Why do the civ designers HIDE so many mechanisms?

Dearmad

Dearmad

Dead weight
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Aug 18, 2001
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Diplomacy mod.
Era modifier to unit strengths
Religious interactions.
Slow price creep of items.

and on and on...

Why are these mechanisms of the game made so f'ing obscure!? I play a lot of board games and in them all of the mechanisms are obvious, clear, public knowledge. The games are FUN. Including solo games where there is a straightforward mechanism that guides the challenge along.

So why are the Civ designers so afraid of being transparent in their game's design so that we can enjoy playing it and knowing what we are doing!? It is good game design....
 
I don't think they are being deliberately obscure. (Most of the time)
I think they just are really bad at documenting what their game does (because sometimes what they do reveal is wrong, and its often misleading)
 
About the diplomacy modifier, I think it was uncovered some time ago that the sum of all the modifiers (after adding and subtracting all the numbers) is the number that shows your relation with a civ will change, every turn. In a way, the information isn't obscured at all, but we just had the wrong idea on how to interpret it.

Basically, the longer you have pissed off another civ, the longer it takes to recover even with all the positive modifiers. I managed to recover with Cleopatra from my game by making sure the sum of the numbers is positive. Took me about 30 turns until we were allied.

For the rest, I agree that the information could be clearer.
 
TruthfulCake said:
About the diplomacy modifier, I think it was uncovered some time ago that the sum of all the modifiers (after adding and subtracting all the numbers) is the number that shows your relation with a civ will change, every turn. In a way, the information isn't obscured at all, but we just had the wrong idea on how to interpret it.

Basically, the longer you have pissed off another civ, the longer it takes to recover even with all the positive modifiers. I managed to recover with Cleopatra from my game by making sure the sum of the numbers is positive. Took me about 30 turns until we were allied.

For the rest, I agree that the information could be clearer.
Click to expand...
How to interpret the game information is a key bit of information.

Also this is a problem civ has always had.... I remember finding the pollution formula for Civ1 on the early internet... it certainly wasn't available in the game.
 
KrikkitTwo said:
How to interpret the game information is a key bit of information.

Also this is a problem civ has always had.... I remember finding the pollution formula for Civ1 on the early internet... it certainly wasn't available in the game.
Click to expand...

Not that I disagree, but for the diplomacy modifiers in particular, there is not much I imagine they would change without cluttering the interface. The most intuitive and concise way is probably to add numbers to the relationship bar, and every turn a player can compare how much their relationship increased/decreased with another civ. Kind of like the city state relationship bar in CiV.
 
TruthfulCake said:
Not that I disagree, but for the diplomacy modifiers in particular, there is not much I imagine they would change without cluttering the interface. The most intuitive and concise way is probably to add numbers to the relationship bar, and every turn a player can compare how much their relationship increased/decreased with another civ. Kind of like the city state relationship bar in CiV.
Click to expand...

The issue is that "clutter information" should be made available in the civilopedia (for people who want the exact formulas/mechanisms so they know what the UI actually means)
 
KrikkitTwo said:
The issue is that "clutter information" should be made available in the civilopedia (for people who want the exact formulas/mechanisms so they know what the UI actually means)
Click to expand...
Oh, there's no disputing that the Civilopedia needs much work. Personally, I would not like to check Civilopedia every other turn to get info. Which is why I think of how to improve tooltips and such in an intuitive and concise manner. The default tooltips in Civ generally offer too little, while in CiV EUI they tend to offer a little too much.

But yes, improve Civilopedia to offer complete information, and improve tooltips to a certain extent. Actually aiming for EUI levels of information seems like a good start, although it may not always be clean.
 
I completely agree with OP. The comparison with a board game manual is perfect because there you know all the rules and especially the winning conditions. So you spend most of your time figuring out your strategy and actually having fun. The manual is also a big topic in terms of reviewing board games yet seems like in video games like civ it is considered OK to leave many of the rules out.

My experience with civ 6 has been greatly hindered by not fully knowing what is going on. I am not a min/max player nor would I want to play that way, but a general idea of what to expect should be made clear to the player. I know there's a whole thread about it but the cultural victory is probably the worst thing in the game now in terms of figuring out what's going on.

Also knowing that there are some really bad bugs or exploits, documentation becomes even more important so we can know whether something is happening by design or is a bug that needs fixing.

It's a good time to thank everyone here for all their hard work to figure the game out!
 
There's actually an extensive user manual that comes with the game, you can view it via Steam(right-click the game) and it has more information than the Civilopedia.

Problem is... it's also full of even more misinformation, and terrible grammar and spelling mistakes, not to mention absurd problems like the same information repeating over and over.

The Civilopedia itself is also clearly written by someone with a less-than-ideal grasp of the English language. Those historical context paragraphs are pretty embarrassing sometimes.

Shame on Firaxis for not quality checking their product.
 
I agree, in my last game saw I an "under siege" icon on some cities I was attacking. Why doesn't this explain what it does when I hover over it with my mouse? Why is their no "under siege" entity in the civilopedia?
 
idjit said:
I was wondering about this myself. Let me know if you ever find out lol
Click to expand...

It would be nice if this was in the game somewhere. It _might_ be under a different heading in the Civiliopedia, kinda like what does it mean to be Allied with an AI isn't found under "alliance" (finds nothing) but under "diplomatic relations" or something like that. Makes sense once you know it, but not always obvious that you should search for that to find alliances.

Anyway. A city under siege, as explained in the preview videos from the Civ6 devs (in case you or anyone else reading this thread is unaware) :

  • When all of a city's adjacent hexagons are under zone of control of enemy units, the city is under siege.
  • So without a river, 2 non-ranged units (or ranged units with the promotion that lets them exert ZOC) at opposite sides of the city will put it under siege.
  • Since rivers prevent ZOC, if there's a river around the city you need more units to exert ZOC on all sides of the river.
  • Once a city is under siege, it does not heal up in between turns. So it's easier/faster to damage and take it.
 
Things that may or may not be hidden:

When I want to move a unit, is there a way to tell how turns it will take to reach a destination (hopefully, before I click)?

If I select a unit that is in the middle of a multi-turn move, can I tell where his destination tile is?

Is there a way to tell where and when a city will claim a tile through culture expansion?
 
Last edited:
Takfloyd said:
There's actually an extensive user manual that comes with the game, you can view it via Steam(right-click the game) and it has more information than the Civilopedia.

Problem is... it's also full of even more misinformation, and terrible grammar and spelling mistakes, not to mention absurd problems like the same information repeating over and over.

The Civilopedia itself is also clearly written by someone with a less-than-ideal grasp of the English language. Those historical context paragraphs are pretty embarrassing sometimes.

Shame on Firaxis for not quality checking their product.
Click to expand...
"there are issues with the product" !== "the product didn't go through QA"

I fully support these things getting fixed (and an actual benefit of digital media is that they can be), but let's not throw around declarations of shame when your post fails at very basic logical correlations.
 
My guess is that a lot of the game was balanced up until release, and the more precise the manual and civilopedia was, the more it would be obsolete when the game ships or at least after a patch or two.

What would be great was if they decided to update the civilopedia when the game gets its first major patch. And preferably add hyperlinks.
 
the biggest ones, and honestly the only ones that annoy me, are the lack of any info on cultural growth of cities, and on the modifiers to city production on the specific item it is building or it will build. To the point that when you are chosing an item to produce you see a certain of turns needed to complete it, but after actually starting it, you see the real one...... that's really poor design, sub par compared to Civilization franchise.
 
So many things... "Last built" item in cities actually show second to last. No explanation that diplomacy values mean change over time and not current value. No info on border growth. Interface not updating values during turns but only in between. Build list showing one build time and city screen another. Cant preview wonders and districts unless you have one tile where you can build it already. No info on current trade deals. No preview info on effects of civic swaps. The list really does go on and on.
I love the game but it is extremely un polished and not what i expect from a AAA game 2016.
Not exactly "early access" level either but this release seems like it would be perfect for preview copies back in july... The basic game and systems are There but lots of polishing and details left, including AI improvements. Not for release version...
 
Imho the makers don't want you to micro-manage but play with an overall view of the game.
 
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