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Civilization 7 Is in Development

polygon.com

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Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#31

Post by NhanH »

oefrha wrote: post #22
corbulo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said was basically my impression of the game when I left it. I didn't know about the last part, it doesn't surprise me they underdelivered on it.

To be clear secret societies is an optional game mode, and it’s not half bad for what it is, especially if you enjoy overpowered gameplay.

Interesting, how is secret societies imbalanced? That wasn’t my impression and I still play the game somewhat recently (certainly no more imbalance than the different civils themselves)

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#32

Post by voidfunc »

They need to really work on the Civ AI especially the military AI. The games are super boring once you learn the AI is basically garbage at managing armies.

Also the late game needs to be more meaningful. A lot of players never make it to the later ages because victory is achievable quite a bit sooner unless you're plating for science victory.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#33

Post by lfowles »

alexashka wrote: post #29

Civ needs to be moddable and they can get a little percentage of every mod sale. Then this franchise will be actually good rather than something people play for a week or two and forget about. I want an invention tree that's thousands of items long based on actual human history, not an invention tree that's optimized for what a 15 year old will find 'fun' within the first week of play. Civ is an unfortunate lost oppo…

Europe Universalis is the one that made me actually want to learn history more. Civ was just a game with some historical names attached to units and buildings in comparison.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#34

Post by raincole »

alexashka wrote: post #29

Civ needs to be moddable and they can get a little percentage of every mod sale. Then this franchise will be actually good rather than something people play for a week or two and forget about. I want an invention tree that's thousands of items long based on actual human history, not an invention tree that's optimized for what a 15 year old will find 'fun' within the first week of play. Civ is an unfortunate lost oppo…

...what do you mean? Civ is very moddable.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#38

Post by JeffL »

dgant wrote: post #24
janalsncm wrote: post #6

It would be really interesting if some of the advances in AI could make their way into the game. Make the gameplay more human by incorporating recent advances in ML-based gameplay e.g. Diplomacy and Poker. Create more variety of dialogue using transformer models. Make in-game diplomacy more nuanced. There’s a lot that could be done.

The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't. This is true in many games but especially Civilization, where we rely on the AI behaving predictably to feel mastery over the environment, and for diplomacy to feel "fair". If the AI were playing to win, diplomacy would mostly evaporate as a game system. It'd break the fiction of the game.

That's what the developers say, but I think it's part true and part a cop out. The AI in Civ 5 & 6 is just so so bad, that it's only challenging when you play on the really hard modes that gives them all sorts of cheats. And then it's a bit less fun because you're walking the line between impossible because of the cheating and having to essentially exploit the AI because of the cheating.

I don't necessarily want an AI that tries to play like a human, though it would be a fun option, I want an AI that isn't just straight up terrible given the same starting resources and rules as the player.

Part of the problem, I think, is that each iteration of Civ, they make the game more complicated in a way that makes it even harder for the AI to do as well as a good player, but probably most players don't care and there isn't a lot of reason to become good at the game anyway.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#39

Post by jasonkester »

I bought the original when it came out and, together with Master of Orion, it ate so much of my life that it added a year to my time at university.

Since then I've bought every new Civ as it came out and maybe played through two or three games before abandoning it. None of them capture the original, but rather just add more and different crap to micromanage. They're just not fun.

The big exception is Alpha Centauri, which is essentially a Civ 2 remake with good automation of the boring stuff. Over the years I've probably played that even more than the original.

The other surprising exception is Civilization Revolution 1 for the iPad. It stripped out manual terrain improvement entirely and left a really fun game behind. Sadly because it's in the apple ecosystem you can't get it anymore. It only runs on iOS 8 and below, and has been replaced in the store by Version 2 With Microtransactions and Pay To Win. I keep an old ipad on life support just to play it.

But yeah, the mainline Civ games have been (for me) a chance to pay $60 every few years, get excited, and be disappointed.

I think I might finally break out of my cycle with this one.

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