Unique + Intrinsic bonuses

[Boris Gudenuf]

I always understood it not to relate to their experience with that terrain but rather the actual attributes of their people

But 'Attributes' do not spring from nothing. Us Humans are notorious for learning and acquiring and passing on knowledge we have learned. It's what made us the most successful chimpanzee, after all.

And, until writing and printing, most knowledge was acquired by experience - of conditions, situations and surroundings. Sometimes those are Human-made, and perhaps that should be reflected in Attributes that crop up later (Fun Fact to think about: there was no Briton or Anglo-Saxon 'naval tradition' discernable for a 1000 years before Alfred of Wessex started gathering ships to defend the English coast, so ask yourself: where did the Royal Navy and all of its manifestations and consequences come from? And more important to this discussion, is it worthwhile gaming the factors or just presenting them as an 'automatic' Attribute of England/Britain?).

I think it is at least worth looking at the factors that provided the basis for Attributes from Start of Game - what preceded Start of Game? What were those little digital folk doing that led them to become Masters of the Desert, or the Rainforest, or Tamers of the Wild Gerbil?

And, of course, as stated, most important: Do we have to represent in any way what went before Start of Game, or just present it as a Given: you plays England, you gets a Royal Navy come what may .

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I always understood it not to relate to their experience with that terrain but rather the actual attributes of their people

There are still a handful of people who I would attribute the terrain as attributing the primary characteristics of the people.
The Phoenicians wouldn't be as well known if they hadn't become one of the first maritime people and spread their colonies across the Mediterranean, with one of the colonies spawning their own empire. Same goes for the Incas and their successful roadbuilding and farming in the Andes mountains.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I think there is not a solution but a mix of factors to ease the terrain/biome bonus issue.
- Better world generation and bigger maps. With more space it would be easier for the game to put every civ in their proper environment.
- Some selectionable early bonus. I prefer to limit it to the Agrarian, Pastoral and Maritime options to keep it simple and thematic.
- A pre-Ancient "Neolithic" era as a prologe that allows you explore and select you starting point more calmly.

Meanwhile, select your civ after start does not really fix the problem. I mean for example if your wanna try Arabia but the game doesnt put you in a desert you would restart again anyway, whatever you select Arabia before or after the world generation if you want to play with a specific civ you would end restarting again anyway.
Also just scrap civ's unique terrain bonus would be a mistake for two reasons. First, they are part of the flavor of the civ that people relate as do with their leaders, music, units and buildings, these give identity to each civ. Second, in a game with over 40 playable civs if all them start to mix all kind of "after start" bonuses their personality would dilute and every match would be the same that the previous and the next one. These two problems would put CIV closer to be another Humankind or Millennia game of descharacterized factions.

Also, you could choose the biome in which you start and then after start select your civ. (let's say at the foundation of your first city) (if you want that badly to keep the uniqueness of each faction)
You could still choose Arabia if you settle in the middle of the jungle I guess. (that may be proposed in a sub-menu like "show all")

 

[GeneralZIft]

Tbh I prefer the way things are now with regards to starting bias and bonuses. It takes away from the mystery of the game to start selecting where I'm gonna start too (as if you'd ever select anything other than the optimal choice)

When the game already does that for you (or it should)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Tbh I prefer the way things are now with regards to starting bias and bonuses. It takes away from the mystery of the game to start selecting where I'm gonna start too (as if you'd ever select anything other than the optimal choice)

When the game already does that for you (or it should)

But that's really a fake 'mystery'. In fact Civs developed the way they did - including before the nominal 4000 BCE Start Date - partly or largely because of where they were, what resources they had available, and what they learned to do with them.

I see two possible potential 'fixes':

1. A Neolithic wandering start that allows you to move to a terrain/biome combination appropriate to our Civ's Uniques: coast to get England's Royal Naval Dockyard, a desert for Mali or Nubia, etc. I already posted that for the past year or so I've been playing Civ VI with a Mod called Faster Starting Settlers that gives my initial Settler a triple move, essentially. That means on the first turn I can vary my 'start position' by approximately 5 - 6 tiles in all directions. That doesn't appear like much, but it has made a huge difference in the variety and appropriateness of the placement of my first city. Not perfect, but alone it makes (for me) a big difference.

2. In addition to the Leader and Civ Unique attributes, if any of those are Terrain/map-related like England's, Norway's, Mali and Nubia's now, provide an 'alternate' Unique that is not terrain-related, which you can choose instead of the original after seeing your start position. I've posted before about the idea of 'Generic Uniques' as more appropriate alternatives to Civ-specific Uniques that are simply inane given your starting position, and since Civ hasn't gotten Starting Terrain Bias right in 10 years or more (Civs V and VI) I think it could be a viable alternative to waiting another 10 years to get starting terrain that's appropriate.

 

[pokiehl]

But that's really a fake 'mystery'. In fact Civs developed the way they did - including before the nominal 4000 BCE Start Date - partly or largely because of where they were, what resources they had available, and what they learned to do with them.

Civ is a videogame and it has never purported to simulate the organic development of a society. Just because that's not how history played out doesn't dismiss GeneralZIft's point that the mystery is actually part of the game. The criticism here doesn't make much sense to me, and I don't get how optimizing start locations in the suggestions below even addresses it. Either way, civs are starting with their bonuses already made.

I see two possible potential 'fixes':

1. A Neolithic wandering start that allows you to move to a terrain/biome combination appropriate to our Civ's Uniques: coast to get England's Royal Naval Dockyard, a desert for Mali or Nubia, etc. I already posted that for the past year or so I've been playing Civ VI with a Mod called Faster Starting Settlers that gives my initial Settler a triple move, essentially. That means on the first turn I can vary my 'start position' by approximately 5 - 6 tiles in all directions. That doesn't appear like much, but it has made a huge difference in the variety and appropriateness of the placement of my first city. Not perfect, but alone it makes (for me) a big difference.

I really can’t get behind an explicit wandering Neolithic phase of the game. I didn’t like it in Humankind, and I think the fundamental choice of “do I settle here or risk a few turns looking for a better area?” is a critical part of the early game tension. A corny Neolithic phase would kill this AND look way too much like Civ is chasing Humankind. This tension extends farther into the early game as well, because you have to balance the risk and rewards of exploring, taking a chance on sending settlers out in a given direction, etc.

All that to say: you guys do realize you already have a wandering phase right? It’s called not settling on turn 1 and it’s a choice you can make. Humankind’s approach is completely superfluous unless you’re choosing your civ after the start which would also be a horrendous idea.

All of this effort to minmax and standardize starts is going to result in a homogenized and boring start period. Just have fewer abilities that are so explicitly terrain based, and keep working on improving the spawn algorithms to better take start biases into effect. Problem solved.

2. In addition to the Leader and Civ Unique attributes, if any of those are Terrain/map-related like England's, Norway's, Mali and Nubia's now, provide an 'alternate' Unique that is not terrain-related, which you can choose instead of the original after seeing your start position. I've posted before about the idea of 'Generic Uniques' as more appropriate alternatives to Civ-specific Uniques that are simply inane given your starting position, and since Civ hasn't gotten Starting Terrain Bias right in 10 years or more (Civs V and VI) I think it could be a viable alternative to waiting another 10 years to get starting terrain that's appropriate.

“Alternate uniques” for terrain-based civs to compensate for not getting your ideal start would just be so hamfisted, unbalanced, and inconsistent. Civ will never have such inelegant systems that require brute-forced solutions.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I very much agree with what Pokie said. Especially about the alternate bonuses being hamfisted.
By the way the capital I in GeneralZIft is a typo I have no idea how to fix it.

I do think that a neolithic era could work, but not in the way that Humankind did it (where you had to chase random points on the map? Do I recall correctly?)

I think it could work if you had wandering nomads, had to fight barbarians with a starting warrior or two, and you advanced on the science tree to unlock Settling.
Note: this would be a nice place to put weird interesting bonuses. Eg. Wandering Nomads with more speed in Neolithic era to allow better exploring.

The reason I say this is because not settling on Turn 1, while it's possible, it's a bit disadvantageous. Actually you should settle by Turn 2 any more than that is too much usually.

This way we could have starting bias & terrain bonuses & satisfy people when they don't have the perfect position.

But, the perfect position shouldn't matter. Civ is about making the best of what you have. If your people are natural desert dwellers and deserts are in short supply, this adds an incentive for the player to grab that land quickly.

And yes, there is an aspect of mystery. Where will I start? What is the map going to look like? Who am I going to meet? If we strip down elements like this for the sake of balance, maybe it would be time to ask at which point are you trying too hard to optimise the game for perfect starts at the cost of ruining the experience and immersion?

 

[BuchiTaton]

Talking about a proper place to found your cities Neolithic/Preshistoric Era is more usefull for CIV than for Humankind and Millennia. After all in Humankind you chose your cultures along the game so you could pick the proper ones for your situation each match, also for Millennia the nation you chose before start add a single bonus that is badly overshadowed by the national spirits you pick later. Meanwhile is CIV were your civ is chosen before world generation and the terrain related bonuses turn to be more relevant, so is CIV the game that would gain more from give player the chance to explore, expand and exploit their enviroment before decide the place for their relatively costly urban settlement.

 

[pokiehl]

It makes no sense to add such a “pre-era” in Civ because you already can explore as much as you want. Just don’t settle on turn 1 and pay the price. You start with a warrior and a settler (rather than a pre-settled city) for a reason.

I swear, you guys want all of the interesting decisions just completely removed from the game so you can get picture-perfect starts every time, which has never even been the intent of the game. If it were, Legendary start would be default, but it’s not.

It 100% makes a lot more sense in Humankind to have a discrete era dedicated for this because there’s a race with objectives that winning allows you first choice of a civ to pick.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I do think that a neolithic era could work, but not in the way that Humankind did it (where you had to chase random points on the map? Do I recall correctly?)

I think it could work if you had wandering nomads, had to fight barbarians with a starting warrior or two, and you advanced on the science tree to unlock Settling.
Note: this would be a nice place to put weird interesting bonuses. Eg. Wandering Nomads with more speed in Neolithic era to allow better exploring.

To me it would be interesting if the animal resources also wandered around on the map until you researched Animal Husbandry, but maybe that's too much?

I'd also call the first technology Agriculture, in order to settle and start building farms.

It makes no sense to add such a “pre-era” in Civ because you already can explore as much as you want. Just don’t settle on turn 1 and pay the price. You start with a warrior and a settler (rather than a pre-settled city) for a reason.

I swear, you guys want all of the interesting decisions just completely removed from the game so you can get picture-perfect starts every time, which has never even been the intent of the game. If it were, Legendary start would be default, but it’s not.

It 100% makes a lot more sense in Humankind to have a discrete era dedicated for this because there’s a race with objectives that winning allows you first choice of a civ to pick.

I wouldn't mind if it was an optionable game mode in which it would be toggable. That way if you didn't want to play with it you don't have to.

 

[Arcaian]

It makes no sense to add such a “pre-era” in Civ because you already can explore as much as you want. Just don’t settle on turn 1 and pay the price. You start with a warrior and a settler (rather than a pre-settled city) for a reason.

I swear, you guys want all of the interesting decisions just completely removed from the game so you can get picture-perfect starts every time, which has never even been the intent of the game. If it were, Legendary start would be default, but it’s not.

It 100% makes a lot more sense in Humankind to have a discrete era dedicated for this because there’s a race with objectives that winning allows you first choice of a civ to pick.

I really don't understand why you're arguing against someone wanting to get a picture-perfect start every time when that does not seem to be the goal of anyone on this thread. The primary example has been a civ that is primarily dependent on naval gameplay not spawning with coast visible, which is not looking for a perfect start so much as one that allows you to engage with the core abilities of the civilization without significant penalty - I don't think people would enjoy a mechanic that gives you a 10% chance of not being able to take actions for the first 3 turns, and anyone who has picked to play a civ with a focus on naval gameplay won't be doing anything but finding a coast if they can't see one (or, more likely, restarting until they don't have an arbitrary penalty). Avoiding settling on turn 1 does not fulfill what I would love out of a neolithic age for a few reasons:

• Put simply, it's a fascinating period of our history that I have spent perhaps too much time looking into, and I would love to see the complexity of the time period represented; civ starts off with a thoroughly strange starting point of a group of people settling a permanent settlement despite barely knowing the land around them, and then needing to research technologies that were widely known by almost all groups that settled at the time we see that settlement start. Part of my enjoyment of civilization is the feeling of exploring history, and there's plenty of interesting history to explore here that cannot be explored in the ~2-3 turns max you can afford to explore before you absolutely need to settle (barring something like Kupe in civ 6).
• Obviously historical accuracy is not a good reason in and of itself, gameplay is important too. I think there's interesting gameplay to be had in the neolithic era - one of my favourite parts of civ is the experience of telling the story of the peoples I'm playing as, and the neolithic has a lot to offer there. At it's most base level, this includes the stuff I'm discussing above - why did we choose to settle where we did? What technologies did we discover while nomadic/semi-nomadic that shaped the direction we took our society? Those are interesting questions to have for me at a gameplay level. At a higher level, you can have something like meeting another group of peoples and events associated with that - did you fight them for the good land? That changes how I feel about the city-state nearby if we're ancient enemies. Did we work together to fight another hostile group? Even if it's advantageous, I'm not going to be attacking the civ/city state that comes from my allies there. Even something like finding a recently-erupted volcano and getting faith for it and choosing to settle in the region because now obviously we worship the fire mountain that has powers of life (great soil) and death is a super fun addition to the story of my civ!
• Settling your first city is obviously a very big decision, and frankly the game as it is now encourages one to restart until they get what looks to be an interesting start, which I don't like doing. I'll play along with a start unless it's truly terrible, but the feeling that I'm doing so despite being incentivized to restart isn't good gameplay, I think. At the same time, a really good start can sometimes feel like I've cheated - you get such an absurd difference from one game to the next. The difference between a good start and a bad start in a game where you have the chance to explore the local area in the neolithic is much less significant, and I think that would be a significant advantage to my experience of the game.

I don't think it should be long - it's fundamentally missing half of the core gameplay of the civ series. ~10 turns seems ideal, ~20 at the max, just enough to get a context for the time and place at which your first settlement is founded both on a narrative level and on a gameplay level would be a wonderful edition to the game, in my opinion.

 

[Evie]

Interesting choice? There is a clear superior choice, settling on turn 1 or at most 2 to get that extra shield on your starting city site, and inferior choices (settling any later) that should only be made if your starting location is truly abominable, or you have a truly amazing location you can reach within a few turns. Any further, and you are simply better off settling closer to your start location and sending your fist settler to the amazing location. There is no tension, no hard choice here: only an obvious correct option.

Some may call that interesting choice.

I'd call it neither interesting nor much of a choice.

 

[Arcaian]

Interesting choice? There is a clear superior choice, settling on turn 1 or at most 2 to get that extra shield on your starting city site, and inferior choices (settling any later) that should only be made if your starting location is truly abominable, or you have a truly amazing location you can reach within a few turns. Any further, and you are simply better off settling closer to your start location and sending your fist settler to the amazing location. There is no tension, no hard choice here: only an obvious correct option.

Some may call that interesting choice.

I'd call it neither interesting nor much of a choice.

Agreed - barring extreme circumstances which occur very rarely (or being Kupe), I do not think the Civ formula as it has existed until now is capable of generating a reason to settle after turn 3 at the latest.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I don't think either extreme is necessary (a whole neolithic era OR rigid starts)
We can have something that has just a bit of fluidity
I can say though I really don't know what you guys are talking about. Because sometimes I get slightly suboptimal starts but I've almost always got something "playable" and in fact "playably interactive with my bonuses" in both Civ5 and Civ6.

 

[pokiehl]

I really don't understand why you're arguing against someone wanting to get a picture-perfect start every time when that does not seem to be the goal of anyone on this thread

Yeah I’m not. I’m arguing against implementing what I see as bad idea (Neolithic era).

 

[Evie]

I said it before back when I was talking about revamping the Civ IV civic system for a future game: instead of having blank starting civics that do nothing at all, have the starting civic in each category be a "nomadic" civic that reduce the pain for the player of settling later, much like Kupe's special ability enables the Maori to wait longer before settling.

But this does not take a Civ IV system, and can be tied to pretty much any variation of government system: have an early game government that is the one you really want while you don't own a city, but that stop being a good choice at all the moment you found your first city.

Then you can fine tune those bonuses so settling earlier is still *stronger*, but taking the time to explore and pick your location is *viable*.

 

[pineappledan]

Just giving your starting settler some extra movement and unobstructed vision of a radius around your start would help a lot.

Having dived into the starting bias thing a bit, a big problem is that the game gives biases to civs that don't need them for flavor purposes. Civs with geographically-based bonuses are fine, but there have to be few enough of them overall that they can be given priority when putting players down on starting locations. Civ 6 tried to address this with high and low tier starting position weights, but still gave those biases out far too generously, and still ended up having to negotiate placements of multiple civs that didn't particular care where they ended up, as long as they had a certain amount of resources, etc.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Just giving your starting settler some extra movement and unobstructed vision of a radius around your start would help a lot.

There are already mods for Civ VI giving Extended Initial Vision and faster initial Settler Movement. I highly reccomend them both.

They won't get you a 'Perfect' starting position, but they give you much more choice in the matter and don't penalize you by delaying your first city founding for several turns.

 

[pokiehl]

Having dived into the starting bias thing a bit, a big problem is that the game gives biases to civs that don't need them for flavor purposes. Civs with geographically-based bonuses are fine, but there have to be few enough of them overall that they can be given priority when putting players down on starting locations. Civ 6 tried to address this with high and low tier starting position weights, but still gave those biases out far too generously, and still ended up having to negotiate placements of multiple civs that didn't particular care where they ended up, as long as they had a certain amount of resources, etc.

This isn’t correct. Civ 6 doesn’t do this at all. All start biases are exclusively related to gameplay except for a handful of the first city-states.

The problem isn’t that start biases are given out inappropriately. The problem is Civ 6 map gen took a step back from Civ 5 and so did the AssignStartingPlots function.

There doesn’t need to be any fancier solution than Firaxis just making map gen and the civ placement function better.

 

[pineappledan]

Re: the original thrust of this thread, I don't mind the idea, but I think you can have simple bonuses without going all the way down to a choice of 5-6 for 50 civs. Civ 6's bonuses were often overwhelming, but you can definitely have more manageable bonuses without going that far.
At least I don't think my own ideas are too complicated...

Pdan's Civ 7 Civ list.xlsx

Civilizations Food/Growth,New,Food/Growth Production,Returning (or slightly changed),Production Gold/Trade,Returning from civ 6,Gold/Trade Science,Science Culture/Great People,Culture/Great People Faith/Religion,Faith/Religion Military,Military Continent,Civilization,Civ Trait,Civ infrastructure...

docs.google.com

There doesn’t need to be any fancier solution than Firaxis just making map gen and the civ placement function better.

This is very true. At least for civ 5, the base map generator was pretty good at putting players down in decent spots, or making spots it had plopped players down on better by scattering a few extra resources down post hoc. There was room for improvement on it, and removing unneeded start biases helps a lot, but it was a pretty solid system.

I am not at all familiar with civ 6's system, but the ability to tier different start bias weights should have solved any of the problems left over from 5. I think another possible issue with 6 is just the generally smaller number of tiles per player on default map sizes.