These amount of uniques and flavor could be used in a "traditional" CIV design for a broader distributed uniques/bonuses in others eras/ages, so an Assyrian civ could have used references to their Syriac and of course also Muslim regional descendants.
"Assyria who must be Muslim" sounds nothing better than the civ-changing. I prefer "Assyria who can be anything between looter horde and cultural empire", which actually is embodied in Civ 7 with the chance to be Mongolia and Abbasid.
Unless if you want to say that Ming people conquered and replaced Han people, I think this is quite obvious that the Civilization in Civ 7 does not represent the people/nation/identity, it just represents specific system and form of life in the piece of time.
Why are you denying all other possible metaphors and symbolism that can work for the civ-changing? Even the most homogeneously continued nations in the world also changed their name and system several times.
For many one issue is that those others possible metaphors and symbolism comes from very different circumstances and degrees. Suppose that the change between ruling groups, forms of governments, religion or conquest and subjugation by a foreign group are the same is historically dishonest.
Of cource cultures change, but all previous CIV games already represented these kind of transformations through changes of government, religion, society and obviously the technologies themselves. People could not see problem to change from Sengoku to Meiji Japan, but change from Maya to Spanish is a very different thing. It does not help that from what has been revealed seems like names, architecture and units change with your civ in a way that from historical examples do not fit the idea that "we must imagine a friendly transition".
I prefer "Assyria who can be anything between looter horde and cultural empire", which actually is embodied in Civ 7 with the chance to be Mongolia and Abbasid.
You can, potentially, have ancient civs that get fresh uniques in later eras to keep them relevant. It would be a stretch in many cases, for example, what would the Maya modern units/abilties look like? Plumed Gunners? Atlatl that fires grenades? Actually, that sounds pretty cool...
Where was I? Ah, yes. The problem is even if you can fully find modernized uniques by carrying over ancient powers, you cannot have modern powers backdated to the ancient era with era-appropriate uniques. I mean, does America have ancient minutemen with coonskin caps and clubs? Mughal proto-mausoleums that are made of rocks? Chariot Keshiks for the Mongols?
Remember, the goal of Civ 7 is to solve the late-game problem, i.e. everyone says the late game is a lot of clicking just to get to the inevitable win condition. Will this work? Who knows? But by making everyone pick up a modern power and play with their fresh uniques, stacked on the legacies of the two prior civs, you'll have some wild combinations to attempt. And if the disasters are enough a setback, everyone will still have a puncher's chance to take the game, enough so you have to try in the late game and can't just coast to victory. It's bold, but I like it.
Of cource cultures change, but all previous CIV games already represented these kind of transformations through changes of government, religion, society and obviously the technologies themselves.
They never did actually. Did you see the Sinocentrism Empire, Classical bureaucratism, or Arab Caliphate in the previous Civ games? Even European civs were not properly described as the successors of Pax Romana. The Civ games just put them all in roughly imitated Western history and dropped a slight flavor of each civ in certain period of gameplay.
They sound like same things to me. Didn't we all agreed about that the Civ franchise is an 4X strategy game series based on the alternative history? Why Assyria civ need to have Muslim uniques in the middle game? The Muslim Syria was not a exact and continual successor of them, and we definitely could see many other possibilities.
The continuity of all these is but a fabrication believed by people who do not really understand the intricacies of human culture and civilisation.
Japanese culture today is European. Heck even a late Edo period Kantou-ite would feel more out of place during mid-Muromachi period than a Japanese exchange student does in India. Ad absurdum if Japan, Vietnam, Korea, China, Greece, Assyrians, Shawnee, etc. any of these served as a viable model for what a "unbroken continuity" constitutes then all nations in the world satisfy an unbroken continuity all the way back to the first culture-like behaviors in Homo Sapiens. Which they do, in a way but there's the catch that it has no bearing on them.
Humans have an unbroken continuity with superbly ancient kinds of fish. It does genuinely leave a mark on us but we're not fish. We never interbred with aliens, or got genetically modified by some crazy scientist and yet the unbroken line to aquatic wildlife has nothing reasonable to say about our present condition.
Right? Funny thing academies are usually organized by regional continuous and not jump from study medieval Korea to modern Shawnee.
The idea that people that want an continuation option ignore cultural and historical changes is getting old pretty quick. I mean "fabrications", like pretend "civilizations" are a discrete number of unified entities that change synchronously their identity all around the globe as if it were a cosplay, without real cultural mixing convergence, diversification and common ancestors but a mere musical chair game of costumes.
So the reductionism and catastrophism model from CIV7 does not fit the intricacies of human culture and civilization either.
Getting the history (and anthrpology) lesson you missed out on in school out of the way and coming back to the video game world, Civ 7 development team is not blind to Humankind.
If they dropped the feature from that game then they had a reason for it. In HK's case, 3% of the players unlocked an achievement for keeping the same culture for 4 eras (i.e. the equivalent length of time to Civ 7's 2 eras, a single non-transition).
The feature was more of a niche thing but apparently some people did opt for it at least once.
However, from a roleplaying perspective it just does not work. Most of Civfanatics has a thing or two to say about how they dislike Humankind's era change system and you hear the complaint about how "you change your culture too often, making it impossible to form a connection/feel like you're actually playing the one you've selected" come up time and time again. What these people never say is "and that's why I used the functionality to remain Egypt, Iroquous, Maya for longer", which shows that while it's technically there and has all sorts of extra bells and whistles to make it feel as natural as humanly possible without making Warcraft, even the invested, roleplaying-focused audience does not really make use of it.
Anything short of having "Modern Shawnee" or "Modern Assyrians" with new bonuses, soundtrack, unique unit visuals, etc. seems to not be able to cut it even for the hardcore folks.
And what's left of the millions of casual players? Mere wasted effort and another button on the interface they will never click on.
Like many people did is ironinc to thing now that CIV can do it better than Humankind about the whole civ changing just because we already know they are trying but keep ignoring the same for an identity continuity option:
1- Humankind was a whole new game that we knew from start that would use the changing mechanic, it is obvious that many people didnt even bothered to try it in the first place, so the ones that do were already open to try this mechanic. On the contrary CIV players are used to keep a civ from start to end.
2- Like the amount of content for each changing civ is deeper in CIV7, Firaxis could also add more incentives for the alternative of keeping your previous indentity, what Humankind offered was a minimum barely the option itself to continue with the same name. It is an absurd to portrait it as if the game was just about that, like people were reducing Humankind failure to the change mechanic until CIV annouced they were doing something similar.
Seriously I am sure Firaxis could be presenting a Millennia like alternate "eras/ages" mechanic any day and a lot of people would suddendly love it just because would be in CIV.
By the way phylogenetically Homo sapiens are fish (Osteichthyes).
Heck, make having no special benefits in subsequent eras the consequence of not playing how the developers want. (Already happens to an extent with V and VI.) I'd rather continue with a vanilla Rome than pretend they somehow turned into the Normans:
-fits better with my sense of immersion, and
-might allow playing TSL games.
Granted, some new kind of unique would be better, but that's asking Firaxis to do more programming. This proposal should require very little. Yes the non-switching player is at a disadvantage, but that's their decision.
When civ7 first announced that it's going to feature civs changing with eras, I wept in terror, for I disliked the system as it was handled in Humankind (as in: in the extremely emotionally alienating way). Alas, you know what, civ devs managed to largely convince me to their version of that idea. I am positively curious of this experiment and I think it offers a lot of creative opportunities for the series. I also admit I'm not *that* fond of the age old idea that we begin in the neolithic year 4000 BC with the modern nationalities of say Poles, Scots, or Brazilians. I do think that beginning from Slavs or Celts and only then unlocking more modern civ may be more immersive (and more fun).
However, I am still not very keen on one aspect of the new systems: that civilizations *have to* die at the junctions between eras, that there is no way for Assyria to exist in the modern era. In fact, in this very real world we do have Assyrian people and culture surviving till this very day! So, for sake of Assyrians, let me present arguments from history, game design and the spirit of civ franchise, why civ7 should give Assyrians the ability to go from ancient to modern era without transforming into Arabs, and how could it look without threating devs vision.
It's going to be a goddamn long post, hence spoilers to make it more readable.
History, or how some stood after all
Spoiler:
Orthodox supporters of civ era switching tryumphantly bring a certain argument: that in real history cultures always change, dying sooner or later, and no civilisation can be feasibly said to have existed from the ancient era till the modern day. Hence civ7 is going to finally please Ozymandias and topple the silly essentialism stating that 2000 years ago Polish speaking people were traversing Vistula river basin proudly in their socks and sandals.
Correction: cultures *often* change, transform and die out - but quite a few do indeed qualify to survive from civ7 "ancient era" till "modern era". Japan has unbroken dynastic continuity of 1500 years, and even longer cultural one. Koreans and Vietnamese don't have the worst claims of two millenia of history. Ethiopian, Armenian and Coptic churches exist in the direct unbroken line since the 4th century. It's hard to deny ancient continuity of Jewish culture; modern Greeks can somewhat understand language of their ancient ancestors from Homeric age; and Assyrians are still around. And while China, India and Iran are controversial cases and one can argue these are not continuous (and they definitely deserve being displayed as many separate civs), the notion of them as "civilizations" is not entirely gone at all. But even without going for the ancient examples, nearly every modern Eurasian ethnicity can easily claim being in two eras.
The rise and fall of the essential counterargument
Spoiler:
There is one great counterargument to be made regarding my claim above: namely that, you see Krajzen, as wise and handsome as you are, all the cultures you have just mentioned are not, in fact, essential monoliths unchanging across space in time. We shouldn't talk about "Armenians" but rather three separate civs of "Arsacid Armenia", "Armenian Cilicia" and "Republic of Armenia", for these were quite different cultures, differing in every regard, even geporaphic space they have occupied. Hence, one cannot really talk about "Armenian civ" standing the test of time and persisting across eras.
That's an intriguing argument, which would require me to enter very difficult historiosophic debate regarding cultural continuity and discontinuity across time.
Fortunately I don't have to do so, because Firaxis devs themselves immediately shoot down themselves in the foot by the decision to include a civilization they call "Maya". Not "specific period Y Maya" or "specific ethnolinguistic group X of many Mayan peoples and languages", nor "specific political entity Maya", no - they take the broadest possible notion of "Maya" and essentialise it for sake of better gameplay, while restricting them to the ancient era.
In which case it is entirely fair for me to point out, that "Maya" defined in such most general way is a civilization which not just survived till the very end of the 16th century in the independent state form, so till the very end of era II as well - but also that Mayan people are alive and well today, numbering over 9 million, of whose 6 million still speak (many) Mayan languages! Hence we can see how civ which IRL actually is present in all "three eras" in game is forced to perish at the end of the first. Which brings us to the awkward point of...
I'm sorry native Americans - modernity is not for you, or awkward implications of Civ VII design
Spoiler:
...the fact that a 100% Mayan (or Nahua) guy who plays civ7 cannot play alternate history with his people building modern era civilization, avoiding ten thousand mizeries and genocidies brought upon them by the scourge of colonialism. Civ7 tells him that his people and inherently "ancient" (or well "exploration era") culture which is predetermined to die out, they are inherently incapable of being "modern", and to add insult and a pinch of salt to the injury, their only way to carry on their legacy is via the colonial states that were born from their conquest. I mean, I do have Nahua friend who is simultaneously a Mexican patriot, but I'm pretty sure he too would appreciate the Aztec alternate history.
Game design and player psychology, or don't take away my identity
Spoiler:
I can't think of any RPG like this, nor about any FPS game which lets you upgrafe tour guns and get attached to them and then forces you to replace them with very different guns. And I think that's for a damn good reason:
1) Challenge in games is fun
2) Change in games is fun
3) Limited choices and difficult decisions are fun
4) But *forcibly* taking away player's old toys and cosmetics and replacing them against his will is not fun
5) Specially if said toys are actually character's and by extension player's *identity*, because while the player can accept drastically changing game rules, one has to have control who she/he is (unless the game is conceptualized as linear storytelling to begin with)
I'm all for radical experimentation with Civ franchise and I love the idea of eras, of crises player must face to survive, and the ability to transform your civ across eras plenty of games enforce such challenge and narrative structure to grest benefit. But forcing player to change civs mid game against his/her will seems to go against some psychological fundaments of video games for me - developers force the player to leave ingame identity he/she is perhaps comfortable with. Give me the option to switch cultures, yes; make AI opponents transform for more exciting world; but I wan alsot the option to somehow retain my old culture because sometimes I'm attached to it and by enforcing me to change you are messing with my own narrative regarding who I am in the game. Especially as - here we return to the previous points - historical Mayans or Poles had no problem very much surviving from one era to the next one, so why can't I, in a historical themed video game?
Civ7 grand design, and how the optional civ retention doesn't threaten it
Spoiler:
It is at this point that I can hear the great cry of sorrow crossing the Atlantic, having come all the way from America. It is civ7 devs who weep: "We have such fun design philosophy dear players, why do you reject it; to allow civ retention is to bring it all to ruin, to admit defeat"
Is it, though? The revolutionary fundament of civ7 is not civ switching in itself but the idea to reflect dynamic and nonlinear nature of history by the division of gsme structure into three very different eras, with dramatic crisis transitions between them, with the ideal outcome of said design being the resolution of the age old 4X endgame problem. Devs themselves said it, and changing civs at the junctions came later. And it's a great idea, as the fact that cultures change across history makes the game closer to reality - but not forcing them all to exist only in the narrow artificial intervals. Is it really historical and immersive that Spain always has to die by the 18th century?
Many cultures change, morph and disappear... but some do persist. The third way would be the closest to the truth, while retaining shakeups between eras, dynamic and changing game world, and the exciting possibility of switching civs (but not the brute necessity). It would be also way easier for both players and devs to add new civs, scenarios and TSL maps, without the necessity to always struggle with the "missing links".
Okay, but how do you exactly envision it? What about the balance?
Spoiler:
The option to retain civ when entering new era should be limited only to the players, both human and AI, who have dealt with the Crisis *very* well. Ideally I'd say between zero and at most 20% of AI civs should be able to both unlock and choose retention per era transition. It makes sense in-universe (continuous cultures are those who survived inbthe best shape), IRL, and doesn't depart too part from civ devs' idea that history forces the players to adapt one way or another. It also precludes most of the AIs from civ retention, while making the remaining ones compete for less next era civs, thereby making the remaining transitions more historical.
As for balance, leader ability transcends chosen civ, whereas many civ unique abilities can handle future eras as well. So the retention civ has no fresh unique unit, UI, and IIRC policy cards (not sure here). The easiest way to counterbalance that would be to provide some generic "Legacy" bonuses/policy cards to the retention civs, depending on their past specializations - so as retained Rome you get bonus to heavy infantry and X district type because of your ancient traditions, while you unlock policy cards providing bonuses to your museums and diplomacy etc.
TL;DR or Jesus Christ that post is too long
I am a fan of unlocking the ability to retain past era civ when entering an era - under the condition of handling the crisis mechanic very well; usually the vast majority of AIs shouldn't do that. This
1) Makes sense in-universe and inside the game's narrative
2) Makes grest amount of historical sense, due to the sheer amount of real life cultures and states who survived "era transitions" IRL
3) Doesn't stray too away from the devs vision and the game's philosophy, respecting it while also helping for many upset players to adapt; the vasy majority of players and sessions would probably involve at least one civ switch anyway
4) While not frustrating the players with the inherently alienating design of "the game forces you to replace the identity of your 'character'" (or your class in the RPG, your weapons in Doom Eternal etc)
5) ...and allowing the players to satisfy the age old purpose of those games: to make their ancestors win against historical defeats, to make Precolombian Indians empires survive to the modern day, and to Stand the Test of Time.
Easy. Zapatistas. I've said for a while that the Maya are the Western Hemisphere's best shot for a three-era civ with Maya > Mayapan > Yucatec. It took the Spanish centuries to conquer the Yucatan and the Maya more broadly, and the Maya are still resisting. That being said...
You can, potentially, have ancient civs that get fresh uniques in later eras to keep them relevant. It would be a stretch in many cases, for example, what would the Maya modern units/abilties look like? Plumed Gunners? Atlatl that fires grenades? Actually, that sounds pretty cool...
Where was I? Ah, yes. The problem is even if you can fully find modernized uniques by carrying over ancient powers, you cannot have modern powers backdated to the ancient era with era-appropriate uniques. I mean, does America have ancient minutemen with coonskin caps and clubs? Mughal proto-mausoleums that are made of rocks? Chariot Keshiks for the Mongols?
Remember, the goal of Civ 7 is to solve the late-game problem, i.e. everyone says the late game is a lot of clicking just to get to the inevitable win condition. Will this work? Who knows? But by making everyone pick up a modern power and play with their fresh uniques, stacked on the legacies of the two prior civs, you'll have some wild combinations to attempt. And if the disasters are enough a setback, everyone will still have a puncher's chance to take the game, enough so you have to try in the late game and can't just coast to victory. It's bold, but I like it.
Reference "Chariot Keshiks" - Yes, they can. There is evidence that the spoked wheel chariot spread to China from the steppes, and therefore was present among the ancestral Pre-Mongols, complete with bows. The old Civ problem was that we have little to no idea what language they spoke or who any leaders were (before the Xiong-Nu, anyway) or more than archeological evidence for any cultural/social attributes. The Cv VII system of 'detached Leaders' obviates most of that: give 'em Pushkin for a Leader and try to build a Civ around Pastoral Poetry . . .
"Fresh uniques in later (or earlier) Eras" is the crux of the problem. Based on what we've seen so far, each Era will require, potentially, unique Improvements, Units, Buildings, Districts, Social/Civic Trees and/or possibly a unique set of (Semi) Great People, Just for the 31 Civs hinted at so far, that's 62 new sets of uniques or varying complexity.
Or to put it in Game Development terms, one H**l of a lot of work.
I think if we are obnoxious and persistent enough in asking for it, and are willing to wait for a couple of years for a dedicated DLC or two (probably preceded by several Mod attempts at it) I think it could be done, but not for release or anywhere close to it.
Reference "Chariot Keshiks" - Yes, they can. There is evidence that the spoked wheel chariot spread to China from the steppes, and therefore was present among the ancestral Pre-Mongols, complete with bows. The old Civ problem was that we have little to no idea what language they spoke or who any leaders were (before the Xiong-Nu, anyway) or more than archeological evidence for any cultural/social attributes. The Cv VII system of 'detached Leaders' obviates most of that: give 'em Pushkin for a Leader and try to build a Civ around Pastoral Poetry . . .
"Fresh uniques in later (or earlier) Eras" is the crux of the problem. Based on what we've seen so far, each Era will require, potentially, unique Improvements, Units, Buildings, Districts, Social/Civic Trees and/or possibly a unique set of (Semi) Great People, Just for the 31 Civs hinted at so far, that's 62 new sets of uniques or varying complexity.
Or to put it in Game Development terms, one H**l of a lot of work.
I think if we are obnoxious and persistent enough in asking for it, and are willing to wait for a couple of years for a dedicated DLC or two (probably preceded by several Mod attempts at it) I think it could be done, but not for release or anywhere close to it.
Easy. Zapatistas. I've said for a while that the Maya are the Western Hemisphere's best shot for a three-era civ with Maya > Mayapan > Yucatec. It took the Spanish centuries to conquer the Yucatan and the Maya more broadly, and the Maya are still resisting. That being said...
...if I disagree with your example, I agree this is something that would be nice to see late in the development cycle, in an "NFP" type situation.
Interesting thought, but I still don't think you can cobble enough "mayan" uniques though to make essentially two later civilizations from them, not without it being highly reductive and a bit silly. And of course this doesn't fix the issue of working later-era civs backwards in time.
Bumping this thread because I believe the devs should see it.
I also like what Boris said above -- if we're persistent enough, they'll probably find some way to make it work. I like to think the fans' relation with Firaxis is less adversarial than the internet wants community-dev relationships to be.
Interesting thought, but I still don't think you can cobble enough "mayan" uniques though to make essentially two later civilizations from them, not without it being highly reductive and a bit silly.
Heck, make having no special benefits in subsequent eras the consequence of not playing how the developers want. (Already happens to an extent with V and VI.) I'd rather continue with a vanilla Rome than pretend they somehow turned into the Normans:
-fits better with my sense of immersion, and
-might allow playing TSL games.
Granted, some new kind of unique would be better, but that's asking Firaxis to do more programming. This proposal should require very little. Yes the non-switching player is at a disadvantage, but that's their decision.
In my opinion, false choices should be avoided in game design. A choice that has only negative consequences should not even be offered. If you still want it, then that is what mods are for. Mods also have the advantage that you can force everyone to keep their civ to make it somewhat fair (but probably still quite unbalanced)
4) But *forcibly* taking away player's old toys and cosmetics and replacing them against his will is not fun
5) Specially if said toys are actually character's and by extension player's *identity*, because while the player can accept drastically changing game rules, one has to have control who she/he is (unless the game is conceptualized as linear storytelling to begin with)
4) I'd argue that the Civ has always been a game that takes away your toys. You may love Roman Legions but at some point you have to upgrade them or use a different class of units. Having one thing and moving on to the next best thing is part of the fun. I'm not arguing against your point but saying there are multiple different types of fun which may be in opposition.
5) Civ is going to be equally about creating an identity for yourself in the game as it is about making your identity reflect you IRL. Again multiple types of fun which are not all compatible with each other all the time.
In my opinion, false choices should be avoided in game design. A choice that has only negative consequences should not even be offered. If you still want it, then that is what mods are for. Mods also have the advantage that you can force everyone to keep their civ to make it somewhat fair (but probably still quite unbalanced)
The not-negative consequence is you get to keep your civ, and again hopefully your TSL territory. The latter would be a huge benefit since that's the only kind of game I play.
The not-negative consequence is you get to keep your civ, and again hopefully your TSL territory. The latter would be a huge benefit since that's the only kind of game I play.
Not in a TSL game if, for example, Egypt switches to Songhai. Those two are thousands of miles apart. Others do work, although it's tough to see Rome as a Norman city.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
