Discussion On Why Civ 7 Doesn't Feel Like A "Civ" Game

[Krikkit1]

This would tie in very nicely with the quality over quantity approach when it comes to civs in civ 7 (I.e., more uniques per civ, and generally more interesting civs). Yet, I fear the demand is for more civs to make transitions smoother, and not for fleshing out the civs that we already got. I would love this though!

I think the idea of Narrative Events during Crisis that reflect the civ you will become is really good. They desperately need to use that narrative system to help increase the immersion (maybe just tie the mechanics benefits to their attributes if you want to keep it simple)

 

[Leucarum]

One of the ironies with the far more detailed civs is that with scaling, most civ's abilities would work well in any era. Ironically I think 7 is the edition of civ where the devs really showed they can make civs that are really interesting in any era. Even with an era system they are showing us they don't need civ switching to keep things interesting.

 

[Core Imposter]

I am reading about a lot of stuff that is in the game which seems to exist independently of the AI civs and absent from the interplay between all of the civilizations.

 

[user746383]

Maybe one way they could do it is, if your civ is doing poorly, then it becomes possible for your new civ to be replaced by another that moves in during the offscreen gap as a kind of catch-up/Hail Mary mechanic. But if your civ is doing great you can accumulate bonuses and keep developing. You can see ancient Missisippians develop fighter jets, if you want, instead of them being pre-ordained by fate/the designers to fall and have someone else move into the ruined remains of their civ.

If this only happened to the bottom 20% of civs for example I think it would feel way better than happening offscreen to the entire world simultaneously.

 

[McSpank01]

The Devs talked a lot about 'building your civ over the ages', basically creating this unique narrative of your civilisation over time, seeing how it evolves, how it uses the traditions of the past to evolve into something new.

I liked that idea a lot. The reality of the game means it doesn't ever feel like that at all. Instead you are just 3 separate Civilisations and you cut from one to the other one. There are some legacy traditions from the previous age, but mostly they are insignificant. You basically start from scratch culturally each age. I never feel like I am evolving my civ, or constructing this new unique blend. No, I feel like I am starting again, and where I might be Greece, now I am playing a whole new game as Spain etc.

 

[UWHabs]

The Devs talked a lot about 'building your civ over the ages', basically creating this unique narrative of your civilisation over time, seeing how it evolves, how it uses the traditions of the past to evolve into something new.

I liked that idea a lot. The reality of the game means it doesn't ever feel like that at all. Instead you are just 3 separate Civilisations and you cut from one to the other one. There are some legacy traditions from the previous age, but mostly they are insignificant. You basically start from scratch culturally each age. I never feel like I am evolving my civ, or constructing this new unique blend. No, I feel like I am starting again, and where I might be Greece, now I am playing a whole new game as Spain etc.

I think that's where everyone comes to their games with different perspectives.

For me, I don't necessarily feel it's 3 separate games, and I do get some sense of what I did in the past. Some civs have better traditions, that lets you keep playing a little based on the old civ, and you still have your UD/UI from the earlier eras that can give you some bonuses too.

I do think I'd have a different feel for a game that went Carthage-Spain, rather than Rome-Spain, or Greece-Spain, or Mississippi-Spain. Sure, the Spain part would be the same, but you'd have a different interaction at play, at least a little.

 

[McSpank01]

I think that's where everyone comes to their games with different perspectives.

For me, I don't necessarily feel it's 3 separate games, and I do get some sense of what I did in the past. Some civs have better traditions, that lets you keep playing a little based on the old civ, and you still have your UD/UI from the earlier eras that can give you some bonuses too.

I do think I'd have a different feel for a game that went Carthage-Spain, rather than Rome-Spain, or Greece-Spain, or Mississippi-Spain. Sure, the Spain part would be the same, but you'd have a different interaction at play, at least a little.

Oh for sure, the transition to Carthage > Spain feels a little more natural, and it's easier to get your head around it. I played that quite recently, but even then, I still felt like I was basically just Spain, and mostly forgot about the Carthage thing altogether.

I'm not sure what the better solution to this is, other then I feel the changes should be more subtle and if you are going to say 'history is built in layers', then you need more than 3 layers. Otherwise it's a very uninteresting sandwich.

One idea that occurred to me was to swap around the idea that you have a consistent leader but a changing civ. What if you stayed as the same civ the entire game, but you can swap leaders. That might reflect a new dynasty coming in and changing the culture and direction of the empire. Say Genghis Khan takes over the chinese and suddenly they are more aggressive etc.

Otherwise I might say that making your Civ much more blank slate at the beginning, and then you choosing the direction as you work through the game over time, adding elements from civs to your own empire to give it an identity. That would be much more interesting to me.

 

[Gorbles]

One idea that occurred to me was to swap around the idea that you have a consistent leader but a changing civ. What if you stayed as the same civ the entire game, but you can swap leaders. That might reflect a new dynasty coming in and changing the culture and direction of the empire. Say Genghis Khan takes over the chinese and suddenly they are more aggressive etc.

The devs made a blog post about this exact suggestion and where it fell short for them personally.

 

[itix]

Unfortunately, the devs' conclusions didn't play out so well.

 

[UWHabs]

The devs made a blog post about this exact suggestion and where it fell short for them personally.

Yeah, to me it's the sort of thing where I can understand the rationale in either way. Arguably the other way, swapping leaders, probably would have been more appealing for civ players. But it has caveats of its own - how would civ uniques translate across the eras, you go back to the old imbalance of earlier vs later civs, and you need the art team to create way more leaderheads, which I would assume are the more expensive part of the process.

 

[user746383]

I don't think this even really answers their own question they posed ("why mix and match?") It says they think people care more about leaders than civs, which ok.. press f to doubt but sure, at least it's a coherent idea a person could have. They go on to say ages enable the strong continuity for civ switching, but then list things unrelated to continuity as why they did it. I guess fundamentally they just assumed people care way more about what leader they are playing in Civilization games than what civ they are playing, and that this feeling was more or less universal. If they believe that, then everything they delivered follows quite naturally.

A major reason for adding mix and match was to support Ages. In past games, you always played as the same leader and civ combo through the entire game. With your empire being represented by multiple different civs across a full campaign in Civilization VII, we needed to make sure that players still had a strong cohesive sense of "who" they're playing as, and against.

With Ages, we thought about several different approaches on how we could handle civs and leaders. This included the idea of switching leaders per Age, as well as designing in "stacks" where every Civ would be like what we have for India (Maurya, to Chola, to Mughal).

Each of these options fell short in different ways. We were convinced that swapping leaders would be particularly confusing to understand who you were playing with. Players often say that they're making alliances or waging war against Cleopatra, Gandhi, or Montezuma - not Egypt, India, or the Aztecs. And if the leader changes mid-game, that narrative inside the player's head is disrupted.

In a similar vein, only choosing civilizations that have a full "stack," as in a direct historical lineage, meant that we would have to be greatly limited in who we could consider for Civilization VII. You would only be able to pick civs whose past spans the entirety of history, which means no America.

That brings us back to "why mix and match" - and in some sense, why Ages? Through this feature, we're able to make sure you maintain a strong sense of identity for your empire, your friends, and your rivals on the world stage. Creating historical "pathways" instead of a strict empire stack provides significantly more replayability and allows us to represent a more diverse set of cultures. We're able to expand leaders into new categories, shining a spotlight on figures who contributed to humanity in ways many players may be discovering for the first time. And, of course, strategy! Every leader has a unique playstyle, and you'll be able to blend that playstyle with the unique traits of each civilization during the Age.

 

[McSpank01]

Yeah I understand their rationale, but the outcome just doesn't match the goal. If they wanted a 'civ built in layers', they just haven't achieved it. To me it feels like I play 3 separate civs in 3 separate ages.

That is why I would maybe lean on the idea of starting with a more generic Civ that you can customise as you play, really lean into the concept of building it in layers. If the decisions you make in the game really do influence how you can play later then that is really powerful. I like the idea that if I herd horses then I get access to Mongolia, but rather than slap down a 'you get to play as mongolia' option, maybe it's more subtle and made up of component parts, where the game encourages you to become more violent and expansive, to get more horses, to lean into cavalry type armies.

I'm thinking of it more in the old Oblivion leveling up system: do something a lot and you get better at it.

I don't have much more thought on it than that, but right now the layering feels very artificial and contrived, where is should feel more natural and the consequences of your actions.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I think one flaw in their reasoning comes here:

Players often say that they're making alliances or waging war against Cleopatra, Gandhi, or Montezuma - not Egypt, India, or the Aztecs. (emphasis added)

When the civs were linked to the leaders and it wasn't even conceivable to think of the apart from one another (as they were 1-6)* one could use either way of referring to the civ and it would amount to the same thing. In circumstances like that, the tendency might even be to favor the leader name, because our minds more easily conceive of agency in connection with individual human beings.

But of course, whenever anyone said "I am waging war against Cleopatra," they meant "Egypt as led by Cleopatra," since one wages war against a country, not an individual human being. "Cleopatra" was serving as a shorthand (a synecdoche), all the more in that she lived for millennia, which no person does. When you imagine the entity-against-which-you-are-waging war, what is in your mind is actually the country (whichever of the two options for naming it you might use), if only because it is a map-territory to which you will be sending troops, and if you are successful, some segment of that map-territory will now be contiguous with your own (in your country's border colors).

People don't play as or against "Ghandi," because Ghandi is not a civilization, and that is true however it is that they might speak about the matter.

*Edit: I've since been reminded that both 4 and 6 actually had multiple leaders with a particular civ, so my comments might be limited to the experience of someone who has mostly played 3 and 5. I still think that, even in those games, when you attack, you are attacking a state (conceived of as a territory), even if the game may have allowed for that state to have had a different person as its leader. (Diplomacy is maybe different; treaties are often worked out by (or crucially signed off on by) individual leaders.)

 

[Krikkit1]

I think the best solution to creating that feel of “building your civ” would be to start every new age with a narrative choice

Your culture has changed in this new age…how do we want to reflect that

-We have changed and grown, our new Empire needs a new name (Mongols)..get culture towards a random unique civic

-We must remember or past and traditions even if we have changed our Empire remains the same (Romans)…get lump sum happiness towards next celebration

-We have become something truly new, and neither others nor our ancestors choose our identity (Custom*)…get lump sum science to random tech


*For custom you would choose any of the civs from any era for the city list+graphic style package and then Keep that name or type in the name you wanted. (so you could have the America city list and graphic style and call it New England or Martians)

Also, buildings built in previous ages need to keep the graphic style of the civ they were built in (maybe with narrative choices when you repair them to preserve the style or update to your current style)

 

[Leucarum]

I've said a few times now that I don't think it's binary whether I associate primarily with a civ or a leader. Augustus for example is so connected with Rome in my mind that he can be playing Hawai'i and I'll still refer to him and his civ as Rome. I found that one out in MP where I thoroughly confused everyone. Ditto Confucious and China - even though China isn't in the game. On the other hand, Xerxes and Tubman don't seem to produce such a strong automatic connection for me and I'll refer to them by their character. In each case giving an example of someone who did and didn't lead their civ...

I think it would have been confusing if either civs or leaders switched... Hence I favour the idea of evolving civs rather than switching outright.

Am I alone on this one? Do you guys associate certain leaders/civs so strongly it overwrites the civ switching/mixing? If so are they different leaders?

 

[McSpank01]

I've said a few times now that I don't think it's binary whether I associate primarily with a civ or a leader. Augustus for example is so connected with Rome in my mind that he can be playing Hawai'i and I'll still refer to him and his civ as Rome. I found that one out in MP where I thoroughly confused everyone. Ditto Confucious and China - even though China isn't in the game. On the other hand, Xerxes and Tubman don't seem to produce such a strong automatic connection for me and I'll refer to them by their character. In each case giving an example of someone who did and didn't lead their civ...

I think it would have been confusing if either civs or leaders switched... Hence I favour the idea of evolving civs rather than switching outright.

Am I alone on this one? Do you guys associate certain leaders/civs so strongly it overwrites the civ switching/mixing? If so are they different leaders?

I think the game has managed to put the feeling you are playing against a leader and not a civ at the front of my mind. However this isn’t maybe for the reasons the developers expected.

It’s no so hard to work out which civ each leader has taken, because it’s sort of hidden away, and you need to remember icons etc or click through a couple of screens to really get what it means.

So they have achieved that goal, but it’s not a positive step

 

[Krikkit1]

I think the game has managed to put the feeling you are playing against a leader and not a civ at the front of my mind. However this isn’t maybe for the reasons the developers expected.

It’s no so hard to work out which civ each leader has taken, because it’s sort of hidden away, and you need to remember icons etc or click through a couple of screens to really get what it means.

So they have achieved that goal, but it’s not a positive step

Having the civ name (shortened?) along with the leader portrait and civ emblem on the yield banners would be good

 

[itix]

Am I alone on this one? Do you guys associate certain leaders/civs so strongly it overwrites the civ switching/mixing? If so are they different leaders?

In Civ 6, Gorgo/Greece is my favorite but i dont associate with her. I dont associate that much with Greece either because Gorgo is so prominently portrayed.

 

[Kev1916]

I think the game has managed to put the feeling you are playing against a leader and not a civ at the front of my mind. However this isn’t maybe for the reasons the developers expected.

It’s no so hard to work out which civ each leader has taken, because it’s sort of hidden away, and you need to remember icons etc or click through a couple of screens to really get what it means.

So they have achieved that goal, but it’s not a positive step

Certainly not a positive step and one that hopefully is dead by the time Civ 8 is in production .
Napoléon general and emperor of the Apache's fighting Genghis first khan o Belgium up against Robert Frost of China .

If they were going to double down on the three mini games and focusing on the "Leader" to level up and gain cosmetic skins
Then they should have allowed players to create there own leaders.

Then again everyone knows why that will never happen.

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[McSpank01]

In Civ 6, Gorgo/Greece is my favorite but i dont associate with her. I dont associate that much with Greece either because Gorgo is so prominently portrayed.

I often forgot the names of leaders and would spend a long time scrolling up and down the list trying to find them because they were in alphabetical order. I knew them as 'The french leader with the black hair' or 'that Incan guy'