To stand the test of time - or a little argumentative essay on why civ7 should allow retention of the old civs in the new eras

[Boris Gudenuf]

Being able to pick stuff to carry over and where you spend points is a good example. It's like giving the player a goody bag full of endorphins. The challenge for civ switching is gonna be how to make it feel more like "I'm gaining something" than "I'm losing something" - it'll always be both, but this is something where presentation will make a big difference to player experience - and you're on the money that a lot of it is semantics and how the lead in is presented I think.

And yeah, gameplay unlocks are a really good way to push this feeling - if they were more like quest chains than "I haz horses" that would probably feel a lot better.

- And, tying some more of the things they have talked about in their game design, Narrative events can/could/should be programmed to advance gameplay unlocks: Narratives with decision trees that give the gamer new possibilities for Unlocks depending on which path they take - and the paths based on already-accomlished game-play events.

This would be devilishly hard to program so that certain paths don't become standardized ("I will always pick C, D, and X because that gives me access to Kangaroo resources that allow me to choose Australia in the next Age" sort of thing) but it would give the gamer some Agency in directing, or at least steering, his Civ switching choices.

Believing (rightly or wrongly) that you have some say in what happens next is, I am firmly convinced, crucial to gamers accepting the game and its new mechanics.

 

[Leucarum]

- And, tying some more of the things they have talked about in their4 game design, Narrative events can/could/should be programmed to advance gameplay unlocks: Narratives with decision trees that give the gamer new possibilities for Unlocks depending on which path they take - and the paths based on already-accomlished game-play events.

This would be devilishly hard to program so that certain paths don't become standardized ("I will always pick C, D, and X because that gives me access to Kangaroo resources that allow me to choose Australia in the next Age" sort of thing) but it would give the gamer some Agency in directing, or at least steering, his Civ switching choices.

Believing (rightly or wrongly) that you have some say in what happens next is, I am firmly convinced, crucial to gamers accepting the game and its new mechanics.

That is without the issues around players experiencing all possible events. Doing it right might require... Emergent gameplay.

Still something feels a little fishy so far for me about the current system. I pick the ancient civ I want to play, but the best civ to play next seems to matter more on how the map was generated. Am I playing the game here or is it playing me?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That is without the issues around players experiencing all possible events. Doing it right might require... Emergent gameplay.

Still something feels a little fishy so far for me about the current system. I pick the ancient civ I want to play, but the best civ to play next seems to matter more on how the map was generated. Am I playing the game here or is it playing me?

In any game that aspires or claims to be historically-based, your choices are going to be limited by Prior Events and Geography. China cannot become 19th century England, because the geography, pre-history and history have alfready bent them in different ways.

However, with immense effort China can become similar to 19th century England (massive industrialization and trade income resting on a large base of rural agricultural laborers) a century or so (an Age?) later.

Based on that, I expect the game will present some 'easy' choices, based on geography/supposed history - as someone already posted elsewhere, one Norman city from the middle ages was Only 100 or so miles from Rome - close enough to make Normandy a Roman Progression in Civ VII's book!

Other choices will be harder - find Horse resources, settle X cities on Z terrain, etc, - that may be impossible in the specific game you are playing at the moment, but will turn out to be easy in other games. But possibly being 'easy' doesn't make them the 'best' for you and your style of play and previous choices.

BUT I will be very surprised (and disappointed) if those choices aren't there, both easy/"historical" or "geographical" and variably Hard based on in-game play.

 

[Leucarum]

Yeah. I'm talking about an idealized world here... Not what is going to be there.

One small change I think would help a lot - let the player pick a set of starting biases during map generation. Make the leader/first civ's biases the reccomended ones but let players swap some in and out. That way if I know I want my persians to become, say, incans, I can control that there will be mountains to justify my society going that way.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yeah. I'm talking about an idealized world here... Not what is going to be there.

One small change I think would help a lot - let the player pick a set of starting biases during map generation. Make the leader/first civ's biases the reccomended ones but let players swap some in and out. That way if I know I want my persians to become, say, incans, I can control that there will be mountains to justify my society going that way.

On the one hand, I'm generally in favor of more agency/choice for the gamer

On the other hand, the ability to manipulate starting position and resources/terrain runs the risk of making the game too predictable: Every time I play Persia, I 'know' my best move is to progress to Incans for whatever reason, so I can arrange that Every Time.

Then what's the point of any requirements for progressions, or any starting biases if they can be manipulated by the player at will?

 

[Leucarum]

On the one hand, I'm generally in favor of more agency/choice for the gamer

On the other hand, the ability to manipulate starting position and resources/terrain runs the risk of making the game too predictable: Every time I play Persia, I 'know' my best move is to progress to Incans for whatever reason, so I can arrange that Every Time.

Then what's the point of any requirements for progressions, or any starting biases if they can be manipulated by the player at will?

I appreciate the devil's advocacy.

As for why it's needed. I'd argue that some of the player agency is illusory. Without more control over terrain you're being played by the map - oh I have mountains, guess I should be Inca. I have no easy distant land access, and no rivers? Mongolia it is. Etc...

Arguably, players choosing terrain is currently facilitated by leader start biases. So once there's enough leaders with different start biases this won't be an issue. At present though there don't seem to be many choices for, say, navigable rivers despite many civs caring about them. I find that omission particularly baffling for Tecumseh when the Shawnee have a malus towards not being on navigable rivers. As it is I find myself gravitating towards leaders who have the terrain I want for my 2nd civ even if they aren't a fun combo...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I appreciate the devil's advocacy.

As for why it's needed. I'd argue that some of the player agency is illusory. Without more control over terrain you're being played by the map - oh I have mountains, guess I should be Inca. I have no easy distant land access, and no rivers? Mongolia it is. Etc...

Arguably, players choosing terrain is currently facilitated by leader start biases. So once there's enough leaders with different start biases this won't be an issue. At present though there don't seem to be many choices for, say, navigable rivers despite many civs caring about them. I find that omission particularly baffling for Tecumseh when the Shawnee have a malus towards not being on navigable rivers. As it is I find myself gravitating towards leaders who have the terrain I want for my 2nd civ even if they aren't a fun combo...

I would argue that with player control over the terrain then terrain becomes largely meaningless as a game factor - you might as well be playing Checkers or Go where the 'terrain' or board is a simple grid.

I guess a lot of it is background: between my sister with her PhD in population geography and taking a few courses myself in historical and economic geography I developed a good appreciation of how much difference geographical features make and made to historical development. To remove them as obstacles seems to me to 'cheapen' the experience of playing a historically-based game (no matter how tenuous the historical basis is in Civ!)

Of course, this is also heavily dependent on how well Civ VII handles starting Terrain. Previous Civs sucked at this, so that playing the map as given frequently meant playing, for instance, Nubia without any desert or Norway and England without any coast in view at start -which always made me wonder how those Civs' bonuses for the terrain could exist without the terrain.

That's what made me argue that Civ's starting sequence should be modified, so that you saw the map first and then chose your Civ. If Civ VII isn't any better at presenting suitable starting terrain, I'll argue that again: first see the map around your starting position, and then chose the Civ and Leader appropriate to the terrain/biome. You'd still have to go hunting for any in-game resources/geographies required for your 1st progression, but that's (nominally) 100 - 200 turns away or, in Antiquity, up to 4500 years, which should be enough time, if you are determined, to find what you need in most cases. It is the struggle to find what you want that, to me at least, is a large part of the game's attraction - within reason.

 

[Bast]

I think if you're going to make antiquity civs available later, you'll have to make exploration or modern age civs available in antiquity. Otherwise, it's not fair. I am actually learning to be ok with different civs for different ages. As long as there are good options. Like I know not everyone's going to have the Han - Ming - Qing continuity like China but at least something within the region or something that makes good historical sense. And that can come about by just adding more civs that cover more geography and more periods of history.

I don't mind initially to play something like Khmer - Majapahit - Siam even though it doesn't make a lot of historical sense, it could be fun. But hoping they do add more options.

 

[Leucarum]

I would argue that with player control over the terrain then terrain becomes largely meaningless as a game factor - you might as well be playing Checkers or Go where the 'terrain' or board is a simple grid.

I guess a lot of it is background: between my sister with her PhD in population geography and taking a few courses myself in historical and economic geography I developed a good appreciation of how much difference geographical features make and made to historical development. To remove them as obstacles seems to me to 'cheapen' the experience of playing a historically-based game (no matter how tenuous the historical basis is in Civ!)

I think you're overstating how much control a player would have. Specifying some start biases is very different from the map being so well defined as to be irrelavent.

Of course, this is also heavily dependent on how well Civ VII handles starting Terrain. Previous Civs sucked at this, so that playing the map as given frequently meant playing, for instance, Nubia without any desert or Norway and England without any coast in view at start -which always made me wonder how those Civs' bonuses for the terrain could exist without the terrain.

That's what made me argue that Civ's starting sequence should be modified, so that you saw the map first and then chose your Civ. If Civ VII isn't any better at presenting suitable starting terrain, I'll argue that again: first see the map around your starting position, and then chose the Civ and Leader appropriate to the terrain/biome. You'd still have to go hunting for any in-game resources/geographies required for your 1st progression, but that's (nominally) 100 - 200 turns away or, in Antiquity, up to 4500 years, which should be enough time, if you are determined, to find what you need in most cases. It is the struggle to find what you want that, to me at least, is a large part of the game's attraction - within reason.

But I think this is where the real disagreement lies. I'm starting from the point of view that I know what subset of civs I'm interested in playing and want to be have more tools to make that likely. Showing players a map first assumes all civs are equally desireable. I don't think that's true for moat players, and giving them the tools to set up civ chains which they want should be a net positive.

My bias here is that I have been disappointed by a lot of the exploration era civs. There's only 3, maybe 4 which excite me. It's made me realise how much I always gravitated towards ancient era civs in previous titles. The modern era has even fewer appealing civs to me based on vibes alone. I would like to be able to set up situations so that I can play the civs I like the look of later without save-scumming.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

What if your civ wipes out everyone else, and get a Conquest/Domination victory in the first Age?

Age ends in a crisis, now with the new age, your empire collapses and every defeated civs gets a second chance and
gains back all of their old capitals plus some neighbouring cities?

 

[Lazy sweeper]

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.

I'm genuinely curious about this... Why are you even bringing the Alien breed thing up?

Ancient people, saw other humans coming from the sea, some of them made the assumption that because they came from the sea, they must have been some kind of fish-human hybrid origin.
These same people, saw gigantic plasma discharges coming from the sea, and crawling their way uphill. Electrics filaments always have a dual nature, two filament intertwingle.
So they said that two headed serpent came out of the sea and headed to the Mountain, carving a valley in the process and every animal nearby the serpent died instantly in convulsions.
They followed the tracks and found a lake. They assumed the serpent lived there. The Mekong rivers is said to have been formed by a serpent.

What makes you think there was an ancient kind of fish that has anything to do with humans??? Because we have the remnants of gills?
What about an atmosphere so dense and thick of water that some kind of ancient humans actually developed gills to breath?
Would that make us fish? These are theories so radical that talking about Aliens would make you seems more sane than mad...

 

[Krikkit1]

What if your civ wipes out everyone else, and get a Conquest/Domination victory in the first Age?

Age ends in a crisis, now with the new age, your empire collapses and every defeated civs gets a second chance and
gains back all of their old capitals plus some neighbouring cities?

1. You can’t conquer all other civs in the first age because some are in distant lands (unless you set it up otherwise)

2. if you have conquered a large amount of territory you will probably be over the settlement cap…meaning a lot of unhappiness.

3. with high unhappiness, conquered settlements (either during the crisis Or during the entire age and stronger during the crisis) you should have to deal with rebel units… even for a civ that has lost all settlements.

4. if you can make it through a mass rebellion crisis with no other civ recapturing any of their settlements (or founding any new ones, they should also get rebel settlers to flee to empty land)…then (and only then) you should win an elimination victory.

Which means hopefully it is impossible in ancient, and ridiculously hard in exploration…and hopefully MAD will render it impossible in modern if you don’t do it fast before an opponent gets nukes.(ie very hard because you need to rush the conquest)

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I'm genuinely curious about this... Why are you even bringing the Alien breed thing up?

Ancient people, saw other humans coming from the sea, some of them made the assumption that because they came from the sea, they must have been some kind of fish-human hybrid origin.
These same people, saw gigantic plasma discharges coming from the sea, and crawling their way uphill. Electrics filaments always have a dual nature, two filament intertwingle.
So they said that two headed serpent came out of the sea and headed to the Mountain, carving a valley in the process and every animal nearby the serpent died instantly in convulsions.
They followed the tracks and found a lake. They assumed the serpent lived there. The Mekong rivers is said to have been formed by a serpent.

What makes you think there was an ancient kind of fish that has anything to do with humans??? Because we have the remnants of gills?
What about an atmosphere so dense and thick of water that some kind of ancient humans actually developed gills to breath?
Would that make us fish? These are theories so radical that talking about Aliens would make you seems more sane than mad...

I think he's meaning we evolved from fish naturally over time, rather than there being some overnight intervention like an alien genetics programme or something that acted as an era transition from when we were fish to when we became humans.

However, I love your post, it's truly mad and I'm here for it. I want all of what you've said in Civ

And I think @notNamed is not entirely correct either, as we are as much ancient fish as some modern fish are by ancestry and indeed genetics. Technically, we are both fish and human by taxonomy, but the bit that matters really for a conversation is the frame of reference we are using, and rarely is there a frame of reference that comes up outside of geological ancestry where its useful to describe humans as fish.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

1. You can’t conquer all other civs in the first age because some are in distant lands (unless you set it up otherwise)

2. if you have conquered a large amount of territory you will probably be over the settlement cap…meaning a lot of unhappiness.

3. with high unhappiness, conquered settlements (either during the crisis Or during the entire age and stronger during the crisis) you should have to deal with rebel units… even for a civ that has lost all settlements.

4. if you can make it through a mass rebellion crisis with no other civ recapturing any of their settlements (or founding any new ones, they should also get rebel settlers to flee to empty land)…then (and only then) you should win an elimination victory.

Which means hopefully it is impossible in ancient, and ridiculously hard in exploration…and hopefully MAD will render it impossible in modern if you don’t do it fast before an opponent gets nukes.(ie very hard because you need to rush the conquest)

It has always been possible. We can raze enemy cities. Leave big garrison on their capital.
It has always been a victory path. If you could accomplish total world domination in the Antiquity age your total score would be massive.
This is the core of civ.

If you take out this option, you take out the core of the core of the game.
If the game will force on me to have to get to even exploration age in order to win the game there is
something inherently wrong. Individual choices had been taken away.

 

[Krikkit1]

It has always been possible. We can raze enemy cities. Leave big garrison on their capital.
It has always been a victory path. If you could accomplish total world domination in the Antiquity age your total score would be massive.
This is the core of civ.

If you take out this option, you take out the core of the core of the game.
If the game will force on me to have to get to even exploration age in order to win the game there is
something inherently wrong. Individual choices had been taken away.

Well if you
1. choose a number of civs so that none of them are in distant lands (otherwise it is literally impossible because you can’t reach them)
2. play on an incredibly easy level (so you can handle the unhappiness and hunt down all the rebel units/ refugee settlements)

Then you should be able to do it in Ancient, but it should require you to go through the crisis.(ie hold all those settlements)

In Exploration, you just need it to be on a very easy difficulty
In Modern, it should be doable on average difficulty…but if your enemy get nukes before being crushed, they should have MAD…ie you can’t declare war on them without getting destroyed (Midway through modern age there should be only Proxy Wars…with IPs)

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Well if you
1. choose a number of civs so that none of them are in distant lands (otherwise it is literally impossible because you can’t reach them)
2. play on an incredibly easy level (so you can handle the unhappiness and hunt down all the rebel units/ refugee settlements)

There is no clear victory path out yet, I was just posing a question.
Domination goal was obtain 66% of all world population, and territory.
Conquest goal to achieve total domination, 100% of population and territory.

Anyway, this is slighltly off the OP argument on retention of pre Age-switch civs into the next era.
So to take it back on the line, it should be what if your civ is NEAR one of those goals, what would happen to your cities, would
be a better argument.

 

[Siptah]

I think if you intend to end the game in Antiquity, you choose to play a one era game when starting and get the appropriate victory conditions for that age. It might be that these are the same as the legacy path goals, but we don't know.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I think he's meaning we evolved from fish naturally over time, rather than there being some overnight intervention like an alien genetics programme or something that acted as an era transition from when we were fish to when we became humans.

However, I love your post, it's truly mad and I'm here for it. I want all of what you've said in Civ

And I think @notNamed is not entirely correct either, as we are as much ancient fish as some modern fish are by ancestry and indeed genetics. Technically, we are both fish and human by taxonomy, but the bit that matters really for a conversation is the frame of reference we are using, and rarely is there a frame of reference that comes up outside of geological ancestry where its useful to describe humans as fish.

Oh well, look up Andy Hall, I just like him, think there is much more to ancient myths than just lore.

 

[GuiSKJ]

Humankind figured out how the player could keep their culture. I don't see why Civ7 couldn't do the same.

I would love the option to bring my Civ into the next Era. As a balancing act, since in the new era your old Civ won't have any buildings and bonuses, you instead get increased XP for commanders and your leader, sort of playing on the idea that your long age civilization is now a well oiled machine.

 

[Zaarin]

Humankind figured out how the player could keep their culture.

I'm skeptical it made it viable. Granted, I played about four games of Humankind before uninstalling it and never looking back, but I never found the option tempting. Also, HK's solution of giving bonus fame points wouldn't apply to Civ7.