GeneralZift
Professional
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2019
- Messages
- 973
In both Civ6 and Civ7, one of my lesser liked changes was taking the personal era that each Civ was in and making it a global era that all Civs followed.
I will make the case that is the wrong way to go for the Civ series for several reasons.
1. Embrace non-linear tech progression
In reality, a lot of nations in the world had vastly different tech at any one period of time. During the Industrial Revolution, it's not like every country on earth had industrial technology.
And aiming to make everyone develop linearly is going to lead to a boring, linear experience.
Instead of accepting linearity and presuming everyone to reach the same era at the same time and designing around that, the Civ titles would be innovating greatly by accepting that some people would be lower in the tech tree than others and creating interesting dynamics between players under this basis.
2. Contrast in player dynamics, realism/believability.
The dichotomy between the Spaniards and the Aztecs for example is something that would be very interesting to play with, but we can't if the developers force everyone to tech up together, or force them to be in a new era together, and so on.
I understand that this was done for balance reasons, so this is why I'm suggesting that the developers instead look at ways to add interesting and unique catch-up mechanics and unique developments for each player as to avoid curbstomping.
For example, Aztecs happen to develop around Jungle, so they would happen to have faster movement in the Jungle, even though that would be totally unrelated to their unique Civ ability -- instead it's related to the map.
Maybe being in Jungle lets them have Poison arrows.
When the Spaniards invade in this hypothetical scenario, they have the technological upper hand, because perhaps they were in a region with flat fertile land, plenty of resources, etc., BUT they don't have the regional upper hand.
Then we essentially develop an interesting gameplay dynamic without compromising on balance or believability.
3. More alternative balance arrangements
I would also very heavily recommend, as a base mechanic, that defeated soldiers of a higher tech provide bonus science towards that tech for the player.
Trade routes should provide science for Techs that each player is missing from the other, but, at an exponential rate. So one trade route would be 90% coin, 10% science. But once you have 10 trade routes with one player, you'd be recieving 50% coin, 50% science (relatively speaking).
So you'd need sheer numbers of trade routes to absorb techs from other players.
Mechanics like these serve absolutely no harm to Singleplayer games -- players who are losing hard to the AI, have an out to their aggressive and technologically superior units. Whereas players who are winning hard, at least giving the AI some sort of boost when they lose units. I think it's a total win scenario.
In PvP it acts as a realistic, non-obtrusive, comeback mechanic for players.
Anyway, that concludes my little essay. I really don't see the benefit of this universal age system they have, except to streamline gameplay, which I really don't like, because it bites the replayability in my opinion.
I will make the case that is the wrong way to go for the Civ series for several reasons.
1. Embrace non-linear tech progression
In reality, a lot of nations in the world had vastly different tech at any one period of time. During the Industrial Revolution, it's not like every country on earth had industrial technology.
And aiming to make everyone develop linearly is going to lead to a boring, linear experience.
Instead of accepting linearity and presuming everyone to reach the same era at the same time and designing around that, the Civ titles would be innovating greatly by accepting that some people would be lower in the tech tree than others and creating interesting dynamics between players under this basis.
2. Contrast in player dynamics, realism/believability.
The dichotomy between the Spaniards and the Aztecs for example is something that would be very interesting to play with, but we can't if the developers force everyone to tech up together, or force them to be in a new era together, and so on.
I understand that this was done for balance reasons, so this is why I'm suggesting that the developers instead look at ways to add interesting and unique catch-up mechanics and unique developments for each player as to avoid curbstomping.
For example, Aztecs happen to develop around Jungle, so they would happen to have faster movement in the Jungle, even though that would be totally unrelated to their unique Civ ability -- instead it's related to the map.
Maybe being in Jungle lets them have Poison arrows.
When the Spaniards invade in this hypothetical scenario, they have the technological upper hand, because perhaps they were in a region with flat fertile land, plenty of resources, etc., BUT they don't have the regional upper hand.
Then we essentially develop an interesting gameplay dynamic without compromising on balance or believability.
3. More alternative balance arrangements
I would also very heavily recommend, as a base mechanic, that defeated soldiers of a higher tech provide bonus science towards that tech for the player.
Trade routes should provide science for Techs that each player is missing from the other, but, at an exponential rate. So one trade route would be 90% coin, 10% science. But once you have 10 trade routes with one player, you'd be recieving 50% coin, 50% science (relatively speaking).
So you'd need sheer numbers of trade routes to absorb techs from other players.
Mechanics like these serve absolutely no harm to Singleplayer games -- players who are losing hard to the AI, have an out to their aggressive and technologically superior units. Whereas players who are winning hard, at least giving the AI some sort of boost when they lose units. I think it's a total win scenario.
In PvP it acts as a realistic, non-obtrusive, comeback mechanic for players.
Anyway, that concludes my little essay. I really don't see the benefit of this universal age system they have, except to streamline gameplay, which I really don't like, because it bites the replayability in my opinion.