Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Hesmyrr]

Even Civ5 had crazy ICS on the beginning before several updates, so I don't know why there would not be one for Civ6 launch.

[Jowy]

EDIT: probably just skip this and watch the other one I posted

[Jowy]

Here is a MUCH BETTER gameplay video:
EDIT: same footage actually, but it has commentary from someone who played the game.

[Bacchus]

Given that research is boosted by expansion and generally doing as many things as possible, I think we will see a lot of REXing, albeit probably less of the ICS variety in the early game. The limit on the number of districts per city does suggest that ICS will be very much a thing in the mid-game.

[Bacchus]

Oh wow, we get to see a lot in these videos. I am just in the mood to watch something like this very closely, will write some impressions.

[Mr. Cairo]

Just want to say now, as an ex-archaeologist, that many roads in history did come about organically, through trade, etc. But ancient governments around the world, dating back to the Bronze Age, did carry out organized efforts to build paved roads along routes they considered important. Most notably the Romans, but also the Mycenaeans and Incans (off the top of my head) and I have no doubt that the same happened in the Near East and in Asia. I hope that they will introduce a similar system, where you can build, for lack of a better term, "military roads" that provide much better movement for soldiers, possibly with a maintenance cost to keep you from building them everywhere.

[T-hawk]

When you are rewarded not penalized for reaching for small gains, they can be some of the sweetest

This is a beautiful argument. But the problem is that this principle is isomorphic to a big micromanagement time sink. If the gains are available and positive, you must go for them and spend the required time, or you will fall behind someone who does.

When you are rewarded not penalized for reaching for small gains, they can be some of the sweetest

This argument is also the core of where I found fun in Civ 5. I found that ambrosia in stacking up the religious and civic and GPP modifiers to enable those cities #5 through #8 to be positive value, even against all that conventional wisdom of Four-City Tradition.

Civ4 begins with the lid on tight, loosens it, then ultimately takes it off.

Early game: found "too many" cities, get slapped down hard. Better stay within the allowed numbers.
Middle game: numbers loosen, you can found a few more cities if you wish.
Late game: OK, now you can do whatever you like.

I disagree. There are always tools to raise the lid in Civ 4 and keep up economically with as many cities as you can reach. I don't think you ever got deep enough into the later strategic developments of the community in Civ 4 to see this. My most successful games and highest scores came from expanding at maximum pace while riding the knife edge of economic disaster.

It is true that those lid-raisers involve some specific pathways: slingshots to Bureaucracy or Currency, the Great Lighthouse, deliberately choosing a Financial or Organized civ, deliberately failing highly multiplied wonders for the refund gold. But put some of these together and you can always expand gradually, or put all of them together and you really do get Civ 3's gameplay on being permitted to reach anything you can.

I mean, T-Hawk just posted a screenshot of an enormous Civ4 map.

Believe it or not, that is a standard size map.

[T-hawk]

Even Civ5 had crazy ICS on the beginning before several updates, so I don't know why there would not be one for Civ6 launch.

I wonder if this might be a natural path for all titles in the Civ genre. All those per-city bonuses are natural for designers to put in, get excited about, communicate to players, and get them excited and talking about and buying and playing the game.

Players always get overexcited over "every X gets some Y" mechanics. This happens with Magic and tons of other CCGs and tabletop games. The casual observer never really considers how often you actually get X or how big Y really is. But for a new game launch, it really is the excitement that matters more than the balance. Remember how crazy everyone went over Civ 4's religious shrines of 1 friggin gold per city?

(My favorite X-triggers-Y example from Magic is Oloro in the Commander format, who gains 2 life per turn. People bitch to hell about that being brokenly overpowered. No, if you can't outrace 2 life a turn with damage, your deck just sucks.)

[Wyatan]

I'm not sure you guys are talking about the same thing Sirian does.

There's a game's design, and there's how people play the game.
These tend not to match 100%.

There's no doubt that Civ 4's design was meant to slow initial expansion and prevent REXing.
The fact that players found loopholes to exploit and ways to beat the design is totally besides the point (don't tell the game designers foresaw the way fail gold could be used for instance).

I tend to agree with Sirian's view (as expressed in an older thread) that such game systems are pointless: this isn't a sandbox game, "SimCiv". It's a competitive game. The only limiting factor should be your opponents. Why impose penalties/costs to settling, when it's your opponents' job to limit your ability to expand ?
Finding the correct balance (between long term potential and short term advantage) to prevent the winner to be determined 100% at the end of the expansion phase is indeed a mighty tough job, but I find Civ 4's and Civ 5's approaches to be cop-outs in the end.

I certainly do prefer Civ 4 to Civ 3 as a whole, and I wasn't exactly a fan of the corruption system, but I can certainly see Siriran's point here.

[Bobchillingworth]

Why impose penalties/costs to settling, when it's your opponents' job to limit your ability to expand ?

Well, because not doing so puts of the onus of checking player expansion solely on the AI, which as Civ III demonstrated generally doesn't work particularly well in a 4X game where everyone starts in a peace state. In a straight-up wargame the situation would be different, but it breaks down once the player has a variety of tools to keep their opponents off their backs.