Civ6 June Update Video

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I think the reason they don't want to release the dll. is because they know it would hurt their sales in the long run. If they released it, modders would get to work and sooner or later they would have a brand new Vox Populi for Civ VI in the workshop.

This wouldn't only hurt their professional image as designers/programmers, it'd mean that, as has already happen with IV and V, many people would choose to stay when VII is released, since VI would be straight up a better product. Even those who decided to buy VII (many of them on discount), could be eventually disappointed with the direction of the new game and return to the old ones for no coming back, so never buying the subsequent expansions of the new. We have a few examples of this in the forum and are totally understandable to be honest.

On the other hand, Civ is and always has been a game living off the community and its mods. If they neglect that part of their bussiness because they don't see immediate economic benefit, they will eventually lose the support of their customers. There will be others ready to take advantage of this and honestly, if they don't want their game improved, I'll be on the other boat.

Possibly true.

But also the release of the DLL and the community modding scene is also, in my eyes, why the Civ series is THE tile based 4x series. You know straight up that it is the best value for money of any 4x series because not only is the base game just inherently fun, there are some incredible mods that elevate the game to simply amazing levels. Even for players who have thrown thousands upon thousands of hours into 4x games.

It would be sad if they lose that. It probably doesn't effect 99% of players, but for a certain minority the DLL release and the amazing modders is the number one selling point of the Civ series compared to competitors

hahaha i'm not sure if it's a myth or not but isn't there a story about lightbulbs being able to be made to last much longer and that they harm them to make sure customers actually buy more so that the business survives. Insert rant about capitalism here
 
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What does this mean? Can access to core game files be made indirectly and piecemeal without actually needing to release any DLL?
See the functions exposed by the game core DLL to the Lua gameplay/script context here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/lua-objects.601146/

There are a lot at first glance, but not many to set/change things if you look closer, and we miss some important functions that were exposed to Lua in civ5 and allowed full control of the AI diplomacy or AI units even before the source code was released. Not enough function of that kind are available in civ6 ATM.

BTW in my previous post I didn't describe correctly the new addition from the latest patch: there is a new line in XML related to the AI behavior node that seems to point to a new method for the game core to call a Lua script to get a boolean. It's referenced in the AI behavior tree for Red Death since the patch, but doesn't seem to be implemented yet in the Lua script controlling the scenario.

Now that there is a new patch dedicated for that scenario coming, I guess it was half-implemented and we may be able to see an example in a few days.

See:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/changes-to-modding-with-may-2020-patch.658230/#post-15779252
 
This whole "business used to be consumer focused" is demonstrably false.

Nowadays there's more laws to keep consumers protected as well as means for consumers to keep themselves informed than ever before. This means consumers are also able to better identify shams, communicate and share opinions, use review metrics and a ton of other stuff which would not be possible a mere few decades ago.

Consumers today are highly critical and much more so than before.

You've got palm oil free products, bacon without pork, yogurt without fat, candy without sugar, beer without alcohol, coke without sugar, coke without sugar for people who don't like coke without sugar, chocolate with 30/50/70/98.567% amount of cocoa, coffee without caffeine, all kinds of flavored tea for people who don't actually like tea, home delivery, home delivery on saturday, home delivery on saturday before 10.00am, all day breakfast, small, medium, large, extra large, family size of [insert consumable product here], cheese without lactose, bread without gluten, bread with seeds, bread with seeds without seeds, milk made of anything but milk, seedless olives, seedless grapes, AND A MILLION OTHER THINGS WHICH ONLY EXIST BECAUSE OF CONSUMERS ASKING FOR THEM.

I was talking about the entertainment industry not food. Everyone and their mother is eating keto or paleo diet for reasons revolving around metabolic diseases, obesity, and death. This topic is about entertainment. You cannot die of bordem. If you want to rant about organic expeller pressed avocado oil vs palm oil made with poisonous hexane I don't mind talking to you about it but that's not what this topic is about.

Also critical customers having little to no impact on the kinds of entertainment they want is no where near the same thing as deciding to buy something else like organic food vs other foods. The food item actually existed prior to the demand for it. Can someone go and pick out a Civ 7 game that's fully moddable out of the ground? No it has to be made first with highly technical specialized skillsets. I would pay 500 dollars for that game right now. I would pay a 1000 dollars for a new Legend of Legaia game. There is tons of demand for various forms of entertainment, problem is, the industry itself is not interested in making that product. It's quite possibly the only industry that does this and gets away with it too. Not calling anyone evil, it's just the reality.
 
Cliffs of Dover should be next up for natural wonders. Let us improve the tiles and settle on it at least. We have Paititi now with its godliness so it wouldn't be out of line.
 
So-so on prince? You can relatively easily win with The Maya on deity :D
But remember This game is balanced and best scaled on a small maps. In huge Maya can struggle, but to be honest I don't bother XXL maps on Civ. They are unbalanced not only for The Maya.

Any Civ can win on deity if you always play a certain way. Is that fun? Not particularly. I want to play Maya the way it was supposed to be played but that is harder to do in reality. Rolling the map with military can get old if you do that every game. There just isn't a good synergy with that Civ and it's bonuses. Maya games felt like I was dragging a horse to a river to drink. Almost like a slog those games were. I'd rather play with Australia or Alexander even though they are pretty much automatic Win Buttons.
 
Cliffs of Dover should be next up for natural wonders. Let us improve the tiles and settle on it at least. We have Paititi now with its godliness so it wouldn't be out of line.

That wonder is way overpowered. I rolled a Colombia game next to the wonder. Instead of warmongering I got a fast culture victory. It was insane!
 
I think the reason they don't want to release the dll. is because they know it would hurt their sales in the long run. If they released it, modders would get to work and sooner or later they would have a brand new Vox Populi for Civ VI in the workshop.

This wouldn't only hurt their professional image as designers/programmers, it'd mean that, as has already happen with IV and V, many people would choose to stay when VII is released, since VI would be straight up a better product. Even those who decided to buy VII (many of them on discount), could be eventually disappointed with the direction of the new game and return to the old ones for no coming back, so never buying the subsequent expansions of the new. We have a few examples of this in the forum and are totally understandable to be honest.

On the other hand, Civ is and always has been a game living off the community and its mods. If they neglect that part of their bussiness because they don't see immediate economic benefit, they will eventually lose the support of their customers. There will be others ready to take advantage of this and honestly, if they don't want their game improved, I'll be on the other boat.

I'm not really sure about this, or if it is the reason I doubt it's true. After all, we already have Vox Populi for Civ V and it didn't impaired the sales of Civ VI AFAIK. So a global, enchanced mod for Civ VI would probably not impair the sales of Civ VII because 1) it's still a minority of players that use all-conversion mods like Vox Populi, the rest will still continue to follow the franchise, as what happened with Vox Populi and Civ VI and 2) we already have mods that answer some of the most urgent questions of the game (Civilization and Religion expanded on the top of my head answering questions of balance between civs (some are discutable, I like my Kongo religionless, thank you, but it's details) and making religion sort of more interesting, or RwF that changed completely how the politics is made) and thus if your argument was true those mods by themselves would be enough to impair the sales of Civ VI so releasing the dll. to please the modders community and making the game more engaging would be smarter.

But it's just my personal analysis, I know nothing about marketing or economy, I'm just using common sense which is, in area of expertise, like using a pair of scisors to cut your food: in the long run you manage to achieve the result you want but others tools are much more efficients and give way better results.

hahaha i'm not sure if it's a myth or not but isn't there a story about lightbulbs being able to be made to last much longer and that they harm them to make sure customers actually buy more so that the business survives. Insert rant about capitalism here

It's not a myth: planned obscolescence began with lightbulbs (the Evil Cartel of Lightbulbs Producers). At the beginning, lightbulbs were too efficient and lasted way too long: the oldest lightbulb still in use is more than 100 years old IIRC. So a cartel of lightbulb producers (not particularly evil in the grand scheme of capitalism) decided to make their lightbulbs to last no more than 1000 hours of use. And thus began planned obscolescence.
 
That wonder is way overpowered. I rolled a Colombia game next to the wonder. Instead of warmongering I got a fast culture victory. It was insane!

Haha, funny you mention that because my first Gran Columbia game was near Paititi as well. I settled my second city on it. I still did the dom thing, but that wonder gives an incredible boost to whatever you want to do.
 
Any Civ can win on deity if you always play a certain way. Is that fun? Not particularly. I want to play Maya the way it was supposed to be played but that is harder to do in reality. Rolling the map with military can get old if you do that every game. There just isn't a good synergy with that Civ and it's bonuses. Maya games felt like I was dragging a horse to a river to drink. Almost like a slog those games were. I'd rather play with Australia or Alexander even though they are pretty much automatic Win Buttons.
I found playing with the Maya very fun.
I rather think playing with Civs with automatic Win buttons is unfun but this is not a Maya problem. This is a problem with some OP Civs. I have mentioned it in Gran Colombia tread. Player can always switch difficulty level if begins to play, or just want to play for fun. Developers shouldn't bypass this problem by designing a Civ ridiculous easy to play.
It is called power creep and it's always unhealthy in game design.
 
I really hope that the desync issues between EGS and Steam players get fixed, I got some of my friends into civ and we all find multiplayer awesome apart from this problem. Should we get our hopes up?
 
Also critical customers having little to no impact on the kinds of entertainment they want[...]Can someone go and pick out a Civ 7 game that's fully moddable out of the ground? No it has to be made first with highly technical specialized skillsets. I would pay 500 dollars for that game right now. I would pay a 1000 dollars for a new Legend of Legaia game. There is tons of demand for various forms of entertainment, problem is, the industry itself is not interested in making that product. It's quite possibly the only industry that does this and gets away with it too. Not calling anyone evil, it's just the reality.

All you can provide is anecdotal evidence and your own perceptions of reality. You being willing to pay 50 or 500 dollars for what you mentioned is hardly evidence of it being good business.

You speak of "The Industry" as if it were some overarching institution which controls everything, rather than being composed of individuals with their own interests and goals and businesses which are trying to turn a profit and which will often stick to what they do best, making incremental changes to old products rather than creating something entirely new.

Furthermore, there being demand for a product which exists only as a concept in the imagination of the consumer doesn't necessarily translate to a final product which that consumer would actually be willing to buy.
 
The new Pagoda seems strong for Diplomatic, but, at the same time, do I want to spam Holy Sites in a diplo victory? Georgia can make good use of it, since you want faith anyway, to get envoys. Other Civs need to try to adopt it before the AI does, to deny it from them, but it doesn't seem like something you would want to focus production on, unless you also got a use for all the faith you'll get. Even without Georgia, Religious Unity can be used to get some extra envoys, so it might be worth to invest a bit more on Holy Sites to convert city-states, but it isn't something that seems beneficial to spam.
 
I loathe the discussion of "do they even know how to play the game at an elite level?"?

Per the Steam stats, something like less than 4% of players have ever won a game at Diety level (and I'm sure I'm not the only one that cheesed that achievement with a 1-turn Roman score victory).

Not only should Firaxis NOT play their game at an "elite level", they should actively avoid making "elite level" any type of priority. It looks like they KNOW that their playerbase is mostly casual people that play to have fun, play on base difficulty (or lower!), and don't really care about min/maxing.

As a business decision, you pick the LARGEST group of people and try to sell to them. If literally all of the Diety players stopped buying Civ stuff... less than 4% of sales would stop and if they added things that got the attention of 5% new people DUMPING THE DIETY PLAYERS WAS A WIN.

So adding in a Zombie Apocalypse mode, even if literally every Diety Player boycotts, is probably a net win, income wise.
 
The new Pagoda seems strong for Diplomatic, but, at the same time, do I want to spam Holy Sites in a diplo victory? Georgia can make good use of it, since you want faith anyway, to get envoys. Other Civs need to try to adopt it before the AI does, to deny it from them, but it doesn't seem like something you would want to focus production on, unless you also got a use for all the faith you'll get. Even without Georgia, Religious Unity can be used to get some extra envoys, so it might be worth to invest a bit more on Holy Sites to convert city-states, but it isn't something that seems beneficial to spam.

Faith should be more versatile, and it is much more versatile than a lot of people think. After all, you can buy Great peoples with it (useful in any circumstance); you need faith to buy Naturalists and Rock Bands (necessary for a cultural victory most of the time). Now you wan use Faith also in Diplomacy.

And for people saying: "But if you build so much holy sites, why don't you go for a Religion Victory instead", it's the same thing as saying for a player going for a Domination Victory: "but if you need some much campuses and industrial zones to maintain your army, why not go for a Science Victory instead?". And it's true, but maybe it's not my goal, or maybe I don't want want all the micromanagement of my units.

Faith, like science, gold, culture and production, should me more versatile and useful in a lot of circumstances. Right now, people build holy sites only if they go for a Religion Victory, but I think that any change that make HS districts more useful is a good thing, as well as even if you don't go for Science Victory you build a lot of Campuses.
 
Faith should be more versatile, and it is much more versatile than a lot of people think. After all, you can buy Great peoples with it (useful in any circumstance); you need faith to buy Naturalists and Rock Bands (necessary for a cultural victory most of the time). Now you wan use Faith also in Diplomacy.

And for people saying: "But if you build so much holy sites, why don't you go for a Religion Victory instead", it's the same thing as saying for a player going for a Domination Victory: "but if you need some much campuses and industrial zones to maintain your army, why not go for a Science Victory instead?". And it's true, but maybe it's not my goal, or maybe I don't want want all the micromanagement of my units.

Faith, like science, gold, culture and production, should me more versatile and useful in a lot of circumstances. Right now, people build holy sites only if they go for a Religion Victory, but I think that any change that make HS districts more useful is a good thing, as well as even if you don't go for Science Victory you build a lot of Campuses.

Faith is useful, but it needs to make up for the investment you're making in production, since building Holy Sites means you aren't investing on something else. You want a religion in a Diplomatic Victory, so you can build the Mahabodhi Temple. A couple of Holy Sites is enough for that, which will also give you enough faith to use monumentality effectively. Building another couple of Holy Sites down the road isn't too costly and can be beneficial, but what I'm trying to consider is if it would be worth to spam Holy Sites everywhere, to get that Pagoda's favor. This is the first building we get that gives favors, the first spammable source of favors per turn in the game, but does it mean spamming it is an effective strategy?

It can be used in domination games, to offset the penalty for holding a capital. The AI usually builds a lot of Holy Sites, so if you spread a religion that has Pagoda, you can build Pagodas in Holy Sites that still don't have a tier 3 building and try to counter the penalty, or at least reduce its impact.
 
Faith is useful, but it needs to make up for the investment you're making in production, since building Holy Sites means you aren't investing on something else.

Since holy sites come at around the same time as the campus and mostly compete for the same spots on the map, i think the game would be served well if it were a really really difficult decision on which one to build first in almost all situations.

You need to build four things in order to get that T3 religious building, on top of winning the right belief in your religion--they should all be super good.
 
I loathe the discussion of "do they even know how to play the game at an elite level?"?

Per the Steam stats, something like less than 4% of players have ever won a game at Diety level (and I'm sure I'm not the only one that cheesed that achievement with a 1-turn Roman score victory).

Not only should Firaxis NOT play their game at an "elite level", they should actively avoid making "elite level" any type of priority. It looks like they KNOW that their playerbase is mostly casual people that play to have fun, play on base difficulty (or lower!), and don't really care about min/maxing.

As a business decision, you pick the LARGEST group of people and try to sell to them. If literally all of the Diety players stopped buying Civ stuff... less than 4% of sales would stop and if they added things that got the attention of 5% new people DUMPING THE DIETY PLAYERS WAS A WIN.

So adding in a Zombie Apocalypse mode, even if literally every Diety Player boycotts, is probably a net win, income wise.

I agree that firaxis have taken the casual gamer approach with civ6, and perhaps that is a more profitable direction. So I guess here I should just shrug and move on. However, I do think there is still a large following that wants to play a more balanced/competitive version of civ. (Plenty of people still play civ5 with lekmod)

I think a lot of people care less about deity difficulty specifically, and more about general balance and replayability, but again maybe casuals don't notice this, so who cares right? But then my question is: Why attempt to balance the game at all? If they don't understand the game at a high (or even reasonable level) why bother attempting to balance it? I just find it all very baffling.

I haven't bought the latest Frontier Patch because right now it's far too expensive for very little change (perhaps later editions will change my mind). However, if they could prove to me that they understand their own game, I would have full confidence and buy without thinking, but patches like this just expose the fact they have no clue, so instead I won't be dropping any money.

With this in mind, I am now convinced that they are full steam ahead working on Civ7, and this is a small side project to squeeze as much money out of the remaining fanbase as possible, and thats fine, but I ain't taking the bait.
 
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