IGN: Civilization's Past and Future, As Told By Its Lead Designers

[Zegangani]

Generating more opponents early just means more opponents to steamroller later - if they last that long.

The answer, I have argued, is a Dynamic Game in which various 'minor powers' - City States, Barbarian Camps, even Tribal Huts if you make them permanent - can develop into Civs if All Goes Well for them. The other half of that, to avoid the Early Game Steamroller simply continuing to Roll, is Internal Disruption to Civs.

- And that may be historically accurate, but it will be an extremely Hard Sell to (most) gamers.

I can make a good case that the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath had more effect on the French Civilization than any other single event, and especially than any external threat or conquest. Likewise, with the exception of the Norman Conquest, the internal English Revolutions (Civil War, Glorious Revolution, Industrial Revolution) changed England/Britain far more than any external event.

BUT who wants to contend with cities and improvements and districts you have lovingly built up suddenly turning on you?

And especially in Civ, which has always given the gamer near-complete control over events and decisions, how do you suddenly include systems like Newly-Developing New Civs, Revolutionary Movements, Ideologies, even Religions that he cannot directly control and that may utterly disrupt his carefully-drafted Civ?

That's exactly what I'm trying to achieve with 4Xpansion Pass. I'm excited how this Experiment will turn out and be received by the Players. If it will be received well perhaps it might even convince Firaxis to try some of the Ideas (for civ7/XP) they are hesitant about.

The goal of the mod is basically:
- add some more interesting things that help with Immersion/micromanagement/fix some Issues that the game suffers from/fill the gaps that feel empty,
- push Challenges more towards the human Player, with much more internal things to manage (flipped loyalty mechanic: loyalty comming internally, instead from the outside / revised Amenities System / Population's Opinion on their Leader...etc), a way to restrict the actions the human Player can take (similar to the Order's system in OldWorld),
- add ways for players that have fallen behind to catch up,
- add ways that might help stop civs from steamrolling while also helping weaker civs to catch up: like with Client States, where the "vassal" may benefit a lot from being a client state of a strong and more advanced civ, but the "master" may not benefit as much as with conquering cities, which will have some more downsides (to make client-states more appealing)
- make the Diplomacy more fleshed out and deep ,
- make civs more evolving: Barbarian Clans/City-States may later end up as a major Civ, and major Civs that struggle may turn into a CS and/or leave room for new Civs merging from the remnants (like through Civil War),
- a balanced game that allows for longer gameplay till the late game, where many systems get even more interwoven, so that World War Scenarios might be inevitable if there are too many powerhouses with different Ideologies,
- ...etc.

I might get a working beta version of Client-States next Week, so for anyone interested, I can provid you the mod+the design document if you would like to test it when its ready.

 

[Gedemon]

Btw, I seem to remember in the very beginning of civ6 an approach from CFC members(?) towards Firaxis in order to coordinate help/info for the modding environment, which was rejected ... anybody remembers details or pointers?

I don't remember that, or maybe it happened on discords servers ?

I'm still wondering why they put so much work in the modding framework, but did not seem to put any in modders support. Maybe the modders already in Franky were not active anymore on release, that would explain the complete lack of documentation compared to Kael's guide for civ5.

They recruited some later, and I think they have given back what they could on the info side, but I would have expected something a bit more direct from Firaxis, like asking them to collect requests from other modders, as they did at some point for civ5, which resulted in a few interesting methods exposed to Lua in a later patch at that time.

 

[Leucarum]

Generating more opponents early just means more opponents to steamroller later - if they last that long.

The answer, I have argued, is a Dynamic Game in which various 'minor powers' - City States, Barbarian Camps, even Tribal Huts if you make them permanent - can develop into Civs if All Goes Well for them. The other half of that, to avoid the Early Game Steamroller simply continuing to Roll, is Internal Disruption to Civs.

- And that may be historically accurate, but it will be an extremely Hard Sell to (most) gamers.

I can make a good case that the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath had more effect on the French Civilization than any other single event, and especially than any external threat or conquest. Likewise, with the exception of the Norman Conquest, the internal English Revolutions (Civil War, Glorious Revolution, Industrial Revolution) changed England/Britain far more than any external event.

BUT who wants to contend with cities and improvements and districts you have lovingly built up suddenly turning on you?

And especially in Civ, which has always given the gamer near-complete control over events and decisions, how do you suddenly include systems like Newly-Developing New Civs, Revolutionary Movements, Ideologies, even Religions that he cannot directly control and that may utterly disrupt his carefully-drafted Civ?

Yeah, definitely throwing more civs into the mix early isn't going to help. My suggestion of expanding the horizons of your civ was just one way to add in more civs that are "untouchable" for your early steamroll. But it's pretty much a thought experiment, I suspect in game it would feel very artificial and be better for a pure board game than an actual civ game.

I think the other problem (beyond not feeling fun) with internal disruption is that either you make it player-only or the player will still come out on top if it affects the players and the AI.

Crusader Kings is pretty much the best example I can think of for a 4x game loaded with internal disruption, but since the human is so much better at handling it than the AI, you come out on top most of the time. And then if you make it player-only then bye-bye historical accuracy...

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

The other half of that, to avoid the Early Game Steamroller simply continuing to Roll, is Internal Disruption to Civs.

- And that may be historically accurate, but it will be an extremely Hard Sell to (most) gamers.

If internal disruption results in "asymmetric play" I think many people would buy in as long as the player gets some choice in disruption. For example my complaint about World Congress was lack of player control about the resolutions offered. Of couse, World Congress resolutions are not the best example of disruption because you often ignore the results.

 

[uhu]

seem to remember in the very beginning of civ6 an approach [...] towards Firaxis in order to coordinate help/info for the modding environment, which was rejected

I don't remember that, or maybe it happened on discords servers ?

Definitely I read here about that.
Along the lines of offering cooperation and also giving them collected "requests" from modders -- and the rejection taken with disappointment & lack of understanding ...
but regardless how much I try to catch more details, I see just circling names like ChimpanG, Deliverator, JFD ...

I'm still wondering why they put so much work in the modding framework, but did not seem to put any in modders support.

Perhaps the meaning of the modding framework implemented by Firaxis changed under 2k influence from a tool available to modders more towards an internal platform focused to produce saleable modes, scenarios (&NFTs?).


All in all I find it stunning how much potential was and is thrown away! A lot of good working structures could have been prolonged or copied again.
Just look at all the individual paths, which started long ago here on CFC, went then through Frankenstein group and are now at Mohawk Games. But ok, that in itself has great advantages too!!!

 

[Solver]

Just look at all the individual paths, which started long ago here on CFC, went then through Frankenstein group and are now at Mohawk Games.

Please, we mostly started on Apolyton before CFC was even a thing

 

[uhu]

we mostly started on Apolyton before CFC was even a thing

Right! Me too. (good to remind me )

... and not forget the endless discussions about Civ2proposal etc. right then in the newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic with e.g. this highlight ending the first dark age of Civilization (will Sid ever be able to release a second part of SM's Civ??): Watch out c.s.i.p.g.strategic, Civ2 is about to take over


Thankfully @The_J excavated yesterday my Overlay modpack from the outdated old download database along with its Euroland map. So I am able to present (in the current download database) the relaunch of the Overlay modpack published first in Nov 1998 on Apolyton.

Mind you, I was already then fond of different sets of rules in different ages ...