Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Level of Optimism for Civ6

[duckstab]

I've got to agree that when the gameplay effect is identical bonuses are just more fun than penalties.

To me it's not so much a question of whether game effects are applied as bonuses or penalties, so much as it is the presence or absence of interesting tradeoffs. Civ4 had these in abundance - is it worth building this wonder or that building based on when they're going to go obsolete? Is it the right time to forego the ability to whip-rush via slavery in order to run unlimited scientists under caste system? If I build a city here how long will it be operating in the red until the population is high enough to offset the maintenance cost? Do I use this GP for ligtbulbing or hold onto them so I can start a golden age? And so on.

The closest Civ5 seems to get to this is through religion/ideology bonuses where picking one means somebody else is going probably going to get to another first. But it's rarely the case that you have to give up something nice for something potentially much nicer. To me that adds an element of strategy and accounts in large part for why Civ5 just never captured my imagination to the extent Civ4 did.

 

[Staler87]

To me it's not so much a question of whether game effects are applied as bonuses or penalties, so much as it is the presence or absence of interesting tradeoffs. Civ4 had these in abundance - is it worth building this wonder or that building based on when they're going to go obsolete? Is it the right time to forego the ability to whip-rush via slavery in order to run unlimited scientists under caste system? If I build a city here how long will it be operating in the red until the population is high enough to offset the maintenance cost? Do I use this GP for ligtbulbing or hold onto them so I can start a golden age? And so on.

The closest Civ5 seems to get to this is through religion/ideology bonuses where picking one means somebody else is going probably going to get to another first. But it's rarely the case that you have to give up something nice for something potentially much nicer. To me that adds an element of strategy and accounts in large part for why Civ5 just never captured my imagination to the extent Civ4 did.

I wasn't really commenting on whether a strategy game should have strategic trade-offs (obviously the answer to that is yes) but simply that bonuses are more fun than penalties.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

bonuses are more fun than penalties.

Well, maybe they are. But if you have a situation where all you get is bonuses and there are no negative situations in the game, the game becomes a cake-walk. What is the point of playing. Part of the fun is overcoming adversity.

Woo-hoo! 4000th post!

 

[MyOtherName]

Well, maybe they are. But if you have a situation where all you get is bonuses and there are no negative situations in the game, the game becomes a cake-walk. What is the point of playing. Part of the fun is overcoming adversity.

Woo-hoo! 4000th post!

Every game is "all bonuses no negative situations" if you take the most adverse conditions as a baseline.

Conversely, if you really want to see penalties in regards to eurekas, then you need to think of getting the eureka as normal; you're entitled to them. So if you put yourself in a position where you want a tech and can't get the eureka... there's that adversity you want to overcome.

 

[ringwraith18]

I don't know what you consider to be strategic choices, but in my books, strategic placement of tiles is definitely one of them.

As in, strategic abstract choices. Tile placement strategy reminds me more of a board game...which is not a good or bad thing. But something that's never really interested me.

 

[Staler87]

Well, maybe they are. But if you have a situation where all you get is bonuses and there are no negative situations in the game, the game becomes a cake-walk. What is the point of playing. Part of the fun is overcoming adversity.

Woo-hoo! 4000th post!

But your opponents get the same bonuses. If not having a bonus is a negative baseline then you have to overcome this to get a bonus. You're working towards gaining something instead of working towards preventing something. As I said previously I'm only commenting on situations where the actual number effect is identical so I don't really get how either way makes the game a cake-walk because it should really be the exact same difficulty either way.

Anyways congrats on the 400th post. That is 3798 more than me.

 

[Drakarska]

But your opponents get the same bonuses. If not having a bonus is a negative baseline then you have to overcome this to get a bonus. You're working towards gaining something instead of working towards preventing something. As I said previously I'm only commenting on situations where the actual number effect is identical so I don't really get how either way makes the game a cake-walk because it should really be the exact same difficulty either way.

Anyways congrats on the 400th post. That is 3798 more than me.

Not entirely correct, especially considering difficulty level. AI always get's more in the way of bonuses in order to "challenge" the player. On the flip side, penalties affect all players ( at least in earlier iterations of Civ) which can alter the choices available in whatever situation may arise. Considering that a human player will automatically gravitate to whatever optimal play that maxes the amount of bonuses they receive, having a penalty matrix seems appropriate. Otherwise, as Lemon stated earlier, what's the point in playing?

 

[Staler87]

Again I'm only talking about situations where the gameplay effect is identical. Where it is start at a high baseline and half something if x does not happen or start at a low baseline at double something if x happens (half-ing is only an easy example it could be other things).

 

[MkLh]

Now after watching some longplays things look quite bad. The early game is slow and boring. The longplayers use like an hour or more on first 30 turns. This is what you might use in cIV when extremely micromanaging and tuning for an optimal early game. But on ciVI it's just chasing barbs and cleaning their ever-respawning camps that takes all that time. It's just a chore with no tactics or strategy involved. Basically you are encouraged not to start a new game as you have to do that chore all over again. This is an exact opposite what I would like to do which is to play a lot of starts to find a strong early strategy. I guess the barbs can be turned off, but that's cutting an essential element of the game. And this is an early access difficulty (noble?), things are probably worse in higher difficulties.

 

[The_Boat]

I just started reading about CivVI today and I think it looks promising. I love the district idea as well as the separate progress trees. The thing that I love about the spread out cities idea is that you really have to manage your cities. In CivIV, once I decide how my cities will be specialized there's not much else to do besides build all the buildings in my pat build order. When things happen elsewhere in my empire like losing a city or gaining a vassal or whatever, it doesn't really impact my decisionmaking regarding my already specialized cities. I think this whole district stuff has the potential to make things more interesting in that regard.

Also, I'm looking forward to playing a whole new installment just to renew my immersion in the game world. I've been thinking about my CivIV cities merely as "containers" for holding some list of buildings, and the population is just a quantity, rather than people. Once it becomes a mathematical optimization problem, it's not much fun any more.

BTW, I've never played CivV, so I might be more optimistic than I should be.

 

[georgjorge]

Small question - can you just take out and put in cards from the civics "decks" as often as you want? No anarchy and instant effect? Or how does it work?

 

[Tatran]

Yes, but it will cost you gold. (Similar as it was in SMAC.)
The 'let's plays' at Prince level aren't exciting, but in the 'let's play Greece/Gorgo' by Beach/Murray at Emperor level, the AI looks better.
The AIs had founded their second city very early in the game and the hoplite attack on Rome wasn't successful.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

and the hoplite attack on Rome wasn't successful.

Why you little... I only had to time to watch the first half of the video in the morning and wanted to watch the rest tonight, and now you go spoil the ending for me like that.

 

[georgjorge]

After watching some Let's Plays for the first time, I am slightly worried about the "shiny stuff" approach the game takes, mostly the Eurekas. I'm not sure how much deep strategy can be associated with those, or if they are just there for the feeling of achieving something every turn. Then there's the envoy system and all those city state quests (no, I didn't play V) plus some AI diplomacy options which feel rather useless...they may be going for quantity of options instead of real strategic choices with some of those.

I really want this game to succeed, I really want to play a Civ which is even better than IV, but as I said - worried. Plus of course 1UPT.

 

[MyOtherName]

I am slightly worried about ... Eurekas. I'm not sure how much deep strategy can be associated with those, or if they are just there for the feeling of achieving something every turn.

Earlier design comments I've read indicated that they didn't like how, in previous Civs, a civilization with no experience in a field could do research just as easily as any other -- e.g. they didn't like how a civ that spent the last 5000 years being completely pacifistic could research Military Tradition just as easily as another civ that has been fighting constantly for the past 3000 years!

When I first read about Eurekas, my impression is simply that that was their way of implementing a mechanics where civs who do things have an easier times doing similar things.

 

[Staler87]

Earlier design comments I've read indicated that they didn't like how, in previous Civs, a civilization with no experience in a field could do research just as easily as any other -- e.g. they didn't like how a civ that spent the last 5000 years being completely pacifistic could research Military Tradition just as easily as another civ that has been fighting constantly for the past 3000 years!

When I first read about Eurekas, my impression is simply that that was their way of implementing a mechanics where civs who do things have an easier times doing similar things.

To be honest I think people have been mis-interpreting what Eurekas are for. They aren't meant to be hard to achieve things you need to focus on, they're meant to be a positive feedback loop for focusing certain parts of the game. As serious side-quests, they would fail, but they're probably effective in opening up the tech/culture tree in the direction your civ is going.

 

[The_Boat]

Earlier design comments I've read indicated that they didn't like how, in previous Civs, a civilization with no experience in a field could do research just as easily as any other -- e.g. they didn't like how a civ that spent the last 5000 years being completely pacifistic could research Military Tradition just as easily as another civ that has been fighting constantly for the past 3000 years!

When I first read about Eurekas, my impression is simply that that was their way of implementing a mechanics where civs who do things have an easier times doing similar things.

This is another example of a mechanic that has the potential for rewarding careful planning, and raising the penalty for flip flopping in your strategic goals. Which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

 

[georgjorge]

My problem with them is that most of them are far too easy to get so the whole "requires careful planning" aspect goes away. Watching Quill play Rome, he played a game without paying any attention to Eurekas, only doing very short-term planning. He still got about half of the Eurekas for his techs anyway just for doing things he would have done anyway. I like the concept, but they should need a lot more focus to achieve them.

 

[MyOtherName]

My problem with them is that most of them are far too easy to get so the whole "requires careful planning" aspect goes away. Watching Quill play Rome, he played a game without paying any attention to Eurekas, only doing very short-term planning. He still got about half of the Eurekas for his techs anyway just for doing things he would have done anyway. I like the concept, but they should need a lot more focus to achieve them.

So... due to his lack of planning, his overall research costs were around 1.5 times as much as they could have been if he snagged them all? That already sounds pretty harsh!

And as I said in my previous post -- if this really is supposed to be the implementation of "civs who do stuff should have an easier time doing similar stuff", then getting Eurekas "for doing things he would have done anyway" is how it's supposed to work.

 

[Staler87]

My problem with them is that most of them are far too easy to get so the whole "requires careful planning" aspect goes away. Watching Quill play Rome, he played a game without paying any attention to Eurekas, only doing very short-term planning. He still got about half of the Eurekas for his techs anyway just for doing things he would have done anyway. I like the concept, but they should need a lot more focus to achieve them.

I think making them difficult to achieve would not be a good idea. I don't want to have to seriously consider artificial side quests that are difficult to achieve. I think they were meant to reward players who were active in a part of a game to be more active in that part of the game. Additionally, they also just place a bit of extra thought into your moves like, maybe I will build an extra-spearmen to get that bonus. But making them as hard quests that you need to achieve to keep up in the tech race would not be a good idea development wise in my opinion.