Sid Meier's Civilization

I_Lurk_Here said:
I bought Civ 7 due to curiosity and because I like the series. I have about 16 hours in it so far. I think it's playable but after completing a playthrough with the science victory, I feel kind of directionless. I've started a few other games but never finished any of them (which is ironic considering that's something they wanted to fix with the era system lmao). It's also one of the few times I bought a game and it was noticeably buggy.
Two things I want to complain about is:
1. All the leaders having a level up system. I wouldn't mind mementos being tied to your account's overall level or achievements but I don't want to grind as specific leaders for a memento I want.
2. Some leaders already having alternate versions. I disliked the concept in Civ 6 and think it's only justified if e.g. you already have 7 American presidents and think having (New Deal) FDR and (Pacific Theatre) FDR is worth it at that point.
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Could you elaborate on the directionless part? I find it interesting that this particular term cropped a few times when discussing this game, when talking to wildly different people, independent of each other.

In all cases, there's a common sentiment of "it's fun but..." thing going on.
 
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Kane Lives said:
Could you elaborate on the directionless part? I find it interesting that this particular term cropped a few times when discussing this game, when talking to wildly different people, independent of each other.

In all cases, there's a common sentiment of "it's fun but..." thing going on.
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I don't know if I can elaborate on it much TBH. I usually get an itch to do a playthrough with one of the older Civ games, sometimes with mods, but don't get that feeling with 7. I don't think the victories are that fun and the game doesn't come with scenarios either.
 
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Checking in on the Vox Populi 4UC update, looks like they're delaying it for more polish, but found this gem:
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@PandaChai

Is this guy openly gay?
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Probably.

He's a Civ6 streamer on YT that I used to put on in the background from time to time because he played casual MP games and was very mid but humble.

He was part of the Christmas CivGiv charity stream back in '23 and had appeared on some other Civ tournaments and guest shows.

His shtick used to be that there was some Eastern European teen named something like Fael that followed him around who was so grating that the rest of Duck's MP group was always conspiring to have him kicked.

But it usually didn't matter because Fael's mother would call him for supper or make him do his homework midgame anyway without fail.
 
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Snekposter said:
Have you seen what they did to Elspeth von Draken?
View attachment 7027185
That's her official GW art where she looks austere and even a bit severe, but not ugly on a fundamental level, oh, and she also has a woman's basic proportions despite GW being GW.
View attachment 7027191
This up above is what CA did to her, where she looks a bit like an old tranny trying to stay relevant by starting up a KISS cover band.

Ulrika is similar, with a lot of the prior art making her a hot vampire tomboy in either Slavic or Goth formats:
View attachment 7027196View attachment 7027197
But for whatever reason CA forgot she has some actual fucking knockers on her as well as a nice trim waistline.
View attachment 7027195

No, but they added chicks to it everywhere because everyone knows what big feminists the Chinese are and were, and as seen above they can't even give us hot vampires. At this point I'm glad they never gave us Lucrezzia Belladonna, famously described as the most beautiful woman in all of the Old World.
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The fact you're this mad about not being able to coom over the corpses of women shows you really should sort your life out.
 
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Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I've pondered this, and the best I can come up with (from more of a simulation point of view) is that you get Great Works of Art just because there's new art movements, and new art movements come about due to social change, whether because of:
1) Cross-cultural interaction
2) Social transformation (caused by economic transformation or political conflict of some sort)
3) Religious transformation (which kind of has the same problem as art, where does it come from?)
And somewhat conditional on:
1) Wealth, at least to a minimum level
2) Individual freedom, at least to a minimum level
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Remembered this ramble of mine and recalled: technology does matter too, and economic considerations. Electricity --> Rock'n'Roll, for example, or the rise of mixing, DJing and ultimately computers. Architecture is directly tied to technology, of course, through engineering. Many music genres emerged based on it being profitable; jazz was adapted to speakeasies, while big band rose because the Depression made massive orchestras relatively cheaper, and in time it shifted back to smaller virtuouso bands with rock music. On the other hand, poor people always develop cheap instruments or musical styles that revolve around singing (like doo wop and hip hop).

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
So a culture that is industrializing hardcore, for example, could invent Romanticism. Then it can use its culture-producing infrastructure (the opera houses, painters workshops, symphony orchestras, whatevers) to pump out Culture in the old style, or in the new style. And the thing is, each art movement has its political effect. Romanticism may, for example, encourage backlash to industrialization but also nationalism (both good and bad: subversive to the regime and unifying in purpose, both for the leading nation and for its imperial subjects). Jazz would promote Communism. Classical stuff would promote republican values and reform (Age of Reason). So on. So you can have circumstances where you may choose to resist the art movement, support it or let it play itself out.

But the big thing is, you only get a lot of cultural prestige if you stay on the cutting edge. Nobody is impressed by people who are doing the same thing that's been done before. There could also be an element of a race to it: early on, you get these "invention" like great works/artistes that pop off, and so you really need to double down if you can get a first-mover advantage.

I especially think about it with EU4, because it starts off smack in the Renaissance and goes through the whole rise of classical music. Patronage - including the competition between states for specific people to patronize - is a big deal. Where in our world we may have seen the Italians lay down the vocabulary of music but really excel at sculptures and paintings, the Germans be great composers and the English be great playwrights and novelists, another world could have had it been, say, Swedish novelists, Portuguese composers and Turkish sculptors if you had the right circumstances.
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I got to thinking of this way to gamify these ideas. A lot of it may overlap with Civ VI to be honest. I didn't play a ton of it.

I like to imagine these Art Movements as opening up "deposits" of ideas. There's a certain stock of Culture to be mined, everybody has access to it, and it will eventually run out. The more you "deplete," the more "diminishing returns" you get: productivity falls. Everybody's doing cheap imitations of the old masters, it's tired and worn out. (You could argue for having increasing returns at the start to represent the Movement picking up speed, but it definitely diminished over most of its life.) It never runs dry, you reach an equilibrium level of low productivity that can last forever, but everybody wants in on it when it first starts. Art Movements are born in a specific country, but the knowledge of them can spread through contact (diplomatic, commercial, cultural-religious, doesn't matter; basically, if you can "see them" you can probably be sharing it). This is a little like EU4 Institutions.

Now, as you "mine" Culture from an Art Movement, there are also Techniques, Artists and Works that can be generated. Techniques are like classic Vicky inventions, you have odds of discovering a thing and discovering it neither gives it nor denies it to anybody else. Techniques give a permanent increase to your Cultural productivity, both good for the long run and for the "fuck you, I got mine," tragedy-of-the-commons style scramble.
Examples: Projective geometry, stained glass windows, saxophones

Works are strictly rivalrous. My culture got this work, you didn't. The Work may have benefits for everyone (like increasing the likelihood of another Work, or a Technique, or something), but in general, it raises your cultural productivity but discovering it denies it to everyone else.
Examples: Rhapsody in Blue, Brunelleschi's domes, Dream of a Fisherman's Wife

Artists are human characters, agents. In a Civ game this wouldn't work well, but in a game with a more human timescale like Old World or grand strategy titles it would. They have traits, they have agendas, they can be involved in human drama and, directly or indirectly, the drama of the state. They can be turned. Artists interact with the world through Techniques and Works. They can develop either (maybe even with some ability to steer them) and their main trait, besides just juicing your output, is having returns to scale: each individual Work or Technique pioneered by them is worth more for EVERY new Work or Technique from the same artiste. These guys become extremely valuable to you. But, as said, they can potentially be turned. The culture that spawns the Artist always gets a share of their lifetime work's value, but these guys can be bought out (patronage) by an enlightened despot who maybe fell behind on developing the infrastructure necessary to spawn their own. In Movements where it makes sense, they may have minds of their own, political activities. A Picasso is not going to voluntarily work with a Fuhrer.
Examples: Elvis Presley, Yukio Mishima, David

As particular cities develop intense Cultural industries, they can even unlock special rivalrous building opportunities (that'd be your Wonders).
Examples: Grand Ole Opry, Hollywood, Bolshoi Theater

In the end, when the Art Movement runs dry - some combination of its own spoilage and depletion - the total amount of production drawn from it is tallied for each faction. If a culture had a particularly large share, it may get a permanent bonus over the bonuses it already has from Works and Techniques, and that bonus translates (much later on) into generalized Tourism in settings where that makes sense. The more dominant they are, the better; a total blowout victory (like America in the Film Industry) means a lot more than a slight majority. Thus, two motivations for the intense race: the immediate payoff of wanting to get what juice you can from it while you can, and then the long-term payoff of getting crowned The Winner in that race. Which in a 4X lends itself well to Cultural Victory: being The Winner matters a lot more than being Second Place for Tourism. Nobody goes to the Netherlands for a Renaissance vacation, they go to Italy.

One final nuance may be that, if Art Movements are set on a building-by-building basis, there may be a tradeoff the player faces of whether to hang on to their victorious past industries (stuck in the past) or convert to a new race that they could lose. This would help balance against winners snowballing because the guy with the most painting schools and amphitheaters always wins, making it more rewarding so they keep investing in it... you see. If trying to win again is a gamble, that helps balance it. I can imagine cultures that achieved total victory especially deciding to just kick up their feet and never do anything creative again, which is kind of how Greece and Italy look to me.
 
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Civilization: Chud Edition 🤔
  • every leader is like a "stereotypical caricature" of the "culture" he or she represents
  • any woman leaders are highly "sexualized" to "appeal to the male gaze"
  • no "ages" system
  • nice interface
  • good map design
  • there's Barbarians
  • the American leader is Donald Trump

(Had a "showerthought" of how to make a Civ vidya as "offensive" as possible to SJWs, yet not offensive by 1980s or 1990s standards.)
 
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The Old World Orders system is actually a good basis for an idea I've had for a long time of depicting stateless societies (specifically Indians). When you have one of these games, one of the questions is who you are: "the government," the specific ruler, the spirit of the nation. And each franchise directly answers this or blows it off, although they don't necessarily stick with 100% consistency to it.

For stateless societies, I figured that the player is a spirit of the nation who essentially acts as a puppetmaster. If you want something done, you have a roster of chiefs who are capable of cashing in their influence (stateless societies govern by persuasion and are polycentric), but these characters are not going to act against their own interests, and something important would be lost if they couldn't act independently. So the stateless society gets a pool of influence on each chief, a range of actions for each chief defined by their personality, political alignments, abilities and such, and what you don't spend a chief may just use for the fulfillment of their own goals.

One way this could play is that you have an Orders pool as the player and then you have separate Orders pools for each chief. You don't just do an action like plant a corn field, lead an army or sign a peace treaty. You have a specific chief plant a corn field, a specific chief lead an army, a specific chief sign a peace treaty. There's an optimization puzzle of figuring out how to use these people in the way that's most effective - not just what do you prioritize, but who you use - and the decision to not use up all the influence of a chief can result in them allocating what remains in ways you don't necessarily want, like a chief who conducts their own independent foreign policy or runs through their own domestic agenda.


In my art ramble, I think Portfolio is a good word to refer to an Artist's collective work. The value of a Portfolio has increasing returns to scale as it's built up, each Work makes them more significant. A Leonardo da Vinci that churns out five bangers is worth many times more than five separate Artists putting out a Work each. Some Artists could be literal Renaissance men capable of working in multiple artforms or even Movements.
 
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TheMonkeyMan said:
And how can they have settlers with a covered wagon in Civ 1 before they got The Wheel?
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I like to think they're just a symbol up to a certain point. Then they have covered wagons.

Hopefully they abandon them once motor vehicles become available, otherwise a long journey.

(I like how they introduce Engineers in Civ 2.)
 
Someone reviewing Civ 7 pointed out a seemingly small flaw: in a diplomatic interaction, the foreign leader faces the player leader. In older Civ vidya, the foreign leaders always face the viewer. Except in Call to Power 2 and maybe CTP where diplomacy is texts, and in C2 Test of Time a glitch makes that pre-rendered animated herald invisible.
 
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ToroidalBoat said:
Found this neat little free online vidya that's sorta vaguely like Civ 6. It's very minimalist.

CivHero (ad blocker may be needed)

As far as I can tell, there's only 1 unit per civ -- the leader -- who does everything: gathers resources and founds towns. Oh yeah and resources are needed to do anything.
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I think I've shilled it before, but there's also this:
Unciv

(Light weight FOSS Civ V clone with modding)
Has android support which is nice if you want a pocket game. Highly recommend the rekmod if you give it a shot.
 
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