There's a bunch of fundemental issues I have with Humankind that make it impossible for me to enjoy it (namely the territory system and the combat system, they're just not for me), but it has some really good ideas that I hope Civ 7 incorporates.
There's a bunch of fundemental issues I have with Humankind that make it impossible for me to enjoy it (namely the territory system and the combat system, they're just not for me), but it has some really good ideas that I hope Civ 7 incorporates.
Out of curiosity, which ones and why? Because personally I somehow managed to not only be disappointed by Humankind in three days after hyping it for a year, but also dislike almost every mechanic it has o
Combatystem is better than 1upt because it at least makes turns load quickly, lpgistics not an issue and AI players more dangerpus, but I wouldn't call it my ideal either, it still makes the map insanely overcrowded and tedious to operate, just occasionally not all the time.
Out of curiosity, which ones and why? Because personally I somehow managed to not only be disappointed by Humankind in three days after hyping it for a year, but also dislike almost every mechanic it has o
Combatystem is better than 1upt because it at least makes turns load quickly, lpgistics not an issue and AI players more dangerpus, but I wouldn't call it my ideal either, it still makes the map insanely overcrowded and tedious to operate, just occasionally not all the time.
I don't like the "Territory" system, I know other game have it, but when utilizing hexes, it feels chaotic to have to juggle what you spend your influence on, not to mention it's almost hard to predict the cost unless you're in that territory, but regardless, i just don't find the manifest destiny a good mechanic overall, I prefer the natural border expansion of cities in Civ 6/5 to be waaay better
I don't like the combat system *for the most part*, there's few greviances i have, including the fact that cities fall the moment you have an enemy waltz in because militia line units are so damn weak, sure, I should have defenses up, but the fact that units take up one population point, on top of having to manage so many stacks in so many territories just feels like such a headache.
Though they improved upon it, I found the whole "exploitation" system to be confusing, when do I have yields and where? How does it calculate it etc.
I did like the diplomacy, the trait/personality systems, the luxury and luxury trading system, the focus on having city infrastructure not tied ot districts (something I hope Civ 7 does).
And of course, lack of hotseat (due to the combat).
Overall it just didnt capture my attention as much, I feel like I juggle too much information at once. Say what you want but Civilization honestly hands you the information rather well.
I remember when these boards were flooded with claims that Humankind was going to be a Civ killer, the ultimate 4X. Then when released it was released it easy still miles better. I'm glad I didn't buy it - it says a lot that no one seems to be playing it, but they are playing Civ 6, which is hardly top quality itself.
Okay I wanted to keep it to myself at first but then I thought screw it I'll admit in the open, it is my moral duty
I'm sorry, actually I was one of those people (maybe even the most stubborn one), for some reason despite my decrepit cynical age I believed a priori, before seeing those systems in action, that all those Humankind solutions simply have to end up being brilliant by their very nature. Shifting faction identities for player and AI, victory conditions based on point categories separated by game age, land divided between territories, there were few other things I think.
And then I play Humankind for the first three days since release and I'm stoically staring in the abyss like "oh my God I spent so much time hyping all those mechanics to so many people and I already feel it's all way worse than civ6 which I have harshly criticized"
The greatest benefit of Humankind's existence is establishing that actually Civ's traditions to have immortal historical leaders, unitary factions (I mean France from 4000 BC to 2050 AD) and not - point - but - direct - action - based - victory - conditions are... Maybe not the only ones available but oh God, I don't want to ever see this series radically change them
That and Humankind's being one more argument for more realistic and less cartoonish graphical design, and that there are ways for 4x games to have WAY shorter loading times.
I don't like the "Territory" system, I know other game have it, but when utilizing hexes, it feels chaotic to have to juggle what you spend your influence on, not to mention it's almost hard to predict the cost unless you're in that territory, but regardless, i just don't find the manifest destiny a good mechanic overall, I prefer the natural border expansion of cities in Civ 6/5 to be waaay better
Actually quite large digression of mine, harshly criticizing Humankind's everything.
Spoiler:
Of all Humankind's mechanics "WTH I expected to love it and I hate it immediately" territory was probably the biggest hammer to my face. The fact that territory system encourages insane rush to very quickly secure gigantic amounts of land (as you cal it, "manifest destiny"). The fact it is in practice even worse to balance pacing with it that with free land (I really hated how the entire world is 100% colonized by early medieval era). The entire yield of "influence" is imo abstract (what is it really) and redudant (especially as it was utterly useless halfway through the game, once you grabbed your land). And the simplest issue in the end, how it really is fundamentally unsatisfying to have those preset lines arbitrarily and nonsensically cutting off city areas from each other (weirdass border gore curves in the middle of the empty plain, border gore involving canyons and mountain passes, enforced overly symmetrical map design etc).
I don't like the combat system *for the most part*, there's few greviances i have, including the fact that cities fall the moment you have an enemy waltz in because militia line units are so damn weak, sure, I should have defenses up, but the fact that units take up one population point, on top of having to manage so many stacks in so many territories just feels like such a headache.
When Humankind announced "we move units in a stack of like eight of them" I have imagined it is going to greatly reduce headache, clutter, micromanagement and that horrible 1upt sliding tile puzzle with eternal traffic jam everywhere you send an army.
What happened in reality was Humankind repackaging all those problems and unleashing them in discrete battlefield maps in even more infuriating ways than civ5/6, so you face 1upt pains more infrequently, but even more annoyingly once you do fight. Now I have to manage 30 units in a single battle, cramped in like 40 tile battlefield, with very unclear UI of seven height differences and rules which make height differences turn equal unit fight into curb stomp. Great.
Not to mention the fact the entire economic system of Humankind (at least on release) was extremely prone to stupidly ridiculous exponential growth of random human/AI player having like 20 times the amount of production of all other players combined. I am not talking about rare exploits done by stubborn mischevious players, I am talking about me accidentally and casually dominating AIs like that in my second game session.
I did like the diplomacy, the trait/personality systems, the luxury and luxury trading system, the focus on having city infrastructure not tied ot districts (something I hope Civ 7 does).
Diplomacy in Humankind (at least on release) was hands - off, passive affair where you set several treaties and then forget about diplomacy with a given nation for next 50 turns. Very little active things to do, not to mention eternally shifting enemy factions with blank avatars having zero personality. The same problem with trade - it was incredibly passive, background affair, with very little interaction from the player. I won't comment on city development system, because my only experiences with it involved exponential growth until being capable of instantly buying everything everywhere, and the game having like 4 times the amount of buildings of civ5 but with all of them being interchangeable "+3 to yield A".
So, to sum up: dear Firaxis devs, please take inspirations from civ4, civ5, paradox interactive games (especially diplomacy IMO), other 4x games, Old World, damn even few ideas from total war (I'm mainly talking about Three Kingdoms diplomacy and economy), combat system from whatever strategy game you want, just please be as little inspired by Humankind as its humanly (heh) possible.
I do not know what civ 7 will be and when but devs should take one direction: original civ or fantasy civ. I mean, legendary heroes? Or secret societies? I love to make three space ports in three turns with Hercules but I like this idea without Hercules. Buying, very expensive, will be more interesting. Or the same Hercules fighting swordsmen with two vampires on his side... clever idea. Or vampires fighting zombies. Giant death robots in civ 5 gave me headache or something worse. All I want to say I play this game with added "fantasy features" turned off, some bugs corrected by mods, no corporations because I found no mod to correct it. So please decide, very important people in Firaxis or Take 2 decide what you want.
3 years between Beyond the Sword and Civ V.
3 years between Brave New World and Civ VI.
New Frontier Pass finished last year. So based on this math I would estimate Civ VII release will be 2024.
While I hope for October 2023, it looks more realistic to see the game in 2024. The lack of information coming through means it's in the very early stages.
Speaking about the game contents, it's really a tricky beast. While I dislike the amount of things they did in Civ 6, I could say from game design perspective it's close to perfect. Overall I expect more ideas thrown into "boring late-game" and "boting peaceful development" problems. I expect the theme of corporations and trade to be explored deeper for it - it's possible to make them not as optional as religions.
While I hope for October 2023, it looks more realistic to see the game in 2024. The lack of information coming through means it's in the very early stages.
Civ VI was announced 21st (edit: 11th) May 2016 and released 21st October 2016, only 5 months notice. A lack of news is not an indication that it's in the early stages of development, and we've sen hints of it in being in development for a while now. We could even, theoretically, see a 2022 release - although that is very unlikely at this point.
Hexagons have always been used by preference for most wargames since the days of Avalon Hill.
I'm not suggesting that a Civ-on-a-sphere would necessarily be better. My point is that for Civ 7 to look like Civ 7 and not like a modded Civ 6.1, some big new idea is needed. In the case of Humankind, mutating factions are it. In the case of Old World, moves as a resource to be doled out are it. A spherical map would be a big new idea. Whether for good or ill is another matter.
If not, what could make Civ 7 Civ 7 and not just Civ 6 done right? A list of wanted fixes is not enough.
One thing off the top of my head that could be new* and different is what some people around here have been clamoring for: getting rid of workers/builders and using the "public works" system where tile improvements are performed through the city build queue.
*by "new" I mean to the numerical Civ games. This was used in Call To Power, but I'm a little foggy on who actually made that game and whether or not it's considered official canon. Besides, I'm sure most people outside of CivFanatics don't even remember that game existed.
EDIT: something else that could be new and different is what @Leyrann suggested in another thread: a toggle button during game set-up where you can choose whether you want the AI to roleplay as a historic empire builder or actively pursue a Victory Condition as a pseudo-human.
I would love a public works option. It would massively cut down on micro vs building and moving workers around, and late game is often when you are generating lots of cash
Civ VI was announced 21st May 2016 and released 21st October 2016, only 5 months notice. A lack of news is not an indication that it's in the early stages of development, and we've sen hints of it in being in development for a while now. We could even, theoretically, see a 2022 release - although that is very unlikely at this point.
Geez, I didn't remember civ6 was that late, I knew the gap between announcement and release was not long but I thought it was like 6 months at least, and it turns out it's 5.
I actually like this Firaxis policy of announcing games not far from release; it's announcing the game when it is deemed to be in the stable end shape, and it results in Firaxis games having relatively decent quality on release when compared with many, many video game releases of this era of gaming (the exception being terrible AI but again I repeat my mantra, 1UPT system of civ5-6 always was and always will be an absolute hell to design modern AI algorithms for, so it's hard to avoid).
The earlier you announce and hype the game, the harder it is to pinpoint "okay this is totally the amount of time we need to polish it to acceptable shape" and the higher the chance is for "goddamn we advertised this feature but later it turned out it kinda sucks and we have to radically change it, or we have no time to implement it at all". HELLO CYBERPUNK 77 HOW'S IT GOING
Geez, I didn't remember civ6 was that late, I knew the gap between announcement and release was not long but I thought it was like 6 months at least, and it turns out it's 5.
I actually like this Firaxis policy of announcing games not far from release; it's announcing the game when it is deemed to be in the stable end shape, and it results in Firaxis games having relatively decent quality on release when compared with many, many video game releases of this era of gaming (the exception being terrible AI but again I repeat my mantra, 1UPT system of civ5-6 always was and always will be an absolute hell to design modern AI algorithms for, so it's hard to avoid).
The earlier you announce and hype the game, the harder it is to pinpoint "okay this is totally the amount of time we need to polish it to acceptable shape" and the higher the chance is for "goddamn we advertised this feature but later it turned out it kinda sucks and we have to radically change it, or we have no time to implement it at all". HELLO CYBERPUNK 77 HOW'S IT GOING
I think going to some sort of limited stacking (3) and reducing the range of all ranged units to one till you have rocketry would Gordian Knot a huge amount of problems with combat and movement in this game
I might actually build more than two melee naval units.
I hope they don't. Neither for the Game nor for the Graphics Engine.
Civ6 seems to have reached it's limits with the Graphics Engine even before NFP IMO, GS put a limit on the max Map Size you can play on without Crashes. And then NFP further pushed that limit with the Asset Bug Limit and Graphical Bugs and Glitches. Ofc we can't know for sure what exactly is the cause of that (the Devs might know), but I would have a new Graphics Engine for other reasons too, mainly for a different approach to loading Assets and Modding (like no baked assets as is the case in Civ6).
I would also like a new Game Engine rather than reusing the same one as Civ6's. Not for the sake of it, but if the Devs improve the loading Time of Games and the waiting time between Turns. Humankind has done a great Job at that, although at the cost of something else (Hotseat - or is it for some other reason?), but for Civ7 a middle ground would be optimal (like without sacrificing Hotseat Mode). The Processing power in Civ6 seems to be very slow, and gets even slower the larger the map is and the more players are in the Game, but I don't think that they are the problem here, bc even in the 1st few turns of a game where there isn't much going on the waiting time between turns oftentimes is longer than it should be. The Devs should prioritize efficient code over "just code something that works and don't bother about optimizing and efficiency because of Time/Resources", no one anticipates Civ7 in 2022, so, Firaxis, please take your Time and put more time and effort in optimizing all the code, I think the prough-reading would probably even fix some possible Bugs.
I hope they don't. Neither for the Game nor for the Graphics Engine.
Civ6 seems to have reached it's limits with the Graphics Engine even before NFP IMO, GS put a limit on the max Map Size you can play on without Crashes. And then NFP further pushed that limit with the Asset Bug Limit and Graphical Bugs and Glitches. Ofc we can't know for sure what exactly is the cause of that (the Devs might know), but I would have a new Graphics Engine for other reasons too, mainly for a different approach to loading Assets and Modding (like no baked assets as is the case in Civ6).
I would also like a new Game Engine rather than reusing the same one as Civ6's. Not for the sake of it, but if the Devs improve the loading Time of Games and the waiting time between Turns. Humankind has done a great Job at that, although at the cost of something else (Hotseat - or is it for some other reason?), but for Civ7 a middle ground would be optimal (like without sacrificing Hotseat Mode). The Processing power in Civ6 seems to be very slow, and gets even slower the larger the map is and the more players are in the Game, but I don't think that they are the problem here, bc even in the 1st few turns of a game where there isn't much going on the waiting time between turns oftentimes is longer than it should be. The Devs should prioritize efficient code over "just code something that works and don't bother about optimizing and efficiency because of Time/Resources", no one anticipates Civ7 in 2022, so, Firaxis, please take your Time and put more time and effort in optimizing all the code, I think the prough-reading would probably even fix some possible Bugs.
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