How unique should we make civs?

[Rinnero]

It's completely different, not even close to the same, the FPS is a huge genre with literally thousands of different games in it, Civilization is a very specific game model, turn-based freeform random-map nation building throughout all of history, I honestly don't know of any other games that are the same, even most turn-based strategy games are extremely different.

Civ isn't something like Starcraft, nor should it pretend to be, aside from that calling Starcraft balanced is an absolute joke it's an utterly different game style. The idea behind Civ is that you start a game and can do absolutely whatever you want with it and have it end up however you want. Having entirely different policy trees or units or something would utterly break this, it would hardly be civ at all any more.

We dont have to compare whole game. But we can try to compare some elements of games. Game can be overall bad, but one part of game can be outstanding. Right now we are discussing traits of civs: we can check how different civs in games with ~10 almost same, but differently flavored sides of conflict.(not starcraft with 3 absolutely unique) For example: Age of Empires, bunch of WWII strategies, or Rise of Nations. I think that the differences in the latter are the best by now. At least I havent seen better.

But having huge changes based on civ, like the ideas in the post on page 2 where, for example, the Germans have more hammers everywhere and Korea is the culture country, turns the game from the sandbox of civ into basically a historical scenario game where each country is the same thing every game no matter what. Part of what's great about civ is those random games where Gandhi conquers half the world or Montezuma is friends with all his neighbors and wins a cultural victory.

That is probably the only really serious argument not to make civs too unique. So that civ didnt lean towards one victory. Basically, I understand that, but why then make so many civs?

If we have civs with weak UAs (like in CivV) or without UAs at all, we basically have ~10 possible choices of grand strategies (2-3 per each victory, something like here http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?109439-Jacs%F3-Benj%E1min-s-Grand-Strategy-Guide! ). And these grand strategies work for all civs, but are at max 5% better if playing one specific civ than another. (few UAs though are significantly stronger, like Babylon's)

But what is bad that if one civ generates significantly more gold, but the other one culture? Of course first civ will more likely go into diplo win, but the other one into cultural. But these money can be spent for units, and SP can improve science by rationalism. So, we get all these 10 grand strategies achieved in a different ways: for example domination can be production oriented, gold oriented, culture oriented (fast adoption of honour and autocracy), of course science oriented, but also we can add something really unique for some civs like really stronger all sieges, stronger fortification bonuses, faster xp, and so on.

So, Its not one predetermined playstyle. Its one overall better/usual strategy (for example cultural victory if culture bonuses), and all standart grand strategies but with different flavour (these culture can lead to more science, or gold, or military). Several UAs instead of one make this even more possible (check examples of civs I made at page 2)



With really unique UAs you basically multiply these 10 common strategies by number of civs.

 

[pspboy7]

To me, the opportunity to have a really interesting game is to play a game where your civ is trying trying to achieve a victory it's not suited for on a map it can't take advantage of... think about it.

"Have no fear, UNDERDOG IS HERE!"
Underdog

 

[ShahJahanII]

What do you guys think about Korea DLC?

 

[PasturedCow]

Korea plays very uniquely. I like it! Of course I voted for as unique as possible

 

[Baleur]

Every civ should be able to be played to pursue any victory conditions. There are several victory conditions for a reason, not to have all but 1 be left in the shadow depending on the civ you play.

But with only 1 leader per civ i don't see how this could be accomplished. So i'd rather see uniqueness be dropped until more than 1 leader per civ exists. I want all civs to be a viable choice for me, if i like a certain playstyle i should not essentially have a game with only 1 third the civs.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Every Civ absolutely can pursue every victory condition, some are just better at it than others. The only arguable one that can't is India. Even that would be fine if you raze cities.

Name me one other civ that can't go for a victory condition?

 

[magritte]

I like unique civs that play differently from one another. Maybe it's partly because I'm not a multiplayer gamer, but I definitely don't like to see flavor sacrificed in the name of balance. My favorite version of Civ ever was the Fall From Heaven mod for Civ 4 because the game played so differently depending on which Civ you were playing.

If some civs become overpowered or underpowered, that doesn't bother me--it just means that I'm selecting my level of challenge as well as the playing style. And even for multiplayer, there are lots of people playing Paradox games where the different countries are extremely unbalanced by design. You'd think everyone would want to play France, Spain and England in Europa Universalis, but a lot of players prefer more challenging countries.