Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Gavagai]

You obviously can't have a game design guideline that says "more choice is always better"

That would definetly be be an "utter bullshit", that's why I'm not saying it.
Chess would be definitly a tactical game from my perspective. It is more about positioning of pieces, getting the highest possible value from them, than managing resources and priorities. I know much less about go but in my limited understanding it's a tactical game as well.

[Gavagai]

To this I'd like to add that it's simply impossible to make a good strategy game with 1UPT rule.

But we can think of a civ 4 'stack' as 1 unit in the tile with a set of properties.

I define "unit" here as something which can't be broken into smaller components. This is the essential property of unit for the purposes of my argument.

[Windsor]

Unless an army has tactical advantages like defending at Thermopylae or bombing helpless ground units from orbit, battles tend to resolve according to pure numbers. (Them as have the mostest are the winniest.) What is a game designer supposed to do to try to overcome this? The ultimate solution as a player in empire games is to outproduce or outtech the opponent -- or both -- and win the war before ever firing the first shot.

You seem to assume that it's something a designer has to overcome.

[SevenSpirits]

You obviously can't have a game design guideline that says "more choice is always better"

That would definetly be be an "utter bullshit", that's why I'm not saying it.
Chess would be definitly a tactical game from my perspective. It is more about positioning of pieces, getting the highest possible value from them, than managing resources and priorities. I know much less about go but in my limited understanding it's a tactical game as well.

The reason I chose the example of Go, and not Chess, is that, like I said, it's widely regarded as highly strategic. However, there are plenty of other good strategy games, pick one if you like and I can point to ways in which it restricts player choice.

Please explain how the following thing you said does not imply you think player choice should be maximized:

"under no circumstances should you do anything to hinder [nuanced strategic decisions]."

[Bacchus]

Gav is just exporting an argument we had in gchat to here, I was sure he wouldn't find many supporters. I think his pure "strategy" game would be almost entirely run on sliders, and free of discrete and thus tactical optimization aspects. Why on earth that's "real" strategy as opposed to anything else still kinda eludes me.

[Mr. Cairo]

Unless an army has tactical advantages like defending at Thermopylae or bombing helpless ground units from orbit, battles tend to resolve according to pure numbers. (Them as have the mostest are the winniest.) What is a game designer supposed to do to try to overcome this? The ultimate solution as a player in empire games is to outproduce or outtech the opponent -- or both -- and win the war before ever firing the first shot.

Most space 4X games these days solve this problem by utilising what is essentially a rock-paper-scissors approach to combat techs. (Usually) 3 types of weapons (mass driver, missile, laser) each with a specific countermeasure that isn't effective against the other 2 types of weapons (ie: point defense is good against missiles, but useless against lasers). By making each of the types of weapons a separate path on the tech tree, one is forced to go down one or the other, as trying to go down all of them will just result in you being behind in tech. I think that this approach works quite well in the context of a game with more than 2 players (human or ai). Since different empires will make different choices, you might be forced to make a mad dash down a previously neglected part of the tech tree if a new enemy appears whose ships are very effective against yours since they use a weapon type you have not yet encountered. That way, even if they are behind in production or tech, their ships are good enough against yours to make up the difference.

Non-space 4X's use the same approach, but rather than techs, they use units that are especially effective against 1 type of unit, and vulnerable against another. Easy example of this is with axes, spears, and chariots in Civ 4. However, in Civ 4, you are able to stack units of complementary types that are able to cover eachother's weaknesses, because at no point are you forced to only make 1 type (which would be stupid in a history-based 4X). And so you end up trying to build the biggest stack to hammer down your opponents stack.
The end result in Civ 4's case is a game in which the decisions that matter are the large scale ones. Where to build my cities, where to attack my enemy, what tech to get next, these are the things that have the largest effect on winning wars (and the game).

Whereas in Civ 5, 1UpT, much smaller scale map and simpler empire mechanics result in a game in which it is the small-scale, tactical decisions that matter: essentially where and how to position your units to maximize their effectiveness.
It is last aspect of Civ 5 the developers at Paradox appear focusing on in Civ 6. Adding support units, increasing the scale (one hopes), etc. Spreading the cities out even fits in this kind of focus, since now objectives (which are always cities) are no longer concentrated in a single tile.
It would be impossible to have this focus on smaller tactical decision in a game with no UpT limit, just as it would be impossible to have the kind of large-scale strategic decisions in a game with 1UpT.

I personally think that Civ games should focus on the large-scale decision making, which is why I have no complaint about the SoD in Civ 4. But to say that 1UpT completely failed, or "ruined" Civ 5, is simply ignoring the fact that Civ 5 was a massive departure from previous Civ games. Civ 5 would simply not work without 1UpT (just as Civ 4 would not work with it), and no-one can argue that Civ 5 was not a successful game. Civ 6 was never going to be a return to Civ 4, since Firaxis wants to make money, so I don't know why anyone is surprised or disappointed that Civ 6 will continue to develop on the mechanics introduced in Civ 5, and add mechanics that fit that kind of game.

The only way to have a game in which both strategic decision and tactical decisions are equally available (and equally relevant) is to essentially have two separate games, one strategic, and one tactical, in the same game. This is what the Total War series does, and does extremely well. Sword of the Stars (kinda) does it as well in a space context.

[picklepikkl]

Unless an army has tactical advantages like defending at Thermopylae or bombing helpless ground units from orbit, battles tend to resolve according to pure numbers. (Them as have the mostest are the winniest.) What is a game designer supposed to do to try to overcome this? The ultimate solution as a player in empire games is to outproduce or outtech the opponent -- or both -- and win the war before ever firing the first shot.

You seem to assume that it's something a designer has to overcome.

In cases where the game is entirely focused on dealing with challenges along the way to "having the mostest," it isn't. But if the game is going to include differentiation between units such that they combine to fill different tactical and strategic roles, then either it's possible for numerically inferior forces to defeat superior ones or the differentiation is pointless and ultimately illusory. The margin of superiority capable of being overcome is an open question, but the point remains.

One of the things Europa Universalis 4 does pretty well is that, while the intersection of quantity and technology is generally a pretty good proxy for military strength, this isn't always true. Players speak in fear of Prussia's space marine infantry - discipline modifiers stacked in the mid-late game make their formations incredibly difficult to defeat.

[Sirian]

Most space 4X games these days solve this problem by utilising what is essentially a rock-paper-scissors approach to combat techs.

Aye. The modern trope, shallow and dull. This is the biggest failing of the latest GalCiv, for example.

We were better off with "attack" and "defense" values from Civs 1/2/3 or the even older health and strength paradigm from games like Legionnaire (C64 days). "Men" and "Swords": your soldier count and the effective strength of the unit (lower than the body count, especially after some combat or even just some marching).


Mind you, units with strengths and weaknesses relative to other units can be part of a beautiful design. Soren's notion of the secret sauce that brings the concept to life is the "monkey wrench". The system needs some irregularities: units that throw the balance of power off the pattern of the snake always eating its own tail. Axemen and Elephants helped do this in Civ4, and folks around these parts are still playing that combat balance over a decade later.

Balance is good. Perfect symmetry is not. Getting assymetrical units to balance out well is no easy task, but great designs are not often published by the lazy.


- Sirian

[Qgqqqqq]

TBF I have a huge hours played on civ 4 on steam, but I regularly leave it run overnight with everything else on the laptop going :P

Heh, me too. My friends are always horrified at the amount of time I supposedly spend on the game, when really I'm just too lazy to close it.


I think I might buy Civ 6 on release. It's not the smart decision, both money and quality wise, but if I leave it too long my view on the game will be too coloured by varying analyses to properly appreciate it.

[Sirian]

The only way to have a game in which both strategic decision and tactical decisions are equally available (and equally relevant) is to essentially have two separate games, one strategic, and one tactical, in the same game.

One of the biggest attractions of Civ is that it DOESN'T "zoom in" to the tactical level to resolve combat. The game keeps its focus at a higher level and keeps the empire-buiilding action rolling on. What you do in your cities matters more than what you do on the tactical battlefield -- which is clearly not true for Age of Wonders or Total War or any other empire game with a full tactical battle mode.

Total War isn't a 4X game. The tactical combat is the priority there, with the strategic mode allowing one to put battles in to context and give them a wider meaning, connect them together. Unfortunately, it also rewards the Powell Doctrine: bring overwhelming force to the fight. If you are constantly getting in to "close" battles where you lose a large part of your force, the attrition will take you down at the strategic level. So what makes for the most fun at the tactical level is disastrous at the strategic level, while winning the strategy makes for dull tactical encounters.

The same is true in general for games that have (or could have) both a strategic game and a tactical game. One of the reasons Xcom (the original) was so brilliant is that it eschewed the standard "4X" model of lots of factions and a "fair fight" and instead scripts the opposition so that tactical battles scale up in (reasonably close) parallel with your strategic gains. The tactical battles are thus more rewarding on average without having to shed the strategic layer to get there. (Too bad Firaxis either did not understand this or did not care, and decided to smack down the heavy hand on the strategic side of the Xcom reboot. I personally was very disappointed in it, so much so I didn't buy the recent sequel. It will just be more of the same.)


- Sirian