Dev Diary #4 Emergent Narrative

[AriochIV]

I don't mind events in principle, especially if they are written to be dynamic and can be tied to something that actually happened in the game.

Where events fail hardest is when they refer to some non-existent third party or some happenstance which obviously has nothing to do with the current game, or worse, are counter-factual to the events of the game. Few things draw you out of the immersion of the actual emergent narrative like a poorly-placed scripted event.

Hopefully they have taken some care in how these are implemented.

 

[Bactrian]

I don't mind events in principle, especially if they are written to be dynamic and can be tied to something that actually happened in the game.

Where events fail hardest is when they refer to some none-existent third party or some happenstance which obviously has nothing to do with the current game, or worse, are counter-factual to the events of the game. Few things draw you out of the immersion of the actual emergent narrative like a poorly-placed scripted event.

Hopefully they have taken some care in how these are implemented.

I don't know, pop-up events just always feel a bit canned to me. Why am I supposed to take my attention away from fighting a big war in order to care that someone spilled wine on someone else in the public bath and now there's some supposed brouhaha over it? I find it distracting.

Maybe if they tie it very closely to the game state it might work: "On your orders the army attempts to ford the river in order to attack, but overnight rains have swollen the waterway and now it is far more dangerous to cross. What do you do? a) Continue the attack (-10% health on all units) or b) Call off the attack (units lose their movement, extra healing)." But I struggle to see how they can implement a system that somehow knows what I am most interested in at any particular moment.

 

[Evolena]

This is my only concern with them. Otherwise they look great. I would prefer pop ups at the end of the turn, rather than the beginning. This is especially important in wars or when your units are attacked, so you can remember to check on said units. Civ 6 was really bad with the popups by the end of their cycle. I loved Gathering Storm, make no mistake. But the popups would interrupt you when you were trying to remember what you had to do at the start of the turn. Like when a barbarian moves next to a vulnerable unit that won't wake up on its own in such a situation. Usually with units on auto pathing. The popups would distract my train of thought.

I do like that some events are based on decisions you make. It's unlikely we'll ever see all of them. My only concern would be if you have 1 or 2 that just pop up every single game, that could get tiring. But I think we'll get enough variety to make it interesting.

Antiquity Stream, turn 7. The event is on the bottom right menu, no pop-up (for the event at least, there is one for the new Civic researched) until Carl click it. Turn 66, same thing with some warning events.

The order of the actions to take in a turn was customizable in Old World, including new Tech choice, that was nice.

 

[Potworny]

One more thing I remembered suddenly - if the events work via a modifier system, I really hope that AI leaders work too

 

[AntSou]

Here's hoping there's an event about a copper merchant selling substandard copper ingots.

They put it in Pharaoh Total War.

 

[AriochIV]

Heh. The 4,000 year old bad Yelp review.

 

[bbbt]

Okay, I finally read the actual dev diary, and oh wow, that's even worse that I imagined. Is this an actual example!? This seems inane. Why is my leader making decisions on someone's clothes being stolen?

I've been slowly moving towards pre-ordering as details have come out and I think this has single-handedly put me back in the wait and see camp. I'll hold on purchase until there's a way to disable this.

Their goal is to remove micro, and they are doing it by removing avoidable micro (manually assigning pops, moving governors, changing policy cards), and replacing it with unavoidable, flow interrupting micro?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Building pillow forts in Morrowind is my idea of what "emergent narrative" means: something that the game enables you to do, but that was not deliberately included as a part of the game, maybe not even envisioned by the designers.

 

[CivLuvah]

I'm not a fan of narrative events in strategy games. The narrative is in my head. It's the story of my people that I tell to myself.

I immediately thought about how Civ4 had that balance (?) of leaving you to your own imagination, and then sprinkle some events here and there. I kinda like events in 4x games, but I think a good balance is really needed generally.

 

[Inhalaattori]

I dont mind narrative events if they are about meaningful things. Events that are realated to leaders and Civs you are playing can be interesting and make each gameplay unique. In general less is more though and I hope they dont overplay this feature.

The example they have in the Dev diary sounds pretty ridiculous.

 

[Nikolai II]

Events, if done right, can be a great boon for the game. But then we need a lot of events, much more than 1000, which I believe was stated as a number? Old World has more than 2000 now I think, and @Solver has said before they needed to go above those 2000 before it began to feel right for the game.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, events are definitely one of those things where quantity matters. Too few and they get predictive and repetitive, which is unfun no matter how well they are individually written.

Old World has a total of about 4000 events, and it took more than 2000 for the system to really click. That doesn't necessarily translate to the same number in Civ7. There are several types of events that Old World needs and Civ7 doesn't - for example, diplomacy is event-driven in OW while Civ7 keeps the "bargaining table" with proposals. Or, Old World has you managing your heir's education, which needs a bunch of events, while Civ7 has no such mechanic. Some other triggers are more comparable, Civ7 gives you events when you pop a goody hut as this dev diary showed, Old World does the same.

I'm a long-time supporter of events in Civ. I made some of the events that appear in Civ4, I wrote a guide on how to mod new ones, and I've been hoping to see the feature return in Civ5 or 6. So I'm happy to see Civ7 finally embraces random events. My initial feeling is that 1000 events, which sounds like a great number, isn't quite enough but I am sure more will be added, and it's a very respectable number compared to some other games that tried similar narratives. Humankind was advertising 150 events on launch. Millennia has about 650, if my quick look at the game files is accurate, and Millennia's events didn't get too repetitive in some categories, while other categories did get repetitive quite quickly, so of course how events are distributed across triggers also matters a lot.

So my initial feeling is that the even pool is a bit below where it needs to be quantity-wise, but I'm pretty sure it's more than any other 4X other than Old World, and I'm optimistic about that. But I like events. One of my most important lessons from Old World was that many people just don't - we've had a substantial minority of players who feel there should be zero random events, or as close as possible, culminating in a No Events mode being added a few months ago. Some people will definitely dislike the system in Civ7 regardless of the implementation details, just because they dislike such random events.

 

[Siptah]

Events, if done right, can be a great boon for the game. But then we need a lot of events, much more than 1000, which I believe was stated as a number? Old World has more than 2000 now I think, and @Solver has said before they needed to go above those 2000 before it began to feel right for the game.

It also depends whether you count event chains as 1 event (as in CK3 or HK) or multiple. That‘s especially important for the event chains tied to leaders and civs. If they count as single events, then each new civ and leader might just add 1 or 2. Otherwise 5-10. But yes, 1000 seem low-ish even if we assume that leaders and civs only account for 50 instead of 200 of these. Some will be restricted by age, I guess and some might be tied to wonders. This means that players with the same civs, leaders and go to wonders would see the same events in antiquity each game. Luckily, many events seem to be tied to discoveries.

I personally hope they take an idea from eu4 and make 2-3 events for each available policy card that can happen while slotted. And one for each tech that can happen while the respective tech is being researched (with a very low chance to happen, obviously).

 

[TheGhostEnthusiast]

I know that the example of the citizen in the bathhouse doesn’t look good to a lot of people, but I honestly like it. Leaders and their relationships and even the direction of my civ as a whole are things that are implied by the gameplay already: what the day to day life of a citizen is like in one of my cities isn’t. Taking some time in the late game of Civ 6 to imagine what sort of life one could lead in my specific web of districts and wonders has always been really fun for me, so getting some of that humanization all throughout the game as a mechanic sounds great. Of course, a lack of variety will make it tedious no matter what, so let’s hope the thousand actually feels like a thousand.

 

[Gorbles]

Why is my leader making decisions on someone's clothes being stolen?

This feels like the kind of thing an Antiquity leader would absolutely be involved with.

 

[bbbt]

This feels like the kind of thing an Antiquity leader would absolutely be involved with.

I'm pretty sure Augustus wasn't running around Rome with his vigiles advising citizens what curses to request of the gods as retribution for petty theft...

 

[TheGhostEnthusiast]

I'm pretty sure Augustus wasn't running around Rome with his vigiles advising citizens what curses to request of the gods as retribution for petty theft...

On some level, though, you’re deciding a greater cultural belief in your Civilization: what sort of punishment a person would instinctively wish upon someone who did them wrong. I really like getting that kind of glimpse into the day to day life of my citizens, but I get why it’s unpopular.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

In every game I've played with this kind of thing in (mostly paradox TBF, so it could be a studio issue), the first time through it's equal parts interesting and frustrating, and then after that it's just really boring and frustrating and repetitive, look up the optimal click on the wiki micro. Ive yet to find an implementation where throwing a text box in my face makes me feel more in game than interacting with the map.

It's not a massive problem for me, but I'd prefer they weren't there. They aren't good in games that are designed to have unlimited replayability IMO

 

[Gorbles]

I'm pretty sure Augustus wasn't running around Rome with his vigiles advising citizens what curses to request of the gods as retribution for petty theft...

Running around Rome? No. Would cases with enough merit eventually wind up in his lap? More than probably, imo.

The level of anachronism is far lower than it happening in, say, Modern (or even Exploration). If it breaks immersion for you, fair enough. I just answered the question you asked.

 

[Evolena]

look up the optimal click on the wiki micro

They said all options are almost equivalent, there is no one strictly better than the other, only the one that fits your current playthrough better.