Is Civ 6 PC: A continuation.

[aelf]

climate change is not a problem at all from the gameplay perspective. that is the problem. you say it can destroy valuable real estate, but not only does this never happen in "normal" games (which end between t150 and t250 standard), even if it does happen it only slightly damages your economy, but does it damage your win condition? I don't think so, maybe with the exception of it randomly hitting a spaceport.

I wouldn't say not a problem at all. As I said, it's a minor problem, and I've had it destroy tiles before t250 (which I'm betting is actually not a commonly achieved goal for SV). We know that there are very few things that damage your win condition in Civ 6, especially after the first era or two, so again this is in line with the spirit of the game.

 

[Angst]

I for one know that the Little Ice Age was a thing because at some point the Øresund area between Helsingør and Helsingborg froze so the Swedes literally walked across to attack Denmark. This would be impossible today.

 

[drewisfat]

Sure but it wasn't manmade.. Are you trying to nitpick me for not saying anthropogenic climate change? Fortunately I last said global warming and not climate change so I'm still safe

 

[Angst]

Sure but it wasn't manmade.. Are you trying to nitpick me for not saying anthropogenic climate change? Fortunately I last said global warming and not climate change so I'm still safe

Just chiming in about my post (which was just chiming in about the Little Ice Age); I haven't followed the thread much, just wanted to nod and say yes Little Ice Age happened. (Just chiming in, again, without much context.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Sure but it wasn't manmade.. Are you trying to nitpick me for not saying anthropogenic climate change? Fortunately I last said global warming and not climate change so I'm still safe

My point about the Little Ice Age to point out that the game could include climate change events whether or not they are man made. And they could happen anytime and not only at end game.

 

[Broken_Erika]

My point about the Little Ice Age to point out that the game could include climate change events whether or not they are man made. And they could happen anytime and not only at end game.

That's a good idea for a mod. Assuming it's possible.

 

[EgonSpengler]

My point about the Little Ice Age to point out that the game could include climate change events whether or not they are man made. And they could happen anytime and not only at end game.

That's a good idea for a mod. Assuming it's possible.

Natural disasters are already in the game, but they're small in scope. I wonder if global or massive-scale disasters could be included? I'm thinking of historical events like the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1816 ("the year without Winter") and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, but there are other plausible scenarios like an asteroid strike, or a solar coronal mass ejection like The Carrington Event in 1859, but in the modern era. There was a big coronal mass ejection in 2012 that missed us by 9 days. Of course the timescale of the early turns of a Civ game would make some of these events hard to render in the early eras of Civ VI. A single-turn flood along a river in Civ VI early in the game represents a generations-long period of recurring, seasonal flooding.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Natural disasters are already in the game, but they're small in scope. I wonder if global or massive-scale disasters could be included? I'm thinking of historical events like the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1816 ("the year without Winter") and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, but there are other plausible scenarios like an asteroid strike, or a solar coronal mass ejection like The Carrington Event in 1859, but in the modern era. There was a big coronal mass ejection in 2012 that missed us by 9 days. Of course the timescale of the early turns of a Civ game would make some of these events hard to render in the early eras of Civ VI. A single-turn flood along a river in Civ VI early in the game represents a generations-long period of recurring, seasonal flooding.

Apocalypse mode added by the New Frontier Pass may do something like this.
I don't have it so take that with a pinch of salt.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Apocalypse_(Civ6)

 

[aelf]

Natural disasters are already in the game, but they're small in scope. I wonder if global or massive-scale disasters could be included? I'm thinking of historical events like the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1816 ("the year without Winter") and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, but there are other plausible scenarios like an asteroid strike, or a solar coronal mass ejection like The Carrington Event in 1859, but in the modern era. There was a big coronal mass ejection in 2012 that missed us by 9 days. Of course the timescale of the early turns of a Civ game would make some of these events hard to render in the early eras of Civ VI. A single-turn flood along a river in Civ VI early in the game represents a generations-long period of recurring, seasonal flooding.

I suspect you'd then run into game design issues. They probably didn't want to make disasters so debilitating because players are likely to find them unfun. Games that make disasters an important aspect are usually those that are focused on survival or at least much more micro-scale management. Civ is essentially about civilizations competing with other civilizations. How fun would it be if you're knocked out of the competition by something completely random that has large-scale effects?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I suspect you'd then run into game design issues. They probably didn't want to make disasters so debilitating because players are likely to find them unfun. Games that make disasters an important aspect are usually those that are focused on survival or at least much more micro-scale management. Civ is essentially about civilizations competing with other civilizations. How fun would it be if you're knocked out of the competition by something completely random that has large-scale effects?

Could they be like "We love the King" and be a10-20 turn period where plains turn to desert or forests to plains, or tundra to plains etc, for portions of the map? Then they would revert back

 

[aelf]

Could they be like "We love the King" and be a10-20 turn period where plains turn to desert or forests to plains, or tundra to plains etc, for portions of the map? Then they would revert back

But that would be unrealistic. What real-world phenomenon is like that? And what would the point of that be?

 

[Broken_Erika]

How fun would it be if you're knocked out of the competition by something completely random that has large-scale effects?

Could be fun to see other civs knocked out that way.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But that would be unrealistic. What real-world phenomenon is like that? And what would the point of that be?

Our current 20 year drought in the the US southwest? The 200 year Little Ice Age? Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930s? I'm sure there are others from around the world.

 

[aelf]

Could be fun to see other civs knocked out that way.

For a while, and for some others it would just rob them of satisfaction in victory.

Our current 20 year drought in the the US southwest? The 200 year Little Ice Age? Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930s? I'm sure there are others from around the world.

There's already a drought disaster in Civ 6 that's more in line with the game's timescale.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I suspect you'd then run into game design issues. They probably didn't want to make disasters so debilitating because players are likely to find them unfun. Games that make disasters an important aspect are usually those that are focused on survival or at least much more micro-scale management. Civ is essentially about civilizations competing with other civilizations. How fun would it be if you're knocked out of the competition by something completely random that has large-scale effects?

Any one thing knocking you out of the competition would be poor game design. If a Civ was already 'on the brink' and then got hit with something big, well, they were already on the brink, so it wouldn't have been one thing that knocked them out.

Could be fun to see other civs knocked out that way.

Dark Ages in the 'Dramatic Ages' mode frequently destroy whole civs, and it's actually kind of a bummer. In that case, it isn't entirely because of the design of the mechanic itself, as it is the Civ VI AI's general inability to play Civ VI. But I think that horse is out of the barn. I doubt there's anything they can do at this point, besides glean some lessons they could apply to Civ VII.

Oh, hey, I just thought of another disaster that could have a regional or global scope: A disease pandemic. Anyone ever read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I've never played Civ 6 so I'm just spitballing ideas here.

 

[aelf]

Any one thing knocking you out of the competition would be poor game design. If a Civ was already 'on the brink' and then got hit with something big, well, they were already on the brink, so it wouldn't have been one thing that knocked them out.

The thing is, often the excitement of Civ is when you're struggling to make things work. You're desperately resisting the high-level AI's surprise attack in the early game, with the promise of early conquest if you prevail, or when you're trying to chop a key wonder ahead of the AI with their production bonuses. Then a bad disaster strikes. Is it enough to lose you the game? Maybe, maybe not. If you lose, it probably isn't the only thing that knocked you out (maybe the AI's early surprise war was more of a factor) - and yet it's just as frustrating.

A game that is finely balanced at your skill level is easily destabilised by significant random things. And it's hard to balance a game around completely random things.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The thing is, often the excitement of Civ is when you're struggling to make things work. You're desperately resisting the high-level AI's surprise attack in the early game, with the promise of early conquest if you prevail, or when you're trying to chop a key wonder ahead of the AI with their production bonuses. Then a bad disaster strikes. Is it enough to lose you the game? Maybe, maybe not. If you lose, it probably isn't the only thing that knocked you out (maybe the AI's early surprise war was more of a factor) - and yet it's just as frustrating.

A game that is finely balanced at your skill level is easily destabilised by significant random things. And it's hard to balance a game around completely random things.

Ah. Well, we're definitely not on the same page as far as Civ VI being "finely balanced", then. For me, the game's predictability is its biggest problem, so it's the randomized elements that make it exciting (and I don't particularly value balance in a game like Civ anyway). I haven't actually finished a game of Civ VI in like 5 years, but I keep playing the first half or two-thirds of the game, because it's the early game that's still unpredictable. (And the AI might be the worst of it, in terms of predictability. But like I say, I think that ship may have sailed. They keep piling new mechanics on the back of an AI that already couldn't understand the game. I'm not a programmer, but I get the impression they just can't do anything with it, at this point.) Adding disasters that affected multiple cities, perhaps even the whole world, would add another little bit of unpredictability. And a disaster that impacts more advanced Civs (although I can only think of one, right now - a coronal mass ejection) would be a late-game event, which is where Civ VI is most in need of some destabilization, imho. Anyway, I wouldn't want the devs to work on any of this, at this stage. If somebody figured out how to do any of this with a mod, I might give it a try, but I'm excited that the devs said the recent official update was the last. That could indicate Civ VII is at least on the whiteboard and drawing their attention.

 

[aelf]

Ah. Well, we're definitely not on the same page as far as Civ VI being "finely balanced", then. For me, the game's predictability is its biggest problem, so it's the randomized elements that make it exciting (and I don't particularly value balance in a game like Civ anyway).

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. What you refer to as balance is usually called something like the 'fun factor'. 'Balanced' typically describes gameplay that has a certain amount of tightness, where skill or making the right decisions is the key factor in determining the outcome, which is only helped by predictability. Games like RTSes are probably the most sensitive to balance issues, so let's imagine if there's a wide variance in a Zergling's damage in Starcraft: Sometimes it barely scratches a Marine, but sometimes it kills a Marine in one hit. What would that do to the game's balance? It might be somewhat fun to a certain crowd in a single player experience, but you can bet that very few people would want to play that in multiplayer.

Now, Civ is primarily a single player game, but what is its user base like? Or, rather, who are the devs designing for? Given the sum total of the mechanics in the game, it appears the game is built for players who love to optimise. Just look at the plethora of policy cards. Heck, even 1UPT is firmly in that tradition - it's requires much more precise planning to move units with 1UPT compared to having unlimited stacks.

So, yeah, as it is, predictability, or least a large amount of it, is one of the features of the game. After all, one of the biggest complaints from the early days was a spearman beating a tank, which is what randomness does. Should it change? Will it change? I guess it depends on the devs' future vision and maybe the market research or user feedback, if they bother with that.

That being said, have you tried increasing disaster intensity? I do prefer more predictability in a game like Civ and I don't have enough time to play a game that I think I wouldn't enjoy, so I have no idea how bad it can get. Maybe it's good enough for many of those who enjoy more unpredictability?

 

[Angst]

That being said, have you tried increasing disaster intensity? I do prefer more predictability in a game like Civ and I don't have enough time to play a game that I think I wouldn't enjoy, so I have no idea how bad it can get. Maybe it's good enough for many of those who enjoy more unpredictability?

Personally I enjoy more unpredictability, but (admittedly as a very green player) increased disasters make flood plains a near waste of attention from what I can gather.

Other than that, I want to say that I generally agree with your post - Civ is a very specific thing. It's much more complicated version of Risk than a simulator. People that want more immersion and general unpredictability should look to stuff like the CK series and the mods for those games - which is what I've moved to.