Vikings in Space! Redux

[acluewithout]

Two years ago, Firaxis released some (sort of) fun video emphasising the Alt History angles for Civ. This included two “Viking in Space” videos, see here and here.

Two things I noticed. First, the Videos make a point of showing how Canal Cities work, way before Canals were ever introduced into the game via Gathering Storm. Just interesting this stuff was on their radar so early in development.

Second, they also show a version of how the Science Victory should work. This includes building Space Modules in multiple Cities. They make a point of saying something like Norway is pooling resources across their empire (ie because multiple Cities are working on different space projects). Science Victory doesn’t work like that now, and it’s much more about doing successive projects in one City. I think that was a poor change.

Just to expand on that second point, given the game is about creating a Civilization or really Empire that stands the test of time, it’s a bit sad there a so few ways to have multiple Cities work directly on the one massive task. Wonders are built in one City, and most area mechanics are about one City slightly buffing lots of other Cities, rather than multiple Cities buffing one City (with the exception of one Victor Promotion). I guess Projects are sort of pooling resources, but that’s a bit underwhelming. Bit of a missed opportunity to not have more mechanics for Cities to work together. Humankind sounds like it’ll have a pooling type Mechanic for Wonders - guess we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, I think having multiple Cities involved in building towards a Space Victory was a good shared project. Real pity they changed that, particularly when it seems SV was previously deliberately designed to be a shared mega project.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The Civ Franchise started with the basic concept that City = Civilization 'way back when, and has never really gotten away from that. Consequently we have:

Individual Cities building Everything
'Empire" borders that are really just city borders that meet and overlap.
Culture, Science, Diplomatic, Production, and any other factors in the game that are all simply the sum of your individual cities.

In effect, All Civs in Civilization games are just overgrown City States, which given that 'real;' city state civilizations are so poorly represented in the game, is more than a little ironic!

The game system desperately needs to get away from the emphasis on cities, especially since the influence of Metropolitan Cores has been declining throughout the developed world for more than the entire time the game franchise has been in existence. Cities are still important, but Out-Of-City 'Districts' are frequently even more important: the Science Centers like Silicon Valley or Space Centers like Canaveral/Kennedy or Industrial Zones like the entire Ruhr Valley or the belt from Cleveland to Detroit along the south side of the Great Lakes - these 'extra-city' or 'multiple-city' conglomerates speak directly to some of the 'standard' factors in the game (Science, Production) but are not city based, at least in the late 20th - 21st centuries.
And earlier, a great deal of Cultural and Religious influence (factors?) was generated by sites far removed from any metropolitan complex: 'Holy Sites', monastic sites, Holy Cities that were minor as 'cities' but major in influence, even some of the pre-Industrial Science-Producing sites (Oxford and Cambridge spring to mind).

In Civ VII, if not sooner, the game needs to get away from the City Only influence, and that includes Multiple-City building of Wonders and Projects, non-city centers for Science, Religion, and Culture, and Empire boundaries instead of city boundaries, at the very least.

The spread-out Districts in Civ VI were a start, but they stayed within the confines of strict city-influence, so didn't really change anything fundamentally. They need to take that idea into the context of Stand-Alone Districts and Non-City Influences and run with it.

 

[Sostratus]

You know Boris, I’m getting the worst inspiration from a terrible game (sim city 2013) but it would be kinda neat if you could place certain wonder tiles down and then nearby cities or (whatever production accumulation points) could contribute to building it.
Then it would be less “Düsseldorf is building the Ruhr Valley wonder” and “the Ruhr Valley is building the Ruhr Valley wonder”
We already have seen the ability to have cities contribute their production to higher level projects- civ5’s UN projects, for example- so it wouldn’t be too hard. This could apply to stuff like space projects as the OP mentions. Regional effects are really under explored for what they could be, especially since the ones is Civ 6 all go Source -> Sinks instead of an inverse “emitters-> Collector” effect. (Imagine a harbor with adjacency from all sea resources within 3 tiles. Etc.)

Combined with an elegant way to make specialized districts not be one per city but still be sane (lest you watch as Sostratus converts the entire continent into a blanket of industrial zones) you’d really have a lot of flexibility in your game play.

 

[acluewithout]

Civ VI originally seems to have had a few more ways for Cities to work together than it does now.

1. As mentioned, Science Victory encouraged multiple Cities working on separate Space Projects. Now you just have one City working on all the projects, which is a bit of a loss. Current SV does let you stack lasers across multiple Cities, but that really not the same thing.
2. You could originally stack Regional Bonuses from Industrial Zones, that proved too powerful, and got nerfed to no stacking, although they’ve brought back limited stacking via Victor. (Similarly, Coastal Cities originally had special value because they could provide two Trade Routes instead of one, because you could stack TRs from Harbours and Commercial Hubs. FXS later nerfed that to reduced TRs in the game, with the result that Coastal Cities lost their use case until getting buffed again in the most recent patch. Actually, they see, to be sort of going back to that a little by having Commercial City States split their bonus between Commercial Hubs and Harbours and a few other bonuses that leverage both (eg Reyna, Free Inquiry)).
3. Internal Trade Routes sort of allow sharing production between Cities, but have been undervalued by a number of changes that increasingly let you gain the benefits of internal trade routes from international trade routes to allies.
4. As discussed above, projects do let you pool resources more generally, and this element hadn’t been nerfed. Indeed, it’s been slightly facilitated by adding Production Queues to the game.
5. Builders are another way to share resources, and that’s been buffed slightly by letting Builders etc. complete Projects and Districts / Buildings in some situations.

FXS could obviously introduce more explicit and complex “pooling resources” type mechanics, and we could theory craft those bad boys all day long.

But there’s something much simpler FXS could do. Bring back a few more projects / victory conditions where you build a few things in parallel across multiple Cities.

I think a start would be bringing back parallel projects for Space Victories. But you could also have other “Mega Projects” or “Mega Wonders” that require three component structures that have to be built across multiple Cities. Like, maybe building the GDR requires three projects to be completed that can only be completed by Cities with an Industrial Zone. Maybe Special Wonders, but they have three separate tiles that must be built in three nearby Cities, and they don’t provide any benefit unless you own all three parts.

Anyway. My OP was more about how FXS seems to have ditched certain early design decisions. The changes to SV seem particularly wrong headed.

 

[Sostratus]

Well, you could get both worlds (solo vs group) by having the production bucket of X for a project and then allowing all cities within range to contribute. (This could be empire wide, within 6 tiles, within N tiles but a 10% drop off in efficiency per tile, same continent, etc.)

 

[acluewithout]

Well, you could get both worlds (solo vs group) by having the production bucket of X for a project and then allowing all cities within range to contribute. (This could be empire wide, within 6 tiles, within N tiles but a 10% drop off in efficiency per tile, same continent, etc.)

That would be super cool. I think the trick would just be coming up with a way to implement it which isn't super complicated.

Maybe there could be separate "support" projects. So, when you run them, you actually boost other Cities that have x building or have a Governor, things like that. Bit like the current "Logistics Project" for Industrial Zones, but you help other Cities not the City running the Project.

Or, maybe the "mystery highly anticipated and 50:50 chance of getting it" Third Expansion will have proper Regional Mechanics, along with Ideologies, Better Economics and Economic Victory, Better Trade Routes, Corporations, Trebuchets, Character Classes for your Leader (Gilgamesh as a Barbarian-Bard-Cavalier), New Space Victory Options where you can choose to settled different planets and then play them out using a modified BE set up, and a Research Project where you create an AI which rapidly gains self-awareness by 2:12 EDT and triggers a global nuclear war and then precedes to wipe out humanity so you have to send Harald Hardrada back to the Classic Era to rescue Queen Victoria so she can lead the Human Resistance to overthrow the AI overlord by building more Theatre Squares and Maori Heads.

Fingers crossed.

(Okay. So I was serious to the first two paragraphs, but then Cabin Fever took over on the last two. But more seriously, I would be very happy to see a Third Expansion allow a bit more pooling between Cities and / or Regional Mechanics, along with something along the lines of Core Cities / Colonial Cities / Vassal Cities. The game really is missing something around differentiating Cities and manipulating how you think them, particularly given Railways, Canals etc. really didn't actually do much to emphasise linking Cities etc.).