"steer the course of your story by choosing a new civilization to represent your empire" (civ switching)

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

America might be a civ that's unlocked by meeting certain requirements, too, like Mongolia - "having more cities on another continent than your capital" or something.

I assumed that all civs would have a "historical" path to choose from, like Confucius' China could go into Mongolia normally, but other civs can if they meet the requirements, like Egypt?

 

[Somebody613]

Its not about the idea itself, but about binding known leaders to unrelated civilizations and rooting different civilizations from unrelated civilizations. If any of these would be historically related, would be fine.

That's not what I said.
First, who even needs fixed leaders in the first place?
I'd be 101% fine with "role-playing" as a Leader all along, lol.
I mean, I am the guy LEADING this civilization, ain't I?
Second, "unrelated" is a tricky word here.
What makes "Mongolia" be "Mongolia"?
Well, territory, ethnicity, specific cultural features, and naming all of that in a predefined way.
But that's precisely my point - we can start "generic" enough that our civ can "assume" basically any (or any from a defined list) civilization as if "it's us".
Start as "generic Asians", tame some horses, unlock some nomadic civics - and why not call yourself "Mongols" NOW?
Still a bit convoluted, but way less compared to how you would have "Ancient Egyptians" surviving into modern world WITHOUT changing culturally whatsoever.
Sorry, but NOPE - that ain't "historical" AT ALL.

 

[eso12por8]

I'm thinking maybe if we could opt to automate the crises, or opt to choose the crises, it may be more favorable. Overall, I like the concept of the crisis mechanic and gradual decline into a new age. It may make civil wars more likely.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Its not about the idea itself, but about binding known leaders to unrelated civilizations and rooting different civilizations from unrelated civilizations. If any of these would be historically related, would be fine.

My thing about this line of argumentation is that I don’t think there’s an amazing historically accurate yet gameplay-friendly way to actually get it to be related civs

their example was horrendous. Egypt to Songhai to Buganda…has what in common? Being on the continent of Africa? My ancient Assyrians switching to the Abbasids in the Exploration age and then Ottomans in the modern age would be a terrible evolution considering both the Abbasids and Ottomans tried to eliminate the real-life Assyrians, who are still around, but by civ standards, not likely to have real medieval and modern equivalents. If the Shawnee have to evolve into the US, it would be an embarrassment to the indigenous resistance against American expansionism as well as the fact that modern American culture has gone long ways to not be influenced by the indigenous people who both came before us and continue to live in the US with little representation. Especially since they’re still around.

This is why at-minimum I think this new game direction needs to let us keep our current civ—If I want the Maya, Aztecs, Shawnee, Maori to be a major power in the modern day, I should be able to have that option. It’s more likely that they let us keep playing as the Assyrians then get the modern and medieval Assyrians to also be civs.

 

[Somebody613]

I wonder if all they have to do is to not use historical civilizations but use maybe encompassing identites like Millenia did would fix the criticism. No one is complaining about the mechanic, a lot of people are complaining about the immersion breaking.

The problem with that is that the game is still named (and is built around) the concept of "civs", so it must still somehow boil down to those.
But "fixed civs" is a totally different issue, indeed.

 

[Krajzen]

CONSOLATION POST FOR PEOPLE SCARED LIKE ME AT FIRST

Keep in mind that in Humankind the system was forced upon the player largely due to this game's horrible mod support and civ switching being enforced by its mechanics. It is highly possible that "classic mode" is either going to be a popular mod (or maybe even official option added by Firaxis if they decide negative response is too high).

Also, Humankind's system was made terrible by the fact you made six transitions and the game had essentially no leaders (avatar system was godawful). Meanwhile in civ7 you're going to have only two transitions plus you have leaders (plus, again, I highly expect mods and modes for AI civs remaining old civs, or going for the closest historical paths etc). So you have much more time to get attached - on epic speed I would spend like 200 turns with each of three civs even if I decided to switch each time and had no "viable feeling" transitions. Much less transitions also means that it is actually possible to fill out sensible development lines using mods, which brings us too...

Finally, this system has incredible potential once you add mod civs. It allows for epic things such as:
China having progression of dynasties (Han -> Ming -> Qing)=
India having countless possible evolution lines
History of Iran (Achaemenids -> Safavids -> modern Iran);
History of Arabs (say Nabateans -> Abbasids -> any modern country)
History of France (Gauls -> French Kingdom -> French Republic (because why not?? mods will allow that))
History of England (Britons -> Anglo-Saxons -> Great Britain)
History of Italy (Rome -> let's say Florence -> Italy)
History of Germany (your fav Germanic tribe -> your fav HRE state -> Germany)
History of Turks (Gokturks -> Ottomans -> Turkey)
History of Andean civs (Nazca -> Inca -> Peru (honestly I'm fine with it - but you can retain Inca))
more historical America (Britons/Anglo-Saxons -> Great Britain -> America )
History of any Bantu country (Bantu -> precolonial empire -> modern country)
History of Korea (Goryeo -> Joseon -> your fav modern Korea)

In Humankind filling out sensible transitions was impossible due to their number (and miserable mod scene). But here it is tangible and actually opens amazing opportunities. I can repeat the above with sensible transitions for Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Burma, history of Bengal and Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Russia (Slavs -> Muscovy -> Russia), Nordic peoples (Proto-Germanic -> Norse -> Norway), Greece (ancient polis -> Byzantium -> Greece), Spain (Iberians -> Visigoths -> Spain), Ukraine (Rus -> Cossacks -> Ukraine)...

Doesn't this sound glorious? There is a potential in this system to make each historical civilization shine greater than before, with fans creativity.

There will be mods modifying the system or even removing it, there may be official game modes, there will be your agency, which taken together will most probably enable you to see the world of old civ games - but there will be also options for something greater. Humankind never had this potential because six transitions, its systems, its avatars and its terrible modding made anti-immersion inescapable; here we have hope.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I wonder if all they have to do is to not use historical civilizations but use maybe encompassing identites like Millenia did would fix the criticism. No one is complaining about the mechanic, a lot of people are complaining about the immersion breaking.

ppl are complaining about the mechanic insofar it’s basically impossible to implement without a) civ losing its identity and b) respecting the cultures they wish to highlight

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The problem with that is that the game is still named (and is built around) the concept of "civs", so it must still somehow boil down to those.
But "fixed civs" is a totally different issue, indeed.

You could easily alleviate this by attaching the Civ back to the leader.

But instead of it being Civilization > Leader.

The order is now Leader > Civilization

The focus is all on the leader, not the civilization. if that makes sense?

 

[Evie]

I assumed that all civs would have a "historical" path to choose from, like Confucius' China could go into Mongolia normally, but other civs can if they meet the requirements, like Egypt?

Perhaps, but I also kind of assume that England and China are just about the two civs most likely to have different iterations for different eras.

Especially England since England -> United Kingdom/Great Britain is such an obvious gimme, and come on, an era that covers the Industrial revolution without Victorian Great Britain/United Kingdom as a civilization?

 

[AffineConstant]

No civilization has stood the test of six thousand years as Civ presents it. No, not even China.

But it was fun. History schmistory, almost no one that plays Civ cares about how "historically accurate" it was, fighting a helicopter with a pikeman is fun.

Justifying a confusing change to make the game less fun by saying it's "more historical" feels like it's out of touch with most of the players that actually enjoy Civ.

 

[bengalryan9]

Honestly, I think many of you are looking at this the wrong way - this is a great mechanic that makes a ton of sense, and you're just getting caught up in the language they've chosen to use in implementing it. Let me explain using the example they gave us...

You start the game as the Egyptian civilization. As the era changes, you are given a choice of two paths (that we've seen so far) you can go down - the Songhai (river based civ) or the Mongols (a horse based civ). You are given a choice to shape your civ based on what the map looks like, which is awesome. Let's say after exploring in the first era you learn that there are several horse tiles nearby but only one short river. In this case, it would make sense historically for your people to gravitate towards being a horse-based civilization rather than become dependent on rivers, so you choose to evolve your civilization into a nomadic horse-based people. In living this life, it makes sense that your civ would probably develop similar characteristics that the historic Mongol people did - they'd probably develop similar traits, similar military units, and similar buildings. If the game just called this choice of path "Nomadic Horseriders", but still referred to your civ as the Egyptians, I'm guessing most people wouldn't have any problem with this mechanic at all. Rather than say your Egyptian civ has taken a "Nomadic Horseriding path (similar to the Mongols)" with a "unique mounted ranged unit (similar to the Mongol Keshik) and a "unique trait centered around enslaving enemy units (similar to the Mongols)", Firaxis just said "hey, let's just call this path the Mongols". I understand why they did it that way - because if they didn't, we'd see tons of fans complaining about "where is civ X?!?!?!" - but because they did, it opens up the argument we're seeing a lot of, which is "OMG, my Egyptians became Mongols, that didn't happen in history". Don't get hung up on the name!

I think it's exciting that we're going to be able to shape our civ to the map in order to play what's given to us. I'm sure many of you have rolled games where the map you generated was completely at odds with whatever "historic" bonuses your civ had. It makes zero sense for my land-locked Phoenician settlers to have a bunch of bonuses based around being on the coast, or for my Roman settlers to have mastery over iron weapons despite not having any iron remotely close to my lands, or for my Aztec settlers on a continent all by themselves to be fierce warrior geared around battle, whether it fits how they were in history or not. Now you can take that landlocked Phoenician civilization and develop them towards taking advantage of all the hills surrounding them, or you can develop your iron-less Romans to specialize in horseback warfare instead, or you can develop your isolated Aztecs to right haiku to pass the time. The civ you develop and grow is really going to be *your civ*, not something steered into playing any specific way. I think that's really cool.

If you're getting upset about this there's a pretty easy workaround. Anywhere you see a specific civilization mentioned in gameplay footage, just mentally put "-like" after the name of it. Your Egyptians aren't changing into Mongols, they're changing to be "Mongol-like". They're still Egyptians if you want them to be, it's your game, call them what you want. They're just developing in unique ways based on the surrounding geography - just like throughout history. We're essentially playing a game with custom civs, where real civ names were shoehorned in to meet fan expectations.

 

[Somebody613]

My thing about this line of argumentation is that I don’t think there’s an amazing historically accurate yet gameplay-friendly way to actually get it to be related civs

their example was horrendous. Egypt to Songhai to Buganda…has what in common? Being on the continent of Africa? My ancient Assyrians switching to the Abbasids in the Exploration age and then Ottomans in the modern age would be a terrible evolution considering both the Abbasids and Ottomans tried to eliminate the real-life Assyrians, who are still around, but by civ standards, not likely to have real medieval and modern equivalents. If the Shawnee have to evolve into the US, it would be an embarrassment to the indigenous resistance against American expansionism as well as the fact that modern American culture has gone long ways to not be influenced by the indigenous people who both came before us and continue to live in the US with little representation. Especially since they’re still around.

This is why at-minimum I think this new game direction needs to let us keep our current civ—If I want the Maya, Aztecs, Shawnee, Maori to be a major power in the modern day, I should be able to have that option. It’s more likely that they let us keep playing as the Assyrians then get the modern and medieval Assyrians to also be civs.

A good point at the surface.
But is the problem merely the NAME of your civ - or is it the "civics" instead?
Like, what is better (I don't know it myself, by the way, it's an open question):
1) Have Native Indians adopt ex-European civics (and religion), yet keep their civ name intact?
2) Adopt those civics and automatically get renamed into USA?
3) Don't have any such options in the game to begin with, resorting back to the old-style "eternally fixed nationalities"?
I don't know what's the best, but I kinda enjoy messing around with the (1) option in games/mods like C2C and CK3, loool.
But that's just me, yes.

 

[Evie]

But it was fun. History schmistory, almost no one that plays Civ cares about how "historically accurate" it was, fighting a helicopter with a pikeman is fun.

Justifying a confusing change to make the game less fun by saying it's "more historical" feels like it's out of touch with most of the players that actually enjoy Civ.

Except, apparently, the dozens of people in this thread who arein fact complaining about this change because they feel it's not historically realistic.Apparently, they care.

As to "it was fun", apparently, it was so much fun that many games never actually lasted the whole six thousand years (or until victory) because people got bored of them.

Seems like "fun" doesn't stand the test of time, either.

 

[ButtBillionaire]

To reiterate my sentiments in the showcase thread a bit more concisely: To me, ruling one civ as one of their historical leaders, immortalised, until contemporary times is Civilization's identity. Changing civs every era is Humankind's.

My disappointment stems from that I wanted more of Civilization's identity, and has nothing to do with how well or poorly Humankind's civ-switching mechanic was implemented or received. Who's going to carry the mantle of that Civ-style identity now? Ara, maybe? Or Millennia, kind of?

That's how I feel right now, at least. Who knows, maybe it'll be great and this is just a natural evolution in the franchise's history, and in five years I'll look back and wonder what my problem was. Certainly wouldn't mind for that to happen - I'd end up happier.

 

[bitula]

That's not what I said.
First, who even needs fixed leaders in the first place?
I'd be 101% fine with "role-playing" as a Leader all along, lol.
I mean, I am the guy LEADING this civilization, ain't I?
Second, "unrelated" is a tricky word here.
What makes "Mongolia" be "Mongolia"?
Well, territory, ethnicity, specific cultural features, and naming all of that in a predefined way.
But that's precisely my point - we can start "generic" enough that our civ can "assume" basically any (or any from a defined list) civilization as if "it's us".
Start as "generic Asians", tame some horses, unlock some nomadic civics - and why not call yourself "Mongols" NOW?
Still a bit convoluted, but way less compared to how you would have "Ancient Egyptians" surviving into modern world WITHOUT changing culturally whatsoever.
Sorry, but NOPE - that ain't "historical" AT ALL.

Look, I believe, that Orks exist in the universe or multiverse (I'm not joking), so an alternative history could be that after Cleoparta died a dimension door opened and Orks surged in and Egypt became Orcania. This is absolutely logical. Still I do not want to see Orks in civilization games. Same way I do not want England become Mongolia because there were excess of horses on the english pastures (or whatever, I'm not english speaker). This is about imersion, not logic. And I think more or less this is what most people think about this issue.

 

[Krajzen]

I would honestly make above a separate post, just to reach more people who were terrified of this system just as I was at first, but I suppose mods would be unhappy and say it should be there, right?
Anyway @Alexander's Hetaroi @Xandinho @pokiehl @Leyrann , see my post of hope above as I recognize you guys for too long to not hope we shall ultimately enjoy the new game, which for me looks amazing in everything except my first impression of civ switching.

 

[Somebody613]

To reiterate my sentiments in the showcase thread a bit more concisely: To me, ruling one civ as one of their historical leaders, immortalised, until contemporary times is Civilization's identity. Changing civs every era is Humankind's.

My disappointment stems from that I wanted more of Civilization's identity, and has nothing to do with how well or poorly Humankind's civ-switching mechanic was implemented or received. Who's going to carry the mantle of that Civ-style identity now? Ara, maybe? Or Millennia, kind of?

That's how I feel right now, at least. Who knows, maybe it'll be great and this is just a natural evolution in the franchise's history, and in five years I'll look back and wonder what my problem was. Certainly wouldn't mind for that to happen - I'd end up happier.

Easy solution: "Me, the Leader of My Civ, the MyCivians".
Seriously.
Removes the "naming weirdness", allows for "civic switcheroo" in the most broadest ways, and even strokes our EGO a bit, loool.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

To reiterate my sentiments in the showcase thread a bit more concisely: To me, ruling one civ as one of their historical leaders, immortalised, until contemporary times is Civilization's identity. Changing civs every era is Humankind's.

My disappointment stems from that I wanted more of Civilization's identity, and has nothing to do with how well or poorly Humankind's civ-switching mechanic was implemented or received. Who's going to carry the mantle of that Civ-style identity now? Ara, maybe? Or Millennia, kind of?

That's how I feel right now, at least. Who knows, maybe it'll be great and this is just a natural evolution in the franchise's history, and in five years I'll look back and wonder what my problem was. Certainly wouldn't mind for that to happen - I'd end up happier.

You still lead a singular Leader.

This game has a bigger focus on the Leader than it does on Civilizations, despite the name sake.

But Sid Meier's Leaders just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I can understand the shuffling of civilizations, but I also think people need to take into account that once Antiquity ends, then the Exploration Age is a COMPLETELY different game to begin with, we just haven't seen how that works out yet.

 

[Krajzen]

To reiterate my sentiments in the showcase thread a bit more concisely: To me, ruling one civ as one of their historical leaders, immortalised, until contemporary times is Civilization's identity. Changing civs every era is Humankind's.

My disappointment stems from that I wanted more of Civilization's identity, and has nothing to do with how well or poorly Humankind's civ-switching mechanic was implemented or received. Who's going to carry the mantle of that Civ-style identity now? Ara, maybe? Or Millennia, kind of?

That's how I feel right now, at least. Who knows, maybe it'll be great and this is just a natural evolution in the franchise's history, and in five years I'll look back and wonder what my problem was. Certainly wouldn't mind for that to happen - I'd end up happier.

Like I said: there is no way there won't be countless mods or quite possibly an official "classic game mode" allowing to modify, cut or customize this aspect of the game. Hell we may even get in-game settings customizing it: "unlock all civs in the first age", "enforce AIs to always stay with their civs and leaders", mods adding three Chinese dynasty civs and then forcing AI to only switch between them etc.

I think Firaxis has been aware of the possible controversial response, but they have reasoned "we'll see how it develops and be ready for [above escape hatches] if many players hate it, but overall we see the enormous potential in this system long term" (see my post for that potential)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Perhaps, but I also kind of assume that England and China are just about the two civs most likely to have different iterations for different eras.

Especially England since England -> United Kingdom/Great Britain is such an obvious gimme, and come on, an era that covers the Industrial revolution without Victorian Great Britain/United Kingdom as a civilization?

According to the gameplay video it seems that both Egypt and Askum could go into Songhai. So, I assume there are at least branched down this "historical' path. So I agree that it's not out of the realm for England to become Britain either. In fact, I would think that Britian and America would at least be the two apparent choices from an Age of Exploration England, presumably under Elizabeth.