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.

 

[Core Imposter]

Everybody has their own opinions but to me the biggest issue has to be the absence of meaningful gameplay. For years it seems to me that Firaxis tries to find something to carry its games rather than to develop the AI to use game mechanics in a meaningful way. For Civ7 they clearly spent a ton of resources on historical research and artistic representations. But there is no game in the game. It's mostly a city builder. IMO.

You really can't do history justice unless your product is, at its heart, a wargame. And a 4x that isn't a wargame is not really a 4x game.

 

[timmychompchomp]

The layoffs I have seen today are sad but not unexpected. I observed systemic issues throughout the years and I see more evidence to support that claim today. Many of the people who were let go were merely the victims of circumstance, but if a Reddit post about departments affected is to be believed, the department (group) responsible for the systemic issues, or fixing them, was affected as well. I took no pride in voicing my opinion, but I hate the feeling I have watching it unfold, hurting in some way, people who seem to me, to be talented, good people. Sometimes it just happens. For the record, I’m a fan of Civ 7, but I also acknowledge the valid flaws or complaints of the bulk player base. The vitriol, by more than a few, was extreme, especially on YouTube, which I truly believe deeply hurt the devs and sales of the game. If you are an influencer, you take trips and money for content, you are an influencer of sales and reception. Totally fine to be disappointed, give feedback, not play if it’s that bad, but honest mature people will attest that the game and devs were maligned by some in a way that was gross and unwarranted. I fear many of the extreme voices are about to get their wish. I am not blaming anyone, just stating what I have observed. I am not absolving 2k, firaxis, devs, for the design and execution either, but our voices and actions have consequences as well, especially for influencers and forum super posters. Sad news today, and I post this here because I was recently in this thread talking about the issues I have observed and related too. To any dev who might read this, I am sorry this happened, I hope for the best in your future pursuits. I enjoy Civ 7 as a whole and will continue to play. I look forward to continued refinement and expansion, if those are still in the works.

 

[Core Imposter]

I wish all of those affected the best future. Godspeed.

 

[King Flevance]

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 sesession.

Now I really want this idea of supply and demand incorporated. This would be great.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Now I really want this idea of supply and demand incorporated. This would be great.

I think it could make a fun game dynamic. If you have a near monopoly on some key resource, you should get more for it. And if you're short of one, it comes as an additional challenge.

I would still want it simplified: a price that you get if your resource is common, a price you get if it's average and a price you get if its rare. Not super-fine calibration.

Could impact settlement sites, if you know the map well enough to know that a particular spot would get you rare resources.

 

[Kenshiro70]

The vitriol, by more than a few, was extreme, especially on YouTube, which I truly believe deeply hurt the devs and sales of the game. If you are an influencer, you take trips and money for content, you are an influencer of sales and reception. Totally fine to be disappointed, give feedback, not play if it’s that bad, but honest mature people will attest that the game and devs were maligned by some in a way that was gross and unwarranted.

At the end of the document, I listed Sources that I'd used in preparation. Do any of those fall into that category? I'd hope not, as I tried as much as possible to avoid videos that had little thought, simply parroted others, or even worse, engaged in meaningless culture war schlock.

I actually have a different take, though the end result is the same. Too many of the content creators breathlessly, with each patch, declared "Game changer!" and set peoples' expectations too high too quickly (Do a quick scan of the thumbnails and you'll see what I mean). After getting your hopes up and having them dashed a couple of times, it turns you jaded and pessimistic very quickly.

You are correct that some of the comments on the YouTube videos were pretty brutal, and that's where another dark side of social media came into play -- toxic positivity. The Reddit and Facebook groups relentlessly stamped out any dissent -- even Emotional Husky's very well-written "Civ VII broke my heart" video was removed from Facebook because it "upset some members". The people who were shut out didn't cease to exist; they went to the unmoderated sites, Steam and YouTube, which unfortunately also happen to be the most publicly visible.

I'm not sure what can be done, as the algorithms behind Facebook and Reddit optimize purely for engagement right now, even at the expense of engagement in the future.

I will say one thing - it makes me feel very lucky to have a community like civfanatics where you can have good discussions and occasional disagreements but still be cordial and learn from others.

I appreciate you all.

 

[timmychompchomp]

At the end of the document, I listed Sources that I'd used in preparation. Do any of those fall into that category? I'd hope not, as I tried as much as possible to avoid videos that had little thought, simply parroted others, or even worse, engaged in meaningless culture war schlock.

I actually have a different take, though the end result is the same. Too many of the content creators breathlessly, with each patch, declared "Game changer!" and set peoples' expectations too high too quickly (Do a quick scan of the thumbnails and you'll see what I mean). After getting your hopes up and having them dashed a couple of times, it turns you jaded and pessimistic very quickly.

You are correct that some of the comments on the YouTube videos were pretty brutal, and that's where another dark side of social media came into play -- toxic positivity. The Reddit and Facebook groups relentlessly stamped out any dissent -- even Emotional Husky's very well-written "Civ VII broke my heart" video was removed from Facebook because it "upset some members". The people who were shut out didn't cease to exist; they went to the unmoderated sites, Steam and YouTube, which unfortunately also happen to be the most publicly visible.

I'm not sure what can be done, as the algorithms behind Facebook and Reddit optimize purely for engagement right now, even at the expense of engagement in the future.

I will say one thing - it makes me feel very lucky to have a community like civfanatics where you can have good discussions and occasional disagreements but still be cordial and learn from others.

I appreciate you all.

I’m no fan of emotional husky’s. I have 0 respect for him. I have 0 respect for potato either. If you think they are fair, balanced, and well conceived, then I don’t know what to say to you. I barely read your post mortem. Using the term post mortem is, and continues to be, inappropriate and inaccurate. Using this term declares the game dead or concluded. You can dance around it if you want, but you said what you said, and that’s what it means. Same thing with Husky and Potato. They also use incredibly strong and inappropriate language to communicate their feelings for engagement. I don’t suffer fools. Potato accepting their money and trip and then turning around and describing Ben Franklin’s model as a hairless ball sack while emotionally ranting about how stupid and poor everything is was not a fair critique. I had some brutal comments about that video and it you think that was toxic positivity,I don’t know what to say. I did the same to Husky for some of his dramatic comments. It’s because they crossed a line. I didn’t take you on , because I only disagree with your use of post mortem, I don’t think it crosses a line, just poorly conceived, meaning inaccurate and inappropriate. You put a lot of effort in explaining game design and the failures of AAA game development studio. I assume you are a colleague of theirs? You are a game designer, developer?

 

[Skojardu]

I’m no fan of emotional husky’s. I have 0 respect for him. I have 0 respect for potato either. If you think they are fair, balanced, and well conceived, then I don’t know what to say to you. I barely read your post mortem. Using the term post mortem is, and continues to be, inappropriate and inaccurate. Using this term declares the game dead or concluded. You can dance around it if you want, but you said what you said, and that’s what it means. Same thing with Husky and Potato. They also use incredibly strong and inappropriate language to communicate their feelings for engagement. I don’t suffer fools. Potato accepting their money and trip and then turning around and describing Ben Franklin’s model as a hairless ball sack while emotionally ranting about how stupid and poor everything is was not a fair critique. I had some brutal comments about that video and it you think that was toxic positivity,I don’t know what to say. I did the same to Husky for some of his dramatic comments. It’s because they crossed a line. I didn’t take you on , because I only disagree with your use of post mortem, I don’t think it crosses a line, just poorly conceived, meaning inaccurate and inappropriate. You put a lot of effort in explaining game design and the failures of AAA game development studio. I assume you are a colleague of theirs? You are a game designer, developer?

Timmy, you didn't read the earlier replies to this thread. The Post-Mortem term isn't the death of the game, it's more the death of the planning and development of the game. Now the game is essentially an art piece whose meaning is determined by public reaction rather than dev inputs.

Secondly, If you can't hear the Philomena Cunkyness of Husky's Civ 7 stories where he faithfully and without sassiness or sarcasm declares he is meeting Ben Franklin of the Mongols, and similarly absurd mis-matched leaders and civs, I can't help you. If you like Civ 7, good! You are at a place where most of us unhappy Civ fanatics would like to be. Maybe if my first Civ was 5 instead of Call to Power, I would like 7, but I don't like what I've seen, and neither have many others, and my posting here is a testament to my eventual hope that the game will be to my liking.

 

[Maiq]

I’m no fan of emotional husky’s. I have 0 respect for him. I have 0 respect for potato either. If you think they are fair, balanced, and well conceived, then I don’t know what to say to you. I barely read your post mortem. Using the term post mortem is, and continues to be, inappropriate and inaccurate. Using this term declares the game dead or concluded. You can dance around it if you want, but you said what you said, and that’s what it means. Same thing with Husky and Potato. They also use incredibly strong and inappropriate language to communicate their feelings for engagement. I don’t suffer fools. Potato accepting their money and trip and then turning around and describing Ben Franklin’s model as a hairless ball sack while emotionally ranting about how stupid and poor everything is was not a fair critique. I had some brutal comments about that video and it you think that was toxic positivity,I don’t know what to say. I did the same to Husky for some of his dramatic comments. It’s because they crossed a line. I didn’t take you on , because I only disagree with your use of post mortem, I don’t think it crosses a line, just poorly conceived, meaning inaccurate and inappropriate. You put a lot of effort in explaining game design and the failures of AAA game development studio. I assume you are a colleague of theirs? You are a game designer, developer?

Read the thing your are commenting on man, jeez.

 

[timmychompchomp]

Timmy, you didn't read the earlier replies to this thread. The Post-Mortem term isn't the death of the game, it's more the death of the planning and development of the game. Now the game is essentially an art piece whose meaning is determined by public reaction rather than dev inputs.

Secondly, If you can't hear the Philomena Cunkyness of Husky's Civ 7 stories where he faithfully and without sassiness or sarcasm declares he is meeting Ben Franklin of the Mongols, and similarly absurd mis-matched leaders and civs, I can't help you. If you like Civ 7, good! You are at a place where most of us unhappy Civ fanatics would like to be. Maybe if my first Civ was 5 instead of Call to Power, I would like 7, but I don't like what I've seen, and neither have many others, and my posting here is a testament to my eventual hope that the game will be to my liking.

I did read that reply. I reject it as an explanation for the title. Husky I understand and I have 0 respect for. I reject your classification of the game as an art piece as well, based on your assertion that you hope to influence it until you get what you want. You don’t go to a museum and demand they alter the works for your next visit, do you? You can judge it, pay to see it, not like it, but you don’t get to alter it. So, you are not handling Civ 7 as a piece of art, it’s a commodity. You want to drastically alter it to your liking? So, you are actively trying to deprive someone else of what they might be enjoying. You need to own that and accept pushback. I have no problem with people critiquing the game and I have no real interest in defending the game, but I take exception with inappropriate and unnecessary, unfair, dramatic, disrespectful criticism. I don’t know if you do that or not, but you are defending someone who does.

 

[timmychompchomp]

Read the thing your are commenting on man, jeez.

Why, the portions I read were unsatisfactory and appeared amateurish. To each his own, if it seems appropriate and well reasoned to you, then great. I only addressed what I took exception to. Also, plenty of people are in the Civ 7 general, commenting and criticizing and they don’t even own the game.