Mythology Generation

[civilizationfanatic2000]

The game should invent concepts that are used by people in universe. Mythological creatures, events, people...based off of real or imagined events. Two examples:

1. One time, an empire tries to invade Tropical Russia during summer. The sun, the mud, the insects, the animals, the people, the disease- all of that destroys their army. Then their empire collapses not long after. 200 years after, someone tries it again and suffers the same fate. The game generates a Mythological Figure named General Summer. Every civilization in the game that has that Mythological Figure suffers a massive morale loss when invading that country.
2. Dinosaur-extinction level meteor hits. Thankfully, humans survive. The survivors make a Mythological Figure named Celestia, the Crusher of Civilizations.

This serves to add flavor and spice up gameplay.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I build my own mythology, when I play Civ V, from the results of goodie huts. So, if I get a 80g goodie hut, and I'm making 4g/turn, that's a hero who found a treasure that was the "wealth of twenty generations." If there's cattle in nearby tile, he fought a bull to get it, if desert, a giant scorpion. If my starting warrior gets upgraded to a spearman, he's a hero who killed a giant boar and made its tusk his spear-point.

If I end up getting a pantheon, I integrate all of these little mini-stories under whoever is my main god.

 

[Morningcalm]

One day they will make Civilization: Mythology, complete with lots of ancient myths, magic, and cool stories. But it might be a while.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is all a sub-set of the Narrative view of Civ: the argument that you are not only playing a game, you are also creating a Narrative History composed of events in that game. - And like all histories, it includes things that happened, things that might have happened, things you wish had happened, and Total Fabrications That Sound Good even though they Never Happened.

I've argued for years that:
1. All of us build stories in our heads about the game we are playing. Some of us even make up our own Sub-Victory Conditions and play for them regardless of the 'official' Victory

2. The game could make this Explicit by including near-random Narrative Events in the game that require you to accept, modify or reject them, and the combination of Event and Reaction create another Chapter in your Narrative History. Likewise, Victory Conditions could be re-written to emphasize success in playing the game rather than Ending it: number of enemy units destroyed, cities taken without losing any, etc instead of just You Succeeded In Taking All The Capitals.

3. Any provided Recap of the game could be in the form of a Narrative History or Timeline - maybe in the format of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which Events include the occasional 'editorial comment':

820 BCE: New York is conquered by the armies of Gaul, with much lamenting of the people there and in the capital of Washington, where the population do sorely lament the folly of starting this war.
700 BCE: Washington falls to the massed War Carts of Gilgamesh: he renames the city Pound Laundry and begins the construction of a Ziggurat in celebration.
580 BCE: Gaul and Sumer go to war, as foretold by the Chief Priest of Pound Laundry to the rejoicing of the population there.

 

[pokiehl]

1. All of us build stories in our heads about the game we are playing. Some of us even make up our own Sub-Victory Conditions and play for them regardless of the 'official' Victory

2. The game could make this Explicit by including near-random Narrative Events in the game that require you to accept, modify or reject them, and the combination of Event and Reaction create another Chapter in your Narrative History. Likewise, Victory Conditions could be re-written to emphasize success in playing the game rather than Ending it: number of enemy units destroyed, cities taken without losing any, etc instead of just You Succeeded In Taking All The Capitals.

3. Any provided Recap of the game could be in the form of a Narrative History or Timeline - maybe in the format of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which Events include the occasional 'editorial comment':

820 BCE: New York is conquered by the armies of Gaul, with much lamenting of the people there and in the capital of Washington, where the population do sorely lament the folly of starting this war.
700 BCE: Washington falls to the massed War Carts of Gilgamesh: he renames the city Pound Laundry and begins the construction of a Ziggurat in celebration.
580 BCE: Gaul and Sumer go to war, as foretold by the Chief Priest of Pound Laundry to the rejoicing of the population there.

I agree with point #1, which is essentially that we are playing Civ and looking for "emergent storytelling." That's the standard phrase used for the player essentially roleplaying and making up their own narrative as they continue to play. It's really important to me and I think it keeps players hooked.

I don't think that random event pop-ups (point #2) is the answer though. They inevitably get exhausted and become tedious rather than novel to the player. Humankind and Old World both have these, and neither game ever really felt more like "emergent storytelling" experiences to me than Civ does. I just click through as fast as possible.

Civ 6 tried to make emergent storytelling more explicit with the Historical Moments system, which is essentially what your point #3 suggests. This didn't do a whole lot to make me feel more immersed, though. TELLING me what I did is a nice reminder, I guess, but it never contributed to my immersion in the game. I think it's for the same reason that random pop-up events didn't help either: inevitably, the new images and stated accomplishments get exhausted and the player simply clicks through. Moreover, it sort of feels like it's telling me how I should feel, rather than letting me react organically to the world in my game.

It's clear to me that specific content to support emergent storytelling will just stop working. What DOES facilitate emergent storytelling is having a more immersive game. Civ 4 and Civ 5 both feel far more immersive to me than Civ 6, and they don't have much in the way of narrative pop-ups or in-game mythologizing.

In Civ 4 and Civ 5, there's more of a feeling of building an empire and making meaningful decisions than spamming cities and slotting in gamey policy cards. The AI opponents all had distinct and memorable personalities, whether they were loyal allies, backstabbing cowards, aggressive warmongers, or isolated and focused on their own growth. Civ 6's agenda system unfortunately failed at making AI opponents play distinctly, and instead all we get is a uniformly mediocre AI, but each with a different arbitrary "trigger" that prompt a threatening tantrum or effusive praise.

So if Civ 7 is to really enhance the emergent storytelling feel, I think it just needs to focus on being a deeper and more immersive game and bringing back distinct AI personalities.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

"Immersive Game", I agree, is the key.

And I think that requires not only distinct 'personalities' among the opponents, but also distinct actions and reactions from them - definitely not the bland and utterly repetitive comments we get from the Civ VI Leaders, which not only got old years ago but also rarely have any relationship to anything happening in the game. Comments - and more importantly Diplomatic, Trade, Military and other actions - should all be varied according to the 'personality' or Traits of the (AI) Leader and should usually require some kind of reaction from the Human gamer if not to "progress" to more consequential actions.

Same with actions/reactions with City States and smaller Settlements of Non-Playable Entities in the game: if we stop branding all the Huts and Camps in the game as pre-set Barbarians or Tribal ("Goodie") Huts then they can also provide variable actions/reactions to the Human gamer in the game. I don't think they have to come up with 100s of different actions or comments, but any variety at all would be more than we have now and the more variation in consequences to our actions the more paths of Narrative we can open up.

That, and Substantial Consequences for our actions. I think one of the major problems with Civ VI is that there don't seem to be a Major Consequences to any decision you make. A Policy, a Civic, a Government - you can change them virtually at will, so there are no long-term consequences to adopting them in the first place. Without Consequences, any 'Narrative' becomes Trivial.

 

[Josephias]

On point 1 about narrative, I’d prefer some “traits” to be enabled by gameplay narrative than predefined for specific civs. E.g. ¿Been the production leader for two-three centuries?: here is workshop of the world for you.

Problem I see is how to balance this to not become other source of snowball effect (even if good traits are also teceived for negative conditions), and the potential risk of randomness in the system scaring away minmaxer players.

So, definitely something to think about, but unfortunately I have no clear idea on how to implement it yet.