Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Commodore]

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).

This is being pretty unfair to the actually surprisingly deep tactical combat of Civ4.

I honestly don't know why they won't just go back to the old "you can stack units but you get everything hurt if the top dies" like in most of the older games.

[Sullla]

I read the preview information about Civ6. I share in some of the skepticism about what we've heard so far, but I'm nowhere near as skeptical as some of the community members. Like Sirian, I've had the advantage of meeting Ed Beach and working with him at Firaxis. I didn't have much contact with Ed during Civ4's development, but from my limited experience he seems like an excellent person to be put in charge of overall design. Ed is in much better shape to handle that role than Jon Shafer was at the time of Civ5's development, and I don't mean that as a cheap shot at Jon, who simply had a lot less experience in game design going into the project. I'm willing to wait and see what we get before leveling judgment based on early previews.

And no, we won't be getting another Civ4. I've learned to live with that in the years since Civ5's release. Civ6 will look a lot more like Civ5 than it will look like Civ6. But the thing is, Civ4 will always be there. We can keep playing it as long as we want. It's the same reason why I can accept the Master of Orion reboot for being what it is, and not hating it for failing to be classic MOO. I hope that the new games will live up to their predecessors, but if they don't, we always have the old game too.

[Mr. Cairo]

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.

I very much disagree with this analysis of the Total War games. Having the larger army in no way guarantees victory on the battlefield in Total War games (at least in the good one: Rome and Medieval 2). I regularly go into battles with the numerically inferior force, but emerge victorious thanks to being smarter than the AI in knowing how to use my units (and I do play on hard difficulty levels FWIW). Moreover, I find the strategic level of play just as important as the tactical level of play. If I don't bother developing my cities and making smart decisions with my units on the campaign map, no amount of tactical acumen can guarantee overall victory.

Also, you also make out as though I was in some way critical of Civ 4 and other games that do keep the focus on the strategic level, which is not. I play Civ 4, Total War games, and Starcraft 2, among many many others. I enjoy strategy games at every level of focus, from the tactical to the strategic, to everything in between. Just because the Total War games don't have the same deep strategic decision-making of Civ, doesn't make them inherently inferior.

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).

This is being pretty unfair to the actually surprisingly deep tactical combat of Civ4.

I honestly don't know why they won't just go back to the old "you can stack units but you get everything hurt if the top dies" like in most of the older games.

I was generalising to make a point. Also, the deep tactical combat of Civ 4 only really expresses itself in multiplayer games between people who have been playing the game for years and years and years. In SP, the SoD is a real thing.


What I was trying to say in my original post was that the entire argument between Civ 4 and Civ 5 is ridiculous. They are two completely different games, and to complain about one or the other because it isn't the kind of game you like is pointless. Just because we like Civ 4 doesn't mean that we are entitled to a Civ 5 (or 6) that pleases us.

[Hail]

night and day cycles is exactly what civ6 needs to succeed.

[greenline]

What I was trying to say in my original post was that the entire argument between Civ 4 and Civ 5 is ridiculous. They are two completely different games, and to complain about one or the other because it isn't the kind of game you like is pointless. Just because we like Civ 4 doesn't mean that we are entitled to a Civ 5 (or 6) that pleases us.

They are indeed two different gameplay styles but people might find one to be deeper and more fun to play for longer periods of time then the other.

And these are games. No one is entitled to any of them, but no game developer is entitled to have people like or buy their games because they try to be different or put more or less effort into them.

[GermanJoey]

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]."

Seven, I think you're (probably) pushing his argument to an extreme that he did not intend. To push yours towards the other way would be: surely, you agree that 2 choices is more interesting than 1 choice? And that chess is more interesting than checkers? (FWIW, I'll clearly say that agree with you that, for most general situations that a game will present a player, that there's gonna a certain optimum number of "real" choices for the player to pick, and that's probably a fairly low, single-digit number.)

At any rate, what gets me really excited about strategy games isn't just having a lot of choice, it is also figuring out what choices you have. I think that's what we mean when we say that Civ4 is a "deep" game. For example, an expert player might see that something otherwise trivial, like what to do with some workers and city builds on T70, is actually a major choice that can even affect their tech path: a.) choose accelerate improvements in a new border city and plant more cottages around the capital, choosing tech A, or b.) choose to build extra mines, build up overflow in the cities, prechop forests now, and then choose techs B -> C, in order to land a major wonder 20 turns from now. An intermediate player might not even realize that option b was there, or that they were making a choice to strengthen their border region. Of course, a super-expert might scoff and think the hidden option c.) was clearly the right thing to do in that situation, because there's a high probability that player D will do this-thing and player E will do other-thing, and thus doing c.) is the lynchpin in a 10 step plan for securing Liberalism in 80 turns, which will then lead to a quick conquest of Player F and thus... and so on.

There's been stuff players have done on this site, in both multiplayer pbems/pitbosses and single player Adventures/Epics, that is so crazy and creative that fellow players playing the same game, even after seeing proof still can't believe it actually, really happened. Now *that* kinda thing is what still gets me fist pumping and hollarin' about year long matches of a 10 year old strategy game!

[SevenSpirits]

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]."

Seven, I think you're (probably) pushing his argument to an extreme that he did not intend. To push yours towards the other would be: surely, you agree that 2 choices is more interesting than 1 choice? And that chess is more interesting than checkers? (FWIW, I'll clearly say that agree with you that, for most general situations that a game will present a player, that there's gonna a certain optimum number of "real" choices for the player to pick, and that's probably a fairly low, single-digit number.)

I do not know what he intended, but what I'm objecting to are the absolutist statements that he definitely posted:

To this I'd like to add that it's simply impossible to make a good strategy game with 1UPT rule. I'm surprised, how some posters here don't understand it.

In true strategy games, however, nuanced strategic decisions are the core of gameplay, under no circumstances you should anything to hinder them.

(Emphasis mine.)

I'm not sure what you mean about pushing "mine" towards an extreme. My stance is "it depends on other factors too", not "fewer choices always make a game more strategic".

I do agree with most of what you are saying - and I think you are articulating it quite well.

To add to your description of strategy emergence from open-ended systems, again I think Go is a really good example of this. Just read people talking about Go and you will see the same deep analysis and layered-on strategy concepts that you see here for Civ IV. (And in fact there is much more of it since there are quite a few more expert Go players!) Contra Gavagai's claim, Go does this while being heavily quantized.

[Gavagai]

I do not know what he intended

Interestingly enough in you initial statement you sounded like you were pretty sure what I intended . My point is very simple - strategy game is a game about concentration of resources, hence you can't make a good strategy game if you forbid players to concentrate them. By contrast, tactical games are about positioning, in such games heavy limits on concentration are pretty much necessary.

[Gavagai]

I think I got it - it looks like you interpret "strategic" label as some kind of value judgement about the depth of the game. In that case I'm not saying that 1UPT games are bad or shallow or not worthy to be played, it's just a different genre.

[Mr. Cairo]

I can see how it would be confusing when people are talking about "strategic" vs "tactical" games when the genre is generally just know as Strategy Games, which includes such wildly different games as Civilization 4 and Starcraft 2. But I think that they should still be within one genre, since those games are much more like eachother than they are like CoD or Elder Scrolls or DOTA 2.

Maybe we need a new name for the wider genre, while using terms like "strategic" and "tactical" for subgenres?