenging map painter.

That may be different to your idea of it of course and that's why I mentioned personas. Your problem statement over simplifies the issues and only states them from the perspective of one type of user. I think you've identified the common one, but there are other problems which are preventing people from not just playing the game but also buying it. Which brings me onto...

2) marketing. A lot of Civ veterans have outright rejected the vision of Civ VII as not being conceptually a civ game anymore essentially. No amount of making the game fun is going to appeal to this group. There are "fun" games out there like Counter Strike which are standouts in their field which millions of gamers play for thousands of hours, but I bet some here have never touched it and have no desire to pick it up.

Civ has rebranded itself for Civ VII because it knows it's competing against Civ VI. The series is a victim of its own success, and because Civ VI is so fun and replayable to many, and has taken almost a decade of development to reach that point, they opted for a different approach this time to capture additional audiences and offer a different style of Civ game, and it's backfired quite considerably.

The problem for a persona of Civ gamers is baked into the vision statement itself. It's rejected on principle, and they can't be won over by improving the fun. That Firaxis is pivoting to try to win this persona over is not a wrong development, but I would agree they are attacking it in the wrong order. Make the game fun, then appeal to a broader base. As it stands they are trying to appeal to a broader base with a game they won't enjoy when and if they decide to buy it anyway on a 50/50 chance based on the odds of the people who liked it enough to buy it in the first place (so presumably anyone else's odds are on fact lower...)

In short, they've marketed this game and designed this game fundamentally differently, with a different vision and a different (imagined bigger) intended audience that as you say, hadn't materialised. I don't think that's just down to making the game simpler, I think it's because they've produced the 4X equivalent of new coke.

Really enjoyed your post though, I think what I'm getting at is I think it should be longer

 

[Gori the Grey]

personas

Yeah, this has come through in the discussions here. Some people want a competitive game. Some people want a "sandbox" (or "freestyle").

I've said in other threads that I think the approach designers should take is to build a game that can be played competitively: clear victory conditions and the AI play to win. But then, include a sufficient number of interactive sub-systems that one can just mess around and see where things go. A player should be able to specify what for him or her would constitute a victory, and then pursue that.

For me the paradigmatic case is pillow-forts in Morrowind. The designers wanted objects in the world to be movable. Some players set themselves the goal of finding all of the pillows in the game and then stacking them into pillow-fort formations. A game with a sufficient number of well-balanced interactive subsystems will allow for this kind of "make your own fun" style of play.

The only reason I think the designers should start from competitive and then allow for sandbox is that it's easier to permit sandbox within a game that has victory conditions then impose victory conditions, after the fact, on a sandbox game.

 

[vorlon_mi]

My apologies - Post-mortem is a term of art in the software industry used to indicate an in-depth review of the development and release process, not a commentary on the end-product itself. (Thus the name of Soren Johnsen's GDC talk, "My Elephant in the Room: An 'Old World' post-mortem"). My intent for the title was to communicate depth of thought rather than signal that I was writing it off from the get-go. Quite the opposite, though I'll admit I that the release of the Settler edition made my conclusion more sharply worded than the original version I had written. Perhaps with time and distance I'll restore the original version.

I also work in IT, with more than 25 years of experience. I understood the term of art, especially as it relates to the release/launch.

Many times we've done such an analysis. Some companies call it a "retrospective," some call it a "lessons learned meeting", and sometimes a post mortem. Probably linked -- loosely -- to the meetings that medical professionals have after a particular medical procedure, to avoid repeating errors.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Probably linked -- loosely -- to the meetings that medical professionals have after a particular medical procedure, to avoid repeating errors.

Because errors there, they're, well, mortal!

 

[Lord Lakely]

Are you guys for real? I thought you were around 30 and up? From an era when hundreds of games released their post-mortems on Gamasutra and the like because they wanted to talk about the development of their game. Share some of the secrets, pat themselves on the back, give back to the community.

It's a non-English-First-Language thing. To someone who hasn't grown up speaking English, the term 'post-mortem' is only known for it's latin translation.

For the record, the English language specifically uses the term for an analysis of an action after said action has taken place action. A panel show analysis of the Eurocup match between England and Serbia would be called a 'post-mortem' in English.

In this context, it doesn't imply 'death'. Yet.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I've read the analysis diagonally (I'll read the whole article once my ADHD allows it), and I agree with most points made (I don't mind the leader choices at all lol - Catherine, Ashoka and Friedrich D-tier? shame on you, sir). The gameplay feels samey after a while, and mostly because it's so easy to optimize and pull ahead in any situation.

The fundamental problems with the gameplay imo is that the elements don't work as intended. The age system is supposed to nerf snowballing - it instead enhances it. The attribute tree is supposed to function as a small reward for completing your era's minigame - it is instead a defining feature of pulling ahead as much as possible and is more impactful than your leader's ability is (which was correctly addressed by OP). The three ages all have separate mechanics but the mechanics themselves are shallow. There are only four goals to work towards each age and the more you play, the easier it is to hit all of them.

The leader designs for a start need to be much more asymetric, the amount of goals should be deepened, the roster of civ's expanded so that you can at least *feel* like you're playing a consistent three-act civ across all three ages. now that most of the UI has been fixed, (well, for those who aren't visually impaired anyway), the glaring flaws of the game itself come more to the forefront and it'll still need loads of work.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

some more comments:

The problems with leaders has nothing to do with a leader's portrait and name; the problem is that most of them have boring abilities that feel like they were generated on a spreadsheet (“+1 adjacency for blah blah blah”).

I think the solution is: you need a game which has its rules, and each player can subvert and turn one of those rules on its head. Speaking about previous titles here: but Polynesia's ability to cross ocean tiles at the start of the game without any tech, would be something along those lines.

 

[Gori the Grey]

In the game (boardgame) Cosmic Encounter, each of the alien races can break one of the rules of the game. (I've never played it; I'd love to get the chance; I think it's a cool game-design idea).

One time I read that it was one of the inspirations for Civ, or for UAs once they introduced those. But I can't track down the reference.

Yes, a game where the civs' UAs worked that way would be cool (and yes Polynesia in 5 is a good example; Shoshone, too: they can pick what bonus they get from a goodie hut; that always feels like breaking the rules when I play as them).

But yes, that would require real work during the design phase (and would, I think, make it harder to just add new civs as DLC; you'd want, in advance, a sense of all the rules that were going to be breakable, I should think.)

 

[Pedro P]

It really feels like the devs don't want players to play with history.

One of the core fun moments I have always enjoyed in Civ games since I first played Civ 2 is to play as a pre-Columbian civ and make it to the space age. Its like, cool as hell. This is always a source of fun for me not only in Civ, but also in basically every single game it's possible, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, to a lesser extent, Europe Universalis.

Civ 7 is the first game since 4 that has my favorite Civ, Incas, as base game. And yet, I have never picked it saying "Yeah, I will play Incas today" like I do with Age of Empires 3 or modded Victoria 3.

There is simply no "romance" to it. I play the Incas in the middle of the game, then the game comes to me and say "Babe wake up, its time for your scheduled genocide," and now I have to play Nepal. It tastes bitter and isn't fun to experience. Completely takes the wind out of my sail.

And I think that is how a lot of players pick up civs. Stats are fun, unique units too, but in casual terms, there is a certain level of roleplay and "romance" that was bulldozed. I think of fans of Native American civs first because I think we have it really the worst and it will never be fixed. But Rome is another civ that lost the romance, and Rome -> Byz -> Italy won't fix it. Japan is another civ I like and now I barely care about it since they are gone for 2/3 of the game, probably won't care even when they add two more Japanese civs as DLC (which, let's be honest, was the plan)

And of course, that lack of understanding also applies to the lack of a modern / information age. Devs really think the fun of giant robots and the cure of cancer was merely late game stats, not the fact you, after so many hours, were finally in the modern age, giving you little virtual cities the internet to the sound of John Adams. The aesthetic of going from Stone Age to the Space Age wasn't just a decoration, really.

 

[Haig]

Pedro P:
I agree with your post.

It also felt that civ players had civs as like sport teams to root for, and when someone said that their main civs are Rome and Persia or that they are going to do an Inca playthrough, people would get the idea what it is about.

Now it would be something like "Yeah my favorite civ is Assyria-Normans-Nepal. With Ben Franklin leading it and having some weird mementos"

Does not have the same feel I think.

 

[Skojardu]

In the game (boardgame) Cosmic Encounter, each of the alien races can break one of the rules of the game. (I've never played it; I'd love to get the chance; I think it's a cool game-design idea).

One time I read that it was one of the inspirations for Civ, or for UAs once they introduced those. But I can't track down the reference.

Yes, a game where the civs' UAs worked that way would be cool (and yes Polynesia in 5 is a good example; Shoshone, too: they can pick what bonus they get from a goodie hut; that always feels like breaking the rules when I play as them).

But yes, that would require real work during the design phase (and would, I think, make it harder to just add new civs as DLC; you'd want, in advance, a sense of all the rules that were going to be breakable, I should think.)

Yes yes 100% yes! Cosmic Encounter is an excellent inspiration. Each faction breaks one rule in a mind bogglingly powerful way. I think factions (Civs) should have one powerful difference and just be able to specialize organically by gameplay, like how you get quests in Civ 4 mods that can buff certain unit types, etc

 

[Siptah]

Yes yes 100% yes! Cosmic Encounter is an excellent inspiration. Each faction breaks one rule in a mind bogglingly powerful way. I think factions (Civs) should have one powerful difference and just be able to specialize organically by gameplay, like how you get quests in Civ 4 mods that can buff certain unit types, etc

Or the game your avatar is coming from: Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Expedition Leaders Expansion. That‘s asymmetry done right. But then again, they only needed 8 factions. Yet, each one has a unique interaction with a specific game system that allows to either bend or break one of the related rules.

Even if civ has easily 20 game systems that each could get a civ interacting and breaking the rules with, we are already at 39 civs and 28 (?) leaders. They can‘t all feel truly unique, I‘m afraid.

 

[GeneralZift]

Maybe the opposite would be better, so the Civs have light, flavourful unique units plus some small quantity of strong bonuses, and the 'unique game breaking aspect' should be reserved for in-game choices.

For example, each government type could have one super unique interesting aspect.
Like only in Democracy can you change your Policies every turn. Or Fascism allows you to ignore Happiness for a new Fascism-unique yield called Terror that is boosted by Military strength.
Maybe Theocracy allows you to use Faith to purchase almost anything, and it's now unique to that Government style.
Of course it would be more interesting if the government styles were not strictly 'tiered' in this case.

 

[Gorbles]

There is simply no "romance" to it. I play the Incas in the middle of the game, then the game comes to me and say "Babe wake up, its time for your scheduled genocide," and now I have to play Nepal. It tastes bitter and isn't fun to experience. Completely takes the wind out of my sail.

There's no romance in succeeding in everything you pursue as the Incas, and then choosing a progression (again, of your choice) that preserves Incan buildings, existing choices you have made, city names, and so on?

You are making alt history; you are playing history. Because in history, most of the pre-Columbian civilisations were wiped out. The Quechua are hardly a direct successor, are they (nor are they wholly Incan).

I mean, on one level, I completely get it. You're expressing your own lack of investment in your chosen civilisation's story. I understand where you're coming from.

But on the other hand I feel like people exaggerate the Age transition into something it's not even coming across as being (nevermind intended to be). If you win, every single piece of game text suggests that you succeeded. That your people lived, thrived and evolved to meet the challenges of an evolving world. I find that very romantic, really. Definitely not pragmatic, or even realistic given history.

 

[Skojardu]

Or the game your avatar is coming from: Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Expedition Leaders Expansion. That‘s asymmetry done right. But then again, they only needed 8 factions. Yet, each one has a unique interaction with a specific game system that allows to either bend or break one of the related rules.

Even if civ has easily 20 game systems that each could get a civ interacting and breaking the rules with, we are already at 39 civs and 28 (?) leaders. They can‘t all feel truly unique, I‘m afraid.

In Arnak, players are differentiated not only by the assistants they choose, but also because every card they can buy to add to the deck is unique. Of course, we cannot have each tech be unique and one copy in a game of Civilization, but some could be like that, at least for a certain time or turn length. Wasn't Greek fire / naptha a Byzantine "exclusive tech" for hundreds of years?

 

[itix]

You are making alt history; you are playing history. Because in history, most of the pre-Columbian civilisations were wiped out. The Quechua are hardly a direct successor, are they (nor are they wholly Incan).

I mean, on one level, I completely get it. You're expressing your own lack of investment in your chosen civilisation's story. I understand where you're coming from.

It is fun to play pre-Columbian civ, then colonize Europe and wipe them out...

 

[Kurgan]

Thank you very much for your analysis. It reflects (for me) the problems that I find with CIV VII. I hope that for next civ it will be taken on account. I have played all civs since the first was released and I was eager to buy the best edition one for me and one for my son ( I wish they would release an special physical edition for CIV VIII). My money and my eagerness to buy the next one are still there. I don't like CIV VII, but I think that (again in my view) 6 great games out of 7 is much better than any other series, so I am eagerly waiting for the next civ ( and hope that Sid gets more involved). I want to thank you again for the effort and time you put in the analysis and finish just suggesting some "revolutionary changes" for the next iteration that could be part of the "one third" new concepts:

- Cities have not hex/square limit, they can grow into provinces but the farther they are from the center limits the yields that the city collects from them are lower, technology, infrastructures, communications will improve them.
- Like in Colonization, you have to actually build factories in cities to produce guns, luxuries (silk), and then distribute them.
- Private sector market should be set up. To get money you sell to this market your surplus (iron, silk etc) and you can buy also in the market what you need and at the price that the market sets, so you may end up indirectly selling oil to your enemies because you need money to wage war against them.
- Districts should be limited, you build religious buildings in cities, but if you have a "special" hex in your territory you can build a religious district like for example one containing an Oracle, or one next to a sacred mountain or natural wonder (big meteor). You can only start building industrial districts when you start building factories or next to terrain landmarks that improve productivity (in southern France roman flour "factories" sometimes lined up more than 20 water mills in good river spots.
- Your capacity to build military units should be limited by your population, if you build more units than what your population can support the yields will start going down as you are taking workers from the fields and factories. Mercenaries will then be a good option.

 

[_hero_]

Civilization’s balance approach​

Using the traditional definition of balance, the Civilization series has been asymmetrically balanced:

• Civilization power waxes and wanes across eras: Different Civs are dominant at different points in time. It’s OK that I’m weak in the Ancient era, because I dominate in the Middle Ages. The fact that others are strong in the Ancient Era is a fun challenge to overcome.

It's worth pointing out that this only started with Civ 5. Civ 1-2 didn't have unique civ strengths and weaknesses. 3-4 only had generic traits and UUs. The asymmetrical balance was still there in 1-4 through things like wonders though. I think that's important though because in Civ 2, you'd feel like you just broke the game if you built Leonardo's Workshop. In Civ 6 these types of moments come when your civ has its dominant era. In Civ 7, when is that moment?

 

[Gori the Grey]

In a game with many moving parts, some things will be OP, and that’s ok. Finding and using them makes you, the player, feel smart and powerful. In fact, OP is a major source of replayability - trying different combinations of leaders and OP areas is fun.

To continue with my ad hoc reactions to what you've given us, Kenshiro.

I think their idea was that in 7, this quality would come from the three civlets and the detachable leaders: that players would work out combinations of those that would be OP, and that working out the combinations would contribute to replayability.

From the discussions here, it would seem to me that the reason it didn't play out that way, is that there isn't enough challenge. If Inca with Tubman was going to prove marginally better than Inca with Lafayette, that marginal difference would only come out in close-call situations: a game where I survived with Tubman but another game where with Lafayette the AI beat me. But since these supposedly OP advantages are evened out by the other civs also having a cluster of advantages, I haven't read on these boards the main thing that, in advance of the release of the game, I thought I would hear: "Man, guys, you need to try Franklin+Han-Shawnee-Mexico. It's siiiiiiick!"