Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[AriochIV]

I have never enjoyed the "choose the least catastrophic penalty" sort of gameplay. I think that may be the one feature of Civ7 that I've heard of so far that seems like a really clear mistake.

 

[Atlas627]

I have never enjoyed the "choose the least catastrophic penalty" sort of gameplay. I think that may be the one feature of Civ7 that I've heard of so far that seems like a really clear mistake.

I think they're looking at making them all benefits with penalties, so you have to weigh them against each other. And since I don't know which crisis will even happen, I can't exactly strategize around it, so possibly all the penalties are at least annoying.

But yes, I agree.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

For a set of 'Crisis' that is supposed to result in an entire Reset of your Civ and game, they look pretty mild. Have to see the actual in-game effects to determine what they really mean.

But in historical terms, let's see:

You have a series of plagues that remove 50 - 60% of your total population.
A horde of Minor States' people and armies have overrun half your territory.
Every Army Commander and their armies have revolted and are all claiming to run the Civ.
You've lost contact entirely with about 1/3 of your Civ's Cities.

So Be Happy: what the game is throwing at you is apparently a lot milder than what the historical Roman Empire went through!

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Watched through quill's video series, he mentioned that walls will be slotted in as a building into an open urban district. Multiple walls can be built by using slots in more then one urban district and in his words, all walls have to be taken down before a city can be captured.

 

[AriochIV]

I get that they're trying to model a catastrophic age transition like the Late Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of the Roman Empire.

But "historically accurate" does not necessarily equate to "fun." Catastrophes can be fun to deal with, but it's a hard sell. If it's the result of a bad risk you took, or if it's a narrative thing that's well established, then it can work. This, however, seems to be just straight penalties that come out of nowhere.

 

[AriochIV]

Watched through quill's video series, he mentioned that walls will be slotted in as a building into an open urban district. Multiple walls can be built by using slots in more then one urban district and in his words, all walls have to be taken down before a city can be captured.

I saw that too, but he said he wasn't sure, and I have since seen this contradicted by other sources. Ursa Ryan said he actually built Walls, and it wasn't a regular building and it affected all of his Urban Districts in that city.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I get that they're trying to model a catastrophic age transition like the Late Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of the Roman Empire.

But "historically accurate" does not necessarily equate to "fun." Catastrophes can be fun to deal with, but it's a hard sell. If it's the result of a bad risk you took, or if it's a narrative thing that's well established, then it can work. This, however, seems to be just straight penalties that come out of nowhere.

Thoroughly agree, negative events for which you have no answer thrown at you by chance are generally Bad Design.

But the whole basis of this design is a Singularity Disconnect between each of the three ages requiring a reset of most of your Civ (Note that they mention Legacies between Civs which implies some connection between Ages, but no details yet), so basically you are going to get a Crisis or set of Crisis situations that your Civ as it is constituted for the previous Age cannot survive Intact.

That mention of Legacies and some structures/buildings that also appear to be carried over leads me to hypothesize that the Singularity between Ages is not Total. That is, there will be things you can do to 'position' yourself for the next Age since you cannot Avoid the next Age.

So your First Age Rome may be reduced to a few forlorn columns rising from the dust, but there may be more than a whiff of Rome remaining in your next Civ, whatever you choose.

It's becoming a mantra, but the Devil Is In The Details.

I just cannot imagine after 5+ years of design work that they would remove all agency from the gamer for a mechanic that important to the design of the entire game . . .

 

[Pistol90]

I would be all in for crisis if it was not hardcoded at turn X, and you got cards to chose.

If it was some kind of disease because of too many trade routes, or barbarian invasions because there are no more un-claimed tiles for them to live, or some kind of civil unrest if you have different govurment than your neigbours in modern age ... etc, etc

But this what they show is my least favorite new mechanic. You always know disaster is coming, cant do anything about it, must choose bad policy ....

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I would be all in for crisis if it was not hardcoded at turn X, and you got cards to chose.

If it was some kind of disease because of too many trade routes, or barbarian invasions because there are no more un-claimed tiles for them to live, or some kind of civil unrest if you have different govurment than your neigbours in modern age ... etc, etc

But this what they show is my least favorite new mechanic. You always know disaster is coming, cant do anything about it, must choose bad policy ....

From my understanding, it's similiar to how Age Transition happens.

It's set at a fixed point in terms of say "score", where each turn 1 gets accumulated, so if nothing changes, it will happen in say 100 turns (just an example), but certian actions, say discovering a new tech/specific tech, or doing a specific action, like conquering, accelerates, meaning instead of it happening/commencing in 100 turns, it now commenced in 90 turns instead. So the threshold shifts based on how the Age plays out.

 

[Pistol90]

From my understanding, it's similiar to how Age Transition happens.

It's set at a fixed point in terms of say "score", where each turn 1 gets accumulated, so if nothing changes, it will happen in say 100 turns (just an example), but certian actions, say discovering a new tech/specific tech, or doing a specific action, like conquering, accelerates, meaning instead of it happening/commencing in 100 turns, it now commenced in 90 turns instead. So the threshold shifts based on how the Age plays out.

But you always go to dark age bassicly ... thats problem.

Why dont have either crisis, or something on other side-like big human advancment.

Stuff didnt just happened in history because of bad things, also good things made history change.

Dark ages ended when renesanse started, it is not always that bad things make things happen.

 

[E.C.H]

But the whole basis of this design is a Singularity Disconnect between each of the three ages requiring a reset of most of your Civ (Note that they mention Legacies between Civs which implies some connection between Ages, but no details yet), so basically you are going to get a Crisis or set of Crisis situations that your Civ as it is constituted for the previous Age cannot survive Intact.

I think a huge aspect of that was seen around 10:40 of the showcase, where immediately after the 'Age of Exploration' announcement the player was shown selecting from a variety of 'Legacies' they could purchase with different points earned during the last age (I think we saw a lot of these types of points could be earnt via the Legacy Paths, but probably also elsewhere. Not sure on the balance of what we see here, but a neat concept for specialization at least.

 

[Atlas627]

But you always go to dark age bassicly ... thats problem.

Why dont have either crisis, or something on other side-like big human advancment.

Stuff didnt just happened in history because of bad things, also good things made history change.

Dark ages ended when renesanse started, it is not always that bad things make things happen.

Because the gameplay purpose of this is to reset the playing field, so you aren't just bored in the mid-late game because you already did everything worthwhile. That type of transition is about the fall of empires.

Furthermore, all game long you're advancing, and that's the premise of Civilization as a series. Having a couple falls is interesting. If you want positive transitions, I'm sure someone will mod it quickly enough.

 

[Pistol90]

Because the gameplay purpose of this is to reset the playing field, so you aren't just bored in the mid-late game because you already did everything worthwhile. That type of transition is about the fall of empires.

Furthermore, all game long you're advancing, and that's the premise of Civilization as a series. Having a couple falls is interesting. If you want positive transitions, I'm sure someone will mod it quickly enough.

I want fall of empires, I installed many mods for Civ6 which increases chances of you empire falling (like Uprising empires mod)

But they need to be natural, not hard-coded ... thats my problem.

On excatly turn 223 crisis will happen, you cant do anything about it and you must chose bad policies ... thats my problem

I loved ages mechanic in Civ6, but in Civ 7 you always go to dark age ... that's my problem.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm hoping that they will set up the crises with some kind of dynamic narrative, but it's not clear to me how that would happen in a way that's not the same every playthrough.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I'm hoping that they will set up the crises with some kind of dynamic narrative, but it's not clear to me how that would happen in a way that's not the same every playthrough.

It could (or should) depend on the state of your empire towards the end of an Age. If you're already ailing then that doesn't need a narrative, it's already there. But say in the scenario that you're having a successful game, it could go something like this:

- if you're scientifically advanced, uncontrolled technological advances caused a massive social upheaval that paralysed society and contributed to extremist ideologies

- rule over a major empire made up of conquered territories, your empire fell to multi-ethnic discord

- have a powerful army, ambitious commanders tried to gain power for themselves and fought among themselves (like what happened after the deaths of Alexander and Nader Shah)

- have a strong economy, powerful merchants vied with each other for political influence and capturing markets, hiring armies and thus devastating the empire

- have a large population, plague spread in your lands

- have extensive farms, feudal aristocratic uprising

And so on and so forth

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

But they need to be natural, not hard-coded ... thats my problem.

On excatly turn 223 crisis will happen, you cant do anything about it and you must chose bad policies ... thats my problem

Except it's not, and somebody already told you that, it's already written and it has already been said.

There will be a meter filling up during the game, but the exact speed of which it's filled depends on the actions of each player, so it won't always be on turn 223, or any fixed number, it will change from game to game, and even in the same game, you might think: "well, according to the average speed, in 20 turns, we'll have the crisis", but suddenly all the empires are doing actions that fill the meter and the crisis happens sooner; or, on the contrary, everyone's quite content and so the crisis is having a longer time coming up.

And you can do something about it: the choice of policies is here to make a choice. Bad things will happen, but you still will have to make the choice on how you handle it. Complaining about it would be like complaining about the AI declaring war to you. "You can't do anything about it and you must produce troops and fight them..." Yeah, that's called a game, challenges are thrown at you and you have to make decisions about it and prepare about it.

 

[bene_legionary]

I wonder if some people are just averse to any negative effects on their empire

At the risk of bringing up Ed Beach’s love for boardgames, this feels similar to disaster management games like In The Year of the Dragon, where the goal isn’t really to win the most but instead to lose the least. I haven’t played it, but I find that switch fascinating.

Besides, it could be argued that this crisis system is finally the "test of time" that Civ has referenced for decades but hasn't really implemented much more than foreign invasion or climate change. I want to see my empire tested; if that means it has to change, sounds even better.

 

[AriochIV]

I wonder if some people are just averse to any negative effects on their empire

...as if being averse to negative effects is somehow strange.

But in particular, people are unsuprisingly averse to negative effects against which there is no counterplay. People usually don't like being punished when they didn't to anything wrong.

For myself, I actually liked random little disasters in earlier iterations, as they helped build a narrative, though I understand why many didn't. I think they were better when there were mitigation strategies (walls vs. floods, etc.). But those weren't penalties that persist for the whole rest of the Age. So again, it depends on whether they are able to structure these Crises into narrative events that actually enhance the game instead of making it more unpleasant.

 

[El Castellano]

In the trailer you can see a probably Roman city. But two of the urban districts have a different architecture from that of the rest, as if they were from another culture. For example, from Egypt or Aksum. Can multicultural cities be built?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

View attachment 700956
In the trailer you can see a probably Roman city. But two of the urban districts have a different architecture from that of the rest, as if they were from another culture. For example, from Egypt or Aksum. Can multicultural cities be built?

Maybe through capturing a city; your new districts take on your civ's look, but the original districts retain the original owner's look.

Or maybe this is after the Age change, so the new districts are being built with the Exploration Age civ's look.