Possible Inspiration?

[Staler87]

Recently I have been playing quite a bit of Sid Meiers Civilization: The Board Game and noticed something about city-building. All your buildings are built outside the city. You don't stack counters in the middle of it but instead place wonders/buildings in the surrounding terrain. Knowing that Ed Beach is a board game designer and that this was an officially approved, critically acclaimed, (I strongly recommend trying it) I was thinking that it could have served as inspiration for the un-stacking of cities in CVI.

It's just a thought. Do you think I'm way off base here or it may actually have been the inspiration for the design decision?

 

[Haig]

Mr. Staler (evil x 2) you could be right, I know that Ed's own games have cards used bit like civics and some same leaders like de Medici..

 

[CaptainUnknown]

I totally agree. I mentioned this in a thread awhile ago when we first learned about Great people. The board game has an expansion and in the expansion each great person has unique bonus cards and are similar to what we see in Civ 6.

 

[D712]

All of the info that has come out of Civ6 has, to me, seemed to be reminiscent of board game strategy games. The unstacking of cities, the card slots, inability to automate workers/builders, and the restacking of *types* of units screamed "board game" to me.

It's honestly a great move, it forces players to think more about the space within the game in the way that board games force players to think about physical space. This makes the game not more challenging necessarily, but forces people to play in a more active way. CiV allowed players to passively plug-and-chug civs, wonders, and units until they were Ruler of the World.

 

[rastak]

Recently I have been playing quite a bit of Sid Meiers Civilization: The Board Game and noticed something about city-building. All your buildings are built outside the city. You don't stack counters in the middle of it but instead place wonders/buildings in the surrounding terrain. Knowing that Ed Beach is a board game designer and that this was an officially approved, critically acclaimed, (I strongly recommend trying it) I was thinking that it could have served as inspiration for the un-stacking of cities in CVI.

It's just a thought. Do you think I'm way off base here or it may actually have been the inspiration for the design decision?

Not sure, I have that game myself. Ed mentioned they wanted to do it with Civ V but really couldn't. It may pre-date the FFG game.

 

[AvantInvader]

Which "Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game"? There are two entirely unrelated board games with that name. One published in 2002 by EGG, and one published in 2010 by FFG. I haven't played either...

 

[CaptainUnknown]

Which Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game? There are two entirely unrelated board games with that name. One published in 2002 by EGG, and one published in 2010 by FFG. I haven't played either...

The 2010 one which has 2 expansions. (perhaps both, but that is what I have played and matches the OP's points).

 

[demidyad]

All of the info that has come out of Civ6 has, to me, seemed to be reminiscent of board game strategy games. The unstacking of cities, the card slots, inability to automate workers/builders, and the restacking of *types* of units screamed "board game" to me.

It's honestly a great move, it forces players to think more about the space within the game in the way that board games force players to think about physical space. This makes the game not more challenging necessarily, but forces people to play in a more active way. CiV allowed players to passively plug-and-chug civs, wonders, and units until they were Ruler of the World.

Yep, this is why I have so much confidence in Civ 6, regardless of how Civ 5 was on launch. Ed Beach is an established and respected board game designer, compared to the unproven young buck Shafer. And you can definitely see the board game pedigree coming through. Like others here I said the same thing when the GP system was announced, and the civic card system too. Board games really have to put a lot of thought into making clear systems with meaningful decisions, so I think Beach is an excellent man to lead the Civ team.

 

[rastak]

Yep, this is why I have so much confidence in Civ 6, regardless of how Civ 5 was on launch. Ed Beach is an established and respected board game designer, compared to the unproven young buck Shafer. And you can definitely see the board game pedigree coming through. Like others here I said the same thing when the GP system was announced, and the civic card system too. Board games really have to put a lot of thought into making clear systems with meaningful decisions, so I think Beach is an excellent man to lead the Civ team.

I am with you, and for every one of the reasons you stated.

 

[Aristos]

Nope, "unstacking" of cities came straight from this very forums, where many years ago a few of us were discussing how to improve the civ series' use of the map/terrain, and were considering Shogun 2 and Napoleon use of strategic buildings/resources and how it added a whole new strategic layer to gameplay.

I cannot prove it, of course, but I am 100% sure it came from there.

As much as I am 100% sure many other things came straight out of Gazebo's mod.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'd say its obvious idea. All board games have this, because stacking doesn't work well on physical board. A lot of computer games have unstacked buildings, like Warlock where each building takes a tile.

What is really unique here is a district concept where each district has more than one building. And it's very cool.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I agree that the unstacked city, with the terrain requirements for various projects, is straight out of the board game. No doubt in my mind.

I think the developers drew inspiration from other board games as well. I bet the different government types giving different numbers of cards of certain types comes from Through the Ages. In that game, each government type has its own bonus, and also gives a certain number of military card slots and civilian card slots. Republican types of government tend to have more civilian cards and autocratic ones more military cards. Exactly like the new civ system (which I think should work great!)

 

[anandus]

Nope, "unstacking" of cities came straight from this very forums

I doubt it. Unstacking cities is a general trend in TBS games for the last few years, see Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Endless Legends, etc.

 

[Staler87]

The 2002 one was only titled civilization the board game rather than sid meiers civilization the board game.

Civ 5 was released before the board game. The board game was based on the mobile game and civ 5.

There are a couple, general, design instances of cities/anything being 'stacked' in board games:
- there could be a separate player board that develops a one tile thing on the map
-there could literally be stacks of counters on the board
-there could be no possibility for improvement

Although I doubt the civilization board game invented building a city with buildings outside of it, it certainly isn't 'common' in many board games as most don't deal with cities at any level of detail, and if they do it is more sim city than civ.

I agree that I trust Ed Beach to make a great game from the moves he has made in his previous design jobs. I feel video games have a lot to learn from board games and I'm not sure if its true to say that the other way around. Board games have just been around for so much longer and have thus developed so much farther.

 

[Staler87]

Just saw that you can now harvest resources. It doesn't work exactly how it does in the board game, but the idea that you have to actively harvest resources instead of just passively having them is definitely there. Is this more inspiration from the board game? I'm really beginning to think they actually put Kevin Wilson in charge of designing civ VI and the whole Ed Beach thing is just a cover story.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Just saw that you can now harvest resources. It doesn't work exactly how it does in the board game, but the idea that you have to actively harvest resources instead of just passively having them is definitely there. Is this more inspiration from the board game? I'm really beginning to think they actually put Kevin Wilson in charge of designing civ VI and the whole Ed Beach thing is just a cover story.

It was announced for some time. The feature is quite similar to forest removal from Vi4, just more advanced version.

 

[Haggbart]

I don't think there is one singular inspiration, rather a natural next step. Already in CiV the trend was in that direction with 1UPT and GPs each making unique tile improvements rather than for example the GS academy in cIV which was a regular city building.

If you look back at cIV there is much less going on the map than on the city screen, I don't think you would need to be a board game designer to see the potential for having that enormous city with 30 buildings and 10 wonders represented on the map on more than one tile.

But yeah, there are certain things in the design of cVI, like the governments and social policy cards that are very board gamey.

 

[Acken]

Ed beach is a boardgame fan and designer iirc. No surprise some of his designs have that feel to it. Not that its a bad idea so far. The balancing will probably need a lot of work though.

 

[Decius]

I'm sure board games provided a lot of the inspiration for the decision to put city districts on the Civ 6 game map, but I suspect they aren't the only one.

Several 4X type computer games have done this in recent years. Endless Legend, which did this very well, may have been a specific inspiration.

Combined, I think, they "boosted" Beach's district tech

 

[Staler87]

I don't think there is one singular inspiration, rather a natural next step. Already in CiV the trend was in that direction with 1UPT and GPs each making unique tile improvements rather than for example the GS academy in cIV which was a regular city building.

If you look back at cIV there is much less going on the map than on the city screen, I don't think you would need to be a board game designer to see the potential for having that enormous city with 30 buildings and 10 wonders represented on the map on more than one tile.

But yeah, there are certain things in the design of cVI, like the governments and social policy cards that are very board gamey.

I think you missed the point a bit. I'm talking about inspiration from a specific board game (sid meier's civilization the board game) rather than board games in general.