Settler's edition announced

[pjotroos]

Antiquity, surely?

That's the same as it always has been though in Civ. I do applaud Firaxis for trying to curb snowballing, but even at release they didn't commit to it enough to make a difference. And they seem to be watering it down further. Other Civ games survived snowballing though so it is probably only a problem thanks to civ switching gating 2/3 of civs into irrelevant eras.

Depends on how you define "won", I guess.

There comes a point in antiquity where the AI can no longer wipe you out, and - once you hit that - you know you are on track to get a win eventually. But I still make strategic choices through the first half of exploration. I'm still expanding. I am at the risk of not completing some of the objectives. There are specific wonders that I need to target if I don't want AI to grab them. In brief - it still feels like a strategy game, with interesting choices in the moment. But by the last third of it I'm done with those, and everything is on auto-pilot.

Modern can be won purely by overbuilding on the same spots, and pressing shift+enter. All modern wonders are easily gettable, and low impact. There's a small number of manual actions you need to take (or large number if you go for war), but they all follow strict script. You are not making strategic choices anymore.

 

[Leucarum]

Depends on how you define "won", I guess.

There comes a point in antiquity where the AI can no longer wipe you out, and - once you hit that - you know you are on track to get a win eventually. But I still make strategic choices through the first half of exploration. I'm still expanding. I am at the risk of not completing some of the objectives. There are specific wonders that I need to target if I don't want AI to grab them. In brief - it still feels like a strategy game, with interesting choices in the moment. But by the last third of it I'm done with those, and everything is on auto-pilot.

Modern can be won purely by overbuilding on the same spots, and pressing shift+enter. All modern wonders are easily gettable, and low impact. There's a small number of manual actions you need to take (or large number if you go for war), but they all follow strict script. You are not making strategic choices anymore.

I can buy that argument too. Antiquity sets up your snowball, so in the first portion of exploration you leverage it. I guess it'a a matter of perspective whether you win at end of antiquity or the first half of exploration.

The only thing I disagree with is not being able to complete legacy paths in exploration. I think the only one there is ever risk for is economic because it has an RMG component. The others are basically automatic.

Definitely agree that in modern very little matters unless you're speedrunning.

 

[Leucarum]

I think they could still mitigate snowballing by boosting the AI each age based on AI performance in the previous age.

Anything's worth a try. I think they more need the AI to actually prepare for age transitions more than get more bonuses.

 

[0urBall]

Anything's worth a try. I think they more need the AI to actually prepare for age transitions more than get more bonuses.

That seems to be one of the main problems that age transitions introduces, the AI plays as 3 seperate mini-games whereas the player can prepare for the transition better
But would players accept if the AI got huge bonuses on transition and/or players got a large reset/no bonuses?

 

[Krikkit1]

Anything's worth a try. I think they more need the AI to actually prepare for age transitions more than get more bonuses.

Well, that would be better but bonuses are easy to make work. “Effective AI” would take a lot of work…if it ever got delivered.

 

[Leucarum]

That seems to be one of the main problems that age transitions introduces, the AI plays as 3 seperate mini-games whereas the player can prepare for the transition better
But would players accept if the AI got huge bonuses on transition and/or players got a large reset/no bonuses?

Well, that would be better but bonuses are easy to make work. “Effective AI” would take a lot of work…if it ever got delivered.

Both are fair comments. I doubt Firaxis even has the bandwidth to work on this. Plus looking at the introduction of continuity mode, and buildings keeping their base yeilds they seem to have drawn the conclusion that preventing snowballing is unpopular. I suspect Civ7 will move in the opposite direction, with all the knock-on effects that will cause.

 

[pjotroos]

I feel like the anti-snowball rules don't even need to favour AI explicitly. It could be something like - give all civilizations a free settler for each city under the base settlement cap for last era; i.e. if a Civ only has 4 cities at the start of exploration, they get 2 free settlers. Give all civilizations free ranged unit in each of the cities until the size of their army is 2/3rds of the biggest one. Place a free merchant within a city for each of the trade routes that city received last era. Level the field across the board, upwards; helps the player if they had bad antiquity, helps the AI in most of the other cases.

There's meant to be a time gap, so you could easily justify those developments narratively - if the world was at war in antiquity, it stands to reason all the regions were rearming in the interim. If a settlement had traders visiting, some of them settled down there, and so on.

 

[Krikkit1]

Both are fair comments. I doubt Firaxis even has the bandwidth to work on this. Plus looking at the introduction of continuity mode, and buildings keeping their base yeilds they seem to have drawn the conclusion that preventing snowballing is unpopular. I suspect Civ7 will move in the opposite direction, with all the knock-on effects that will cause.

Well I think part of those continuity changes wasn’t because players think “snowball is good” it was because they think “don’t take my stuff”

If you prevent snowballing with stronger competitors, players still keep all their stuff…but snowballing is limited.

 

[Crashdummy]

If they introduce all those anti-snowball mechanics, i hope they make them optional

Some of us think you shouldnt be punished for playing well and that snowballing is actually a GOOD THING in non-PVP games

I dont think punishing players for playing well will get this game any more popular if its not optional

 

[Krikkit1]

If they introduce all those anti-snowball mechanics, i hope they make them optional

Some of us think you shouldnt be punished for playing well and that snowballing is actually a GOOD THING in non-PVP games

I dont think punishing players for playing well will get this game any more popular if its not optional

That’s why any anti-snowball should be
Boosts to the AI
If the AI is doing poorly (probably measured by Legacies achieved)

So how the player played would have no effect on it. (except maybe by rushing the age done before the AIs were able to get their Legacies)

However, it would be making the AI harder, so it should probably be a “yes/no” on AI difficulty level.

 

[Leucarum]

Well I think part of those continuity changes wasn’t because players think “snowball is good” it was because they think “don’t take my stuff”

If you prevent snowballing with stronger competitors, players still keep all their stuff…but snowballing is limited.

I wasn't trying to make a value judgement on the anti-snowball mechanics.

I kind of feel like Firaxis didn't go hard enough in the base edition. It felt as if they started trying to curtail snowballing but not too much. I suspect anti-snowballing mighr be one of these mechanics where you go all in or not at all... Maybe they tried it internally, realised it could produce some negative reactions and dialled it back? Either way, it looks like Firaxis has drawn the conclusion that the feeling of "I don't want to lose my stuff" was a major driver of the game getting poorly recieved. So I think the snowball is here to stay. That does not bode well for the modern era.

 

[Krikkit1]

I wasn't trying to make a value judgement on the anti-snowball mechanics.

I kind of feel like Firaxis didn't go hard enough in the base edition. It felt as if they started trying to curtail snowballing but not too much. I suspect anti-snowballing mighr be one of these mechanics where you go all in or not at all... Maybe they tried it internally, realised it could produce some negative reactions and dialled it back? Either way, it looks like Firaxis has drawn the conclusion that the feeling of "I don't want to lose my stuff" was a major driver of the game getting poorly recieved. So I think the snowball is here to stay. That does not bode well for the modern era.

If they are serious about snowballing, they can still let the player keep all their stuff…you just start playing against stronger opponents.

 

[Leucarum]

If they are serious about snowballing, they can still let the player keep all their stuff…you just start playing against stronger opponents.

Thus the slippery slope to a classic mode and then complaints about Civ AI begins again....

 

[Gori the Grey]

Or against more opponents. In Civ V, once the other civs size you up as a warmonger, they'll band together and all attack you at once. It's often the decisive point for me in the game, if my army is stretched too thin to defend on multiple fronts.

But it's also a natural response.

If for every victory type, the AI had ways of banding together to slow you down, once you had emerged as clear threat, that would operate as a kind of break on player snowballing, but also not seem forced by arbitrary game mechanics, but rather the rational motivations of the rival civs.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If they are serious about snowballing, they can still let the player keep all their stuff…you just start playing against stronger opponents.

A very important thing is that speaking about balance they were talking mostly about multiplayer and it requires anti-snowballing measures in gameplay, not AI.

 

[Crashdummy]

A very important thing is that speaking about balance they were talking mostly about multiplayer and it requires anti-snowballing measures in gameplay, not AI.

A multiplayer should definitely NOT have anti snowballing meassures. Specially is all the Civs are relevant in every single Age. Multiplayer games shouold be won by the one that played the best, not by someone that had to get external help for it

Snowballing in multiplayer games only make sense if you have difference in early game and late game selection of civs/characters/whatever

Not that it would affect me since i dont play multiplayer 4x games, but its my opinion on the concept

 

[Krikkit1]

A very important thing is that speaking about balance they were talking mostly about multiplayer and it requires anti-snowballing measures in gameplay, not AI.

Those come from the Tech/Civic reset and dark age legacies.

And I’m not sure if multiplayer has the same snowballing problem.

Human players can
team up against the leader
and
focus on an opponent weak spots
and
even feed off them with espoinage.

I think the tech civic catchup is probably enough for multiplayer.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

This is the kind of thread I feel it's the most nefarious to the devs reading it.
There's so much positive reinforcement of completely wrong ideas it's hard to comprehend.
It's too much.

I mean there's still no Manual.
It's a cheaper price but it doesn't give you any quality improvement.

 

[Niallism]

Many many multiplayer games have mechanisms to avoid the game being 'rich gets richer'. I would say 'anti-snowballing measures' are a standard approach in boardgaming and any multiplayer strategy games, whether digital or analog, new or old.

 

[reddishrecue]

Settler's edition? for the newbies... That's cool.. I thought it could've been some sort of expansion.