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

[UWHabs]

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

Yeah, there's definitely a few things they could do to be better around that. I don't know what the logos are yet, so it's hard to match them up. And then every now and then you get the random "your crossbowman was defeated by a Norman unit", and it takes me a minute to remember which opposing civ is the Normans. I kind of feel that every interaction should be more clear. So let me know every time I am talked to them that it's Lafayette (Norman). Even a few other things like Sokeman (Settler) would help me remember when I see a random unit walking through my land whether that's something I need to kill or can ignore.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I hope they have the balls to actually completely scrap the era system, do away with legacies and civ switching (for the xpack).
Probably wont happen, but I equally wont buy the game unless they do.

 

[Civinator]

Citizens of Rome, I proudly announce that we all are now Mexicans. To become Spanish was bad enough, but at least we were able to drink still our red wine in the sangria. But now no more red wine and pizza. We are forced to eat tortillas and drink tequila. What a cruel destiny for our proud civilization, that was never conquered nor occupied. But when reflecting about it, the good is, that I never was the imperator of Rome. I am Ada Lovelace.

 

[user746383]

Don't worry, it's not your civilization. Your civilization just collapsed off-screen (sorry you're not allowed to know how or why) and then Mexicans teleported in from.. somewhere.. to build all new versions of the same buildings on top of your now broken Roman ones.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I think one flaw in their reasoning comes here:



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.

I'm one of those people. I fell into the pattern of associating "India-as-led-by-Gandhi" with the term "Gandhi", "Egypt-as-led-by-Hattie" with the term "Hattie."
Part of this came from Civ4, where "Germany-as-led-by-Bismarck" played very differently from "Germany-as-led-by-Frederick", "Mongols-as-led-by-Genghis" played differently from "Mongols-as-led-by-Kublai". It was reinforced in Civ6, where "China-as-led-by-Kublai" played differently than "China-as-led-by-Yongle" or "China-as-led-by-one-of-the-Qins"

Granted, Civ6 had lots of cases where each civ had only one leader, 1:1, and the synedoche (what a great word!) applied directly.
But my mental shorthand has deep roots; I see a leader, so I associate all of my interactions with the leader. Trade, denouncements, war/peace, other treaties.

So far, when playing Civ7, playing against Augustus is the dominant aspect, whether he is leading Rome, Greece, or Egypt. Or the Mississippeans, for goodness' sake. The system they have chosen plays into my mental shorthand. And as I wrote earlier, I understand why it doesn't work for many other people.

 

[Core Imposter]

It is the transition between eras and navigating the crisis and becoming a new "polity" that is the real game. Which Firaxis completely left out because it is complicated and hard to model and beyond their capabilities. It is also beyond their mandate, which is to produce a mass market product with little strategic complexity but lots of bells and whistles and pretty that will easily fit on even the most primitive gaming systems. It doesn't feel like civ but seems reminiscent of scenarios created by the modding community of past versions.

The promo for the game featured Augustus of the Maya but what the heck, we had that option way back in Civ 4. Bad ideas badly executed and the graphics on primary play scale are really bad. Firaxis is known for making some stinkers along with their great games.

 

[Bug Repellent]

I never felt that my civilization wasn't evolving in time in Civ 6 and that it needed an overhaul mid-game. That's what wonders, great people, governments, and city states do.

Fixed civ/leaders also give character to the AI in Civ 6. If Eleanor is my neighbor, I know she'll be trouble starting mid-game when she gets her mittens on great works. If Genghis is nearby, expect a cav rush. Seondeok competes heavily for scientists, Ambiorix for engineers and Shaka for generals. Does the AI have that much character in Civ 7, or does it all feel like... soup, basically?

 

[Gori the Grey]

That's what wonders, great people, governments, and city states do.

Yes. Social policies in particular. In the historical narratives I would construct, I would make it a big deal when civs reached particular social policies. When I earned "Warrior Code," I would actually give that society's code some name (modeled on Bushido), and in that civ's history, the pre-code and post-code eras were separated by a watershed at least as significant as what Civ VII models with its ages. When I reached Military Caste, each city was thenceforth governed by a military nobleman (represented by the garrisoned unit) and the tiles around it were now constituted as a kind of duchy, and that was a different social structure than had obtained prior.

 

[Gorbles]

I hope they have the balls to actually completely scrap the era system, do away with legacies and civ switching (for the xpack).
Probably wont happen, but I equally wont buy the game unless they do.

And I hope the developers don't make wide, sweeping changes based on the nebulous promise of anecdotal sales.

 

[Nikolai II]

People here on CFC seem to not understand how big of a change this would be to the game. It would mean to start from scratch. It is not easily done at all.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

People here on CFC seem to not understand how big of a change this would be to the game. It would mean to start from scratch. It is not easily done at all.

Oh I understand that it's a huge change, and hence why I added the disclaimer that it probably won't happen.
But the entire current game design is trash, and I don't see them saving the game short of removing this design.
Do I expect it to happen though? Absolutely not.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

And I hope the developers don't make wide, sweeping changes based on the nebulous promise of anecdotal sales.

Yeah because the current design is so easily fixable, in the style of these recent patches. It's just unfounded criticism is what it is, the game is fundamentally sound. It's just haters review bombing it and fake news that civ 5 has more steam players than civ 7, lol.

 

[Core Imposter]

I once picked up a Stephen King book and started reading only to be totally bummed out when I realized that the interesting story I was reading was just a short story. That's kind of what Civ 7 is ... a book of short stories instead of a novel. And nobody reads a book of short stories straight through. You read one and you put it down because there suddenly is no reason to turn the next page.

Unforced error, own goal, shooting yourself in the foot, ....

And it occurs to me that the state of the game is a work of evil genius because people bought the game (at an inflated price) and now they are already starting to clamor for Civ 8. Chasing the dragon. Folks need to sober up.

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah because the current design is so easily fixable, in the style of these recent patches. It's just unfounded criticism is what it is, the game is fundamentally sound. It's just haters review bombing it and fake news that civ 5 has more steam players than civ 7, lol.

But I didn't say any of that, so.

That said, I do think the game can be "fixed". Maybe not how some want it to be, but that's besides the point. The question will be whether or not the game can be improved to a level where it regains appeal, before the publisher loses interest.

And nobody reads a book of short stories straight through. You read one and you put it down because there suddenly is no reason to turn the next page.

You do. Not everyone does.

I have a well-thumbed copy of the abridged tales of Edgar Allen Poe I used to read cover to cover in my teens.

This again has me asking how we decide what is or isn't myth. How do we rule out confirmation bias?

 

[Core Imposter]

I have a well-thumbed copy of the abridged tales of Edgar Allen Poe I used to read cover to cover in my teens.

I can assure you that Ed Beach is no Edgar Allen Poe.

 

[vorlon_mi]

But I didn't say any of that, so.

That said, I do think the game can be "fixed". Maybe not how some want it to be, but that's besides the point. The question will be whether or not the game can be improved to a level where it regains appeal, before the publisher loses interest.

This again has me asking how we decide what is or isn't myth. How do we rule out confirmation bias?

I expect the game to change, for some mechanics to be overhauled, just as Civ5 and Civ6 did in their expansion packs.

What is or isn't a myth? That's an excellent question that we (the fans on a web forum) cannot answer. I can readily believe that when I fire up a game of Civ (any of those that were born on Steam, Civ5, BERT, Civ6, or Civ7), that additional metadata about the game are transmitted back to a server. I recall that when I completed the criteria for a particular Steam achievement, Steam let me know right away with a popup. My hypothesis goes further that those metadata, including turns played, difficulty level, achievements unlocked, even games finished and victory types, are all anonymized and shared with the game developers. Yes, I'm aware that console players would live/play in different ecosystems. Yes, I agree that Epic or other online storefronts would collect different data/metadata.

Simply put, they have more data than I/we do. I/we can speculate about the sort of analytics that Firaxis or 2K perform on these data. I/we/YouTubers can speculate about the conclusions that are drawn from those data. But we can't *KNOW*, because we don't have the data.

 

[Gorbles]

I can assure you that Ed Beach is no Edgar Allen Poe.

And? How is that relevant to you assuming everyone shares your habit of stopping at a single short story in a collection?

 

[Naokaukodem]

And? How is that relevant to you assuming everyone shares your habit of stopping at a single short story in a collection?

Maybe he means that you can't wait to read the next story of a good storyteller, even though there is few to no link with the previous one, and that it is not given to everybody to be such good storytellers. Everyone being free to define "good storyteller".

 

[Gorbles]

Maybe he means that you can't wait to read the next story of a good storyteller, even though there is few to no link with the previous one, and that it is not given to everybody to be such good storytellers. Everyone being free to define "good storyteller".

Except that he said, and I quote, "nobody reads a book of short stories straight through". No mention of the quality of the storyteller was made. He simply assumed his opinion was shared by the majority of people, everywhere.

 

[Core Imposter]

Except that he said, and I quote, "nobody reads a book of short stories straight through". No mention of the quality of the storyteller was made. He simply assumed his opinion was shared by the majority of people, everywhere.

I assert that you have never read an entire book of short stories straight through and I assert that when you stopped for the day it was almost always at the end of a story and I assert that your total page count read per day is/was higher for novels than collections of short stories.

And I assert that anyone who has published short stories knows/has been told that the good ones go in the front of the book because a higher percentage of readers complete all of novels compared to finishing all of a collection of short stories. Who reads the last story (everyone if it is Poe)? Otherwise, next to nobody.

Likewise, the age of antiquity is finished more than exploration and who plays modern. One of the greatest design failures in gaming history. Designed to dissuade players from taking one more turn. Epic.