What can Firaxis learn?

[Solver]

As quite a few people know here, I was part of the Civ playtest team since the Civ4 days, and then Civ5 and Civ6. One thing I can say with complete confidence is that the team at Firaxis is very aware of the community opinions at CFC. I've seen that many times over the years, and the designers at Firaxis are awesome.

Of course the developers at a small independent studio like Mohawk have completely different possibilities to interact with players compared to developers working for a multinational with billions in market cap - that's nothing to do with game development, that's just the reality of corporations.

 

[Krajzen]

As quite a few people know here, I was part of the Civ playtest team since the Civ4 days, and then Civ5 and Civ6. One thing I can say with complete confidence is that the team at Firaxis is very aware of the community opinions at CFC. I've seen that many times over the years, and the designers at Firaxis are awesome.

Of course the developers at a small independent studio like Mohawk have completely different possibilities to interact with players compared to developers working for a multinational with billions in market cap - that's nothing to do with game development, that's just the reality of corporations.

That's very interesting (oh God now I feel bad for frankly trashing various aspects of this game over years). I'd kill to know what are they thinking about the state of AI, combat system and .dll modding... Although I'm sure you can't say that. But one thing that maybe is not so secret - is lack of direct communication with fans like Paradox (AAA company) does, such as dev diaries and resoonding to questions, some imposition by 2K, or is it a decision Firaxis made simply due to a differing approach? I ask because a lot of oeole were frustrated by this thing for years and I vaguely recall people saying 'that's imposed by 2K'.

- ages are stupid. junk them entirely. are people in my civilization happy? yes? then I should be rewarded for that, not for doing X number of things the game thinks I should be doing.

As soon as I knew details of age system, I knew this system is going to completely and utterly fail its task of introducing more dynamism to the game - like literally every feature of R&F (and GS) that tried that. That's for two reasons.

First one is exactly what you say. There is a complete disconnect of what activates golden/dark ages in the game and the actual prosperity state of the emoire when compared with others. Things that activate it are some board gamey nonsensical things utterly disconnected from reality. Why exactly does it matter for the stability of a Roman empire whether it does some token symbolic gestures such as 'building unique thing' (honestly it's immersion breaking in itself when the game itself brings attention to this meta thing), 'finding natural wonder' (who cares), first mountain tunnel no matter how pointless, first progressive gesture such as one renewable district etc. The only things that should matter for the 'golden age' are the oerceived peace, stability, economic prosperity, political efficiency and so on; happiness of people. Apolying civ6 logic to the real world would mean world's most miserable dictator states would constantly generate 'golden ages' because goddamn do they love such grand shows and oropaganda gestures when their citizens starve.

Which brings us to the second ooint. If there is one thing civ6 devs really should learn from fails of this game is how the anti snowballing pro catch - up dynamics seem to have to result from game's fundamental systems (economy, stability, tech, diplomacy) and how they naturally interact.
You can throw on top of the game however many shallow, localized, anti - snowball mechanics you want, they won't change anything if core systems are extremely static.

Climate and disasters are utterly meaningless in the large scheme of things (too random, local and rare, besides they hit everyone equally), diplomacy fails in this task because the game has 57 options of alliances but none of them allowing Let's Beat Naooleon/Hitler Coalition World War, combat fails anyway because AI sucks at 1UOT, late game eras don't fundamentally change any mechanic to really shake world's foundations, there is de facto no happines nor stability system, wide growth is always good, and the only thing loyalty does is crippling AIs ability to expand even more.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Then I'm not sure you understand what a total war is because Carthage certainly never experienced one. Wars of conquest are not new; total war, where the entire population is mobilized for war, first appeared in the twentieth century. Some historians have pushed claims that the American Civil War was a total war, but this is not widely accepted. The population was not mobilized, and civilian targets were strictly off limits (yes, including during Sherman's greatly exaggerated March to the Sea). The Civil War was unusually ideologically motivated, in which sense it might be thought of as a proto-total war, but it was fought strictly conventionally.

Depending on the nature of the war they absolutly DID have conflicts where you saw total mobilization

Rome’s response to Hannibal’s invasion being one, and Gaul trying to resist Caesar being another (where a sizeable percentage of the total population ended up dead, especially military age males).

Anyway this is sliding OT for this thread.

Because it is a game, it was not in the original version but the forums pushed specifically for a flipping mechanism. Without this mechanism people were truly walking all over other civs with impunity, here was a mechanic that could get around people that have a 5 hundred year science advantage and stopped people being able to use “COMPLETELY ABSENT” which you did. Using caps to emphasise something that this mechanic fixes made me smile, and also explained your rationale a bit. It also got rid of the AI walking up to your civ and placing a city in between your cities.

Flipping is an absolutly stupid gamey mechanic having no basis in reality. There was a reason in earlier versions of Civ there was a push against it and it became an option you could turn off.

If AI are placiing cities between yours, you are too spread out AND are doing nothing to secure your borders. Unlike flipping, this does have a basis in history, and it helps balance out the forward settle strategy.

Live by the forward settle, die by the forward settle.

It is in no way realistic. But what game is? I did not play colonisation or civ II because it was realistic, it’s a turn based game piggy backing off history. The more like reality it is, the longer and more complex it will become.

Any game or work of fiction is going to have to do a balancing act on the user’s suspension of disbelief. There are always going to be tradeoffs

That being said, the premise of this game is Building A Civilization, so the various mechanics et al should have a fheme of historical basis.

Flipping has none. It’s also a terrible enfuriating mechanic in and of itself.

Most things have a rational answer, it just not the one you want.

A mechanic that is terrible AND has zero basis? Ansolutly Do Not Want.

It is hilarious how much this game improves both in terms of SoD and actual playability if you turn all the expansions and fheir attendant broken and dumb mechanics off. The AI even gets better.

Not per se. It worked quite well already in the original PanzerGeneral under MS-DOS (i486CPU!). What matters much are the available movementpoints per turn; in that game: infantry on foot 2 and 3 / vehicles typical 8-10 (afair) / a quick Antiair unit surely 14 ... possibly restricted by terrain & weather.
See also:

Having both UPT. and low movement allowance is a hilarious synergy of suck. It makes just moving an army a tedious sliding tile puzzle

As far as hex wat game design goes, Panzer General is VERY much the exception, so citing it actually underscores how rare it is to not suck

Civ is using kind of a dumb downed version of the classic Hex based war game.

The heyday of the Hex War Game was arguable the 50’s to the 90’s. Board game design of that era rapidly converged on stacks of 2 to 4 units with movement allowances of 2 to 9 for a VERY good reason; this was the sweet spot for player useabliity and enjoyment. You took whatever conflict you were making your game around and adjusted the map scale, time scale and unit size to fit that window.

As well as being a Synergy of Suck, 1 UPT also makes warfare in this game hilariously unhistorical. You did NOT see continious fronts in warfare and actual crowd management being an issue in warfare at the scale of this game outside of Europe in the 20th century.

Warfare for most of human history consisted of isolated stacks manouvering around trying to find a time and place for battle that was favorable, and one of the biggest concerns was keeping your stack fed and denying the same to the enemy.

Isolated sfacks is both more manageable and more historical.

 

[Jimdigriz]

I'm being very simplistic here and freely admit that I don't understand all the nuances but...

Could it be that too many options and details in the game are affecting the A.I. so would keeping it simpler make for better A.I. in Civ VII?

 

[Leucarum]

Flipping has none. It’s also a terrible enfuriating mechanic in and of itself.

It's one of the less immersive mechanics for sure but it is nonetheless one of my favourite innovations in the game.

It prevents the AI giving you free mid game cities when they settle in the heart of your empire (as they did in vanilla). For the player it adds challenge to forward settling, and adds logistical hurdles to conquest. And it even makes the map prettier by discouraging border gore.

Doing all those things with 1 mechanic. That's elegant game design right there.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I'm being very simplistic here and freely admit that I don't understand all the nuances but...

Could it be that too many options and details in the game are affecting the A.I. so would keeping it simpler make for better A.I. in Civ VII?

Absolutly it is, you are one million percent correct

It's one of the less immersive mechanics for sure but it is nonetheless one of my favourite innovations in the game.

It prevents the AI giving you free mid game cities when they settle in the heart of your empire (as they did in vanilla). For the player it adds challenge to forward settling, and adds logistical hurdles to conquest. And it even makes the map prettier by discouraging border gore.

Doing all those things with 1 mechanic. That's elegant game design right there.

There are other ways to do this that are’nt enfuriatiing and don’t murder SOD.

Just even the simplest of logicistical systems would do it. Units that are’nt scouts can only move so many move points away overland from a friendly supply source before they start “starving” and lose X amounts of health per turn.

What constitutes a supply source and how long it can be changes depending on what techs you have. Enemy units and ZOC block this

Bam. Done. Look, I even made scouts worth building too. Settlers can’t wander half way around the globe either and expansion has to springboard naturally from your existing turf

Notice I said over land. Supply lines traced over seas and along rivers are unlimited. Bam, water ttransport suddenly has it’s historical importance.

Supply lines over sea only go one hex inland unless traced through a harbour. Oh snap coastal cities really matter and colonizing the New World is gonna be tough for a while.

Well will you look at that. A simple, elegant system that also improves the military side of things.

And for the millionth time. If you are greedy, and forward settle, and have open borders and/or don’t have a military blocking the gaps you will and should have random enclaves popping up in your turf.

It’s both historical and game balancing.

 

[Leucarum]

There are other ways to do this that are’nt enfuriatiing and don’t murder SOD.

Just even the simplest of logicistical systems would do it. Units that are’nt scouts can only move so many move points away overland from a friendly supply source before they start “starving” and lose X amounts of health per turn.

What constitutes a supply source and how long it can be changes depending on what techs you have. Enemy units and ZOC block this

Bam. Done. Look, I even made scouts worth building too. Settlers can’t wander half way around the globe either and expansion has to springboard naturally from your existing turf

Notice I said over land. Supply lines traced over seas and along rivers are unlimited. Bam, water ttransport suddenly has it’s historical importance.

Supply lines over sea only go one hex inland unless traced through a harbour. Oh snap coastal cities really matter and colonizing the New World is gonna be tough for a while.

Well will you look at that. A simple, elegant system that also improves the military side of things.

And for the millionth time. If you are greedy, and forward settle, and have open borders and/or don’t have a military blocking the gaps you will and should have random enclaves popping up in your turf.

It’s both historical and game balancing.

There are lots of systems we could come up with that would accomplish the same goals as loyalty.

To keep on the topic of the thread one thing I'd like firaxis to bear in mind is that the reasons they introduced it were solid and a mechanic to deal with them should be in the base game of civ 7. I really can't play vanilla civ6 - loyalty just makes the game so much more interesting.

 

[kaspergm]

Flipping is an absolutly stupid gamey mechanic having no basis in reality. There was a reason in earlier versions of Civ there was a push against it and it became an option you could turn off.

If AI are placiing cities between yours, you are too spread out AND are doing nothing to secure your borders. Unlike flipping, this does have a basis in history, and it helps balance out the forward settle strategy.

Live by the forward settle, die by the forward settle.

I strongly disagree with this. While I'm no expert in world history, I can say from my local perspective, there are several cases of "cities" (regions) objecting to belonging to one empire and going to another instead, the regions of Southern Jutland choosing to go back to Denmark while Schleswig-Holstein chose to remain German being perhaps the most prominent. On a larger scale, USA going independent and throwing off the British rule can - imo. - be seen as an example of what the loyalty system tries to mimic, as I guess many of the former colonies becoming independent can be. Is the game mechanics 1:1 identical with reality? No - but I do think there's enough foundation in history to make the system meaningful.

Secondly, there's the question of forward settling - again, I don't agree with your analysis. In Civ5/early Civ6 I had plenty of cases where I placed my cities in what I considered a coherent matter, but there would be one hex either on the fringe or even in the center of my empire that would be a valid city spot, and sure enough, an AI settler would march in and place a city there. That - imo. - is just plain nonsense from a realism AND from a gameplay perspective.

Now we can always discuss if the loyalty system is THE BEST solution to this issue. I'll probably agree it isn't. One thing the loyalty system fails to take into account is the local cultural pressure, i.e. how long has someone owned a territory. If Civ A and Civ B arrive at unclaimed land at roughly the same time, the fact that Civ A get's to settle a couple of cities first should not place severe loyalty pressure on a city founded by Civ B if they place a city next - simply because Civ A has not really established a cultural presence in the area yet.

Which sort of brings me to another question someone brought up earlier in this thread.

On the whole I definitely agree. As an obvious example, why exactly do we need another way to claim territory that isn't founding a city? What does this actually add to the game? I don't see any benefit. The best strategy games are universally the ones with simple rules that interact with each other in complicated and interesting ways. Not games that add complexity for complexities sake.

I think the game needs another way to lay claim on land than just by building a city because it'll add more flexibility around the loyalty system. One example: If I place a city, and the city starts generating a lot of culture, this should allow me to state some sort of "cultural claim" on neighboring areas - be that handled through regions like in Humankind or by some other means. If someone then settles a city in the area, I should either get some casus belli to DoW them and/or the city should have loyalty towards me, possibly resulting in a resolution.

Another area where I see other ways to claim territories being relevant is in resource management. If I find an unclaimed resource somewhere, I should be able to place some sort of outpost to work and harvest the resource for my empire. Of course, if someone else comes along, they should be able to content my claim on the resource, particularly if I have not left military presence to defend my claim. Such a system would imo. be both more historic and more meaningful in terms of game mechanics than having to place a city in every area where you want to extract a resource.

 

[Solver]

That's very interesting (oh God now I feel bad for frankly trashing various aspects of this game over years). I'd kill to know what are they thinking about the state of AI, combat system and .dll modding... Although I'm sure you can't say that. But one thing that maybe is not so secret - is lack of direct communication with fans like Paradox (AAA company) does, such as dev diaries and resoonding to questions, some imposition by 2K, or is it a decision Firaxis made simply due to a differing approach? I ask because a lot of oeole were frustrated by this thing for years and I vaguely recall people saying 'that's imposed by 2K'.

Now I'm going to feel old, but back when Apolyton was the main civ site (before circa 2007), Firaxians were active posters for several years. In the Civ3 days, at least Soren, Mike Breitkreutz, Jeff Morris and Dan Magaha used to post, off the top of my head, with a couple other people dropping by occasionally. Then for Civ4, several people were also posting, and that's really when many community members were brought on to help with the game in some capacity, including as (eventually) employees - both Civ4 expansions and Civ5 were designed by forum posters who made the transition to designers. 2K acquired Firaxis after Civ4, later in 2005, and direct communication with the fans started decreasing, until it largely dried up. That's not coincidental.

Comparing to Paradox and other companies, the key thing to look for is, what's the corporate structure? What's a game designer's position at the company? Paradox the publisher is still a relatively small company, and it's independent. The Stockholm studio has less than 100 people. I have no first-hand experience working with them, but I'm pretty confident that the dev team of a Paradox game isn't far removed from leaderships. The design team answers to a game director who in turn answers to some senior person.

On the other hand, Firaxis is a small subsidiary of 2K, which in itself is a subsidiary of Take-Two. So even the bosses at Firaxis are two companies away from the big bosses at the publicly traded company. And marketing is mostly handled by 2K - check the credits for Civ5 or Civ6. There's a couple people involved at Firaxis (Pete Murray is awesome and a genuine Civ fan!), but it's mostly 2K. And since ultimately this is a big public company, Take-Two has billions in market cap, you can be assured all senior leadership are very careful about employee statements that could, even potentially, be seen as affecting the stock price. If you've ever worked for a company that size, you'll know that rank-and-file employees would not be allowed to make public statements about their company's products.

A bit tangential, but I strongly suspect you're about to see the open Paradox communication decrease a lot. They've been hit by some scandals about the workplace environment recently, and before that they were already having some difficulty with the community. They're increasingly putting Björn in charge of the forums, which seems like a big step towards wanting a forum experience that's more curated by the community/marketing team and less involvement from the actual game designers.

 

[Victoria]

The AI even gets better.

Well of course, you make things less complex and it gets better. Pretty obvious stuff.
Turning off barbs makes the AI better.
It is clear to me civ is made to have wide appeal. I doubt they will revert unless bought back into private hands so while you have some validity in most points, you are gonna be trumped regardless.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Well of course, you make things less complex and it gets better. Pretty obvious stuff.
Turning off barbs makes the AI better.
It is clear to me civ is made to have wide appeal. I doubt they will revert unless bought back into private hands so while you have some validity in most points, you are gonna be trumped regardless.

I don’t disageee the shallow mass appeal formula will continue for sure

 

[Aristos]

Well of course, you make things less complex and it gets better. Pretty obvious stuff.

Yes, it is so obvious that it I find it amazing that some designers don't remember that.

Soren was the last one to have it clear, and he always stated that: you first design an AI friendly game and its systems, and then you design the AI. Brad Wardell is a master of this, and it shows in Galciv 2 (impressively) and in the ultimate version of Galciv 3. It also shows clearly in Old World.

So yes, obvious as hell... so please go and remind Firaxis designers of it.

 

[uhu]

You can throw on top of the game however many shallow, localized, anti - snowball mechanics you want, they won't change anything if core systems are extremely static.

I think, the most difficult part of this anti - snowball mechanics is the narrative given for the negative feedback. You need Negative feedback to escape the exponential catastrophe, but players "don't want to be punished for doing great" ... so what? I like the stories reported about chess player Paul Morphy, how he "upped the challenge". This genius played blindfold chess in which he regularly played and defeated eight opponents at a time (in another room) while being busy the whole evening also playing Whist (related to the Bridge card game) ...

Civ4 experimented with events, which showed the potential, but felt a bit sterile in its minimalist implementation. Events can still provide an extra layer of challenge to human players, who like it, because the AIplayers aren't burdened with those events.
Another possibility are internal affairs in leadership. Eg. FearSunn's civ6mod Reincarnation pseudo periodically "takes away control of everything while you are just an Observer from above and then AI regularly screws things up ... Mid/Late game boredom problem solved." In Die Gilde (The Guild) your playing character died several times during a whole game and was weak again in the beginning of the next generation (despite carefully selecting spouse & tutoring brats ) ...

All depends on delivering necessary Negative feedback without the human player experiencing it as punishment, but part of the rules he accepts.

Having both 1UPT and low movement allowance is a hilarious synergy of suck. It makes just moving an army a tedious sliding tile puzzle
As far as hex wat game design goes, Panzer General is VERY much the exception, so citing it actually underscores how rare it is to not suck

Yeah, but if you have a look onto OldWorld, you see that the units there have fine Long Moves too (while it comes in handy, that you also have not to move all units in every turn - just because you can and there might be some marginal benefit)


edit: played actually Die Gilde 1 (Gold Edition), not Die Gilde 2

 

[aieeegrunt]

I think, the most difficult part of this anti - snowball mechanics is the narrative given for the negative feedback. You need Negative feedback to escape the exponential catastrophe, but players "don't want to be punished for doing great" ... so what? I like the stories reported about chess player Paul Morphy, how he "upped the challenge". This genius played blindfold chess in which he regularly played and defeated eight opponents at a time (in another room) while being busy the whole evening also playing Whist (related to the Bridge card game) ...

Civ4 experimented with events, which showed the potential, but felt a bit sterile in its minimalist implementation. Events can still provide an extra layer of challenge to human players, who like it, because the AIplayers aren't burdened with those events.
Another possibility are internal affairs in leadership. Eg. FearSunn's civ6mod Reincarnation pseudo periodically "takes away control of everything while you are just an Observer from above and then AI regularly screws things up ... Mid/Late game boredom problem solved." In Die Gilde (The Guild) your playing character died several times during a whole game and was weak again in the beginning of the next generation (despite carefully selecting spouse & tutoring brats ) ...

All depends on delivering necessary Negative feedback without the human player experiencing it as punishment, but part of the rules he accepts.
Yeah, but if you have a look onto OldWorld, you see that the units there have fine Long Moves too (while it comes in handy, that you also have not to move all units in every turn - just because you can and there might be some marginal benefit)


edit: played actually Die Gilde 1 (Gold Edition), not Die Gilde 2

I have’nt played Old World, what is the deal there?

 

[Zegangani]

I have’nt played Old World, what is the deal there?

Old World has a Resource/Currency called "Orders" which is needed to do practically anything in the Game, such as building things and moving Units. So you have to go strategically with your Decisions, before you run out of Orders for that Turn. It's like mobilizing your resources and using them for things that are necessary and important.

I really like this Concept, but given that there is also a redo option in the Game, that let's you redo an Action or more (go back before you made a decision - which is like loading a save in Civ ), it contradicts with the concept of Orders a little bit, since you can always redo your actions, so strategic thinking isn't a necessity, which is actually the objective of Orders.

The Issue with Unit Movements with Orders is, that you can move a Unit as far as the Orders Amount you have in that Turn allow (it's some Months now since I've played the Game, so things might have changed), like if you have 15 Orders in a Turn, you can move a Unit as far as 15 Tiles (or more based on Unit Movement IIRC) in that same Turn, which is Immersion breaking IMO (again, they may have set a limit to this by now).

Nonetheless, it's a really good Concept that encourages strategical thinking, even with the redo option, since you still have a limited Amount of Orders per Turn that you can use to manage your Empire.

 

[Solver]

Old World features IMO the best 4X innovation in a very long time, the Orders system. Almost everything you do costs Orders. Move a unit, that's 1 Order. Assign a governor, 2 Orders. Worker constructing an improvement, that's 1 Order per turn while construction lasts. So Orders are a super important resource for your empire, and they make it impossible to do something with every unit every turn as you would in Civ.

That works very well together with OW's larger and less densely populated maps (compared to Civ), creating a completely different movement and combat system. Units can move across large distances, measured in tiles, in one turn, and there's enough space on the map, which means you actually get tactically important unit formations, and you get meaningful flanking, rear strikes and other tactics.

The Issue with Unit Movements with Orders is, that you can move a Unit as far as the Orders Amount you have in that Turn allow (it's some Months now since I've played the Game, so things might have changed), like if you have 15 Orders in a Turn, you can move a Unit as far as 15 Tiles in that same Turn, which is Immersion breaking IMO (again, they may have set a limit to this by now).

It hasn't worked like that since way earlier in development. Units still have fatigue, usually 3 fatigue points. That means you get 3 moves per unit, each move costs an Order and can cross several tiles. You can move beyond the fatigue limit but that's a "forced march" - costs 100 training (another global resource) and each move beyond the fatigue limit costs double orders, so you cannot just force march units whenever you please, that's a costly action you would reserve for key moments.

 

[Zegangani]

It hasn't worked like that since way earlier in development. Units still have fatigue, usually 3 fatigue points. That means you get 3 moves per unit, each move costs an Order and can cross several tiles. You can move beyond the fatigue limit but that's a "forced march" - costs 100 training (another global resource) and each move beyond the fatigue limit costs double orders, so you cannot just force march units whenever you please, that's a costly action you would reserve for key moments.

I completely forgot about that (long time since I played the Game)! Thanks for the explanation!
And I totally agree with you, it's one of the best Innovations we have seen in a 4X Game since very long Time. IMO every 4X Game should have a limit to the decisions they can make in One Turn (maybe not in Multiplayer), so strategic thinking will be a necessity. And Old World did a really good Job implementing it.

 

[civac]

Soren Johnson mentioned on his blog that he was in favor of just allowing a single unit to move as often as there were Orders. The rest of the team disliked this so they implemented the fatigue system. Johnson preferred the simplicity of the system without fatigue and was of the opinion that burning many orders on a single unit is suboptimal anyway. (That's a true tactician's/min-maxer's opinion. )

 

[Solver]

Yeah, Soren still prefers an unlimited fatigue system, but that's one case where he's firmly in the minority on the team, as well as among the general player base.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Old World has a Resource/Currency called "Orders" which is needed to do practically anything in the Game, such as building things and moving Units. So you have to go strategically with your Decisions, before you run out of Orders for that Turn. It's like mobilizing your resources and using them for things that are necessary and important.

I really like this Concept, but given that there is also a redo option in the Game, that let's you redo an Action or more (go back before you made a decision - which is like loading a save in Civ ), it contradicts with the concept of Orders a little bit, since you can always redo your actions, so strategic thinking isn't a necessity, which is actually the objective of Orders.

The Issue with Unit Movements with Orders is, that you can move a Unit as far as the Orders Amount you have in that Turn allow (it's some Months now since I've played the Game, so things might have changed), like if you have 15 Orders in a Turn, you can move a Unit as far as 15 Tiles (or more based on Unit Movement IIRC) in that same Turn, which is Immersion breaking IMO (again, they may have set a limit to this by now).

Nonetheless, it's a really good Concept that encourages strategical thinking, even with the redo option, since you still have a limited Amount of Orders per Turn that you can use to manage your Empire.

Oh ya, I’ve played games with a system like that before, it really is awesome