What's your opinion on civ switching?

[stealth_nsk]

Yes, it is unrelated for the topic about letting players rename their civs, but I was talking about civs with their different territorial forms in the sentence you quoted and asked "why".

So I think you agree with my post, that this is no problem for civs in their different territorial forms ?

Yes, it's a big topic for discussion if we start describing this in details, but overall it's not a problem and could be done.

 

[Kev1916]

While I understand people reluctance to civ-switching in the Civilization series, I really don't see how civ1-6 are "more serious" 4x games than civ7.

Just my opinion, I can’t think of any serious 4X game that was designed from start to be played on a switch console

 

[Gedemon]

Just my opinion, I can’t think of any serious 4X game that was designed from start to be played on a switch console

Here we are, back at civ6 release again, with the exact same diminishing arguments.

 

[Kev1916]

Here we are, back at civ6 release again, with the exact same diminishing arguments.

For sure, if you can think of one come back to me otherwise enjoy your night

 

[Crashdummy]

Players are perfectly fine with Civ switching and Civ evolving. Tons of players engage with that concept routinely in games like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Age of Wonders, Victoria, and others. I think the concept needs more scaffolding and and support in Civ.

This is clearly wrong

There are A LOT of players that are not fine with Civ switching, and no, it isnt just because the game takes you completely away from itself to change, its because the change itself goes against the core concept of the franchise

Civilization was always about how well could you do with a Civilization, from scratch to modern, Civ 7 goes against the soul of the franchise. Maybe civ switching can work in another IP, but it wont in Civilization

And Age of Wonders do NOT have anything like civ switching, you just get MORE spells and units available to be built, you never LOSE a single spell or unit available to be built

 

[Gedemon]

For sure, if you can think of one come back to me otherwise enjoy your night

according to posters hating it at release, civ6 was designed for consoles, smartphone and tablets, not PC.

 

[Leucarum]

This is clearly wrong

There are A LOT of players that are not fine with Civ switching, and no, it isnt just because the game takes you completely away from itself to change, its because the change itself goes against the core concept of the franchise

Players are perfectly fine with Civ switching and Civ evolving. Tons of players engage with that concept routinely in games like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Age of Wonders, Victoria, and others. I think the concept needs more scaffolding and and support in Civ.

Paradox's concept of civ switching is pretty different. It is an example of Civ Switching being popular with its player base, but it's a very different model. It's optional, asynchronous, it's an achievement to aim for, usually with tradeoffs and choices, and its asymmetric where the ability to switch is very different based on who you play.

That's very different to what Civ7's goals were, and the concept of it being "an achievement you aim for" rather than "something which will happen at set intervals" is I think a better model for Civ switching, albeit one which probably doesn't fit a Civ game but does fit a Paradox-style grand strategy game.

Civ evolution over time though as a way to give players shiny new toys each era is here to stay I am sure. I just doubt that Civ switching is the vehicle it'll take.

 

[socratic]

There are A LOT of players that are not fine with Civ switching, and no, it isnt just because the game takes you completely away from itself to change, its because the change itself goes against the core concept of the franchise

This game has had soooo many things that turned people off. Denuvo, UI, the buggy release, the day-one DLC, the leader roster, age transitions, etc. We can’t say that civ-switching is the sole reason for its divisiveness. There’s no telling how civ-switching would’ve been received had it been implemented differently.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Your criticisms are valid, but it's not saying that the core of the game is gone. Core identity is still Civ to me. That honestly makes he hope it can be saved.

I wish I shared your optimism. Two of my favorite franchises essentially deleted themselves (Halo and Fallout) by doing exactly what Civ is now doing.

If that was the case then 7 wouldn't be trying to be a whole 3 act story copied from history.

It’s an incredibly narrow, scripted, forced Euro centred caricature of history.

I mean look at how terrible the default map is. Two ish continent blocks seperated by a vertical chain of islands forcing you to be a colonizer.

Players are perfectly fine with Civ switching and Civ evolving. Tons of players engage with that concept routinely in games like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Age of Wonders, Victoria, and others. I think the concept needs more scaffolding and and support in Civ.

In other games you may have pressure from your populations, conquered lands, religions, over-extension, or internal division. In Civ 7 the change comes from a club to the back of the head, lights out, black screen, choose a new Civ disconnected from anything that has occurred up to that point.

The design commits a double foul in eliminating all/most creative sandbox engagement with Civilization (along with hard age changes) while not really providing a proper on-ramp to Civ changing.

The design team was so close to a great concept with Civ 6's loyalty. Settle too outside of your Civ's range/influence and your city would flip to the more influential neighbor. There was a great seed of Civ change and Civ evolution there if developed further with more iteration. Would be cool if independent peoples, city states, and other major Civ's have an impression and influence on your Civ/Culture...rather than a club to the back of the head with the necessity to pick a Civ completely unrelated to the existing game state.

I think most players are on board with Civ-change, but the context, lead-up, and presentation needs some work.

People are fine with that in those franchises because that mechanic is organic to it, but more importantly because when I sit down to play Crusader Kings I am getting what I expected.

The Civ7 experience, to someone who wants a sandbox where they can buid an empire to stand the test of time and craft their own “story” if they want is like going to your favorite steak house, sitting down expecting a steak, the chef walks up and announces he is now a dentist and tries to shove a power tool in your eye socket because he has zero experience or training in being a dentist.

The sales and player count shows that people who want steak, generally do not want a power drill to the face

Even if it’s a Bosch.

This is no problem for a civ with its different territorial forms.

If a single modder is able to manage this in the genious C3X mod for Civ 3, Firaxis should be able to do this, too.

It’s goddamn sad how many times a single modder has to fix their stuff for them.

When the problem is preventing people from buying the game, adding a mod isn't going to get people to buy the game

I mean I might, because I want to try out things like no builders, City/Towns, the new diplomacy etc, but that is probably not significant.

according to posters hating it at release, civ6 was designed for consoles, smartphone and tablets, not PC.

I remember that, every release had rabble rabble about something

None of them had the massive flop Civ7 is, so clearly something else is the problem…what could it be I wonder….

One of these things is not like the otherssssss, one of these things just doesn’t beloooooong

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Paradox's concept of civ switching is pretty different. It is an example of Civ Switching being popular with its player base, but it's a very different model. It's optional, asynchronous, it's an achievement to aim for, usually with tradeoffs and choices, and its asymmetric where the ability to switch is very different based on who you play.

That's very different to what Civ7's goals were, and the concept of it being "an achievement you aim for" rather than "something which will happen at set intervals" is I think a better model for Civ switching, albeit one which probably doesn't fit a Civ game but does fit a Paradox-style grand strategy game.

Civ evolution over time though as a way to give players shiny new toys each era is here to stay I am sure. I just doubt that Civ switching is the vehicle it'll take.

The scale of time in paradox games is much shorter too. You're swapping from one polity to another. Unless you are cheesing the game, usually you remain the same culture though, which is what I think broadly maps to "civilization" conceptually in this game series.

What people want is to play as for instance, the German peoples consistently. People don't mind swapping between different German policies so much as long as they feel like there is a consistent and believable switch.

It breaks down in that you physically cannot maintain that macro culture (ie. Civilization) through a civilization game

 

[GeneralZift]

Actually I liked Civ 6 Loyalty. I think it worked really well and was logical. Yes it was difficult to settle a colony next to an opposing Civ, but then it should be. However, it was possible to do it, if you had leaned heavily into colonising as a strategy. Some civs are set up to be colonisers, and with the right civic cards and wonders and governors, it was totally a legitimate tactic. That is how it should work. If you think it is advantageous to go and settle far off lands, then you need to be set up to do that, not all civs should be able to do it easily.

I think that is a big step up from the way things work in Civ 7



I don't know if the settlement limit is a more fun implementation. Corruption was always disliked by many people, but the fact that is passive and hard to calculate was part of it's appeal. Settlement limit is such a blunt, simplistic rule, it leads to boring gameplay. You can either stick to your settlement limit (which I mostly do in many games, because it feels better) in which case you just feel pretty restricted. Or you ignore it and min max and do lots of busywork to manage it, which isn't fun either. Either way, it doesn't feel immersive, the blunt nature reminds you that you are playing a video game at all times.

Passive, under the hood mechanics is something the game needs more of, and less obvious arbitrary numbers that make you feel like you are playing a video game.

Yeah, I liked the loyalty in 6. It was best in that it prevented people sneaking in a tiny city in between all your others. At times it sucked (trying to get a colony going), and other times I didn't like it because it was too easy to cheese (basically as soon as you captured your opponent's biggest city, suddenly you never had loyalty issues with their other former cities and could actually culturally flip the rest of their empire).

I don't mind the settlement limit, but I agree that it can use more. I'm definitely in favour of changing it to some sort of "administration" cost, where cities cost you more settlement limit than towns do. And you could even add on more to it - settle a city outside your trade network, it costs an extra point to the settlement limit. Captured/occupied cities should maybe cost you an extra settlement point in their occupation period. And then often you just get so many happiness bonuses from other sources (city parks can give you like 60 happiness in some settlements, pavilions can give you like 10+, etc...) it's just too easy to cover the max -35 penalty you can hit on your biggest cities.

Civ keeps running into problems trying to figure out if they want nice round values, or they want weird calculations. Like in 7, they simplified adjacency so you don't have this whole minor/standard/major, or some of the weirder calculations from earlier versions. But at the same time, the growth formula is some complex cubic equation, and specialists still end up with cases where they give you 0.5 hammers and cost you 1.3 food in some cases. Sure, it sometimes was a struggle to understand why one trade route was 12.6 gold and another was 10.8 in civ 6, but at the same time, do I care? Computers can do math for me, tell me the biggest number and I'm happy.

Even though I didn't like loyalty I agree with both of these takes.
For me, I think the settlement limit is a bad idea, because it's an arbitrary value.
So why is it 5 or 10 or why is it different for some Civs and what about picking up a Civic let's you place down a new city without a happiness penalty?

What's funny is that Civ5 had the same exact system, where the happiness was essentially the settlement limit. So the more happiness you had the more cities you could settle.
And when you played on lower difficulties with higher base happiness, you could literally play wider - if we ignore the culture / science / great person penalties.

I agree with some others about an administration value, but I think we could tie it to the Corruption / Loyalty value, or the Happiness value or something along those lines.
So it's not arbitrary and it makes sense (more cities means more corruption means you lose them more, and acts as a settlement limit).

Also, I think Civ would benefit heavily from under the hood mechanics.
If anyone here plays Rimworld, that's a game with heavy simulation systems and a story based AI events system.
In many ways, Civilisation could benefit from a similar systems based design, where there's many interlocking mechanics to achieve a natural gameplay feel - and the "Game" is built on top of the system rather than the other way around.

Other systems based games, like Streets of Rogue, is one I quite enjoy. In that game, all the different objects and systems interact with each other and the game is built on top.
Breath of the Wild is the same.

Strategy games aren't usually system based, but I think the future for replayable strategy games is definitely system based.

 

[Gedemon]

One of these things is not like the otherssssss, one of these things just doesn’t beloooooong

forced age transition ?

 

[Leucarum]

What people want is to play as for instance, the German peoples consistently. People don't mind swapping between different German policies so much as long as they feel like there is a consistent and believable switch.

It breaks down in that you physically cannot maintain that macro culture (ie. Civilization) through a civilization game

Not every Civ fits this model though. Civs petered out or emerged at different times. Paradox can get away with it by dealing with narrow time periods and only modeling some possible transitions.

I think the winner of this 4X arms race will be the game that manages to make choosing from a set of non-civ-linked buffs per age not feel generic...

 

[Leucarum]

I wish I shared your optimism. Two of my favorite franchises essentially deleted themselves (Halo and Fallout) by doing exactly what Civ is now doing.

Have you given the antiquity era a go? Before the first transition, and with the broadest possible legacy paths this is easily the best that a Civ game has ever been.

 

[Maiq]

according to posters hating it at release, civ6 was designed for consoles, smartphone and tablets, not PC.

They don't help their case by making 7's UI scream "made for touchscreens"

 

[aieeegrunt]

Even though I didn't like loyalty I agree with both of these takes.
For me, I think the settlement limit is a bad idea, because it's an arbitrary value.
So why is it 5 or 10 or why is it different for some Civs and what about picking up a Civic let's you place down a new city without a happiness penalty?

What's funny is that Civ5 had the same exact system, where the happiness was essentially the settlement limit. So the more happiness you had the more cities you could settle.
And when you played on lower difficulties with higher base happiness, you could literally play wider - if we ignore the culture / science / great person penalties.

I agree with some others about an administration value, but I think we could tie it to the Corruption / Loyalty value, or the Happiness value or something along those lines.
So it's not arbitrary and it makes sense (more cities means more corruption means you lose them more, and acts as a settlement limit).

Also, I think Civ would benefit heavily from under the hood mechanics.
If anyone here plays Rimworld, that's a game with heavy simulation systems and a story based AI events system.
In many ways, Civilisation could benefit from a similar systems based design, where there's many interlocking mechanics to achieve a natural gameplay feel - and the "Game" is built on top of the system rather than the other way around.

Other systems based games, like Streets of Rogue, is one I quite enjoy. In that game, all the different objects and systems interact with each other and the game is built on top.
Breath of the Wild is the same.

Strategy games aren't usually system based, but I think the future for replayable strategy games is definitely system based.

I think a blend of a more refined Loyalty system and the culture flip INCLUDING TILES and culture identity system from Civ3 would go a long way towards a more refined and elegant anti snowball mechanic.

The biggest thing is there needs to be a MASSIVE difference between a city you settled and one you captured. The latter should never be as loyal or productive, and should be able to rebel or break away easily. A former capital breaking way should ressurrect that civ; at the tech level you are currently at, and all cities founded by them also break away. If you want civ switching, that is where you do it; the Gauls are conquored by Rome and come back as the French or something.

In most civ games if you replicate Rome and overrun the Middle East and Western Europe with your Legions you have essentially won at that point, your empire really can’t fall and now you have most of Europe robotically giving you yields. This is terrible history and terrible gameplay.

A better system like the one I described would act as history did; you overrun Western Europe, but the costs of maintaining control and the inevitability of Imperial Overstretch eventually causes more and more of your Empire to break away. Attempts to fight this just throws more yields down the black hole of the military and accelerates the collapse.

This shows just how superior the old “science/gold/luxuries” system was to the clunky yields system of 5 and 6; Rome in the scenario I described would be frantically maxing out the slider trying to pay maintenance on all those Legions and Barracks and Happiness/Luxury things and science will be zero. In 6 your science districts are still robotically cranking out beakers regardless of whether or not Attila is at the gates, and the snowball keeps balling.

Civ has become less and less system based when it should be more because Beach is a board game dinosaur who keeps trying to ram the square peg of board game mechanics into the round hole of a PC game

 

[Gedemon]

They don't help their case by making 7's UI scream "made for touchscreens"

or the cartoon-like graphics, still it seems most people here now think of civ6 as a "serious 4x", you can't judge that on appearance alone or on the released platforms.

 

[Maiq]

or the cartoon-like graphics, still it seems most people here now think of civ6 as a "serious 4x", you can't judge that on appearance alone or on the released platforms.

Of course not. You can judge it based on the sum of all its parts though and come to the obvious conclusion of "of course they did it like that"

 

[Krikkit1]

Not every Civ fits this model though. Civs petered out or emerged at different times. Paradox cam get away with it by dealing with narrow time periods and only modeling some ppssihle transitions.

I think the winner of this 4X arms race will be the game that manages to make choosing from a set of non-civ-linked buffs per age not feel generic...

I'm hoping there are able to do that for an optional "Golden Age Civ" mode where a civ gets its fully unique bonuses in it's normal age, and then in the other ages it gets bonuses that are based on it's attributes.... so
in Antiquity, Inca/America/Mughal would play the same (if you played them all with Amina)....
but in Exploration the Inca would have their standard set of unique bonuses.(America and Mughal would still play the same)..
and then in Modern Inca would have it's unique Exploration traditions... while America and Mughal have their fully unique bonuses.(and the attribute based Exploration/Antiquity Traditions)

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Not every Civ fits this model though. Civs petered out or emerged at different times. Paradox can get away with it by dealing with narrow time periods and only modeling some possible transitions.

I think the winner of this 4X arms race will be the game that manages to make choosing from a set of non-civ-linked buffs per age not feel generic...

"Can you build a civilization that will stand the test of time?" Already implies that not every Civ will exist through the whole period. I think Civ previously dealt with it abstractly enough that it was enjoyable.

Firaxis never had a very strong conception of what a Civ was before though, and that led to debates like with the Polynesian Civ in Civ V, and over time a Civ has been eroded back from an actual civilization concept to a polity or state.

That poor conception of what a civilization is has landed us with where we are with Civ VII, where am extreme interpretation on the granular end has broken the hypothetical contract they have fans over what their game is about for many.