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Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

Hawkatana said:
So, I think it bears asking this. Considering opinions regarding the ability to switch between multiple civs per game has been met with mixed reception, what's the general opinion here? I'm going in with an open mind, but I think it's at least worth asking what SV's consensus says.
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Hot boomer take incoming:

the civlike genre peaked with Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, so all judgements go through this lens. This is bad for civ identity, which was one of the strongest things about that game and something I feel recent civs weren't too bad at it by indexing more into giving leaders personalities and civs special mechanics but lost track of by making diplomacy kinda irrelevant so you'd never really bother with the cool personalities and just mechanic your way to victory. Civlikes have felt increasingly soulless to me in comparison to the good old days.

This is only going to make it worse, by making civs a collection of player choices with no preset identity to craft narratives around.

yrsillar said:
Kinda iffy on it, I do like the idea in theory but I also worry that it'll make the civs feel boring and generic. Like one of the big things I liked in six was the... personality it felt like each civ had I guess? At least that was my problem with humankind and with Millenia too.

Maybe it would feel better if your civ choice was limited in some way either based on your initial choice or on the way you've built and what resources you've developed in the previous era?
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It's definitely what happened with a few other civlikes who toyed with stuff like this like humankind, and with millennia where civs are only your flag and city names. It's very hard to build a civ identity you'll care about interacting with when they're just a pile of generic components.

It's fine for your civ because it's your choices and you've experienced having to make them to progress through the game but it's utterly soulless for civs you meet and talk to. Who are they, what are they about? uuuh a list of past names and a pile of mechanics at best.

Hawkatana said:
I actually had an idea for my own take on Civ VII a couple years ago where each civ would have three leaders each that could be swapped between whenever they entered a new era and to reflect each civ's changes over the course of history (for example, China had Liu Bei, Wu Zetian and Sun Yat-sen, and its Civ ability: Mandate of Heaven specifically tied into that mechanic).
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This would be a much better way to do the era swapping while keeping clear civ identities. Each civ would have its own roster of leaders and each leader its identity rather than a soup of choices that make each civ a pile of common pieces.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
On a different note, I'm pretty happy that they're finally going with Hatshepsut instead of the stupid "let's pretend that that Cleopatra wasn't a Macedonian Greek woman" thing that they've done for the last few games. It was always an inane bit of pop history that ignored the actual darker skinned Pharaohs in favor of banking on name recognition and common historical ignorance.

I don't expect the game to suddenly become super accurate, Civ is the embodiment of pop history, but it's nice to see them correct on bugbear of mine.
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I was actually hoping for Tutankhamun, considering as he's the literal face of Ancient Egypt (or rather his sarcophagus is).
 
Hawkatana said:
I actually had an idea for my own take on Civ VII a couple years ago where each civ would have three leaders each that could be swapped between whenever they entered a new era and to reflect each civ's changes over the course of history (for example, China had Liu Bei, Wu Zetian and Sun Yat-sen, and its Civ ability: Mandate of Heaven specifically tied into that mechanic).
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The big problem with that is that not all civilizations existed meaningfully in all three eras. You'd still essentially need civilization swapping to cover, say, the United States by having its Ancient era be a Native American polity, or most of the African and Near Eastern civilizations that are essentially wholly different polities pre and post colonial era (compare Mesopotamia to the Abbasids to Iraq - they wouldnt be considered one civilization and shouldnt have the same AI or mechanical identity).

It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it's still very much civ swapping, just a more restricted form where a few civilizations swap to later versions of themselves rather than distinct successors
 
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Fair point but until the Confederate States of America are added as a civilization, Stalin will have to be grouped in as a Russian Option.
 
Georgia has already been in Civ, though.
 
Historically un-modded Civ has done a really mediocre job at making its civilization actually feel like mechanically distinct "characters". Usually you can just copypaste your strategy and gameplan between them, with a few exceptions per game like Civ5 Venice or Civ6 Inca.

So I am not too bothered with the switching.
 
Clearly you've never played Civ V Arabia. I was fucking rolling in cash by the midgame and nobody declared war on me because I had so many trade deals with everyone.
 
The real awkwardness for historical progression like this is finding modern successors to like, indigenous American civs. It's a pretty awkward implication to call like America, or Canada a sucessor to say,the Sioux.
 
tankdrop24 said:
The real awkwardness for historical progression like this is finding modern successors to like, indigenous American civs. It's a pretty awkward implication to call like America, or Canada a sucessor to say,the Sioux.
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That's the big advantage to making the successors pickable from a list based on your playstyle, along with being more consistent-strategy friendly - by not trying for historical accuracy they avoid baking in
the more genocide-y and cultural conquest-y parts of real world history. The only real advantage to historically accurate "successors" would be appeals to nitpicky history nerds' sense of OCD.

Which is why I'd prefer it and can't bring myself to call it a bad idea, but I recognize it's probably not one with broad appeal comparatively speaking.
 
Hawkatana said:
Clearly you've never played Civ V Arabia. I was fucking rolling in cash by the midgame and nobody declared war on me because I had so many trade deals with everyone.
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That's actually a hilarious example since Civ5 Arabia with the Vox Populi mod is one of my favorite video game things ever. Let's compare them:
Vanilla:
More trade range, more religious pressure via trade, more oil efficiency
VP:
Every time you build a Wonder, birth a Great Person or finish a foreign trade route, you get permanent boosts to Science and Culture in Mecca and progress towards a random Great Person.

Vanilla Arabia boosts trade, but since every civilization already wants to run as much trade as possible that doesn't really change much. Once you have everything set up you get Gold, Oil and Peace easier than other civilizations, but your wealth isn't actually out of their reach.

VP Arabia takes the classic Tall vs Wide dial and pushes it so far towards Tall that it almost makes a single city strategy optimal. You build a few sad expansions to extract the luxuries the capital craves, and build soldiers so it can focus on the finer things, but mostly it will be your shining capital of literal Wonders against whatever vast empires form across the rest of the globe. Suddenly maximing the Food in your capital is something worth obsessing over, while analysing your neighbors for potential conquests turns into a waste of time.
 
CeBrudras said:
That's actually a hilarious example since Civ5 Arabia with the Vox Populi mod is one of my favorite video game things ever. Let's compare them:
Vanilla:
More trade range, more religious pressure via trade, more oil efficiency
VP:
Every time you build a Wonder, birth a Great Person or finish a foreign trade route, you get permanent boosts to Science and Culture in Mecca and progress towards a random Great Person.

Vanilla Arabia boosts trade, but since every civilization already wants to run as much trade as possible that doesn't really change much. Once you have everything set up you get Gold, Oil and Peace easier than other civilizations, but your wealth isn't actually out of their reach.

VP Arabia takes the classic Tall vs Wide dial and pushes it so far towards Tall that it almost makes a single city strategy optimal. You build a few sad expansions to extract the luxuries the capital craves, and build soldiers so it can focus on the finer things, but mostly it will be your shining capital of literal Wonders against whatever vast empires form across the rest of the globe. Suddenly maximing the Food in your capital is something worth obsessing over, while analysing your neighbors for potential conquests turns into a waste of time.
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I don't really play VP that much due to it clashing with most of the mods I play with, but I somehow still manage to build both taller and wider than the AI whenever I play with Arabia.
 
I am cautiously(?) optimistic about the era change? Like, it failed in both Humankind and Millenia, but having fewer, more impactful eras would make it easier to make them feel distinct and wide enough you get to do stuff in them. Plus, it can serve as a catch-up mechanic, which games like Civ needs.

Zap Rowsdower said:
That's the big advantage to making the successors pickable from a list based on your playstyle, along with being more consistent-strategy friendly - by not trying for historical accuracy they avoid baking in
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Based on the released info, they do have 'historical' successors that you have access to by virtue of playing the Civ you are. The example given is that you always have access to Songhai when you're playing as Egypt (because Songhai is the Exploration Age Civ geographically closest to Egypt).

Which does make sense from a gameplay perspective. The game doesn't work if you can't progress through the Eras. So in the rare but definitely possible state that a Civ has a rough time and meets none of the gameplay requirements for their successors, you need to have some sort of fallback mechanic.

EDIT: I just learned that Abbasid is also a historical option for Egypt, so there's more than one 'historical-unlocked' Civ. Probably also a good move
 
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I wouldn't say it failed in Millenia, more just needed to be iterated on more, like the rest of that game.
 
It's probably going to be unplayable for alot of people. I wasn't able to play Civ VI due to hardware issues that just wouldn't run the game, at least not quickly.
 
Omegahugger said:
I am cautiously(?) optimistic about the era change? Like, it failed in both Humankind and Millenia, but having fewer, more impactful eras would make it easier to make them feel distinct and wide enough you get to do stuff in them. Plus, it can serve as a catch-up mechanic, which games like Civ needs.


Based on the released info, they do have 'historical' successors that you have access to by virtue of playing the Civ you are. The example given is that you always have access to Songhai when you're playing as Egypt (because Songhai is the Exploration Age Civ geographically closest to Egypt).

Which does make sense from a gameplay perspective. The game doesn't work if you can't progress through the Eras. So in the rare but definitely possible state that a Civ has a rough time and meets none of the gameplay requirements for their successors, you need to have some sort of fallback mechanic.

EDIT: I just learned that Abbasid is also a historical option for Egypt, so there's more than one 'historical-unlocked' Civ. Probably also a good move
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I feel like this is losing the soul of civilization, which is very much "what if x civilization lasted through the ages". If Rome just evolves into Italy it's a lot less fun than imagining an industrial era Rome
 
Yeah, if there isn't a option to keep going as let's say Rome or Carthage past when they would have fallen it would be rather uncivilizationlike and it just makes me wonder about countries let's say China or Japan which have been around a very long time even if they had ups and downs.
 
Alane1 said:
Yeah, if there isn't a option to keep going as let's say Rome or Carthage past when they would have fallen it would be rather uncivilizationlike and it just makes me wonder about countries let's say China or Japan which have been around a very long time even if they had ups and downs.
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You could go with dynasties and governments for long lived countries at least. China deserves more than one country slot if you're doing a 3 eras system.
 
It's actually pretty funny that they are doing a Civ deemphasizing speculative fantasies like 'Industrial Rome' right now. Creating an endless amount of okay-ish, but highly specific, assets to cover all these possibilities for every civilization would have been a solid application of the AI technology every management is desperate to find a use for.
 
CeBrudras said:
It's actually pretty funny that they are doing a Civ deemphasizing speculative fantasies like 'Industrial Rome' right now. Creating an endless amount of okay-ish, but highly specific, assets to cover all these possibilities for every civilization would have been a solid application of the AI technology every management is desperate to find a use for.
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I'm pretty sure for Industrial era Rome at least they could just use photos. It's still there and still a major capital (compare Susa or Sparta).
 
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