What’s new in 8 years?

[Leyrann]

Do you import cheap natural gas from your large neighbor, stick with your polluting coal reserves, or build out nuclear or renewable resources?

Speaking of, it's time to move out of the 1970s and start depicting nuclear power plants that aren't constantly on the edge of nuking their home city.

 

[Acepox]

In terms of things that can be related from current real life to a new iteration of Civ, very obviously - at least to me -, is migration.

In the last 8 years, migration has really become the number one priority (or close) in many countries and it's such a timeless and important issue when it comes to civilizational history, it would be a terrible mistake not to make it a major feature of Civ 7 in my mind.

 

[UWHabs]

Speaking of, it's time to move out of the 1970s and start depicting nuclear power plants that aren't constantly on the edge of nuking their home city.

The problem is that from a gameplay perspective, there'd be almost no reason not to run them, as they provide a cheap and plentiful source of clean power. so the (slight) risk of a meltdown at least sort of compensates for that. Although I guess Uranium is relatively rare in civ 6 terms, so that would give some limit still, but this is one of those cases where I don't mind using a slightly incorrect historical anachronism to enhance gameplay. I mean, at least we do have historical examples of meltdowns to play with, more than, say, how much grain was stored in the pyramids.

Although if in-game 99% of meltdowns are simple cases which just pillage the tile and force you to rebuild the plant, then that's not even that bad. I've never actually seen a meltdown in game so I'm not sure how bad they are.

 

[Ordnael]

There could be a sabotage power plant spy mission, something that I believe happens real life conflicts, if the power plant is nuclear than the result would be nuclear fallout, something I believe never happened in real life (the sabotage nuclear plant, not the fallout)...and I hope Lord Shishio it keeps from haver happening!

 

[Leyrann]

The problem is that from a gameplay perspective, there'd be almost no reason not to run them, as they provide a cheap and plentiful source of clean power.

Maybe we should, I don't know, take that to heart in real life too?

As for a gameplay perspective, they can just be the technological advancement that replaces the earlier options.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The problem is that from a gameplay perspective, there'd be almost no reason not to run them, as they provide a cheap and plentiful source of clean power. so the (slight) risk of a meltdown at least sort of compensates for that. Although I guess Uranium is relatively rare in civ 6 terms, so that would give some limit still, but this is one of those cases where I don't mind using a slightly incorrect historical anachronism to enhance gameplay. I mean, at least we do have historical examples of meltdowns to play with, more than, say, how much grain was stored in the pyramids.

Although if in-game 99% of meltdowns are simple cases which just pillage the tile and force you to rebuild the plant, then that's not even that bad. I've never actually seen a meltdown in game so I'm not sure how bad they are.

I see your point, and raise you that Coal Power Plants are the weakest of the three, you'd be better off running Oil Power PLants in 6 than 5... if you have access to Oil.

I think the key here is pacing (unlocking Nuclear Power Plants late enough), and maybe make them the less overwpoered or something (if that's even applicable for them).

"provide cheap and plentiful source of clean power" which can also be achieved with Solar Farms and what not. The game doesn't shy away from pushing towards this notion anyways. The game wants you to build these, so there's no reason to make Nuclear Power Plants "dangerous", as lon gas you have the resources to build it, the game encourages you to build it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I see your point, and raise you that Coal Power Plants are the weakest of the three, you'd be better off running Oil Power PLants in 6 than 5... if you have access to Oil..

Admittedly more from economic reasons than 'efficiency', that's also true IRL: in 2022 67% of US energy production came from petroleum, natural gas or LNG, while only 12% came from coal. Interestingly, Renewables accounted for 13%, finally surpassing coal as part of the energy spectrum.

 

[Leyrann]

"provide cheap and plentiful source of clean power" which can also be achieved with Solar Farms and what not.

Except solar panels require significant heavy metals to construct, which provides considerable environmental damage to the area where those metals ar mined. In addition, they are newer technology (later unlock), and do not have the load-carrying capacity (note: not sure if that's the right word...) that nuclear power does.

Solar power is a pretty decent addition to the power grid (unlike wind which is just overhyped, and has been for decades now), but it can't be the primary method of generation. It's main advantage is that you can make production very granular, e.g. a lot of people all putting a few solar panels on their roof.

 

[Krajzen]

Fun fact, as late as 2010 AD solar and wind energy taken together brought only 1,7% of the global electricity production - today it's 13%, they only truly exploded last decade
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

 

[UWHabs]

Fun fact, as late as 2010 AD solar and wind energy taken together brought only 1,7% of the global electricity production - today it's 13%, they only truly exploded last decade
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

Yeah, they've really grown in the last 10 years. In some ways the civ solar farms were almost a sci-fi terrain improvement when the game launched, but now it's totally reasonable to make up a good portion of the energy needs.

 

[Ordnael]

Maybe CIV VII should really make a big deal of the energy mechanic from GS and make city a almost unable to build industrial military units without power...You can't build a tank by candlelight or mill those metal sheets by hand. The players should be obliged to power their cities, maybe make coal kind of a default energy that everyone has access to, work it in way that if you have the deposits you are automatically selling the "excess coal" in a energy market and if you don' have the deposits then you are automatically spending x money per turn on that market per y number of cities.
This way CIV VII could really flush out the pros and con of other power sources, for example renewable could be time (turn) consuming to achieve full reliance on but then very profitable on that energy market.

 

[Catalytic]

Maybe CIV VII should really make a big deal of the energy mechanic from GS and make city a almost unable to build industrial military units without power...You can't build a tank by candlelight or mill those metal sheets by hand. The players should be obliged to power their cities, maybe make coal kind of a default energy that everyone has access to, work it in way that if you have the deposits you are automatically selling the "excess coal" in a energy market and if you don' have the deposits then you are automatically spending x money per turn on that market per y number of cities.

I think you may be onto something here. It could be done in a hard way as you suggest, or a soft way, by simply making the production costs sky high and making electrification the only feasible path to achieve them.

Another poster noted just how critical the advent of fossil fuels really were in society. The use of kerosene allowed people to stop using whale oil to heat their homes and candles for light at nighttime. It radically transformed the US when John Rockefeller's Standard Oil made that universally available. It was the kind of change that went from 0 -> 98% adoption within a generation. Electrification of cities was another. While the physics had been discovered and elucidated decades before this point, it was the light bulb and A/C current that allowed the technology to be practically useful, even essential in every home. Again, within a generation, the cities were wired and illuminated. Same with trains and the automobile and the airplane.

So if we think about how to take that sort of transformative technology and apply it to a game like Civ, having large passive bonuses that apply once the tech is unlocked would seem to be a good way to model this. You could have some researches that unlock new buildings or new units, and some, like that, that are so vital, they're nodes in the tech tree. You beeline them for the passive and for access to the succeeding technologies. You'd put these at the transition between eras. But that might be a good way to have the game play reflect the historical impact of some of these things. What do you think?

 

[mitsho]

Yeah, the lag between researching a tech and actually building the thing in all your cities can be really long if you look at the turns or even more the display of the year.* So it'd be good if the techs themselves can be transformative. Civ has always lacked in the area of actually showing those deep transformative changes - like industrialization, electrification or the Internet. How do we display it?

*Btw. we are ready for each civ to use a different calendar - we have the turns for comparison after all.

Maybe we should, I don't know, take that to heart in real life too?

As for a gameplay perspective, they can just be the technological advancement that replaces the earlier options.

You misunderstand. The reason nuclear plants are not a problem in the game is that the game (currently) ends at 2050. So long-term concerns are no problem here. Also, it's a game: I nuked some cities just for fun in the game. Real life is different. So yeah, I'm fine with meltdowns simulating the cons here.

Some great topics here about new tech and world events but I’m wondering if there has been any archeological discovery that changed the perception of the past?

Apart from all the other things mentioned, the thing that came to my mind is Gobekli Tepe and its proof that cities may predate agriculture. The whole early tech tree of civ may need to be reinvented. As has been mentioned a tribal or nomadic start before the real thing starts. Or something like that. Just innovation there is needed.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, the lag between researching a tech and actually building the thing in all your cities can be really long if you look at the turns or even more the display of the year.* So it'd be good if the techs themselves can be transformative. Civ has always lacked in the area of actually showing those deep transformative changes - like industrialization, electrification or the Internet. How do we display it?

*Btw. we are ready for each civ to use a different calendar - we have the turns for comparison after all.



You misunderstand. The reason nuclear plants are not a problem in the game is that the game (currently) ends at 2050. So long-term concerns are no problem here. Also, it's a game: I nuked some cities just for fun in the game. Real life is different. So yeah, I'm fine with meltdowns simulating the cons here.



Apart from all the other things mentioned, the thing that came to my mind is Gobekli Tepe and its proof that cities may predate agriculture. The whole early tech tree of civ may need to be reinvented. As has been mentioned a tribal or nomadic start before the real thing starts. Or something like that. Just innovation there is needed.

From a gameplay perspective, it's hard to make any one technology too revolutionary, because the game suddenly becomes a race to that tech. Ideally maybe you'd almost need some sort of branched alternate tech tree, where like once you reach some of those turning points, you have to continue to invest a lot in to actually develop that new technology. So that by the time you actually "industrialize", other civs have basically gotten a chance to catch up. You'd still have the more modern stuff to be able to update to, but right now (or some of these other setups), the edge for getting to a spot first and like mass upgrading things immediately when you get there just keeps vaulting you too far ahead.

 

[vorlon_mi]

From a gameplay perspective, it's hard to make any one technology too revolutionary, because the game suddenly becomes a race to that tech. Ideally maybe you'd almost need some sort of branched alternate tech tree, where like once you reach some of those turning points, you have to continue to invest a lot in to actually develop that new technology. So that by the time you actually "industrialize", other civs have basically gotten a chance to catch up. You'd still have the more modern stuff to be able to update to, but right now (or some of these other setups), the edge for getting to a spot first and like mass upgrading things immediately when you get there just keeps vaulting you too far ahead.

On the one hand, trransformative techs are very historical, as we've seen in the last two centuries. Including the benefits for the civ citizens would reflect the wide scope of changes in the last few era(s). On the other hand, Civ the franchise has also featured snowball mechanics that risk making one (or a few) factions overpowered in just a few turns. In Civ3, after researching Military Tradition which unlocked a powerful unit, strong players (and AI) can invade and overwhelm their neighbors. Getting railroads in both Civ3 and Civ4 (and probably Civ2, but it's been a long time) dramatically changed the number of turns required to move troops around. Yes, in the later eras, each turn represents a year. So the transformative effects that @Catalytic described might take place within 20 or 50 turns. But their potential for snowballing is massive, from a gameplay perspective.

I would go further; while some leading real world civs developed electrification, the effects were quickly spread to countries/civs that did not. They hired companies from the other countries/civs to install it for them. How do we model that, in-game? A Civ3-like trade agreement, trading Gems for Electricity?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

The problem is that from a gameplay perspective, there'd be almost no reason not to run them, as they provide a cheap and plentiful source of clean power. so the (slight) risk of a meltdown at least sort of compensates for that. Although I guess Uranium is relatively rare in civ 6 terms, so that would give some limit still, but this is one of those cases where I don't mind using a slightly incorrect historical anachronism to enhance gameplay. I mean, at least we do have historical examples of meltdowns to play with, more than, say, how much grain was stored in the pyramids.

Although if in-game 99% of meltdowns are simple cases which just pillage the tile and force you to rebuild the plant, then that's not even that bad. I've never actually seen a meltdown in game so I'm not sure how bad they are.

The reason nuclear power isn't as utilized IRL as much as it should it be, has less to with any supposed technical drawbacks or risks, and more to do with it being politically unpopular. This was largely due to the very explicit connections it had with the military-industrial complex during its infancy, though the propaganda campaigns funded by the fossil fuel industry during the following years certainly didn't help.

That leads me to conclude that maybe what the game actually needs implemented, is some form of adversarial ruling class, a la Victoria 3

 

[ls612]

Global satellite megaconstellations (Starlink) having a real impact in both the civilian and military sectors. Not sure whether that would be some kind of unit or a wonder though.

 

[UWHabs]

On the one hand, trransformative techs are very historical, as we've seen in the last two centuries. Including the benefits for the civ citizens would reflect the wide scope of changes in the last few era(s). On the other hand, Civ the franchise has also featured snowball mechanics that risk making one (or a few) factions overpowered in just a few turns. In Civ3, after researching Military Tradition which unlocked a powerful unit, strong players (and AI) can invade and overwhelm their neighbors. Getting railroads in both Civ3 and Civ4 (and probably Civ2, but it's been a long time) dramatically changed the number of turns required to move troops around. Yes, in the later eras, each turn represents a year. So the transformative effects that @Catalytic described might take place within 20 or 50 turns. But their potential for snowballing is massive, from a gameplay perspective.

I would go further; while some leading real world civs developed electrification, the effects were quickly spread to countries/civs that did not. They hired companies from the other countries/civs to install it for them. How do we model that, in-game? A Civ3-like trade agreement, trading Gems for Electricity?

The hardest part in civ series is knowing the future. Like I'm sure if people realized how important electricity was going to be, the efforts put into it would have been like 10x what they were in the early days. Civ games you know ahead of time what techs are valuable and what aren't, whereas IRL you don't necessarily know if a Tesla Coil is going to be the basis of the next 200 years, or something that you only deal with in museums.

The reason nuclear power isn't as utilized IRL as much as it should it be, has less to with any supposed technical drawbacks or risks, and more to do with it being politically unpopular. This was largely due to the very explicit connections it had with the military-industrial complex during its infancy, though the propaganda campaigns funded by the fossil fuel industry during the following years certainly didn't help.

That leads me to conclude that maybe what the game actually needs implemented, is some form of adversarial ruling class, a la Victoria 3

Some of it maybe is that there needs to be some more direct negatives. It's a little unfortunate that civ 6 doesn't have any sort of local pollution. You could have an industrial complex with a coal plant in the middle of farmlands and you can still feed the whole city from that.
Maybe for Nuclear Plants, you could have them where by default they are strong and powerful, but like every time someone uses a Nuclear Bomb, or every time a nuclear plant melts down anywhere in the world, each Nuclear Plant would give -1 amenity. Basically like a "they're great, but once people see some of the danger, they get scared".

 

[Leyrann]

whereas IRL you don't necessarily know if a Tesla Coil is going to be the basis of the next 200 years, or something that you only deal with in museums.

And Red Alert.

Don't forget Red Alert.

Some of it maybe is that there needs to be some more direct negatives. It's a little unfortunate that civ 6 doesn't have any sort of local pollution. You could have an industrial complex with a coal plant in the middle of farmlands and you can still feed the whole city from that.
Maybe for Nuclear Plants, you could have them where by default they are strong and powerful, but like every time someone uses a Nuclear Bomb, or every time a nuclear plant melts down anywhere in the world, each Nuclear Plant would give -1 amenity. Basically like a "they're great, but once people see some of the danger, they get scared".

Then you should also include the positive amenity from me seeing a nuclear power plant in my backyard.

 

[AffineConstant]

Then you should also include the positive amenity from me seeing a nuclear power plant in my backyard.

Like, then we could get amenities from barren dessert wastelands and nearby wars and things being on fire. I'm sure it's all to some people's taste, but it's not most peoples, and we'd be trying to represent the average overall.