HUMANKIND a Civ VI killer?

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is a big issue for a lot of Ancient-era civilizations. Harappans, the Mississippians, the Olmecs... what did their language sound like? Even Trung Trac - her language (Lac) is lost. Sometimes, we can guess, sometimes we can substitute a present-day language for a past one, but sometimes it's just not possible to accurately present such a thing. History does not make a coherent picture; it's snippets that sometimes have key pieces missing, and sometimes is self-contradictory. Also... name a Harappan figure. Tell me about their religion, their society. We have a wonderful and evocative series of archaeological sites and an un-translated language, but no story to tell.

Historians love a people who obsess over record-keeping (Rome, China). Then there's those people who are dutiful about putting up stelae with self-congratulatory stories of a king or two on them and maybe some oral histories (Khmer, Vikings, Maya). But then there's people who were here and now aren't... And imagine the thousands of languages, stories, and personalities that have been forever lost to time...

It is bad enough that the game(s) are forced to frequently 'reconstruct' Civilizations almost entirely from what their neighbors/opponents said about them: Gauls, Carthage, Scythians spring to mind. But when you also have to try to reconstruct individuals (Leaders) personalities and attributes (let alone appearancees) from archeological or anecdotal foreign evidence, well, the terms 'fantasy' and 'history' become almost indistinguishable . . .

Example du jour: I'm currently trying to assemble information about the Kushans, a great middleman Civ between China, Persia and Rome who dominated the real Silk Road trade and other contacts across central Asia. And didn't leave a bloody scrap of written material of their own. They are described at some length by Chinese travelers, but the only 'native' information, other than pure archeology, are inscriptions and artwork on thousands of their coins. Imagine trying to reconstruct the history and attributes of the USA and its leaders from a horde of American coins: the only leaders you'd know about would be Lincoln, Roosevelt, some Native American Chief, an Eagle and a Buffalo - which you'd probably interpret as some sort of American Gods . . .

 

[AsH2]

...and Mario isn't the only successful Nintendo platformer.

Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Kirby come to mind (Mario itself spun off from Donkey Kong, while Yoshi spun off from Mario; Kirby is jointly owned by Nintendo and HAL Laboratory).

Indeed. Then you'd think Donkey and King Kong are related..

Spoiler Kong :

 

[Zaarin]

It is bad enough that the game(s) are forced to frequently 'reconstruct' Civilizations almost entirely from what their neighbors/opponents said about them: Gauls, Carthage, Scythians spring to mind.

What's most infuriating is when those people spoke for themselves, but the records are lost. St. Augustine famously said you couldn't be well-educated if you couldn't read Punic. Unfortunately all those wonderful tomes he referenced are lost, and we're left with a smattering of votive and monumental stelae, a handful of Greek quotes (in translation) or paraphrases from Hanno, and the fragments of Punic drama preserved in Plautus' Poenulus--the latter of particular note because it informs us that Carthage had a vibrant theater tradition that's lost to us. IMO the loss of the rich Punic literary tradition is as much a tragedy as the loss of the Library of Alexandria (though had the latter been preserved we might have the complete works of Berossus, which was another great loss--the only Babylonian scholar we know of who wrote extensively about Babylon in Greek).

 

[AsH2]

..
Imagine trying to reconstruct the history and attributes of the USA and its leaders from a horde of American coins: the only leaders you'd know about would be Lincoln, Roosevelt, some Native American Chief, an Eagle and a Buffalo - which you'd probably interpret as some sort of American Gods . . .

Well, I'm not convinced they didn't..

Spoiler USA :

[TABLE="head"]Civilization|Leader(s)|Civilization Ability|Unique Unit|Unique Infrastructure

American​

|

Teddy Roosevelt​

|

Founding Fathers​

|

P-51 Mustang​

|

Film Studio​

[/TABLE]

..AI..
Then again, it was never good in previous Civilization games, either, so I guess I don't know what you mean by "original Civ fanatics audience"..

How dare you?!
Once upon a time there was a lead designer who wrote all of the AI..

Spoiler Soren Johnson :

..
Johnson's decision to join Firaxis at this time has been described as a "strategic gamer's move applied to real life", and is today seen as one of the factors that saved Civilization III and the future of the Civilization franchise.

Due to his success in Civilization III, Soren Johnson became the sole lead designer of Civilization IV, once again writing all of the AI. For Civ IV Johnson brought in Civilization fans and members of the gaming community to test the game ahead of release, which proved highly effective in making the game stable and balanced before release. This set the precedent for his future development process, and continues to be part of the formula for developing his games.

According to Johnson, there are generally 2 types of AI in video games, 'good AI' and 'fun' AI. Good AI competes to beat the player and win, whereas fun AI does not necessarily try to win a game but tries to give the human an enjoyable gameplay experience. A game like Civilization IV would have an AI that has features from both, their balance dependent on the difficulty setting. According to Johnson, building a successful AI for gameplay is not based on any novel technique, but requires a lot of hard work and coding.
..

 

[Kwami]

How dare you?!
Once upon a time there was a lead designer who wrote all of the AI..

Spoiler Soren Johnson :

..
Johnson's decision to join Firaxis at this time has been described as a "strategic gamer's move applied to real life", and is today seen as one of the factors that saved Civilization III and the future of the Civilization franchise.

Due to his success in Civilization III, Soren Johnson became the sole lead designer of Civilization IV, once again writing all of the AI. For Civ IV Johnson brought in Civilization fans and members of the gaming community to test the game ahead of release, which proved highly effective in making the game stable and balanced before release. This set the precedent for his future development process, and continues to be part of the formula for developing his games.

According to Johnson, there are generally 2 types of AI in video games, 'good AI' and 'fun' AI. Good AI competes to beat the player and win, whereas fun AI does not necessarily try to win a game but tries to give the human an enjoyable gameplay experience. A game like Civilization IV would have an AI that has features from both, their balance dependent on the difficulty setting. According to Johnson, building a successful AI for gameplay is not based on any novel technique, but requires a lot of hard work and coding.
..

And it was so bad that the developers later borrow the community AI patch and incorporated it into the game proper. A win for the modding community, to be sure!

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Imagine trying to reconstruct the history and attributes of the USA and its leaders from a horde of American coins: the only leaders you'd know about would be Lincoln, Roosevelt, some Native American Chief, an Eagle and a Buffalo - which you'd probably interpret as some sort of American Gods . . .

I have some of those golden dollar coins with Sacagawea on them.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

I have some of those golden dollar coins with Sacagawea on them.

There are Susan B. Anthony silver dollars as well.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Back to topic please.

 

[c4c6]

And it was so bad that the developers later borrow the community AI patch and incorporated it into the game proper. A win for the modding community, to be sure!

You could also describe it so that the developers later improved their already good AI with the even better community patch and incorporated Blake into Firaxis proper ...
But to go beyond the AI improvements which Infixo made already for civ6 and be able to reach those levels achieved in civ4 & civ5, it is an imperative necessity to have access to the source files of the AI DLL and modify them. Which we cannot.

As AsH2 cited from wikipedia "For Civ IV Johnson brought in Civilization fans and members of the gaming community to test the game ahead of release, which proved highly effective in making the game stable and balanced before release. This set the precedent for his future development process, and continues to be part of the formula for developing his games." interaction between developers and community can have fruitful effects on the game quality experienced by players (accompanied with satisfaction and long term sales). He is doing it again & again, now with Old World.

So I would add Old World to the Humankind vs. civ6 discussion. Btw, Old World offers a great solution for a problem plaguing the whole genre: a fun & interesting way to NOT move (nearly) all the units in every turn (just because you can, strenuous & with diminishing ROI). Lesser micromanagement by design, like vassalage in civ4.


Nothing will kill civ6/civ7/ except itself. Despite its roots it can continue to develop into a prevailing builder game (cf. eg. the Caesar ... Pharao ... series: military is only a side issue) with great graphical efforts and more pervasively depth of increasing numbers of civilizations. (collectors heaven)
And/or a game with lots of quick & fun multiplayer interaction: more and more yields, wonders, units, abilities of units (modifiers paradise!) ... I see plenty of opportunities there for micro payment etc.

In theory a game could become more abstract and concentrate on the strategical aspects. Long ago are forgotten the people for whom the colours black & white & red & green in Tschaturanga stood for.
The red & green went from India to China and farther to Japan (colourless), while the white & black went to Arabia, then Europe and from there to the whole world.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

You could also describe it so that the developers later improved their already good AI with the even better community patch and incorporated Blake into Firaxis proper ...
But to go beyond the AI improvements which Infixo made already for civ6 and be able to reach those levels achieved in civ4 & civ5, it is an imperative necessity to have access to the source files of the AI DLL and modify them. Which we cannot.

As AsH2 cited from wikipedia "For Civ IV Johnson brought in Civilization fans and members of the gaming community to test the game ahead of release, which proved highly effective in making the game stable and balanced before release. This set the precedent for his future development process, and continues to be part of the formula for developing his games." interaction between developers and community can have fruitful effects on the game quality experienced by players (accompanied with satisfaction and long term sales). He is doing it again & again, now with Old World.

So I would add Old World to the Humankind vs. civ6 discussion. Btw, Old World offers a great solution for a problem plaguing the whole genre: a fun & interesting way to NOT move (nearly) all the units in every turn (just because you can, strenuous & with diminishing ROI). Lesser micromanagement by design, like vassalage in civ4.


Nothing will kill civ6/civ7/ except itself. Despite its roots it can continue to develop into a prevailing builder game (cf. eg. the Caesar ... Pharao ... series: military is only a side issue) with great graphical efforts and more pervasively depth of increasing numbers of civilizations. (collectors heaven)
And/or a game with lots of quick & fun multiplayer interaction: more and more yields, wonders, units, abilities of units (modifiers paradise!) ... I see plenty of opportunities there for micro payment etc.

In theory a game could become more abstract and concentrate on the strategical aspects. Long ago are forgotten the people for whom the colours black & white & red & green in Tschaturanga stood for.
The red & green went from India to China and farther to Japan (colourless), while the white & black went to Arabia, then Europe and from there to the whole world.

You're right that Old World should be considered as well as HumanKind as natural successors to Civ IV. In terms of Civ VI - I'm done with it for now until they release dll code which I'm not counting on. As for Civ VII, you're probably right that they will continue down the same path.

 

[RohirrimElf]

I hope so. But knowing the developer. I think the balance will take at least one year to get right.
Don’t think civ 6 will stand still for next full year. More patches are coming and i am still hoping the modding community will put in a combined effort to improve things once civ 6 development is finished.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

You're right that Old World should be considered as well as HumanKind as natural successors to Civ IV. In terms of Civ VI - I'm done with it for now until they release dll code which I'm not counting on. As for Civ VII, you're probably right that they will continue down the same path.

Not releasing the DLL code is a complete betrayal to the Civ VI player base. We were promised the most "moddable" Civ and without DLL access that's an empty promise.

I hope so. But knowing the developer. I think the balance will take at least one year to get right.
Don’t think civ 6 will stand still for next full year. More patches are coming and i am still hoping the modding community will put in a combined effort to improve things once civ 6 development is finished.

How can they "improve" things without DLL code? CPP for Civ V NEEDED the DLL code. Just give it up already. In any case, HumanKind will be here soon so bye bye Civ VI and Firaxis.

 

[tzu]

More patches are coming and i am still hoping the modding community will put in a combined effort to improve things once civ 6 development is finished.

How can they "improve" things without DLL code?

Making the AI players smarter needs appropriate access. Nevertheless play balance can be improved via XML, Lua or even house rules.
Eg the Heroes mode: yes, the AI players can not use them (properly / at all), though I think, better than switching the mode off permanently it is to invoke only ONE hero for ONE time per game for the human player. Pitiful approach ... yeah, but as long as we still love the game; and personally I prefer that beyond not using Heroes at all.

In theory a game could become more abstract and concentrate on the strategical aspects. Long ago are forgotten the people for whom the colours black & white & red & green in Tschaturanga stood for.
The red & green went from India to China and farther to Japan (colourless), while the white & black went to Arabia, then Europe and from there to the whole world.

I'd like to extend here a bit until we'll gain a clearer view in summer (onto HumanKind & OldWorld, maybe Civ6):

The presented game can easily be played with 2 different chess games, say made of plastic & wood: on one board half the pieces of both games and the other half of pieces on the other board (entertaining max. 2x4 players, eg. in a chess club).

In one game the players sitting in opposition are allied: white & red against black & green. The five types of pieces are set up as pictured below:

They are called (look at white) Raja, elephant, horse, boat and soldiers. Traditionally, these are properly represented respectively by king, rook, knight, bishop and pawns from a standard chess set.
Movement and capture by Raja, elephant & horse are identical to those of the modern counter-parts in chess. Soldiers have no initial two step move, but otherwise move and capture like modern pawns in chess. The boat jumps exactly two spaces diagonally (capturing as it moves) thereby limiting it to certain spaces of the board.
Goal is to enter the starting field ("throne") of a hostile Raja.


With two D4 (moving 2 pieces per turn) it can be easily turned into a heavily luck dependent race-game (1: Raja or soldier / 2: boat / 3: horse / 4: elephant) - think of it as playing "Mensch ärgere dich nicht", "Jeu des petits chevaux", "Ludo", "Sorry!", "Parchisi" etc. on a much smarter course ...

[[the confusion with permuted elephant vs. boat (rook, ship vs. bishop) names, figures and positions is age-old since when the Indians wanted the strongest unit besides the Raja while the Persians insisted to have this unit on the other flank ...]]

 

[Quintillus]

I agree with c4c6 that only Civilization can kill itself. The worst case for Firaxis is Humankind is a huge success, and Civilization VII is a huge flop. But Humankind being a huge success doesn't mean that Civ VIII would be a flop. It would set expectations a little higher, but the strategy gaming market is large enough that both could coexist. It should also help if the releases remain somewhat staggered. It's good for Humankind that it's being released this spring, when Civilization VI is near the end of its cycle and Civilization VII is not out yet. But from a fan standpoint, the ideal would be that instead of a Civilization game every 5 or 6 years, we'd have either a Civilization game, or a Humankind game, ever 2.5-3 years. You could buy both, stick with one series, or hop back and forth as the reviews indicate.

Old World is interesting too. I don't expect it to have the market splash at its 1.0 release that Humankind does; Amplitude has some advantages in their audience from the Endless series, as well as their marketing. But if anything I'm more interested in Old World as a player. If it's well-received, it has the potential to grow into a bigger-market game over time.

I also like that the increased competition will likely mean to several different styles of Civ-like games. I like the historical 4X setting, but haven't been a fan of many of the changes in the last two Civ iterations. Humankind and Old World will of necessity try some new things to distinguish themselves, and will also benefit from not having the baggage of previous games in the series that fans expect them to conform to. Some of those ideas are likely to be good, and even where it's a matter of taste, more fans will be happy with at least one of the options. That should lead to more overall spending on the genre. I haven't bought Civ VI (only having played the free EGS giveaway version), and waited until Civ V Complete was on sale for 75% off after being disappointed by Vanilla. But if there had been a Humankind in the past decade, I might have been enthusiastically buying its iterations and expansions.

 

[PiR]

After 19 pages of this thread (although after page 10 I scrolled quite fast), I'm still totally undecided whether to pre-buy HK or not.

 

[TreVor_ish]

I also haven't. Waiting for contemporary cultures or delay info - although if they would delay I think they would tell us by now.

There is gonna be a Future Game Show on Thursday 25th of March at 2:45 PM PDT / 5:45 PM EDT / 9:45 PM GMT and Sega will be there. (hosted by GamesRadar)
I would assume more info about Humankind then.
https://www.twitch.tv/gamesradar

 

[blackbutterfly]

After 19 pages of this thread (although after page 10 I scrolled quite fast), I'm still totally undecided whether to pre-buy HK or not.

I did

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

After 19 pages of this thread (although after page 10 I scrolled quite fast), I'm still totally undecided whether to pre-buy HK or not.

I'll wait until it's released and see the reviews, what people here think when they've played, etc. I just don't want to join a hype train that might derail once the game is released. That being said, I'm also undecided about the Manor Lords hype train...

 

[PiR]

I could buy it now, but if my computer doesn't have enough specs, then I'm not Steam will still agree to reimburse by then.

 

[8housesofelixir]

After 19 pages of this thread (although after page 10 I scrolled quite fast), I'm still totally undecided whether to pre-buy HK or not.

I don't think this thread is deeply concerned with the actual features and mechanics of HK (not to say that the op is more or less a troll on HK related topics)* so it is very okay to not be convinced by just one thread.
*He suggested in a post that, the CivFan forum should remove the Civ VI section and replace it with HK subforum, since "VI marked the death of Civ series, and HK is the true successor of Civ." The post is now already being removed by the moderators.

Moderator Action: To call another member a troll is to be a troll. If you have an issue, please use the report function and let staff know so we can decide what to do. Thanks, leif

I pre-brought it myself for participating in the Opendev, which was a very fun experience. If you are unsure about the game - I agree it still need a lot of balancing, even after the full release - you can always wait till the full release or a steam discount.