Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Siptah]

I also actually believe this could be a viable and even fun game mechanic.

Even if so, though, I would not advise the developers to build a game around it. Here's why.

It could be fun for us civ veterans--to become skilled in both gradually building a snowballing civ and preparing ourselves to best handle a known coming downturn.

But it's not good for hooking new players, I would think. Civ is complex enough, when one first picks it up, that one doesn't need to be told 1/3 of the way through one's first game: "oh, you know how you've been building, building, building? Now, instead start bracing yourself to minimize the number of things that will be taken away.

I think back to my first games. That would feel like too much complexity to me, in a game that I was already struggling to understand. It would feel like the game didn't know what it wanted to be, like it was schizoid. And I'd probably just have walked away from it. The relative simplicity of Build, build, build at least has the advantage of helping with the onboarding of new players.

Edit: I guess I'd add one more thing. There's a kind of player who doesn't so much prefer challenge as just beating up in the AI. People like that would be put off by severe setbacks.

I'm actually curious how I would have reacted to crises and age resets 30 years ago. I remember very well when I first played civ 3 (after playing a bit of 1 and a lot of 2) and I was crushed in every game. I was so attuned to playing through the earlier games with ease (probably on settler, but I don't remember), taking some cities when I wanted, but being hardly bothered by downfall or enemies (except barbarians). It took my quite a while to learn that the experience of civ 3 is completely different (for me personally) compared to the games before, but I saw it as a nice challenge and was happy to actually learn the game (and the franchise that I already played for years).

Now, I'm also liking the reset in 7 (which I'm used to from other games), and I wish crises and reset would be stronger or more consequential. There are these games in which I'm looking back and remember the ones where I just blazed through as the peak experience (e.g., most city builders or eco games like anno), but in strategy games, I usually have my peak experiences in games in which I lost stuff, recovered, or barely won on the last meters. Unfortunately (?), playing civ in the past 15 or so years has become more and more of the blazing through instead of struggle to keep your things together. In short, I guess I'm just a bit of a snowflake when it comes to having stuff taken away, as I'm not alienated by it at all.

 

[Crashdummy]

Civ 7 is the game that introduced the most antisnowball mechanics in the entire franchise

Its also the easiest Civ game to beat in the entire franchise

Its FALSE that anti snowball mechanics lead to a higher challenge

Civ 7 discord is an echo chamber build with heavy moderation

 

[socratic]

Civ 7 is the game that introduced the most antisnowball mechanics in the entire franchise

Its also the easiest Civ game to beat in the entire franchise

Its FALSE that anti snowball mechanics lead to a higher challenge

Civ 7 discord is an echo chamber build with heavy moderation

I mean Civ 7’s anti-snowball mechanics don’t work too well. Maybe a future Civ can add a more effective system that could be challenging

 

[Siptah]

I think we had anti-snowball mechanism that definitely make a challenge. For instance, corruption based on distance from capital in civ 3. Or global happiness in civ 5 at launch that would basically wreck you when you expand to more than 4 cities. Or corruption from territories that EU4 introduced for some years. But the latter is a good example for showing the problematic: that snowball mechanic worked well to prevent snowball, but it was also quite unfun to interact with. I'm also not sure myself whether, mechanically, diminishing returns work better for anti-snowball (as we have in all civs with food) or playing with fire (as we had with global happiness in civ 5, rising upkeep in others, or the threat of losing units if you don't have commanders in civ 7).

 

[stealth_nsk]

Civ 7 is the game that introduced the most antisnowball mechanics in the entire franchise

Questionable. There were plenty of anti-snowball mechanics throughout the series, like corruption, global happiness, decreased tech cost for outsiders and so on. I wouldn't say ages hit as hard on snowballing as corruption did in some previous games.

Also, limiting snowballing is only one of several functions of age reset.

Its also the easiest Civ game to beat in the entire franchise

Again, questionable. Earlier games were really easy to beat once you understand how the game works. Civilization 3 even had to add 2 difficulty levels in one of the expansions, because existing ones were too easy.

Its FALSE that anti snowball mechanics lead to a higher challenge

I don't remember anyone claiming snowball mechanics should lead to higher challenge. It should lead to a different type of challenge, not concentrated in the early game. And while ages are not very good at this, I'd argue that they do the thing better than, for example, Civ6 anti-snowball mechanics.

Civ 7 discord is an echo chamber build with heavy moderation

I'm not a member of Civ7 discord, but as I understand, it's built for constructive communication with developers. For comparison, most of the threads on this forum have zero value for developers.

 

[Crashdummy]

I mean Civ 7’s anti-snowball mechanics don’t work too well. Maybe a future Civ can add a more effective system that could be challenging

The most challenging Civ games had very little in terms of snowball mechanics

I dont think both terms are as tighly related as some people think they are. I am biased though because i dont think snowballing is bad for the game, i actually think its something good for Civilization

 

[Crashdummy]

Questionable. There were plenty of anti-snowball mechanics throughout the series, like corruption, global happiness, decreased tech cost for outsiders and so on. I wouldn't say ages hit as hard on snowballing as corruption did in some previous games.

Also, limiting snowballing is only one of several functions of age reset.

But Civ 7 also has happniness with city limitation. Ages is not the only anti snowball mechanic Civ 7 has

If we cant agree that Civ 7 is the game with the most anti snowball mechanics in the franchise, i dont know anymore how we can get an agreement on anything at this point

I'm not a member of Civ7 discord, but as I understand, it's built for constructive communication with developers. For comparison, most of the threads on this forum have zero value for developers.

I wasnt criticizing it. I was saying that it cant be used as a metric to know if people are against those mechanics or not because of it. I dont think creating ane cho chamber is valuable either but i dont really care about Civ 7 discord to be honest

 

[stealth_nsk]

But Civ 7 also has happniness with city limitation. Ages is not the only anti snowball mechanic Civ 7 has

City limit is anti-snowball mechanics, happiness itself in Civ7 isn't.

If we cant agree that Civ 7 is the game with the most anti snowball mechanics in the franchise, i dont know anymore how we can get an agreement on anything at this point

Yes, Civ7 have hardest anti-snowball restrictions altogether and they work meaning it's hardest to snowball. A pretty decent indication of snowballing are early victories and in Civ7 all but conquest victory are totally prevented until some time into modern age and even conquest is almost impossible to get before modern, even if you start on Pangea.

But the original point was about ages in particular.

I wasnt criticizing it. I was saying that it cant be used as a metric to know if people are against those mechanics or not because of it. I dont think creating ane cho chamber is valuable either but i dont really care about Civ 7 discord to be honest

Yep, it's as unrepresentative as this forum. We're very small and specific part of the community, relics of the epochs long gone, sitting on 25 year old forum. Yes, the poll about civ switching tells that 35% of respondents won't play the game because of civ switching. But in absolute numbers, that's 84 persons out of millions of players.

 

[firadin]

I'm really confused by the idea that we *want* anti-snowball mechanics. It's not a (primarily) multiplayer game so that's not a factor. Why would I want to spend a half dozen hours working on and optimizing my civ only for it to be erased because I'm doing too well?

 

[Siptah]

I'm really confused by the idea that we *want* anti-snowball mechanics. It's not a (primarily) multiplayer game so that's not a factor. Why would I want to spend a half dozen hours working on and optimizing my civ only for it to be erased because I'm doing too well?

To keep the game interesting. The problem with civ an its 'symmetric' starts (e.g., everybody starts with the same kit, variations are subtle) is that if you get the upper end early, your advantages keeps growing and growing and you are rather unstoppable.* I always regarded this as one of the biggest problems of civ 6: if you could chop out some things at start, you'll just run away and basically have won the game by the medieval era. Keeping the exponential growth in check at least a bit by, e.g. diminishing returns or penalties for overextension, allows to keep the game competitive for a longer time.

I think crises would have been great for this tbh. If crises hit larger empires much more severely, that would present a challenge (that they can overcome) while smaller empires are not that affected. Currently, that just doesn't apply. With 3000 gold per turn, it doesn't hurt me at all to take a -50 gold card, and with 100 influence per turn, the -8 influence card is also hardly noticeable at the end of an age. If the pestilence hits two of your 18 settlements this is also not so much of a setback than if you only have 5 settlements. If the cards would be more drastic (e.g., -300 gold per city or -0.5 CS per unit instead of a flat -5), this could work as a nice anti-snowball, as it would level the playing field in a more organic way – at least for the duration of the crisis.

* The same would apply to the AI if it could play the game.

 

[Krikkit1]

Yeah, I've been thinking about this.

(You can add me to the list of people who don't finish games but start game after game after game.)

I might go a step further and say that snowball is THE GAME.

What I mean is this. The other slogan besides "stand the test of time" that used to get bandied about was "interesting choices." I'll just focus on the choice from among buildings. So, as you're first learning Civ, early game, you can build a monument, a granary, a watermill, a shrine. (5 is my reference point). The game tells you what each one will do, but you don't really have a way of knowing, long term, how some extra culture, food, food and production or faith will help you. But it's a clear choice. Those are various strands of the game, and you can decide on whatever basis on which strand you'd most like to advance.

Once you've played a few games, you have a better sense of how those various things do benefit you long term, and maybe you've started to get the sense, well, nothing benefits me more than population growth. So you start to gravitate toward granary as your go-to choice in that early situation.

Once you play a little more, if you've got a certain kind of mind, you start to ask, "now, which one will help me the most?" You start min-maxing, in other words. For every set of possible competing buildings, through the whole game, there is a best answer to that question. Not one single best answer in all cases; it's partly situational. But you start to get the sense for what sort of situation has to obtain for you to deviate from the generally best.

As you get better at all of these things, you move up in difficulty level in order to keep giving yourself a challenge. You hit deity and the AIs start with so many advantages, and all through the game do everything faster than you that for you to compete at all, now all of those choices have to be absolutely optimal. You can't miss a trick. But if all of your choices are optimal, you can gradually chip away at the AIs starting advantages. Again, you can't do this unless you are making absolutely optimal choices, but once you do edge past the AI, all of that optimal infrastructure you built now lets you keep building your lead over them (snowballing).

You have got to that point by getting particularly skilled at doing THE. THING. THAT. THE. GAME. MOST. FUNDAMENTALLY. ASKS. YOU. TO. DO. (make good choices).

So-called "snowballing" is actually PLAYING. CIV.

The problem is you only "play civ"/make interesting choices for the first part of the game... because your lead builds and eventually it doesn't matter.

If the AI got additional benefit as the game went on... then you would have to keep making interesting choices, because your "snowball" would always be in danger of falling apart as tougher ais got to you.

The age structure provides a way to do that (other options would have to be things like tech level, where a better player means the AI gets better faster)

The big problem with many anti-snowball mechanics (corruption/crises that hit the big one harder/ais that gang up on the winning player) is that it feels like punishment for success (because it is)

However, if the AIs got harder and harder throughout the game (possibly getting more benefits if They did poorly rather than if the player did well).. then you have to push the snowball and always optimize it or you will get buried.
Every decision is needed... there is no coast time (if you want coast time you either take a lower difficulty level or you switch off the "Constant Challenge AI" option
That would just be the difficulty level choice instead of player punishment.

 

[AD1730]

To keep the game interesting. The problem with civ an its 'symmetric' starts (e.g., everybody starts with the same kit, variations are subtle) is that if you get the upper end early, your advantages keeps growing and growing and you are rather unstoppable.* I always regarded this as one of the biggest problems of civ 6: if you could chop out some things at start, you'll just run away and basically have won the game by the medieval era. Keeping the exponential growth in check at least a bit by, e.g. diminishing returns or penalties for overextension, allows to keep the game competitive for a longer time.

I think crises would have been great for this tbh. If crises hit larger empires much more severely, that would present a challenge (that they can overcome) while smaller empires are not that affected. Currently, that just doesn't apply. With 3000 gold per turn, it doesn't hurt me at all to take a -50 gold card, and with 100 influence per turn, the -8 influence card is also hardly noticeable at the end of an age. If the pestilence hits two of your 18 settlements this is also not so much of a setback than if you only have 5 settlements. If the cards would be more drastic (e.g., -300 gold per city or -0.5 CS per unit instead of a flat -5), this could work as a nice anti-snowball, as it would level the playing field in a more organic way – at least for the duration of the crisis.

* The same would apply to the AI if it could play the game.

This is a fundamental problem of the drive to put more and more things on tiles: it makes wide gameplay even more advantageous. Wide gameplay benefits more from snowballing than tall. Thus, the developers attempted to solve a problem with eras that would have been better fixed by getting rid of or limiting the district system.

 

[GeneralZift]

I want interesting anti snowball mechanics, or rather, systems that just slow down the inevitable victory into maybe-yes-maybe-no with the right timing you feel like you just barely overcome victory. That and I would just like up-and-down mechanics so it doesn't feel like I'm always in the lead all the time.

This is why I'm a big advocate for society yields or society stats as it were, like Health or Corruption, which go up as your empire sprawls. Then you have to deal with new problems. Which is interesting.

People who fell behind already don't have sprawling empires. So they don't deal with these issues *yet*.

That makes it easier for them to catch up and then everyone is close together and competitive as you reach the end. I like the AI to be competitive, smart, snarky, aggressive, territorial, opportunistic but yet some AI should have some kind of diplomatic weakness. Like some AI trusts too quickly, or they neglect Science, or they depend heavily on nautical piracy.

EDIT I don't like reset mechanics. It just feels abrupt rather than slow and natural. Downfall should feel gradual and preventable but somewhat necessary to progression.

 

[Siptah]

This is a fundamental problem of the drive to put more and more things on tiles: it makes wide gameplay even more advantageous. Wide gameplay benefits more from snowballing than tall. Thus, the developers attempted to solve a problem with eras that would have been better fixed by getting rid of or limiting the district system.

I agree. (Soft) limiting districts in combination with the (soft) settlement cap that we already have could be an option. I'd actually take Humankind for a comparison here. Both that and civ 7 have unlimited districts, while their predecessors Endless Legend and civ VI had limited districts. Opening that limitation didn't fare too well in neither game.

One potential way to limit districts could be by making population a more contested resource: make units take up a population, and make urban districts also cost population instead of providing population. But this might just slow down the game too much.

In addition to districts, I think the snowball per tile is also a bit too strong in 7. In previous games, tiles with 5 resources were great in the beginning and still worth it in the mid game. In civ 7, you find tiles with 7 or 8 resources regularly, and many buildings provide 10+ resources as well. In the late game, a tile with less than 20 resources is actually bad. They tried to limit that with the age reset (building yields drop down, adjacencies lost, rural tiles reset), which seems a good way to me. But then they decided to just ramp it up in the next age for some reason. Yet, if yields reset, it would have been fine to make age 2 buildings just a bit stronger than age 1 buildings, and not twice as strong... so, I don't really follow the philosophy here.

 

[Crashdummy]

I'm really confused by the idea that we *want* anti-snowball mechanics. It's not a (primarily) multiplayer game so that's not a factor. Why would I want to spend a half dozen hours working on and optimizing my civ only for it to be erased because I'm doing too well?

Because some people think the franchise would be better if snowball is reduced to the minimum possible expression

I and some others disagree, i think the franchise grew as much as it did in not small part thanks to the way you could snowball

But neither side cam make a claim of having the absolute truth

 

[aelf]

You're right. It seems to be a a marketing-oriented role with a solid analytical background. Likely to support the developers and guide future development decisions.

Head of product isn't a marketing-oriented role. At least not in tech. As you suggest, it's about making decisions for the future based on the available information and a good bit of predicting or 'visioning.' That has impact on the product (and franchise) itself, not just how it's marketed.

The fact that they still dont understand what players want after 6 months worries me a bit

I hope the person they hire goes and tells them to make a freaking sandbox game where you can build a civilization to stand the Test of Time

On the topic of what a Head of Product must do, yeah, that's not how it works. That's what you (and the customer segment you're part of) want now, but it doesn't mean that's a sustainable formula for the next ten years, let alone for future iterations of the franchise. If a franchise is not refreshed from time to time, especially where there's no real barrier to entry to cheaper copycats or rival products that can follow the same formula and improve on it, the franchise might lose out and come to an end when it can no longer compete. You generally want to stay ahead of the competition, not wait for the competition to repeat your success.

 

[Gorbles]

I'm really confused by the idea that we *want* anti-snowball mechanics. It's not a (primarily) multiplayer game so that's not a factor. Why would I want to spend a half dozen hours working on and optimizing my civ only for it to be erased because I'm doing too well?

It's not being erased, so my guess is that you're extrapolating backwards from an existing dislike (transitions) to the rationale that was provided in the first place.

But sure. I'll ask you the same question I asked Crashdummy.

Would you be okay with autolosing a game as soon as an AI achieved a lead? After this point, skill no longer matters, your loss is guaranteed.

Does that sound fun?

 

[Crashdummy]

Head of product isn't a marketing-oriented role. At least not in tech. As you suggest, it's about making decisions for the future based on the available information and a good bit of predicting or 'visioning.' That has impact on the product (and franchise) itself, not just how it's marketed.


On the topic of what a Head of Product must do, yeah, that's not how it works. That's what you (and the customer segment you're part of) want now, but it doesn't mean that's a sustainable formula for the next ten years, let alone for future iterations of the franchise. If a franchise is not refreshed from time to time, especially where there's no real barrier to entry to cheaper copycats or rival products that can follow the same formula and improve on it, the franchise might lose out and come to an end when it can no longer compete. You generally want to stay ahead of the competition, not wait for the competition to repeat your success.

Not every change is a good change, and trying to push a change that isnt good can lead to your franchise dying even faster than a competition making a better product. Halo was killed by Halo doing this mistake, not by a competitor

Not changing the proven formula of a sandbox game where you can start and finish with the same Civ is NOT asking to not refresh the game. There are MILLONS of things you can change in the game, literally, saying that the sandbox element, and the switching of the civilizations shouldnt be changed does not mean that the other millons of things shouldnt change

The competition already tried to get ahead by making a similar approach. They failed too

 

[itix]

I think crises would have been great for this tbh. If crises hit larger empires much more severely, that would present a challenge (that they can overcome) while smaller empires are not that affected. Currently, that just doesn't apply. With 3000 gold per turn, it doesn't hurt me at all to take a -50 gold card, and with 100 influence per turn, the -8 influence card is also hardly noticeable at the end of an age. If the pestilence hits two of your 18 settlements this is also not so much of a setback than if you only have 5 settlements. If the cards would be more drastic (e.g., -300 gold per city or -0.5 CS per unit instead of a flat -5), this could work as a nice anti-snowball, as it would level the playing field in a more organic way – at least for the duration of the crisis.

The problem still persists. Humans learn how to counter crises, AI only follows its preprogrammed path.

IMO it could be interesting if at the beginning of the new era, the worst performing civs gained bonuses. Free units, +2 pop city growth, +% to science or something.

 

[aelf]

Not every change is a good change, and trying to push a change that isnt good can lead to your franchise dying even faster than a competition making a better product. Halo was killed by Halo doing this mistake, not by a competitor

Not changing the proven formula of a sandbox game where you can start and finish with the same Civ is NOT asking to not refresh the game. There are MILLONS of things you can change in the game, literally, saying that the sandbox element, and the switching of the civilizations shouldnt be changed does not mean that the other millons of things shouldnt change

The competition already tried to get ahead by making a similar approach. They failed too

Nobody said change has to be good. But making changes is a risk you have to take at some point, and that point is never too far away.

The formula you originally described as "a freaking sandbox game where you can build a civilization to stand the Test of Time" is vague enough that there's plenty of room to tweak it and thereby introduce changes. Arguably, Civ7 follows the same formula because civ-switching can be understood as an evolution of your civ, not a complete replacement. Whether you see it this way or not is subjective, so there's no right or wrong or any guarantee which way it would break without the benefit of hindsight. There are very few things that are as black-and-white or straightforward as you imagine.

That's why customers generally can't step in and make decisions like the Head of Product can. You only see the picture through a particular lens, and the Head of Product needs to be able to go beyond that.