The Victory Requirements: A Good Concept that Ultimately Forces Narratives

[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.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I think people forget that the core game is the same. It's still primarily about settling or conquering good land in order to have better yields than your rivals. How the legacy paths play into that is hard to say, until we know what the final victory conditions will be. For example, if the culture victory is still related to tourism, and in Modern you start to generate tourism from wonders, relics, and codices, then of course it will be important to follow these legacy paths in prior Ages. But that's not really any different to current Civ, is it? Certainly no more "forced" if you want to pursue a culture victory.

Maybe it's just me but in current Civ games, I find the early game exciting because I have purpose. I know what I need to do, and whilst this is the same in every single game, it is fun. In contrast, I tend to drift in the mid game, with no clear purpose other than "increase yields". It's fine, but not nearly as engaging as that early experience. I generally don't bother with the late game. I'm hoping that these legacy paths, whether closely tied to final victory conditions or not, will give me clear purpose and somewhat replicate that early game excitement.

 

[anemo]

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.

You don't have to get to the end of every legacy path. You can play like a colonial power, or you could try to succeed in science and culture and stay peaceful at your continent. You may win a dark legacy point (I don't remember how they call them) in the military and economic paths, wich can alter your game in the modern age.

 

[chaosprophet]

I think people forget that the core game is the same. It's still primarily about settling or conquering good land in order to have better yields than your rivals.

I agree with your whole post, but wanted to add to this part based on something I said elsewhere: From the gameplay we saw so far, seems like the game is balanced so the number of players for a map size would mean by the end of the Antiquity era, most or all good land in the initial available map will be covered. So to expand keep expanding on exploration age you either go look for new land on the previously inaccessible land or conquer land from your neighbors. And to keep expanding is just the usual core game of civilization. And even if conquering neighbors won't give you the same points on legacy, chances are they're better to make you win overall as you weaken a lot the other players, than actually go to settle new lands that take time to grown.

So basically, expanding to the distant lands is just the normal civ game expanding mid game, the main difference being just the order, as now the maps are made so one can't get to ocean exploring too much earlier than others players, while in other games would could go to ocean earlier and ignore most of the initial land if they wanted.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

The new age based victory paths (and the visuals) are the main things that have really peaked my interest in 7. I really like the idea that someone with an early lead could be caught because they were too focussed on getting early points, or how much you can build a strong base in the early ages and have a chasing at taking over on the scores by the end. It could make he game feel much more dynamic. My main reason for stopping civ games is where I feel like I've already won and I'm a bit aimlessly pressing buttons to go through the motions, so I'm intrigued at the trade offs that going hard on leading in one age might bring in the later ones

 

[Olleus]

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.

Sorry to quote myself, but I think this highlights one of the issues that keeps coming back up.

If legacy paths are weak then people will ignore them, at most getting a reward for doing what they were going to do anyway, and say that it was a failed game element. If they're strong and distinct from "normal" civ-style gameplay, then people will complain that they're being forced to play a certain way. Indeed, the more specific the goals of a legacy are, the more diverse gameplay will become (because going for one legacy rather than another drastically changes your overall strategy), but the more forced it will feel. That's the dilemma. There is no difference between the game encouraging diversity by recognising and explicitly rewarding divergent styles of play, and the game "forcing" those styles of play. People claim to like the former and dislike the latter, but they're the same thing! That's why the phrase "forced narrative" is so annoying, it's a broad brush use to paint something as bad without seeing what it does. Most of the time people aren't annoyed at the forced narrative per se, just that it's not forcing the narrative they (subconsciously or not) want to tell.

I guess that one way around this impasse would be to have custom legacy path goals for every civilization. That seems implausible, and too much to ask for; making multiple parallel games is a very inefficient way of adding diversity to a single game. It's also a ton of railroading, with the devs hardwiring a particular "narrative" for each civ. The alternative is to have common goals, but multiple ways of achieving these goals. This is probably the right option to aim for, but unless balance is absolutely perfect, there will be one strategy that will almost always be optimal for each goal. But that's always what happens with strategy games.

If you really want diversity in any game, you have to ignore all explicit in-game reward mechanisms, and play according to your own internal goals. So if you want to play exploration age Inca without so much as a sideways glance at the new world, well, no one will stop you. But asking for an explicit reward for each type of role-playing inspired grand strategy would create *more* forced narratives, not fewer (as well as insurmountable balance problems).

 

[JNR13]

Rewarding growth itself instead of total size of a given metric keeps the game dynamic and counters snowballing towards victory. If you conquered 90% of your continent in antiquity, keeping 90% of that continent within your empire is easier and takes less investment than someone from another continent taking over 10% of it. Strategy games should always reward taking initiative and competitiveness over isolation.

 

[Disgustipated]

I want to add to my earlier post, if you find yourself in the middle of a continent (which may only be an issue on the largest map type), you will have no choice but to go on the offensive in the middle of the game, no matter who you are playing. Of course you could go on the offensive in the beginning, but on higher difficulty levels that may be difficult. Usually the player has to build up their cities more efficiently than the AI to counteract their science bonus.

One thing that we'll have to wait and see on is resources. It may be that you almost have to settle abroad in order to get resources to increase your happiness so you can grow more. Maybe some of this can be counter acted with happiness buildings like temples, we'll have to wait and see. I certainly hope they balance it in such a way that you aren't forced to secure resources on distant lands no matter what.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I want to add to my earlier post, if you find yourself in the middle of a continent (which may only be an issue on the largest map type), you will have no choice but to go on the offensive in the middle of the game, no matter who you are playing.

Navigable rivers might be a way around this, also I would not be surprised if being in the middle of a continent is a strong position like it's been in past civ versions. We'll see.

 

[sTAPler27]

You don't have to get to the end of every legacy path. You can play like a colonial power, or you could try to succeed in science and culture and stay peaceful at your continent. You may win a dark legacy point (I don't remember how they call them) in the military and economic paths, wich can alter your game in the modern age.

But why is that even a restriction. By game logic, Spain's conquests are true markers of success while Russia's arent because they did their's in the Americas. It's not about the necessity it's by labeling a very specific gameplay style as the sole marker of success to be rewarded.

 

[Atlas627]

But why is that even a restriction. By game logic, Spain's conquests are true markers of success while Russia's arent because they did there's in the Americas. It's not about the necessity it's by labeling a very specific gameplay style as the sole marker of success to be rewarded.

By game logic, Russia's will be directly eliminating the only competitors that matter, leading to success by winning the game. The Legacy Path is an alternate condition that is valued despite it not being a normally good path, allowing multiple paths to success. You should be complaining about how every game before this only cared about technological advancement and conquest, rather than complaining about how this one finally has a mechanic that makes it possible to legitimize multiple paths.

 

[sTAPler27]

Sorry to quote myself, but I think this highlights one of the issues that keeps coming back up.

If legacy paths are weak then people will ignore them, at most getting a reward for doing what they were going to do anyway, and say that it was a failed game element. If they're strong and distinct from "normal" civ-style gameplay, then people will complain that they're being forced to play a certain way. Indeed, the more specific the goals of a legacy are, the more diverse gameplay will become (because going for one legacy rather than another drastically changes your overall strategy), but the more forced it will feel. That's the dilemma. There is no difference between the game encouraging diversity by recognising and explicitly rewarding divergent styles of play, and the game "forcing" those styles of play. People claim to like the former and dislike the latter, but they're the same thing! That's why the phrase "forced narrative" is so annoying, it's a broad brush use to paint something as bad without seeing what it does. Most of the time people aren't annoyed at the forced narrative per se, just that it's not forcing the narrative they (subconsciously or not) want to tell.

I guess that one way around this impasse would be to have custom legacy path goals for every civilization. That seems implausible, and too much to ask for; making multiple parallel games is a very inefficient way of adding diversity to a single game. It's also a ton of railroading, with the devs hardwiring a particular "narrative" for each civ. The alternative is to have common goals, but multiple ways of achieving these goals. This is probably the right option to aim for, but unless balance is absolutely perfect, there will be one strategy that will almost always be optimal for each goal. But that's always what happens with strategy games.

If you really want diversity in any game, you have to ignore all explicit in-game reward mechanisms, and play according to your own internal goals. So if you want to play exploration age Inca without so much as a sideways glance at the new world, well, no one will stop you. But asking for an explicit reward for each type of role-playing inspired grand strategy would create *more* forced narratives, not fewer (as well as insurmountable balance problems).

Like I said maybe "forced" is a bit strong but ultimately for a game series that has been trying to show the diversity of human civilization they really made it so the markers of success are playing like a handful of cultures in Western Europe. The most neutral route in the era is the science route. Culture is pretty neutral but ultimately there aren't many other major prostheletyzing religions other than Christianity other than Islam and Buddhism so it gives those that play in a way of religious dominance like Spain, France or Portugal a boon. Economic gameplay depends on treasure fleets which are only avaliable through colonization. It doesn't matter how well versed you are at trade because ultimately you need to colonize territory to deemed successful. It's only slightly less forced than military because you can pillage other people's fleets. So honest commerce is not a marker of success you either take over distant lands or you're a thief.

And lastly military. Given there only seems to be two major continents i'll make the comparison between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. By civ 7 logic, the Ottomans, Russians and Incan's military victories and expansion are not valid measures of success. Spain, France, Portugal, The Netherlands and Britain are successful. I understand games need markers for success because there ultimately need a victor but the fact that you can only be rewarded by the game through doing SPECIFIC actions that really only match the histories of a handful of countries is while maybe not forced heavily punitive to those that want to break from that mold. Can you be successful not abiding by those terms? Yes, but the game will see you as lacking and reward players who play along with the story they want to tell even if the reward doesn't match the actions of the player. It's like rewarding an actor who did a decent job reading off a script you wrote vs tolerating someone who's doing some good improv work. There's a clear favoritism there. Civ 7 is an Alternate history game where the factors are randomized to create a world with the same core components but vastly different from our own.

It's funny that the devs bring on Shawnee leaders because the mark of success in the era that civ will appear is to actively colonize other continents. In other words if you are not colonizing you are a loser in over half of the victory conditions. And I get it to an extent that that is in a way a feat worthy of recognizing but the fact it is the sole marker of success means that that is the narrative the game wants the focus of the era to be.

 

[gdr_willter]

You have to understand the naval colonialist were not the preferred option in previous titles... Of course, yes, Civ 7 is trying to motivate players to explore and settle on the distant land, but not in the "forced" way. You can completely ignore the milestone with your strong homeland empire, like as the most playthrough in Civ 5 and 6 (especially with Pangea map). I strongly consider it will not be so easy to focus all milestones in the Age, so this homeland playstyle more will be able to deal with the science and culture, while the distant land playstyle can access to the military and economy.

 

[Krikkit1]

Like I said maybe "forced" is a bit strong but ultimately for a game series that has been trying to show the diversity of human civilization they really made it so the markers of success are playing like a handful of cultures in Western Europe. The most neutral route in the era is the science route. Culture is pretty neutral but ultimately there aren't many other major prostheletyzing religions other than Christianity other than Islam and Buddhism so it gives those that play in a way of religious dominance like Spain, France or Portugal a boon. Economic gameplay depends on treasure fleets which are only avaliable through colonization. It doesn't matter how well versed you are at trade because ultimately you need to colonize territory to deemed successful. It's only slightly less forced than military because you can pillage other people's fleets. So honest commerce is not a marker of success you either take over distant lands or you're a thief.

And lastly military. Given there only seems to be two major continents i'll make the comparison between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. By civ 7 logic, the Ottomans, Russians and Incan's military victories and expansion are not valid measures of success. Spain, France, Portugal, The Netherlands and Britain are successful. I understand games need markers for success because there ultimately need a victor but the fact that you can only be rewarded by the game through doing SPECIFIC actions that really only match the histories of a handful of countries is while maybe not forced heavily punitive to those that want to break from that mold. Can you be successful not abiding by those terms? Yes, but the game will see you as lacking and reward players who play along with the story they want to tell even if the reward doesn't match the actions of the player. It's like rewarding an actor who did a decent job reading off a script you wrote vs tolerating someone who's doing some good improv work. There's a clear favoritism there. Civ 7 is an Alternate history game where the factors are randomized to create a world with the same core components but vastly different from our own.

It's funny that the devs bring on Shawnee leaders because the mark of success in the era that civ will appear is to actively colonize other continents. In other words if you are not colonizing you are a loser in over half of the victory conditions. And I get it to an extent that that is in a way a feat worthy of recognizing but the fact it is the sole marker of success means that that is the narrative the game wants the focus of the era to be.

And the Antiquity rewards a settlement conquered more thsn one settled….why? they both give the same output.

The victory paths will incentivize certain playstyles. That is true of any victory path (including stay alive the whole game)

The rules of the game incentivize certain playstyles (the fact that I can’t control what the enemy units do and I can’t change the land forms midgame and I can’t build nukes and slingers at the same time with one of my merchants….that incentivizes certain playstyles )

 

[nantus]

Like I said maybe "forced" is a bit strong but ultimately for a game series that has been trying to show the diversity of human civilization they really made it so the markers of success are playing like a handful of cultures in Western Europe. The most neutral route in the era is the science route. Culture is pretty neutral but ultimately there aren't many other major prostheletyzing religions other than Christianity other than Islam and Buddhism so it gives those that play in a way of religious dominance like Spain, France or Portugal a boon. Economic gameplay depends on treasure fleets which are only avaliable through colonization. It doesn't matter how well versed you are at trade because ultimately you need to colonize territory to deemed successful. It's only slightly less forced than military because you can pillage other people's fleets. So honest commerce is not a marker of success you either take over distant lands or you're a thief.

And lastly military. Given there only seems to be two major continents i'll make the comparison between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. By civ 7 logic, the Ottomans, Russians and Incan's military victories and expansion are not valid measures of success. Spain, France, Portugal, The Netherlands and Britain are successful. I understand games need markers for success because there ultimately need a victor but the fact that you can only be rewarded by the game through doing SPECIFIC actions that really only match the histories of a handful of countries is while maybe not forced heavily punitive to those that want to break from that mold. Can you be successful not abiding by those terms? Yes, but the game will see you as lacking and reward players who play along with the story they want to tell even if the reward doesn't match the actions of the player. It's like rewarding an actor who did a decent job reading off a script you wrote vs tolerating someone who's doing some good improv work. There's a clear favoritism there. Civ 7 is an Alternate history game where the factors are randomized to create a world with the same core components but vastly different from our own.

It's funny that the devs bring on Shawnee leaders because the mark of success in the era that civ will appear is to actively colonize other continents. In other words if you are not colonizing you are a loser in over half of the victory conditions. And I get it to an extent that that is in a way a feat worthy of recognizing but the fact it is the sole marker of success means that that is the narrative the game wants the focus of the era to be.

I think you formulate it a bit too narrow-mindedly. Incentivizing the utilization of existing but clearly sub-optimal game mechanics within divergent play styles for the sake of more viable variation is not “forcing” (btw "nudging" at best) a narrative, but very much needed.

It's not about different civilizational modes of conquest but simply the following: The generally best meta (expansion on the homeland landmass, conquest/weakening of direct competitors) obtains no additional bonuses in the 2nd age in order to avoid excessive snowball effects. Now in the Exploration Age there are some bonuses for overseas conquest, in many respects nevertheless an inferior strategy, in terms of military and economics. Additionally, the "tall" strategy, which is already significantly strengthened by the Town mechanic, gains strong bonuses in the area of science/culture, so that these 2 poles are in balance in my opinion.

Based on what we've already seen, however, we can already say that this whole debate is a giant nothing-burger, as Legacy points are very easy to obtain and hardly represent a serious strategic decision beyond what players make anyway, usually already with the Leader and/or Civ choice. (Namely Militaristic vs. Peaceful and Wide vs. Tall) I'll try to elaborate on this in a dedicated thread, because it is more a "technical" question of impact, not of perception.

 

[Fummy]

The science one in exploration is really weird. whats 40 yields on a single tile got to do with science? So a player who is the science leader, reached the end of the tech tree, but doesnt have more than 30 yields doesnt get a single legacy point? Just repeating the codex thing for mastery would have been better. I can see how the tech tree makes it possible to achieve these numbers, but civics and specialists will be important too and those have nothing to do with science.

It seems like they took the "yield porn" trend from Civ VI and made it an actual win condition.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

The science one in exploration is really weird. whats 40 yields on a single tile got to do with science? So a player who is the science leader, reached the end of the tech tree, but doesnt have more than 30 yields doesnt get a single legacy point? Just repeating the codex thing for mastery would have been better. I can see how the tech tree makes it possible to achieve these numbers, but civics and specialists will be important too and those have nothing to do with science.

It seems like they took the "yield porn" trend from Civ VI and made it an actual win condition.

I took it to be a nod to the importance of specialists. As in, you can't really achieve these yields without focusing on tall growth + specialists, and so it rewards civs who prefer internal progress over external. My guess is you won't be the science lead unless you invest in growth and specialists, but I'm not sure we've seen enough to be sure.