2:16 - Correction: I can't remember who said it (I think Ursa Ryan, could be wrong), but one of the people who played said they were told that every age will have some sort of Future Tech and Future Civic option that will provide bonuses of some sort (very vague) if you finish the tech and/or civic tree early. I think we'll need to wait to see how those bonuses carry over. My hope is that doing a Future Tech in Age 1 will give you some sort of massive boost to an Age 2 tech. I also think you're vastly overstating how much of a "clean slate" each age will be. If nothing else, there will be some sort of victory points or other overarching scoring system that will carry over between ages, as well as there being Persistent buildings that will carry over. It feels like concentrating on that early infrastructure/setting up your civ for the second and third age will be the focus of the first age. That being said, I immediately knew that Civ 7 was going to be single player focused when I heard it was released. Unfortunately, MP is just too small of a player base for them to cater to. But something of note: Civ 6 wasn't very MP friendly, either. Every competitive MP player uses mods to equalize and tweak game mechanics.
Ursa Ryan mentioned that the dev team made some design decisions with multiplayer specifically in mind. I can’t recall what they were, but I believe it was the ages system. Having multiplayer games for single ages will be far more manageable than a full campaign, especially when 450-600 turns per game is enforced
@@Grimnebulon I did hear that there would be some equalization and that you wouldn't be able to research techs from the previous era. So I assume something like everyone gets all techs or all techs but the masteries are removed, or something like that. Infrastructure carries over, but adjacency bonuses are removed, there are future techs and civics in every era. If you do well in an era you can choose bonuses for the next era. Crisis cards looked like they might hurt good players the most. All in all, players may catch up, but their are advantages to playing well.
In general I believe the new age mechanic may encourage more risky gameplay in MP. If you can reach the age gate without simming 100% optimally, then maximizing yields is actually suboptimal. We may see very greedy early war openers that bounce back once the era crosses over and get to consolidate while keeping tech parity. Civ6 suffers from very low intensity early game in FFA due to the war being inherently a negative sum game
I think 1 unit per tile make it easy to defend bc units are hard to kill without concentrating firepower, and it much easier to do in defense rather in attack
Civ Vi suffers from weak early game wars because of consecutive nerfs to the strategy And that was nerfed even further due to multiplayer "balancing" mods from groups like CPL who fell into a tit-for-tat delimma as they played with the same small group over and over and over for 5-6 years Early war was a huge, nearly the only possible game-style of civil vi from release to approximately rise and fall
Competitive civ 6 multiplayer is not even viable in vanilla, they need mods. I think you make a good point in how it will change the game but idk if they are actually changing their design philosophy that much
The only problem with "engaging and tense endgame" in your space race with Arabia is that there are 6 other players in your lobby and they are basically Shift-Entering
Not sure if u familiar with Multiplayer system, but to avoid this they score or else determine the ranking of other players (for gain/loss of ELO), so 6 others chase 2nd place coz who looses the space race prbably will not have enough points to be 2nd. Players play around this and usualy decides in mid game if they even have a shot at 1st or just war for 2nd. If u are weak player / unlucky start / misstakes - u dead long before end game :)
@@bobr920 Sure it may be worth it ranking wise, so there's motivation, but it still is boring gameplay, they're only in it for those points. Potentially having the playing field leveled count give more pople a chance to contest the victory
@@spameron7575in the late game, the fastest way to get points is by taking cities in war. So rather than just shift entering, everyone ends up warring with each other to try and end with the most cities by the time someone claims victory, which is much more engaging than shift enter spam
@@bobr920this relies on a 3rd party ELO system for motivation. Civ VII multiplayer will most likely find its footing after its own 3rd party manipulations, just like Civ Vi
If you watch the video of his Nubia game you can see that Canada is only a few turns away from culture victory and England is fighting Mongolia to barely get fifth place in the very last turn of the game by nuking one of their cities. A lot of games have one or two players giving up early and phoning it in until they can leave but in serious lobbies it's not a huge problem.
Your statement in the "Final Thoughts" segment *cannot* be understated. I'm a big fan of competitive content myself, but the fall of Blizzard and the collapse of the RTS genre is a clear example of what happens when a game hyperfocuses on its competitive environment to the detriment of its wider casual playerbase. I definitely understand and sympathize with your concern for the competitive environment (and on that front I do have an additional concern beyond the points you stated, that the subdivision of the different ages as standalone game categories will be a hurdle to competitive play in that it will very likely dilute the already small competitive player base further, leading to longer queue/lobby times and therefore larger onboarding hurdle), BUT I do think that focusing primarily on the single-player experience is still the better choice in the long run for the overall health of the game.
I'd agree, but mechanics isn't a problem. the horrid netcode is. since it's fundamentally multiplatform, the lobby simulator is only going to get worse, not better. firaxis is not doing anything at all to fix it.
Honestly I went back to play Civ 5 the other day and I missed so many of the new systems of Civ 6 that I just had to go back to Civ 6, I can't wait for Civ 7 because I like the new artstyle of 7 better than 6 and I am hyped for the changes and to see how they work out
Herson, you are singlehandedly uplifting the quality of Civ content on UA-cam, especially with your multiplayer guides and content. No other Civ content creator has put out such quality content over the last year.
Game is over 7 years old. Everything has pretty much been done to death. CPL isn't much different. You do the same things over and over again and have to deal with all sorts of connection problems.
While it might not be great for competitive multiplayer, I honestly think it will be great for casual multiplayer with friends. The age system would allow for perfect stopping points for each session. Also, the fact that you can just play a single age means even if your friend group has very limited time, you can still potentially get that multiplayer session to happen.
Good for multiplayer when now we can't even all play on same lobby?!? I don't have too strong of opinions on the mechanics of civ 7 yet, but a 5 player max just ruins our weekly civ nights. We'll have to stick to civ 5 & 6
Sorry but you're just flipping the problem around. Comp multiplayer civ 6 is the exact opposite of single player civ 6. You guys have min-maxed the game to such a degree that the early game is the boring part. The proof of this is your own videos where the same strategies are used with so little variation. You have said it before that early wars are useless as they put you at such a disadvantage no one does it. Beelining trade routes districts, feudalism, then industry with the game being decided most of the time by who gets oxford. Granted the better balance game mod is partially what drives this meta but even without it, I bet the strategies would be the same - ignore everyone early and you only war late game if you have no shot at another victory and just want to slow down someone else. What the age system will allow is for more variation in strategies. Want to war early? go ahead as that is now a valid strategy due to the soft reset at age turnover. Now, yes there could be a chance where this just means only the last age/late game is where victory is decided, but victory should only be decided in the late game with multiple avenues of setting up a good foundation in the earlier ages. At the end of the day, you will never have a good 4X game for singleplayer and multiplayer. I have my own concerns about civ 7 but the age rubber banding system is not one of them.
You simply don't understand what real competitive MP is because Herson is playing ffa. Ffa is just chilling and perfecting strats. Teamers is where everything goes and becomes bloodbath. Where you throwing your game is fine if you ruin games if two enemies. And many more angles to win. Firaxis making stupid mechanics that don't allow proper MP is just disgusting.
@@vaidast5713 to call it disgusting is a bit much. They're trying to build a better game for their main user base. Seems a pretty reasonable approach. Unfortunately, it might not work so well for a small number of players.... But they don't have to switch.
@@bobby_hmm How is it exactly too much. They literally removed multiplayer option for competitive gaming. Only internet censorship stops me from describing it as it should be. 5 players max, everyone gets free techs etc etc. You loving concept that they want to make money instead of good product is also disgusting. Ofc they want people to pay 200 euros and play 300 hours. Good business. And by simply copying Humankind, not even making original game. I'm not gonna pretend that something that stinks is ok to me. It's a f joke as firaxis themselves. They literally can't play there own game and would get wiped by any xp player. I don't know any other game that their devs would stink at their own game.
@@vaidast5713 The vast majority of players are single-player only. The game should be made for them. Focusing on competitive multiplayer ruins games for most players in service of a small number of competitive ones. Not just in this genre, but others too (see Halo 5).
To be 100% real, while your example takes a competitive civ community, the average online game is not like that. It usually is 1 or 2 people trailblaze. 1 or 2 people play aggro and that makes players annoyed they can't develop their civilsation more so rhey quit and those 1 or 2 players get the singleplayer effect. On top of that, I think theyre REALLY angling for a casual market on this one. The progression system feels rimworld-esque in that they seem to be valuing roleplay and immersion over competitive gameplay, which im sure sucks from a competitive players perception, but as someone who plays singleplayer, love roleplaying games and only plays multiplayer with 3 or 4 other people, Im very happy with the direction tbh
nah, war is VERY common in history and flat out stearing clear of it for roleplay is dumb in my view. Easiest way to get a turtler on the backfoot is getting a army going and burning undefendable cities down. You get new resources and set the other player back to the stone age. Works in both single player and multiplayer...only reason you get the war isn't worth it min maxing is the online speed /fast speed which means research rush by the time it takes to build and use units and pushes them obsolete. You want the real roleplay set the speed to long or epic ( which means EVERYTHING takes more turns ) wonders feel like wonders and anchient or mediveal wars can go all out.
I find the idea of a game company choosing to gear the game towards its more casual singleplayer audience rather than its competitive multiplayer audience kind of refreshing. With other studios, they’ll constantly change the game to what the highest skill level of players are asking for which doesn’t really matter to 99% of the player base. Seeing Firaxis not do that is kind of nice. Granted, this could all be fixed by just making the AI play better rather than upend how the game works.
@@penknight8532 Dude chill out . They arnt focusing hard on multi because because a vast majority of the playerbase only plays single . ( at the end of the day Firxais is a for-profit company they do what will make them the most money) . B Never make fun of someones play time 200 hours is over a week in game . C Your not going to suffer mods will come out to balance out all issues in civ 7 like they did 6 .
Making a comperent AI for this kind of game is really, really hard so I can understand why AI tends to be dumb and just gets buffed with higher difficulty. It's an unfortunate experience but the amount of factors to consider in a strategy game is so large it's super difficult to create somekind of ruleset for the AI that isn't too rigid or limited.
Or mods, I mean it's hypocritical that the same people say "Oh just use a fan made tsl Earth huge/enormous map from steam." and yet these same people will demand the devs to do things like make the barbs spam less in the game! 😂
I think the crisis idea is cool, and I'm trying to do a Endless Legend 2 fanwork where it takes the explicit Frostpunk vibes that game had on launch and taking them a step further. I have a REAL love-hate relationship with HK, so I get the idea of civ swapping, but what I feel would make it better would be Leader swapping. You have a spirit of a leader (science, military, developer, etc.) that gets shuffled after so many turns dependent on your government (Democracies have shorter terms than Kings). These Leaders then have priorities and bonuses towards those priorities and filling as many of those desires throughout the ages (like in the amazing trailer) is how you achieve victory.
bro really put the youtubers in the padded room that's crazy what you're saying is true, although for me ultimately the make or break mechanic is the civilization switching. if I don't end up liking it I might never play the game, if I do I'll probably be willing to go along with most other changes
I felt like bro made the UA-camrs into voices haunting him while he was in the padded room, because he was "going crazy" being left out of Firaxis invitations
I am worried that the civ switching mechanic will make the game feel less engaging because your civ is just gonna change anyway, and your leader can be whatever as well, so it's not very meaningful.
@@eduardog3000 definitely feels that way to me for now. I think Firaxis has a good enough track record not to write them off, but I didn't like what I saw
I really liked the civ switching mechanic in Humankind but the ages just went by too fast and you always wanted to rush to the next so you wouldn't loose the one you wanted to take, which made it so you wouldn't be able to enjoy playing that one Civ and make use of their special stuff as much as you wanted to, I am hoping that there being only 3 ages will make this much better. Since with only 3 ages you get to play each Civ far longer than you would in Humankind letting you enjoy them before you switch to the next era.
I disagree with the take that multiplayer doesn’t suffer from the same issues as single player. You’ve even said it yourself, players can tell fairly early on who is going to win. So BBG FFA has the points system in place to reward second third etc. in civ 7, they could consider removing that and going to a winner takes all system.
But how is a winner takes all system automatically more fun than playing for second or third place in an elo ranking system? Achieving a victory condition in civ has never been the fun part, it's the journey to reach it and the struggles and stories that come out of it. It's planning your cities and plotting your wonder strategies or your next war and executing it. Now I'm not saying civ 7 is going to be bad because of these things, I just dispute that rubber banding will make the game more fun automatically. Frankly if you get the right set of Ai mods, even Ai can be a fun challenge and I've crushed dozens of deity wins. It really just comes down to a problem of bad Ai design in the base game.
The civ 5 multiplayer community also rewards little to nothing for second place and beyond. We have tournaments a few times a year and no ranked play beyond that, because having an elo just encourages playing for something else than to win, which in an FFA is mega cringe imo
I feel like your comments on the "issues" isnt as valid as it could be. Youre playing on BBG with a few other mods that fundamentally change the game to large varying degrees. As well as the mentions to "multiplayer" suffering is also a bit scuffed due to the comp community being a much smaller slice of the pie.
It really doesnt change the game that much it spreads powers more evenly and balamces starts for multiplayer so the rng isnt that much impactful and the actual gameplay and tactic shines... civ 7 just shows very boring autopilot gameplay like millenia
There sort of is I think? Each age you get like a science goal, culture goal etc, and when you reach certain milestones, you get something called legacy points and some bonuses in the future. Saw it in one eof the videos.
You not getting invited just proves how little Firaxis pays attention to the Multiplayer community, which sucks because 90% of my Civ playtime is multiplayer with friends
@@penknight8532 This fr though. Like, I get people enjoy multiplayer, but losing track of the real audience is what killed the wider RTS genre. After Starcraft, every big RTS focused so hard on Multiplayer and esports when most strategy players do singleplayer or co-op and I can't even remember the last good proper RTS we've had. Hopefully multiplayer gets some attention and care but it really can't come at the detriment of what the vast majority of casual focused singleplayer experience.
herson is a very new content creator in civ 6, of course they didn't invite him. They did invite lege who has been around for much longer and is in the multiplayer community.
To be fair, just three months ago, I only had around 3k subscribers. I think they'd already decided on who they'd invite for the playtest way back then.
I like most of what Civ 7 looks to be doing, but I think changing how the ages work puts me off the most. I do like the Crisis system though, as long as it's not there to just ruin the leaders time. Even as just a casual multiplayer player, I enjoy how it progresses from start to finish in Civ 6. Though we could all be worrying about nothing, they could be absolutely cooking, but we won't know until release
Excellent video, perfectly described the concerns I was having, how is a skilful player supposed to get ahead? Does anything I do in the first 2 ages actually matter? It really does seem like they are trying to fix the problem of not being able to create a competent AI. However, it might be a fun single player game for a couple of games... Wish they'd design a Civ game with multiplayer as the focus.
One solution they might consider is dividing a large multiplayer server between two continents seperated by the impassible barrier to new land and civs being added in the exploration age. This might not be the desired solution like just removing the gimmick outright, but I think it would be a much better compromise then simply limiting multiplayer games to 5 players.
This is actually a really cool idea since it mimics the real worlds meeting of the old and new world, if not for the eradication of native populations from European diseases, the technology and population of both hemispheres may have been much closer
@@squeegyboi3645 they may have also been much closer if civilizations like the Aztec's didn't make it a living hell for anyone else to be civilized. If China had rolled into Europe after the fall of Rome they would have seen a similar sight, but they were dealing with their own barbarian invaders as well in the mongels only they were able to hold them off. All over the world the story is the same, warmongers with petty ambitions slow or halt or even reverse the intellectual pursuits of their more advanced neighbors. Usually at the same time these intellectuals grow to fast, give into hedonism and become fragile and start collapsing to some extent on their own. It would be interesting to know what became of the more ancient advanced civilizations, why did Nubia fall? What about Sumeria? Was it some widespread psychosis from believing that the world was coming to an end? Was some kind of taboo revealed that the people wouldn't stand for? Perhaps a natural disaster or plague that was interpreted as a sign from the gods that the current administration was illegitimate resulting in a rebellion. Or the classic death of an autocrat with no clear line of succession. I believe that these are some of the universally applicable examples for why a great civilization would be weakened to a state where they fall apart, but as with the native Americans they did not have any great civilization when Europeans arrived which is why they quickly enlisted the help of the Europeans to eliminate the barbarians responsible for this stagnation, the Aztecs.
Good analysis. I agree that fixing the single-player experience is likely the focus of these changes as Firaxis recognizes that the vast majority of Civilization players will experience the game only in single-player. Civ 6's viability as a competitive multiplayer game seems almost accidental at times. One of the things you don't touch on in the video which I think could be worth noting is that the developers of Civ 7 expect the ages to be much longer, ideally over 150-200 turns on (probably) standard speed. They didn't intend for Civ 6's victory conditions to be optimized to the effective completion of all of history in ~200 turns. As I understand it, this means that standalone ages are likely to be on par in duration as an average game, which is why I somewhat disagree with you on the idea that limiting playthrough to a single age will severely impact the long-term strategy of competitive play. What I think is being set up is more like three consecutive games of Civilization as we understand it across fundamentally different eras, which can (in a more casual multiplayer or singleplayer context) feed into each other into a grand campaign. I think the future of competitive Civ 7 will likely take the form of these single-age games which will play similar to current "full" games, and will end with a victor declared before the soft-resets and map expansions. Antiquity, Expansion, and Modern games will be three separate cakes rather than being all packed into one. Obviously it all depends on implementation. Worst case scenario, we'll always have BBG mods and Civ 6 on a perpetual sale of ~$20.
@@penknight8532 Turns might be a lot quicker though because moving units is easier and you don't have the whole worker micro manage and remember that is the amount of time for the average person it may well only take good players 400 turns and if turns are like 20% quicker then maybe it is actually not bad.
I figured you’d have a robust, well thought out take. Waiting for this video was worthwhile. I’m glad you’ve made the point so succinctly, and haven’t pretended it’s apocalyptic.
You yourself told about how the multiplayer games tend to only have one or two civs in contention for the victory, and how a scoring system was invented specifically so that even the people who fell behind have something to play for. So the same problems that make late game in singleplayer boring do exist in multiplayer in different forms after all. With the era and crisis system, it could very well end up being that the player who survives the crises better will end up gaining the upper hand, instead of the one that snowballs best in early game, and the competition will be closer come the modern age. Wouldn't that be better for multiplayer than heavy struggle to snowball the best in early and mid game? Those parts would still matter, but it would be more about building an empire to survive the crises than one that snowballs to the victory fastest. In other words, you'd strive to build an empire that *stands the test of time*. If that doesn't end up working, you can just keep playing civ VI for competitive multiplayer, that isn't taken away from anyone. It's not like civ games have ever been designed with competitiveness in mind, and they need modding for that anyway. Civ VI isn't really usable for competitive multiplayer by default either.
>...and how a scoring system was invented specifically so that even the people who fell behind have something to play for... I mean, it's an ELO system like those used in any game where people play each other.
@@PseudoAccurate Well, yeah. But my point still stands, the snowballing in Civ VI would be a problem in multiplayer without the scores, because people who fall behind and clearly have no chance to win from like one third of the way in would need to stick around for no good reason.
All will be well. As for multi, it's only fun for the top 2 players in the lobby. at that point, all that is left is AI. If you're on parity every age, at least tech wise, it commits more players to stay. and dont forget prob no more desyncs. BEOWOLFMAN signing out
it's unlikely that all is left is AI as in a 8 player lobby placing 3rd is not too shabby and generally I don't see more than 2/3 players that are either dead or declared irrel. I have no trust in Fireaxis improving their disgusting netcode
I think civ7 multiplayer will be a massive improvement over civ6. Here's why: 1) Improved networking 2) Improved diplomacy gameplay 3) The expanding map insures player interaction in the mid- and lategame through competition over new resources and territory 4) For many peaple an entire civ game takes too long, playing just one age could be a great way to play a shorter civ 5) If you enjoy the long term planing of playing an entire civ game but an entire civ game still takes too long, you can play in 3 sessions, one for each age I agree that the 5 player limit could be a problem, but I think there will be a patch or mod to increase that limit.
I think a potential path forward may be like a point system. You get x amount of points each age, then add them up at the end. Lots of competitive potential there, as long as the systems are built correctly. Embrace the change, you can't reject it (unless you disavow civ vii completely).
Potatomcwhiskey mentioned masteries, you can choose to research an already researched tech to get extra bonuses. Like you can research fishing boats again to get +1 prod on all fishing boats. The future tech research for each age allows you to keep the bonuses of certain buildings in the next age instead of it going away.
Just as you already play Civ 6 with mods as a fairly standard setting in multiplayer games, the modders will find a way around this problem in Civ 7 as well. "Future civic" and "Future tech" become available at the end of each age if you have completed everything. Having every completion of these transfer into something like a free inspiration or eureka once the next age begins for example can help with that. Obviously the ideas I can put out are quite limited without access to the game myself but I have full confidence in the modders to make multiplayer work for Civ 7 as well...though maybe not on launch day.
Besides the already mentioned future tech mechanism that will provide research bonuses for the next age. There will also be the different golden Age bonuses that i guess help you to specialize early on as well. Also it seems that the ages are not dependent on turn limit but player Legacy points. Good players can advance the age and thus face the crisis era with a more developed nation. Those seem to counterbalance the rubberband mechanisms of the Ages system
I don't get this so called "fix". Why not introduce a more organic catch-up mechanic into the game with a concept already known in grand strategy games called "technology spread"? You could even tweak it more with policy cards that are unlocked when you're behind, or make the spread more intense as time goes on. You could then introduce more interesting mechanics for the players that are ahead too with them trying to stop tech spread. Also why don't you make it harder and harder to progress in relation to everyone else making future techs more and more expensive the more you're ahead? The one thing I learned from playing grand strategy games is that a soft barrier is almost always a superior option to a hard barrier when designing a mechanic.
I’m really glad there’s people who can take a look at things from a gameplay perspective and really consider why these changes were made and what drawbacks it comes with. So many people are reacting to things with fear and mistrust because it’s different without considering what these changes are for and what they can do.
I had an idea for a technoloy development strategy where everyone gains knowledge about technologies anyone else has researched, and more the more players have reserached that technology. This is sort of a catchup mechanic, but also emulates real world exchange of ideas, without the massive bump from civ7.
You're my first source of these updates to the series. However I believe they are the ideas that are actually pretty interesting if you worked around with it. The idea to level the technology tree of every civilization after the end of an age seems kinda bad to me - they should instead make it much cheaper to research them (like let's say ~25-75% cost depending on how much are you missing on from the country leading in science). Actually, I think there is a handicap mechanic already installed in Civ6 - dark age cards if you've got 'dramatic ages mode' on which are quite powerful (even better than golden age cards) which really help you to catch on if you've had bad start so maybe they should aim this way, About the idea of 'new continent appearing' - I don't see nothing wrong with it - even with making such mode as a vanilla experience. I believe they'll sooner or later add something to disable 'new continent appearing' - if you think that new AI appearing in the middle of bunch of PLAYERS and they're gonna be exploited by them since there's always gonna be a strategy against them - go on. That's kinda what HISTORICALLY happened with Africa and native americans LOL. You were speaking of a living community of Civ6 multipayers and how you guys basically tamed the game and made it competetive. However such big company doesn't really care for sorry to say, but a small group of devoted players. Especially since no one bans you from playing Civ6 after Civ7 comes out. They aim for a bigger score - to sell as many copies of the game as they can in a short ammount of time so the project pays off - even the better if the game keeps on selling for next few years. So in the end: They've presented different ideas to which we are accustomed to - let them cook. If it turns out bad - just go back to Civ6.
I do wonder if the Age system will allow more variety for build order meta. I imagine the MP could be fixed by just having an option to have a full World from the start AND option to disable major AI civs.
Though I do enjoy multi-player, I play mainly single-player, so I'm looking quite forward to some rubber-banding, if it is well balanced. The largest issues for MP in my opinion are the map getting larger which explains the player limitation. I am sure it wouldn't cost the devs too much to develop a scenario or game mode that makes the whole map available on the first era, I hope they do so. If the rubber-banding is well-balanced, I think it would work well in MP as well. There are some competitive games with an extreme amount of rubber-banding. I sure hope the game does well without mods, but if Civ 7 is moddable like Civ 6, I expect that balancing issues will be solved somehow.
nah, it's the same game. getting the community to fix a stupid design decision by firaxis with a mod is exceedingly hard. the only thing mod really does is balance the civs out, not much more.
@@512TheWolf512 messing around with vanilla and bbg, my playstyle with bbg and without are fundementally different from eachother. It does quite a bit more than just balance civs. The changes to governors for example are quite game changing and whole new strats you couldnt do in vanilla open up through that and other changes. I dont think vanilla is amazintly balanced or anything, and i do like some of the changes but it feels definitely tailored to the mp meta and doesnt really cater well to the general singleplayer experience, such as how it feels to play with on something like standard or epic speed which i prefer solo. I run an entierly different modset for singleplayer cause it just doesnt feel as fun when working with an ai only enviornment. The point being SP and MP recquire very different expeirences and thats fine, one will suffer over the other always with these games. shitting on the devs for it is childish and ignorant about what goes into designing a game. Basically: youre playing a very niche aspect of the game, youre not the core audience and thus not what the game is balanced or designed around.
Kinda weird to see a preview and opine this, because it's too early to say. Remember vanilla Civ VI launched as an obvious successor to Civ V in that it already had ALL it's expansions at launch. But Civ VII may take the game in a completely different directions. What we were shown was obviously NOT the release candidate, and there will be yet more patches, expansions etc... I generally respect your opinion but this is a little silly, from my point of view. Edit. not trying to rip on you i really appreciate your channel
I feel like they could just have a set map size for multiplayer, at least as an option, so that the competitive players won't have to deal with all the weirdness that comes with an expanding map and adding new civs. Now to be clear I am one of those people who pretty much exclusively plays singleplayer, and only even play multiplayer with my friends, and yeah I can see how this stuff will impact competitive play, but I would think that as the DLCs for the game start rolling out, they will be adding more support for multiplayer, with additional settings and such to customize your experience. just look at all the extra gamemodes that they added for Civ 6, I'm sure there will be options to eventually make it fit the multiplayer environment better.
Thank you for the note at 8:55. People complaining about the age system (as opposed to discussing actual potential repercussions like you do here) seem to be missing the fact that they definitely chose to go this route because it *allowed them to accommodate common player requests* Frankly it only seems to bear a thin surface resemblance to Humankind's system from what I can see.
A way to potentially fix this "expanding area" would be to just have 2 different continents at once that can't interact with each other the first 2 ages, but become open to each other in the last age could have like, 2 continents with 5 players each, and being completely separated until the last age, could be interesting Tho I do understand that they don't focus much on the multiplayer aspect, since most players are singleplayer only players I obviously would prefer if they could just _fix_ the bad AI (aka: Make a better one essentially) instead of designing the new game around AI being bad (which btw confirms that they will indeed not have fixed the AI problem for Civ 7 sadly)
Maybe this will simply make the multiplayer scene for Civilization 7 have to change significantly as well. It could open up new possibilities, like 3v3 matches where each player specializes in a specific era, kind of like a relay race :) Ultimately, victory could be determined, for example, by adding up the points earned in each era. I'm rather optimistic about it, but time will tell :)
Correction: It does matter if you finish tech and civics since they give you legacy points. Legacy points gives you a permanent bonus to what you want to do so a dude having a lot of leagcy points in tech will do better in tech throughout the game
This is a problem, but there are numerous ways to fix it (some of which make come in the form of mods) You could for example, drop the online speed and instead play a single age on standard or quick speed. You still get a game that's approximately the same length, and the wording suggests that there are age-specific victory conditions, so you'd also still get a victory screen. If player limits are a problem, this game could start in the modern age. They could also engineer a multiplayer mode, that makes the entire map accessible in the antiquity age, and removes the player number cap. Alternatively, they could remove the initial player cap, and not spawn AI's on the new continents, giving you less land to start with, but an explicit colonisation phase when the exploration age hits to make up the difference. I think the techs resetting can really make the multiplayer scene a bit more interesting; now the race is always between 2 high technology players trying to complete the most techs while every tech only costs 1 turn, instead the meta would probably revolve around building up your science in the early game beyond that 1 tech/turn limit, so you can still 1-turn modern age technologies without the science overflow
I think that civ 7 can be amazing for multiplayer if you just change one thing from CPL, the scoring system! In civ 7 there is still a victory screen in earlier eras that gives you legacy bonuses to keep some of your empire as it progresses to the next age. These objectives are build wonders, have and conquer cities, get science stuff, and asign resources to your cities. So instead of second place being determined by score you could instead have it be determined by the sum total of the era progress generated by each milestone from ALL ages of the game. This would make it so being dominant in the antiquity age and exploration age does matter in multiplayer. No longer will progress down the tech and civics tree be the focal point of competing in civ and instead this legacy system provides the perfect alternative. Additionally civ 7 looks like it has an actual diplomacy system which looks great for multiplayer complete with proxy wars and more depth than non aggression pacts and glorified trade agreements. If used properly this system would be very interesting and make early wars viable and fun I just hope it won’t be overlooked by continuing the ban on secretive conversations by CPL. I’m sure you won’t mind herson everyone teams up on you anyway.
Been waiting to hear your thoughts on Civ 7 since I pretty much came to the same conclusion, though I'm sure the modding community will find ways to make Competitive Multiplayer functional even if Firaxis doesn't - disabling AI civs in new territory and upping the civ count in the Antiquity age being hopefully simple fixes, as well as some fair solution to however picking your next Civ in a new age will work.
Shift-Enter instead of selecting a crisis policy? It should probably be enforced randomly, but I guess that doesn't go well with having control on things. As for the question of multiplayer, each age is roughly 150-200 turns so it would fit within the session of a multiplayer game I guess? I'm not sure how one wins the Antiquity or Exploration age and what this means for the next age though. It's not like things are completely reset, as you keep the cities you settled, so if you're severely behind, you'll still be severely behind. We'll just have to see.
It doesn’t exactly put all players on even ground after age end given the fact that the more advanced players will have built all the buildings and benefited from the bonuses they provided. But I feel like there will be more focus on age end strategies like queuing production science and culture etc. Definitely going to be interesting.
I really like civ multiplayer and got my thousands of hours and i like that once for a strategy game it is not catered to competetive play. I lost dozens of my favourite franchises to a competetiveness i have no longer joy competing in. Looking forward to see how this turns out. It may be worse but if not that may be curious!
I don't often play civ in multiplayer so I might not be entirely correct, but from what I've seen those close games with fun lategame are not exactly common. It seems to me the boring lategame is normally just "sidestepped" because once someone starts snowballing, the opponent simply gives up.
I have faith that the competitive community will claw interesting play patterns out of civ vii regardless of its design. There are going to be advantages that carry between ages outside of just techs that could be produced more heavily. Early aggression might be less suicidal and lead to more varied openers. I think this rubber banding changes the types of on term strategies that can thrive, but i doubt it eliminated them. The introduction of AIs mid game is troubling though. Maybe they could be removed or the rules of competitive play could prevent exploitation, but we simply have to wait and see what it's like.
Finally, a real review for the trailer. Yes I also felt the graphic and some feature really great on civ 7, but after seeing ages, leader and changed leader on the new era kinda dissapoint me. Hopefully I was wrong and after it released this turn great
Is there much overlap in the communities of Civ V and Civ VI? Or Civ IV and Civ V? I've kind of always gotten the impression that competitive players tended to stay within their preferred games and metagames rather than automatically moving on to the new game in the series. I could be wrong though.
I am hoping the 3 age system helps create better AI. There is less need for long term planning so AI can focus on optimal strategies for the age that they are in.
@@AvishaiGreenstein the thing is in the past the issue wasn't that the AI couldn't keep up. The way the AI played was just completely non sensical and seemingly random. The Ai already failed to do basic sensible decisions in moment to moment gameplay, and it falls completely apart in war time. Creating good ai cant be that hard, starcraft 2 and age of empires 2 have pretty good ai opponents without cheating and those games are in realtime.
What could make the ai better is that there will be way less micro management. No builders, no pop management. But combat will still be an issue if they dont put a lot of effort into it.
@@Crowbarai is easier in real time than turn based tho. those are completely different games all about Actions per Minute and that’s way easier to do AI for than turn based strategy
When you look at the vods of people who played civ 7 it looks like all the new trees (commander leader advisor) are really streamline and don't combo well into eachother
I am interested in the age system, on one hand it punishes players for getting ahead but on the other hand it ensures that the game isn't won half way thorugh and encourages players to interact with one another more, because if you are ahead in a certain age you are incentivized to throw your weight around before the age ticks over. I think it is something we won't know how good it is until we get our hands on it.
I will be very interested to see exactly how single-age games work. Given that they've stated that the aim is for each age to last around 150-200 turns, there should still be a fair amount of depth to them, and if that's the case I wouldn't be surprised at all if single-age becomes the default for multiplayer Civ 7 (at least, until some enterprising modder finds a way to balance the ages and crises system for multiplayer).
I think you should have mentioned that single-player community is extremely annoyed by the fact that you are basically changing the civ every era. This effectively ruins the fantasy of creating an empire that stands the test of time.
@@MrThisissparta999 if it has an option to play as a single civ (some say it will have) then you're locked in one age games. Since all the civs will probably only have stuff in their own ages.
Some* I have seen many people cautiously optimistic about the mechanic. It has potential to be very good, I just think people are caught up on the naming mechanic. Should’ve made it so you gain an element instead of an entirely new civ. Take Egypt with a horse culture because they found a bunch of horses early in their civilization.
@@andrewu8525 100 %. I think the idea is great. To modify your civ based on what is around you and how you play. But key word being modify. Why can't we just have these same gameplay changes behind leader changes for example? I bet more people are more attached to the civ they are playing rather than the leader.
@@Omit1tulliportin I agree that leader changes make instinctively more sense but I will enjoy getting to know other CIvs by their leader name instead of by what nationality they are
I think your points for the MP vs SP is valid. However, I think some, if not all, of the points could be addressed with toggle-able settings that they can implement. The catch up mechanic could be toggled on and off when creating the MP setting, etc. The full 3 age MP game vs the 1 age can easily be decided by who is playing. Possibly have a toggle preventing AI characters to be added in the new ages. Then, if you want to go to the modding community, future BBG could change these things too.
I don't play MP, but I have seen some crazy tough, fun late game nail biters that an AI simply isn't capable of doing. But plenty of times the game gets conceded well before a victory screen, right? What's a rough percentage of multiplayer games that hit the victory screen vs getting conceded before victory?
I completely disagree, there isn't a massive community that play civ 6 multiplayer but there is a big community who play civ 6 modded multiplayer. If there are big balancing issues the same thing will happen with civ 7 when a mod that will fix these issues comes.
So you get some mechanics wrong. You get yields only from improved tiles. City had 5 5 5 and after a fish constructed which gives 1 1 1 1 city have 6 6 1 6. Extra 3 tiles add nothing to yields.
There will need to be a balance mod for Civ 7 multiplayer, just like Civ 6 has. The balance mod can simply disable problematic mechanics like the world expanding and the 5 player limit. I think a rubber-banding mechanic will be healthy for the multiplayer experience, not harmful
It feels so weird as to why they havent just implemented something like a scaled event system for singleplayer, where an ai attacks and is scaled enough to make it challenging for each player. keeping the same really solid core mechanics that have lasted for like 20 years now for multiplayer and improving the story element for single player
When Civ 6 was released most of the high level Civ 5 mp community had a pretty negative opinion of it on average. Some went back to 5, some moved to different games, a few stuck it out with 6. After dlc evolving the game and important mp balancing was done by our wonderful modders, Civ 6 has a vibrant mp community the rivals and probably outdoes the civ 5 equivalent (notably with a mostly refreshed streamer community and possibly viewership too). I think we'll have something similar with civ 7. It will be a slightly rocky start, many people will reject it's underdeveloped mp play and balancing, but there are already clear opportunities in leader attributes and age legacy bonuses; the community is creative and listens, it'll get worked out. The only major issue I see is the much reduced max player count, which changes in the last age as you mention. If firaxis can't come up with a way to expand it to at least 6 players, FFA games could be over very quickly, very often, especially with early combat seeming to be incentivised vs the current state of civ 6 mp. Whole load of other issues it creates as well and bigger lobbies are more interesting I think. Tied in is the map expansion being balanced for all players start locations. 'Distant Lands' are a thing, visible in one of the cultural leader attributes, heavily implying new continents do appear. Keeping and eye out for more info and being vocal about these issues is all we've got at the moment. Overall, I'm very optimistic. There seem some great core mechanics which is the most important thing. Although it'll be a wildly different game from 6 and many won't like it immediately, I think in the medium term it will be a huge success.
I'm sure that the limitation to multiplayer and the small civ count + map size in Antiquity is fixable with a mod for that purpose. Civ 6 has mods that fix multiplayer too, why not Civ 7?
I hope that the map expansion issue would be solved by either having seperate groups of players in their own ball pit or by having players limited by range to only be able to interact with a limited amount of players, more "venn diagram" vibe than separate ball pits
I also don't like the monetization with the 3-tiers. I'm somewhat ok with a high price, and skins, but including special offer only in higher tiers, making content time sensitive and using FOMO tactics, I'm very concerned about the future of civ.
Civ VI multiplayer late game isn't engaging for everybody, only for those who can realisticly win. The players that are behind are shift-entering every turn. I think the era change rubber band mechanic in civ VII will give the players that are behind a good oppertunity to catch up and come back to compete for the win, if they play optimal. Of course the top-players from the previous era shoud keep some advantage to make sure it pays off to do well in the early/mid game.
My concern with the growing map thing, is that in multiplayer, any player at the edge now gets all this new territory to explore, but anyone in the middle gets nothing. If you don't spawn on one the edges of the world, you've probably lost the game already, as you can't take advantage of any of the new land, new empires or new independent powers.
The competitive multiplayer community will find new meta, establish rules, and make balance mods just like they always do, and I think in actual practice the Age transition won't be as dramatic as "starting over" like it sounds. Limiting the number of civs in Antiquity is dumb though. Most likely it will be handled by not adding new players in later mp game Ages and limiting a match to smaller groups.
At least I know I'm not the only one who felt like they were going crazy with the huge bevy of similarly-titled "I PLAYED CIV 7!" videos that hit the 'Tube after the gameplay feature premiere! It almost felt like astroturfing, to be honest...
This is a good critique of the possibility of good multiplayer in Civ VII but I feel like the example brought up for lategame competitive play is something that only 1% of civ players truly experience. The competitive community already relies on mods for the game to be fair and fun, I feel it'll be the same for VII unfortunately. But I do look forward to changes to make it less snowballey.
I am cautiously optimistic to see how it will work for multiplayer games to only span one age. You mention the losing the ability for long term planning... Sure, some things will be worse and others will be better. For example, this would keep multiplayer games a bit shorter, as not everyone can or wants to play a 4 hour game which they will clearly lose at the end. And it won't rely on the "online" game speed as much which you might have come to appreciate but IMO was problematic (only 1 tech completable per turn, units movement was not scaled to online speed because it would allow scouts to move 8 hexes per turn, city projects were absurdly strong, etc). Sadly, I also think that Sid won't lose sleep over this!
But wouldnt the civ7 age tech thing make early game shenanigans more viable? Coz then you would sacrifice less by the virtue of techs being given to you anyways
As a fairly casual player, the whole Magnus & Chop situation in 6 I found to be pretty stale and boring. I am pretty optimistic but obviously need to play some games to see. I think the graphs you had were pretty helpful and if they can succeed in some of their goals I think 7 has the potential to be the best one yet. Absolutely love the idea of towns where you can claim territory without another production queue to manage, can't believe it took them 7 games to get to that lol. Here's hoping for the best!
to fix the issue of the map expanding, all 8 players should be present with the whole map, but exploring farther from friendly territory (influenced city states counts, so considering the suzerainship or conquest of one is a dilemma for players) has debuffs, which can, say, allow other players to raid your ships without war and without you knowing who did it, or barbarians to kill scouts easier. you still have to explore early on to find new cities to settle, but you cant march across 2 entire continents to conduct trade effectively an example would be rome with china, and colonial europe with china rome didnt have the means to directly trade with china, relying on the silk roads, nor could they conquer china because marching an army across the length of russia is difficult. most invaders of russia couldnt even make it past moscow whereas colonial europe had the means to trade with better ship technologies, and colonial bases established from alliances or conquest (iberia with the kongo is a real life example) the exploration age should expand how far one can explore and give them techs to traverse obstacles they couldnt previously. this way, when the exploration age starts, the map DOES expand relative to how far you can explore, and you are now rewarded with exploring further
Major correction: There’s “future tech” and “future civic” for each Age, which are repeatable.
Do you know what they give? Cause I think in base civ 6 (no gathering storm), they just gave score. (For score victory).
@@maddoxbellrose7679 I believe Future Civic gave an envoy Future Tech only score
Doesn't seem worth it if it doesn't carry over as me having an edge. Even in humankind the whole 4x game for me is about getting guns first
@@platanius9856 Future Civic gives diplo favour and Future Tech boosts your production towards projects.
@@RobinLSL Future civic gives governor titles as well.
2:16 - Correction: I can't remember who said it (I think Ursa Ryan, could be wrong), but one of the people who played said they were told that every age will have some sort of Future Tech and Future Civic option that will provide bonuses of some sort (very vague) if you finish the tech and/or civic tree early. I think we'll need to wait to see how those bonuses carry over. My hope is that doing a Future Tech in Age 1 will give you some sort of massive boost to an Age 2 tech.
I also think you're vastly overstating how much of a "clean slate" each age will be. If nothing else, there will be some sort of victory points or other overarching scoring system that will carry over between ages, as well as there being Persistent buildings that will carry over. It feels like concentrating on that early infrastructure/setting up your civ for the second and third age will be the focus of the first age.
That being said, I immediately knew that Civ 7 was going to be single player focused when I heard it was released. Unfortunately, MP is just too small of a player base for them to cater to.
But something of note: Civ 6 wasn't very MP friendly, either. Every competitive MP player uses mods to equalize and tweak game mechanics.
Yeah, this is also the first I've heard that all techs from the previous era would be given freely at its conclusion.
Thanks for the additional info
none of the civ games was tuned for multiplayer, it was just a added bonus out of all of them civ 6 had the best netcode
Ursa Ryan mentioned that the dev team made some design decisions with multiplayer specifically in mind. I can’t recall what they were, but I believe it was the ages system. Having multiplayer games for single ages will be far more manageable than a full campaign, especially when 450-600 turns per game is enforced
@@Grimnebulon I did hear that there would be some equalization and that you wouldn't be able to research techs from the previous era. So I assume something like everyone gets all techs or all techs but the masteries are removed, or something like that.
Infrastructure carries over, but adjacency bonuses are removed, there are future techs and civics in every era.
If you do well in an era you can choose bonuses for the next era.
Crisis cards looked like they might hurt good players the most.
All in all, players may catch up, but their are advantages to playing well.
That opening alone already marks this as a masterpiece of a video.
In general I believe the new age mechanic may encourage more risky gameplay in MP. If you can reach the age gate without simming 100% optimally, then maximizing yields is actually suboptimal. We may see very greedy early war openers that bounce back once the era crosses over and get to consolidate while keeping tech parity. Civ6 suffers from very low intensity early game in FFA due to the war being inherently a negative sum game
I would love to see early war be viable in FFA, similar to how it is in teamers.
this is a really good point. exciting!
That is if the players aren’t springboard by crisis which is a rubber-banding handicap.
I think 1 unit per tile make it easy to defend bc units are hard to kill without concentrating firepower, and it much easier to do in defense rather in attack
Civ Vi suffers from weak early game wars because of consecutive nerfs to the strategy
And that was nerfed even further due to multiplayer "balancing" mods from groups like CPL who fell into a tit-for-tat delimma as they played with the same small group over and over and over for 5-6 years
Early war was a huge, nearly the only possible game-style of civil vi from release to approximately rise and fall
Competitive civ 6 multiplayer is not even viable in vanilla, they need mods. I think you make a good point in how it will change the game but idk if they are actually changing their design philosophy that much
The only problem with "engaging and tense endgame" in your space race with Arabia is that there are 6 other players in your lobby and they are basically Shift-Entering
Not sure if u familiar with Multiplayer system, but to avoid this they score or else determine the ranking of other players (for gain/loss of ELO), so 6 others chase 2nd place coz who looses the space race prbably will not have enough points to be 2nd. Players play around this and usualy decides in mid game if they even have a shot at 1st or just war for 2nd. If u are weak player / unlucky start / misstakes - u dead long before end game :)
@@bobr920 Sure it may be worth it ranking wise, so there's motivation, but it still is boring gameplay, they're only in it for those points. Potentially having the playing field leveled count give more pople a chance to contest the victory
@@spameron7575in the late game, the fastest way to get points is by taking cities in war. So rather than just shift entering, everyone ends up warring with each other to try and end with the most cities by the time someone claims victory, which is much more engaging than shift enter spam
@@bobr920this relies on a 3rd party ELO system for motivation. Civ VII multiplayer will most likely find its footing after its own 3rd party manipulations, just like Civ Vi
If you watch the video of his Nubia game you can see that Canada is only a few turns away from culture victory and England is fighting Mongolia to barely get fifth place in the very last turn of the game by nuking one of their cities. A lot of games have one or two players giving up early and phoning it in until they can leave but in serious lobbies it's not a huge problem.
Your statement in the "Final Thoughts" segment *cannot* be understated.
I'm a big fan of competitive content myself, but the fall of Blizzard and the collapse of the RTS genre is a clear example of what happens when a game hyperfocuses on its competitive environment to the detriment of its wider casual playerbase.
I definitely understand and sympathize with your concern for the competitive environment (and on that front I do have an additional concern beyond the points you stated, that the subdivision of the different ages as standalone game categories will be a hurdle to competitive play in that it will very likely dilute the already small competitive player base further, leading to longer queue/lobby times and therefore larger onboarding hurdle),
BUT I do think that focusing primarily on the single-player experience is still the better choice in the long run for the overall health of the game.
I'd agree, but mechanics isn't a problem. the horrid netcode is.
since it's fundamentally multiplatform, the lobby simulator is only going to get worse, not better. firaxis is not doing anything at all to fix it.
@@512TheWolf512 what's wrong with the code?
@@liminal_spaces_on_earth tell me you've never played a civ6 multiplayer without telling it.
@@django8451 I haven't, what's wrong with the code though?
@@liminal_spaces_on_earth it's very bad. Lobbies crash very often and that means losing a game in which you could have spent hours playing.
My greater fear is civ being stale by not experimenting. I'm interested in how all of these systems end up feeling when it releases
Honestly I went back to play Civ 5 the other day and I missed so many of the new systems of Civ 6 that I just had to go back to Civ 6, I can't wait for Civ 7 because I like the new artstyle of 7 better than 6 and I am hyped for the changes and to see how they work out
Herson, you are singlehandedly uplifting the quality of Civ content on UA-cam, especially with your multiplayer guides and content. No other Civ content creator has put out such quality content over the last year.
Game is over 7 years old.
Everything has pretty much been done to death.
CPL isn't much different.
You do the same things over and over again and have to deal with all sorts of connection problems.
While it might not be great for competitive multiplayer, I honestly think it will be great for casual multiplayer with friends. The age system would allow for perfect stopping points for each session. Also, the fact that you can just play a single age means even if your friend group has very limited time, you can still potentially get that multiplayer session to happen.
That sounds bad. You should always have 4-6 hours reserved for civ 6 multiplayer
@@TheJrcattle nope, unless you pay for my copy of the game, you can shut up and let me play for as much time as me and my friends have.
@@mr.p215 bro is pissed
@@Chudsmash777 self entitled gate keepers that tell other how to play like Jr do tick me off.
Good for multiplayer when now we can't even all play on same lobby?!? I don't have too strong of opinions on the mechanics of civ 7 yet, but a 5 player max just ruins our weekly civ nights. We'll have to stick to civ 5 & 6
Sorry but you're just flipping the problem around. Comp multiplayer civ 6 is the exact opposite of single player civ 6. You guys have min-maxed the game to such a degree that the early game is the boring part. The proof of this is your own videos where the same strategies are used with so little variation. You have said it before that early wars are useless as they put you at such a disadvantage no one does it. Beelining trade routes districts, feudalism, then industry with the game being decided most of the time by who gets oxford. Granted the better balance game mod is partially what drives this meta but even without it, I bet the strategies would be the same - ignore everyone early and you only war late game if you have no shot at another victory and just want to slow down someone else.
What the age system will allow is for more variation in strategies. Want to war early? go ahead as that is now a valid strategy due to the soft reset at age turnover. Now, yes there could be a chance where this just means only the last age/late game is where victory is decided, but victory should only be decided in the late game with multiple avenues of setting up a good foundation in the earlier ages. At the end of the day, you will never have a good 4X game for singleplayer and multiplayer.
I have my own concerns about civ 7 but the age rubber banding system is not one of them.
You simply don't understand what real competitive MP is because Herson is playing ffa. Ffa is just chilling and perfecting strats. Teamers is where everything goes and becomes bloodbath. Where you throwing your game is fine if you ruin games if two enemies. And many more angles to win. Firaxis making stupid mechanics that don't allow proper MP is just disgusting.
@@vaidast5713 "Disgusting"? Damn MP players are dramatic
@@vaidast5713 to call it disgusting is a bit much. They're trying to build a better game for their main user base. Seems a pretty reasonable approach. Unfortunately, it might not work so well for a small number of players.... But they don't have to switch.
@@bobby_hmm How is it exactly too much. They literally removed multiplayer option for competitive gaming. Only internet censorship stops me from describing it as it should be. 5 players max, everyone gets free techs etc etc. You loving concept that they want to make money instead of good product is also disgusting. Ofc they want people to pay 200 euros and play 300 hours. Good business. And by simply copying Humankind, not even making original game. I'm not gonna pretend that something that stinks is ok to me. It's a f joke as firaxis themselves. They literally can't play there own game and would get wiped by any xp player. I don't know any other game that their devs would stink at their own game.
@@vaidast5713 The vast majority of players are single-player only. The game should be made for them. Focusing on competitive multiplayer ruins games for most players in service of a small number of competitive ones. Not just in this genre, but others too (see Halo 5).
To be 100% real, while your example takes a competitive civ community, the average online game is not like that. It usually is 1 or 2 people trailblaze. 1 or 2 people play aggro and that makes players annoyed they can't develop their civilsation more so rhey quit and those 1 or 2 players get the singleplayer effect.
On top of that, I think theyre REALLY angling for a casual market on this one. The progression system feels rimworld-esque in that they seem to be valuing roleplay and immersion over competitive gameplay, which im sure sucks from a competitive players perception, but as someone who plays singleplayer, love roleplaying games and only plays multiplayer with 3 or 4 other people, Im very happy with the direction tbh
nah, war is VERY common in history and flat out stearing clear of it for roleplay is dumb in my view. Easiest way to get a turtler on the backfoot is getting a army going and burning undefendable cities down. You get new resources and set the other player back to the stone age.
Works in both single player and multiplayer...only reason you get the war isn't worth it min maxing is the online speed /fast speed which means research rush by the time it takes to build and use units and pushes them obsolete. You want the real roleplay set the speed to long or epic ( which means EVERYTHING takes more turns ) wonders feel like wonders and anchient or mediveal wars can go all out.
@@Solus749 exactly this. Online Speed is the problem. Go for marathon and you have a Civ VI game with early wars.
it is truly poetic how everyone who played it makes like 1 hour videos of it while the 1 pvp civ youtuber manages to make it just 11 minutes
and he explains it much more deeply than anyone else
@@yeahthisiscuddy no he doesn't. like straight up there is a lot of missing info in this video
I find the idea of a game company choosing to gear the game towards its more casual singleplayer audience rather than its competitive multiplayer audience kind of refreshing. With other studios, they’ll constantly change the game to what the highest skill level of players are asking for which doesn’t really matter to 99% of the player base. Seeing Firaxis not do that is kind of nice.
Granted, this could all be fixed by just making the AI play better rather than upend how the game works.
Glad you're happy. Enjoy your 200 hours of gameplay while the hardcore gamers suffer to no end.
@@penknight8532 Dude chill out . They arnt focusing hard on multi because because a vast majority of the playerbase only plays single . ( at the end of the day Firxais is a for-profit company they do what will make them the most money) . B Never make fun of someones play time 200 hours is over a week in game . C Your not going to suffer mods will come out to balance out all issues in civ 7 like they did 6 .
Making a comperent AI for this kind of game is really, really hard so I can understand why AI tends to be dumb and just gets buffed with higher difficulty.
It's an unfortunate experience but the amount of factors to consider in a strategy game is so large it's super difficult to create somekind of ruleset for the AI that isn't too rigid or limited.
Or mods, I mean it's hypocritical that the same people say "Oh just use a fan made tsl Earth huge/enormous map from steam." and yet these same people will demand the devs to do things like make the barbs spam less in the game! 😂
I think the crisis idea is cool, and I'm trying to do a Endless Legend 2 fanwork where it takes the explicit Frostpunk vibes that game had on launch and taking them a step further. I have a REAL love-hate relationship with HK, so I get the idea of civ swapping, but what I feel would make it better would be Leader swapping. You have a spirit of a leader (science, military, developer, etc.) that gets shuffled after so many turns dependent on your government (Democracies have shorter terms than Kings). These Leaders then have priorities and bonuses towards those priorities and filling as many of those desires throughout the ages (like in the amazing trailer) is how you achieve victory.
bro really put the youtubers in the padded room that's crazy
what you're saying is true, although for me ultimately the make or break mechanic is the civilization switching. if I don't end up liking it I might never play the game, if I do I'll probably be willing to go along with most other changes
I felt like bro made the UA-camrs into voices haunting him while he was in the padded room, because he was "going crazy" being left out of Firaxis invitations
I am worried that the civ switching mechanic will make the game feel less engaging because your civ is just gonna change anyway, and your leader can be whatever as well, so it's not very meaningful.
It’s already a break. It ruins the entire point of the game.
@@eduardog3000 definitely feels that way to me for now. I think Firaxis has a good enough track record not to write them off, but I didn't like what I saw
I really liked the civ switching mechanic in Humankind but the ages just went by too fast and you always wanted to rush to the next so you wouldn't loose the one you wanted to take, which made it so you wouldn't be able to enjoy playing that one Civ and make use of their special stuff as much as you wanted to, I am hoping that there being only 3 ages will make this much better.
Since with only 3 ages you get to play each Civ far longer than you would in Humankind letting you enjoy them before you switch to the next era.
I disagree with the take that multiplayer doesn’t suffer from the same issues as single player. You’ve even said it yourself, players can tell fairly early on who is going to win. So BBG FFA has the points system in place to reward second third etc. in civ 7, they could consider removing that and going to a winner takes all system.
But how is a winner takes all system automatically more fun than playing for second or third place in an elo ranking system? Achieving a victory condition in civ has never been the fun part, it's the journey to reach it and the struggles and stories that come out of it. It's planning your cities and plotting your wonder strategies or your next war and executing it.
Now I'm not saying civ 7 is going to be bad because of these things, I just dispute that rubber banding will make the game more fun automatically. Frankly if you get the right set of Ai mods, even Ai can be a fun challenge and I've crushed dozens of deity wins. It really just comes down to a problem of bad Ai design in the base game.
@@Authorman2 personally I live by “if you’re not first, you’re last” Fuck playing for 2nd with a score victory, I want to win.
The civ 5 multiplayer community also rewards little to nothing for second place and beyond. We have tournaments a few times a year and no ranked play beyond that, because having an elo just encourages playing for something else than to win, which in an FFA is mega cringe imo
Fingers crossed that one day you will get to play Civ 8!
Great video, honest and to the point without inferring anything
Herson, ur content makes me happy
I feel like your comments on the "issues" isnt as valid as it could be. Youre playing on BBG with a few other mods that fundamentally change the game to large varying degrees. As well as the mentions to "multiplayer" suffering is also a bit scuffed due to the comp community being a much smaller slice of the pie.
It really doesnt change the game that much it spreads powers more evenly and balamces starts for multiplayer so the rng isnt that much impactful and the actual gameplay and tactic shines... civ 7 just shows very boring autopilot gameplay like millenia
Maybe there’s a way to score each age, and the player with the highest combined score would win?
Good call
Humankind 2 moment
There sort of is I think? Each age you get like a science goal, culture goal etc, and when you reach certain milestones, you get something called legacy points and some bonuses in the future. Saw it in one eof the videos.
You not getting invited just proves how little Firaxis pays attention to the Multiplayer community, which sucks because 90% of my Civ playtime is multiplayer with friends
Yeah, but 98% of the player base are single player players.
They are not going to cater to the hardcore 2% of players FFS.
@@penknight8532 This fr though. Like, I get people enjoy multiplayer, but losing track of the real audience is what killed the wider RTS genre. After Starcraft, every big RTS focused so hard on Multiplayer and esports when most strategy players do singleplayer or co-op and I can't even remember the last good proper RTS we've had.
Hopefully multiplayer gets some attention and care but it really can't come at the detriment of what the vast majority of casual focused singleplayer experience.
herson is a very new content creator in civ 6, of course they didn't invite him. They did invite lege who has been around for much longer and is in the multiplayer community.
Lege was invited so
To be fair, just three months ago, I only had around 3k subscribers. I think they'd already decided on who they'd invite for the playtest way back then.
I like most of what Civ 7 looks to be doing, but I think changing how the ages work puts me off the most. I do like the Crisis system though, as long as it's not there to just ruin the leaders time.
Even as just a casual multiplayer player, I enjoy how it progresses from start to finish in Civ 6.
Though we could all be worrying about nothing, they could be absolutely cooking, but we won't know until release
Bro likes microtransactions, GAYmers deserve everything what happened to games.
Excellent video, perfectly described the concerns I was having, how is a skilful player supposed to get ahead? Does anything I do in the first 2 ages actually matter?
It really does seem like they are trying to fix the problem of not being able to create a competent AI. However, it might be a fun single player game for a couple of games...
Wish they'd design a Civ game with multiplayer as the focus.
lol... a couple of games :)
One solution they might consider is dividing a large multiplayer server between two continents seperated by the impassible barrier to new land and civs being added in the exploration age.
This might not be the desired solution like just removing the gimmick outright, but I think it would be a much better compromise then simply limiting multiplayer games to 5 players.
This is actually a really cool idea since it mimics the real worlds meeting of the old and new world, if not for the eradication of native populations from European diseases, the technology and population of both hemispheres may have been much closer
@@squeegyboi3645 they may have also been much closer if civilizations like the Aztec's didn't make it a living hell for anyone else to be civilized. If China had rolled into Europe after the fall of Rome they would have seen a similar sight, but they were dealing with their own barbarian invaders as well in the mongels only they were able to hold them off.
All over the world the story is the same, warmongers with petty ambitions slow or halt or even reverse the intellectual pursuits of their more advanced neighbors. Usually at the same time these intellectuals grow to fast, give into hedonism and become fragile and start collapsing to some extent on their own.
It would be interesting to know what became of the more ancient advanced civilizations, why did Nubia fall? What about Sumeria? Was it some widespread psychosis from believing that the world was coming to an end? Was some kind of taboo revealed that the people wouldn't stand for? Perhaps a natural disaster or plague that was interpreted as a sign from the gods that the current administration was illegitimate resulting in a rebellion. Or the classic death of an autocrat with no clear line of succession.
I believe that these are some of the universally applicable examples for why a great civilization would be weakened to a state where they fall apart, but as with the native Americans they did not have any great civilization when Europeans arrived which is why they quickly enlisted the help of the Europeans to eliminate the barbarians responsible for this stagnation, the Aztecs.
Good analysis. I agree that fixing the single-player experience is likely the focus of these changes as Firaxis recognizes that the vast majority of Civilization players will experience the game only in single-player. Civ 6's viability as a competitive multiplayer game seems almost accidental at times.
One of the things you don't touch on in the video which I think could be worth noting is that the developers of Civ 7 expect the ages to be much longer, ideally over 150-200 turns on (probably) standard speed. They didn't intend for Civ 6's victory conditions to be optimized to the effective completion of all of history in ~200 turns. As I understand it, this means that standalone ages are likely to be on par in duration as an average game, which is why I somewhat disagree with you on the idea that limiting playthrough to a single age will severely impact the long-term strategy of competitive play.
What I think is being set up is more like three consecutive games of Civilization as we understand it across fundamentally different eras, which can (in a more casual multiplayer or singleplayer context) feed into each other into a grand campaign. I think the future of competitive Civ 7 will likely take the form of these single-age games which will play similar to current "full" games, and will end with a victor declared before the soft-resets and map expansions. Antiquity, Expansion, and Modern games will be three separate cakes rather than being all packed into one.
Obviously it all depends on implementation. Worst case scenario, we'll always have BBG mods and Civ 6 on a perpetual sale of ~$20.
TLDR: Civ 7 seems like it will be much slower than Civ 6 by hundreds of turns, and single-era games will be the most viable for competitive play.
oof 500 turn games sound horrible lol... I'm guessing I'll be able to warmonger to victory much faster if and when I buy Civ 7.
@@penknight8532 Turns might be a lot quicker though because moving units is easier and you don't have the whole worker micro manage and remember that is the amount of time for the average person it may well only take good players 400 turns and if turns are like 20% quicker then maybe it is actually not bad.
I feel like a good lot of the change might add some immersion... but playing Augustus as India is where it stops
I figured you’d have a robust, well thought out take. Waiting for this video was worthwhile.
I’m glad you’ve made the point so succinctly, and haven’t pretended it’s apocalyptic.
You yourself told about how the multiplayer games tend to only have one or two civs in contention for the victory, and how a scoring system was invented specifically so that even the people who fell behind have something to play for. So the same problems that make late game in singleplayer boring do exist in multiplayer in different forms after all. With the era and crisis system, it could very well end up being that the player who survives the crises better will end up gaining the upper hand, instead of the one that snowballs best in early game, and the competition will be closer come the modern age.
Wouldn't that be better for multiplayer than heavy struggle to snowball the best in early and mid game? Those parts would still matter, but it would be more about building an empire to survive the crises than one that snowballs to the victory fastest. In other words, you'd strive to build an empire that *stands the test of time*.
If that doesn't end up working, you can just keep playing civ VI for competitive multiplayer, that isn't taken away from anyone. It's not like civ games have ever been designed with competitiveness in mind, and they need modding for that anyway. Civ VI isn't really usable for competitive multiplayer by default either.
>...and how a scoring system was invented specifically so that even the people who fell behind have something to play for...
I mean, it's an ELO system like those used in any game where people play each other.
@@PseudoAccurate Well, yeah. But my point still stands, the snowballing in Civ VI would be a problem in multiplayer without the scores, because people who fall behind and clearly have no chance to win from like one third of the way in would need to stick around for no good reason.
All will be well.
As for multi, it's only fun for the top 2 players in the lobby. at that point, all that is left is AI. If you're on parity every age, at least tech wise, it commits more players to stay. and dont forget prob no more desyncs. BEOWOLFMAN signing out
it's unlikely that all is left is AI as in a 8 player lobby placing 3rd is not too shabby and generally I don't see more than 2/3 players that are either dead or declared irrel. I have no trust in Fireaxis improving their disgusting netcode
I think civ7 multiplayer will be a massive improvement over civ6. Here's why:
1) Improved networking
2) Improved diplomacy gameplay
3) The expanding map insures player interaction in the mid- and lategame through competition over new resources and territory
4) For many peaple an entire civ game takes too long, playing just one age could be a great way to play a shorter civ
5) If you enjoy the long term planing of playing an entire civ game but an entire civ game still takes too long, you can play in 3 sessions, one for each age
I agree that the 5 player limit could be a problem, but I think there will be a patch or mod to increase that limit.
I think a potential path forward may be like a point system. You get x amount of points each age, then add them up at the end. Lots of competitive potential there, as long as the systems are built correctly. Embrace the change, you can't reject it (unless you disavow civ vii completely).
Potatomcwhiskey mentioned masteries, you can choose to research an already researched tech to get extra bonuses. Like you can research fishing boats again to get +1 prod on all fishing boats. The future tech research for each age allows you to keep the bonuses of certain buildings in the next age instead of it going away.
Love to watch the videos continually improve in both editing quality and structure, great work man
Just as you already play Civ 6 with mods as a fairly standard setting in multiplayer games, the modders will find a way around this problem in Civ 7 as well. "Future civic" and "Future tech" become available at the end of each age if you have completed everything. Having every completion of these transfer into something like a free inspiration or eureka once the next age begins for example can help with that. Obviously the ideas I can put out are quite limited without access to the game myself but I have full confidence in the modders to make multiplayer work for Civ 7 as well...though maybe not on launch day.
Besides the already mentioned future tech mechanism that will provide research bonuses for the next age. There will also be the different golden Age bonuses that i guess help you to specialize early on as well. Also it seems that the ages are not dependent on turn limit but player Legacy points. Good players can advance the age and thus face the crisis era with a more developed nation. Those seem to counterbalance the rubberband mechanisms of the Ages system
I don't get this so called "fix". Why not introduce a more organic catch-up mechanic into the game with a concept already known in grand strategy games called "technology spread"? You could even tweak it more with policy cards that are unlocked when you're behind, or make the spread more intense as time goes on. You could then introduce more interesting mechanics for the players that are ahead too with them trying to stop tech spread. Also why don't you make it harder and harder to progress in relation to everyone else making future techs more and more expensive the more you're ahead? The one thing I learned from playing grand strategy games is that a soft barrier is almost always a superior option to a hard barrier when designing a mechanic.
All always cool video. I was just curious, what's your opinion on CIV V?
I’m really glad there’s people who can take a look at things from a gameplay perspective and really consider why these changes were made and what drawbacks it comes with. So many people are reacting to things with fear and mistrust because it’s different without considering what these changes are for and what they can do.
Being emotional and crazy is way more fun and entertaining.
@@penknight8532 that’s fair
I had an idea for a technoloy development strategy where everyone gains knowledge about technologies anyone else has researched, and more the more players have reserached that technology. This is sort of a catchup mechanic, but also emulates real world exchange of ideas, without the massive bump from civ7.
You're my first source of these updates to the series. However I believe they are the ideas that are actually pretty interesting if you worked around with it. The idea to level the technology tree of every civilization after the end of an age seems kinda bad to me - they should instead make it much cheaper to research them (like let's say ~25-75% cost depending on how much are you missing on from the country leading in science). Actually, I think there is a handicap mechanic already installed in Civ6 - dark age cards if you've got 'dramatic ages mode' on which are quite powerful (even better than golden age cards) which really help you to catch on if you've had bad start so maybe they should aim this way,
About the idea of 'new continent appearing' - I don't see nothing wrong with it - even with making such mode as a vanilla experience. I believe they'll sooner or later add something to disable 'new continent appearing' - if you think that new AI appearing in the middle of bunch of PLAYERS and they're gonna be exploited by them since there's always gonna be a strategy against them - go on. That's kinda what HISTORICALLY happened with Africa and native americans LOL.
You were speaking of a living community of Civ6 multipayers and how you guys basically tamed the game and made it competetive. However such big company doesn't really care for sorry to say, but a small group of devoted players. Especially since no one bans you from playing Civ6 after Civ7 comes out. They aim for a bigger score - to sell as many copies of the game as they can in a short ammount of time so the project pays off - even the better if the game keeps on selling for next few years.
So in the end: They've presented different ideas to which we are accustomed to - let them cook. If it turns out bad - just go back to Civ6.
I do wonder if the Age system will allow more variety for build order meta. I imagine the MP could be fixed by just having an option to have a full World from the start AND option to disable major AI civs.
I figure they'll probably have options to have the map open from the start and have the cap from the beginning for multiplayer lobbies.
Though I do enjoy multi-player, I play mainly single-player, so I'm looking quite forward to some rubber-banding, if it is well balanced.
The largest issues for MP in my opinion are the map getting larger which explains the player limitation. I am sure it wouldn't cost the devs too much to develop a scenario or game mode that makes the whole map available on the first era, I hope they do so.
If the rubber-banding is well-balanced, I think it would work well in MP as well. There are some competitive games with an extreme amount of rubber-banding.
I sure hope the game does well without mods, but if Civ 7 is moddable like Civ 6, I expect that balancing issues will be solved somehow.
MP is what, 5% of players? 10%? And competitive MP is so heavily modded that it's barely the same game.
nah, it's the same game. getting the community to fix a stupid design decision by firaxis with a mod is exceedingly hard.
the only thing mod really does is balance the civs out, not much more.
@@512TheWolf512 Altering the balance of the game is very much "not the same game".
@@512TheWolf512 messing around with vanilla and bbg, my playstyle with bbg and without are fundementally different from eachother. It does quite a bit more than just balance civs. The changes to governors for example are quite game changing and whole new strats you couldnt do in vanilla open up through that and other changes. I dont think vanilla is amazintly balanced or anything, and i do like some of the changes but it feels definitely tailored to the mp meta and doesnt really cater well to the general singleplayer experience, such as how it feels to play with on something like standard or epic speed which i prefer solo. I run an entierly different modset for singleplayer cause it just doesnt feel as fun when working with an ai only enviornment.
The point being SP and MP recquire very different expeirences and thats fine, one will suffer over the other always with these games. shitting on the devs for it is childish and ignorant about what goes into designing a game. Basically: youre playing a very niche aspect of the game, youre not the core audience and thus not what the game is balanced or designed around.
Kinda weird to see a preview and opine this, because it's too early to say. Remember vanilla Civ VI launched as an obvious successor to Civ V in that it already had ALL it's expansions at launch. But Civ VII may take the game in a completely different directions. What we were shown was obviously NOT the release candidate, and there will be yet more patches, expansions etc... I generally respect your opinion but this is a little silly, from my point of view.
Edit. not trying to rip on you i really appreciate your channel
I feel like they could just have a set map size for multiplayer, at least as an option, so that the competitive players won't have to deal with all the weirdness that comes with an expanding map and adding new civs. Now to be clear I am one of those people who pretty much exclusively plays singleplayer, and only even play multiplayer with my friends, and yeah I can see how this stuff will impact competitive play, but I would think that as the DLCs for the game start rolling out, they will be adding more support for multiplayer, with additional settings and such to customize your experience. just look at all the extra gamemodes that they added for Civ 6, I'm sure there will be options to eventually make it fit the multiplayer environment better.
Thank you for the note at 8:55. People complaining about the age system (as opposed to discussing actual potential repercussions like you do here) seem to be missing the fact that they definitely chose to go this route because it *allowed them to accommodate common player requests*
Frankly it only seems to bear a thin surface resemblance to Humankind's system from what I can see.
A way to potentially fix this "expanding area" would be to just have 2 different continents at once that can't interact with each other the first 2 ages, but become open to each other in the last age
could have like, 2 continents with 5 players each, and being completely separated until the last age, could be interesting
Tho I do understand that they don't focus much on the multiplayer aspect, since most players are singleplayer only players
I obviously would prefer if they could just _fix_ the bad AI (aka: Make a better one essentially) instead of designing the new game around AI being bad (which btw confirms that they will indeed not have fixed the AI problem for Civ 7 sadly)
Maybe this will simply make the multiplayer scene for Civilization 7 have to change significantly as well. It could open up new possibilities, like 3v3 matches where each player specializes in a specific era, kind of like a relay race :) Ultimately, victory could be determined, for example, by adding up the points earned in each era. I'm rather optimistic about it, but time will tell :)
Correction: It does matter if you finish tech and civics since they give you legacy points. Legacy points gives you a permanent bonus to what you want to do so a dude having a lot of leagcy points in tech will do better in tech throughout the game
This is a problem, but there are numerous ways to fix it (some of which make come in the form of mods)
You could for example, drop the online speed and instead play a single age on standard or quick speed. You still get a game that's approximately the same length, and the wording suggests that there are age-specific victory conditions, so you'd also still get a victory screen. If player limits are a problem, this game could start in the modern age.
They could also engineer a multiplayer mode, that makes the entire map accessible in the antiquity age, and removes the player number cap. Alternatively, they could remove the initial player cap, and not spawn AI's on the new continents, giving you less land to start with, but an explicit colonisation phase when the exploration age hits to make up the difference.
I think the techs resetting can really make the multiplayer scene a bit more interesting; now the race is always between 2 high technology players trying to complete the most techs while every tech only costs 1 turn, instead the meta would probably revolve around building up your science in the early game beyond that 1 tech/turn limit, so you can still 1-turn modern age technologies
without the science overflow
I think that civ 7 can be amazing for multiplayer if you just change one thing from CPL, the scoring system! In civ 7 there is still a victory screen in earlier eras that gives you legacy bonuses to keep some of your empire as it progresses to the next age. These objectives are build wonders, have and conquer cities, get science stuff, and asign resources to your cities. So instead of second place being determined by score you could instead have it be determined by the sum total of the era progress generated by each milestone from ALL ages of the game. This would make it so being dominant in the antiquity age and exploration age does matter in multiplayer. No longer will progress down the tech and civics tree be the focal point of competing in civ and instead this legacy system provides the perfect alternative.
Additionally civ 7 looks like it has an actual diplomacy system which looks great for multiplayer complete with proxy wars and more depth than non aggression pacts and glorified trade agreements. If used properly this system would be very interesting and make early wars viable and fun I just hope it won’t be overlooked by continuing the ban on secretive conversations by CPL. I’m sure you won’t mind herson everyone teams up on you anyway.
Been waiting to hear your thoughts on Civ 7 since I pretty much came to the same conclusion, though I'm sure the modding community will find ways to make Competitive Multiplayer functional even if Firaxis doesn't - disabling AI civs in new territory and upping the civ count in the Antiquity age being hopefully simple fixes, as well as some fair solution to however picking your next Civ in a new age will work.
Shift-Enter instead of selecting a crisis policy? It should probably be enforced randomly, but I guess that doesn't go well with having control on things.
As for the question of multiplayer, each age is roughly 150-200 turns so it would fit within the session of a multiplayer game I guess? I'm not sure how one wins the Antiquity or Exploration age and what this means for the next age though. It's not like things are completely reset, as you keep the cities you settled, so if you're severely behind, you'll still be severely behind. We'll just have to see.
It doesn’t exactly put all players on even ground after age end given the fact that the more advanced players will have built all the buildings and benefited from the bonuses they provided. But I feel like there will be more focus on age end strategies like queuing production science and culture etc. Definitely going to be interesting.
I really like civ multiplayer and got my thousands of hours and i like that once for a strategy game it is not catered to competetive play. I lost dozens of my favourite franchises to a competetiveness i have no longer joy competing in. Looking forward to see how this turns out. It may be worse but if not that may be curious!
I don't often play civ in multiplayer so I might not be entirely correct, but from what I've seen those close games with fun lategame are not exactly common. It seems to me the boring lategame is normally just "sidestepped" because once someone starts snowballing, the opponent simply gives up.
I have faith that the competitive community will claw interesting play patterns out of civ vii regardless of its design. There are going to be advantages that carry between ages outside of just techs that could be produced more heavily. Early aggression might be less suicidal and lead to more varied openers. I think this rubber banding changes the types of on term strategies that can thrive, but i doubt it eliminated them. The introduction of AIs mid game is troubling though. Maybe they could be removed or the rules of competitive play could prevent exploitation, but we simply have to wait and see what it's like.
Finally, a real review for the trailer. Yes I also felt the graphic and some feature really great on civ 7, but after seeing ages, leader and changed leader on the new era kinda dissapoint me. Hopefully I was wrong and after it released this turn great
Honestly…. I think it’s going to be great. Might have a rough launch…. Most the civ games do, but things get ironed out and everyone has a good time.
Is there much overlap in the communities of Civ V and Civ VI? Or Civ IV and Civ V? I've kind of always gotten the impression that competitive players tended to stay within their preferred games and metagames rather than automatically moving on to the new game in the series. I could be wrong though.
The irony is that for a singleplayer focused game youd think they would spent time on making good ai players
I am hoping the 3 age system helps create better AI. There is less need for long term planning so AI can focus on optimal strategies for the age that they are in.
@@AvishaiGreenstein the thing is in the past the issue wasn't that the AI couldn't keep up. The way the AI played was just completely non sensical and seemingly random. The Ai already failed to do basic sensible decisions in moment to moment gameplay, and it falls completely apart in war time. Creating good ai cant be that hard, starcraft 2 and age of empires 2 have pretty good ai opponents without cheating and those games are in realtime.
What could make the ai better is that there will be way less micro management. No builders, no pop management. But combat will still be an issue if they dont put a lot of effort into it.
@@Crowbarai is easier in real time than turn based tho. those are completely different games all about Actions per Minute and that’s way easier to do AI for than turn based strategy
When you look at the vods of people who played civ 7 it looks like all the new trees (commander leader advisor) are really streamline and don't combo well into eachother
I am interested in the age system, on one hand it punishes players for getting ahead but on the other hand it ensures that the game isn't won half way thorugh and encourages players to interact with one another more, because if you are ahead in a certain age you are incentivized to throw your weight around before the age ticks over. I think it is something we won't know how good it is until we get our hands on it.
I will be very interested to see exactly how single-age games work. Given that they've stated that the aim is for each age to last around 150-200 turns, there should still be a fair amount of depth to them, and if that's the case I wouldn't be surprised at all if single-age becomes the default for multiplayer Civ 7 (at least, until some enterprising modder finds a way to balance the ages and crises system for multiplayer).
I think you should have mentioned that single-player community is extremely annoyed by the fact that you are basically changing the civ every era. This effectively ruins the fantasy of creating an empire that stands the test of time.
This. I will refuse to get civ 7 unless they have a "same civ only" mode.
@@MrThisissparta999 if it has an option to play as a single civ (some say it will have) then you're locked in one age games. Since all the civs will probably only have stuff in their own ages.
Some*
I have seen many people cautiously optimistic about the mechanic. It has potential to be very good, I just think people are caught up on the naming mechanic.
Should’ve made it so you gain an element instead of an entirely new civ.
Take Egypt with a horse culture because they found a bunch of horses early in their civilization.
@@andrewu8525 100 %. I think the idea is great. To modify your civ based on what is around you and how you play. But key word being modify. Why can't we just have these same gameplay changes behind leader changes for example? I bet more people are more attached to the civ they are playing rather than the leader.
@@Omit1tulliportin I agree that leader changes make instinctively more sense but I will enjoy getting to know other CIvs by their leader name instead of by what nationality they are
I think your points for the MP vs SP is valid. However, I think some, if not all, of the points could be addressed with toggle-able settings that they can implement. The catch up mechanic could be toggled on and off when creating the MP setting, etc. The full 3 age MP game vs the 1 age can easily be decided by who is playing. Possibly have a toggle preventing AI characters to be added in the new ages. Then, if you want to go to the modding community, future BBG could change these things too.
I don’t see the point of the early and mid game if all civs are brought up to par. Are there sufficient bonuses for playing well?
I don't play MP, but I have seen some crazy tough, fun late game nail biters that an AI simply isn't capable of doing.
But plenty of times the game gets conceded well before a victory screen, right?
What's a rough percentage of multiplayer games that hit the victory screen vs getting conceded before victory?
I completely disagree, there isn't a massive community that play civ 6 multiplayer but there is a big community who play civ 6 modded multiplayer. If there are big balancing issues the same thing will happen with civ 7 when a mod that will fix these issues comes.
So you get some mechanics wrong. You get yields only from improved tiles. City had 5 5 5 and after a fish constructed which gives 1 1 1 1 city have 6 6 1 6. Extra 3 tiles add nothing to yields.
There will need to be a balance mod for Civ 7 multiplayer, just like Civ 6 has. The balance mod can simply disable problematic mechanics like the world expanding and the 5 player limit. I think a rubber-banding mechanic will be healthy for the multiplayer experience, not harmful
So apart from potentially lowering player limit and adding bots midway through the game there are no other concerns? That's what I got from this video
I think the solution is a multiplayer balanced rule set that changes the age system and map expanding.
Would the modding community not be able to work around the player limit, or do we know yet?
It feels so weird as to why they havent just implemented something like a scaled event system for singleplayer, where an ai attacks and is scaled enough to make it challenging for each player. keeping the same really solid core mechanics that have lasted for like 20 years now for multiplayer and improving the story element for single player
So no feudalism rush?
When Civ 6 was released most of the high level Civ 5 mp community had a pretty negative opinion of it on average. Some went back to 5, some moved to different games, a few stuck it out with 6. After dlc evolving the game and important mp balancing was done by our wonderful modders, Civ 6 has a vibrant mp community the rivals and probably outdoes the civ 5 equivalent (notably with a mostly refreshed streamer community and possibly viewership too).
I think we'll have something similar with civ 7. It will be a slightly rocky start, many people will reject it's underdeveloped mp play and balancing, but there are already clear opportunities in leader attributes and age legacy bonuses; the community is creative and listens, it'll get worked out.
The only major issue I see is the much reduced max player count, which changes in the last age as you mention. If firaxis can't come up with a way to expand it to at least 6 players, FFA games could be over very quickly, very often, especially with early combat seeming to be incentivised vs the current state of civ 6 mp. Whole load of other issues it creates as well and bigger lobbies are more interesting I think. Tied in is the map expansion being balanced for all players start locations. 'Distant Lands' are a thing, visible in one of the cultural leader attributes, heavily implying new continents do appear. Keeping and eye out for more info and being vocal about these issues is all we've got at the moment.
Overall, I'm very optimistic. There seem some great core mechanics which is the most important thing. Although it'll be a wildly different game from 6 and many won't like it immediately, I think in the medium term it will be a huge success.
I'm sure that the limitation to multiplayer and the small civ count + map size in Antiquity is fixable with a mod for that purpose.
Civ 6 has mods that fix multiplayer too, why not Civ 7?
Source: vibes. I loved those graphs.
I hope that the map expansion issue would be solved by either having seperate groups of players in their own ball pit or by having players limited by range to only be able to interact with a limited amount of players, more "venn diagram" vibe than separate ball pits
I also don't like the monetization with the 3-tiers. I'm somewhat ok with a high price, and skins, but including special offer only in higher tiers, making content time sensitive and using FOMO tactics, I'm very concerned about the future of civ.
Civ VI multiplayer late game isn't engaging for everybody, only for those who can realisticly win. The players that are behind are shift-entering every turn. I think the era change rubber band mechanic in civ VII will give the players that are behind a good oppertunity to catch up and come back to compete for the win, if they play optimal. Of course the top-players from the previous era shoud keep some advantage to make sure it pays off to do well in the early/mid game.
My concern with the growing map thing, is that in multiplayer, any player at the edge now gets all this new territory to explore, but anyone in the middle gets nothing. If you don't spawn on one the edges of the world, you've probably lost the game already, as you can't take advantage of any of the new land, new empires or new independent powers.
The five player limit is really bad. Maybe they can allow parallel games to join in the exploration/modern era?
Noooo focusing on multiple is the worst thing they can do. That’s not what Civ is about. The problem is the identity and AI
The competitive multiplayer community will find new meta, establish rules, and make balance mods just like they always do, and I think in actual practice the Age transition won't be as dramatic as "starting over" like it sounds. Limiting the number of civs in Antiquity is dumb though. Most likely it will be handled by not adding new players in later mp game Ages and limiting a match to smaller groups.
At least I know I'm not the only one who felt like they were going crazy with the huge bevy of similarly-titled "I PLAYED CIV 7!" videos that hit the 'Tube after the gameplay feature premiere! It almost felt like astroturfing, to be honest...
This is a good critique of the possibility of good multiplayer in Civ VII but I feel like the example brought up for lategame competitive play is something that only 1% of civ players truly experience.
The competitive community already relies on mods for the game to be fair and fun, I feel it'll be the same for VII unfortunately. But I do look forward to changes to make it less snowballey.
I am cautiously optimistic to see how it will work for multiplayer games to only span one age. You mention the losing the ability for long term planning... Sure, some things will be worse and others will be better. For example, this would keep multiplayer games a bit shorter, as not everyone can or wants to play a 4 hour game which they will clearly lose at the end. And it won't rely on the "online" game speed as much which you might have come to appreciate but IMO was problematic (only 1 tech completable per turn, units movement was not scaled to online speed because it would allow scouts to move 8 hexes per turn, city projects were absurdly strong, etc). Sadly, I also think that Sid won't lose sleep over this!
Has loyalty pressure gone? Hope so!
But wouldnt the civ7 age tech thing make early game shenanigans more viable? Coz then you would sacrifice less by the virtue of techs being given to you anyways
Finally, Polytopia 2 is about to be released
The 4x genre doesn't need saving unless you are only willing to sell to the majority rather than the niche.
As a fairly casual player, the whole Magnus & Chop situation in 6 I found to be pretty stale and boring. I am pretty optimistic but obviously need to play some games to see. I think the graphs you had were pretty helpful and if they can succeed in some of their goals I think 7 has the potential to be the best one yet. Absolutely love the idea of towns where you can claim territory without another production queue to manage, can't believe it took them 7 games to get to that lol. Here's hoping for the best!
Could all of the Ages, Crisis, and new Continents mechanisms be removed for multiplayer?
Makes me want to play Civ 6, human kind and Victoria 3 more….
Civ 7 looks very underwhelming
to fix the issue of the map expanding, all 8 players should be present with the whole map, but exploring farther from friendly territory (influenced city states counts, so considering the suzerainship or conquest of one is a dilemma for players) has debuffs, which can, say, allow other players to raid your ships without war and without you knowing who did it, or barbarians to kill scouts easier. you still have to explore early on to find new cities to settle, but you cant march across 2 entire continents to conduct trade effectively
an example would be rome with china, and colonial europe with china
rome didnt have the means to directly trade with china, relying on the silk roads, nor could they conquer china because marching an army across the length of russia is difficult. most invaders of russia couldnt even make it past moscow
whereas colonial europe had the means to trade with better ship technologies, and colonial bases established from alliances or conquest (iberia with the kongo is a real life example)
the exploration age should expand how far one can explore and give them techs to traverse obstacles they couldnt previously. this way, when the exploration age starts, the map DOES expand relative to how far you can explore, and you are now rewarded with exploring further