What do we want in Civ 6?

[bc1]

Culture / NIH strikes again...

 

[Svip]

The notion that more level of detail is wanted is your mistake. That's not the point - quite the contrary.

You're supposed to lead your civilization through the millennia, not upgrade a single Horseman unit to a Knight or solve the logistical problems when ordering your army to attack someone.

Funny you should mention that, in Paradox games, your units are automatically upgraded whenever a newer version of the unit type becomes available, if your units are in your territory. At no cost, by the way.

The SoD, for all it's worth, at least abstracted all those things away. It didn't do the best job one could imagine, mind you, but it resulted in having an army that moved as one entity, that part was desireable. Directing each individual unit to attack manually (in whichever order) was NOT desireable.
In Civ5 I (and the AI) have to tell each individual unit where to move, which flank to cover, when to fall back, which other unit to support ... that's all nice and sweet, but it does not belong into this kind of game.

Exactly, which is why I propose a simplistic restrictive stack system. Pick an arbitrary number of units that each tile can contain (whatever turns out to work best). If you want to add more flavour, don't actually make it restrictive to that, but instead have each unit require a supply each turn (a Scout could for instance require no supply), and each civilisation can only deliver so much supply each turn (like the Happy citizen system in previous Civs).

However, instead of unhappy citizens, you instead have damage inflicted on your units. Note; this supply system is different from the Gold maintenance for units, which I think should be there as well. The supply system is per tile, by the way; how much supply your civilisation can deliver for a tile. This would mean that while the game technically allowed you to store an infinite amount of units on each tile, it would be a very bad idea, because your units would start suffer damage and they would fight much less effectively when that occurs.

Maybe a morale system as well, but that might be overdoing it.

Similar changes could benefit other parts of the game - telling your scientists to get to work on the Wheel was nice for the 1993 game, but there ought to be a better way to simulate scientific progress.

Yeah, but not in a game like Civilization. You really want the player to have control over what is being researched, even though throughout history, the research focus of peoples have changed dramatically, military vs. engineering is usually a good example of the difference; military was usually done by states, while engineering was done by individuals. (Obviously they did at times overlap.)

It is no surprise that in Hearts of Iron 3, almost all the technologies are military related. But I don't think it makes that much sense in Civilization to diminish the power of the player. The things that go on needs to be in control of the player, and importantly visually clear to the player what's going on. At least in a game like Civilization. Or did we all love random events in Civilization IV?

Telling a settler you built to settle a city right there alongside the river was an acceptable abstraction for 1993, but can't we find a better way to depict this today?

I disagree. Cities are so important an element in Civilization, I don't see - without changing the basis of using tiles with something else - how this could work.

Not all things needs to be abstracted away in a different way. How about exploring? Historically, that was usually done by hiring explorers, not exactly doing it one self.

The list goes on and on.

You should be in the lead and making meaningful decisions directing your civilization as a whole, as opposed to mostly your armies or - even worse - individual units.

I see; so your points about settlers and technology tree was the fact that we should not abstract that further away, but rather focus on abstracting combat away? Because then I agree with you.

So it's not about more details presented to the player, it's about finding new ways to handle with stuff that was abstracted very rudimentary in all Civ games so far, because Civ1 had to run on pretty lousy computers and all subsequent games shunned away from straying too far off the beaten path.

No? I see. But I don't agree that the tech tree needs to be changed fundamentally. But certainly made more interesting.

Civ5 made more ambitious changes, but steered the series exactly in the opposite direction it should go (at least in my opinion).

That I agree with (except for the hex tiles and city states).

Fixes needed, in order of most important to least imo-

1. Fix the tech tree. There is so much dependence in Civ5, and the eras really prevent you from going down an entirely different branch. Unlike Civ4 where you could say beeline biology but let your military techs like steel and rifles suffer, this is nearly impossible to do in Civ5. I feel like I make zero tech choices when playing because all paths lead to the same place.

I concur. The eras also seem rather arbitrary, and bring rather little new with them as well. I wonder if a system like in Civilization III, where you need more than one technology to enter a new era. Or at least a system like that. Not saying you need to fill out an era, but require two technologies, before you officially enter a new era.

2. Bring back tech trades. I like research agreements and they should be kept as well, but part of the reason research feels so generic every game is also because you can't hoard a tech, and you can't leverage a tech into more techs.

I don't know, I think the problem was that it was too easy to game the tech trade system, to speed your process ahead. But how about a neighbour bonus when researching technologies other civilisations you know are familiar with; and the more civilisations who has the technology you are researching, the quicker the research is. This would at least keep the game interesting, so civilisations falling behind can catch up.

3. Bring back sliders and commerce and trade. It seems asinine to me that research is based solely on the amount of citizens you have. It's not realistic at all. Research is a result of financial investment, everything should be commerce and redirected into research of wealth production.

And if not, then at least allow you to delicate your gold income to your research. Or in times of desperation, do the opposite. Oh wait. But yeah, I am talking about keeping the current system, but allowing to move them around. I was not a fan of the previous system, where it was just gold that you turned into science, and not some base of science production regardless of money.

6. Bring back civics. Actually policies are fine but they need to be living and breathing, able to switch them out because a nation's policies change over time. It's not supposed to be just another tech tree to fill out.

The civics would be nice, but I think the social policy system could co-exist with it, but rather be seen as a 'social development' system. Which is sort of what it is trying to be, but does not allow for dramatic social change.

Both could be used to counter runaway expansion and infinite city sprawl. Unhappy and/or improperly assimilated citizens could form break away rivals. Sprawling empires should be more vulnerable to this, but the mechanisms must be very easy to understand (both for the AI & player).

Maybe a system where large empires could have conquered civilisations reappear if they were doing terrible (a revolution system, etc.)?

Civilization is not a Paradox game, and it should not be treated as such.

But he was only talking about inspiration. But I concur, Civilization is a 4X board game; Paradox games are grand strategy games.

 

[rezaf]

First of all, Svip, you're taking my remarks too literally. While I could imagine a civ game with all those things, they are just ideas. The approach that is selected can vary tremendously, I just think the next Civ should aspire to tackle those issues ... somehow. Somehow not identical to Civ1 for the most part.

Yeah, but not in a game like Civilization. You really want the player to have control over what is being researched(...)

Oh, there definately should be SOME level of control, sure. But this mustn't mean to tell your scientist guy to get to work on the wheel.
Again, there's surely MANY ways to approach this, but ONE idea I could imagine would be to handle this as some sort of "patronage".
As you mentioned that game, think of it as something similar to the tech teams in HoI3, only a bit more vague.

I disagree. Cities are so important an element in Civilization, I don't see - without changing the basis of using tiles with something else - how this could work.

It can totally work, but yeah, there'd need to be pretty drastic changes.

Not all things needs to be abstracted away in a different way. How about exploring? Historically, that was usually done by hiring explorers, not exactly doing it one self.

Even that COULD technically be done. Maybe it's not the best idea for a Civ game, but it could make a totally cool game. And hey, in my book, making 1UPT tactical hex combat isn't the best idea for a Civ game, either, and yet it was implemented.

I see; so your points about settlers and technology tree was the fact that we should not abstract that further away, but rather focus on abstracting combat away? Because then I agree with you.

Like I wrote, it was basically brainstorming. Neither of the proposals I made is a MUST for me, it's just that I think whoever designs Civ6 should think about these things instead of being blinded by how it's done in the previous games. If he then finds he must, for example, keep settlers because otherwise the game is no fun, then by all means keep them.

That I agree with (except for the hex tiles and city states).

Yeah, especially about the hexes I read that all the time. It must be the same phenomenon as with the nerd glasses. Am I the only person old enough to remember the days when the most uncool thing you could do, even amongst gamers, was play a game on a hex grid?

But he was only talking about inspiration. But I concur, Civilization is a 4X board game; Paradox games are grand strategy games.

Ah, now I see where many of our different ideas about approaching this come from.
Seeing civ as a board game is all wrong in my book, and all the changes that tried to make Civ play more like a boardgame leave me cold.

I mean, sure, the first Civ was LOOSELY based on a boardgame (though I think SM claimed it had no influence at all), but ... Europa Universalis, the first of Paradox' "grand strategy games", was also based on a boardgame, and the whole province based approach etc. make it more similar to one than the civ games in my eyes...
_____
rezaf

 

[petey]

I find the 1UPT to be more onerous than anything else. If you want to go and attack someone, it's just such a time-consuming bother to move all of your units over as opposed to just stacking them up and shunting them along in one go. It's not the type of bother that really adds anything to the gameplay either. It's fine in the actual battles where an added level of detail is created by your needing to worry about unit placement and all that but I think that it adds more negatives than positives. Perhaps have a system where you get negative combat modifiers or the like with stacked units but can still do it to save time and energy.

Also, it was added in to get rid of the stacks of doom when another system to do that, namely having the number of units available be resource dependent was already added in. Enhance that with the number of resource-free units be tied to the number of cities that you have and you have a combat system that's easier for the AI to not suck at and the issue of the SoD also solved.

Also, add more depth to religion and spying because they're basically just add-ons to fiddle around with when you can't be bothered with anything else at this point.

 

[civvver]

I guess one other thing I've always wanted in a civ game is a distinction between grand cities and smaller towns, rural and suburban areas. For example, LA is not as large in population as NYC but area wise I believe it is the largest city in the USA, it sprawls. Yet in civ, there's just population size and cultural borders. Realistically, many people do not even live in large cities, but in small towns or suburban areas etc. This was somewhat simulated in civ4 with cottages which turned into thriving towns, and you had farms and mines which can simulate the rural areas. But I would like to have something like sub cities- a settler or cheaper cost other unit but similar to a settler, could found a small town. The town would act sort of like an appendage of a nearby city. It would only be able to work a tile or two, and would increase the base output of its current tile. In civ5 there's a lot of improvements that increase the base output of the city tile. Then it would transfer a majority or all of it's commerce/gold/science/production back to the main city but it would grow and build improvements independently. They would have to share happiness somehow, but maybe not just be one big pool.

I don't know, maybe it's too complicated and towns should just be uber tile improvements, but it would be something I'd like to see simulated. Also towns wouldn't have garrisons. Again, very unrealistic to have military sitting in every city, as in real life military are in a few bases. You deploy the national guard when a presence is needed.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Again, very unrealistic to have military sitting in every city, as in real life military are in a few bases. You deploy the national guard when a presence is needed.

May I ask, do you live in the United States? We have bases everywhere. I hear we got them in other countries too

 

[Ikael]

1 UPT and combat - Keep it, but add the following exception: you can stack units with the ones of your allied nations. Meaning that an alliance of several smaller civs would be able to stand against a much bigger army of a common enemy by allowing a "min stack" to form, thus making diplomacy and multi player co - opt a blast! Other than that, the Gods and King combat system is pretty much perfect to me, specially the naval aspect.

Happiness - Make unhappiness local, yet pool all the happiness excess into a global empire - wide golden age bucket so you have a reason to go beyond the "Just content" status. That way you will have to decide between big cities VS happier smaller empire.

Manteinance - Make you pay manteinance for your number of cities and army size, Civilization IV - style. It acted as a really good terrent against city spam. If there's any need to limit buildings in cities, perhaps that could be done by adding a "water supply" meter, with the maximum number of buildings determined by the local sources of water of the city, forcing you to actually choose which buildings you built on each city, destroying the old ones for its better counterparts and so forth.

City radious- Just a two hex radious so your location does not becomes irrelevant as it happens right now on CivV.

Diplomacy - Copy and paste Europa universalis casus belli war system. Make public apperance and public opinion a force to consider before entering in a war. Whenever a rival civ makes a blunder with yours (you caught their spy, they colonize near your lands, etc), you can either forgive it and increase their friendship, or trow this points into the "casus belli bucket". Friendship with foreign nations will means that their agressive moves towards yours will be met by unhappiness among its populace, while a bucket filled up of good ole casus belli will mean almost no war weariness when declaring war against them - and also, a better reputation with the rest of the players.

Goverment: non linear social evolution - I propose a system that blends the strenghts of the Civ IV's goverment system with Civ V civics. Your goverment will be a divided in a series of areas a la Civ 4 (economic system, society values, rule, etc), and it will be advanced trought the tech tree. However, like in Civ 5 social policies, once you choose a different policy, the course is set: you cannot go back to your previous ones, making a system that it is both adaptable, but that forces you to plan in advance.

Introduce proper trade routes - As in, you can make a city with no inmediate food resources to substain itself due to imports from far away lands, and same for production, and making the strategic position and communications of your city a more valuable asset than its inmediate resources (sea straights, inland crossroads, etc). I thought about a system that would be able to represent this on a very decent fashion. It is very in depth and it would affect substantially both the game and city placement mechanics, hence why this is its own cathegory and why I have decided to spoiler it. If you want it to give it a go, try this:

Spoiler :

Tiles would yield commerce points, pretty much like it happened on every civilization game other than 5. Said commerce points would translate into science, and only a minimum part into gold (say, 1/5). If you actually want to prosper, you shoud stablish trade routes either between your cities or with foreign ones.

In order to determine how far away your traderoutes can go, its radious gets determined by the trade output of your city, as if they were the moves of a unit. Say, if your traderoute wants to go trought a hill you must spend 5 trade points to cross that particular tile, with moves trought land being a little cheaper and but moves on roads, ocean or river tiles are far cheaper (say, 1 or 2 points per tile). Needless to say, roads will have manteinance, but trade routes will make more than up for them

That would mean that the distance and number of routes will be determined by your city trade yield and the terrain between the two cities, and that open borders agreements will have massive implications for your civilization's trade routes.

Needless to say, the further the trade route and the bigger the two cities it connect, the more gold it will yield. But trade routes will yield much more interesting bonuses: it will give food to your city for each food resource worked by its destination city, and production for each strategic resource worked by said city. These production and food bonuses granted by trade routes will increase with specific commerce buildings and policies.

The consequences of this system are clear: a higher emphasis on city placement, much more diplomatic preassure on signing trade and border agreements, the replication of "metropolis vs colony" dynamics, and the possiblity of making cities such as Carthage viable (crap inmediate land yield, great trading position).

Religion and culture - Separate culture into several different aspects: language, lifestyle, art and religion. Yet another system that I will be expanded on latter.

And yes, in case that you are wondering, I have devoted far too much time to thinking these things

 

[iamdanno]

I would like to break the game in half in this way: Make each hex on the current hex map represent an 8x8 (or so) grid of hexes. This grid of hexes is another map, for fine-grained control of things. The big map is for strategic planning for conquests, expansions, exploration, etc. . . . The smaller maps would only be for tactical combat, worker/building placement, etc. . .

Since so many people seem to feel Civ V tries to be both strategic and tactical, give it the tools to do both. The beauty is that it would be easy to have an auto-resolve combat option, and an auto place buildings option, etc . . for those who want to remain at the strategic level of things. Also, you could move around units on the strategic map while stacked, and only have to unstack when zooming into strategic level.

Other than that I would love to have revolutions built-in to the game, trading for food resources too, many more small things.

 

[Svip]

Ah, now I see where many of our different ideas about approaching this come from.
Seeing civ as a board game is all wrong in my book, and all the changes that tried to make Civ play more like a boardgame leave me cold.

I mean, sure, the first Civ was LOOSELY based on a boardgame (though I think SM claimed it had no influence at all), but ... Europa Universalis, the first of Paradox' "grand strategy games", was also based on a boardgame, and the whole province based approach etc. make it more similar to one than the civ games in my eyes...

The only way I can accept the unusual abstractions, the fact that your opponents are playing to win (e.g. they hold grudges for too long), that each civilisation only has one leader throughout the game, etc. is if I treat it as a board game. Its tile base system is similar to a good deal of board games, like Advanced Third Reich or World in Flames (and there are plenty less complicated ones as well).

And it has to, because Civilization, unlike Civilization (the board game) and its expansion Advanced Civilization (which it is inspired by, by the way; even Sid Meier admits this), tries to capture the entirety of human history. (Advanced) Civilization focused on the Ancient and Classical eras.

You cannot do that without some drastic abstractions. The Wheel and Fire were probably invented by tribes, but here you have the idea of a civilisation doing the work. Of course that's how it goes. You also have to seriously consider what a city is. Because in Civilization, it has always been more than just a city.

Europa Universalis 1 was inspired by a board game named Europa Universalis, but Europa Universalis 3 have moved quite far away from that by now. In fact, the computer game version was an attempt at doing things you could not possibly do in a board game. I am not saying that Civilization V would be fun to turn into an actual board game, but it is less complex.

And fortunately, it is turn based, which Europa Universalis 3, for instance is not. Europa Universalis 3 also manages your combat.

The fact that you basically have to do anything yourself in Civilization V (or can), indicates that everything beyond that has been cut out and thus is sort of equal to a board game.

It's not a simulation game and it's not grand strategy. Could be cool if it was, but it needs a different focus. Also; it is not bad, that it is a board game. I like board games.

 

[PhilBowles]

The only way I can accept the unusual abstractions, the fact that your opponents are playing to win (e.g. they hold grudges for too long), that each civilisation only has one leader throughout the game, etc. is if I treat it as a board game. Its tile base system is similar to a good deal of board games, like Advanced Third Reich or World in Flames (and there are plenty less complicated ones as well).

And it has to, because Civilization, unlike Civilization (the board game) and its expansion Advanced Civilization (which it is inspired by, by the way; even Sid Meier admits this), tries to capture the entirety of human history. (Advanced) Civilization focused on the Ancient and Classical eras.

I think this, and the earlier point that the people proposing major changes are looking at the wrong game, are the key points. Civilization is, was, and forever should be ... Civilization. Not Europa Universalis, Distant Worlds, Total War, or any other game you'd like to have as an empire-building strategy game. Is there a way to automate tech progression? Yes - Master of Orion implemented this the year after Civ first came out. A tech pool where you slider-allocate different amounts of research to different types of tech has been a standard of 4x space games ever since. It was never transferred to Civ because that's not Civilization - the original Civ tech tree is a direct steal from the board game, and it's fundamentally part of how Civ does things. To a large extent Civ should be hidebound to many of the elements that were in Civ 1, because frankly that's the only reason to give it the Civilization brand name other than marketing.

It's not a simulation game and it's not grand strategy. Could be cool if it was, but it needs a different focus. Also; it is not bad, that it is a board game. I like board games.

There's no reason for it to be either, since both alternatives already exist in other games and series. And yes, the idea that it being a "board game" is somehow bad is strangely at odds with the entire feel of Civilization as a series. Fundamentally, a map-based game in which you move and place pieces on said map is a board game almost by definition. When I was growing up, a key appeal of Civ 1 was that it was just like a board game in which you (a) had twice as many players, and (b) could explore to find out what the board looked like as you went along (which has been done in genuine cardboard board games - e.g. Settlers of Catan or Space Hulk - but is very limited in the extent to which you can generate interestingly new permutations).

Seeing civ as a board game is all wrong in my book, and all the changes that tried to make Civ play more like a boardgame leave me cold.

And which version of Civ did you start with? "making Civ play more like a boardgame" isn't something new, it's more a return to the feel of the first two games.

Europa Universalis, the first of Paradox' "grand strategy games", was also based on a boardgame, and the whole province based approach etc. make it more similar to one than the civ games in my eyes...

Well, more similar to a province-based board game at least... Isn't the "grand strategy game" label one borrowed from board games? I believe it's the label conventionally given to Risk. The original Civ board game featured actively settling sites around the map rather than Britannia or Axis & Allies (or indeed Risk)-style provinces. You could settle any region in Civ, although those marked as city sites could be settled more easily (a precursor of computer Civ's terrain-based city placement).

(though I think SM claimed it had no influence at all)

Wasn't there a section in the Civ II manual where he discusses his influences and credits the board game as the major one? The Civ 1 box even included fliers for the board game (then distributed by Avalon Hill).

And if you've played the game you'll find the computer version is more than 'loosely' based on it.

 

[95soram]

I would like to see unit stacking return. Not infinite stacking like in previous civs, but limited stacking. I would like to see it scaled so that ancient warfare would be fought with just one or two stacks, and the number of stacks in play would gradually increase over time, to the point where modern warfare would be fought on fronts. I think this would better simulate strategic warfare over time.

I also think that food should be able to be shared between cities if they are connected by railroads and/or modern commercial harbors.

 

[rezaf]

I think this, and the earlier point that the people proposing major changes are looking at the wrong game, are the key points. Civilization is, was, and forever should be ... Civilization. Not Europa Universalis, Distant Worlds, Total War, or any other game you'd like to have as an empire-building strategy game.

Agreed.

Is there a way to automate tech progression? Yes - Master of Orion implemented this the year after Civ first came out. A tech pool where you slider-allocate different amounts of research to different types of tech has been a standard of 4x space games ever since. It was never transferred to Civ because that's not Civilization - the original Civ tech tree is a direct steal from the board game, and it's fundamentally part of how Civ does things.

First, I wasn't talking about totally automating tech progression, I explained that in my last post.

Second ... I don't really know what to reply. Having a square based grid was part of how Civ does things, having stacks was part of how Civ does things. Weren't those things changed anyway?

the idea that it being a "board game" is somehow bad is strangely at odds with the entire feel of Civilization as a series.

Like I wrote above, I strongly disagree with this notion, we'll have to leave it at that.

And which version of Civ did you start with? "making Civ play more like a boardgame" isn't something new, it's more a return to the feel of the first two games.

I was there right from the start, Civ1 was my first.
Like I wrote above, I never viewed Civ as a boardgame, so neither Civ1 nor Civ2 invoked boardgame feelings in me and I don't feel the changes in Civ5 as a return to the old ways.
But I guess that's the core question: Do you view Civ as a simulator with some compromises to make things easier to work out and more fun, or do you view it as a boardgame with some more stuff crammed in because, hey, the computer can calculate the numbers. I'm firmly in the former camp.

Wasn't there a section in the Civ II manual where he discusses his influences and credits the board game as the major one? The Civ 1 box even included fliers for the board game (then distributed by Avalon Hill).

And if you've played the game you'll find the computer version is more than 'loosely' based on it.

Maybe, I thought I had read sometime that SM once said his designing Civ1 wasn't influenced by the boardgame though he knew it, but I might be mistaken on this, so maybe he way.

I haven't played the boardgame, but I have played the computerized version of Advanced Civilization, and felt it played very different from Civ.
There were passing similarities, sure, but that's about it. It's been a LONG time, though, so I don't recall any details.
_____
rezaf

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: You know, we actually have an entire subforum for this. If you wish to discuss what you'd like in Civ6, please do so (or continue doing so) there.