Dev Diary #4 Emergent Narrative

I really like this because it adds a good level of immersion and uniqueness to each game. Since we'll only see a portion of them in each match, and they’ll also be expanded with additional content, it will take a lot of playthroughs before they feel completely exhausted.
 
I really like this because it adds a good level of immersion and uniqueness to each game. Since we'll only see a portion of them in each match, and they’ll also be expanded with additional content, it will take a lot of playthroughs before they feel completely exhausted.
With only a thousand, I think you will start to see repetition quickly enough, particularly if you have a preferred playstyle. If I recall correctly, Old World had something like 3000 at release and they still added more.
 
I wonder, why didn't they do crisis policies choice through such events as well? It seems such an obvious fit for the mechanics.
 
It sounds interesting, I only hope it doesn’t pop up every other turn

I do like the new discoveries where you have a choice instead of a completely RNG bonus
 
it really depends on their frequency. Discoveries ones are probably be very repetable, albeit they're the simpler ones. But discoveries aside, if we get, lets say, about 10 of the other type of events in a game, then the current number may be pretty good already. But I don't think so far we have any idea on how many to expect.
 
it really depends on their frequency. Discoveries ones are probably be very repetable, albeit they're the simpler ones. But discoveries aside, if we get, lets say, about 10 of the other type of events in a game, then the current number may be pretty good already. But I don't think so far we have any idea on how many to expect.
10 (or about 3-4 per age) seems nice
 
Almost instinctively I like the system, simply because my adult life has been spent writing or pursuing narrative history, so anything that introduces or amplifies it anywhere is a Good Thing.

But, some thoughts . . .

IF they have a suitably convoluted train of in-game triggers for 'Narrative Events' then it will be some time before either the player discovers how to consistently trigger the ones he wants OR how to avoid the ones that just interrupt his preferred play style.
BUT with millions of gamers playing Civ VII (a safe estimate, I think) it won't be long before either here or elsewhere someone posts all the triggers and trains of in-game events.

SO no matter how many Narratives they produce, at some point they become repetitive and predictable.

BUT that is also true of broad-based historical narrative in general: seen one massive Barbarian Invasion, one Black Death Pandemic, seen 'em all - the fact that 'real' history only had a few of each does not matter: any gamer with more than a few hundred hours in the game will see dozens of each, probably affecting whatever Civ he plays in whatever Age they are appropriate. The argument that 'Narrative Events' will ultimately be Dull potentially refers to the entire game - any game. The question is, How Long can the design put off the development of Boredom in the narrative system.

That remains to be seen, of course. 1000 potential 'events' is pretty obviously too few, but based on potential in-game events driving the narratives we really don't know what might be enough - yet.
 
It sounds interesting, for sure. I like the way they have designed the system but also worry a bit about it becoming repetitive. That said, I think it's nice to add a bit of extra flavour to your games, and I really like the idea of events that call back to previous Ages.
 
Almost instinctively I like the system, simply because my adult life has been spent writing or pursuing narrative history, so anything that introduces or amplifies it anywhere is a Good Thing.

But, some thoughts . . .

IF they have a suitably convoluted train of in-game triggers for 'Narrative Events' then it will be some time before either the player discovers how to consistently trigger the ones he wants OR how to avoid the ones that just interrupt his preferred play style.
BUT with millions of gamers playing Civ VII (a safe estimate, I think) it won't be long before either here or elsewhere someone posts all the triggers and trains of in-game events.

SO no matter how many Narratives they produce, at some point they become repetitive and predictable.

BUT that is also true of broad-based historical narrative in general: seen one massive Barbarian Invasion, one Black Death Pandemic, seen 'em all - the fact that 'real' history only had a few of each does not matter: any gamer with more than a few hundred hours in the game will see dozens of each, probably affecting whatever Civ he plays in whatever Age they are appropriate. The argument that 'Narrative Events' will ultimately be Dull potentially refers to the entire game - any game. The question is, How Long can the design put off the development of Boredom in the narrative system.

That remains to be seen, of course. 1000 potential 'events' is pretty obviously too few, but based on potential in-game events driving the narratives we really don't know what might be enough - yet.
In the exploration stream I believe they said there was a random selection of a subset from the universe of possible events before game start. That way you can never be completely certain you are able to trigger an event. Though if you are save-scumming or playing a GoTM you might get prior information on events you could spawn...
 
During one of the livestreams, they said that the game creation process selects events at random at the beginning and then you trigger them through gameplay. So, it's entirely possible that even if you learn the trigger for a particular event, it won't trigger because the game didn't choose it when you started.

The funny thing then becomes players restarting games because they didn't get the events they wanted, and they are back to the drawing board for trying to get players to complete games.
I hope that's not how it works. Millennia does this atrocious thing where resources for an area are rolled first and *then* it is checked whether the terrain allows them. The result: lots of resource-barren lands where a resource was selected that can't actually be chosen.

Having to play guesswork and possibly save-scum just to get *any* events in the first place doesn't sound great.
 
I hope that's not how it works. Millennia does this atrocious thing where resources for an area are rolled first and *then* it is checked whether the terrain allows them. The result: lots of resource-barren lands where a resource was selected that can't actually be chosen.

Having to play guesswork and possibly save-scum just to get *any* events in the first place doesn't sound great.
I'm 99% sure that is how it works. In the exploration stream, they knew there was one event for overbuilding a building from a previous age, and remarked that they knew it had been selected from the possible random events because they'd played that save before.
 
* either way, there are never enough and many devs, most famously Paradox with CK3, has already found themselves caught in a trap of their own making by adding such a system that is extremely hungry for more content all the time to avoid it becoming stale for veteran players.

This was my thought as I read the Dev Diary, too. My experience with CK3 suggests that these types of scripted events get tired really soon, long before you see all of them. It happens sometime around the time you've seen a particular event 3 times, unless you've seen lots of other events in between. CK3's event trigger system is extremely robust and at least, if not more, dynamic as Civ 7's looks to be. Considering how Civ 7 is combining a wide variety of different pop ups when counting the number of events - discoveries, diplomacy with independent powers, crises, etc - I worry that 1,000 events in total may not be nearly enough to keep the game fresh for more than a couple of play throughs. If the events are fun, the demand for new events will be huge, which may be a positive for Firaxis as a source of additional DLCs. If the events aren't fun and distract players from what they're trying to do on the map, the number of different events may not matter, and players will just farm them for bonuses without thinking about where the bonuses come from.

During one of the livestreams, they said that the game creation process selects events at random at the beginning and then you trigger them through gameplay. So, it's entirely possible that even if you learn the trigger for a particular event, it won't trigger because the game didn't choose it when you started.

That sounds like it could annoy a lot of players, if it applies to events that provide bonuses. If people are playing with a particular strategy in mind and they miss a bonus permanently because of RNG, I can see people being peeved.
 
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I wonder when this Pharaoh appears in the game. I hope not each GP or Commander for Egypt looks like that.
 
Well, if devs were happy making that then I am happy.
It would be cool if game options would allow an expanded interface with listed effects (text that is probably currently in choice buttons' tooltips).

Thank you for the effort.
 
I wonder, why didn't they do crisis policies choice through such events as well? It seems such an obvious fit for the mechanics.
I think it may be because there are different number of choices depending on the crisis, compared to the "stories" shown that are always two choices. That would lead to a "wall of text" effect that would be rather too much for some players. Especially since the crisis effect can be easily summed up by a few words on the cards.
 
I think many people in this thread
1) Seriously underestimate how many 1000 events are
and
2) How many more can be added during the years of this game's lifecycle by devs and mods, such events are very easy to make in paradox games and I assume (hope) firaxis is inspired by those and the old world

I have finished MANY campaigns in eu4 and according to my estimates I have seen maybe 20% of all narrative events from that game, they kept surprising me for years... And I haven't even used any event adding mods, which add thousands more :p

For me the entire allure of random/conditional but surprising events lies in
a) The inability to optimize the fun and challenge out of them, the acceptance of the world of chaos where you can never predict everything, just like IRL
b) The ability for devs to depict all those layers of the ingame world and rare anomalous events which could have simply never been simulated by mechanics (yeah yeah sure everything should arise from general procedural systems, good luck with that)
c) The ability to peek beyond number crunching and introduce me to the people I am ruling, the funny, the sad, the absurd, the cool and the mundane aspects of life "on the ground" far away from my excel spreadsheets of GDP and legions. There is one damn thing in particular which events can do which very few other things can in this kind of games, evoke simple human emotions beyond the terror of challenge and the pride of victory. There are modders who have managed to square the circle and turn some paradox games into borderline short story medium with their event chains, I don't expect this level of glorious insanity in civ but I won't complain on the possibility of such splendor arising here as well.
 
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I think many people in this thread
1) Seriously underestimate how many 1000 events are
and
2) How many more can be added during the years of this game's lifecycle (and that's excluding mods), such events are very easy to create in paradox games and I assume (hope) firaxis is inspired by those and the old world
I disagree with the first point but agree with the second. For someone who puts hundreds or thousands of hours into a Civ game, 1,000 events is not a lot. But I do agree that Firaxis will surely continue to add more. With that in mind, 1,000 isn't a bad start.
 
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