What's your opinion on civ switching?

[Crashdummy]

The problems Saxy points out are real, but none of them as as imapctful as Ages and Civ switching. They are regular problems like the previous Civ games also had, and some of them are also a result of Ages and Civ switching

There is a reason why a lot of people can have fun in Ancient Age but gets bored after, even with all those problems present in Ancient Age too

If Firaxis fixes all of those problems but retain Age transitions and Civ switching, nothing would change and we would see no increase in player numbers

 

[uppi]

I get it that all of this is out the window in 7, where there aren't workers any more. (Around 17:00, he mentions the missing builders and the number of forms of player involvement that eliminates).

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Civ 7 works. Yes, there are no workers anymore, but you are still making choices how you develop your land (well, you should be making them, it is possible to not make them, but then you are playing badly). Instead of deciding whether you want +1 food or +1 production by placing a farm or a mine on it, you make the decision by expanding to the 2 food/1 production tile or the 1 food / 2 production tile. The decision is the same, you just don't have to go through the hassle of producing a worker and walking it over there. And then when placing districts, you have to decide which tiles you sacrifice, effectively deciding which way you develop your tiles. A city where you built over all the potential mine tiles will have very different yields from one where you built over all the potential farm tiles.

 

[King Flevance]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Civ 7 works. Yes, there are no workers anymore, but you are still making choices how you develop your land (well, you should be making them, it is possible to not make them, but then you are playing badly). Instead of deciding whether you want +1 food or +1 production by placing a farm or a mine on it, you make the decision by expanding to the 2 food/1 production tile or the 1 food / 2 production tile. The decision is the same, you just don't have to go through the hassle of producing a worker and walking it over there. And then when placing districts, you have to decide which tiles you sacrifice, effectively deciding which way you develop your tiles. A city where you built over all the potential mine tiles will have very different yields from one where you built over all the potential farm tiles.

Districts have choice but rural improvements do not. You can't build a farm on a tile with a forest. It MUST be a woodcutter tile or a district. A tile MUST be a farm or a district. Or MUST be a mine or a district. You can't choose to remove a forest and farming or plant a forest and gain production. This inflexibility removes options that workers provided.
A problem I also have is I cant opt out of resources. If I dont want another jade resource because my money ptoduction is already insane - and this city would greatly benefit by me expanding my districts over the jade resource, too bad. The game tells you what you WILL build on a tile outside of districts. And districts are like " well, 2 mountains are here, do I want culture or happiness?" So while there is choice in districts, it can be narrow or even sometimes severely limited by the surrounding terrain.

 

[Crashdummy]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Civ 7 works. Yes, there are no workers anymore, but you are still making choices how you develop your land (well, you should be making them, it is possible to not make them, but then you are playing badly). Instead of deciding whether you want +1 food or +1 production by placing a farm or a mine on it, you make the decision by expanding to the 2 food/1 production tile or the 1 food / 2 production tile. The decision is the same, you just don't have to go through the hassle of producing a worker and walking it over there. And then when placing districts, you have to decide which tiles you sacrifice, effectively deciding which way you develop your tiles. A city where you built over all the potential mine tiles will have very different yields from one where you built over all the potential farm tiles.

But you can only make that decision when your population grows. You definitely have less decision power each turn to make, the game is way more streamlined than previous entries

 

[Wrenched]

I think I have reached the same conclusion as Saxy but for slightly different reasons. I think Firaxis probably should lean in on the Ages and Civ switching and try to iterate, improve, and make those design choices more compelling. Might as well try to keep the engaged players interested, because I think that a significant portion of the player-base is not coming back...well anytime soon.

A tacked on "Classic" mode 1+ years out from release probably isn't going to be the panacea everyone wants, there are too many other problems. The consensus of critics has been that 7 is the least challenging Civ game, has the most narrow decision space/most railroaded, the continuation of weakening AI in the OUPT era, uninspired grey UI, the most issues with immersion, and the unreadable unpacking of cities across the entire map. YMMV, just noting what I have observed from critical commentary. I'm doubting that a tacked on Classic mode will overcome the other issues in any meaningful way. Might depend on perspective though such as if Civilization is the only series one plays; those folks have more skin in the game. For those open to playing a variety of strategy games 7 is having trouble making a case for itself at the moment. I'm beginning to think Firaxis should just put most effort into improving the design choices that they already made and connected with a portion of the Civ community. I think a sizeable portion are just not coming back (near future).

~~~
If I was doing old school magazine design layout and Saxy was the featured interview that issue one of the "pull quotes" I would highlight in a large zany font outside of the text body would be:

The 4X in Civilization VII is:
eXplore
neXt turn
neXt turn
neXt turn

Wow.

 

[Krikkit1]

But you can only make that decision when your population grows. You definitely have less decision power each turn to make, the game is way more streamlined than previous entries

However that decision is permanent (or rather is only done twice once when placing and once when building over).. this makes it more strategic (including the decision of where to place the settler in the first place ...a basically permanent one as well)

This means less tactical decision making and more strategic decision making.

 

[Crashdummy]

However that decision is permanent (or rather is only done twice once when placing and once when building over).. this makes it more strategic (including the decision of where to place the settler in the first place ...a basically permanent one as well)

This means less tactical decision making and more strategic decision making.

It doesnt make it more strategic, it has the same strategy component than if you can do it every turn. I feel some people dont have a clue about what strategy means....

In any way, it LOWERS the amount of things you can do each turn, which was the point we were discussing

 

[uppi]

Districts have choice but rural improvements do not. You can't build a farm on a tile with a forest. It MUST be a woodcutter tile or a district. A tile MUST be a farm or a district. Or MUST be a mine or a district. You can't choose to remove a forest and farming or plant a forest and gain production. This inflexibility removes options that workers provided.

Yes, but you are usually not forced to expand to a particular tile. As long as you have vegetated and non-vegetated tiles available the decision is functionally the same. And by choosing where to place your districts you also control which ones you run out of first. For many cities, you can decide how many mines, farms or woodcutters you want to end up it. Yes, there are some more long term consequences attached to those decisions, but I regard that as a good thing.

A problem I also have is I cant opt out of resources. If I dont want another jade resource because my money ptoduction is already insane - and this city would greatly benefit by me expanding my districts over the jade resource, too bad. The game tells you what you WILL build on a tile outside of districts. And districts are like " well, 2 mountains are here, do I want culture or happiness?" So while there is choice in districts, it can be narrow or even sometimes severely limited by the surrounding terrain.

I agree that resources are a bit more inflexible, though I can see why they did that. It does add a hidden component to settlement location though: The question is not only whether something is in range, but also whether you can easily get to it.

Yes, the decision placement of regular buildings is often a bit narrow and I think this could definitely be improved to make the best decision less obvious. Which is why I fret most about placing warehouse buildings. Because their position does not matter directly, their placement matters most.

But you can only make that decision when your population grows. You definitely have less decision power each turn to make, the game is way more streamlined than previous entries

Not really. In previous Civ games, you were also making the decision when your population grows if you were playing optimally. An improvement without population working on it is a waste of resources and a population working an unimproved tile is also not the best. You would just be making 10 clicks instead of two, but the decision was the same.

 

[aieeegrunt]

You are thinking of CTP perhaps?
If there ever is a civ remaster, I'd actually like to have CTP2, but this is probably the least likely.

Ya you are probably right

He has many good points that show that the game's main problems are neither ages, nor civ switching, nor console release. But rather that it has many weaknesses – weaknesses that could be fixed, most importantly!

What I find more concerning: reading through the comments, I got the impression that many there are very vocal about how proud they are of not buying the game. This means, in their eyes, the game now needs to fail, otherwise they can't continue being proud of that decision. That's a concerning stance from my view, but also quite funny because they put themselves into a lose-lose situation.

They have absolutly no reason to buy the game *right now*.

From Saxy Gamer's video, I like his phrase concerning terrain (about the 12:00 mark) "interactions with the map."

I've really only played two games in the series, 3 and 5, and for me, much as I like 5, there was a dropoff between the two on this point. In 3 (as I remember it; it's been a while), you had plains and grasslands. They started with 1food 1prod or 2food, but you could mine (+1prod) or irrigate (+1food) either one. This did mean that you could effectively even out what the terrain provided you, but it also meant that you could make a strategic decision about what you wanted to totality of your terrain ultimately to yield you.

In 5, there's only one kind of thing you can do with each kind of tile. You can only put mines on hills. Moreover, there pretty much is a best order in which to develop tiles, luxes first, strats next, farms next to rivers next, farms elsewhere and mines next. So you're pretty much playing out a program--not much real decision-making.

I get it that all of this is out the window in 7, where there aren't workers any more. (Around 17:00, he mentions the missing builders and the number of forms of player involvement that eliminates).

But my sweet spot would be between 3 and 5, where you had real choice in how you developed a tile. I played 4 a tiny bit and I remember that there you had to do long-term investments. You could start a village that would eventually grow into a town. And you could know what the yields would be at each of those stages. I don't remember it well enough.

Anyway, my ideal civ game would have a good number of opportunities for "interactions with the map." I just wanted to say I liked that phrase.

Honestly 8 should start out with 3 as a base and move forward from there.

3 did a LOT right, the Luxury/Science/Gold slider with Elvis/Scientist/Tax Man specialists is still the best “economic” system Civ has to date.

It’s simple, elegant, impactful and leans *into* the strengths of being on a computer, as opposed to the clunky “Cards” or “trees” or other square board game mechanics shoe horned into the circular computer ecosystem.

Same thing with culture flipping, each pop and tile having a seperate cultural identity that can be impacted. Far more granular and intuitive than the clunky Loyalty system.

Ed Beach is building a car in 2025 with manual drum brakes, manual linkage steering, leaf spring suspension, carbeurator engine with manual timing and gravity fuel feed, hand crank window etc and wondering why it’s failing.

Yeah I think Civ 6 is a game that really leaned in to making players adapt to the map, where your location absolutely influenced the choices you made and what kind of civ you are. I think that was really powerful and a good choice.

So it’s pretty deflating to play Civ 7 and have your location feel almost irrelevant. Ideally your civ would be specially suited to some climates, but right now the effects are so minor as to barely be noticeable.

Engaging with the map like this is why Civ6 is the Civ game I play the most along with 3, despite the economic/government system being flunky card nonsense and the AI being a joke

The sales figures show how powerful a draw it is.

His big point is that all of the forms of "optimization" really have the effect of eliminating meaningful choices by the player.

Around 30:00 (sorry, you're all just having to deal with my running commentary on the video), he points out an important fact about age transitions. Not only are they frustrating at the moment they happen (which I know the devs have tried to mitigate), but they impact your play for multiple turns beforehand: why bother starting a war if you know that, in the course of it, it's going to be stopped, all of your and your opponents' units reset? What most of us Civ-lovers love is precisely the long-range planning that the game involves: "Yes, if I do this now, it will cost me a lot of hammers, but 30 turns from now that will set me up for a massive advance in science." A game dynamic that interferes with such long-term planning really is counter to the spirit of the game.

I have no idea how the hell this wasn’t instantly obvious during playtesting of the game.

It should have been obvious the first time it was whiteboarded

Hey this car has drum brakes, manual steering and leaf suspension. The handling is goint to be complete ass. BUILD IT ANYWAY.

Make a Classic Mode that is essentially all the techs and civs available during an Ancient Age that essentially lasts the whole game and ditch everything else.

That might save you.

 

[Bug Repellent]

This inflexibility removes options that workers provided.

I love workers in Civ6. They bring a lot of strategic benefits and thus depth to the game. Forested tundra tiles could be valuable for their chops, so settling there to rush a wonder, a high adjacency campus, a strategic harbor, etc is great. Then, you can turn the barren tundra into a usable city by planting 2nd gen forests and put a national park on it. Workers are essential to make settling cities in mid game strategically viable. Removing them from Civ7 made Civ7 poorer, in my opinion.

 

[kotpeter]

I love workers in Civ6. They bring a lot of strategic benefits and thus depth to the game. Forested tundra tiles could be valuable for their chops, so settling there to rush a wonder, a high adjacency campus, a strategic harbor, etc is great. Then, you can turn the barren tundra into a usable city by planting 2nd gen forests and put a national park on it. Workers are essential to make settling cities in mid game strategically viable. Removing them from Civ7 made Civ7 poorer, in my opinion.

As a player that tries to minmax and have fun from strategical decisions rather than APM, I loathe workers and unit management in general in Civ 6. It requires you to click and micromanage a lot to develop your empire effectively (i.e. fast) and to wage wars effectively. In Civ 5 you can automate road building, and you don't have to orchestrate your workers every turn.

Civ 7 has a vastly different approach to improvements compared to both 5 and 6. I can't say that I like it much more than Civ 5, but I definitely prefer it over Civ 6.

And warmongering imo is the best in Civ 7, especially for multiplayer.

 

[GeneralZift]

As a player that tries to minmax and have fun from strategical decisions rather than APM, I loathe workers and unit management in general in Civ 6. It requires you to click and micromanage a lot to develop your empire effectively (i.e. fast) and to wage wars effectively. In Civ 5 you can automate road building, and you don't have to orchestrate your workers every turn.

Civ 7 has a vastly different approach to improvements compared to both 5 and 6. I can't say that I like it much more than Civ 5, but I definitely prefer it over Civ 6.

And warmongering imo is the best in Civ 7, especially for multiplayer.

Agree. Didn't like microing Builders. But I like the Workers in general.
Civilian units are fun while they're simple. I don't want to have to manage them like Hero units, with multiple charges, and their own promotions and so on (IE rock bands).

I like them to do just a couple things. For example workers just build and repair. Yes it's a lot of structures but you don't need to apply too much brain bandwidth to them, by focusing on how many charges they might have, and renewing them when they run out.

 

[Haig]

I love workers in Civ6. They bring a lot of strategic benefits and thus depth to the game. Forested tundra tiles could be valuable for their chops, so settling there to rush a wonder, a high adjacency campus, a strategic harbor, etc is great. Then, you can turn the barren tundra into a usable city by planting 2nd gen forests and put a national park on it. Workers are essential to make settling cities in mid game strategically viable. Removing them from Civ7 made Civ7 poorer, in my opinion.

Also you could form a rescue mission to release a captured worker from barbarians, or you could raid them from other civs.

In Civ VI there are also social policies affecting workers etc.

 

[kotpeter]

As a player that tries to minmax and have fun from strategical decisions rather than APM, I loathe workers and unit management in general in Civ 6. It requires you to click and micromanage a lot to develop your empire effectively (i.e. fast) and to wage wars effectively. In Civ 5 you can automate road building, and you don't have to orchestrate your workers every turn.

Civ 7 has a vastly different approach to improvements compared to both 5 and 6. I can't say that I like it much more than Civ 5, but I definitely prefer it over Civ 6.

And warmongering imo is the best in Civ 7, especially for multiplayer.

Speaking of reducing micromanagement, I just created a post in ideas & suggestions with some ideas regarding religion rework in Civ 7. I think the approach that I proposed is closer to what Civ 7 wants to become as a game. I'm looking for feedback, so if it sounds interesting to you, please have a look.

 

[Leucarum]

Districts have choice but rural improvements do not. You can't build a farm on a tile with a forest. It MUST be a woodcutter tile or a district. A tile MUST be a farm or a district. Or MUST be a mine or a district. You can't choose to remove a forest and farming or plant a forest and gain production. This inflexibility removes options that workers provided.

I think there is less choice lost here than you are portraying. There usually was a "best" option to put on a tile, and Civ6 ended up with a swath of deforested tiles if you were playing optimally... I don't miss chopping! I do think they could do more with the tile improvement UIs though if they wanted more flexibility here.

No builders is one of my favourite changes in Civ7, but I'm sure it could be expanded upon.

 

[King Flevance]

But my sweet spot would be between 3 and 5, where you had real choice in how you developed a tile. I played 4 a tiny bit and I remember that there you had to do long-term investments. You could start a village that would eventually grow into a town. And you could know what the yields would be at each of those stages. I don't remember it well enough.

In 4, you had the most tile diversity to customize your yields but there were strategies that could force your hand into "best improvement" for a tile. However hybrid strategies were totally viable. Primarily, cottages vs farms was wide vs. tall respectively. However, windmills, workshops, and lumbermills allowed you to make smaller adjustments for production. You could run an economy either way but farms were needed for either tall gameplay or great people farming.

I think there is less choice lost here than you are portraying. There usually was a "best" option to put on a tile, and Civ6 ended up with a swath of deforested tiles if you were playing optimally... I don't miss chopping! I do think they could do more with the tile improvement UIs though if they wanted more flexibility here.

No builders is one of my favourite changes in Civ7, but I'm sure it could be expanded upon.

If you could choose to pay gold to chop a forest, or pay gold to plant one and wait some turns, this would add more options that make city development more about choice and less about restrictions. I also love the removal of builders but they did not substitute them well. "Usually" a best option does not mean always, and removing the choice does not make the game better. At best, it is akin to "I guess I can make do with that" vs. "I should do this to optimize this city" in a strategy game. I am all for giving the player obstacles to overcome. However, I am opposed to intentionally tying their hands and saying "Do your best" knowing the difficulty is in limited design, not difficult choices.

 

[Pfeffersack]

In 4, you had the most tile diversity to customize your yields but there were strategies that could force your hand into "best improvement" for a tile. However hybrid strategies were totally viable. Primarily, cottages vs farms was wide vs. tall respectively. However, windmills, workshops, and lumbermills allowed you to make smaller adjustments for production. You could run an economy either way but farms were needed for either tall gameplay or great people farming.

I liked Civ4 best in this regard, too. Old World builds on this system and refines it further, adding further considerations: Since both buildings and imporvments consume material resources and precious order to be built, before doing anything one needs to ask, whether something can be afforded and if its worth to be build now. After that, you are in a full mini game of juggling adjacencies and alloacting limited space beetween rural tiles and buildings. And overall, it is hard to find any no-braining strategies here...as almost everything indirectly has some feedback effect. Example: OW distinguishes between the growth speed of a city and its food consumption. My game usually end up with producing too much food. So in my recent game, I put more emphasize on growth - both tall and wide. I suceeded in a kind of snowballing manner, taking a lot of land, having huge cities...the point were you are done in terms of being secure and winning in the usual 4X game. Not so in Old World...suddenly two of my three ruling families become more and more discontent. Up to point of every turn some rebels popping up here and there. But why? Not because of an artifical crise mechnic. No, I just underestimated the costs and burden of many big cities. Citizen in Old World expect to become specialists or add unhappiness (and that makes the connect families angry...) and extra maintenance. I neglected that part due do a shortage of orders, civic and stone. Because I invested everything into my snowball. I managed to fix things in the end, but only after radically making a shift. I needed to stop a war against a weaker opponent, as I just couldn't effort to continue it with full dedication (which is equal to losing the fight on OW anyway, as even weaker AIs know exactly how the do guerilla warfare) while pouring all resources into stabilizing my realms society and economy.

I know that not everyone does like that level of detail and challenge (which is fine), but everytime I switch between playing Civ and OW it is kind of a culture shock. In both directions...either I need to cope with what is suddenly all missing (OW ---> Civ)...or I start with some inevitable extra mistakes due to having forgotten that there is the game where every decision has consequences (Civ--->OW).

For Civ7 I don't mind having lost the builders, as that took at least a major MM factor out of system being too simple anyway. If I have to command individual workers (and in case of religions, missionaries), then I also wish that they have fairly complex minigame. Civ7 strangely was consequent with builders, but not with missionaries. I'm curios how the will fix the latter in the announced religion improvements.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I have no idea how the hell this wasn’t instantly obvious during playtesting of the game.

It should have been obvious the first time it was whiteboarded

Hey this car has drum brakes, manual steering and leaf suspension. The handling is goint to be complete ass. BUILD IT ANYWAY.

Make a Classic Mode that is essentially all the techs and civs available during an Ancient Age that essentially lasts the whole game and ditch everything else.

That might save you.

And there is a game out there that also has age transitions (Ara History Untold) where this isn't a problem at all.

And you know why that is? because you as a player are allowed to play the 'next' age in the previous one if you're ahead in tech. The game continues linearly and the age transitions only serve to eliminate the 'least impactful' AI civs. That transition system works because it doesn't mess with the progression of the campaign itself.

If Civ7's transitions worked similarly (them being the point where your Civ gains more powers, while your previous uniques become obselete), while everything else continued, they wouldn't be an issue for many players.

the more you play games with similar mechanics, the more you understand that Civ7's approach of 'three games in one' is a huge, huge mistake.