Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Gorbles]

It's not just Continuity, it's things like this change in the latest patch:

(★) Buildings now retain their full base Yields and Maintenance costs on Age Transition. They will still lose adjacencies and special effects.

I like that this eats into Gold costs more (because imo not enough stuff does), but full Yields is just massive.

 

[McSpank01]

And in regards to snowballing, in most of my games the winner is clear by the middle of exploration. Sometimes, randomly, a black horse AI can pull off a science victory in Modern—but this often feels more like a chaotic bug than good design.

I guess the question would be why would an empire that was winning by the exploration age be able to just continue that trajectory with little obstacle. What is it that Civ has that is creating that advantage? Its clearly a mix of land, population, science and culture and gold etc. The game basically works by saying that the player with the most of those will win.

I actually think that Civ 7 is doing some thing right in that regards. It should be possible theoretically for players to switch strategy in the Modern age and focus hard on one win objective. Doing that should be advantageous, even if you were lagging behind in the previous era. I haven't played enough Modern era to know if that is to true, because the game becomes dull to me, but surely that was the goal of the developers.


If it is currently the case that just having a big successful empire is the key to winning in all cases then that is a problem. Rubber banding should be more complex and restrictive, and should work better than it does now. There should be more ability for players to come from behind by using specific strategies.

I don't know how bad a problem this is, other than from what I hear on here though.

 

[Leucarum]

It's not just Continuity, it's things like this change in the latest patch:

(★) Buildings now retain their full base Yields and Maintenance costs on Age Transition. They will still lose adjacencies and special effects.

I like that this eats into Gold costs more (because imo not enough stuff does), but full Yields is just massive.

True. But it does suggest the direction of travel is away from the three-age structure, and an acceptance that snowballs will remain.

 

[Gorbles]

True. But it does suggest the direction of travel is away from the three-age structure, and an acceptance that snowballs will remain.

I think it's more of an acceptance that transitions (and Ages, consequently) will remain, and that giving players more options and empowering them to feel like they're more in-control cedes more to snowballing being inevitable.

The narrative break of a transition can be improved by better UI and UX. The mechnical impact directly relates to snowballing.

 

[Leucarum]

I think it's more of an acceptance that transitions (and Ages, consequently) will remain, and that giving players more options and empowering them to feel like they're more in-control cedes more to snowballing being inevitable.

The narrative break of a transition can be improved by better UI and UX. The mechnical impact directly relates to snowballing.

But there is a tension between the changes making modern increasingly irrelevant. You could muddle by with the three age structure I suspect, but I don't think Civ Switching can survive 1/3 of the civs not mattering.

Or to put it another way, Civ7's design is tightly interconnected, if you start pulling on threads more things start to unravel. To keep the game afloat, Firaxis have had to start pulling threads, and it's going to be tough for the final game to still look like the original concept.

 

[GeneralZift]

But there is a tension between the changes making modern increasingly irrelevant. You could muddle by with the three age structure I suspect, but I don't think Civ Switching can survive 1/3 of the civs not mattering.

Or to put it another way, Civ7's design is tightly interconnected, if you start pulling on threads more things start to unravel. To keep the game afloat, Firaxis have had to start pulling threads, and it's going to be tough for the final game to still look like the original concept.

Agree - also don't think that the UI and UX can cover up switching that well. What more could you want I suppose, an animation for a revolution, or a time lapse or something?

 

[Solver]

To support Firaxis here, they have a history of successfully changing major aspects of a game to improve the reception.

Civ5 was initially released with a very strong focus on small tall empires, and expansion by conquest was intentionally made very punishing (had to puppet cities instead of annexing). Civ5 also had an intentionally opaque diplomacy where you never saw any opinions or modifiers and instead had to rely on AI leader declarations. Both aspects were redone, and while it's true that age transitions are an even more challenging design to tweak, I think the history here is illuminating.

 

[Leucarum]

The patch contents certainly suggest a course correction. I'm hoping they pull it off, I've enjoyed Civ7 in spite of its rough edges but this feels like a tough design to tweak with so many of the new systems being very interdependant.

 

[0urBall]

Do we think it may be possible, with the 3 age structure, for Firaxis to put something in that changes the difficulty in-game? As a potential anti-snowball antidote, as well as helping make the endgame more meaningful/impactful?

 

[AD1730]

The patch contents certainly suggest a course correction. I'm hoping they pull it off, I've enjoyed Civ7 in spite of its rough edges but this feels like a tough design to tweak with so many of the new systems being very interdependant.

There's also a problem when the negative reaction is to a core system's very existence and the consequences it creates. I don't think you can address the objections of the anti civ-switching/ages crowd without removing the systems entirely. 1UPT started as a much harsher system that was adjusted to allow for stacking of certain unit types, but this didn't undermine the principle of 1UPT, which was to get rid of the doomstack and encourage more tactical gameplay. I don't think there is a similar needle to be threaded in the case of civ-switching and ages.

 

[Kwami]

Are you talking about VII? Or VI?

I was mostly talking about V and VI.

I know that some players didn’t enjoy the late game in VI—a mix of complaints here range from snowballing—the game being essentially over and just clicking through until victory is reached—or the need to move so many units on the map—rock bands, missionaries, workers, military units.

Yes, precisely. And in V, there were also very long turn timers on top of the other problems.

I find myself less likely to finish games in VII than VI.

I'm the opposite. I've finished all but one game of VII and that one ended after antiquity when I got distracted by some other stuff and didn't remember what I was doing by the time I was able to come back to the game. But in VI, I finished maybe half of my games. The late game was just so tedious. In VII, getting a new kit to play with reenergizes me for the late game. And while the modern era needs a lot of work, at least it's short for now.

 

[Kwami]

Agree - also don't think that the UI and UX can cover up switching that well. What more could you want I suppose, an animation for a revolution, or a time lapse or something?

Actually, yes, cinematics would help. The intended design seems to be lost on many players. Better in-game explanations and some cinematics between ages would better convey the intended narrative of decline, the passage of time, and the emergence of a new civilization built from what was there before, but with its own stuff mixed in. As it is now, we see complaints about civilizations evolving into other ones like some kind of Pokemon. Systems like unit resets, diplomacy resets, independent people resets, and so on make a lot more sense when you consider the intended story, but if you don't, then they're just annoying.

 

[Kwami]

Do we think it may be possible, with the 3 age structure, for Firaxis to put something in that changes the difficulty in-game? As a potential anti-snowball antidote, as well as helping make the endgame more meaningful/impactful?

They could, but it probably wouldn't matter. The AI isn't actually better at higher levels. It just gets more bonuses. Maybe some day they'll figure out how to make AI that's both fun to play against and good at playing the game, but they weren't able to get there in the first six games, so I'm not expecting them to figure it out for this one, either.

 

[Crashdummy]

Splitting the game into 3 mini games didnt fix any issues but created new ones

As i stated before, I dont consider snowballing an issue, i think the game should reward you from playing well in the early game and anti-snowballing systems do the opposite, they punish you for spending effort into winning the early game. But even if someone considers it an issue, it wasnt really fixed by splitting the game

Also, everyone agrees the best Age is antiquity and the worse Modern, so the late game fatigue wasnt fixed either

We got all the cons of splitting the game, without any benefit

I dont think any "course correction" will make people come back, i think Firaxis should focus ASAP on a Classic Mode to bring people back, which also has the added bonus of leaving the current system as a separate mode for those that like it. And yes, a Classic Mode is perfectly possible with some months of work

There isnt really any other solution IMHO

 

[Gori the Grey]

They could, but it probably wouldn't matter. The AI isn't actually better at higher levels. It just gets more bonuses. Maybe some day they'll figure out how to make AI that's both fun to play against and good at playing the game, but they weren't able to get there in the first six games, so I'm not expecting them to figure it out for this one, either.

This would take us off on a tangent, but my view on this is that you have to build into the game's most fundamental design the ability for the AI to play it well. You can't design a game and then ask, "how can we get the AI to play this well?" Rather, in your first brainstorming sessions for an new iteration of the game, you have to ask "what kind of a civ game could AI play well?" Actually, you have to ask it of each sub-system of the game. What kind of military game could AI play well? What kind of diplomacy could AI do well? What kind of economic system could AI handle well? I think the answer would be generally the same in each case: number-crunching. For example, city development. Make it so that adjacent tiles of particular terrain types can be developed in different ways based on those adjacencies (kind of like how a tile could be irrigated in Civ 3, if you started from a tile that was adjacent to water, but lots of these kinds of possible inter-relations between tile types: a forest next to grassland can do something different than a forest next to plains). A computer could look at the particular concatenation of tile types in the final ring of a city and calculate what set of improvements would generate the maximum yields. Ditto, maybe with military units: they can support each other in particular ways (if a horse is next to an archer it imparts one bonus, if it's next to a spearman, it imparts a different bonus). The computer can number-crunch and devise the optimal arrangement of troops to exploit these bonuses.

Anyway, my big point is that, for the AI to work well, the game has to be designed from the start for that purpose primarily.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think the age structure could be a key way to improve snowballing, but rather than focus on restricting a successful player, focus on boosting up poor AIs.

Give AIs an additional +X to %yields and combat strength each age…but let X be bigger for AIs that ‘did poorly*’ last round.

*based on either Legacy paths or settled tiles

This could keep the challenge up (and possibly provide for an ebb and flow of the AIs themselves)

 

[Leucarum]

There's also a problem when the negative reaction is to a core system's very existence and the consequences it creates. I don't think you can address the objections of the anti civ-switching/ages crowd without removing the systems entirely. 1UPT started as a much harsher system that was adjusted to allow for stacking of certain unit types, but this didn't undermine the principle of 1UPT, which was to get rid of the doomstack and encourage more tactical gameplay. I don't think there is a similar needle to be threaded in the case of civ-switching and ages.

I can see a path forward for ages, but it does de-emphasise how much each of them is a distinct minigame (more choice on how much carries over, what legacy paths are in play etc...), and an acceptance that a lot of people enjoy snowballing against the AI. That route though I think means modern gets relegated to being less emphasis, and in turn that kills civ switching. Effectively ages can still be markers where new mechanics get introduced, but the gameplay is less proscribed to center on them, and the player has more control over what carries through.

 

[Xandinho]

One issue I see with the implementation of Classic Mode is this: What should be done with civs that have era-specific bonuses? For example, Majapahit’s unique district, the Pura, grants a relic when constructed, but we know that relics are an interaction exclusive to the Exploration Age, and they only exist during that age.

 

[King of Prussia]

I think the age structure could be a key way to improve snowballing, but rather than focus on restricting a successful player, focus on boosting up poor AIs.

Give AIs an additional +X to %yields and combat strength each age…but let X be bigger for AIs that ‘did poorly*’ last round.

*based on either Legacy paths or settled tiles

This could keep the challenge up (and possibly provide for an ebb and flow of the AIs themselves)

Taking away something someone worked on will always feel worse than boosting those who are behind. That negative feeling is imo one of the main reasons why the age system was so disliked. Of course, if boosting goes to far, then it feels like what is the point of playing super well if those who were far behind are caught up. Its a tough balancing act.

 

[Crashdummy]

One issue I see with the implementation of Classic Mode is this: What should be done with civs that have era-specific bonuses? For example, Majapahit’s unique district, the Pura, grants a relic when constructed, but we know that relics are an interaction exclusive to the Exploration Age, and they only exist during that age.

Nothing

We have had units and buildings that came early or late in different civilizations for decades and it was never an issue. Moreso, it was something GOOD

When every Civilization is special at all times, then no Civ is special. Rome being good early thanks to its early units versus America being good late was a good design that added spice to the game

In terms of items that are available in one age only, like relics, will need some rebalance, but all the rebalance can be done in a few months. Relics would be available after a certain tech or civi and they would remain so untill the end of the game

All this isnt new, we had mechanics similar to those in previous entries of the franchise