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

[ombak]

How many people download mods in the first place? And what types of mods? Remember, Civfanatics is one subsection of players, not necessarily representative of the entire playerbase.

This is true for all games with forums (official forums or not). The percentage of players who don't come to forums at all is generally much larger than those who do. I would imagine the same is true for mods. Most players probably don't use them, or only use a tiny subset.

 

[Leucarum]

I think it might live or die based on how much the eras really feel like fresh beginnings. If everything does feel like a break and a new start, then adding a civ switch on top might feel ok?

 

[Somebody613]

Steam workshop mods are downloadable only on Steam.

This is assuming everyone who has downloaded a mod specifically downloaded the mix and match leaders and civs, which probably isn't the case.

"How to tell us that you haven't played C2C without actually telling that you haven't played C2C."
Duuude...
C2C literally resides on this very forum, loool.

Civ4 - Caveman 2 Cosmos

Forum for the Caveman 2 Cosmos modpack

forums.civfanatics.com

And you don't need any additional sub-mods to experience stuff like what I described above - it's just how that mod works in the first place.

 

[Zaarin]

It was. Mods are easily accessible, and they exist for the sole reason of making the Vanilla BETTER. If you are a Vanilla purist - well, YOU are. And I'M not, lol.

I'm not a vanilla purist, but saying, "People shouldn't be upset by a feature because a mod did this before" is a strange argument. The mod was not an obligatory download. Culture changing is in Civ7 whether you like it or not.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I think you have a number of leaders who are people that the devs determined were interesting Great Historical Figures, and a number of civilizations, whom the devs determined were interesting civilizations to play so that every region of the world had some representation in each era..

It's an interesting idea for a game but it's not CIV ....

 

[Somebody613]

I'm not a vanilla purist, but saying, "People shouldn't be upset by a feature because a mod did this before" is a strange argument. The mod was not an obligatory download. Culture changing is in Civ7 whether you like it or not.

You totally missed my point AND what I actually think of Civ 7.
I'm disappointed that it FAILED to implement the feature correctly.
They could've ignored it entirely - or they should've done it much more properly.
The actual factual result is "half here, half there", and THAT is what I don't like.
And this is also why people are annoyed by "Egypt going Mongolia" - because that's not a PROPER way to implement "civ switching via culture".

 

[Baudshaw]

from IGN
https://www.ign.com/articles/civilization-7-the-first-preview

"Other interesting progression paths mentioned included
starting as Rome,
then becoming the Normans,
and finally the England."

I hope the game journalists are misinterpreting England as Britain…

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'm liking it more, considering leaders have always been presented as one of the biggest limiting factors in adding new civs, both resource-wise (creating the fully animated leader head, and potentially music which can be both leader or civ specific), and availability wise (see: Mionans, Olmecs, Harappans...), not to mention limiting who could be leader (amazing historical figure whose people did not make a great civ) and creating the potential for endless threads about "how dare you leave my civ stuck with this one leader I don't like" (see also: Gandi, Seongdeok, Kristina...) and "how dare you make him a leader for this civ instead of that civ" (see also: Charlemagne, whom the devs can just add to the game now and let players decide if he should lead France, Germany, the Franks, or some other combination).

Separating leaders from civs, while painful as a major break from tradition, is, I think, the correct move to open up possibilities here.

I don't know. This feels like backtracking that whole argument that we had one time trying to justify an Olmec civilization, by implementing a Maya leader for them. But now it's suddenly, OK?

"How to tell us that you haven't played C2C without actually telling that you haven't played C2C."
Duuude...
C2C literally resides on this very forum, loool.

Civ4 - Caveman 2 Cosmos

Forum for the Caveman 2 Cosmos modpack

forums.civfanatics.com

And you don't need any additional sub-mods to experience stuff like what I described above - it's just how that mod works in the first place.

I'm unaware of how Civ 4 mods work. That being said it still doesn't answer the fact that console players can't use mods.

 

[Somebody613]

I'm unaware of how Civ 4 mods work. That being said it still doesn't answer the fact that console players can't use mods.

Well, and? That wasn't even the main point of my opinion, lol.
Note that if you haven't played it, you can't say that it's a bad experience - you literally haven't tasted it (or even much of Civ4, seemingly).

 

[Somebody613]

How many people download mods in the first place? And what types of mods? Remember, Civfanatics is one subsection of players, not necessarily representative of the entire playerbase.

Interesting point to be made... on CivFanatics in a discussion by people who post on CivFanatics. Dude...

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well, and? That wasn't even the main point of my opinion, lol.
Note that if you haven't played it, you can't say that it's a bad experience - you literally haven't tasted it (or even much of Civ4, seemingly).

Never said it was or would be a bad experience. Mix and match just isn't my style and doesn't appeal to me. It's one reason why I didn't even bother with Humankind.
To me this is essentially Humankind with the immortal leader twist that is Civ.

 

[Evie]

It's an interesting idea for a game but it's not CIV ....

Civ II let you name your leader (and civilization, for that matter) without modding a thing. Civ IV already had mix and match. The idea of civ and leader not being in iron lockstep is NOT something new to the franchise.

In fact, Civ 3 was somewhal controversial at the time precisely for putting so much emphasis on enforcing specific leader/civilization pairs with specific pre-defined bonuses with no customization or flexibility at all.

I don't know. This feels like backtracking that whole argument that we had one time trying to justify an Olmec civilization, by implementing a Maya leader for them. But now it's suddenly, OK?

I *really* cannot emphasize enough how different the two situations are to me. One was misrepresentation: forcing you to play a specific non-Olmec guy as an Olmec leader, and claiming falsely he was one. The other make no false pretense: no one is claiming anyone in particular was historically a Olmec leader, the game is just letting you decide what pairings you want to play.

These are just entirely different.

 

[moondog385]

Seeing that the Abbasids are one of the “default” options for Egypt makes me a lot less concerned about this mechanic. I wonder why that wasn’t what they choose to highlight, as opposed to Songhai.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I *really* cannot emphasize enough how different the two situations are to me. One was misrepresentation: forcing you to play a specific non-Olmec guy as an Olmec leader, and claiming falsely he was one.

Well, I'd feel less this way if every civ at least had their own designated leader. But one of the possible requirements to play Songhai is to have Amina as the leader, who never actually led Songhai but just happened to be queen of a different people that had overlap with them.

 

[Evie]

One possible requirement. Not the only one.

If we were sticking to purely historical options (eg, only civ that are actual historical precursors of the Songhai and leaders who actually led the Songhai can pick them), the only way to play Songhai would be to have a Songhai leader a non-Songhai civ in the fist part of the game. There's no identified precursor civ - Mali and Ghana certainly are not!

You essentially cannot have both flexible civ/leader pairings AND historical civ/leader pairings at once. Making the pretense, at the cost of artificially limiting the number of civs by demanding each mustnhave a leader, would be a farcical mistake.

 

[E.C.H]

I'll just state this as a benefit of detaching leaders and civs and thus allowing civs without a leader and vice versa:

Civs too ancient/unrecorded to know a leader Civs too modern to have leaders without controversy

I especially look forward to what this'll open up for modding, should modding be accessible enough.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

One possible requirement. Not the only one.

I know it's not the only requirement. However, it feels like they are making her their "historical" leader which still kind of bugs me. Therefore, if any Olmec civ would end up being in the game, I don't have a doubt that their "historical" leader would have to be picked from a Maya or Aztec one.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Interesting point to be made... on CivFanatics in a discussion by people who post on CivFanatics. Dude...

how so? isnt it true? the opinions we have here as hard core fans might not be true of the fans who only use reddit, or discord, or don’t talk about the game on social media at all.

You can compare the number of downloads of even the most popular mods with the game itself. I play the game heavily modded. But I know that’s not the majority. A lot of players of the game are too old or young to know how to use steam workshop or other modding sites. Others are just uninterested and aren’t hardcore fans who want a modded experience.

But don’t take the average experience of CivFanatics, which is a big minority of the fanbase, and apply it to a larger player base of millions of people.

I know this isn’t a representative body of the fanbase because I logged back on for the first time in 4 years and most of the same users are still posting (shoutout @Alexander's Hetaroi)

Translation, please?
Do you mean that non-Pc gamers wouldn't be able to use them (no idea, not a modder myself), or that we shouldn't relegate the task of "fixing the game" to mods to begin with?

yes, xbox, switch and ps players cannot download mods as mods are generally not supported on console and there is no way to download mods on console without hooking it up to computer (in the case of xbox and playstation) and directly modifying game files, or homebrewing your console (in the case of switch)

Crisis is also something forced ...

UI pop-out and says "Now its crisis time, choose two of this bad policies" .... thats all forced, its not natural

Crisis would be if barbarians naturally become more violent because there is less non-claimed tiles on map, forcing them to start invasions.

Thats how it should be done, not by some button on screen at turn X.

hard agree

3) Balancing civs would be made around the non-classical mode.

while not ideal, this isn’t *that* different than how civs previously were, since they’d just all come online at their appropriate eras and try to snowball while their civ was at its peak

One possible requirement. Not the only one.

If we were sticking to purely historical options (eg, only civ that are actual historical precursors of the Songhai and leaders who actually led the Songhai can pick them), the only way to play Songhai would be to have a Songhai leader a non-Songhai civ in the fist part of the game. There's no identified precursor civ - Mali and Ghana certainly are not!

You essentially cannot have both flexible civ/leader pairings AND historical civ/leader pairings at once. Making the pretense, at the cost of artificially limiting the number of civs by demanding each mustnhave a leader, would be a farcical mistake.

it’s how the game series has always been played. Yes, leader/civ relationships been toyed with before, but never to the point that the core gameplay of at least 1 leader for 1 civ was toyed with.

i also don’t see how making the leader of the Hausa, who don’t share geography with the Songhai, were at their peak around the end of the Songhai empire and cannot be called Successors of the Songhai, the “default” leader for the Songhai, is any better than your aforementioned example of locking in a Mayan leader to the Olmecs. The “default path” is effectively their recommended path and the one which requires the most hoops. At high difficulties where you have to mix-max, can you afford to waste time trying to unlock other progressions? Will people who misguidedly think they’re being more historically accurate or maintaining flavor pick her because they think she is a Songhai leader?

The devs said it themselves, their goal is to educate. How are you educating about lesser known people’s and kingdoms and civs when you can’t highlight the leaders of these great empires like the Songhai, and can’t highlight the nations of great leaders like Amina of Zazzau. I got into history because I wanted to know more about Montezuma of the Aztecs, Pachacuti of the Inca, Kamehameha of Hawai’i. These are not engagements with history that occur in the same way when you don’t connect leader and civ in the same way.

I don’t disagree that this allows us to explore civs like the Indus Valley Civ and the Olmecs, but respectfully, at what cost? The game has always been fairly explicit about what it’s able to realistically include as an entry, and part of the reason why civs were excluded bcs we can’t depict their leader or don’t know their language is because the leader plays an educational role in actually *engaging* with the civ. hearing their language, learning about them by googling their abilities.

We know the real reason they’re doing this—leaders are expensive to animate, research, voice act and implement. So they’re creating a system where they need to do far less of that. Cost Cutting while making deluxe edition $120 doesn’t sit right with me.

 

[Somebody613]

Civ II let you name your leader (and civilization, for that matter) without modding a thing. Civ IV already had mix and match. The idea of civ and leader not being in iron lockstep is NOT something new to the franchise.

Ah, Civ 2, indeed. Heck, that's pretty much what I was talking about: Me_Leader and My_Civ being based on (or rather, directly referencing) NOTHING "real" altogether.
Add to this the concept of Developing Leaders (from Civ 4 modding), where YOU (the player, including AI) choose what Traits your Leader adopts over time.
And thus we have a civ that we decide how to name, whom to lead with, and where to develop into.
I can understand that certain people simply don't like it (though I have no idea why), but it'd be a great concept to have been implemented in Civ 7.
Except it wasn't, instead going almost in the opposite direction of forcing the player into extremely rigid choices that pretend to allow this.
Pure disappointment for me, really.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Ah, Civ 2, indeed. Heck, that's pretty much what I was talking about: Me_Leader and My_Civ being based on (or rather, directly referencing) NOTHING "real" altogether.
Add to this the concept of Developing Leaders (from Civ 4 modding), where YOU (the player, including AI) choose what Traits your Leader adopts over time.
And thus we have a civ that we decide how to name, whom to lead with, and where to develop into.
I can understand that certain people simply don't like it (though I have no idea why), but it'd be a great concept to have been implemented in Civ 7.
Except it wasn't, instead going almost in the opposite direction of forcing the player into extremely rigid choices that pretend to allow this.
Pure disappointment for me, really.

yeah I don’t know why a) we’re comparing Civ 7 (and a 5 game precedent) to civ 2, a game that, while groundbreaking at the time, is not really the standard that any modern game should be holding itself to. The naming leaders and civs happened at a time when civs had 0 flavor, and the game itself had little depth. It feels like that’s a massive step back jsut in the sense that we’re seriously talking about Civ 7 in relation to Civ 2.

And exactly this. Everyone at Firaxis, and the hardcore defenders of this change on here, seems to think “oh it’s flexibility” “oh it’s more flavor”, when all most of us would want is the ability to play as any civ in any era. Heck, I feel like most of us would still do it even if they didn’t get balanced “hidden abilities” for eras they originally weren’t designed for, just for the fun of actually taking the Maya to the nuclear age and all that. Although my sincere hope is Firaxis reads this feedback and understands that they should probably think about ways that gameplay can remain fair for people who want to play as civs in any era if they choose to change the gameplay structure to accomodate for that