Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[8housesofelixir]

its a very small thing in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason the little popups that happen when you unlock a civ makes me super happy. I like that there is an attempt at giving a little bit of lore as to why potentially Egypt will go to Inca, or something like that.

Some of these narrative pop-ups have really compelling and thoughtful writing, and imagined how the civ change happened in detail.

Spoiler Examples :

If people are saying that civ-changing is FXS copying Humankind, then this is where I hope Humankind can copy FXS. Meaningful cultural transitions with narrative implications are exactly what Humankind lacks - even though Humankind is a much more narrative-centered game to begin with.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

No, they're gone.

The other techs and civics don't unlock, exactly. They just become irrelevant in the next Age.

It's a Tabula Rasa at the beginning of next age. everyone reset at the same tech and civic starting point.
So... .what are carryovers from previous civs if game begins at Age I and not Age II or III

 

[lo24681]

any civ unique infrastructure and traditions seem to carryover, as well as settlement names.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Some of these narrative pop-ups have really compelling and thoughtful writing, and imagined how the civ change happened in detail.

Spoiler Examples :

View attachment 715725
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If people are saying that civ-changing is FXS copying Humankind, then this is where I hope Humankind can copy FXS. Meaningful cultural transitions with narrative implications are exactly what Humankind lacks - even though Humankind is a much more narrative-centered game to begin with.

That's Cat Manning for you

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Iguazu Falls details

 

[sTAPler27]

its a very small thing in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason the little popups that happen when you unlock a civ makes me super happy. I like that there is an attempt at giving a little bit of lore as to why potentially Egypt will go to Inca, or something like that.

Its one of those things the Humankind asked for for a while so i'm glad the devs thought of implementing it here. I just wish the people not on board with the switching mechanic because they think it makes no sense saw the vision the devs were going for. Like the Egyptians becoming Mongolia in our universe would be a wild 180 but the flavor text shows how such a situation could happen.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Some of these narrative pop-ups have really compelling and thoughtful writing, and imagined how the civ change happened in detail.

Spoiler Examples :

View attachment 715725
View attachment 715726
View attachment 715727

If people are saying that civ-changing is FXS copying Humankind, then this is where I hope Humankind can copy FXS. Meaningful cultural transitions with narrative implications are exactly what Humankind lacks - even though Humankind is a much more narrative-centered game to begin with.

Another Example:

Spoiler :

Become the Ming by being ridiculously urban!

 

[gdr_willter]

Some of these narrative pop-ups have really compelling and thoughtful writing, and imagined how the civ change happened in detail.

Spoiler Examples :

View attachment 715725
View attachment 715726
View attachment 715727

If people are saying that civ-changing is FXS copying Humankind, then this is where I hope Humankind can copy FXS. Meaningful cultural transitions with narrative implications are exactly what Humankind lacks - even though Humankind is a much more narrative-centered game to begin with.

[...]
Now back to Civ7, I will consider that choosing Hatshepsut means I'm playing as a group of people who call themselves Egyptian. My first Civ can be the Egypt Civilization which represent old kingdoms of Egypt. Facing the Age of Exploration, my Egyptian people realize that the system of old kingdoms is completely outdated and they need to innovate my empire. So I'll choose another Civ like Abbasid, Songhai, or even Mongolia, to adapt my Egyption people to the new challenges.

It can be interpreted in various way. I can imagine that a great prophet Muhammad was born in Cairo and spread Islam in my empire that led it becomes to the Abbasid Caliphate. I can imagine that the Nile flooded fatally and killed a lot of people therefore Egyptian accepted immigrants from the Niger river basin to procure manpower. Or I can even imagine that the rising Mongolian horde invaded Egypt and occupied the ruling class of it. However, the point is there still will be the Egyptian people in the second emprie regardless its form and name. The Crisis system will help you to build your interpretation like above. And the same process will be happened when the third age has come.
[...]

I think devs did what exactly I wanted! I personally planned to accept those transitions in this way, and now the game provides it as the actual narrative flavor texts!

 

[notNamed]

I just wish the people not on board with the switching mechanic because they think it makes no sense saw the vision the devs were going for.

I'd just caution that the vision of the devs for Humankind was in the compounding of influences.
The culture switching is a mechanic that was used in it but the central idea is that, for instance:
- England is Britons + Roman influence + West Germanic tribes + North Germanic tribes + Norman influence
- Modern Egypt is a compounding of Ancient Egypt, the Hellenistic world, the Islamic world, the Ottoman period and a dash of British colonialism.
This works fine somewhere (Roman Britain -> Saxon kingdoms -> Norman England -> England; Egyptian kingdoms -> Persians/Macedonians/Romans -> Arabic caliphates ->...) but becomes a fairly important distinction in other places like Japan.

Under Civ 7 you have 2 scenarios:
- A pure, yamato-damashii, primordial essence Japan of za Japan that has always been here and always doing its own thing.
- Creating an explanation of how the Han people (like the Vietnamese) became Japanese.

Whereas within the realm of the idea behind Humankind there is no Japan without Chinese culture, but at no point is it implied that Han people (of Vietnam, Central Plains,...) turned Japanese. Japanese culture is simply historically a compounding of influence from the states and people of mainland Asia, tiny bits of the original inhabitants, etc.

Of course the era switching implementation in Humankind, also inherited by Civ 7, fits the former model but it's not really the idea that it had spawned from.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Whereas within the realm of the idea behind Humankind there is no Japan without Chinese culture, but at no point is it implied that Han people (of Vietnam, Central Plains,...) turned Japanese. Japanese culture is simply historically a compounding of influence from the states and people of mainland Asia, tiny bits of the original inhabitants, etc.

Bit off-topic - I feel like this is because Humankind decided to stick to a 6-Era model. Extensive periodization is fine if it is a serious academic model for historical research, but it would cause an issue for in-game progression as not every culture has an Ancient and/or Classical counterpart. Meanwhile, a 3-Age or 4-Age system could navigate around this issue by having something much later in the Ancient, as the first Age now has a much wider bandwidth.

 

[lo24681]

Something I noticed while going through a bunch of videos even when not paired with their historical civ, the leaders would still go down the historical route, only breaking it if they were able to select their main civ, the one exception to this I noticed is Aksum to Shawnee, which I saw happen twice, so which I believe has to be a bug.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

The minimap is essentially useless and broken, showing settlements as gigantic, ugly squares with no information about empire control.
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The distinction between finished and able to be researched techs isn't high.
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A lot of the unit icons in the build menu seem to be differently shaped sticks.
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The settlement banner is too small with information spilling out over the landscape - which is worse because it's already such a tiny banner. Some of it is also just offset weirdly. That the numbers have a black background seems to indicate that they know this is a bad design, so hopefully it'll be fixed. Also, you cannot click on these banners for IPs to talk to them, but instead have to click on the tile.
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Some unit options are hidden inside a popup menu. Have UI designers not learnt from Microsoft Word? When you hide options (especially something important like resting) users just don't use it. How will a newbie to the franchise realise that this is an option?
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Unit HP bars are tiny.
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Tons of instances of text butting up against UI elements. In the start screen in particular, there's tons of text crammed at the top with a bunch of empty space below.
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I don't hate the overall black and gold style, and in particular I love the next turn button (pictured below). But there's tons of little issues that, if they make it to release, I will be very annoyed about.
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Thank you.

Fully agree on the minimap, what a terrible thing.

As for the rest, this suggests that it is more about specific niggles than the overall aesthetic? In which case, perhaps we can make a long list of said niggles and give that as feedback to the FXS folks on here. The aesthetic is set, but specific examples of wonky UI can probably be easily fixed. I may make a thread!

 

[Potworny]

On a more positive note regarding the UI, it appears that VII will be compatible with ultrawide monitors at launch, which I'll be a beneficiary of. Not a surprise considering VI worked well with 21:9, but you never know.

Spoiler :

Also, even though I realise why it is that way, I can't help but find it humorous that the outlet Windows Central has the Activate Windows notification on all screenshots.

 

[evonannoredars]

Spoiler :

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Annoys me a bit that the polar ice is always visible, I think it was potatomcwhiskey that pointed out you can even still make it out far away in the darker fog of war tiles and therefore roughly figure out your latitude. Looks a bit odd as a straight ice wall also.

 

[Lorizael]

I can't wait to see the flavor text for unlocking France with 3 wine: "A tribe of drunkards has recently come into ascendancy..."

 

[Brutus2]

I find it odd that the map selection doesn't have any description of what the map types are, not even the mouse over tooltips. Vet civ players will get it but how would a new player have any idea what the difference is between "continents, continents plus or terra incognito." Hopefully they will add that in the launch build.

 

[Brutus2]

There's always room for improvement but overall I like the UI. As an "older gamer" who also likes to play on steam deck, I appreciate going for larger, easy to read fonts with good contrast between the text and background colors. It may seem simple or lacking color but it is very clean and easy to read. In civ6 build menu, when you can't afford something, the gold cost is red text on a blue background. I can not see the number at all. The colorblind options don't fix it and I've never found a mod to fix it either. Give me simple clean font with white text on a dark background all day.

 

[Ebon-Hawke-]

I must be a crazy but I actually like the current mini map a lot, I like seeing more of the visible land mass for some reason and cities are more clear

 

[JNR13]

I was hoping that they would serve as some kind of a bonus for those good at tech in the last age. Like everyone would recieve the base techs but only some would have mastered them. I get the age reset mechanic but I just wish they swapped around some of the stuff that becomes locked with an age transition

The stuff they unlock might continue to be relevant. For example, a lot of Masteries in antiquity unlock Codices. In later ages, these still help you scale bonuses applying to Great Works. Further, the Codices directly determine how far you get in the scientific legacy path, giving you more legacy points in the Exploration Age and a boost towards producing the Science Victory project in the Modern Age.

 

[Lorizael]

One thing I was wondering about that I don't think we've seen an explicit answer to: when you have a great leader who gives a bonus to a building, does that bonus persist to the next age? I can see an argument (design philosophy-wise) either way.