So if the even numbered Civs are the better ones, your expectations for 7

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Of course some may debate whether the even numbered Civs are actually better, feel free to discuss that here. I fully admit that's my opinion/observation that 2, 4, and 6 are the superior titles. Not to say the odd numbered ones were bad. I enjoyed them at the time (though I never actually played Civ 1). I think 5 was the best it could be given how many serious changes they made to the formula, though it took two expansions to get to that point. Of course Civ6 really didn't become that great until later updates/expansions. It's hard to believe we used to not have map search or a city remembering what it last built or a queue, but I still liked it out of the gate unlike 3 and 5.

I admit I'm a little worried about Civ7. But they seem to have a good team, one of the strongest they've had so there's that. My main worry is taking the game too far from what it's supposed to be. Of course that is debatable. Can they come up with new ideas to keep it fresh while maintaining that core empire building gameplay? Are there any new ideas that haven't been done? Obviously Humankind tried some new ideas with mixed success. I'm not sure some of those ideas can ever work. I do feel a certain element of roleplay is a strong point of Civ6 and Civ5, so I would rather keep the one civilization entire game aspect the same.

What are your views of the entire Civilization series and the future of the series?
 
Well, I've only played Civ 5 (no expansions) and 6 so far, so can't say whether the even numbered iterations of Civ are the best ones or not, but having researched a lot about all the Games(except the 1st One) lately, I found the more and most interesting and fun Gameplay mechanics are in Civ 4 and 6, followed by Civ 5 right behind them.

As for the Future of the Game, I think, based on how certain mechanics turned out for Civ6, Civ7 will most likely have these game Mechanics/System completely reworked:
- The Religion System: although it isn't a bad Mechanic (micromanagement aside), I don't see anybody loving it or even defend it from Players who critisize it.
- Espionage: nothing unique/special about it. Will be completely reworked.
- World Congress: Mmm, yo'know...
- 1UPT: no breaner!
- Naval Game: I don't know why, but I think because the "Play the Map" design of Civ6 only worked for the Land Map and didn't include the Sea Map, Civ 7 will fix that imbalance.
- Trade Routes: they are just too much micromanagement in the late Game, and I can't see how the Devs could fix that without completely changing how they work.

Things that I will be kept but Improved on:
- Districts: I think they will improve them a little bit, make them have a bit less sources of adjacency bonuses but with sources distinct for each District Type, perhaps add more mutually exclusive Buildings and/or a Tier4 Building...etc.
- Policies & Governments: One of the best Features of Civ 6 IMO, however they could be improved on, and I think they will. Maybe something like a cost (not necessarilly in Gold, perhaps in temporary Unrest (kinda like a reduced version of Anarchy) in your Cities or something like that) when you change a Policy, adding Ideologies for late Game...etc.
- Great People: Civ6 has the best Great People System of all the Civ Games, my guess is that they will try to make the GP have more (in number) Unique Abilities or more unique (interesting/fun) individual Abilities.
- Boosts: The Tech/Civic Boosts are a very cool feature, but kinda underutilized, or at least there is no interesting/fun way of triggering them, just build x of A, Kill y of B Unit, place this Wonder...etc. I actually just want triggers that help the actual Gameplay (why should I always have to get X to trigger A, If I don't need/want X) like what you're doing should decide what the trigger is, and Boosts coold be also a solution to Civs fallen behind.

Things that I don't think they will remove/revise:
- Builder Charges: this worked really well for Civ6, especially with the "Play the Map" design of Civ6. I really hope they don't turn back to how Workers worked.
- Improvements: although it's the logical thing to do (removing them/including them as districts) if they keep the Districts System, this would make Builders/workers kinda useless. The only thing that I can imagine the Devs doing, is allowing for multiple Improvements per Tile, like 2 or 3. That would be neat!
- City-States: I can see some little improvements here and there, but overall I expect the same System.
- Duplicate Leaders: Though, I think they will keep it just for Modders, just like they did for Civ6.

I'm really curious how the Art Style of Civ7 will look like. Will it be the same as in Civ6 (for easier Map reading)? Will they do a more realistic Style? something in the middle gouund? I have no clue, but I'm exceited to find out! I'm actually just hoping for a good 1UPT System and bigger Maps.
 
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My main worry is taking the game too far from what it's supposed to be. Of course that is debatable.

I'm going to put this to rest once and for all, so we don't need to discuss it. It is not debatable, and they can't take the game too far from what it is supposed to be. They make the game, so they decide what it is supposed to be. We can only debate on what we would like to have seen, and see if what we want and they put out aligns.

As for your general question:

I have no real thoughts about the mechanics, but to me Civ is one of those franchises that starts with a product with some new ideas/designs, and leaves a lot of standard features behind to add in later. No production queue in CiVI at launch was more than shameful in my opinion. World builders, map tacks, production queues, easy overviews of trades and trade routes, diplomacy, war, etc, should all be standard in the game. A franchise with this many itterations should just have some things as standard, but to be honest I expect CiVII to do exactly the same again: release a product with some new shiny things, and leave us wanting things that should have been in the base game in the first place, only for the devs to add it later down the line (or not at all, CiVi world builder I'm looking at you).
 
2 and 4 definitely were highs in their own right. I feel like 5 and 6 splits the lot a bit more evenly among them: They both have some things they do better than the other. My hope is we'll get a 7 that manages to take the best of both 5 and 6. My fear is we'll get a 7 that takes the game off in an even worse direction.

I can't help draw parallels to HoMaM series where 3 and 5 were strong bids for the best of the series, and I hoped that the 6th - and later the 7th - installment would manage to take the best from these games, yet instead 6 completely ruined the game, and 7 somehow managed to make it even worse.
 
A lot of the core concepts I like, they need some tweaking or adjustment

Things like revealing a resource suddenly making a tile unbuildable.

The biggest thing far and away is the game becoming incredibly tedious in the last few eras
 
The even numbered ones being the better ones is based on the idea that they tend to shake up the game mechanics more in the Odd Numbered ones, and then refine in the Even numbered one.

With that, I'd expect more radical changes in 7.

Having said that, if Ed Beach stays on as lead designer, that might change that a bit, as I don't think the game has had a lead designer stay on for multiple iterations in that regard.
 
Well, I don't know for version number, but for me the next good iteration will be the one with more empire building and less gameboarding.
 
The even numbered ones being the better ones is based on the idea that they tend to shake up the game mechanics more in the Odd Numbered ones, and then refine in the Even numbered one.

With that, I'd expect more radical changes in 7.

Having said that, if Ed Beach stays on as lead designer, that might change that a bit, as I don't think the game has had a lead designer stay on for multiple iterations in that regard.

To this point, Civ 2 was really more like what we'd consider an expansion to Civ 1 in terms of changes than it was a new game by today's standards. Civ 3 started introducing flavor to the game and brought about a layer of depth and complexity that Civ 1/2 players weren't accustomed to and consequently, I think got unfairly criticized. Civ 4 being a masterpiece really drove home Civ 3s reputation but ultimately it wasn't THAT bad a game IMO.

As for Civ 5/6 I still see much debate about which was better on here so I don't know that the even/odd thing holds as true as the OP suggested.

I admit I'm a little worried about Civ7. But they seem to have a good team, one of the strongest they've had so there's that. My main worry is taking the game too far from what it's supposed to be. Of course that is debatable. Can they come up with new ideas to keep it fresh while maintaining that core empire building gameplay? Are there any new ideas that haven't been done? Obviously Humankind tried some new ideas with mixed success. I'm not sure some of those ideas can ever work. I do feel a certain element of roleplay is a strong point of Civ6 and Civ5, so I would rather keep the one civilization entire game aspect the same.

What are your views of the entire Civilization series and the future of the series?

After seeing that IGN interview with the previous lead designers and seeing them talk about the value of characters and the interest in improving diplomacy I started toying with the idea of what really is a leader in Civ. Then I also considered my own previous thoughts about what I haven't liked about Civ 5/6: That they've taken flavor too far to the point of ruining balance and forcing your playthroughs to go certain ways based on which leader you choose my conclusion is that they could do themselves a huge favor in Civ 7 with a major change. I think they need to dial back the flavor a notch or two, not back to Civ 4 levels but not as far as Civ 5/6 have it. I think every nation should have only 1 defining trait and I think these traits need to be a little less extreme than some of the ones we saw in Civ 6 because it doesn't feel good to be forced into a particular play style. In addition to that, I think every nation should get 2 from a pool of UUs, UBs, UDs and maybe some other minor unique that's just a slight upgrade on something everyone has (something like a unique government type for instance). These unique aren't really game-breaking as they are just a slight buff in certain situations on things everyone has access to. Finally, I think leaders should go back to the Civ 4 system of having personality traits that offer them slight buffs in certain aspects of the game.

Now here is where I think they can introduce the "character" stuff they were talking about. In addition to having a ton of premade leaders with their traits, I would like to see them add a character creator to the game, much like you see in a typical RPG game. You'd be able to customize their appearance and pick from the pool of personality traits to determine what they're good at. You could make yourself any person from history as you wanted, or you could make yourself or any fictitious character the leader of your nation. This will let you toy around with more combos of strengths and weaknesses with each nation and I think adding this would attract many people who haven't really been as interested in Civ in the past. For those of you who get frustrated by the lack of historical accuracy added to the game by something like this: how is it any worse than having Teddy Roosevelt lead the US in 4000 B.C.? If you're already dealing with ahistorical notions such as that, who is to say who would rise to power over a nation.
 
To this point, Civ 2 was really more like what we'd consider an expansion to Civ 1 in terms of changes than it was a new game by today's standards. Civ 3 started introducing flavor to the game and brought about a layer of depth and complexity that Civ 1/2 players weren't accustomed to and consequently, I think got unfairly criticized. Civ 4 being a masterpiece really drove home Civ 3s reputation but ultimately it wasn't THAT bad a game IMO.

As for Civ 5/6 I still see much debate about which was better on here so I don't know that the even/odd thing holds as true as the OP suggested.

Yeah, 3 probably gets a negative reputation overall because it came out after Alpha Centauri, which was absolutely fantastic, and then when 4 basically took all the good ideas in 3 and then refined them all, it makes it harder to look back on. 3 I would probably say was better than 2, but maybe just not as much of a gap as 1 -> 2 or 3->4, so it has a slight negative memory with it.

Personally 5 was very much a one step forward/2 steps back. After 5 came out, I simply could not go back to playing civ 4 anymore despite how much I loved it. But it also had enough flaws in it that I got tired of it fairly quickly (relatively speaking).

After seeing that IGN interview with the previous lead designers and seeing them talk about the value of characters and the interest in improving diplomacy I started toying with the idea of what really is a leader in Civ. Then I also considered my own previous thoughts about what I haven't liked about Civ 5/6: That they've taken flavor too far to the point of ruining balance and forcing your playthroughs to go certain ways based on which leader you choose my conclusion is that they could do themselves a huge favor in Civ 7 with a major change. I think they need to dial back the flavor a notch or two, not back to Civ 4 levels but not as far as Civ 5/6 have it. I think every nation should have only 1 defining trait and I think these traits need to be a little less extreme than some of the ones we saw in Civ 6 because it doesn't feel good to be forced into a particular play style. In addition to that, I think every nation should get 2 from a pool of UUs, UBs, UDs and maybe some other minor unique that's just a slight upgrade on something everyone has (something like a unique government type for instance). These unique aren't really game-breaking as they are just a slight buff in certain situations on things everyone has access to. Finally, I think leaders should go back to the Civ 4 system of having personality traits that offer them slight buffs in certain aspects of the game.

Now here is where I think they can introduce the "character" stuff they were talking about. In addition to having a ton of premade leaders with their traits, I would like to see them add a character creator to the game, much like you see in a typical RPG game. You'd be able to customize their appearance and pick from the pool of personality traits to determine what they're good at. You could make yourself any person from history as you wanted, or you could make yourself or any fictitious character the leader of your nation. This will let you toy around with more combos of strengths and weaknesses with each nation and I think adding this would attract many people who haven't really been as interested in Civ in the past. For those of you who get frustrated by the lack of historical accuracy added to the game by something like this: how is it any worse than having Teddy Roosevelt lead the US in 4000 B.C.? If you're already dealing with ahistorical notions such as that, who is to say who would rise to power over a nation.

That's really a big challenge with a series and game like this. Like, there's a part of me that finds it absolutely essential that every civ has a bunch of unique pieces, and you can really go completely wild handling them. Like I love how I play some civs and I'm constantly flipping back and forth on the appeal lens and planning everything around that. And other civs where I am burning and mining the entire countryside and almost find it sacrilegious if a forest has survived to the medieval era. But I agree that having that level of uniqueness creates challenges for balance. So I'm really not sure if we should be going further all in on these setups, where civs are even more unique to the point that a Roman campus and a Norwegian Campus have completely different adjacency rules, for example. Or if things would be better with milder uniqueness and you can have a little more flexibility.
 
I'm going to put this to rest once and for all, so we don't need to discuss it. It is not debatable, and they can't take the game too far from what it is supposed to be. They make the game, so they decide what it is supposed to be. We can only debate on what we would like to have seen, and see if what we want and they put out aligns.
I'll put it to rest in a different way: they are AAA developers owned by a large corporation. They will never take the kind of risks necessary to fundamentally change the game, even where such changes might be a good idea.

As for what I expect--Well, the best I'm hoping for is a more polished iteration on Civ6's better ideas.

Now here is where I think they can introduce the "character" stuff they were talking about. In addition to having a ton of premade leaders with their traits, I would like to see them add a character creator to the game, much like you see in a typical RPG game. You'd be able to customize their appearance and pick from the pool of personality traits to determine what they're good at. You could make yourself any person from history as you wanted, or you could make yourself or any fictitious character the leader of your nation. This will let you toy around with more combos of strengths and weaknesses with each nation and I think adding this would attract many people who haven't really been as interested in Civ in the past.
Yes, this has worked so well for Humankind. :mischief:
 
As for the Future of the Game, I think, based on how certain mechanics turned out for Civ6, Civ7 will most likely have these game Mechanics/System completely reworked:
- 1UPT: no breaner!

Things that I will be kept but Improved on:
- Districts: I think they will improve them a little bit, make them have a bit less sources of adjacency bonuses but with sources distinct for each District Type, perhaps add more mutually exclusive Buildings and/or a Tier4 Building...etc.

Things that I don't think they will remove/revise:
- Builder Charges: this worked really well for Civ6, especially with the "Play the Map" design of Civ6. I really hope they don't turn back to how Workers worked.

I'm really curious how the Art Style of Civ7 will look like. Will it be the same as in Civ6 (for easier Map reading)? Will they do a more realistic Style? something in the middle gouund? I have no clue, but I'm exceited to find out! I'm actually just hoping for a good 1UPT System and bigger Maps.

Personally, I hope 1UPT goes away but I don't want to see stacks of doom brought back either. I think some modest stacking is fine and I think maybe introducing logistics into the game is a way to compromise between the two choices.

With districts, I think they should not be population limited, and I also think they need to be condensed I bit. Maybe merge Industrial and Commercial into 1, Religious and Cultural into 1, all the military-related stuff into one. I always felt that the restrictions on districts caused too much tension for me. It always felt like I needed to be overly selective with building them because I was only ever going to get 3-4 per most cities. It made me long for the days of old civ games when I could essentially build everything in all my major cities by the end of the game.

Personally, I was never a fan of builder charges, but I do agree that the old system had issues as well.
 
Yes, this has worked so well for Humankind. :mischief:

What I'm talking about isn't really much like Humankind at all. I'm basically saying Civ 4's leader traits and leaders while also including a character designer for more flavor, possibly as a DLC feature down the road. I don't think Humankind's system is remotely related to this discussion.
 
What I'm talking about isn't really much like Humankind at all. I'm basically saying Civ 4's leader traits and leaders while also including a character designer for more flavor, possibly as a DLC feature down the road. I don't think Humankind's system is remotely related to this discussion.
Customizable appearance and personality, selecting their abilities--that is precisely the Humankind system. I think the feature every Civ game until Civ6 has had where you can rename your civ and leader needs to make a come back, but I'm not at all in favor of generic avatars replacing leaders. I'd like to see more RPG elements in Civ, but character creation isn't one of them.
 
It's hard to knock the odd-numbered civs when 1 is an odd number. Sure the others built on the formula, but the OG Civ can hardly be called a bad iteration of the franchise when it laid the groundwork for everything that would come after.

Sounds like we're veering into a question of how much customization there should be in Civ though! I kind of feel like they should avoid going too heavily into it and that heavy customization works better in sci-fi games which are by their nature speculative as to who the factions might be...
 
Of course Civ6 really didn't become that great until later updates/expansions. It's hard to believe we used to not have map search or a city remembering what it last built or a queue, but I still liked it out of the gate unlike 3 and 5.

I enjoyed vanilla civ because it was simple enough that the missing features didn't make much difference to me. I do agree that missing features is not a good thing would rather have a smaller feature set to being with that is "complete".
Thes lessons they take from civ 6 are:
- You can sell expansions/DLC for seven years so it's worth taking the time and investment to get AI and "modability" right at release.
- Having a Mod and Multiplayer community helps keep the game alive
- There's lots of interest in less well know civs
 
Personally my expectations for civilization 7 is probably that they have a great base for the game and then fill it with DLC a la NFP. By adding random things that completely clash with each other. My apologies for being so pessimistic but I am kind of scared that after they called the NFP a success, they see it as a good thing to add mechanics that work against each other. But at least if they follow the NFP formula, they will update the game more regarly....
 
Customizable appearance and personality, selecting their abilities--that is precisely the Humankind system. I think the feature every Civ game until Civ6 has had where you can rename your civ and leader needs to make a come back, but I'm not at all in favor of generic avatars replacing leaders. I'd like to see more RPG elements in Civ, but character creation isn't one of them.
The HK system is nullified by their marketing choice of locking them, you can't name them, you can't save them, you can't play against them, you can only download and play against other players avatars (thanks AOM for its mod BTW). I don't think it can be used as a reference to say it won't work. It's not useful in HK because of the locks placed on the system, not because of the possibility itself.
 
They will never take the kind of risks necessary to fundamentally change the game, even where such changes might be a good idea.
You mean, like by introducing 1UPT and changing squares to hexes? ;)

(the point of dissonance here, that the poster you replied to was trying to draw a line in the sand with, is that both "fundamental changes" and "good ideas" often align with subjective approval rather than anything else)
 
Personally, I hope 1UPT goes away but I don't want to see stacks of doom brought back either. I think some modest stacking is fine and I think maybe introducing logistics into the game is a way to compromise between the two choices.
I've nothing against limited Stacks, but only if they aren't +5 Units of the same Type. Just different Unit Types on the same Tile would make the AI make a better use of the Units (Arstahd's Improved Movement Mod: works good for AI even without coding it to use it, imagine if AI was coded/trained to use it) + an Improved Army/Corps System: might actualy work well. The Devs, I think, didn't experiment much with the Army/Corps System in Civ6, it seems its just something that they tried for some while and decided to just add it to the Game, even without much depth to it, and that's why it came short as a solution to 1UPT Issues in the late Game.
I think Humankind did a good Job with the Unit Stacks though, so something similar but without the tactical Combat would be good enough for Civ7 too IMO.

With districts, I think they should not be population limited, and I also think they need to be condensed I bit. Maybe merge Industrial and Commercial into 1, Religious and Cultural into 1, all the military-related stuff into one. I always felt that the restrictions on districts caused too much tension for me. It always felt like I needed to be overly selective with building them because I was only ever going to get 3-4 per most cities. It made me long for the days of old civ games when I could essentially build everything in all my major cities by the end of the game.
I think the Population limit is to have some downside to wide play, so that only tall play can allow for many specialist Districts in a City. Though, it would have been Ok if there was actually some more benefits to tall play.
I completely agree about mixing Holy Site with Theater Square (perhaps making the Holy Site a whole district only as a Unique District for some Civ), but not wih the IZ, though, CH can be mutually exclusive with the Harbor (like if you have CC on coast, then you can just build the CH instead of a Harbor, especially if you could build some Harbor Buildings in the CC if it's on coast). the Military Districts could stay, but they shouldn't require Population.
after they called the NFP a success, they see it as a good thing to add mechanics that work against each other
I'm not sure if that's the Impression they got from NFP. I mean, sure, NFP was/is a success, but not because of the Game Modes, some were good but they only are fun because the Game already has good features, so those Game Modes are just something that squeezes some more fun from the Game in a way that a full expansion of mechanics can't achieve, since the Game Modes kinda go outside of the familar box (and less immersive), so they don't have to be imbedded with other Game mechanics. So I'm not afraid that Civ7 will have NFP like mechanics or prioritize them, they might add some later down the line, and maybe more than NFP has added, but they will be like in NFP: Icings on the Cake that you can turn On/Off.

Although, I have to admit, some Game Modes, like Barbarian Clans or shuffle Tech/Civic (togglable) could make it into the base Game.
 
The HK system is nullified by their marketing choice of locking them, you can't name them, you can't save them, you can't play against them, you can only download and play against other players avatars (thanks AOM for its mod BTW). I don't think it can be used as a reference to say it won't work. It's not useful in HK because of the locks placed on the system, not because of the possibility itself.
That HK's execution was particularly bad doesn't change my opinion of the idea in general.

You mean, like by introducing 1UPT and changing squares to hexes? ;)
Oh, no, my argument is invalidated because they made a couple moderate-sized changes more than a decade ago! :crazyeye: No company the size of 2K will ever take the kind of risks necessary to redefine the game. That's why big companies don't make good games. Of course they will introduce new ideas; they do actually want you to buy a sequel. Not all AAA games are CoD. But bold decisions and corporate culture do not walk hand in hand.
 
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