Do you think the prerquisite civs will change as more fitting civs are released?

[Krikkit1]

It needs not be perfectly balanced, but we know for a fact they don't want too many options per civs (despite people somehow ignoring that part again and again), and I would add that I strongly suspect they want more than one path into each civ, so it will likely be close to balance anyway. The idea of ancient civs with 5 or 6 paths so we can overload on later ages is one I would call extremely unsound, as appealing as some of you seem to find it.

Again, we're looking at around as many or more civ after around one year as Civ VI had in its entire existence; and still manny more years of support after, and given Ancient is the first age of the game (and thus the first age of a full campaign they're certainly not going to shaft it on civ count - they'll want a wide variety of civilizations there, so people have lots of options to start the game. They're not going to out all the options later and just players to start with a micro list.

Which, considering the limited selection of ancient civs in large parts of the world (anywhere but Europe, the Middle East, India and East Asia), due tomlimited informstion, is going to be preeeetty hard to do with only five Euros in the long run.

They want to avoid having too many options to start. If Rome opens up
Norman
Spain
HRE
Dutch
Italian CS
Byzantines
… that won’t be too much because if you have 30 Exploration Civs you will probably unlock several by gameplay without trying.

Remember… they limited it because they didn’t want you having to sort through ALL the civs every single time…. if there are some of the civs you Can’t pick, then they have simplified it.

If you have 30 civs per era, I would expect the average base game civ to be unlocking 4 or so. (some like Rome would be higher)
Once you chose a DLC civ though, I would expect many to only unlock 1 civ.

 

[Evie]

I buy neiither of those extremes, and I find them just plain lazy. I also think slapping more than 4 unlocks on top of leaders unlock and gameplay unlock is stretching the dev's stated intent into meaninglessness just to fit a desired "but Rome need all those successor" outcome,

And none of that address what I said about needing many options to chose from in Ancient because you don't want people starting a full campaign only having a few starting options. The idea of a small starting pool growing with later age is just shoddy design thinking.

 

[Krikkit1]

I buy neiither of those extremes, and I find them just plain lazy. I also think slapping more than 4 unlocks on top of leaders unlock and gameplay unlock is stretching the dev's stated intent into meaninglessness just to fit a desired "but Rome need all those successor" outcome,

And none of that address what I said about needing many options to chose from in Ancient because you don't want people starting a full campaign only having a few starting options. The idea of a small starting pool growing with later age is just shoddy design thinking.

Europe might start small and get more later (and then slightly less in modern)

But the overall number would probably keep fairly constant

If you have 30 civs in each era then Europe doesn’t need to be 666 or 777

also, you don’t need them to be perfectly balanced even worldwide.

If you had 10->20->30. (or 20->10->20)
Those might be a bit of a stretch… but some combos of DLC could give you that.

 

[sTAPler27]

If you want 10-ish European modern civs, you need a similar number of European ancient civs to keep thenpaths balanced. Otherwise you are almost certain to end up quickly with overloaded modern or exploration civs.

I suppose you're right. The trick might need to be finding civs that blend regional boundaries. Ottomans are a good example because a Balkan civ and a Middle Eastern Civ could realistically evolve into them. Given how many regions have next to no representation I think it will be a while before we see more obscure civs from regions already somewhat developed. The devs like to throw in some more wild card picks at the begining of any new civ game but the first couple of DLC's usually prioritize the "essential" civs

 

[Evie]

Possible, although that was with one or two civ DLCs - you need pretty much all the room for the big-ticket civs that will sell the DLC, then.

With DLC of four civs each I could see something a little more in line with the expansions (The first VI expansion notoriously had Georgia and Mapuche), mixing big seller civs (say 2), mpderate civs, and obscure civs (say one each).

And yeah, region-straddling civs will matter a lot. Tricks like Carthage - Spain/Portugal helps a lot, one reason why I rate an eventual Revenge of the Scyth(ians) very likely as they're very usefully connected to early scythians people.

Right now my dream list for potential ancient civs (around 30 civs total) has in the ancient European age beside Rome and Greece, Scythians, Phoenicians (not really European but ancestral to most of Iberia), Illyrians, Gauls, Goths, Saxons (or Franks), and Norse, with the Gaels or Britons being on-again, off-again additions. The German trio has the neat advantage of actually being easy to distinguish: you got Infantry German, Cavalry German (Basically Rohan) and the infamous Sea Germans. They also have largely distinct heirs : Saxons/Franks best connect to north-western and Central Europe (and England); Goths best connect into the Southern Europe, and Norse cover Northern and Eastern Europe. The Illyrians are my dark horse, but, well, Mediterranean pirates, what more can I say?

And no, (to answer the other poster) I don't for one second buy 10-20-30 era split, Each era is supposed to be fully playable on its own; and that means to me treating them as (roughly) equals, not adding far more to each new age. And we don't need absurd 666 or 777 Europeans to look at splitting up the Celts and Germans. Even if you get to 7-8 Europeans you're probably already splitting the Germans, and the Celts aren't far behind.

27-32-31 or something similar may happen depending on DLC priorities (just like we have 30-31-30 for now), but that's hardly the same.

Plus, the various subdivisions of Germanic people are well known names with good sales potential: Goths are very well known for their role in the fall of Rome, Saxons are known to anyone with an interest in English history (or in the Lord of the Rings, since they're basically Rohan), and then there's the Norse aka the Vikings and they're one of the best known Euro civs,

 

[Caprikel]

Honestly with how much potential controversy seems to arise over the default civ pathways, I think a better system would be to have no default civ pathways at all (outside of the leader default pathway). All you would have to do to make this work is have it so that all Exploration and Modern civs have some gameplay condition to unlock them, and have it so that if you don't unlock any, you have the default option to stay with the same civ for the next era, but with neutered bonuses in some form. Then for the AI pathways, just have a them be customizable by the player so that you can choose whatever you prefer, and otherwise have them choose a civ that they unlock by gameplay unlocks if you don't set up a customized set of AI pathways.

This way the players have more control, and the developers won't have to worry about potentially offending anyone, or have to deal with the rubbish that would be conditional pathways based on which DLCs you have. The only major hurdle would be the option to allow players to remain as the same civ, since that could require a bit of effort to add in, but would at least have the extra added benefit in that it would also make the role-players who want to stick as one civ a bit happier.

 

[ColtSeavers]

Honestly with how much potential controversy seems to arise over the default civ pathways, I think a better system would be to have no default civ pathways at all (outside of the leader default pathway). All you would have to do to make this work is have it so that all Exploration and Modern civs have some gameplay condition to unlock them, and have it so that if you don't unlock any, you have the default option to stay with the same civ for the next era, but with neutered bonuses in some form. Then for the AI pathways, just have a them be customizable by the player so that you can choose whatever you prefer, and otherwise have them choose a civ that they unlock by gameplay unlocks if you don't set up a customized set of AI pathways.

This way the players have more control, and the developers won't have to worry about potentially offending anyone, or have to deal with the rubbish that would be conditional pathways based on which DLCs you have. The only major hurdle would be the option to allow players to remain as the same civ, since that could require a bit of effort to add in, but would at least have the extra added benefit in that it would also make the role-players who want to stick as one civ a bit happier.

I think one simple solution would be, give the player the option, to set up a predetermined pathway for the AI (e.g. the player defines at the beginning of the game, that the AI plays Rome - Normans - England; the player can not pick Normans or England in the case!). If you want to play with game unlock, fine. But players could also have the option to play against the respective Civs they want to play at every age, without any of the mentioned controvesies. That should not be too hard to implement, should it?

 

[Archanist]

I think one simple solution would be, give the player the option, to set up a predetermined pathway for the AI (e.g. the player defines at the beginning of the game, that the AI plays Rome - Normans - England; the player can not pick Normans or England in the case!). If you want to play with game unlock, fine. But players could also have the option to play against the respective Civs they want to play at every age, without any of the mentioned controvesies. That should not be too hard to implement, should it?

It seems straightforward, and I'd be pleasantly surprised if they have the option on release, but I don't think they'd do this because I don't think majority of civ players would want to set up their games this way, and officially supporting it means they'll have to design and program yet another view.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I've never really understood why they put any restriction on player customization. If a player wants to choose precisely which civs occur in a game, why shouldn't they be able to? If a player wants to rename all the civs to be things from Star Trek, why shouldn't they be able to? If a player wants their great and glorious leader to look like Hatshepsut but be called Janet, why shouldn't they be able to?

None of these things are my cup of tea (beyond being Janet, lols) but I don't see the harm in allowing it.

 

[evonannoredars]

I've never really understood why they put any restriction on player customization. If a player wants to choose precisely which civs occur in a game, why shouldn't they be able to? If a player wants to rename all the civs to be things from Star Trek, why shouldn't they be able to? If a player wants their great and glorious leader to look like Hatshepsut but be called Janet, why shouldn't they be able to?

None of these things are my cup of tea (beyond being Janet, lols) but I don't see the harm in allowing it.

Besides being extra work to implement, the devs presumably have a vision for how they want players to interact with the game and the history the game represents, into which being able to rename historical figures and cultures would be out of place.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Besides being extra work to implement, the devs presumably have a vision for how they want players to interact with the game and the history the game represents, into which being able to rename historical figures and cultures would be out of place.

I honestly don't see how the developer's vision is compromised by allowing some basic customization. The default would be their vision, and most people would stick with it anyway.

 

[evonannoredars]

I honestly don't see how the developer's vision is compromised by allowing some basic customization. The default would be their vision, and most people would stick with it anyway.

It wouldn't compromise it, it would just undermine the intent of interacting with history - since renaming civs/leaders originates from when civs really were mostly just cosmetic, it makes sense to drop as theyve become increasingly historically detailed. It's also imo just more respectful to the cultures they're representing for them to unalterably be who they are, rather than allowing players to use the unique cultural traits of a people but give them whatever name they feel like. Plus, renaming is something that could likely be figured out by modders anyway.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

It wouldn't compromise it, it would just undermine the intent of interacting with history - since renaming civs/leaders originates from when civs really were mostly just cosmetic, it makes sense to drop as theyve become increasingly historically detailed. It's also imo just more respectful to the cultures they're representing for them to unalterably be who they are, rather than allowing players to use the unique cultural traits of a people but give them whatever name they feel like. Plus, renaming is something that could likely be figured out by modders anyway.

I respectfully disagree on all counts. But not enough to type a proper answer.