Will Civ7 be a diamond?

[Thormodr]

My expectations for Civ 7 are somewhat reduced by the trajectory of Civ 6. It seemed so promising at first, but as the expansions came, I didn't think they improved the game the way Civ 5's expansions did. Quite the opposite, in many ways they made the game worse. If they continue the philosophy of tossing in more and more loosely connected content (which I understand, makes them money), rather than refining what is there, I worry that Civ 7 will not be to my liking.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

Civilization 5 had a disastrous launch and its lead designer resigned in disgrace. It had nowhere to go but up.

Civ VI, in contrast, had a pretty decent launch, all things considered.

We'll see what Civ VII has to offer.

 

[KayAU]

@AntSou @Thormodr
I agree Civ 6 had a good launch, and I know a lot of people didn't like Civ 5 at its launch. Some complaints I may agree with, but some, like not having features which were in the then 5 years old and twice expanded Civ 4, I did not. It may have been barebones, but it still brought some significant developments to the table. It was the first Civ to move to hexagonal tiles, for example. It introduced city states, it had much greater variety between civs, and handled resources in a much more interesting way than previous games. I understand that people missed things like religion, but I'd rather start with a smaller core, and add systems which are well integrated with the rest of the game, than have a myriad loosely attached and often poorly implemented features.

As an example of what I am talking about, take the World Congress, a feature I was looking forward to:
- You can generally not influence what is voted on....instead it's drawn randomly, severely limiting any possibility to make strategies around the World Congress.
- You can not be sure what you yourself are voting on, because they separated the resolution type from the resolution from the target of the resolution. I think this is next-level silly. You could very well end up voting against yourself.
- The resolutions themselves are a mixed bag at best
- It is not at all integrated with general diplomacy. In Civ 5, your actions in the World Congress will influence how other leaders see you. They'll be grateful if you support their resolutions, angry if you propose something which goes against their interests. You can ask them to support or vote against resolutions. In Civ 6 however, general diplomacy and World Congress are entirely separated, and the AI will have no concept of your actions there being helpful or harmful to them.
This is how it was released, and it is how it still is to this day. Systems in Civ 6 will generally not be changed once they are released, and the priority seems to be getting out more content instead. It is not hard to see why, as new content is something you can sell.

 

[Bibor]

For all the speculation, it seems to me that some things are absolutely unavoidable if it's to have the Civ branding:

- It will be turn-based (been there in every version since Civ 1)
- It will have named civilisations and leaders (ditto)
- It will have science (ditto)
- It will have happiness (ditto)
- It will have cities (ditto)
- It will have military units (ditto)
- It will have wonders (ditto)
- It will have workers to develop the land, and scouts to explore it (ditto)
- It will have difficulty levels (ditto)
- the AI will be stupid, and rely on cheating (ditto)

What made Sid games stand out then (1990s) was the cartoonish simplicity of execution (graphical and mechanical representation), but of important historical concepts to understand and learn. Concepts perhaps simplified and presented in a fun way, but on point.

Lets take just the very first of it's breakthrough concepts: the unknown.

A settler, a tiny patch of green land, some blue (be it a river, or body of water) and lots and lots of BLACK. Your whole screen is black. Except for the tiny speck of colour in the middle. This blackness has a huge psychological effect. Your first urge is to remove the darkness, to explore the unknown, to know more, to see where you are in the world. Is there anything else out there?

What you can do and should do, with modern technology, is to add onto this concept. Imagine if you suddenly saw a huge storm in that blackness, a storm that occasionally reveals, for brief moments, lands in the distance. Perhaps it reveals a village, or an unnatural feature. You send your braves in that direction, they reveal just the path behind them, but you send them into this black. They suffer animal attacks, growls can be heard in the distance. And then they reach a chasm. A dead end. They need to either turn back or change course. But they are running low on supplies, so you need to either make them the forage, or return to camp.

You can't just turn this black into white, like they did in civ5 and 6, and make units YOLO their way around the map, discovering a billion hexes every turn, because that already breaks one of the core tenets of the Civilization franchise: the beauty, dangers and necessity of exploration.

So... no. I'm not sold on the idea that recent Civilization designers "nailed" the core principles of the franchise and what made it great.

 

[AntSou]

I don't think turning the unexplored territory from black into white makes any difference at all. However, your post made me realise I never put much thought into early exploration. It's always been just "grab a unit and move around". There's barely any real danger.

But what if scouting parties worked differently? Maybe a bit more like traders or builders, or a mix of both? What if exploration was a different sort of investment? Right now the only opportunity cost to exploration is time. You can go both east and west, or north and south. Not going a direction just means you're leaving that area for later.

1. What if you couldn't control scouting parties as tightly as you can now, just send them in a general direction, with events occurring along the way, and revealing tiles would require the safe return of the scouting party? So the longer you commit, the greater return on investment from successful exploration, but also the greater danger your scouting party might be lost.

2. This points doesn't require the point above to work: military units would also be able to traverse terra incognita, but every unknown tile would cost all movement, and maybe even a bit of health. So Scouts would be fundamental, and you couldn't just reveal terrain with Great People like you can now. Maybe that could be an ability for Great Admirals, increasing their use considerably, at least for a few eras.

2.b. You could then require a specific type of more advanced explorer unit to traverse terrain in different biomes from the one your capital is set in.

 

[Thormodr]

They need wild animals back in the early game like in Civ IV.

 

[KayAU]

Early scouting and exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of most 4Xs, and I would love to see the concept expanded upon. Looking at how some other games have done things:

Civ 5 Vox Populi
Standard Civ-style exploration, but the recon class has been given an excellent promotion tree which makes these units essential in the early game, as they are just so much better suited for exploration. They earn experience for uncovering tiles.
Stellaris
The exploration phase lasts through much of the game, due to the sheer size of the game world, and the fact that you need science ships to survey possible habitable worlds and research anomalies.
Beyond Earth
This also features an extended exploration phase. "Goody huts" can only be taken by Explorers, and these need to return to cities to resupply after completing a set number of expeditions. Expeditions can yield artifacts, which can give you either quick resource boosts, powerful permanent effects, or access to special buildings and wonders.
Civ4 Colonization
I didn't like this game, but there was one thing I found interesting about exploration: it would get you exploration points, which would then give you exploration founding fathers with powerful bonuses. Unfortunately, this was horribly cheapened by the designers' decision to copy-and-paste Civ 4's mechanism for converting production to any other yield, meaning the easiest way to earn exploration points was by staying at home and using carpenters. Oh well. A poor implementation, but I did like the fundamental idea of having a reward system/bonus tree for exploration.

 

[Foufa131]

Honestly, the only thing that I really want for CIV VII, is the possibility for AI to conquer each other again. (and by that I mean at least half of the continent, not just 1 city).

 

[Bibor]

Honestly, the only thing that I really want for CIV VII, is the possibility for AI to conquer each other again. (and by that I mean at least half of the continent, not just 1 city).

To expand on that – i'd like every player on the map (AI or otherwise) to be able to lose the game. Not just to each other, but to the world itself.

 

[Nikolai II]

To expand on that – i'd like every player on the map (AI or otherwise) to be able to lose the game. Not just to each other, but to the world itself.

I remember first time I played Civ1. Sent my warrior out scouting. Lost the game as a barb unit found my unprotected city.

 

[uhu]

I remember first time I played Civ1. Sent my warrior out scouting. Lost the game as a barb unit found my unprotected city.

Yep! Civ1 was really cruel ... after several lost games due to being outperformed science-wise I was ready for my first domination victory ... I thought ... but the game denied it to me ...
I had destroyed / captured all foreign cities I found ... after the satellites tech the proof: no more cities ...

... still I had to find and destroy the last lonely settler wandering endlessly at the arctic edge of the world.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

To expand on that – i'd like every player on the map (AI or otherwise) to be able to lose the game. Not just to each other, but to the world itself.

So natural disasters?
I did see one video where someone moved their settler on turn one and then a major flood happened, so they lost.

 

[Leucarum]

Stellaris
The exploration phase lasts through much of the game, due to the sheer size of the game world, and the fact that you need science ships to survey possible habitable worlds and research anomalies.

The exploration component of Stellaris is hands down my favourite element. The game starts to wane for me as that part winds down... It does seem like it would be tough to incorporate into Civ though

 

[KayAU]

The exploration component of Stellaris is hands down my favourite element. The game starts to wane for me as that part winds down... It does seem like it would be tough to incorporate into Civ though

The very late game can be fun too, when you get things like titans and colossal ships, and especially when the end-game crisis kicks in.


Yeah,I don't think you could do it the same way in civ. BE had it's Explorer units and Expedition Sites, which are somewhat similar to Science ships and Anomalies. It might be possible to do a more down-to-earth version of this in Civ, although these things may just lend themselves more to sci-fi or fantasy settings.

 

[Bibor]

The exploration component of Stellaris is hands down my favourite element. The game starts to wane for me as that part winds down... It does seem like it would be tough to incorporate into Civ though

You only need to shift the axis from horizontal to vertical. Space, deep sea, mineral deposits, liquid (water, natural gas, oil) deposits etc. Exploration can also mean a more detailed look at what you thought you already know.

Which is also probably the reason why Civ6 gets so boring after T100. Everything is as-is, with the possible exception of railroads, tunnels and an occasional "resouce reveal". Build an aqueduct once, it serves the same function, with same effect, until the next ice age. Not exactly ideal.

 

[Horizons]

The way forward is creating lots of game modes. Dungeons and dragons; vampires and zombies; a Fortnite mode, or Roblox, or whatever it is these days with lots of rainbow colours and inclusivity. Narrative is important so anything controversial should not exist in the game (e.g. slavery, which was a constant of all ancient civilization and thrived well into the renaissance) or anything else that is mean or unpleasant. Tobacco should not be a resource because it might encourage kids to vape (sugar also, because it is very unhealthy). It should be an online service and all cutomizations and add-ons should be monetizied up the gills. As much as possible, any kind of deep thought should be discouraged and the AI made nice and cheesy so content creators can give Deity-beating strats that revolve around deficiencies in the game play. The late game should revolve entirely around the themes of climate change, equity and diversity. To that end, a new way to win the game - 100% DEI compliance - should be introduced and war discouraged to the point of making it virtually impossible to play the game if you declare war too much (after all, the world has been a global community from day one - like in Civ6).

And above all else, puts layers upon layers upon layers and introduce wonderful things like rock bands. Let's have more in that vein. Abstract the entire late game war into GDRs and other such because the entire focus should be on combating climate change.

 

[pokiehl]

The way forward is creating lots of game modes. Dungeons and dragons; vampires and zombies; a Fortnite mode, or Roblox, or whatever it is these days with lots of rainbow colours and inclusivity. Narrative is important so anything controversial should not exist in the game (e.g. slavery, which was a constant of all ancient civilization and thrived well into the renaissance) or anything else that is mean or unpleasant. Tobacco should not be a resource because it might encourage kids to vape (sugar also, because it is very unhealthy). It should be an online service and all cutomizations and add-ons should be monetizied up the gills. As much as possible, any kind of deep thought should be discouraged and the AI made nice and cheesy so content creators can give Deity-beating strats that revolve around deficiencies in the game play. The late game should revolve entirely around the themes of climate change, equity and diversity. To that end, a new way to win the game - 100% DEI compliance - should be introduced and war discouraged to the point of making it virtually impossible to play the game if you declare war too much (after all, the world has been a global community from day one - like in Civ6).

And above all else, puts layers upon layers upon layers and introduce wonderful things like rock bands. Let's have more in that vein.

I bet you'd be able to grind that axe of yours a lot more efficiently if you call a specialist. Some of them only charge $5 or so an edge!

 

[Nikolai II]

The way forward is creating lots of game modes. Dungeons and dragons; vampires and zombies; a Fortnite mode, or Roblox, or whatever it is these days with lots of rainbow colours and inclusivity. Narrative is important so anything controversial should not exist in the game (e.g. slavery, which was a constant of all ancient civilization and thrived well into the renaissance) or anything else that is mean or unpleasant. Tobacco should not be a resource because it might encourage kids to vape (sugar also, because it is very unhealthy). It should be an online service and all cutomizations and add-ons should be monetizied up the gills. As much as possible, any kind of deep thought should be discouraged and the AI made nice and cheesy so content creators can give Deity-beating strats that revolve around deficiencies in the game play. The late game should revolve entirely around the themes of climate change, equity and diversity. To that end, a new way to win the game - 100% DEI compliance - should be introduced and war discouraged to the point of making it virtually impossible to play the game if you declare war too much (after all, the world has been a global community from day one - like in Civ6).

And above all else, puts layers upon layers upon layers and introduce wonderful things like rock bands. Let's have more in that vein. Abstract the entire late game war into GDRs and other such because the entire focus should be on combating climate change.

Please. No.