Plans to add sandbox and custom games?

[lander]

Ill be honest here even in civ 6 I did not play the normal game modes, I have always viewed this as like the mini campaign the same as age of empires, mini campaign for story mode and the custom creation is for creating the real games.

Are you planning to ever give the population the ability to create some real games and mod out the age change. I deleted the game after 5 hours of play and that was the beggining of last week. As of when I deleted the game the only thing available was a little bit of a story mode, it felt like early stages of early access.

I would like to know so I know if I need to cut my losses or not. Is there a plan to finish the game because what was released as a full price game is probably 4x less than is acceptable.

 

[Siptah]

FYI this is not an official forum by firaxis. Hence, you cannot expect to address the devs here and get an answer. Their discord might be more appropriate for these questions. Yet, you probably would need to elaborate what you mean with "story mode", "real games", or "finish the game." Otherwise your post might be read as just a blurry accusation of the game not being worth the money you decided to spend on it.

While I can imagine some things that you might imply with these terms, I have no clue what you actually mean with real games or normal game modes for civ VI. Do you mean you never played the scenarios in civ VI, but just the normal game mode? I'd say that this normal (custom) game mode is the game's main feature. And the same is for civ 7 - there haven't been any scenarios announced yet, and I for one hope that they don't spend too much time on scenarios or alternate game mode just yet.

 

[lander]

FYI this is not an official forum by firaxis. Hence, you cannot expect to address the devs here and get an answer. Their discord might be more appropriate for these questions. Yet, you probably would need to elaborate what you mean with "story mode", "real games", or "finish the game." Otherwise your post might be read as just a blurry accusation of the game not being worth the money you decided to spend on it.

While I can imagine some things that you might imply with these terms, I have no clue what you actually mean with real games or normal game modes for civ VI. Do you mean you never played the scenarios in civ VI, but just the normal game mode? I'd say that this normal (custom) game mode is the game's main feature. And the same is for civ 7 - there haven't been any scenarios announced yet, and I for one hope that they don't spend too much time on scenarios or alternate game mode just yet.

Im not going to go into full detail describing everything as it will be a huge post and im kind of already at the point that I'm ready to abandon the genre/series and im not that upset about it anymore. But I will elaborate slightly more on the story mode and real game concept i have and I will also use age of empires as an example because for me it's basically the same game just not tiles or turn based.

Civ along with age of empires have basically always had the same setup. You start the game and run through a scenario which is more of a tutorial than anything, age of empires is structured more as an actual tutorial but its basically the same in civ. You start off and learn the game and in both games there is a cap at wich point the session end. Again age of empires is more of a tutorial and ends after a specific objective but civ having a turn limit to me has always been the same thing. Its a small session to learn the game.

The term real game comes after playing the story mode/tutorial where you get to create a custom game where you can change the parameters and create a very long game with a fully built up civilization and experience the full potential of the game and war capabilities without being restricted by time and turns. Even when I first started civ 6 I played some scenarios to learn the game then when I felt good enough I went domination only and created a bad ass, epic, real game to kick ass.

Custom, no turn limit games have always been the way I have played both games and I could make a game last 15 hours on both games.

My reference to civ 7 being unfinished comes from the only thing being available is the story mode tutorial with no option to create a long game in which I get to fully build an empire and get to experience the huge strategic wars that I play the games for.

Im asking if the custom game setup is coming because this is what I have always seen as the real game. I dont want to play short tutorials at all. And the age system should be something you can deactivate because it deletes your army and replaces with troops useless to you.

The custom long war game format is the only thing I play and the only reason I played civ and age of empires. Civ currently does not have this which for me was the entire point of the game.

I view what civ 7 currently has as the tutorial and nothing else, for me civ 7 is missing the actual game. Its like a demo currently.

 

[Siptah]

For me, the analogy with AoE is a bit far-fetched. That series had tutorial campaigns, but also pretty hard ones in AoE2 expansions, if you ever tried them on harder levels. So, unlike civ, you can easily spend 100 hours in AoE2 campaigns and it has always been an important part of the game. Yet, I agree that the skirmish games are the main feature of the game nowadays. In contrast, civ never really had tutorial campaigns, right? Scenarios didn't really have a tutorial character, sometimes even the opposite: they required to play a very different game (see civ 6 scenarios for Poland, Vikings, Alexander, or Australia, or the whackier civ II scenarios). So, the customizable game from antiquity to the near future (if you didn't win earlier) was already the main feature of civ for me. Apparently, we share this view. But I don't get the tutorial or story mode in civ 7? I would estimate that civ 7 games on standard speed go between 6-20h depending on play style.

Civ 7 had a custom setup for games since launch. The options are limited, but have grown a bit with patches. A soon-to-hit patch will increase map sizes and player count in MP. Currently, you have to end the game when you have achieved a victory. But the mentioned patch will introduce a continue button. Deactivating ages hasn't been announced, and I wouldn't get my hopes up for it. It also doesn't delete your army if you have enough commanders - only your navy in the first transition, probably because you would finish the game in 20 turns in the second era if you could keep the navy and civilian units. If ages are too short (i.e., you think you cannot fight enough wars), you might want to try long ages (which can be modded to be even longer) and/or slower game speed.

 

[lander]

Maybe more has been added since last week to customise but yes I had seen that there are very limited customisable options but you are right that there were very few, not enough to get close to me creating a game I would enjoy.

And on civ games I almost always choose a map with multiple islands or continents because I much prefer being a naval power. In the 5 hours I played before I deleted the game I literally had an age change that deleted my entire naval power and gave me all land units on an island I fully controlled, for how I play and what I was building, that was a total wipeout.

Its good that they are slowly adding in some more features to make the customisation experience a bit better but this was not an early access game so some of these core features should have been an upgrade from the previous game on arrival.

I dont care about other changes to wonders, general, buildings or most other thing as i would learn, and i don't use anything but domination as a win condition. I use all features to build thriving and advanced cities and empires, I don't race to get points from them. So the changes to how any of the other things work are irrelevant to me, I just want to build a highly functional civilization and start ww3 at around 600+ turns.

I dont need to go into extremely detailed mechanics as the only thing that matters is simple. The experience of building a fully functional and thriving empire to go to war with the whole world after maxing out naval and nuclear power and min/maxing deffences. Nothing else matters and to me everything else is irrelevant. The game need a far superior custom game setup to civ 6 to even qualify for sale based on my view of what makes the game great.

And there was never a difference in the way I played aoe or civ. The menu screens had the same setup and they had the exact same functions. I always viewed civ as just having a less advanced tutorial with less explanation but I played it the exact same way with the exact same goal, learning curve, and strategy in mind. The story, scenario, and custom creation working almost as if both games were cousins.
Civ 7 launched a game with the core of what this family of games have always had not in it.

Edit: also collecting and fighting over resources essential for empire and military growth was such a fun and exciting way to play.

 

[Krikkit1]

If you are specifically interested in no turn limit games, they have that now... once someone has gotten one of the victory conditions (including score) you can use the "one more turn" to continue playing until... you want to stop (I believe it will continue even if you eliminate everyone, although that might be boring.)