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

[aieeegrunt]

I thought Shafer's civ7 response was interesting:



I am not sure chopping off the second half of the game would still be civ since we think of civ as going from bronze age to future age. But maybe it could work. Maybe you could have a civ game that only goes from the bronze age to the end of the middle age that was amazing because it was much more focused on building a great empire with no boring or dull parts. It would probably depend on the victory conditions. But if you've built a great empire and accomplished the victory conditions, do you really need to keep playing another 600 years? Probably not. I certainly get why he wants to chop off the second half because the second half of civ has notoriously been boring and a dredge to get through.

I do like his idea of simplifying civ. I think civ6 has gotten rather bloated. I think it would be better for civ7 to try to really focus on the essentials of what makes civ fun. IMO, it's better to have a simpler game that is deep than a complex game that is shallow. Just look at chess as a perfect example of a simple game in terms of rules but very deep in terms of strategy and tactics.

Just about every Civ has had the Late Game Tedium issue where the outcome is more or less decided but it’s now Next Turn Simulator for 4 hours.

I usually just call it so I can start a new game

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Just about every Civ has had the Late Game Tedium issue where the outcome is more or less decided but it’s now Next Turn Simulator for 4 hours.

I usually just call it so I can start a new game

Yes, every civ game has failed to solve the late game tedium issues which is why Shafer's solution is not to even try and just chuck the last half of the game. If players are going to quit anyway, might as well, end the game for real.

 

[kaspergm]

I will say that Ed's remark that he was not happy that civs developed into having extensive lists of bonuses probably indicates where Civ VII is going, design-wise. It sounds like civs in Civ VII will have fewer, but more potent bonuses, and probably rely even more on unique infrastructures and units.

I'm curious whether that's a correct interpretation. Might be true. Personally I felt many civs in Civ6 shoehorned you strongly into one particular game style, which I felt was a weakness in design earlier games suffered less. But obviously, it's a trade-off where you can't have it both ways: If we want unique civs, they can't be jacks-of-all-trades at the same time. I think Humankinds idea of only choosing your culture (civ) after a certain time is interesting in this light. In my dream world, I'd like a civ where I can choose different civilization-bonuses as game progresses depending on how my specific game develops, but I also realize that it will both be a nightmare to balance and grow into a scope of endless work for a game with 50+ civs.

 

[Bactrian]

I will say that Ed's remark that he was not happy that civs developed into having extensive lists of bonuses probably indicates where Civ VII is going, design-wise. It sounds like civs in Civ VII will have fewer, but more potent bonuses, and probably rely even more on unique infrastructures and units.

While I largely bounced of Humankind (something about it is just too ... floaty and disconnected, for me), I do appreciate their idea to have cultures respond to the map and game rather than the other way around. The developers indicated that they liked how playing the map worked out, and I agree except I think they should lean even more into it. I would love it if you got bonuses based on the choices you made and the actions you took. For example, if you commit to building enough docks, you get a bonus to your ships' movement speeds that represents the dedication of your civ to seafaring. Did you start in the middle of a giant jungle? Well, working enough jungle tiles for long enough teaches your people to best use the resources of the terrain and you get a +1 food bonus on jungle tiles.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I will say that Ed's remark that he was not happy that civs developed into having extensive lists of bonuses probably indicates where Civ VII is going, design-wise. It sounds like civs in Civ VII will have fewer, but more potent bonuses, and probably rely even more on unique infrastructures and units.

Yeah, civ6 definitely got carried away with the small bonuses. I would like to see civs have 1-2 major unique abilities rather than bonuses, something that makes the playstyle unique and interesting.

I think Humankinds idea of only choosing your culture (civ) after a certain time is interesting in this light. In my dream world, I'd like a civ where I can choose different civilization-bonuses as game progresses depending on how my specific game develops, but I also realize that it will both be a nightmare to balance and grow into a scope of endless work for a game with 50+ civs.

I would be ok with choosing new bonuses as the game progresses, maybe when you enter a new era, but I dislike Humankind's idea of actually switching cultures. It just feels weird that you can be the Egyptians and then suddenly change to the celts and then suddenly change to the Americans. It also makes diplomacy kinda weird because your opponents are also changing cultures. I feel like your civ's name should remain the same throughout the entire game because that is your identity but you could gain cultural bonuses in each new era. It should be noted that Humankind suffered from huge balancing issues as a result of changing cultures idea because some combos could be too powerful. So I think it could be tricky to implement.

One idea I had is for culture to be like the religion system. You could start with a basic culture and gain culture traits as the game progresses and spread your culture with units, like religion. But in order not to have 2 religion systems in the same game, perhaps religion could be rolled into the new culture system. After all, spiritual beliefs, a state religion or no religion at all itself could be considered part of culture. So building religious buildings could let you add a spiritual trait to your culture. Eventually you could add a state religion to your culture or add the "secularism" trait to your culture if you don't want religion in your culture.

Another idea could be for civ's bonuses to grow organically from your decisions. So every civ would start the game with just one tribal bonus or ability. But as the game progressed, your actions would give you new civ bonuses. For example, every unit you kill, would give points towards the militaristic trait. As you gain points, you could level up the militaristic trait. Every trade route and economic building would give you points towards the economic trait. Likewise, building a lot of horseman units might unlock a unique cavalry unit. Building lots of archers would unlock a unique archer unit.

 

[Zaarin]

I'm curious whether that's a correct interpretation. Might be true. Personally I felt many civs in Civ6 shoehorned you strongly into one particular game style, which I felt was a weakness in design earlier games suffered less. But obviously, it's a trade-off where you can't have it both ways: If we want unique civs, they can't be jacks-of-all-trades at the same time. I think Humankinds idea of only choosing your culture (civ) after a certain time is interesting in this light. In my dream world, I'd like a civ where I can choose different civilization-bonuses as game progresses depending on how my specific game develops, but I also realize that it will both be a nightmare to balance and grow into a scope of endless work for a game with 50+ civs.

I adamantly do not want to see evolving cultures like HK has, but dynamically evolving or developing abilities would be awesome. To a certain extent this is a thing that happens in Endless Space 2: if certain conditions exist in your empire, certain events may happen and abilities be developed. (ES2 has a lot of wonderful ideas I'd like to see Civ7 take inspiration from--far more so than HK IMO.)

One idea I had is for culture to be like the religion system. You could start with a basic culture and gain culture traits as the game progresses and spread your culture with units, like religion. But in order not to have 2 religion systems in the same game, perhaps religion could be rolled into the new culture system. After all, spiritual beliefs, a state religion or no religion at all itself could be considered part of culture. So building religious buildings could let you add a spiritual trait to your culture. Eventually you could add a state religion to your culture or add the "secularism" trait to your culture if you don't want religion in your culture.

Yes, I'd love to see Culture take the form of the current Religion system, and this works especially well for me since I want to see Religion go in a completely different direction--divorced from the civ as something that develops organically and can be reacted to but not controlled by the player (cf. how religion works in CK3, which I think is a pretty good model).

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Yeah, civ6 definitely got carried away with the small bonuses. I would like to see civs have 1-2 major unique abilities rather than bonuses, something that makes the playstyle unique and interesting.



I would be ok with choosing new bonuses as the game progresses, maybe when you enter a new era, but I dislike Humankind's idea of actually switching cultures. It just feels weird that you can be the Egyptians and then suddenly change to the celts and then suddenly change to the Americans. It also makes diplomacy kinda weird because your opponents are also changing cultures. I feel like your civ's name should remain the same throughout the entire game because that is your identity but you could gain cultural bonuses in each new era. It should be noted that Humankind suffered from huge balancing issues as a result of changing cultures idea because some combos could be too powerful. So I think it could be tricky to implement.

One idea I had is for culture to be like the religion system. You could start with a basic culture and gain culture traits as the game progresses and spread your culture with units, like religion. But in order not to have 2 religion systems in the same game, perhaps religion could be rolled into the new culture system. After all, spiritual beliefs, a state religion or no religion at all itself could be considered part of culture. So building religious buildings could let you add a spiritual trait to your culture. Eventually you could add a state religion to your culture or add the "secularism" trait to your culture if you don't want religion in your culture.

Another idea could be for civ's bonuses to grow organically from your decisions. So every civ would start the game with just one tribal bonus or ability. But as the game progressed, your actions would give you new civ bonuses. For example, every unit you kill, would give points towards the militaristic trait. As you gain points, you could level up the militaristic trait. Every trade route and economic building would give you points towards the economic trait. Likewise, building a lot of horseman units might unlock a unique cavalry unit. Building lots of archers would unlock a unique archer unit.

I had been wanting era-specific, and cumulative bonuses for quite a while. And I like how Humankind managed it, with a nomadic neolithic period too. But yes, coupling the bonuses to cultural identities creates a big ask for the imagination of the player. I don't mind it overly much, but if I had my druthers, it wouldn't work that way.

 

[Eddie Verdde]

In my dream world, I'd like a civ where I can choose different civilization-bonuses as game progresses depending on how my specific game develops

I believe they were trying to adress that issue with the system of tech/civic Boosts in Civ6 but in my opinion it was badly implemented and resulted only in reducing the overall cost of unlocking techs and civics.

 

[Zaarin]

I had been wanting era-specific, and cumulative bonuses for quite a while. And I like how Humankind managed it, with a nomadic neolithic period too. But yes, coupling the bonuses to cultural identities creates a big ask for the imagination of the player. I don't mind it overly much, but if I had my druthers, it wouldn't work that way.

I like the idea of a nomadic neolithic start, but I dislike the way HK handled it. As it is, I'm just rushing to found my first culture so I can get to the interesting part of the game.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Nice interview. Seems like they all on the same page about what the issues are with Civ as most players are. I wonder if those three would be up for answering questions submitted by this forum?

Iv'e had a similar idea as Shafer - don't include late game on release. If the life of a version of civ is going to be 8 year there's plenty of time to put out a expansion instead.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If it doesn't go through the late ages it's a different game.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yes, every civ game has failed to solve the late game tedium issues which is why Shafer's solution is not to even try and just chuck the last half of the game. If players are going to quit anyway, might as well, end the game for real.

Every Civ game has lacked punishing anti snowball mechanics, for a variety of reasons

Essentially you are punishing a player for doing well, which few people will enjoy.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, civ6 definitely got carried away with the small bonuses. I would like to see civs have 1-2 major unique abilities rather than bonuses, something that makes the playstyle unique and interesting.



I would be ok with choosing new bonuses as the game progresses, maybe when you enter a new era, but I dislike Humankind's idea of actually switching cultures. It just feels weird that you can be the Egyptians and then suddenly change to the celts and then suddenly change to the Americans. It also makes diplomacy kinda weird because your opponents are also changing cultures. I feel like your civ's name should remain the same throughout the entire game because that is your identity but you could gain cultural bonuses in each new era. It should be noted that Humankind suffered from huge balancing issues as a result of changing cultures idea because some combos could be too powerful. So I think it could be tricky to implement.

One idea I had is for culture to be like the religion system. You could start with a basic culture and gain culture traits as the game progresses and spread your culture with units, like religion. But in order not to have 2 religion systems in the same game, perhaps religion could be rolled into the new culture system. After all, spiritual beliefs, a state religion or no religion at all itself could be considered part of culture. So building religious buildings could let you add a spiritual trait to your culture. Eventually you could add a state religion to your culture or add the "secularism" trait to your culture if you don't want religion in your culture.

Another idea could be for civ's bonuses to grow organically from your decisions. So every civ would start the game with just one tribal bonus or ability. But as the game progressed, your actions would give you new civ bonuses. For example, every unit you kill, would give points towards the militaristic trait. As you gain points, you could level up the militaristic trait. Every trade route and economic building would give you points towards the economic trait. Likewise, building a lot of horseman units might unlock a unique cavalry unit. Building lots of archers would unlock a unique archer unit.

Especially once they started adding in the "Russia is immune to blizzards" pieces to civ bonuses, it definitely starts to be a case where you really have to dig into the full text to make sure you're not missing a bonus. Like, comparing my previous game of Persia with my current game as Pericles, one of them you have to read though a mound of text to get all the bonuses. The other is like "Free wildcard slot".

I think for progressive bonuses, I would probably go with something more like the current pantheons or golden age bonuses. To me, those are some of the most fun parts of the game, I just am sad that I only get one pantheon, or that my golden age bonus only lasts for 40 turns. But if you add those, it's almost like going back to the fixed civics tree like in civ 5, so I don't know if they would do that. I could see them opt to do something along those lines for district adjacency - Ed I think mentioned that he didn't like how complicated they were running, and I somewhat agree. Like when I hover over a campus and there's 14 lines listing adjacency options (partly though it ends up not clustering similar options together), it gets a little tougher. It wouldn't surprise me with Ed's comment if in civ 7 they simplify it so that the district gains no innate adjacency (other than maybe for adjacency districts or something), and then all that terrain-specific bonus ends up as building options. So you build a campus anywhere, but you have a choice when you build your university whether you want it to specialize as an observatory (+1 science per mountain), a geological research lab (+2 science per geothermal fissure), a marine biology lab (+2 science per reef), or a biodiversity lab (+1 science per rainforest), or something along those lines.

 

[kaspergm]

I would be ok with choosing new bonuses as the game progresses, maybe when you enter a new era, but I dislike Humankind's idea of actually switching cultures. (...) One idea I had is for culture to be like the religion system. You could start with a basic culture and gain culture traits as the game progresses (...)

Just to be clear, I definitely would not want to inherit Humankind's "changing culture" aspect. That really annoyed me as well. I wouldn't mind having something like choosing either an ability from a global pool each era, or alternatively something like choosing from a nation-specific pool at certain key points - maybe at start of Ancient era, start of Medieval Era, start of Industrial era, and start of Atomic era, or something like that. But obviously if you need say, four different traits at four different times of the game to pick from for each civ, that quickly blows up immensely.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Just to be clear, I definitely would not want to inherit Humankind's "changing culture" aspect. That really annoyed me as well. I wouldn't mind having something like choosing either an ability from a global pool each era, or alternatively something like choosing from a nation-specific pool at certain key points - maybe at start of Ancient era, start of Medieval Era, start of Industrial era, and start of Atomic era, or something like that. But obviously if you need say, four different traits at four different times of the game to pick from for each civ, that quickly blows up immensely.

I would give each civ a unique starter trait and unique buildings and unique units and then just have a global pool of traits that civs would pick from each era. Civs with the same trait would gain a diplomatic bonus (they have a common trait that brings them closer).

Alternatively, traits could be removed from the pool once a civ picks it so that there are no duplicates. But that raises the question of how do you decide what order civs would go in to pick traits if the eras start at the same time for everybody. you could let civs pick a new trait when they get the first tech in a new era. This would favor science civs and beelining down the tech tree. Or you could have civs go in reverse order of their score when a new era starts for everybody. So the civ with the lowest score goes first. This would be more fair and would help civs that are behind as they could pick the trait they want first. I would not want the highest score civ to go first as they would create a snowball effect of the strongest civ possible getting even stronger by picking the best traits first.

 

[Zaarin]

Alternatively, traits could be removed from the pool once a civ picks it so that there are no duplicates.

This is something I'd like to see phased out. E.g., for religion, many religions have similar doctrines; there's no particular reason why it should be "first come, first served." If there's a global pool of civ abilities, I'd probably feel the same way about them, and I particularly like your suggestion that two civs who pick the same ability may feel an affinity towards each other. A third, middle-of-the-road possibility might be "regional abilities"--i.e., a pool for Western European civs, a pool for Middle Eastern civs, etc. Of course, this would lead to some civs like the Maori potentially having what amounts to a unique pool. Call it a feature if you want, I guess...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Especially once they started adding in the "Russia is immune to blizzards" pieces to civ bonuses, it definitely starts to be a case where you really have to dig into the full text to make sure you're not missing a bonus. Like, comparing my previous game of Persia with my current game as Pericles, one of them you have to read though a mound of text to get all the bonuses. The other is like "Free wildcard slot".

I happen to be a big fan of the multiple small bonuses model. I like that they reference historical moments. Russia's blizzard immunity (actually, more blizzard damage to enemy units in Russian territory) reflects how inclement weather defeated an existential threat to the country, not once but twice. Similar for Japan and its hurricane bonus. They are small but flavorful morsels that really make playing fun in the unlikely occurrence that an event in the game mirrors historical ones.

@Zaarin You could go middle of the road, where the first civ to pick an era bonus gets the most powerful version and the subsequent selectors receive more watered down versions until it becomes more beneficial to go another route.

 

[kaspergm]

This is something I'd like to see phased out. E.g., for religion (...) there's no particular reason why it should be "first come, first served."

I actually disagree with this, from a game-design pov. there's a very strong reason why you have to design it like that: You need a "reward" for the player who focuses a lot on a certain aspect of the game. So for instance with religion, you pay an opportunity cost at building holy sites first instead of, say, campuses, but the reward is you might get to pick some of those juicy and extra strong beliefs. Imo. that's a good design principle, and one I have a hard time seeing them abandon. If anything, I think such a system should have applied to more parts of the game, for instance the era dedications, which would have made the era system a lot more interesting, i.e. only the first player to unlock a golden age gets to choose freely which dedication he will have. This is one thing I think Humankind did quite well.

When that's said, Civ6 fails on this design on multiple occasions because the AI will often have a locked order of selection and the options that are most interesting for the player will often sit unpicked by the AI even if you are last to the party. A notorious example of this is the work ethic belief, which is circumstantially overpowered (bordering on game-breaking) yet never picked by AI (at least not in a standard 8-civ game).

 

[Zaarin]

I actually disagree with this, from a game-design pov. there's a very strong reason why you have to design it like that: You need a "reward" for the player who focuses a lot on a certain aspect of the game. So for instance with religion, you pay an opportunity cost at building holy sites first instead of, say, campuses, but the reward is you might get to pick some of those juicy and extra strong beliefs. Imo. that's a good design principle, and one I have a hard time seeing them abandon. If anything, I think such a system should have applied to the era rewards, which would have made the era system a lot more interesting, i.e. only the first player to unlock a golden age gets to choose freely which dedication he will have. This is one thing I think Humankind did quite well.

I can see what you mean; it's just not a feature I'm very fond of--but I think virtually everything about how Civ6 handles religion is poorly done. I hope the entire religion system as it exists gets tossed out and rebuilt from the ground up in Civ7, as I've said here and elsewhere.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I can see what you mean; it's just not a feature I'm very fond of--but I think virtually everything about how Civ6 handles religion is poorly done. I hope the entire religion system as it exists gets tossed out and rebuilt from the ground up in Civ7, as I've said here and elsewhere.

Any reason why? I think the Religion system, particularly in Civ 5, was very well done. Civ 6 improved it (although made the whole system bit too gamey for my taste, even if I enjoyed the aspect of Religious Victory).