Boris Gudenuf
Deity
or
My Civilization VII: Hopes and Dreams
Realistic expectations of Civilization VII are not the primary objective here. The purpose of this essay is to establish what I would like to see in a Civilization VII game, not what I expect to see or even what I think would be popular among the majority of gamers and therefore commercially possible or successful.
A great deal of what I will relate here has already appeared in some form over the years in posts all over the CivFanatics forums. I make no apologies for repeating them here, since the recent posts about what people would like to see in a future Civ game make it obvious that very few people have ever actually read the previous threads or posts, or remember them if they did read them.
And so, in no particular order of Importance, Here We Go Again . . .
Purpose of the Game:
Great Tides of History have their place, and they should be represented in some way in the game, but I want to Tell A Story. I want to play Narrative History, if you will, all about the people, digital though they may be, in my Civilization. That includes not only the Leaders, Generals, Governors, Ministers, and other named folks, but also the un-named traders, artisans, farmers, herders, miners, and other inhabitants of my cities, towns, plantations and such.
That means, all else being equal, I come down on the side of Named People in the game mechanics, even when the result is a named personage that lasts centuries. Think of it as a dynasty, a lot of adoptions, a personal Inherited Title, or whatever you choose: it’s a game, and in this instance it is My Game, and that’s what I want.
Appearance and Graphics:
No cartoons. If I want to watch or play with a cartoon, I’ll watch some old Road Runner cartoons or re-read Asterix the Gaul or Pogo: all of them did it far better than Civ’s graphic artists ever managed, and the result in Civ VI gave the impression that the company wasn’t taking the game very seriously, so I shouldn’t either.
I want a map that splits the difference between the very bare, utilitarian Civ look and the animated beauty of Humankind (or Anno 1800) which, however, in Humankind at least, was so varied and ‘busy’ that it was difficult to play on – basically, it failed as part of the GUI.
Furthermore, and at least as important, I want a map that looks Good. So, why not use as the graphic artists’ inspiration, the great landscape artists of the past? Specifically, the Romantic Era artists who made everything in nature look good by selectively emphasizing the good-looking parts of it. This aesthetic, applied to the game map, could give us both dramatic and beautiful terrain to play on and a map that actually shows us what we need to see to play the game.
The map should also show visually and distinctively the variations in different biomes. That means not only cold blue ice and snow in the Arctic, but different ‘styles’ of terrain based on continent and region. That would mean:
Mountains
Chinese steep tree-covered mountain peaks
North American Rocky Mountain hanging valleys, box canyons, granite peaks
European Dolomite-like rocky cliffs
Deserts/Desert Mountains
Massive Sand dunes like the Saharan Sand Seas
Rocky plains like the Gobi
Dramatic Mesas as in the American Southwest
Frequent bright colors in cliffs and rocks.
Forests
Division into Coniferous, Deciduous, Dryland, Rain Forest, Taiga, but with a purpose in showing different latitudes and biomes.
Dryland could be coniferous ‘lodgepole pine’ as in the American West
OR
Deciduous scrub oak as in Tunisia/North Africa
High latitude deciduous would combine marsh, massive oak and hemlock and maple forests
High latitude Coniferous would segue into Taiga
Rain Forest would be mostly heavily-vined tropical with perhaps one example of a Temperate Rain Forest of giant trees (Red Cedar, Sequoia)
Forests next to or near Cities would automatically be ‘cleared’ or cut down early in the game for firewood, building materials, etc unless stopped by building a Special Something on it, like a Sacred Grove, Hunting Preserve, etc.
Prairie
The new “grassland/plains’ of Civ: Tall Grass, Short Grass, Savannah (scrub)
Marshlands: Much more extensive, very variable with even slight climate/sea level changes
Animation:
We tend to forget just how much non-human life used to be on the planet: herds and flocks of land animals and birds, rivers and lakes literally teeming with fish. And, for that matter, there should be People moving around in our cities, along our roads, with carts and wagons and coaches and cars, and on railroads (trains, dammit, I want trains!). There is no excuse for having to play on a static, dead map.
Dynamics:
Civ VI nodded to climate change, but only at the end of the game. Terrain and climate change have been taking place since before humans, so, again, there is no excuse for not including both the micro and the macro versions and examples.
Micro:
Rivers and harbors silt up, rivers overflow their banks, cities or parts of cities sink into the ocean from earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
Droughts can be much, much more influential than the transient events that are all we got in Civ VI: they caused some cities and populations and civilizations to pack up and move, for one thing, and required in other cases (it is theorized) major efforts towards alleviating them with irrigation and water management systems – which in turn transformed the society and Civ.
Animals: some animals change the terrain: Elephants and Bison both trampled grasslands and killed trees and so turned tiles from forest to prairie or grasslands and then back again as they moved around. Beavers change rivers into marsh, wetland or floodplains – but without floods because the rodents are very good at managing their environment. These ‘micro-changes’ (1- 2 tiles at a time) would be like the current Forest fires in Civ VI, but not all bad – another flavorful element missing from all the games so far.
Macro:
The biome/map should change over time – ALL the time, not jus in the last bits of the game. Forests change from evergreen to mixed to deciduous, and back. Prairies grow and decline. Especially early in the game, when time-frames for turns can be measured in Decades, this should be the normal flow of the game.
Coastlines change. They rise or fall, and so ‘seaports’ move inland or have to deal with rising water (the original port of Alexandria, Egypt is now several meters below ‘sea’ level). Some rivers not only flood regularly, but also (most notoriously China’s Huang He/Yellow River) change their banks every once in a while by hundreds of kilometers – requiring people living in the area to adapt to it, at least until Modern Construction gives them the potential to control it.
Basically, I want a map that is both good to look at and endlessly fascinating to study and still a clear GUI to play on. It’s a fine balance, but not impossible: there are, Dog Knows, plenty of Bad Examples to show what Not to do!
Resources Reconsidered:
A bunch of Resource Ideas for consideration:
First, get rid of the rigid classification of Natural Resources into Bonus, Luxury, and Strategic: those definitions, if used at all, depend on the Civ and its technology and Needs and may change even within that Civ: for example, Copper as a component for Bronze is a Strategic Resource of extreme importance in early game, a Luxury for jewelry and household items at the same or earlier times, and later a component for electrification of cities in the Industrial and Modern Eras – for Amenities and Luxuries both, if they are distinguished as to their effects.
Second, at least until the Industrial Era, most Resources are not Required, they just make it cheaper and easier to build something. In the quantities required for most purposes, Someone will always trade it to you – until the Industrial Era requires resources in the thousands of tons, like Iron, Coal, Oil, etc, and then the Resources become restrictive.
Third, most Natural Resources should be replaced by Manufactured Versions as the game progresses. Let’s face it, natural Dyes are a niche market now, and Ivory is banned internationally – both have been replaced by various chemical or plastic substitutes, the product of the Industrial and Modern Eras.
Fourth, Resources deplete and/or can be Moved. You can plant plants in any suitable biome (tile) and later, with technologies and resources, even unsuitable biomes can be made to work. You can move animals with varying amounts of effort. Deposits of minerals get used up – and more get found as you discover new ways of looking and new ways to literally Dig Deeper for them.
All of this would make Resources Dynamic within a game. No more looking around the map once when a certain tech is discovered for all the Coal, Iron, Aluminum, or Arsenical Ores that appear all at once: some of them may be too deep to see until later, and others may turn out to be easily substituted for by other resources or Technologies. You will have to keep looking for and considering resources and the sources for them.
Tech Trees, Tech Shrubs and Bushes, Tech Kudzu Vines
Civ has enshrined the linear Tech Tree in the canon of 4X gaming. Recently, games like Old World and (apparently) Ara are varying that by adding ‘card-based’ systems to vary the linearity, but the artificiality of those that I’ve experienced are off-putting – discard a Tech, draw a Tech, bet your Civ on a Tech: Poker is already a perfectly good game that doesn’t require a computer to play.
BUT this only highlights the fact that a linear Tech Tree, no matter how complex, is far too predictable and therefore, after your first 50 to 500 hours of play, Boring. You know you need Basketweaving Tech to eventually achieve Rope and Ships of the Line, so you research Basketweaving – even though your Civ has started in a bone-dry desert and the only thing you can weave is camel intestines. I hope you can see the potential problem here: short of mass lobotomies for all gamers, you cannot stop a gamer from Gaming the Linear Tech Tree.
Civ VI tried to ‘change up’ the Tech Tree a bit by adding Eurekas, which boosted the speed with which Techs could be researched based on what you were actually doing in that particular game. Great Idea, but, as usual in Civ VI, so poorly implemented that many Eurekas bore only the mildest relationship to what you were supposedly researching. We can still use ‘Eurekas’ as a concept, though, but with a Twist.
The principle: ‘Tech’ is actually two things: a way of doing something that you need to do to satisfy some perceived Need, and the capability of implementing that Tech. That second might include boosts from Very Desperate Need, like impending Starvation, or political, social, or resource impediments to using that particular idea or tech to solve your problem.
So instead of choosing a Tech, let’s choose a (potential) Solution to a problem.
This sequence also neatly divides many of the aspects of the game into two categories: Problems and Solutions:
Problem Categories: Food, Defense, Gold, Knowledge.
Solution Categories: Science (Technology), Social Policy, Civic/Political Choice, Religion, Commerce.
So, first you identify the Main Category of Problem (at least this turn or set of turns) you need to Solve.
Then, a set of possible roads to a solution will present. Some may be Techs. Some may be Civic or Social or Political or even Religious ‘solutions’. Many will have Unintended Consequences, especially the social, civic, religious or political ones, but even Technologies can develop in Ways Unforeseen – check the application of Lasers to playing music in CD players, something totally unpredicted when Lasers were first being developed in the 1950s.
IF you don’t have the prerequisites, you won’t even see the ‘Tech’ solutions. This is where the ‘Eurekas’, where applicable, come into play. Instead of Boosts, they become Requirements. No cities on the coast, you won’t even see Fishing or Sailing, or any other ‘Naval’ Tech as a solution to anything (You might see Celestial Navigation if you are still in the middle of that Desert, because desert navigation without land markers uses celestial markers as much as ships on the sea do).
For an example, the need for Defense might give you potential solutions of Better Weapons, Better Metallurgy leading to better weapons (but only if you have Enabling Techs like Pottery or earlier metals) – and the types of weapons will/may depend on your social/civic structure – a bunch of city dwellers and farmers, like most Civs, will not get a chance to build Horse Archers, but may get Crossbows, Pike Phalanxes or Gunpowder, depending on what they have already – or they may get a chance at the Civic of Drilled Formations that make their existing simple Spears much more effective, but may also require changes in the Social and/or Political structure of the Civ – a potential for Unrest, at least.
Technical changes are only one set of solutions, although a massive one, and potential techs that become available should be heavily modified by what comes with them and what they require in Resources, civic, social, political, or even religious changes also. A highly Hierarchial society led by a relatively small group of aristocrats will not want or adopt the big, compact phalanx of commoners with spears, pikes, or muskets. They will adopt better armor for the aristocratic tiny group, or chariots to carry them in and out of battle, or War Horses to do the same thing even more efficiently.
All of this means that, when playing in the game at least, you may never see the same set of Techs twice. And for some ‘solutions’, may see No Techs at all! What you see depends on what you already got, what problems you are trying to ‘solve’, what your resources, situation, civics and social policies and religion – a host of non-Tech as well as Tech Factors that influence your ‘research’.
The shape of your society Will be reflected in what kind of Tech you develop and how you use it: you may play Slobbovia ten times in a row, but it shouldn’t develop exactly the same society with the same Civics, Social Policies, Religion, or Politics every time and therefore will not develop the same Technologies in the same way every time.
If that isn’t enough to keep the game interesting, go back to Poker.
If all this hasn't put you into a glaze-eyed coma, Part Two follows . . .
My Civilization VII: Hopes and Dreams
Realistic expectations of Civilization VII are not the primary objective here. The purpose of this essay is to establish what I would like to see in a Civilization VII game, not what I expect to see or even what I think would be popular among the majority of gamers and therefore commercially possible or successful.
A great deal of what I will relate here has already appeared in some form over the years in posts all over the CivFanatics forums. I make no apologies for repeating them here, since the recent posts about what people would like to see in a future Civ game make it obvious that very few people have ever actually read the previous threads or posts, or remember them if they did read them.
And so, in no particular order of Importance, Here We Go Again . . .
Purpose of the Game:
Great Tides of History have their place, and they should be represented in some way in the game, but I want to Tell A Story. I want to play Narrative History, if you will, all about the people, digital though they may be, in my Civilization. That includes not only the Leaders, Generals, Governors, Ministers, and other named folks, but also the un-named traders, artisans, farmers, herders, miners, and other inhabitants of my cities, towns, plantations and such.
That means, all else being equal, I come down on the side of Named People in the game mechanics, even when the result is a named personage that lasts centuries. Think of it as a dynasty, a lot of adoptions, a personal Inherited Title, or whatever you choose: it’s a game, and in this instance it is My Game, and that’s what I want.
Appearance and Graphics:
No cartoons. If I want to watch or play with a cartoon, I’ll watch some old Road Runner cartoons or re-read Asterix the Gaul or Pogo: all of them did it far better than Civ’s graphic artists ever managed, and the result in Civ VI gave the impression that the company wasn’t taking the game very seriously, so I shouldn’t either.
I want a map that splits the difference between the very bare, utilitarian Civ look and the animated beauty of Humankind (or Anno 1800) which, however, in Humankind at least, was so varied and ‘busy’ that it was difficult to play on – basically, it failed as part of the GUI.
Furthermore, and at least as important, I want a map that looks Good. So, why not use as the graphic artists’ inspiration, the great landscape artists of the past? Specifically, the Romantic Era artists who made everything in nature look good by selectively emphasizing the good-looking parts of it. This aesthetic, applied to the game map, could give us both dramatic and beautiful terrain to play on and a map that actually shows us what we need to see to play the game.
The map should also show visually and distinctively the variations in different biomes. That means not only cold blue ice and snow in the Arctic, but different ‘styles’ of terrain based on continent and region. That would mean:
Mountains
Chinese steep tree-covered mountain peaks
North American Rocky Mountain hanging valleys, box canyons, granite peaks
European Dolomite-like rocky cliffs
Deserts/Desert Mountains
Massive Sand dunes like the Saharan Sand Seas
Rocky plains like the Gobi
Dramatic Mesas as in the American Southwest
Frequent bright colors in cliffs and rocks.
Forests
Division into Coniferous, Deciduous, Dryland, Rain Forest, Taiga, but with a purpose in showing different latitudes and biomes.
Dryland could be coniferous ‘lodgepole pine’ as in the American West
OR
Deciduous scrub oak as in Tunisia/North Africa
High latitude deciduous would combine marsh, massive oak and hemlock and maple forests
High latitude Coniferous would segue into Taiga
Rain Forest would be mostly heavily-vined tropical with perhaps one example of a Temperate Rain Forest of giant trees (Red Cedar, Sequoia)
Forests next to or near Cities would automatically be ‘cleared’ or cut down early in the game for firewood, building materials, etc unless stopped by building a Special Something on it, like a Sacred Grove, Hunting Preserve, etc.
Prairie
The new “grassland/plains’ of Civ: Tall Grass, Short Grass, Savannah (scrub)
Marshlands: Much more extensive, very variable with even slight climate/sea level changes
Animation:
We tend to forget just how much non-human life used to be on the planet: herds and flocks of land animals and birds, rivers and lakes literally teeming with fish. And, for that matter, there should be People moving around in our cities, along our roads, with carts and wagons and coaches and cars, and on railroads (trains, dammit, I want trains!). There is no excuse for having to play on a static, dead map.
Dynamics:
Civ VI nodded to climate change, but only at the end of the game. Terrain and climate change have been taking place since before humans, so, again, there is no excuse for not including both the micro and the macro versions and examples.
Micro:
Rivers and harbors silt up, rivers overflow their banks, cities or parts of cities sink into the ocean from earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
Droughts can be much, much more influential than the transient events that are all we got in Civ VI: they caused some cities and populations and civilizations to pack up and move, for one thing, and required in other cases (it is theorized) major efforts towards alleviating them with irrigation and water management systems – which in turn transformed the society and Civ.
Animals: some animals change the terrain: Elephants and Bison both trampled grasslands and killed trees and so turned tiles from forest to prairie or grasslands and then back again as they moved around. Beavers change rivers into marsh, wetland or floodplains – but without floods because the rodents are very good at managing their environment. These ‘micro-changes’ (1- 2 tiles at a time) would be like the current Forest fires in Civ VI, but not all bad – another flavorful element missing from all the games so far.
Macro:
The biome/map should change over time – ALL the time, not jus in the last bits of the game. Forests change from evergreen to mixed to deciduous, and back. Prairies grow and decline. Especially early in the game, when time-frames for turns can be measured in Decades, this should be the normal flow of the game.
Coastlines change. They rise or fall, and so ‘seaports’ move inland or have to deal with rising water (the original port of Alexandria, Egypt is now several meters below ‘sea’ level). Some rivers not only flood regularly, but also (most notoriously China’s Huang He/Yellow River) change their banks every once in a while by hundreds of kilometers – requiring people living in the area to adapt to it, at least until Modern Construction gives them the potential to control it.
Basically, I want a map that is both good to look at and endlessly fascinating to study and still a clear GUI to play on. It’s a fine balance, but not impossible: there are, Dog Knows, plenty of Bad Examples to show what Not to do!
Resources Reconsidered:
A bunch of Resource Ideas for consideration:
First, get rid of the rigid classification of Natural Resources into Bonus, Luxury, and Strategic: those definitions, if used at all, depend on the Civ and its technology and Needs and may change even within that Civ: for example, Copper as a component for Bronze is a Strategic Resource of extreme importance in early game, a Luxury for jewelry and household items at the same or earlier times, and later a component for electrification of cities in the Industrial and Modern Eras – for Amenities and Luxuries both, if they are distinguished as to their effects.
Second, at least until the Industrial Era, most Resources are not Required, they just make it cheaper and easier to build something. In the quantities required for most purposes, Someone will always trade it to you – until the Industrial Era requires resources in the thousands of tons, like Iron, Coal, Oil, etc, and then the Resources become restrictive.
Third, most Natural Resources should be replaced by Manufactured Versions as the game progresses. Let’s face it, natural Dyes are a niche market now, and Ivory is banned internationally – both have been replaced by various chemical or plastic substitutes, the product of the Industrial and Modern Eras.
Fourth, Resources deplete and/or can be Moved. You can plant plants in any suitable biome (tile) and later, with technologies and resources, even unsuitable biomes can be made to work. You can move animals with varying amounts of effort. Deposits of minerals get used up – and more get found as you discover new ways of looking and new ways to literally Dig Deeper for them.
All of this would make Resources Dynamic within a game. No more looking around the map once when a certain tech is discovered for all the Coal, Iron, Aluminum, or Arsenical Ores that appear all at once: some of them may be too deep to see until later, and others may turn out to be easily substituted for by other resources or Technologies. You will have to keep looking for and considering resources and the sources for them.
Tech Trees, Tech Shrubs and Bushes, Tech Kudzu Vines
Civ has enshrined the linear Tech Tree in the canon of 4X gaming. Recently, games like Old World and (apparently) Ara are varying that by adding ‘card-based’ systems to vary the linearity, but the artificiality of those that I’ve experienced are off-putting – discard a Tech, draw a Tech, bet your Civ on a Tech: Poker is already a perfectly good game that doesn’t require a computer to play.
BUT this only highlights the fact that a linear Tech Tree, no matter how complex, is far too predictable and therefore, after your first 50 to 500 hours of play, Boring. You know you need Basketweaving Tech to eventually achieve Rope and Ships of the Line, so you research Basketweaving – even though your Civ has started in a bone-dry desert and the only thing you can weave is camel intestines. I hope you can see the potential problem here: short of mass lobotomies for all gamers, you cannot stop a gamer from Gaming the Linear Tech Tree.
Civ VI tried to ‘change up’ the Tech Tree a bit by adding Eurekas, which boosted the speed with which Techs could be researched based on what you were actually doing in that particular game. Great Idea, but, as usual in Civ VI, so poorly implemented that many Eurekas bore only the mildest relationship to what you were supposedly researching. We can still use ‘Eurekas’ as a concept, though, but with a Twist.
The principle: ‘Tech’ is actually two things: a way of doing something that you need to do to satisfy some perceived Need, and the capability of implementing that Tech. That second might include boosts from Very Desperate Need, like impending Starvation, or political, social, or resource impediments to using that particular idea or tech to solve your problem.
So instead of choosing a Tech, let’s choose a (potential) Solution to a problem.
This sequence also neatly divides many of the aspects of the game into two categories: Problems and Solutions:
Problem Categories: Food, Defense, Gold, Knowledge.
Solution Categories: Science (Technology), Social Policy, Civic/Political Choice, Religion, Commerce.
So, first you identify the Main Category of Problem (at least this turn or set of turns) you need to Solve.
Then, a set of possible roads to a solution will present. Some may be Techs. Some may be Civic or Social or Political or even Religious ‘solutions’. Many will have Unintended Consequences, especially the social, civic, religious or political ones, but even Technologies can develop in Ways Unforeseen – check the application of Lasers to playing music in CD players, something totally unpredicted when Lasers were first being developed in the 1950s.
IF you don’t have the prerequisites, you won’t even see the ‘Tech’ solutions. This is where the ‘Eurekas’, where applicable, come into play. Instead of Boosts, they become Requirements. No cities on the coast, you won’t even see Fishing or Sailing, or any other ‘Naval’ Tech as a solution to anything (You might see Celestial Navigation if you are still in the middle of that Desert, because desert navigation without land markers uses celestial markers as much as ships on the sea do).
For an example, the need for Defense might give you potential solutions of Better Weapons, Better Metallurgy leading to better weapons (but only if you have Enabling Techs like Pottery or earlier metals) – and the types of weapons will/may depend on your social/civic structure – a bunch of city dwellers and farmers, like most Civs, will not get a chance to build Horse Archers, but may get Crossbows, Pike Phalanxes or Gunpowder, depending on what they have already – or they may get a chance at the Civic of Drilled Formations that make their existing simple Spears much more effective, but may also require changes in the Social and/or Political structure of the Civ – a potential for Unrest, at least.
Technical changes are only one set of solutions, although a massive one, and potential techs that become available should be heavily modified by what comes with them and what they require in Resources, civic, social, political, or even religious changes also. A highly Hierarchial society led by a relatively small group of aristocrats will not want or adopt the big, compact phalanx of commoners with spears, pikes, or muskets. They will adopt better armor for the aristocratic tiny group, or chariots to carry them in and out of battle, or War Horses to do the same thing even more efficiently.
All of this means that, when playing in the game at least, you may never see the same set of Techs twice. And for some ‘solutions’, may see No Techs at all! What you see depends on what you already got, what problems you are trying to ‘solve’, what your resources, situation, civics and social policies and religion – a host of non-Tech as well as Tech Factors that influence your ‘research’.
The shape of your society Will be reflected in what kind of Tech you develop and how you use it: you may play Slobbovia ten times in a row, but it shouldn’t develop exactly the same society with the same Civics, Social Policies, Religion, or Politics every time and therefore will not develop the same Technologies in the same way every time.
If that isn’t enough to keep the game interesting, go back to Poker.
If all this hasn't put you into a glaze-eyed coma, Part Two follows . . .