Have you SEEN these bonuses?

[ManoftheHour333]

I dunno, I think I‘m used to having so many bonuses to think of. Late game Humankind or EU4 seem to amount to at least a similar magnitude of bonuses. The difference there is that you choose them over time, often considering which one to choose from a pool or unlocking „the next one“. In civ 7, you basically choose three times - and more packaged than in the paradox games. This may make it harder to remember them, not the actual amount of modifiers and uniques. Yet, personally, I like it a lot.

I‘m more concerned that I‘ll forget the bonuses from wonders and resources than from civs…

And here I was hoping that Civ would not turn into a paradox game...

But I do think that you have a point that we haven't considered how the wonder bonuses or terrtain features or city buildings' bonuses will work. But the fact that they are now really, really competing with 10 different things the player has to know when going up against just a civ could be troubling. I don't know maybe it's just me but it just seems like a lot. Obviously we'll have to wait and see but I'm not in love with this design of bonuses so far.

 

[icon41gimp]

I like this - it's much more likely to generate Starcraft type gameplay rather than Age of Empires.

One of the biggest issues I have with Civ6 is that there are a couple openers that all civs basically slot into and then from there you transition into the path to your win condition which is basically the same for every civ going for it. Games feel very samey where you go for Currency then Feudalism then Apprenticeship then Industrialization blah blah blah. I really hope they can make the gameplay between each civ feel much more differentiated than it currently has been.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

Sure it's great to have more civs but that could just make the choice even more daunting. I wouldn't be surprised if we see 40 civs in just the base game alone; 10 per age and then who knows what extra ones they'll add.

Except it won't be more daunting than Civ VI at launch. IIRC, Civ VI had 16 civs at launch, so you had to choose between 16 civs. If Civ VII has 40, sure, it's more... but it amount to roughly 13 civs per age. So, whenever you have to make a choice, you'll have to choose only between 13 civs, so the choice will be less daunting that Civ VI at launch (and even nowadays, where you have 50+ civs to choose from at the start).

Sure, you'll have to choose 3 times; but choosing once between 40 civs and choosing thrice in three separate pools of 13 civs is, mathematically and psychologically, not the same thing at all. You'll only have to make this choice roughly every 200 turns. It's exactly as if you had to make your choice if you started your game again.
Especially since, when entering the Exploration then Modern age, you won't have to choose between 13 civs: most of them will be locked from you, either because it's not the "historical" (ew) path, or because you didn't unlock their requirements. So you'll have to make a choice between 3 to 6 civs, perhaps. So you won't have to choose between 40 civs, but choose between 13 civs, then 4 then 3, so 20 in total. Quite a reasonable amount.

Sure, in pure, raw numbers, there will be an abundant list of civs at launch; but in term of players' choice, it'll be roughly the same amount that we had before, at least for each choice independantly.

(Leaders, here, is another matter, though, as all of them will be available at the start of a game, and if we consider that we'll have a leader for each civ, then, you'll indeed have to choose between

 

[Thormodr]

"The civ-switching is taking away the uniqueness of each civ! Look at Humankind: each faction was bland and generic!"
"Oh, right, that's true. Well, don't worry, because each culture in each age will truly feel unique!"
"Wait, no, not like that!"

Slight friendly mockery apart: one of the reasons why the boardgame Root: A Game of Wooland Might and Right is quite a popular and successful game, despite it being quite complicated especially for newbie entry-level boardgame players, is that each faction truly feels unique and different from the others. In fact, the amount of actions they have in common is lower than their specific abilities. The Marquise de Cat, the Eyrie Dynasties, the Woodland Alliance and the Vagabond all feel truly distinct, and makes you want to play another game trying another faction. And when you factor in the expansion factions, you have a wide variety of truly unique ways to play.

And I feel -and hope- that Civ VII is kinda going this path. Each civ will feel unique and you'll be encouraged to try new ones. Civ VI already did that, kind of, but there are dozens of civs in Civ V that I never tried because they basically boiled down to: "Civ A is Civ B, but slightly to the left". Here, we'll have to see more precisely what each civ brings to the table, but it's already quite satisfying to see that choosing your civ will really have an impact.

Moreover: you will also have to adapt and be encouraged to adapt yourself as the age goes down. No more endless relaunched because you started as the Incan in the middle of the plains, or the Mali deep down in the tundra! You'll have basic starting bias, the the truly environmental civs will come later and will be more satisfying. I think. Well, at least I hope.

Root is fun with its assymetric factions. The designer has a real gift for that.

 

[JNR13]

I like that they're stacking up on the civs themselves with more unique abilities. As mentioned before, picking your civ is still a single choice, after all. And I think it will result in *less* "unique abilities play you" because you're probably not even going to exploit all of them fully. Chances are that you unlock more traditions than you can or even want to slot. Now a civ can have a peaceful bonus and a warfare bonus - Greece for example gets a hostile and a friendly diplo tradition. You probably don't need both simultaneously. Rather, you now have a unique bonus available whichever way you go. Greece is no longer just "either you are Greek cultural or you are generic scientific". Now, many more paths can be infused with the flavor of your civ as you play it.

However, what I like to call "unique fatigue" still seems real, unfortunately. Civ VI's offenders were suzerain bonuses, world wonders, great people, alliances, governments, policies, government plaza buildings, etc. There's nothing wrong with stacking up modifiers, but they should not dominate your civ's uniques. Policies are fine to keep I think because you have a single overview screen for them but the rest easily becomes a mess where you lose track of things. Many of these modifier sources are gone, but now we have the leader upgrade trees and these legacy bonuses.

Personally, I'd like modifiers to have a clear identity. Seeing the modifier description should give you a clear idea about where it is from. In Civ VI, some world wonder effects were indistinguishable from some unique civ or leaders abilities (e.g. "+1 Wildcard policy slot"). What I'd like to see is modifiers following certain rules so you don't lose track of them:

- Policies: empire-wide bonuses enhancing things you sometimes but not always do
- Leader upgrades: empire-wide bonuses enhancing things you permanently benefit from
- Wonders: location-based effect
- Legacy bonuses: immediate one-time effects to aid the era transition
- Governments: boosting celebrations is a clear identity; not what I would've gone for, but at least it stands apart.

Speaking of governments, they seem to be an indicator that yield porn is still very much a focus. Governments used to have mechanical differences. In Civ VI, while governments already had their fairly generic modifiers going, they also provided different slot types and were the primary source of Influence and later Favor. Now all ancient governments are exclusively a choice of which set of two yield bonuses to pick. I'd have to double-check policies, but my impression there was also that they're being reduced *even more* to "which yield do you want?"

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

- Policies: empire-wide bonuses enhancing things you sometimes but not always do
- Leader upgrades: empire-wide bonuses enhancing things you permanently benefit from
- Wonders: location-based effect
- Legacy bonuses: immediate one-time effects to aid the era transition
- Governments: boosting celebrations is a clear identity; not what I would've gone for, but at least it stands apart.

This. And to it, I would add:
- Civilzations: unique units, buildings and policies
- Great people: immediate one-time effects that boost your economy or military
- Luxury Resources: on-going effects that boost the economy of a single city
- Strategic Resources: on-going effects that boost part of your military

 

[Krikkit1]

Quite early for such definitive statements.

If uniques do not play player at all then they are either useless or balance of game is so whacked that you pursue one strategy anyway.

It is more visible in board games where finding optimal plays is much more trivial. Most common solution to make games less repeatable is based on combinatorics. However you achieve much more combinations by having multiple packages of randomized stuff rather than just one big package. Furthermore good board games are also interactive, and forces player to adapt upon opponents' actions.

Now if I choose a great package of abilities that will define the majority of my actions in game, what's a point of playing. One decision, you almost click an auto-play button. It would be an extremely disappointing gameplay with low replayability value. Therefore I would prefer for it to have an impact on game but within a reasonable margin.
Right now, we can't evaluate this impact. Therefore I have used the word 'might'. The amount of bonuses is concerning. The issue will not disappear just because player has chosen that playstyle. Too much eggs in one basket.


Thinking further, we know that civilizations are unlocked by certain prerequisites (horses for Mongolia?). This is so much worse, I have seen such mechanics before. Instead of enjoying the era players will try to abuse the mechanic to ensure certain civilization conversion. It will be like: ensure prereq A and fail as many other prereqs possible. The gameplay becomes narrow.
Well, even civ series already had something similar, era score in civ6.

Why would you want to fail prereqs, you get to choose the civ you want.

 

[LastSword]

Why would you want to fail prereqs, you get to choose the civ you want.

Unfortunately I was working under false impression that player will be ultimately limited to 3 options upon civ switching.

Though to be honest I find it extremely hard to find any decent gameplay info about it, too much gibberish around it.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Unfortunately I was working under false impression that player will be ultimately limited to 3 options upon civ switching.

Though to be honest I find it extremely hard to find any decent gameplay info about it, too much gibberish around it.

Most civs will probably have about 3 "historical" options to choose from whether by the initial civilizations or leader chosen. Any other potential unlocks will be by playing the game such as acquiring 3 horses for Mongolia, or settling near many mountains to become the Inca etc.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Though to be honest I find it extremely hard to find any decent gameplay info about it, too much gibberish around it.

This. Which makes much of the heated discussion about this topic amusing. Details on how this mechanic will work will be coming, right now we're speculating from marketing-speak.

 

[RedCourtJester]

I like this - it's much more likely to generate Starcraft type gameplay rather than Age of Empires.

One of the biggest issues I have with Civ6 is that there are a couple openers that all civs basically slot into and then from there you transition into the path to your win condition which is basically the same for every civ going for it. Games feel very samey where you go for Currency then Feudalism then Apprenticeship then Industrialization blah blah blah. I really hope they can make the gameplay between each civ feel much more differentiated than it currently has been.

This is my sentiment as well. It's why I tend to burn out on civ quickly. There aren't enough unique goodies for each civ to prevent me from getting bored progressing through the same techs and general infrastructure, and to some extent that even applied to districts. Now that civs have unique buildings, unique quarters, and unique tech trees, and we are guaranteed that same depth of choice being refreshed at mid- and late-game with the new civs, the moment-to-moment gameplay is going to be much less grindy.

 

[Tanel]

I've always wanted Civs to be more unique so I'm really happy. If anything the complexity just gives a reason to play each Civ more than once or twice.

 

[Fummy]

My understanding is that you start off only with your unique ability and have to unlock all the other "unique abilities" with the civic trees. So its not as overwhelming as you think. You get each ability and building one at a time when you go down the unique civic trees. None of the unique units seem to have a tech requirement so I guess culture is a lot more important for getting them than in any previous game.

Compared to previous games where you have all the abilities from the start but many weren't relevant yet or uniques that are on the tech tree further down, this is actually not so different. it also gives you a choice in what order to unlock them. I wonder if any traditions you didnt unlock by the time you change era are lost...

 

[bbbt]

Anyways...just something I wanted to mention as I was dumbfounded and concerned at the amount of bonuses and things I'll have to remember about individual civs+leaders for this iteration of the game. Obviously I'll be waiting a bit before I sink money into the game so can reassess then but I just noticed that few people seem to be talking about how the structure of the civs themselves-rather than the game/ages-will be affecting the game as whole.

I also have a concern about the myriad of bonuses, but in a different way: that it will lead to a feeling of 'sameness', so to speak, where it's just different permutations of the same types of effects, and you don't have any of the more interesting designs of 5 or 6 (ala Venice or Maori). Humankind had this issue to me, but too soon to tell for 7. I generally prefer fewer, more significant bonuses to lots of little bonuses (I still prefer the policy trees of 5 to the policy cards of 6 for example).

Egypt has a myriad of bonuses, but they are primarily thematic: gold bonuses, navigable river bonuses, desert bonuses. If all designs are similarly thematic, it might not that be that difficult: by the time you hit your first era switch, you'll likely have a good idea of what you are aiming for and the terrain around you, and can choose from that. Or from the sound of it, you may only have a couple choices.

From a UX/UI perspective some sort of thematic summary (ie "Egypt gets bonuses primarily around gold, navigable rivers, and desert") might be useful in the civ description (maybe toggleable) to help that initial feeling of being overwhelmed.