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

[Razpor]

Couldn't find the one true definition, eh?

coudn't answer?

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Official ruling: Do not bicker about the definition of "civilization". Any further bickering will be deleted.

 

[AffineConstant]

It would have instantly gotten the game un-wishlisted by me. Play HK and tell me it's fun to struggle to figure out who the other players are or what your relationship with them is/has been. Especially fun in the middle of a war. "Wait, who are you that I'm at war with?"

It's not perfect, but I think it's solveable. The first time you interact with a Civ in each age you get a little Cinematic. "America is now lead by" and show Teddy Roosevelt handing off to Ghandi (or whatever) so it's linked in your mind. The little flag above the leader is always the same, the buildings are the same, the player color is the same. Maybe it'd work.

What I suspect is not solveable is "Civ switching" for those that have a fundamental problem with it, which appears to be a lot of people. I'm guessing here, I don't think the thematics of it work at all, but I'd put up with it. And I'm interested in solving problems, so "Switch Leaders" is an idea, if not a perfect one.

The other option I can think of is "just drop Civ switching altogether" but keep the game mechanics. Civ switching is 100% a thematic thing, there's 0 reason it has to have anything at all to do with game mechanics.

 

[Zaarin]

It's not perfect, but I think it's a solveable. The first time you interact with a Civ in each age you get a little Cinematic. "America is now lead by" and show Teddy Roosevelt handing off to Ghandi (or whatever) so it's linked in your mind. The little flag above the leader is always the same, the buildings are the same, the color is the same. Maybe it'd work.

This wouldn't solve it for me. When I sit down to a game of chess, I expect to finish the game of chess with the person I started it with.

 

[Gorbles]

@Zaarin - I've got to ask, and maybe this is the wrong thread to ask, but I've seen your opinion several times in the last few pages . . . what's your issue(s) with leader animations?

The problem for me is that there's no easy / lazy indication of which side you are (I'm assuming left, but that's a very left-to-right reading assumption). But the quality of the figures and their animations seem pretty high? That said I'm not an artist, or even an art critic, I'm a programmer haha.

It's not that I can't recognise quality, but above a certain level it all seems "good".

 

[Zaarin]

@Zaarin - I've got to ask, and maybe this is the wrong thread to ask, but I've seen your opinion several times in the last few pages . . . what's your issue(s) with leader animations?

The problem for me is that there's no easy / lazy indication of which side you are (I'm assuming left, but that's a very left-to-right reading assumption). But the quality of the figures and their animations seem pretty high? That said I'm not an artist, or even an art critic, I'm a programmer haha.

It's not that I can't recognise quality, but above a certain level it all seems "good".

They lack visual interest or any particular kind of style. The lighting is bland (Civ6 had the same problem but had colorful models that made up for it). Several are just plainly bad (Ben Franklin, in particular). And the cardinal sin is that they stare across a screen instead of addressing the player (they look much better in the intro where they directly face the camera). Also I'm glad there's no easy indication about which side I'm on, for I'm on no side and hate both sides more or less equally.

 

[Professor Phobo]

I'll be honest I've never liked animated leaders in these games, I think I'd prefer a static "historical portrait" or stylized image that acted as their avatar for like a diplomacy chat window thing. Like Hammurabi is calling me in Cyberpunk 2077.

 

[TempusFugit]

Naw. Complaints about Civ VI's art style were merely a matter of taste. Art is subjective. Civ VI looks great and 7 looks pretty good, too.

This is a bit of a pet peeve for me, but what is good gameplay is just as much of a matter of taste and subjective, as what a good visual art style is. Some actually objective factors matters in both, but the subjective factors are far more numerous. Especially when you try to differ between "good" and "really good". Often in gaming discussions people seem to forget this. Or be totally oblivious to it. Now this may not necessarily be the best thread to discuss visuals, but the idea that visuals doesn't matter needs to go.

 

[Zaarin]

but the idea that visuals doesn't matter needs to go.

 

[TempusFugit]

I think this is one area where we are fully in league. There are probably some others as well. What's funny is that it was your colorful commentary about "realistic" visuals and the people who like them, which prompted me to register here after decades of lurking.

 

[pokiehl]

Seems natural and expected that new games in the series shed some older players while expanding the player base with newer players.

 

[Professor Phobo]

Seems natural and expected that new games in the series shed some older players while expanding the player base with newer players.

Yeah it's the ebb and flow. I didn't care for 6 or 3, but adored 2, 4, and 5. Any long running franchise that takes swings each iteration rather than just a quick graphics update and stapling a new year on will have people bounce off.

 

[Zaarin]

I think this is one area where we are fully in league. There are probably some others as well. What's funny is that it was your colorful commentary about "realistic" visuals and the people who like them, which prompted me to register here after decades of lurking.

We may be championing different styles, but we're in agreement that the aesthetics of the game are important.

 

[Quintillus]

Agree here, Humankind was "fixed" for me the moment I modded restrictions for the evolutions.

One of the way I did it was to limit it by regions owned on TSL or Terra-like map (people knowing me know I play those a lot), with an option to split your Empire, you keeping only the historical regions of the new selected civ (with construction/science bonuses based on your previous expansion) and keeping the previous civ as a new AI player or as minor civs with the other regions.

Interesting! I hadn't picked Humankind up yet at the time you created that mod, but I have now bookmarked it. I'll definitely have to give it a try should I give Humankind another go-round. I've got close to five months in which to do so!

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I think they've ended up too strict with it, in an attempt to make it more balance-able at the expense of what many love about the game.

If instead it was designed such that some cultures have the option of transitioning from one civ into another, I think it would be very popular. For example, being able to transition from Rome into successors (perhaps with trigger criteria). But not allowing someone to start and stay as the civ *of their choice* is a fundamental shifting of the game concept.

This is part of what makes it feels so good in many other games that it is more appropriate for

Yeah I agree with this, even Humankind, with its half-baked system of switches, allowed players to keep their previous civ if they wanted to. Doing this isn’t enough for Civ, since obviously a lot of ppl are attached to civs like Brazil and America and England, plus you need to provide some kind of ability to prevent ppl who keep their old civ from being totally outcompeted, but it would still be a marked improvement.

So, there seems to be some hard feelings about civ switching in HK, but afair one always has a choice to transcend one's current civ in HK, which keeps it going into the next era. An Ancient era civ can be kept all the way into the Contemporary era this way, though this definitely has some functional drawbacks.

With that said,

• Why is the prevailing thought that civ switching is mandatory in HK?
• Though I haven't seen evidence of it yet, I'm definitely hoping that Civ 7 will provide an option to keep a civ through ages. I don't see why that couldn't be a possibility.

It’s not, but most Civ fans also want the ability to play a later game civ at the beginning, not just an early game civ at the end.

It was one of HK's key features. After HK failed so badly, I think everyone had to get past that HK having a feature didn't automatically make the feature bad just because HK had it; I know I had to work past that. (I still have mixed feelings about the civ changing, but I'm mostly past it. At this point, my biggest complaint is how bad the leaders look and the bizarre design of the diplomacy screen.)

Yeah, the out-of-character nature of it was def a shock and I’m pretty much at the place where I’m open to how this will play out provided that a) the three eras aren’t basically unrelated “rounds” and b) you don’t have to switch/start as an ancient civ

Clearly this controversy isn't dying down in day 2, if anything, it's getting worse. And a lot of it comes down to Firaxis not properly explaining how this will work, and so the holes are being filled being filled by wild speculation.

For instance, it seems you now cannot chose a civilization like England or France in Antiquity. You have to chose a civilization like the Celts or the Gauls instead. So in the Exploration era, I can then choose England or France. But what determines who I can choose next as opposed to the other AI (or human) players? What if I'm Gaul, but then Rome decided to become France and then doesn't give me the opportunity to become France, even though that's my "successor civilization"? So now I can't become France and I have to go from Gaul to Mongolia?

There are so many ways AI could have been used to make the game richer, more immersive, and even more flexible than ever before. Instead we get something so restrictive, random and history-breaking that it borders on the absurd. It would have been much better if we had options of successor historic civilizations. Like ok Russia, there's been an age change and a revolution, now you need to become either the Soviet Union or the Russian federation. Now maybe that could happen, but it also seems like England could become the Soviet Union and then Russia could become the United Kingdom based on... what? Who has more built up score or mets certain conditions? There's a way to do this to make everyone happy... but it almost seems like Firaxis itself hasn't properly thought this through. Indeed, if you watch those YouTube influencer videos, it seems like Firaxis wasn't sure how it would really work either in their presentations and so the YouTubers were left scratching their heads as well.

Just so you’re aware, England is apparently a modern civ—especially ridiculous considering that means the US is also likely a modern civ, but Shawnee, whose identity in history is often earmarked by their resistance to the US, would never see the US in game because they’re a “exploration age civ”. Speaks to a larger problem in how the timeframes have been gamified—the early 1800s and late 1700s are still considered the exploration era, meaning that either the medieval era is considered part of the antiquity age in this game, or that the exploration age in game correlates from everything between the fall of rome to the industrial revolution (which should still potentially make an argument for england and the us as exploration age civs)

Sounds terrible.

The Normans were Scandinavian and settled in Frankish/HRE territory (a Germanic Tribe) in the 10th century AD. No connection to Rome at all, really.

Normans into England/UK at least makes sense.

Anyway, throw them all in the history blender and see what comes out. Mix master 7.

this suggests that the logic behind the development of this feature was backwards—what ancient and exploration age civs can we include that result in our modern age desired results—oh, England was Roman than Norman? So those should be the lineage

Also, as mentioned earlier, this feeds into what is said below by

As I've said elsewhere, the devs seems to have leaned very hard into the "adapt or die"-aspect for this instalment. Maybe it's less that Rome falls, and more that it's rendered obsolete, that new times call for new identities

I think the main inspiration was Ed Beach talking about London originally being a Roman town. So, in their mind it makes Rome>Normans>Britain path historically accurate.

the inspiration here is not that your civ is transforming, but that you’re playing as the history of the land, and the different peoples who ruled over it and invaded it.

Your civ isn’t evolving into the next one like in Humankind, it’s being defeated and replaced.

 

[TempusFugit]

Seems natural and expected that new games in the series shed some older players while expanding the player base with newer players.

Yes. I have mixed feelings about some of the changes, and the changing civilizations concept is not what I personally would have wanted, but I am still impressed at how bold and ambitious this presentation was.

First they are changing things up a lot. Second they shamelessly stole a couple of ideas from their new competitors, which there is nothing wrong with. And third, they really took the visual aspect seriously and put a lot of effort into it. They pleased both "camps" really well, by continuing some of the things that many people liked in Civ 6, while removing those that many people disliked.

When they show so much confidence and vigor as this, it gives me confidence that they are going to be able to pull this off.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Because they still wanted the idea of having an immortal leader. I guess in the end having a leader to stand the test of time was more important to have a civ do it.

Will you build an empire that will stand the test of time?

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Will you build an empire that will stand the test of time?

will your capital city, twice conquered and your people, twice genocided and replaced, stand the test of time, apparently.

 

[Thormodr]

I just had a thought. If Korea is an exploration Civ and Japan is a modern Civ and there is a Korea into Japan path, the outrage is going to be legendary amongst Koreans.

Can't say I'd blame them, either, with the colonial legacy.

Also, the authoritarian government in China would not take kindly to China/Chinese people group into anything.

Lots of land mines out there for Firaxis.

 

[pokiehl]

I don’t see how these “landmines” are any worse than what’s already there. In any Civ game you can already pick a civ and nuke or conquer or humiliate whomever you want.

Does Firaxis need to design their game by tiptoeing around avoiding any potentially negative interaction between any two factions who’ve ever had a problem with each other in 6000+ years of human history? And why do any specific ones keep getting called out? Look back far enough and any country can find an ax to grind.

In general I think these concerns are overblown by fans.