Things you *don't* want to see in Civ7 and its expansions

[Boris Gudenuf]

Do you mean a nomadic period?

Otherwise, this is basically why I often play Terra.

Not as it was implemented in Humankind, which essentially allowed you to do nothing but Prepare and explore the map u ntil you plunked down your first city - an extended First Turn, basically.

Rather, what is needed is a mechanic that makes it possible to advance before you plunk down that first city instead, as now and forever in the Civ series, having you utterly handicapped until you get your first city - without a city you have essentially no Science, no Production, no Culture, since all those resources are tied to Cities.

Given that earlier groups going back to at least 10,000 BCE were either wandering hunter-gatherers or smaller-than-city Settlements that occasionally reached Near City in size, we need a way to make both of those Playable, at least for some time in the early game. Obviously, IRL nomadic/pastoral Civs became non-competitive after the Renaissance, since you couldn't put a factory on a wagon, and hunting and gathering was non-competitive with domesticated animals and agriculture so that smaller Settlements gave way to Cities. But it shouldn't be necessary to make those transitions on the First Turn to stay in the game.

 

[mitsho]

This, and especially @Boris Gudenuf's elaborate fleshing out ,is good . . . but . . . all the other techs in the game would cluster around these at roughly the historically-appropriate time.

And then you'd essentially be back to having eras.

Wich brings me back to my original question: Then what are eras for? What do they bring gameplay wise? Why do we need them? What do we do?

Do you have an answer to that?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Game concerns history. Tech tree tracks with developments over human history. Historians divide the past into eras. Nothing more than that.

 

[Krajzen]

Wich brings me back to my original question: Then what are eras for? What do they bring gameplay wise? Why do we need them? What do we do?

Do you have an answer to that?

Eras are convenient heuristic mental shortcut, a way to divide the gameplay into stages, a "map" of organisation and comprehension, similarly to how we still use them in real life history. I can refer to any given era name for anything, instead of awkwardly stumbling "uhhh so have you noticed how around the time you discover tech #46 there is phenomenon X??" How many wonders do we have per era, when there are pacing problems?

Eras are way to balance stuff - how do we distribute units, wonders, buildings etc ("okay we need to add X content to Y era to match content density of other eras"), discrete intervals are useful here

Eras are way to handle cosmetics - period appropriate music changing with eras, city aestethics and improvmenets and other stuff also divided into discrete units of change, whereas all other triggers of cosmetic change would be more awkward (if you discover tech X, and only that, then your cities change appearance?)

Eras can interact with game mechanics and usually there are various things balanced to change with eras - the amount of spies in civ5, votes in WC, IIRC artifacts having bonuses from how many eras have passed etc.

 

[Gori the Grey]

And what's the harm in dividing the tech tree into eras?

 

[Sephi]

Eras often times change the art in the game. How roads look like or buildings. What music is played etc.

So my list of stuff I do not want to see:
- 1UP
- comic graphics
- leader backgrounds/clothing that do not change with eras. Like an aztec leader chilling at a campfire in the modern era.
- braindead AI
- rules that feel completly artificial, like "warmonger diplo penalties" or "science district is more productive when next to a mountain or jungle"
- ahistorical stuff like vampires, zombies, giant death robots...
- overcomplicated and intransparent rules like the production formula in civ6. Keep the rules simple and make the systems interconnected so that a player can craft a deep variety of strategies

 

[jsciv69]

Settlement restriction; How frustrating is it to spot a very ripe land to settle a city. Then not being allowed to due to the are being too close to someone's borders. This needs to go. It should be that any land not in anyone's borders is free game. I would go further and bring back a mechanism from Civ III ( which I still say was the best of the franchise). Where we could actually settle a new city within our own borders.

 

[Vahnstad]

- Policies (micromanagement)
- Civ 6 world congress
- Civ 6 alliances
- Timed Agreements
- Governors (micromanagement)

 

[AriochIV]

Settlement restriction; How frustrating is it to spot a very ripe land to settle a city. Then not being allowed to due to the are being too close to someone's borders. This needs to go. It should be that any land not in anyone's borders is free game. I would go further and bring back a mechanism from Civ III ( which I still say was the best of the franchise). Where we could actually settle a new city within our own borders.

So... you like having the AI settle directly on your border? Because that's the alternative.

 

[Leucarum]

So... you like having the AI settle directly on your border? Because that's the alternative.

I guess loyalty reduces this somewhat... But I think it's healthy for the game to have a minimum distance from cities.

Maybe the one exception could be city states, where you often don't want to destroy them, but their placement can really block off city sites...

 

[pokiehl]

I actually think it’d be interesting to even further limit settling with a territory system like Humankind, which would allow you to merge cities from different territories as well.

 

[Acepox]

Settlement restriction; How frustrating is it to spot a very ripe land to settle a city. Then not being allowed to due to the are being too close to someone's borders. This needs to go. It should be that any land not in anyone's borders is free game. I would go further and bring back a mechanism from Civ III ( which I still say was the best of the franchise). Where we could actually settle a new city within our own borders.

You mean from the loyalty mechanic?

If so, that has been very annoying indeed.

I don't think loyalty should be done away with entirely, but I think it could be dampened if dependent on a migration system. Like, your city loyalty won't degrade unless a significant part of the population isn't from your Civ's ethnicity.

 

[jsciv69]

So... you like having the AI settle directly on your border? Because that's the alternative.

Any land outside anyone's borders should be fair game for any player. That is what we used to be allowed. Starting with Civ V settlement restrictions became implemented. That should be eliminated .

 

[AriochIV]

Any land outside anyone's borders should be fair game for any player. That is what we used to be allowed. Starting with Civ V settlement restrictions became implemented. That should be eliminated .

Why? How would that make the game better?

 

[jsciv69]

Why? How would that make the game better?

It creates quite the welcome competition for a particular stretch of land. Say you spot a nice piece of land for a city. Very likely other Civs spot the same land. You'll want to get their first. But it would be ideal to bring some fighting units with your settler. In reality that kind of dispute over a particular area, tends to require the use of lots and lots of violence. Such is the reality of History.

 

[AffineConstant]

It creates quite the welcome competition for a particular stretch of land. Say you spot a nice piece of land for a city. Very likely other Civs spot the same land. You'll want to get their first. But it would be ideal to bring some fighting units with your settler. In reality that kind of dispute over a particular area, tends to require the use of lots and lots of violence. Such is the reality of History.

And, why wouldn't that city secede and join the country it liked better given the chance? That's all how history worked, a lot of people in the Texas rebellion against Mexico weren't migrants from the US, they'd settled there from Mexico and wanted their own country just as much as anyone else.

"Fair game" well influencing someone else's city to rebel and join your country sounds perfectly fair game.

 

[civPeter]

Looking forward to Civ 7.. hopefully some major changes will be coming in the new version.

I do NOT like the 1 Unit Per Tile. Just gets so hard and annoying to move units around.. and doesn't really make sense.
I hope the art style can be a little less cartoon. I just didn't totally love the Civ 6 style (especially compared to 5 or 4). I found it hard to take the leaders seriously with their exaggerated look.
The map got hard for me to look at in 6. Hard to tell what tile had what on it, and things felt so unbalanced. (again I preferred 4 or 5 in this regard).

Thanks for listening to our feedback.

 

[Leyrann]

Thanks for listening to our feedback.

You do know this forum has no affiliation with Firaxis or 2k, right?

 

[civPeter]

You do know this forum has no affiliation with Firaxis or 2k, right?

Yes. But I would guess some of their team might check over here from time to time. Plus you read my post.. so thanks for listening....

 

[pokiehl]

I hope the art style can be a little less cartoon. I just didn't totally love the Civ 6 style (especially compared to 5 or 4

If anything, Civ 4 is even more goofy and cartoon looking than Civ 6. So is Civ 3 really.