Historical paths problem

[brick623]

Millenia's gameplay system is interesting in that your civ doesn't have any flavour or traits at the start (except one minor buff) instead you develop national spirits which you pick in game. Often your choice reflects the geography, so if you're Egypt but spawn onto vast plains you can take a nomadic horse archer type route, instead of permanently being a civ with a load of river and wonder building buffs but unable to use them. On the other hand I think it does take a some flavour out of the game though, and would be a change in direction since Civ 5.

But you're always kind of screwed if you're playing England on a mostly land map in Civ 5 and 6, of course, if the earth has no oceans, why would civilisations develop specialised naval capabilities?

 

[Civinator]

And anyone near enough mountains could be Inca, and probably anyone occupying multiple islands could be polynesia,
and possibly anyone with 4 settlements on the new world can become America,
or anyone in complete control of a landmass could become Japan Age2
Or anyone who lost their capital in the crisis can become the Byzantines
Or conquering/annexing 4+ Independent peoples unlocks Germany
….. etc.

pst! You reveal here tons of upcoming DLCs!

 

[stealth_nsk]

Hm, I'm not sure this makes sense. Why would FXS tie themselves up in knots trying to determine "the most historical of the historical paths", rather than just allowing each AI civ to pick one of the available historical paths at random?

All info we have now points at having just one historical path for each civilization. There are other types of paths, like regional or unlocked, but AIs use historical path by default.

Having multiple historical paths would solve the problem, but populating the world for them would require dozens if not hundreds of civs. Let's say you try to cover Polynesia and Australia region - you need at least 5 civilizations there if you need historical path variety, but if you want to deal with potential colonialism issues, you need more - at least Australia have to be represented as Britain's path. So that's 6 civs as a bare minimum for a region which was never represented before by more than 2 civs.

 

[Gorbles]

The great Mongolia has been reduced to anyone with a bunch of horses could have been them, yeah.

Yes, this is exactly how the quirks of history work, and have always worked. Empires have risen and fell because brothers had nothing more than a literal falling out. Others did so because one individual was particularly charismatic / the opposite. Or because they had a bunch of horses (or stole a bunch). Or because they had a lot of limestone, or copper.

Every single inflection point in history is the culmination of the exact complicated, often messy context surrounding said point. But we like to try and identify particular circumstances that causality revolved around.

Translating this into a video game is difficult. Abstractions are always going to be required. If attempting the abstraction to better model causality harms your immersion, I completely get that. But attempting that better model is what I personally appreciate.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

All info we have now points at having just one historical path for each civilization. There are other types of paths, like regional or unlocked, but AIs use historical path by default.

Having multiple historical paths would solve the problem, but populating the world for them would require dozens if not hundreds of civs. Let's say you try to cover Polynesia and Australia region - you need at least 5 civilizations there if you need historical path variety, but if you want to deal with potential colonialism issues, you need more - at least Australia have to be represented as Britain's path. So that's 6 civs as a bare minimum for a region which was never represented before by more than 2 civs.

I'm still unclear what the evidence for this is? I think they have been deliberately vague so far.

The intention of this mechanic, surely, is to allow many more interesting routes through history. This requires many more civs, absolutely, but they have decoupled leaders from civs, presumably with the intention of adding a lot of civs. I just don't see why they would be so restrictive with the idea of historical paths.

 

[ezzlar]

When I compare to Rhyes and Fall there are two major differences that maintains the immersion for that mod:

Firstly, yes, civs change as you play. But the player tries to keep their civ alive during the whole game. If you dont fail, you dont see why you should be forced to change. You can go as the Romans for a long time.

Secondly, the civs change at certain time periods. Not all at the same time. It does feel a bit more resonable?

Since Civ7 will go another way here new problems arise when it comes to immersion. Specially what the player feels is a "reasonable" argument for you having to change civ and to what civ. And then again, Rhyes is a historic world simulator. Civ7 isnt.

 

[Siptah]

re: immersion
I feel the word is used wrongly in 90% of cases in these discussions. People are talking about a believable world and call this immersive. But immersion is (at least in psychology), among other things, completely subjective and an embodied sensation. It has some sense to it to talk about immersion in the way it is used here for some kind of games in which you interact with the environment more „naturally,“ e.g. a first person shooter or assassin‘s creed. But the way you interact in civ - what do you feel like being? In best case, you are immersed in playing a board game. Almost by nature, everything is abstracted to a degree that it completely depends on the player to create any kind of belief whatsoever - maybe you feel the world is believable. But the game and situation reminds you all the time that you are not actually Augustus or leader of Rome or at your current tech level, etc. If something as basic and unnatural as having turns and a grid doesn‘t stop you from finding the world believable, I think it is mostly a familiarity issue for what you find believable or not as a player. But I honestly don‘t see where immersion comes into this. It has become a common catchword for criticism or praise of video games on a personal basis (because no one can argue that you are wrong), but broadly misused in what it actually means. For example, it‘s perfectly realistic to be immersed in a task (such as playing a game) without this task to be particularly immersive or believable.

 

[GIO888]

The "something" bugging me since the Civ VII announcement has just been solved for me by aieeegrunt?

"The real problem here is that Civ has been a sandbox game for decades, and now it’s a forced narrative."

 

[Thormodr]

The "something" bugging me since the Civ VII announcement has just been solved for me by aieeegrunt?

"The real problem here is that Civ has been a sandbox game for decades, and now it’s a forced narrative."

Paradox had the same dilemma with the EU series. Do you let it be completely sandbox and let people go bananas or do you force the player into doing certain unavoidable things.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm still unclear what the evidence for this is? I think they have been deliberately vague so far.

The intention of this mechanic, surely, is to allow many more interesting routes through history. This requires many more civs, absolutely, but they have decoupled leaders from civs, presumably with the intention of adding a lot of civs. I just don't see why they would be so restrictive with the idea of historical paths.

Developers surely are deliberately vague and they even could change things they already announced. And yes, we've only heard about Ai following historical path in one source only. The evidences are, though:

1. When speaking about historical paths, developers use singular case
2. All historical paths shown so far (3 actually) don't have any branches
3. The transitions we've seen so far don't look natural and the only explanation I see is the historical path exclusiveness
4. As I wrote in previous post, designing multiple historical paths for each antiquity civ and assigning each later civ to at least one historical path, requires huge amount of civilizations to cover all the game region.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Developers surely are deliberately vague and they even could change things they already announced. And yes, we've only heard about Ai following historical path in one source only. The evidences are, though:

1. When speaking about historical paths, developers use singular case
2. All historical paths shown so far (3 actually) don't have any branches
3. The transitions we've seen so far don't look natural and the only explanation I see is the historical path exclusiveness
4. As I wrote in previous post, designing multiple historical paths for each antiquity civ and assigning each later civ to at least one historical path, requires huge amount of civilizations to cover all the game region.

Thanks.

Well for me, this isn't nearly enough evidence to be conclusive.

You may be reading the signs correctly, but I think (and hope) that ultimately we will see multiple historical paths for Rome and other civs, it's the only thing that makes sense for the system they have introduced. I suspect that at launch, the paths may feel a little limited and empty, but I believe that they will flesh this out with enough civs over the course of the game's lifecycle to make it feel both rich and interesting.

If they don't flesh it out, then I can begin to agree a little more with those who have concerns over the paths we have seen so far. I can be patient though, since I believe the whole motivation and purpose of this system is to allow them to explore many different paths, and I like this idea in principle since the potential is enormous.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The "something" bugging me since the Civ VII announcement has just been solved for me by aieeegrunt?

"The real problem here is that Civ has been a sandbox game for decades, and now it’s a forced narrative."

Yes, that's the big point. It surely will look significantly different from previous civ games. The real question - will it still be as interesting and replayable as before?

This kind of forced narrative doesn't seem really restricting.

 

[ColtSeavers]

re: immersion
I feel the word is used wrongly in 90% of cases in these discussions. People are talking about a believable world and call this immersive. But immersion is (at least in psychology), among other things, completely subjective and an embodied sensation. It has some sense to it to talk about immersion in the way it is used here for some kind of games in which you interact with the environment more „naturally,“ e.g. a first person shooter or assassin‘s creed. But the way you interact in civ - what do you feel like being? In best case, you are immersed in playing a board game. Almost by nature, everything is abstracted to a degree that it completely depends on the player to create any kind of belief whatsoever - maybe you feel the world is believable. But the game and situation reminds you all the time that you are not actually Augustus or leader of Rome or at your current tech level, etc. If something as basic and unnatural as having turns and a grid doesn‘t stop you from finding the world believable, I think it is mostly a familiarity issue for what you find believable or not as a player. But I honestly don‘t see where immersion comes into this. It has become a common catchword for criticism or praise of video games on a personal basis (because no one can argue that you are wrong), but broadly misused in what it actually means. For example, it‘s perfectly realistic to be immersed in a task (such as playing a game) without this task to be particularly immersive or believable.

I'm not an english native speaker, so not an expert how exactly "immersion" is defined in the English language. However, I think you are making things somewhat to complicated here. At the end of the day, a lot of players just don't want to play as/ or against Augustus leading Mongolia. Whether you call that a-historic, non immersive or any other word, doesn't really matter. I wouldn't mind giving people the Option! to have the AI play with random leaders (non historical paths), though. As long as I don't have to play that way, I'm fine with that, too.

 

[Leyrann]

Developers surely are deliberately vague and they even could change things they already announced. And yes, we've only heard about Ai following historical path in one source only. The evidences are, though:

1. When speaking about historical paths, developers use singular case
2. All historical paths shown so far (3 actually) don't have any branches
3. The transitions we've seen so far don't look natural and the only explanation I see is the historical path exclusiveness
4. As I wrote in previous post, designing multiple historical paths for each antiquity civ and assigning each later civ to at least one historical path, requires huge amount of civilizations to cover all the game region.

What makes you so confident Egypt -> Songhai and Egypt -> Abbassids are not both considered historical paths? Because I know of absolutely nothing to indicate that.

 

[Krikkit1]

But you're always kind of screwed if you're playing England on a mostly land map in Civ 5 and 6, of course, if the earth has no oceans, why would civilisations develop specialised naval capabilities?

And that is the coolest thing about the system, if a civ of the Second or Third Age has terrain based abilities
1. That can be a way to unlock it
2. That lets you choose that civ only in the case you need it (Rome players probably won’t choose to go Norman-Britain on a land locked map

 

[Krikkit1]

What makes you so confident Egypt -> Songhai and Egypt -> Abbassids are not both considered historical paths? Because I know of absolutely nothing to indicate that.

They talked about Regional paths while showing that.

Basically a civ/culture unlocks one (or more) Regional paths, and one (?or more?) of those Regional paths are “Historical” and the default for the AI.

 

[Leyrann]

They talked about Regional paths while showing that.

Basically a civ/culture unlocks one (or more) Regional paths, and one (?or more?) of those Regional paths are “Historical” and the default for the AI

Where did they say this?

 

[Riconatic]

I'm not an english native speaker, so not an expert how exactly "immersion" is defined in the English language. However, I think you are making things somewhat to complicated here. At the end of the day, a lot of players just don't want to play as/ or against Augustus leading Mongolia. Whether you call that a-historic, non immersive or any other word, doesn't really matter. I wouldn't mind giving people the Option! to have the AI play with random leaders (non historical paths), though. As long as I don't have to play that way, I'm fine with that, too.

And to answer your problem…It seems that as a player you never ever to encounter that if you do not want to. Ai has programmed to go historic route (by default) and you are not forced to select it ever.

 

[Siptah]

I'm not an english native speaker, so not an expert how exactly "immersion" is defined in the English language. However, I think you are making things somewhat to complicated here. At the end of the day, a lot of players just don't want to play as/ or against Augustus leading Mongolia. Whether you call that a-historic, non immersive or any other word, doesn't really matter. I wouldn't mind giving people the Option! to have the AI play with random leaders (non historical paths), though. As long as I don't have play that way, I'm fine with that, too.

Of course I‘m making things too complicated (I’m working as perception psychologist after all) and I’m fully aware of that and that any remark will not change anything. Still bugs me though. It‘s comparable to when someone would
come into the ages discussion and complain that they think it is a bad idea to have the third age based only on the 1920s (because that’s how they understand „modern“).
I can comprehend people’s problems with the switching, though. It‘s a valid complaint, just not so good to be explained with immersion.

 

[stealth_nsk]

What makes you so confident Egypt -> Songhai and Egypt -> Abbassids are not both considered historical paths? Because I know of absolutely nothing to indicate that.

I'm not confident, it's just current evidence. In the sources we have, Egypt -> Songhai is considered a historical path and the rest of the paths mentioned are either regional or unlocked.

Still, as I said, Firaxis has enough free ground to create multiple historical paths for AI to follow. I just don't know how they are going to handle them outside of Europe/Mediterranean region.