What makes a good Civ-game ?

[Spiffor]

I have just begun to play Alpha Centauri again, after one year of playing Civ3 only. Both games are very solid and good, but both have big lacks which hinder them being perfect. Civ2 too has its pros and cons, as do the CTPs.

In this thread, I'd like to use our common experience with Civ-games to know what makes a Civ-game good, and what makes it bad.
It is not a Civ3 vs. SMAC thread, or a "let's Bash Civ3" one. Rather, it's a place to discuss and think about the great qualities we expect of a Civ-game.

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

What I think makes Civ3 good is a good challenge. When you aren't sure if you are gonna win or lose. However with the way the AI is it's oftentimes hard to get to that point. If you play smartly you can pretty much always beat the AI. They are just awful at conduction a war.

BigD

[TheArsenal]

I enjoy the ability to manage/micromanage to whatever degree I choose. Or not. This, along with being able to use different strategies and play styles, are some the many factors that add to the all important replayabiltiy for me.

[Spiffor]

To me, a Civ game needs the following elements :

1. Complexity
When I'm playing Civ, I am not playing Starcraft or Unreal. These games are fun because they give you adrenaline rushes, but Civ's fun is completely different. Civ is fun because the player uses his head calmly, and develop the best strategies to overcome the odds.

What is complexity ?
"Complex" is very different from "complicated". In a "complex" game, you have to weight several pro and cons, and no decision is obvious, there is no decision that is absolutely superior to the other. On the other hand, a "complicated" game asks you to do tedious tasks to reach a decision whether complex or not.

Complexity requires every decision to have drawbacks, but also requires there are several dimensions of positive impacts and drawbacks. In a one-dimension game, there are only two factors which impact on each other. More clearly, in a one dimensional game, you have :
- Decision A will do good for your economy, at the cost of military prowess
- Decision B will do good for your military prowess, at the cost of the economy.
As simple as that.

A multi-dimensional complexity means you have several kinds of pros and cons. Economy, War, Science, Happiness, Diplomacy, Culture... In a multi-dimensional game, you couls take this kind of decisions :
- decision A has a good impact on your treasury, but a bad impact on your military and your culture
- decision B has a good impact both on your treasury and your military prowess, but your culture and research tank.
- decision C gives you more culture and diplomatic skill, but at the cost of military prowess and research.
etc, etc.

A good example of successful complexity in a Civ game is the diplomatic screen of Civ3. : there are tons of possible deals, and you haggle anything for anything, but it is extremely easy to do so. In the diplomacy screen, everything has a drawback : To get Invention from Cleopatra, do you prefer to lose money, to disclose the secrets of Education, to give all your workers, to ally with Cleo against her old foe Elizabeth ? It's your call.
Getting Invention has a price, but there are many different prices whose natures are different. And that's why Civ3's diplomacy is complex.
I love it

[Spiffor]

2. Simple interface

A simple interface doesn't go against a complex game. However, it is more challenging to develop a simple interface for a complex game than for a simplistic one. A simple interface means you can take any action in a few clicks, or in one key-shortcut. By the same token, a simple interface lets you get any information you want in a few clicks.

Firaxis has done great efforts in making a simple interface. for Civ3 : most available info can be found in pleasant, easy to use screens. All actions taken by units were accessible by a shortcut or by a simple click on the screen. All interactions with anything on screen were accessible by a right click.
An example of the progresses made by Civ3 in the matter is the comparison between diplomatic dealings in Civ3 and Alpha Centauri : in AC, it was also possible to trade various things for other various things. But to merely trade a tech for another tech, you had to follow a rather long dialogue : "Let's have a deal. -> I want to access your research. -> I am ready to let you access my own research. -> Don't you want the other tech instead ? -> Deal !". In Civ3, you have to click on the tech that interests you, and to click on the tech you're ready to disclose : the advisor tells you whether it will work or not. In short, the concept is the same, and is equally complex (a tad more complex in Civ3 actually), but the interface is much more simple.

However, Civ3 offers an example of bad interface, when it comes to gathering info on other civs : to figure whether Bismarck has discovered Mobile Warfare (and the dreaded Panzers that go along), you have to go each turn in the diplo screen to check. Those who base their scientific success on tech-whoring have to check every single Civ every turn to know if there is something new : the information is here, the player is allowed to access it, but there is no convenient way to access the info = bad and complicated interface.

In fact, simple interface goes along well with a complex game. Should the interface be too tedious or poorly designed, many elements of the game would be too boring to use. The designers would have to dumb-down the game to avoid boredom to appear.

[Spiffor]

3. Involvement in the game

When I'm playing a Civ game, I know it will be a long game, and I will grow fond of it, and get some memories. I still remember my fist game of Civ1, more than 10 years ago, when I got spanked by the Russians, or this game of Civ2 on Earth map where I was playing Japan at emperor level and ended up fighting the Mongol empire spanning on whole Eurasia

In a Civ game, I don't want to think I'm only pushing some pixels, I want to feel like the leader of a civilization, of a society. I want to feel like I reign in those cities, that I fight in those units, that I believe in this religion, that I read this alphabet, etc etc.

In this regard, I think Civ2 and Alpha Centauri were very good, despite some shortcomings in the latter. In Civ2, the description of each tech, each unit in the Civilopedia was very complete, and let me understand why those discoveries were called "breakthroughs". Everytime my scientists made a discovery, it was an event for me (in the form of a screenwide popup). In Alpha Centauri, there was also a short text quoting one of the game's leaders whenever a discovery was made. It made me feel the leaders really lived the colonization of the planet.
The wonder movies are also important in this regard. When I see a wonder movie, I understand I haven't got a bonus, but I have built a wonder ! Besides, Alpha Centauri had a storyline, which interrupted the game from time to time, and showed a text relating the story of the planet as it was written. It was also possible in AC to do blind research, with the computer choosing semi-randomly what the next tech would be (the player sets priorities between 4 categories of tec : builder, explorer, knowledge and conquets)
In Civ3, discoveries and wonders are mere popups. Descriptions in the Civilopedia are 3liner blurbs, except those about the civilizations.

However, Alpha Centauri wasn't perfect in this domain, far from it : there were no city views, the cities didn't change their looks according to technological progress, and there were no graphics for individual improvements, meaning I had no idea what a futuristic biological lab looked like.

Graphics are very important when it comes to feel involved with the game, and Civ3 has done very well in this, even though there is room for improvement. Specific architecture styles changing through the eras, really is much better than the standardised icons of Civ1. Finely drawn units help me to identify with the era, and UU help me identify with the country.

An ambitious Civilopedia also has a big educational value. This is a definite plus that only applies to historical games such as Civ, because Civ both covers all of human history, but also different domains such as technology, warfare, economy etc. This means an enormous knowledge could be written in the Civilopedia without it being off-topic.
Of course, the Civilopedia must not look like a (boring) encyclopedia from real life. But if it holds basic knowledge, it can both please the history buffs and create others. Until recently, I personnaly took most of my pre-19th century historical knowledge from Civ1 and Civ2's Pedia, and I got interested in history thanks to it. Also, a complete Civilopedia can help the player to feel more close to the daily life of his civilization, which makes the game more involving.


There is however a risk : It would be possible all these element which help feeling involved get in the way of a smooth interface. After all, Civ3's little popup that appears when you have discovered a tech is very convenient for the game to go on quickly. After all, wonder movies take time, and the player can get bored of them after a few viewings. That's right.
But these "involvement elements" aren't doomed to hurt the interface : if a simple click gets rid of a wonder movie, if the tech popup has the exact same functions than the Civ3's one but is simply bigger and more eye-candy, if, if, if... then there is no problem.
The player should only be able to dismiss these "involvement elements" easily and immediately, for them to be only a plus in the game.

[alva]

Spiffor, you have made one big mistake, instead of using the question mark in your title, you should have have used a ' ; '.

You've pretty much summed it all up !

[The Mad Monk]

It certainly seems that way. Have you considered stitching those posts together and submitting them as an article to Markos?

[Solver]

Spiffor - hillarious post .

[Spiffor]

Mad Monk :
Good idea. I have still some elements to write (which were already said : challenge and various levels of micromanagement), and I'll wait to see if people agree with them. I'm trying to develop a theoretic explanation of what makes a Civ3 game good, and I'd like it to be the most complete and the most true as possible

Solver :
I didn't intend to be funny

[pedrojedi]

When you wrote about complexity, EU2 came to my mind...

[Solver]

Solver :
I didn't intend to be funny

I didn't intend to say you were. I intended to say that you did excellent posts.

[pedrojedi]

But I admit that some parts can be comically funny.

[Spiffor]

4. Cohesion

I prefer the word "cohesion" to "realism". Many people have complained how unrealistic Civgames are, but realism is the price of fun, to some extent. It would be realistic to lose after a few turns, because your leader's lifespan is over. It would be realistic to lose once a revolution overthrows your regime and kills the leader. It would be realistic to have all your production wasted if you decide to build something else. But it wouldn't be fun.

Cohesion, on the other hand, doesn't mean realism for the sake of it. It means for the game to be true with its spirit, to have no logical holes. Alpha Centauri, despite being obviously unrealistic had a cohesive environment.
Civ3 offers several examples of uncohesiveness, by insisting on the importance of superior weaponry, while it allows low-tech units to destroy high-tech units, for example. By the same token, a cultural victory (an apparently very builder-like victory) has little chance to be achieved without conquering neighbouring civs, to get more cities and hence more culture.

Cohesion helps making a good Civgame because it avoids the player to wonder "how come this happened ?". It helps casual players basing their gameplay more on gut-feeling than on a complete comparison of values.
An absence of cohesion helps the player feeling less involved in the game, and makes him feel like he's comparing numbers. Hardcore strategists have no problems with it, but more "roleplay" players can feel slowly alienated.
I think the lack of cohesion in Civ3 is the most important source of the "my tank was killed by a spearman" frustration. However, one must admit it is tricky to make a cohesive environment in a historical game, because historical realism must be respected to some extent. But players can buy major historical unrealism without too many problems, when it's consistent with the spirit of the game : who ever complained the Pyramids were a gigantic granary ?

Cohesion is closely bound with Involvement, but I felt it was an important part enough to be one whole point.

[Spiffor]

Solver :
Oh OK. I thought Hilarious meant Funny

[arslankhan]

Exploration, discovery of key resources and the securing of strategic points on the map. Then several thousand years of warfare against reasonably competant AI opponents.

[Spiffor]

5. Challenge

Civ games' very nature make them more inclined to SP than MP. They were first developed for longlasting games, and it is difficult for a non-fan to find other people dedicated to play for several days. At their core, Civ games are very different towards MP than Real Time Strategy games are. In Civ3, the modes allowing fast action are recent and are a twist of the existing system. In RTS games, fast action is the very principle upon which the game is built.
So, despite the growing emphasis on multiplaying in the gaming industry nowadays, Civ games as we know them will remain deeply tied to single playing and to the AI.

A good AI is needed to make a good Civ game. While it is fun to crush the AI with the same old technique from time to time, a Civ game gets quickly boring if it is not up to the challenge.
Soren has made a fantastic effort in Civ3's AI, and we can hope his skills and the general progresses on AI behaviour will make even more challenging AIs in the future.

However, a good AI can come in the way of the game's complexity. Firaxians told several time many SMAC features weren't present in Civ3 because the AI wouldn't know how to use them, which created an unfair advantage to human players. They have also put a great deal of effort in hunting down every abuse of a feature they could find.

There are two ways to fight abuses : to fight the abuse itself, or to fight the feature that's being abused. Civ3 offers examples of these both ways :

- IFE (Infinite Forest Exploitation) was an abuse from the first version of Civ3, as it entered the stores. Everytime a forest was cleaned, the nearest city got 10 shields. With many workers, it was possible to clean a forest and replant it on the same square several times, giving tens of shields to the city nearby each turn. The AI didn't know this trick, so it was a pure advantage to human players.
In response, Firaxis forbid any cleared forest to give shields more than once in the game. It effectively killed IFE without killing forest-cleaning. It effectively killed the abuse without killing the feature.

- Unit trading. There were known abuses of unit trading in Alpha Centauri and Civ2, and Firaxians feared those abuses would be repeated in Civ3. The abuse was to give obsolete units to other Civs, whose upkeep costs would prune them dearly.
Maybe there could have been answers to these abuses, like the impossibility to give/trade units that are obsolete for the reciever, or to give the AI the ability to disband a unit. We'll never know : Firaxis has chosen to scrap the feature altogether. The quest for a better challenge (i.e a less weak AI) has cost Civ3 a cool feature.

I personally don't think there should be a fanatical war against abuses, except the very easy and very tempting ones. If the player wants to play using tricks against the AI, so be it. If the players in MP want to play using abuses, so be it. Abuses aren't a problem if they aren't too easy to figure out.
The fanatical war against abuses IMHO, has cost Civ3 unit-trading and tile-sharing with allied civs (units from different civs on the same tile). I don't think it helped making Civ3 better

[WarpStorm]

Excellent article Spiffor. For the most part I agree with your points.

[Spiffor]

Warpstorm : if you disagree on anything, please say so. I'm really trying to corner out what objective qualities a good Civgame needs, and the more feedback I get, the happier I am

[Spiffor]

6. Various levels of micromanagement

There are different kinds of players of Civ. Some are control freaks who want to manage everything in their empire; some like playing fast games without performing "dumb" tasks; some are interested by one aspect of the game and don't want to be bothered with more "trivial" aspects; some are newbies who must not be confused with tons of actions to take. There are also players who change style as time passes by.

A good Civ game must not alienate any of these players, for all of them can find a good entertainment in Civ. However, there seems to be an opposition between control freaks -who want to have as much stuff as possible to manage- and newbies who must not have a too steep learning curve.
There is one solution to please all kinds of audiences, it is to allow various levels of micromanagement.

In other words, it is automation. There have been tremendous progresses in this domain since Civ1, which match the progresses made by the AI. In Civ3, it is now possible to automate workers, cities, exploration, deal renegociation... It seems the AI takes over these tasks and does them as well as an AI-controlled Civ would perform. Actually, the automation seems to use the same AI.

But the concept can be taken even further, where basically every aspect of the game can be automated (i.e taken over by the AI). Tired of dispatching your many defensive troops across your cities ? Automate military moves. Tired of negociating deals to have your coal ? Automate trade. Tired of selecting the target tech every 4 turns ? Automate research.

A good automation, besides having a solid AI, must be easily and quickly revokable. It also needs an input from the player in form of priorities. Civ3 and Alpha Centauri both allow the player to give "priorities" to their city governors, and to give precise limitations to automated workers.

In short, a good automation reconciles hardcore micromanagers and more casual players, because it allows the latters to care only about what interests them, and because it allows the formers to micromanage at their heart's content. A good automation solves the tension between adding stuff and removing stuff.

[Spiffor]

7. Replay value and moddability

Most good games, in general, have a lifespan of several tens of hours. Their replay value is weak in SP, and the industry now uses MP to lengthen its products' replay value. But good Civ games have a lifespan of several years. Civ2 has hit the shelves in 1996, seven years ago, and a Civ2 community is still important, most fans continue to play it from time to time.
This is a phenomenon unique to Civ games : there is nowadays no strong community of Doom2 players, nor there is a strong community of Warcraft1 players, which are both hits about that old.

The reason behind such a longevity is replay value and moddability.

Civ has a fundamentally high replay value, because of the map generator that makes every game different from another, or because of the very different starting positions in the same premade map.
However, this is not enough to prevent the player from getting bored after several games. Identical develoment patterns, identical AI behaviour can end up dulling the player.

That's why moddability is essential in keeping the game alive. With mods and scenarios, the game can be thoroughly refreshed, and be interesting again. Some tweaks in the rules can give a somewhat fresh game experience for a little time, whereas drastic mods completely change the way the game is played.
Scenarios have what the normal game lacks : the necessity for the player to find new ways to victory, rather than the same develoment pattern. Unlike normal games, scenarios put the player against very specific odds he will not encounter anywhere else.
In this meaning, scenarios cannot afford to be mere placement of cities and units on the map. Scenario tools must allow the scenariomaker to bind the player whatever way he wants. This way, some of the player's usual methods will be barred from use, making the experience more interesting.
That's why scenarios are so interesting to play, even by veteran players.

That's also why new scenarios and mods get created. And that's why people continue to play the game, even years after.

[Solver]

You hit the nail with replay value. Indeed, Age of Kings, where I had limited ability to play MP, was of great value for me for about 10 months - and that's a real long period. Empire Earth pleased me for like 2 weeks, many games even shorter.

Just yesterday I fired Civ1 up again... gotta love that !

[Spiffor]

Well, I tried to be as exhaustive as possible, so the replay value shouldn't be forgotten ! It was the best feat of Civ1, which really made it superior to the competition

I think I have developed all aspects. Any idea if I have missed something ?

[Solver]

Hmm... fansite coverage ?

[pedrojedi]

As a matter of fact, I think a "minor" feature that you did not covered is that Civilization series are great for learning history and lighting up a curiosity to get to know more about different cultures and nations...

Civilization is a strong game because it is familiar to our own world. We don't have orcs or elves, nor can we spell magics, we do not live in 3500 AD and we can't travel through outer space. Although I'd like some futuristic features in the game, it is its proximity to the real world and history that makes me love every day to crush Persians, show those Babylonians a lesson and leading Greece, Rome or Egypt to a different victorious end!

[Theseus]

Spiffor, buddy, you left out:

ONE MORE TURN!!!

[Spiffor]

Pedrojedi :
That's right. I think the educative value of Civ games belongs to what I call the "involvement". I'll update this part.

Theseus:
Exactly ! How could I forget that ? I'll think about what makes a Civ game addictive, and what doesn't.

[Flight]

excellent thread spiffor

[pedrojedi]

I don't know if it would fit in involvement. The educational value per se is a factor big enough to have its own item. We must take into account that many players are under 18, 16 years old, and parental rule over gaming is, or at least should be, very important. A game with educational value is very interesting for all parents...

[pedrojedi]

... and of course, the curiosity that sparkles us about history is another factor in getting to like & love Civ series.