Cooleatack

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 14, 2013
Messages
99
Location
The Netherlands
The latest patch added yet another game mode with a good idea, but poor execution/ which is incredibly lackluster. I would like to share my views and see what the community has to say about the topic.

I feel like they could have added so much more content and interactions to all three paid modes that would make them much more fun and game changing than the current gimmicks they really are.

They honestly subtract more from the game than they add, which is a shame, because again, the ideas for all of them so far are really good and listen to the wishes of the community for the game and follow a understandable expansion to the game.

- Apocalypse Mode could be more logical with earthquakes, tsunamis etc, and not make the game unplayable after the asteroids, but make them habitable after a period of time. Or use some of the existing Red Death scenario gameplay after the actual apocalypse. Heck, they could even incorporate religion into it more than just with soothsayers, considering many faiths believed disasters to be caused by gods.

- Secret societies should have events, missions, interactions with other societies, instead of haha bonus go brrrr and then not having to think about any of the other super unique societies again.

- Dramatic Ages should give Rise and Fall to empires, like the loyalty and Age system in, you know, Rise and Fall should have done. Make free cities eventually turn into their own civilizations. There are so many civs in the game that you don’t get to see in a match. It would be much more historical too if you see some of these civs die out and give rise to others through the already existing systems for fans of that. You even have colonial civs that could pop out of other civs.

These are just some ideas off my head that just feel like an organic and logical continuation of the ideas presented by these modes. I feel that a game designer with a creative team could come up with more than just a gimmick., especially considering that almost all of what I just suggested could be done with the existing content we have.

I love Civ and think that Firaxis has an incredible team, but aside from the civs/wonders that have come with the New Frontier Pass, the rest of the content unnecessarily fails to impress.

I would like to see what the rest of the community has to add to this discussion. Am I too harsh in this view? What other ideas do you have that could expand to the modes? Could it even be possible for the devs to expand the modes given? I suppose that simply seeing what the consensus is could also be good for Firaxis in itself for some feedback.
 
I agree with the OP. The content is honestly lacking for the price, and I would much prefer to see systems added or fleshed out as opposed to these gimmicks being continuously added. Unless the developers are asleep, they know that the late game is weak compared to Civ V, and this is where they could have focused their efforts. I'm not hopeful now we'll see any content like ideologies and corporations.
 
Like it or not,

The Civ VI is a mature product that has become what it is now. It is a gamified, in-a-wide-manner complex, history-inspired-but-not-driven turn-based strategy game with loads of nuances and intertwined interactions. It all came up like that after hours of development and game design decisions. It has been published on multiple platforms, and money is being spent to continue developing it on all platforms simultaneously.

The changes that devs make are heavily localized on the code level -- to prevent overall stability loss. So don't expect these updates to shift gameplay core, even beneath a toggler. These modes are not intended to become "another game within a game" or "better version of Civ 6", because that would require much more money from the player and you can't satisfy everybody with a single change.

By the way, this is why the pack is sold in parts: don't buy parts that you don't need.
 
Like it or not,

The Civ VI is a mature product that has become what it is now. It is a gamified, in-a-wide-manner complex, history-inspired-but-not-driven turn-based strategy game with loads of nuances and intertwined interactions. It all came up like that after hours of development and game design decisions. It has been published on multiple platforms, and money is being spent to continue developing it on all platforms simultaneously.

The changes that devs make are heavily localized on the code level -- to prevent overall stability loss. So don't expect these updates to shift gameplay core, even beneath a toggler. These modes are not intended to become "another game within a game" or "better version of Civ 6", because that would require much more money from the player and you can't satisfy everybody with a single change.

By the way, this is why the pack is sold in parts: don't buy parts that you don't need.

To add to this, these were always marketed as "the cherry on top". They aren't meant to reinvent the game, but shake it up, and I actually don't think they are that bad. You're also not paying JUST for them, but the new leaders and the new bonus content that isn't tied to the new modes either.

The only truly lackluster o ne to me is the Apocalypse Mode and only because the fun part appears at the end of the game where most usually win by.

The Secret Societies I found to be incredibly fun and keep it interesting. While the Dramatic Ages are defeniately a nice shake and expansion to an already existing mechanic.
 
Yea, I agree. I think this in large part due the modes being in standalone DLCs as well. There's a limit to the complexity they can afford to put into a small pack. I'm hoping that the upcoming packs with only 1 civ will have comparably more complex game modes, to make up for the lack of content of a whole civ - secret societies was already much more complex that the apocalypse or dramatic ages modes.

I also really hope the Devs will do additional adjustments to the modes down the line, based on community feedback.
 
To add to this, these were always marketed as "the cherry on top". They aren't meant to reinvent the game, but shake it up, and I actually don't think they are that bad. You're also not paying JUST for them, but the new leaders and the new bonus content that isn't tied to the new modes either.

The only truly lackluster o ne to me is the Apocalypse Mode and only because the fun part appears at the end of the game where most usually win by.

The Secret Societies I found to be incredibly fun and keep it interesting. While the Dramatic Ages are defeniately a nice shake and expansion to an already existing mechanic.

I really do feel that even though it comes in small packs they could still have been made to better use the existing game mechanics. That they are cherries, does not mean that they need to only contain the seed, which I do think is the case. Also on what kotpeter said, yes, the game is sold in chunks, but you could only get some content by buying the whole pack plus it had a small discount, so it should not matter. It is incentivised to buy the whole package. But if some feel that the content provided is deep enough, that is also a valid opinion that is good to be voiced.
 
  • Like
Reactions: j51
One game mode they should is custom empire creator.

When you turn this on it allows to 1st chose your Civ, then your leader and then the two other options rather a unit or building or two units etcs, and then the game to random crate the AI civs.

So i could play as Russia with Teddy with Redcoats and the Electric factory. Of course this will never be balanced, but Modes should be about playing in new creative ways. It is why the only mode I really like is the Tech Shuffle.
 
One game mode they should is custom empire creator.

When you turn this on it allows to 1st chose your Civ, then your leader and then the two other options rather a unit or building or two units etcs, and then the game to random crate the AI civs.

So i could play as Russia with Teddy with Redcoats and the Electric factory. Of course this will never be balanced, but Modes should be about playing in new creative ways. It is why the only mode I really like is the Tech Shuffle.
The programmers would dislike this comment :D
 
- I mostly agree, but free cities becoming their own civs might be a little too much.
- I was really disappointed with Apocalypse Mode. They should have added more disasters like earthquakes, plagues, forest fires etc. and make the global warming effects stronger. Adding more disasters is an excellent idea, but the way they did Apocalypse Mode was a fail IMO. I will probably never use this mode again. The mode doesnt really add anything interesting to the game. Most of the stuff is just nuisance like solar flares destroying all your buildings, which you need to repair one at the time.
 
Like it or not,

The Civ VI is a mature product that has become what it is now. It is a gamified, in-a-wide-manner complex, history-inspired-but-not-driven turn-based strategy game with loads of nuances and intertwined interactions. It all came up like that after hours of development and game design decisions. It has been published on multiple platforms, and money is being spent to continue developing it on all platforms simultaneously.

The changes that devs make are heavily localized on the code level -- to prevent overall stability loss. So don't expect these updates to shift gameplay core, even beneath a toggler. These modes are not intended to become "another game within a game" or "better version of Civ 6", because that would require much more money from the player and you can't satisfy everybody with a single change.

By the way, this is why the pack is sold in parts: don't buy parts that you don't need.

Yeah, while it might be neat to basically have each game mode affect large portions of the game, and effectively be like playing mods or scenarios on top of the whole game, that risks a lot of complications, and the more they interact, the more you have to worry about them interacting on top of each other.

For example, if you add apocalypse mode playing more into religion, say disasters potentially having people turn towards faith or away from it, or let your apostles target soothsayers, or even add extra religious beliefs explicitly for apocalypse mode (ie. a "God of Floods" pantheon or something like that), then suddenly if any other mode has anything more than a passing impact on religion, you need to make sure the modes won't step on each other's toes if they happen to both impact the same pieces.

Now, I do think they could have done a tiny little bit more interaction. For example, some of those apocalyse interactions with religion could be fairly self-contained. Or perhaps when secret societies are enabled, that would also cause a change to how spy missions are done or those odds are calculated, but each game mode would only really interact with one other game mode, for example. That might give just enough extra feel to the game modes to feel like they're complete pieces, and not just little add-ons.
 
I love the modes (except apocalypse).

The new dramatic ages is my favorite, uprisings during dark ages are great, gives this epic feel of controlling an empire that needs to hold on to its conquests.

Secret societies is something I dont have on every game but it has lots of content.

Shuffled tech trees is a more straightforward one but gives..interesting situations. :-D

Apocalypse mode I think I use in about 15-20% of games, the ending is too crazy. Love to use the soothsayers though! Even though the mode is my least favorite, the Maya dlc had good content.

I recommend NFP and hope to see the Second front(ier) opened next year!
 
Well, I did expect the 'good ideas-bad implementation' combo. That has been civ team's speciality for the past years. Now what really made me buy NFP was the announced regularity of patches, I was like 'yeah they learned how to counter their weaknesses'. I was naive. They simply don't bother maintaining. Like SS or Maya, fun concepts but definitely requiring tweaks...but nothing is coming except Winter.
 
I purchased the complete New Frontier Pass, but haven't even played with any of the new civs or mechanics after the Colombia/Maya Pack. I'm going wait until the whole Pass is released, then play a game with every mode on at the same time : Apocalypse, Secret Society, Shuffle Tech, Dramatic Ages and whatever the next 2 modes will be. Might be fun; will almost certainly be interesting.
 
I love Civ and think that Firaxis has an incredible team, but aside from the civs/wonders that have come with the New Frontier Pass, the rest of the content unnecessarily fails to impress.

Well, if you look at the actual expansions and what they brought to the table, you have to ask yourself if the features added are really all that impressive themselves.

Rise and Fall brought: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilization_VI:_Rise_and_Fall

Great Ages- At first I really thought this was a cool feature, but after 5 or so games, I found myself taking the same golden age perks every game. I also was annoyed that I felt I needed to "game" the system in terms of era score. It became an unnecessary level of micromanagement if I didn't choose to just not care because it ultimately didn't really matter after the first couple of ages anyway. Honestly most games I don't even pay attention to it anymore. Not really that impressive of a feature.

Loyalty- I was really excited about this feature. Cities revolting away sounded so cool to me. I remember when I was a kid playing Civ 2 there was a way you could cause a civil war, splitting a world power into 2 civs. It involved taking the capital of a far superior nation over, as well as there being at least 1 slot available for a new nation to spawn. It was really rare but so fun to cause. Instead, what we got was a system where stable peaceful empires rarely lose cities unless a powerful Eleanor is in the game, but otherwise it really just exists as a way to make warmongering a little more tedious and otherwise gets ignored most games. Not really that impressive of a feature.

Governors- Be honest, how often do you pretty much just go with the same governors and the same promotions every game? I sometimes have change my decision up in the very early game for my first governor, but by the mid game, these guys are just kind of there existing and being ignored by me. Not really an impressive feature.

Enhanced Alliances- Tier 1 alliances are virtually useless. Takes way too long to get to tier 2 and I think I've only ever gotten a tier 3 alliance twice, and this is considering I try to ally as often as possible because I like playing the diplomacy game. I don't think being allied or not being allied has ever really impacted my game in a noticeable way. The only time I notice it is when I've decided I don't like someone anymore and want to war them but dammit I just renewed the alliance 8 turns ago and now I have to wait 22 turns. Not really an impressive feature.

Emergencies- They're there I guess. The Rise and Fall version was really lacking. Gathering Storm made it somewhat engaging by adding disasters and diplomatic victory into the equation, but in Rise and Fall this feature was really really lacking. Not impressive.

Timeline- Cool, I guess. I don't even look at it and get slightly annoyed when it pops up on my screen now. Not really even a feature, just there for flavor.



Gathering Storm brought: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilization_VI:_Gathering_Storm

Environmental effects- AKA disasters. I like them I guess. It's cool to get some super high yield tiles every once in a while. Other people hate them. Many hate the fact that the feature can't be turned off completely. I think this group is one of the main motivators behind the devs going with toggleable game modes instead of adding new features. At any rate, this feature changes where I build cities sometimes, but otherwise it really just adds a bit of annoyance to the game in exchange for some long term yield gains. Honestly not that engaging or impressive of a feature.

Power and consumable resources- The power system was mostly added to make T3 buildings more compelling. I'm not sure if it accomplished that goal or not. The main problem here is that late game exclusive features just don't impact the outcome of most games. As a result it's a pretty meh feature. Consumable resources on the other hand added a layer of depth to the combat system that was lacking, but ultimately most of the time you sit at the resource cap. I like it, I guess, but it really only gets noticed in brief intervals throughout the game. Not that impressive of a feature overall.

Engineering projects- Dams, Canals, Tunnels, Railroads. Dams are the only one that I build with any sort of consistency. I'd love to build Canals but the map generator refuses to create maps that have useful locations for canals on a consistent basis. Tunnels can come in handy sometimes, but unless I'm playing as Incans, they end up not really impacting the outcome of the game. Railroads do serve a purpose, but again the come late and aren't impactful enough for the amount of micromanagement that goes into them. I'm glad the Engineering projects exist, but they are about the least impactful feature the Devs have added.

World Congress- It was kind of cool for a minute until I figured out how the AI votes. I personally preferred how other Civ games did it where the decisions were permanent and impactful, but even those games really failed to make this feature totally compelling. Also, I despise how diplomatic victory works in this game. I really wish they'd incorporated the alliance system in a meaningful way with Diplomatic victory. Allies could form voting blocs in world congress. World Congress could have initiatives that boost Alliance tier generation substantially. Diplomatic victory could involve actually having tier 3 allies or something. The 2 systems could have really had a lot of depth had they been designed to interact with each other. Instead, we got something that I usually just buzz through every time it pops up unless I'm going for a Diplo victory, at which point I stop to take a few extra seconds to figure out what the "correct" vote is likely to be for me free Diplo victory points. A pretty meh feature if you ask me.

21st century Techs and Civics- I mean an extra era is always fun. I do think this made culture victory and science victory "better" in terms of being more engaging, though perhaps it also made them a bit more silly. Firing laser beams at your space ship to let it violate the laws of physics sounds like something out of an early 2000s dank meme, not something that really makes a ton of sense in a civ game. Sending Rock Bands to other cultures to perform and win them over to your culture actually makes some degree of sense and it did serve to make the culture victory more interactive than it was before but the implementation turns culture victory into a faith heavy victory and that has always seemed just a little bit weird to me. Not that faith doesn't effect culture, just that it is nearly the entirety of a culture victory now is what seems weird to me. So, okay feature I guess.

----------

I feel like the game modes, at least Dramatic Ages and to a lesser extent Secret Societies, actually feel more impactful than most of the stuff listed above. At least in the sense that I feel like I'll be forced to interact with them throughout the entirety of the game. Dramatic Ages in particular, not just because it breaks up borders whenever there's an era change, but moreso because being able to change out the golden age perk on the fly as a policy card makes it far more engaging than just picking the best one did. Now, I don't have to just take monumentality. I can swap it in when I have a use for it and then swap to something else when I don't.

If I could trade in the game modes for anything, it would have actually been a real serious update to all the features in the game that needed polish. I don't really want another new base feature given what the base features they added in the past ended up looking like in the long run.

Edit: I just want to note that I'm not saying all this to be critical of the game in anyway, I just personally feel like the game modes aren't really that much different in terms of impact than the actual features that have been added in the past.
 
Last edited:
. These modes are not intended to become "another game within a game" or "better version of Civ 6", because that would require much more money from the player
I paid £20 for both R&F and GS, but had to pay £33 for NFP. I've paid more than treble for NFP than I did for either XP. Even without a sale on, it costs double. It's hard to argue that it's down to them not getting enough money to fund it, when they've been doing more for less.

Granted, they probably couldn't do a full XP level game mode each pack, but I don't think it unreasonable to expect that level of change over the entire pack. They've still got time to pull it back, but I don't think we're on course for that. The lack of cohesiveness mandated by a season pass also means that I'd actually want more content to make up for the loss in quality.
 
I'm enjoying the new game modes, with Tech and Civic Shuffle and Dramatic Ages being my favourites so far. I also want to give Firaxis Kudos for trying something new with NFP and committing to an ambitious release schedule.

While I don't think the new modes are poor in execution per se, I am learning to manage my expectations with what we get each month. With so much content being released, it makes sense each individual game mode would see less development time and maybe lack the depth we would prefer to see.

Personally, I'd prefer quality over quantity, with fewer modes being released but each one seeing more development (while still having the regular communication from the devs that has come with NFP). Certainly there is a lot of potential for the game modes. Red Death got a season 2, so lets hope the new modes also get revisited by Firaxis in the future.
 
I think these togglable game modes are a legit way to help Firaxis experiment with their playerbase and their game; in order to see what works and what doesn't. I'm OK with that as long as they keep improving and polishing Civ 6. I don't want another buggy vanilla Civ game in the near future.
 
Top Bottom