From the Devs: Developing Your Settlements

[Siptah]

I see that sneaky buff to gold buildings...

I hope it comes with increased prices...

 

[marius_kaparius]

I'm missing what the Stealth Buff is ...

 

[Lebo44]

"In addition to continued iteration here, the team is hard at work improving the presentation and usability of the Settlement Banners, Overbuilding experience, and a whole new Commerce hub."

I'm curious about that Commerce hub. New/reworked town specialization?

 

[Krikkit1]

I'm curious about that Commerce hub. New/reworked town specialization?

I think it means a new Resource/Trade Route management

 

[Manpanzee]

I'm missing what the Stealth Buff is ...

You can see in one of the before and after examples that the base yield of Bazaar has gone from 3 gold to 6 gold.

IMO gold buildings were pretty underpowered before, so this is a good change.

 

[Krikkit1]

You can see in one of the before and after examples that the base yield of Bazaar has gone from 3 gold to 6 gold.

IMO gold buildings were pretty underpowered before, so this is a good change.

The Bazaar is still 3 Gold…but it pays 0 gold maintenance and is replacing a building that does. (it has always been that way)

 

[WillK96]

The Bazaar is still 3 Gold…but it pays 0 gold maintenance and is replacing a building that does. (it has always been that way)

I don't think the screenshots bear that out. Look at the places where the Bazaar will replace a farm or be placed on an empty tile. In the before screenshots those areas are 4s and 5s. In the after screenshots those areas are 7s and 8s.

 

[Krikkit1]

I don't think the screenshots bear that out. Look at the places where the Bazaar will replace a farm or be placed on an empty tile. In the before screenshots those areas are 4s and 5s. In the after screenshots those areas are 7s and 8s.

Looks like you’re right. The detailed view shows 6 as the base yield.

Maybe they did a general boost to base yields for later ages. Hopefully they have Massively increased Unit Maintenance costs.

 

[WillK96]

Looks like you’re right. The detailed view shows 6 as the base yield.

Maybe they did a general boost to base yields for later ages. Hopefully they have Massively increased Unit Maintenance costs.

Maybe. This was likely done because the gold buildings actually had the worst return of any yield-based building for their cost.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Being able to see so clearly how yields will change, is fantastic. Looking at the screenshots, I feel like I will finally be able to make an informed decision about what to build and where to place it. Thank you Firaxis!

 

[moondog385]

Oh my god, these changes are awesome. So much better than the current UI.

 

[tman2000]

This is incredibly troubling. I admit my hopes are low, but I'm still waiting to see what sort of "big fat overhaul" might come for this game before fully judging it. This is a bad bad sign. From their release:

The Settlement Production menu is arguably one of, if not the, most important UI elements in a Civ game. The choices made here are fundamental to building your empire's engine, pursuing campaign-specific goals, and ultimately dominating your enemies.

Our current version displays a predictive Yield presentation on Buildings, Wonders, and Unique Improvements intended to help players make these decisions. Unfortunately, we’ve learned that the presentation of these Yields is often confusing for players, as it doesn’t present all of the data needed to make an informed decision. These Yields can also contribute to a lack of engagement with critical decision points by encouraging the player to simply choose the biggest number; making this moment feel more like an Idle Clicker than Grand Strategy. I admit I’ve been guilty of this myself.

Yikes. I admit I appreciate honesty and they need to be honest so we shouldn't be too harsh when they are, but Yikes. They're admitting how disruptively bad their UI is. "Never should have shipped this way." But, given the first point, I forgive.

The main problem with this presentation, and what we’re addressing with this update, is that these Yields are acting as a recommender without actually being one. The Yields presented are supposed to show the highest possible Yield currently available. This sounds great in theory, but remember earlier when I said they might not have all the data you need? This is due to the sheer depth of the game. There are so many factors that can modify the Yield output of a given tile. These modifiers can come from many sources, like your Leader Abilities (permanent), Social Policies (temporary), and Building Adjacencies (contextual). These can be modified further with Leader Attributes and Wonders. Additionally, Specialists create their own issue where they're usually modifying these Yields for some, but not all, of the Building options in the menu. All this creates a data management headache of needing to access and communicate to the player “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” which is an outstanding movie, but a terrible approach to making responsive data calls.

Ultimately the potential Yields are being overly emphasized in this context given their value and accuracy, so we moved their display to the actual placement decision context. But without the potential Yields, how will I know what to build?

This KILLS ME. I understand what they're saying in good faith. Some UI mods show everything because Civ 6 players vestigial instinct is to want to have all that information and to develop mods that satisfy their intuition about what needs to be known. Not knowing that information is instinctively frustrating for veteran VI players, so there's a perceived need for it all to be in the UI. I understand and agree with Firaxis's point that you don't actually need to see the full breakdown of all yields. The game is not 6. I'm not sure I grok their solution, so I don't know if it was the right one, but I understand what they're trying to say.

It's just... YIKES.

I want to focus in on "This is due to the sheer depth of the game." That's a very polite way of saying, clustered, bloated, overcomplicated for little meaningful result. It's absolutely part of why I stopped playing. There's a ton to keep track of, which is hard to keep track of, frankly. However, it just doesn't matter that much. Your choices are limited. It's all just iterations on over-balanced micro yields that make civ uniques sound interesting when other than in a few cases, they don't do very much.

Civ 7 is a game where I have to set out to create the situation where many of the civs abilities blossom into amazing results, and I have to roll and re-roll, save scum, try a few times - like solving a puzzle with RNG - to feel like I made a civ's set of synergizing micro-yield bonuses really express. If you do do that, then you snowball anyway. And, you can't really make a civ blossom without being in a situation where you were already positioned to win anyway - in most cases. This is the core of the entire game, and it's bad.

I really am getting the message from Firaxis that they know exactly what their game is. I'd bet they spent a whole year getting this "sheer deep" mess to balance and they're terrified of messing with it. Where they are still selling to corporate that this is how you made a game streamlined and fun for a wider audience. Where all the little parts and microyields all fit together.

"We wouldn't want general audiences to know too much about the sheer deep complexity of the game, because they're too dumb to make choices from that much information."

This is a "sheer deep" game which also tiptoes around the capacities of its audience. No, that's dumb. Instead, this is just a game that is obsessed with a level of balancing that doesn't even contribute any fun, but can't really confront the level of this mistake and the need to do a lot more radical change to pull fun up from the jaws of monotony.

UPDATE: I looked at the actual UI changes. God help us all. They changed paragraphs into bullet points. I am glad the negative effects are shown, but then now I'm like, really it took this long for that? I know, progress is progress and should be applauded, but this is another way of them admitting they're just not even working on this game and have no intention of changing it.

Holding out hope this patch is like a "pretending we're still working on it while we prepare our actual big changes we haven't fully decided on yet, and since big change is coming, we don't really want to work that hard on the old stuff anymore but have to pretend like we are to show progress, because we can't admit what we're really going to change until it's ready". If that's the case, I do understand. But color so insulted by this patch I'm going to just pretend it doesn't exist and just keep waiting to see if there's anything better coming.

 

[Tuvok694]

Could it be that the developers waited a few months to see what the modders can come up with and then just copied their ideas?
I've been using the mod "City Hall" for many weeks, and it basically contains everything (and a little more) that is described in this new Dev Blog (at least related to the city production menu).

 

[Leucarum]

It took me a second to remember that this UI update wasn't already in the game and I just use mods...

 

[Yzman]

This is incredibly troubling. I admit my hopes are low, but I'm still waiting to see what sort of "big fat overhaul" might come for this game before fully judging it. This is a bad bad sign. From their release:


Yikes. I admit I appreciate honesty and they need to be honest so we shouldn't be too harsh when they are, but Yikes. They're admitting how disruptively bad their UI is. "Never should have shipped this way." But, given the first point, I forgive.


This KILLS ME. I understand what they're saying in good faith. Some UI mods show everything because Civ 6 players vestigial instinct is to want to have all that information and to develop mods that satisfy their intuition about what needs to be known. Not knowing that information is instinctively frustrating for veteran VI players, so there's a perceived need for it all to be in the UI. I understand and agree with Firaxis's point that you don't actually need to see the full breakdown of all yields. The game is not 6. I'm not sure I grok their solution, so I don't know if it was the right one, but I understand what they're trying to say.

It's just... YIKES.

I want to focus in on "This is due to the sheer depth of the game." That's a very polite way of saying, clustered, bloated, overcomplicated for little meaningful result. It's absolutely part of why I stopped playing. There's a ton to keep track of, which is hard to keep track of, frankly. However, it just doesn't matter that much. Your choices are limited. It's all just iterations on over-balanced micro yields that make civ uniques sound interesting when other than in a few cases, they don't do very much.

Civ 7 is a game where I have to set out to create the situation where many of the civs abilities blossom into amazing results, and I have to roll and re-roll, save scum, try a few times - like solving a puzzle with RNG - to feel like I made a civ's set of synergizing micro-yield bonuses really express. If you do do that, then you snowball anyway. And, you can't really make a civ blossom without being in a situation where you were already positioned to win anyway - in most cases. This is the core of the entire game, and it's bad.

I really am getting the message from Firaxis that they know exactly what their game is. I'd bet they spent a whole year getting this "sheer deep" mess to balance and they're terrified of messing with it. Where they are still selling to corporate that this is how you made a game streamlined and fun for a wider audience. Where all the little parts and microyields all fit together.

"We wouldn't want general audiences to know too much about the sheer deep complexity of the game, because they're too dumb to make choices from that much information."

This is a "sheer deep" game which also tiptoes around the capacities of its audience. No, that's dumb. Instead, this is just a game that is obsessed with a level of balancing that doesn't even contribute any fun, but can't really confront the level of this mistake and the need to do a lot more radical change to pull fun up from the jaws of monotony.

UPDATE: I looked at the actual UI changes. God help us all. They changed paragraphs into bullet points. I am glad the negative effects are shown, but then now I'm like, really it took this long for that? I know, progress is progress and should be applauded, but this is another way of them admitting they're just not even working on this game and have no intention of changing it.

Holding out hope this patch is like a "pretending we're still working on it while we prepare our actual big changes we haven't fully decided on yet, and since big change is coming, we don't really want to work that hard on the old stuff anymore but have to pretend like we are to show progress, because we can't admit what we're really going to change until it's ready". If that's the case, I do understand. But color so insulted by this patch I'm going to just pretend it doesn't exist and just keep waiting to see if there's anything better coming.

So you complain when they don't update and when they do. Nothing will please you except a new game. Let's be honest.

 

[tman2000]

So you complain when they don't update and when they do. Nothing will please you except a new game. Let's be honest.

Complaining that it's a bad update. If I was complaining about not having an update, and then one comes and it's bad, that doesn't address my original complaint and there's no contradiction.

In any event, that's not the substance of the comment I made anyway. Just clarifying my position relative to your claim.

 

[thecrazyscot]

For those disappointed the update is not bigger: anything with a x.x.x (e.g. 1.2.5) number is usually a relatively minor QOL/bugfix update. Expect larger changes at x.x (e.g. 1.3) and major differences at x.0 (e.g. 2.0).

Of course this pattern does not always hold true due to timelines, process quirks, and how things get shuffled around, but it's a good general yardstick to help manage expectations.

I've been playing other things the last few months but map generation changes are exciting and I'm thinking of playing a game or two before going back to other games and books currently holding my attention.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Wait?! There are people complaining that this update is too small?! How is an update that adds major changes to the UI, does a big balance pass on building costs, attributes and city-states bonuses, uses a completely new engine for map generation, adds 2 new map types and changes Napoleon's bonuses, a small update?!

 

[thecrazyscot]

To be clear I'm totally satisfied with how the update looks. Just wanted to point out the version numbering itself is indicative of the scale of changes anyone can reasonably expect.

 

[Leucarum]

Wait?! There are people complaining that this update is too small?! How is an update that adds major changes to the UI, does a big balance pass on building costs, attributes and city-states bonuses, uses a completely new engine for map generation, adds 2 new map types and changes Napoleon's bonuses, a small update?!

It feels small I think, but not through any fault of Firaxis'. It's just

The UI changes are pretty much the same as mods.

The Map types were probably a big deal. But it kind of feels like the map issues were mostly fixed already.

I think the biggest thing is the city state stuff. The switch to fixed values instead of % values will also be really good for the game. That said it definitely doesn't help exploration where the legacy paths are the biggest issue. And probably doesn't help modern or curtail snowballing if the AI is subject to the same constraints.

I have no doubt that it was a lot of work, and it's a step in the right direction... But this definitely won't right the ship yet.