My take on why Civ 6 will be a bad game, a 3 pt. podcast

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So, mountain areas now enable science buildings.
And what about archipelago maps? Or any map type or areas where there are no mountains?

Then you don't get tons of science. Good thing you now have to do something different this game, rather than what you've done in all previous games.

Eureka moments. They sound great. And what if I cannot kill a unit with a slinger because I have no access to barbarian units? Or turned barbarians off?

Then you don't get that Eureka, and now you have to evaluate the worth of researching Archery differently from usual. Again, good.

They "unstacked" cities, moved out buildings to the map. Are they aware that this will create "carpeting" strategies where you build a few frontline units and have a sizeable number of cheapest units possible just to carpet-raze enemy lands?

And that will create "wall" strategies where you block entry and keep bombarding the cheap, weak units. What's the problem?
And what about paratroopers in later game? Just land and pillage? So end-game will be bombers, fighters and paratroopers?

You mean like in real life, where destroying infrastructure was how you won wars? Now there is intricacy in late game warfare.
There was a gameplay reason why cities held most of the infrastructure.

I don't think there was, I think it was originally an ease of programming and art. But have you considered that maybe Civ6 could be a different game?!

And what about rushes, so dreaded in games like Starcraft 2? Create one unit to pester the AI? Abuse its weaker decision making to wreak havoc with a single fast-moving unit?

Is this a problem? The inability to rush in V in any form helped the "quickly expand to 4 cities" strategy, because you didn't have to defend and there was no point in attacking. Now you can rush their improvements, if not the city (but it seems like cities are weaker to start, too)

They removed the ability to build roads. And what if I plant a city 3 tiles into the jungle, without having a trade route? How will I be able to reinforce my city then? It will take 3 or more turns just to cross the jungle. And what's worse, it will be a nightmare for the AI, not so much for the human player. Will this force us to chop down jungles and forests, "just to make sure" we can reinforce a city, "until much later in the game when military engineers will be able to build roads"? Can the AI be taught to do this? Or will any city built by the AI in an "un-optimal reinforcement location" be easy pickings for even a newbie player?

If you really want that jungle city, you don't get to reinforce it as easily. Its a tradeoff, a decision. If you want to build a road, you must use a trade route, which is now unavailable for gold. A tradeoff, a decision. If you want to reinforce it without a road, you can spend builder charges to chop down the jungle. A tradeoff, a decision.

Whats the problem here? You're making choices that affect things. You want all cities to be reinforceable, always? Boring.

For every new feature they announced, my list of questions just grows.


Good. That means the aspects have some nuance, which means more puzzle pieces. And if you have a bunch of questions, how can you be SURE its a bad game already?!
 
In the first two-thirds or so of this thread, I read partly incoherent points of Bibor and valid points by some other posters. But then someone dug up an older post of Bibor, and the discussion changed, in my eyes.

Yes, it is very valid to say that Civilization V is chock-full of meaningless glitter, obnoxious interfaces, and more such undesirable content. Sulla has written to great length about this on his website. It is valid to say that Civilization V is mostly meaningless; there are three or so things every player who has an interest in playing optimally does, and that is that.

This isn't true in Civilization IV, which has a far more functional interface (and a far more functional interface with BUG and all), and which has a lot of meaningful choices. I once tested this, seeing if and how my build orders and tech choices changed. They did. And these changes mattered. Unlike Civilization V.

As a sidenote, I would actually argue that all these specific civilisation - and now leader, too - bonuses are bad. A bunch of traits, as seen in Civilization IV, gives more choices (so, too, do different starting technologies, another thing that Civilization V lacks). I can expand upon that, if someone wishes me to, but that isn't what I want to write about right now.

Eventually, this is tied to terrain, and here Civilization V does have some nice ideas, with more interplay between terrain and other features - and as terrain is random, this affects the choices you make. Civilization VI, however, seems to ruin this again. These Eureka bonuses are... Well, you might as well make the Eureka bonus 'press the left mouse button'. A relatively useless gimmick that detracts (not subtracts, and sure, slightly adds to, but it clouds it moreso) from interesting choices.

But... Terrain is constant. There are a few ways Civilization games have played with this. There is ICS, of course, that massively reduces the importance of terrain - and choice, by extension, as well. There is Civilization V, which is ridiculous in that it has made a 'tall empire' a - and not only a, but the only - valid choice for every game type. Where building more than four cities is never a good idea, and where you are playing a medieval tactical wargame instead of an epoch-spanning empire-building game.

Bibor seems to suggest something along the lines of... Well. We win at the end. And we reach the end by science. Whether we do it by conquest, culture, or what have you, science is the most important. Civilization V added more options for gold and culture - but then also removed sliders and tied science to population, to name two things, and that made the whole thing spiral into nothingness.

Terrain is constant. With constant yields; food, production, and / or commerce. Civilization V added mechanics that made terrain yield culture, science, and faith. But Civilization V removed commerce, splitting gold and science, and made terrain improvements far weaker than in Civilization IV.

There was a nice interplay between the first three yields. Food allows you to work more tiles, and thus, more yields. Commerce instantly translates to gold and science - and culture and espionage, too, but they are more 'minor'. Production takes time to translate itself to all other yield and commerce types (buildings - or building wealth and all), but does so better, and can further be used to build a military, that, again, takes time to acquire yields (conquest).

It's quite brilliant, really.

But what if we needed different things during the span of the game? I think that is what Bibor - or someone else? - proposed somewhere, and I like that idea. What if faith is more powerful in the medieval era, to paraphrase what someone proposed - I could be the best in faith, but then, someone who invested in trade suddenly eclipses me as we enter the renaissance.

That is a very dangerous mechanic, I would like to stress. I am a firm believer of progress; a golden age is a good mechanic, a dark age is a bad mechanic. Plagues are punitive and bad, health as in Civilization IV is good. And so on. The player who focused on trade should be weak and bad, but rise quickly, and quicker still, as the renaissance era progresses - but then, he will need to replace his trade-focus with an industry-focus, for the industrial era dawns, and he doesn't want to be left behind... Or does he? There is no reason why he couldn't be an extremely wealthy city-state, focused on trade over production. But this player will be vulnerable, because he is playing a renaissance-game in the industrial era.

And there you have your highly theoretical solution to this silly tall versus wide debate. And also, also, a reason to play on after being almost defeated; switch to a tall strategy for the next era, and go back to wide in the era afterwards, if you wish.

I have no idea how to properly implement such a thing. The vast majority of players should desire a wide empire, yet not an infinite city sprawling one. Terrain should matter. Terrain improvements, therefore, should matter. This is why, the very first time I heard of them, city districts seemed like a good idea. Until I realised all the obvious problems.

In Civilization games, it is usually undesirable to change your terrain improvements. That is something that should not always be true... But on the other hand, the Cottage>Hamlet>Village>Town mechanic is something I am very much in favour of; developing your empire.

And also, making pillaging valuable - it should be far more valuable, as warfare shouldn't solely consist of 'take worker at turn one' and 'take city at later turns'; more money from pillaging, to finance your empire, military experience for pillaging, to terrain your army? But that is another sidenote.

Anyway... That is a contradiction, yes. I don't know how to solve it - massively upping the scale of the game, perhaps, but that isn't a good solution - but it is the same contradiction that should arise with the whole idea of having 'different games' within the main game. As in, an accumulation of commerce shouldn't be a snowball towards a victory that you know is coming from a hundred turns away. Your game should be shaken up by non-random factors that you know will happen, and you should have multiple choices (even if only two) in how to respond.

A change from the game's sub-end-goal being reached primarily through who-knows-what-for-the-ancient-era to culture to faith to gold to industry to science, perhaps. Or espionage... Science is perhaps too vital (which is why food for the ancient era probably wouldn't be a good idea), and espionage would fit with the Cold War and all. In combination with great people, perhaps. But that isn't very relevant, really. I have no idea how to implement an idea like this in practice so that it would result in a nice game. But it is an idea worth exploring; terrain is the sole constant random factor that should give you a different game to puzzle out every single time - the next step is to make terrain have different values (even if only by relation; you would perhaps rush buy more than you would produce in the renaissance, to give a very random idea) at different times within the game, so that terrain remains meaningful and different, and not snowball you to a win.
 
Yes, it is very valid to say that Civilization V is chock-full of meaningless glitter, obnoxious interfaces, and more such undesirable content. Sulla has written to great length about this on his website. It is valid to say that Civilization V is mostly meaningless; there are three or so things every player who has an interest in playing optimally does, and that is that.
I'm not sure that anyone has contested this point. If your concern is winning, Civ5 has one path. Even the developers agree.

This isn't true in Civilization IV, which has a far more functional interface (and a far more functional interface with BUG and all), and which has a lot of meaningful choices. I once tested this, seeing if and how my build orders and tech choices changed. They did. And these changes mattered. Unlike Civilization V.

You can definitely make choices that matter in V. You can choose to pick the obviously winning strategy or not. Those choices have meaning, because if you didn't choose them, you'd lose (or at least not win by as much). They aren't interesting though, because they are the same every game and never change.

As a sidenote, I would actually argue that all these specific civilisation - and now leader, too - bonuses are bad. A bunch of traits, as seen in Civilization IV, gives more choices (so, too, do different starting technologies, another thing that Civilization V lacks). I can expand upon that, if someone wishes me to, but that isn't what I want to write about right now.

You don't want to talk about this now, which is fine. But more choices =/= more interesting choices.

Eventually, this is tied to terrain, and here Civilization V does have some nice ideas, with more interplay between terrain and other features - and as terrain is random, this affects the choices you make. Civilization VI, however, seems to ruin this again. These Eureka bonuses are... Well, you might as well make the Eureka bonus 'press the left mouse button'. A relatively useless gimmick that detracts (not subtracts, and sure, slightly adds to, but it clouds it moreso) from interesting choices.

I think you need to explain why Civ6 is LESS attached to the terrain than Civ5. Also, what makes you say Eureka bonuses are so easy as to be irrelevant?

But... Terrain is constant. There are a few ways Civilization games have played with this. There is ICS, of course, that massively reduces the importance of terrain - and choice, by extension, as well. There is Civilization V, which is ridiculous in that it has made a 'tall empire' a - and not only a, but the only - valid choice for every game type. Where building more than four cities is never a good idea, and where you are playing a medieval tactical wargame instead of an epoch-spanning empire-building game.
I don't disagree, but what's your point?

Bibor seems to suggest something along the lines of... Well. We win at the end. And we reach the end by science. Whether we do it by conquest, culture, or what have you, science is the most important. Civilization V added more options for gold and culture - but then also removed sliders and tied science to population, to name two things, and that made the whole thing spiral into nothingness.

Terrain is constant. With constant yields; food, production, and / or commerce. Civilization V added mechanics that made terrain yield culture, science, and faith. But Civilization V removed commerce, splitting gold and science, and made terrain improvements far weaker than in Civilization IV.

There was a nice interplay between the first three yields. Food allows you to work more tiles, and thus, more yields. Commerce instantly translates to gold and science - and culture and espionage, too, but they are more 'minor'. Production takes time to translate itself to all other yield and commerce types (buildings - or building wealth and all), but does so better, and can further be used to build a military, that, again, takes time to acquire yields (conquest).

It's quite brilliant, really.
I didn't enjoy the slider system. To me, it was too flexible. While it enables many strategies, that means to me that all my choices don't really matter, because I'll just adjust the slider to fix it. It may not have been that way, but it certainly FELT that way, and that's still important.


But what if we needed different things during the span of the game? I think that is what Bibor - or someone else? - proposed somewhere, and I like that idea. What if faith is more powerful in the medieval era, to paraphrase what someone proposed - I could be the best in faith, but then, someone who invested in trade suddenly eclipses me as we enter the renaissance.

This was my suggestion. I said you must check and score the civs periodically, because that means that being strong now is worthwhile without it having to snowball into being strong at the end. There can be ebb and flow. There can be nuance, such as making Religion worth more points in the Medieval, but Commerce worth more in the Industrial. The Renaissance naturally becomes about 2 things: Art is valuable now because it scores for a lot, and Naval power is valuable now because it helps you conquer overseas possessions before Imperialism scores are checked in Industrial.

That is a very dangerous mechanic, I would like to stress. I am a firm believer of progress; a golden age is a good mechanic, a dark age is a bad mechanic. Plagues are punitive and bad, health as in Civilization IV is good. And so on. The player who focused on trade should be weak and bad, but rise quickly, and quicker still, as the renaissance era progresses - but then, he will need to replace his trade-focus with an industry-focus, for the industrial era dawns, and he doesn't want to be left behind... Or does he? There is no reason why he couldn't be an extremely wealthy city-state, focused on trade over production. But this player will be vulnerable, because he is playing a renaissance-game in the industrial era.
I wasn't suggesting anyone be penalized. They just stop advancing as quickly, and someone else surpasses them.

There's always a reason to keep playing, because you can win the next era. And you don't know the exact score until the end, so you just try to do your best and see if you win. You don't quit once you are far enough behind that you can't catch up, which is what the current snowball causes.

And there you have your highly theoretical solution to this silly tall versus wide debate.

I have no idea how to properly implement such a thing. The vast majority of players should desire a wide empire, yet not an infinite city sprawling one. Terrain should matter. Terrain improvements, therefore, should matter. This is why, the very first time I heard of them, city districts seemed like a good idea. Until I realised all the obvious problems.

In Civilization games, it is usually undesirable to change your terrain improvements. That is something that should not always be true... But on the other hand, the Cottage>Hamlet>Village>Town mechanic is something I am very much in favour of; developing your empire.

And also, making pillaging valuable - it should be far more valuable, as warfare shouldn't solely consist of 'take worker at turn one' and 'take city at later turns'; more money from pillaging, to finance your empire, military experience for pillaging, to terrain your army? But that is another sidenote.

I don't think you made a point that I can respond to, here.

Anyway... That is a contradiction, yes. I don't know how to solve it - massively upping the scale of the game, perhaps, but that isn't a good solution - but it is the same contradiction that should arise with the whole idea of having 'different games' within the main game. As in, an accumulation of commerce shouldn't be a snowball towards a victory that you know is coming from a hundred turns away. Your game should be shaken up by non-random factors that you know will happen, and you should have multiple choices (even if only two) in how to respond.

A change from the game's sub-end-goal being reached primarily through who-knows-what-for-the-ancient-era to culture to faith to gold to industry to science, perhaps. Or espionage... Science is perhaps too vital (which is why food for the ancient era probably wouldn't be a good idea), and espionage would fit with the Cold War and all. In combination with great people, perhaps. But that isn't very relevant, really. I have no idea how to implement an idea like this in practice so that it would result in a nice game. But it is an idea worth exploring; terrain is the sole constant random factor that should give you a different game to puzzle out every single time - the next step is to make terrain have different values (even if only by relation; you would perhaps rush buy more than you would produce in the renaissance, to give a very random idea) at different times within the game, so that terrain remains meaningful and different, and not snowball you to a win.

This was the type of thing I was suggesting, yes. If you have several smaller games that affect each other, you have a reason to play the game the whole way through. You can plan ahead, but you might have smaller, changing goals.

Having played many board games, where keeping all players interested is vital, I am pretty sure the most important element to fixing this is to check who is winnING at multiple different stages of the game, and then add them up. Currently, Civ only checks who is winning at the end, which means the only point of winning early is if it causes you to win late. And that just means you win all game long.
 
I didn't reply to everything - imagine silent nods and agreements there. :p

GamerKG said:
They aren't interesting though, because they are the same every game and never change.

Aye, that was my point.

GamerKG said:
You don't want to talk about this now, which is fine. But more choices =/= more interesting choices.

Certainly. But not that many of Civilization V's abilities have an influence on the way someone plays the whole game. On an aspect of it, more often, though not even that always, but... They're nice to have, they don't substantially change the game.

That is not bad, per se, for otherwise, a civilisation would be 'locked' into playing the game in one way. But that is why Civilization IV's set of traits seems better, to me. Financial favours cottages and coasts. The Colossus would be nice to pick up, too. Imperialistic favours the typical wide empire. And so on - you could let them change how you make use of the map, and this is compounded by unique units or buildings, but... It doesn't force you into one way of playing, but it does influence most of what you will do. I admit that I could be biased here.

GamerKG said:
I think you need to explain why Civ6 is LESS attached to the terrain than Civ5. Also, what makes you say Eureka bonuses are so easy as to be irrelevant?

It isn't interesting to put one swordsman into the build queue and get an Eureka bonus through that. It's slightly more interesting to settle one of your earliest cities near a river - I think the majority of people would build one of their first cities there, so it's not really a choice, but it does depend on your starting location. It's more interesting to settle one of your earliest cities near three desert tiles - that's a good Eureka bonus in theory; foregoing a location that is probably better, dependent on whether you have a nearby desert but you do get an Eureka bonus. But what I would actually be looking for is something gradual; have a minimum of three cities, as well as 50% of your cities, settled on the coast. Have a minimum of ten units, as well as 30% of all your combat units, be naval units. And so on. These would require planning, and would, as such, influence your way of playing the game. They would give you large choices that have an impact on many things. 'Declare war', 'sign open borders', 'build a district', and ever so on, are silly Eureka bonuses.

GamerKG said:
I didn't enjoy the slider system. To me, it was too flexible. While it enables many strategies, that means to me that all my choices don't really matter, because I'll just adjust the slider to fix it. It may not have been that way, but it certainly FELT that way, and that's still important.

That's fair. Maybe you are right. I view this gold versus science balance to be a very good mechanic; you can overexpand, but you will be behind in science for some time. You can even channel commerce into culture and espionage. I think there could be done more with this slider - the Colosseum ties it to happiness, for example, and that could perhaps be used more. Or tie it to health, infrastructure, trade yields... Who knows? It would be fun to experiment with. But your view is a fair one, especially as you note perspective; it felt that way to you, and that is important, yes.

GamerKG said:
I wasn't suggesting anyone be penalized. They just stop advancing as quickly, and someone else surpasses them.

There's always a reason to keep playing, because you can win the next era. And you don't know the exact score until the end, so you just try to do your best and see if you win. You don't quit once you are far enough behind that you can't catch up, which is what the current snowball causes.

I know, and I agree. Where I think we differ, is that you see this purely as a numeric scoring mechanism (or maybe you do not, hence why I'm writing-asking this :p), whereas I would like to see it as a full-fledged integral part of gameplay.
 
Certainly. But not that many of Civilization V's abilities have an influence on the way someone plays the whole game. On an aspect of it, more often, though not even that always, but... They're nice to have, they don't substantially change the game.

That is not bad, per se, for otherwise, a civilisation would be 'locked' into playing the game in one way. But that is why Civilization IV's set of traits seems better, to me. Financial favours cottages and coasts. The Colossus would be nice to pick up, too. Imperialistic favours the typical wide empire. And so on - you could let them change how you make use of the map, and this is compounded by unique units or buildings, but... It doesn't force you into one way of playing, but it does influence most of what you will do. I admit that I could be biased here.

I think a bigger problem with Civ5's civs is that so many aspects of Civ5 strategy were "plan ahead for the whole game". If I went Honor, I had to justify that choice. Since I was stuck with Honor the whole game, I had to maximise its use all game long. So if my Civ has boosts that make me think "I should use military at X point" it became "I should use military all game long". No flexibility.

On the other hand, I think Civ4's abilities were so flexible that they didn't really matter. America was the same as England to me, at least with regards to the leader abilities.

Civ6 looks like a better compromise to me. Unique abilities, but in multiple different directions. The game itself is encouraging you to change your plan on occasion (policy changes, government changes, seeing new Great People pop up in the pool, getting to midgame and realizing that some map-dependent Eurekas aren't happening this game, etc), which means that I can try to find a way to use each of my civ's uniques without having to commit to that playstyle all game long.


It isn't interesting to put one swordsman into the build queue and get an Eureka bonus through that. It's slightly more interesting to settle one of your earliest cities near a river - I think the majority of people would build one of their first cities there, so it's not really a choice, but it does depend on your starting location. It's more interesting to settle one of your earliest cities near three desert tiles - that's a good Eureka bonus in theory; foregoing a location that is probably better, dependent on whether you have a nearby desert but you do get an Eureka bonus. But what I would actually be looking for is something gradual; have a minimum of three cities, as well as 50% of your cities, settled on the coast. Have a minimum of ten units, as well as 30% of all your combat units, be naval units. And so on. These would require planning, and would, as such, influence your way of playing the game. They would give you large choices that have an impact on many things. 'Declare war', 'sign open borders', 'build a district', and ever so on, are silly Eureka bonuses.

Some of the bonuses are simple and aren't intended to be choices. Those ones are supposed to be thrust on you by the map, so some games you get them and some games you don't. This forces the player to change their initial strategy, which can be a very good thing.

Some of the bonuses are choices, and yet still simple. Something like the "Own 2 galleys" Eureka for Celestial Navigation. As simple as that is, you just don't have TIME to do that and also get "Build 3 different districts" for Mathematics. (I'm using real examples, and those are at the same tier) Of course, depending on the number balance, you may have time to do both. In that case, these Eurekas are failures, yes, because all it does is make you think of a strategy to get them all.

Some of the Eurekas have significant tradeoffs in other parts of the game. For example, the Castles tech Eureka wants a government with 6 policy slots. I'm not sure if the wonders will help with that, but from what we saw in gameplay previews, most players had access to Monarchy by then. So they could choose Monarchy if they wanted the Eureka. But choosing Monarchy means they lose their old government bonus, they stop accruing the old Legacy bonus, they now can't go back to Monarchy later for free, and they must switch to having mostly military policies. That's a lot of tradeoffs, which will sometimes be worth it and sometimes not. Determining when to do it is what the game is all about.

And then there's opportunity cost in the rest of the game. Do I really care about building 2 galleys when I could be building Swordsmen instead? Is it worth the Eureka for Celestial Navigation this game? Sometimes it will be, and sometimes it won't. There's more nuance because the Eureka exists. Without it, there would be no reason to build galleys if you'd rather build Swordsmen. Now there is, occasionally.



I know, and I agree. Where I think we differ, is that you see this purely as a numeric scoring mechanism (or maybe you do not, hence why I'm writing-asking this :p), whereas I would like to see it as a full-fledged integral part of gameplay.

Oh no, it certainly could also have changed gameplay. In the Medieval Era, the game has some wildly different mechanics. Just as the World Congress in Civ5 isn't enabled until a certain era, you enable and disable mechanics as you progress.

Sure, you could do that. My point was that changing the scoring system (and therefore victory calculations) on its own would be a significant improvement already.

Having mechanics change throughout the eras could be another step. I'm not entirely sure it would feel like Civilization, but I think it would. We agree :D
 
You know someone is desperate for attention when they produce a Moderator Action: <snip> THREE PART podcast about an unreleased game and why it sucks.

Moderator Action: Please help keep our forums family friendly by using appropriate language on the forums. Thanks.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Counterpoint, quoted from Sullla, did work on Civ IV:
Penalties in an empire building game are generally something to be avoided. You want to reward players for doing well, not punish them for failing. There's a reason why the Civilization games have Golden Ages and not "Dark Ages" in them - the latter would not be fun for most players. (The Civ3 design team actually implemented a whole "Dark Ages" concept in the testing stages, and took it out of the game because it simply wasn't fun.) Worst of all are penalties that accrue to players randomly, for things that they had no control over. I'm looking at you, floodplains disease and plague from Civ3! There will be some players who enjoy that sort of thing, but most people won't find it to be very amusing. These sort of things should be avoided when designing a game. (Note that penalties are different from challenges; there's nothing wrong with having a challenging game design. The Ninja Gaiden games are extremely challenging, but they are generally not punitive in their design. You just have to be really, really good to win.)

I don't agree with everything he says (in other rants, I agree with pretty much everything here), but this is a good summation of why I don't like the ideas presented in the podcast.
 
I agree that three-part podcast can look as an incoherent mess. Mostly because it's so specific. I'm used to discussing things with people that are at least roughly on the same page. And by same page I don't mean of the same opinion. I made the false assumption that posting in a civfanatics forum, specifically the one related to Civilization 6, my podcast would be listened to by lurkers and long-time players of civilization 5 or BE.

I'm a civfanatics child, not the other way around. People like R_Rolo, Iranon, Solver etc. taught me how to think civ, how to discuss civ, be informed before you post, be informed before you read, because for many people before I even made an account here these games were something way beyond a casual computer game.

For these reasons, I didn't put in the effort of explaining everything from the very fundamentals, and what I'm doing for the last few days is to pick up other people's explanations and comments and I'm trying to stitch them together to make a coherent statement for people that apparently do need to be explained literally everything.

So here it is, as plain and as simple as I can do, step by step.

Every strategy game, Civilization games included, are about resource conversion. You plant food in hopes you'll get more food back than you spent planting it. The player that made the best investments gets the best returns. The winner of a civilization game should be the player that has the best ratios of invested vs. spent resources.
Resources in civ 5 are: hammers, food, commerce, faith, culture, turns, happiness etc.

Collection of these resources is pretty straightforward: mines produce X hammers per turn, farms Y food per turn etc. Some of them are automatically spent (production), some of them are collected and then automatically spent (food), and some of them serve as an energy bank.
Military units or settlers, for example, are production storage banks. Being a storage, they require maintenance (in form of GPT upkeep).
Depending on the map and player decisions, these resources are collected at various speeds and spent at various things.

Resource management and conversions is the first thing that is MESS in Civ5 and BE. And if you're wondering why I'm dreading Civ6 is because I see no fundamental changes to this aspect of the game. This mess leads to game disbalance from the very start and spins out of control with each turn that passes.

For example, if you have two civs, and one starts with 3 wheat riverside tiles, it has an unbelievable advantage compared to a player that starts with none. Why? Because a Granary of the first player will produce 5 food, compared to the other player who's granary will produce 2 food.

This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but add 2 iron hills to the first player. Now the first player is now so much ahead that the chances of winning for the second player are pretty slim. Add to this random events like finding a religious city state, being on a river, or starting near a mountain. And the game start keeps feeding random events (emphasis on random, not choice), that can either make one player completely OP.

You talk about fun. How about systematically losing to randomness for 300 turns and 6 hours?

If the game has so many variables (resources) as Civ games do and the spending and distribution of these resources is so complex (compare CIV to SC2 which has three: minerals, gas and time), this can only be remedied by splitting the resource game into two logical levels, and the game mechanics should be built around these:

Level 1: Enabling players to even out the playing field.

Due to the randomness of the map and events, players should be able to even out the playing field with other players (that have a more advantageous start). It should require more effort, more skill from the player that's doing the "catching up", but it should be doable. In a clear, understandable fashion. There were numerous ways for this in civ4: the whip, communism, espionage, just to name a few. You'll notice I'm not talking about "beeline to cav" here. These were fundamental empire-wide game mechanics.

This is what I mean by "civilizations should be automatically losing". Due to inherent disbalance in civ traits and starts and randomness, most players (compared to the top dog) are already automatically losing, but they should have the ability to level out the playing field.



Level 2: Clear conversion of surplus resources into risky investments.

Once the playing field has been leveled, players (both human and AI) should be able to pool resources and create short and medium term investments of these resources. To enable "player skill" to play a part in this, there should be slightly risky, risky and very risky options. Again, clear and understandable options, with risks being clearly defined.
In Civ4, this is what World Wonders did, among other things.

For example, the Oracle slingshot. On Deity, it required a huge risk and many empire-wide sacrifices to get it done on time. Once completed, it enabled the player to level out the playing field in so many aspects: he could trade techs to catch up in tech, he could trade techs for gold to catch up in gold. He could start a religion and by "infecting an unsuspecting civ" to catch up in diplomacy. Every turn spent in an "oracle opening" was a nail-biter. You had to sacrifice research, every barbarian was dreaded, every point of commerce was critical. This is what I mean by decision-driven gameplay.

***

The reason why civilization 4 played so much better is because it was flexible enough for players to find these two balance points, even if they weren't intended.



to be continued.
 
I really think the biggest issue with Civ 5 is they never came back and fixed what they built. We got one balance patch. It just wasn't enough. There are a lot of good ideas there that just didn't come to fruition. Tradition/Rationalism was simply better than everything, and the punishment for expanding too high, which robbed a lot of tension from the game. Melee units are too weak to take cities or be a serious threat. I feel the community balance patch/Vox Populi corrected almost all of this.

The basics of Civ 5 are solid. Policy trees are maybe the one area where that isn't true. The new Governments look, to me, *vastly* better than either what was in Civ 4 or 5.

The other thing missing in 5 that I think the CBP made awesome was multiple copies of a resource. The "monopoly bonus" in CBP made fighting over resources worthwhile. I am hoping to see that in Civ 6. Or some other reason to horde multiple copies of the same luxury, beyond just trading it.

I just tried loading up Civ 4 and playing for a while. Doing so shows me that while it's an okay game, and i will agree better balanced than 5, in terms of core mechanics, it just doesn't hold my attention. Almost everything about 5 is more realized. They just needed more time to get the numbers right, and 6 looks like a good opportunity for that.
 
Every strategy game, Civilization games included, are about resource conversion. You plant food in hopes you'll get more food back than you spent planting it. The player that made the best investments gets the best returns. The winner of a civilization game should be the player that has the best ratios of invested vs. spent resources.
Resources in civ 5 are: hammers, food, commerce, faith, culture, turns, happiness etc.

No, the winner comes about as a combination of good ratios and of these other things: understanding of rock-paper-scissors gameplay of military vs economy, understanding of which resources are capable of converting into which ones, and prediction of opponents moves (diplomatic and military, and wonders in Civs case, and the new Great People system).


Resource management and conversions is the first thing that is MESS in Civ5 and BE. And if you're wondering why I'm dreading Civ6 is because I see no fundamental changes to this aspect of the game. This mess leads to game disbalance from the very start and spins out of control with each turn that passes.

Which ones are a mess? The balance is totally out of whack on some things, which does cause a mess. Balance does not require fundamental changes.

Every mechanic which *most people* have agreed has fundamental flaws has been fundamentally changed. The Culture system from 5 is completely gone, and is replaced with something more like 4. The penalties on expansion are completely gone, and are instead replaced with inefficiencies similar to corruption from 3. The City State system has been completely reworked to not depend on Gold, and Gold now converts into other yields through Policies/Governments.

There are entirely new resources to convert to, such as Access level, City State Sovereignty, and a Great People race.

How is this not different?

For example, if you have two civs, and one starts with 3 wheat riverside tiles, it has an unbelievable advantage compared to a player that starts with none. Why? Because a Granary of the first player will produce 5 food, compared to the other player who's granary will produce 2 food.

Player one gets a good Granary start, player two gets a good Swordsman rush start.
This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but add 2 iron hills to the first player. Now the first player is now so much ahead that the chances of winning for the second player are pretty slim. Add to this random events like finding a religious city state, being on a river, or starting near a mountain. And the game start keeps feeding random events (emphasis on random, not choice), that can either make one player completely OP.

So the problem is that, because victory is only checked at the end of the game, that you must have snowball or there's no point in getting ahead early. If there's more snowball than catchup, then you end up with a boring runaway game.

You talk about fun. How about systematically losing to randomness for 300 turns and 6 hours?

Yeah, and the problem isn't uneven starts, its that a start translates to a win because of snowball. This has been a problem in ALL Civ games.

If the game has so many variables (resources) as Civ games do and the spending and distribution of these resources is so complex (compare CIV to SC2 which has three: minerals, gas and time),

You have a poor definition of resource. SC2 has more resources which you convert those into: damage, movement options/speed, health, sight, population, and population cap. Some of these convert to Time and into each other, and some convert into something you seem to have completely overlooked: knowledge.

Similarly, Civ has many resources and conversion ratios. Finding out which ones to use where is the skill of the game, and as long as there is nuance, you will have to reevaluate every game. THAT is what makes the game have depth, because you will never 100% solve it.

this can only be remedied by splitting the resource game into two logical levels, and the game mechanics should be built around these:

Level 1: Enabling players to even out the playing field.

Due to the randomness of the map and events, players should be able to even out the playing field with other players (that have a more advantageous start). It should require more effort, more skill from the player that's doing the "catching up", but it should be doable. In a clear, understandable fashion. There were numerous ways for this in civ4: the whip, communism, espionage, just to name a few. You'll notice I'm not talking about "beeline to cav" here. These were fundamental empire-wide game mechanics.

This is what I mean by "civilizations should be automatically losing". Due to inherent disbalance in civ traits and starts and randomness, most players (compared to the top dog) are already automatically losing, but they should have the ability to level out the playing field.

I honestly don't see your point here. Yeah, there should be comeback mechanics. Ones that can't also be used for snowball.

If they require more skill than the snowball, then you still have an inherent imbalance. The winning player will stay ahead all game, because its easier to remain ahead.

You need it to require more skill to remain ahead. And at that point, why would anyone bother getting ahead when its easier to slingshot?

Which is exactly why snowball is a problem, and having the winning player checked only at the end creates a need for snowball.

Level 2: Clear conversion of surplus resources into risky investments.

Once the playing field has been leveled, players (both human and AI) should be able to pool resources and create short and medium term investments of these resources. To enable "player skill" to play a part in this, there should be slightly risky, risky and very risky options. Again, clear and understandable options, with risks being clearly defined.
In Civ4, this is what World Wonders did, among other things.

For example, the Oracle slingshot. On Deity, it required a huge risk and many empire-wide sacrifices to get it done on time. Once completed, it enabled the player to level out the playing field in so many aspects: he could trade techs to catch up in tech, he could trade techs for gold to catch up in gold. He could start a religion and by "infecting an unsuspecting civ" to catch up in diplomacy. Every turn spent in an "oracle opening" was a nail-biter. You had to sacrifice research, every barbarian was dreaded, every point of commerce was critical. This is what I mean by decision-driven gameplay.

And what happens when you miss out on your very risky option? You're out of the game. You have zero chance of winning because of snowball, so you might as well quit.

How is this any more decision-driven than what we have? What makes you say Civ6 doesn't have this, or that its even a desirable thing? And why are your terms all terrible misnomers that confuse people?

The reason why civilization 4 played so much better is because it was flexible enough for players to find these two balance points, even if they weren't intended.

What on earth does this mean?

to be continued.

Well, its better than what you've done so far, which is edit line-by-line as people respond. Writing up the whole post would be better, but I understand that not everyone has infinite time to complain about a game that doesn't even exist yet.


I really think the biggest issue with Civ 5 is they never came back and fixed what they built. We got one balance patch. It just wasn't enough. There are a lot of good ideas there that just didn't come to fruition. Tradition/Rationalism was simply better than everything, and the punishment for expanding too high, which robbed a lot of tension from the game. Melee units are too weak to take cities or be a serious threat. I feel the community balance patch/Vox Populi corrected almost all of this.

The basics of Civ 5 are solid. Policy trees are maybe the one area where that isn't true. The new Governments look, to me, *vastly* better than either what was in Civ 4 or 5.

The other thing missing in 5 that I think the CBP made awesome was multiple copies of a resource. The "monopoly bonus" in CBP made fighting over resources worthwhile. I am hoping to see that in Civ 6. Or some other reason to horde multiple copies of the same luxury, beyond just trading it.

I just tried loading up Civ 4 and playing for a while. Doing so shows me that while it's an okay game, and i will agree better balanced than 5, in terms of core mechanics, it just doesn't hold my attention. Almost everything about 5 is more realized. They just needed more time to get the numbers right, and 6 looks like a good opportunity for that.

This. Civ5 had a couple of inherent issues, but most of it was balance. Would it have been the best game of all time if balanced? No, but I still might have liked it better than 4.

I remember few of the explicit game mechanics in 4, probably because each one wasn't very unique compared to the rest of the game. Most of what I remember is the religion system (lol 3 religion holy city, I do miss that) and the Civics system. I remember hating the science slider because it was just so boring, and the Civs were all a combination of the same traits, which was bland. Oh, and stacks of doom were literally the worst.
 
Sorry mate, I would love to chat with you about why Civ 6 is going to be a bad game, but I haven't played it yet so I'm not able to give an educated opinion, and my educated opinion on giving uneducated opinions is, don't.
 
Well, its better than what you've done so far, which is edit line-by-line as people respond. Writing up the whole post would be better, but I understand that not everyone has infinite time to complain about a game that doesn't even exist yet.

Your replies are welcome, but don't answer any of the questions I ask.

You're also not providing the relevant context. Civilization 5 (from videos also 6) has a very limited number of flags (cities) that can be conquered by military means. SC2 has too, but SC2 games last 10-15 minutes. In Civ5, specifically, this was "solved" by throwing "omg bbq wtf you conquered wai minus DKP soldier" penalties at the conquering player.

It would be a rock-paper-scissors game, if capturing minor map segments (like a hex) would be possible. But it isn't. Only cities can be "capped". Also, armies created on turn 10 will become obsolete at turn 30. As such, it's not actually an rock/paper/scissors game, but rather a rock game that can afford papers and scissors, as a result (surplus) of the economy. Again, this was more pronounced in Civ5 where cities were super-soldiers that could hold off minor attacks by themselves.

The reason why Civ5 sucks in this aspect is also why Civ6 will suck: Terrain luck will create a strong economy, strong economy will provide stronger armies, strong armies will capture more terrain, more terrain will make for an even stronger economy. As you said, it's a snowball effect. Adding new game mechanics that feed into the same problem isn't solving the problem, it's just introducing new mechanics with the same problem.

As Heinlein said, you need language, math and history to learn pretty much anything else. To solve this problem, you just need to look at how history worked.

Peoples living in poor lands were better soldiers, because starvation is a powerful motivator. They had to hunt, plunder, travel longer distances to find sustenance. Nomadic cultures always conquered stationary cultures. The result was a fusion of new and old, conqueror and conquered. Other peoples with limited resources turned to trade (norse, greeks etc.), motivated people turned to risk of shipping, either via land (silk road) or sea (greeks etc.).

It could work the same way in civ as well. Land itself could determine what type of civilization you're building. If you're a coastal civ with scarce lands, you should be able focus on trade and naval supremacy. If your civ is in a tundra or great desolate plains, your civ could feature mighty mounted warriors even with limited infrastructure.

In time, this could transform, expand into new eras with different conflicts. Colonizing or conquering nations would be strong because of their trade and exploitation, while other nations might be focusing on diplomacy and crafts.

This is not what I'm seeing. What I'm still seeing in civ6 is "winner takes all", just like it was in all previous variations on the same theme.

here are some examples of mechanics that would make this game so much more fun and challenging:

This building provides X science for each sea tile owned by the city.
Owning X sea tiles increases the combat ability of naval units by Y.
Policy: owning more sea tiles than land tiles provides these benefits.
Policy: Having more than X mountains or jungles per city makes units ignore terrain movement penalties within Y hexes of that city.
Each tile with this new improvement gives a X% bonus to units attacking enemy cities.
This building costs hammers, but provides fresh water resource around it.
...


Like SC2 has humans, zerg and protoss, Civ could have nomadic, seafaring and stationary themes. The same gains (production, faith, culture etc.) should be possible to be generated from various sources. Most civs would obviously be a mix of these three, but by the midgame, you'd have truly unique civs, defined by the map, but shaped by the player. From the midgame onwards, you'd have the clash of these unique civs, each with their strenghts and weaknesses, where diplomacy and new mechanics dominate, and finally the endgame, the final resolution.

Unlike the start, the midgame could be all about diplomacy and the balance between conquest and development.

Do you conquer and make your civ stronger that way? Do you build up instead? Some tiny aspects of this were introduced in BE. Like decisions "do you make the buildings you have stronger, or make them cheaper?". Some aspects of this were introduced in Civ5 as well, via the three factions. It was an excellent addition to the game, but not fully fledged out. Not as it could be anyway. And the snowball effect was already in place by then.


While you might argue that Civ5+ had some of these elements (National wonders etc.) these were either band-aids for a different problem (tall vs. wide) or unintended byproducts.
 
I will tell you one thing. It will not be worse than any other Civ game :lol:

If it's a bad game, then all Civ games are pretty bad.
 
I really think the biggest issue with Civ 5 is they never came back and fixed what they built. We got one balance patch. It just wasn't enough. There are a lot of good ideas there that just didn't come to fruition. Tradition/Rationalism was simply better than everything, and the punishment for expanding too high, which robbed a lot of tension from the game. Melee units are too weak to take cities or be a serious threat. I feel the community balance patch/Vox Populi corrected almost all of this.

The basics of Civ 5 are solid. Policy trees are maybe the one area where that isn't true. The new Governments look, to me, *vastly* better than either what was in Civ 4 or 5.

The other thing missing in 5 that I think the CBP made awesome was multiple copies of a resource. The "monopoly bonus" in CBP made fighting over resources worthwhile. I am hoping to see that in Civ 6. Or some other reason to horde multiple copies of the same luxury, beyond just trading it.

I just tried loading up Civ 4 and playing for a while. Doing so shows me that while it's an okay game, and i will agree better balanced than 5, in terms of core mechanics, it just doesn't hold my attention. Almost everything about 5 is more realized. They just needed more time to get the numbers right, and 6 looks like a good opportunity for that.
Well im not sure any civ game was balanced.
Its the sad truth but you better look into mods if you want the game to be balanced. Although to be honest things were at least largely improved over vanilla overtime.

Civ6 will follow the same path.
 
Well that burst my bubble, feel a little bit like a lazy idiot having spent 1000s of hours playing Civ. And I have to agree with practically all the points.
I was happy when random events were introduced and then puzzled why they got rid of them.
I suppose the only good thing is, as the author pointed out, that another developer is now more likely to have a crack at civilization, and that's a good thing, having competition is always good for the consumers.

I'll still play Civ 6 though :) and probably spend 100s of hours on it.
 
True, but these things are good because they're good, not because they work in other genres. My criticism is that he did not really point out why Civ needs them, that's why I particularly mentioned the "Other games put you against the clock!"-argument. I don't see why it would make Civ better, and for me personally it would do the opposite. I like the relaxing nature of the game, even when I put a lot of thought in my strategies I never feel "stressed", and I think that's a good thing for this particular game.



One should never trust a company, no matter their track record. :D
I just don't think that particular argument of his was sound.

I don't think the "don't trust a company" argument follows. You have to have some metric for comparing belief in a company's ability to deliver on its promises/advertising. For example, I trust Firaxis more than Paradox or Electronic Arts, but less than Blizzard or From Software.

With my life on the line, I wouldn't be particularly inclined to trust any of them, but trust is a relative metric in the sense I was using it, not an absolute one.

The game doesn't need a "race against the clock" element per se', but would benefit immensely from thinking about how to make it run in a way where such a game mode would be at least theoretically viable.
 
You mean the Company that pushed the Diablo 3 Auction house Simulator? That brought "They're limited time, and you can't craft them, but you can randomly get them in Crates that are limited, but can be bought with real money?"-Skins to Overwatch? Whose solution to WoWs outdated, boring leveling experience was to add a microtransaction - measly 50€ - to get a max level Char and skip the process?

Yeaaaaah... I don't trust companies to have my interests in mind. And nobody should - it keeps companies honest. Because in the end no matter how much the individuals in the company want to create great games that people can have fun with, the company is in it for the money.
 
I agree that three-part podcast can look as an incoherent mess. Mostly because it's so specific. I'm used to discussing things with people that are at least roughly on the same page. And by same page I don't mean of the same opinion. I made the false assumption that posting in a civfanatics forum, specifically the one related to Civilization 6, my podcast would be listened to by lurkers and long-time players of civilization 5 or BE.

I'm a civfanatics child, not the other way around. People like R_Rolo, Iranon, Solver etc. taught me how to think civ, how to discuss civ, be informed before you post, be informed before you read, because for many people before I even made an account here these games were something way beyond a casual computer game.

For these reasons, I didn't put in the effort of explaining everything from the very fundamentals, and what I'm doing for the last few days is to pick up other people's explanations and comments and I'm trying to stitch them together to make a coherent statement for people that apparently do need to be explained literally everything.

Amazing. You manage to admit that the videos are badly presented, but only by not-so-subtly shifting the blame for that on other people because of their supposed ignorance. :rolleyes:

This post reeks of condescension. I think we're done here.
 
Your replies are welcome, but don't answer any of the questions I ask.

I answered your questions. You just keep changing the questions you're asking. After 6 pages of making no sense, you're finally making some sort of sense because you're responding to somebody else instead of ranting about why we're all idiots.

You're also not providing the relevant context. Civilization 5 (from videos also 6) has a very limited number of flags (cities) that can be conquered by military means. SC2 has too, but SC2 games last 10-15 minutes. In Civ5, specifically, this was "solved" by throwing "omg bbq wtf you conquered wai minus DKP soldier" penalties at the conquering player.

It would be a rock-paper-scissors game, if capturing minor map segments (like a hex) would be possible. But it isn't. Only cities can be "capped". Also, armies created on turn 10 will become obsolete at turn 30. As such, it's not actually an rock/paper/scissors game, but rather a rock game that can afford papers and scissors, as a result (surplus) of the economy. Again, this was more pronounced in Civ5 where cities were super-soldiers that could hold off minor attacks by themselves.

Cities cap tiles. That's one thing that was an improvement in 5 over 4.

I can't really disagree that its a rock (economy) game that can afford paper (defense) and scissors (attack). Multiple players, long game length, having cities be all or nothing captures, having wars be all total wars (especially with 5s crazy heavy diplomatic penalties), and having units be so expensive to produce in 5 are all problems.

However, several of these have been changed for 6.

War doesn't need to be total war because of reduced diplo penalties and war goals attached to casus bellis. Cities don't even need to be captured, because you can steal science (you get and they lose) by pillaging their campus district. Units seem cheaper and cities seem weaker, but that is again a balance concern.

The reason why Civ5 sucks in this aspect is also why Civ6 will suck: Terrain luck will create a strong economy, strong economy will provide stronger armies, strong armies will capture more terrain, more terrain will make for an even stronger economy. As you said, it's a snowball effect. Adding new game mechanics that feed into the same problem isn't solving the problem, it's just introducing new mechanics with the same problem.

Terrain luck also creates a strong army, causing it to either snowball in the inverse direction or to have 2 snowballs collide. Then you have an even game with unique starts.

As Heinlein said, you need language, math and history to learn pretty much anything else. To solve this problem, you just need to look at how history worked.

Peoples living in poor lands were better soldiers, because starvation is a powerful motivator. They had to hunt, plunder, travel longer distances to find sustenance. Nomadic cultures always conquered stationary cultures. The result was a fusion of new and old, conqueror and conquered. Other peoples with limited resources turned to trade (norse, greeks etc.), motivated people turned to risk of shipping, either via land (silk road) or sea (greeks etc.).

I don't disagree. And it works this way in Civ5. Strategic resources spawned more heavily in territory that was weaker for economy.

The reason why economy starts were so powerful is because you didn't need a strong early game army to conquer the AI. You either destroyed them because the AI was god awful at warfare or you had to build a huge, technologically advanced army to get past their starting units...which meant you had to build an economy first and you might as well keep doing it.

It could work the same way in civ as well. Land itself could determine what type of civilization you're building. If you're a coastal civ with scarce lands, you should be able focus on trade and naval supremacy. If your civ is in a tundra or great desolate plains, your civ could feature mighty mounted warriors even with limited infrastructure.

In time, this could transform, expand into new eras with different conflicts. Colonizing or conquering nations would be strong because of their trade and exploitation, while other nations might be focusing on diplomacy and crafts.

This already exists in Civ.

This is not what I'm seeing. What I'm still seeing in civ6 is "winner takes all", just like it was in all previous variations on the same theme.

What suggests that Civ6 is "winner takes all"? What do you even mean by that?

here are some examples of mechanics that would make this game so much more fun and challenging:

This building provides X science for each sea tile owned by the city.
Owning X sea tiles increases the combat ability of naval units by Y.
Policy: owning more sea tiles than land tiles provides these benefits.
Policy: Having more than X mountains or jungles per city makes units ignore terrain movement penalties within Y hexes of that city.
Each tile with this new improvement gives a X% bonus to units attacking enemy cities.
This building costs hammers, but provides fresh water resource around it.
...

Why are these INHERENTLY any different from mechanics that are in the game? You said in your OP that this would be easier for the AI.

I agree that some mechanics could be made more interesting, but we still don't have enough knowledge about the game to conclude that they aren't in the game. You cannot KNOW that your suggestions arent even in the game. Your entire premise is flawed, because you are just as uneducated as the rest of us, despite the fact that you like to point out you've been a Civfanatic for longer. As if that proves you're smart or something.

Unlike the start, the midgame could be all about diplomacy and the balance between conquest and development.

Do you conquer and make your civ stronger that way? Do you build up instead? Some tiny aspects of this were introduced in BE. Like decisions "do you make the buildings you have stronger, or make them cheaper?". Some aspects of this were introduced in Civ5 as well, via the three factions. It was an excellent addition to the game, but not fully fledged out. Not as it could be anyway. And the snowball effect was already in place by then.


While you might argue that Civ5+ had some of these elements (National wonders etc.) these were either band-aids for a different problem (tall vs. wide) or unintended byproducts.

The mid game in 6 seems to be about diplomacy and intricate wars. Even 5 tried to have it, but the balance was off.

Amazing. You manage to admit that the videos are badly presented, but only by not-so-subtly shifting the blame for that on other people because of their supposed ignorance. :rolleyes:

This post reeks of condescension. I think we're done here.

Yes it was painful for me to suck up my pride and respond to him. Fortunately, he's starting to make some sort of sense, and I think the topic is more interesting than I think he's a jerk. If he will oblige, I will continue discussing. You should stay! The intellectual pursuit may be worthwhile.
 
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