this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There'll be nothing to get adjusted to if they continue to insist on Denuvo

[–] pycorax 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Reddit and lemmy like to say that but I doubt any noticeable portion of the player base is going to bother. Has been for almost every game with denuvo lol

[–] Taalen 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sadly your average person just doesn't care about consumer rights, in any matter.

I learned my lesson about malicious DRM when Starforce broke my new computer's DVD drive back in the day. Fortunately it was still under warranty so I had it fixed, but sucked all the same.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I don't like denuvo but for me it's the price that's the deal-breaker. Nearly $170CAD for the full version is absolutely bonkers, and I simply can't justify it. So I guess I'm picking it up in a Steam sale in 2028 or something when it's $40 with all the DLC.

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[–] Lost_My_Mind 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Out of the loop. What's Denuvo?

[–] NocturnalMorning 24 points 2 months ago (13 children)

Anti piracy software that slows down your game

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[–] firadin 63 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The crisis system, the era system, and the changing civilizations system all feel especially game-y to me. I get it, Civ is first and foremost a video game. Still, the idea that there are pre-defined eras, and that you have to hit a crisis at the end of each pre-defined era, feels artificial and unnatural. Why can't I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?

Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of eras and crises. If, instead, eras were triggered by hitting certain milestones or accumulating enough points (e.g. hit some combination of weighted tech/cultural/religious/economic development) - I would be down for that. Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there's too much corruption you could have a civil war. If too much of your civ is following another religion there could be unrest. Those are all interesting and fun ideas, but the important part is that the goal is to avoid/mitigate them and play around them - not that they're some kind of inevitable occurrence that you're forced into even if you play otherwise perfectly.

It feels like Firaxis decided to lean hard into "Civ is a board game focused around balance" and completely away from "Civ is a game about growth and optimization", and I don't know if I'm here for it. I guess we'll have to see.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Great points. I also wonder if fixed crises and era changes will make every game flow in a very similar fashion, leading to repetitiveness? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why can’t I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?

Seems like a simple config option making disasters optional would solve that.

Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there’s too much corruption you could have a civil war.

I like those ideas. Have you suggested them to the developers?

If they're not in at release time, maybe the usual expansion/rework DLC will add them. :P

[–] firadin 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think Firaxis would agree with any of my feedback because I think I disagree with them in a fundamental sense about how the game should be oriented. Mandatory disasters appear to be a fundamental part of the Civ 7 game philosophy: you build your civ, face the crisis, reset your civ in a new era, and start over with some amount of carry-over. I get the motivation: by forcing these soft resets, Firaxis is making it so you can't snowball so far ahead that the mid/late game is a chore of uninteresting gameplay. An advantage in the first/second eras won't put you in so far of a lead in the third era that it's just a rush to hit the next turn button. On the other hand... that also means that everything you do in the first/second eras counts way less, and that feels bad.

Granted I obviously haven't played the game yet; this is just my read from demos and press around the game/design philosophy. We will see if I'm right or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The biggest issue I foresee is just how short eras are. If they're going to do these resets then eras need to last way longer relative to unit production and movement.

[–] ampersandrew 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're going to have to make some fundamental changes for this one, because Civ 6 already felt like the final form of the previous design.

[–] firadin 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hard disagree. The district system of Civ 6 was half-baked, and the new one for Civ 7 seems way more interesting with districts growing more organically. Civ 6's world congress was garbage. The eras system needed serious work as dark/golden/heroic eras just didn't feel impactful enough aside from getting a monumentality era early. The new map generation with navigable rivers is a huge plus as well. The climate system in Civ 6 was a dud too, not nearly impactful enough. I think they could've made a Civ 7 which fixed all the broken Civ 6 systems and made a great game.

[–] ampersandrew 6 points 2 months ago

Speaking for myself, if the only selling point was that they revised systems that I already liked, I'd probably pass on Civ 7. Navigable rivers isn't really enough for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah I feel like you could tie these crises into player actions pretty organically - like if there's a war and a big enough percentage of Civs get involved, then it triggers a World War crisis, or they could tie something into the global warming mechanic from Civ VI, or have a Cold War come up from excessive espionage actions, stuff like that.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

If I were to be granted a single wish for a new Civ edition, it would be game AI that scaled well across the difficulty range without cheating.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

I'd just settle for competent AI at any difficulty. I only ever had a few runs in Civ6 because the AI consistently fell apart in late game. Conversely, it's why I had over 1000 hours in Civ5. Yes, it cheated, but once I started to ignore that, it was really satisfying to climb the difficulty ladder and still feel challenged even into the late eras most of the time.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I never moved from civ 5 to civ 6. Every time I try civ 6 it feels awful and looks like a mobile game. Ive got little hope for civ 7 and since it ships with Denovo I doubt I'll ever try it.

[–] BowtiesAreCool 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’ve got over 1000 hours in Civ V and like 15 in Civ VI

[–] ownsauce 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • Civ IV 1000+ hours
  • Civ V ~370 hours
  • Civ VI ~37 hours

Been playing since OG Civ on floppy disk. I'll skip Civ VII

[–] Stovetop 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

To me that just looks like adulthood.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ahh yes, Civ IV. From ye olden days, when the dev teams cared about such weird and obsolete ideas as testing the game before release, or creating an interface that tells the player what the fuck is actually happening. Or useable asynchronous multiplayer, or an AI with enough of a clue to play the damn game competently... I could go on.

Some people apparently liked V's whole "don't build too many cities, we don't want to have an actual empire here" deal, which definitely isn't my thing but does create less micro. But most of the mechanics were reasonable and the UI shared more or less enough info to follow along. They also opened up the code after the final expansion so modders could do some really great things.

IV had a lot of really good ideas, and zero polish. The current version of the game is laden with silly bugs, ride with bizarre balancing choices, and hideously opaque with simple questions like "how much research have I put into this tech", "how much production overflowed off this completed build", and "how likely is this unit to kill this other unit, vs simply damaging it." They haven't opened up the code to modders, nor have they put any effort into fixing these frankly silly errors themselves.

Civ IV is great because of relatively simple mechanics which allow a lot of interesting choices in how to construct and develop your empire. It accentuates this by getting all the boring stuff right: bugs are few and minor, the interface is communicative, etc. it's not perfect in either regard, and yet somehow it far exceeds its successors in these simple categories. This is how you make a good turn-based 4X game actually fun, even with 2005 graphics.

And yet, V and VI sold extremely well, and VII seemingly will as well, despite inevitably being a grossly inferior product at release which will be dragged most of the way to a truly finished state over five years of patches and DLC.

I guess this is very "stop having fun meme", but why the hell are the only games in this genre (of all genres) trading balance, bug fixes, and comprehensible interfaces for fancy graphics? Is it really not profitable to make a game like Civ IV in 2024?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I hate that I agree with this, but yup.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Same! I still play Civ V all the time

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Each to their own! I really enjoyed V and have hundreds of hours in it, but I appreciated the changes in VI and felt like it vbecame a stronger game than V overall. I do have more hours in VI. I get that the art style was a little controversial, but I was never playing V for the visuals anyway

[–] EncryptKeeper 5 points 2 months ago

I loved Civ 5 but I couldn’t go back after Civ 6.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Civ 3. I want my stacks of doom and the ability to blow up improvements and roads with artillery attacks.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Crises will strike towards the end of each Age, and players can react to these in different ways. Make the most of the chaos, and you can find yourself with bonuses going into the next Age or shifting your entire civilization into something else entirely.

This reminds me of Sim City disasters, but with a potential reward depending on how you handle them, which seems more appealing. I don't hate that idea. :)

[–] PapaStevesy 10 points 2 months ago

I would play Sim City for the sole purpose of destroying it with all the various disasters. Kind of fucked up now that I think about it.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros 35 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I might not have to get used to it if the game launches with Denuvo.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not an adjustment for me. I haven't bought a Civ game within 5 years of release for a very long time. It's far better to wait for the expansions and DLC to get bundled into the Complete Edition. Denuvo will probably be removed by then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Same with paradox games at this point.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Good point. Denuvo is why I didn't buy Civ 6.

[–] Tattorack 32 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I played some Humankind recently for the first time, and it made me realise that Civ 7 is stealing a lot of their homework. Districts, civilisations, even the leader interact/diplomacy screen all look incredibly similar to Humankind.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Districts were a thing in Civ 6, before Humankind came out

[–] Tattorack 4 points 2 months ago

Obviously. I mean, I've only played Civ 6 for hundreds of hours. But they didn't function similarly to Humankind. The districts in Civ 7 seem to work exactly like how they do in Humankind.

[–] CynicRaven 3 points 2 months ago

I think Endless Legend, also made my the Humankind devs Amplitude, was the first to introduce districts. Granted, the bones of 4x games, in general, are based on Civilization 1, at the very least.

[–] fathog 6 points 2 months ago

You’re acting like Humankind didn’t steal from Civ’s homework to begin with, lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Which is a weird move IMO, 'cause normally you're supposed to steal the homework of someone who's doing a better job than you are.

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[–] aesthelete 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The existing ages system seemed really bad in some of the games I played. You'd have like nuclear warfare while neighboring countries on the same continent hadn't developed agriculture. I know countries develop at different rates, but like India didn't have to research and upgrade its way through multiple ages in real life in order to have cities and technology companies.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

There should almost be some sort of technological transfer to nearby empires, like cultural influence. If your neighbour is at 10000 tech points or whatever while you are at 1000, you should be able to leech some tech points from your neighbour to develop faster.

Transfer rate increases with the disparity between nations and decreases with distance.

So a super advanced empire on continent A will contribute to nations on continent A and B, but those on continent A get more of a bonus than those on B.

This aligns fairly well with reality as neighbouring countries would transfer students to universities all the time, less so the further the nations are apart.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

I dont hate it. But Crises happening automagically does feel against the typical nature of Civ, where I typically prefer more random events.

It's more board game feeling.

[–] stock 3 points 2 months ago

Sounds similar to the possibility you have in Humankind to change civ at each age while keeping some advantages.

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