10:54 I think this is a big point. If you just go for the 'ahistorical' route of having all civilisations co-exist for all of human history, sure that's absurd, but setting 'historical' routes just sets you up for a million own goals, like "Tecumseh is Exploration Age because native", "Egypt to Songhai because Africa", or "Rome to England because... empire biiiig???"
So far it looks like it’s because the civilizations have similar bonuses so your early game decisions still carry over well to the bonuses of the new civ
The funny thing in civilization was that you could have Romans in the modern era, or Egyptians in the North Pole. I hope that in other eras it is the option to maintain these civilizations. Because if the Romans in the modern era become the Germans, and the Egyptians in the north pole, become Norwegians... the magic disappears.
From what I understand the civs we would transition to are more like a dynasty or a new kingdom of that age but from the same civilization. To change to Norwegian is an option from the civs or environment that has influenced your civ. However, we can also keep the civ on a more historical route so Rome would transition into eventually modern Italy and ancient Egypt into what we know today
@@Bookworm214-y3dIndeed! How about choosing not to play Civ 7 and continuing with Civs X (the best one of the series) as a protest against these awful signs of despotism?
@@fatyak4122 well im not buying it on day 1 any way, i waited 3 years to finally play civ 6 (and civ 5) to get the complete experience and it did not disappoint! civ 7 will have to be a 3-4 years wait for me because i rather get all the dlcs and expacs . too many games to play right now
Civilization has always been the most approachable and "vanilla" game of this genre, so the civ switching upon era transition mechanic is a major paradigm shift. It feels more like a gamemode or a mod rather than part of the base game. I am definitely in the camp of disliking both the concept and the implementation. You guys already touched on indigenous/native civs and I agree 100%. Firaxis is playing with fire there. These games have done so much good to promote indigenous cultures and if word gets out that you can't play as a modern Shawnee or Iroquois or Métis civilization because they belong to the past, then in the future tribes will behave like the Pueblo in Civ V and decline representation. All it takes is a few bad headlines. I like the way Paradox games handle this concept of civilizations evolving over time with "formable" and "releasable" nations. If you perform certain in-game tasks and satisfy certain conditions, that will be reflected in your nation. I believe such a mechanic could be mapped on to Civ in some fashion. For example, if you're playing as the Shawnee, when you make your first alliance you become "Tecumseh's Confederacy". If Greece becomes suzerain of an independent power, they become "Athens" but if they conquer it militarily they become "Sparta". If Rome pursues a cultural victory, they become Florentine but if they pursue economic they become Venetian. The bottom line is Egypt -> Songhai is not palatable to Civ players, but the underlying concept of your antiquity civilizations evolving throughout the game and exploring some alt-history is an idea with some merit.
That is such an interesting and dynamic way of implementing “evolving” civs, a few people have recommended paradox games now, I think I need to give it a shot! But like you said civ has been the most approachable and vanilla 4x game, and I think they want to maintain that with this civ changing feature. It’s a difficult balance and “playing with fire” is apt!
I did enjoy your discussion on this topic. My comment here is purely from a gameplay perspective. The rest of what I write has nothing to do with real history. The only game that successfully has done this "change your civilization" is Europa Universalis IV. In that game you can (if you meet certain criteria) tag-switch (change nation) from one to another based on you meeting the requirements. At the start of the game there is no Germany, United States, Australia, China or Great Britain (to name a few). You can form those nations when you manage to fulfill the requirements. But you don't have to. The players are given a choice. Your empire will probably be stronger if you choose to "upgrade" to a "better" tag (nation), but it is not a requirement that you do so. Players are given a choice. If you want to you can play as your original tribe or medieval nation all the way through. THAT is the choice I want to have in a new game of Civilization. As it stands today the new game in the Civ franchise is not a real Civ game. You can no longer build "a civilization to stand the test of time." Now they've changed it to build "an empire to stand the test of time." Firaxis really should pick up the phone and make the call to Paradox before continuing down this path.
Thank you for sharing! I love hearing about how different video games have approached this mechanic, seems like there have been lots of other games with ranging success. I do think though it’s way too far into development for us to see major changes…
Gameplay wise civ looks the same. You either get similar era specific bonuses following the historical path or you can choose to tag switch. The only way in which it doesn’t make sense is if you care about the historical side in which case both fail catastrophically
@@csrjjsmp Well... from the footage I've seen so far you cannot choose not to switch. You are forced to. Egypt to Songhai or Mongolia. You cannot stay as Egypt. That is my understanding of the information give so far. Historical path does not mean you can stay as Egypt.
This is one reason I play Civ - to play "what if" with history. If I want to take the Babylonians from ancient history to modern day, the game should let me do it. Playability needs to trump historical accuracy if it leads to a bad, not fun game. From what I saw in the devs livestream, it appears like change in cultures for each era is severely limiting - you have to meet certain criteria to even have a choice of three in the next era. If you fail to meet certain criteria, your choice may be only 2 or having to choose your only option. Also, the Romans had a huge influence on most of the modern European cultures. Thus, if you are playing as Romans in Era X, the next Era should have many possible cultures to branch off to. But, that may not be fair to other cultures gameplay-wise. So, there is always a balance between playability/fun versus historical accuracy. Are they going to allow 5 players transition to the Romans in Era X in the same game on their way to separate modern cultures of British, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italians, etc. If they will allow that, then you could see 5 players playing as the Romans on your map which would be very weird. That's again why I feel like they will severely limit the paths people can take so that there won't be 5 players playing the Romans in Era X. But, historically, you should be able to play as the Romans and then transition to many cultures because they had such a huge influence.
@@csrjjsmpI wouldn’t say the historical side fails because the game was never trying to be anywhere close to historical. It’s a sandbox environment where many unpredictable and often ahistorical things go down. The game design is leaning more into that by saying, let’s have your civ adapt to the board state just like irl civs evolved through history in response to what happened around/within them. Difference is, the things that happened to the irl civ may not be what you experienced in that specific game, so some divergence as a consequence should not come as a shock. In that way, the game is becoming more internally consistent or authentic. While some irl civs have somewhat remained through all the ages, they were not exactly in the same form. They took on different roles, strategies, goals and seems like the game wants to emulate that process with in-game lore and decisions (board state). There’s only a rare few locations where you have native tribesmen still living in a more or less same way. The majority of the time, the culture drastically shifts because they got taken over (internal or external), or they survived but did not keep the same identity. I hope this mechanic gets implemented well and has the chance of becoming a staple going forward. Teething pains are to be expected but I’m eagerly optimistic it’s a good direction to go towards. It creates player choice and gives the opportunity for the evolution of the game (board state) to influence what characteristics your civ adopts going forward into a new age with new challenges.
Excited for the opportunity to play as alternate histories, but so many ways for this to be represented poorly: "The smallpox crisis wipes out the Cree and Canada rises in it's place" "Wilfred Laurier, leader of the Cree people"
The leaders are the in game embodiment of the god-like player and give a face/personality to the ai for the player to associate with. Ramses leading the maui is no stranger than classic era Abe Lincoln sending chariots to punch through the Great Wall defenses that Alexander the Great using to stifle the invasion.
Very refreshing to hear historians' dialogue about the preliminary changes in CIV VII - I'm very glad you picked up on the lumping together of African cultures into a monolith as teased in the gameplay trailer. I hope they find something that could be a bit more of an appropriate solution.
It kinda breaks the alternate history vibe if every civ is locked to a historical time period, and it really doesn't help the eurocentrism. The idea that, say, Egypt only "belongs" in the Ancient Era and then they're supposed to die off, when that's pretty ahistorical. I would have preferred if they gave each civ multiple uniques so that they had something every few ages, or let you choose one civ but swap leaders out. That way you still have that throughline but you're flexible.
Totally, that was my first initial reaction when they revealed this feature - they are condemning people to a historical death that are actually very much around today. But when I reread the transcript, they seem to try to make clear it’s not supposed to be an end… but like we said in the video it remains to be seen if they can match their vision with the way it feels. So far we’ve only seen Egypt transition into Songhai in gameplay, and I don’t really see much of the layering of cultures architecturally or visually besides just a few wonders. But again; there might be more mechanics that shows that layering? I hope?
Ugh, the point of playing civ was the fantasy of bringing Egypt to the modern age. I didn't care how inaccurate it is, I just want to play the way I want.
@@Bookworm214-y3dyou probably still can do that, either in the sense of the bonuses or flavor wise (more likely after more civs get added). If it’s just the stats you care about, pick your next civ to be an age appropriate upgrade of your current bonuses. Arguably you’re still playing civ x in the new age just with scaled stats. The look and label may have changed but if you’re doing this, I suspect you care more about the stats than the flavor text which you can use some head canon to bypass. If it’s the flavor you want, it may not be available for most civs early on but there might be a few obvious ones like China or Japan that get representation in all ages of the base game. As more dlc/freelc get added, we might see more cultures with their direct irl continuation available, widening the pool from which you can do this follow irl history style gameplay.
I like the fact that civs will change over time. I think it will make the game more fun. But the transitions should have some geographical/cultural bridge between the civs.
This is honestly the first discussion on historical accuracy that I've taken serious and it is entirely based on how you presented your points and discussed them. I feel like so many people are quick to write things off entirely and take stances without accepting any sort of nuance. Yes Civ has always stretched historical accuracy and has always compromised for the sake of gameplay. But, I'm absolutely in agreement that this new feature/mechanic will just function and feel better to interact with IF considerations are taken to make it convincing, at least to the average person. I feel as though us history heads always have room to be disappointed by games these days but I'm glad Firaxis is trying something different from their tried and true formula. My biggest concern comes from the variety. Both in Civ and in Leader. The leader being static actually has raised more concerns for me then the Civ being this sort of evolution. The fact that if I start a game in Antiquity and will have to play as for example Augustus the ENTIRE time I feel like the effort this transitional civilization mechanic has brought would've been a waste because Augustus in his ancient roman armour is still leading my Modern Age English empire...... The more I think about it the more this point irks me. But, Ill patiently wait to hear more about the Exploration / Modern ages and how the transitional period actually functions.
Thank you, we tried to be measured and thoughtful with our commentary, and really try to understand both what is motivating the developers to make this change, and the limitations that exists when you make a game like this!
I hope that Sid Meir's Civilization VII keeps two features from the previous game that have stuck out to me: presenting leaders who speak in their own languages instead of having everyone speak English and using a soundtrack that is culturally accurate and respectful. I have played and seen many other games based on history that, while somewhat entertaining, failed to get those parts right. I'm mainly talking about games like Inca 1 and 2 for the PC and the Uncharted Waters series. That latter series is another "Pandora's Box" of a topic when it comes to portraying Colonialism and historical inaccuracies.
Very much agree with the way you think about it with the “closest thing we Have” being balanced with wanting to provide a diversity of representations and gameplay styles. Though if you can conquer civilizations and raze all their settlements to the ground it seems weird to get hung up over any other war crimes or historical atrocities. You can commit genocide in every civ because the games theme themselves around history so the antagonism and conflict within the gameplay easily become genocide if you interpret them through the history- themed dressing
You’re totally right and that’s the nature of a game themed on history. Of course it’s your own choice to raze another civilization and it’s not a forced choice like this one will be, but your point stands I think. I’ve mentioned before that I really don’t like plugging in a card called “colonization” or “corvee labor” in civ 6, and I think to some extent civ developers also agree there are some topics that should not be gamified (I think they’ve never included slavery, definitely not in civ 6).
As a Scottish player, I have an issue with Civ 6 that I find a little problematic, admittedly it's not as bad as a lot of other stuff. Playing as Scotland, they only play Scottish music in the ancient and other primitive eras. As soon as things get advanced and modern, it stops using Scottish music. Intentional or not, I feel it implies my culture is more primitive or something. Given the stereotype of the big hairy Scotsman throwing cabers, living in a thatched roof stone hut in the Highlands and talking incomprehensibly, making Scotland less Scottish as it advances is not a good look.
Yes you’re completely right, and I think your explanation of how Scotland is portrayed maps onto other civs too. But the one thing I’ve really liked about civilization is that they seem in tune with these conversations in the field of history and make correctives each iteration of the series - for example the janissaries have come a long way from orientalist Arabian nights soldiers. So I do think it’s important to talk about these things!
At the end of the day, it's a game, and I'm excited to go from playing Ben Franklin leading the Mongols and then transition into Native America and then to England. That just sounds cool. The accuracy doesn't matter to me, it's a game.
I was watching a number of streams, including Potato's, and I was a bit disappointed by how happy he was to shut down questions of accuracy. Triple A games have a wide reach and have to be responsible. When I was a kid playing Assassins Creed I learned a lot through it, and that's a good thing to get people interested in history and it's influence on today's issues. But it would be easy for a large game company to rewrite history and claim it as fact which, especially young, people can grow up to believe. I think it's so important that you raise these questions and concerns and I hope Firaxis and 2K address them without treating them with contempt as perhaps some creators have been doing. Keep up the good discussions and looking forward to your next videos! :)
Thank you! I also grew up playing Assassins creed and was just so captured by the beautiful and historical settings. I would spend hours reading the entries for buildings in Florence, and it’s why we went there for our honeymoon lol! But it’s such an interesting comparison you make, because they also include aliens and time travelling in that game, but hopefully no one took that as historically accurate! That’s why I think they need to be clear on what’s the historical links they’re making in the civilopedia if they want to make this claim, for nerds like me to read!
@@Paisley_Trees Absolutely agreed! I would do the same thing, while friends were just there for the action I would stop at every little landmark and read about its significance. Games companies definitely have a right and responsibility to make sure their games are fun, but the main thing is ensuring that they don't present fiction as fact. The old AC games were able to separate the two fairly well, and the modern ones do have the Discovery Tours which, while a good idea in theory, allowed the core games to become a bit more fanciful which I have mixed feelings about. The bigger the company the more responsibility they should have in presenting fiction carefully too as they will reach wider audiences, especially with all the disinformation online today, and Civ will definitely reach more people than its competitors ever did. It's not that any of these decisions are inherently bad, just that care needs to be taken, and it's nice to see that point discussed in a logical and considerate way :)
The whole concept of changing civilizations is absurd. China has existed throughout all three ages. Why limit it to only one? We know that the Babylonians only existed in ancient times, but being able to 'change history' and enable them to survive to modern times gave players a real sense of achievement. Also, the leader models are apparently not going to change, which results in absurdities such as having a US President dressed like an Egyptian Pharaoh or Ancient Egypt led by Benjamin Franklin in 18th century clothes. This could have been done far more intelligently, with, for example ancient Britons/Celts, changing to Medieval English, to modern British. Also, with leaders changing (eg. Boudicca, Edward I, Churchill) and being dressed appropriately for their age.
China can be divided into different dynasties (as it was for the last 6000 odd years). So essentially you will be able to play as China through the whole game, but just have a different dynasty. Same for Japan, though they had periods instead, depending where the capital was situated. That said, possibly this will not be available for all civilizations right from the start, so we will have to wait and see how will they implement it.
Yes there definitely are much more accurate transitions that maybe we’ll eventually see, but like we said, they’re probably trying to have a balance of civs on release, which I think is also a good thing! That’s why I doubt we’ll see both Medieval English and British anytime soon.
you dont have Phoenician or Tunisian Empires in 2010 either. Thats the point. Thats the ALTERNATE part of alternate-history game. They couldve given leaders that were different throughout the ages. They couldve made unique buildings or bonuses that scale or change over time. SO many missed opportunities.
Hi, new sub here. your coverage from your Historian vantage point is really interesting for me. This is the second video I’ve watched from you and enjoyed both. I have (perhaps) tough questions: (I don’t expect an answer) 5:46 - Why, in your opinion, would slavery and genocide detract from a game being a game, yet gunpowder and nukes wouldn’t? Btw, paying gold for builders on civ 6 was optional. Their maintenance didn’t cost anything, neither did their build actions. How would you call a worker without wage who is forced to do what we tell them to? 14:20 “that is your stamp of approval on genocide”. Is having nukes in the game is putting a stamp of approval on nukes?
Hi! Thanks, I appreciate the tough questions and actually I’ve been thinking about the nuke one since a repeated example has been Gandhi nuking the world. I think there’s something funny about the ability to do that because of the juxtaposition of non-violence Gandhi doing the most violent thing possible in the game. In my opinion, and let me know if you agree, it would be a lot less fun and funny if every time you played America you had to nuke Japan, despite being historically accurate! Of course you still can do that in civ 6, but it’s up to the player. So the first concern is that I find the civ switching mechanic with a default historical choice for both you and the AI takes away a lot of that agency from the player. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be possible to do certain civ paths, I just don’t think they should present it to us as the best or historically preferred choice, especially as we discussed indigenous nations still very much do exist on their own sovereign land, but in many ways colonization is an ongoing threat to their sovereignty. Us humans have a very brutal past and it’s tough to make a game that represents that past in a fun way, but I think the franchise has generally succeeded in doing that by giving a lot of freedom to the player, and civ 7 seems to be much more narratively structured so it comes with new challenges. To your point about builders, it may allude to some wage free labor but I think there is a reason why they’re not naming it slaves, it would kind of a jolting experience for a lot of players if they did. Although that line of what breaks you out of the gameplay immersion and reminds you of the reality of humanity’s brutality is going to be different for everyone. I’m sure some people might find it distasteful to have nukes, but they just have to try and do what they think works for most people that they consider a target consumer. For example, I’m sure me grimacing at corvee labor card in civ 6 is too niche for them to care about, but slavery as a prominent and named feature probably is more widely thought by their target market as a distasteful thing to do. I hope my writing is clear, it’s the middle of the night and the baby woke us up 😅!
But the idea of layering civilisations only happens when a civilisation gets conquered. Like Istanbul only has Byzantine and Ottoman layers because the Romans were defeated. If your civilisation doesn't get defeated in an age, should it really be layered by something new?
Agree in totality. Instead of "Civilizations" being interchangeable when traversing ages, traits should be able to gain based on geography or other influences. Instead of Egypt becoming Mongol, they could unlock the "Steppe nomad" traits. Thus every civ can be present from the beginning till the end of all 3 ages.
You bring up some good points. I'm very interested in seeing how they handle the Shawnee culture in the game because that is one of the civs they've identified as having on day 1. As I'm sure you know that the Shawnee Nation exists today, so their culture didn't evaporate in the modern era. I also want to mention that the Shawnee civ was playable in earlier Civ games (some but not all) where you could play them from the ancient era to the end of game. In those earlier versions of Civ, the devs didn't worry about historical accuracy yet it was still fun to play as the Shawnee and have them become a world power. I think the devs are vastly overselling the historical context justification for forcing culture changes at every era change. In fact, the primary reason why they are doing it is to differentiate it from prior Civ versions. People aren't going to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new version of the game unless it offers significantly new and interesting gameplay. Otherwise, people will continue to play Civ 5 and 6. Civ 6 was slow to catch on because the upgrades from Civ 5 were fairly minor or nonexistent, so I feel like they learned their lesson that there has to be some big change gameplay-wise for Civ 7 to sell well early on.
I can't fully agree with the colonialism point, it's too abstract. Take England: the romans invaded the isle, the normans invaded too, yet everyone gets they're part of english history (who knows how many locals died back then). I get that you have to draw the line somewhere, you can't do Congo -> Belgium, but colonizations that happened over 500 years ago?? Most mayans today are catholic, speak spanish and mixed with the colonizers. Mexico is as much their heritage as it is Spain's.
Okay but like, Mayans still exists ‘romans’ do not. I think the civ team kimda messed up here, and it would be alot better if they chise to change the leader overtime instead.
You’ve got a point. I would say some cases of colonialism by way of attempted genocide are very clear, but there’s a lot of murkiness with other cases. I brought up the case of Maya because we know they are an antiquity civ, and they will be linked to an exploration era civ first before modern era. I also think Maya to Mexico, while fraught, would have been an interesting transition and imply Mexico today has mayan descendants and Mayan influence. But I just don’t see that being the case if we see Antiquity Maya becoming Exploration age Spain! That to me implies something much more unpalatable.
It's an interesting point, but as an Englishman I feel the need to point out that there aren't any Roman or Norman entities or structures that have direct control or influence over England or its people today. Certainly, the decisions of invaders long ago have helped to define a part of English identity. Even in primary school we would be taught how our last names reflected these invasions (people in my class had surnames ending in "son" e.g. "Patrickson" which implied they probably had Viking ancestry), but we are not affected at all by Roman legislation. Vikings haven't stolen our land and refused natives access to it. There are no Norman corporations we have to purchase food from, or get our healthcare through. Structurally there is very little impact on the day to day living of English people from these invasions. Whereas when you look at the colonisation/invasion of the Americas, many indigenous societies and cultures that survive today are still very much bound by the rules, laws, customs, and cultures of those who have settled and established states there, and don't have sovereignty or much political power within the states they now live. This is generally improving as more people become educated on the past, but I don't think the situation of the average Mayan and the question of their identity is easily comparable to the average English(wo)man and questions on their identity.
@@Livsopc I agree, when it comes to alienated communities that mostly remained isolated from their conquerors (many times by imposition). But if we take Mexico as an example: most of the population is a genetic mix. It doesn't matter who they inherited their institutions from, as long as they control them they own them. As I heard an Algerian guy say, "French language is spoils of war" (sorry if I butchered it). They were forced to use it, but then they made it their own.
Im 99% sure they will include indigenous options for the modern era too. But equally sure that you can transition from native tribe to USA. One thing to keep in mind though is that the leader stays the same over the ages. Which might help in not feeling like you olay a colonizer. But also might lead to indigenous historical figure leading their future colonizer? Im feeling mixed about this. Not just from a historical perspective, but also a gameplay one. If its all a mix and match how much cultural identity does one civ or leader have?
We’re also feeling mixed! And yes we’re guessing we’re going to see a modern Kingdom of Tonga based on the wonders we know about and some of the art styles we’ve seen!
@@Paisley_Trees I think they should have stuck to gameplay related transitions only. That way you don't get into the political waters of which culture is related and why. Plus by 6 degrees logic (or in this case 3) you could end up nearly anywhere anyway. If every civ had some unlocking trigger like Mongolia that invites the player to think more in histories trends and world wide phenomenons. For example Egypt to Netherlands might not make historical sense. But it explores how people build their lives around river deltas. By making these broader connections you make no claim that one civilization is the successor of another. And you inspire creative thinking in unusual connections. And since the developers can set what unlocks a civ they can avoid any sensitive topic. For example you would unlock the USA by using the social policy liberalism and not by westward expansion. If the unlockables are easy enough to guarantee at least 2 options I think that should work fine
The case of the Songhai seems even more absurd than the Mongols because of the condition of enabling it, playing with Egypt, while the Mongols is setting up a cavalry. Egypt's relationship with Shongais is very small and certainly smaller than with the Kursh, Abbasids, Fatimids or Mamluks, certainly the Egyptians would prefer the Abbasids (who created their capital). If the theme that connects Egypt and Shongai is Africa, this would be stated in the condition and would be available for Carthage as well.
In the gameplay trailer, you can choose the Abbasids as one of the next stages. However, modern Egypt has little connection to the ancient civilization. Even Cleopatra, for instance, was a ruler of Hellenistic culture, and the ancient Egyptian traditions were long gone by the time she came to power. So, transitioning from Ancient Egypt to the Abbasids and then to Modern Egypt would make more sense in the game. But this isn't about a civilization that stood the test of time.
I wonder about the condition for Mongolia: Maybe instead of needing 3 horses you need to have no horses. Because you are getting invaded and replaced by the mongols with horses. They bring the horses. You dont need horses yourself for that.
I've been playing civ since I ordered civ 3 out of a book fair catalog in 5th grade. (the years come at you fast) And after giving this change a lot of thought, I think there are ways to remedy it. The big one? Changing the perspective to be "Influenced". Instead of an older civilization transitioning into a newer one it can instead be influenced by a civilization from our history to develop an analog for this historical fiction we are crafting. Instead of Egypt just becoming Songhai or Mongolia, it is instead INFLUENCED by the conditions that led to the Mongolian civilization, creating a culture that is a hybrid between ancient Egypt and Mongolia. Ideally, the devs would alter assets slightly so each incarnation of every combination of civs looked different based on their past (and their location) but that's a lot of work. In the end I think this is a problem of internal dialog and not being really considered or changed for general audiances. Thankfully that's easy enough to adress and hopefully they won't double down. Ideally they will make a few minor vocabulary changes to better illustrate the ideas they're trying to portray here.
I’m glad you think our suggestion might work! You’re exactly right that I tried to think of a solution that is applicable at this stage, obviously there are lots of other great suggestions others are making but I think they’re too far in to make huge changes.
@@Paisley_Trees exactly. I have a other ideas but they ex be far better discussed during the Devlopment cycle of the next game than at this stage. It's a good idea, one that should add a lot of depth and role play to the whole experience. The language simply needs to be changed maybe with a dlc or an expansion we can have the graphics for each civ combo be slightly different.
Wouldn't make more sense kept one civ the entire game and choose different historical leaders as the ages progresses (leaders as great great people)???
I’ve seen many people suggesting this would have been better! I haven’t given it too much thought since it seems like it’s too late to see a change like this made, but I’ve also seen people complain that they didn’t like leaders changing in humankind either
People do not ask about historical accuracy but for historical inspiration and historical sense. Egypt into Songhai makes no sense, Egypt into Mongolia makes no sense, it is not contrafactual is fantasy, even if There was a shift of population or climate and egyptians where in a steppe area they would not become Mongolia, as others from the steppe do not become Mogolia, they could evolve into something that could have some of the mongolian traits but not Mongolia. People are not dumb just beacase they complain, there are all kinds of people and all kinds of complains. What Potato said is just insulting to fun base, Nuke Ghandi was more of a meme, in reality India is of a few nations that build nukes so it was inspired by history. People complains, as my own, are about artificial evolutions that will kill a part of what CIV meant and why make it so atractive for us. If we want to play Humankind type of game we can go play it, but do not want CIV to become a replica of a what could be an interesting formula but become more of a fail game, artificial change of civilization was responsible in part of that outcome. They try to solve a problem by ignoring the root of it, it was dumb cheater AI and almost no penalties for forever expanding civilizations that made a boring game in the last eras. So you have a frustrating catch up game in begining then a period of relative balance then you would snow ball till will become just clics and no fun. PS Egypt into Ethiopia could be an alternative historical evolution where after arab conquest, egyptian elites would imigrate to Ethiopia (both were cristian) trough Nile valley and there they would melt into an ethiopian with egyptian flavour type of civilization, give more attention to history! In the end this new mechanic could work if it is made smart and people do not lose the feeling of leading a civilization trough the challenges of times, even if at some point they have to evolve but to be a plausible evolution where a part of identity is retained, but this more as a mode of the game.
We’re giving them the benefit of the doubt by saying they should explain the historical connection in the civilopedia, since they are claiming there is one, but that was definitely our first reaction!
There's an unstated third reason; Humankind generated a lot of buzz and was moderately successful enough that Firaxis took some of the good ideas from it.
In my eyes the thing they should have done is have no guaranteed civs. It should have been that you have to get one of the requirements for a new civ or you lose the game. That would explain why Egypt is more likely to become Songhai because the requirement for Songhai are something Egypt can get with ease(like have 10 navigable river tiles in your empire)so that way it would explain historical inaccuracy with the reason that Egypt and Songhai are similar enough not with they are exactly the same
I doubt that. The release date is in half a year, and they have to make physical copies of the games for other platforms well ahead of time. Changing a fundamental thing like this so late in the production cycle looks extremely unlikely.
@samuelhakansson6680 I was referring to the UI and civopedia changes. The UI looks to be in development right now, and celebrating the historical influences in the civopedia could be an endless mine of history and articles.
I love the ages idea from a early/mid/late game perspective but as someone who reads a lot about subsaharan africa, they've shown a standard progression that is difficult to intentionally make worse (*no* ethnic or linguistic ties, many alternative possible civilizations with greater cultural ties) alongside Egyptians to Mamluks, Songhay to Mali would be a great standard transition I love the idea of them being able to transition into vastly different civs though if it's well conditioned like the case with Mongolia (though I feel like there could be an extra condition to the horses, some aggression against independents f.e.) I am optimistic and hyped to actually finish more civ games but I hope they'll improve the transition options
You’ve captured our thoughts exactly! We’d love to see cultural ties between the civs, not just proximity (and one can still argue Songhai to Buganda isn’t that close either).
I'm interested in how they manage the civ transitions. I study Mexican/American history during the early 1900s. This feature is interesting because Mexico is a merger of Spanish, Aztec, and Mayan influence (and other smaller tribes that lived in the area). How civilizations and sociestes interacted also defined them. I'm excited for this game but skeptical. Let's see how it plays out.
Yes thank you for your insight! We’re also excited overall but have a few hesitations. Someone suggested we might see Mayans transition into Aztecs, I’d be curious what you would think of that? If that is the case, would a change in wording that implies influence rather than direct transition work?
@@Paisley_Trees a change in wording would be needed. I could understand a transition from Aztec to Mexico but not Mayan to Aztecs. They were pretty much parallel to each other. Hopefully the devs explain bit more on this. I know some have mentioned Humankind's transitions be similar but I haven't played that game. Have you all?
No I haven't played humankind because everyone seemed to move on once I had some time to play! So many people seem to hate the transition in humankind but I need to look more into it to understand why
Well the good thing about how Humankind did it is, you dont have to switch, you can stay as your starting Civilization and just get gameplay bonuses for that Civ.
I think civs that historically have survived since the antiquities like Egypt should have a version for each of the 3 ages so that there's at least 1 historically consistent choice to pick.
@toodleselnoodos6738 yes infact the reason Egyptian nationalism has struggled historically is because most modern citizens of Egypt did not associate themselves with the pharonic past, rather tribal, religious or pan Arab ties
one way to see an indigenous population becoming for instance the us... would be an alternate history where a coalition of native people had succeded in doing the opposite: shoving away england, and then absorb the colonists that entered into the coalition to expel away england, then those guys became a minority in a new "north american native coalition". of course doing this properly would be very tricky to communicate
Yes someone mentioned there’s the possibility of having Tecumseh lead the U.S. for some sort of narrative building driven by the player! But if players can make their own gameplay narratives, does it makes sense to just remove “historical choice” option totally and rely on gameplay to unlock civs, or just have every civ available?
@@Paisley_Trees Having every civ available would take away from the dynamic system and introduce optimal choice and pre-planning which is exactly what they do not want to have. I like the idea to have everything locked without “historical choice” and rely on gameplay to unlock civs
PS. Three eras are too few in my opinion. There should be a fourth - the Middle Ages, which lasted 1000 years. In earlier Civilization games eras passed too quickly. Before I trained knights and built castles, the gunpowder era was coming and everything was outdated.
Based on what I've read it seems the antiquity era lasts around 150+ turns on standard. Assuming that is also the case for Exploration and Modern thats ~450 turns for a standard game (Depending when you or someone else reaches their victory condition)
@@Bookworm214-y3d I mean, that's not really a "nowadays" point for Civ. And in all fairness, I do believe that for highly complex grand strategy games, it is better to hold some things back so they can get more attention in DLC. Part of the reason Civ V was so successful is because of how well it boiled Civ down to its core elements to attract new fans, then paced out more complex features back into the game through DLC.
Whole concept of naming civilizations after those from our world is wrong path to go if you want to have this civ switching. Lets say you spawn on the desert as nameless nomads. You create your first settlement named Thebes - your faction is from now on named Thebians. You evolve to civ like mongolians you turn to Thebian Khanate/Horde or if you become like ancient Franks you become Thebian Kingdom. You go to third era choosing some democratic traditions - you can be Thebian Republic or Thebian League. Prefer some authoritarianism? Be Thebian Empire or Thebian Dominium. Its not that hard to program some naming generator. And someone explain to me, why you tremble on concept of civilizations/tribes/countries losing and getting replaced? It happend a lot. Gauls? Devoured by growing Roman Empire. Etruscans? Lost and replaced. Carthaginians? Lost and replaced. Rome? Fell and got replaced by barbarian kingdoms. Lotharyngia? Burgundia? Prussians(baltic ones not german), Gone. Aztecs or Mayans? Gone. Caliphate of Cordoba? Eradicated by reconquista. History of humanity is nasty and written with blood. Its not another episode of teletubbies.
I’m not an expert in AI, would such capabilities have existed 5 years ago when they probably started development? I do think it’s a great idea though, super dynamic gameplay, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that in future games! I think we tried to make clear in the video it just wouldn’t be fun to make the current and ongoing colonization of people into a game - especially one where you’re forced to play the scenario of completing that colonization through this civ changing mechanic. It’s just not fun for us because it takes us out of the game! Of course others could disagree (respectfully like you have) and we’re just 2 people with opinions we felt like sharing on our channel! In the end I doubt we’ll make much of a difference given how close the game is to being completed.
Its funny that Civ of all things is being discussed in this way. What happened to fun? There is a unique novelty to being able to attack Gandhi with nuclear submarines as Shaka Zulu. Its fun and to me it never needed to be anymore complicated than that because Civilization never tried to assert itself as a truly historical game. We are pretending as though your 250 turn Civ game needs to follow a cohesive historical narrative and that the gameplay needs to altered so dramatically to make something work that no one asked for.
We love civ and we have lots of fun playing it! I recommend our civ 6 playthroughs to see how it can be fun to talk about history while playing civ. Of course this is a channel that talks about history through games, and sometimes the topic is less fun… we think it’s not fun for example to have slavery in the games, and I think the developers agree since it’s not in civ (I don’t it’s ever been? Definitely not in civ 6). Like I said at the end of the video, if Egypt becomes Songhai then we’ll play and make a video as to why we don’t think that’s historically accurate, but if the game is implying something more nefarious then we will definitely struggle more and would like to see that avoided, maybe through a more thoughtful wording, or maybe through avoiding some claims about “historical choice”!
@@fatyak4122 they can do whatever they want, just pointing out the reason why it was done this way. "fun" is no longer a quality that is being considered when profits is placed at #1. you can NOT agree with it, or you can.
Fantastic discussion! In short: Human history is complicated and there is no easy historical model that can be exploited as a gamified system. Though one reason I’m still excited for Civ 7 is because of representation. Throughout all the civ games, players have constantly gatekept various civilizations because they always needed to have “core” civilizations (usually highly Eurocentric) while the others come in as DLC late into the game-cycle. I saw that they have a lot more American civs and even showcased Hawaii. In a base game. I’ll take having scraps of histories and cultures that rarely ever get screen time than having to stick with another “Here’s 10 new European civs you can play as”. Edit: The whole condoning genocide is a bit funny because genocide has always been a player condoned option in the game. Domination victory. 😅
Thank you! We tried to be measured and fair in our commentary, but I definitely got a little passionate thinking about the possibility that you might play for example Shawnee and then be told by the game that the next historical progression is to play U.S. - but you’re totally right the concept in some form already exists in civ games! So I guess the issue comes down to this claim that it’s the historical choice? We also are a huge fan of the range of civs we’re probably going to see on release!
For the countries and areas that have political conflicts, doing this non-sense civ transition is very dangerous… Imagine you try to transit China to Japan… one billion people will be pissed😂
I think the Civ switching mechanic has a lot of potential! Both from a gameplay and historical perspective but I think it will be really difficult for the mechanic to meet it's potential for both the historic education and game play simultaneously, or at least, not from the jump. I imagine it will get better as more expansions and DLC for the game comes out. I really hope they take the opportunity to fix some of the more boring historical representations. The "India" and "Arabia" civs stand out as the worst offenders in my eyes. It would be super cool to have an Arabian civ that starts out as the Nabateans, then having the choice to play as Ummayads or Abbasids in the exploration age and then maybe we could get some actual representation of modern Arab nations like Egypt or Iraq. But in all honesty, I don't think Firaxis has the balls! Even though that's a fairly innocuous decision I think they'll do their best to avoid "controversy" which is going to be hard when nations that exist today are being represented in the game and connecting them to other older civilizations may be even more controversial. Firaxis has fumbled this in weird ways in the past as well. Dido for example in civ 5 and 6 is voiced by an actress who speaks reconstructed Phoenician with a modern Hebrew accent and in civ 6 founds Judaism as their religion, which seems to be a soft attempt to link that civilization to modern day Israel...which becomes even more confusing when you realize that Beirut's iconic corniche is visible in the background of her leader screen. Anyway I'm rambling, loved the video, subscribed!
I very much agree with what you wrote! They need a lotttt of civs to make the transitions feel satisfactory and there is definitely lots of potential but if you watch our Abbasid video you'll see we were definitely expecting this system to allow more specificity for each civ, and it was a bit of a missed opportunity (but still SO much better than just Arabia!!). So far, they do seem to be shying away from 20th century civs in the modern age to maybe avoid controversy as you said, so if they're not going to do nation-states, maybe something like the Khedivate of Egypt would work? Also huge YIKES on the Phoenicia info you shared, if they're trying to stay away from controversy they failed with that lol.
I think they should make it optional to switch to a different civ to allow sandbox historical story making. So for instance, if england continues its historical path in the americas with its traditional system, or for it to adopt new set of ideas and branch off to a new culture that is the USA. Similarly with Rome, whether to continue with into the modern age or to evolve into modern european principles. Or for egypt to retain its progress from its ancient heritage, or to get influenced by the classical Mediterranean influence. As a game, civilization should allow all these paths, and not force civilisations to become today’s Canada, Germany, USA, etc.
The game definitely does not need to be completely historically accurate. The game needs to be fun and playable more than anything else and the more historically accurate you go, the more you have to include genocide lol
Unless I'm mistaken, i was under the impression from the announcement that a Civ could choose to remain on its "historical" path. You could start as Egypt and stay as Egypt through the whole game, and they each have unique bonuses throughout each age, as opposed to Egypt in previous games where they only got bonuses in the "Ancient" and "Classical" Eras.
It’s at minute 17:35 to 18:00 on their gameplay video. The wording is something like “there are many factors into which civ you evolve into… this includes any historical connection.. you might want to stick as close to history as possible, only picking civs that have historical ties to each other”!
I didn't like the system in Humankind and I don't like it here. The culture changes feel less like changing cultural norms, memes, and aesthetics, and more like replacing the people themselves. Assyrians still exist, as do Mayans, only cultures that got exterminated disappeared. And changing culture in Humankind felt less like evolution and more like extermination.
One problem I have with this system is the fact that in some cases there is no "positive" historical progression available. Let's take Poland as an example. Assuming it is a civilization from exploration era, what can it realistically change into in modern era? Because if there is nothing called "modern Poland", than the only option seems to be Russia/Soviet Union or Austria-Hungary. But if that's the case, it would honestly feel like you've lost, Poland lost it's independence and, at least for me, there is no fun playing the modern era. I might be a bit bias since I'm Polish, but i think the same problem might apply to other civilizations, like Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Japan (assuming you only have Feudal Japan and no Modern Japan) or Byzantium. So I must admit I am not a great fan of this mechanic, it will work in some cases but in others it will make you feel like you've lost the game and you are playing as "your colonizer".
I was actually thinking about Poland too when trying to think what civilizations this won’t work for at all! I don’t know how they get out of this conundrum with a civ like Poland to be honest - I can imagine china having three iterations but I doubt they’d give us two polands? I think most of us would have loved to see an option to keep your civ, but I think it’s too late for that and based on what motivated them to make this change for gameplay reasons, I don’t think it’s an option that they could easily implement based on recent reactions.
@@Paisley_Trees The only other possibility with Poland might be something called Intermarium. This was not so much a country, but more like a geopolitical plan for Eastern Europe, created after World War 1. It failed in real life, but perhaps the civilization might include this as an option? This might be a convenient way to add different option for any Eastern European Civs, instead of just having Russia/Soviet Union. But realistically I think they will most likely not include Poland or any Eastern European nation. Which is a bit disappointing, but still, it's their game and their decision.
Doable, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth splits into Poland or Lithuania. I believe we all have the problem thinking that those civilizations/cultures in the game are somehow connected to us, to Earth. They're just concepts/ideas/archetypes.
Not saying I don't understand the argument, and indigenous people becoming mexico is not a good look, but slavery and colonisation are part of history. When you capture a worker with an eagle warrior from a battle in IV, it's represeznting slavery,You can even genocide every othger civs on the map. So I can understand that in the context of the age switching you don't want colonisation to be represented, but if it is in the game with a mechanic and it makes sens, I don't think developers should just drop the idea.
Your perspective is uniquely American one: while I agree that change from any indigenous culture into modern American culture would essentially endorse colonialism and genocide of the Native Americans, the same perspective can be applied to many other pairings. For example, Egypt becomes a part of Rome and later Byzantium as an effect of conquest, same is true for it becoming later Fatimid or Mamluk. Since in many cases we don't really have people who can identify with any of these displaced civilizations anymore, we cannot really know their perspective, but surely Ptolemaic Egyptians were not too happy becoming a part of the Roman Empire, and later Byzantine/Coptic Egyptians becoming part of an early Caliphate. In case of these last ones, we have remnants of the Copts in Egypt, and they're harassed and persecuted because of their beliefs, and are target of terrorist attacks until this day. The same is true for other Christian minorities like Assyrians in Iraq and neighboring areas. So for an Assyrian, switching between, e.g., Assyria to Ottoman Turkey, would be essentially like for a Native American switching to America. Therefore, I think that the concept of switching civilization is really problematic in its core. Either you go for nonsensical pairings like Egypt to Mongolia, or you go for pairings which are controversial because of the reasons above. (And switching to Mongolia should be also considered controversial, since Mongols were very well known of slaughtering entire cities, so is this implied that when you switch to Mongolia, you essentially did that at the cost of your population being enslaved or killed?). In rare examples we have several civilizations which continuously existed since ancient times, these are obviously Far East civilizations, like China, Japan, Korea. They all went different ways (like Japan preserving monarchy, South Korea becoming a democratic country, and China becoming a communist country), but these were decisions mostly made internally, obviously often as a result of outside pressure, but not conquest. And this is the model Civilization VII should adopt for civilization transformation: not always peaceful transformation, but often evolutionary, often adopting outside forms of government, but as a result of internal decision. And the new mechanic of switching civilizations essentially takes away this choice from us. I cannot start game as an ancient Japan, and finish as a modern Japan, this is no longer possible, and this is just mindboggling.
We use the American examples because I think they’re the clearest ones to show how wrong it would feel, but also like we said, and I think you’re agreeing with, it’s an ongoing process today. I’m Persian myself so I can imagine many would be upset for the Persian empire to become the mongol one, but it does have a different implication because it’s not ongoing and because the relationship of the ilkhanids to Persian culture was not like the colonialism of later eras. Not to dismiss how others would be upset, and your other examples from the west Asian region I think are much closer to this issue we’re concerned about. Especially because assyrians are once more a targeted group today, I just don’t want a game to make light of ongoing suffering, so I think we’re mostly in agreement!
@@Paisley_Trees Certainly, I don't think we disagree, just trying to add to your perspective. Still, I don't dismiss not ongoing issues so lightly : I think present issues inform us how people in the past could feel facing new, alien empire taking over their homes. Also, colonialism or imperialism are much wider phenomena, not only limited to early modern and modern European empires. Same behaviors we attribute to modern British can be already found in case of ancient Assyria or Persia. So, what my point is, displacement of culture, ethnic identity, religion always comes through suffering, and Civ VII makes it routine occurrence.
Ed Beach has literally talked about the possibility of playing Japan in all three ages the day after the gameplay trailer. I feel like people are getting angry way too soon and we just need to wait for more updates.
There main game should be a non historically accurate game mode, with a historical accurate main game that allows you to stay your civ the whole game or switch to ones that make sense. For example Rome - Florence - Italy or Rome - Rome - Rome or Rome - Florence - Florence
A bit off-topic, but I really hope there will a significant AI improvement. My friend don't have high-end PC's, or sometimes I just don't have time to sit through a whole game and I really need AI that can actually keep up with the player or at least just play the game.
I believe your approach is an improvement. Personally, I believe the whole framing of historical accuracy for a game like Civ is a bad idea. The game design is so far away from any kind of representation of the real-world and historical developments that accuracy can only really apply to elements of the presentation. The use of world history as the game's theme functions as flavor, providing a hodgepodge of recognizable and relatable elements that allows the player to create their own story. But we could just as well replace the whole presentation with a fantasy or sci-fi one, without changing any game rules, and it wouldn't make the game feel incoherent.
Great discussion. I also wondered about the timeframes of the eras. You are touching on the morality of using colonization and slavery in a game. Many games are about indulging in some kind of immorality. It is indeed a very interesting topic; why do we see indulging in random murder or conquest as different to indulging in colonization and slavery? Civ is of course in itself a game about war, conquest, and imperialism. Victoria 3, another game like Civ about imperialism, includes colonization and slavery as core mechanics of the game as it is set in the 1830 to 1930 timeframe. Do you reject Victoria 3 on the grounds of including these mechanics? Or is including them part of their historiographical lens? Could the same be argued for Civ including colonization? I agree that an indigenous civ "turning into" the USA is a concerning framing. But if we let the exact wording go for a moment and focus more on their communicated intent of creating layers of civilizations, it is true that the USA was built "on top of," or rather displacing, the indigenous civilizations. Now could this also be seen as part of Civ's historiographical lens? Or is there some extra difference? Maybe the new concept of choosing and switching civs and leaders is too gamified to be framed as a historiographical lens? I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks bye
Some context for Victoria 3: In as much as it is a game about colonization and slavery, it is a game about *resisting* colonization and slavery. So I think it is a beautiful game
Thank you for the thoughtful comment! I have to admit I haven’t played Victoria 3 but it sounds very interesting, I’m very curious as to how they approach historical game making - from my understanding they seem much more focused on conveying historical accuracy than civ? I think since making this video we’ve learned more about the civ switching mechanic, and you’re exactly right that there’s a challenge in communicating what they are trying to achieve historically through game mechanics. I think it’s clear now their main concern was gameplay, and now it’s a matter of doing so that makes sense for a historical game. For example I love how the city architecture will retain some aspects of the previous civ, I assume they also retain their unique civics tree? I think I just need to be generous in interpreting what they are trying to convey history as with just game play mechanics! Still I remain a little critical with the fact that they are marketing this new feature as “historical”, and I think that opens them up to criticism when they clearly cannot only consider historical factors (like having Songhai’s “historical choice” civ switch be Buganda… which maybe it will change and that is all they could show us at the moment). I’m going to talk more about this with a group of civ streamers on Saturday, and I’ll keep your questions in mind for that conversation too!
I definitely need to play it! Since making this video I played humankind and it was disappointing in so many ways. I’ll add Victoria 3 to my list as well as Ara coming out soon… civ 7 has made me very interested in how other games tackle the same issues
I definitely hope they remove the "historical choice" marker from Aksum when you've selected Hatshepsut. And I hope to see Native American civ options in the Modern age. Cree, Shoshone, Apache, Mapuche, or Lakota could be good options, given that the Shawnee will apparently be an Exploration Age civ. But I think you set a pretty tough standard if an Exploration Age civ can't have a historical path to the civ that historically colonized it. If both the Aztecs and modern Mexico are in the game, I'd find it very strange if there wasn't a possible historical path from Aztecs to Mexico. You also mentioned that Haudenosaunee to US could be ok due to the influence on the US constitution, but Shawnee to US would be horrible. But didn't the Shawnee influence the US? And how do you determine what kind of influence justifies a transition from one civ to another? I'd argue that most colonizers have been influenced by the cultures they colonized to at least some degree.
I completely agree with everything you’re saying but just to clarify one thing: I was trying to brain storm ways out of the conundrum of having Shawnee replaced by the U.S. and having that replacement of civilization be claimed as a historically accurate progression for the Shawnee. What I was trying to say is, well if they take out this claim that it’s a historically accurate progression, and instead say something like “U.S. was in the sphere of influence of the Shawnee”, then maybe that would be better because it’s not implying the Shawnee are gone, or that they’re replaced by the U.S., just that some influence made it to this next empire you pick. I am also curious why Shawnee is exploration age and not modern age given that their leader is Tecumseh but that’s a different issue. I should emphasize that this changing of wording would make it much more palatable for me personally but I can’t speak to everyone else who doesn’t like it. I just wanted to propose an idea that is easy to implement, that softens the claims to something more defendable. I’d be curious what you and others think about the fact that the Mayans are an antiquity civilization, therefore they won’t be replaced by Mexico, but some other exploration age civ, which I’m guessing is Spain? That was what I found questionable but should have made clearer - going from Mayans to Spain instead of Mayans to Mexico. Or is that just splitting hairs? Happy to see such thoughtful engagement, thank you!
@@Paisley_Trees Thanks for clarifying :) My guess would be the Aztecs rather than Spain. Given that there are only three ages, I assume that "Exploration Age" actually covers all/most of the Middle Ages + the Early Modern Era, and into sometime during the early 19th century. (Exploration Age isn't a perfect name for this time span, but I'm not sure I'd be able to come up with a better term. Post-classical/Pre-modern maybe?) So Maya > Aztecs > Mexico could be one path. And Spain would represent medieval Spain too, so it probably wouldn't be a transition option for the Maya, but maybe for Rome/Celts/Phoenicians/Goths, depending on which of these are in the game.
Historically accuracy in a game like CIV doesn't matter. It doesn't even work, and kinda miss the point of CIV. But historically authenticity and immersion is important, and I think most people confuse historically accuracy with authenticity when they say they want accuracy. I love the idea of CIVs representing a culture or different culures with ties to each other. Like For example Egypt being able to change to other northern african civilizations, and other nations along the nile river and in the Levant as they would all have been influenced by Egypt at some point, to some extent. And other African civilizations have even claimed the title of Pharao and the successor of Egypt like many European nations have claimed the title of Caesar/kaiser/Czar/Imperator/Emperor etc and being the successor to Rome. But Egypt changing into Mongolia is dumb. If you play as Egypt and focus on horses/cavalry a more authentic evolvement in the next age would be the ability to turn into the Mamluk sultanate. I'm all for Civs changing but within reason. And I think this is a missed opportunity to represent more "micro civs/cultures" and each CIV having their own "CIV-tree" if you want. With some overlapping like both Egypt and Arabs having the ability to become the Mamluk sultanate. Huns can become Mongols and Seljuks. Seljuks can become Ottomans but the Mongols can not. Mongols on the other hand can become Manchus which again can evolve into China (Quing Empire). But if a different nation, lets say Han Empire China already exist on the map that route on the tree is locked. Unless they are conquered/wiped out before the next age begins.
All excellent points and I think you’re on to something with accuracy vs. authenticity. I should add that they showed civ 7 having unique tech trees for each civilization and a more generic one for leader!
Yep I liked your accuracy vs. authenticity point too. But I disagree on your "changing civs within reason" point. I actually like the completely inauthentic civ-switches the most for gameplay reasons. The problem is with implying that choices are historical when they are not
Yeah. I don't mind it as long as it is an option really. Just like random personalities is an option in older Civs, I guess (and hope) that you can just check/uncheck a box for Civs being able to change into wathever or being locked to more authentic routes. And everybody will be happy:D
I really don't get why people are mad at this feature. After all it improve the historicity of the make the game feel more fun and varited. People that are mad about it are just don't want the game to be art and just want it to be their little toy soldiers game.
It improves one aspect of historicity, not having civs like USA in 4k BCE, but at the same time it highlights things like immortal leaders and "smoothing" of complicated relationships between real world civs. IMO switching leaders would make more sense, they could say, that leaders represents dynasties or political systems.
As someone who was amazed when Civ1 game out ..very disappointing. I wouldn't go so far as saying they're ruining the game, but they're definitely going against the original idea of the game. The whole point of Civilization was to pick a civ you like, then take their civ concept back to ancient times and see if you can progress them all the way to leaving the planet. That's no longer what this game is about.😞
I really like the video The only thing I disagree with is the treatment of colonization. Violence and expansion whether we like it or not, is part of our development as a species. I don't think the colonizer should should be the only option to transition from the native society I still think the The colonizer should be an option. The only fair way to censor colonization would be to remove warfare and expansion from civ 7 which is not tenable.
Thank you! And yes that’s fair enough, especially since they’ve changed the wording since this video from “historical choice” to something else (I don’t exactly remember what!).
Your obsession with colonization was eye rolling, Persia can’t change into Mongolia? As you mentioned this is a GAME, it sounds super fun. I just want giant robots in the Modern age… 15:18
It's just a new way to sell a lot more leader packs. It's baffling that more people dont see that. If they truly wanted to balance things they could have just given each civ abilities for each age...there i balanced it.
What do you think native american tribes should change to in the new eras? I think the only logical choice is US, Canada, etc. depending on the location.
Well the only one we know for sure about is the Shawnee, and for that one we’re questioning why it’s in the exploration age and not in the modern age. Tecumseh is a 19th century leader and I would have assumed that is part of the modern era? But right now, the only connection we see between Egypt and Songhai is proximity, so if they change the concept from “historical” to “closest regionally” then that could open up more choices too, but also make the transitions maybe less fraught with implications!
People are just made about the name rather than how it plays. They could have literally removed the name of all civs and kept the gameplay, and everyone would be happy.
im kind of confused if its just a game and its fun Ghandi nukes, i cant for the love of god think of 1 legimate reason why we should care about ppls feelings about who conqueres who, because itsjust a game . nobody nesides woke ppl would make this an issue... get over it get ready and have fun
You’re free to have your opinions as we are ours! But thank you for sharing respectfully and I’m sure many people agree with you. I love civ and I think will have lots of fun with civ 7 like civ 6
I never played Civ to be historical. I played it for the opposite reason. Romans conquering the world with iron-clads? Yes, please! This forced-switch sounds like it would preclude a lot of fantasy/role-play styles. I’m probably going to skip it.
i get where they are coming from, cultures/nations do change over time. but from the sounds of things what they are doing to represent that is causing every civ in the world to all at once spontaneously change into a completely different culture that might have some relation or could be completely different altogether. why cant I just evolve my own culture instead of becoming a new one? If my Egyptian culture is successful why cant it continue to exist into the exploration and modern ages? they could at least add that option to keep the role play of bringing one culture and one civilization from the dawn of history into the future
I think having that option to keep your civ would have made a lot of people happy, but I wonder if it’s too late now to make that change. They’ve said that all civs are balanced to the age, and have designed the game around this ages mechanic. I think I did mention in the video that we will have the option to just play one age, and I’m guessing that is what they will point to for people who want to play the same civ throughout. But then you miss 2/3 of the game of course.
R.I.P. Civilization. It appears that the CIV series ended with CIV 5. Sad, been playing CIV since CIV I on Amiga. I want its original sandbox feel back. Will stick to grand strategy games then... Looks like a dumbed down console game.
Yawl scare me to buy now! For example in Civ6 I played with Shaka Zulu and Ethiopia I would be pissed they make me change to a civilization that looks nothing like us! I thought the whole point was to get your civilization to survive through time!
I like the idea of evolving to another civilization, but it should be done with sense. In Humankind, you could go from Egypt to China... On the other hand, I won't meet Americans in 2000 BC or Sumerians in the 21st century.
It looks like they are adding something very complicated and very sensitive for little return on gameplay. It may be historical accurate for a civ to change over history spanning hundreds or thousands of years but I’m only going to be playing the game for a few hours. If I’m emotionally invested as playing Egypt I will want to remain Egypt till the end. If I wanted to play as Mongolia I would start a brand new game. This level of nuance is just unnecessary and by the reaction I’ve been seeing it’s also very unwanted
They are fixing inherent issues: late game lacked depth, it was a boring and long dash towards the victory condition, rarely becoming any interesting (you could easily tell who's winning based on the status during the transition from mid game to end game). Reason being: early game disadvantages or errors piling on top of each other and snowballing into later game stages.
@@tomaszs3040 I agree with you, but they could solve these issues without forcing you to change to a Civ you may not actually want to play. The example of Egypt is a really interesting one as the country actually exists today, so why should people not be able to play as it? Humankind had its flaws, undeniably, but it did allow you to continue as the culture you were if you wanted to, and a small thing that made me smile was the inclusion of Egypt as both a 1st era culture and final era culture. But mid-late game crises can be introduced with civ swapping being possible but not necessary, and that will likely be the more valuable mechanic to keep things interesting. With crises you could maintain the civs themselves while choosing between different ways of responding to them - e.g. If you chose England from the beginning and the plague is the first disaster, perhaps you can choose between traits in the exploration age that could either focus on trade and exploration or traits that focus on internal production (enclosures, early stage industrialisation, constitutionalism etc). Both of which are very English things in that era but allow specialisation for the player without forcing the abandonment of any emotional investment a player may have built up around the civ. This probably could be something implemented *alongside* the current system of civ switching too, allowing for all parties to be satisfied here, so I don't think it's a bad suggestion.
@@tomaszs3040 I'm not an Egyptian, nor have I studied the country's culture much, so I'm very happy to be corrected here, but I would tend to agree. I presume there may be some affinity and pride through Egyptian society at things like the Pyramids and the continuity of the state. But your argument is true also of English culture today compared to 200 years ago, the constant shifting between change and preservation is somewhat the nature of human society and culture. Of course, different cultures and states are going to be contextually different, but with Egypt it is true that a political entity called Egypt exists in the same general location as one of the earliest civilisations known today by the same name, and that continuity is likely something felt by at least some of those living there, and indeed could be felt by someone playing a game as Egypt that is able to make it to the modern age having started in antiquity. Which may not be felt by someone in a game who is forced to switch to a different civilisation that probably has even fewer connections to the original civilisation than modern Egypt has to Ancient Egypt. Again, this is contextual, and subjective. I'm not trying to suggest what Firaxis are trying is inherently bad, but it does raise some fundamental questions around culture, civilisations (or the political entities that represent them), and identity, which would be good to have discussed. :)
I’m curious if the driving factor was actually a way of rethinking history, or solving gameplay issues! I am leaning towards gameplay tbh. I think I remembered to mention in the video that there is an option to just play a single era, that should take about 200 turns, which is typically how many turns I play civ 6. I wonder if that is what they will point to for people who want to stay as a single civilization!
I’m going to say something that may be controversial but… who cares about hurt feelings? This is a video game. Whether the culture you identify with is represented to the end of time or not is entirely irrelevant to history irl, which IS a worthy cause to be upset about certainly for many cultures around the globe. I understand Civ has been an approachable, relatively PG game series, which does make the Civ evolution a somewhat questionable element to introduce as it does put them in potentially hot water with indigenous cultures, but Civ has also been controversial as is for its inherent Eurocentric biases in terms of development, advancement, settlement, and representation. Essentially, when you toy in the historical fiction genre, you will always be controversial! I think one way they could have potentially remedied this is to make it so that your leaders would change with the ages alongside your Civ, so if you start as say the Navajo, you could end the game as the US but your leader would be Chester Nez, whereas if you started with the British, you could still end up being the US, but with a more traditional presidential leader instead. Ultimately, I think that sensitivity in history cuts both ways. I understand that people looking to play what is essentially a board game may not want to encounter the harsh realities of genocide and/or colonialism, but on the other hand, painting a happy-go-lucky version of history where slavery never occurred and Colonization is a mere policy card doesn’t make your game less offensive, but imo makes it even more misleading/obfuscating as to the mechanisms through which human history have actually transpired. I would love to see a separate series someday grapple with the more brutal/controversial realities of history via the 4X genre. Also, this is the first video I have watched of yours and saw on Twitter you’re a Yalie which makes us neighbors! Will sub for more interesting historical discourse around Civ
I don’t think what you’re saying is controversial at all, and I appreciate the intellectual engagement and debate! I think you’ve got an excellent point that it’s maybe not so much about hurt feelings, but this balance between do we place historical accuracy above all else, or do we try to keep games light and not force one to encounter harsh realities? It’s one civ really has to balance and I’m sure have these debates behind closed doors too, and generally I think they usually land somewhere in the middle.
@@Paisley_Trees With the new system, with it being open and vague, allows you to fill in the story of your Civs journey. The Native Americans can form the United States, but it wouldn't be culturally the same one as now, rather one started by them rather than European colonists who rebelled.
I would be interested to see if your vision is one they share! From the art style revealed so far, like the architecture and look of cities, I’m not 100% convinced that this sort of filling in your own narrative would be satisfying. But the only indication the U.S. is in the game is the leader Benjamin Franklin, which now that leaders are unlinked with civs, it might not mean anything.
@@Paisley_Trees I figured architecture would be the same for each Civ, no matter who has it. It would be a lot of work, unless they had building style tied to leader and not Civ.
Please do not use your academic titles to make normative statements about how a game ought to be. An ought is a normative statement, and thus academic titles are irrelevant to such a discussion. I also get the point of counterfactuality, but having Egypt magically become Mongolia just totally breaks immersion for me. They could have made Egypt a generic pastoralist civilization (while keeping the name), but MONGOLIA? No, absolutely not. This isnt even counterfactual, its plain wrong. Mongolia is in the eastern steppes of Asia, Egypt in Africa. You can have a pastoralist Egypt without raping history by turning them into an actually existing different civilization that has zero historical ties to Egypt.
I think we’re just sharing our opinions as you are free to share yours! I think at the heart of the issue we agree, but I see the third option they give (turning into Mongolia based on gameplay) isn’t for people like us interested in history, it’s for people who mostly care about play style and couldn’t care less what name is attached to what bonuses. But if you listen carefully to the video we are VERY concerned as to why they connect Hatshepsut to Aksum, or Egypt to Songhai, or Songhai to Buganda, and claim there is a historical connection between these.
The discussion of colonialism in Civ made me remember how the ‘civilian unit’ (mostly spies) naming system works in civ vi with Australia where the names are all indigenous names until the later ages where they’re replaced by western names… yuck
"based on our data, everyone is playing England and the USA... We need to force them to play an African country!"... Is how this whole thing started...I bet my life on it 😂
Yuck, your approach really disappointed me, i was hoping for more out of this game instead of the fluff in the previous game like climate change and grievances
10:54 I think this is a big point. If you just go for the 'ahistorical' route of having all civilisations co-exist for all of human history, sure that's absurd, but setting 'historical' routes just sets you up for a million own goals, like "Tecumseh is Exploration Age because native", "Egypt to Songhai because Africa", or "Rome to England because... empire biiiig???"
So far it looks like it’s because the civilizations have similar bonuses so your early game decisions still carry over well to the bonuses of the new civ
The funny thing in civilization was that you could have Romans in the modern era, or Egyptians in the North Pole. I hope that in other eras it is the option to maintain these civilizations. Because if the Romans in the modern era become the Germans, and the Egyptians in the north pole, become Norwegians... the magic disappears.
From what I understand the civs we would transition to are more like a dynasty or a new kingdom of that age but from the same civilization. To change to Norwegian is an option from the civs or environment that has influenced your civ. However, we can also keep the civ on a more historical route so Rome would transition into eventually modern Italy and ancient Egypt into what we know today
Seriously many people who play Civ think about Rome 5 times a day. Now you telling me there won't be a Rome?!
Its symbolic of player choice being removed and replaced with " we know what's better for you"
@@Bookworm214-y3dIndeed! How about choosing not to play Civ 7 and continuing with Civs X (the best one of the series) as a protest against these awful signs of despotism?
@@fatyak4122 well im not buying it on day 1 any way, i waited 3 years to finally play civ 6 (and civ 5) to get the complete experience and it did not disappoint! civ 7 will have to be a 3-4 years wait for me because i rather get all the dlcs and expacs . too many games to play right now
Civilization has always been the most approachable and "vanilla" game of this genre, so the civ switching upon era transition mechanic is a major paradigm shift. It feels more like a gamemode or a mod rather than part of the base game. I am definitely in the camp of disliking both the concept and the implementation.
You guys already touched on indigenous/native civs and I agree 100%. Firaxis is playing with fire there. These games have done so much good to promote indigenous cultures and if word gets out that you can't play as a modern Shawnee or Iroquois or Métis civilization because they belong to the past, then in the future tribes will behave like the Pueblo in Civ V and decline representation. All it takes is a few bad headlines.
I like the way Paradox games handle this concept of civilizations evolving over time with "formable" and "releasable" nations. If you perform certain in-game tasks and satisfy certain conditions, that will be reflected in your nation. I believe such a mechanic could be mapped on to Civ in some fashion. For example, if you're playing as the Shawnee, when you make your first alliance you become "Tecumseh's Confederacy". If Greece becomes suzerain of an independent power, they become "Athens" but if they conquer it militarily they become "Sparta". If Rome pursues a cultural victory, they become Florentine but if they pursue economic they become Venetian. The bottom line is Egypt -> Songhai is not palatable to Civ players, but the underlying concept of your antiquity civilizations evolving throughout the game and exploring some alt-history is an idea with some merit.
That is such an interesting and dynamic way of implementing “evolving” civs, a few people have recommended paradox games now, I think I need to give it a shot! But like you said civ has been the most approachable and vanilla 4x game, and I think they want to maintain that with this civ changing feature. It’s a difficult balance and “playing with fire” is apt!
I did enjoy your discussion on this topic.
My comment here is purely from a gameplay perspective. The rest of what I write has nothing to do with real history.
The only game that successfully has done this "change your civilization" is Europa Universalis IV. In that game you can (if you meet certain criteria) tag-switch (change nation) from one to another based on you meeting the requirements. At the start of the game there is no Germany, United States, Australia, China or Great Britain (to name a few). You can form those nations when you manage to fulfill the requirements. But you don't have to. The players are given a choice. Your empire will probably be stronger if you choose to "upgrade" to a "better" tag (nation), but it is not a requirement that you do so.
Players are given a choice. If you want to you can play as your original tribe or medieval nation all the way through. THAT is the choice I want to have in a new game of Civilization. As it stands today the new game in the Civ franchise is not a real Civ game. You can no longer build "a civilization to stand the test of time." Now they've changed it to build "an empire to stand the test of time." Firaxis really should pick up the phone and make the call to Paradox before continuing down this path.
Thank you for sharing! I love hearing about how different video games have approached this mechanic, seems like there have been lots of other games with ranging success. I do think though it’s way too far into development for us to see major changes…
Gameplay wise civ looks the same. You either get similar era specific bonuses following the historical path or you can choose to tag switch.
The only way in which it doesn’t make sense is if you care about the historical side in which case both fail catastrophically
@@csrjjsmp Well... from the footage I've seen so far you cannot choose not to switch. You are forced to. Egypt to Songhai or Mongolia. You cannot stay as Egypt. That is my understanding of the information give so far.
Historical path does not mean you can stay as Egypt.
This is one reason I play Civ - to play "what if" with history. If I want to take the Babylonians from ancient history to modern day, the game should let me do it. Playability needs to trump historical accuracy if it leads to a bad, not fun game. From what I saw in the devs livestream, it appears like change in cultures for each era is severely limiting - you have to meet certain criteria to even have a choice of three in the next era. If you fail to meet certain criteria, your choice may be only 2 or having to choose your only option.
Also, the Romans had a huge influence on most of the modern European cultures. Thus, if you are playing as Romans in Era X, the next Era should have many possible cultures to branch off to. But, that may not be fair to other cultures gameplay-wise. So, there is always a balance between playability/fun versus historical accuracy. Are they going to allow 5 players transition to the Romans in Era X in the same game on their way to separate modern cultures of British, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italians, etc. If they will allow that, then you could see 5 players playing as the Romans on your map which would be very weird. That's again why I feel like they will severely limit the paths people can take so that there won't be 5 players playing the Romans in Era X. But, historically, you should be able to play as the Romans and then transition to many cultures because they had such a huge influence.
@@csrjjsmpI wouldn’t say the historical side fails because the game was never trying to be anywhere close to historical. It’s a sandbox environment where many unpredictable and often ahistorical things go down. The game design is leaning more into that by saying, let’s have your civ adapt to the board state just like irl civs evolved through history in response to what happened around/within them. Difference is, the things that happened to the irl civ may not be what you experienced in that specific game, so some divergence as a consequence should not come as a shock.
In that way, the game is becoming more internally consistent or authentic. While some irl civs have somewhat remained through all the ages, they were not exactly in the same form. They took on different roles, strategies, goals and seems like the game wants to emulate that process with in-game lore and decisions (board state). There’s only a rare few locations where you have native tribesmen still living in a more or less same way. The majority of the time, the culture drastically shifts because they got taken over (internal or external), or they survived but did not keep the same identity.
I hope this mechanic gets implemented well and has the chance of becoming a staple going forward. Teething pains are to be expected but I’m eagerly optimistic it’s a good direction to go towards. It creates player choice and gives the opportunity for the evolution of the game (board state) to influence what characteristics your civ adopts going forward into a new age with new challenges.
Excited for the opportunity to play as alternate histories, but so many ways for this to be represented poorly:
"The smallpox crisis wipes out the Cree and Canada rises in it's place"
"Wilfred Laurier, leader of the Cree people"
It could also be Lady Six Skys, leader of the Russian People. That sounds awesome.
The leaders are the in game embodiment of the god-like player and give a face/personality to the ai for the player to associate with. Ramses leading the maui is no stranger than classic era Abe Lincoln sending chariots to punch through the Great Wall defenses that Alexander the Great using to stifle the invasion.
Very refreshing to hear historians' dialogue about the preliminary changes in CIV VII - I'm very glad you picked up on the lumping together of African cultures into a monolith as teased in the gameplay trailer. I hope they find something that could be a bit more of an appropriate solution.
It kinda breaks the alternate history vibe if every civ is locked to a historical time period, and it really doesn't help the eurocentrism. The idea that, say, Egypt only "belongs" in the Ancient Era and then they're supposed to die off, when that's pretty ahistorical. I would have preferred if they gave each civ multiple uniques so that they had something every few ages, or let you choose one civ but swap leaders out. That way you still have that throughline but you're flexible.
Totally, that was my first initial reaction when they revealed this feature - they are condemning people to a historical death that are actually very much around today. But when I reread the transcript, they seem to try to make clear it’s not supposed to be an end… but like we said in the video it remains to be seen if they can match their vision with the way it feels. So far we’ve only seen Egypt transition into Songhai in gameplay, and I don’t really see much of the layering of cultures architecturally or visually besides just a few wonders. But again; there might be more mechanics that shows that layering? I hope?
Ugh, the point of playing civ was the fantasy of bringing Egypt to the modern age. I didn't care how inaccurate it is, I just want to play the way I want.
@@Bookworm214-y3dyou probably still can do that, either in the sense of the bonuses or flavor wise (more likely after more civs get added).
If it’s just the stats you care about, pick your next civ to be an age appropriate upgrade of your current bonuses. Arguably you’re still playing civ x in the new age just with scaled stats. The look and label may have changed but if you’re doing this, I suspect you care more about the stats than the flavor text which you can use some head canon to bypass.
If it’s the flavor you want, it may not be available for most civs early on but there might be a few obvious ones like China or Japan that get representation in all ages of the base game. As more dlc/freelc get added, we might see more cultures with their direct irl continuation available, widening the pool from which you can do this follow irl history style gameplay.
@@sphaera2520 but i love egypt and wanna play as the queen ruling thru all the ages....why take that away?
I like the fact that civs will change over time. I think it will make the game more fun. But the transitions should have some geographical/cultural bridge between the civs.
i LOVE your approach to civ its so fun looking at it through an academic lens
Love to hear that! Thanks!
The glazing in this video is outta pocket but I gues to each hes own
This is honestly the first discussion on historical accuracy that I've taken serious and it is entirely based on how you presented your points and discussed them. I feel like so many people are quick to write things off entirely and take stances without accepting any sort of nuance.
Yes Civ has always stretched historical accuracy and has always compromised for the sake of gameplay. But, I'm absolutely in agreement that this new feature/mechanic will just function and feel better to interact with IF considerations are taken to make it convincing, at least to the average person. I feel as though us history heads always have room to be disappointed by games these days but I'm glad Firaxis is trying something different from their tried and true formula.
My biggest concern comes from the variety. Both in Civ and in Leader. The leader being static actually has raised more concerns for me then the Civ being this sort of evolution. The fact that if I start a game in Antiquity and will have to play as for example Augustus the ENTIRE time I feel like the effort this transitional civilization mechanic has brought would've been a waste because Augustus in his ancient roman armour is still leading my Modern Age English empire......
The more I think about it the more this point irks me. But, Ill patiently wait to hear more about the Exploration / Modern ages and how the transitional period actually functions.
Thank you, we tried to be measured and thoughtful with our commentary, and really try to understand both what is motivating the developers to make this change, and the limitations that exists when you make a game like this!
Finally, a reasonable explanation on why Ages in Civ 7 is actually a great feature.
I hope that Sid Meir's Civilization VII keeps two features from the previous game that have stuck out to me: presenting leaders who speak in their own languages instead of having everyone speak English and using a soundtrack that is culturally accurate and respectful. I have played and seen many other games based on history that, while somewhat entertaining, failed to get those parts right. I'm mainly talking about games like Inca 1 and 2 for the PC and the Uncharted Waters series. That latter series is another "Pandora's Box" of a topic when it comes to portraying Colonialism and historical inaccuracies.
Very much agree with the way you think about it with the “closest thing we Have” being balanced with wanting to provide a diversity of representations and gameplay styles.
Though if you can conquer civilizations and raze all their settlements to the ground it seems weird to get hung up over any other war crimes or historical atrocities. You can commit genocide in every civ because the games theme themselves around history so the antagonism and conflict within the gameplay easily become genocide if you interpret them through the history- themed dressing
You’re totally right and that’s the nature of a game themed on history. Of course it’s your own choice to raze another civilization and it’s not a forced choice like this one will be, but your point stands I think. I’ve mentioned before that I really don’t like plugging in a card called “colonization” or “corvee labor” in civ 6, and I think to some extent civ developers also agree there are some topics that should not be gamified (I think they’ve never included slavery, definitely not in civ 6).
Slavery was in civ 4
As a Scottish player, I have an issue with Civ 6 that I find a little problematic, admittedly it's not as bad as a lot of other stuff.
Playing as Scotland, they only play Scottish music in the ancient and other primitive eras. As soon as things get advanced and modern, it stops using Scottish music.
Intentional or not, I feel it implies my culture is more primitive or something. Given the stereotype of the big hairy Scotsman throwing cabers, living in a thatched roof stone hut in the Highlands and talking incomprehensibly, making Scotland less Scottish as it advances is not a good look.
Yes you’re completely right, and I think your explanation of how Scotland is portrayed maps onto other civs too. But the one thing I’ve really liked about civilization is that they seem in tune with these conversations in the field of history and make correctives each iteration of the series - for example the janissaries have come a long way from orientalist Arabian nights soldiers. So I do think it’s important to talk about these things!
From my short time in Scotland, you lads are indeed incomprehensible, but the music part you mention (if you’re not joking) should definitely be fixed
I appreciate hearing your perspectives on this feature as historians!
At the end of the day, it's a game, and I'm excited to go from playing Ben Franklin leading the Mongols and then transition into Native America and then to England. That just sounds cool. The accuracy doesn't matter to me, it's a game.
I was watching a number of streams, including Potato's, and I was a bit disappointed by how happy he was to shut down questions of accuracy. Triple A games have a wide reach and have to be responsible. When I was a kid playing Assassins Creed I learned a lot through it, and that's a good thing to get people interested in history and it's influence on today's issues. But it would be easy for a large game company to rewrite history and claim it as fact which, especially young, people can grow up to believe.
I think it's so important that you raise these questions and concerns and I hope Firaxis and 2K address them without treating them with contempt as perhaps some creators have been doing.
Keep up the good discussions and looking forward to your next videos! :)
U know u can build the pyramids as china in this game right?
& Ghandi nukes u.
@@paulstaker8861 I get the feeling you didn't watch the video, but thank you for your input.
@paulstaker8861 That is a players choice.
Civ 7 claims Hatshepsut is a historic leader of Aksum.
Thank you! I also grew up playing Assassins creed and was just so captured by the beautiful and historical settings. I would spend hours reading the entries for buildings in Florence, and it’s why we went there for our honeymoon lol! But it’s such an interesting comparison you make, because they also include aliens and time travelling in that game, but hopefully no one took that as historically accurate! That’s why I think they need to be clear on what’s the historical links they’re making in the civilopedia if they want to make this claim, for nerds like me to read!
@@Paisley_Trees Absolutely agreed! I would do the same thing, while friends were just there for the action I would stop at every little landmark and read about its significance. Games companies definitely have a right and responsibility to make sure their games are fun, but the main thing is ensuring that they don't present fiction as fact. The old AC games were able to separate the two fairly well, and the modern ones do have the Discovery Tours which, while a good idea in theory, allowed the core games to become a bit more fanciful which I have mixed feelings about. The bigger the company the more responsibility they should have in presenting fiction carefully too as they will reach wider audiences, especially with all the disinformation online today, and Civ will definitely reach more people than its competitors ever did. It's not that any of these decisions are inherently bad, just that care needs to be taken, and it's nice to see that point discussed in a logical and considerate way :)
Great job again, thank you!
The whole concept of changing civilizations is absurd. China has existed throughout all three ages. Why limit it to only one? We know that the Babylonians only existed in ancient times, but being able to 'change history' and enable them to survive to modern times gave players a real sense of achievement. Also, the leader models are apparently not going to change, which results in absurdities such as having a US President dressed like an Egyptian Pharaoh or Ancient Egypt led by Benjamin Franklin in 18th century clothes. This could have been done far more intelligently, with, for example ancient Britons/Celts, changing to Medieval English, to modern British. Also, with leaders changing (eg. Boudicca, Edward I, Churchill) and being dressed appropriately for their age.
Probably because there are only 3 eras and clothing even if changing was still a lot more simplified throughout
China can be divided into different dynasties (as it was for the last 6000 odd years). So essentially you will be able to play as China through the whole game, but just have a different dynasty.
Same for Japan, though they had periods instead, depending where the capital was situated.
That said, possibly this will not be available for all civilizations right from the start, so we will have to wait and see how will they implement it.
@@8wayz2shine That is not what they are going to do, though, sadly.
Yes there definitely are much more accurate transitions that maybe we’ll eventually see, but like we said, they’re probably trying to have a balance of civs on release, which I think is also a good thing! That’s why I doubt we’ll see both Medieval English and British anytime soon.
Yeah I would assume that they will implement them with DLCs etc.
They could just evolve old age civs so that they still have a place in modernity but at the same time you don’t have America in 2000BCE
you dont have Phoenician or Tunisian Empires in 2010 either. Thats the point. Thats the ALTERNATE part of alternate-history game. They couldve given leaders that were different throughout the ages. They couldve made unique buildings or bonuses that scale or change over time. SO many missed opportunities.
@@gamer1X12 instead of embracing theoretical they went with a weird and vague historical context instead 💀
I think they'll add this feature in a DLC or something
@@anonimosu7425 EXACTLY bro 😭😭. Egypt ---> Songhai is an insane pipeline. I can't wait to transition from Cambodia to Brasil 😍😍
@@gamer1X12 i can’t wait for han china to become literally everything asian 💀
Hi, new sub here. your coverage from your Historian vantage point is really interesting for me.
This is the second video I’ve watched from you and enjoyed both.
I have (perhaps) tough questions: (I don’t expect an answer)
5:46 - Why, in your opinion, would slavery and genocide detract from a game being a game, yet gunpowder and nukes wouldn’t?
Btw, paying gold for builders on civ 6 was optional. Their maintenance didn’t cost anything, neither did their build actions.
How would you call a worker without wage who is forced to do what we tell them to?
14:20 “that is your stamp of approval on genocide”.
Is having nukes in the game is putting a stamp of approval on nukes?
Hi! Thanks, I appreciate the tough questions and actually I’ve been thinking about the nuke one since a repeated example has been Gandhi nuking the world. I think there’s something funny about the ability to do that because of the juxtaposition of non-violence Gandhi doing the most violent thing possible in the game. In my opinion, and let me know if you agree, it would be a lot less fun and funny if every time you played America you had to nuke Japan, despite being historically accurate! Of course you still can do that in civ 6, but it’s up to the player. So the first concern is that I find the civ switching mechanic with a default historical choice for both you and the AI takes away a lot of that agency from the player. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be possible to do certain civ paths, I just don’t think they should present it to us as the best or historically preferred choice, especially as we discussed indigenous nations still very much do exist on their own sovereign land, but in many ways colonization is an ongoing threat to their sovereignty. Us humans have a very brutal past and it’s tough to make a game that represents that past in a fun way, but I think the franchise has generally succeeded in doing that by giving a lot of freedom to the player, and civ 7 seems to be much more narratively structured so it comes with new challenges. To your point about builders, it may allude to some wage free labor but I think there is a reason why they’re not naming it slaves, it would kind of a jolting experience for a lot of players if they did. Although that line of what breaks you out of the gameplay immersion and reminds you of the reality of humanity’s brutality is going to be different for everyone. I’m sure some people might find it distasteful to have nukes, but they just have to try and do what they think works for most people that they consider a target consumer. For example, I’m sure me grimacing at corvee labor card in civ 6 is too niche for them to care about, but slavery as a prominent and named feature probably is more widely thought by their target market as a distasteful thing to do. I hope my writing is clear, it’s the middle of the night and the baby woke us up 😅!
But the idea of layering civilisations only happens when a civilisation gets conquered. Like Istanbul only has Byzantine and Ottoman layers because the Romans were defeated. If your civilisation doesn't get defeated in an age, should it really be layered by something new?
Agree in totality.
Instead of "Civilizations" being interchangeable when traversing ages, traits should be able to gain based on geography or other influences.
Instead of Egypt becoming Mongol, they could unlock the "Steppe nomad" traits. Thus every civ can be present from the beginning till the end of all 3 ages.
You bring up some good points. I'm very interested in seeing how they handle the Shawnee culture in the game because that is one of the civs they've identified as having on day 1. As I'm sure you know that the Shawnee Nation exists today, so their culture didn't evaporate in the modern era. I also want to mention that the Shawnee civ was playable in earlier Civ games (some but not all) where you could play them from the ancient era to the end of game. In those earlier versions of Civ, the devs didn't worry about historical accuracy yet it was still fun to play as the Shawnee and have them become a world power.
I think the devs are vastly overselling the historical context justification for forcing culture changes at every era change. In fact, the primary reason why they are doing it is to differentiate it from prior Civ versions. People aren't going to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new version of the game unless it offers significantly new and interesting gameplay. Otherwise, people will continue to play Civ 5 and 6. Civ 6 was slow to catch on because the upgrades from Civ 5 were fairly minor or nonexistent, so I feel like they learned their lesson that there has to be some big change gameplay-wise for Civ 7 to sell well early on.
The transitions between civs don't make any sense though...
I can't fully agree with the colonialism point, it's too abstract. Take England: the romans invaded the isle, the normans invaded too, yet everyone gets they're part of english history (who knows how many locals died back then). I get that you have to draw the line somewhere, you can't do Congo -> Belgium, but colonizations that happened over 500 years ago?? Most mayans today are catholic, speak spanish and mixed with the colonizers. Mexico is as much their heritage as it is Spain's.
Okay but like, Mayans still exists ‘romans’ do not. I think the civ team kimda messed up here, and it would be alot better if they chise to change the leader overtime instead.
You’ve got a point. I would say some cases of colonialism by way of attempted genocide are very clear, but there’s a lot of murkiness with other cases. I brought up the case of Maya because we know they are an antiquity civ, and they will be linked to an exploration era civ first before modern era. I also think Maya to Mexico, while fraught, would have been an interesting transition and imply Mexico today has mayan descendants and Mayan influence. But I just don’t see that being the case if we see Antiquity Maya becoming Exploration age Spain! That to me implies something much more unpalatable.
It's an interesting point, but as an Englishman I feel the need to point out that there aren't any Roman or Norman entities or structures that have direct control or influence over England or its people today. Certainly, the decisions of invaders long ago have helped to define a part of English identity. Even in primary school we would be taught how our last names reflected these invasions (people in my class had surnames ending in "son" e.g. "Patrickson" which implied they probably had Viking ancestry), but we are not affected at all by Roman legislation. Vikings haven't stolen our land and refused natives access to it. There are no Norman corporations we have to purchase food from, or get our healthcare through. Structurally there is very little impact on the day to day living of English people from these invasions.
Whereas when you look at the colonisation/invasion of the Americas, many indigenous societies and cultures that survive today are still very much bound by the rules, laws, customs, and cultures of those who have settled and established states there, and don't have sovereignty or much political power within the states they now live. This is generally improving as more people become educated on the past, but I don't think the situation of the average Mayan and the question of their identity is easily comparable to the average English(wo)man and questions on their identity.
@@Livsopc I agree, when it comes to alienated communities that mostly remained isolated from their conquerors (many times by imposition).
But if we take Mexico as an example: most of the population is a genetic mix. It doesn't matter who they inherited their institutions from, as long as they control them they own them. As I heard an Algerian guy say, "French language is spoils of war" (sorry if I butchered it). They were forced to use it, but then they made it their own.
@@jeongbun2386Did Romans die off like dinosaurs? Where did Italians come from?
Im 99% sure they will include indigenous options for the modern era too. But equally sure that you can transition from native tribe to USA. One thing to keep in mind though is that the leader stays the same over the ages. Which might help in not feeling like you olay a colonizer. But also might lead to indigenous historical figure leading their future colonizer?
Im feeling mixed about this. Not just from a historical perspective, but also a gameplay one. If its all a mix and match how much cultural identity does one civ or leader have?
We’re also feeling mixed! And yes we’re guessing we’re going to see a modern Kingdom of Tonga based on the wonders we know about and some of the art styles we’ve seen!
@@Paisley_Trees I think they should have stuck to gameplay related transitions only. That way you don't get into the political waters of which culture is related and why. Plus by 6 degrees logic (or in this case 3) you could end up nearly anywhere anyway. If every civ had some unlocking trigger like Mongolia that invites the player to think more in histories trends and world wide phenomenons. For example Egypt to Netherlands might not make historical sense. But it explores how people build their lives around river deltas. By making these broader connections you make no claim that one civilization is the successor of another. And you inspire creative thinking in unusual connections. And since the developers can set what unlocks a civ they can avoid any sensitive topic. For example you would unlock the USA by using the social policy liberalism and not by westward expansion. If the unlockables are easy enough to guarantee at least 2 options I think that should work fine
The case of the Songhai seems even more absurd than the Mongols because of the condition of enabling it, playing with Egypt, while the Mongols is setting up a cavalry.
Egypt's relationship with Shongais is very small and certainly smaller than with the Kursh, Abbasids, Fatimids or Mamluks, certainly the Egyptians would prefer the Abbasids (who created their capital).
If the theme that connects Egypt and Shongai is Africa, this would be stated in the condition and would be available for Carthage as well.
In the gameplay trailer, you can choose the Abbasids as one of the next stages. However, modern Egypt has little connection to the ancient civilization. Even Cleopatra, for instance, was a ruler of Hellenistic culture, and the ancient Egyptian traditions were long gone by the time she came to power. So, transitioning from Ancient Egypt to the Abbasids and then to Modern Egypt would make more sense in the game. But this isn't about a civilization that stood the test of time.
I wonder about the condition for Mongolia: Maybe instead of needing 3 horses you need to have no horses. Because you are getting invaded and replaced by the mongols with horses. They bring the horses. You dont need horses yourself for that.
I've been playing civ since I ordered civ 3 out of a book fair catalog in 5th grade. (the years come at you fast) And after giving this change a lot of thought, I think there are ways to remedy it. The big one? Changing the perspective to be "Influenced". Instead of an older civilization transitioning into a newer one it can instead be influenced by a civilization from our history to develop an analog for this historical fiction we are crafting.
Instead of Egypt just becoming Songhai or Mongolia, it is instead INFLUENCED by the conditions that led to the Mongolian civilization, creating a culture that is a hybrid between ancient Egypt and Mongolia. Ideally, the devs would alter assets slightly so each incarnation of every combination of civs looked different based on their past (and their location) but that's a lot of work.
In the end I think this is a problem of internal dialog and not being really considered or changed for general audiances. Thankfully that's easy enough to adress and hopefully they won't double down. Ideally they will make a few minor vocabulary changes to better illustrate the ideas they're trying to portray here.
I’m glad you think our suggestion might work! You’re exactly right that I tried to think of a solution that is applicable at this stage, obviously there are lots of other great suggestions others are making but I think they’re too far in to make huge changes.
@@Paisley_Trees exactly. I have a other ideas but they ex be far better discussed during the Devlopment cycle of the next game than at this stage. It's a good idea, one that should add a lot of depth and role play to the whole experience. The language simply needs to be changed maybe with a dlc or an expansion we can have the graphics for each civ combo be slightly different.
Wouldn't make more sense kept one civ the entire game and choose different historical leaders as the ages progresses (leaders as great great people)???
I’ve seen many people suggesting this would have been better! I haven’t given it too much thought since it seems like it’s too late to see a change like this made, but I’ve also seen people complain that they didn’t like leaders changing in humankind either
I think it would. It’s a bit funny I’m talking to the same leader for 2000 years 😅
People do not ask about historical accuracy but for historical inspiration and historical sense. Egypt into Songhai makes no sense, Egypt into Mongolia makes no sense, it is not contrafactual is fantasy, even if There was a shift of population or climate and egyptians where in a steppe area they would not become Mongolia, as others from the steppe do not become Mogolia, they could evolve into something that could have some of the mongolian traits but not Mongolia.
People are not dumb just beacase they complain, there are all kinds of people and all kinds of complains. What Potato said is just insulting to fun base, Nuke Ghandi was more of a meme, in reality India is of a few nations that build nukes so it was inspired by history.
People complains, as my own, are about artificial evolutions that will kill a part of what CIV meant and why make it so atractive for us. If we want to play Humankind type of game we can go play it, but do not want CIV to become a replica of a what could be an interesting formula but become more of a fail game, artificial change of civilization was responsible in part of that outcome.
They try to solve a problem by ignoring the root of it, it was dumb cheater AI and almost no penalties for forever expanding civilizations that made a boring game in the last eras. So you have a frustrating catch up game in begining then a period of relative balance then you would snow ball till will become just clics and no fun.
PS Egypt into Ethiopia could be an alternative historical evolution where after arab conquest, egyptian elites would imigrate to Ethiopia (both were cristian) trough Nile valley and there they would melt into an ethiopian with egyptian flavour type of civilization, give more attention to history!
In the end this new mechanic could work if it is made smart and people do not lose the feeling of leading a civilization trough the challenges of times, even if at some point they have to evolve but to be a plausible evolution where a part of identity is retained, but this more as a mode of the game.
Also I'm pretty sure that the "historical connection" between Songhai and Egypt is "they're both African, right?"
We’re giving them the benefit of the doubt by saying they should explain the historical connection in the civilopedia, since they are claiming there is one, but that was definitely our first reaction!
There's an unstated third reason; Humankind generated a lot of buzz and was moderately successful enough that Firaxis took some of the good ideas from it.
Thank you! Love your input
Thank you for watching!
In my eyes the thing they should have done is have no guaranteed civs. It should have been that you have to get one of the requirements for a new civ or you lose the game. That would explain why Egypt is more likely to become Songhai because the requirement for Songhai are something Egypt can get with ease(like have 10 navigable river tiles in your empire)so that way it would explain historical inaccuracy with the reason that Egypt and Songhai are similar enough not with they are exactly the same
Yes I am curious what conversations were happening that led them to think this was the best way to do it!
Great video as ever and love your take. We have time to feedback the 'influenced by' to Firaxis!
I doubt that. The release date is in half a year, and they have to make physical copies of the games for other platforms well ahead of time. Changing a fundamental thing like this so late in the production cycle looks extremely unlikely.
@samuelhakansson6680 I was referring to the UI and civopedia changes. The UI looks to be in development right now, and celebrating the historical influences in the civopedia could be an endless mine of history and articles.
Stil can't believe that for France, it's going to be something like this :
Franks -> Kingdom of France -> French Republic
I love the ages idea from a early/mid/late game perspective
but as someone who reads a lot about subsaharan africa, they've shown a standard progression that is difficult to intentionally make worse (*no* ethnic or linguistic ties, many alternative possible civilizations with greater cultural ties)
alongside Egyptians to Mamluks, Songhay to Mali would be a great standard transition
I love the idea of them being able to transition into vastly different civs though if it's well conditioned like the case with Mongolia (though I feel like there could be an extra condition to the horses, some aggression against independents f.e.)
I am optimistic and hyped to actually finish more civ games but I hope they'll improve the transition options
You’ve captured our thoughts exactly! We’d love to see cultural ties between the civs, not just proximity (and one can still argue Songhai to Buganda isn’t that close either).
That's an interesting point of view. Thanks for sharing...
Thank you for watching!
I'm interested in how they manage the civ transitions. I study Mexican/American history during the early 1900s. This feature is interesting because Mexico is a merger of Spanish, Aztec, and Mayan influence (and other smaller tribes that lived in the area). How civilizations and sociestes interacted also defined them. I'm excited for this game but skeptical. Let's see how it plays out.
Yes thank you for your insight! We’re also excited overall but have a few hesitations. Someone suggested we might see Mayans transition into Aztecs, I’d be curious what you would think of that? If that is the case, would a change in wording that implies influence rather than direct transition work?
@@Paisley_Trees a change in wording would be needed. I could understand a transition from Aztec to Mexico but not Mayan to Aztecs. They were pretty much parallel to each other. Hopefully the devs explain bit more on this. I know some have mentioned Humankind's transitions be similar but I haven't played that game. Have you all?
No I haven't played humankind because everyone seemed to move on once I had some time to play! So many people seem to hate the transition in humankind but I need to look more into it to understand why
Well the good thing about how Humankind did it is, you dont have to switch, you can stay as your starting Civilization and just get gameplay bonuses for that Civ.
I think civs that historically have survived since the antiquities like Egypt should have a version for each of the 3 ages so that there's at least 1 historically consistent choice to pick.
Egypt today and Egypt of antiquity bare no relation to each other.
I agree
“Civs that historically have survived since the antiquities like Egypt”.
That’s a very shallow understanding of Egypt.
@toodleselnoodos6738 yes infact the reason Egyptian nationalism has struggled historically is because most modern citizens of Egypt did not associate themselves with the pharonic past, rather tribal, religious or pan Arab ties
@@LukeFoody-m9v pharaonic egypt to arabic egypt still better than egypt to mongolia i think
one way to see an indigenous population becoming for instance the us... would be an alternate history where a coalition of native people had succeded in doing the opposite: shoving away england, and then absorb the colonists that entered into the coalition to expel away england, then those guys became a minority in a new "north american native coalition".
of course doing this properly would be very tricky to communicate
Yes someone mentioned there’s the possibility of having Tecumseh lead the U.S. for some sort of narrative building driven by the player! But if players can make their own gameplay narratives, does it makes sense to just remove “historical choice” option totally and rely on gameplay to unlock civs, or just have every civ available?
@@Paisley_Trees Having every civ available would take away from the dynamic system and introduce optimal choice and pre-planning which is exactly what they do not want to have. I like the idea to have everything locked without “historical choice” and rely on gameplay to unlock civs
PS. Three eras are too few in my opinion. There should be a fourth - the Middle Ages, which lasted 1000 years. In earlier Civilization games eras passed too quickly. Before I trained knights and built castles, the gunpowder era was coming and everything was outdated.
Based on what I've read it seems the antiquity era lasts around 150+ turns on standard. Assuming that is also the case for Exploration and Modern thats ~450 turns for a standard game (Depending when you or someone else reaches their victory condition)
There's a reason for that, games nowadays come sparse so they can sell it as dlc
@@Bookworm214-y3d I mean, that's not really a "nowadays" point for Civ.
And in all fairness, I do believe that for highly complex grand strategy games, it is better to hold some things back so they can get more attention in DLC. Part of the reason Civ V was so successful is because of how well it boiled Civ down to its core elements to attract new fans, then paced out more complex features back into the game through DLC.
Whole concept of naming civilizations after those from our world is wrong path to go if you want to have this civ switching.
Lets say you spawn on the desert as nameless nomads. You create your first settlement named Thebes - your faction is from now on named Thebians. You evolve to civ like mongolians you turn to Thebian Khanate/Horde or if you become like ancient Franks you become Thebian Kingdom. You go to third era choosing some democratic traditions - you can be Thebian Republic or Thebian League. Prefer some authoritarianism? Be Thebian Empire or Thebian Dominium.
Its not that hard to program some naming generator.
And someone explain to me, why you tremble on concept of civilizations/tribes/countries losing and getting replaced? It happend a lot. Gauls? Devoured by growing Roman Empire. Etruscans? Lost and replaced. Carthaginians? Lost and replaced. Rome? Fell and got replaced by barbarian kingdoms. Lotharyngia? Burgundia? Prussians(baltic ones not german), Gone. Aztecs or Mayans? Gone. Caliphate of Cordoba? Eradicated by reconquista.
History of humanity is nasty and written with blood. Its not another episode of teletubbies.
I’m not an expert in AI, would such capabilities have existed 5 years ago when they probably started development? I do think it’s a great idea though, super dynamic gameplay, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that in future games! I think we tried to make clear in the video it just wouldn’t be fun to make the current and ongoing colonization of people into a game - especially one where you’re forced to play the scenario of completing that colonization through this civ changing mechanic. It’s just not fun for us because it takes us out of the game! Of course others could disagree (respectfully like you have) and we’re just 2 people with opinions we felt like sharing on our channel! In the end I doubt we’ll make much of a difference given how close the game is to being completed.
@@Paisley_Trees You dont need AI for that
Its funny that Civ of all things is being discussed in this way. What happened to fun? There is a unique novelty to being able to attack Gandhi with nuclear submarines as Shaka Zulu. Its fun and to me it never needed to be anymore complicated than that because Civilization never tried to assert itself as a truly historical game. We are pretending as though your 250 turn Civ game needs to follow a cohesive historical narrative and that the gameplay needs to altered so dramatically to make something work that no one asked for.
We love civ and we have lots of fun playing it! I recommend our civ 6 playthroughs to see how it can be fun to talk about history while playing civ. Of course this is a channel that talks about history through games, and sometimes the topic is less fun… we think it’s not fun for example to have slavery in the games, and I think the developers agree since it’s not in civ (I don’t it’s ever been? Definitely not in civ 6). Like I said at the end of the video, if Egypt becomes Songhai then we’ll play and make a video as to why we don’t think that’s historically accurate, but if the game is implying something more nefarious then we will definitely struggle more and would like to see that avoided, maybe through a more thoughtful wording, or maybe through avoiding some claims about “historical choice”!
It's just fluff for "we really only designed it this way to make more dlcs" ... It's window dressing for more corporate profits
@@Bookworm214-y3dSurprise, surprise, a game developer wants to earn some money by making a game. And they dare to do it their way. How could it be?
@@fatyak4122 they can do whatever they want, just pointing out the reason why it was done this way. "fun" is no longer a quality that is being considered when profits is placed at #1. you can NOT agree with it, or you can.
@@fatyak4122 unimagine unironically shilling for bad business practices
Fantastic discussion!
In short: Human history is complicated and there is no easy historical model that can be exploited as a gamified system.
Though one reason I’m still excited for Civ 7 is because of representation.
Throughout all the civ games, players have constantly gatekept various civilizations because they always needed to have “core” civilizations (usually highly Eurocentric) while the others come in as DLC late into the game-cycle.
I saw that they have a lot more American civs and even showcased Hawaii. In a base game.
I’ll take having scraps of histories and cultures that rarely ever get screen time than having to stick with another “Here’s 10 new European civs you can play as”.
Edit: The whole condoning genocide is a bit funny because genocide has always been a player condoned option in the game. Domination victory. 😅
Thank you! We tried to be measured and fair in our commentary, but I definitely got a little passionate thinking about the possibility that you might play for example Shawnee and then be told by the game that the next historical progression is to play U.S. - but you’re totally right the concept in some form already exists in civ games! So I guess the issue comes down to this claim that it’s the historical choice? We also are a huge fan of the range of civs we’re probably going to see on release!
For the countries and areas that have political conflicts, doing this non-sense civ transition is very dangerous… Imagine you try to transit China to Japan… one billion people will be pissed😂
Yes they need to tread very lightly lol
I think the Civ switching mechanic has a lot of potential! Both from a gameplay and historical perspective but I think it will be really difficult for the mechanic to meet it's potential for both the historic education and game play simultaneously, or at least, not from the jump. I imagine it will get better as more expansions and DLC for the game comes out.
I really hope they take the opportunity to fix some of the more boring historical representations. The "India" and "Arabia" civs stand out as the worst offenders in my eyes. It would be super cool to have an Arabian civ that starts out as the Nabateans, then having the choice to play as Ummayads or Abbasids in the exploration age and then maybe we could get some actual representation of modern Arab nations like Egypt or Iraq. But in all honesty, I don't think Firaxis has the balls! Even though that's a fairly innocuous decision I think they'll do their best to avoid "controversy" which is going to be hard when nations that exist today are being represented in the game and connecting them to other older civilizations may be even more controversial.
Firaxis has fumbled this in weird ways in the past as well. Dido for example in civ 5 and 6 is voiced by an actress who speaks reconstructed Phoenician with a modern Hebrew accent and in civ 6 founds Judaism as their religion, which seems to be a soft attempt to link that civilization to modern day Israel...which becomes even more confusing when you realize that Beirut's iconic corniche is visible in the background of her leader screen.
Anyway I'm rambling, loved the video, subscribed!
I very much agree with what you wrote! They need a lotttt of civs to make the transitions feel satisfactory and there is definitely lots of potential but if you watch our Abbasid video you'll see we were definitely expecting this system to allow more specificity for each civ, and it was a bit of a missed opportunity (but still SO much better than just Arabia!!). So far, they do seem to be shying away from 20th century civs in the modern age to maybe avoid controversy as you said, so if they're not going to do nation-states, maybe something like the Khedivate of Egypt would work? Also huge YIKES on the Phoenicia info you shared, if they're trying to stay away from controversy they failed with that lol.
I think they should make it optional to switch to a different civ to allow sandbox historical story making.
So for instance, if england continues its historical path in the americas with its traditional system, or for it to adopt new set of ideas and branch off to a new culture that is the USA.
Similarly with Rome, whether to continue with into the modern age or to evolve into modern european principles.
Or for egypt to retain its progress from its ancient heritage, or to get influenced by the classical Mediterranean influence.
As a game, civilization should allow all these paths, and not force civilisations to become today’s Canada, Germany, USA, etc.
The game definitely does not need to be completely historically accurate. The game needs to be fun and playable more than anything else and the more historically accurate you go, the more you have to include genocide lol
Not to mention slavery which is one of the most important building blocks of history
Unless I'm mistaken, i was under the impression from the announcement that a Civ could choose to remain on its "historical" path. You could start as Egypt and stay as Egypt through the whole game, and they each have unique bonuses throughout each age, as opposed to Egypt in previous games where they only got bonuses in the "Ancient" and "Classical" Eras.
I'm pretty sure the "historical" path is Egypt -> Songhai -> Buganda. That's the whole reason for the controversy.
It’s at minute 17:35 to 18:00 on their gameplay video. The wording is something like “there are many factors into which civ you evolve into… this includes any historical connection.. you might want to stick as close to history as possible, only picking civs that have historical ties to each other”!
I hadn't realized! Thank you both.
I didn't like the system in Humankind and I don't like it here. The culture changes feel less like changing cultural norms, memes, and aesthetics, and more like replacing the people themselves. Assyrians still exist, as do Mayans, only cultures that got exterminated disappeared. And changing culture in Humankind felt less like evolution and more like extermination.
One problem I have with this system is the fact that in some cases there is no "positive" historical progression available. Let's take Poland as an example. Assuming it is a civilization from exploration era, what can it realistically change into in modern era? Because if there is nothing called "modern Poland", than the only option seems to be Russia/Soviet Union or Austria-Hungary. But if that's the case, it would honestly feel like you've lost, Poland lost it's independence and, at least for me, there is no fun playing the modern era.
I might be a bit bias since I'm Polish, but i think the same problem might apply to other civilizations, like Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Japan (assuming you only have Feudal Japan and no Modern Japan) or Byzantium. So I must admit I am not a great fan of this mechanic, it will work in some cases but in others it will make you feel like you've lost the game and you are playing as "your colonizer".
I was actually thinking about Poland too when trying to think what civilizations this won’t work for at all! I don’t know how they get out of this conundrum with a civ like Poland to be honest - I can imagine china having three iterations but I doubt they’d give us two polands? I think most of us would have loved to see an option to keep your civ, but I think it’s too late for that and based on what motivated them to make this change for gameplay reasons, I don’t think it’s an option that they could easily implement based on recent reactions.
@@Paisley_Trees The only other possibility with Poland might be something called Intermarium. This was not so much a country, but more like a geopolitical plan for Eastern Europe, created after World War 1. It failed in real life, but perhaps the civilization might include this as an option? This might be a convenient way to add different option for any Eastern European Civs, instead of just having Russia/Soviet Union. But realistically I think they will most likely not include Poland or any Eastern European nation. Which is a bit disappointing, but still, it's their game and their decision.
Doable, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth splits into Poland or Lithuania.
I believe we all have the problem thinking that those civilizations/cultures in the game are somehow connected to us, to Earth. They're just concepts/ideas/archetypes.
I imagine that Poland is a modern civ
Not saying I don't understand the argument, and indigenous people becoming mexico is not a good look, but slavery and colonisation are part of history. When you capture a worker with an eagle warrior from a battle in IV, it's represeznting slavery,You can even genocide every othger civs on the map. So I can understand that in the context of the age switching you don't want colonisation to be represented, but if it is in the game with a mechanic and it makes sens, I don't think developers should just drop the idea.
You make some great points, and I get your perspective too! I’m sure the devs had these debates too
Your perspective is uniquely American one: while I agree that change from any indigenous culture into modern American culture would essentially endorse colonialism and genocide of the Native Americans, the same perspective can be applied to many other pairings. For example, Egypt becomes a part of Rome and later Byzantium as an effect of conquest, same is true for it becoming later Fatimid or Mamluk. Since in many cases we don't really have people who can identify with any of these displaced civilizations anymore, we cannot really know their perspective, but surely Ptolemaic Egyptians were not too happy becoming a part of the Roman Empire, and later Byzantine/Coptic Egyptians becoming part of an early Caliphate. In case of these last ones, we have remnants of the Copts in Egypt, and they're harassed and persecuted because of their beliefs, and are target of terrorist attacks until this day. The same is true for other Christian minorities like Assyrians in Iraq and neighboring areas. So for an Assyrian, switching between, e.g., Assyria to Ottoman Turkey, would be essentially like for a Native American switching to America. Therefore, I think that the concept of switching civilization is really problematic in its core. Either you go for nonsensical pairings like Egypt to Mongolia, or you go for pairings which are controversial because of the reasons above. (And switching to Mongolia should be also considered controversial, since Mongols were very well known of slaughtering entire cities, so is this implied that when you switch to Mongolia, you essentially did that at the cost of your population being enslaved or killed?).
In rare examples we have several civilizations which continuously existed since ancient times, these are obviously Far East civilizations, like China, Japan, Korea. They all went different ways (like Japan preserving monarchy, South Korea becoming a democratic country, and China becoming a communist country), but these were decisions mostly made internally, obviously often as a result of outside pressure, but not conquest. And this is the model Civilization VII should adopt for civilization transformation: not always peaceful transformation, but often evolutionary, often adopting outside forms of government, but as a result of internal decision. And the new mechanic of switching civilizations essentially takes away this choice from us. I cannot start game as an ancient Japan, and finish as a modern Japan, this is no longer possible, and this is just mindboggling.
We use the American examples because I think they’re the clearest ones to show how wrong it would feel, but also like we said, and I think you’re agreeing with, it’s an ongoing process today. I’m Persian myself so I can imagine many would be upset for the Persian empire to become the mongol one, but it does have a different implication because it’s not ongoing and because the relationship of the ilkhanids to Persian culture was not like the colonialism of later eras. Not to dismiss how others would be upset, and your other examples from the west Asian region I think are much closer to this issue we’re concerned about. Especially because assyrians are once more a targeted group today, I just don’t want a game to make light of ongoing suffering, so I think we’re mostly in agreement!
@@Paisley_Trees Certainly, I don't think we disagree, just trying to add to your perspective. Still, I don't dismiss not ongoing issues so lightly : I think present issues inform us how people in the past could feel facing new, alien empire taking over their homes. Also, colonialism or imperialism are much wider phenomena, not only limited to early modern and modern European empires. Same behaviors we attribute to modern British can be already found in case of ancient Assyria or Persia. So, what my point is, displacement of culture, ethnic identity, religion always comes through suffering, and Civ VII makes it routine occurrence.
Ed Beach has literally talked about the possibility of playing Japan in all three ages the day after the gameplay trailer. I feel like people are getting angry way too soon and we just need to wait for more updates.
There main game should be a non historically accurate game mode, with a historical accurate main game that allows you to stay your civ the whole game or switch to ones that make sense. For example Rome - Florence - Italy or Rome - Rome - Rome or Rome - Florence - Florence
A bit off-topic, but I really hope there will a significant AI improvement. My friend don't have high-end PC's, or sometimes I just don't have time to sit through a whole game and I really need AI that can actually keep up with the player or at least just play the game.
For sure it’s also an interesting question to think what paths the AI will take between the civs!
This only makes sense in certain situations, like maybe the British civ can branch out into, America, England, and Australia.
Even then, like, Britain still exists though, it just budded some new Anglophile cultures.
I believe your approach is an improvement. Personally, I believe the whole framing of historical accuracy for a game like Civ is a bad idea. The game design is so far away from any kind of representation of the real-world and historical developments that accuracy can only really apply to elements of the presentation. The use of world history as the game's theme functions as flavor, providing a hodgepodge of recognizable and relatable elements that allows the player to create their own story. But we could just as well replace the whole presentation with a fantasy or sci-fi one, without changing any game rules, and it wouldn't make the game feel incoherent.
Great discussion. I also wondered about the timeframes of the eras.
You are touching on the morality of using colonization and slavery in a game. Many games are about indulging in some kind of immorality. It is indeed a very interesting topic; why do we see indulging in random murder or conquest as different to indulging in colonization and slavery? Civ is of course in itself a game about war, conquest, and imperialism. Victoria 3, another game like Civ about imperialism, includes colonization and slavery as core mechanics of the game as it is set in the 1830 to 1930 timeframe. Do you reject Victoria 3 on the grounds of including these mechanics? Or is including them part of their historiographical lens? Could the same be argued for Civ including colonization?
I agree that an indigenous civ "turning into" the USA is a concerning framing. But if we let the exact wording go for a moment and focus more on their communicated intent of creating layers of civilizations, it is true that the USA was built "on top of," or rather displacing, the indigenous civilizations. Now could this also be seen as part of Civ's historiographical lens? Or is there some extra difference? Maybe the new concept of choosing and switching civs and leaders is too gamified to be framed as a historiographical lens?
I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks bye
Some context for Victoria 3: In as much as it is a game about colonization and slavery, it is a game about *resisting* colonization and slavery. So I think it is a beautiful game
Thank you for the thoughtful comment! I have to admit I haven’t played Victoria 3 but it sounds very interesting, I’m very curious as to how they approach historical game making - from my understanding they seem much more focused on conveying historical accuracy than civ? I think since making this video we’ve learned more about the civ switching mechanic, and you’re exactly right that there’s a challenge in communicating what they are trying to achieve historically through game mechanics. I think it’s clear now their main concern was gameplay, and now it’s a matter of doing so that makes sense for a historical game. For example I love how the city architecture will retain some aspects of the previous civ, I assume they also retain their unique civics tree? I think I just need to be generous in interpreting what they are trying to convey history as with just game play mechanics! Still I remain a little critical with the fact that they are marketing this new feature as “historical”, and I think that opens them up to criticism when they clearly cannot only consider historical factors (like having Songhai’s “historical choice” civ switch be Buganda… which maybe it will change and that is all they could show us at the moment). I’m going to talk more about this with a group of civ streamers on Saturday, and I’ll keep your questions in mind for that conversation too!
I definitely need to play it! Since making this video I played humankind and it was disappointing in so many ways. I’ll add Victoria 3 to my list as well as Ara coming out soon… civ 7 has made me very interested in how other games tackle the same issues
I definitely hope they remove the "historical choice" marker from Aksum when you've selected Hatshepsut. And I hope to see Native American civ options in the Modern age. Cree, Shoshone, Apache, Mapuche, or Lakota could be good options, given that the Shawnee will apparently be an Exploration Age civ. But I think you set a pretty tough standard if an Exploration Age civ can't have a historical path to the civ that historically colonized it. If both the Aztecs and modern Mexico are in the game, I'd find it very strange if there wasn't a possible historical path from Aztecs to Mexico.
You also mentioned that Haudenosaunee to US could be ok due to the influence on the US constitution, but Shawnee to US would be horrible. But didn't the Shawnee influence the US? And how do you determine what kind of influence justifies a transition from one civ to another? I'd argue that most colonizers have been influenced by the cultures they colonized to at least some degree.
I completely agree with everything you’re saying but just to clarify one thing: I was trying to brain storm ways out of the conundrum of having Shawnee replaced by the U.S. and having that replacement of civilization be claimed as a historically accurate progression for the Shawnee. What I was trying to say is, well if they take out this claim that it’s a historically accurate progression, and instead say something like “U.S. was in the sphere of influence of the Shawnee”, then maybe that would be better because it’s not implying the Shawnee are gone, or that they’re replaced by the U.S., just that some influence made it to this next empire you pick. I am also curious why Shawnee is exploration age and not modern age given that their leader is Tecumseh but that’s a different issue. I should emphasize that this changing of wording would make it much more palatable for me personally but I can’t speak to everyone else who doesn’t like it. I just wanted to propose an idea that is easy to implement, that softens the claims to something more defendable. I’d be curious what you and others think about the fact that the Mayans are an antiquity civilization, therefore they won’t be replaced by Mexico, but some other exploration age civ, which I’m guessing is Spain? That was what I found questionable but should have made clearer - going from Mayans to Spain instead of Mayans to Mexico. Or is that just splitting hairs? Happy to see such thoughtful engagement, thank you!
@@Paisley_Trees Thanks for clarifying :)
My guess would be the Aztecs rather than Spain.
Given that there are only three ages, I assume that "Exploration Age" actually covers all/most of the Middle Ages + the Early Modern Era, and into sometime during the early 19th century.
(Exploration Age isn't a perfect name for this time span, but I'm not sure I'd be able to come up with a better term. Post-classical/Pre-modern maybe?)
So Maya > Aztecs > Mexico could be one path. And Spain would represent medieval Spain too, so it probably wouldn't be a transition option for the Maya, but maybe for Rome/Celts/Phoenicians/Goths, depending on which of these are in the game.
They should change civilization's strategy set via changing great person rather than changing civilization itself.
All people have a common ancestor just depends on how far back you go.
Historically accuracy in a game like CIV doesn't matter. It doesn't even work, and kinda miss the point of CIV. But historically authenticity and immersion is important, and I think most people confuse historically accuracy with authenticity when they say they want accuracy.
I love the idea of CIVs representing a culture or different culures with ties to each other. Like For example Egypt being able to change to other northern african civilizations, and other nations along the nile river and in the Levant as they would all have been influenced by Egypt at some point, to some extent. And other African civilizations have even claimed the title of Pharao and the successor of Egypt like many European nations have claimed the title of Caesar/kaiser/Czar/Imperator/Emperor etc and being the successor to Rome.
But Egypt changing into Mongolia is dumb. If you play as Egypt and focus on horses/cavalry a more authentic evolvement in the next age would be the ability to turn into the Mamluk sultanate.
I'm all for Civs changing but within reason. And I think this is a missed opportunity to represent more "micro civs/cultures" and each CIV having their own "CIV-tree" if you want. With some overlapping like both Egypt and Arabs having the ability to become the Mamluk sultanate. Huns can become Mongols and Seljuks. Seljuks can become Ottomans but the Mongols can not. Mongols on the other hand can become Manchus which again can evolve into China (Quing Empire). But if a different nation, lets say Han Empire China already exist on the map that route on the tree is locked. Unless they are conquered/wiped out before the next age begins.
All excellent points and I think you’re on to something with accuracy vs. authenticity. I should add that they showed civ 7 having unique tech trees for each civilization and a more generic one for leader!
Yep I liked your accuracy vs. authenticity point too. But I disagree on your "changing civs within reason" point. I actually like the completely inauthentic civ-switches the most for gameplay reasons. The problem is with implying that choices are historical when they are not
Yeah. I don't mind it as long as it is an option really. Just like random personalities is an option in older Civs, I guess (and hope) that you can just check/uncheck a box for Civs being able to change into wathever or being locked to more authentic routes. And everybody will be happy:D
They want to use this to sell more civ dlcs
I really don't get why people are mad at this feature. After all it improve the historicity of the make the game feel more fun and varited. People that are mad about it are just don't want the game to be art and just want it to be their little toy soldiers game.
It improves one aspect of historicity, not having civs like USA in 4k BCE, but at the same time it highlights things like immortal leaders and "smoothing" of complicated relationships between real world civs.
IMO switching leaders would make more sense, they could say, that leaders represents dynasties or political systems.
As someone who was amazed when Civ1 game out ..very disappointing.
I wouldn't go so far as saying they're ruining the game, but they're definitely going against the original idea of the game.
The whole point of Civilization was to pick a civ you like, then take their civ concept back to ancient times and see if you can progress them all the way to leaving the planet.
That's no longer what this game is about.😞
I really like the video The only thing I disagree with is the treatment of colonization. Violence and expansion whether we like it or not, is part of our development as a species. I don't think the colonizer should should be the only option to transition from the native society I still think the The colonizer should be an option. The only fair way to censor colonization would be to remove warfare and expansion from civ 7 which is not tenable.
Thank you! And yes that’s fair enough, especially since they’ve changed the wording since this video from “historical choice” to something else (I don’t exactly remember what!).
If they want to do historical transitions, Egypt isn't a good choice!
Your obsession with colonization was eye rolling, Persia can’t change into Mongolia? As you mentioned this is a GAME, it sounds super fun. I just want giant robots in the Modern age… 15:18
It's just a new way to sell a lot more leader packs. It's baffling that more people dont see that. If they truly wanted to balance things they could have just given each civ abilities for each age...there i balanced it.
What do you think native american tribes should change to in the new eras? I think the only logical choice is US, Canada, etc. depending on the location.
Well the only one we know for sure about is the Shawnee, and for that one we’re questioning why it’s in the exploration age and not in the modern age. Tecumseh is a 19th century leader and I would have assumed that is part of the modern era? But right now, the only connection we see between Egypt and Songhai is proximity, so if they change the concept from “historical” to “closest regionally” then that could open up more choices too, but also make the transitions maybe less fraught with implications!
When a country gets overrun by another country like the Romans. The Romans brought roads, and other technologies, so I can see it.
People are just made about the name rather than how it plays. They could have literally removed the name of all civs and kept the gameplay, and everyone would be happy.
im kind of confused if its just a game and its fun Ghandi nukes, i cant for the love of god think of 1 legimate reason why we should care about ppls feelings about who conqueres who, because itsjust a game . nobody nesides woke ppl would make this an issue... get over it get ready and have fun
You’re free to have your opinions as we are ours! But thank you for sharing respectfully and I’m sure many people agree with you. I love civ and I think will have lots of fun with civ 7 like civ 6
I just want my American chariots rolling across the field.
I never played Civ to be historical. I played it for the opposite reason. Romans conquering the world with iron-clads? Yes, please! This forced-switch sounds like it would preclude a lot of fantasy/role-play styles. I’m probably going to skip it.
i get where they are coming from, cultures/nations do change over time. but from the sounds of things what they are doing to represent that is causing every civ in the world to all at once spontaneously change into a completely different culture that might have some relation or could be completely different altogether. why cant I just evolve my own culture instead of becoming a new one? If my Egyptian culture is successful why cant it continue to exist into the exploration and modern ages? they could at least add that option to keep the role play of bringing one culture and one civilization from the dawn of history into the future
I think having that option to keep your civ would have made a lot of people happy, but I wonder if it’s too late now to make that change. They’ve said that all civs are balanced to the age, and have designed the game around this ages mechanic. I think I did mention in the video that we will have the option to just play one age, and I’m guessing that is what they will point to for people who want to play the same civ throughout. But then you miss 2/3 of the game of course.
R.I.P. Civilization. It appears that the CIV series ended with CIV 5. Sad, been playing CIV since CIV I on Amiga. I want its original sandbox feel back. Will stick to grand strategy games then... Looks like a dumbed down console game.
Going to be a shit game
In other words, your civ is automatically conquered by another civ when the new era arrives. I hate it. I don't care to play Historicalization.
Yawl scare me to buy now!
For example in Civ6 I played with Shaka Zulu and Ethiopia
I would be pissed they make me change to a civilization that looks nothing like us!
I thought the whole point was to get your civilization to survive through time!
I think we’ll get lots more information soon! I’m guessing before release for sure we’ll know the civilizational paths they’ve marked for each civ
I like the idea of evolving to another civilization, but it should be done with sense. In Humankind, you could go from Egypt to China... On the other hand, I won't meet Americans in 2000 BC or Sumerians in the 21st century.
shawnee turning america maybe is controversial but history is build with blood sadly so also wrong to not remember that prespectiv
also you play a game where you nuke others…..and take over the cities,…or have cultural influence over them
It looks like they are adding something very complicated and very sensitive for little return on gameplay. It may be historical accurate for a civ to change over history spanning hundreds or thousands of years but I’m only going to be playing the game for a few hours. If I’m emotionally invested as playing Egypt I will want to remain Egypt till the end. If I wanted to play as Mongolia I would start a brand new game. This level of nuance is just unnecessary and by the reaction I’ve been seeing it’s also very unwanted
They are fixing inherent issues: late game lacked depth, it was a boring and long dash towards the victory condition, rarely becoming any interesting (you could easily tell who's winning based on the status during the transition from mid game to end game). Reason being: early game disadvantages or errors piling on top of each other and snowballing into later game stages.
@@tomaszs3040 I agree with you, but they could solve these issues without forcing you to change to a Civ you may not actually want to play. The example of Egypt is a really interesting one as the country actually exists today, so why should people not be able to play as it?
Humankind had its flaws, undeniably, but it did allow you to continue as the culture you were if you wanted to, and a small thing that made me smile was the inclusion of Egypt as both a 1st era culture and final era culture.
But mid-late game crises can be introduced with civ swapping being possible but not necessary, and that will likely be the more valuable mechanic to keep things interesting. With crises you could maintain the civs themselves while choosing between different ways of responding to them - e.g. If you chose England from the beginning and the plague is the first disaster, perhaps you can choose between traits in the exploration age that could either focus on trade and exploration or traits that focus on internal production (enclosures, early stage industrialisation, constitutionalism etc). Both of which are very English things in that era but allow specialisation for the player without forcing the abandonment of any emotional investment a player may have built up around the civ. This probably could be something implemented *alongside* the current system of civ switching too, allowing for all parties to be satisfied here, so I don't think it's a bad suggestion.
@@Livsopc Modern Egypt has almost nothing to do with the ancient Egyptian culture. Current Egypt is much closer to Arabia than to ancient Egypt.
@@tomaszs3040 I'm not an Egyptian, nor have I studied the country's culture much, so I'm very happy to be corrected here, but I would tend to agree. I presume there may be some affinity and pride through Egyptian society at things like the Pyramids and the continuity of the state. But your argument is true also of English culture today compared to 200 years ago, the constant shifting between change and preservation is somewhat the nature of human society and culture.
Of course, different cultures and states are going to be contextually different, but with Egypt it is true that a political entity called Egypt exists in the same general location as one of the earliest civilisations known today by the same name, and that continuity is likely something felt by at least some of those living there, and indeed could be felt by someone playing a game as Egypt that is able to make it to the modern age having started in antiquity. Which may not be felt by someone in a game who is forced to switch to a different civilisation that probably has even fewer connections to the original civilisation than modern Egypt has to Ancient Egypt.
Again, this is contextual, and subjective. I'm not trying to suggest what Firaxis are trying is inherently bad, but it does raise some fundamental questions around culture, civilisations (or the political entities that represent them), and identity, which would be good to have discussed. :)
I’m curious if the driving factor was actually a way of rethinking history, or solving gameplay issues! I am leaning towards gameplay tbh. I think I remembered to mention in the video that there is an option to just play a single era, that should take about 200 turns, which is typically how many turns I play civ 6. I wonder if that is what they will point to for people who want to stay as a single civilization!
Is this woman saying potato?
Yes sorry, that is PotatoMcWhiskey, a famous RUclipsr and civ player!
She is. She is referring to a RUclipsr who plays a LOT of Civ called Potato McWhisky.
@@Paisley_Trees Ohh i see, i thought i misheard it the first time until she said it again. Thanks for letting me know, and also @wakkosan
I’m going to say something that may be controversial but… who cares about hurt feelings? This is a video game. Whether the culture you identify with is represented to the end of time or not is entirely irrelevant to history irl, which IS a worthy cause to be upset about certainly for many cultures around the globe. I understand Civ has been an approachable, relatively PG game series, which does make the Civ evolution a somewhat questionable element to introduce as it does put them in potentially hot water with indigenous cultures, but Civ has also been controversial as is for its inherent Eurocentric biases in terms of development, advancement, settlement, and representation. Essentially, when you toy in the historical fiction genre, you will always be controversial!
I think one way they could have potentially remedied this is to make it so that your leaders would change with the ages alongside your Civ, so if you start as say the Navajo, you could end the game as the US but your leader would be Chester Nez, whereas if you started with the British, you could still end up being the US, but with a more traditional presidential leader instead.
Ultimately, I think that sensitivity in history cuts both ways. I understand that people looking to play what is essentially a board game may not want to encounter the harsh realities of genocide and/or colonialism, but on the other hand, painting a happy-go-lucky version of history where slavery never occurred and Colonization is a mere policy card doesn’t make your game less offensive, but imo makes it even more misleading/obfuscating as to the mechanisms through which human history have actually transpired. I would love to see a separate series someday grapple with the more brutal/controversial realities of history via the 4X genre.
Also, this is the first video I have watched of yours and saw on Twitter you’re a Yalie which makes us neighbors! Will sub for more interesting historical discourse around Civ
I don’t think what you’re saying is controversial at all, and I appreciate the intellectual engagement and debate! I think you’ve got an excellent point that it’s maybe not so much about hurt feelings, but this balance between do we place historical accuracy above all else, or do we try to keep games light and not force one to encounter harsh realities? It’s one civ really has to balance and I’m sure have these debates behind closed doors too, and generally I think they usually land somewhere in the middle.
Absolute s#!t. I hope this is an optional mode upon release.
You couldn't get around having an indigenous leader lead the US? That would be great representation. 😅
That’s actually huge big brain solution I never thought of lol
@@Paisley_Trees With the new system, with it being open and vague, allows you to fill in the story of your Civs journey. The Native Americans can form the United States, but it wouldn't be culturally the same one as now, rather one started by them rather than European colonists who rebelled.
I would be interested to see if your vision is one they share! From the art style revealed so far, like the architecture and look of cities, I’m not 100% convinced that this sort of filling in your own narrative would be satisfying. But the only indication the U.S. is in the game is the leader Benjamin Franklin, which now that leaders are unlinked with civs, it might not mean anything.
@@Paisley_Trees I figured architecture would be the same for each Civ, no matter who has it. It would be a lot of work, unless they had building style tied to leader and not Civ.
Were Indians mad Ghandi built nukes and wanted wars in game?
I'm number 1000 :)
We did it!! Thank you! 💜
Please do not use your academic titles to make normative statements about how a game ought to be. An ought is a normative statement, and thus academic titles are irrelevant to such a discussion. I also get the point of counterfactuality, but having Egypt magically become Mongolia just totally breaks immersion for me. They could have made Egypt a generic pastoralist civilization (while keeping the name), but MONGOLIA? No, absolutely not. This isnt even counterfactual, its plain wrong. Mongolia is in the eastern steppes of Asia, Egypt in Africa. You can have a pastoralist Egypt without raping history by turning them into an actually existing different civilization that has zero historical ties to Egypt.
I think we’re just sharing our opinions as you are free to share yours! I think at the heart of the issue we agree, but I see the third option they give (turning into Mongolia based on gameplay) isn’t for people like us interested in history, it’s for people who mostly care about play style and couldn’t care less what name is attached to what bonuses. But if you listen carefully to the video we are VERY concerned as to why they connect Hatshepsut to Aksum, or Egypt to Songhai, or Songhai to Buganda, and claim there is a historical connection between these.
The discussion of colonialism in Civ made me remember how the ‘civilian unit’ (mostly spies) naming system works in civ vi with Australia where the names are all indigenous names until the later ages where they’re replaced by western names… yuck
Oh wow I never even noticed that! Yikes
"based on our data, everyone is playing England and the USA... We need to force them to play an African country!"... Is how this whole thing started...I bet my life on it 😂
The Egyptians are not historically accurate in the game, the developers purposely made them look like Nubians….very wrong
Yuck, your approach really disappointed me, i was hoping for more out of this game instead of the fluff in the previous game like climate change and grievances