Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

There's a version on YouTube and on Twitter.

I still need a valid link

 

[tedhebert]

And one more question. What is the actual benefit of moving the capital other than possibly upgrading a town into a city?

I strongly suspect the main reason to do so going into exploration age is to have a capital that is a coastal city to better enable exploration by sea

 

[stealth_nsk]

I fear the leader attributes alone are enough to keep the game imbalanced forever... but maybe, hopefully, they add a lot to replayablity and fun.

They are roughly the same as Civ5 social policies. While on itself the system didn't look too variable, it added significant strategic choices depending on the playstyle and current situation. So, I'm really looking forward to see leader skill trees in action.

 

[Nikolai II]

I strongly suspect the main reason to do so going into exploration age is to have a capital that is a coastal city to better enable exploration by sea

Also you might have a settlement other than the old capital with better yields I guess.

 

[Calcifer]

I'm curious about this, too. The last time I recall a material reason to move your capital around was when corruption was a game mechanic that caused diminishing returns on gold/science/happiness for cities the further those cities were from your capital. There's probably been something since that I'm forgetting, but I don't recall being motivated to move my capital since. I'm looking forward to hearing whether Civ 7 has a reason to change your capital, other than for flavour or to boost a town into a city for free.

Rome has a tradition that boosts production in the capital. Augustus’ leader ability boosts production in the capital. These are off the top of my head, there could be more I don’t remember or that haven’t been revealed yet. You may want to move your capital to a place that makes a better use of those bonuses in the exploration age (like a coastal settlement).

 

[chaosprophet]

You will want to get one out ASAP, then fight Indie Powers to get some promotions on it before trying to conquer another civ.

Be an AAA mega company and suppress those Indie powers!!!

I have a question, not worth its own thread. How exactly does the capital switching mechanic work? I'm still a little unclear on that. Are you forced to change capitals? I suspect the answer is no, but I think it would be more interesting to force the player to change capitals, it might make the civ changing mechanic less awkward. And can the capital only go to a town and not a city? And finally, what happens to the old capital? Is it still a city or does it go into a town?

And one more question. What is the actual benefit of moving the capital other than possibly upgrading a town into a city?

Depending on which new civ you picked for the next age, they may have very different bonuses, they may work better with different terrain, etc. In those cases, the location of a different settlement may be better for a capital.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

"Better an army of Lambs commanded by a Lion,
Than an army of Lions commanded by a Lamb".

That's exactly what I would expect historian-worshippers of the Great Men of History to say.

An objective review would probably say:

"Better a well-drilled army of Lambs commanded by anyone other than a complete fool,
Than an army of ill disciplined Lions commanded by a Lion."

Nationalism tends to focus on the character of the nation's soldiers, the fun part of history focuses on the competencies (or lack therefore) of the generals. Much more boring, but probably more important than either, are logistics, training, and the quality of the NCO- and junior officer-equivalents.

Either that or having the most artillery. Having the most artillery is good, too.

 

[j51]

I just hope the change capital option can be easily modded to rename all of your cities and not just the capital

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That's exactly what I would expect historian-worshippers of the Great Men of History to say.

An objective review would probably say:

"Better a well-drilled army of Lambs commanded by anyone other than a complete fool,
Than an army of ill disciplined Lions commanded by a Lion."

Nationalism tends to focus on the character of the nation's soldiers, the fun part of history focuses on the competencies (or lack therefore) of the generals. Much more boring, but probably more important than either, are logistics, training, and the quality of the NCO- and junior officer-equivalents.

Either that or having the most artillery. Having the most artillery is good, too.

Be careful who you are calling a "worshipper of Great Men", I WAS one of those quality NCOs for most of my 20 years in the US Army.

The 'Great Man' view of history dominated 19th and early 20th century Europe and America, replaced by the 'Marxist' view of Impersonal Forces that began to hold sway (at least in the University I attended) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I consider both incomplete. There are 'Great Men' (and Women) who made a significant difference in how things went, and a larger number of Almost Great who had no influence to speak of. There are 'Movements' or 'Trends' in history, but how exactly they manifest on the ground is rarely predictable - History remains a Craft more than a Science, much better at explaining What Happened than predicting What Will Happen in any given instance.

And the quote was from a 19th century European, Ardant du Picq, one of the first people to use personal surveys to extract attitudes and 'sociological data' from troops (in the French Army before 1870, to be exact)

Reference Non-Commissioned Officers:
When they were briefing us on the Iraqi Army before Desert Storm, and they told us that the Iraqis had no NCO corps to speak of, being organized and trained on the Soviet model, I pointed out that all they were, then, was a large set of targets. The war bore out that statement and I maintain that all military forces both current and historical can be divided into those that have a professional and experienced corps of Non-Commissioned Officers and those that don't, and those that don't are just meat for those that do.

Note that Professional NCOs includes groups like the Roman Centurions and Decurions after the Marian Reforms, Alexander's 'File Leaders' in his phalanx, Frederick the Great's NCO corps and the Prussian/German NCO Corps from 1815 to 1945. All forces with ferocious reputations in battle even when being ground down by superior numbers.

In game terms, they should be modeled as part of the individual Units rather than Imposed as a Army Commander factor, but that's not how Civ VII has chosen to do it. We'll see how their model works in the game.

 

[Krikkit1]

Be careful who you are calling a "worshipper of Great Men", I WAS one of those quality NCOs for most of my 20 years in the US Army.

The 'Great Man' view of history dominated 19th and early 20th century Europe and America, replaced by the 'Marxist' view of Impersonal Forces that began to hold sway (at least in the University I attended) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I consider both incomplete. There are 'Great Men' (and Women) who made a significant difference in how things went, and a larger number of Almost Great who had no influence to speak of. There are 'Movements' or 'Trends' in history, but how exactly they manifest on the ground is rarely predictable - History remains a Craft more than a Science, much better at explaining What Happened than predicting What Will Happen in any given instance.

And the quote was from a 19th century European, Ardant du Picq, one of the first people to use personal surveys to extract attitudes and 'sociological data' from troops (in the French Army before 1870, to be exact)

Reference Non-Commissioned Officers:
When they were briefing us on the Iraqi Army before Desert Storm, and they told us that the Iraqis had no NCO corps to speak of, being organized and trained on the Soviet model, I pointed out that all they were, then, was a large set of targets. The war bore out that statement and I maintain that all military forces both current and historical can be divided into those that have a professional and experienced corps of Non-Commissioned Officers and those that don't, and those that don't are just meat for those that do.

Note that Professional NCOs includes groups like the Roman Centurions and Decurions after the Marian Reforms, Alexander's 'File Leaders' in his phalanx, Frederick the Great's NCO corps and the Prussian/German NCO Corps from 1815 to 1945. All forces with ferocious reputations in battle even when being ground down by superior numbers.

In game terms, they should be modeled as part of the individual Units rather than Imposed as a Army Commander factor, but that's not how Civ VII has chosen to do it. We'll see how their model works in the game.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2013-04-15

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2013-04-15

www.smbc-comics.com

Your point Illustrated

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Be careful who you are calling a "worshipper of Great Men", I WAS one of those quality NCOs for most of my 20 years in the US Army.

I didn't mean you, I meant the person who wrote the lines you quoted. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

 

[gdr_willter]

In game terms, they should be modeled as part of the individual Units rather than Imposed as a Army Commander factor, but that's not how Civ VII has chosen to do it. We'll see how their model works in the gagame.

Theoretically right, but we are already seen the promoted each troop in previous civ games. That was cool to describe the veteran troops (with good NCO), but hundreds times of promotion choices were not the best experiences in the game...

I always consider the General/Admiral in civ games as the field command which connect the supreme command (me) and the troops in battlefield. The commander unit in Civ 7 also fit with this understanding, and now they will grow up with some promotions. I think the capable and experienced field commands (not as a man, but as a group and organization) also very important to the huge armed forces and Civ 7 is the first title which is focusing to them.

 

[shaglio]

This post by @Guandao in the Pachacuti thread got me thinking about the BOLD part:

"Menelik II hates me for settling on hills. Dido hates me for settling on coast. Gitarja hates me for settling on islands......"

Settling a city on tiny (or even one tile) islands is not going to work in Civ7. Since you need to build districts adjacent to the city center or other districts, you won't be able to build a district on another body of land with water in between. Therefore, you'll be limited in how many districts you can build in that city. Maybe towns might work, but there's no use upgrading them to cities, unless I have my game mechanics mixed up.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

This post by @Guandao in the Pachacuti thread got me thinking about the BOLD part:

"Menelik II hates me for settling on hills. Dido hates me for settling on coast. Gitarja hates me for settling on islands......"

Settling a city on tiny (or even one tile) islands is not going to work in Civ7. Since you need to build districts adjacent to the city center or other districts, you won't be able to build a district on another body of land with water in between. Therefore, you'll be limited in how many districts you can build in that city. Maybe towns might work, but there's no use upgrading them to cities, unless I have my game mechanics mixed up.

They talked about that a bit in the Exploration livestream. There are some water-based buildings (Fishing Quay, Wharf, etc) you can build around an island city-center, potentially linking it to other islands, but eventually, your settlement's size will be limited.

 

[shaglio]

They talked about that a bit in the Exploration livestream. There are some water-based buildings (Fishing Quay, Wharf, etc) you can build around an island city-center, potentially linking it to other islands, but eventually, your settlement's size will be limited.

Oh, derp. I completely forgot about building districts on water tiles

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I didn't mean you, I meant the person who wrote the lines you quoted. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

No apologies needed. The arguments within the historical community over Great Men versus Great Movements was and is far more bitter and protracted than any debates on these Forums!

Ironically, du Picq, the originator of the quote, is famous as the first (or at least one of the first) people to try to go beyond the Great General and find out what his troops really thought and felt about battle. He distributed questionaires to combat veterans to collect real information on what they went through externally and internally: looking for the 'bottom-up' battle experience instead of the General's view - which is really all historians collected before that. Unfortunately for historical and sociological research, he was killed in action in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 while still relatively young. It would have been interesting to see what data he might have collected from that conflict, because nobody bothered with that kind of data collection again for over a generaion.

 

[chaosprophet]

They talked about that a bit in the Exploration livestream. There are some water-based buildings (Fishing Quay, Wharf, etc) you can build around an island city-center, potentially linking it to other islands, but eventually, your settlement's size will be limited.

Or at least, the size of your settlement urban districts. On the other hand, all those water tiles can become finishing type rural districts, boosted by water based few buildings and can be likely a very good specialized Fishing Town, or depending on location a Hub Town or Trade Outpost. As a town tend to have less buildings, so less need for urban districts, it can likely work well.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Achaemenid Xerxes can become Spain.

 

[Siptah]

View attachment 709452

Achaemenid Xerxes can become Spain.

Maybe, he started with Rome or Greece. It doesn’t prove that there are other ways to become Spain, sadly.

 

[Lord Lakely]

That's what I guess as well, Siptah. But that was not the interesting part.

The question we should ask is: "if Xerxes was Rome or Greece, then who was Persia?"