Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[humble serf]

2. The new world actually exists in antiquity. During livestream developers confirm what civilizations of the new world play and could beat you in wonder race

One idea I saw being used is the poles being accessible on modern age. Also could see mountains having a different effect on modern as they become more accessible than before with the creation of flight.

But also said that civs on that other part of the world would be doing things there just like the ones playing on your side, also being able to, for example block some wonders to you. So my guess is that the actual thing is impassable terrains and the literally expands because before that era the map won't even let you scroll to the region outside of it, and the minimap also would show only your half of the world as if it was a full map.

It’s possible I’ll be disappointed on this, but based on how big of a deal the devs have made about the map expanding — even affecting civ numbers and multiplayer specs — I think the division between the Old and New Worlds will be more complex than “ocean tiles are impassable in Antiquity,” which has been the case forever.

And if the map does continue to expand from Exploration to Modern, which the devs have also mentioned before, I find it hard to imagine that this won’t interact with colonial gameplay in some way.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It’s possible I’ll be disappointed on this, but based on how big of a deal the devs have made about the map expanding — even affecting civ numbers and multiplayer specs — I think the division between the Old and New Worlds will be more complex than “ocean tiles are impassable in Antiquity,” which has been the case forever.

And if the map does continue to expand from Exploration to Modern, which the devs have also mentioned before, I find it hard to imagine that this won’t interact with colonial gameplay in some way.

Before it was possible to play Pangea and just ignore all this stuff. Now:
1. There's always separation between 2 land masses
2. There never will be a secret path connecting old and new world through coastal tiles (as it often were before)
3. Even if you play, say Island map, you still have old world islands which are connected through coastal tiles and new world islands, separated by the ocean

There's no practical difference between expanding map and just generating map beforehand with inaccessible areas as you'll not see the inaccessible map anyway. But the former is an extreme complexity technical task while the latter is very easy. I have no doubts which path developer have chosen.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And if the map does continue to expand from Exploration to Modern, which the devs have also mentioned before, I find it hard to imagine that this won’t interact with colonial gameplay in some way.

I suspect, without anything resembling specific information yet, that the expanded map in Exploration Age will be based on expanded oceanic travel, as many have assumed.

But for the Modern Age, a useful model would be the expansion into previously-impassable or difficult Terrain: non-natives of the Arctic simply could not traverse arctic terrain without a lot of specialized preparation, and even then groups went missing and dead on a too-regular basis right up to the beginning of the 20th century. Likewise, heavy rain forest/jungle was practically impassable for large groups coming from the outside, and even some desert terrain, because of distance from settled population centers, was indicated by blank spaces on the map: parts of the Gobi and Taklamakhan, although they had been traveled through for centuries, remained 'Terra Incognita" until the early 1930s in places.

So, at the start of the Exploration Age whole continents may be out of sight beyond the watery horizon, while at the start of the Modern Age continents representing central Asia, western North America, central South America, the Antarctic (or Arctic) continental masses may be blank spaces of map with vague ice, jungle or desert marked on them representing areas too difficult to explore without better technologies.

The requirements in technology and other prerequisites to start exploring at the start of each Age, as well as the type of terrain explored, may be very different - as they have hinted at in saying that each Age is supposed to present you with different in-game situations.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I suspect, without anything resembling specific information yet, that the expanded map in Exploration Age will be based on expanded oceanic travel, as many have assumed.

But for the Modern Age, a useful model would be the expansion into previously-impassable or difficult Terrain: non-natives of the Arctic simply could not traverse arctic terrain without a lot of specialized preparation, and even then groups went missing and dead on a too-regular basis right up to the beginning of the 20th century. Likewise, heavy rain forest/jungle was practically impassable for large groups coming from the outside, and even some desert terrain, because of distance from settled population centers, was indicated by blank spaces on the map: parts of the Gobi and Taklamakhan, although they had been traveled through for centuries, remained 'Terra Incognita" until the early 1930s in places.

So, at the start of the Exploration Age whole continents may be out of sight beyond the watery horizon, while at the start of the Modern Age continents representing central Asia, western North America, central South America, the Antarctic (or Arctic) continental masses may be blank spaces of map with vague ice, jungle or desert marked on them representing areas too difficult to explore without better technologies.

The requirements in technology and other prerequisites to start exploring at the start of each Age, as well as the type of terrain explored, may be very different - as they have hinted at in saying that each Age is supposed to present you with different in-game situations.

Yeah, I wrote about this possibility, but with rainforests and tundra currently existing in the game and passable even in antiquity, it's quite hard to implement.

But surely not impossible. For example, the word "jungle" was not used yet and could be used in new world to create zones impassable during exploration.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yeah, I wrote about this possibility, but with rainforests and tundra currently existing in the game and passable even in antiquity, it's quite hard to implement.

But surely not impossible. For example, the word "jungle" was not used yet and could be used in new world to create zones impassable during exploration.

So far they've revealed 5 land terrain types: Desert, Grassland, Tundra, Plains, and Tropical, with each further divided into Normal, Wet, and Vegetated. Interestingly, they have not revealed a Wet state for Tundra or Tropical, so Wet Tundra could be Impassable Snowfields and Wet Tropical could be (temporarily) Impassable Jungle.

'Mountainous' is another Terrain Modifier that could be Impassable in the early Ages (and therefore, block off parts of the map) but passable by Modern - similar to what Civ VI did with the Tunnel capacity that kicked in only with later Technologies or as a Unique for the Inca.

All utter Guesswork at the moment, but shows that there are a lot of ways they can go besides Every Map Is A Terra Map that people have posted fearfully about.

 

[Krajzen]

I have to say, no matter how it all turns out, I respect Firaxis having balls to have so crazy and unorthodox changes to 4X dogmas - I have always desired for civ7 to be revolutionary in some way, unlike incremental upgrades of civ6 being civ5.5, but I think very few of us have expected such radical re-engineering of the very structural cores of 4X game structure. Some of those revolutions may miss terribly, but overall I think it's healthy for a series and a genre to occasionally go all out with experimentation like this, after all there are numerous ways to retreat to the old ways afterwards, but no way to know the path never traversed.

 

[chaosprophet]

I have to say, no matter how it all turns out, I respect Firaxis having balls to have so crazy and unorthodox changes to 4X dogmas - I have always desired for civ7 to be revolutionary in some way, unlike incremental upgrades of civ6 being civ5.5, but I think very few of us have expected such radical re-engineering of the very structural cores of 4X game structure. Some of those revolutions may miss terribly, but overall I think it's healthy for a series and a genre to occasionally go all out with experimentation like this, after all there are numerous ways to retreat to the old ways afterwards, but no way to know the path never traversed.

Agreed, and also to add one more point to what you said: I like that from what we saw on their explanations, they have a clear and solid reasons to make those changes, to address some specific problems common of the series and of many similarly long 4x games. So even if one may disagree with the implementation they picked to solve those issues or may not even consider them issues, at least is good to know they had specific goals in mind instead of just trying to shake the board to see if it may feel at something interesting.

 

[Elhoim]

If you place an improvement 3 tiles away from your city, it culture bombs the 4th tile.

From what could be seen so far, it doesn't. Check the quarry on the right side, it doesn't go into the next ring.

The cities being limited to 3 tiles again is one of my biggest disappointments with Civ 7. As others said, avoiding overlapping AND not leaving a tile empty will become more important.

I assume the idea here is that you plan cities that will use all tiles, and surround it with towns to cover the holes between cities, making them use less tiles (giving away the overlapping ones to the cities).

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

We don't know what the Modern Age brings. There could be a mechanic that allows megalopoli by having additional workable rings or the consolidation of towns into cities.

 

[Elhoim]

Hopefully, but the way they talked about it in the interviews and such seemed unlikely.

 

[Krikkit1]

We don't know what the Modern Age brings. There could be a mechanic that allows megalopoli by having additional workable rings or the consolidation of towns into cities.

I would imagine far more likely would be some “outposts” that can collect tradable resources and don’t count as much towards the settlement limit.

 

[AriochIV]

They said specifically in the interviews that the 3-tile limit was something deep in the code that would be very difficult to change, and that they weren't going to change it.

I can't tell from the current videos whether placing an improvement at a 3 tile distance grabs the 4th tile -- in the Antiquity Livestream the video quality is pretty poor and the border graphics are much harder to see in the busy terrain than in Civ6.

 

[Elhoim]

I would imagine far more likely would be some “outposts” that can collect tradable resources and don’t count as much towards the settlement limit.

Yeah, that would be the best, and we have the Civ 6 vampire castles as a mechanical reference of a "test implementation".

 

[Siptah]

I would imagine far more likely would be some “outposts” that can collect tradable resources and don’t count as much towards the settlement limit.

I‘d like that. But they should be contestable, not just first come first served. If I found a city nearby, a foreign outpost should vanish.

 

[Krikkit1]

I‘d like that. But they should be contestable, not just first come first served. If I found a city nearby, a foreign outpost should vanish.

Id rather say if I put a unit in it, it becomes mine.

 

[Siptah]

Id rather say if I put a unit in it, it becomes mine.

It sounds quite abusable then though. Player 1 founds a city, player 2 creates an outpost on a resource 2 tiles away that player 1 can‘t reach anymore (besides declaring war I guess). Alternatively, pillaging could be possible while at peace, but that doesn‘t feel civ-like.

 

[chaosprophet]

Do we know if resources also gives bonus yields to the tile they are in now that they also are assigned through resource management? As in, does a plain with a horse has more yields than a plain without one? Or is their effect only through the city you assign them to (or the whole empire for some resources)?

I‘d like that. But they should be contestable, not just first come first served. If I found a city nearby, a foreign outpost should vanish.

Depends on how it works. Whether only in exploration onward or just a way we haven't been told yet, there will likely be some way to get territory besides the city base grow. So outposts may only work to get resources on your territory but that isn't on the range of a city. Then you may not be able to settle there, or at best if it is on the corner of another civ territory, you may be able to settle next to it and get the tile, but that could be something that would declare a war or at least automatically give a negative effect to the diplomacy with that country.

 

[chaosprophet]

That's worrying IMO. Something like that should be a global, or even exposed to XML / SQL, not hard coded deep in the code. Unless there's some critical optimisation gains by having it that way, it's not encouraging news about the quality of the code based (and so the likelihood of bugs)

At very least, it is the same as civ 6, whether that makes you relieved or more worried.

 

[Krikkit1]

It sounds quite abusable then though. Player 1 founds a city, player 2 creates an outpost on a resource 2 tiles away that player 1 can‘t reach anymore (besides declaring war I guess). Alternatively, pillaging could be possible while at peace, but that doesn‘t feel civ-like.

You should be able to take an unoccupied outpost without declaring war, just a relationship penalty.

And you should probably be able to claim territory with influence in Exploration.

And probably an unoccupied outpost in range of a city can be claimed with influence as well (with relationship drop to owner)

 

[stealth_nsk]

If we speak about this problem alone (unreachable resource tiles), the outposts could be limited in what they can't be placed further than 5 tiles from your city. That way you can't use them to steal other civ resources (unless they are in disputed territory, but this looks ok).

If outposts solve any additional problems, the approach could be different.