Love the way the actual real time hour is displayed in game. Since about 40 years playing Civ I really really know how easily you are suddenly disturbed by bird singing for the raising sun while you just wanted to do one more turn...
Very excited for the capacity to combine military units within one tile, but in a limited and controlled manner. Stacks in Civ4 are strategically interesting, but they devolve into pilling up units mindlessly. The one-unit-per-tile system in Civ5 and Civ6 is more positionally interesting, but the AI doesn't know how to use units and becomes incredibly stupid. This has at least the potential to be the best of both worlds.
Something else I just thought of is that to defeat an army it'll be less of a drudge to defeat all the units and more of a focus of defeating commanders as I imagine if 2 armies fight and one loses their commander, they probably want to pull back to reinforce. I like giving armies a focus point.
Yeah at 11:30 the computer totally screws up- their archer is stuck with no retreat path (archers are great at moving back one tile and shooting) AND the chariot can’t reach the enemy archers, the perfect target for it. It did basically the worst deployment possible.
I did love my doom stacks in civ 3 and 4 and it was HARD going away from them for 5 and 6. I’m very glad they have brought back combined tile occupation and movement even if it’s not entirely for combat. That solves major logistical nightmares that 5 and 6 didn’t really bother to tackle. The reinforcement system sounds good “in theory” as quill said… But I suspect it is going to be unpopular and will need some serious tweaking by the time all is said and done. It seems a bit cheap to always be able to get reinforcements to a battle a long ways away without risking them being ambushed or attacked along the way. Beyond that though, the combat and commander system looks refreshing and awesome!
This unit stacking mechanic is so good. It solves one of the issue I had with the previous where you had so many units that it took 5 minutes to move them all. This sounds really good.
just found out your channel, i really like how you have a different point of view on the franchise than people like me who started to play in Civ 6, playong "competitive multiplayer"
Would not mind having the commander stacks being able to fight as one later down the road, like the "Corps" and "Army" concepts from civ 6. Looking very promising.
A big nostalgia hit of Stacks of Doom! 😅 Question: do the units unpack in the same formation they were hoovered up by the commander? Would be good if we could choose which units unpacked to which tile ourselves.
Woah, a Biffa spotting in the wild. Cheers mate, I absolutely love your creative approach to games and am glad to see you are interested in Civ! Maybe we get some Civ 7 content? 👉👈 Edit due to dumb autocorrect
Everything looks good in my opinion, except for the reinforcement option. It was very fun intercepting reinforcements that e.g. have to go over water with boats and I think its pretty fair that the nation which is closer to the battlefield, has an advantage by moving getting reinforcemens faster. That you can just "sporn" reinforcements at the other side of the world just by having a commander there doesnt sound that promising
Agree, I don't mind some automation of it, but it would be nice if (perhaps in an expansion) there was some sort of supply line concept that could be blocked / had an inverse benefit based on length
you took the words out of my mouth! I loved everything until I heard this feature! I really hope he either explained it wrong or they change this feature. It would be so stupid if you could surround someone's army and they just keep reinforcing and spawning more units. or if you sneak one commander around the world and use them as basically a mobile deployment center.
Like if you were able to have units set to " disrupt reinforcement lines". SImilar to spy's where there is a certain chance of various outcomes. For example when choosing a unit that will reinforce to a commander there could be various pathing options on the map for that unit to reinforce. They won't physically move over that path but if an enemy unit is patrolling and has " disrupt reinforcements enabled", then you could potentially, delay, kill, or send those reinforcements back to their original point. This would create a game of cat and mouse where both sides would have to guess where the other is reinforcing or patrolling and would make for incredible game play.
I would argue it depends on how quick said reinforcement is. If it matches actual unit movement and accounts for terrain penalties, assuming no tech/commander upgrades, then I don’t mind it that much, because it will be mostly automation. If there is a considerably faster movement, like ignoring terrain penalties entirely, then it will be unrealistic. Quill didn’t sound like he knew for a fact what is the case, he just speculated, in my opinion. In any case, I think this could be modded, if necessary, so people will certainly tweak the balance if it proves it breaks the game. However, I find the idea of being able to disrupt the reinforcement rate of your opponent great, it adds a whole new level of strategy. On the downside, it brings Civ closer to grand strategy games like Europa Universalis, which not everyone will like, I imagine.
If they drew a path on the map (similar to civ vi traders) when hovering over the commander I could see that being a good alternative. Then you could disrupt the reinforcement unit's path by placing your own units on the line or something like that
My only concern is I hope they still have a means of cutting off or intercepting reinforcements for the enemy. It would be kinda dumb if you launch a counterattack on the enemy cities and then new units just spawn into their frontline army
This was my first thought when he mentioned the reinforcement mechanic. Yes, plodding your troops along to the front line took time, effort, and was not perhaps the most fun thing, but that inherent movement across the map was very important for interception, interdiction, evasion, scouting, and all sorts of other things.
That's what I've been wondering. It's a major question that so far every content creator has ignored. If a stack of 6 units is traveling on one tile, what happens when it's attacked?
@@AtomicPunx But other creators have said it's not civ 4 death stacks. If it just defaults to the strongest individual unit, sounds like civ 4. I'm wondering if the unit auto deploys, but that would be a problem if there aren't enough open tiles for all units to deploy.
Would be interesting if it counted as some sort of "ambush". Maybe you do a bit of damage to everyone in the army, and then the army unloads. Gives more meaning to stealthy units or just sneak attacks in general. But yeah, we need more information.
Yeah, i do agree with keeping the wonder completion cutscenes from civ6. You get to see your wonder completion in a different environment every game which is something the pre-rendered cutscenes could not do.
Good eye! I saw on Ursa Ryan's video that each culture has an additional unique culture tree that buffs their unique units and buildings. It speaks to the wealth of art assets that Quill mentions that perhaps selecting a buff to your unique unit can be reflected in their character model.
I think those are not the same units because they have different icons. I reckon the hastati units are regular swordsmen with culturally appropriate models, whereas the units with lorica segmentata are actual unique roman units.
It will be interesting to see the additional strategic/tactical importance of stacking. Can you, for example, take advantage of units being stacked, and attack them before they deploy? This would echo real life in a pretty decent way, as in the mountain pass scenario Quill mentioned: You can bunch up to get through the pass, but it will leave you vulnerable.
On a different note, since you are mentioning the large art team: I'm really disappointed by the user interface. Hopefully it will improve towards launch, but the iconography is really not good, and the interface in general looks sort of haphazard and unfinished. I really hope the latter is the actual reason. The map, buildings and units look gorgeous, though!
I guess there are less possible moves in chess though to tell it what to do in each possible scenario once they have chess figured out. Civ etc. would have infinite combos with randomly generated much bigger maps and variables.
Was it OpenAI that trained a model on LoL and beat a professional team? It was few years ago now. I'm not saying fire axis has to do the same, but there must be some evolution to the in game AI
It doesn't even take a supercomputer to develop a superhuman chess engine, a regular computer is enough (although a supercomputer/multiple computers will help develop one faster)
I dunno that strategic movement is appropriate for most of the ages, as it was railroad and other fast travel to get them moved. Romans are still gonna have to march. So then being OFF map, makes you wonder if you cut their only real route to the front, would they still manage to get through that mountain pass you cut off? That would be bad! So hope it turns into something like the unit is ON the board but has a highlight or is transparent or something to show it is reinforcing, and it moves ON the board each turn without you having to do it. So you could in theory then click it at any time to change its orders to reinforce someone else, or move to battle something nearby, etc.
Heroes of Might and Magic 4 had a similar mechanic, where one of the buildings a city could build was a “caravan” that allowed armies to be sent there from the player’s other cities, or recruited and sent from dwellings they controlled, at a rapid pace. There still needed to be an unblocked route in order to start this transport, but once it was started, that route was locked in - the transport couldn’t be intercepted, nor could it speed up if the enemy stopped blocking a shorter route.
The changes are interesting. I really hope they do an accessibility pass on the menus before launch, though. The greyed out options on the Leader Attribute screen are kind of low-contrast, and on the video about diplomacy, there was dark red text on a dark background for unavailable options that was likewise very hard to see.
Heres a problem that I see with the commander XP. You move a unit to attack, it wins and I presume it moves forward outside of the commanders range. Then on the next turn i defends from an attack or two and commander misses out on the XP. Oh also the unit that moved to attack loses the bonuses from the commander since its outside of the range. About reinforcements, if the unit truly "disappears" then its potentialy game breaking. You just plant commanders near enemy borders and then "teleport" units from the capital. Also, you wont be able to ambush reinforcements.
The fact that they went back to giving us more people into one unit makes it feel more epic and huge when you have a stack of 5 units. I hated the only 3 or 4 big people in one unit.
I wonder if army commander have that small field of reach with his/her skills then making flanking with cavalery will be kinda hard since they need to leave the reach of commander to flank the enemy units
I have some doubts this going to be very effective or useful, except for the fast reinforcement mechanic, which I see as extremely good. I could be very wrong, but I need to see this in action when people have figured out the optimal play. The way I usually play the game is not having an army ready to go. Civ 6 punishes you for it. You want as few units as possible while still just being able to defend yourself so they don't drain resources. You only need to create units in bulk together, when planning offensively, and even then not all the time. When you need to defend, you need to create units, then send your produced units immediately to choke points to block their units, you can't wait. Or they're all over your empire giving amenities, again reinforcement is the way to go. Point is if sending units 1 by 1 is more efficient you're never going to use the mechanic of massing an army to march together. The reinforcement mechanic makes the other even less viable. send 1 horse unit or scout with general then the rest teleports in. Those are my concerns after thinking it over for a day, again I need to see it in action to know this is actually the case.
I have so many questions about the stacking: 1) What happens if the army commander only has 3 slots, but he's surrounded by 4 or more units when you try to form up? 2) What if you only want to form up 2 units surrounding the army commander, instead of all of them? 3) What happens if the formed up unit is attacked? 4) Can I manually redeploy the units? (There's no way I want to trust that to the computer)
I am very intrigued by the combat system, though I am not sure how I feel about offmap movement. Having reinforcements move around allows you to potentially intercept them, which can be valuable. I think I would prefer a speedboost a la +1 to movement, and upgrades to ignore terrain etc, but still have them actually walk there
Any old computer with a good chess program can easily beat the vast majority of humans at chess. Although that’s because a lot of effort has gone into writing good chess programs, over the years.
the learning curve on this game will be massive, which is great, Civ VI felt like you only had to learn city planning, and micromanaging governors and government policies for min maxing gains. and it also seems a lot more focused, with numerous QoL changes to make the building and preparing for war parts easier, so you can focus on actually playing the game instead of spending 5 minutes on a single turn just moving things around. it looks like they really done it, and the age system will make late game far more playable, i'm pretty sure lots of players are like me who start games and drop it after renassaince or industrial age because of how tedious it could become, and end up finishing one game for each 10 started. i was also skeptical about the Humankind approach for the civ selection and the changes, but having you locked into similar civs, or certain conditions also spices up and makes you go along with what you get instead of plan everything turn 1 like it happens on the game that did it first. the art style is awesome, albeit tuned down for what i assume as Switch/PS4/XOne versions, but as this is an early build, it's likely that it will look a lot better when it releases. going for a mix of colour tone from VI, and a medium scale realism from V was an excellent choice, not breaking your immersion cause of the cartoony leaders from VI, but also keeping you marveled with how colourful it is instead of the toned down looks from V can't wait for it, i hope it consumes my life, it's been a while since i was absorbed by a strategy game, EU4 bores me too fast, and Civ V and VI stresses me out with microing everything
hmm well i still hope that they still have great people (commanders) but maybe they get like a personalized themed skill tree (which would be the best) or maybe just a tacked on bonus to a perk that kinda matches the theme of the great commander.
One thing I want to know, is if the Go To command is back. I have missed that over the last few games.. it would make late game so much easier when you're flooded with units. The commander looks like it will help with that, but still...
The new general system seems to be really interesting. Long distancee wars will be a lot more interesting. Though I hope there is a way to cut reinforcement potential to prevent attackers from pumping units into battle every turn and making distance totally irrelevant. Makes me wonder a lot about how things will be balanced. Also I wonder how combat really works now. Units seem to be engaged at the end of the player's turn, does that mean that the AI or other players cannot move their units when it's their turn? Can they disengage to reposition? And how does it work in multiplayer with simultaneous turns?? Anyways, thank you for dividing the videos so you can go into details. I love how you provide us with as much information as possible. Thanks again!
I hope there is still a supply limitation to when a reinforce can occur. If one army is completely surrounded but the army leader has an improved reinforce could the surrounded army hold out indefinitely just by 'magically teleporting' new units? Good QoL feature if you're concerned with micromanagement, otherwise I'd hope for an option to turn that off entirely. Reinforcement armies are key targets unless they are in stealth mode walking straight through enemy territory so they can get to the front line. Yellow flag on that feature.
10:09. Small correction, it does not take a supercomputer to beat a human at chess. It used to, but a modern phone is better at chess than every human put together.
I’ve played chess for almost 60 years and nothing has changed. Yet I still find it incredibly entertaining. I’ve played civ since the plodding about of square pieces. It seems to me that the added complexity to this already complex game will make picking up civ 7 for the uninitiated a daunting task indeed.
this means the commander will be a high prioity target, since if he is killed the ppl that lost him will have to waste turns to get them back and the army loses all their promotions until he gets back and the army will have to move 1 at a time and block each other until they get back, so aka back to civ5-6 gameplay. I wonder how you can protect the commander due to how important they seem to be in battle.
Everybody compare CIV VII with Humankind but with the way they are handling Commanders feels a little more like Age of Wonders, the way you extend the city too with a side of Warhammer 40K Gladius with the district slots
Thanks for doing these... i'm really enjoying learning about all this. Just a question, you mention that individual combat units don't get upgrades, but in the combat (~12:00), the units appear to have veterancy chevrons on their icons, so do they maybe get some kind of XP for passive strength buffs or something? Just curious. All of these warfare changes seem quite good in principle, and I love the idea of converting the civ6 Governor system to use your commanders and the upgrade choices on them... i hope that's how it plays out as I always found managing Governors a bit meh.
There are those of us who enjoy micromanagement. It's not unfun, it's just not your cup of tea. Not sure if I'll like this entry or not. Definitely not happy about the workers disappearing, I liked watching them build things.
The RPGesque tree of the civilisation leader is so weird to me but the one for commanders seems cool. And then you keep the leader and play another culture in following ages? They really made some big changes, hope it's fun but I'm really worried.
I worry the leader attribute trees will mean you dilute the unique feeling of a civ if there ends up being only a few optimal paths through each tree that get taken consistently.
One of the things I'm worried about with all the mix and match and level trees and stuff is that your civs will start to feel interchangeable after a while: That was a problem in both Humankind and Milennia. (and to a limited extent Age of Wonders 4) Unless the leaders all have unique level up trees I guess?
When I saw the army commander with its slots I got this immediate feeling "Holy, hell this is Heroes of might and magic!!" xD Of course it's not true, Civ and HoMM are very different games, but maybe the likeness between commanders and Heroes (in HoMM) will make them feel right at home for me when playing. We'll see. :) Edit: Speaking of which, not to take the HoMM comparison too far, because HoMM isn't really like Civilization at all, but in HoMM the Hero's movement capacity is based on the slowest army unit it carries. I wonder how the speed of the commander unit is determined when carrying units of different speeds.
Regarding movement. Will it work like in Civ6 or Civ5 with regards to difficult terrain. As you remember in Civ6 if you wanted to move into a forest that has a movement cost of 2 you needed 2 movement, where in Civ5 you only needed a movement point to enter a tile.
Overall the commander system seems like a cool mechanic, but I do have two concerns. The range of the commander seems awkward to work with attacking melee units as your enemy is unlikely to be in a perfect line. The reinforcement system removes the ability to ambush reinforcing units and could also lead to silly situations like a commander that is effectively cut off receiving magic reinforcements.
I’ll be honest, the mechanic at 15:30 seems a bit unfair because it removes the ability to take out units as they’re being produced. You constantly have to fight at the front line
I hope there will be an Auto-resolve this battle button - like in other games - so we that are not so much into wars in Civ, do not have to micromanage this wars.
Good, the reason I stopped playing CIV VI forever was when the rival faction absolutely covered my territory in religious units, to the point that when an enemy civ declared war on me, I could not defend myself because my military units were immobilized by neutral religious units covering all relevant tiles on my own territory. It was too absurd and unrealistic a concept.
So, you can't attack as a single stack with the military commander, but what happens if you leave your units stacked, and someone attacks you? Do you defend with the strongest unit?
Love the way the actual real time hour is displayed in game.
Since about 40 years playing Civ I really really know how easily you are suddenly disturbed by bird singing for the raising sun while you just wanted to do one more turn...
"Stupid bird. Wait. Bird? Shit."
Hasn't that been a feature since Civ IV?
Is Civ really that old?
@@amc1140 Older if you consider the boardgame from Avalon Hill.
@@amc1140 No, the first Civ came out '91, which makes it 33 years old :D
Huh, the combat commanders seem like they're taking Civ VI's governors concept and taking them into the field. Eeeeeeeenteresting.
Total War already had this concept
I'm seeing good QOL changes so far, very cool
16:28 the rome unit animations on the back to the right side of the screen , look so good.
That "unit stacking" is something I've wanted with fleets of ships.
SAME!
Very excited for the capacity to combine military units within one tile, but in a limited and controlled manner.
Stacks in Civ4 are strategically interesting, but they devolve into pilling up units mindlessly. The one-unit-per-tile system in Civ5 and Civ6 is more positionally interesting, but the AI doesn't know how to use units and becomes incredibly stupid.
This has at least the potential to be the best of both worlds.
Good Point!
Something else I just thought of is that to defeat an army it'll be less of a drudge to defeat all the units and more of a focus of defeating commanders as I imagine if 2 armies fight and one loses their commander, they probably want to pull back to reinforce. I like giving armies a focus point.
Is there a way to micro the auto redeploy? I can find myself getting extremely angered by stupid placement
Yeah at 11:30 the computer totally screws up- their archer is stuck with no retreat path (archers are great at moving back one tile and shooting) AND the chariot can’t reach the enemy archers, the perfect target for it. It did basically the worst deployment possible.
That would be super important.
I did love my doom stacks in civ 3 and 4 and it was HARD going away from them for 5 and 6. I’m very glad they have brought back combined tile occupation and movement even if it’s not entirely for combat. That solves major logistical nightmares that 5 and 6 didn’t really bother to tackle.
The reinforcement system sounds good “in theory” as quill said… But I suspect it is going to be unpopular and will need some serious tweaking by the time all is said and done. It seems a bit cheap to always be able to get reinforcements to a battle a long ways away without risking them being ambushed or attacked along the way.
Beyond that though, the combat and commander system looks refreshing and awesome!
Wait how does the reinforcement system sound cheap? It's a unit that still has to move and can theoretically be ambushed on it's way.
Thank you for this breakdown. The theory sounds solid and the design seems well thought out. I look forward to these new combat mechanics.
This unit stacking mechanic is so good. It solves one of the issue I had with the previous where you had so many units that it took 5 minutes to move them all. This sounds really good.
Thanks for doing these videos quill. Just wanted to say I'm excited for this new game and I enjoy hearing your enthusiasm for all these changes!!
just found out your channel, i really like how you have a different point of view on the franchise than people like me who started to play in Civ 6, playong "competitive multiplayer"
Would not mind having the commander stacks being able to fight as one later down the road, like the "Corps" and "Army" concepts from civ 6. Looking very promising.
A big nostalgia hit of Stacks of Doom! 😅 Question: do the units unpack in the same formation they were hoovered up by the commander? Would be good if we could choose which units unpacked to which tile ourselves.
Woah, a Biffa spotting in the wild.
Cheers mate, I absolutely love your creative approach to games and am glad to see you are interested in Civ!
Maybe we get some Civ 7 content? 👉👈
Edit due to dumb autocorrect
Videos are awesome thanks for making
Everything looks good in my opinion, except for the reinforcement option. It was very fun intercepting reinforcements that e.g. have to go over water with boats and I think its pretty fair that the nation which is closer to the battlefield, has an advantage by moving getting reinforcemens faster. That you can just "sporn" reinforcements at the other side of the world just by having a commander there doesnt sound that promising
Agree, I don't mind some automation of it, but it would be nice if (perhaps in an expansion) there was some sort of supply line concept that could be blocked / had an inverse benefit based on length
you took the words out of my mouth! I loved everything until I heard this feature! I really hope he either explained it wrong or they change this feature. It would be so stupid if you could surround someone's army and they just keep reinforcing and spawning more units. or if you sneak one commander around the world and use them as basically a mobile deployment center.
Like if you were able to have units set to " disrupt reinforcement lines". SImilar to spy's where there is a certain chance of various outcomes. For example when choosing a unit that will reinforce to a commander there could be various pathing options on the map for that unit to reinforce. They won't physically move over that path but if an enemy unit is patrolling and has " disrupt reinforcements enabled", then you could potentially, delay, kill, or send those reinforcements back to their original point. This would create a game of cat and mouse where both sides would have to guess where the other is reinforcing or patrolling and would make for incredible game play.
I would argue it depends on how quick said reinforcement is. If it matches actual unit movement and accounts for terrain penalties, assuming no tech/commander upgrades, then I don’t mind it that much, because it will be mostly automation. If there is a considerably faster movement, like ignoring terrain penalties entirely, then it will be unrealistic. Quill didn’t sound like he knew for a fact what is the case, he just speculated, in my opinion.
In any case, I think this could be modded, if necessary, so people will certainly tweak the balance if it proves it breaks the game. However, I find the idea of being able to disrupt the reinforcement rate of your opponent great, it adds a whole new level of strategy. On the downside, it brings Civ closer to grand strategy games like Europa Universalis, which not everyone will like, I imagine.
If they drew a path on the map (similar to civ vi traders) when hovering over the commander I could see that being a good alternative. Then you could disrupt the reinforcement unit's path by placing your own units on the line or something like that
Civ7 has so many quality-of-life improvements to combat
Thank you for these videos! Always appreciate your insight.
My only concern is I hope they still have a means of cutting off or intercepting reinforcements for the enemy. It would be kinda dumb if you launch a counterattack on the enemy cities and then new units just spawn into their frontline army
This was my first thought when he mentioned the reinforcement mechanic. Yes, plodding your troops along to the front line took time, effort, and was not perhaps the most fun thing, but that inherent movement across the map was very important for interception, interdiction, evasion, scouting, and all sorts of other things.
That is exactly my thought. If you can't cut supply lines anymore, it will be just not fun. It was in HoMM6, but HoMM6 was trash as a whole.
This one video has changed my mind about Civ7. I'm actually excited now.
I just realized that Civ VII and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 will launch on the same day in February.
What happens if someone attacks you commander guy while all your army units are sucked up and walking with him?
That's what I've been wondering. It's a major question that so far every content creator has ignored. If a stack of 6 units is traveling on one tile, what happens when it's attacked?
I would say perhaps his defense goes up depending on what he has stacked or the best defense unit in the stack takes over if attacked!
@@AtomicPunx But other creators have said it's not civ 4 death stacks. If it just defaults to the strongest individual unit, sounds like civ 4. I'm wondering if the unit auto deploys, but that would be a problem if there aren't enough open tiles for all units to deploy.
Or there is no room to unload them
Would be interesting if it counted as some sort of "ambush". Maybe you do a bit of damage to everyone in the army, and then the army unloads. Gives more meaning to stealthy units or just sneak attacks in general.
But yeah, we need more information.
The more I see of this game, the more I like it.
The micromanagement of unites honestly discouraged me from ever going full warmonger in Civ VI, so this is such a great change
Excellent walkthrough thank you very much ❤
11:58 I really like how each civ has different look and style for their towns and Military forces
Yeah, i do agree with keeping the wonder completion cutscenes from civ6. You get to see your wonder completion in a different environment every game which is something the pre-rendered cutscenes could not do.
Nice! Love this showcase of the new systems. I'm looking forward to Civ VII lets plays in the future!
enjoying the brief run through of the game so far
Did anyone notice that the legionary unit seems to have an early version (hastati armor), and a late game version (lorica segmentata)?
Good eye! I saw on Ursa Ryan's video that each culture has an additional unique culture tree that buffs their unique units and buildings. It speaks to the wealth of art assets that Quill mentions that perhaps selecting a buff to your unique unit can be reflected in their character model.
☝🤓
But for real, that's pretty cool
I saw it too
I think those are not the same units because they have different icons. I reckon the hastati units are regular swordsmen with culturally appropriate models, whereas the units with lorica segmentata are actual unique roman units.
They are cosmetics you can buy, similar to the leader skins.
with every video it's getting better, civ 5 was my favorite, i think civ 7 will take the throne
Gotta say I'm such a sucker for combat animations and the marching army. Initial thoughts are at least on that part: I love it.
The commander and reinforcement changes are really good.
It will be interesting to see the additional strategic/tactical importance of stacking. Can you, for example, take advantage of units being stacked, and attack them before they deploy? This would echo real life in a pretty decent way, as in the mountain pass scenario Quill mentioned: You can bunch up to get through the pass, but it will leave you vulnerable.
On a different note, since you are mentioning the large art team: I'm really disappointed by the user interface. Hopefully it will improve towards launch, but the iconography is really not good, and the interface in general looks sort of haphazard and unfinished. I really hope the latter is the actual reason. The map, buildings and units look gorgeous, though!
You had my attention, now you have my interest. Looks like some really good changes.
This looks so incredible
Weird that the Colosseum wonder cinematic shows fireworks before gunpowder is even discovered.
While it takes supercomputers to train the algorithms that can beat humans at chess, you can run them locally on fairly light hardware.
I guess there are less possible moves in chess though to tell it what to do in each possible scenario once they have chess figured out. Civ etc. would have infinite combos with randomly generated much bigger maps and variables.
Was it OpenAI that trained a model on LoL and beat a professional team?
It was few years ago now.
I'm not saying fire axis has to do the same, but there must be some evolution to the in game AI
It doesn't even take a supercomputer to develop a superhuman chess engine, a regular computer is enough (although a supercomputer/multiple computers will help develop one faster)
@@jokersauce5100yup and it was DOTA2
@kommodore6691 That's why you aren't teaching it every possibility, you are teaching it optimal strategies that work across a variety of situations
I dunno that strategic movement is appropriate for most of the ages, as it was railroad and other fast travel to get them moved. Romans are still gonna have to march. So then being OFF map, makes you wonder if you cut their only real route to the front, would they still manage to get through that mountain pass you cut off? That would be bad! So hope it turns into something like the unit is ON the board but has a highlight or is transparent or something to show it is reinforcing, and it moves ON the board each turn without you having to do it. So you could in theory then click it at any time to change its orders to reinforce someone else, or move to battle something nearby, etc.
Heroes of Might and Magic 4 had a similar mechanic, where one of the buildings a city could build was a “caravan” that allowed armies to be sent there from the player’s other cities, or recruited and sent from dwellings they controlled, at a rapid pace. There still needed to be an unblocked route in order to start this transport, but once it was started, that route was locked in - the transport couldn’t be intercepted, nor could it speed up if the enemy stopped blocking a shorter route.
Great video. looks like there are even going to be different era legionairs
The changes are interesting. I really hope they do an accessibility pass on the menus before launch, though. The greyed out options on the Leader Attribute screen are kind of low-contrast, and on the video about diplomacy, there was dark red text on a dark background for unavailable options that was likewise very hard to see.
This is very interesting. I'm very bad at military myself and really liked how Humankind did it. Maybe this fits me better.
YAY!!! No more conga line of death!
Heres a problem that I see with the commander XP. You move a unit to attack, it wins and I presume it moves forward outside of the commanders range. Then on the next turn i defends from an attack or two and commander misses out on the XP. Oh also the unit that moved to attack loses the bonuses from the commander since its outside of the range.
About reinforcements, if the unit truly "disappears" then its potentialy game breaking. You just plant commanders near enemy borders and then "teleport" units from the capital. Also, you wont be able to ambush reinforcements.
The fact that they went back to giving us more people into one unit makes it feel more epic and huge when you have a stack of 5 units. I hated the only 3 or 4 big people in one unit.
Looking at this, I miss the Roman aqueducts sprawling from the mountains ^_^
I wonder if army commander have that small field of reach with his/her skills then making flanking with cavalery will be kinda hard since they need to leave the reach of commander to flank the enemy units
This game has gotten so far from the Civ III and IV that I loved... it's crazy.
So every one will try to kill the army commander as fast , as they can ;]
i mean thats how it is irl too ! the fact that you'll not be able to ambush reinforcements may be a bad thing
Commander mechanics seem really cool :D
I have some doubts this going to be very effective or useful, except for the fast reinforcement mechanic, which I see as extremely good. I could be very wrong, but I need to see this in action when people have figured out the optimal play. The way I usually play the game is not having an army ready to go. Civ 6 punishes you for it. You want as few units as possible while still just being able to defend yourself so they don't drain resources.
You only need to create units in bulk together, when planning offensively, and even then not all the time. When you need to defend, you need to create units, then send your produced units immediately to choke points to block their units, you can't wait. Or they're all over your empire giving amenities, again reinforcement is the way to go.
Point is if sending units 1 by 1 is more efficient you're never going to use the mechanic of massing an army to march together. The reinforcement mechanic makes the other even less viable. send 1 horse unit or scout with general then the rest teleports in.
Those are my concerns after thinking it over for a day, again I need to see it in action to know this is actually the case.
Looking great. They did what Humankind tried to do to CIV's formula. Amplitude just didn't get it. Firaxis wrote the book.
I have so many questions about the stacking:
1) What happens if the army commander only has 3 slots, but he's surrounded by 4 or more units when you try to form up?
2) What if you only want to form up 2 units surrounding the army commander, instead of all of them?
3) What happens if the formed up unit is attacked?
4) Can I manually redeploy the units? (There's no way I want to trust that to the computer)
So can you move with the commander behind enemy lines and reinforce it with troops and your enemy can’t block them?
I am very happy with the combat mechanics
I am very intrigued by the combat system, though I am not sure how I feel about offmap movement. Having reinforcements move around allows you to potentially intercept them, which can be valuable. I think I would prefer a speedboost a la +1 to movement, and upgrades to ignore terrain etc, but still have them actually walk there
I am looking forward to it we well see tho i like a lot of the changes.
it does not take a super computer to beat a grand master player at chess :). Great video though thanks for posting
Any old computer with a good chess program can easily beat the vast majority of humans at chess. Although that’s because a lot of effort has gone into writing good chess programs, over the years.
the learning curve on this game will be massive, which is great, Civ VI felt like you only had to learn city planning, and micromanaging governors and government policies for min maxing gains.
and it also seems a lot more focused, with numerous QoL changes to make the building and preparing for war parts easier, so you can focus on actually playing the game instead of spending 5 minutes on a single turn just moving things around. it looks like they really done it, and the age system will make late game far more playable, i'm pretty sure lots of players are like me who start games and drop it after renassaince or industrial age because of how tedious it could become, and end up finishing one game for each 10 started.
i was also skeptical about the Humankind approach for the civ selection and the changes, but having you locked into similar civs, or certain conditions also spices up and makes you go along with what you get instead of plan everything turn 1 like it happens on the game that did it first.
the art style is awesome, albeit tuned down for what i assume as Switch/PS4/XOne versions, but as this is an early build, it's likely that it will look a lot better when it releases. going for a mix of colour tone from VI, and a medium scale realism from V was an excellent choice, not breaking your immersion cause of the cartoony leaders from VI, but also keeping you marveled with how colourful it is instead of the toned down looks from V
can't wait for it, i hope it consumes my life, it's been a while since i was absorbed by a strategy game, EU4 bores me too fast, and Civ V and VI stresses me out with microing everything
So fucking excited for this game
hmm well i still hope that they still have great people (commanders) but maybe they get like a personalized themed skill tree (which would be the best) or maybe just a tacked on bonus to a perk that kinda matches the theme of the great commander.
One thing I want to know, is if the Go To command is back. I have missed that over the last few games.. it would make late game so much easier when you're flooded with units. The commander looks like it will help with that, but still...
Interractions for its interraction throne
The new general system seems to be really interesting. Long distancee wars will be a lot more interesting. Though I hope there is a way to cut reinforcement potential to prevent attackers from pumping units into battle every turn and making distance totally irrelevant. Makes me wonder a lot about how things will be balanced.
Also I wonder how combat really works now. Units seem to be engaged at the end of the player's turn, does that mean that the AI or other players cannot move their units when it's their turn? Can they disengage to reposition? And how does it work in multiplayer with simultaneous turns??
Anyways, thank you for dividing the videos so you can go into details. I love how you provide us with as much information as possible.
Thanks again!
Its just animation if two units are standing on tiles next to each other and one attacked other as last action.
I hope there is still a supply limitation to when a reinforce can occur. If one army is completely surrounded but the army leader has an improved reinforce could the surrounded army hold out indefinitely just by 'magically teleporting' new units? Good QoL feature if you're concerned with micromanagement, otherwise I'd hope for an option to turn that off entirely. Reinforcement armies are key targets unless they are in stealth mode walking straight through enemy territory so they can get to the front line. Yellow flag on that feature.
A lot of inspiration taken from Endless Legend and Endless Space.
I hope we get to choose how we want to spread out the armies from the commanders after dissolving a stack
Army commander is a Hero now.
10:09. Small correction, it does not take a supercomputer to beat a human at chess. It used to, but a modern phone is better at chess than every human put together.
I’ve played chess for almost 60 years and nothing has changed. Yet I still find it incredibly entertaining.
I’ve played civ since the plodding about of square pieces.
It seems to me that the added complexity to this already complex game will make picking up civ 7 for the uninitiated a daunting task indeed.
I wasn’t interested in Civ 7 AT ALL until I watched these videos. I’m pumped for a new Civ doe the first time since…Civ 3 maybe?
It would be really cool if trade routes could be sent to armies for logistical bonuses.
Army commanders sound like Generals in older Total War games
Good! 1 unit per tile was the worst error in the Civilization series.
this means the commander will be a high prioity target, since if he is killed the ppl that lost him will have to waste turns to get them back and the army loses all their promotions until he gets back and the army will have to move 1 at a time and block each other until they get back, so aka back to civ5-6 gameplay. I wonder how you can protect the commander due to how important they seem to be in battle.
All I can say is Sean Bean. Sean Bean, Sean Bean. I get it, but Sean Bean.
Clearly people haven't watched "If Sean Bean survives" vid
11:15 There could also be a limit which Army Commaner can be trained.
Everybody compare CIV VII with Humankind but with the way they are handling Commanders feels a little more like Age of Wonders, the way you extend the city too with a side of Warhammer 40K Gladius with the district slots
Thanks for doing these... i'm really enjoying learning about all this. Just a question, you mention that individual combat units don't get upgrades, but in the combat (~12:00), the units appear to have veterancy chevrons on their icons, so do they maybe get some kind of XP for passive strength buffs or something? Just curious. All of these warfare changes seem quite good in principle, and I love the idea of converting the civ6 Governor system to use your commanders and the upgrade choices on them... i hope that's how it plays out as I always found managing Governors a bit meh.
Seems the unit stacking is a somewhat simplified version of Ampltude's combat system
There are those of us who enjoy micromanagement. It's not unfun, it's just not your cup of tea. Not sure if I'll like this entry or not. Definitely not happy about the workers disappearing, I liked watching them build things.
The RPGesque tree of the civilisation leader is so weird to me but the one for commanders seems cool. And then you keep the leader and play another culture in following ages? They really made some big changes, hope it's fun but I'm really worried.
I worry the leader attribute trees will mean you dilute the unique feeling of a civ if there ends up being only a few optimal paths through each tree that get taken consistently.
Leader attributes reminds me of Civ5 civics. I prefer that mechanic than the civics tree.
One of the things I'm worried about with all the mix and match and level trees and stuff is that your civs will start to feel interchangeable after a while: That was a problem in both Humankind and Milennia. (and to a limited extent Age of Wonders 4) Unless the leaders all have unique level up trees I guess?
Looking forward to this
When I saw the army commander with its slots I got this immediate feeling "Holy, hell this is Heroes of might and magic!!" xD Of course it's not true, Civ and HoMM are very different games, but maybe the likeness between commanders and Heroes (in HoMM) will make them feel right at home for me when playing. We'll see. :)
Edit: Speaking of which, not to take the HoMM comparison too far, because HoMM isn't really like Civilization at all, but in HoMM the Hero's movement capacity is based on the slowest army unit it carries. I wonder how the speed of the commander unit is determined when carrying units of different speeds.
This civ looks so good. It lools lile they pulled some of the good ideas from humankind and millennia.
The reinforcement tab seems like a similar thing to strategic movement in hearts of iron 4.
I prefer my archers in the back, legions up front, lets gooooo!
Regarding movement. Will it work like in Civ6 or Civ5 with regards to difficult terrain. As you remember in Civ6 if you wanted to move into a forest that has a movement cost of 2 you needed 2 movement, where in Civ5 you only needed a movement point to enter a tile.
Overall the commander system seems like a cool mechanic, but I do have two concerns. The range of the commander seems awkward to work with attacking melee units as your enemy is unlikely to be in a perfect line. The reinforcement system removes the ability to ambush reinforcing units and could also lead to silly situations like a commander that is effectively cut off receiving magic reinforcements.
You put zone of control around commanders where enemy army cannot reinforce. So you have to pull back home.
I’ll be honest, the mechanic at 15:30 seems a bit unfair because it removes the ability to take out units as they’re being produced. You constantly have to fight at the front line
Tbh personally I'd like it if you could micro what tile what unit gets dropped on.
I would like to move my archers by myself thank you very much... why are they removeing everything? Let me micro MY empire!
I hope there will be an Auto-resolve this battle button - like in other games - so we that are not so much into wars in Civ, do not have to micromanage this wars.
First obvious thing I got to notice : everything dealing with religion will come later as a DLC. How surprising.
I saw somewhere that religion is an era 2 thing. No idea how true that is, but it would explain why we haven't seen it yet.
Good, the reason I stopped playing CIV VI forever was when the rival faction absolutely covered my territory in religious units, to the point that when an enemy civ declared war on me, I could not defend myself because my military units were immobilized by neutral religious units covering all relevant tiles on my own territory. It was too absurd and unrealistic a concept.
THANK FUCK I hope I never have to deal with that again
15:30 this reinforcement mechanics also eliminates the reinforcement interception tactic, unfortunately
So, you can't attack as a single stack with the military commander, but what happens if you leave your units stacked, and someone attacks you? Do you defend with the strongest unit?