Legacy paths and victory rework - expectations

[Porry]

What do you expect from the changes to the legacy paths and the new victories Firaxis has planned? I expect new legacy paths tied to expansionism and diplomacy. I also hope for victories to be possible for all eras. I also hope that the legacy paths abandon the current framework and allow for more freedom: different actions will lead to the possibility of earning points, and reaching the maximum unlocks the golden age for every path. A bit like in Civ 6.
What are your thoughts?

 

[Siptah]

Yeah, basically two additional paths and more flexibility. If that flexibility comes from more variety how to complete the current paths, or whether there are multiple different paths for each attribute (with only one of them available each game), I can‘t even guess. I assume the latter leads to more diverse games, and it’s easier to balance than the former, but the former would be more popular.

Victory projects in any age would be great!

 

[stealth_nsk]

As I understand, goals are:

1. Make victories for Antiquity and Exploration as initially planned
2. Make victory age not feel like a straightforward race
3. Reduce the feeling of railroading

To fulfill those goals some expected changes are:

1. Longer and more complex victory projects, requiring various aspects of the game. This should allow victory age to be more interesting
2. More ways to delay enemy victory projects. This also should make victory age more diverse - both for AI delaying player projects and player doing the same for AI
3. Design victory projects for antiquity and exploration.
4. Rebalance existing legacy paths for antiquity and exploration. At the moment they differ a lot in how fast they could be achieved, which is not great when used for victory.
5. For each legacy path add an alternative way to reach it, instead of creating more legacy paths, again balanced with time. This should soften most random legacy paths like antiquity culture.
6. Remove legacy paths speeding up age progress. That's my personal pain point, but I think current mechanics forcing people to delay legacy paths is extremely gamey.

 

[Porry]

Excellent analysis. I would appreciate it if the solutions you proposed were implemented.

 

[Krikkit1]

I disagree with 6…but deliberately holding back is a problem perhaps making them like the victory age (5-10-0) would solve the problem….since the AI will get the first two early.

Maybe 10-10-0 for nonVictory ages, and 5-5-0 for victory ages.

That way they don’t launch you to the end of the age as much as launch you into the Crisis.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I disagree with 6…but deliberately holding back is a problem perhaps making them like the victory age (5-10-0) would solve the problem….since the AI will get the first two early.

Maybe 10-10-0 for nonVictory ages, and 5-10-0 for victory ages.

Yes, that's possible too. I think only playtest will show the best approach.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't mind a 10-10-0. Another option is if they just adjusted the timer a little. So if you're at 85%, getting the last peg on the treasure legacy doesn't jump you immediately to 95%. Someone had also mentioned playing on a shorter age but a longer final fixed countdown timer. That also forces you to be in the crisis for a slightly more fixed length of time.

As for the legacies, while a part of me would like the symmetry of 6 legacies for the 6 attribute trees, and arguably with 6 of them I wouldn't hate just completely ignoring one or two of them sometimes, I do think that gets a little trickier. I also like the 4 legacies mapped to the 4 current victories. I'm fine with them as we have them now, and just getting a little bit of balance towards them, as well as maybe some alternate ways to get there. You could add more points to the paths from storylines, or from UQ, or in wonders. Give more civs (or maybe even every civ) an alternate path to treasure fleets like a few of them already do. Or maybe even have you select which path you want sometimes - maybe 20 or 30 turns in I can decide to give up on the wonder path, and instead my antiquity cultural path is about constructing 10 culture buildings, or having 12 policies slotted in my government, or having 8 golden ages, etc...

 

[pjotroos]

I expect it's not in the scope of the current rework, but what's by far the biggest pain point for me right now is that you can't actually work towards your chosen victory path until modern age. The up-to-six tokens don't really make tangible difference, since three out of the four are still linked to your production, and the economy one is bundled with your diplomacy, but also, gives you a discount from something you can always afford anyway if you have a strong economy game.

In Civs 1-6 you could have a domination game all the way from the start, or a science game, or a culture game, or a religion game. In VII, we just spend antiquity and exploration building generically strong empires. That's why the legacies feel samey, that's why we are all doing some occasional meta-gaming with delaying a legacy path. I'd like to see antiquity and exploration victories, sure, but the main thing history-in-layers needs is for the bottom two layers to help us work towards a win that ties to their legacy.

Each settlement conquered in antiquity and exploration should give us 1 progress point on the modern military legacy. Each civilization wiped out completely (in any of the three eras) should give us 5 - and the tracker should be 40 instead of 20. Skip projects at the end.

Each antiquity wonder should become a single-slot museum of itself in modern. Each 5 slotted exploration relics should turn into a single artifact in modern. And the overall target becomes 25 instead of 15.

That would give a strong incentive to just go ham on religion, or on conquering, and worry less about a game of whack-a-mole with the objectives. It's why science actually feels sort of okay now - you just generate lots of science, and research lots of future technologies, which gives you modern era technology boosts and lets you reach the projects quicker, whereas playing for a culture win is just twiddling your thumbs a lot and playing for a military win is building a big army but not actually conquering too much with it, because then you have less you can conquer in modern.

 

[UWHabs]

I expect it's not in the scope of the current rework, but what's by far the biggest pain point for me right now is that you can't actually work towards your chosen victory path until modern age. The up-to-six tokens don't really make tangible difference, since three out of the four are still linked to your production, and the economy one is bundled with your diplomacy, but also, gives you a discount from something you can always afford anyway if you have a strong economy game.

In Civs 1-6 you could have a domination game all the way from the start, or a science game, or a culture game, or a religion game. In VII, we just spend antiquity and exploration building generically strong empires. That's why the legacies feel samey, that's why we are all doing some occasional meta-gaming with delaying a legacy path. I'd like to see antiquity and exploration victories, sure, but the main thing history-in-layers needs is for the bottom two layers to help us work towards a win that ties to their legacy.

Each settlement conquered in antiquity and exploration should give us 1 progress point on the modern military legacy. Each civilization wiped out completely (in any of the three eras) should give us 5 - and the tracker should be 40 instead of 20. Skip projects at the end.

Each antiquity wonder should become a single-slot museum of itself in modern. Each 5 slotted exploration relics should turn into a single artifact in modern. And the overall target becomes 25 instead of 15.

That would give a strong incentive to just go ham on religion, or on conquering, and worry less about a game of whack-a-mole with the objectives. It's why science actually feels sort of okay now - you just generate lots of science, and research lots of future technologies, which gives you modern era technology boosts and lets you reach the projects quicker, whereas playing for a culture win is just twiddling your thumbs a lot and playing for a military win is building a big army but not actually conquering too much with it, because then you have less you can conquer in modern.

Yeah, I would agree a little on that. Or even if you don't go that way, maybe modern requirements should have, say, 10 ticks for each path, and each of the checkpoints you finished earlier is one less you need. So if the modern military tracker is upped to 50 points, each one is 5 ideology points, if you completed 5/6 military paths in the earlier eras, then you start with 25/50. So at least every tick from an earlier era is something you can cut out of the final countdown. Maybe it's 8, maybe it's 10, depends on how much you want those earlier eras to factor in.

If I was redesigning things, I think I would make those earlier eras much harder to get 3/3 in (basically make them all as hard as the current culture path is). It should be a true thrill to get a 3/3 on a path, you should have to fight tooth and nail for it. As opposed to now where half the paths you can basically get there by accident without really trying.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If I was redesigning things, I think I would make those earlier eras much harder to get 3/3 in (basically make them all as hard as the current culture path is). It should be a true thrill to get a 3/3 on a path, you should have to fight tooth and nail for it. As opposed to now where half the paths you can basically get there by accident without really trying.

I think it contradicts with the concept of any age being the final age. You need to be able to reliably finish one legacy path AND victory project afterwards (presumably being more complex than current victory projects), all normally way before age end.

I also think adding "thrill" to legacy paths is a wrong goal too. Legacy paths should feel as mundane as possible to easy the feel of railroading many players have problems with. And they shouldn't require total focus for the same reason.

Actually that's one of the reasons why I suggest removing age prolonging from legacy paths. And other things, like removing legacy paths from victory screen and age finish screen, replacing them with charts, graphs and complex scores, like in previous games.

 

[MrRadar]

Bring back spaceship building, with multiple parts, and possibly diverging paths on the tech tree to arrive at the same or possibly alternative parts, with the different levels of sophistication of the final craft, with the effect on the journey duration or destination and respective rewards in the final victory points. Arrival at the destination would not guarantee victory, after the fluid end of the age points from other victory types would be compared to determine the winning civ. It should be a race on every front every turn to break stagnation and bring back excitement.

For Culture victory it can be the construction of the good old palace or throne room, filled with rooms and slots for all those great works. Similarly evaluated and rewarded with victory points for sophistication. Make the great works persistent through the ages, capturable and perishable in catastrophic events or captures in hostilities. Not everything from antiquity would survive till Modern. Bring in here the score from Wonders too, make them deteriorate and require maintenance too, so that they remain standing, or let them fall to dust or be taken away brick by brick for other structures, or be damaged and demolished in wars. Layers and such...

For Economic victory, idk, maybe it can be establishing some sort of the Global Monopoly. Through direct control or trade slot in every factory resource available on the planet in your factories. Some changes in the trade and influence system would be necessary. Good luck

For Military Victory, bring back surrender from SMAC and then beat every remaining civ into it.

For Domination, bring back land and population ownership proportions from Civ 4.

For Diplomacy... just kidding, no. FXS just can't do it. As well as no RV, religion can remain under CV umbrella.

But first, some better code for the AI is necessary so that it knows how to play. The game would be so much more lively in Modern even now, if only AI would not just quit playing during it.

 

[pjotroos]

If I was redesigning things, I think I would make those earlier eras much harder to get 3/3 in (basically make them all as hard as the current culture path is). It should be a true thrill to get a 3/3 on a path, you should have to fight tooth and nail for it. As opposed to now where half the paths you can basically get there by accident without really trying.

It's an odd one, because I agree, somewhat, but I also think they should be linked to playing the game well. It's why the antiquity paths all make sense - you want wonders for their effects and adjacencies, you want resources for yields, you want relics for science, and you want to grow your empire. On the other hand, some of the later ones are just mini-games - how often do you keep sending missionaries out once you got your 12 relics secured? Do you bother with archeology if you're aiming for any other win? Do you ever convert your colonies to your own religion if you don't need the military legacy points? Harder is fine, but I don't want more minigames.

There are definitely some tweaks, though - change 40 yields total to science yields per tile, and have more masteries grant extra science, for one, so it's not just a case of popping down Machu Pikchu and few districts in the mountains (or Brihadeeswarar Temple / rivers, or Notre Dame / celebrations).

Actually that's one of the reasons why I suggest removing age prolonging from legacy paths.

Would you just shorten the era accordingly? Cause, personally, I need a way out of exploration once I'm done with it - and it can't be future techs & civics, or we'd be leaving it with maxed out attribute trees.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Would you just shorten the era accordingly? Cause, personally, I need a way out of exploration once I'm done with it - and it can't be future techs & civics, or we'd be leaving it with maxed out attribute trees.

Yes, I'd shorten the ages, unless other changes would make it balanced. For example, in some variants future techs/civics could speed up ages more.

 

[UWHabs]

It's an odd one, because I agree, somewhat, but I also think they should be linked to playing the game well. It's why the antiquity paths all make sense - you want wonders for their effects and adjacencies, you want resources for yields, you want relics for science, and you want to grow your empire. On the other hand, some of the later ones are just mini-games - how often do you keep sending missionaries out once you got your 12 relics secured? Do you bother with archeology if you're aiming for any other win? Do you ever convert your colonies to your own religion if you don't need the military legacy points? Harder is fine, but I don't want more minigames.

There are definitely some tweaks, though - change 40 yields total to science yields per tile, and have more masteries grant extra science, for one, so it's not just a case of popping down Machu Pikchu and few districts in the mountains (or Brihadeeswarar Temple / rivers, or Notre Dame / celebrations).

Would you just shorten the era accordingly? Cause, personally, I need a way out of exploration once I'm done with it - and it can't be future techs & civics, or we'd be leaving it with maxed out attribute trees.

The exploration requirements just haven't been re-balanced after all the recent updates. Yields are higher now than they were at launch, so 40 on a tile is almost laughably easy. Like, even without anything else boosting them, Guildhall+Inn is already 20 yields. If you even have a +3 adjacency which really isn't hard on a coastline, you're up to 26. Each specialist adds 7 in that case, so 2 specialists and you're at 40. That's not even counting having any of those +food on food buildings from a city-state, bonuses to specialists, the +1 gold on gold buildings from a mastery, etc...

Given where things are now, at least upping that requirement to 50 would give something of a challenge. Heck even 60 isn't that much of a reach, although probably getting 5 tiles to 60 would be a stretch without some more generic bonuses at the end of the tree. The main reason the AI is bad is that it seems like they often end up with a warehouse building where they should have a nice observatory. I have a feeling their building construction is very much in the now, so when they are ready for a saw pit, they just pop it down wherever, they don't plan ahead and "save" tiles for the better adjacencies.

 

[King Flevance]

1. I would mostly like to see a way to "pre-spend" or "preallocate" legacy points and pre-select your next civ before age transition.

2. Dynamic legacy paths.

There are more things I would like to see but these are my top 2.

 

[Krikkit1]

1. I would mostly like to see a way to "pre-spend" or "preallocate" legacy points and pre-select your next civ before age transition.

2. Dynamic legacy paths.

There are more things I would like to see but these are my top 2.

#1 is something I think they could definitely do something with for civ transition.... if you Unlock America with 3 Grass/Plains Settlements in the Distant Land...perhaps that also opens a Quest to get 6 Settlements with 3 of them Cities in Grass/Plains Distant Land to get a bonus to American Unique Civics if you choose them next Age.

 

[CivKirk64]

I'm hoping to see more legacy paths (Diplomatic, Expansionist, removed from militaristic)

Multiple ways to earn points within the paths, civs can play more into their strengths.

For the end of ages, I'd prefer a rework, make sure multiple civs have completed paths before moving on. Maybe make sure a certain number of civs need to "defeat" and/or collapse from the crisis.

Just finished my latest antiquity play (Teach/Tonga) and was really thrown for a loop, I was the leader in culture and science per turn, and yet was barely halfway through the tech/civic tree when the age started to end.
On the legacy page, the only completed paths were myself for economic, and another civ finished culture. No one else finished any of the other paths.

Really didn't make sense to me, we need to ensure age tractions are triggered by actually reaching the end of the tree, and enough civs getting to the end of the paths, and not just some arbitrary number of turns. Who are we racing here? The history of our game plays out at whatever rate makes sense due to what's actually going on, if everyone is languishing for various reasons then the age needs to take forever, with few survivors and fewer thrivers into the next age. If all Civs are super successful out the gate then it makes sense the age went by quickly

 

[disjointaccount]

I think if legacy paths are staying in the general way they currently exist, the sweet spot for me are ones that basically trick new players into playing well by giving them an extrinsic incentive to do what experienced players do intrinsically, and, by the same token, therefore don't require experienced players to go out their way to hit those bonuses.

What I mean by that is that completion of a given legacy path should not only come as a natural result of playing well for that particular type of game, but that doing so should set you up for future ages (beyond just giving you the legacy points). I think the best example of this in the game currently is the exploration science path. For a science game where you're ultimately really looking to max out your science and production, identifying and utilising high-adjacency tiles is a solid gameplan regardless. Five 40-yield tiles means you've made good use of your tiles, grown your cities, progressed through the science tree to get specialist limit increases, and all of those things contribute a lot to your empire's general strength going forward, either into a science win or to be adapted for something else. For an experienced player, they're probably doing that anyway, and therefore don't feel too railroaded into going out their way to get the legacy points. For a new player, meanwhile, the legacy points have the effect of jangling the keys in front of them to give them a more immediate, "gamier" reward to work towards, while at the same time guiding them towards taking action that will strengthen their empire in the longer run. It strikes a really nice balance between making the game more approachable for new players while remaining inobtrusive for those who know what they're doing. (I think antiquity culture and economic paths are pretty solid at this too; exploration economic isn't terrible either, at least in the sense of pushing you to expand effectively. And kind of just discount military from this whole discussion since it's kind of its own thing).

Contrast that with codices or relics, where it's just this weird arbitrary points system that only really serves to try and move you through the tree in question (though relics don't even do that very much). Yes, getting lots of codices requires a high science yield, but at that point why not just tie the legacy points to science per turn thresholds? There's nothing about codices that gives you more general strength going forwards (the "general strength" vs. "specific yield strength" distinction is a little arbitrary but I think it's important to the paths not feeling railroady. If I, as an experienced player, can just focus on developing my empire well and naturally hit legacy milestones for whatever I'm succeeding in, that feels much more fluid than "You hit 300 culture per turn! Here is culture legacy milestone number 2!", even if 300 culture per turn can ultimately translate into all kinds of other, more generalised strength).

Basically, if we're having this system of ticking off boxes each age, the best implementation I can see is one that serves as a helpful guide for new players to improve, but that experienced players can largely forget about and just naturally complete as they play.

To be clear, I absolutely would like legacy paths to be as open as possible and have more ways to complete each one; these are just my rough thoughts on the good and bad of how they're currently implemented.

 

[UWHabs]

I do think the antiquity codex path isn't that bad. It still requires a little bit of effort, and if you're not zooming ahead in science often you have to make some choices on detours or not. And you still have to have enough slots to display them. It forces you down the science tree. Heck, even the antiquity wonder path actually forces you down the culture path to research them. Or at least it would if the AI didn't just build them all.

I definitely agree with the other relic paths being completely separate from anything else though. Both need only a basic level of civic research, and they just end up being you playing a mini-game on the map to chase them down.

Antiquity military path is another one that I don't mind. You can get a couple spots if you play peacefully, but you pretty much have to capture a couple settlements to complete it. And that's more or less fair as well. To your points, settlements are good, so pushing you to get more makes sense. I wouldn't hate if it that path maybe also counted cities as 2 points - maybe require 15, where cities count for 2 and captured settlements converted to cities count as 4. Similarly, the exploration military path isn't terrible, other than the religion. I would definitely flip that to count cities and not religious conversion.

And then otherwise, I think antiquity econ path could be a little harder but maybe include a few other pieces too. Like if that was 30 points, 1 point per slotted resource + 1 point per trade route maybe.

 

[disjointaccount]

Codices aren't terrible, science has always been the most "just get a lot of the yield" path with its victory projects, and in antiquity your empire isn't really developed enough to do much else with science anyway.

I think the problem is just that getting the codices feels arbitrary, like they have no purpose other than acting as checks you have enough science to get through the tree. If you ignore legacy points, there is literally zero reason to ever research Mathematics II. That sort of thing is what I think makes legacy paths stick out awkwardly at times. Getting through the tree itself isn't even that critical since anything I don't get is grandfathered in at the start of the next age. I guess it would be nice for there to be some kind of other mechanic as a layer between science per turn and codices, that gives you power that carries forward. If great people existed in 7 how they did in 6, earning great scientists would work pretty nicely.

But yeah, all of that said, relics are the worse offender lol.

As for military, I kind of ignored it in my original post, because it's inherently pretty constrained to being about conquest since that's always going to be the intuitive way you pursue a militaristic win, but fwiw I do like the militaristic paths in Civ 7. The addition of points as a layer on top of raw settlement capture is subtle but has the potential for quite a lot of extra depth. The various default ways to supplement your points gains flesh the system out a bit in a way that's very welcome. It'd be cool to see it expanded in further in leader and civ abilities; maybe more points for conquering specific types of settlements, or extra bonuses from conquest like we've seen with Assyria already.