Much of this diplomatic weakness comes from the fact that there is only one long-range goal for a Civ game, and that is to win. As a result, there really isn’t much that needs to be done other than weakening your closest competitors. There are no medium-term goals to be accomplished via diplomacy. Ironically, because there is no goal in EU4, it opens up short and medium-term goals, and Paradox pushes this along with their mission system. Both the player and the AIs are therefore assigned things they want to accomplish (the player by themselves, by missions, or by achievements), and that allows for goals to be aligned between the player and various entities. Very little of this layer exists in Civ games, both because of the lack of goals and the lack of available entities.
One way to ameliorate this would be for Civ to scrap its victory conditions and switch to victory points. Victory points could be awarded based on accomplishing a mix of secret and known missions. Missions could be to reach a certain tech first, make a race lose a certain city, etc. There would now be reason to collaborate with AIs and try to achieve certain common short-term goals. This would also make it ok to not be the strongest player. You don’t need to dominate in any one aspect to accomplish your goals.
In general, I find that games of Civ where you’re not the dominant player tend to be the best ones, because you then have to think about how to whittle down the strongest nation(s). If the AI cannot put up a fight, there’s really no thinking required about strategic goals, and diplomacy is useless. What the diplomatic model is missing is the ‘chunking’ of fights: let’s take down this one city, and then sue for peace. It’s doable within the diplomatic model even of Civ 4 but it’s crude, where it should instead be the default.
EDIT: Needless to say, Civ 6’s weak AI means none of this is remotely possible. Alpha Centauri and Civ 4, as the best of the Civ series IMO, come closest to being political games in addition to builder/war games. Their AI mods make them even better in that respect.
I kind of want to get into the “simulating history” vs “historically authentic” and how what we’re really talking about is how we feel history has gone from our current perspective, and what role games and popular culture have in forming our conception of history, but (1) the conversation here is already going strong in a different direction that is also good and (2) I already put out two walls o’ text in this thread and that’s enough for today!
Well, yes and no. There has to be an algorithm, but that is quite different from its being based upon certainty and transparency.
I think the best way for me to explain this is to use a game from another genre – Out of the Park Baseball, especially in career mode. You draft a player, knowing things like your scout’s assessment of his talent and his personality. And what happens with this player through his development and his eventual (hopefully) major league career is a matter of numbers under the hood, algorithms. But sometimes the super talent with a terrible personality turns into a superstar, sometimes he is just a PITA bust. The good talent with superior personality could be a bust, too, but the odds are different.
Now, if you took the conventions of 4X/grand strategy games and applied it to that game, you’d probably be adding up coaching bats to get fill the box to 100, and then you’d get a good hitter. Or you would choose a new manager, and the screen would say pitching +28 fielding -3. And know that those modifiers would be applied for the coming season. Or you would draft two pitchers pronto because the third pitcher in line will be the one you already know will blow away the league.
History-based games could let you make all kinds of decisions that were actually made throughout time, aware of both the risks and possible upsides. But again, I understand why game makers do not do this. So many customers hate RNG with a passion. However, for me, any sense of realism is lost without RNG. At which point Civ VI’s district placing puzzle is just about top of the line as far as enjoyment goes.
Not expanded, but revamped. They removed the warmongering system in the base game and replaced it with a grievance system with the Gathering Storm expansion and I like it much better than the warmogering system.
I generally agree with this sentiment from an experiential perspective. However, it’s important to point out that RNG virtually disables the human ability to plan ahead. Since political games (“grand strategy”) are so much about manipulation of the AI entities to accomplish the player’s aim, randomness needs to be layered in carefully, or you risk destroying the foundation.
I’m not sure that this really disagrees with me. To continue the baseball sim comparison, it would ruin the game if, over time, it appeared that pretty much anything could happen. First round picks were no more likely to be successful than last round picks. Players with personality problems in the past were no more likely to cause problems in the future than anyone else. Players hurt frequently in the past were pretty much as likely to miss this season as anyone else.
But that does not translate into a need for “accumulate X points, which can be gained through clearly defined diplomatic actions, and you then obtain a specific, 100% predictable result.” In system after system of the game.
Which is to say, one of the plusses for me in Civ VI is that, although you can see diplomatic points in relation to a rival, that only correlates with their opinion of you, it does not always define it. Especially early game. My preference would be, however, to skip the points, simply list positive factors, and have a higher level of unpredictability. Especially in systems like technology, district efficiency, and great person generation.
What you’re talking about really is that in most “civilization” games the supposed people living under your thumb are virtual slaves (or wooden meeples) with virtually no autonomy. And that’s because Civ games are really just computerized board games with a whole lot more moving pieces.
And you know Paradox games are the same… just ^10 or so. They run on a “one turn per day” system, so turns can go by so fast it “feels” like real time, and virtually all the systems are automated so you don’t have to assign peasant tasks for every province.
It would be fun to make a “pixel 4x” game, where you have thousands and thousands of pixel people, populous style, running around a large game board, whose behavior you could influence but not directly control.
That’s the god-game approach. The problem is that it works only to a very limited degree: see Populous, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper, Majesty etc. If designing a well-balanced, good strategic system is very hard, designing an indirect strategic system is that much harder.
The next installment of the frontier pass is coming. I will be very disappointed if they didn’t add a new wonder that allows me to build a stately pleasure dome.
Anyone play Civ 6 on the Switch? I see that the base game is only $19.99 (CDN) and the DLC pack is currently at its lowest price ever on the eShop at 60% off. I assume that everything is touch screen compatible.
I’ve played it on the IPad and it’s much better than I would have expected (quite good and very easy to use interface). Not sure about the Switch directly though.
The maps are as segmented as ever, maybe more so. Pure hatred for that.
Vietnam looks very interesting, and others at CivFanatics have been liking it, but in practice I found it boring, all three games I started.
The economic mode (monopolies, etc.) – I like the idea a lot, but honestly, it is so overpowered as to ruin a lot of playthroughs. All of a sudden, fairly early on, you are so awash in gold that you can do anything. And where I see the AI getting benefits from heroes, I have yet to see them swimming in gold.
Something happened to Civ VI’s development over the last couple years to take it in a direction of something that i’ve never seen a Civ game go. To put it in a weird way, it’s kind of like Goat Simulator for 4X games now. The Let’s Plays by the hardcore players just dismiss it because it’s so imbalanced in multiplayer, but there’s a whole community of Civ VI players now min-maxing their way to happiness… but often, very explicitly, without building any military at all, to the point where listening to one character talking said something like “When do I build military? Only when i absolutely have to”.
So in this “hilarious” Civ 6 world of just piling on features and improvements and this and that, i guess (?) the audience just likes taking a random challenge and running with it. Beating the game seems more or less taken as an assumption.
I’ve only played one game with Vietnam and it was ridiculous. The movement and combat bonus for marsh, woods, and rainforest meant I just went to war early and obliterated my neighbours. As an added bonus, the Matterhorn was nearby so most of my troops had attack bonuses for any land except open flatland. My biggest impediment to world domination was the amount of time spent moving around all the mountains that were in the way.
It seems to me that this is a trend that goes way beyind Civ. I figured this mindset came from Steam achievements, which I hardly notice, but I gather they are a very big deal to a lot of players.
I mean, I am happy for the players who get fun out of this style of play, but not so happy if it kind of lets gamemakers off the hook as far as making games that are basically good games.
I continue to have a good time playing Civ VI, even if it can be fairly stupid at times. My most recent game, I decided to mix it up and play a standard map (I typically play on Large), and chose the new gameplay that mixes the tech and civic trees up so you don’t know what’s coming next. That alone was a pretty refreshing take on the early game so far. I didn’t think these weird alternate ways to play would interest me, and I’ll probably not try the others, but this one is a nice break from the norm.
Yes, that was a great addition. I play with that game mode on all the time now. The other game modes are a little less good.
Dramatic ages mode was something I doubted I’d like. I’m not really a fan of the ages thing to being with. I tried it. I hate it.
Apocalypse mode was entertaining for a few turns for the sacrifices to the volcano but that grew old pretty fast and the soothsayer, which I suppose is the centrepiece of this game mode, just isn’t interesting.
Heroes and Legends mode is fun, but be prepared for getting overpowered. Any time I’ve recruited Sinbad early, I am rolling in gold and just buy myself a big leg up on the other civs.
Secret Societies are nice addition to the game. Again, depending on how you take advantage, it can make quick work of your neighbours.
