What's your opinion on civ switching?

[TylertheDestroyer]

Assuming this is a combination that actually happens ingame (and I'm being charitable, because Poland . . . isn't in) . . . this would be something the player chooses.

Player choice is good. If this isn't something you'd ever choose, then that's the system working as intended. Unexpected; jarring transitions are less good (bad, even). I've often asked if improving that transition itself would help at all. People often say "no", because their problem doesn't seem to be the transition itself. Their problem seems to be that civs "evolve" at all. Which is hilariously ahistorical!

What's hilarious is you trying to hold up a nonsense system where immortal Harriet Tubman's civilization suddenly and arbitrarily morphs from Ancient Eygptians to Arabs to Subsaharan Africans on the other side of different continent as any more historical than previous civs.

Nonsense civ evolutions, detached leaders, and jarring transitions are all problems that compound in this game being an absolutely flop

So what do the devs choose? Ahistorical option A, or ahistorical option b?

The answer is, of course, "the one I want". But that gets tricky when you have hundreds of thousands of fans, and these design decisions need to be locked in months before the release of a game.

They choose the option that has been how every Civilization in the past has worked and not with the divisive and poorly designed mechanic which was loudly lambasted by the fanbase before they decided to release and which caused their game to flop and have less players than a 15 year old preddesecor in the same series and required them changing the tagline of the entire series to justify

 

[Krajzen]

Assuming this is a combination that actually happens ingame (and I'm being charitable, because Poland . . . isn't in) . . . this would be something the player chooses.

Player choice is good. If this isn't something you'd ever choose, then that's the system working as intended. Unexpected; jarring transitions are less good (bad, even). I've often asked if improving that transition itself would help at all. People often say "no", because their problem doesn't seem to be the transition itself. Their problem seems to be that civs "evolve" at all. Which is hilariously ahistorical!

So what do the devs choose? Ahistorical option A, or ahistorical option b?

The answer is, of course, "the one I want". But that gets tricky when you have hundreds of thousands of fans, and these design decisions need to be locked in months before the release of a game.

Ahistorical option A ("French civ from 4000 BC to 2000 AD") with its problem of unchanging civ has the advantage of being far easier to rationalize and explain away using in-game mechanics and implicit assumptions than the ahistorical option B ("Axum->Inca->Meiji Japan") with its problem of abruptly changing civs.

In the old civ games I've never really had that big of a problem with French people existing from 4000 BC to 2000 AD (though sure, an option to see them develop from megalithic Europe and then Gaul and then Franks would be the best of all worlds). The brain asks the questions about the logical holes in this setup ("how come those people and their culture don't change for millenia") but those holes are easily explained away. "You see, dear brain - it's just a video game so it isn't always explicitly modeled, but those people do change a lot over the campaign. Their social institutions change when I change Social Policies; their entire civilization changes when I develop new Technologies; there are changes in their Religions. And when I gain cities and pops of other civs, by war or other means, after some time of "resistance" they are treated as any other French cities and pops, so those are new genetic and cultural inputs of the other peoples of the planet, so now after this expansion my "French" are 30% German. Well, their skin color remains the same and they always speak French, but again I wouldn't expect the game to model genetics and linguistics lol, and again it's not like modern French have nothing common here with the Gallo-Romans."

(and all those rationalisations would be even smoother if the civ games added some simple mechanics and cosmetics like immigration, "cultural osmosis" etc)

Meanwhile in the new model the brain asks "how come black Axumites suddenly became white Normans and then Meiji Japanese and all their languages and cultural institutions are suddenly extremely alien from each other" and I don't have much to say it on the basis of ingame dynamics. Well, I did choose those particular changes for meta-reasons because the game had artificially forced me to do that, and then suddenly some vague "crisis of civilization" changed everything about my people's skin colour, language, culture, society, institutions, art, aestethics etc. And the brain asks "what the hell, how and when did this all happen, show me that process of change" and I shrug and mumble something without confidence and the poor thing gets confused and upset.

 

[Gorbles]

Meanwhile in the new model the brain asks "how come black Axumites suddenly became white Normans and then Meiji Japanese and all their languages and cultural institutions are suddenly extremely alien from each other" and I don't have much to say it on the basis of ingame dynamics. Well, I did choose those particular changes for meta-reasons because the game had artificially forced me to do that, and then suddenly some vague "crisis of civilization" changed everything about my people's skin colour, language, culture, society, institutions, art, aestethics etc. And the brain asks "what the hell, how and when did this all happen, show me that process of change" and I shrug and mumble something without confidence and the poor thing gets confused and upset.

I agree that transitions are very immediate and don't have much UX to aid players through it (or even UI, apart from the legacy points mechanics).

But your brain isn't asking you anything. You have the mental model backwards. A player making a choice has already rationalised that choice. They don't need to come to terms with it.

It's like trying to complain about nomadic Mongols achieving a Science victory. Ahistorical? Yes. Needs the brain to fill in the blanks? Yes. The player chooses to do this? Also yes.

Transitions are similar. I do think being able to end the game after one Age without transitioning would be neat. Especially for players that like longer game time settings. That way players are no longer "forced" into transitioning their civ.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

I agree that transitions are very immediate and don't have much UX to aid players through it (or even UI, apart from the legacy points mechanics).

But your brain isn't asking you anything. You have the mental model backwards. A player making a choice has already rationalised that choice. They don't need to come to terms with it.

Are you seriously trying to tell someone that actually spent the time explaining to you in good faith their exact dislike of the unpopular mechanic you still champion that their brain is wrong and they just have to think about it differently....? No one has the mental model backwards, the game was a flop because people dont' want to make the silly choices you and Firaxis think they should arbitrarily be forced to make in this game. We don't want Ibn Battuta leading the Greeks who become Chinese if the sales, poor reception, and player counts haven't made that obvious yet.

It's like trying to complain about nomadic Mongols achieving a Science victory. Ahistorical? Yes. Needs the brain to fill in the blanks? Yes. The player chooses to do this? Also yes.

Ahh yes having nomadic mongols achieve science victory isn't historical.... we can't have that in a video game about building empires that span all of time... no, no , that's too ahistorical we need to have Khmer turned Bugandans led by an immortal Ada Lovelace do the same exact thing instead.

Transitions are similar. I do think being able to end the game after one Age without transitioning would be neat. Especially for players that like longer game time settings. That way players are no longer "forced" into transitioning their civ.

This isn't a solution. the people who expect long form and traditional Civ campaigns and don't want jarring loading screen transitions between ages are not looking to play a self-contained minigame.

 

[Leucarum]

Historic options I doubt will ever satisfy people who find it immerion breaking. With the best will in the world, they can't possibly make every single transition completely seamless and satisfactory. Some civs don't have transitions that feel good. Especially in colonized regions. And even where they do, there likely will always feel like there's some jarring. For that reason I think having historic suggestions at all was a mistake.

I'd like to see the system be made optional, but I'd stop complaining if there was a way to "transcend" your civ, and carry on with it, which came with some interesting gameplay.

 

[King Flevance]

Modern Norwegian still has a lot in common with the Germanic language that was spoken there two millenia ago, it hasn't been the jump four language families away with nothing remaining from its Roman-era past

Everyone knows that this is because they didn't become suzerain of 4 city states.

 

[Crashdummy]

If that were the answer, then no sequel would ever do anything different. Your answer is the one I already said: "the one you want" (or are happy with, if that's an acceptable substitution). Nobody is psychic. Every change is a gamble, from the small ones to the big ones.

The devs have been pretty open about how this time they went for a big one. That comes with risk. It hasn't paid off yet, as much as I'd like it if it did. I was as fond of VI, and that turned out great.

Sequels shouldnt go against the core gameplay of the franchise. It didnt work in Mass effect, it didnt work in Dragon Age, it didnt work in Civ 7

Its FALSE that the only way to do things different is to completely change the core gameplay of your franchise, and when the Devs are so egocentric to think their playerbase would buy anything they do, then they fail

If you as a Dev want to do something completely new that goes against the core gameplay of the franchise you have, you should do it with a NEW IP instead os trying to mil the name of a franchise with somethign different

 

[user343744]

Back in 2022, Firaxis created a wishlist thread asking fans what they wanted to see in Civilization VII. Out of 1,367 replies filled with thoughtful ideas ranging from internal politics to innovative mechanics...only 2 mentioned civ-switching. The point is, Firaxis had countless opportunities to improve gameplay without reinventing the wheel into a cinder block. Especially after seeing Humankind, yet they went with it anyways. Just baffling.

Thread:

Whishlist Civ 7 / Civ VII :: Sid Meier's Civilization VI General Discussions

Since threads are popping up more and more regularly about things people like in the next iteration (if it ever comes) and these get spread out, left to die and then revived again, we're creating a central place to collect and discuss these ideas. Keep in mind, this is not a thread to post...

steamcommunity.com

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Sequels shouldnt go against the core gameplay of the franchise. It didnt work in Mass effect, it didnt work in Dragon Age, it didnt work in Civ 7

Its FALSE that the only way to do things different is to completely change the core gameplay of your franchise, and when the Devs are so egocentric to think their playerbase would buy anything they do, then they fail

If you as a Dev want to do something completely new that goes against the core gameplay of the franchise you have, you should do it with a NEW IP instead os trying to mil the name of a franchise with somethign different

I'm going to save anyone the effort before someone trods into the familiar and extremely tired "you just oppose change" and "they can't just release Civ 6 again" strawmen that love to get levied whenever this is pointed out

There are countless changes that could been made to the formula that wouldn't have been anywhere near as contentious and wouldn't have literally resulted in Firaxis having to change their nearly 30 year old tagline to justify. Nobody got upset about navigible rivers, you don't see heated debates about commanders nor countless topics about how having more detailed individual civs with more unique units, buildings, and even civics has ruined the series...... I wonder why that is......

 

[moondog385]

Historic options I doubt will ever satisfy people who find it immerion breaking. With the best will in the world, they can't possibly make every single transition completely seamless and satisfactory. Some civs don't have transitions that feel good. Especially in colonized regions. And even where they do, there likely will always feel like there's some jarring. For that reason I think having historic suggestions at all was a mistake.

I'd like to see the system be made optional, but I'd stop complaining if there was a way to "transcend" your civ, and carry on with it, which came with some interesting gameplay.

You mention this a lot — just curious; what do you mean by “transcending” your civ?

 

[Leucarum]

You mention this a lot — just curious; what do you mean by “transcending” your civ?

It's humankind's description of continuing to play a civ from a previous era. I probably shouldn't use it as shorthand but it fits really well.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Back in 2022, Firaxis created a wishlist thread asking fans what they wanted to see in Civilization VII. Out of 1,367 replies filled with thoughtful ideas ranging from internal politics to innovative mechanics...only 2 mentioned civ-switching. The point is, Firaxis had countless opportunities to improve gameplay without reinventing the wheel into a cinder block. Especially after seeing Humankind, yet they went with it anyways. Just baffling.

Thread:

Whishlist Civ 7 / Civ VII :: Sid Meier's Civilization VI General Discussions

Since threads are popping up more and more regularly about things people like in the next iteration (if it ever comes) and these get spread out, left to die and then revived again, we're creating a central place to collect and discuss these ideas. Keep in mind, this is not a thread to post...

steamcommunity.com

Why I agree civilization switching was a mistake, I have some comments:

1. As far as I see, this wishlist thread has nothing to do with Firaxis, it's just usual fan thread
2. "After seeing Humankind" is wrong, because Firaxis settled on Civ switching even before HK was announced and by the time anyone seen HK in play, this feature was already deep into the game
3. Humankind was actually a financial success https://www.pcgamesn.com/humankind-2/release-date for a simple reason - it's much much cheaper than games from Civilization series

Those 3 points were facts, this one is debatable, but following fan wishlist is one of the worst ways to develop the game. You need features aligned with each other, you need professional game designers and you need a lot of playtesting to see how they go. Fans could throw some interesting ideas to think on, but polls and wishlists shouldn't be taken as backlog.

 

[Lebo44]

Back in 2022, Firaxis created a wishlist thread asking fans what they wanted to see in Civilization VII. Out of 1,367 replies filled with thoughtful ideas ranging from internal politics to innovative mechanics...only 2 mentioned civ-switching. The point is, Firaxis had countless opportunities to improve gameplay without reinventing the wheel into a cinder block. Especially after seeing Humankind, yet they went with it anyways. Just baffling.

The answer is... monetization. Its easier to monetize by adding some minor nations than impriving the AI so it can build and utilize airplanes.

In the old civ games I've never really had that big of a problem with French people existing from 4000 BC to 2000 AD (though sure, an option to see them develop from megalithic Europe and then Gaul and then Franks would be the best of all worlds). The brain asks the questions about the logical holes in this setup ("how come those people and their culture don't change for millenia") but those holes are easily explained away.

I have a different theory about that. To explain it properly, we need to go back to the roots of the game.

In Civilization I, there were only 16 civilizations, and—intentionally or not—they represented broad cultural regions of the world. For instance:

• The French civilization represented the entire historical arc of the region, from the Gauls and Franks to the French Empire.
• The Germans encompassed all tribes, peoples, and cultures of Central Europe, from the Germanic tribes through the Holy Roman Empire to Prussia.
• The Aztecs served as a representation for all Mesoamerican civilizations.
• The Mongols represented Central Asian nomadic cultures, including groups like the Huns.
• The Zulus stood in for Black Africa's civilizations.

Each civ had leaders that were strongly tied to those cultures, which made the representation feel cohesive and meaningful.

So in the early Civilization games, there weren’t really any major logical inconsistencies—or at least none glaring enough to me.

The issues began to appear later, when the developers started adding individual nations as separate civilizations. Austria, for example, is historically part of Germanic culture, so having it alongside Prussia or Germany always felt a bit redundant. The same goes for Poland, Sweden, and many others. I understand that it's a great way to monetize the game through DLCs and that having your own country represented can be fun—but personally, I'd rather see a unified Slavic civilization instead of Poland that covers the broader cultural region and a longer part of history. I see no issue with incorporating the Polish Winged Hussars as a unique unit, alongside leaders like Žižka or Jan Hus. An entertainment building such as a Hockey Rink or a Tatra resort (a nod to Slovakia) would fit in naturally as well. Even weaving in Scythian or Sarmatian influences during the early game phase could add rich historical depth.

That said, I feel that civ switching (especially paired with disconnected leaders) was entirely unnecessary from the gameplay perspective.

 

[Gorbles]

Sequels shouldnt go against the core gameplay of the franchise.

In your opinion, for whatever the core gameplay is to you. Again, I covered this. "just do what I want" is easy to say. It's harder to put into practise.

It didnt work in Mass effect, it didnt work in Dragon Age, it didnt work in Civ 7

It absolutely worked for Mass Effect 2.

 

[Siptah]

I think it is difficult if a sequel goes against the core. But I don't think civ 7 does that, actually. It's still quite clearly a civ game, and it feels right at home from turn 1. What you do is to 80% or more what you always did in civ games. Eras are a big change, but it is not in anyway ruining the core or making it unrecognizable as a civ game. The same is true for civ switching. That's just a hyperbole.

But I might simply have different standards for what is a core and how to be true to it. For me, even a huge jump like Super Mario World to Mario 64 isn't against the core. It's a great expansion of what the game is about. And in this case, it probably changed 50+% of what you actually do. Or GTA2 vs. the sequels. Yet, I still see these more as a natural evolution than a redesign from scratch. Examples for the latter would be Frostpunk 2, Zelda II, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Thief, or Caesar IV – not that these aren't fun games, they are just not very similar to their predecessor(s).

 

[Leucarum]

Civ7 is definitely still a Civ game, and the tweaks to core Civ mechanics - things like removing builders, adding army commanders, towns and cities, adding influence to diplomacy, these are all amazing additions! Antiquity is pretty much Civ7 before the controversial features kick in, and I'd argue it's the best the franchise has ever been. At its core 7 doesn't shake things up quite as much as people say.

The issues with eras are probably fixable with customization options and more ways to score legacy paths.. It's civ switching which I doubt is salvageable for a large chunk of people, since a lot of the negativity is down to the emotional response it produces and questions of what Civs you identify with while playing. I don't see a good way to fix that.

 

[Lebo44]

Antiquity is pretty much Civ7 before the controversial features kick in, and I'd argue it's the best the franchise has ever been.

I agree. Yesterday I had a great game as Romans versus Hatshepsut’s Greece. My Legions clashed with her Hoplites across rough terrain, and all these unit details and battlefield terrain made it feel like a recreation of Battle of Pydna or Cynoscephalae. I felt a bit I was playing Field of Glory 2. But the new warfare mechanics also contributed to that.

That’s why I believe there is a great potential to craft truly exceptional historical scenarios. When civs are tailored to specific eras or historical roles (as a result of ages and civ-switching in Civ 7) it could deepen the atmosphere of period-specific gameplay.

 

[Leucarum]

I agree. Yesterday I had a great game as Romans versus Hatshepsut’s Greece. My Legions clashed with her Hoplites across rough terrain, and all these unit details and battlefield terrain made it feel like a recreation of Battle of Pydna or Cynoscephalae. I felt a bit I was playing Field of Glory 2. But the new warfare mechanics also contributed to that.

That’s why I believe there is a great potential to craft truly exceptional historical scenarios. When civs are tailored to specific eras or historical roles (as a result of ages and civ-switching in Civ 7) it could deepen the atmosphere of period-specific gameplay.

And in Civ7 everything is a scenario anyway... Civ3 was the last game in the series for me which had good scenarios though, so I don't hold out much hope...

 

[Crashdummy]

I think it is difficult if a sequel goes against the core. But I don't think civ 7 does that, actually. It's still quite clearly a civ game, and it feels right at home from turn 1. What you do is to 80% or more what you always did in civ games. Eras are a big change, but it is not in anyway ruining the core or making it unrecognizable as a civ game. The same is true for civ switching. That's just a hyperbole.

Come on... They even had to change their 3+ decade motto of "build an empire to stand the test of time" because they knew the changes went against that. Sure, we still have turns and cities, but the core of the game is changed

 

[kotpeter]

Civ switching has grown on me at some point. In Civ 6, role-playing a particular civ was real and fun. In Civ 7, this is no longer possible, but instead you get to role-play as a nation, the identity of which you get to develop on the way. Once my imagination embraced this new paradigm, it became much easier to immerse with the gameplay and with leaders being the new "face" of each player. While each leader wasn't a politician per se, all of them left a noticeable legacy on our history, and the impact of their legacy is what their personas reflect on. I feel like there is a nice charm to it.

My only minor gripe is that leaders always look at each other and never at the player. I think the way leaders looked at players in Civ 6 was superior. But it's not a critical issue to me.

I honestly think Civ 7's poor reception is not because of civ switching. It's because of pricing model and raw state of the game, i.e. lack of UI QoL features and mediocre UI in general, lack of gameplay settings (maps, victory customizations, etc.), bugs and very opinionated age transition implementation.