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4X Make Civ(likes) Great Again! Brainstorming design thread

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IncendiaryDevice

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I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.

No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.

No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
That's another fundamental aspect. They are not mutually exclusive.

Of course not, that's why civ-likes only have flavour random and not rogue-like random. You don't "make civ-likes great again" by concentrating all your thoughts into ways to introduce more random.
 

Bad Jim

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I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.

No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
That's another fundamental aspect. They are not mutually exclusive.

Of course not, that's why civ-likes only have flavour random and not rogue-like random. You don't "make civ-likes great again" by concentrating all your thoughts into ways to introduce more random.

Whether you spawn near special resources or not isn't "flavour random", it's actually random and affects gameplay. Sometimes you spawn next to a useful resource, sometimes you need to wage war against a civ on the other side of the map to get it. And a lot of the politics, if it isn't pure dice rolls, is dependent on things happening in parts of the map you haven't explored and/or have no control over, so it might as well be random.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Whether you spawn near special resources or not isn't "flavour random", it's actually random and affects gameplay. Sometimes you spawn next to a useful resource, sometimes you need to wage war against a civ on the other side of the map to get it. And a lot of the politics, if it isn't pure dice rolls, is dependent on things happening in parts of the map you haven't explored and/or have no control over, so it might as well be random.

Civ 1 and civ 2 didn't have resources. Being next to resources doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, as you can trade for them, settle an island with them on, take out one civ to get your missing ones, completely ignore them and wait for the next advancement. Resources were just flavour when they were introduced, they angered some loyal fans when they were introduced, and some even consider their introduction one of the many things that started civ on its journey to monumental decline and this thread.

Nice try, but maybe find a mechanic that didn't even start until the third entry of the franchise.
 

Bad Jim

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Nice try, but maybe find a mechanic that didn't even start until the third entry of the franchise.

The map is random, your starting location is random, what you get from villages is random, the AI goes to war at random, barbarians appear at random, and in the earlier games it got wonders at random.

Nice try, but maybe try an argument that I haven't already answered? All of those I listed can have significant knock on effects:
  • You can spawn on an island that is too isolated even for triremes and have to research sails while some aggressive AI eats three other civs and takes over a continent.
  • Villages and barbarians are small but have significant knock on effects if they happen early. Sometimes you get free cavalry, sometimes you get murdered by barbs, sometimes you eliminate the Zulus early by entering a nearby village that spawns barbs.
  • Random wars. Should not need an explanation.
  • The AI gets wonders at random. It doesn't build them, it just randomly gets them for free.
It's a fact. Randomness is a part of Civ games.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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It's a fact. Randomness is a part of Civ games.

I never said it wasn't you spastic.

You can spawn on an island that is too isolated even for triremes and have to research sails while some aggressive AI eats three other civs and takes over a continent.

Randomising a start location does not effect game mechanics nor your reason for building a structure, everything will still be aimed towards improving your empire, it does not introduce 'build against random' mechanics.

Villages and barbarians are small but have significant knock on effects if they happen early. Sometimes you get free cavalry, sometimes you get murdered by barbs, sometimes you eliminate the Zulus early by entering a nearby village that spawns barbs.

They are not as random as you make out, because you know that they will exist, you have a choice about whether to enter them, you know what the possible outcomes are. They are, in fact, less of a random element and more of a player-choice mechanic. Randomly spawning barbarians on the other hand are another matter, a very minor one that can indeed be turned off, however, even with these, if you have them turned on, you will know for sure that you will encounter them and will need to plan for encountering them. Since barbs are a military force then it is not distracting you too much from what your objective is anyway and they do not distract from the concept of the game because they are merely an abstraction of conquering and empire building, ergo, they are not equivalent in any way to applying random disasters.

Random wars. Should not need an explanation.

Wars in civ games are not random, lol. I like how you say "should not need explanation" as some kind of pre-emptive strike on any response here. You do not attack randomly and neither does the AI. The laughable suicide ones that appear to make no sense are indeed just the game trying to spice-up your play time, but are you seriously calling that kind of random as incline?

The AI gets wonders at random. It doesn't build them, it just randomly gets them for free.

And you think this is in some way incline mechanics?
 
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Climate worsen in Civ means that land somewhere is being changed to less productive lands. Not something you can do anything about.

Only in Virgin Civ rather than the Chad SMAC.

Oh yeah, let's segue into something else that could make civ-likes better - dynamic climate/terrain.

Yes, its another episode of "Why SMAC is the best 4X and more games should take lessons from it".

Go play with the SMAC map/scenario editor, start making terrain - observe that as you make more land, make land levels higher or lower, everything around it changes in fertility. You can do this in the game with terraforming, too. SMAC also has no "mountains" tile, every single tile in the game has its own elevation level.

It reproduces some very real-world behavior - like huge "fat" continents being full of deserts in the middle, mountains blocking rainfal.

Now, SMAC's implementation is relatively simple, because Chiron is not Terra - Chiron is a warm planet with its own mild greenhouse effect. There is no snow in-game, and SMAC also lacks huge mountains, Hymalaia/Alps/Andes-style (we DO need a mountain tile for very high terrain). You cannot also make "high coasts" without beaches and it really lacks impassable tiles.

Did SMAC even tiles? My memory tells me that SMAC's map terrain was dynamically generated voxels, wans't it? SMAC buffs help me here.

A more advanced version of what SMAC did could handle a global climate system.
 
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Barbarian horde suddenly invading your land when you are busy with other civs is tantamount to "good game". In Civ4, I have seen event spawn barbarians wipe out entire AI civs. That is BAD.

Not if you are playing with a good mod, in which Barbarians can eventually turn into a new Civilization. Don't remember the name of the mod that did that, tho.
 

Cael

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Climate worsen in Civ means that land somewhere is being changed to less productive lands. Not something you can do anything about.

Only in Virgin Civ rather than the Chad SMAC.

Oh yeah, let's segue into something else that could make civ-likes better - dynamic climate/terrain.

Yes, its another episode of "Why SMAC is the best 4X and more games should take lessons from it".

Go play with the SMAC map/scenario editor, start making terrain - observe that as you make more land, make land levels higher or lower, everything around it changes in fertility. You can do this in the game with terraforming, too. SMAC also has no "mountains" tile, every single tile in the game has its own elevation level.

It reproduces some very real-world behavior - like huge "fat" continents being full of deserts in the middle, mountains blocking rainfal.

Now, SMAC's implementation is relatively simple, because Chiron is not Terra - Chiron is a warm planet with its own mild greenhouse effect. There is no snow in-game, and SMAC also lacks huge mountains, Hymalaia/Alps/Andes-style (we DO need a mountain tile for very high terrain). You cannot also make "high coasts" without beaches and it really lacks impassable tiles.

Did SMAC even tiles? My memory tells me that SMAC's map terrain was dynamically generated voxels, wans't it? SMAC buffs help me here.

A more advanced version of what SMAC did could handle a global climate system.
SMAC tiles were static once the game starts (unless you trigger one of the global warming/cooling things or YOU chose to raise/lower the terrain) and that is the point. It doesn't randomly mutate into another type of tile simply because the computer rolled badly that turn.

Known effects that does NOT rely on random events is something that is acceptable in a civ-like. Entirely random upheavals isn't because it dilutes the choices the PLAYER makes in the long run, and that should NOT happen in a civ-like.

An extreme example is Call To Power 2. The game virtually FORCES you to trigger global warming and turn the entire planet into Waterworld. Yes, there are ways around it, but you better know the rules well to avoid it, and pray like hell your opponents are too technologically backwards to trigger it themselves. What is the fun in all that? Whatever you built is gone. Of course, if you are first to making underwater bases, triggering global warming is one key path to your domination. You WANT the waters to rise and sink the lands. You are the only one with underwater cities! Is that fun? I find it boring. An in-built "I win!" button.
 

Cael

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Barbarian horde suddenly invading your land when you are busy with other civs is tantamount to "good game". In Civ4, I have seen event spawn barbarians wipe out entire AI civs. That is BAD.

Not if you are playing with a good mod, in which Barbarians can eventually turn into a new Civilization. Don't remember the name of the mod that did that, tho.
Not a comfort when YOU are the one the barbs wiped out before they turn into a new civ.

And also besides the point. Stop moving the goalpost.
 
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SMAC tiles were static once the game starts (unless you trigger one of the global warming/cooling things or YOU chose to raise/lower the terrain) and that is the point. It doesn't randomly mutate into another type of tile simply because the computer rolled badly that turn.

But it doesn't have to be.

The tiles are static because SMAC has pretty simple climate models, and they are only as "static" as the player is. You can use Condensers to turn arid soil into good soil, or raise mountains that block humidity and rainfall, turning tiles deserted. The point here is that the entire thing is generated dynamically, rather than set. Go make a SMAC map now, there is no such thing as a "make this tile rainy/arid" button, except if you use landmarks to do it.

Climate is dynamic and changes.
- Did you know that what we call Lybia nowdays, used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire? Now its a shadow of what it was.
- Did you know there was a time the Sahara was green?
- Did you know the Brazilian southeast gets rain from a complex system that involves large amounts of airbone water mass going into the Amazon Forest, and from there being sent southwards? If the Amazon disappeared now, the weather would be fucked up.
- Did you know Greenland used to be far less of a cold hellish place than it is now, during the Medieval Warm Period?
- Did you know there was a mini-ice age in the 18th century?

The Romans were not killed by a random dice roll. No civilization in history was killed by a random dice roll.
 

Cael

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But it doesn't have to be.

The tiles are static because SMAC has pretty simple climate models, and they are only as "static" as the player is. You can use Condensers to turn arid soil into good soil, or raise mountains that block humidity and rainfall, turning tiles deserted. The point here is that the entire thing is generated dynamically, rather than set. Go make a SMAC map now, there is no such thing as a "make this tile rainy/arid" button, except if you use landmarks to do it.

Climate is dynamic and changes.
- Did you know that what we call Lybia nowdays, used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire? Now its a shadow of what it was.
- Did you know there was a time the Sahara was green?
- Did you know the Brazilian southeast gets rain from a complex system that involves large amounts of airbone water mass going into the Amazon Forest, and from there being sent southwards? If the Amazon disappeared now, the weather would be fucked up.
- Did you know Greenland used to be far less of a cold hellish place than it is now, during the Medieval Warm Period?
- Did you know there was a mini-ice age in the 18th century?

The Romans were not killed by a random dice roll. No civilization in history was killed by a random dice roll.
Once again, you dodge the point being brought up: It dilutes player decisions in that it occurs randomly and the player has to scramble to adapt. Having to go around build more farms elsewhere because Libya dried up is no fun for someone who is fighting a war somewhere else at the time.

You think it is a good idea, but the same argument could be made of changing climatic conditions forcing you to disband cities because they are no longer productive. That has also happened in real life. THAT IS A STUPID THING TO HAVE IN A CIV-LIKE.
 

Bad Jim

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Once again, you dodge the point being brought up: It dilutes player decisions in that it occurs randomly and the player has to scramble to adapt. Having to go around build more farms elsewhere because Libya dried up is no fun for someone who is fighting a war somewhere else at the time.

You think it is a good idea, but the same argument could be made of changing climatic conditions forcing you to disband cities because they are no longer productive. That has also happened in real life. THAT IS A STUPID THING TO HAVE IN A CIV-LIKE.

I should point out that climate change is generally pretty slow, and "scrambling to adapt" is far from accurate IRL. For example, Greenland was slowly abandoned due to the Little Ice Age, there is little evidence of people dying of starvation or cold. People just migrated.

The desertification of the Sahara actually happened before the Romans. The reason North Africa stopped being a bread basket was piracy in the Mediterranean, which prevented food being shipped to Europe and that is entirely reasonable in a Civ game, as the player just has to defend trade routes.

The example from Call to Power is way off, and should not resemble Waterworld without a "rule of fun" justification. If global warming continues and all ice melts, only a fairly small proportion of land gets submerged, the only catch being that we have built nearly all our cities on that small proportion. Have a look:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...ew-shoreline-maps/#/ice-melt-globe-opener.jpg

A realistic simulation of global warming in a Civ game would submerge some coastal tiles, and maybe some desert would become fertile. You would be able to make another city inland and transfer the population. And you would get 50+ turns warning before it happened. The idea isn't bad just because some developer managed to fuck it up in a way that is neither fun nor realistic, and its not fair to assume that if The Brazilian Slaughter had creative control it would turn into a sudden random "half your empire is underwater trololo" mechanic.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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The Brazilian Slaughter and Bad Jim you both still seem to be missing the point of your own thread. Adding more random 'realities' to the game wont "make them great again", because those random realities were never there in the first place other than as minor spice. You're not trying to make them great again, you're trying to subvert them into something they never were. Further, I can only repeat, if your focus of 'improvements' have nothing to do with the concept of building and improving an empire, then you're putting all your thoughts and energies into irrelevancies that are nothing more than minor spice, so they, again, have virtually nothing to do with "making civ-like great again".
 
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Hexes are fine but bring back stacks.

Borrow some ideas from Call to Power. I like the ocean/space cities in the future.

Civil Wars for larger empires.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I agree that stacks were never the problem in 4x games. The problem I have with 4x games is that the years don't match up with the supply of troops. For example, the biggest deterrent to replayability of any 4x is thinking, before you even start the game, about how, even if you defeat a big stack, on the higher difficulty levels, the AI will just be able to re-amass that stack in a few turns. Which turns combat away from an abstract realism and into a Diablo-like respawn grind-fest.

In civ games the problem here is Production=Units. As if your factories are literally manufacturing people. When, in reality, once you've subdued the main stack, ie: most fighting capable men between 20 and 40, then the defeated territory can't just suddenly magic-up another stack of fighting capable men between 20-40 in a couple of years. It's probably the biggest absurdity of the series. They never tied Unit production to population.

The game where I hate this dissonance the most is the Total War series, and it's why so many people end-up just auto resolving battles. If you knew that that one BIG battle was make or break, then the battle would be meaningful and barely anyone would auto resolve, however, if, after you've just defeated a 2,000 stack the AI just immediately produces another 2,000 stack in 4 or 5 turns, then, meh, it's just a grind-fest and one's hand instinctively starts to hover over the auto-resolve button, the brain knowing it's all just bullshit anyway, etc.
 
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The game where I hate this dissonance the most is the Total War series, and it's why so many people end-up just auto resolving battles. If you knew that that one BIG battle was make or break, then the battle would be meaningful and barely anyone would auto resolve, however, if, after you've just defeated a 2,000 stack the AI just immediately produces another 2,000 stack in 4 or 5 turns, then, meh, it's just a grind-fest and one's hand instinctively starts to hover over the auto-resolve button, the brain knowing it's all just bullshit anyway, etc.

The big problem with Total War is that units cost huge maintenance compared to their construction cost. An average unit might cost 800 to recruit and 200 per turn to maintain. This means any army you wipe can be replaced in 4 turns. It's not even really an AI difficulty/cheating problem, the player can do it too.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Indeed, what makes it particularly bad regarding an AI opponent though is that killing off that 2,000 stack before you're ready to do the whole empire in is that all you're doing by killing the 2,000 is permitting the AI to build even better troops; because the AI never upgrades and just bankrupts itself on the first units available, so killing off the old units suddenly lets it build the new ones. Which, for a 'strategy' game, is ludicrous. The Total War series makes this even worse by ensuring that 'rebels' are often more powerful than the main army you just destroyed, simply because 'rebels' are drawn from a random pool of all the currently available armies.
 
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At least the AI has to pay reinforcement and ends up with a smaller overall army. What really sucks is when a one city faction stays on weak units and ends up with 1.5-2 stacks that just camp their city. The city of course provides its own garrison so trying to take down what should be a weak enemy means you need to fight 2.5 or so stacks of shit
 

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Strap Yourselves In
This is one thing that Europa Universalis got right. The manpower limit keeps you from immediately rebuilding if you suffer a military disaster.
 

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