New interesting interview - for videogames.si.com

[Krajzen]

https://videogames.si.com/features/civilization-7-interview-gamescom-2024ter

most interesting parts:
"What we don’t do in this version of Civilization is fill up every empty place on the map with cities. We leave open spaces and room to breathe, because we want there to be gameplay opportunities in the wild."

According to Shirk, the AI will make use of all the new features and concepts in the game with great effect, thanks to Firaxis’ investments in this area. “We have a team on AI twice the size that we had in Civilization 6,” he states. “We’re very proud of the progress that we’ve made in AI, especially with all of these new gameplay systems to play. It’s playing really effectively right now.”

The very fact they are mentioning AI is encouraging, civ6 had this nervous absence of devs talking about it at all.

 

[bbbt]

https://videogames.si.com/features/civilization-7-interview-gamescom-2024ter

most interesting parts:
"What we don’t do in this version of Civilization is fill up every empty place on the map with cities. We leave open spaces and room to breathe, because we want there to be gameplay opportunities in the wild."

According to Shirk, the AI will make use of all the new features and concepts in the game with great effect, thanks to Firaxis’ investments in this area. “We have a team on AI twice the size that we had in Civilization 6,” he states. “We’re very proud of the progress that we’ve made in AI, especially with all of these new gameplay systems to play. It’s playing really effectively right now.”

The very fact they are mentioning AI is encouraging, civ6 had this nervous absence of devs talking about it at all.

That does sound promising, Civ 6 only has one person in the credits actually named as an AI engineer - and he is also listed as a general programmer. So they've moved up to one full time programmer

There is always something new to discover: Some systems leave, new systems come in without overburdening the player,

This sounds promising for me, this is definitely what I've wanted to see in a Civ game, instead of it just being the same systems continuously growing the whole time.

 

[greenOak]

"What we don’t do in this version of Civilization is fill up every empty place on the map with cities. We leave open spaces and room to breathe, because we want there to be gameplay opportunities in the wild."

This is extremely concerning to me as competition for land (via settling or conquest) is a core aspect of civ to me. It's one thing if cities are just going to be settled further apart, but I hope to god we're not going back to civ 5 where there's swaths of unclaimed land between four city empires.

 

[Thormodr]

Good and bad.

It is good that they are focusing on the AI and have a bigger team for that. In particular, getting the AI to use the mechanics correctly.

The open space bit reminds me of 5. Because of crappy global happiness, you'd often have parts of the map empty fairly late in the game.

Since cities will be sprawling, though, it wouldn't look great to see one giant city with no empty spaces, either.

Anyway, wait for actual gameplay to see how it looks.

 

[Xur]

Twice the size is fairly easy to say when they only had 1 guy on it before.

Even if they had a team of 500 on the AI and it was sentient, then it wouldn’t change anything. Civ switching is still a thing.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

"What we don’t do in this version of Civilization is fill up every empty place on the map with cities. We leave open spaces and room to breathe, because we want there to be gameplay opportunities in the wild."

This is extremely concerning to me as competition for land (via settling or conquest) is a core aspect of civ to me. It's one thing if cities are just going to be settled further apart, but I hope to god we're not going back to civ 5 where there's swaths of unclaimed land between four city empires.

Just goes to show that you can't please everyone really; there was another thread in which many people were lamenting the crowded maps of VI and hoping that city sprawl didn't cover the entire map. Can't say this aspect is too important for me either way, but there's probably a nice middle ground between V and VI.

 

[greenOak]

Just goes to show that you can't please everyone really; there was another thread in which many people were lamenting the crowded maps of VI and hoping that city sprawl didn't cover the entire map. Can't say this aspect is too important for me either way, but there's probably a nice middle ground between V and VI.

I don't want city sprawl over the whole map either. There's a big difference between not having districts on every tile and having large areas of unclaimed space between empires. The latter is what I'm worried about.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I don't want city sprawl over the whole map either. There's a big difference between not having districts on every tile and having large areas of unclaimed space between empires. The latter is what I'm worried about.

Yes, fair. I just mean that opinions on the right balance between the two will differ quite a bit. Personally, I'm hoping the "competition for space" element of Civ is a major part of the Exploration Age, rather than in Antiquity, where a lot of open space makes some sense.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That does sound promising, Civ 6 only has one person in the credits actually named as an AI engineer - and he is also listed as a general programmer. So they've moved up to one full time programmer

There's a lot of misunderstanding here. AI in video games is totally different from this term outside of gaming industry (unless the games are board games like chess). The key features of AI for games like Civ are:
1. Provide right challenge per difficulty level
2. Utilize all game mechanics, not those needed for win. For example, one of the major complains about early Civ 6 was about AI not using aviation
3. Roleplay. Civ 5 tried to make effective AI, which could backstab players and again, that was one of major complains.

Those things are totally different from what standard AI engineers do (make it solve problems in the most efficient way).

So I totally see AI team to have various people inside, like game designers and generic programmers.

EDIT: Just a minor correction, when I talk about chess AI being different, I'm speaking about top-notch chess AI. AIs for playing with humans (like Stockfish you play against on Lichess) follow the same approach as AI in video games. They are made to fit particular difficulty level and make human-like mistakes.

 

[Civinator]

The very fact they are mentioning AI is encouraging, civ6 had this nervous absence of devs talking about it at all.

At least in Germany this was different, as you can see in an interview with Ed Beach in the Civilization Gamestar Black Edition short before the release of Civ 6 about the AI in Civ 6:

"The first results are promising, we make good progress, we use a behaviour-tree-system, there are calculations in Civ 6 where the AI of Civ 5 would have had big problems, we had to use an AI which follows its plans up to the end, I cannot promise exactly, how it finally will appear, we are on the right way".

Of course I am not a professional translator and there can be mistakes in my translation, but it is a fact that a dev talked about the AI before the release of Civ 6.

Edit: I deleted the scan of that interview.

 

[Krikkit1]

"What we don’t do in this version of Civilization is fill up every empty place on the map with cities. We leave open spaces and room to breathe, because we want there to be gameplay opportunities in the wild."

This is extremely concerning to me as competition for land (via settling or conquest) is a core aspect of civ to me. It's one thing if cities are just going to be settled further apart, but I hope to god we're not going back to civ 5 where there's swaths of unclaimed land between four city empires.

I could see Quality of land varying significantly. So
Ancient you race and fight for the best lands
Exploration you go for newly reachable good land
Modern you use some of the marginal lands.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I hope to god we're not going back to civ 5 where there's swaths of unclaimed land between four city empires.

In Civ7 we might have 4-city empires with a lot of towns in-between those cities. With the multiple levels of settlements i highly doubt it will be possible to play with only 4 settlements.
However, the 4-cities gameplay in 5 mostly originated from a misunderstanding of the traditions tree (was i called traditions, it's been a long time since i played 5). Just because you get 4 monuments for free doesn't mean you have to stop at 4 cities. In fact the best Civ5 players mostly played wide or semi-wide, not tall, and even when going Traditions it was often better to go for 6-8 cities than 4. I'm talking about the players who were winning against modded Deity AI with both stronger bonuses and better priorities here, or those doing the best times in GotM.
I personally usually went for about 6 cities in 5, 8 in 6, not because it was optimal, but because i disliked the increasing micro-management when i have many cities (and i very rarely went domination in civ6 for that reason) so i'm really excited about the addition of towns in Civ7, because i think it will make it far easier to keep the tedious management low while still providing players the feeling of a sprawling empire with many places where people live

 

[pokiehl]

This bit about the sprawl and space between cities just shows how it’s completely impossible to please everyone. Sometimes this feels like the most polarized fan base out there.

There’s another thread about city sprawl concerned that the map is going to just be cities and too busy. They want empty space between cities for other parts of the game to occur. This interview assuages that concern. But now this thread has people concerned there’s going to be not enough sprawl and too much open space.

As for me, I love the way the screenshots look and it seems from this interview they’re nailing the perfect balance of what cities should feel and look like.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

There's a lot of misunderstanding here. AI in video games is totally different from this term outside of gaming industry (unless the games are board games like chess). The key features of AI for games like Civ are:

Agree with that, also i would like to point that an AI in a video-game isn't meant to act like a human opponent, it's more like a game-master in traditional PnP RPGs. It's not there to win (or even try to), it's there so that the player(s) can enjoy the game. Of course enjoying varies greatly from player to player so i hope they make their AI robust enough to handle the various difficulty levels, from very easy to very hard. Ideally, in addition to general difficulty, they should also provide an option to choose between "immersive" AI and "competitive" AI because while many players will prefer an AI that acts in an immersive way, there are some who liked the psychotic hyper-opportunistic Civ5 AI.
As a corollary, i think it's not an issue if the AI cheats as long as it cheats "behind the GM screen" and so it's not obvious to the players. We all know GMs cheat sometimes (or at least most do), as long as it's not (too) visible and they do it for good reason (keeping the game interesting), than it's fine. What's bad is when such cheating becomes obvious (huge bonus growth allowing AI desert cities to grow to size 20 but when you capture it suddenly it starves to 5) or when it actually becomes a bonus to the player on high difficulty.

 

[greenOak]

This bit about the sprawl and space between cities just shows how it’s completely impossible to please everyone. Sometimes this feels like the most polarized fan base out there.

There’s another thread about city sprawl concerned that the map is going to just be cities and too busy. They want empty space between cities for other parts of the game to occur. This interview assuages that concern. But now this thread has people concerned there’s going to be not enough sprawl and too much open space.

As for me, I love the way the screenshots look and it seems from this interview they’re nailing the perfect balance of what cities should feel and look like.

Nobody said anything about space between cities in this thread - in fact I explicitly said "It's one thing if cities are just going to be settled further apart". I mentioned unoccupied land between empires which is a much different thing.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think there’s also a few types of sprawl v open space

Urban Districts
Rural districts
Unimproved tiles
Unclaimed tiles

Towns means more Rural districts.

Id imagine few unclaimed tiles by mid modern. But I could see many unimproved tiles (tundra, desert, mountain areas, ie Siberia, Sahara, etc.)

 

[UWHabs]

In Civ7 we might have 4-city empires with a lot of towns in-between those cities. With the multiple levels of settlements i highly doubt it will be possible to play with only 4 settlements.
However, the 4-cities gameplay in 5 mostly originated from a misunderstanding of the traditions tree (was i called traditions, it's been a long time since i played 5). Just because you get 4 monuments for free doesn't mean you have to stop at 4 cities. In fact the best Civ5 players mostly played wide or semi-wide, not tall, and even when going Traditions it was often better to go for 6-8 cities than 4. I'm talking about the players who were winning against modded Deity AI with both stronger bonuses and better priorities here, or those doing the best times in GotM.
I personally usually went for about 6 cities in 5, 8 in 6, not because it was optimal, but because i disliked the increasing micro-management when i have many cities (and i very rarely went domination in civ6 for that reason) so i'm really excited about the addition of towns in Civ7, because i think it will make it far easier to keep the tedious management low while still providing players the feeling of a sprawling empire with many places where people live

Yeah, you weren't restricted to 4 cities, for sure. But basically the free monuments was enough to push you to 4, and after that, every city you settled basically penalized you more than you would get back. It would delay the national wonders, there were science/happiness penalties, etc... (I forget the whole extent) Yeah, I think I tended to get to 6 or 7 at least, but there were definitely times where you'd see a big open island continent and be like "nah, not worth it". Whereas in 6, you could still make sure of settling those new spots, albeit mostly about late game resource collecting.

It sounds like the new towns mechanism should help that, since you can still "settle" those new cities to get the resources, but you don't get the micro from managing a new city.

 

[GeneralZIft]

All good things from this interview for me

I don't mind if there's lots of claimed lands as towns, as long as I don't have to feel like I need to manage 20 cities.
I'm a tall player, so I prefer at most 6-8 cities, even that's pushing it, so this is better.

Plus I really like the AI investments. While I hope the general quality of life of AI goes up, and the competency goes up, they've said little about making the AI immersive, or unpredictable or anything along those lines.
So I'm worried because Agendas are said to come back.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I feel like there are advantages in leaving empty space on the map. It allows for exploration and expansion to remain relevant longer in the game. One of the problems with filling every space on the map is that there is no exploration and expansion left. It essentially kills 2 of the 4 Xs in a 4X game. I believe this is a big reason why the late game is often less interesting than the early game. The other problem with filling every part of the map is that more cities will add more micro and busy work. Also, you will have cities that are not very productive because they are in bad locations but you built the cities anyway just to fill the space. By limiting cities, you make the decision to expand more meaningful. with city caps and global happiness, placing another city will cost more. Hopefully, this means that players will have more interesting choices about whether to build a city and where. Players will want to grab the best city locations and not waste their city cap on bad city locations. And having more empty space is realistic as most of Earth is actually empty.

The downside is that it seems civ7 might be returning to a civ5 style of "tall" with small number of cities and fragmented territories that don't really feel like empires. I worry civ7's empires will basically be a sprawl of 2-3 cities. Personally, I don't really care for that. Hopefully, civ7 will balance things so that we can still expand a bit more than that. And the reduction in micro (no more citizen management or workers/builders), I would think that a wide play would be less tedious. I suspect that wide play will be possible in civ7, it will just require getting those buildings, resources, wonders, special abilities to maximize global happiness. Also, I am not sure if the cap is on cities or settlements. If it is cities, then it might be possible to go wide with towns. If the cap is on settlements, that would be more restrictive for sure. The good news is that the military victory condition in Antiquity is 12 settlements which would seem to suggest that getting to 12 settlements is doable with global happiness. The cap can likely be raised with techs, civics etc... This is encouraging that we can go "wide" with a dozen settlements or so. We won't be as restricted as civ5.

 

[Zyntax]

I feel like there are advantages in leaving empty space on the map. It allows for exploration and expansion to remain relevant longer in the game. One of the problems with filling every space on the map is that there is no exploration and expansion left. It essentially kills 2 of the 4 Xs in a 4X game. I believe this is a big reason why the late game is often less interesting than the early game. The other problem with filling every part of the map is that more cities will add more micro and busy work. Also, you will have cities that are not very productive because they are in bad locations but you built the cities anyway just to fill the space. By limiting cities, you make the decision to expand more meaningful. with city caps and global happiness, placing another city will cost more. Hopefully, this means that players will have more interesting choices about whether to build a city and where. Players will want to grab the best city locations and not waste their city cap on bad city locations. And having more empty space is realistic as most of Earth is actually empty.

The downside is that it seems civ7 might be returning to a civ5 style of "tall" with small number of cities and fragmented territories that don't really feel like empires. I worry civ7's empires will basically be a sprawl of 2-3 cities. Personally, I don't really care for that. Hopefully, civ7 will balance things so that we can still expand a bit more than that. And the reduction in micro (no more citizen management or workers/builders), I would think that a wide play would be less tedious. I suspect that wide play will be possible in civ7, it will just require getting those buildings, resources, wonders, special abilities to maximize global happiness. Also, I am not sure if the cap is on cities or settlements. If it is cities, then it might be possible to go wide with towns. If the cap is on settlements, that would be more restrictive for sure. The good news is that the military victory condition in Antiquity is 12 settlements which would seem to suggest that getting to 12 settlements is doable with global happiness. The cap can likely be raised with techs, civics etc... This is encouraging that we can go "wide" with a dozen settlements or so. We won't be as restricted as civ5.

Well, there are actually a few mechanics that would solve the exploration part in the late game ( and earlier ). What if you actually had to go out and search for resources instead of having them auto-popup like they always done?