For all who love the Civ Switching Idea: How do you want it to be implemented?

[ColtSeavers]

I personally am not convinced about the new Civ Switching feature, but obviously there is a signficant amount of people out there, who love this mechanism and look forward to it being implemented. As a matter of fact, I'm at least not totally opposed to the Ages idea. However I can't envision a way how the Civ Switching part is implemented in an interesting and immersive way.
I sort of understand the "geographical/ historical path", though Egypt turning into Songhai just because it is on the same continent, doesn't make much sense to me either. Finding 3 horses to turn Rome into Mongolia, however? What's next, Vikings become Chinese, because they harvested some rice, or Incas turning into Germans after they started 3 surprise wars on their neighbours ? That sounds like Civ 6's heureka mechanism all over again, which just felt goofy and repetitive to me.

So my question for you is: Do you have any specific ideas, how the Civ Switching should look like? Any specific wishes, how exactly these mechanics should work?

 

[Krikkit1]

For some of the "mechanics of choosing"

I believe it was stated the computer will always choose the best "geographic" option. (Abassids would probably be more geographic to Egypt than Songhai, even though they are both 'geographic' unlocks...if we got a Byzantine they would probably be over the Normans for Rome)

I would like that to be an option (default on seems best) (as well as an option in multiplayer games for the human players to be similarly restricted)..that way I might face an AI Mongols, or in general face an unexpected civ later in the game if

Generally I'd say Humans should go first in choosing civs and computers should avoid duplicates if at all possible

In MP games if duplicate civs are not allowed (another option they should have).. then some priority system should be there. (probably players with the fewest options choose first... and then those that had the most Legacy points from the previous Age)


In terms of "Appearance"
One thing they should definitely have is the ability to Custom Title your New Civ and Rename your leader on every Era (including the start) ** possibly disabled in online MP for obvious reasons

Also I think the issue of Rome->Mogols or Egypt->Inca seems weird because we are thinking of Earth maps....Where Egypt is closer to Aksum than China, and the Maya are on a different continent.
But you may play a game where Aksum and China are neighbors on the other side of the continent from the neighbors Egypt and the Maya.

Unfortunately the "Geographic" civ transitions lean away from that, while the "Leader/Gameplay" transitions lean into it.

A Lot will have to do on how exactly the Age transition happens

 

[Takfloyd]

My requirement for a civ switching mechanic is that it is based on history and doesn't just allow you to switch to anything you want. The way Civ VII is implementing it is excellent from what we have seen so far.

I think my main fear relates to a major flaw with Firaxis's game design in Civ V and Civ VI - adherence to arbitrary "rules" based purely on gameplay over historical logic and accuracy. For example, "a unit can only require one strategic resource to build", leading to knights being buildable without horses, or "a technology can only have prerequisites that directly precede it on the tech tree graphic", leading to silly things like being able to make computers without discovering electricity or motor vehicles without discovering the wheel. These are problems Civ IV didn't have, it was designed so cause and effect always made sense, even if it meant the tech tree wouldn't look as perfectly streamlined for example.

The way I can see this design problem end up in the civ switching mechanic is if Firaxis decides that every civ gets exactly the same number of choices to switch to, regardless of whether it makes sense. Imagine if Rome for example gets the same number of choices as ancient Japan. They would have to bullshait up most of Japan's choices while many of Rome's logical choices would be arbitrarily off-limits.

Hopefully Firaxis has grown out of their era of restrictive game design and will simply allow every Civ change that makes sense, and not too many that don't make sense.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I don't really care about the "immersion" that a lot of people here talk about. That word has been hijacked to mean something completely different from what it means to me. I don't have an issue choosing either Songhai or Mongolia after playing as Egypt. My only worry is that the requirements for unlocking next-age Civs through accomplishments will be strategically trivial. If resources spawn in a similar fashion to how they do in Civ 6, acquiring three horses will largely be a matter of luck. Satisfying that requirement is similar to utilizing Mbande's ability in Civ 6. The only real decision I need to make in order to optimally utilize her ability is to check if the continent I spawned on is large enough, and if it isn't, re-roll.

It should be one of two ways:

1. Make requirements actually fun to play for. They should be sophisticated enough that there should be at least one step* after "I have horses" before "I'm playing Mongolia".

2. Don't impose requirements and allow the player to select any Civ of their liking for each age. (Note that I'm not advocating the AI should be able to make random choices.) I should be able to conduct experiments on conditions required for me to be successful as Mongolia. I suspect one of the reasons requirements are put in place is to hide away potential balancing problems. There will be civs that are overpowered no matter what conditions they're played in, and there will be ahistorical or unnatural civ-leader pairings that will be better than natural pairings. (e.g. In Civ 6, Mvemba is a terrible leader for Kongo, or for any other civ for that matter. Eleanor not only synergizes much better than Mvemba with Kongo but also much better than she does with England or France.) Just open everything up to let players poke holes at the game and provide balancing feedback to the developers.

* I think they're making a similar mistake by giving a ridiculous amount of bonus to civs toward building wonders that are associated with them.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

I do generally love the idea of Civ switching, but do have some ideas on how it could best be implemented:

1) Default to AI always leaning towards the historical past, with an option to turn that off in game set up. Some folks have mentioned this is the case, but I’ve not seen their source cited

2) Allow players to turn off gameplay unlocks (eg horses for Mongolia) entirely in game set up

3) Allow advanced set up options in single player that allow the human to pre-select the path for the AI to follow. If for some reason I want Ben Franklin leading Egypt, I want the option to decide whether he becomes America or Buganda in the Modern era

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I like the idea of Civ switching. I'm actually most concerned about forcing the idea of "historical" civ switching. Why should the default be Norman -> England if, during the game, the experience of the in-game Normans is completely different than that of the real-life Normans?

I'd rather see more selection conditions like those for picking Mongolia (find 3 Horse resources). For each Era 2 and Era 3 option, what were the conditions that gave rise to that "civilization"? (Quotes are to recognize the inconsistency of whether we're talking about ethnic groups, political entities, or something else.) I'd like to see the AI, at least, required to select on that basis, even if the player is given greater flexibility. That, to me, would make more sense in a game about creating alternate histories.

I'm also skeptical about the one leader for all three eras design. It feels like holding onto an aspect of past Civ games that doesn't fit well into the rest of Civ 7 and is going to play awkwardly, at best. I wonder if there shouldn't have been a cleaner break from the past here.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

I like the idea of Civ switching. I'm actually most concerned about forcing the idea of "historical" civ switching. Why should the default be Norman -> England if, during the game, the experience of the in-game Normans is completely different than that of the real-life Normans?

I'd rather see more selection conditions like those for picking Mongolia (find 3 Horse resources). For each Era 2 and Era 3 option, what were the conditions that gave rise to that "civilization"? (Quotes are to recognize the inconsistency of whether we're talking about ethnic groups, political entities, or something else.) I'd like to see the AI, at least, required to select on that basis, even if the player is given greater flexibility. That, to me, would make more sense in a game about creating alternate histories.

I'm also skeptical about the one leader for all three eras design. It feels like holding onto an aspect of past Civ games that doesn't fit well into the rest of Civ 7 and is going to play awkwardly, at best. I wonder if there shouldn't have been a cleaner break from the past here.

How on earth would you ever be able to keep track of who you're playing against?!?
Changing leaders and ahistoric civ switching would reduce all civs to mere jersey colors.
Humankind sucks primarily because dealing with the culturally schizophrenic Red, Yellow, and Blue civs is not at all satisfying

 

[Krikkit1]

I'm also skeptical about the one leader for all three eras design. It feels like holding onto an aspect of past Civ games that doesn't fit well into the rest of Civ 7 and is going to play awkwardly, at best. I wonder if there shouldn't have been a cleaner break from the past here.

I do agree players should at least be able to retitle their leader for a new Era. It would be nice if they could also regraphics them (use an unused leaders graphics).

 

[ggalindo001]

How on earth would you ever be able to keep track of who you're playing against?!?
Changing leaders and ahistoric civ switching would reduce all civs to mere jersey colors.
Humankind sucks primarily because dealing with the culturally schizophrenic Red, Yellow, and Blue civs is not at all satisfying

I hope it isn't as described that you are playing against Yellow or Blue (I'll be on the Red team, thank you very much)

What I am anticipating is most AI "evolutions" are more/less historically based. But I do look forward to a random unanticipated change (the Egypt -> Mongolia jump) every so often to put some spice into the game.

I have a little faith in the Devs here that it isn't going to feel artificial -- time will tell.

 

[Thormodr]

I can't say I love it but I'd say I'd love to have it optional and easily moddable. Also, I would like to have hundreds of Civs so we don't nails on the chalkboard Egypt into Songhai.

 

[TartanWarlord]

I generally am not too concerned with the switch concept, but I do find some internal concern surrounding the lack of an option to remain as a particular civ. I see what I think they are trying to present to us, which would be the differing pools of civilizations at each age of the game.

I would be much happier if when the age changes, you had the option to try and persevere/forge ahead as your current civ rather than being forced to choose from X other civs. Maybe Hatshepsut feels that they can keep Egypt's identity rather than transitioning to Songhai.

Perhaps it would be less jarring if there was a wrapper to contain the idea of Empire. If at the start of the game, you select a Leader and a Name for your Empire, then choose your first cultural inspiration, you could then look at the age transition not so much as moving from 1 to another but adding a second (and then 3rd) cultural inspiration to your Empire. I think regardless of how the game frames it, that's most likely the internal paradigm that I will run with.

 

[King Flevance]

I'm also skeptical about the one leader for all three eras design. It feels like holding onto an aspect of past Civ games that doesn't fit well into the rest of Civ 7 and is going to play awkwardly, at best.

I would actually prefer to have to pick 3-5 leaders throughout a game instead of Civ swapping. Leaders with different traits but 1 permanent attribute for your empire.

 

[Voidwalkin]

I don't really care about the "immersion" that a lot of people here talk about. That word has been hijacked to mean something completely different from what it means to me. I don't have an issue choosing either Songhai or Mongolia after playing as Egypt. My only worry is that the requirements for unlocking next-age Civs through accomplishments will be strategically trivial. If resources spawn in a similar fashion to how they do in Civ 6, acquiring three horses will largely be a matter of luck. Satisfying that requirement is similar to utilizing Mbande's ability in Civ 6. The only real decision I need to make in order to optimally utilize her ability is to check if the continent I spawned on is large enough, and if it isn't, re-roll.

It should be one of two ways:

1. Make requirements actually fun to play for. They should be sophisticated enough that there should be at least one step* after "I have horses" before "I'm playing Mongolia".

2. Don't impose requirements and allow the player to select any Civ of their liking for each age. (Note that I'm not advocating the AI should be able to make random choices.) I should be able to conduct experiments on conditions required for me to be successful as Mongolia. I suspect one of the reasons requirements are put in place is to hide away potential balancing problems. There will be civs that are overpowered no matter what conditions they're played in, and there will be ahistorical or unnatural civ-leader pairings that will be better than natural pairings. (e.g. In Civ 6, Mvemba is a terrible leader for Kongo, or for any other civ for that matter. Eleanor not only synergizes much better than Mvemba with Kongo but also much better than she does with England or France.) Just open everything up to let players poke holes at the game and provide balancing feedback to the developers.

* I think they're making a similar mistake by giving a ridiculous amount of bonus to civs toward building wonders that are associated with them.

I'm one of those who do believe immersion will be an issue. Many lovers of Ancient Egypt will choose to be Pharoah, and then lose their investment of energy and emotion on age end, forced to become another entity. Relative to 6, where you can imagine yourself as Pharoah till the end, 7 will have much worse emotional RoI as consequence.

Totally agree with opening it up to the player without qualifiers, though. IMO that's the only reasonable position to take. The skilled will find the prereqs tedious, while the casuals will find them unachievable and be less able to become the civ they may have intended to be from game start... preventing investment in the preferred civ, limiting enjoyment.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

When I think about switching, I go back and forth on it a bit.

Like many, I find the idea of going from Egypt to Mongolia a little bit difficult; I can rationalise it to an extent (my Egypt is just evolving down a path similar to Mongolia, etc.) but I think it will take some time with the game to get fully used to such transitions.

On the flip side, there are certain elements to the whole idea which I think are really positive and exciting. The best example for me, because it's home and I know more about it, is England. Civ VI is the best Civ to date in terms of making each civ feel unique - they have unique units, infrastructure, civ abilities and leader abilities. England are a hot mess, a pretty awful hodgepodge of ideas that fails to represent England at all well. That's partly down to poor design, but largely down to the difficulty of trying to represent England or Britain with a single civilization.

The prospects for England and / or Britain in Civ VII are far more compelling and engaging. I could start as the Romans or the Vikings or the Celts, progress to the Normans or a 17th Century naval style England or an Enlightenment era Scotland, before ending as Britain or USA or Australia. This is so much more interesting, and I love the potential of this.

It is, however, entirely based upon the need for many different civs to be included in the game. I like the notion of historical paths, but I want to see multiple historical paths available, where possible.

 

[EgonSpengler]

One thing I need to see before rendering an opinion on civ-switching is how much of your old civ you carry over into the next Age. Are we actually going to be replacing Egypt of Antiquity with Age of Exploration Mongolia, just because we have some horses? Or are we becoming some new, ahistorical nation, carrying aspects of Ancient Egypt with us and adopting aspects of the Mongol horde? Perhaps our Egypt-on-another-planet might evolve into something like the Mughal Empire on Earth, after Timur/Tamerlane tried to restore the Mongol Empire. India+Mongols=Mughal Empire. Sort of. Ancient Egypt+Mongol Empire=Some new nation that we don't have a name for, because it didn't exist on Earth. I hope that's how it works, anyway.

A couple of other things I wouldn't mind seeing:
1. Capitals moving. This happened all the time throughout human history on Earth, but it never really happens in Civ games.
2. Age of Exploration and Modern Age versions of civs from earlier Ages. Could we get Modern Egypt, China, or the Soviet Union down the road? I don't see why not. If people think it sounds crazy that Ancient Egypt would evolve into the Mongol Empire, it seems equally absurd to me that the Roman Empire and Renaissance Italy are the same people, except that it happened. The Celtic Britons could be an Antiquity civ, painting their faces blue and erecting stone obelisks; the British Empire could be an Exploration civ, marching around with their red coats, sailing the seas and writing the classics of the English language; and the UK could be a Modern civ, pretty much inventing modern team sports, and sending musicians and film & television actors around the world.

 

[Mezmorizor]

I'm also deeply skeptical of it possibly be a good mechanic, but the one way I can see where it might work is if you don't actually get to choose how your civ evolves and the game chooses for you depending on how you play. eg You become the Mongols by being a mounted warmonger, and you become the Mughals by making a lot of money. I don't think this would actually be good because specific players would end up being the exact same civ game after game unless they specifically try to do different things and it'd do bad things to the meta, but at least it's not what we saw with Humankind where there's like 2 to 3 civs worth anything every era that you pick every single game.

I would also hate it less if it's deeply historical and you really just have a few civ "paths". I think that'd be inferior to just having civs, but at least I wouldn't always just be jamming whatever gets me the most science.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

2. Age of Exploration and Modern Age versions of civs from earlier Ages. Could we get Modern Egypt, China, or the Soviet Union down the road? I don't see why not. If people think it sounds crazy that Ancient Egypt would evolve into the Mongol Empire, it seems equally absurd to me that the Roman Empire and Renaissance Italy are the same people, except that it happened. The Celtic Britons could be an Antiquity civ, painting their faces blue and erecting stone obelisks; the British Empire could be an Exploration civ, marching around with their red coats, sailing the seas and writing the classics of the English language; and the UK could be a Modern civ, pretty much inventing modern team sports, and sending musicians and film & television actors around the world.

That seems to be the direction they are going, at least for some civs. In an interview it was stated that the Normans in the Exploration Age can become Modern France or Britain. According to a leak we are also getting Han, Ming, and Qing China.

 

[bv98132454]

One thing I need to see before rendering an opinion on civ-switching is how much of your old civ you carry over into the next Age. Are we actually going to be replacing Egypt of Antiquity with Age of Exploration Mongolia, just because we have some horses? Or are we becoming some new, ahistorical nation, carrying aspects of Ancient Egypt with us and adopting aspects of the Mongol horde? Perhaps our Egypt-on-another-planet might evolve into something like the Mughal Empire on Earth, after Timur/Tamerlane tried to restore the Mongol Empire. India+Mongols=Mughal Empire. Sort of. Ancient Egypt+Mongol Empire=Some new nation that we don't have a name for, because it didn't exist on Earth. I hope that's how it works, anyway.

A couple of other things I wouldn't mind seeing:
1. Capitals moving. This happened all the time throughout human history on Earth, but it never really happens in Civ games.
2. Age of Exploration and Modern Age versions of civs from earlier Ages. Could we get Modern Egypt, China, or the Soviet Union down the road? I don't see why not. If people think it sounds crazy that Ancient Egypt would evolve into the Mongol Empire, it seems equally absurd to me that the Roman Empire and Renaissance Italy are the same people, except that it happened. The Celtic Britons could be an Antiquity civ, painting their faces blue and erecting stone obelisks; the British Empire could be an Exploration civ, marching around with their red coats, sailing the seas and writing the classics of the English language; and the UK could be a Modern civ, pretty much inventing modern team sports, and sending musicians and film & television actors around the world.

As to #2, all of the examples you cite are the result of invasion/subjugation, not some nebulous "crisis". There is pretty much no historical basis for what they are doing. If you want to argue for it because you like it as a gameplay mechanic, that's fine. But from a historical perspective there is little to no justification for this change (even though they attempted to do so in the gameplay reveal video).

 

[vorlon_mi]

I want the "historical" option, but I want other options, too. I expect the computer players to choose a similar progression, in most games. But as the human player, I want to try something different. When the map expands in the Exploration Age, I want to take a risk and opt for a new civ that emphasizes exploration. Maybe that risk pays off, maybe it doesn't. If I started "tall", I want the option to choose a 2nd civ that lets me go "wide." I expect that some Exploration Age civ choices will have a higher settlement cap than others. Please give me that choice!

When I played as the Zulu in Civ3 or Civ4, I didn't restrict myself to a certain geography. To be honest, it was a random map, so that restriction doesn't make sense. I want really interesting choices. Perhaps not every Exploration Age civ will be open to me if I start as Rome; I would like 4-6 choices that make me pause. Perhaps not every Modern Age civ will be open to me, once the Exploration Age is complete. I still want 4-6 interesting choices. What's the best choice to A) win a victory condition and B) builds the most upon the legacies that I've carried over from the earlier ages.

 

[chaosprophet]

As of now, I like a lot everything we know so far for switching, so I guess my pick is to keep it as it is. One thing I hope they have is a switch to make so the AI don't have a bias for historical path when picking new civ, even if it will likely still end up picking those as they are the ones which are unlocked for free without prerequisites. Hopefully there will be an option in a future patch or dlc, for a randomized mode where each civ gets a random civ of next age as their civs automatically unlocked instead of a fixed historical option for more interesting variations on each game.

Another point, I hope the civ unlock requirements are chosen so that it feels natural, as in instead of it being too much of you hunting requirements to unlock a civ, the civ unique stuff are such that having the requirements as you growing your city naturally makes you want to pick them.

I sort of understand the "geographical/ historical path", though Egypt turning into Songhai just because it is on the same continent, doesn't make much sense to me either. Finding 3 horses to turn Rome into Mongolia, however?

That is all based on perspective. In the end it actually is a Rome-like civ turning into a Mongolia-like civ based on how they grew on a most likely completely different world (or if you're playing terra, a similar world to us but where things will still very much likely evolved to be very different as the game advances).

Generally I'd say Humans should go first in choosing civs and computers should avoid duplicates if at all possible

It was confirmed in the last stream that human picks first in SP, albeit we don't know how that is decided on MP between multiple human players, but they likely pick at least before the AIs..