Firaxis cannot control for all possible Civ/Leader Combos, and multiplayer gaming might reach a new peak as a consequence.

[Thenewwwguy]

I'm imagining a roster of 100+ leaders broken into meta tiers like OU, UU, etc.

And Ben Franklin turns out to be the Civ 7 version of gen 4 Garchomp and is banished to Ubers.

i assume navelgazer is comparing civ 7 more to vgc, where there’s so many combos that the permutations are literally millions more than singles

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Developers are notoriously bad at playing their own games. Competitive multiplayers are extremely good at it. The balance passes will come once multiplayer feedback comes in on here / Reddit / Steam, but only if the required changes don't make the game less fun for the casual single player. Or in other words, imbalance will be a constant feature and thrown off-kilter every time a new DLC is released. A competitive multiplayer scene is very unlikely to emerge, but hopefully people can have fun playing multiplayer with their friends.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

If wonder if the default initial civ for a leader will be the "best" choice.

For multiplayer i'm less concerned with for overall balance as balance for the first 30 turns and your at the most venerable to someone with a good start.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

If wonder if the default initial civ for a leader will be the "best" choice.

For multiplayer i'm less concerned with for overall balance as balance for the first 30 turns and your at the most venerable to someone with a good start.

they’re advertising full disconnection. so idk if they’d make playing the “accurate” option or historical path better.

 

[greenOak]

I'm not certain it will be as amazing for MP as people suggest. I used to play vanilla Civ5 MP - it's not that bad, because the Civs/Leaders are pretty baseline, there is nothing too crazy, not too many factors to consider besides your actual playstyle.

I'm worried that all these dozens and dozens of bonuses for each Civ will make the game unbalanced, combined with the combo-system, the "any leader" system - it sounds like there will be eventually overpowered combinations...

This sounds like a negative thing for multiplayer. People will eventually discover all kinds of awful loopholes that will make entertaining YouTube videos (How To: Build 7 units in one turn)
My basis for saying this is that pre-day-1 Spiff already found crazy exploits for Egypt.

Now, combating terrible balance is a fat reset button which may or may not solve this problem depending on implementation. It's to be seen, but I'm hesitant to basically say that the MP is going to be amazing straight off the bat.
I'm more easily convinced that it will actually be a horsehockyshow - a very entertaining one though

This.

Even with a small roster of say 10 civs per age, and a leader for each of those civs (30 in total), with unrestricted leaders you essentially have 10*10*10*30 = 30,000 different combinations of civs/leaders. Good luck making sure each of the different 30,000 combinations isn't broken. I'd expect the difference in the best civ / leader combinations to be far greater than in any past version of the game - which isn't that big of an issue in SP but I bet there are going to be a ton of changes or outright bans for MP.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

This.

Even with a small roster of say 10 civs per age, and a leader for each of those civs (30 in total), with unrestricted leaders you essentially have 10*10*10*30 = 30,000 different combinations of civs/leaders. Good luck making sure each of the different 30,000 combinations isn't broken. I'd expect the difference in the best civ / leader combinations to be far greater than in any past version of the game - which isn't that big of an issue in SP but I bet there are going to be a ton of changes or outright bans for MP.

this is why ppl are comparing it to pokemon. you have to have strict design philosophies to prevent none from being broken, but you don’t need total balance—a meta is going to develop no matter how much the devs want it not to.

 

[greenOak]

this is why ppl are comparing it to pokemon. you have to have strict design philosophies to prevent none from being broken, but you don’t need total balance—a meta is going to develop no matter how much the devs want it not to.

Competitive pokemon supports my claim though. Just look at how many more bans smogon has had to make in newer generations (where there are more strategic combinations), compared to older generations in order to have a competitive metagame.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Competitive pokemon supports my claim though. Just look at how many more bans smogon has had to make in newer generations (where there are more strategic combinations), than older generations in order to have a competitive metagame.

smogon isn’t the legitimate or official competitive field, and it’s also widely known for being extremely aggressive with its maintenance of the meta

vgc (the official format) has more permutations due to the doubles format, a wider range of choosable pokemon (on average), and more pokemon with 1% usage on ladder/top tournament placements. And that’s with 0 bans, since the pokemon company itself doesn’t regulate usage outside of the format’s legal pokemon itself.

point being, vgc has rarely been a centralized space (and when it is, THATS when balancing comes into play)

Without going too far off topic—even in this generation, with extremely broken pokemon like incineroar, calyrex, urshifu, the winning team at the world championships featured only one of the top used pokemon (urshifu)

games with an extreme number of permutations don’t need to be heavily balanced. a meta will develop even if they tried to balance it. leaders need to have strict bounds on how far they can go before they’re stepping on civ abilities’ toes and vice versa, and that will prevent combinations from being too synergistic. Then, there will obviously be combos better than others but nothing will be so centralizing that it’s overpowering.

 

[greenOak]

Agree to disagree, but VGC is frequently regarded as a poorly balanced metagame. It remains popular because gamefreak pushes it, but VGC probably garners the most balance complaints among top players than any other metagame. For example, there was that recent fiasco of teams stacking a bunch of mons with 4 OHKO moves. People often complain about smogon's metagames being "ban heavy" but I'd guess that 95% of these complaints come from scrubs who aren't allowed to use their favorite broken mon.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Agree to disagree, but VGC is frequently regarded as a horribly balanced metagame. It remains popular because gamefreak pushes it, but VGC probably garners the most complaints among top players than any other metagame. People often complain about smogon's metagames being "ban heavy" but I'd guess that 95% of these complaints come from scrubs who aren't allowed to use their favorite broken mon.

i think an actual convo about the merits of vgc does not belong in this thread, but i simply don’t believe that’s true. top players of…what? smogon and vgc are effectively two different esports because singles is so different from doubles, and most vgc players actively push back against the stereotype of vgc being centralized because it isn’t true. there were nearly 100 different pokemon used in the top 64 teams at the north america international championships, for example.

also 0 evidence for vgc “only being popular because gamefreak pushes it”…that’s just made up (it’s also *the official format*. it’s like saying “the world cup is only popular because fifa pushes it”)

 

[Thenewwwguy]

For example, there was that recent fiasco of teams stacking a bunch of mons with 4 OHKO moves.

didn’t get this ninja edit but this never happened. just fissure (an OHKO move) was used semi-commonly on one pokemon (Ting-Lu) for one tournament. It wasn’t even a gamebreaking strategy or plan a for those players. it was just a backup plan these players had.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Developers are notoriously bad at playing their own games. Competitive multiplayers are extremely good at it. The balance passes will come once multiplayer feedback comes in on here / Reddit / Steam, but only if the required changes don't make the game less fun for the casual single player. Or in other words, imbalance will be a constant feature and thrown off-kilter every time a new DLC is released. A competitive multiplayer scene is very unlikely to emerge, but hopefully people can have fun playing multiplayer with their friends.

Yeah, I see this unfolding similarly.

There really isn't a guarantee that a meta will not be discovered so clearly above and beyond other civs that they're effectively non competitive. In 6, before ram changes, this was Tomyris. Two horsemen and a powerful combat buff, with a horse spawn bias? You rode roughshod if you used her in MP. Monte was close.

Even in single player, there were some civs far more effective at exploiting ai weaknesses than others. I always preferred marathon speed for SP, and I never got the Norway hate. On marathon, they were far better at exploiting those unbalanced pillaging yields than any other civilization, particularly on huge maps. Build 8 melee naval units, loot the whole world, and you'll have infantry before the AI has muskets.

If you got cheesy, you could pretty much harvest a city state for 400-1500 gold every 4 turns. Show up, loot a mine off the coast. Move your ship 3 ties from the border. AI, having improved all their tiles, has kept a 2 charge builder in the capital. You clear LoS, he moves out, repairs, you repeat.

 

[King of Prussia]

Assuming modding is around the same levels of CIv 6, you will see the competitive community doing what they did in Civ 6(and before). They will make/modify civs and leaders, on top of having their own rules. If some combo comes out that is super broken, then they will just ban it. They will overhaul a bunch of mechanics that make them happier. In terms of balancing, they probably wouldn't care that much about what the vanilla game does. I doubt the MP scene will be that large in the vanilla game.


Ill add another point from my perspective as an indy dev.You spend a lot of time making something, knowing how it should work and what it will do. You try to think of any bugs, exploits, balance issues, etc., that will arise and head them off before you are done. You spend a lot of time testing it. You test it how it should be played. You release it/have others test it and low and behold there is some unforeseen issue. They play it in a way that wasnt intended. Maybe someone comes along and rolls their face on the keyboard hitting a magical combo that breaks everything. Maybe it all worked properly, but some other aspect of the game changed, thus making something that use to work properly, not do so anymore.

There will be balance issues/exploits. There were several found in the small playtest with the streamers/youtubers. The hundreds of thousands of players(or millions?) at release, even if they played for an hour or 2, will easily surpass all the hours spent by the devs, qa, etc. That is a lot more brain power coming up with ways to break stuff. Hopefully the most egregious ones are already caught before release, or quickly fixed post release.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Assuming modding is around the same levels of CIv 6, you will see the competitive community doing what they did in Civ 6(and before). They will make/modify civs and leaders, on top of having their own rules. If some combo comes out that is super broken, then will just ban it. They will overhaul a bunch of mechanics that make them happier. In terms of balancing, they probably wouldn't care that much about what the vanilla game does. I doubt the MP scene will be that large in the vanilla game.


Ill add another point from my perspective as an indy dev.You spend a lot of time making something, knowing how it should work and what it will do. You try to think of any bugs, exploits, balance issues, etc., that will arise and head them off before you are done. You spend a lot of time testing it. You test it how it should be played. You release it/have others test it and low and behold there is some unforeseen issue. They play it in a way that wasnt intended. Maybe someone comes along and rolls their face on the keyboard hitting a magical combo that breaks everything. Maybe it all worked properly, but some other aspect of the game changed, thus making something that use to work properly, not do so anymore.

There will be balance issues/exploits. There were several found in the small playtest with the streamers/youtubers. The hundreds of thousands of players(or millions?) at release, even if they played for an hour or 2, will easily surpass all the hours spent by the devs, qa, etc. That is a lot more brain power coming up with ways to break stuff. Hopefully the most egregious ones are already caught before release, or quickly fixed post release.

the game is also meant to be updated semi-regularly for the next 5-10 years. part of that will be bug fixes and balancing even if it wasn’t a game with so many permutations.

 

[chaosprophet]

Given that Leaders are based (loosely) on historical characters in specific Ages, the attributes/bonuses that we've seen so far are very general: + Resource capacity, + Culture per imported Resource, + production per Town, etc. That means there is a wide range of interactions potentially between these bonuses and the actual in-game situation, even in a single Age: numbers of towns, cities, resources, etc will dramatically change the actual benefits from any Leader.

Then you change Ages, and the situation in regards to Towns. Cities, and Resources changes, and quite probably the situation with your neighbors: you may find that your peaceful Leader is now facing a combination of distinctly Expansionist/Militarist states and Leaders and the old bonuses are nowhere near as valuable.

I can foresee a bunch of post-release posts again, this time focusing on Best Combinations of Civs and Leaders/Age, most of which will remain theoretical for most games, or be 'tweaked' out of existance if they prove to be OP.

Your post also made me think that a good thing about the change in civ for a new age, also means if we pick a civ that isn't working well on the current map/situation you're in, you then pick one on the next age that better fit your reality of the match. Heck, if they do a good jpb at the unlocking conditions, then you naturally would unlock civs that fit better what your situation is.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Your post also made me think that a good thing about the change in civ for a new age, also means if we pick a civ that isn't working well on the current map/situation you're in, you then pick one on the next age that better fit your reality of the match. Heck, if they do a good jpb at the unlocking conditions, then you naturally would unlock civs that fit better what your situation is.

you could also get funky with it

pick a civ that’s not as good in antiquity, but is really good leading into a exploration era civ. so you have a slow start but turbocharge the mid game

 

[m_mus]

MP will only flourish fully, if they drop the 5-player restriction with which Civ7 supposedly will launch.
Taking my weekly Civ6-group of 8 people as an example: we were ready to hop on the hypetrain and dreamt of fantastic civ-combos throughout the ages ... until we learned about the restriction ... which led to said hypetrain continuing its route without us for now.

 

[AntSou]

MP will only flourish fully, if they drop the 5-player restriction with which Civ7 supposedly will launch.
Taking my weekly Civ6-group of 8 people as an example: we were ready to hop on the hypetrain and dreamt of fantastic civ-combos throughout the ages ... until we learned about the restriction ... which led to said hypetrain continuing its route without us for now.

I suspect they'll change it to 8 max before release (because that's what they seem to have currently planned for the Modern Age in multiplayer), and make optional whatever mechanic is blocking the three extra civs in the Ancient and Exploration Age.

I guess those are the three Civs that spawn when you move from the Ancient to the Exploration Age, though we still don't really know how that works.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I suspect they'll change it to 8 max before release (because that's what they seem to have currently planned for the Modern Age in multiplayer), and make optional whatever mechanic is blocking the three extra civs in the Ancient and Exploration Age.

I guess those are the three Civs that spawn when you move from the Ancient to the Exploration Age, though we still don't really know how that works.

there’s also no hard confirmation of it yet, if i understand it correctly. will also prob be the first thing mods try to address

 

[m_mus]

Yeah, I really hope the change the restriction before release ... or that mods will be able to help out in the meantime.