The Victory Requirements: A Good Concept that Ultimately Forces Narratives

[sTAPler27]

I originally really liked what we saw of the victory requirements from the Antiquity Age because they felt generic enough to be applicable to the history of any civilization. But with the Exploration age having you gain points from conquering land on foreign continents alone or having treasure fleets bring you stuff from your colonies it more or less making it so if you aren't playing like the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch did in our world then you're going to suffer for it. Not only does it mean games are going to feel more similar but also in ways that don't really tap into that alternate history feel because you'll more or less get rewarded for playing exactly like the colonial powers of the real age of exploration. And I get this is a game but the use of specific gameplay terms to mark success I feel will make gameplay feel clunky. It doesn't matter if you've conquered your entire continent because success is only measured by conquering territory on different continents. And it won't matter if you have the highest gold per turn because ultimately it matters more if you're getting that gold via treasure fleets. I think these are great mechanics but they should be new side objectives not the mai npath towards success.

This was an issue similar to Civ 6's era's system, where even if you had the largest population, the most gold and excess happiness it didn't matter ultimately towards triggering golden ages because those weren't the marks of success the game deemed worthy of points. This was considered stagnation by the game logic which would plunge you into a dark age. While Humankind's gameplay could feel very samey itself it did ultimately reward you for doing the mundane things that would be a mark of a thriving civilization, a growing economy, well fed people, expanding your influence and building up your city infastructure. All of the cultures from that game had specialties but with no one mark of success any player could succeed so long as they used their strengths to strengthen the other facets of their empire. Meanwhile in Civ 7 the civs who participated in the behaviors associated with that era of time will succeed because the gameplay is designed for them to. It doesn't matter how strong the Inca are compared to the Spanish because there are set conditions that dictate who will win by the age's standards. The Inca could own 90% of a continent with each city thriving but if Spain conquers 10% of that continent they'll be deemed more succesful.

Overall there need to be more measures of success beyond parallels to real history or else this game will turn out less like an alternate history sandbox and more like a game trying to take the place of a 4X map game like EU without fully committing to that genre. A game of Civ 7 should feel less like an alternate universe with points of divergence and more like a picasso of history in which their are things to pick out and recognize but are ultimately jumbled in a way sensible but alien to our world.

 

[El Castellano]

Mongolia works differently. You can win military victory points conquering settlements in your continent. So it is possible that there are other civilizations that have alternative ways to win the scenarios.

 

[Siptah]

What you are saying has some sense to it, there is some railroading and a stronger suggestion of what to do. But keep in mind that the age 1 and age 2 goals aren't victory conditions in games with multiple ages. They might be the victory conditions in single age games though (we don't know yet how those end). I would assume that most people will play 3-age games. I guess that the actual victory conditions are similar to 5 and 6, and that you can win without golden ages or a wagonload of legacy points.

 

[timmychompchomp]

The treasure fleets and conquering cities, in the live stream, seemed to be economic and expansionist paths to “victory”. What about Cultural and Scientific era “victory”? Can someone explain to me, because I think I missed it, how colonization and resource exploitation of distant lands works regarding to Scientific and Cultural era “victory”? Religion is cultural, right?

 

[AriochIV]

I'm also concerned that the forced narrative is going to limit replayability, but we will have to wait and see.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The treasure fleets and conquering cities, in the live stream, seemed to be economic and expansionist paths to “victory”. What about Cultural and Scientific era “victory”? Can someone explain to me, because I think I missed it, how colonization and resource exploitation of distant lands works regarding to Scientific and Cultural era “victory”? Religion is cultural, right?

With regards to the Cultural, it's highly variable. You have to collect and house a dozen relics, but how you go about getting relics depends on the Reliquary Belief you pick for your civ. In the Livestream, Carl picked a Reliquary Belief that gave him 2 relics for converting a city-state.

The Science Legacy doesn't require that you go to the Distant Lands. It's the one Exploration Legacy that doesn't. You have to create 5 districts with 40+ yields.

Also, there's a few ways to do the militaristic legacy. You can found or annex cities in the Distant Lands and spread your religion to them for points.

And for the Economic, you can play pirate and steal your rivals' Treasure Ships if you prefer not to found, annex, or capture cities in the Distant Lands.

 

[sTAPler27]

With regards to the Cultural, it's highly variable. You have to collect and house a dozen relics, but how you go about getting relics depends on the Reliquary Belief you pick for your civ. In the Livestream, Carl picked a Reliquary Belief that gave him 2 relics for converting a city-state.

The Science Legacy doesn't require that you go to the Distant Lands. It's the one Exploration Legacy that doesn't. You have to create 5 districts with 40+ yields.

Also, there's a few ways to do the militaristic legacy. You can found or annex cities in the Distant Lands and spread your religion to them for points.

And for the Economic, you can play pirate and steal your rivals' Treasure Ships if you prefer not to found, annex, or capture cities in the Distant Lands.

The thing is though is that doesn't matter if you have a perfect economy becasue the path to victory requires someone to do the colonizing so you can either extract from a foreign place or steal. If no one does either you can't win.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The thing is though is that doesn't matter if you have a perfect economy becasue the path to victory requires someone to do the colonizing so you can either extract from a foreign place or steal. If no one does either you can't win.

That's where the Scientific Legacy path comes in. You don't have to even lay eyes on the Distant Lands or interact with the civs who go there.

Just grow your cities and stack Specialists for maximal adjacency bonuses.

 

[sTAPler27]

I have no idea why "forced narratives" has become a catch all term in this forum to describe anything anyone doesn't like about the game. What does it mean? What, exactly, is the narrative here? How is it forced? Seems to me that we're talking about optional mechanics here more than anything else - because legacy paths are mechanics and you chose which of the 4 (or multiple, or none) you want to focus on.

As for the exploration legacy paths themselves, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, I think that having medium term goals to focus towards is fun and could give the game a more interesting rhythm than monotonous rise. On the other hand, if there's only one way (or one clearly optimal way) of succeeding in each legacy then the game loses some replayability. The best case scenario is that each is a goal that can be accomplished several way. Having x cities in the distant lands could probably be that, because you can settle, conquer, or annex your way to it. But getting y gold from treasure fleets only has two options (make your own or pirate others) both of which involve a strong oceanic navy.

Because it is. If the marker for success is doing a very specific set of actions than you will have to do those actions if your goal is victory. Now there's an argument that civ has always been like that with its victory conditions but the major difference is that those are things that no human culture has actually accomplished yet, there is no interplanetary colonies, world government leader, singular religion, one world culture or singular global empire. So there are multiple paths towards achieving these goals. You could become a tourism powerhouse through religion, leisure and recreation or culture. In civ 7 the mark of success for culture comes solely from collecting rellics at least in the exploration era. So if you do not play like the followers of prostheletizing religions you're at a disadvantage. You could build a dozen wonders and be a master patron of the arts but since you didn't follow the victory condition your culture is just about as valuable as that of the city states.

 

[sTAPler27]

That's where the Scientific Legacy path comes in. You don't have to even lay eyes on the Distant Lands or interact with the civs who go there.

Just grow your cities and stack Specialists for maximal adjacency bonuses.

You're 100% right but it makes it so certain ways of doing things are unviable. The Incans were master expansionists but by exploration age logic their style of conquest isn't worthy of recognition, favoring a playstyle that really only rewards intercontinental conquest, with an emphasis on religion as well. And while I won't deny that countries like Spain achieved monumentous feats (even if morally dubious) they do not stand as the soul marker of success.

 

[gdr_willter]

Well, the strong empire itself is the biggest reward to it, so the game system do not have to recognize or give advantage from this immediate achievement. The milestone have to be some motivation for doing what you don't actually need it for now but will be critical at the next Age.

If the game only reward the homeland YOLO player, who will try hard to go further outside? (and this is one of the reasons why players mostly preferred the Pangea map in the previous titles) But the Distant Land colony and the wealth from it are very important clue toward the capitalism and the modern empire. So the game reward the player who focused on DL in the next Age.

It is basically the choice on your hand. Follow the milestone goals and get rewards from the upcoming golden age, or build the strong empire which can overcome the challenging dark age. You don't have to say it's not realistic, the strongest empires IRL also often faced the dark age and fall caused by the sudden change of the world history.

 

[bbbt]

On the other hand, if there's only one way (or one clearly optimal way) of succeeding in each legacy then the game loses some replayability.

I think that's what people are calling the 'forced narrative' - that the game will feel like you have limited optimal options - you have to settle distant lands, found and spread a religion, and or develop codexes(? - I don't remember the science path). You can't just spend the exploration age say hermiting up on the homelands building wonders and expect to hit of those legacy paths.

I agree with you that they are optional - you can actually just hermit up and wonder build and ignore them in the exploration age. In fact doing that in Civ 6 currently is also 'suboptimal'. However 7 will have this legacy path screen reminding you much more heavily that you are playing sub optimally. So 'strongly encouraged' narrative?

 

[sTAPler27]

That is not an answer to any of my questions. Indeed, it's not an answer to any question. Your complaints come down to there being only a few narrow paths for achieving a legacy goal, aka, a "victory" in an age. I agree that's a potential problem, and a grave one for any strategy game, because how can there be strategy without high-level choices?

But there's no need to call this "forced narratives." Because choosing whether to colonise another continent isn't a solely (or even primarily) a narrative part of the game but one of the core game-play and strategic decisions the player makes. Similarly it's not forced because you don't have to do any of the legacy paths, we really don't know if they're worth going for, or if focussing on growth for the next age will be better, or how strong dark ages policy cards will be. Just because you don't get legacy path progress for doing something doesn't mean it's worthless or not recognised by the game. So considering that it's absolutely not forced and primarily not about narratives, maybe we should call this problem "mechanical goals with limited ways of being accomplished" instead. Or just talk about it without sticking a meaningless label just because it's been a popular phrase for the last couple of months.

But, once again, I do wish the legacies were a little bit more like the scientific ones, and a little less like the economic one. But this is a common design problem in strategy games: do you make the goals the things the player already wants to do? At which point you're just rewarding them for doing what already makes them strong, thereby accelerating the snowballing effect. Or do you set them goals which are to the side of what they'd do normally? At which point they might be resentful about being told what they should do. Or do you set no goals at all? But this often leads to a game with a lack of focus and the tension evaporating far before the end. Game design is hard.

It's forced in the sense you need to play in a very specific way to succeed. Of course that's not necesearilly bad, it makese sense that as a militaristic nation by conquering territory you'll be better at domination later on. But that's because naturally by doing X, Y will be easier. You could culture flip every city on a continent or launch a naval invasion on the coast of a foreign continent and both were equal in the eye of the game. In 7 it is specified that meangingful conquest is done through the conquering of land on other continents, with a focus on doing so through capturing other people's city's meanwhile converting them. So in order to actually make meaningful progress in the game and have the boons to carry you into the enxt era you need to play almost exactly like the Europeans of the 14th-18th centuries did in real life. Yes it's not hard forced but you are heavily steered into playing a certain way simply because it would match the record of history in our real world more.

 

[Disgustipated]

I see no reason not to conquer the civ on your continent who is the leader. Even if you don't get victory points for it. Even if they finish out the age ahead in a specific type of victory points, does it matter if they only have 1 city left? Or better yet, 0 cities left. You don't have to be Mongolia to take your opponents down a few pegs. I still suspect bigger will be better as always going into the modern age. Even if you don't have as many points to allocate in the modern age.

I also believe they said during the last live stream there is one other civ that has mechanics that focus on original continent activity. No idea who that is yet.

 

[sTAPler27]

I think that's what people are calling the 'forced narrative' - that the game will feel like you have limited optimal options - you have to settle distant lands, found and spread a religion, and or develop codexes(? - I don't remember the science path). You can't just spend the exploration age say hermiting up on the homelands building wonders and expect to hit of those legacy paths.

I agree with you that they are optional - you can actually just hermit up and wonder build and ignore them in the exploration age. In fact doing that in Civ 6 currently is also 'suboptimal'. However 7 will have this legacy path screen reminding you much more heavily that you are playing sub optimally. So 'strongly encouraged' narrative?

Maybe my use of words was a bit strong, it's just annoying you'll be heavily encouraged to play a specific way to have the bonuses to garuntee you a chance at a successful modern era.

 

[sTAPler27]

Almost. "strongly encouraged" goals. There's nothing particularly narrative about any of this. It's no more narrative than researching gunpowder and building Pike & Shot units in Civ6 is about playing the narrative of European powers fighting during the 30 years war. Or how using iron-age swordsman to beat bronze-age spearman is the game forcing a narrative of bronze age collapse.

And we don't know how strongly it is encouraged anyway. We don't know if the bonuses for achieving legacy goals are worth chasing. Just because you don't get legacy progress for doing something, doesn't mean the game mechanics aren't rewarding you for it in a different way. Maybe it turns out that DL colonisation and all the related legacy paths are a massive distraction, and the best way to play is to completely ignore them and simply conquer another Civ on the Homeland in order to hit the 3rd age with a huge territory and population advantage. I doubt that's what the devs intended, but I'd barely be surprised if it turns out that way.

Well we've seen the legacy bonuses and some of them are pretty strong from free techs to maintaining your old cities. So if you play sub optimally by game standards you will be at a disadvantage

 

[sTAPler27]

But is that stronger than, say, knocking out the largest two civs on your home continent during Age 2 so that there's nobody even vaguely powerful enough to be a threat in Age 3? Doesn't matter how many legacy points they have if they're dead.

There's an opportunity cost to completing legacy paths, and considering that we're talking about ~150 turns of investment, that cost might dwarf a free tech or saving some gold in re-upgrading towns to cities. You're assuming that progressing in the legacy path is absolutely the most important thing to do in an age, and anything else is drastically sub-optimal, but there's really no evidence for that. In fact, the balance of every past civ game (and just about every strategy game) hints that such side goals are likely a distraction, and focussing on growing pop and land at the direct expense of rivals is the most effective way to win.

You make a good point. I do think the system at it's core is good and offers a fun gameplay opportunity as side quests, I just hope they expand the criterea for each trait to allow for more diversity of playstyles.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

But with the Exploration age having you gain points from conquering land on foreign continents alone or having treasure fleets bring you stuff from your colonies it more or less making it so if you aren't playing like the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch did in our world then you're going to suffer for it. Not only does it mean games are going to feel more similar but also in ways that don't really tap into that alternate history feel because you'll more or less get rewarded for playing exactly like the colonial powers of the real age of exploration.

You're describing what was missing from civ 6 and what the devs are trying to include in 7. In 6 there were some bonus to settling on another continent in the form of different luxury resources and some policies for different continents. But as others have pointed out the best strategy was usually to capture your neighbors.

 

[timmychompchomp]

With regards to the Cultural, it's highly variable. You have to collect and house a dozen relics, but how you go about getting relics depends on the Reliquary Belief you pick for your civ. In the Livestream, Carl picked a Reliquary Belief that gave him 2 relics for converting a city-state.

The Science Legacy doesn't require that you go to the Distant Lands. It's the one Exploration Legacy that doesn't. You have to create 5 districts with 40+ yields.

Also, there's a few ways to do the militaristic legacy. You can found or annex cities in the Distant Lands and spread your religion to them for points.

And for the Economic, you can play pirate and steal your rivals' Treasure Ships if you prefer not to found, annex, or capture cities in the Distant Lands.

Thank you. Your explanation did the trick. I remembered each of the actions and moments you mentioned. During this Civ promotional period, I have had a hard time following along during the livestreams. I am recovering from a long fight with COVID. I think I am experiencing the brain fog that’s been reported.

 

[Atlas627]

It's all about the game balance. If one option is obviously too good, you're always going to be throwing if you don't do it. That's...true in every single game, not even just civ games. Usually, it's just "do whatever makes you get to the end of the game fastest" because civ is a race game. Now, the legacy paths enable you to reward doing things that may not be on the normal path to victory: building a navy, settling the bonus continent, spreading your religion, making an incredibly tall city, etc. If balanced poorly, we'll have a best route...like usual. So this can only be a good thing, unless the best route is not the one you like, thematically. And in that case, just play suboptimally like you probably already do, because nobody can be bothered to micromanage everything required to play perfectly.