How unique should we make civs?

[ehecatzin]

Rinnero's suggestion are pretty much in line with what Rise of Nations had going, and I would love to see Civ develop UA's into a similar direction. Is it odd that RON sometimes felt more civ like than civ?

anyway, Fat Tonle has a good idea, in that in order to not restrict the player, but instead offer mutually exclusive options. Continuing the idea of a unique social policy tree. for example with the Aztecs you would have to choose between military focus, or growth focus (which in the aztec case could be massive if played right, at the expense of military of course.)

And to add flavor, think of the names for this kind of trees, Garland wars (military focus Aztecs), Pax Romana (Building focus Romans), Plus Ultra (Exploration focus Spain) etc.

Just throwing suggestions, I would rather like to see more unique estrategical options for civs, than have a lot of new ones each with only a meagre situational bonus.

 

[ShahJahanII]

Rinnero's suggestion are pretty much in line with what Rise of Nations had going, and I would love to see Civ develop UA's into a similar direction. Is it odd that RON sometimes felt more civ like than civ?

anyway, Fat Tonle has a good idea, in that in order to not restrict the player, but instead offer mutually exclusive options. Continuing the idea of a unique social policy tree. for example with the Aztecs you would have to choose between military focus, or growth focus (which in the aztec case could be massive if played right, at the expense of military of course.)

And to add flavor, think of the names for this kind of trees, Garland wars (military focus Aztecs), Pax Romana (Building focus Romans), Plus Ultra (Exploration focus Spain) etc.

Just throwing suggestions, I would rather like to see more unique estrategical options for civs, than have a lot of new ones each with only a meagre situational bonus.

Unique social policy trees? I don't like that idea. That's adding 7 new abilities per civ if adopted. Maybe 1 policy will do. But even that worries me.

 

[Strategist83]

I think they have done exceedingly well with creating unique and interesting civs with CiV; the unique ability system is leaps and bounds ahead of Civ4's traits. I like things just how they are because I really don't think it gets much better - it's one of the areas where 5 truly shines, just pure genius.

I think stuff like unique policy trees is going overboard.

 

[ShahJahanII]

How about more scenarios? Right now we have 4, if you bought all the DLCs. I would like to see at least 1 per civ. For example, a Mexico-based scenario for the Aztecs, where each tribe will have to compete for control of the region like the Aztecs did. For Rome, we could do the full history of the Roman Empire, from the founding of Rome, to the collapse of the Empire. For Greece, we could do Peloponnese Wars, or Alexander's conquests, or a joint Greece-Persia scenario, the Persian wars. If we ever get a Carthage civ, we could do the History of Carthage, or a joint scenario with Rome: The Punic Wars. How about a full crusades scenario? And I don't mean the 1000 A.D. conversion.
These would add a sense of uniqueness to the whole game for each civ.

 

[Becephalus]

I would love to see more unique building and unit types, several per civ. A 10$ DLC that gave each faction another pair of unique buildings/units would be a DLC I would actually buy,

The main bonuses are the right level of diversity, but could use some balancing work.

 

[Ankh]

They take the time and make each civ unique, people will complain there are to few civs.
They devote resources to make a lot of civs instead, people will complain they are to blend.

Guess the game developers cant win this one? I think civ 5 hits the middle ground pretty well.

 

[Deggial]

I think civ 5 hits the middle ground pretty well.

Oh yes, it is does!

When I did write, I want civs as unique *as possible*, I didn't want to imply that I do not appreciate what they did so far. I really do! Especially the DLC civs are very fun to play.
We'll see, if this level of creativity can be kept in future. I hope so!

 

[ShahJahanII]

Oh yes, it is does!

When I did write, I want civs as unique *as possible*, I didn't want to imply that I do not appreciate what they did so far. I really do! Especially the DLC civs are very fun to play.
We'll see, if this level of creativity can be kept in future. I hope so!

I too, did not mean to complain about the game or criticize it. This is just a suggestion.

 

[Rinnero]

I think they have done exceedingly well with creating unique and interesting civs with CiV; the unique ability system is leaps and bounds ahead of Civ4's traits. I like things just how they are because I really don't think it gets much better - it's one of the areas where 5 truly shines, just pure genius.

You are not well-versed. Try to broaden your gaming horizon and play other games.

Praising CivV's uniquieness of civs is just like praising DOOM III when there is Half-Life 2, but you dont know about it. "Pure genius"... heh... Looks like you really havent played any other games except Civ.

 

[qyll]

I'd love to see in civ the level of uniqueness in starcraft where mechanics are different for each race on a fundamental level, yet games are still balanced. Alas, balancing dozens of civs this way would be way too difficult and time-consuming, but one can dream, right?

 

[Ankh]

You are not well-versed. Try to broaden your gaming horizon and play other games.

Praising CivV's uniquieness of civs is just like praising DOOM III when there is Half-Life 2, but you dont know about it. "Pure genius"... heh... Looks like you really havent played any other games except Civ.

How about you bring something to the table instead of random insults?

His not praising Civ V uniqueness of civs, he is comparing them towards the earlier games in the series and he is correct. The Civ's bonuses in civ 5 are much better designed then in Civ 4. Compare how different some of the civs plays in V compared to IV and you can see a lot of work has been put to make them somewhat unique.

 

[Revoran]

Gameplay-wise, i'm happy with things the way they are.

To add flavour, i'd like to see each culture group (Asian, Middle East/Africa, Americas, European) get unique models for certain units (particularly, the asians should have a unique pre-industrial work boat and embarked graphic - pikemen should look different as should longswordsmen etc etc. However this is more a thing for modders. Also India should have more unique architecture (sort of a cross between asian and middle eastern) and Russia should have European crossed with middle eastern/byzantine type architecture (ie: St. Basil's cathedral and about any religious building in russia). It might be good for native American civs to have canoes instead of the normal early embarked graphics.

 

[Thormodr]

How about you bring something to the table instead of random insults?

His not praising Civ V uniqueness of civs, he is comparing them towards the earlier games in the series and he is correct. The Civ's bonuses in civ 5 are much better designed then in Civ 4. Compare how different some of the civs plays in V compared to IV and you can see a lot of work has been put to make them somewhat unique.

I agree that there is no need to insult one another, although I do emphasize with the frustration people feel for getting burnt by the latest iteration of the series.

Eh, the uniqueness of the Civs isn't really any better than cIV. They look different certainly, due to the different mechanics in Civilization 5 but they aren't anything special. As far as unique units go, they are definitely nothing special with a few notable exceptions. For the most part they are improved stats over normal units or get bonuses versus certain unit types.

As well as this, when playing against the AI, the AI doesn't feel unique at all. They are all psychotic, bloodthirsty savages that are "playing to win". At least in cIV, you could see some personalty in the AI.

 

[HammerandSickle]

I said "as unique as possible", but I meant graphic art, especially unit art. Just as there is unique city art for every "region", there should be unique unit art per region.

 

[Rinnero]

I wasnt insulting. I just wanted that people not be obsessed with Civ. If you play some other games, you will find that many many things could be much better in Civ, that CivV is not completely up to time.

Uniqueness of civs did improved compared to CivIV, but that is really the same as saying that DOOM III is better than DOOM II. If you compare this with other games, its faaaar from "pure genius" and "shining".

 

[Snuffleupagus]

What is the fundamental problem with allowing a civs to have a fleeting chance at achieving victory on all maps?

Because that requirement takes away too much. It's about alternatives.

Your requirement means that you can't have any UA's which utilize terrain at all. As someone pointed out before, this means no jungle, mountain, desert, ocean UA's.

Would this be fair? I guess . . . but it really only facilitates a desire to play on random settings and never restart (and even then, if you get a bad situation, you are forced to play without a major UA. Seems like that would be part of the risk of random).

As a rule of thumb it seems perfectly reasonably to tailor UA's to playing on 'earth' maps.

It isn't that allowing civs to have a chance on all maps is a "problem" in and of itself, it's just that most people feel that that restriction takes away too many good options.

The choice is to have UA's like Plolynesia and England and not have the game be balanced for random leaders and random maps some of the time if you get unlikely. OR to have a wider variety of UA's.

Personally, I prefer the wider variety of UA's.

 

[juxtapose519]

I've always accepted and been perfectly fine the fact that no game of Civ will ever be balanced. If you start on a crappy little island with no room to expand in the early game and no strategic resources beyond horses, that's just part of the challenge.

One could argue that those aspects are random from game to game, while Civ traits are locked and permanent, but you also have full knowledge going into each game what your Civ's strengths are. If you think a particular Civ is underpowered, don't pick it. I would definitely agree that some Civs are slightly better suited as a whole than others, but none so much that it's game breaking.

Crushing the French with England on a Pangea map is part of the fun. If it were up to me, I would make each Civ more unique. Who knows, adding more UA's might actually help the balance.

 

[asmartlittleman]

I like Rinnero's ideas. I would also like to see Era bonuses that you can choose. For example let's say there are 4 or 5 categories like science,commerce, culture etc similar to SP. You can choose a bonus when you enter an era and they vary for each era the commerce bonus for Classical is different from Industrial. If you choose the same category for each era you specialize in that area since the bonuses don't go away. So if you want a Science based society just pick all of the science bonuses but you miss out on being balanced. These bonuses will be small so not to overshadow SP and not to upset balance. Also each civ will have a unique Era when they get to this Era they can choose two abilities to emphasize their dominance in that Era.

Edit: or each civ could have only one bonus( two if is the unique era) that you can't choose to make each civ more unique.

 

[Tacgnol]

I wasnt insulting. I just wanted that people not be obsessed with Civ. If you play some other games, you will find that many many things could be much better in Civ, that CivV is not completely up to time.

Uniqueness of civs did improved compared to CivIV, but that is really the same as saying that DOOM III is better than DOOM II. If you compare this with other games, its faaaar from "pure genius" and "shining".

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.

Personally, I do enjoy a bit of variety, the point of having historical civs is for fun and to make the game more engaging and they need to have some unique things to matter. IMO the best ones are the ones that you need to alter your strategy to take advantage of but don't completely change it. Take the Mongols, for example; between their UUs and their UA, they're a medieval cavalry powerhouse and to use them you build a whole lot more keshiks than you'd build knights, but other than that and maybe using other cavalry more you don't change much. Or Rome, you make sure your capital is damn good and you're unstoppable at classical expansion but you're still playing a normal game. Some are crap, like Sun Never Sets, although that's not bad because it's situational it's just bad, but IMO civ 5 on the whole gets it pretty well, no civ is really forced into a different playstyle if you don't want to. At the same time each civ is different enough that playing a game as a new civ is a fun and new experience. I'd get bored if every game was the exact same civ with different art and one UU or something.

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.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I voted things are good the way they are. Ideally, they should be a hair more unique, but the diversion from the mean should vary by civ. For example, I'm perfectly fine with some civs being run of the mill jack of all trades and others specializing. That way, if you don't want to be pidgeonholed, you don't have to be. I think DLC has improved uniqueness, so we're at a good happy medium right now.

Ideally, each Civ should have a point - something you know that Civ will do well. It could be a unique play style (Spain encouraging you to explore to find natural wonders). It could be a trait (Babylon is good at science). It could just be useful units or buildings (Rome for units, Aztecs maybe for buildings). The changes shouldn't be marginal, though. They should be dramatic. Maybe dramatic all in one area (like Polynesia, which is very early-focused) or spread out (Danes, Germans, etc.). But what I don't want is a slight boost in three different areas that are pleasant, but not memorable.