Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Core Imposter]

Today is a banner day. UNC is playing this afternoon and we have a real football coach for once. I have been looking forward to it. Also, this is the month that Firaxis will be releasing the latter parts of the Civlets: Right to Rue expansion. Exciting times.

 

[Kwami]

You call mine misleading when I could say the same thing about yours. For example, 1 civ in Civ 6 will last an entire game from 4000 BC to endgame. In 7, 1 civ only gets 1/3 of the turns at most.

Yes, you have 1 or two more uniques in the process. But, at most, 1/3 of the gameplay time. So 2 civs in Civ 6 is 2 whole games. 4 civs is 1.33 games. It isnt hard to understand.

If you are happy paying $30 for these packs, you do you. But many people, myself included, have laid out pretty clear why $30 is WAY overpriced for what you get. Especially, on a game that has failed to engage a large portion of the fanbase - or for those of us where the momentum is running out.

You (and others) keep making this 1/3 argument, but it's bogus. You might play any one civilization for 1/3 of a single game, but you'll play each one about three times as often as you otherwise would. You're still getting the same amount of gameplay time as before.

Nothing else that I wrote could possibly be misleading because it was a simple list of facts.

 

[King Flevance]

You (and others) keep making this 1/3 argument, but it's bogus. You might play any one civilization for 1/3 of a single game, but you'll play each one about three times as often as you otherwise would. You're still getting the same amount of gameplay time as before.

Nothing else that I wrote could possibly be misleading because it was a simple list of facts.

It isn't bogus, its literally the reason people are saying they won't buy it. You won't play it 3 times as much if the game doesn't entice you play because you don't care for it. Plus, that argument makes a weird "the game is really repetitive" statement which is a big criticism of the game.
And most of us are saying that adding in more civs is not the issue. This game could have 200 unique civs and it would feel repetative for me.

 

[DefinitelyNotSidMeier]

You (and others) keep making this 1/3 argument, but it's bogus. You might play any one civilization for 1/3 of a single game, but you'll play each one about three times as often as you otherwise would. You're still getting the same amount of gameplay time as before.

Nothing else that I wrote could possibly be misleading because it was a simple list of facts.

The fact that Civ VIs Civilizations have so little uniqueness about them makes them practically less than 1/3 of a Civ VII Civilization. It's part of the reason why I don't enjoy Civ VI as much anymore.

You pick America in Civ VI, and they're just a bog standard Civilization with minimal uniqueness until the Atomic era. We're talking 250-350+ turns into the game (although it depends what speed you play on) until you see get something unique from them.

Now we're seeing people saying that the fact they're more unique makes the game... less unique? Because everything is unique? So to make the game more unique, we should include things which are less unique then?

 

[Gori the Grey]

That's the reasoning, yeah. Does seem paradoxical. Or counter-intuitive, at least. Did to me anyway, as the logic of it was dawning on me.

Sometimes less is more.

 

[King Flevance]

Let me be clear about uniques. I don't speak for anyone but myself, obviously. Many have various issues with the game.

Variety is a good thing. However, uniques used to be an advantage you held over others in your civ's "spotlight era". This was because everyone's advantage(s) (uniques) came in at staggered times. You gained an advantage when others didn't have one. But now, it is hoplites vs medjay, which by itself is fine. Some people even still retain warriors. This happened in previous games where you would have an edge with military due to your unique unit. Currently 11/12 Antiquity Civs have unique military. So Aksum is the oddball. Let's say your neighbors with Egypt. I used to be able to just know their UA, UU and UB, but now I need to understand their unique playstyle. I need to go to diplomacy and see their 5ish unique things from buildings, to GP, to 2 UAs, units, civilians, improvements and compare that to the leader's ability, and pay attention to endeavors the leader can offer. Cool, now I meet the Han. What do they do again? Now I go look at the leader/civ combo for them.

Then just when I start understanding my homelands dynamics and all those unique attributes and getting comfortable, here let's change all that information into all new unique attributes. Then we will do it again later. So this surely helps when you finally have memorized all 39 civs various multiple uniques (I haven't) and all the leaders (I haven't) but what I think we really need to do is throw in even more civs with even more uniques.

But honestly, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter anyway. Ignore all that and spam adjacencies. Claim city states and manipulate warfare build cavalry and siege. Slap down specialists and hit up your legacy bonuses. Which civ's aesthetic do I want to look at next. Then do all of that again but try to get some treasure fleets cities for fun.

More uniques does not mean more unique gameplay. You need a standard to be unique otherwise "unique" becomes just the base line standard. (Which is dull, not exciting) Uniques make the game exciting when they are powerful. Most unique units in Civ 7 feel like little more than unit reskins. The buildings/districts can feel unique. As can the UAs. But you also need a baseline to compare it to.

"I want to be different, just like everybody else" defeats the purpose.

 

[fantsu]

You (and others) keep making this 1/3 argument, but it's bogus. You might play any one civilization for 1/3 of a single game, but you'll play each one about three times as often as you otherwise would. You're still getting the same amount of gameplay time as before.

Nothing else that I wrote could possibly be misleading because it was a simple list of facts.

Modern Age lasts like 40 turns, or less. Any modern age civ is automatically a bad purchase in my mind.
You rarely have even time to build any units, but you surely wont have time to actually use them so its money wasted.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

So today is the first post labour day back to school / work day that's relatively common across at least the western world, and you can already see it in the overnight stats. Will be interesting to see how the numbers look over the next few weeks now there's more people with competing priorities again

 

[GeneralZift]

Modern Age lasts like 40 turns, or less. Any modern age civ is automatically a bad purchase in my mind.
You rarely have even time to build any units, but you surely wont have time to actually use them so its money wasted.

What's the distribution for the turns across the ages normally? Regular civ usually lasts around 200 turns right? Is like a 90:70:40 distribution?

 

[Siptah]

What's the distribution for the turns across the ages normally? Regular civ usually lasts around 200 turns right? Is like a 90:70:40 distribution?

You always play the first two ages to the end. With long ages it is something like 120 turns, 120 turns, 60 turns if it is a long game (which is much longer than a common game in civ 5 or 6). Shorter games can be 100:100:40. I haven't played with standard age length in months, but I would guess it is something like 80:80:40 (modern should stay the same regardless of age length).

 

[UWHabs]

You always play the first two ages to the end. With long ages it is something like 120 turns, 120 turns, 60 turns if it is a long game. Shorter games can be 100:100:40. I haven't played with standard age length in months, but I would guess it is something like 80:80:40 (modern should stay the same regardless of age length).

My exploration tends to be shorter than antiquity. I've found my games tend to be like 120:90:50, with standard length ages (usually at some point in exploration things start to snowball and a couple future techs/civics cut the age back).

 

[GeneralZift]

You always play the first two ages to the end. With long ages it is something like 120 turns, 120 turns, 60 turns if it is a long game (which is much longer than a common game in civ 5 or 6). Shorter games can be 100:100:40. I haven't played with standard age length in months, but I would guess it is something like 80:80:40 (modern should stay the same regardless of age length).

Why is modern always 40 turns is it down to the victory conditions?
Ah this reminds me, if they extend it to include an information era then they could extend the era itself to around double the length, to match the previous eras.

 

[UWHabs]

Why is modern always 40 turns is it down to the victory conditions?
Ah this reminds me, if they extend it to include an information era then they could extend the era itself to around double the length, to match the previous eras.

Modern ends with the victory, whereas the other ages end when when the turn counter runs out. None of the requirements or projects in modern scale with the age timer.

 

[Siptah]

Ah this reminds me, if they extend it to include an information era then they could extend the era itself to around double the length, to match the previous eras.

Ironically, if they add a 4th age, some problems of the modern era (but not all, clearly) will be fixed. It's currently just a race to victory, if you play at least somewhat competitively. "Luckily" the AI isn't good at closing the game, so you can play further on to at least get a bit of a feel for the modern era and the civ you chose.

To make the modern era interesting and longer, the legacy paths need to be changed in some respect though. Even if there is a fourth era afterwards, you would finish the legacy paths too fast (35-50 turns) compared to the previous ages, so the modern age would unlikely be 100 turns. And I don't think a simple "score 800 factory points instead of 400" would do, because it is already a legacy path that basically is an interesting setup phase followed by only waiting for the bucket to be filled turn by turn automatically. Or that requiring more artifacts or techs would make it more interesting to pursue further. The only one that might be easy to extend is the militaristic path – but here with some care, as you could be locked out of completing it in edge cases (not enough settlements of a different ideology on the map). Maybe it would need to be slowed down that you don't get any points before you adopted an ideology, and then no points for settlements following the same ideology as you.

 

[itix]

Speaking of ages, I guess this game could have been a smashing hit without it. Having a continuous timeline from antiquity to the modern but with empires switching civs at varying spacing, it could have introduced interesting dynamics.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Ironically, if they add a 4th age, some problems of the modern era (but not all, clearly) will be fixed. It's currently just a race to victory, if you play at least somewhat competitively. "Luckily" the AI isn't good at closing the game, so you can play further on to at least get a bit of a feel for the modern era and the civ you chose.

To make the modern era interesting and longer, the legacy paths need to be changed in some respect though. Even if there is a fourth era afterwards, you would finish the legacy paths too fast (35-50 turns) compared to the previous ages, so the modern age would unlikely be 100 turns. And I don't think a simple "score 800 factory points instead of 400" would do, because it is already a legacy path that basically is an interesting setup phase followed by only waiting for the bucket to be filled turn by turn automatically. Or that requiring more artifacts or techs would make it more interesting to pursue further. The only one that might be easy to extend is the militaristic path – but here with some care, as you could be locked out of completing it in edge cases (not enough settlements of a different ideology on the map). Maybe it would need to be slowed down that you don't get any points before you adopted an ideology, and then no points for settlements following the same ideology as you.

Yeah, we've discussed this a couple of times. To sum it up:

The most radical solution would be to eliminate all victories except for score and conquest. From pure gameplay perspective it should be better regardless of whether ages are in or not, if the score calculations are designed well. Civ7 has a problem of too discrete scores, which often lead to a tie.

The more realistic solution (Firaxis don't want to break another important thing in the game) is to make victory projects longer. This solution also requires delaying score victory for the last age - otherwise you'll either have last age still shorter (if those victories will be achieved before normal end) or see score victory too often. But Firaxis clearly knows that and already made adjustments - in one of the patches they removed age progress from the final step of each legacy path in the final age, making score victory longer to reach.

If Firaxis want to try improving victories and not just prolong the last age, they have plenty of things which could be done, like tying victory projects with other legacy paths (i.e. decreasing their cost depending on era score) or making them multi-step. I believe that's why Firaxis delays releasing victories for antiquity and exploration - they plan big victory refresh they are going to release together.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, we've discussed this a couple of times. To sum it up:

The most radical solution would be to eliminate all victories except for score and conquest. From pure gameplay perspective it should be better regardless of whether ages are in or not, if the score calculations are designed well. Civ7 has a problem of too discrete scores, which often lead to a tie.

The more realistic solution (Firaxis don't want to break another important thing in the game) is to make victory projects longer. This solution also requires delaying score victory for the last age - otherwise you'll either have last age still shorter (if those victories will be achieved before normal end) or see score victory too often. But Firaxis clearly knows that and already made adjustments - in one of the patches they removed age progress from the final step of each legacy path in the final age, making score victory longer to reach.

If Firaxis want to try improving victories and not just prolong the last age, they have plenty of things which could be done, like tying victory projects with other legacy paths (i.e. decreasing their cost depending on era score) or making them multi-step. I believe that's why Firaxis delays releasing victories for antiquity and exploration - they plan big victory refresh they are going to release together.

The problem always with victory conditions is that you can focus down that one path, and ignore everything else. So if you want a culture victory, you really don't need to worry about science, other than unlocking whatever buildings you want to build.
And obviously, since the game has the deep snowball still, if you're finishing every tech in 2-3 turns, it really doesn't take a long time to just bomb down the path to the space race, and finish that off. Especially if you set yourself up enough at the end of the exploration that you're not really worried that the AI will rush the artifacts before you can, or that they will actually be able to war you properly to cause you to shift focus.

They switched up a little on the econ path and the culture paths, and at least now I would say that the 4 paths are all more or less balanced, in that whichever of them you are best suited for, other than some extreme cases, you're probably completing it in that 40-60 turn range if you don't delay too much. But they're still pretty short on the whole.

I don't think just delaying the projects really makes any sense. The game isn't more fun if the banker takes 4 turns to teleport between each capital. You could probably swap around the trees a little bit more to balance. Like if explorers were only unlocked at Hegemony or whatever where currently you can start digging up the earlier eras, at least in any normal gameplay, you're now at least 10-15 civics away before you can even get started on the path, so that should add another 30-40 turns. Similarly you could not give ideology points until you actually picked an ideology, which means warring from turn 1 of the era wouldn't help you down that route. But science all you can do is add more pieces or make things more expensive, realistically. And the Econ path while i do kind of enjoy it now, either you need to completely redesign that, or just again, add in something else to artificially slow it down (limits on factory resource slots or something).

 

[stealth_nsk]

The problem always with victory conditions is that you can focus down that one path, and ignore everything else. So if you want a culture victory, you really don't need to worry about science, other than unlocking whatever buildings you want to build.
And obviously, since the game has the deep snowball still, if you're finishing every tech in 2-3 turns, it really doesn't take a long time to just bomb down the path to the space race, and finish that off. Especially if you set yourself up enough at the end of the exploration that you're not really worried that the AI will rush the artifacts before you can, or that they will actually be able to war you properly to cause you to shift focus.

They switched up a little on the econ path and the culture paths, and at least now I would say that the 4 paths are all more or less balanced, in that whichever of them you are best suited for, other than some extreme cases, you're probably completing it in that 40-60 turn range if you don't delay too much. But they're still pretty short on the whole.

I don't think just delaying the projects really makes any sense. The game isn't more fun if the banker takes 4 turns to teleport between each capital. You could probably swap around the trees a little bit more to balance. Like if explorers were only unlocked at Hegemony or whatever where currently you can start digging up the earlier eras, at least in any normal gameplay, you're now at least 10-15 civics away before you can even get started on the path, so that should add another 30-40 turns. Similarly you could not give ideology points until you actually picked an ideology, which means warring from turn 1 of the era wouldn't help you down that route. But science all you can do is add more pieces or make things more expensive, realistically. And the Econ path while i do kind of enjoy it now, either you need to completely redesign that, or just again, add in something else to artificially slow it down (limits on factory resource slots or something).

I was talking about more complex victory projects, like the science victory requiring multiple ship components in previous games, that sort of things.

EDIT: Regarding the victory conditions being balanced. In my last game I had funny experience - I decided to pursue all peaceful victories without delaying any and I ended with science victory shown on top of world fair constructing video, they seem to happen at the same turn, science just at earlier city. And great banker was 2 capitals ahead of winning.

Sure, there were some prioritization, I spent all my continuity gold on buying 4 explorers and didn't save them for buying factories, but still.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The fact that Civ VIs Civilizations have so little uniqueness about them makes them practically less than 1/3 of a Civ VII Civilization. It's part of the reason why I don't enjoy Civ VI as much anymore.

You pick America in Civ VI, and they're just a bog standard Civilization with minimal uniqueness until the Atomic era. We're talking 250-350+ turns into the game (although it depends what speed you play on) until you see get something unique from them.

Now we're seeing people saying that the fact they're more unique makes the game... less unique? Because everything is unique? So to make the game more unique, we should include things which are less unique then?

America actually gets their first unique building earlier in Modern, or Industrial if playing with (Rough Rider) Teddy Roosevelt.
But I think the point is being missed in that every civ does have some uniqueness in the early game. With Founding Fathers, you get uniqueness whenever you pick your first government. Depending on the leader you can also get unique bonuses from turn 1: combat strength on home continent or science and culture from breathtaking appeal tiles.
I personally prefer the design of Civ 6 America to Civ 7 America, but to each their own.

 

[UWHabs]

I was talking about more complex victory projects, like the science victory requiring multiple ship components in previous games, that sort of things.

EDIT: Regarding the victory conditions being balanced. In my last game I had funny experience - I decided to pursue all peaceful victories without delaying any and I ended with science victory shown on top of world fair constructing video, they seem to happen at the same turn, science just at earlier city. And great banker was 2 capitals ahead of winning.

Sure, there were some prioritization, I spent all my continuity gold on buying 4 explorers and didn't save them for buying factories, but still.

I'm usually the same, I see how closely I can align the goals together without substantially delaying one. I've definitely had the last spaceship piece a few turns away from launching, or I think in my last game I had the banker maybe 2 turns away before I did launch the last spaceship piece.