Official announcement: Hot off the presses. Next Civ game in development!!!!!!!

[Thormodr]

A lot of people think that Bigfoot exists too. Sure, maybe some stuff like barbarians clans might serve as a prototyping of sorts for additional concepts.

But given the tantrums people threw over the supernatural stuff (and the fact that Civ has never had that sort of stuff in the base game), I doubt we'll see vampires as a default, unchangeable setting anytime soon.

Tantrums? Give it a rest with the hyperbole. Don't need vampires and zombies in Civ. Thanks.

Not unless there is a spinoff game or a great mod like Fall from Heaven.

 

[pokiehl]

Don't need vampires and zombies in Civ.

I liked them. I thought it was fun—AI issues and balancing aside. Luckily there is no one holding a gun to anyone’s head to enable those modes though.

 

[Thormodr]

I liked them. I thought it was fun—AI issues and balancing aside. Luckily there is no one holding a gun to anyone’s head to enable those modes though.

If you like it, that's fine. Just don't use inflammatory language like "people throwing tantrums." No need for that.

 

[Thormodr]

I would expect Civ VII to be conservative as Ed Beach is in charge again. If there had been a new person at the helm, I believe it would have been less conservative.

I don't mind conservative if they really tie all the game systems together to be more cohesive.

 

[MrRadar]

I liked them. I thought it was fun—AI issues and balancing aside. Luckily there is no one holding a gun to anyone’s head to enable those modes though.

No, no one's holding a gun. But when a mode comes and screws up the theme feature of an entire expansion? And leaves it like that? Apocalypsis came and wrecked the deforestation formula and subsequent sinking of the world. Now Deforestation starts at the maximum of 50%, and goes down, if it has time, instead of vice versa, and nobody gives a damn. Not a squeak from the devs or the publisher. Just a quick hotfix in hurry for something a First Comrade didn't like. Does nobody understand or care about that? What's the point of that expansion then? No modes enabled, base game only, but screwed for now and continuing to be screwed.
Modes, yes, the lowest effort possible, fun, can also be bugged as hell and stay that way. Nobody needs to play them anyway. As long as they yield the yields. Thicc ones. Nothing else matters.

 

[pokiehl]

of an entire expansion? And leaves it like that? Apocalypsis came and wrecked the deforestation formula and subsequent sinking of the world. Now Deforestation starts at the maximum of 50%, and goes down, if it has time, instead of vice versa, and nobody gives a damn. Not a squeak from the devs or the publisher. Just a quick hotfix in hurry for something a First Comrade didn't like. Does nobody understand or care about that? What's the point of that expansion then? No modes enabled, base game only, but screwed for now and continuing to be screwed.
Modes, yes, the lowest effort possible, fun, can also be bugged as hell and stay that way. Nobody needs to play them anyway. As long as they yield the yields. Thicc ones. Nothing else matters.

I hear you about those issues, but that’s an entirely separate point from what I was responding to (other users’ complaints about the “supernatural” or fantasy features).

I’ve certainly aired my grievances with the poor quality, bugs, design, and balancing issues in NFP.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

people throwing tantrums

But that's what it I'd and what you are doing now.

Moderator Action: Please stop the personal comments and get back to topic leif

 

[Patine]

I liked them. I thought it was fun—AI issues and balancing aside. Luckily there is no one holding a gun to anyone’s head to enable those modes though.

There should just be a game toggle for such settlings. That would save a lot more grief for everyone.

 

[SirNovelty]

My problem with secret societies is the same as with many features of civ6: should those things even be relevant in history - based, empire building, millenia spanning games; and should they be gameplay priorities for games like Civ? I mean should we really focus on
Spoiler :
- secret cultists
- several fantasy modes added to the game (half of them dysfunctional in singleplayer as AI can't use them)
- beach resorts
- ice hockey
- skiing resorts
- power grid
- governors
- rock band concerts
- emergencies
- first happiness system, amenities
- second happiness system, loyalty, since the first one is inconsequential
- third happiness system, golden ages (all three fail to stop snowballing but they do manage to cripple AI more)
- blizzards and sandstorms apparently having any significance at all on the imperial scale
- micromanaging affordable housing in each city
- remembering about a small separate minigame quest designed for every tech in the tech tree (optimally we should have them all memorized)
- many types of air units, naval units and upgrades to land units, which are not needed at all since AI sucks in 1UPT
- micromanaging every single unit traffic jam over every single hill, river crossing, mountain, lake, other unit etc
- stealing individual works of art
- honestly micromanaging every single spy as a physical unit, with most of their actions being utterly inconsequential
- micromanaging placement of each major hotel as a crucial component of US - USSR global power struggle
- micromanaging every single missionary
- future era added when the endgame sucks, so let's make it much longer without improving it

Well, when it comes to a hockey, skiing, and rocking, it's sort of a logical consequence of having something as historically silly as a "culture victory" in the game. To be clear, every VC except for Domination and maaaaaaaaybe RV is equally ridiculous diegetically speaking, but if you're going to let the player win by culture, you have to let them do cultural things, otherwise they're just abstractly pumping up a number.

Art stealing though, I hate (although when are you ever stealing it? That never works, just spend the money. The many failed spy missions are practically more expensive, and definitely way slower) with a passions, it's so stupid. For Art specifically, it makes some kind of sense, people want to see it, but for Writing and Music it's ridiculous. How many people travel to see the original manuscript of a book? Or a song? Also, if China stole the manuscript for Oliver Twist.....would people stop thinking a British guy wrote it? Would they also edit the book to take place in Beijing? This mechanic transparently arose from somebody asking "what's some cool **** our spies can do?", and somebody thinking of a heist movie.

Emergencies should in theory be a very valuable contribution to Civs portrayal of history, large scale diplomatic events which can shift geopolitics or signal current wealth/power. It's just that in game they amount to very little mechanically, I wanna get back to why later.

Of the three "happiness systems" you list, only one is a happiness system, ammenities, which these days are actually pretty valuable, people need to stop dissing a +/-20% yield swing It's a passive system, easy to maximize vs AI, but it is impactful. Loyalty is.....a silly mechanic, it's not designed for empire stability, it's a band-aid on border-gore, but ultimately it isn't really a "happiness" mechanic, you can't improve it by giving your people more "stuff", you have to make them more numerous, assign a governor for more direct control, have a military presence there. I do think there are ways for this to actually add a lot to a historical simulation, but the fact that it has almost nothing (outside cultural alliances) to do with geopolitics, culture, or economics, and instead being mostly about raw population, makes it feel completely silly. The third one.....I'm genuinely curious why you'd even call this a happiness mechanic? I guess it affects loyalty, but it's mostly a measure of how much "stuff" you civilization did last era. Granted, I'll be really happy to see it go (or disappointed to see it return, that is a possibility I concede) for the sequel, but that's because of how completely uncontextualized this set of bonuses feels.

I mean, blizzards and sandstorms kill people. That has effects....on collections of people. Honestly I like these mechanics right now simply because they're some of the only attrition effects in the game. Under the Civ VI ruleset Napoleon should've ran over Russia with no losses....if he didn't get stuck shuffling his troops through the Eural mountains.

Governors....yes. Of course. Obviously. At an imperial scale, we should absolutely be delegating parts of our empire to trusted members of our staff, delegating tasks, assigning people to improve specific things in a city, or hurry production, etc. Civ VI's Governor mechanics may have a set of silly faces, and it may ultimately play out in a rather fiddly way, but there's no doubt in my mind it's something that should be in the game. Old World, Endless Legend (I therefore assume Humankind, still haven't played it), heck even Crusader Kings all show ways of doing this that feel more "historical."

Like, could we get a world war, a cold war, a global struggle between ideologies, a revolution, a civil war, a coalition, a competent AI invasion, colonialism, a holy war, a sane UN organisation, meaningful oversea exploration etc - you know, great, epic, exciting stuff of history, which would make sexond half of the game not braindead - before we get ice hockey, rock bands, space robots and Illuminati?

I do think those things would be cool....but people wanna be able to play peacefully. Note how basically everything you just described except for the UN (which btw, implying that real life can have a sane UN is making a lot of assumptions) involves military. Enforcing that kind of violence and destabilization would force people away from the city-building mechancis that, from my perception, seem to be a lot more popular. While people say they want complex geopolitics and Civ, most players seem to find managing a military situation in this game to be a chore, and if a war becomes any sort of challenge they check out. Besides, I don't think Civ needs something as hamfisted as a formal "cold war", or "world war" mechanic, it'd be much more interesting if such things emerged from other mechanics, and World Wars regularly did in previous games. How did they do that? By focusing on the granular. In previous Civ games things such as Religion, Ideologies, Congress resolutions, war histories, formed together to create whatever geopolitical complexity is possible in a world with less than a dozen major states, but in Civ VI the AI is simply too inept, and the mechanics simply too disconnected, to create these sorts of emergent narratives. Let's circle back to Emergencies. The reason they're dull is their simplicity, both in input and output. Civ VI in some ways is too focused on the big picture, or perhaps more accurately the broad strokes. Natural disaster relief is as simple as "throw money at the country" or pressing a button that literally says "send aid." A Military Emergency adds a couple modifiers to an ongoing conflict, and then it either succeeds or fails. Religious Emergency (contextually this one is so bizarre), "x city was converted to y, make it not y." And all of them are initiated with a couple conditions being met, and some of the asbtract "Favor" resource being dumped in. There's no building a coalition, no framing, no media blitz, nothing. Just a potential "problem", let's see if anybody cares enough to "solve" it. Furthermore, all of them resolve and just give the victor(s) some bonuses. Shouldn't this have more impact on....diplomacy? If we're going to make these explicitly written out events, shouldn't they continue after their resolution? If I convert a city, and it gets reconverted via Emergency, is that really the "end" of that story? My faith just had an intergovernmental body band together to convert a city away from it, I feel like that should inform that religion's beliefs going forward. Idk, it's late, and this post is going way off the rails, maybe I'll clean it up tomorrow.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

There should just be a game toggle for such settlings. That would save a lot more grief for everyone.

You mean a toggle to even show the game modes?
Are some people that mad to even look at them? I mean I don't like the idea of the zombie mode either, but I've never complained every time I decided to start a game that it's potentially available option. I just don't enable it in my games.

 

[Patine]

You mean a toggle to even show the game modes?
Are some people that mad to even look at them? I mean I don't like the idea of the zombie mode either, but I've never complained every time I decided to start a game that it's potentially available option. I just don't enable it in my games.

It's not a matter of being mad, at least not myself. I just think a toggle would allow players to pick and choose between non-core features for their own personal games' preferences. I don't think that should be controversial - in fact, it should be less controversial than having to mandatorily have all content of every Xpac you've installled.

 

[AntSou]

My problem with secret societies is the same as with many features of civ6: should those things even be relevant in history - based, empire building, millenia spanning games; and should they be gameplay priorities for games like Civ? I mean should we really focus on

But those elements were introduced in an unplanned DLC Pass, so they are clearly not priorities or focus?

The stuff in the list you mention later in your post is rather complex, the kind you'd expect in a full expansion. I don't think there was ever any chance of such mechanics appearing in NFP.

Edit: ok nvm, I read "secret societies" but only now did I read the full list, which is mostly stuff introduced in Gathering Storm.

 

[pokiehl]

It's not a matter of being mad, at least not myself. I just think a toggle would allow players to pick and choose between non-core features for their own personal games' preferences. I don't think that should be controversial - in fact, it should be less controversial than having to mandatorily have all content of every Xpac you've installled.

His point is they are literally already toggleable…

 

[Patine]

His point is they are literally already toggleable…

Yeah, my mistake there. I haven't been able to play Civ6 (or the AoE2, AoE3, and AoM expanded versions by FE), for a few weeks because I've been suffering some weird, and apparently rare, sync error with Steam that their tech support are working on.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It's not a matter of being mad, at least not myself. I just think a toggle would allow players to pick and choose between non-core features for their own personal games' preferences. I don't think that should be controversial - in fact, it should be less controversial than having to mandatorily have all content of every Xpac you've installled.

I mean the only thing that I could think of that I was "forced" to get was the Scout Cat DLC, just so I could get Julius Caesar. But then I disabled the cats right after.

But you do bring something up which I think I wouldn't mind if maybe more things were toggleable, for future games. I know some people that wish the World Congress was.

 

[Patine]

I know some people that wish the World Congress was.

Certainly I do.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

There should just be a game toggle for such settlings.

There literally is!

 

[GIO888]

Times do change tho'. Civ II had an awesome WWII scenario I played over and over - now that's so long ago half the civ community simply view WWII as ancient history and wouldn't play it (Much) so its not even an option now.

I really hope Civ VII doesn't bow to any virtue-signaling political fads, which to be fair it hasn't done in the past.

But then times do change tho' !!

 

[Sync]

Could you be more specific in regards to what in Civ IV is it that you hope to return?

Civ IV was an empire builder, Civ V and VI make me feel like I'm playing a board game. V in particular is rife with too much micro-management - moving units late-game is a chore. It doesn't add complexity to the game, just annoyance.

The moddability of IV is also unmatched. One of the key selling points of V was that it would be the 'most moddable Civ ever'. This promise was never fulfilled, or even attempted to be.

This, coupled with the mess of a launch with V left a lot of players with a bad taste in their mouths. Instead of apologising, Shafer ran away with his tail between his legs.

 

[Nikolai II]

I believe much of the blame for the state of V must be laid at Shafer's foot, not the rest of the team. And the more laudable Beach's achivement is.