What direction will/should Civ V head?

[steveit546]

One of the interesting conflicts in Civ is between player control and strategizing vs. forces outside of the player's controls. A different kind of strategizing is required for players to deal with forces outside their control. My question is whether you think Civ V will involve more choices and control for the player or if the player will have to deal more with consequences and surprises.

For example, realism would dictate that at least sometimes the people would be responsible for a change in civics. A change in religion civics from free religion to theocracy for example could be forced by having a population of almost strictly one religion. Likewise, having many religions could force a shift in the other direction. In Civ IV the player has more control because he or she effectively acts as the ruler and the masses at the same time, choosing when to have a revolution and what have you. Should the near omnipotence of the player be increased or reduced?

 

[Warlord Sam]

I prefer it this way. I've played 4X games (civ and otherwise) where your government is representative and you have to please your populace, and I've never liked that as a mechanic. It doesn't ever seem fun, interesting, or adding any depth to the game.

Maybe it just hasn't been done right, yet, and could be awesome? But in my opinion, arbitrarily having your people dictate things you have to do isn't very fun. I like the idea of choice. Reward the player for following the "people's wish", sure, but don't just take the control away from the player.

 

[Thyrwyn]

It could be fun - if you could interact with your populace and influence their preferences. Some mechanisms would be easier than others: if you keep the people happy they should be more willing to let you run things; if they are unhappy, they should be more likely to clamor for change. The threshold should be influenced by your actions as well as some base line preferences for each civ's population (maybe determined by traits or flavors)

It could be fun - but if it a one way interaction, then it would not be.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Some things should be random, but they should be known to the player and controllable to some extent. I didn't mind volcanic eruptions or that the galleys sank in the oceans from time to time, but when it comes to the people, I think the player should be omnipotent in the ruling... For now I think so at least.


Didn't they try this in Civ2 with the Democracy government..? You were unable to go to war in some instances, because it was ruled against.

It wasn't the most fun of features...

 

[Set]

I think the simplest way to implement this would to give unhapiness bonuses to certain civics if you had had them for to long or other civs had more advanced "better" civics eg. like heriditery rule would start giving you an ever increasing unhappiness bonus if civs near you were representation and you could become representation too.

 

[mjs0]

I actually enjoyed the choice this forced on you...do you give up some control in order to gain some benefits? To me, choices like this are at the heart of the appeal of the Civilization series.
Slavery works the same way in Civ4, (albeit in a more minor way) do I keep whipping and risk revolts or do I switch to a safer civic with less benefits.

 

[Woodreaux]

I like having the deity micromanagement ability. It's totally unrealistic, but it's fun. You're not only ever-living god-in-chief leader, you're also the collective will of the people. If I wanted a realistic experience of influencing society indirectly, I'd stop playing and run for elected office or become a lobbyist.

I see what the OP is saying about things like civic changes occurring naturally as demographic changes occur. But all this would accomplish is force players to jump through an extra series of hoops to put the conditions in place to change the civic and get the extra XP for new units (or whatever the gameplay bonus incentive is). That's assuming Theocracy and Free Religion had the same well known pro's & cons. That's my opinion from a gameplay experience perspective.

 

[steveit546]

I think that a lot of the internal benefits or harms of adopting certain civics for example are implicit. You wouldn't adopt theocracy unless you needed to build a strong military and you had some degree of religious unity, and likewise you wouldn't adopt free religion unless you had a bunch of different religions under your belt. The game punishes you for making decisions that don't make sense with regard to the internal situation of your empire, but I would suggest that maybe there should be a bit more conflict.

For example, if you adopt theocracy for a time that is fine, but unhappiness penalties increase over time and part of your empire might go into revolt. That could be counterbalanced using hereditary rule and spamming units there (fewer units to fight wars though) or in Civ 5 by paying for police in those cities or something like that. I just personally feel Civ is too predictable on the domestic front and doesn't present the same kind of interesting challenges you face on the international scale. Possible changes might include dealing with hereditary succession, elections, class warfare, democratic/communist revolutions, coups, feuding with the nobility, religious upheaval and persecution, etc. All of these would be dependent on the civics you choose and societal conditions. If you run a militaristic civic set and have a large army, some of the army might split off in a coup for example. Anyway, I know a lot of this can be modded in, but it might be good to have as an option to turn on or off in vanilla.

 

[Crazy George]

I believe a player will continue to have complete control over every aspect of their civilization.

However, I would hope that in C5 there would be more intelligent guidance built into the system.
Basically, for every possible decision there would be a proposed solution with an easy to understand rationale as to why this decision is optimal. If present, a dissenting opinion or two thrown in for good measure would be nice. The computer has an AI. I would like to be able to see what it would do in my situation and if it is capable, briefly explain why.

I don't know how many games I played before I realized that the consequence of not granting Monty his diplomatic requests was going to be a war. And not a brief war, but one that lasted the rest of the game. And then, how many more games it took before I realized that by granting Monty's request, I might be in a position to not only become his ally but "channel" his aggression to meet my needs.
A good advisor would explain this sort of thing. Perhaps throwing in a tidbit about how Monty's troops presently outnumber ours 2 to 1. So if we're not going to grant his request, we should at least stop building those stupid temples and gear up war.

 

[frekk]

For example, realism would dictate that at least sometimes the people would be responsible for a change in civics. A change in religion civics from free religion to theocracy for example could be forced by having a population of almost strictly one religion. Likewise, having many religions could force a shift in the other direction. In Civ IV the player has more control because he or she effectively acts as the ruler and the masses at the same time, choosing when to have a revolution and what have you. Should the near omnipotence of the player be increased or reduced?

That sort of thing has been done before (e.g. the Senate in a democracy stopping you from declaring war), and it doesn't generally go over well with civ players - I guess because it isn't a "god game" where you set things in motion and watch the results play out, with a little nudging here and there. The appeal of civ is in complete control over every aspect of the society.

 

[xexoy2]

The only thing I need (or want) is to know what the heck is going on with the religion. They said that it would not be "completely included." What the Flagnod does that mean?!

 

[Draginol]

I'd like to see culture take a bigger place in the game. If I make my civilization a wonderful place to live, other civilizations should experience some sort of brain drain.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree with the general consensus that having things like government changes "happen to you" rather than be "caused by you" is not much fun.

They said that it would not be "completely included." What the Flagnod does that mean?!

My guess is that it means that *specific* religions (christianity, islam, hinduism, etc.) will not be explicitly included in the game, but that there will still be religious social policies that you may adopt.

I'd like to see culture take a bigger place in the game. If I make my civilization a wonderful place to live, other civilizations should experience some sort of brain drain.

I agree that culture needs to be made more important, but I'm skeptical that migration is a fun way to do it. Having some kind of permanent loss of "best and brightest" doesn't sound like so much fun when it happens to you.

Also somewhat unrealistic, since the exporting countries normally end up benefiting massively from remittances.

It seems from screenshots like they might have an empire-wide culture meter, so that culture produced by your big internal non-border cities are still valuable in expanding your territory.
I think it makes a lot of sense to interpret culture as kindof a national prestige/influence, which makes perfect sense that it can help you out in terms of winning international recognition for your territorial claims.

 

[Crazy George]

The only thing there is is a consistent series of choices, and no advisor is going to be able to know what you want to achieve and therefore cant help you achieve it.

I agree that the AI cannot know what a player's plans are, but the AI would know what it would do, and by telling the player what it would do and why, the effect would be a sort of rolling tutorial that adapts to the players level of ability.

Perhaps a more acceptable alternative would be simply provide more advance guidance, as in what modifiers will this action incure.

For instance, prior to a battle, one can access the combat odds by rolling their cursor over an enemy unit. I don't think anyone is apposed to this function. Well, in addition to knowing the tactical outcome to the battle, I wouldn't mind knowing whatever else the battle is going to effect (increase to War Weariness and Experience for my troops, for instance, maybe others). These additional effects could easily be included under the combat odds.
This is how the game is going to change if you win this combat.
This is how the game is going to change if you lose this combat.

In much the same way, I want guidance on anything the computer can help me with. If the computer can study combat odds, it can also look at the Diplomatic Screen for me and make a reasonable guess that if I declare war on Monty:
It is LIKELY Ghengis will DECLARE WAR.
It is UNLIKELY Victoria will ALLY.
It is VERY LIKELY Ghandi will REMAIN NEUTRAL.
And so on.

And yeah, I wouldn't mind having the AI also make a determination that not only could Monty beat me if I declared war, but with Ghengis help it's a near certainty, so I probably shouldn't do it. It's the type of thing I would expect my general staff to tell me if I were Lord King Emperor.

"Um, Crazy George, sir!
Have you seen the size of the Aztec army lately? Here's the latest from the Power Graph.
This line, way up here. That's Monty's. Under it, Mr. Kahn.
And way down here, huggin the bottom of the screen. That's us, sir.
I know you hate Monty, sir, but please don't declare war."