[GS] Rock Band Discussion

[AmazonQueen]

Something to bear in mind.

FXS seem to much prefer “specific” over “generic”. So, you get particular great people, not just a general great person, and they give you specific works of writing or art or whatever. You get individual religious units - Apostles, Gurus, whatever - not generic religious pressure. And you get specific governors - Magnus, Whatever - rather than more abstract Governors - eg A Steward.

FXS’s approach has pluses and minuses. As much as some of the specifics annoy me, particularly Governors, I suspect it actually does make the game more dynamic.

Rock bands are very specific, but that fits with FXS’s model I guess. They are dangerously close to my most hated Mechanic - Corporations. But. I’m willing to get on board with this unit. They’re very well executed from what we’ve seen, will maybe round out a bit more the “late game faith” units (really, just the naturalistic), and hopefully won’t be overwhelming.

Really, my only concern is that they don’t become some massive meta of their own, but that seems unlikely. I suspect they’ll be more like Warrior Monks. Kinda cool. Something to play around with if you really want to. But otherwise, you can basically ignore.

What I really want is the core of the game to work better. That doesn’t mean we can’t have things like Rockbands. Fun is fun. But the core game is what matters. So far, it seems like GS will at least significantly improve the core game mechanics (don’t know about AI), although I suspect a few things will still be not quite right although modable (eg unit balance, particularly Heavy Cav, Anti-Cav and Seige, and mid and late game hammers). So, yeah, assuming everything else is okay, Rockbands are cool.

Although. Maybe a bit Baby Boomer... I’m surprised there aren’t a few different models - eg rapper, dj, diva, jazz band...

I'd've liked a few different models. They are very white, male and metal. It will seem very odd to have a rock band with say the reggae promotion looking like that. Still thats just fluff, nice to have but in the end its the mechanics that will matter. Are they useful or not.

 

[MonkeyPaw]

Next up: Rap battles!

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I like the idea of rock bands, I think you should be allowed to play your own cities though.

Make it so tourism works vs all civs, but have a 90% negative modifier, so 15 vs 150 tourism. But make the odds of dispanding much lower, say 50% survivability bonus.

The intention would be to grow your band locally, and once they are big enough (high level) go on a world tour.

We might as well add record companies while we’re at it. I thought we were supposed to be building nations here not music industries!

 

[NukeAJS]

I thought rock bands were a little too culturally specific at first but then I thought about the art team and then about music and geo-politics.

From an art POV, it's just easier to give everybody the same models and animations and change skin tone. I don't have a problem with this except that when the information era comes around, it oughta be hip-hop groups. They'd have to do just two sets of models/animations (one for rock bands and another for hip-hop groups) and it would be actually relevant to the real world. Name one huge rock act that only started playing ten years ago? 15 years ago? All the big, international acts are basically pre-2000. I say this as a huge rock fan -- it's gone to the wayside. That's not to say there's no talent or value in rock music. It's just younger people finally don't want to listen to music their parents listen to. That totally makes sense seeing as that was basically the whole genesis of rock music itself.

From a geo-political perspective, rock bands make a lot more sense than other styles of music regarding their tourism mechanic. Rock groups themselves were coveted (not the genre, artform, or style) by people that didn't really have a rock music scene (at least a popular one at that). A couple of weeks ago, I had a Polish colleague of mine tell me that the first way he experienced Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (the movie) was by having it described to him, on the radio, by a DJ, with the actual music being played in the background. If that seems like that shittiest way to experience a musical -- well, that's how badly people wanted to experience that album back in the 80s during martial-law communism.

One last word -- I like how rock bands are purchased with faith -- both mechanically from a gameplay perspective and what rock music (or just music in general) actually is. I've read four or five different books on the current state of politics generally and perception of reality more specifically and even though they all had various different aims, ideologies, and opinions, they all agreed that the hippy movement of the 60s and the rock music that came with it was a revolt against rationalism/empiricism -- or at least a turn from it. Basically just watch "Almost Famous" to get the whole drift of the anti-analysis, "If it feels good, do it" tenet that absolutely defines rock music.

It's also nice to have something to spend faith on once all my national parks are up and I don't want to drop 8k faith on a great writer/artist/musician. A couple of rock bands will be more cost-effective and a more active way to win a culture victory.

 

[acluewithout]

I thought rock bands were a little too culturally specific at first but then I thought about the art team and then about music and geo-politics.

From an art POV, it's just easier to give everybody the same models and animations and change skin tone. I don't have a problem with this except that when the information era comes around, it oughta be hip-hop groups. They'd have to do just two sets of models/animations (one for rock bands and another for hip-hop groups) and it would be actually relevant to the real world. Name one huge rock act that only started playing ten years ago? 15 years ago? All the big, international acts are basically pre-2000. I say this as a huge rock fan -- it's gone to the wayside. That's not to say there's no talent or value in rock music. It's just younger people finally don't want to listen to music their parents listen to. That totally makes sense seeing as that was basically the whole genesis of rock music itself.

From a geo-political perspective, rock bands make a lot more sense than other styles of music regarding their tourism mechanic. Rock groups themselves were coveted (not the genre, artform, or style) by people that didn't really have a rock music scene (at least a popular one at that). A couple of weeks ago, I had a Polish colleague of mine tell me that the first way he experienced Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (the movie) was by having it described to him, on the radio, by a DJ, with the actual music being played in the background. If that seems like that ****tiest way to experience a musical -- well, that's how badly people wanted to experience that album back in the 80s during martial-law communism.

One last word -- I like how rock bands are purchased with faith -- both mechanically from a gameplay perspective and what rock music (or just music in general) actually is. I've read four or five different books on the current state of politics generally and perception of reality more specifically and even though they all had various different aims, ideologies, and opinions, they all agreed that the hippy movement of the 60s and the rock music that came with it was a revolt against rationalism/empiricism -- or at least a turn from it. Basically just watch "Almost Famous" to get the whole drift of the anti-analysis, "If it feels good, do it" tenet that absolutely defines rock music.

It's also nice to have something to spend faith on once all my national parks are up and I don't want to drop 8k faith on a great writer/artist/musician. A couple of rock bands will be more cost-effective and a more active way to win a culture victory.

I know a lot of people think of unit models etc as fluff, but I think this stuff actually has a big impact of the feel of the game. It’s really bugged me for ages that for Religion everyone gets basically Roman Catholic Apostles and Missionaries etc... Likewise, it bugs me England doesn’t get a Longbowmen instead of Crossbows - they don’t need different stats, just different models. And I really dislike how unique improvements disappear. UI are such a big part of making the map look different - having the, disappear is the pits.

...anyway. It looks like in GS that FXS are getting to this, and increasingly giving standard units a unique look based on their Civ. I know this isn’t at the level of “fixing the AI” etc., but I really think this is still a key improvement to the overall game. I’m really happy FXS are doing this.

The current Rockband is very baby boomer and very white. I like the silliness of it in a way (particularly the this is spinal tap reference) and at the same time agree that actually popular music has had a impact on politics etc. and that the Rockband does capture this. But it’s still very baby boomer and very white.

There need to be some different skins - rap, dance / club, diva, country, whatever. You can still call everything a Rockband, just give things different looks, much like I wish English crossbows just looked like Longbowmen. Thing is, if FXS do support this game through another expansion or more dlc (god I hope so), then I think there’s a good chance they will add some more skins. They seem to be pretty attended to the visual designnof the game - adding all those river names must have been a bit of work.

Leaving all that aside - conceptually and mechanically the RB does seem like a solid unit. I particularly like the way it lets you punish other culture and science players by letting you play at their world wonders, theatre districts and campuses. It makes a nice little trade off for players that have those. Clever.

 

[Furycrab]

It would be easier not to get caught up on the name if you got some "Faith" from buildings such as Broadcast Centres, for example, instead of from Shrines, Temples, and Mosques.

Some of it is just balance though. A science or culture building doesn't really need bonus yields because it already advances you in other ways, especially if you can stack the yields with a policy card. The rest is just the devs trying to make sure Faith remains a relevant resource even if you never intended to go for a Religious victory.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

R&R was a watershed moment in Western Civ. In civ terms I'm not sure if i was a result of civics advancement or an "inspiration"

 

[steveg700]

The problem with great works is that they are a holdover from Civ 5 and they have not been modified since. The entire cultural victory path could use an overhaul, the religious one too.

Well, the journey into goofiness began with interpreting cultural through tourism rather than cultivation of art, a rich heritage, or a sophisticated ideology. So, we started to move towards things like seaside resorts, which is not really reflective of culture (resorts tend to be more about escape into luxury, not immersion into a culture). Rock bands are now the ultimate expression of said goofiness. I suspect the novelty of a butt-rock guitar riff will become cloying over time to even the most ardent fans of whimsical, bong-hit ideas. Not saying I wouldn't play with'em, but I'd sure love a checkbox to switch'em off.

 

[steveg700]

It would be easier not to get caught up on the name if you got some "Faith" from buildings such as Broadcast Centres, for example, instead of from Shrines, Temples, and Mosques.

Fair point, that.

 

[steveg700]

There are two reason that I really hate the rock bands, and those reasons are great musicians and faith.

If I'm generating rock bands through faith, then what do my great musicians represent? Who are these great musicians, and why am I making them if we get another gameplay mechanic that replaces whatever abstraction great musicians were meant to represent? If we are going to use music as a victory condition then shouldn't I be encouraged to cultivate a civilization that excels in music? I've got buildings, wonders, and government policies that generate great musicians and hold their works; but they don't matter. Whether I have zero music buildings or ten music buildings, I can create rock bands all the same.

Since great musicians and rock bands are different entities in the game then what different real world analogs are great musicians and rock bands meant to represent?

The other issue is faith purchasing. The civ team seems to use faith as their currency to purchase aspects of the game unrelated to faith just to make the faith currency more useful. I'm going to use national parks as the example. I could see a very faith oriented civ using their faith to purchase a national park because I can assume the faith currency represents the desire of the people to create a national park for religious or moral reasons. The issue is that faith is the only way to purchase a national park. What is the rationale for that? Does the game assume that atheistic societies would have no desire for national parks?

The reason national parks and rock bands are purchased with faith is because the faith currency would be otherwise useless to a civilization that has not developed a religion. The players aren't building holy sites unless they are playing religious civs, and instead of changing the religious game to encourage non-religious players to build them, they instead tied arbitrary game elements to faith, and made faith the sole way to experience those elements.

Well-said. Now, this may simply beg the question of why faith-generation doesn't get a post-industrial source to create a thematic link to post-industrial means of expending faith, such as parks and rock bands. The game basically sticks to Civ V's treatment of that currency, even though very explicitly religion was intended to be a mid-game ploy that became less important in later eras, rather than the victory condition it is in Civ VI. Linking screeching guitars to organized religion is a thematic disconnect, to be sure.

 

[bbbt]

It looks entertaining, if a bit silly, to me - but we'll see how it plays.

I'd say it's actually less silly than the Civ 4 version with Rock and Roll as a wonder that generated tradable 'hit record' luxuries.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Oh wait, we're talking about rock band in civ, not vice versa...

I definitely like that we will have something resembling Civ V great musicians, to be used as tourism bombs. I enjoy cultural victory the most (or tied with scientific, perhaps) but I often find they take a bit too long.

It's not exactly related to rock band, but I hope they make the cultural victory progress screen a bit more interpretable. I think it was easier to understand where to aim your efforts in Civ V.

 

[Disgustipated]

I feel it's impossible with the current game, but things like rock bands or buying great people should be done from a culture pool, not a faith pool. Currently that doesn't exist, we have per turn culture generation, but it doesn't pool. Or just combine faith and culture which I think is a better solution. Because faith essentially is culture in that it adds to a societiy's cultural identity.

 

[Hammurabbit]

Too me it feels like the tourist/culture victory is just not thought through.

- Domination victory: Build armies and war other civs. Civ's combat system is well developed and makes sense.
- Science victory: Build science buildings, be smart with eureka moments, build wonders, recruit great scientists.
- Religious victory. Stack up faith to buy religious units. Fight other religious units and convert cities.
This all makes sense to me and feels applicable to most civs.

-Tourist/cultural victory: build culture buildings, build wonders, recruit great persons, excavate artifacts, build seaside resorts, build national parks (for faith), recruit rock bands (for faith)
It's really a mix of everything, where in my opinion, seaside resorts and rock bands feels very specific.
Why not focus in on one mechanic, e.g. great works, and try to make that as interesting as possible from a gameplay perspective?
We already have interesting elements, such as excavating artefacts, that could lead to aggression, need for specific great works to theme museums.
It's still too simple, but I believe this can be built out to something as interesting as military campaigns.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Some of it is just balance though. A science or culture building doesn't really need bonus yields because it already advances you in other ways, especially if you can stack the yields with a policy card. The rest is just the devs trying to make sure Faith remains a relevant resource even if you never intended to go for a Religious victory.

True.

I just have a strong preference for multi-purpose buildings over single use ones. I think there'd be more interesting choices to make if Libraries and Temples provide some Culture, Broadcast Centres provide some "Faith", etc. Then instead of "I need culture, better build a Theatre Square", the decision becomes "I need culture, do I want to get it with science, faith, or amenities as a side kicker?"

 

[Xmonger]

OK we should probably disambiguate the mechanic versus the mechanism. The mechanic is a late game kind of culture event generating tourism via a unit's ability and RNG. On this basis I think it's a great idea - with globalism and a shrinking world you can have individual artists, be they musicians, writers, dancers or artists, who grow the cultural stature and visibility of a country. Example: think ABBA from Sweden. They've got a museum dedicated to them over there. Or Björk from Iceland. Two cultures not known for art, writing or music have an icon who made it big internationally. A more recent example is Psy with Gangnam Style k-pop. He created the idea internationally that k-pop can be something more than regional.

Now the mechanism here is pop music - and interestingly the first examples that came to mind were musical. What about writers or artists? Those can get famous, but not like music. Music has a way of getting to our emotions and 'soul' or spirit in a way writing or art doesn't. So you know I was going to finish this post by saying maybe they should have expanded the concept to writers or artists too, but in fact that's not very representative - maybe it's only musicians who can really make an international impact. Interesting ... so on thinking it through I have to admit that despite how odd and specific it seems (rock bands) it's actually a representative cultural feature that should work well in the game. I take it all back, I'm a convert (and I'm a lifelong classical musician who never liked pop music - oh well).

EDIT: Wait a minute - I just realized the flaw maybe. Does this mechanic work earlier in the game with classical musicians? I just recalled how the international cultural impact of music has been there ever since the Romans. During the classical period Mozart was an internal touring culture bomb, among many others. Because of this various regions became known as musical meccas because they spawned so many world famous (or Europe famous) musicians - such as Vienna.

So maybe if the mechanic was pulled up earlier in the game we would have the missing piece, and also if it applied to classical musicians too late game (think Yo-Yo Ma and Itzak Perlman or any of the great modern pianists - classical musicians are still culture bombs).

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I thought rock bands were a little too culturally specific at first but then I thought about the art team and then about music and geo-politics.

From an art POV, it's just easier to give everybody the same models and animations and change skin tone. I don't have a problem with this except that when the information era comes around, it oughta be hip-hop groups. They'd have to do just two sets of models/animations (one for rock bands and another for hip-hop groups) and it would be actually relevant to the real world. Name one huge rock act that only started playing ten years ago? 15 years ago? All the big, international acts are basically pre-2000. I say this as a huge rock fan -- it's gone to the wayside. That's not to say there's no talent or value in rock music. It's just younger people finally don't want to listen to music their parents listen to. That totally makes sense seeing as that was basically the whole genesis of rock music itself.

From a geo-political perspective, rock bands make a lot more sense than other styles of music regarding their tourism mechanic. Rock groups themselves were coveted (not the genre, artform, or style) by people that didn't really have a rock music scene (at least a popular one at that). A couple of weeks ago, I had a Polish colleague of mine tell me that the first way he experienced Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (the movie) was by having it described to him, on the radio, by a DJ, with the actual music being played in the background. If that seems like that ****tiest way to experience a musical -- well, that's how badly people wanted to experience that album back in the 80s during martial-law communism.

One last word -- I like how rock bands are purchased with faith -- both mechanically from a gameplay perspective and what rock music (or just music in general) actually is. I've read four or five different books on the current state of politics generally and perception of reality more specifically and even though they all had various different aims, ideologies, and opinions, they all agreed that the hippy movement of the 60s and the rock music that came with it was a revolt against rationalism/empiricism -- or at least a turn from it. Basically just watch "Almost Famous" to get the whole drift of the anti-analysis, "If it feels good, do it" tenet that absolutely defines rock music.

It's also nice to have something to spend faith on once all my national parks are up and I don't want to drop 8k faith on a great writer/artist/musician. A couple of rock bands will be more cost-effective and a more active way to win a culture victory.

They really should call them Pop Artists and not Rock Bands. Rock is too specific. Pop is all encompassing. Back in the 50's and 60's rock music was the pop music for the time. Rock n' Roll took a backseat to Pop music in the 1980's. Michael Jackson and Madonna practically took over the world. Most of the Rock bands of the 80's could easily be called Pop. They were very polished with a few exceptions. This became apparent when Rock was renamed Alternative in the 90's. Pop music has owned the world ever since.

This article explains it perfectly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music

 

[Disgustipated]

maybe they should have expanded the concept to writers or artists too, but in fact that's not very representative - maybe it's only musicians who can really make an international impact.

I would argue that people like J.K. Rowling and Tolkien had a pretty big impact for England. They were certainly very popular in the States, and raised awareness of the English literary scene.

Michael Jackson and Madonna practically took over the world.

Beat It and Material Girl are rock songs. Beat it actually has a guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen. Back then pop music still had rock drum beats for the most part. Now days, not so much.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'd say the great writers and artists model still holds even in the case of famous names like Tolkien. His works are still remembered over 80 years after the first of them was published. Pop music, even the best, is ephemeral. I doubt many people will remember "Please Please Me" in 2040.

 

[Icicle]

While I agree with a lot of the issues people have raised, ultimately I'll take anything that makes the culture game more fun and active.

I'd actually be fine if they just scrapped Great Musicians as they are. They don't really serve any purpose except to provide a slightly harder to place resource. Artists have their theming mini game which can be fun, writers are just the spam anywhere, Musicians don't really accomplish anything that needs accomplishing.

As for the faith buy, yeah, that's problematic. Faith obviously is used by firaxis to be more than just spiritual belief, but if its a society's identity and spirit then uh, what is culture exactly? Still, needing some faith for a culture win requires the civ to be a bit less single minded and I don't think that's a terrible thing.

End of the day, they'll make the game more fun.