What makes a good Civ-game ?

[arslankhan]

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

[Spiffor]

5. Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[WarpStorm]

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

[Spiffor]

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

[Spiffor]

6. Various levels of micromanagement

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Spiffor]

7. Replay value and moddability

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

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

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

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

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

[Solver]

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

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

[Spiffor]

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

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

[Solver]

Hmm... fansite coverage ?

[pedrojedi]

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

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

[Theseus]

Spiffor, buddy, you left out:

ONE MORE TURN!!!

[Spiffor]

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

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

[Flight]

excellent thread spiffor

[pedrojedi]

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

[pedrojedi]

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