Visions of the Seventh Civilization

[UWHabs]

I've posted on this before; because the average size of basic units goes up though history, there's much less need for multitudes of separate units to show bigger army sizes. AND I don't want individual units (other than Scouts/Recon) wandering around the map anyway: combat should be between armies, moved as a single group, which alone reduces the profusion of mouse clicks or scrolls required by Civ V/VI's 1UPT.

And, IMHO, Civ Needs some kind of Supply Rule - your "distance maintenance". That can be kept as simple as a line to your nearest city, unobstructed by enemy units or ZOCs, the length determined by Technology and possibly extra resources you've put into Logistics in the Industrial and later Eras.

Among other things, this alone would keep individual non-Recon units from wandering from one end of the continent to the other in the Classical Era: it was never possible IRL, and it shouldn't be possible in Civ without extraordinary measures in Logistics, Diplomacy, or spending Gold to buy supplies from everey village along the way . . .

A very basic supply system would be really cool. Even a simple "for every X tiles to nearest un-occupied city, unit maintenance is +1 per unit per turn". Even if it's just a simple +1 gold per 5 tiles away from your nearest unoccupied city, suddenly wars will probably double your overall unit upkeep or more. Never mind a more complete system that ties in unit healing or other more complex topics. (I do think you need this to also count back to your non-conquered cities, already you get way too many automatic bonuses like loyalty for conquering cities in a war).

One of the "features" of civ 4 that I miss was the whole maintenance penalties for expanding too fast, and how doing that could entirely cripple your empire. There's way too much good in conquest in 6, there needs to be some penalties, if only just temporary costs to war.

 

[Pistol90]

I would like them to keep sam style ... game looks good today, when you compare it to Civ5 which looks outdated.

And when you consider that civ game lifespan would probably be 7-8 years ... more cartoonish civ6 art style is better for me.

But not to go inch more towards cartoonish, civ6 is far as it go without beeig not-serious.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

would like them to keep sam style ... game looks good today, when you compare it to Civ5 which looks outdated.

Civ5 looks perfectly fine

 

[pokiehl]

Civ 6 has aged way better than Civ 5 visually. I find Civ 5 pretty ugly to look at today.

 

[Civinator]

This matter of taste posts in my eye are not targeted in this thread. Per example for my taste Civ 4, Civ 5 and Civ 6 graphics are looking ugly, but this is no vision for Civ 7.

 

[Leucarum]

ALL art in games is stylized. Attempts at completely realistic terrain/graphics/units at the scale of a Grand Strategy Game like Civ would be incomprehensible to the average gamer without training - take a look at an aerial photograph of virtually any terrain and try to pick out individual things like buildings, 'districts', terrain types and try to identify them - it take very specific training in Terrain Analysis, which means you couldn't start the game until you had finished several months of training!

The question is, What Style?
I have noticed a trend, if you will, in recent and incoming 4X-type games: the maps and depictions in Humankind, ARA, and Elaborate Lands all have much more animation and detail in their maps than Civ, and, frankly, look a lot better to me. Humankind, as has been frequently noted, went a little too far, and produces maps that are hard to track and identify the various types of terrain on them. ARA seems to be gett ing closer to a nice balance between Enough Detail to be Interesting, and More Detail Than The Mind Of Man Can Comprehend. It's a very fine balance, but it's worth pursuing, IMHO.

It seems you understood the intended meaning of stylized.

I'll add that it's also contrast of styles which helps readability. Civ 6's terrain still has a lot of realism to it, which makes the more cartoonish improvements/districts stand out more. Opportunity to have best of both worlds.

I've not followed ARA or Elaborate Lands. Hopefully they get the balance of readability right...

 

[DavidPBacon]

This a topic I´ve been wanting to open for a long time, but didn´t have the patience. SInce it´s here... Those are very good ideas and a good change from the formula we´ve been getting. I confess I am not very fond of the direction the game has been going, losing many mechanics that used to give the game more depth in favor of ones that for me, fell more gamey and only there to give the player one more thing to do. On my part, the biggest change I like to see is a change in focus from the city based model to a pop based one, where the PoP has the abbility to work the land or the improvement in the hex or move to the city.
The city would be like a special improvement where the magic of "civilization" would happen. So I would have a separation between cities and country side. In the country raw materials are collected and some processed and in the cities is where commerce and industry and religion happens. Not only that, but I would have pops breeding independently, based on resources and other factors and spreading through the map and my job would to keep them satisfied and occupied and inside my culture instead of going their own way.
I would also create a separate screens for the cities and internalize districts and wonders. I would base the city in the city center, that would hold some buildings and have a hex based map around it. the city would grow based on the districts I´d build around it. The buildings could provide housing or I could build housing as a building and that would be necessary for the citizens inside the city. The distance from housing would affect productivity. That would create a nice dinamic between getting bonus from productive buildings and the necessity to house everyone or risk slums. This model would provoke a push towards expansion, a reason for colonization, internal upheaval and many dinamics that can really spice the role game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This a topic I´ve been wanting to open for a long time, but didn´t have the patience. SInce it´s here... Those are very good ideas and a good change from the formula we´ve been getting. I confess I am not very fond of the direction the game has been going, losing many mechanics that used to give the game more depth in favor of ones that for me, fell more gamey and only there to give the player one more thing to do. On my part, the biggest change I like to see is a change in focus from the city based model to a pop based one, where the PoP has the abbility to work the land or the improvement in the hex or move to the city.
The city would be like a special improvement where the magic of "civilization" would happen. So I would have a separation between cities and country side. In the country raw materials are collected and some processed and in the cities is where commerce and industry and religion happens. Not only that, but I would have pops breeding independently, based on resources and other factors and spreading through the map and my job would to keep them satisfied and occupied and inside my culture instead of going their own way.
I would also create a separate screens for the cities and internalize districts and wonders. I would base the city in the city center, that would hold some buildings and have a hex based map around it. the city would grow based on the districts I´d build around it. The buildings could provide housing or I could build housing as a building and that would be necessary for the citizens inside the city. The distance from housing would affect productivity. That would create a nice dinamic between getting bonus from productive buildings and the necessity to house everyone or risk slums. This model would provoke a push towards expansion, a reason for colonization, internal upheaval and many dinamics that can really spice the role game.

The City has always been the focus of Civilization games for just the reasons you mention. The separation between city and Elsewhere was traditionally the City Wall, which is found in the earliest settlements/cities dating back to 9500 BCE.

I have an entire separate document in which I'm gathering my thoughts on organization of a City in the game, because I think putting as much as possible on the maps in Districts in Civ VI was a brilliant move, but not implemented well enough.

In brief, I would increase the number of Building slots in a District tile to 5, make any adjacency bonuses apply to the Buildings in a District instead of the Districts themselves. All Districts could be Themed for more bonuses, none would be inherently Commercial, Religious, Scientific, etc. If the majority of Slots in a District were all occupied by buildings from the same area of emphasis, then the entire District gives a Theming or Adjacency Bonus to those.

Housing would be included in most of the early buildings, since in most of the world people lived in back of their shops, workshops, places of business. Only with the Industrial Era would Production Buildings like Factories (which would take up more than one slot, representing their Size compared to earlier Workshops) start to become completely separate from Residences, and at that point adjacency Bonuses from having Residential Buildings near the Factories would come into play.

The one exceptional District would be the first one, the City Center, which would require an Administrative Building - Palace for the Capital, Governor, Prince, Mayoral structure of some kind for other cities. Other Buildings in the City Center would depend on your emphasis for the city and sometimes the Civic, Governmental, and Social structure of your Civ. For example, a Theocracy government would require that a Temple be constructed next to the Palace, while a Constitutional Monarchy or Republic or Democracy would require a Parliament or Congressional Building next to or near the Palace.

All Districts in a city would have to be adjacent to each other: separate Districts would be Settlements and represent individual smaller towns feeding Resources or Goods to the city. Each of these would have to have some kind of Resource structure in one or more of their building slots, like a Grange or Grain Elevator to store and ship Food to the city, a Refinery, Smelter or Forge to ship Production, etc.

Distances from the City Center to the rest of the city, and from the city to Resources, would vary tremendously during the game. At the start, you could only build out one ring of Districts (with some exceptions). As transportation gets better, with better roads, vehicles, horses, the city could expand. Get Steam Transportation as in railroads, street railways, and later the personal automobile, and effectively there would be no restriction on the distance from which Resources could be supplied to the city, or the distance to which the city could expand. The late Industrial and post-Industrial Era of powered transport should see in the game the same massive expansion into Megalopolises that occured in the late 20th century, with Urban Conglomerates extending hundreds of miles.

Ideally, planning and administering to a late game City should be an entirely more complex undertaking than keeping an early city going, and most of the buildings and structures in the late-game Metropolis would be very different in size and efficiency from those cnstructed around the City Center in the early game.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

The City has always been the focus of Civilization games for just the reasons you mention. The separation between city and Elsewhere was traditionally the City Wall, which is found in the earliest settlements/cities dating back to 9500 BCE.

I have an entire separate document in which I'm gathering my thoughts on organization of a City in the game, because I think putting as much as possible on the maps in Districts in Civ VI was a brilliant move, but not implemented well enough.

In brief, I would increase the number of Building slots in a District tile to 5, make any adjacency bonuses apply to the Buildings in a District instead of the Districts themselves. All Districts could be Themed for more bonuses, none would be inherently Commercial, Religious, Scientific, etc. If the majority of Slots in a District were all occupied by buildings from the same area of emphasis, then the entire District gives a Theming or Adjacency Bonus to those.

Housing would be included in most of the early buildings, since in most of the world people lived in back of their shops, workshops, places of business. Only with the Industrial Era would Production Buildings like Factories (which would take up more than one slot, representing their Size compared to earlier Workshops) start to become completely separate from Residences, and at that point adjacency Bonuses from having Residential Buildings near the Factories would come into play.

The one exceptional District would be the first one, the City Center, which would require an Administrative Building - Palace for the Capital, Governor, Prince, Mayoral structure of some kind for other cities. Other Buildings in the City Center would depend on your emphasis for the city and sometimes the Civic, Governmental, and Social structure of your Civ. For example, a Theocracy government would require that a Temple be constructed next to the Palace, while a Constitutional Monarchy or Republic or Democracy would require a Parliament or Congressional Building next to or near the Palace.

All Districts in a city would have to be adjacent to each other: separate Districts would be Settlements and represent individual smaller towns feeding Resources or Goods to the city. Each of these would have to have some kind of Resource structure in one or more of their building slots, like a Grange or Grain Elevator to store and ship Food to the city, a Refinery, Smelter or Forge to ship Production, etc.

Distances from the City Center to the rest of the city, and from the city to Resources, would vary tremendously during the game. At the start, you could only build out one ring of Districts (with some exceptions). As transportation gets better, with better roads, vehicles, horses, the city could expand. Get Steam Transportation as in railroads, street railways, and later the personal automobile, and effectively there would be no restriction on the distance from which Resources could be supplied to the city, or the distance to which the city could expand. The late Industrial and post-Industrial Era of powered transport should see in the game the same massive expansion into Megalopolises that occured in the late 20th century, with Urban Conglomerates extending hundreds of miles.

Ideally, planning and administering to a late game City should be an entirely more complex undertaking than keeping an early city going, and most of the buildings and structures in the late-game Metropolis would be very different in size and efficiency from those cnstructed around the City Center in the early game.

So then the First Cities are closely packed and not 3 hexes radious wide from the start? when transportations improved (Especially in the Late Industrial Era when Steam powered Railroads became serious business (1829, Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Brits and Europeans never like the term Railroad much, I don't understand why. also outside North America, very few Rail Transportation Corporate (Private and National) use english term Railroad to call itself (Nagoya Railroad in Japan, now called itself Meitetsu. and Korean National Railroad (Korail) ) ).
What to do with closely packed cities or should there be command to merge two closely packed cities to form Megapolis once Railroad Technology becomes available? (And has EITHER Rail connections OR Tarmac highways conntected to.)?

 

[reddishrecue]

Civ 6 has aged way better than Civ 5 visually. I find Civ 5 pretty ugly to look at today.

I also noticed that. Civ 6 has way better graphics.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I also noticed that. Civ 6 has way better graphics.

My take would be that Civ VI has a much better GUI: the graphics are much more distinct and individual for the terrain (with the notable exception of the early problems with the Hills and Fog of War), buildings and districts and units. You rarely have any problem identifyng what you are looking at.

But to do that they simplified and exaggerated the characteristics of the buildings and units into the Cartoon style we have played with for these many years. I have always felt that they went too far with that, however much people have 'gotten used to it'. The OP reaction to Humankind's first map shots shows, I think, how much people really wanted better graphics, but that game showed the opposite problem: a map that was drop dead gorgeous, but too busy to be a good GUI and cities that did not even attempt to show all the things built in them so that, combined with a much greater number of potential constructions, you had the devil's own time keeping track of what had been built in a city an what not.

What we got as gamers, in my opinion, were two examples of what Not to do leaving us still waiting for a game that hits the Sweet Spot between Ease of Use GUI and Maps We Want To Look At. Sooner or later some game is going to hit that spot: why not Civ VII?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So then the First Cities are closely packed and not 3 hexes radious wide from the start? when transportations improved (Especially in the Late Industrial Era when Steam powered Railroads became serious business (1829, Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Brits and Europeans never like the term Railroad much, I don't understand why. also outside North America, very few Rail Transportation Corporate (Private and National) use english term Railroad to call itself (Nagoya Railroad in Japan, now called itself Meitetsu. and Korean National Railroad (Korail) ) ).
What to do with closely packed cities or should there be command to merge two closely packed cities to form Megapolis once Railroad Technology becomes available? (And has EITHER Rail connections OR Tarmac highways conntected to.)?

I would make the initial City consist at Early Game of 1 City Center tile and the tiles adjacent to it. That gives you 7 tiles to build in, with 5 slots each, or, potentially, 35 buildings, which should be more than enough to keep you busy until later technologies expand the city's 'footprint'.

Of course, some early constructions would take more than one slot. The principle ones I've theorized so far would be the Palace, initially a 2-slot Large Building, and the Ceremonial Square, a 2 slot space in which you can put a 1 slot Monument with Civic, Religious or Cultural significance.
Another multi-slot early structure which would help expand the city would be the Processional Way, a wide avenue or road stretching from the City Center (taking up 1 slot there) through another city tile (taking up one more slot there) to a 2nd tier tile (1 more slot). This would not only allow you to add a tile a little more distant from the City Center, it would also have Religious, Civic or Cultural significance and provide an 'adjacency' bonus to cultural, entertainment or Civic structures. A Temple built in a tile with a Processional Way would be boosted, for example, as would an Entertainment structure.

City radius would expand only along rivers after you get decent river craft (Classical, roughly) and Canals (Medieval) and generally with hard surface, graded roads and personal coaches and carriages (Renaissance to Early Industrial). With powered transportation (Steam) there is no limit to the radius from which the city can draw resources, just wherever the railroad runs, and with (Internal) Combustion and the personal automobile the number of tiles connected to the City Center becomes essentially Infinite and you can start building your Megalopolis stretching from Boston to Richmond or from Chicago to Detroit. Ideally, in keeping with a bit of historical reality, cities would start to expand over the map dramatically only in the late Industrial Era, but after that there would be no stopping them.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

City radius would expand only along rivers after you get decent river craft (Classical, roughly) and Canals (Medieval) and generally with hard surface, graded roads and personal coaches and carriages (Renaissance to Early Industrial). With powered transportation (Steam) there is no limit to the radius from which the city can draw resources, just wherever the railroad runs, and with (Internal) Combustion and the personal automobile the number of tiles connected to the City Center becomes essentially Infinite and you can start building your Megalopolis stretching from Boston to Richmond or from Chicago to Detroit. Ideally, in keeping with a bit of historical reality, cities would start to expand over the map dramatically only in the late Industrial Era, but after that there would be no stopping them.

Actually when did the paved intercity highways came to be after Roman Empire and Qin-Han Empire fell? one that allows stage coaches to run so easily?
And also when did pivoted truck wagons first came to be? (and so when should this be travelling merchants land graphics, replacing pack animals and two-wheel cart?)

And what should ingame roadbuildings and railroad tracklayings be?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Actually when did the paved intercity highways came to be after Roman Empire and Qin-Han Empire fell? one that allows stage coaches to run so easily?
And also when did pivoted truck wagons first came to be? (and so when should this be travelling merchants land graphics, replacing pack animals and two-wheel cart?)

And what should ingame roadbuildings and railroad tracklayings be?

In every case, hard-surfaced, graded, all-weather roads and Wagons went together: a wagon was worthless to carry heavy loads anywhere without a road, and a hard-surface road was actually worse than a soft-surface road for pack animals and mounted couriers.

Roman roads were designed mostly for marching troops. Consequently they went right over hills without grading or cutting and so were not always very convenient for any wheeled vehicles with loads. The first known hard surface, all-weather paved road for wheeled vehicles was actually in Crete, built about 2000 BCE, running for 50 km from Knossos south to another palace site at Gortyn. It was built with 20 cm thick sandstone blocks held in place by a gypsum mortar with side drainage. It was, frankly, better built than any Roman road!

Other 'Great Roads' of antiquity, like the Achaemenid Persian Royal Road or the Great Khurasian Road of Central Asia, were designed for pack trains or mounted couriers, so were not, as far as is known, hard-paved to provide an all-weather surface for wheeled vehicles

Paved city streets date back to the first cities: Ur had stone pavement around 4000 BCE, the Harappan cities had brick paving by 3000 BCE, Classical Greek cities had stone or brick streets by 500 BCE. Some of the Roman roads (not the long-distance 'named' ones) were paved from the city center to the nearest farms to facilitate movement of goods into the city, and these might be a model for a UI for Rome, providing for a longer City Radius - but also requiring significant Maintenance, because all of them collapsed during the early post-Roman period when governments simply couldn't afford them any more.

It was not until the early 1700s that 'Roman-type' (hard surface of gravel, brick or stone, sub-levels with drainage) started to be built (in Europe) again, coinciding with better wagon technology, like the 'coach' from Hungary with sprung suspension. Many of these Improved Roads were built by Toll companies who were given permission by the Crown to charge people for using the roads and bridges and so pay for the maintenance and construction. By 1815 John MacAdam had patented a road construction method using Roman-style drainage systems and a surface of small stones laid on a sand/gravel bed that provided the first modern 'system' of hard-surface roads. After that, asphalt-'tarmac' paving was the next big addition at the beginning of the 20th century.

The pivoted front axel system for 4-wheeled wagons was in use in Rome in the 1st century BCE for sure, and may date back to Bronze Age northern Europe (Celts), but that evidence is less certain. The Celts did have some kind of leather springs or suspension to smooth the ride for wagons, the earliest 'suspension' system known. The 'fifth wheel' pivoting system is much more modern, dating from the 17th century CE in Europe.

Any change from pack transport to wheeled for long distance trade, though, was dependent as much on building roads as changes in wagon technology: no amount of springing, pivoting or harness systems makes any difference in getting a wagon over an un-bridged river or over a trackless mountain pass full of large trees. This is evident from fthe travel to Washington Territory over the Cascade Mountains in the early 1850s - the northern extension of the 'Oregon Trail' was completely impassable to wheeled vehicles, so settlers/homesteaders had to break up heir wagons on the eastern side of the mountains, convert to pack travel, and arrived in Puget Sound with a fraction of the goods they started with, regardless of how easy the rest of their trip across the central plains was. It was only after a crew of volunteers attacked the mountain passes with axes and other tools that a primitive 'road' was hacked over the mountains, allowing wagons to complete the trip.

 

[DavidPBacon]

The City has always been the focus of Civilization games for just the reasons you mention. The separation between city and Elsewhere was traditionally the City Wall, which is found in the earliest settlements/cities dating back to 9500 BCE.

I have an entire separate document in which I'm gathering my thoughts on organization of a City in the game, because I think putting as much as possible on the maps in Districts in Civ VI was a brilliant move, but not implemented well enough.

In brief, I would increase the number of Building slots in a District tile to 5, make any adjacency bonuses apply to the Buildings in a District instead of the Districts themselves. All Districts could be Themed for more bonuses, none would be inherently Commercial, Religious, Scientific, etc. If the majority of Slots in a District were all occupied by buildings from the same area of emphasis, then the entire District gives a Theming or Adjacency Bonus to those.

Housing would be included in most of the early buildings, since in most of the world people lived in back of their shops, workshops, places of business. Only with the Industrial Era would Production Buildings like Factories (which would take up more than one slot, representing their Size compared to earlier Workshops) start to become completely separate from Residences, and at that point adjacency Bonuses from having Residential Buildings near the Factories would come into play.

The one exceptional District would be the first one, the City Center, which would require an Administrative Building - Palace for the Capital, Governor, Prince, Mayoral structure of some kind for other cities. Other Buildings in the City Center would depend on your emphasis for the city and sometimes the Civic, Governmental, and Social structure of your Civ. For example, a Theocracy government would require that a Temple be constructed next to the Palace, while a Constitutional Monarchy or Republic or Democracy would require a Parliament or Congressional Building next to or near the Palace.

All Districts in a city would have to be adjacent to each other: separate Districts would be Settlements and represent individual smaller towns feeding Resources or Goods to the city. Each of these would have to have some kind of Resource structure in one or more of their building slots, like a Grange or Grain Elevator to store and ship Food to the city, a Refinery, Smelter or Forge to ship Production, etc.

Distances from the City Center to the rest of the city, and from the city to Resources, would vary tremendously during the game. At the start, you could only build out one ring of Districts (with some exceptions). As transportation gets better, with better roads, vehicles, horses, the city could expand. Get Steam Transportation as in railroads, street railways, and later the personal automobile, and effectively there would be no restriction on the distance from which Resources could be supplied to the city, or the distance to which the city could expand. The late Industrial and post-Industrial Era of powered transport should see in the game the same massive expansion into Megalopolises that occured in the late 20th century, with Urban Conglomerates extending hundreds of miles.

Ideally, planning and administering to a late game City should be an entirely more complex undertaking than keeping an early city going, and most of the buildings and structures in the late-game Metropolis would be very different in size and efficiency from those cnstructed around the City Center in the early game.

Funny enough, that´s exactly how I thought it should be implanted. But I still disagree about the city sprawl. For that to work, the scale should be way smaller, like 0,5 mile per hex, which would produce a game with millions of hexes even in small maps. For most of history, even the big cities had a 1-5 miles radius, it breaks immersion.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Funny enough, that´s exactly how I thought it should be implanted. But I still disagree about the city sprawl. For that to work, the scale should be way smaller, like 0,5 mile per hex, which would produce a game with millions of hexes even in small maps. For most of history, even the big cities had a 1-5 miles radius, it breaks immersion.

Given that the game already has a few Units per hex and implies that there is no room for more, that would put the hex at less than a kilometer across already. Given that the average ground unit can only move 2 - 6 tiles per turn, which is 40 years in the Ancient Era, that implies that each tile is about 40,000 kilometers across. Given that the smallest city is 1 population point and ancient early cities averaged less than 3000 people, that implies each population point = less than 3000 people. Which would make a 30 pop city less than 100,000 people, or less than 1/300 rhe size of the largest cities in the world today by population.

ALL the 'figures' and relationships in the game are a compromise between playablity and 'realistic' time, size and distance scales. Given the advantage of having all the buildings and structures of a city present and visible on the map, I am willing to artificially expand the size of the city on the map to make room for them. Take a look at a mid-game city in Humankind: none of the infrastructure within the city is visible, so you can go quite mad tapping back and forth between build lists and screens trying to figure out what you need to build next and haven't or have built already. To avoid that headache, I'm willing to have an over-large city graphic and assume for the sake of playability that the graphic includes the fields and farms surrounding the actual city, which even in ancient times could extend 10s of kilometers beyond the walls.

But it all comes down to what kinds of compromises each gamer is willing to make, implicitly or explicitly, in the game design. No two of us will agree completely, so the total package is a compromise in and of itself.

 

[Olle Wernersson]

Given that the game already has a few Units per hex and implies that there is no room for more, that would put the hex at less than a kilometer across already. Given that the average ground unit can only move 2 - 6 tiles per turn, which is 40 years in the Ancient Era, that implies that each tile is about 40,000 kilometers across.

What you are describing here is something that I personally find to remove some immersion. I have no problem with units (groups of humans) being visually upscaled so that we can see them on the map, or any other visual upscale for that matter. I think the visual upscales are a good thing, but just as you describe here, the game mechanics act like the tiles are far different in size depending on if groups of people are traveling or by how much space they seem to mechanically take up. Personally, I would like to see the mechanics of the game be just a little bit more realistic here, perhaps by allowing more units to be on the same tile. About the incredibly slow movement of travel in the ancient era, I don't know how this could be "solved," but personally, it annoys me. Does this annoy you in the same way and do you think it needs to be somewhat addressed, or do you think this is one of the compromises that needs to be made in a game like Civilization 7?

 

[Sync]

I want Civ 4.5, it's all I want.

Put a limit on the number of units allowed per tile to prevent absurdly-sized stacks. This still allows you to move units around the map without tedious micromanagement.

I never felt like I was building an empire in Civ 5 or 6, just that I was managing a collection of loosely connected cities. Both games lacked a soul and character.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

What you are describing here is something that I personally find to remove some immersion. I have no problem with units (groups of humans) being visually upscaled so that we can see them on the map, or any other visual upscale for that matter. I think the visual upscales are a good thing, but just as you describe here, the game mechanics act like the tiles are far different in size depending on if groups of people are traveling or by how much space they seem to mechanically take up. Personally, I would like to see the mechanics of the game be just a little bit more realistic here, perhaps by allowing more units to be on the same tile. About the incredibly slow movement of travel in the ancient era, I don't know how this could be "solved," but personally, it annoys me. Does this annoy you in the same way and do you think it needs to be somewhat addressed, or do you think this is one of the compromises that needs to be made in a game like Civilization 7?

I think that making a game that is both playable on the average computer and comprehendable by the average gamer will always require a compromise on the 'ground scale'. Let's face it, even the most ardent Wide player in any Civ game has never managed to replicate the scale of the Roman Empire, where a simple listing of the cities runs to several pages, and even at its height of extent that empire was only a small fraction of the (playable) global area. And as long as we are 'compressing' the world to a playable size, individual movement rates/turn are also going to be out of scale. As mentioned, in a single year, even stopping to gather food, a military or civilian unit can cover hundreds or thousands of kilometers, and for most of the game that year is only a fraction of a turn!

So, I can grit my teeth and put up with wildly out of scale movement rates. I am not so able to put up 1UPT, which is grossly out of any ground scale and also makes any 'battle' grossly out of ground and time scale. When it takes several centuries in the ancient era to dest roy a single Barbarian Camp, my suspension of belief gets suspended. This is why I've been advocating for a multiple-unit Army system to resolve battles on a sinvle tile, in one turn, to at least come closer to a realistic` time scale if nothing else.

I am also starting to think about Variable Movement. That is, the old board game/miniatures mechanic of a Strategic versus Operational movement rate for units, representing the fact that a civilian or military group moving over a half-decent road within their own country and no conceivable opposition can move much, much faster than a military unit moving through unknown or hostile country while hunting for supplies, which describes most of the movement from 4000 BCE to 1900 CE. A multi-tier set of movement rates based on Conditions on the map would at least come closer to bringing the movement into line with the notional map scale - although as long as we want to play a game covering the entire planet and 6000 years, we are not going to get 'realistic' movement and ground scales for anything on any computer I can foresee being available to most of us in the near future.

But, to quote Gorshkov, "Perfect is the Enemy of Good Enough", and in the case of game design, what is Good Enough will be different in some particular for each and every Gamer.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I want Civ 4.5, it's all I want.

Put a limit on the number of units allowed per tile to prevent absurdly-sized stacks. This still allows you to move units around the map without tedious micromanagement.

I never felt like I was building an empire in Civ 5 or 6, just that I was managing a collection of loosely connected cities. Both games lacked a soul and character.

Limiting number of units in a stack is a No Brainer, both from the standpoint of Good Game Design and historical models. In this, at least, both Humankind and the new Millennia game show the way: initial 'armies' of 3 - 4 units, getting bigger as technology and tactical/operational techniques allow. Civ can add to those two with a mechanic so far unique (in 4X games, at least) to the franchise: Great Generals, which could allow you to stack an extra unit or more in the army and possibly do some other 'special things' with the stack of units.

I personally think the key to providing games and civilizations/factions in the games with 'soul and character' is Narrative. If you don't get the feeling that you are constructing a Herodotus or Toynbee-like narrative history of your Civilization, you might as well be playing computer Solitaire. Providing named characters as Leaders, Governors, Great People is a start, and one that is also unique in its scale to Civ, but so much more could be done, and the techniques aren't even New. Look at the quote inserts in SMAC that define the Leaders' an Factions' character: look at the Newspaper articles in Anno 1800 that give you some feedback on how the pixel population is reacting to Events - that could be expanded to include Monumental carvings or Stele in the Ancient Era, Tablets in the market place in the Classical Era, Chronicles in the medieval Era, etc so as to provide Feedback and 'character' throughout the game.

The more Unique-to-your-Civ in-game Feedback and ways of customizing the look and even the play of your Civ in-game the more Civ VII could give the gamer the genuine feeling that he/she is building a Civilization to stand the Test of Time rather than passing the time testing their patience in a dull Civilization game.