Civilization VII - coming February 11th

[whydoibother]

Who the fuck are even the Serbs or the Romanians and where do you put them? No correct answer, always many offended.

Old Great Bulgaria -> Bulgarian Tsardom -> Bulgaria/Romania/Serbia.

At start of game, pick a civilization. Those are BIG C civilizations, not modern nations.
You have a few turns to explore your land, and when you finish building your very first building, always Monument, you can pick 1 ancient leader of the ones available to your civilization. Having seen your land a bit, you can make a somewhat educated pick as to what you'd be doing early.
When you advance into the next era, you see a list of leaders available to your civilization, maybe currated by some accomplishment (need to have conquered a city to see Attila, need to have founded a religion to see Constantine, etc).
Also some leaders can appear to multiple civilizations:

• Pick Euroasian Steppes -> enter middle ages -> offered to pick Simeon of Bulgaria
• Pick Greco-Roman -> enter middle ages -> offered to pick Simeon of Bulgaria
• Pick Slavs-> enter middle ages -> offered to pick Simeon of Bulgaria

So you can have more niche cultures, that don't encompass enough time to be represented by a civilization, still have representation in one given era by their famous leader.
This way you can have a game with no Serbia, because who the fuck cares about Serbia, but you can still pick Tito if you started as the Slavs or the Greco-Romans or wherever you'd put Tito. Tito leader ability: during this era, don't accumulate debt; next era, go bankrupt.

 

[ropetight]

Picking a new civilization each era is a very basic mechanic, and not multicultural approach. Abstract everything away, make it so you are just moving pawns and there's numerical values. At the end of an era going from the military numbers to the economic numbers to consilidate is something that makes sense as an option. Like a skill respec in some RPG. Its also a common historical trope, from conquerors to administrators to enjoying the fine life too much, is how most empires are presented to us by writers. Yet with the static model, your civ either starts as "cultural" or stays "conquerors" all game, you can't pick new character trait to fit your new situation. Its obvious and common sense to try to add it, which Civ games tried before with the civics cards systems, with ideology, etc, allowing the player to pivot their game a bit.
With how pernament districts are, the Civ6 model absolutely needed some way to switch things around if you notice there's another 3 heavy religious civs in the game and your plan clearly won't work, or if you have such good land that aggressive expansion doesn't make sense and your leader abilities seem wasted.
Its not multiculti Soros whatever, that's marketing speak. Its necessary game design.

Necessary game design?
It is neccessary only in a way in which yearly Madden, Fifa of NBA2K are neccessary - to sell you "novelty".

"Borrowing" districts from Endless Legend was a mistake - made the game sluggish and too vertical building oriented.
And now to fix it, they "borrow" another gameplay mechanic from another Amplitude game.
That will surely work great.

Good luck making any kind of AI to work with this without being even stupider than it already was in previous Civs.
Maybe instead of lifting mehcanics from unsuccessful games, like true genre innovators, they could made AI which isn't retarded.
Now that is what I would call neccessary - making your game not suck.

 

[ropetight]

Tito leader ability: during this era, don't accumulate debt

Now this is a comedy, probably unintentional, but still.

 

[whydoibother]

Tito leader ability: during this era, don't accumulate debt

Now this is a comedy, probably unintentional, but still.

Debt is not real if you die before having to pay it.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Civilization switching is not a mechanically but ideologically motivated design decision. Maybe you were playing as Vikings, and you were Swedish later, but who can't say in the next age all the Swedes won't turn into Somalis? Maybe all Americans will turn into Zulus led by George Floyd himself? Of course, this is apparent bullshit, because civilizations show persistent continuity (first example that comes to my head, the Sicilian dialect of Italian still shows huge Greek influences even though Magna Graecia stopped being a thing over 2,200 years ago). But that's real life. According to the ruling ideology men can become women, niggers can become scholars, and Swedes can become Somalis. So you will play as "Harriet Tubman" or some other humanoid ape, chud.

This was Humankind's premise and it was a shit game.

 

[Zeriel]

Pretty sure that the reception of the civ swapping mechanic in Humankind was generally negative tho. Dumb decision to copy it.

It was negative, but maybe they think they can make it better. The biggest problem in Humankind was the lack of continuity. I think this sort of system can work if the civilizations are something like "the slavs" or "the latins" and you can pick an era appropriate leader from that culture. Going from mythical Arthur to William the Conqueror to Queen Victoria to president Delano Roosevelt has meaningful enough continuity, even if its a celt, a norseman, a german and a colonial dutchman.

The point is that long running series are too big to radically change and experiment, so what they do is they steal mechanics from their move innovative competitors. Not dissimilar to big companies buying out the competition. To assume its ideologically motivated, when its a long running and easily observable pattern of market behavior, is silly.

As the other guy said though... copying a bad mechanic seems kind of stupid. Especially when your game is bigger and more successful. I just don't see how this works out to Civ's benefit: but then making bad choices and watering down Civ's appeal seems to be the path they've gone since Civ 5 -> 6 changeover. They are really trying their best to run it into the ground, just like they destroyed XCOM after rebirthing it as a franchise.

 

[deuxhero]

It is safe to say that we all here agree that those who will play CivVII deserve harriet tubman as a leader of american civilization.

Still better than Kamala, to be fair.

At this rate it feels like only a matter of time before video games are outright political propaganda with "VOTE today!" messaging and advertisements in the big franchises. They are already giving off immense "how do you do, fellow kids" vibes with everything in this game.

Try "sixteen years ago". Obama campaign was advertising in video games in 2008. It was when the shit publishers were experimenting with in-game ads for real stuff in retail releases.
https://archive.ph/wip/s8n8f

Harris campaign had a really big spend for custom Fortnite assets last month.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-h...lking-to-other-players-and-no-custom-building

 

[whydoibother]

As the other guy said though... copying a bad mechanic seems kind of stupid. Especially when your game is bigger and more successful. I just don't see how this works out to Civ's benefit: but then making bad choices and watering down Civ's appeal seems to be the path they've gone since Civ 5 -> 6 changeover. They are really trying their best to run it into the ground, just like they destroyed XCOM after rebirthing it as a franchise.

Cool manifesto, but Civ6 sold more than Civ5, and especially much more if you consider how much further it was monetized, despite taking the bad district mechanic from the lesser Endless Legends game.
Why wouldn't they learn the lesson that doing this is a good idea?

 

[flyingjohn]

Having no barbs( confirmed ) is just gonna make the player forward settle everybody and leaving the weak AI with one city to easily kill.
I don't know what they were thinking with this one, barba are the only real thing that kinda stopped players from just steamrolling the AI too early.
And no, civ 6 loyalty did not stop stop this whatsoever.

 

[Zeriel]

As the other guy said though... copying a bad mechanic seems kind of stupid. Especially when your game is bigger and more successful. I just don't see how this works out to Civ's benefit: but then making bad choices and watering down Civ's appeal seems to be the path they've gone since Civ 5 -> 6 changeover. They are really trying their best to run it into the ground, just like they destroyed XCOM after rebirthing it as a franchise.

Cool manifesto, but Civ6 sold more than Civ5, and especially much more if you consider how much further it was monetized, despite taking the bad district mechanic from the lesser Endless Legends game.
Why wouldn't they learn the lesson that doing this is a good idea?

"We have so much money, it can't possibly be a bad idea to burn piles of it in the yard!"

Everything seems like a good idea when you're on top of the world... and then suddenly you aren't, and it turns out all those good ideas were shit. It's the same logic that says the US government can just print money forever. Do you really think that logic holds out forever? And keep in mind the US government has the benefit of holding the entire world hostage economically; a corporation selling video games has a whole lot less leeway to work with. I'm sure Blizzard in the money-printing era of WoW thought they could do no wrong. Now they're bleeding out from every hole. Firaxis is going the same way; they thought they could do no wrong with XCOM, now it doesn't exist and they lost their entire team.

I really don't buy the idea that Civ is on the up and up. It seems to me it's declining and the bottom will eventually fall out. It is riding on name recognition right now, which is never a good situation to be in.

I don't have any good sales numbers on Civ 6. Do you? I know it had a huge backlash on release, and the opinion of it from core players has never really seemed to improve. Maybe it sold lots from casual purchases, but I'd like to see some hard data on it selling better than Civ 5... unless you're just referring to it being available on more platforms.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

As the other guy said though... copying a bad mechanic seems kind of stupid. Especially when your game is bigger and more successful. I just don't see how this works out to Civ's benefit: but then making bad choices and watering down Civ's appeal seems to be the path they've gone since Civ 5 -> 6 changeover. They are really trying their best to run it into the ground, just like they destroyed XCOM after rebirthing it as a franchise.

Normally I'd say the civ switching thing is a completely stillborn idea that can't be made good. But, tbh, it seems to fit right in with the recent trend of eschewing actual choices, flavor, unique mechanics and all the good stuff for the unholy amalgamation of "do whatever the fuck you want lol". And recent(ish) games that have done that are the ones that achieved success so it indeed seems like that's what "the people" want.

And again: it looks nice and will sell bucketloads just on that. VI looked like ass, had severe technical problems, lacked some absolutely basic features etc. and sold like hot cakes. I would love for the fanbase to push back on it to show that this is not the right direction, but it ain't happening. They didn't push back on the 1upt, global happiness, mobile game production values, dlc policy yada yada. Can't see them starting now.

And the only strategy games that can come close to popularity of civ are the ingenious paradox offerings (or rather, only HoI), anyway. So it's a stuck between a rock and a hard place type of scenario.

 

[Zeriel]

As the other guy said though... copying a bad mechanic seems kind of stupid. Especially when your game is bigger and more successful. I just don't see how this works out to Civ's benefit: but then making bad choices and watering down Civ's appeal seems to be the path they've gone since Civ 5 -> 6 changeover. They are really trying their best to run it into the ground, just like they destroyed XCOM after rebirthing it as a franchise.

Normally I'd say the civ switching thing is a completely stillborn idea that can't be made good. But, tbh, it seems to fit right in with the recent trend of eschewing actual choices, flavor, unique mechanics and all the good stuff for the unholy amalgamation of "do whatever the fuck you want lol". And recent(ish) games that have done that are the ones that achieved success so it indeed seems like that's what "the people" want.

And again: it looks nice and will sell bucketloads just on that. VI looked like ass, had severe technical problems, lacked some absolutely basic features etc. and sold like hot cakes. I would love for the fanbase to push back on it to show that this is not the right direction, but it ain't happening. They didn't push back on the 1upt, global happiness, mobile game production values, dlc policy yada yada. Can't see them starting now.

And the only strategy games that can come close to popularity of civ are the ingenious paradox offerings (or rather, only HoI), anyway. So it's a stuck between a rock and a hard place type of scenario.

Fair points, I'd point out though that "push back" looks very different to different people. I hate Civ 6. I bought it before I knew I hated it. There's plenty of people like that. That's why I view it as a "you become poor slowly, then suddenly" situation. These things build up over time, it takes a looong while for "fuck these guys, they are dead to me" to percolate down to all purchasing decisions.

My main view though is that everything they are doing to "innovate" does not attract more purchases. They could get as just as much if not more by not "innovating" in the way they are. Civ is a giant and it would probably sell more if they just focused on a good art style and doing the classic thing well. It's impossible to argue about what an alternate reality would be where they make different decisions, however, so until the franchise goes up in flames, they can always just say, "Trust us, this was the only way to do it!"

As soon as Civ 6 was shown off, you had tons of comments flooding their forums, on every platform (Steam, their own forums, reddit, whatever) that hated the art style. Civ 7 doubles down on that, more or less. I don't think these are people who are just hating the game for recreation. I think they are people they could have pleased if they stuck to a more Civ 5 style. And what about the people who defend it, are they saying, "I will ONLY buy Civ if it looks like a cartoon!"? No, they are just reflexively defending the game as good consoomers. So they'd be just as ready to defend it if it looked like Civ 5. In other words, it's an unforced error.

 

[whydoibother]

"We have so much money, it can't possibly be a bad idea to burn piles of it in the yard!"

Bruh they MADE money on Civ6. Much money. Many money. More money than any other Civ game.
They did this by copying a failed mechanic from a lesser competitor. So clearly not a failing strategy. I don't know what you mean by anything.

Edit: I see you asking for numbers, just Google it. Civ5 sold 8 million copies on Steam, many on deep discount. Civ6 sold 11 million copies on Steam, and was available on other platforms. And it hasn't been on deep, deep discount yet. And it has more microtransactions, season pass, all the cancer. It absolutely made them more money.

 

[Zeriel]

"We have so much money, it can't possibly be a bad idea to burn piles of it in the yard!"

Bruh they MADE money on Civ6. Much money. Many money. More money than any other Civ game.
They did this by copying a failed mechanic from a lesser competitor. So clearly not a failing strategy. I don't know what you mean by anything.

And how much would they have made if they took a different approach? We just don't know. Bad decisions artistically are bad decisions, presuming we can agree. Your viewpoint seems to be, "Well if they made money that retroactively makes the decision good." That doesn't follow. The amount of people playing games every year increases, if you're a mass audience game in order to lose audience you have to really, really fuck up. I'm just not convinced that these decisions were leading to increased sales.

 

[whydoibother]

"We have so much money, it can't possibly be a bad idea to burn piles of it in the yard!"

Bruh they MADE money on Civ6. Much money. Many money. More money than any other Civ game.
They did this by copying a failed mechanic from a lesser competitor. So clearly not a failing strategy. I don't know what you mean by anything.

And how much would they have made if they took a different approach? We just don't know. Bad decisions artistically are bad decisions, presuming we can agree. Your viewpoint seems to be, "Well if they made money that retroactively makes the decision good." That doesn't follow. The amount of people playing games every year increases, if you're a mass audience game in order to lose audience you have to really, really fuck up. I'm just not convinced that these decisions were leading to increased sales.

You are traveling to alternative universes to look for an argument. What if they made it into a Mario Kart type mascot racer and it went viral, they would've made more money! What if they sold it to Netflix to make a softcore porno? What if they used the game budget to hire mercenaries and conquer a country and make money that way?
The fact is that its not failing, its not bad business, they aren't running it into the ground, etc. Copying mechanics from your competitors is what every established franchise does, always, every time, forever, and its not a political statement and it isn't making them go bankrupt. Not true. You're wrong.

 

[whydoibother]

Having no barbs( confirmed ) is just gonna make the player forward settle everybody and leaving the weak AI with one city to easily kill.
I don't know what they were thinking with this one, barba are the only real thing that kinda stopped players from just steamrolling the AI too early.
And no, civ 6 loyalty did not stop stop this whatsoever.

Funny thing is I remember city states being announced for Civ5 and everyone saying this is going to ruin expanding and ruin the game and how the bad AI can't handle it.
Clearly they want to move away from barbs and towards city states as this third, neutral party, a mini-civ that isn't competing to win. Again, this is a mechanic stolen from Endless Legend. Worked fine there.

 

[flyingjohn]

Worked fine there

Endless legend minor factions can spawn roaming armies, city states in civ can't.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

They did this by copying a failed mechanic from a lesser competitor.

It wasn't a failed mechanic coming from a failed game. EL was not without problems, but it was well regarded, did a lot of cool new stuff and objectively left more wealthy and experienced competition in the dust (pun intended) in certain aspects. To compare stealing from it to stealing from a mixed-rating turd like Humankind is nonsensical, and the fact that same parties are involved yet again does not change that.

Ditto for blanket statements in the vein of "leaders always steal from others to stay on top". Firaxis are obviously seen and want to be seen as top dogs and trend-setters. Nuxcom and nuciv changed their respective landscapes completely and everyone was falling over themselves to look and feel like them. To make the big new thing in VII a direct rip off can absolutely be seen as a failure and weakness. Particularly when the title getting ripped off is goddamn Humankind.

 

[whydoibother]

It wasn't a failed mechanic coming from a failed game. EL was not without problems, but it was well regarded, did a lot of cool new stuff and objectively left more wealthy and experienced competition in the dust (pun intended) in certain aspects. To compare stealing from it to stealing from a mixed-rating turd like Humankind is nonsensical, and the fact that same parties are involved yet again does not change that.

Again, what does "failed competitor" mean to you? Humankind sold 10x Endless Legend. As far as Civilization-killers go, it did better. And that's what Firaxis is looking at.

Firaxis are obviously seen and want to be seen as top dogs and trend-setters.... To make the big new thing in VII a direct rip off can absolutely be seen as a failure and weakness...

Civ5 literally took its entire movement and combat system for 1UPT from a different game - Panzer General. The lead designer Jon Schafer openly spoke about it. Its not weakness, its leader privilige.

Edit: I had some deja vu and checked, and yes, we've already had this conversation in the past, in this very thread. If you think Civ5 combat was inovative and a case of an industry leader being progressive or w/e, I don't know what to tell you that I haven't before.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Again, what does "failed competitor" mean to you? Humankind sold 10x Endless Legend. As far as Civilization-killers go, it did better. And that's what Firaxis is looking at.

I think that's very obvious and even someone as obtuse as you should not be asking this question? If they were looking at sales numbers only there would be only one logical conclusion and it wouldn't be copying mechanics from either of them. But maybe you can reach out to firaxis for a comment on whether they see sub 1k concurrent players, mixed rating on steam and making virtually no impact on the market as acceptable KPIs.

Civ5 literally took its entire movement and combat system for 1UPT from a tabletop game, I think it was called Panzer Commander. The lead designer Jon Schafer openly spoke about it. Its not weakness, its leader privilige.

It was called "There were no hex based wargames before 2010" and it's totally the same as directly ripping off something as specific as the civ-switch thing and not an argument on a level of "they stole game having trees from a forest".

 

[Gerrard]

"We have so much money, it can't possibly be a bad idea to burn piles of it in the yard!"

Bruh they MADE money on Civ6. Much money. Many money. More money than any other Civ game.
They did this by copying a failed mechanic from a lesser competitor. So clearly not a failing strategy. I don't know what you mean by anything.

Edit: I see you asking for numbers, just Google it. Civ5 sold 8 million copies on Steam, many on deep discount. Civ6 sold 11 million copies on Steam, and was available on other platforms. And it hasn't been on deep, deep discount yet. And it has more microtransactions, season pass, all the cancer. It absolutely made them more money.

 

[Fedora Master]

Firaxis bad
Civ bad
I warned you

 

[orcinator]

Is there a decent rundown on what happened with Humankind? Meant to play it after playing all the Endless 4x's but decided to wait for all expansions and now it's getting shit on.

 

[Lacrymas]

Is there a decent rundown on what happened with Humankind? Meant to play it after playing all the Endless 4x's but decided to wait for all expansions and now it's getting shit on.

The TLDR is that it's severely unbalanced and a slew of issues follow because of that.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Is there a decent rundown on what happened with Humankind? Meant to play it after playing all the Endless 4x's but decided to wait for all expansions and now it's getting shit on.

It was hyped as a civ killer but it's half cooked and the latter half of the game has no substance to it.