What's your opinion on civ switching?

[disjointaccount]

I like the flexibility and improved playability it gives each age. I hated how chosing a civ with an early or late ability handicapped it in the other ages in old games.

While I absolutely think it has downsides and there are still some rough edges (though to be clear I enjoy it overall), there are a number of objective benefits and this is one of the biggest. Playing someone like Teddy in 6 sitting by watching everyone steamroll with their war carts and hoplites knowing you were stuck with regular units for centuries was a terrible feeling.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

While I absolutely think it has downsides and there are still some rough edges (though to be clear I enjoy it overall), there are a number of objective benefits and this is one of the biggest. Playing someone like Teddy in 6 sitting by watching everyone steamroll with their war carts and hoplites knowing you were stuck with regular units for centuries was a terrible feeling.

Perhaps a bit off topic to this thread but I think one solution to this would be to detach unique units from civs and let every civ get whatever unique unit they want based on gameplay. You could have unique units be in a tech mastery. So players who want a certain unique unit could spend more science to unlock it. Certain civs could get a discount towards their historical unique unit, like civ7 does with wonders, to still give a preference to the historical choice while not locking other civs out completely. The first civ to build a unique unit for the first time would get it as their unique unit for that Age and then nobody else can build it. You could add a rule that a civ can only have 1 unique unit per Age to prevent a science heavy civ from stealing all the unique units in an Age. And this would force players to make a choice of what unique unit they want to pursue. It would also embrace the alternate history aspect of civ. What if the Americans built the hoplite instead of Ancient Greece? But it would solve your issue since civs would not automatically be locked out of an early unique unit just because their civ does not have a unique unit in the early game.

 

[Leucarum]

Well it's so far looking like the poll here is quite even. Not that as fanatics we're a particularly unbiased sample.

I'd believe you whether you told me: "I'd expect the Civ Fanatics to be the biggest fans of the series, so they'll be biased towards liking civ switching" or "I'd expect Civ Fanatics to be the most engaged and have the strongest opinions against things they dislike" (or even "Forum users tend to skew older and probably don't like it when things change").

Either way a roughly 50-50 split is not great news.

With Humankind I left a review that when someone worked out how to make civ switching work they'd be onto a winner. With Civ7, I think they did solve many of Humankind's problems (too many changes, bland civs), and while they made some new ones (too few civs, civ unlocks/implied evolutions, later civs with start biases)... I think my opinion now is that wholesale switching of your civ is not the right way to have your Civ evolve through the game because of the issues it creates around the identity of your civ, and the emotional response that "losing" your civ produces (at least for a large chunk of the player base)... I also would love to know if there's a split in opinion between people who had a shortlist of civs they played in previous editions, and people who wanted to try everything. As one of the former, I feel primed to not feel like I "get enough" out of each Civ in Civ7.

To put the above another way, I think the biggest hurdle for Civ switching is that the players who don't like it, don't like it for mainly emotional reasons. Logic and good design seem unlikely to fix that, and I think it might be a baked-in thing with Civ switching that it'll alienate a significant chunk of the player base. At the same time, if you're someone who doesn't have a knee-jerk "ugh" reaction to civ switching, you probably find it incomprehensible that so many players dislike what feels like a good mechanic to you.

I think Civs evolving is here to stay, just not civ switching. I'd wager that Civ7 and Humankind have killed that approach stone dead. The challenge will be to make evolution not feel either generic or speculative in a history game.

 

[McSpank01]

The results of the poll make perfect sense I think, probably what I would have expected. It is hard to separate out the idea of civ switching from the implementation though. I am currently disliking civ switching, but I was very excited for it as an idea. I think it needs to be hugely expanded to have more natural feeling choices and feel like less of a hard 'cut to black', because it feels so closely related to ages, which I think really are a problem for a lot of people.

I'm happy to basically ignore people who dismiss the idea out of hand, because I don't think they are really being fair. Having one civ for the entire game is no more realistic. It is going to take a lot more work, and a lot more civs to really round out this feature I think.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I didn't expect the almost perfect 50/50 split here on the forums, but this picture of opinions in a forum called Civfanatics pretty much reinforces the point that it is a divisive change...

I'm somewhere in between 3 and 4, with having voted the latter ("don't like, but doesn't prevent me from playing"). This final leaning got reinforced by playing with Gedemons Classic Civ mod the first time - I didn't miss the process of picking a civ at all in the exploration age, but was completely fine to get later access to the Inca specials instead. So it is that while I can tolerate civ switch and play with it, I neither need it nor do I think it solves more problems than it causes (at least in the current implementation).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Switching is fine: the execution for now needs work.

 

[Leucarum]

I also voted for option 4 - I have tolerated it thus far. I still almost always have an emotional "How about no? Is that an option?" reaction to civ switching.

That feeling makes me not want to dismiss the reaction of people who voted 5 as "unfair". I could easily have been in that camp if other changes to Civ7 weren't as good as they are to balance it out (things like removing builders, adding influence, army commanders, leader mixing/matching).

More civs has the potential to help. I find myself playing past antiquity fewer and fewer times as after a delicious appetizer, when I look at the entree and dessert, I really start to wish this wasn't a Prix Fixe menu. Thus far I have enjoyed playing with 9/11 Aniquity civs, 5/11 exploration civs, and only 1/11 modern civs). I don't think more civs solves everything with the mechanic though.

 

[Shirotora Kenshin]

At first it seemed interesting to me, but now I think it was a mistake.

I believe that with time it could turn out that it wasn’t a mistake, but we‘re not at this point yet. Meaning that with more civs and leaders available, the problems will melt like ice in the sun

I really hope so.

 

[mackintosh]

Not my thing, still haven't bought VII because of it. I simply don't have any desire to play any other civ apart from the one I started with. I'm fine with Civ moving on, though, and I'm playing other games now.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I'm happy to basically ignore people who dismiss the idea out of hand, because I don't think they are really being fair. Having one civ for the entire game is no more realistic. It is going to take a lot more work, and a lot more civs to really round out this feature I think.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding that keeps persisting. I have never once started up a game of Civ hoping for realism. I play Civ precisely for a less realistic experience. I don't care that one Civ lasting millennia isnt realistic, I just want to build an Egyptian flavoured empire with nuclear weapons and frigates and pyramid skyscrapers.

That was the selling point of Civ for me, and it's completely absent from this game.

 

[McSpank01]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding that keeps persisting. I have never once started up a game of Civ hoping for realism. I play Civ precisely for a less realistic experience. I don't care that one Civ lasting millennia isnt realistic, I just want to build an Egyptian flavoured empire with nuclear weapons and frigates and pyramid skyscrapers.

That was the selling point of Civ for me, and it's completely absent from this game.

But that has never happened, you've never had pyramid skyscapers, you always need to do huge levels of mental gymnastics to imagine a modern Egypt that is essentially a continuation of a cartoon version of Antiquity age Egypt.

 

[Leucarum]

But that has never happened, you've never had pyramid skyscapers, you always need to do huge levels of mental gymnastics to imagine a modern Egypt that is essentially a continuation of a cartoon version of Antiquity age Egypt.

I wouldn't say it's quite that - more that it's fun to have a world where civs which didn't last in reality, are major players in the modern world. I really miss that 7 forces us to have the same old civs in each era... For me the alt. history fun was seeing if the Incas were independent into the modern era rather than trying to imagine what Macchu Picchu would look like with a skyscraper on top...

 

[Lord Lakely]

I enjoy the mechanic. It leads to some interesting strategic decisions because the individual Civs themselves are very well designed. I don't NEED it in the game necessarily, but it's way better than Humankind's borehole tedium.

The Age transitions are very bad, or at least, were bad prior to the patch. I'll hit Exploration soon in my first 1.2.3 game.

 

[McSpank01]

I wouldn't say it's quite that - more that it's fun to have a world where civs which didn't last in reality, are major players in the modern world. I really miss that 7 forces us to have the same old civs in each era... For me the alt. history fun was seeing if the Incas were independent into the modern era rather than trying to imagine what Macchu Picchu would look like with a skyscraper on top...

Yes this is something I agree with

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

But that has never happened, you've never had pyramid skyscapers, you always need to do huge levels of mental gymnastics to imagine a modern Egypt that is essentially a continuation of a cartoon version of Antiquity age Egypt.

In Civ V (which I have spent an embarrassing amount of hours), by end game I am Ramesses II leading Egypt. I still have functioning burial tombs in my cities granting me additional happiness. I'm still a civ focus around monumental construction with 20% off wonder production. My symbol is still the eye of ra, my colours are still yellow and purple, my city names are still ancient Egyptian, by spy names are still ancient Egyptian, my music theme is still Egyptian.

There's not a lot of mental gymnastics required to get the flavour that you are playing Egypt still, and I think the city names, consistent map colour and music do the bulk of the heavy lifting.

I would prefer that they leant more into that of course, and I agree there's further they could lean into it. But it has been there, and it's why I played.

If I want realism I pick up a paradox game which does it 1000x better. If I want something that doesn't take itself too seriously and allows me to alt history, I pick up Civ. Only not anymore.

 

[McSpank01]

In Civ V (which I have spent an embarrassing amount of hours), by end game I am Ramesses II leading Egypt. I still have functioning burial tombs in my cities granting me additional happiness.

In Civ 7 I'd argue there is the same if not more carry over in terms of your previous civs. You still have unique quarters, you may have your unique buildings if you had them, your cities can remain the same name, you might have unique traditions that carry over. Really I don't see much of a difference here at all. If anything I think there is much more flavour, because essentially most civs stop being unique and relevant outside of their era in previous games, at least in 7 there is flavour in all of the ages.

The problem with previous games is that most civs end up being bland and generic outside of their own era. Egypt in modern age would just look the same as everyone else in previous games, you mostly would be playing in exactly the same way and wouldn't be able to tell.

I get the arguments against civ switching and eras, but the fantasy of playing as one civ throughout time was always littered with huge weaknesses in how Civ games portrayed it.

 

[Skojardu]

The current implementation of Civ switching put me off entirely. I am still waiting until the game seems ripe to play before I buy it. I think Civs should evolve like Pokemon do; by choice.

You can choose to keep Pikachu as Pikachu to the end of the game if you want, similarly an ancient Civ like Rome should be able to persist until the end of the game, but it might be smarter to switch it to Byzantium (missing in 7), Spain, or Venice based on external stimuli. It's offensive to view Civs as moribund and not allowing them to try to advance to the next age.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I'll repeat it a hundred times if I must. Civ7 has problems. Civ Switching is NOT one of them. That part is actually done well (or acceptably well, if you'll have it.)

The Age Transitions are rough. The game runs slowly. The UI is uninformative. Exploration legacies are genuinely unfun to play. The Civilopedia still only shows exerpts from the current era. Religion is garbage. The available Civ rosters are too small. It's difficult to keep track of all the bonuses because there's many of them and the game tells you not enough. Civ7 is outrageously expensive for the amount of content and quality of content you're getting, which is slowly being dripfed into the game via a gilded IV and pandering.

If I were to make a list of what bothers me in Civ7, Civ Switching wouldn't even be on the list. It absolutely WOULD have been for Humankind, which is boring sandbox game with insufficient flavour and variation (Imagine eating only celery for a week. That's what playing Humankind is like). Civ7's Civs are vibrant, flavourful and exciting to play. I enjoy playing them for an Era, and then moving on to the next, seeing how the Civ I played in Antiquity strongly impacts my game up to the very end. There just aren't enough Civs, and of those that exist, some are way too easy to unlock, so you play them all the time. Some of them are never offered to you at all, unless you play a specific leader or civ. That is the issue I have with the Switching Mechanic.

The game probably should add a few bottleneck Civs that are currently missing and bridge some gaps like Byzantium and the Ottomans, which are quizzically not present already, then work on padding out the existing lines where possible. Abbasids exist as a separate entity so why not add the Ayyubids for Egypt? Add Ethiopia for Aksum. Add the HRE/Teutons for Prussia. Etc.

 

[Krikkit1]

In Civ V (which I have spent an embarrassing amount of hours), by end game I am Ramesses II leading Egypt. I still have functioning burial tombs in my cities granting me additional happiness. I'm still a civ focus around monumental construction with 20% off wonder production. My symbol is still the eye of ra, my colours are still yellow and purple, my city names are still ancient Egyptian, by spy names are still ancient Egyptian, my music theme is still Egyptian.

There's not a lot of mental gymnastics required to get the flavour that you are playing Egypt still, and I think the city names, consistent map colour and music do the bulk of the heavy lifting.

I would prefer that they leant more into that of course, and I agree there's further they could lean into it. But it has been there, and it's why I played.

If I want realism I pick up a paradox game which does it 1000x better. If I want something that doesn't take itself too seriously and allows me to alt history, I pick up Civ. Only not anymore.

That’s why I think if you could end the game with the
Name/Graphics/City list/Music of Ancient Egypt

then the fact that you had a different UA,UU and UI and civics would be ok… especially since you still have Egyptian Traditions/UQ gameplay wise.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Yeah I really don't know what to say when people are telling me my reasons for not wanting to buy the game aren't issues with the game and that Civ 7 is actually better at what I want than previous games somehow. Guess I have to buy it then, I've been facts and logic'd by Civ Shapiro