6mo ago

Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to"

www.ggrecon.com Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to"

Civilization 7 will debut a new 'Ages' system that should lead to a more curated gameplay experience each game. We spoke to Creative Director Ed Beach about how different it makes things.

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6mo ago

Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to"

www.ggrecon.com /articles/civilization-7-interview-ages-system/

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65 comments

There'll be nothing to get adjusted to if they continue to insist on Denuvo
- Reddit and lemmy like to say that but I doubt any noticeable portion of the player base is going to bother. Has been for almost every game with denuvo lol
  
  Sadly your average person just doesn't care about consumer rights, in any matter.
  I learned my lesson about malicious DRM when Starforce broke my new computer's DVD drive back in the day. Fortunately it was still under warranty so I had it fixed, but sucked all the same.
- Out of the loop. What's Denuvo?
  
  Anti piracy software that slows down your game

The crisis system, the era system, and the changing civilizations system all feel especially game-y to me. I get it, Civ is first and foremost a video game. Still, the idea that there are pre-defined eras, and that you have to hit a crisis at the end of each pre-defined era, feels artificial and unnatural. Why can't I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?
Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of eras and crises. If, instead, eras were triggered by hitting certain milestones or accumulating enough points (e.g. hit some combination of weighted tech/cultural/religious/economic development) - I would be down for that. Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there's too much corruption you could have a civil war. If too much of your civ is following another religion there could be unrest. Those are all interesting and fun ideas, but the important part is that the goal is to avoid/mitigate them and play around them - not that they're some kind of inevitable occurrence that you're forced into even if you play otherwise perfectly.
It feels like Firaxis decided to lean hard into "Civ is a board game focused around balance" and completely away from "Civ is a game about growth and optimization", and I don't know if I'm here for it. I guess we'll have to see.
- Great points. I also wonder if fixed crises and era changes will make every game flow in a very similar fashion, leading to repetitiveness? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
- Why can’t I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?
  Seems like a simple config option making disasters optional would solve that.
  Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there’s too much corruption you could have a civil war.
  I like those ideas. Have you suggested them to the developers?
  If they're not in at release time, maybe the usual expansion/rework DLC will add them. :P
  
  I don't think Firaxis would agree with any of my feedback because I think I disagree with them in a fundamental sense about how the game should be oriented. Mandatory disasters appear to be a fundamental part of the Civ 7 game philosophy: you build your civ, face the crisis, reset your civ in a new era, and start over with some amount of carry-over. I get the motivation: by forcing these soft resets, Firaxis is making it so you can't snowball so far ahead that the mid/late game is a chore of uninteresting gameplay. An advantage in the first/second eras won't put you in so far of a lead in the third era that it's just a rush to hit the next turn button. On the other hand... that also means that everything you do in the first/second eras counts way less, and that feels bad.
  Granted I obviously haven't played the game yet; this is just my read from demos and press around the game/design philosophy. We will see if I'm right or not.
- They're going to have to make some fundamental changes for this one, because Civ 6 already felt like the final form of the previous design.
  
  Hard disagree. The district system of Civ 6 was half-baked, and the new one for Civ 7 seems way more interesting with districts growing more organically. Civ 6's world congress was garbage. The eras system needed serious work as dark/golden/heroic eras just didn't feel impactful enough aside from getting a monumentality era early. The new map generation with navigable rivers is a huge plus as well. The climate system in Civ 6 was a dud too, not nearly impactful enough. I think they could've made a Civ 7 which fixed all the broken Civ 6 systems and made a great game.
- Yeah I feel like you could tie these crises into player actions pretty organically - like if there's a war and a big enough percentage of Civs get involved, then it triggers a World War crisis, or they could tie something into the global warming mechanic from Civ VI, or have a Cold War come up from excessive espionage actions, stuff like that.

I never moved from civ 5 to civ 6. Every time I try civ 6 it feels awful and looks like a mobile game. Ive got little hope for civ 7 and since it ships with Denovo I doubt I'll ever try it.
- I’ve got over 1000 hours in Civ V and like 15 in Civ VI
  
  Civ IV 1000+ hours
  Civ V ~370 hours
  Civ VI ~37 hours
  Been playing since OG Civ on floppy disk. I'll skip Civ VII
- I hate that I agree with this, but yup.
- Same! I still play Civ V all the time
- I loved Civ 5 but I couldn’t go back after Civ 6.
- Each to their own! I really enjoyed V and have hundreds of hours in it, but I appreciated the changes in VI and felt like it vbecame a stronger game than V overall. I do have more hours in VI. I get that the art style was a little controversial, but I was never playing V for the visuals anyway
- Civ 3. I want my stacks of doom and the ability to blow up improvements and roads with artillery attacks.

If I were to be granted a single wish for a new Civ edition, it would be game AI that scaled well across the difficulty range without cheating.
- I'd just settle for competent AI at any difficulty. I only ever had a few runs in Civ6 because the AI consistently fell apart in late game. Conversely, it's why I had over 1000 hours in Civ5. Yes, it cheated, but once I started to ignore that, it was really satisfying to climb the difficulty ladder and still feel challenged even into the late eras most of the time.
- With machine learning, there's no reason we can't have better AI other than cost. I hope strategy games eventually look into this.
  
  Machine learning is irrelevant to the sort of AI used in a game like this.

Crises will strike towards the end of each Age, and players can react to these in different ways. Make the most of the chaos, and you can find yourself with bonuses going into the next Age or shifting your entire civilization into something else entirely.
This reminds me of Sim City disasters, but with a potential reward depending on how you handle them, which seems more appealing. I don't hate that idea. :)
- I would play Sim City for the sole purpose of destroying it with all the various disasters. Kind of fucked up now that I think about it.

I might not have to get used to it if the game launches with Denuvo.
- Not an adjustment for me. I haven't bought a Civ game within 5 years of release for a very long time. It's far better to wait for the expansions and DLC to get bundled into the Complete Edition. Denuvo will probably be removed by then.
  
  Same with paradox games at this point.
- Good point. Denuvo is why I didn't buy Civ 6.

I played some Humankind recently for the first time, and it made me realise that Civ 7 is stealing a lot of their homework. Districts, civilisations, even the leader interact/diplomacy screen all look incredibly similar to Humankind.
- Districts were a thing in Civ 6, before Humankind came out
  
  Obviously. I mean, I've only played Civ 6 for hundreds of hours. But they didn't function similarly to Humankind. The districts in Civ 7 seem to work exactly like how they do in Humankind.
  
  I think Endless Legend, also made my the Humankind devs Amplitude, was the first to introduce districts. Granted, the bones of 4x games, in general, are based on Civilization 1, at the very least.
- You’re acting like Humankind didn’t steal from Civ’s homework to begin with, lol
- Which is a weird move IMO, 'cause normally you're supposed to steal the homework of someone who's doing a better job than you are.
- I wish they took the neolithic era from Humankind. That's such a cool super early game element to the game rather than 'settle your first city ASAP or you're screwed'.

I dont hate it. But Crises happening automagically does feel against the typical nature of Civ, where I typically prefer more random events.
It's more board game feeling.

The existing ages system seemed really bad in some of the games I played. You'd have like nuclear warfare while neighboring countries on the same continent hadn't developed agriculture. I know countries develop at different rates, but like India didn't have to research and upgrade its way through multiple ages in real life in order to have cities and technology companies.
- There should almost be some sort of technological transfer to nearby empires, like cultural influence. If your neighbour is at 10000 tech points or whatever while you are at 1000, you should be able to leech some tech points from your neighbour to develop faster.
  Transfer rate increases with the disparity between nations and decreases with distance.
  So a super advanced empire on continent A will contribute to nations on continent A and B, but those on continent A get more of a bonus than those on B.
  This aligns fairly well with reality as neighbouring countries would transfer students to universities all the time, less so the further the nations are apart.

Sounds similar to the possibility you have in Humankind to change civ at each age while keeping some advantages.

Sounds interesting. They need something other than changing the shape of the movement grid.

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