[NFP] In six months' time which game modes do you expect to be using in the majority of your games?

In six months' time which game modes do you expect to use in the majority of your games?

  • Apocalypse mode

    Votes: 3 5.2%
  • Secret Societies

    Votes: 28 48.3%
  • Tech and Civic Shuffle

    Votes: 27 46.6%
  • Dramatic Ages

    Votes: 22 37.9%
  • None of these

    Votes: 14 24.1%

  • Total voters
    58

Scrabbler

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 15, 2007
Messages
22
Location
Scotland
I tried Apocalypse mode once. I might try it again, but only occasionally.

I also played one game with Secret Societies, but it is not really for me as I tend to play more for the historical flavour.

I do like Tech and Civic Shuffle though as it gives you variety between games and the feeling of unknown, a bit like with exploring the map. It is good that in the Ancient Era your exact path to the space race is obscured. For me at least, I think that mode is here to stay.

It is a bit early to tell for Dramatic Ages, so I voted No for now.

Which modes do you think you will still be using in the long term? You may select multiple options but I also included an option to select none of these.
 
- Apocalypse Mode, Secret Societies and Dramatic Ages for sure

I've already modded Apocalypse to be tamer, and am now working on restoring some removed functionality in Dramatic Ages (Normal Ages to be more precise).
 
I'm using Secret Societies on a regular basis. I've tried all the others, but the are kind of meh. AT least for me.
 
Apocalypse mode is not fun for me. Dramatic ages are really annoying at the beginning - other civs influence on free cities is usually really low so they back to you.
 
I don't like Apocalypse mode that much anymore since soothsayers produce CO2. But I really enjoy SS and Shuffle mode. Its too early for me to make a decision about dramatic ages.
 
None of them as of right now. I like Secret Societies the most but most of my games are still played without it.
I *love* the idea of Dramatic Ages and having the ages have more of an impact but I just don't like the execution of it at all sadly.
 
I'm hoping someone will make mods that pull major balance passes on Secret Societies and Dramatic Ages. If that happens, I reckon I'll use them regularly. Otherwise, I still might use Secret Societies from time to time, but will also turn it off again sometimes, because it feels overpowered as it is. Haven't tried out Dramatic Ages yet, but in its current form, I think it will be too stressful and disruptive for me to use frequently.
 
I can't imagine playing without Shuffle. I will probably use Secret Societies. The other two are a big fat NEVER.
 
I really dislike all of them. Basically paid for a bunch of new civs, almost no bonus content in this expansion pack.
 
I'm not sure about dramatic ages yet, but of the other three, it's likely the only one I'll use regularly is secret societies. But not every time, though.
 
Apocalypse rarely, Secret Societies I will often use, Tech and Civic shuffle occasionally. As for Dramatic Ages, I think they need to implement a normal age and a sliding scale for the % of cities lost based on how far you missed the threshold (this way if you're close you don't lose 20%, maybe just 1 city), and if they do that or something like it I'll consider it base game essentially.
 
I would leave almost all of them on if they were adjusted.

Apocalypse Mode - Needs to be survivable via technology and mitigation buildings/improvements - I don't want to get to the end of a game and just see what cities are left after random asteroid strikes wipe out everyone else.

Secret Societies - Need to be more integrated throughout the game, and each society needs to be able to be supported or fought against in a type of epic showdown. They may even need to be split off into separate modes, so that each game can have one or more specific societies as a global threat.

Tech and Civic Shuffle - No complaints here. This one is awesome for players who have been through the tech tree enough times to know what is what, or in multi-player games to level the playing field.

Dramatic Ages - Almost perfect. There needs to be a small window still for a normal age.
 
Not a fan of any of them to be honest... they're just not balanced. The tech shuffle at least can break things up a bit, but I feel it's a poor replacement for a more realistic or robust tech / eureka 'path' that critiques have often called for across the series.
 
I like secret societies and frequently play with it, but with that said I'd really like them to be more balanced.
These are my personal pet peeves:

1. The tying of invites to governors, which can have a human player cheese the game with (too) early governors - super early Magnus chops, Connoiseur Pingala to cruise through the civics tree early, 4x Moksha for faith buying districts in a high faith civ etc. The invites should ideally be a separate mechanic, not tied to governor promotions. This should also be easy to fix in a future patch.
2. Some are just clearly better than others, especially Void Singers and partially Sanguine Pact. Owls of Minerva are decent for the early economic policy (but falls off hard later), while Hermetic Order are just a no-go for me.
3. The randomness of getting the invite (and thus the early governors), leading to very uneven games. Sometimes the game just won't let you have the invite without severe save scumming (which I really dislike to do), especially for Void Singers this can be devastating since you eventually run out of Tribal Villages (and on high difficulty, you are handicapped in scouting for them anyway). I've had games where by the Medieval Era (where void singers really start to pick up) I still didn't get an invite, which sucked hard since my entire strategy revolved around them (building up massive faith and turtling up, and catching up once Medieval Era hit). This also makes the mode a no-go for multiplayer games, since the RNG can screw a player over completely if one doesn't get the right invites in a timely fashion, while everyone else happens to get them and abuse them.

As for Dramatic Ages, I could grow to like that, but I kind of dislike the binary nature of it, where a DA is too punitive and can have cities insta-flip if you fail by just a few era points.
I don't mind loyalty being an issue, but it should have more counterplay as in forcing you to slot loyalty cards, garrison units, focus on excess amenities/bread and circuses projects etc., not just outright losing a percentage of cities (as I've understood that it does).
It's also disproportionally punitive to the AI, and if you don't have direct control over which cities flip, it means that it could be your baseline most loyal high-pop core cities. This again takes away from any "sensible" planning around loyalty, where RNG just decides to screw you over.

TL;DR: Heavy RNG influenced elements in civ are terrible, as in my opinion, planning around things is what makes this game so fun to begin with. Too heavy RNG elements just have no place in civ.
 
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