aieeegrunt
Emperor
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I did nothing of the kind.
What are the essential requirements of the civ formula?
- Thread starter SupremacyKing2
- Start date
I did nothing of the kind.
I was replying to Crashdummy. You replied to me, here.
You can outright ignore victory conditions and do your own thing in VII, too. Transitions are not victory conditions. Picking a new culture to transition your civ into is not a victory condition.
Technically, the only victory that actually counts is the one at the end of Modern (at the moment). The rest are just minigames for transition-related bonuses (which, personally, I enjoy, but YMMV). And you can also turn them all off . . . so.
Yes, the act of the transition itself is "forced" upon the player. Just like picking a leader is, or picking a civ. It is a fundamentally new thing in VII that didn't exist in previous iterations (as picking a leader was a new thing, when that was introduced). But that doesn't mean you can't ignore victory conditions. You are incorrect in attempting to claim that VII is somehow different.
This is a bit of a tangent, but: if you could keep your original, chosen culture throughout a whole game of VII, would that be preferable to you? Or, alternatively / as well, would being able to play single-Age games (maybe on slower game speeds) be more appealing? As both would negate the forced transition, and everything else is basically ignorable if you truly want to. The map generation doesn't even come into play until Exploration.
aieeegrunt
Emperor
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Sigh.
The claim was made that “nuh uh, previous Civ titles were just as railroady because they had victory conditions therefore bothsame”
I pointed out that you could easily simply ignore victory conditions in previous titles and play how you want.
Meanwhile this isn’t an option in Civ7 because you get the era reset/switch forced on you via developer fiat
In fact they were so dedicated to making sure I played the way they wanted they warped the very map generation to cram Distant Lands and Treasure Fleets down my throat.
I’m sure their are plenty of other examples because the whole design paradigm is railroady but those are the two best known.
In response to your question, I would love to try a version of Civ7 that didn’t do that because there are a lot of things I really want to try, but apparently that is a technical impossibility or something.
The claim was made that “nuh uh, previous Civ titles were just as railroady because they had victory conditions therefore bothsame”
I pointed out that you could easily simply ignore victory conditions in previous titles and play how you want.
Meanwhile this isn’t an option in Civ7 because you get the era reset/switch forced on you via developer fiat
In fact they were so dedicated to making sure I played the way they wanted they warped the very map generation to cram Distant Lands and Treasure Fleets down my throat.
I’m sure their are plenty of other examples because the whole design paradigm is railroady but those are the two best known.
In response to your question, I would love to try a version of Civ7 that didn’t do that because there are a lot of things I really want to try, but apparently that is a technical impossibility or something.
Nowhere that I can see, was that claim made.
I compared victory conditions to the existence of mandatory mechanics. Because, well, by definition, they are. You can either engage with them or not, but they will impose themselves on you either way (win or lose). This is the same in VII as it is in any other game. I am trying to explain why I see them as similar. It's not a gotcha.
On top of that, age transitions are not victory conditions. They are not the same thing. You can even turn one of these things off!
Well, there's a difference between removing the mechanics outright and letting you play around them, which is why I asked. Firaxis seem committed to the mechanics for the time being at least, so I was just working out the limit for you. Like I said though, a tangent.
Gori the Grey
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Ok, here's my starting response. I'll probably want to tinker with it, and there's a section that I already plan to add to it, but it's already pretty long, so let me get this part of it out there. I put some stuff in inline spoilers to try to make it a little bit less tl;dr.
One preliminary terminological note: Starting with point (11), I reference strands within the game that the player manages and tries to increase (gold, production, culture, happiness). The best word for these would be “resources,” but that already has so fixed a meaning within Civ games (strats and luxes), that I needed some other term, and I couldn’t find a better one than “assets.” Please do note the special meaning that I assign to that term because a lot of what I say concerns itself with that.
1) Turn-based
2) Historically themed
3) Covering the whole of human history from the founding of the first cities to the present or near future.
4) Playing out over hundreds of turns
5) Taking place on an alternative Earth that might have very different geographical features than this-Earth, but which is defined primarily in terms of a limited but rich set of terrain types
6) The player only knowing about a small portion of the map initially and needing to explore in order to determine the location of good terrain for settling, resources and other civilizations.
7) Using as its competing entities civilizations that attained some level of prominence in this-Earth—at least their names and ideally some game representation of characteristics traditionally associated with their this-Earth flourishing (In keeping with (5), though, these civilizations might appear in the game amid very different terrain than was characteristic for that civilization in this-world).
8) with a particular famous figure from that civilization serving as the in-game “face” of that civ, to humanize the player’s various forms of interaction with the civilization.
9) Victory conditions (i.e. it at least can be played as a competitive game, with one civ emerging as the winner, and not a mere sandbox—though it should ideally allow for sandbox play).
10) And multiple possible victory conditions, at that; four or five of them (not just, e.g. military conquest of whole world)
((1), (9) and (10) together mean that the game is fundamentally a race to beat every other civ to one or another of the victory conditions. The primary pleasant-tension that the game arouses is “will I be first?” But (9) and (10) combine with (4) to mean that the kind of race that a Civ game represents is a marathon. Good long-term planning will mean that one civ—and most especially the player—can eventually catch up and surpass another civ that got an early edge.)
11) Most elements making up the game are (what I will call) “assets” that can, ultimately, be leveraged toward helping to reach one of the victory conditions
12) There are multiple “strands” of such assets—money, productivity, culture, science, happiness, military units—but a comprehensible, manageable number of such strands. Basically the things that appear, color-coded, along the top bar of Civ 5.
13) The strands are partly fungible.
(I.e. you can build a building or buy it, so you can reach the same end if you happen to be strong in production or in money. Hammers or the Holy Warriors belief can supply you with troops. (in Civ 5, which is always my own reference point))
14) But the strands are not entirely fungible (e.g. the limit that wonders must be built not bought adds challenge). For some things you just need e.g. culture and nothing but culture can get you that thing, and you can’t hurry it up by using any other asset.
15) The primary building-block of the game is a city; its borders cover and control a certain portion of the map and certain resources that are located within that territory. A major activity of the game is founding cities in order to expand the overall territory controlled by one’s civilization.
16) The overall strength of cities is tied in large measure to their population, so a major goal beyond founding cities is to grow them. Many of the assets in the game derive fundamentally from the population of cities.
17) The primary pacing for the game is set by a tech tree that mirrors the developing technological sophistication of this-Earth through a set of technologies you can discover/develop
18) Once that primary pacing is in place, there is also built into the game a standard pacing for all other resources: a pace at which population tends to grow, a normal amount of money per turn, culture per turn, etc.
19) This “standard pacing” for growth of any asset—population, gold, production, culture—can be exceeded, in a particular game, based on various factors that might be present in a particular situation--terrain, natural wonders—or chosen by the player: cultural policies, religious pantheons. Against the standard pace, the player can feel that, in a particular game, he or she is moving faster than is usually the case with respect to one of the strands of assets. Anything in the game that significantly increases the player’s acquisition of any asset, I will call an accelerant. Goodie huts are an accelerant; your civ progresses way more quickly, in one of the strands of assets, than it would through its normal operations. Since the game is fundamentally a race, anything that makes you feel you are moving faster makes you feel good.
20) The player’s own building choices can improve the pace of one of the strands of assets, and most particularly Wonders speed the pace of acquiring one of the game’s assets significantly; i.e. there is a big payoff, in one dimension of the game at least, for building a Wonder.
21) Most player actions center on developing one or another of the game’s assets.
22) There are hard choices to be made in deciding which asset to further develop, trade-offs; to develop one means that you miss or delay the possibility to develop another. You can prioritize a building that increases your civilization’s money, but through the set of turns you are building it, you will not be progressing on a building that could increase its culture, or happiness, or faith, etc., each of which is valuable in its own right (and those values are balanced to keep those hard choices hard).
23) Success in the game is primarily a function of maximally leveraging the advantages that you get in terms of terrain, your civ’s special abilities, etc. to pull ahead of the other competing civilizations. There are good overall strategies; there are good ways of exploiting your civ’s built in advantages; but ultimate success also involves some per-game improvisation based on the particular site in which one’s civ happens to start (terrain and neighboring civs particularly).
For me, (19) is the most crucial element: feeling one is racing forward, relative to a normal pace for asset X. Oh, and (22), the "hard choices from among competing priorities"
***
There are two things that I think are crucial to the Civ formula that I wanted to treat at greater length.
First, (24) players should be able to play in sandbox mode.
I have said in (9) that Civ should have victory conditions. One should be able to win. Civ shouldn’t be fundamentally a sandbox game. But a lot of people like to play in more of a sandbox mode. One key element of this, in my view, is there be the various strands of assets (gold, production, culture, faith, etc.), that there be no clear best one among them (if they have been well balanced), that they are partly fungible, and they are fun to go after in their own right. Then, going into a particular game, or after seeing the initial roll, a person can say, “Let’s see how wealthy a nation I can build; let’s center everything around money." Or, let’s see how much culture I can generate. Or let me see how far I can spread my faith. The systems are complex enough and interlocking enough that a player can just invent his or her own goals for a particular game.
I don’t terribly like jungle starts in Civ 5 because they tend to be low in production, and for me production is king. But if I roll Brazil in a big jungle, I sometimes say “ok, let me see if I can build a jungle empire.” I try to get the Sacred Path pantheon, so I’m getting culture out of tiles I’ll be working anyway. I know that once I get my universities built, all those jungle tiles will really bump my science. Is there some other way I can make up for the lack of production? You just start interacting with the terrain, with the various game systems in mind, and see what happens.
Second, (25) the other kind of player that you should try to cater to (and this is not altogether distinct from the sandbox player, or the victory-condition player, for that matter) is people who like the narrative that emerges as their civilization grows. Here I think the key is just to have lots of historical flavoring to the different assets, so that there are details around which to build that narrative. In the Civ 5 social policy trees are policies that are essentially a package of game-advantages. But the designers haven’t left it at that, but have given the policies a name, so when I get “Warrior Code,” I imagine my society developing a warrior code (and I often name it after the great general who is generated as a result of getting that policy). The great works in Civ 5 and 6 are actual great works that were produced in our world, so when expend a great writer to get one of those, as one poster here said, you feel like it was your civilization that produced Romeo and Juliet. (The codices in Civ 7 don’t give that feeling because they are generic, don’t have historical flavoring).
***
More thoughts:
26) It should be possible to play peacefully, but difficult. Even if you don't want to wage war yourself, you should be at some risk of being attacked, so you should feel pressure to build at least a defensive force.
27) There should be mechanisms (happiness, corruption) to keep success from being simply a matter of empire size. A larger empire should on the whole be better (more room for resources to appear within your territory, e.g.) But it shouldn't be the case that the first civ to have military success just steamrolls from that point on. I actually like what they tried to do in Civ 5, where tall empires could be equally viable with wide ones.
One preliminary terminological note: Starting with point (11), I reference strands within the game that the player manages and tries to increase (gold, production, culture, happiness). The best word for these would be “resources,” but that already has so fixed a meaning within Civ games (strats and luxes), that I needed some other term, and I couldn’t find a better one than “assets.” Please do note the special meaning that I assign to that term because a lot of what I say concerns itself with that.
1) Turn-based
2) Historically themed
3) Covering the whole of human history from the founding of the first cities to the present or near future.
4) Playing out over hundreds of turns
5) Taking place on an alternative Earth that might have very different geographical features than this-Earth, but which is defined primarily in terms of a limited but rich set of terrain types
6) The player only knowing about a small portion of the map initially and needing to explore in order to determine the location of good terrain for settling, resources and other civilizations.
7) Using as its competing entities civilizations that attained some level of prominence in this-Earth—at least their names and ideally some game representation of characteristics traditionally associated with their this-Earth flourishing (In keeping with (5), though, these civilizations might appear in the game amid very different terrain than was characteristic for that civilization in this-world).
8) with a particular famous figure from that civilization serving as the in-game “face” of that civ, to humanize the player’s various forms of interaction with the civilization.
9) Victory conditions (i.e. it at least can be played as a competitive game, with one civ emerging as the winner, and not a mere sandbox—though it should ideally allow for sandbox play).
10) And multiple possible victory conditions, at that; four or five of them (not just, e.g. military conquest of whole world)
((1), (9) and (10) together mean that the game is fundamentally a race to beat every other civ to one or another of the victory conditions. The primary pleasant-tension that the game arouses is “will I be first?” But (9) and (10) combine with (4) to mean that the kind of race that a Civ game represents is a marathon. Good long-term planning will mean that one civ—and most especially the player—can eventually catch up and surpass another civ that got an early edge.)
11) Most elements making up the game are (what I will call) “assets” that can, ultimately, be leveraged toward helping to reach one of the victory conditions
12) There are multiple “strands” of such assets—money, productivity, culture, science, happiness, military units—but a comprehensible, manageable number of such strands. Basically the things that appear, color-coded, along the top bar of Civ 5.
13) The strands are partly fungible.
(I.e. you can build a building or buy it, so you can reach the same end if you happen to be strong in production or in money. Hammers or the Holy Warriors belief can supply you with troops. (in Civ 5, which is always my own reference point))
14) But the strands are not entirely fungible (e.g. the limit that wonders must be built not bought adds challenge). For some things you just need e.g. culture and nothing but culture can get you that thing, and you can’t hurry it up by using any other asset.
15) The primary building-block of the game is a city; its borders cover and control a certain portion of the map and certain resources that are located within that territory. A major activity of the game is founding cities in order to expand the overall territory controlled by one’s civilization.
16) The overall strength of cities is tied in large measure to their population, so a major goal beyond founding cities is to grow them. Many of the assets in the game derive fundamentally from the population of cities.
17) The primary pacing for the game is set by a tech tree that mirrors the developing technological sophistication of this-Earth through a set of technologies you can discover/develop
18) Once that primary pacing is in place, there is also built into the game a standard pacing for all other resources: a pace at which population tends to grow, a normal amount of money per turn, culture per turn, etc.
19) This “standard pacing” for growth of any asset—population, gold, production, culture—can be exceeded, in a particular game, based on various factors that might be present in a particular situation--terrain, natural wonders—or chosen by the player: cultural policies, religious pantheons. Against the standard pace, the player can feel that, in a particular game, he or she is moving faster than is usually the case with respect to one of the strands of assets. Anything in the game that significantly increases the player’s acquisition of any asset, I will call an accelerant. Goodie huts are an accelerant; your civ progresses way more quickly, in one of the strands of assets, than it would through its normal operations. Since the game is fundamentally a race, anything that makes you feel you are moving faster makes you feel good.
20) The player’s own building choices can improve the pace of one of the strands of assets, and most particularly Wonders speed the pace of acquiring one of the game’s assets significantly; i.e. there is a big payoff, in one dimension of the game at least, for building a Wonder.
21) Most player actions center on developing one or another of the game’s assets.
22) There are hard choices to be made in deciding which asset to further develop, trade-offs; to develop one means that you miss or delay the possibility to develop another. You can prioritize a building that increases your civilization’s money, but through the set of turns you are building it, you will not be progressing on a building that could increase its culture, or happiness, or faith, etc., each of which is valuable in its own right (and those values are balanced to keep those hard choices hard).
23) Success in the game is primarily a function of maximally leveraging the advantages that you get in terms of terrain, your civ’s special abilities, etc. to pull ahead of the other competing civilizations. There are good overall strategies; there are good ways of exploiting your civ’s built in advantages; but ultimate success also involves some per-game improvisation based on the particular site in which one’s civ happens to start (terrain and neighboring civs particularly).
For me, (19) is the most crucial element: feeling one is racing forward, relative to a normal pace for asset X. Oh, and (22), the "hard choices from among competing priorities"
***
There are two things that I think are crucial to the Civ formula that I wanted to treat at greater length.
First, (24) players should be able to play in sandbox mode.
I have said in (9) that Civ should have victory conditions. One should be able to win. Civ shouldn’t be fundamentally a sandbox game. But a lot of people like to play in more of a sandbox mode. One key element of this, in my view, is there be the various strands of assets (gold, production, culture, faith, etc.), that there be no clear best one among them (if they have been well balanced), that they are partly fungible, and they are fun to go after in their own right. Then, going into a particular game, or after seeing the initial roll, a person can say, “Let’s see how wealthy a nation I can build; let’s center everything around money." Or, let’s see how much culture I can generate. Or let me see how far I can spread my faith. The systems are complex enough and interlocking enough that a player can just invent his or her own goals for a particular game.
I don’t terribly like jungle starts in Civ 5 because they tend to be low in production, and for me production is king. But if I roll Brazil in a big jungle, I sometimes say “ok, let me see if I can build a jungle empire.” I try to get the Sacred Path pantheon, so I’m getting culture out of tiles I’ll be working anyway. I know that once I get my universities built, all those jungle tiles will really bump my science. Is there some other way I can make up for the lack of production? You just start interacting with the terrain, with the various game systems in mind, and see what happens.
Second, (25) the other kind of player that you should try to cater to (and this is not altogether distinct from the sandbox player, or the victory-condition player, for that matter) is people who like the narrative that emerges as their civilization grows. Here I think the key is just to have lots of historical flavoring to the different assets, so that there are details around which to build that narrative. In the Civ 5 social policy trees are policies that are essentially a package of game-advantages. But the designers haven’t left it at that, but have given the policies a name, so when I get “Warrior Code,” I imagine my society developing a warrior code (and I often name it after the great general who is generated as a result of getting that policy). The great works in Civ 5 and 6 are actual great works that were produced in our world, so when expend a great writer to get one of those, as one poster here said, you feel like it was your civilization that produced Romeo and Juliet. (The codices in Civ 7 don’t give that feeling because they are generic, don’t have historical flavoring).
***
More thoughts:
26) It should be possible to play peacefully, but difficult. Even if you don't want to wage war yourself, you should be at some risk of being attacked, so you should feel pressure to build at least a defensive force.
27) There should be mechanisms (happiness, corruption) to keep success from being simply a matter of empire size. A larger empire should on the whole be better (more room for resources to appear within your territory, e.g.) But it shouldn't be the case that the first civ to have military success just steamrolls from that point on. I actually like what they tried to do in Civ 5, where tall empires could be equally viable with wide ones.
Last edited:
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I think this relates to the core civ formula but I feel like civ should have multiple viable strategies. You should be able to play wide or tall. You should be able to do a specialist strategy where you stack specialists in a city. You should be able to do a warrior-archer rush where you attack super early or a turtle strategy where you wall up and play defense. You should be able to do a science focus where you tech hard and then conquer with more advanced military units. You should be able to do a pacifist diplomacy strategy where you make alliances and friends to stay safe. You should be able to do city-state strategy where you try to get as many city-states as possible to leverage their bonuses and levy troops when needed. You should be able to do a wonder spam strategy. etc...
Gori the Grey
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I very much agree, and for me that's (10) multiple victory conditions, and (11) multiple possible pathways to a victory condition.
I also think this is part of what some people mean when they say "sandbox." It's not totally neglecting victory conditions, just "going with the flow" toward them.
I've started going after culture in my Civ 5 games, but one time I said to myself that instead of scrambling to found four cities, I would do a CB rush and capture some of my early cities (hoping the Parthenon owner would be near me, so I could get some early tourism). It didn't work out. But I had fun giving it a try.
A well-designed Civ game should allow that. One promising thing I heard about 7 is that it allows one to pivot from one kind of victory type to another, at each of the age transitions. That part of it sounds cool. But then I hear so many people say that it's not difficult to achieve any particular victory condition, so that pivoting sounds like it matters less.
I also think this is part of what some people mean when they say "sandbox." It's not totally neglecting victory conditions, just "going with the flow" toward them.
I've started going after culture in my Civ 5 games, but one time I said to myself that instead of scrambling to found four cities, I would do a CB rush and capture some of my early cities (hoping the Parthenon owner would be near me, so I could get some early tourism). It didn't work out. But I had fun giving it a try.
A well-designed Civ game should allow that. One promising thing I heard about 7 is that it allows one to pivot from one kind of victory type to another, at each of the age transitions. That part of it sounds cool. But then I hear so many people say that it's not difficult to achieve any particular victory condition, so that pivoting sounds like it matters less.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Unfortunately, I feel like civ7 really fails at offering multiple viable strategies because the game is too railroaded. This is mainly due to the limited legacy paths which only offer you 4 strategies in each Age. For example, in the Antiquity Age, there is really one viable strategy and that is to expand to your settlement limit and then either bulld 7 wonders, build libraries and academies and get codices, get merchants and slot resources for the economic legacy or go conquering to pursue the military legacy. And usually, if you get a good empire up and running, you can do well in all 4 legacies.
Yes, Age transitions do give you a chance to pivot to a new strategy. But you are only really pivoting to one of the 4 legacy paths. So the strategies are again limited. And the downside is that you cannot really continue the strategy from the previous Age. So for example, you cannot really have a long term wide strategy for the entire game in civ7 like you could in previous civs.
And yes, it is easy to do almost any victory in the Modern Age. There is some continuation. For example, your culture legacy points give you a discount towards building the World's Fair. And if you don't have a lot of factory resources, you probably should not try an economic victory. But in practice, I find that as long as you have a good empire, your strategies in the Antiquity and Exploration don't really matter. You can basically do whatever you want in the Antiquity and Exploration Age and then pick any victory you want in the Modern Age. Of course, some might be easier than others.
Gori the Grey
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Everything in your post squares with what I've read here, and to the extent that that is true, then I think 7 did violate the "formula" of Civ. A Civ game should never "railroad."
I highlight this part because it's so funny to me. As you move up the difficulty levels in 5, you're encouraged to stop bothering to go after wonders, because the AI, with their starting advantages, are always going to beat you to them. So I (who now play at deity) often don't build a single wonder in the entire game (let alone seven of them in antiquity!).
Now, in domination games, I capture a bunch of them, of course.
reddishrecue
Deity
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I also don't focus on wonders as much and it'll enhance my skills more if I did. I usually focus on science and trade.
BackseatTyrant
Queer Anarcho-Transhumanist
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An extensive tech tree and representation of as many cultures from all around the planet as possible
I can't believe I forgot about Elvis.
Bootstrapbilly
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To me Civ is a turn based 4x on human history and civilisations, whilst also being a celebration of human history, culture and achievement.
I feel being a celebration of culture is one of the current weaker parts of Civ 7 when compared to the complete versions of past civs. In some ways its better - with new unique civic trees and traditions, more uniques for each civ, countless city states, wonders and narrative events. But in other ways it feels weaker - less ambient tracks for different cultures that are based on real world pieces (Civ V), no named great people (Civ VI), great works or writing, art and music (Civ V ans VI), some of the unique buildings for quarters can feel a bit uninspired (Royal Exchange and Manufactuory makes a financial centre - should have been Corn Exchange plus Pub makes 'The city'.) but thats a minor nitpick.
I hope Civ 7 and future iterations can continue to create a sense of awe in what humanity has achieved and overcome to be where we are today. And I hope it can genuinely continue to inspire players to be curious of the world and cultures around them.
So long the core mechanics of 4x are preserved then other gameplay mechanics should experiment and promote that sense of 'celebration' in my view.
I feel being a celebration of culture is one of the current weaker parts of Civ 7 when compared to the complete versions of past civs. In some ways its better - with new unique civic trees and traditions, more uniques for each civ, countless city states, wonders and narrative events. But in other ways it feels weaker - less ambient tracks for different cultures that are based on real world pieces (Civ V), no named great people (Civ VI), great works or writing, art and music (Civ V ans VI), some of the unique buildings for quarters can feel a bit uninspired (Royal Exchange and Manufactuory makes a financial centre - should have been Corn Exchange plus Pub makes 'The city'.) but thats a minor nitpick.
I hope Civ 7 and future iterations can continue to create a sense of awe in what humanity has achieved and overcome to be where we are today. And I hope it can genuinely continue to inspire players to be curious of the world and cultures around them.
So long the core mechanics of 4x are preserved then other gameplay mechanics should experiment and promote that sense of 'celebration' in my view.
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