Is it time for a custom civ option?

[Arent11]

I like the historic setting & the character of the various civs. However, I also always catch myself: "Why the hell is there no "customize" option? Sure, you can mod it & create Norway with better berserkers & better tundra. But in almost every modern RPG I can create my character & choose his or her appearance, skills etc. It seems a little anachronistic that you have to mod your own civ.

 

[Flaxton]

You would have to use a point based system, however synergistic bonuses would be over powerful. I don't know how that would work but as a single player does it matter if you make it awesome?

E.g. adding Aztec luxury bonus to, say, the French increased diplomacy or Americas same continent bonus - stacking them would be more more powerful than normal.

 

[Karmah]

while I do appreciate being able to min/max my character and such ,I'm joining Flaxton. My experience with civ-like games allowing customization is that you tend to create OP civs right off the bat and selecting the civ becomes a 'I win button'. I'm thinking endless space on top of my head where all of my creations are just too good.

I voted I don't care..because I guess someone who is pretty much into roleplay might discipline him/her/itself into creating interresting civ to play , and if it enhance said person game experience fine with me. I just know I will not use the feature personnally if it were to be developped.

 

[Arent11]

You would have to use a point based system, however synergistic bonuses would be over powerful. I don't know how that would work but as a single player does it matter if you make it awesome?

E.g. adding Aztec luxury bonus to, say, the French increased diplomacy or Americas same continent bonus - stacking them would be more more powerful than normal.

In single player it wouldn't be necessary. But in multiplayer such a point system might be important. Of course it would be best if the traits were balanced to begin with. Another point that you bring up is of course the synergy of different traits.

 

[Patine]

I like the historic setting & the character of the various civs. However, I also always catch myself: "Why the hell is there no "customize" option? Sure, you can mod it & create Norway with better berserkers & better tundra. But in almost every modern RPG I can create my character & choose his or her appearance, skills etc. It seems a little anachronistic that you have to mod your own civ.

Although, indeed, it's an attractive and appealing idea from my perspective as well, Empire Earth, for example, shows in clear highlighted relief how a custom player civilization creation system in a nation-building strategy game can end up being an abysmal sinkhole of sloppiness in application if poorly done.

 

[acluewithout]

I think modding really does cover this very well. If FXS created some custom civ tool it would be much weaker / buggier than just modding with very little gain.

What I think modding is missing for the less tech-savvy (like me) is some easy way to deal with animated leaders, because art and animation is some seriously complicated stuff.

It would be helpful if Civ had some sort of “default” for leaders for people who have modded their own leader or civ. This could be some sort of animated “advisor” character that could present messages from yours and other people’s modded leaders. Not a perfect solution, but would maybe fill the gap in a less jarring way than just having a static character and or kludged picture.

But, you know, this is hardly a top priority.

 

[Karpius]

Yes! I want that! I have always wanted to be able to design my own civ! But I don't want to turn to a mod to do it. I want to be able to do it on the fly every time I start a game. Okay, I understand that is likely not very possible in the current infrastructure, but to answer the OP's question.....Yes, I want to create my own civ!

Truth is, as much as I love the game of Civilization going back to '97, I have never felt quite right about playing "real" civs. While I understand the appeal to the general audience, it always bothered me that none of the civs were even in existence at the dawn of history. Playing scenarios that start on a specific date in history with participants that represent historically accurate nations or personalities is quite different and was my bread and butter for more than twenty years of table-top gaming. I know it is quite appealing to have the "unique units" and agendas and abilities for different civs, (I do love my Legions!) but in my mind it is so inaccurate that it becomes much less immersive.... at least for me it does.

Throughout history, each tribe, city or nation was shaped by its environment with geography arguably playing the biggest role of all. Climate and access to food sources influenced the domestication of plants and animals. Contact with other human groups then created 'exchanges' of varied types that further influenced each groups development. The earliest city-states in the fertile crescent learned about horsemanship from the steppe peoples, but it took them years to grudgingly adapt it properly. Ideas were spread from people to people and region to region and accepted and adopted where most useful at the time. In our 'game'. we can have America, Egypt, Germany and China all begin at the same time with their representative agendas all trying to discover the wheel independently of each other.

My personal preference would be to have each tribe start with the exact same abilities and no real agenda beyond 'find food'. After that, lets choose from policy cards, or some other method, to shape our tribe as it grows into a civilization with its own identity...even if some of that identity is influenced by other tribes. Now THAT would be historically accurate.

That is only the briefest and rather nebulous description of where I would like to see Civilization go, but I recognize there is a very major flaw in the concept. It is probably not marketable.

 

[Uberfrog]

The OP appears to be conflating cosmetic customisation with skill assignment. Even in RPGs, you tend to have to pick abilities from a selected character class – you cannot pick, say, a healing spell as a fighter; nor can a damage-dealing rogue also wear heavy armour.

Civs are supposed to be balanced holistically, and cherry-picking abilities breaks this essential balance of the game. Balance is still important in single-player – civs are supposed to offer a variety of play-styles with strengths and weakness, not be a blank canvas onto which to project your own. It's not an anachronism, so much as key decision in the game's design.

I can see how mixing and matching abilities might be a fun exercise in over- or under-poweredness, but mods are sufficient for this. It's too niche a feature for the developers to go to the trouble of implementing it.

 

[Patine]

Even in RPGs, you tend to have to pick abilities from a selected character class – you cannot pick, say, a healing spell as a fighter; nor can a damage-dealing rogue also wear heavy armour.

Well, you can in the Rift MMO, but that's a corner case and it has it's own rules, restrictions, and storyline behind it. That being said, I do see your point, but, to be me, reconfiguring skills and traits as a civ in a way that wasn't unbalanced or highly sloppy (like Empire Earth's system was) would be of MORE importance to me by far than cosmetic changes.

 

[Equilin]

I just play All Unique mod(s) when I want to combo unique components.
My opinion is that mod is sufficient for this (mods can even get achievements now!)

 

[tedhebert]

I voted NO, because I think there are a lot of more important things that could better the CIV6 experience and game...

That being said, it IS fun to be able to easliy customize your civ... One of the good examples of that is Galactic Civilizations 3 (and 1 and 2 for that matter)... Yes, it IS impossible to correctly assign values to differents abilities and qualities to balance them out adequately, but it really allows you to tailor your Civ to your tastes and preferences... And also, the fun of seeing the Canadian Flag take over the universe is uplifting

 

[Karpius]

Civs are supposed to be balanced holistically, and cherry-picking abilities breaks this essential balance of the game. Balance is still important in single-player – civs are supposed to offer a variety of play-styles with strengths and weakness, not be a blank canvas onto which to project your own. It's not an anachronism, so much as key decision in the game's design.

I want the blank canvas to start on. I want the strengths and weaknesses and play style to develop over the course of the experience (game) based on the player's response to circumstances. I don't want to make contact with a civ and know ahead of time they can and will develop a unique unit my civ cannot replicate, or if I can hold out for the next advancement on the tech tree I can upgrade my units into something they cannot replicate. I don't want to already know they are likely to be very strong in religion or science. I don't want to watch them automatically gain roads from city to city without trade routes while I watch and say, "why can't I do that?". I don't want to meet Teddy early in the game and know for sure that late in the game he's going to be a tree hugger and get irked every time I chop down a tree. Its too much prescient knowledge for my taste and adds to the complaint of how easy the game is to beat. I would much rather meet a new stranger each game and learn how best to deal with them.

 

[Arent11]

Yes! I want that! I have always wanted to be able to design my own civ! But I don't want to turn to a mod to do it. I want to be able to do it on the fly every time I start a game. Okay, I understand that is likely not very possible in the current infrastructure, but to answer the OP's question.....Yes, I want to create my own civ!

It's just a bit about RPGish play. I want to have my own, little named civ, own cities, colors & traits. And then I want to play against the one of my brother

My personal preference would be to have each tribe start with the exact same abilities and no real agenda beyond 'find food'. After that, lets choose from policy cards, or some other method, to shape our tribe as it grows into a civilization with its own identity...even if some of that identity is influenced by other tribes. Now THAT would be historically accurate.

That's basically what you do in beyond earth. You start with some traits which are rather unimportant, but throughout the game you have a "virtue" tree similar to RPGs to customize your civ.

Civs are supposed to be balanced holistically, and cherry-picking abilities breaks this essential balance of the game.

But the civs are unbalanced. So much in fact that some of them are banned in multiplayer.

 

[Uberfrog]

I want the blank canvas to start on. I want the strengths and weaknesses and play style to develop over the course of the experience (game) based on the player's response to circumstances. I don't want to make contact with a civ and know ahead of time they can and will develop a unique unit my civ cannot replicate, or if I can hold out for the next advancement on the tech tree I can upgrade my units into something they cannot replicate. I don't want to already know they are likely to be very strong in religion or science. I don't want to watch them automatically gain roads from city to city without trade routes while I watch and say, "why can't I do that?". I don't want to meet Teddy early in the game and know for sure that late in the game he's going to be a tree hugger and get irked every time I chop down a tree. Its too much prescient knowledge for my taste and adds to the complaint of how easy the game is to beat. I would much rather meet a new stranger each game and learn how best to deal with them.

This is an interesting concept for a free-from sandbox game, it just doesn't fit into Sid Meier's Civilization. The fantasy of playing historical empires and leaders with expected strengths and traits is an intrinsic part of the series' identity.

I genuinely like the idea of a 4X game with malleable traits you pick on the fly. But there would presumably still be win conditions, and a limited pool of viable options to choose from given your starting position and play style. The game would still have to be balanced so that radically different circumstances have equal viable routes to victory. The predictability would still have to be there, particularly if AI is to be involved. Just the way you identify who's who shifts from what leader they are playing, to where their empire is – e.g. you see a civ who has started on the plains, you strongly suspect they're going to be a cavalry force; you see a civ on the coast, you know they're going to need a good navy. There would therefore still be an element of prescience, I don't think that's ever avoidable with game design, as it's how strategies are forged in the first place.

But the civs are unbalanced. So much in fact that some of them are banned in multiplayer.

Oh sure, that's why I said "supposed to be balanced" . Just because Firaxis violated good design principles doesn't mean the idea of them is not still there. Still, each Civ as designed has an identifiable set of characteristics so the player knows what to expect. Certain civs are OP, and the player knows when they play them, they will have an easier ride .

 

[Banazir864]

I've wanted this since Civ V. No need to go that in-depth, just mix-and-match existing bonuses (and, ideally, things like agenda and favored religion) and choose your own name, colors, symbol, and leader and background art (heck, you can't even rename your civ in this version of the game). Even being able to change the names and colors would be nice (for example, I liked Egypt's bonuses in Civ V, but I could never bring myself to stare at that eye-assaulting magenta-on-yellow for so many hours).

If balance is an issue, just add an option to disable custom leaders that's turned on by default in multiplayer (though you should still be able to customize purely aesthetic things like name and color).

As an added bonus, if two people wanted to play the same leader in multiplayer, letting one choose a different name and leader art would eliminate the confusion of having duplicate leaders running around.

I can see how mixing and matching abilities might be a fun exercise in over- or under-poweredness, but mods are sufficient for this. It's too niche a feature for the developers to go to the trouble of implementing it.

Only if you're a modder, which most people aren't; otherwise you can't do anything but hope the exact mod you want comes out.

And talking like being overpowered in single-player is a problem is pointless because the game already contains easy difficulties where every human-run civ is overpowered (not to mention you can do things like have Kongo as your only opponent with all victories disabled but religious). Heck, even older games usually contained cheat codes. If other people want unbalanced singleplayer games, how's that anyone else's business (and if it's achievements you're worried about, they could just disable achievements for custom civs, though there are already easy ways to cheese the "win on difficulty X" achievements, and most of the others can be obtained on the easiest difficulty)? And as for being underpowered, well, then all of those people who find deity too easy might finally be able to give themselves a challenge.

So many people want different civs that Firaxis can't possibly include them all. With mix-and-match, you could make whichever civ you wanted. I'd rather buy an expansion that let me mix-and-match my own civs (or even reskin existing civs) than one that contained five new leaders, because that way I can have all the leaders I could ever want (and there are already plenty of abilities to choose from), including ones neither Firaxis nor the modders would be likely to ever make.

 

[Forster]

I voted yes because it would allow new civs without having to wait for another dlc. I am aware that it would probably be difficult. I also like the suggestion of starting with a blank slate for all civs and letting their experiences during play evolve the civ nature/abilities. This also would be a difficult project I suspect.

 

[ChocolateShake]

I voted NO, because I think there are a lot of more important things that could better the CIV6 experience and game...

That being said, it IS fun to be able to easliy customize your civ... One of the good examples of that is Galactic Civilizations 3 (and 1 and 2 for that matter)... Yes, it IS impossible to correctly assign values to differents abilities and qualities to balance them out adequately, but it really allows you to tailor your Civ to your tastes and preferences... And also, the fun of seeing the Canadian Flag take over the universe is uplifting

Yup it's high time for Civ to allow easy new civ and leader creation. There are awesome mods out there, but there would be a lot more if it was a lot easier to customize a new civ/leader.

I remember before release there were some thoughts that we might be able to choose things like Cleopatra leading the U.S., etc., that would've been interesting too.

I kind of miss how things were in Civ 2 - the lack of differences between the civs made everything feel more equal and made it feel like it was your civ to develop.

 

[Arent11]

Yup it's high time for Civ to allow easy new civ and leader creation. There are awesome mods out there, but there would be a lot more if it was a lot easier to customize a new civ/leader.

It's just super easy to implement & already standard in basically all modern RPG titles. It is obvious that for more rpgishly inclined people this would be a cause to buy civ. For example, I myself don't really like the traits of the existing civs. I have no problem to play against historical figures like Harald or Cleopatra, but when it comes to my civ I would like to control their traits & appearance.