What's your opinion on civ switching?

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Personally, I think that the concepts of “empire” and “civilization” are distinct enough and should not be used interchangeably. Semantically I would indeed put the word “civilization” closer to “faction” than I would put the word “empire”. And I think one of the reasons for this ongoing debate is FXS going down this slippery slope and blurring the line between “civilization” and “empire/polity” with each subsequent game. But I digress.

In this series any "civilization" is deemed as a playable faction, so I feel like the lines have always been blurred. I do agree with the fact that using specific empires/dynasties is becoming more normalized, which I don't necessarily agree with, but I feel like you have to do it in regard to civ switching. Otherwise instead of Han, Ming, Qing you'd have to have civs called Antiquity China, Exploration China, and Modern China.

Each population having a culture assigned to it, and cultural pressure being able to “flip” pops and tiles from Civ3, as well as culture having a hig impact on how likely a ciry is to rebel or split off.

The vassal system from Civ5.

Loyalty from Civ6, NOT based on population but amenaties

All of the tools are already there.

Loyalty was my least favorite mechanic from Civ 6, but I could tolerate it more if it was based off of happiness/amenities instead of population.

 

[Krajzen]

I would love if the pop points had the "culture" of a given civ (or a minor faction) assigned to them, even though it would involve some clever dealing with the balancing of such things as the speed and degree of assimilation. After all IRL you have crazy and hart to intuitively comprehend differences in the resilience (or lack of it) of the particular cultures, with some seemingly "powerful" ones disappearing after few scant centuries (see Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greks in Anatolia, Nubians, Chams, Roman Punic culture etc) whereas other survived for millenia. Also I would hate to see the system making it trivially easy to just "convert" other cultures, I'd much prefer the process being very slow and unreliable and you rather having to deal with the cultural diversity. Also such system would naturally facilitate separatist rebellions and emigration. Like how the hell can the 4X game series have straight no rebellions?

As for the loyalty system, I hated it because it was simultaenously annoying to deal with, difficult for the AI to handle, and being based on absolutely nothing in history. I mean states have always been based on the military control, and switching of territory between them on diplomacy - show me when could a province of some strong, functional empire just spontaneously leave against the will of the emperor with no military action being possible to prevent it. Just make it like in Paradox games, where a province (city) can revolt to change its owner but its owner has a window of time for the military supression, so said province either has to win militarily or revolt in the time of weak central authority.

Also I'd like to point out that if the loyalty system were nuanced and interesting it has to be based on city happiness not population, but if it is based on city happiness instead of population then it can't fulfill its function of dealing with the AI forward city settling. A function that has always seemed strange to me because it was the problem of the way territorial control and colonization works in those games being solved by an entirely different system. Instead of, you know, simply programming AI not to do this clearly suicidal idiotic thing, or changing the way colonization and territorial control work, so for example inland cities with no sea access have to be founded in the continuous way within a certain distance (it would make a great deal of sense and look better anyway).

 

[King Flevance]

I have always seen the name of the game "Civilization" in the broader sense of all of the nations in the game are "civilization" and it is referencing the concept of humanity going from "caves to space" or humanity creating a global "civilization" and you are playing out 1 aspect (faction) of that narrative. Civilization can be defined both as having a geographical boundry or just in regards to a species developing both technology and social constructs to create a more sustainable lifestyle. Like humanity becoming more advanced in both technology and sociology. However, because this is not a "god game" like Populous or Black & White - it instead plays with the social construct "political side" of human civilization, the self-imposed empires that different societies ascribe to. Empires are a part of civilization but civilization as a concept is larger than that, but I have always seen the title of the franchise to be referencing all of human civilization and the hurdles we struggle with. I have never seen the title Civilization as though it were referencing a single empire or as a way to be synonymous with "empires" but rather just a blanket reference to human history.

I think the title is more akin to "Humankind" than "Age of Empires".

 

[Kev1916]

I think the title is more akin to "Humankind" than "Age of Empires".

Totally Humankind was a spectacular fail and universally laughed at , for a "civ" game to copy this idea for a short term gain will ultimately cause this particular "civ" game to flop.
Civ switching as before will see this version as a laughable footnote

 

[aieeegrunt]

If only the Native Canadians could be a Civ...

Didn’t we have the Iroquios in a previous version of Civ?

I would love if the pop points had the "culture" of a given civ (or a minor faction) assigned to them, even though it would involve some clever dealing with the balancing of such things as the speed and degree of assimilation. After all IRL you have crazy and hart to intuitively comprehend differences in the resilience (or lack of it) of the particular cultures, with some seemingly "powerful" ones disappearing after few scant centuries (see Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greks in Anatolia, Nubians, Chams, Roman Punic culture etc) whereas other survived for millenia. Also I would hate to see the system making it trivially easy to just "convert" other cultures, I'd much prefer the process being very slow and unreliable and you rather having to deal with the cultural diversity. Also such system would naturally facilitate separatist rebellions and emigration. Like how the hell can the 4X game series have straight no rebellions?

As for the loyalty system, I hated it because it was simultaenously annoying to deal with, difficult for the AI to handle, and being based on absolutely nothing in history. I mean states have always been based on the military control, and switching of territory between them on diplomacy - show me when could a province of some strong, functional empire just spontaneously leave against the will of the emperor with no military action being possible to prevent it. Just make it like in Paradox games, where a province (city) can revolt to change its owner but its owner has a window of time for the military supression, so said province either has to win militarily or revolt in the time of weak central authority.

Also I'd like to point out that if the loyalty system were nuanced and interesting it has to be based on city happiness not population, but if it is based on city happiness instead of population then it can't fulfill its function of dealing with the AI forward city settling. A function that has always seemed strange to me because it was the problem of the way territorial control and colonization works in those games being solved by an entirely different system. Instead of, you know, simply programming AI not to do this clearly suicidal idiotic thing, or changing the way colonization and territorial control work, so for example inland cities with no sea access have to be founded in the continuous way within a certain distance (it would make a great deal of sense and look better anyway).

Civ3 *had* a cultural identity for each pop. A pop would start out with the culture of whoever controlled the city when they were born.

If a neighbouring civ had superior culture output a pop could “flip” to the better culture, as could individual tiles, and eventually whole cities. I believe a military garrison of a superior culture would eventually have this effect as well

A player who neglected culture and went all in on a military rush would find their conquests very short lived, as the superior culture assimilated it’s barbarian overlords, so it was a nice self balancing mechanic.

Combine this with Civ5’s vassal system you could actually have large multi ethnic states like Austria Hungary, with all their advantages and drawbacks.