Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Haven't finished all of this, but have enough to start a discussion, so here goes . . .
Disclaimer: I have not played Crusader Kings III at all, nor Old World very much, nor any RPG Computer or Board Games in years (decades, really). So if a lot of my musings are already covered or touched on in other games, by all means run with that.
What this little essay will try to do is open up a discussion for the possibilities of adding Narrative Events and even a bit of Role Playing to Civ, and specifically to Civ VII because, as I’ve said before, I think Civ VI has a fork in it already and is Done as far as further development by the official game design team is concerned. We might get a Bug Fix this year, but I wouldn’t even bet money on that.
History is, at its best, the story of Other People. In Other Places, and especially in Other Times, all doing People Things. That’s what makes history so fascinating: you can’t help but identify with the Poor Sods having History done to them, even if only to think “There, but for the Grace of Dog, could be me . . .”
In the game, it Should be you, and it seems a crying shame that it isn’t, more explicitly than it is.
Parenthetically, I think one of the great mistakes of Humankind was that while it had an explicit identification of the gamer with an Avatar, there was almost no identification of the Avatar with the Faction or Civ and so no real connection between the Gamer and the Game his Faction was experiencing.
So, here are some ideas for discussion, on how to add more elements of Role Playing and (In Game) History as Narrative Events in Civ VII.
Leaders
1. Better and more extreme Reactions
There were a few mild and self-effacing Leaders for Civilizations. But damned few. Most of them tended towards the histrionic, extreme, and volatile. Some of them, in fact, were notorious for murderous tempers. Where’s all that in Civ? As long as we’re going to throw all the resources into Fully Animated Voice-Acted Leaderboards, let’s get some scenery-chewing Melodrama out of it:
Kleopatra (or Hatshepset, or Gitarja) throwing things at you when she gets mad
Alexander (or Charles XII, or Hannibal) drawing his sword and threatening you with it, maybe decapitating a statue in the background.
Catherine (any of them: French or Russian) with an icy, frozen smile suggesting that perhaps you should reconsider your last statement - at length and somewhere else.
There’s no sense wasting the potential sheer Entertainment Value of an animated Leader
2. Multiple Backgrounds
Given that the Leader backgrounds are static art, why is there only one of each? Here’s a relatively cheap (in Graphic Art Assets) place to add some ‘commentary’ and narrative to the animated Leader - change their background to match Events.
The ‘Defeat’ screen showing a humbled Leader standing in front of flaming ruins or in a burnt-out audience room.
The ‘Victory’ screen showing the Leader’s troops in the background hauling away cartloads of loot and screaming captives - appropriate to Alexander, Trajan, Genghis, and too many others to mention.
If they feel threatened, the background should show armed troops gathering, sharpening weapons, etc.
Every Era, at least, the background should change - I agree that changing Leader costume has a potential for ghastly caricatures, but a developing Civ could be reflected in the background static art and, among other things, might give a clue as to what and how their Civ is doing - see gantries for a Launch Platform rising in the background, and that’s a clue that they are aiming at a Science Victory - a new Palace by the river behind the Leader, and they are waxing Cultural, etc.
3. Leaders on the Map
In a great many Cultural/Government Types, the Leader is/was also a Military Commander - Monarchy, many Aristocracies, the Roman Empire, all Pastoral groups, etc.
So why can’t we replace the Leaderboard with a Great General on the map and use him, possibly with Special Bonuses, as a military Great Person? Of course, while they are excursioning with the Army (or Fleet) none of their usual Leader Uniques would apply to the Civ as a whole*, and if they get themselves killed, you’d lose all the Leader Uniques for another X turns and there could be a (faint) chance they would be Captured, in which case you’d have to ransom the little varmint back.
Some Leaders also had other specific abilities/talents represented elsewhere in the game by Great People: they were musicians (NOT Nero!), writers, calligraphic artists, philosophers, etc. Again, if used to produce a Great Work or bonuses from a non-Leader type of Great Person, you’d lose their usual Leader Uniques for X turns.
Leader as Real Game Piece would provide numerous chances for Narrative Events in the Game instead of just being an animated Face for Diplomacy.
* This would, of course, be a great excuse for adding Great Administrators as a new Great Person type, who could take over and add some Unique to the Civ while Leader was off playing soldier/sailor see Gustaphus and Oxenstierna for IRL example.
Events, Random and Otherwise
In any system as big and complex as History and a Civilization involving 10s, 100s, or 1000s of thousands of people, there are Unexpected Events. Some are near-random, some simply the result of a lot of people all pursuing their own agendas. Some turned out to be important in either the long or short term.
Europa has “Events and Decisions” which was modded into Civ V, and basically provided Events about which you had to make a decision, which in turn led to some kind of outcome or bonus or - usually slight but sometimes significant - change in Social. Civic, or Political situation.
Example: A Mercenary company arrives in the civ for hire - or if not hired, turn Bandits.
Example: The Minister of Silly Walks accidentally insults the Ambassador from Gondwanaland at a banquet: you have three ways to handle this, each of which leads in a different direction.
Example: Gold is discovered in Slobbovia, which is on your border but in the territory of a City State:
(A Gold Resource appears on the map, you have Expansionist/military, or Diplomatic, or even Trade options to pursue)
The sky is almost the limit, here, and the type of Event could vary depending on the type of Culture/Government/Economy/Religion you have, the Civics/Social Policies you have adopted, or the Uniques, terrain, weather, Resources you are exploiting. Likewise, the decisions available to you could vary wildly depending on the same things.
Side ‘Quests’ and/or Narrative Events.
The game Anno 1800, and others, have Quests or what I call Narrative Events which require certain in-game actions on your part, and in return lead to events, outcomes, bonuses, that affect for good or ill your play and in-game situation. These fit neatly into the idea of increasing the in-game Narrative style of play - “writing your own history”. Civ already has a very limited form of these in the actions that can be taken to affect City State relations or fulfill Leader Agendas, but they can be expanded to cover a wide range of actions and, potentially, affect relationships and actions with everyone and everything in the game, both External and Internal. These will also dovetail neatly with the idea that many things now tightly under the Gamer’s control should in fact be generated outside of the gamer’s control and require a reaction or action in response.
Example: A Barbarian Clan asks permission to settle in or cross your territory to get away from a nasty enemy.
If you deny the request, they may invade, turn around and get massacred by the nasty enemy - who then invades you or thanks you for not aiding their enemy, or the barbarian clan beats the snot out of the nasty enemy and starts raiding across your borders because you didn’t help them
If you allow them in, they may add new Settlements/Population to your Civ, new Units to your Army, simply cross your territory and disappear (permanently or Temporarily, with More To Come later) or some idiot tax collector of yours messes with them and they attack you from within.
Whatever you decide starts a narrative story with multiple possibilities, and your continued actions and reactions will fill in that story in a way that will be unique to your Civ in that particular game.
Family
Obviously, with the Civ Immortal Leader, there will be no Succession Wars or change of Leadership at the top, but that only slightly limits the potential of Family Members to mess with things.
A Royal Family (Monarchial government) provides potential marriagable sons and daughters to cement diplomatic relationships, but also can get you involved in Conflicts, Military and/or Diplomatic, with other actors in the game - including City States and Barbarians, as well as other Civs.
Great Families (Every Great Person, Governor, Aristocratic Government, lots of potential sources) may provide Great People, bonuses to accomplishing certain things, new mechanics in your Civ (Merchant Princes, Banking Families, invention of Champagne, etc) - again, Narrative Events or Bonuses or things the gamer has to react to one way of the other.
More to come: Governments, Society, News, Legends & Propaganda, Personalization of Your Individual Game, History within the 4X Game, probably tomorrow . . .
Disclaimer: I have not played Crusader Kings III at all, nor Old World very much, nor any RPG Computer or Board Games in years (decades, really). So if a lot of my musings are already covered or touched on in other games, by all means run with that.
What this little essay will try to do is open up a discussion for the possibilities of adding Narrative Events and even a bit of Role Playing to Civ, and specifically to Civ VII because, as I’ve said before, I think Civ VI has a fork in it already and is Done as far as further development by the official game design team is concerned. We might get a Bug Fix this year, but I wouldn’t even bet money on that.
History is, at its best, the story of Other People. In Other Places, and especially in Other Times, all doing People Things. That’s what makes history so fascinating: you can’t help but identify with the Poor Sods having History done to them, even if only to think “There, but for the Grace of Dog, could be me . . .”
In the game, it Should be you, and it seems a crying shame that it isn’t, more explicitly than it is.
Parenthetically, I think one of the great mistakes of Humankind was that while it had an explicit identification of the gamer with an Avatar, there was almost no identification of the Avatar with the Faction or Civ and so no real connection between the Gamer and the Game his Faction was experiencing.
So, here are some ideas for discussion, on how to add more elements of Role Playing and (In Game) History as Narrative Events in Civ VII.
Leaders
1. Better and more extreme Reactions
There were a few mild and self-effacing Leaders for Civilizations. But damned few. Most of them tended towards the histrionic, extreme, and volatile. Some of them, in fact, were notorious for murderous tempers. Where’s all that in Civ? As long as we’re going to throw all the resources into Fully Animated Voice-Acted Leaderboards, let’s get some scenery-chewing Melodrama out of it:
Kleopatra (or Hatshepset, or Gitarja) throwing things at you when she gets mad
Alexander (or Charles XII, or Hannibal) drawing his sword and threatening you with it, maybe decapitating a statue in the background.
Catherine (any of them: French or Russian) with an icy, frozen smile suggesting that perhaps you should reconsider your last statement - at length and somewhere else.
There’s no sense wasting the potential sheer Entertainment Value of an animated Leader
2. Multiple Backgrounds
Given that the Leader backgrounds are static art, why is there only one of each? Here’s a relatively cheap (in Graphic Art Assets) place to add some ‘commentary’ and narrative to the animated Leader - change their background to match Events.
The ‘Defeat’ screen showing a humbled Leader standing in front of flaming ruins or in a burnt-out audience room.
The ‘Victory’ screen showing the Leader’s troops in the background hauling away cartloads of loot and screaming captives - appropriate to Alexander, Trajan, Genghis, and too many others to mention.
If they feel threatened, the background should show armed troops gathering, sharpening weapons, etc.
Every Era, at least, the background should change - I agree that changing Leader costume has a potential for ghastly caricatures, but a developing Civ could be reflected in the background static art and, among other things, might give a clue as to what and how their Civ is doing - see gantries for a Launch Platform rising in the background, and that’s a clue that they are aiming at a Science Victory - a new Palace by the river behind the Leader, and they are waxing Cultural, etc.
3. Leaders on the Map
In a great many Cultural/Government Types, the Leader is/was also a Military Commander - Monarchy, many Aristocracies, the Roman Empire, all Pastoral groups, etc.
So why can’t we replace the Leaderboard with a Great General on the map and use him, possibly with Special Bonuses, as a military Great Person? Of course, while they are excursioning with the Army (or Fleet) none of their usual Leader Uniques would apply to the Civ as a whole*, and if they get themselves killed, you’d lose all the Leader Uniques for another X turns and there could be a (faint) chance they would be Captured, in which case you’d have to ransom the little varmint back.
Some Leaders also had other specific abilities/talents represented elsewhere in the game by Great People: they were musicians (NOT Nero!), writers, calligraphic artists, philosophers, etc. Again, if used to produce a Great Work or bonuses from a non-Leader type of Great Person, you’d lose their usual Leader Uniques for X turns.
Leader as Real Game Piece would provide numerous chances for Narrative Events in the Game instead of just being an animated Face for Diplomacy.
* This would, of course, be a great excuse for adding Great Administrators as a new Great Person type, who could take over and add some Unique to the Civ while Leader was off playing soldier/sailor see Gustaphus and Oxenstierna for IRL example.
Events, Random and Otherwise
In any system as big and complex as History and a Civilization involving 10s, 100s, or 1000s of thousands of people, there are Unexpected Events. Some are near-random, some simply the result of a lot of people all pursuing their own agendas. Some turned out to be important in either the long or short term.
Europa has “Events and Decisions” which was modded into Civ V, and basically provided Events about which you had to make a decision, which in turn led to some kind of outcome or bonus or - usually slight but sometimes significant - change in Social. Civic, or Political situation.
Example: A Mercenary company arrives in the civ for hire - or if not hired, turn Bandits.
Example: The Minister of Silly Walks accidentally insults the Ambassador from Gondwanaland at a banquet: you have three ways to handle this, each of which leads in a different direction.
Example: Gold is discovered in Slobbovia, which is on your border but in the territory of a City State:
(A Gold Resource appears on the map, you have Expansionist/military, or Diplomatic, or even Trade options to pursue)
The sky is almost the limit, here, and the type of Event could vary depending on the type of Culture/Government/Economy/Religion you have, the Civics/Social Policies you have adopted, or the Uniques, terrain, weather, Resources you are exploiting. Likewise, the decisions available to you could vary wildly depending on the same things.
Side ‘Quests’ and/or Narrative Events.
The game Anno 1800, and others, have Quests or what I call Narrative Events which require certain in-game actions on your part, and in return lead to events, outcomes, bonuses, that affect for good or ill your play and in-game situation. These fit neatly into the idea of increasing the in-game Narrative style of play - “writing your own history”. Civ already has a very limited form of these in the actions that can be taken to affect City State relations or fulfill Leader Agendas, but they can be expanded to cover a wide range of actions and, potentially, affect relationships and actions with everyone and everything in the game, both External and Internal. These will also dovetail neatly with the idea that many things now tightly under the Gamer’s control should in fact be generated outside of the gamer’s control and require a reaction or action in response.
Example: A Barbarian Clan asks permission to settle in or cross your territory to get away from a nasty enemy.
If you deny the request, they may invade, turn around and get massacred by the nasty enemy - who then invades you or thanks you for not aiding their enemy, or the barbarian clan beats the snot out of the nasty enemy and starts raiding across your borders because you didn’t help them
If you allow them in, they may add new Settlements/Population to your Civ, new Units to your Army, simply cross your territory and disappear (permanently or Temporarily, with More To Come later) or some idiot tax collector of yours messes with them and they attack you from within.
Whatever you decide starts a narrative story with multiple possibilities, and your continued actions and reactions will fill in that story in a way that will be unique to your Civ in that particular game.
Family
Obviously, with the Civ Immortal Leader, there will be no Succession Wars or change of Leadership at the top, but that only slightly limits the potential of Family Members to mess with things.
A Royal Family (Monarchial government) provides potential marriagable sons and daughters to cement diplomatic relationships, but also can get you involved in Conflicts, Military and/or Diplomatic, with other actors in the game - including City States and Barbarians, as well as other Civs.
Great Families (Every Great Person, Governor, Aristocratic Government, lots of potential sources) may provide Great People, bonuses to accomplishing certain things, new mechanics in your Civ (Merchant Princes, Banking Families, invention of Champagne, etc) - again, Narrative Events or Bonuses or things the gamer has to react to one way of the other.
More to come: Governments, Society, News, Legends & Propaganda, Personalization of Your Individual Game, History within the 4X Game, probably tomorrow . . .
I have several objections to changing costumes: 1) the resources that go into changing costumes could go into new leaders and civs; 2) costumes that change are inevitably going to be less detailed than costumes that don't as a corollary to the first point; 3) I don't have confidence that Firaxis is more mature than it was twenty years ago, and I don't want to see a repeat of Neo-Nazi Joan of Arc or Abe Lincoln in a loincloth; 4) what do you do with modern clothing? Civ3 chose to put everyone in suits as though Westernization were inevitable, but if I'm the culture leader as China why am I suddenly exchanging hanfu for suits? Why isn't everyone else wearing hanfu? I'd much rather have detailed historically accurate costumes for the leaders as they appeared at the time they ruled.
