I do not like the design mindset the Civ series chose with Civ5, which Civ6 and Civ7 are only a continuation and iteration of. My main issue with Civ5 is that it recentered its design touchstone on hex based war games like Panzer General and the like, which turned it from a representation of the world that incorrectly has units moving on it like it's a battlefield into a representation of a battlefield that incorrectly has cities and nations on it like a world map.
The most direct way this expresses itself is the idea of "unstacking" which they first executed on with units in Civ5 and then expanded to cities in Civ6. I find that whole approach misguided - in my opinion it was never really a problem that units were "stacked", only that some rules of the combat system as implemented in Civ4 made unit stacks powerful under certain conditions (if you ever look at how multiplayer Civ4 is played it is not that people steamroll each other with huge stacks) but somehow it has taken for granted in the community that stacks are inherently bad, and that idea worked itself into the design staff unquestioned.
My main problem with this is that executing on the unstacking idea inherently makes the game world feel small. The number of tiles on the map has not increased, but now everything is crowded with city tiles and units to the point where you sometimes struggle where to put them. That's just not a vision of the world and of history that I find very appealing or compelling. It does not feel true as a representation of history.
I am not emotionally invested in stacking either, but it bothers me that "unstacking" is seen as an obvious improvement because "stacking" is unquestioningly taken for granted as an obvious problem. This leads to negative effects of unstacking such as small cramped worlds filled with "carpets of doom" not being addressed or even acknowledged because they are seen as the price you have to pay to "solve the problem" of stacking. We have maneuvered ourselves into such a strange discourse. Does anyone know that other video games exist that have solved this problem on the same scale?
And what is even more frustrating is that the commercial success of Civ5 (which in my view has little to do with its design and more with the name recognition and being the first Civ game to be released on Steam in an era where a Steam release was a guaranteed success) led to its design principles becoming the default for other 4X games, which is why you see unstacking in Humankind and Old World as well. It is frustrating that it's impossible to escape bad designs from a mainstream series when even its competitors ape it. I wish these games provided an actual alternative rather than being a copy with some variation. I don't mean to be unkind to Old World, which has some really good ideas in it, but it's just a waste that its starting point still was "what if Civ5 with X".
Maybe this is what you need to do in the 4X genre, which seems less and less like a genre now and more just one game: Civilization. The rest of the genre only seems to exist by virtue of being basically Civilization with some minor mechanical differences, or via a variation on the setting. No wonder the "genre" is shrinking and the audience it originally captured has moved away to grand strategy games e.g. of the Paradox variety. All that's left is an increasingly conservative old guard who just wants to play the same thing over again without any of the familiar conventions being questioned and overturned.
You can see that in some game design choices that have been made since Civ5 that mostly seem to be geared towards turning the game more into a Skinner box. There is a difference between the original meaning of "one more turn" that was all about having multiple interlocking, mutually supportive goals that you could advance on different time scales (I need to conquer the Aztecs but for that I need gunpowder but for that I need research and for that I to grow my cities but for that I need happiness but for that I need to capture that silver resource etc.) and just cramming more and more mechanics into the game that only seem to exist to give you something to do and a little reward every turn (e.g. eureka events and city state interactions and collecting works of art). When I am being rude to modern Civ and call it a Facebook game this is what I mean. Artificial induced engagement rather than organic engagement that comes from interacting with complex game system. It's unsurprising that people turn to Paradox games to deliver them the latter because Firaxis has given up on doing so.
I mean that, and some really baffling choices in graphic and UI design that make the game look flat and simplistic and actually like it could run in a browser window. It's a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things but also so baffling considering that they have the resources to do better. Does anyone remember when someone figured out that all tech buttons for Civ5 were just downloaded images from the internet with minor touch ups? How.
I used to think that the 4X genre needs a revolutionary game from outside the Civ series to challenge a lot of its entrenched assumptions, but at this point I am not sure. I do not think you can make such a game and still be in the 4X genre because the genre IS the Civ series.
The most direct way this expresses itself is the idea of "unstacking" which they first executed on with units in Civ5 and then expanded to cities in Civ6. I find that whole approach misguided - in my opinion it was never really a problem that units were "stacked", only that some rules of the combat system as implemented in Civ4 made unit stacks powerful under certain conditions (if you ever look at how multiplayer Civ4 is played it is not that people steamroll each other with huge stacks) but somehow it has taken for granted in the community that stacks are inherently bad, and that idea worked itself into the design staff unquestioned.
My main problem with this is that executing on the unstacking idea inherently makes the game world feel small. The number of tiles on the map has not increased, but now everything is crowded with city tiles and units to the point where you sometimes struggle where to put them. That's just not a vision of the world and of history that I find very appealing or compelling. It does not feel true as a representation of history.
I am not emotionally invested in stacking either, but it bothers me that "unstacking" is seen as an obvious improvement because "stacking" is unquestioningly taken for granted as an obvious problem. This leads to negative effects of unstacking such as small cramped worlds filled with "carpets of doom" not being addressed or even acknowledged because they are seen as the price you have to pay to "solve the problem" of stacking. We have maneuvered ourselves into such a strange discourse. Does anyone know that other video games exist that have solved this problem on the same scale?
And what is even more frustrating is that the commercial success of Civ5 (which in my view has little to do with its design and more with the name recognition and being the first Civ game to be released on Steam in an era where a Steam release was a guaranteed success) led to its design principles becoming the default for other 4X games, which is why you see unstacking in Humankind and Old World as well. It is frustrating that it's impossible to escape bad designs from a mainstream series when even its competitors ape it. I wish these games provided an actual alternative rather than being a copy with some variation. I don't mean to be unkind to Old World, which has some really good ideas in it, but it's just a waste that its starting point still was "what if Civ5 with X".
Maybe this is what you need to do in the 4X genre, which seems less and less like a genre now and more just one game: Civilization. The rest of the genre only seems to exist by virtue of being basically Civilization with some minor mechanical differences, or via a variation on the setting. No wonder the "genre" is shrinking and the audience it originally captured has moved away to grand strategy games e.g. of the Paradox variety. All that's left is an increasingly conservative old guard who just wants to play the same thing over again without any of the familiar conventions being questioned and overturned.
You can see that in some game design choices that have been made since Civ5 that mostly seem to be geared towards turning the game more into a Skinner box. There is a difference between the original meaning of "one more turn" that was all about having multiple interlocking, mutually supportive goals that you could advance on different time scales (I need to conquer the Aztecs but for that I need gunpowder but for that I need research and for that I to grow my cities but for that I need happiness but for that I need to capture that silver resource etc.) and just cramming more and more mechanics into the game that only seem to exist to give you something to do and a little reward every turn (e.g. eureka events and city state interactions and collecting works of art). When I am being rude to modern Civ and call it a Facebook game this is what I mean. Artificial induced engagement rather than organic engagement that comes from interacting with complex game system. It's unsurprising that people turn to Paradox games to deliver them the latter because Firaxis has given up on doing so.
I mean that, and some really baffling choices in graphic and UI design that make the game look flat and simplistic and actually like it could run in a browser window. It's a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things but also so baffling considering that they have the resources to do better. Does anyone remember when someone figured out that all tech buttons for Civ5 were just downloaded images from the internet with minor touch ups? How.
I used to think that the 4X genre needs a revolutionary game from outside the Civ series to challenge a lot of its entrenched assumptions, but at this point I am not sure. I do not think you can make such a game and still be in the 4X genre because the genre IS the Civ series.
