How to repair the Age transition system -not a civ game- opinions and suggestions

[Arcaian]

Both of you have misread the original post. Nowhere has OP talked about a single "correct" path, they've presented several "or" based transition options. You're straw manning this whole thread into something it isn't.

The OP's examples that provide a full pathway:

• Rome -> one of a series of acceptable intermediates -> Italy
• Greece -> Byzantium (or an incredibly obscure 2nd choice) -> Modern Greece
• Turks -> Ottomans -> Turkey
• Israelites -> Venice (???) -> Israel
• Aztec -> Michica -> Mexico

These are all clearly based off of reconstructing a pathway for a modern day construct of a national identity, and/or nonsensical (I am baffled by proto-american olmecs into the USA). They explicitly say:

The Last piece of the puzzle is to
1: RESTRICT every Civ swap to its NATURAL succession.
Leave the option to swap completely a civ to another, and maybe add a middle ground option, like shared borders, cultural exchange, but to ADD only Strict cultural proximity jumping, requires that all civs has a LINEAR optional choice in the first place...
2: RESTRICT Leaders to their Natural civilization. (And leave UNRESTRICTED Leaders as an option (as it was in Civ IV)).
3: Balance out the Age Reset and the tech reset... it is ok IMO if some civs still had to learn Writing in the MODERN AGE but had already unlocked Metallurgy....
but don't just plain the field at every reset as a Tech tree option for every civ should also get in a possible super-patch.

That each Civ should only be able to swap to its natural successor - i.e. to strictly build unique, 'correct' pathways to arrive at modern-day national state's national identities. I am not strawmanning anything, this is literally what the OP says - though they do say "maybe" there should be an option for "strict cultural proximity jumping", but only so long as those nationalist cultural identity pathways are created for all civs. They are very clearly insistent that this is supposed to create a clear, linear, correct option from which deviation might be acceptable. This thread has been, from the beginning, about creating pathways that justify identities only built in the last ~200 years, and which were built for political purposes, not for historical inaccuracy. That's what this is all about.

 

[Xur]

I’d consider myself a pretty normal person, but I’ve done some horrible things in single-player games - Fallout, RimWorld, Stellaris, Crusader Kings, and so on. I’ve seen RimWorld streamers do far more evil than my imagination would ever allow. It’s not that violence is the goal - it’s that the option exists. That’s what matters.

Wanting a game to be limited by your real-life morals is a strange idea. Should all shooter games be banned, too? Where do you draw the line - and where do I draw mine? Every individual, culture, and civilization has its own values. There are still tribes today that practice cannibalism - that's their normal. I'm not saying they’re out there playing Civilization, but it’s a good example of how morals, culture, and politics are deeply relative.

I fully respect that you might not want to play with certain beliefs. But to say you don’t want to play against them either? That feels like an extremely limiting approach. If I had to impose my own moral code on every game I play, I’d be stuck playing solitaire.

I’d argue that a civilization game should lean into extremes. I don’t want to face off against a cute leader who’s mad that I have more ships than she does - I want to fight real evil. That’s what makes stories compelling.

Some of the most popular books, movies, and games are power fantasies - for good reason. They sell. Personally, I’d love to see Disney make a super dark, Sith-focused Star Wars movie. But I suspect they share your views, so that’s probably not happening. And for the record, I don’t think I’m a Sith... as far as I know.

Nationalist is not the same as Nazis. Come on...

 

[MutilationWave]

To be fair here, @Lazy sweeper can be difficult to decipher sometimes. No offense meant, as I only speak one language decently well.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I stand by my interpretation of OP. Even in the adjusted quote there's talk of shared borders. Given the examples around tmnirthwestern Europe, I think any reasonable read of the rest of his post would be that the paths they'd mentioned are ideation not full solution, and they would appreciate and expect more than 1 option for them too, but that they are vaguely believable rather than Maya > chola for instance

 

[Arcaian]

I stand by my interpretation of OP. Even in the adjusted quote there's talk of shared borders. Given the examples around tmnirthwestern Europe, I think any reasonable read of the rest of his post would be that the paths they'd mentioned are ideation not full solution, and they would appreciate and expect more than 1 option for them too, but that they are vaguely believable rather than Maya > chola for instance

I don't know how that would be the only reasonable read of their post when they explicitly say they want the default option to be that a civ is restricted to only swap to its natural successor, with optional non-default game modes to keep things as they are. I don't think it's an unreasonable read of their posts to say that they want clear unambiguous, restrictive paths towards current nation-state identities in the Modern age.

 

[Arcaian]

I’d consider myself a pretty normal person, but I’ve done some horrible things in single-player games - Fallout, RimWorld, Stellaris, Crusader Kings, and so on. I’ve seen RimWorld streamers do far more evil than my imagination would ever allow. It’s not that violence is the goal - it’s that the option exists. That’s what matters.

Wanting a game to be limited by your real-life morals is a strange idea. Should all shooter games be banned, too? Where do you draw the line - and where do I draw mine? Every individual, culture, and civilization has its own values. There are still tribes today that practice cannibalism - that's their normal. I'm not saying they’re out there playing Civilization, but it’s a good example of how morals, culture, and politics are deeply relative.

I fully respect that you might not want to play with certain beliefs. But to say you don’t want to play against them either? That feels like an extremely limiting approach. If I had to impose my own moral code on every game I play, I’d be stuck playing solitaire.

I’d argue that a civilization game should lean into extremes. I don’t want to face off against a cute leader who’s mad that I have more ships than she does - I want to fight real evil. That’s what makes stories compelling.

Some of the most popular books, movies, and games are power fantasies - for good reason. They sell. Personally, I’d love to see Disney make a super dark, Sith-focused Star Wars movie. But I suspect they share your views, so that’s probably not happening. And for the record, I don’t think I’m a Sith... as far as I know.

Nationalist is not the same as Nazis. Come on...

I don't know who this is replying too - I haven't seen anyone say we shouldn't have evil represented in the game. Given the concept of a 4x, and the necessity of picking major empires, I think almost all the civs are pretty evil, and have done horrible things. No-one is arguing that we shouldn't be able to fight fascists, or be fascists, while trying to conquer the world and impose our imperial might. That's one of the most common bits of gameplay in a 4x, and while I'm not as into conquest gameplay anymore, it'd be absurd to remove it from these games. The argument here is that we should not pick which civs are present on the basis of nationalism instead of historical interest or gameplay, which is completely different than what you're discussing here.

 

[Babbalanja]

I don't even know if I like my own idea here, but the thread got me thinking so here it is:
What if the civs who "won" an age by completing at least one of the four paths got to continue on with their current identity and the civs who "lost" by not completing any of the paths are forced to evolve/shift/switch. After all, the Normans didn't eventually evolve into England or France because they chose to, they had to by virtue of expanding beyond their ability to maintain what they had established. If Rome had it's way, it definitely would still be here. It was historical "failure" that forced it to evolve into its successive states.

 

[MutilationWave]

I don't even know if I like my own idea here, but the thread got me thinking so here it is:
What if the civs who "won" an age by completing at least one of the four paths got to continue on with their current identity and the civs who "lost" by not completing any of the paths are forced to evolve/shift/switch. After all, the Normans didn't eventually evolve into England or France because they chose to, they had to by virtue of expanding beyond their ability to maintain what they had established. If Rome had it's way, it definitely would still be here. It was historical "failure" that forced it to evolve into its successive states.

That's a very interesting idea. I wouldn't want it to be the default game mode. And we run into the issue of civ abilities becoming overpowered in other ages (can you imagine Mississippians being able to pillage two tiles away for one movement in modern? It would be gamebreaking). I think legacy paths would need to be made more difficult for this to work, or change it to require getting 3 legacy paths to keep your civ. Something for balance. Each age has at least one legacy path that you'd have to try not to get, like not making missionaries in exploration for example.

 

[Xur]

I don't know who this is replying too - I haven't seen anyone say we shouldn't have evil represented in the game. Given the concept of a 4x, and the necessity of picking major empires, I think almost all the civs are pretty evil, and have done horrible things. No-one is arguing that we shouldn't be able to fight fascists, or be fascists, while trying to conquer the world and impose our imperial might. That's one of the most common bits of gameplay in a 4x, and while I'm not as into conquest gameplay anymore, it'd be absurd to remove it from these games. The argument here is that we should not pick which civs are present on the basis of nationalism instead of historical interest or gameplay, which is completely different than what you're discussing here.

I saw Kwami declaring; "I maintain that we don't need to appease nationalists at all".

Conflating nationalism, nazism and history with the simple desire to play the same civilization from start to finish is, in my opinion, completely absurd. Historical interest in general is also absurd when it comes to the civ swapping and the immortal leader. Furthermore, if someone can't seperate nationalism from nazism, then historical facts are also irrelevant. If I can be Xerxes in 4000 BC leading Rome and then later I do a swap to lead Normandy and later America, then any talk about history is null and void. There's almost nothing historical about civ games - I just want to launch roman rockets into space.

All that talk about history, gameplay and nationalism is a giant straw man.

 

[misesfan]

Switch leaders, not nations - follow a successful design ala Old World. Do not follow a failed design ala Humankind. One should always reinforce success, not failure.

 

[Kwami]

I saw Kwami declaring; "I maintain that we don't need to appease nationalists at all".

Conflating nationalism, nazism and history with the simple desire to play the same civilization from start to finish is, in my opinion, completely absurd. Historical interest in general is also absurd when it comes to the civ swapping and the immortal leader. Furthermore, if someone can't seperate nationalism from nazism, then historical facts are also irrelevant. If I can be Xerxes in 4000 BC leading Rome and then later I do a swap to lead Normandy and later America, then any talk about history is null and void. There's almost nothing historical about civ games - I just want to launch roman rockets into space.

All that talk about history, gameplay and nationalism is a giant straw man.

I stand by what I wrote. The original post is asking for "correct" paths. He furthermore wants to make the default play style such that you must take those "correct" paths. He also wrote this: "That [nationalism] is what it seems to have been lost, and it has affected the most the majority of players around the world. Except China and India." He's explicitly saying that players want to play the nations that they come from and that they want to play those nations from 4000 BC until the end of the game on the "correct" path, even if that means making up new nations that never existed.

I do not believe that we need to appease nationalism of that form in this game or in any other.

And I didn't bring up Nazis. Someone else did.

 

[MutilationWave]

Switch leaders, not nations - follow a successful design ala Old World. Do not follow a failed design ala Humankind. One should always reinforce success, not failure.

It should be noted that 7 began development long before Humankind and I believe Old World as well, and I'm sure it was designed with civ switching from the ground up. They did not make a decision to copy or not copy either design.

 

[Siptah]

Switch leaders, not nations - follow a successful design ala Old World. Do not follow a failed design ala Humankind. One should always reinforce success, not failure.

I don‘t think either would work for civ, neither HK’s nor Old World‘s approach. Which is probably why they didn‘t go with either. Changing leaders every turn/few turns is very cumbersome and changing civs every few turns (while others change at their own pace) apparently has a similar effect on most players. Keeping things stable for ~100 turns seems a good alternative imho, and at least for me strikes the best balance of the classic and modern approaches.

Or do you mean changing leaders each age? For example, you play Rome throughout but start with Hatshepsut, then Pachakuti, then Ada? Would that really be better? I think it would be very confusing with the emphasis on leaders in the last few civ games if the figures you interact with change. It works in Old World because they use stable dynasties, but that isn‘t an option for civ. You could go Sulla in Antiquity, Augustus in Exploration, and Diocletian in Modern or something. But what would be the point of that?

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Both Spain and France speak Romance languages, directly descended from the language of Rome.

You are aware that Latin is the biggest fraud in history? So called "Romance" language taught in schools... all of that?
France still speak like 60 different dialects, Italy the same, with some like sardinian that are considered languages on their own.
Each of this "dialect" and Pais Basque in Spain is one of the older... far preceeds the "Romance" languages...
These "dialects" are remnants of ancient languages that never went away. Latin was "invented" by the Roman Elite for beurocratic reasons.
The only truth to that term is the French Trobadores songs spread with a particular French dialect and remained and has nothing to do with Rome...
because of its sweet cadence took that term. It was best suited for love poems. Within Sicily there are Armenian, Greek, and Albanian enclaves, that still speak
sub-dialects. Sardinian root system has more in common with ancient Akkadian than Italian... Catalan is also spoken in Sardinia and other southern Italian towns as many, many
more Occitanic towns speaks a mixture of French, Italian and Catalan, or Basque... in the East Serbia, which is just slightly more nationalist than surrounding countries...
You know, those terrorists that killed the only hereditary King of Austria and triggered the first World War... just wanted to be left alone... but then formed into Yugoslavia...
and today ask any Croatian or Slovenian and they will tell you it's far better today than back then... but they all speak the same -slav language no? No...
here is the point.... language has been used as a tool for divide and conquer from the time of the Romans... to deny an identity to a group of people...
Don't fall for that... it's far more interesting to study the nuancès of the various cultures than blindly homogenize them without having spoken them once.
I'm very interested in ancient languages...
Jesus it is said that spoke in ancient Mayan on its cross... where did he learn that??? Tibet??? Sardinia???

Anyway. I don't have any problem if a Norman knight wants to become the King of France or Spain or Italy. In a civ game.
Continuity and immersion and more freedom of choice, without being forced to sway away from your ancient roots is what counts.
Romance is no roots.
Bayonne was a Templar city. It spoke French, but was a templar city. All which survived the massacre escaped to the Americas.
I think it would be faaaaar more intriguing to follow this route.
devs have to work? Players can reward good work...

Mechican America or just USA? Maybe both? Alternative history. Possibilities. Scenarios. But keep the key...
Changing cultures and mixing cultures are two different things.
I didn't open the flood gates...
I think Tamil is also India... but in a game... if you play two similar culture with a language affinity...
say after an Age you civ merges with an Ai civ with cultural affinity.... both gets the right to become the "next" civ...
In a multiplayer game... how would that work??? Would the two have to play as allied under a single banner???

 

[misesfan]

I don‘t think either would work for civ, neither HK’s nor Old World‘s approach. Which is probably why they didn‘t go with either. Changing leaders every turn/few turns is very cumbersome and changing civs every few turns (while others change at their own pace) apparently has a similar effect on most players. Keeping things stable for ~100 turns seems a good alternative imho, and at least for me strikes the best balance of the classic and modern approaches.

Or do you mean changing leaders each age? For example, you play Rome throughout but start with Hatshepsut, then Pachakuti, then Ada? Would that really be better? I think it would be very confusing with the emphasis on leaders in the last few civ games if the figures you interact with change. It works in Old World because they use stable dynasties, but that isn‘t an option for civ. You could go Sulla in Antiquity, Augustus in Exploration, and Diocletian in Modern or something. But what would be the point of that?

So switching leaders at an age reset is more confusing than having Ben Franklin lead Khmer and then lead the Songhai during the next age? I disagree. Having a leader reset, lets say a change in family or how about changing governments - going from a monarchy to a republic - represented by a change in leaders. That would be so much more of an interesting, impactful decision.

But, they did it their way, so they are gonna live with this decision.

 

[MutilationWave]

So switching leaders at an age reset is more confusing than having Ben Franklin lead Khmer and then lead the Songhai during the next age? I disagree. Having a leader reset, lets say a change in family or how about changing governments - going from a monarchy to a republic - represented by a change in leaders. That would be so much more of an interesting, impactful decision.

But, they did it their way, so they are gonna live with this decision.

I disagree. I interact with a leader, that's how I identify an opponent. I love to hate Napoleon. I know Hatshepsut is going to love me. I like that. Sometimes I don't even bother checking what civ they switched to until a few turns into a new age.

 

[misesfan]

I disagree. I interact with a leader, that's how I identify an opponent. I love to hate Napoleon. I know Hatshepsut is going to love me. I like that. Sometimes I don't even bother checking what civ they switched to until a few turns into a new age.

And this is why the game will never be great and will not have any staying power. I despise nation resets, it goes against a core principle of civ, which is building an empire to stand the test of time. You like it, for your own valid reasons. But Firaxis has, unfortunately, just sliced the number of players in half (or more if you look at ratings...) because of this design decision. I think the game will continue to wallow because of the design and there's really no feedback that we can give to change anyone's mind on the subject.

 

[evonannoredars]

I despise nation resets, it goes against a core principle of civ, which is building an empire to stand the test of time.

Interesting things to dissect here. Imo the 'empire I build that stands the test of time' is manifested in what I build - the cities, wonders, etc. The name and aesthetics of it might change, but I don't think that necessarily goes against the principle of civ - it only does in the context of ideas of national identity stretching backwards into prehistory, which I don't subscribe to.

 

[Leucarum]

I think forcing historical paths would be way worse than the current system by several orders of magnitude. I complain that there are nowhere near enough civs with only 11 per age, and a large part of the variety you could see in terms of civs is stifled by the same leaders always picking the same semi-historical paths when they are able to. We already have the diet-version of the OP's proposal, and it's way worse for the game. Unless firaxis had the resources for 20+ full civ stacks, this is a hard nope for me, as it would completely tank the replayability of the game. I'm in the camp that the current levels of restrictions are too much and they should just remove civ unlocks altogether.

Leader switching... I do think firaxis misjudged how many more players associate with a civ rather than a leader. It definitely appears far more players identify with a single civ than maybe I might have expected. I am inconsistent, e.g. in Civ6 I'd refer to Macedon as Alexander, and Sumeria as Gilgamesh every time, but Scotland was never Robert and Japan was never either of its leaders. And in Civ7 there are some leaders I so strongly associate with a Civ that it overrides whatever civ they picked, e.g. Augustus is always Rome for me even when he isn't. They say they tried it and found leader switching was more confusing... But I can't help wonder if they maybe didn't experiment with enough options here - it definitely could have had the potential to keep that "test of time" feeling while allowing the age system to remain.

 

[AD1730]

Leader switching... I do think firaxis misjudged how many more players associate with a civ rather than a leader.

Identifying with the leader seems to be over-represented on this forum. Many here said I was wrong months ago when I said that people identifying with the civ more than the leader was an issue Firaxis would have to deal with. Well, look where we are now.

I think they could have dealt with this issue more effectively if they had chosen a better leader roster. It doesn't fix the issue, but helps it. I'm sorry, but Lady Lovelace just doesn't cut it and is an absurd self-insert by the developers. That's the kind of leader you add in year 8, not month 1.