Did People Overreact to Losing Units Between Ages?

[Tanel]

Are there other games where you put everything away and set back up a few times during the game, based on some rules for evaluating the previous state before putting things away? I feel like that would be immersion breaking in any case, but I am having a hard time thinking of any example and maybe there are some good ones that show how this can be done well.

Not very common in video games but there are definitely board games that do this. Civ is more closer to a very complex board game than a simulation anyway so I think in that sense it is fitting.

 

[Taefin]

Are there other games where you put everything away and set back up a few times during the game, based on some rules for evaluating the previous state before putting things away? I feel like that would be immersion breaking in any case, but I am having a hard time thinking of any example and maybe there are some good ones that show how this can be done well.

Dungeons and dragons, terrible immersion

 

[Siptah]

For computer games, some that come to mind are Memoriapolis and Microcivilization in the strategy world, Hades or Counter-Strike (at least it was like that 20 years ago, don't know about now) for action, and countless RPGs.

For board games, it really common when a game has a distinction between a turn and something longer (e.g., rounds, seasons, eras). Two very different approaches can for example be seen in the story driven Time Stories series (regardless which one exactly, the reset is a base mechanic) or in the famed Tigris & Euphrates (which is a game every civ fan should try). Time Stories is a super hard reset of the whole game that just starts anew - the only thing that changes is the player's knowledge. Tigris & Euphrates is much softer, and you decide yourself when you let go and start something new. (Except if another player forces you to leave an empire)

I wonder if the last would work in a way in civ 7: give the player the option to extend the age at 100% with a much more intensive crisis that wrecks the empire more and more each turn. It would give players the choice to continue with what they had at 100% if they leave it then - or gamble whether 2-3 turns more would be enough to reach something significant with the risk of losing 1-2 settlements.

A board game that does it differently (but I haven't played it in 15 years or so, so I might misremember some things) is Vinci. Here, new empires are easy to lead, expand, and exploit. But as it grows, it becomes more and more inefficient. And some point you decide to let it decline in favor of a new one. It's a different kind of reset as you start again from scratch, but it also gives the player the freedom to decide when the best spot for changing from a strong but outdated empire to a weak but highly efficient empire is. So, the difference in reset between civ 7 and Vinci or T&E is the player chooses when the reset happens. In other games, as the above mentioned Time Stories, there is a "counter" while some others reset if you run out of actions or after a specific amount of actions, which comes closer to civ 7.

Doe any of this scratch immersion? I don't know. For me, it is completely unrelated - I rarely have trouble to feel immersed in playing a game as long as it is engaging and not boring. But I'm also rather experienced playing with many different rules, mechanics, types of games, and also playing against a game.

 

[Krikkit1]

It's not arbitrary though.There is a crisis, the civilizations of the world are in decline and have to abandon ongoing wars to focus solely on internal problems for a period. The game skips over that period because for most people that wouldn't be fun to play through.

Except they have a Crisis that you play through…it’s just not strong enough/doesn’t encourage moving your units back strongly enough.

If all Crises were both stronger and came with an escalating Combat Strength/ Unit Maintenance Penalty for being out of your territory, then it might work.

 

[user746383]

Also, if crises had something to do with what happened so far in the game that would be better I think, instead of being randomly selected from a list.

 

[Krikkit1]

Also, if crises had something to do with what happened so far in the game that would be better I think, instead of being randomly selected from a list.

I believe they do…as in the randomness is weighted based on the gameplay.

 

[user746383]

Do you have any info on the weights or mechanics of how that works? This is the first I'm hearing of that.

 

[Siptah]

Do you have any info on the weights or mechanics of how that works? This is the first I'm hearing of that.

It has been speculated on here since release. It fits with my experience: I get the same crises in almost all of my games, but most of my games unfold in a similar fashion. I don’t think anyone found evidence that it such a weighting really exists in the code though.

 

[user746383]

This seems like it would be very hard to say with any confidence one way or the other based on anecdotal data, there are way too many potential variables, and the other person (not sure if they actually know anything or not) said weighting is combined with randomness, making it even harder to draw any conclusions. One person's "seems like maybe" is just another person's "seems like maybe not". I guess I lean towards it not working that way, as why would they make it work that way then hide it? But who knows, you could say the same thing about lots of other features.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think I get different crises with more or less equal probability, so I don't think it's gameplay related. Implementing non-random crises is a feature which doesn't make sense for MP and very questionable value for SP.

 

[Taefin]

My 8 games without a barbarian crisis yet would be around a 5% likelihood. Maybe should factor in that my suspicion wasn’t raised until after 4 games, so I should probably discount those, and wait til I’ve played 4’more.

 

[user746383]

My 8 games without a barbarian crisis yet would be around a 5% likelihood. Maybe should factor in that my suspicion wasn’t raised until after 4 games, so I should probably discount those, and wait til I’ve played 4’more.

What are you doing consistently in your games that you think is causing this? And wouldn't this then point to the behaviour being deterministic rather than weights to something probabilistic?

 

[Lanthar]

This feels like a kind of ridiculous complaint of a turn based game. It's a game mechanic. If you're immersed in the game and aren't paying attention to a key mechanic, you'll be surprised. To counter, I always found it super immersion breaking that if you slightly misbalance unit vs infra production in prior Civs, you get DoWed on by an AI that will almost always wipe the map with you in the early game. And even if you manage to tactically win the war... you've already fallen out of contention of many other victory conditions.

You can dislike the mechanic, but "immersion is immediately lost" is such a subjective statement that it's effectively equivalent to "I don't like it". Again, fine to not like it!

Of course it's a subjective complaint - this mechanic breaks immersion for me. I don't like it, and that kind of mechanic interferes with my enjoyment of the game.

 

[Lanthar]

It's not arbitrary though.There is a crisis, the civilizations of the world are in decline and have to abandon ongoing wars to focus solely on internal problems for a period. The game skips over that period because for most people that wouldn't be fun to play through

Ok, triggering the crisis is not arbitrary, but part of their age mechanic. Skipping time and resetting the map is arbitrary; the designers decided that it was better to reset the map for the next age and skip time because the designers decided that it would be too boring to play through.

 

[Siptah]

Skipping time and resetting the map is arbitrary;

As are turns. But most people hardly notice these negatively, because we are all so used to them.

the designers decided that it was better to reset the map for the next age and skip time because the designers decided that it would be too boring to play through.

Would you actually prefer to play it out when it would be designed to end in a failure of your empire regardless of what you do, but you get a chance to fail slightly less? E.g., only getting 2 cities demoted instead of 4, and you only lose 4 units instead of 6.

 

[Smayo]

It has been speculated on here since release. It fits with my experience: I get the same crises in almost all of my games, but most of my games unfold in a similar fashion. I don’t think anyone found evidence that it such a weighting really exists in the code though.

I have noticed that the loyalty crises happens a lot more if you conquer cities or are above settlement limit. I have a suspicion there’s different behaviour in single player vs mp games, where it really cares a lot more deciding the crisis based on the single player.

Anyways as far as losing units goes, if anything I feel the age transition doesn’t do enough, although units getting shunted to the wrong place is awful (I have two fleet commanders in two separate oceans, but you’re really gonna plonk them both in the same city, the one that I need open borders to access the ocean?). You’re gonna put all my units in the non Initative commander that spawned with the Terracotta Army instead of my level 16 commander, who remains empty?

Buganda plus spamming cavalry in the previous age can lead to sub 1776 victories from pillage wars, for example. Pillage straight to the ideology lock in, leaving the settlement centres alone, then taking them as soon as the points double.

 

[j51]

I wish the there was an option to make the crises more punishing, like brutality so. I want it to really feel like my empire really went through some CHANGES.

 

[Lanthar]

As are turns. But most people hardly notice these negatively, because we are all so used to them.


Would you actually prefer to play it out when it would be designed to end in a failure of your empire regardless of what you do, but you get a chance to fail slightly less? E.g., only getting 2 cities demoted instead of 4, and you only lose 4 units instead of 6.

No...not interested in a game like that. I don't like the era mechanics in this one (wasn't too fond of the era mechanics of VI either ie, the Gold/Dark Age dynamic). As a long time Civ player (II-VI), the designers went too far out of bounds on this one, which is a big disappointment for me.

Since VI, I feel this franchise is moving too far away from Sid's vision of games - that they be a series of interesting choices. A lot of choices in VI and VII feel insignificant or busywork for little value.

 

[user746383]

A good example is broken improvements. What’s the fun they were going for there? The player will feel a sense of accomplishment clicking around until all their improvements are fixed, and then it will happen again in a couple turns so they can get a new round of accomplishment, and really feel like they are in charge of their civ? It’s hard to even imagine the thinking process that would lead to you putting that sort of busywork in a game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

A good example is broken improvements. What’s the fun they were going for there? The player will feel a sense of accomplishment clicking around until all their improvements are fixed, and then it will happen again in a couple turns so they can get a new round of accomplishment, and really feel like they are in charge of their civ? It’s hard to even imagine the thinking process that would lead to you putting that sort of busywork in a game.

Ed likes natural disasters, he puts them in all his civ games, so it was inevitable. At least we have them in base game and integrated much better than in Civ6. Once we have "fix all" button (or right now if you're using a mod), it's not a big problem.