From a "monument placement simulator" to a game – Evolution of Civ6

One addition:

I hope Civ 7 dials it back and distills Civ back to a set of interesting choices, not the bloated amount of largely inconsequential micromanagement that I perceive 7 to be.

While I can't lie and say I haven't loved this iteration of civ, my biggest bugbear with the game is the amount of busywork and constant clicking you are made to do between each turn. Having to repair district buildings one by one with no ability to queue, the policy cards, and the late game. V had elegant solutions to the latter two (permanent social policies which felt like you were making really impactful decisions on your city, and the ability to assign a permanent project to the city and just let the city get on with it).
 
-I remember Democracy in civ 2 made sense and I completely agree with that because I recall that I had a large, expanded empire that I accidentally chose Democracy instead of the default government type and everyone revolted! It was entertaining in a way because it made sense how Democracy works, including the overrule feature from the senate that doesn't allow the player to declare war.
-I liked how the OP said strategies on how civ 7 could sell and not sell.
-I used to dominate civ 1 without any government types! when I was a child... I always used to despot. Now I found out how to use those governments, but I don't have time to use them anymore since there's civ 2 and the rest of them out and are better.
- Civ 4 was also good. The espionage system in beyond the sword was so intelligent seems like you could do anything with EP.
 
-I remember Democracy in civ 2 made sense and I completely agree with that because I recall that I had a large, expanded empire that I accidentally chose Democracy instead of the default government type and everyone revolted! It was entertaining in a way because it made sense how Democracy works, including the overrule feature from the senate that doesn't allow the player to declare war.

The overrule feature did not make sense, either from a realism or from a gameplay perspective.

America, one of the world's foremost democracies, is known for instigating a ton of wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, and honestly I might be forgetting one or two, and that's just the last 30 years), and from a gameplay perspective it is incredibly annoying to be instantly forced into a peace every time your opponent wants to make peace, and they can also enforce contact in Civ 2. A compounding issue in Civ 2 is that every AI would end up hating you if you grew too powerful, and would declare war on you literally every turn. It was just:

AI declares war -> you take a city -> partisans spawn and force diplomacy -> senate enforces peace -> AI declares war the next turn and the process repeats.

(oh yeah, there was actually one way to avoid this: place an airplane on every hex surrounding the city, then capture it with a ground unit, the planes stop partisans from spawning because the tiles are occupied, then you move the planes in the city; of course this was itself incredibly gimmicky and dumb)
 
The overrule feature did not make sense, either from a realism or from a gameplay perspective.

America, one of the world's foremost democracies, is known for instigating a ton of wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, and honestly I might be forgetting one or two, and that's just the last 30 years), and from a gameplay perspective it is incredibly annoying to be instantly forced into a peace every time your opponent wants to make peace, and they can also enforce contact in Civ 2. A compounding issue in Civ 2 is that every AI would end up hating you if you grew too powerful, and would declare war on you literally every turn. It was just:

AI declares war -> you take a city -> partisans spawn and force diplomacy -> senate enforces peace -> AI declares war the next turn and the process repeats.

(oh yeah, there was actually one way to avoid this: place an airplane on every hex surrounding the city, then capture it with a ground unit, the planes stop partisans from spawning because the tiles are occupied, then you move the planes in the city; of course this was itself incredibly gimmicky and dumb)
I didn't continue to play to see what happens after the revolution because there were so many unhappy people in my empire to continue to see this gimmick. I played civ 1 more often than civ 2. However, I do see that the gimmick is possible only when the AI has Guerilla Warfare technology. IMHO it was entertaining to have cheap units pop out of a captured city that try to capture their captured city back. The gun shot sounds also used to make it entertaining.
 
I didn't continue to play to see what happens after the revolution because there were so many unhappy people in my empire to continue to see this gimmick. I played civ 1 more often than civ 2. However, I do see that the gimmick is possible only when the AI has Guerilla Warfare technology. IMHO it was entertaining to have cheap units pop out of a captured city that try to capture their captured city back. The gun shot sounds also used to make it entertaining.

Oh, I don't mean to say that the partisan aspect is problematic, per se (though it could get annoying), it's the forced peace that's problematic. It's neither realistic nor beneficial to game enjoyment, and I'm glad it didn't make a return in later editions.
 
The overrule feature did not make sense, either from a realism or from a gameplay perspective.

America, one of the world's foremost democracies, is known for instigating a ton of wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, and honestly I might be forgetting one or two, and that's just the last 30 years), and from a gameplay perspective it is incredibly annoying to be instantly forced into a peace every time your opponent wants to make peace, and they can also enforce contact in Civ 2. A compounding issue in Civ 2 is that every AI would end up hating you if you grew too powerful, and would declare war on you literally every turn. It was just:

AI declares war -> you take a city -> partisans spawn and force diplomacy -> senate enforces peace -> AI declares war the next turn and the process repeats.

(oh yeah, there was actually one way to avoid this: place an airplane on every hex surrounding the city, then capture it with a ground unit, the planes stop partisans from spawning because the tiles are occupied, then you move the planes in the city; of course this was itself incredibly gimmicky and dumb)
It's been decades, but I remember my basic game plan for Civ 2 was to get to Democracy ASAP. Then when I was ready to conquer the world, I would switch to Fundamentalism and crank the Science slider as high as I could while keeping my economy in the black.
 
Oh, I don't mean to say that the partisan aspect is problematic, per se (though it could get annoying), it's the forced peace that's problematic. It's neither realistic nor beneficial to game enjoyment, and I'm glad it didn't make a return in later editions.
Yes, Yes. Civ 4 had something improved where you got called a world villain in the apostolic palace or the united nations when choosing never! Civilians got more excuses to not go to war. That wasn't a forced peace but the unhappiness from never! really added up along with yearn to join motherland, or not go to war with brothers and sister of the faith and war weariness. It wasn't a forced peace but it was something similarly improved to civilization 2's forced peace democracy.
 
Yes, Yes. Civ 4 had something improved where you got called a world villain in the apostolic palace or the united nations when choosing never! Civilians got more excuses to not go to war. That wasn't a forced peace but the unhappiness from never! really added up along with yearn to join motherland, or not go to war with brothers and sister of the faith and war weariness. It wasn't a forced peace but it was something similarly improved to civilization 2's forced peace democracy.

Yeah, that was a much better way of doing things.
 
As much as I enjoy and miss many of the features in Civ4 I wonder if there is a bit of rose coloured glasses happening. I’m guessing that there was a lot more micro than I remember

The slider mechanics in Civ1 and 2 was the perfect Empire Management mechanic. Simple, clean and functional and without much of the distortions latter attempts to “solve” this problem intoduced. Combine this with the district mechanics in 6 such that you can’t have Scientists or other specialists in cities that don’t have the neccessary districts

What it really needed was a means to rein in ICS and Blob effects. The former can be reined in by the city states and especially the awesome Barbarian Clans from Civ6 so there isn’t a lot of empty land to spam settlers at, and both would be solved if cities you conquor were never really as cooperative or productive as the ones you found and immediatly rebel and generate an army if unrest happens

Playing Gran Colombia has been a real eye opener. That extra movement point removed a lot of the agonizing sliding tile puzzle nonsense from what should be the simple act of moving units

That plus a stacking limit of three plus removing the multi hex range from range and siege class units solves most of Civ6’s problems with combat

Stacking is a problem that the hex wargames of the Consim era, which is what Civ evolved from, already solved, and the solution that was universally adopted was three being the default.

While we are on the topic of stacks, doom and otherwise, I’d like to point out that from a functional standpoint a stack of 6 melee units, and a single unit with 6 hp operate mechanically very similar and the latter had much less micro
 
I agree with @Bibor and @megabearsfan, I have even discussed the very same things you both mentioned in the past. Civ 5 and 6 do feel static, boring and too formulaic for me, and have played everything Firaxes made from Civ 3 onwards.

As for mid to late game goes, Cooperative victory conditions, regional events that demand cooperation such as regional benefits for climate change impacting less said region, or having increased population increase based on how countries deal with immigration. Like for instance, having migration waves and events activating after wars or catastrophic events, or negative effects to high score civs due to the impoverishment of smaller weaker neighbors. Trade deals as well could provide benefits, or even funding revolutions in other civs countries triggering a a friendlier leader of sorts. Or maybe a dynamic global resource economy, one that is based on what the map offers.

I think they should scrap the cards policy system and recreate something like between civ 4-5 policies which affects other civs, and to have negative/positive effects with a conditional clause. An example will be some civic that values immigration, which increases pop whenever countries goes to war, but that also increases unhappiness. Something like domestic/foreign policies will do that are affected by both local and foreign events.

I do also expect a less deterministic approach to leader traits, as being soft pushed to play in a particular manner takes away from choosing a civilization, rather a path to victory with a historical name.

While I do not like the district system I cannot find a better solution to it, hence I would recommend a rescaling of the values the game has, since districts take forever to build and their return values are too weak. It also suffers from being to static and boring, maybe have blank districts on which one could combine buildings in designing our own, to better tailor our victory conditions, or to get specific GP or buffs, like having economic buildings along with museums could boost tourism, or scientific and military buildings could boost military tech. Or to have theaters next to workshops to greatly improve happiness.

Civ 4 and 5 combined had the best approach to GP which imo on 6 it sucks and its plain math. To have GP being achieved by happiness levels and to have the type of GP determined by the citizen manager from 4, which was my fav. I think civ 5 and 6 lost the charm of managing citizens and became redundant compared to what it was.

I also think the adjacency thing should be between buildings within a district, not from external feats, since its silly to have a campus in the corner of a city separated by jungles and farmlands.

Building back roads makes a lot of sense, and having back workers instead of builders makes the game more interacting as well.

As for diplomacy and trade, I might think the game might benefit by taking the opposite approach of having trade available as tech allows by default, and having the trade dialogue as means of controlling what gets into your civ from your neighbors. I am thinking of avoiding capital outflows and embargos to deter enemy civ. That way we would avoid the chore of having the disgusting page with all resources and be trading fur for the same 5gpt the whole game.

What do you think?
 
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Playing Gran Colombia has been a real eye opener. That extra movement point removed a lot of the agonizing sliding tile puzzle nonsense from what should be the simple act of moving units

That plus a stacking limit of three plus removing the multi hex range from range and siege class units solves most of Civ6’s problems with combat

Stacking is a problem that the hex wargames of the Consim era, which is what Civ evolved from, already solved, and the solution that was universally adopted was three being the default.

While we are on the topic of stacks, doom and otherwise, I’d like to point out that from a functional standpoint a stack of 6 melee units, and a single unit with 6 hp operate mechanically very similar and the latter had much less micro
If you liked Gran Colombia's Ejercito Patria, then you would like Scottland's war of liberation. Even though the extra movements are 2 and the turns are only 10 you still get that 100% production also.
 
Unless 2k come up with a combat system for civ 7 along the lines of xcom civ 7 will flop. the game in its current state is utterly boring.You could easily dump 50% of civ 6 and have little or no effect on the overall outcome of the game. There should never be anymore than 163 turns on a hextile based game.After that its mathemathically pointless and poorlymade. But hey as the devs say they listen,but they never say they implemented. I wouldnt hold my breath for a better version on civ 7.
 
Unless 2k come up with a combat system for civ 7 along the lines of xcom civ 7 will flop. the game in its current state is utterly boring.

Oh god, please no. The biggest thing that turned me off Endless Legend (and consequently made me uninterested in Humankind) was its self-contained, abstract, arbitrary, slow and overly involved battle system. Speed up 1UPT like Old World (heck I'd even take Civ V movement rules for a start), or allow limited stacking, nothing that takes longer than the current system.

There should never be anymore than 163 turns on a hextile based game.

People who play marathon games be like :hide:. More seriously however, having tried out Old World quite a lot this week, I sympathize, but I think the game scope is here to stay, it's core to series identity and marketing. If anything I think Civ 6 games are a lot shorter than Firaxis intended at a high level, at least for Standard speed.
 
I would like to point out that Endless Legend is not the best example of a tactical combat system. Humankind is a bit better, but in my opinion, as someone who really likes tactical combat, not up to the level of things like Age of Wonders 3 or Fallen Enchantress. While I personally would like to see tactical combat in Civ 7, I don't know if it should be quite as involved as in those games though. Some middle ground between those and the simple system from Conquest of the New World might be just right.

Anyway, as long as I could get an army system, I would happily settle for a somewhat more advanced auto-resolve, which took into account things like unit synergies and army leader stats.
 
With regards to game speed, it seems people have wildly different preferences. I play on Marathon in Civ 5 and Epic in Civ 6. It's a habit I originally got into due to the strange relationship between movement speed and tech development speed, especially in early civ games, where units would often become obsolete in the amount of time it took to move them from where they were built to where they were supposed to be deployed.
 
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