Civ7 dev interview

[SupremacyKing2]

Interview with Ed and Carl:

00:00 - Intro
01:02 - Is there something from previous Civs that you miss that was taken away in Civ 7?
03:15 - How many narrative events are there in the game? How hard was is it to come up with the payofs of them?
07:26 - Does the AI only just have cheats on Deity to make it harder or has the AI improved to make better decisions?
13:30 - How do you think the new mechanics age transitions, rubberbanding, etc helped with the Late Game problems of Civ?
16:55 - Do you think players will get paralyzed by too many choices with the new Civ switching mechanic?
19:42 - How hard was it/is it to have to balance the game with the introduction of civ switching?
23:24 - Can we pet the dog?

 

[Thugless]

Good one thanks

 

[SupremacyKing2]

By the way, over 1000 narrative events! That's insane! WOW!

 

[Sephi]

very cool interview. Thanks for sharing. Lets hope the AI will be fun to play against, but it is good they try a new approach this time.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Two more dev interviews from today. Includes a bit of insight about modding in Potato's vid:

PotatoMcWhiskey

Ursa Ryan

 

[Thormodr]

...

I kid! I kid!

Some decent questions there.

Nothing about the elephant in the room, though. Da new thing...

 

[Kwami]

Ed confirms that the Switch is one of the reasons that the maps are smaller, the player count is limited to 5, and hot seat isn't supported. That's what a number of us predicted when Firaxis announced that the Switch would be supported. Unfortunate.

Also, bridges are in! And one new type of commander per age.

 

[Thormodr]

Ed confirms that the Switch is one of the reasons that the maps are smaller, the player count is limited to 5, and hot seat isn't supported. That's what a number of us predicted when Firaxis announced that the Switch would be supported. Unfortunate.

Also, bridges are in! And one new type of commander per age.

Yeah, we all knew (or should have known) that consoles would hold the game back. That stinks. The game has been shrinking since 5.

Ara is going in the opposite direction. PC first and the Nitrous game engine will fuel huge maps.

Anyway, bridges are cool. Glad to hear that.

 

[Siptah]

By the way, over 1000 narrative events! That's insane! WOW!

It's definitely a good looking number. Around 4 times as much as HK at release. And a 1/10 of final CK2 or a 1/3 of release CK3.
I assume (and we've seen an example) that a lot of them are tied to specific leaders, civs, (religions), or unlocked by gameplay actions. Hence, if you always play Augustus with Rome for a conquering game, you'll see the same 15 each game.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Narrative events sound way more intricate and interesting than I was expecting.

Really like their answer on balance; recognising that there are bound to be some mad broken strategies but it'll be fun to discover and fix them.

Bridges = cool!

Ed confirms that the Switch is one of the reasons that the maps are smaller, the player count is limited to 5, and hot seat isn't supported. That's what a number of us predicted when Firaxis announced that the Switch would be supported. Unfortunate.

Sad. And I say that as someone who is predominately a console player these days.

 

[Gedemon]

Ed confirms that the Switch is one of the reasons that the maps are smaller, the player count is limited to 5, and hot seat isn't supported. That's what a number of us predicted when Firaxis announced that the Switch would be supported. Unfortunate.

Also, bridges are in! And one new type of commander per age.

He said it was for a smooth release with cross-play on all platforms. And we already knew the player count was going to be smaller on the Switch anyway.

He immediately said the maps sizes will get bigger after on PC. I guess the days after release, as they said the modding framework is similar to civ6.

About hot-seat, he says it was about prioritization of features (cross-play coming first), but it's not a hardware limitation on consoles, there is no reason they can't bring that on Switch, unlike, say, a Giant Earth Map.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

He said it was for a smooth release with cross-play on all platforms. And we already knew the player count was going to be smaller on the Switch anyway.

He immediately said the maps sizes will get bigger after on PC. I guess the days after release, as they said the modding framework was similar to civ6.

About hot-seat, he says it was about prioritization of features (cross-play coming first), but it's not a hardware limitation on consoles, there is no reason they can't bring that on Switch, unlike, say, a Giant Earth Map.

Ok, I didn't actually watch that interview yet, that makes me feel better.

 

[Gorbles]

He said it was for a smooth release with cross-play on all platforms. And we already knew the player count was going to be smaller on the Switch anyway.

He immediately said the maps sizes will get bigger after on PC. I guess the days after release, as they said the modding framework is similar to civ6.

About hot-seat, he says it was about prioritization of features (cross-play coming first), but it's not a hardware limitation on consoles, there is no reason they can't bring that on Switch, unlike, say, a Giant Earth Map.

It really is wild the amount people will try and pin on consoles without actual hard evidence that that's the case. Appreciate the breakdown here.

 

[TheGrayFox]

It really is wild the amount people will try and pin on consoles without actual hard evidence that that's the case. Appreciate the breakdown here.

Without hard evidence? Ed Beach literally just admitted that the game and PC launch are being dictated with the Switch's capabilities in mind... The fact that we have to wait until after release and for modding to fix the fact that PC map sizes were handicapped is because the devs wanted the game to also release on the switch at the same time is

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Without hard evidence? Ed Beach literally just admitted that the game and PC launch are being dictated with the Switch's capabilities in mind... The fact that we have to wait until after release and for modding to fix the fact that PC map sizes were handicapped is because the devs wanted the game to also release on the switch at the same time is

From the interview, it sounds like maps are only size-restricted for multiplayer. Single player will probably have the usual assortment of sizes.

 

[TheGrayFox]

From the interview, it sounds like maps are only size-restricted for multiplayer. Single player will probably have the usual assortment of sizes.

Even the fact that PC multiplayer is being restricted at launch with the Switch in mind is part of the problem, from the sounds of what Beach said they are shipping a one size fits all map size across all platforms and those strict player limits still apply to the PC version which means that the game is being designed and launched with the Switch's capabilities in mind

the fact that we still haven't seen what the average map size and player counts are for single player maps across platforms (as far as I'm aware) leaves me worried

 

[Siptah]

from the sounds of what Beach said they are shipping a one size fits all map size across all platforms and those strict player limits still apply to the PC version which means that the game is being designed and launched with the Switch's capabilities in mind

Official written information states that the Switch only supports 4 players, not 5. So you might have misunderstood Ed or he said something wrong or the official information for buying the game is wrong.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I forget which one of these interviews it was, but I was glad to hear that Ed wanted to solve this problem in 6 where you can't move your unit when it still has some movement remaining but not enough to go anywhere and that forces you to make one extra click before you end the turn. It's small detail, but it's something that everyone's had to deal with in the game. It really shows they're serious about alleviating the micromanagement problem from the game.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Official written information states that the Switch only supports 4 players, not 5. So you might have misunderstood Ed or he said something wrong or the official information for buying the game is wrong.

I didn't misunderstand Ed, that's what he and the other guy said in the interview in question...

So either the official imformation is wrong or Ed Beach and his team are giving confusing/contradictory/unclear information in PR interviews

 

[Siptah]

I didn't misunderstand Ed, that's what he and the other guy said in the interview in question...

So either the official imformation is wrong or Ed Beach and his team are giving confusing/contradictory/unclear information in PR interviews

Checking the official 2k information, there seems to have been a change of some sorts. It still says:

On Nintendo Switch, up to four players are supported in the Antiquity & Exploration Ages, and up to six players supported in the Modern Age in games. Map size restrictions may apply to certain cross-play multiplayer games.

But now also, in another place at the same faq, it reads more undecided:

Nintendo Switch version is not expected to support map sizes of Standard and above. We will update this page once we have confirmation of the available map sizes for launch.

While Nintendo itself says 2-6 players in its store, seemingly confirming the upper quote. Interesting about the Nintendo store: they already list the 25 post launch DLCs.