Scenarios

[Siptah]

I enjoyed playing the scenarios that came with DLC/expansions quite a lot. While not playing them again and again too often, I liked the changes, the limited time frame and different social policies some of them offered. IIRC vanilla Civ 5 did not include any of them, they came with DLC and the expansions. I don't remember hearing anything about scenarios in Civ VI - did I miss something or was nothing said? I have no clue how popular those are and maybe most people didn't even like/play them and they are unlikely to return.

I hope to have a nice Sumerian City State Scenario included and a Scythia/Greek/Persia/India antiquity Scenario of some sort.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[SJSerio]

I understand that the multiplayer will have scenarios for shorter gameplay. I think you will still be able to play a regular game in multiplayer and scenarios in single player, though. However, I suppose this is something that we will have to wait and see.

 

[Haig]

Ed Beach designed Into the Renaissance scenario for Civ 5, and has boardgames in that same similar era, so I bet we get a DLC with that age's power player like Sweden along with a similar European renaissance scenario.

 

[Ryika]

Looking at the Steam Achievements, the Scenarios weren't exactly a huge success. They also take quite a lot of extra time to create, given how much must be crafted by hand.

 

[Krajzen]

Scenarios in civ5 were very mixed bag. Some of them were challenging and cool (fall of rome, scramble for africa, maybe into the renai although it was a bit weird) but most either short, plain or unnecessary (ancient wonders, polynesia, korea, britain, steampunk, civil war) and I'd prefer devs to put their effort in other things.

WW2 scenario could work because we're going to have all of its major nations (it should be on the map of europe though, for good scale).
Rise of Islam scenario could work too provided we got Persia among playables.

I think the best (most popular) scenario firaxis could put in the game would be their version of TSL Earth with all civs.

 

[jsciv69]

I think a Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis scenario featuring Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro would very exciting to play.

 

[Amrunril]

A lot of the Civ V scenarios were interesting in concept but tended to devolve into almost pure wargames towards the end (if that wasn't the idea behind them to begin with). I hope they avoid that this time around, as civ's combat system works well for abstacted combat as one aspect of empire development but isn't ideal for creating a focused wargame set in any one specific time period. It's also balanced around the assumption that you'll sometimes be building things other than units and therefore produces highly congested maps when you reach a point where none of your other options are worthwhile.

I think one way of counteracting this tendency would be to give scenarios distinct win conditions instead of turn counts (imagine what the base game would be like if it never ended until someone won a time victory). Another would be to allow for more variation in scenario length. An exciting 50 to 100 turn scenario would be much better than one that stretches 100 turns of progress over 150 turns of gameplay.

 

[Janskey]

Looking at the Steam Achievements, the Scenarios weren't exactly a huge success. They also take quite a lot of extra time to create, given how much must be crafted by hand.

Had to look that up, and damn, only 1% of players ever beat the Mongol, Korea or Fall of Rome scenarios. What a waste. I think I played most of the scenarios once, but would have played more, if hotseat was available.

 

[Siptah]

Had to look that up, and damn, only 1% of players ever beat the Mongol, Korea or Fall of Rome scenarios. What a waste. I think I played most of the scenarios once, but would have played more, if hotseat was available.

Wow, I'm really surprised. I would have thought almost everybody played it once... because why wouldn't you even try game content? Couldn't look it up myself since I have no steam account, thanks for the info.

 

[Ryika]

Well, "playing it once" doesn't automatically translate into a victory. ^^

I for example tried most of them but I think the only Victory Achievements I ever got were all from the Civil War Scenario which I really liked and played a ton of. (And maybe the Smoky Skies one, no idea if I ever won that)

The other ones were either too focused on Military, too similar to the base game, or just too boring for me to ever finish them.

 

[Krajzen]

Wow, I'm really surprised. I would have thought almost everybody played it once... because why wouldn't you even try game content? Couldn't look it up myself since I have no steam account, thanks for the info.

Steam achievements aren't counted if you run offline or modded game. But even with those I think scenarios weren't very popular.
>why woldn't you even try game content
because regular game may be great and superior fun

Also, the problem with civ5 scenarios was that they weren't updated for the expansion changes, and for example vanilla scenarios (mongols, korea, polynesia, wonders, denmark) look terrible in comparision with BNW (even in pure combat, as they have this awful 10HP combat system instead of 100HP introduced by GAK). Conquest of america was also terribly outdated until 'deluxe' version introduced by some BNW patch.

 

[Siptah]

Also, the problem with civ5 scenarios was that they weren't updated for the expansion changes, and for example vanilla scenarios (mongols, korea, polynesia, wonders, denmark) look terrible in comparision with BNW (even in pure combat, as they have this awful 10HP combat system instead of 100HP introduced by GAK). Conquest of america was also terribly outdated until 'deluxe' version introduced by some BNW patch.

Oh right, I completely forgot about that! That was indeed awful.

 

[ftl]

I never ended up playing the scenarios because there was just so much to play with regular civ. Don't think I ever tried them. I've played a bit over 300 hours of civ which isn't much compared to some of the experts on this forum, but it's more than I've played of any other game in my steam collection.

 

[dagriggstar]

I remember absolutely loving scenarios back in civ II. You look back and most of the modding stuff is scenario related, not game redesign related. As the series has gone on, they've continually added more and more systems, so creating a good scenario requires either core game elements to be missing or an insane amount of work (Because balancing).....

The scenarios the devs created, to me when I play them they always feel a bit off, like I'm not a fan of the randomly generated map thing they have going on in a couple of them for instance. But even then, not updating them means they are kind of outdated, I have no interest going back to 10HP.

I would say it's unlikely we see a good scenario created for the game on release. In fact it will be quite some time (6 months at least) before one is created by either the devs or community, imo.

 

[Siptah]

But in Civ 5 most DLC Civs included a scenario, even the ones available from the beginning like Mongolia and Babylon. With 4 early DLC Civs there is a chance of having some shipping with them.