Is it a good idea to "merge" game features into one in new iterations of the game?

[kaspergm]

The concept of eurekas was good - the things you are exposed to drives what you learn. The implementation was weak for a variety of reasons, including static tech trees, knowing the triggers for the eurekas, those triggers not varying, etc. Most importantly, though, it didn't have the intended result. If you're on the coast, you already have an incentive to learn Sailing, so you're likely to research it. The eureka system simply disincentivized learning a tech until you had triggered the cost discount.

And yes, you could ignore them, but that's mostly because Civ 6 was "win your way". You could ignore lots of mechanics in Civ 6 without meaningful penalty, because the AI certainly wasn't optimizing. That doesn't mean those were good systems or that gameplay couldn't be improved by re-imagining some of the more micro-intensive mechanics.

Also, I'm not arguing that all of these changes will end up being good for gameplay. I'm just encouraged to see them trying to eliminate some of the busywork. Pop placement is a great place to start:

• What did it even mean to suggest that your city has expanded, if no one is working the land? It makes sense to represent the expansion of a city by having population from the city "move into" and start working that tile.
• If people are working the land, they can be assumed to be optimizing the technology at their disposal. It makes sense to assume they dig mines, build sawmills, and fence farmland if your culture knows how to dig mines, build sawmills, and fence farmland.

Of course there are other ways of addressing this and the Civ 7 approach may not prove to be the best, but I like what I'm seeing on this front and hope they go further (*cough* *policy cards* *cough*).

I actually think I agree with all you're saying here, I just think this is a somewhat different point than what I was trying to communicate in my post. I'm not against tiles being improved once you place the worker on it, to eliminate the whole tiresome process of improving tiles (like you say, what does it even mean to have a citizen working an unimproved tile). I do think the fact that you can't move the citizen is an unnecessary restriction, but that's not my main point either. What I'm objecting to is tying the working of a tile to the border expansion. That just seem completely unnecessary to me. Why does working a tile automatically give you all adjacent tiles? And why can't you acquire tiles in other ways? Both the coupling and the restriction seems illogical and undesirable to me, but apparently I'm the only one with that concern, so I guess that's great.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

What I'm objecting to is tying the working of a tile to the border expansion. That just seem completely unnecessary to me. Why does working a tile automatically give you all adjacent tiles? And why can't you acquire tiles in other ways? Both the coupling and the restriction seems illogical and undesirable to me, but apparently I'm the only one with that concern, so I guess that's great.

I agree with you about this. The reality is that for the whole of written history, any land that could support people has supported people, so a city expanding isn't just people moving into uninhabitable land, its people displacing other people or bringing them under their control - although it could (and often did) include as part of that process changing how the land was used from low intensity activity to high intensity activity.

So, yes, I would be totally fine with other ways to acquire tiles or other conditions for acquiring tiles other than the traditional Civ approach of "stuff our women-folk full of food until they have more babies".

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I agree with you about this. The reality is that for the whole of written history, any land that could support people has supported people, so a city expanding isn't just people moving into uninhabitable land, its people displacing other people or bringing them under their control - although it could (and often did) include as part of that process changing how the land was used from low intensity activity to high intensity activity.

So, yes, I would be totally fine with other ways to acquire tiles or other conditions for acquiring tiles other than the traditional Civ approach of "stuff our women-folk full of food until they have more babies".

Just to bring in a point: DNA analysis a few years ago found that the population of parts of England has remained remarkably genetically consistent for over 7000 years. That is, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Viking/Danes, Normans - all of them came in, added a bit here and there, but had no fundamental effect on the population on the ground.

That indicates that the people already settled in an area are remarkably persistent as a genetic group. Obviously, Culture may change over time, since that is influenced by emulation of the ruling group as well as the physical composition of the people living the culture.

But in game terms, it means that the original Pelasgians/Celts/Britons living on the tile you grabbed in the beginning of the Antiquity Age are probably still there at the beginning of the Modern Age. They may be speaking your language by now and paying your taxes, but they probably celebrate a version of the Hogswatch festival with some slightly different trimmings and they may still prefer Barley Beer to Kumiss. The evidence is that they are very hard to get rid of completely.

 

[Trengilly]

I actually think I agree with all you're saying here, I just think this is a somewhat different point than what I was trying to communicate in my post. I'm not against tiles being improved once you place the worker on it, to eliminate the whole tiresome process of improving tiles (like you say, what does it even mean to have a citizen working an unimproved tile). I do think the fact that you can't move the citizen is an unnecessary restriction, but that's not my main point either. What I'm objecting to is tying the working of a tile to the border expansion. That just seem completely unnecessary to me. Why does working a tile automatically give you all adjacent tiles? And why can't you acquire tiles in other ways? Both the coupling and the restriction seems illogical and undesirable to me, but apparently I'm the only one with that concern, so I guess that's great.

I don't think the developers have said that this is the only way to expand city borders?

Its possible that their are other options. I actually hope there are.

Old World did it really well by having specific families or leader types or government policies allow you to buy tiles in addition to the normal expansion via culture bomb. It presented a trade off . . . there were options but you had to make specific choices or other sacrifices to be able to buy tiles.

 

[aieeegrunt]

This particular mechanic removes a LOT of tedious micro from the game, I am whole heartedly in favour of it, and I wish there was a way to back port it to Civ6

I guess you could make the basic yields of a tile the same as if it had an improvement on it.

Holy Crap that would save SO MANY CLICKS

 

[Zaarin]

Just to bring in a point: DNA analysis a few years ago found that the population of parts of England has remained remarkably genetically consistent for over 7000 years. That is, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Viking/Danes, Normans - all of them came in, added a bit here and there, but had no fundamental effect on the population on the ground.

That indicates that the people already settled in an area are remarkably persistent as a genetic group. Obviously, Culture may change over time, since that is influenced by emulation of the ruling group as well as the physical composition of the people living the culture.

But in game terms, it means that the original Pelasgians/Celts/Britons living on the tile you grabbed in the beginning of the Antiquity Age are probably still there at the beginning of the Modern Age. They may be speaking your language by now and paying your taxes, but they probably celebrate a version of the Hogswatch festival with some slightly different trimmings and they may still prefer Barley Beer to Kumiss. The evidence is that they are very hard to get rid of completely.

And I appreciated that Andrew Johnson emphasized that, hey, all that empty land between your civilization and their civilization? It's already inhabited. The empty map isn't really empty; it's just not yet under the control of a state. Because by 4000 BC, the entire world was populated.

 

[dagriggstar]

Pop management always seemed like a problem mechanic to me
1) AI can’t/won’t do it
2) If you are strictly playing to win and have the real life time to do it, you would spend the time doing it every turn. Which rockets up the % of real life time you spend with this mechanic, taking away time from the rest of the game.
3) On every turn of the game, there would be an optimal output in a brain dead obvious kind of way.
4) Multiplayer games (I think anyway) are mostly played with a turn timer. Pop management is more who can click the fastest gets rewarded, which I don’t think is a skill that interests me in being rewarded for what is meant to be a turn based game.
5) The most common critique of the series is that it takes too long (real life time) to finish a game. Reducing that in ways that players don’t feel bad for playing sub optimally is a good thing.

 

[Krikkit1]

So, yes, I would be totally fine with other ways to acquire tiles or other conditions for acquiring tiles other than the traditional Civ approach of "stuff our women-folk full of food until they have more babies".

I could see that becoming a part of the Later Ages.... After all Spain claimed an entire continent and a half with about 2 cities.

However, given that "claimed tiles" actually give you vision and block others (unlike Spains claims), it would probably need to be bought with Influence/Gold at a City/Military Outpost (not a Farming/Mining/Trading/Growing town)

 

[RedCourtJester]

I think things like builder spending and pop shuffling are only engaging on a much smaller and less complex scale. Past a certain threshold, they just become tedious.

I wouldn't have minded if they kept those mechanics in the antiquity age and phased them out for the simplified model in the exploration age. But overall I think this system is preferable when you look at the full breadth of mechanics from start to finish.

 

[Fummy]

I don't think the developers have said that this is the only way to expand city borders?

Placing a building on a title (converting it into an urban quarter) also annexes surrounding tiles to the city. So gaining a pop can expand the border by various amounts at once depending on which tile you improve with that new population, but placing a building can as well. Urban quarters (districts?) can only be placed adjacent to existing ones though so its less likely this will expand your cities borders, but it can.

 

[rocksinmypath]

4) Multiplayer games (I think anyway) are mostly played with a turn timer. Pop management is more who can click the fastest gets rewarded, which I don’t think is a skill that interests me in being rewarded for what is meant to be a turn based game.

I agree that this sort of mechanic has no place in the turn-based genre. To add to this, I believe the builder mini-game and citizen management are two of the biggest immersion breakers in Civ 6. People often ask for builder automation, and if citizen management automation weren't a thing, I'm sure everyone would be screaming for it. The desire for automation is, aside from quitting the game, probably the clearest indicator that a player is not immersed in the game. You cannot justify automation of either task by using just elements that are present in the game. These tasks aren't that difficult to perform. A competent player can perform them just as well or better than the computer can, so the player does not gain any edge by resorting to automation. What automation gives the player is time, and in a turn-based game, there is no concept of time. Desire for automation arises from factors that are completely foreign to the game, and if that's not a sign of disimmersion, I don't know what is.

 

[_hero_]

You have 3 options as a game developer

1. "Merge" features to make room for new features
2. Stop adding features to your game
3. Have massive feature bloat leading to players getting overwhelmed and losing interest

 

[RedCourtJester]

You have 3 options as a game developer

1. "Merge" features to make room for new features
2. Stop adding features to your game
3. Have massive feature bloat leading to players getting overwhelmed and losing interest

Yes I was thinking along these lines. I didn't play the earlier civs, but I did notice that the new features in Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm were, almost entirely, new concepts to the civ franchise (with the only major exception I can think of being diplomacy/world congress). Base game Civ VI, to my understanding, packed in as many expansion features from completed V as it could: religion and espionage from Gods and Kings, ideology, archaeology , and cultural victory from Brave New World. And then it streamlined them into a more simplified base concept to build upon (while also adding its own major ideas in Civics and districts).

I kind of see VII as doing the same thing. Districts from VI have been massively overhauled to be more flexible Quarters. The idea of alternate leaders has been fully realized as separating leaders from civs, and representing different civs from the same region across eras. I would argue the eras and "crisis" format of the game are a simplification of Golden/Dark Ages from Rise and Fall, and it looks like governors have been reworked into civ-specific units like Egypt's viziers Greece's Logios. So I do fully expect that once we start seeing more of the modern era, power will likely have been reworked into something, and maybe some other elements of Gathering Storm (SURPRISE ELEANOR!). I think barbarian clans from Frontier Pass influence the goody hut overhaul, and I could also totally see corporations making it into the base game.

(I do hope they bring secret societies back, too. With maybe more options from other parts of the world.)

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

(less strategic options for the player = bad for gameplay). Furthermore, when I chose where to place the population, I'll be faced with conflicting interests: Do I place the population where I get the yield I want most, or do I place the population in order to expand my borders where I need it the most.

It's seems like this system creates the biggest 'difference' in result from a choice. So while it may be annoying it should result in choices feeling more important.

Have the population live on the tile makes me wonder what happens when you take a city. A farm that's between two cities would not just switch sides if the urban part was captured. A farm that's two tiles away from two different cities is essentially the same thing.

 

[Fummy]

You have 3 options as a game developer

1. "Merge" features to make room for new features
2. Stop adding features to your game
3. Have massive feature bloat leading to players getting overwhelmed and losing interest

What new features? There are fewer features than Civ VI as far as we know. and don't say swapping civs, that doesnt require any micro management since its a one (two) off decision.

 

[Krikkit1]

What new features? There are fewer features than Civ VI as far as we know. and don't say swapping civs, that doesnt require any micro management since its a one (two) off decision.

They are actually combining 1 and 3 ..... merge features to get rid of the feature bloat that leads to players losing interest

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I believe that's outdated now, genetics based history was very volatile in the 2000s and 2010s and is only now settling down to some sort of stable consensus. There were two prehistoric waves of migration into Britain that almost completely replaced the previous genepool. One is associated with the Corded-Ware culture some ~5000 years ago and another associated with the Bronze age some 3800 years ago.


Although this book is already 7 years old so it might be slightly out of date already (it's excellent though, highly recommended). The amount of DNA from Ango-Saxons and Norse in modern British populations is also still hotly debated AFAIK. Exciting topic with lots of research answering age old questions

Thanks for the tip on the Reichs book: got it ordered already.

The DNA Mania of 15 - 20 years ago was based, unfortunately, on a very small data base. I believe at one time they were making sweeping statements and deductions based on a total of less than 4000 different samples over the entire Eurasian continent (minus Africa) and 7000+ years.

Sigh. It's damn near impossible to keep up with everything . . .

 

[Fummy]

They are actually combining 1 and 3 ..... merge features to get rid of the feature bloat that leads to players losing interest

I've never lost interest from "feature bloat". its civilization, its always had many many interacting features. this is the source of its strength. What you are describing is simplification/casualisation.

 

[Zaarin]

I've never lost interest from "feature bloat". its civilization, its always had many many interacting features. this is the source of its strength. What you are describing is simplification/casualisation.

Strongly disagree. Late Civ6 suffered from an excess of poorly integrated systems.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I've never lost interest from "feature bloat". its civilization, its always had many many interacting features. this is the source of its strength. What you are describing is simplification/casualisation.

Maybe you haven't, but I bet what you're referring to is one of the big reasons why more than 60% of players on Steam have never completed a game of Civ 6.