Refactionizing 4x: The Civilization Problem

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The 4X genre is an often-overlooked part of gaming history with an illustrious past that had fallen out of favor until recently. The Architect explores how new games in this once-great genre can go about standing on their own merits, rather than being slaves to the legacy of Civilization.

[@anonymousjeffry1864]

The problems all 4X games still have, is that the endgame is often always just tedious. At the start you have fun exploring, trying to survive, planning out your strategy. But during mid to end game, you often know you won already and spend many turns just rounding up your game.

[@MrFlarespeed]

Stellaris avoids this somewhat by having endgame crises and fallen empires that awaken late game.

[@StephensCrazyHour]

I'd go further and say that the interesting part of the game generally only lasts a few hours. There comes a point where you fall behind irreparably or you reach a point where you know you will win, and in most civ games that happens very early. I remember civ 3 being over as soon as you reached cavalry because the AI couldn't adequately defend against 3 tiles of movement. How many times have you given up on a game of civ because you got to the middle ages and knew you would win or lose from that point? I think a more interesting direction for 4X games to go is to create smaller games with more focus on the weight of individual choices.

[@julioverne579]

Well thats whats great about Civ V... it has so many mods and was built to make modding extremely easy that I play this came since it came out... yeah I usually quit a game in the mid game or after I used a cizilisations specific trait but its so much fun to start all over again an add a different mod or 2 or 30...

[@gilgabro420]

I think that the games need to somehow transition into a ecenimic manager getting more complex as game progresses. imagine managing everything that's necessary to build a complex economy! But civ is quite an beginners game... and a already like the new districts mechanic but it also punishes building tall. I don't know civ might have gotten into a corner creative wise.

[@MiguelOliveira-wz4ju]

@@MrFlarespeed but it has an horrible early game. you cant build your planets because of limited growth/administrative capacity, you cant build your economy because of limited planet growth and you cant build your fleet because you dont have an economy to support it. all this limited by tech constraints. mid game is somewhat better because of the new federations mechanics and crisis, but its somewhat lacking because of the lack of importance of strategic resources. late game is the best of all games, i agree

[@enlightedjedi]

I think it is Explore, expand, exploit and exterminate (3&4 switched)!

[@Kissamiess]

Yes, because it typically happens in that order.

[@enlightedjedi]

Yes, but the presenter said it in a different order. Daleks would most likely disagree I guess :)!

[@torstengang5521]

@modisp thats the correct 4x

[@fundemort]

When I play Civ's to me it Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend

[@mikesnow285]

The 4X description of these games make no sense, there's many victory conditions that do not include, expansion, exploit or exterminate. I'll stick to RTS or Turn-Based to describe these games.

[@LimeyLassen]

I'm of the opinion that good single player and competitive multiplayer experiences are incompatible. Novelty is sacrificed in the name of balance, or vice versa. In Civ both are compromised.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Yeah, no wonder in Starcraft 2 there's a quite distinct unit layout between Campaign an Multiplayer(s) !

[@reubenm.d.5218]

I love Civ, but it's high time the devs took some of this in.

[@wombat4191]

Never played Stellaris, but it looks like someone looked at Spore space stage and said "hey let's make that but actually interesting and good". And I have to say, I'm interested.

[@Gufnorkian]

This video is terrible. First, there's been games that did the diverse factions long before the games you mention, such as Master of Orion and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Second, one of the games you use as an example might have different gameplay with different factions, but the fact that they can't balance the gameplay worth a damn clearly shows why Civ doesn't do it. It's not fun playing a game you know you can win on the highest difficulty 100% of the time because the mechanics are broken. You say Civ is a game for beginners and you're dead wrong. Civ is a game for experts, because it provides a challenge. Endless Legend might be fun for a beginner because they're not experienced enough to discover how broken the game really is and can thus enjoy the different playstyles. Civilization has problems, most notably the fact that the AI has started getting worse with each new release after Civ IV, but your video is way off the mark. Civ purposely avoid drastically different starting factions in order to ensure that their gameplay works for each faction and that the multiplayer experience is a fair one. I love that there are other games out there doing things differently, but saying that Civs choice is the wrong one is ignorant. You might not like it, but the genre would be much worse off if no game offered it.

[@marlonyo]

i mean the first point is not a point against but a point in favor since this video since this is not a civ vrs endless legend video. same goes for your second point.

[@Gufnorkian]

The first point didn't even mention Endless Legend, it had nothing to do with it. It addressed his dreamed up scenario where 4X died out because the factions weren't diverse enough in the early games. They clearly weren't, Civ was pretty much the only game doing that even back then.

[@ebolachanislove6072]

endless legend is pretty balanced imho walkers just kindof suck

[@lettuceprime4922]

Henrik Persson - Civ was the only game doing what? Having mechanically different factions?

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

MULE had lots of different factions... Including pacman, spheroids, and those Bonzoids from the Arm Pull Galaxy.

[@zinccull]

Would be interested to hear your take on the 4X Dominions games by Illwinter. They have been around a long time (not quite as long as civ) but have many of the features you describe here though they lack the polish of some of the most recent 4X games

[@sorcdk2880]

While Dominions play similar to 4x games, I am not sure whether they technically are 4x games, considering that the exploration and expansions are done as military scouting and conquest rather than exploration and expansion into empty space.

[@zinccull]

Not sure I would agree with that distinction as in Dominions it is still crucial to gain knowledge about the world, to identify resources, and gather intelligence about your opponents so that you can prioritize the expansion of your nation. Exploration can occur through a variety of mechanisms (scouts, spies, magic, and pushing dominion) beyond straight up aggression. I think that the whole "4X or not" would be an interesting debate though but I thought the whole premise of this video was to argue that maybe 4X needs some shaking up. IMO, Dominions is very closely aligned to 4X if not actually in the 4X genera and therefore it can be useful to see how Dominions breaks with tradition, handles highly asymmetric nations, and makes for a compelling game play and narrative. Anyways, its your channel I was just offering it up since you mentioned several well regarded games from big studios but didn't mention Dominions, possibly because it comes from a relatively obscure studio, even though I think it has many of the characteristics you were looking for or admired in the non-Civ 4X games.

[@sorcdk2880]

This isnt my channel, so there is no need to out on that whole line. I would indeed agree that dominions is close enough to 4x that one can at least look at how it handles assymetric factions, and several other concepts. Dominions does suffer from a profoundly steep learning curve though. I remember trying to figure out which faction might be a good fit for my first game, and when searching on the net the basic answer was: just try to play a lot of different factions in practice games. This together with some other details, means it will tend to be a niche game, unless it accumulates such a great reputation that it spreads outside that niche (which is what happened to factorio, which were originally considered a niche game for intellectuals).

[@zinccull]

Oppps my bad - didn't look at who had responded. Dominions is complex, but I wouldn't say its steep as more very deep and there isn't a great tutorial with the game so its hard to know where to focus (though now there are good KZbin intros). When I started I bounced the first time as well. But I have been told that playing as Niefelheim or Jotunheim is a good place to start as the giants are pretty good, don't tend to have vast armies, and don't rely on complex mechanics. Anyways, I have put in way too many hours on this game and still feel like I am learning constantly... I agree its niche but I think there are lessons here that could be applied to more standard 4X games to great effect.

[@sorcdk2880]

It felt as a very steep learning curve for me. I think I spendt more time figuring out what kind of faction would be right for me for my first serious game than I spend from there until I started making and playing my own modded factions. That might also say more about how I approach games than the learning curve, but it still stands to me as a game with a very steep initial learning curve. After that it becomes smoother, but that may have as much to do with you already having climbed a huge cliff already.

[@williamburnett3660]

Doesn't anybody remember sword of the Stars anymore? Yes you could say that it sequel sort of flopped pretty badly and the first game with all three expansions didn't age well but nor did it age badly. At one point it was praised for revolutionising the 4X genre but now it's nearly forgotten Into Obscurity. I understand that not everybody who loves the 4X genre would like sword of the Stars but every man has his favorite 4X game. I was first introduced to the 4X genre by sword of the Stars and still to this day remains my favorite 4X game. I just really hope that sword of the Stars could make a resurgence. Of course the disastrous launch of Sword of the Stars 2 and what appears to be a total genre change by sword of the Stars: the pit in which I haven't played yet to see if it's any good.

[@williamburnett3660]

Warning I did not do much proofreading to this comment. Sorry if it's misspelled or other stuff.

[@pauldaulby260]

easier to have a relatively balanced game with the traditional, better at x, roles. If someone wants to play tech based, doesn't matter if tech is underpowered, the tech specialist will still be good at it.

[@WolfGamez1]

This is why in CIV 5, Venice was always my favorite, because of the one city rule with puppets was super interesting to me

[@alexbaker1569]

Do you think that the cultists of the eternal end maybe copied them?

[@Awalys]

Holy shit, I *have* to get Stellaris. I'm literally incapable of ~>not

[@r4wtgrh42]

Did you get it?

[@Exodon2020]

Well, we don't hear from him. he's probably totally engulfed into the game^^ (1,450 hours and counting on Steam - easily my most played game ever)

[@Awalys]

I did and now I'm a huge Paradox fan in general.

[@lololoershadow]

Ahh the love of Stellaris

[@robadc]

@Awalys kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWKmgmqMrN9re9E

[@jasonfenton8250]

Given that Cleopatra is famous for seducing two of the greatest romans ever, I don't see how her being sexualized in modern portrayals is weird.

[@tevildo7718]

Well she wasn't exactly known for her physical beauty either so it would make more sense for her to be plain if we are going with historical accuracy.

[@FrankCastle-tq9bz]

We don't actually know too much about her actual appearance and it's moot point anyway - the fact of the matter is that she has a reputation as a seductress, so it makes sense to portray such an individual as some one physically attractive.

[@robertgronewold3326]

They have coins with Cleo's profile on them. She was chubby with a large nose. What was attractive about her was her intelligence. She had the brains to get what she wanted.

[@blanktrigger8863]

@Robert: Chubby wasn't really a negative back then. Look at the statues of Aphrodite. Chubbiness replaced thinness as an unattractive feature mostly because it became a sign of unhealthiness in place of thinness due to the mass availability of food.

[@bismuthcrystal9658]

Cleopatra's reputation is that of a beautiful seductress, true or not. And yes, chubbiness was beautiful back then - and so was that now-generally-considered-ugly roman profile with a squiggly nose with little to no bridge. But, how is gesturing a lot overly or weirdly sexualized? She's covered, with minor cleavage - probably less than the actual Cleopatra showed - doesn't have an exaggerated hourglass figure - in fact, the most exaggerated proportion she has, even compared to other leaders in Civ VI, is her head size. Which is an infantile trait, not a sexualized one. She makes a flirtatious gesture. Fairly tame considering how far they could've gone with it, and not objectified or anything. And what sexualization is there is nowhere near as prominent as, say, Montezuma's very weird utter rage. At worst, it's akin to Peter's arrogance. The characters are caricatures. Cartoonish. Exaggerated.

[@MrErtwer]

Meanwhile in Warhammer 40k Gladius: -There's only one x... ...EXTERMINATUS!!!!

[@madmark8363]

Letz figh' doze 'oomiez! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

[@electricant55]

0/10, no Chaos

[@OzgurOzanCakmak]

I am a simple man. I see Basilisk artillery throwing Earthshaker rounds and our boys who fight for the Emperor, beloved by all, I buy. Simple (but not basic) combat, tons of research, fast gameplay... Gladius is a focused game which does what it sets out to do. For a 3 person team it is awesome.

[@Fyrebrand18]

The Emperor Protects.

[@inderpreetsingh7429]

@ WE WILL DIE WITH THE LIGHT OF THE EMPEROR IN OUR EYES

[@icecold1805]

Came for Civilization V, left with a copy of Endless Legends.

[@AlaricKerensky]

Few I know regret that decision.

[@czechmeoutbabe1997]

yeah the game seems reaaaaally hard to get into. The UI is so exhausting to try to understand (at least for me).

[@VluggeJapie59]

It is actually quit easy. While I love the game it really is not that hard probably one of its drawbacks because there isn't as much of a challenge because of incompetent AI. But the lore o my fuking god the lore and bachground of the races is unlike any other strategy game out there. Not just in Endless legends but also in Endless space it really is what makes the game for me.

[@rams3955]

+Lucas van Wijk Idk what it is but I have struggled getting into Endless legend and endless space 2 which was never a problem for me in total war warhammer or civ 5 and 6. I think my main issue with endless legend is the lack of variety in units and the combat system. In civ even though alot of available units will never be used theres such a massive variety just based on the fact that you span generations. Endless on the other hand your armies have 3 units and thats it. Like I want to love Endless legend, I love the huge variety in how the factions play but I get bored of it so fast. Im not a huge 4x gamer as I play them mostly when im bored with my other games but for contrast I have 60 hours in warhammer 2 55 hours in civ 5 40 in civ 6 and then 10 in EL and 6 in ES. Haha idk i've also tried to get back into EL 2x after I initially stopped playing when I got it in like 2015 didn't take either time.

[@nemou4985]

Pretty sure this video is made to sell Endless Legend. It even says "8 major parts you WILL be experiencing" :V

[@CptTachyon]

A downside to Endless Legend's approach to factions is that in many respects, it can bottleneck them into a single playstyle depending on the faction. If you're not borderline constantly at war, you are simply playing the necrophages wrong and you will lose, which is really tough going if you end up in a situation where warfare isn't much of an option, such as being stuck on an island or have a nearby opponent who currently has too many units to deal with. Comparing this with, say, Civ 6's Alexander. If you ever end up in the situation, all is not lost. If the snaky mountain range is blocking your conquest ambitions, you could pivot and use them to get beefy science and holy districts, and even change plans and pursue a scientific victory instead, which, while less optimal than domination on Alexander, is still a viable option. Regardless, I'm glad they differentiated the empires more in civ 6 than 5, since I found myself constantly using the same strategies in 5.

[@ToxicBastard]

True, there's a choice for devs: defined roles or variety? Look at overwatch: most heroes are fun but limited, if you try to play, say, Pharah as anything but air support you'll lose. Tracer trying to get in the thick of it? Dead. Playing Reaper defensively? Frustrating. Bastion leading the charge? Won't work . The thing is, all those heroes are fun when you play the intended role and do it well and play to your strengths, even with the downside of sucking at anything they're not built for. However in 4X you're stuck with your choice for the duration of a campaign, no tactical switching.

[@alecchristiaen4856]

That's not a problem where the faction design is to blame. The trick is somehow making the various factions and their specialty able to both steamroll a game, and possibly win in clutch if the player is clever enough.

[@silver1340]

"...or have a nearby opponent who currently has too many units to deal with." Necrophages are equipped for dealing with these types of opponents. Simply run your army into them and likely perish, but you still gain large stockpile of food from your losses, which are now your gains. Now I forget how much you gain, but I believe its a little bit more than you invested to create sacrificed units, or you gain equivalent amount, but your enemy is more worn out. Repeat until you consume them entirely.

[@artstsym]

Love all these posts saying he's shitting on Civ, when his whole point is that Civ is one very specific way of designing a 4x that we've convinced ourselves is the gold standard.

[@mattmorehouse9685]

It's somewhat similar to StarCraft 2 and rts games. Because the latter is so popular it feels like a lot of people assume every rts has to be like StarCraft 2 with branching campaigns and esports. Hell, I think the competitive community is orbiting StarCraft 2 especially close, so they can justify their assertion that only they matter and everyone else just has to put up with what they want.

[@Dragonite43]

A problem that I have with 4X games is that diplomacy is usually the weakest part of them. There is no point in getting into diplomacy, since it is usually better and faster to wipe a nation/Civ off the face of the earth.

[@Beastinvader]

I prefer Civ5, but Endless Space 2 has this interesting festure where you gain influence over another civ. You can use it to force them to take a certain political decision. That game seems to care more for these types of interactions. (Although imo Civs diplomacy has more personality)

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Additionally, if you're playing multiplayer, the stats relating to diplomacy kinda come apart, since whether or not a decision goes through isn't up to your stats, it's up to what the person at the other side of the screen wants.

[@dajmo2369]

Beastinvader there is a similar thing in CIV beyond earth

[@arandombard1197]

In Stellaris you can play fully as a democratic nation and win. Join a federation, become a council member of the galactic community, get everybody to make you one of the permanent members of that council, then convince everyone that there should only be one seat on the council. Suddenly, you ARE the council

[@zarnox3071]

@@arandombard1197 I love democracy.

[@ArchitectofGames]

For everyone asking, the final song is Faster Than Light from the Stellaris OST! I forgot I don't tell people what music is playing in these old, terrible videos.

[@EpsilonRosePersonal]

You don't seem to actually have a link to the Modes of Opperation's video, nor do you seem to give its name.

[@timentelechy428]

Just like games, content creators too improve over the course of time. Don't be so hard on yourself. :D

[@tropingreenhorn]

I enjoyed the video

[@brodiemagee8857]

Actually man far as i know cleopatra was pretty sexual

[@Gathaeryx]

Do you also recall what the song playing at 2:00 is?

[@brianaldridge5639]

you left off nuclear gandhi

[@nucleargandhi2709]

Indeed he did. How dare you.

[@Ben_R4mZ]

FOOOLLL!!!! I HAVE MANY WAR ELEPHANTS AND THEY ARE UNSTOPPABLE!!!! xD

[@clefsan]

Nuclear Gandhi = Peace through Power xD

[@chuckles3116]

Nuclear Gandhi is a meme easter egg, there's no mechanical incentive to rush nukes as India that other factions don't have.

[@Abd121]

"weirdly sexualized Cleopatra" considering that she was depicted casually topless (which wasn't weird for them.) I'd say you're the one who found a problem with her, she's actually made tame to fit with today's standards...

[@topshaggeralfieg9130]

Anyone else notice in 00:59 when Cleopatra is talking to you she strokes her cheek and looks down out of your peripheral vision when she says 'if your worthy'

[@ToxicBastard]

Hornytown USA - population: Cleo

[@EskiZagra]

I miss strategy games like Age of Empires, Rise of nations and Empire Earth. Anyone remember those?

[@alextrollip7707]

There's a game called 0AD Completely free Based off the old age of empires gameplay with some awesome adaptions. It's in alpha but I haven't yet run into any problems

[@derrickbonsell]

Age of Empires 2 still has a strong multiplayer community. Spirit of the Law has a lot of videos on it

[@neoshenlong]

AoE2 is amazing but it still feels dated. It is amazing to think that considering the huge increase in tech and resources in the videogame industry, no one has made a worthy AoE successor that uses the same mechanics and improves them with modern AI and capabilities.

[@felixdumbravescu2725]

@@neoshenlong Cus FPS are the real money makers yo.

[@MonkDakarte]

Venice in CIV V was a one city gameplay, but I belive it was the only civ that really changed the GAMEPLAY

[@michaeledmunds7056]

There was also Germany's ability to recruit barbarian units by defeating them.

[@Medytacjusz]

Glad you mentioned roleplay. It's a big problem with Civ for me, that you can't really roleplay. Sure, as the commenters said, the little differences become huge when talking about competitive meta, but that's not what interests me. I can't really decide that "my civ is this and that" and try to shape it in this image to the best of my abilities. Rather, I mostly have to react to how the game plays out and what map gets generated. Everything is situational rather than executing a certain vision that was in my head when I picked a faction. I have to balance everything more-or-less equally, otherwise you immediately fall behind and get crushed. You can't play backwards but agressive and populous. You can't play tiny but influential. You can't play peaceful but economically aggressive. Every game you get a taste of everything, just with different proportions. Beyond Earth was so disappointing in this regard, three different ethics and yet you always end up a little bit of each, you can't go full into one and the expansion muddled it even more adding hybrids and whatnot to make it inconsequential long-term. Alpha Centauri had much more distinct factions. The only true role-play choice in civ is the one of victory condition you aim for, whether you go for culture, diplomatic or conquest really changes your game from start to finish, especially cultural. Scientific only changes the late game, all have to go for science throughout the game anyway, and the early game is still mostly the same for all. I still love Civ though ;) I just love discovering / learning new mechanics they introduce in each iteration and I don't have time to play one game for hundreds of hours anyway. The biggest problem I have with each 4X game is mid-late game gets tedious and slow with exponentially increasing number of cities and units to micromanage, and I can't stand automation, and the game gets decided many hours of gameplay before the end anyway (90% of the time). The modern era mechanics get therefore mostly wasted, unless you start in later eras.

[@Cythil]

I do like the potential RP aspect some of the games offer. Can be really fun in multiplayer. And I think it related to the idea of the 5x game. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate and the added eXperience as it sometimes called. Games that add a bit of story line or let you make you own in a way. Of course this last term is a bit vague. Endless series for example has elements in this by giving your faction a faction specific quest. Which make is a bit more of a guided RP experience. On the other side of the spectrum you have games like GalCiv3 or Stellaris which both do have some in game events, but where the RP is more about customizing you civilization and playing the part.

[@ualaelinlive]

oh god you owe it to yourself to play EU4 or CK2 then. The people that have the most fun with the game are quasi-RPers.

[@Choppytehbear1337]

Bartosz Szafarz I would highly recommend a game called "Stellaris." Even without mods, you can really RP a custom made Empire. With a few mods (easily downloaded via steam workshop) you can create very unique empires.

[@dynamicworlds1]

Alpha Centauri is, IMO, by far the best of the civ series. Not only do they have great thematics (which I could go on at length about), but they're well integrated into the gameplay. For example, the culture management page is not only my fave I've seen in a game so far (with how you get to choose government, economy, values, and eventually futuristic society) on top of your ideological (extremist) faction, but the choices you make there are the driving force of many of your conflicts as the AI will pressure you to change your choices to match their ideology and will go to war with you eventually if you don't (and since there are ideologically opposed factions, your choice isn't just a mechanical one for the bonuses, but being forced to pick a side in a violent ideological conflict) Instead of picking off weaker factions and opportunisticly switching alliances, you're left with the decision to get involved in a fight you want no part of, let them die (and thereby be down an ally when those are hard to come by), or retool your society (and therefore gameplay) mid game to make yourself more appealing to another potential ally. It's a shame that got caught up in legal trouble so we never got an Alpha Centauri 2, because that should have been the flagship of 4x. (Grand strategy like Crusader Kings 2 are great too, but a different genre)

[@Medytacjusz]

+DynamicWorlds I absolutely agree. It had the most flavour, like, if you stripped all the mechanics stuff away, what was left was so distinctly 'Alpha Centauri' you couldn't confuse it with anything else, whereas with all other sci-fi 4x if you subtract mechanics, nothing's left to differentiate them, it's all generic. For a genre where writing 'seems' (!) not important at all, Alpha Centauri had the best writing. It was the most fun I had reading entries for technologies and watching their cinematics. In new 4Xs there's no cinematics for techs and entries are so bare bones (not counting Civ, but that's different since these are real world techs). In fact half the technologies seem copy pasted from other titles. Yet in Alpha Centauri you observed how faction ideologies related to technological progress. It was moving you not just intellectually, but also emotionally. That's why it worked so well with 'blind research' because it was not just a mechanical choice, there was a sense of discovery, of tackling the unknown, of facing new societal challenges. In fact Alpha Centauri INVENTED (to my knowledge) the stereotypes for factions we are now playing with - the economy faction, the science faction, the war faction, the fundamentalists, the green faction, the totalitarianists (this one is less prominent in modern titles for some reason)... The expansion Alien Crossfire added a sea faction so now it's mandatory to have a sea faction and bunch of sea mechanics in a DLC/expansion (Beyond Earth, Endless Legend). Yet none of the successors and copy-cats have managed to match the originals in depth, not just mechanically but theme-wise. The question of ethics in science (science faction), the theme of survivalism/paranoia for war faction, the relationship between society and technology for fundamentalists, the nature of humanity vs transhumanism for the green faction, the role of (Far Eastern type of) spirituality in social order for the totalitarians.... Some of these were vaguely (!) touched upon in Beyond Earth, but only because it was a tribute to Alpha Centauri. +Chppytehbear1337 I'm familiar with Stellaris, at least the base game. Shame the DLC are so darn expensive.

[@crazyfrogracer2pro848]

endless legend is so underrated. i think it has some of the best music in videogames ever

[@grugnotice7746]

"weirdly sexualized" Cleopatra? She was the most famous sexy lady in history!

[@andurilan]

Yeah, she is not weak or anything, but she definitely got it on with Anthony And Julius...

[@coolwhiprofl]

Brandon G Not at all. She was widely intelligent, fluent in many languages, and used seduction scarcely for political gain. Rome was the main threat to Egypt so she made Caesar an ally. When he died she allied with Marcus Antonius. The modern view of her as a seductress above all else is just a myth built on the lack of information.

[@andurilan]

And the fact she fathered sons with invaders...

[@MrBasmannen]

She wasn't actually, look it up

[@tevildo7718]

That is a myth created by Shakespeare Cleopatra was known for her intelligence and wit, not her physical beauty.

[@meewarwoowoo]

When a person is creating a Space 4X game a person can create a load of Bug like Aliens who are especially good at fighting. The Space Bugs get a +1 because they are just great at fighting where as the Brain in jar people get +1 to Science because they are obviously smart. We have seen this so much it is a SciFi cliche. It probably has an origin in Tolkien and the many other fantasy stories. Play the Dwarves and you will be great Miners and Fighters while the Elves will be more Cultured and get +1 to all Horse Riding rolls. The Orcs though are mindless and they get a debuff on Science but there are more of them so they get bonus population. I'm being vague because I'm trying to sum up a tone and a style rather than any specific game or product. Hopefully you've followed me on that and you know what I mean. This video talks about - criticises perhaps - Civ because of the similarity between factions. The example of the Norwegians is used and there is some talk of them being a warlike faction and while I do not want to but words in Adam's mouth if I boiled the idea down he is saying something like "they get a tiny bonus to fighting sometime unlike the Space Bugs who get +1, and the Orcs who get the Pop Buff." The idea being that Civ is failing in this. For me though it is a success and it is a success when balanced by a very fundamental part of the human experience which is that races and peoples do not have an eternal character. Of course one might suggest that there is an idea that a race has displayed some characteristics in their history - which is always a super murky thing to suggest - but Civ allows you to play out a game like that. You can play any of the factions in Civ as the War Mongers or the Scientists and perhaps you miss a little optimisation but not that much because the game does not be so crass as to make a statement that "this faction is inherently massively better at this thing than anyone else." Which is a good thing. I live in England. The British Navy once was the envy of the World but that was not because the English are inherently better at Hoisting Sails it is because the country has oak trees aplenty and they make for good boats and when you get good boats you get good sailors. Also it is surrounded by water which sort of helps too. There is nothing in the national character that makes us good sailors. A plus one bonus to Sailing for the British in a game is absurd. These characteristics come and go. If you want an illustration of this two weeks into COVID19 people in Brexit Britain are fighting to panic buy toilet rolls. How would that fit in with a "Stiff Upper Lip" bonus as being inherent in the British character? The narrative of the game should give these characteristics, not the selection of factions. This is to say nothing of obvious problem with creating a game which gives the plus one fight/minus one intelligence to the Zulu people. Which ultimately is the reality of mapping game factions onto real life races of people. You end up painting broad stereotypes which are often unpleasant but also do not reflect a reality. Civ6 (I'm more of a Civ 4 player personally) has slight difference between factions while other games have greater ones but when starting a game of it I'm able to play that in any way that the narrative branches into. Maybe I want to make a peaceful Korea but we end up fighting eternal wars? Maybe my would be Colonialist British never have to leave England because we have all the resources we need? That is the game allowing you the space to tell a story, not enforcing a story on you. (I read a tonne of the comments to try make sure I was not duplicating this point, apologies if I missed something. Also I hope this comes over in the spirit it is supposed to. I'm not having a go.)

[@mattmorehouse9685]

Okay, make them cultures, or have them be like Stellaris. This is about gameplay, not real world nationalism and race. Just because a fictional game makes the Chinese have batch production and quantity units does not mean the devs think China is some sort of hive mind. You could have several different gameplay themes, such as giving the Chinese a boost to science. But making them the same as every other faction is a real waste because it means the devs are unable to try out different gameplay ideas, and have to give every faction everything. I suppose they could try having the player define their faction with permanent choices throughout gameplay, but that brings up the problem of players defaulting to several overpowered options, when set factions could separate that combination.

[@werothegreat]

Couple points: -Endless Legend may have more diverse factions, but I think it's more lacking in actual gameplay than Civ. Not in terms of amount of content, but in how it's implemented. I just don't have as much fun with it - the combat is tedious, and I vehemently dislike the economic victory ("yay I sat on my hoard of gold the whole game so I win"). -I think you cherrypicked one of the worst civs in Civ VI - Norway is... pretty bad. As a counterexample, I would give you Alexander's Macedon, which gets scientific and cultural boosts from taking cities, heals when taking cities with wonders in them, and gets scientific boosts when making military units. Alexander is encouraged to go to war. Similarly, look at the domestic bonuses for Egypt and China, which are encouraged to build wonders. Previous civ incarnations may have had window dressing differences, but starting with V, they've really started to make each civ feel and play differently.

[@lorddashdonalddappington2653]

I can't speak to your experience but after playing EL a little more, I can say that the combat system grew on me, and I prefer it to Civ's.

[@Nikolapestanac]

one nation that really feels different : "Venice", its so different that its basicly banned from multiplayer games.

[@toivosilvennoinen8540]

"because they feel more strategic" Now I can understand that. But once you go really scrutinize it, the combat is weak. Easily the weakest part. It has it's merits, it's easy to learn but damn if it also isn't easy to master. It's simple, which is it's weakness and strength: if two nations of equal power are fighting, and of them gets ahead, it can quickly turn into a snowball effect with little to no chance of coming back (at that point you need nukes). "but because they resolve faster" combat speed up to max or near it. Otherwise oh yea, it's a treat during the first two games but after that yea don't need to see those animations thanks.

[@toivosilvennoinen8540]

werothegreat While I disliked the economic victory initially (turned it off every time until I got the hang of the game), it really isn't that. In order to pursue that you're going to need to make sacrifices on other paths; you will need to focus on dust building/tech/resources. So weaker military/food production/science etc, standard 4x stuff right? If they keep hoarding gold, punish them. Economic factions are just as credible of a threat as military factions, if you don't react early enough, they will roll ahead to a point where stopping them is incredibly difficult. "Previous civ incarnations may have had window dressing differences, but starting with V, they've really started to make each civ feel and play differently." I really would've agreed with you before. It always felt like starting a new adventure before with a unique faction. Problem is, I now realized that there are very few truly unique factions in civ. Most of them just play so very similarly, and most of them have little problem switching from one victory condition to another. You could say that that is a sign of a good all-around faction, but I just see it as bland now. Just asking, how is the combat more tedious in EL than in Civ?

[@lorddashdonalddappington2653]

Well there's always the autoresolve thing.

[@UltimaTiger]

Surprised you didnt mention AOW3 it has by far the most satisfying character creation decions of any 4x game, you pick both race and class which provide large changes to play style. undead is a class so you can plan an undead human which plays quite different to a Druid human which plays differently to an undead frostling, or goblin team. then you pick 3 spell schools which also change your play style quite a bit(although there are some that help some combos better)

[@rudebox5688]

Norway was a bad example i think. Macedonia, Scythia and Sumeria are the main aggro factions really, and their unique bonuses and units are incredibly strong for that play style.

[@ArchitectofGames]

I think there's a decent case that could be made for that. I ended up picking Norway after some deliberation because they showed that civ is much more focused on historical flavor (which is by no means a bad thing) than it is on interesting gameplay decisions. For what it's worth, the decision to do Norway over Scythia was a last-minute thing, so who knows, I might've been able to make a stronger argument for them.

[@rudebox5688]

That is true. They certanly did put flavour over all else it seems. Norway, Egypt, France and Kongo are themeatic but the abilities are just terrible or bland.

[@Cl0ne66]

Adam Millard - The Architect of Games No you picked them because you wanted to straw-man the argument

[@jonathanslater1397]

That's not exactly fair. Whether Norway is the most representative example or not, it's still a real example, and it's not like there are so many civs to choose from that it's insignificant.

[@generalhorse493]

Interesting vid, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Civ 6's new expansion rise and fall in it's new mechanics.

[@spooky5787X]

I don't know if you know the game Star Ruler 2. It was made by a company that closed soon after launching it's first DLC. It didn't sell fantastic but it changes so many core mechanics of 4x and it's empires played really different as well. You might want to check that one out.

[@sorcdk2880]

I have played it, and while it has many interesting new ways to do things, the result is a lot less than impressive, and the gameplay value of those mechanics seems to be somewhat mediocre, at least in the format I saw. The diplomatic cards required too much attention too often, so it was easy to miss the timings unless you come from an APM heavy RTS game, meaning it was too much work and ended up feeling fairly random for me. The planet linking idea was interesting, but in practice ended up being fairly cookie cutter, since many of the interesting decisions where either way too complicated or limited due to availability. The game also topped off early enough that the full value of building up supplie lines and such did not get sufficient effect, as it ended up being decided by other things earlier than that, at least in my experiance. In total the game's mechanics and gameplay was not polished enough for its new concepts to truely shine. We can compare this to MoO2, which had several flaws in ideas, but its gameplay was polished to a superb degree, so that it is joy to play (there are a lot of details in how the tech tree is laid out that really makes a difference).

[@EloquentTroll]

I would say you probably shouldn't pick up a paradox game if you don't want to RP at least a little, but I keep playing EU3 as a short tempered economist with a deep hatred of Austria. Last time I played as Manchuria and I still ended up at war with them (they had colonized the Philippines).

[@jinchoung]

"weirdly sexualized cleopatra"? you understand who cleopatra was right?

[@Jonathan-bu7iv]

What I like about Civ is that your nation usually has some kind of golden age and you should prepare for that. If you play Rome you want to get really aggressive once you get your legions and achieve an advantage. Then you play that advantage to the end. The factions are very simple on the surface, but not really, you need to use your advantage to win.

[@charo703]

This felt more of a sale pitch for Endless Legend than a video about problems in 4x games.

[@CoffeeKitty.]

to be fair i can't blame him, EL is one of the best 4x's i've ever played, and i've been playing 4x games since original civ, SMAC, and MOO truth is, you'd need a very long video essay to cover this topic properly.

[@Jonathanizer]

Felt like a sales pitch to me too. And it worked (at least with me): i looked it up on steam, saw it was on sale, bought it. Now i am typing comments while downloading^^

[@charo703]

I also did because of you Jonathan :)

[@Jonathanizer]

Haha OK :]

[@Damalycus]

lol, I've pitched Endless Legend in comments in the first minute of this video, not knowing he will bring it up.

[@sleepingcity85]

Paradox saved the genre for me (while i like grand strategy even more as 4x)

[@lololoershadow]

Loved Stellaris. Liked HOI4 but wasn't my thing.

[@SephonDK]

Have you tried Europa Universalis 4 or Crusader Kings 2?

[@AdamCradamParkes]

CK2 did a much better job than EU4 imo, with CK2, you're constantly looking over your shoulder from internal threats whilst trying to do with external threats, whereas in EU4, oh, just crush a couple revolts, and if you manage your kingdom correctly, not even that

[@SephonDK]

That's true, but only after a certain level of play. I was more thinking about the built-in asymmetry of the games' nation choice.

[@Wilczan]

They are not really 4x though, neither is Stellaris to be honest.

[@SephonDK]

Wilczan Why not?

[@Wilczan]

Joves Bahobs well they arent turn based thats for one, and they have pregenerated setting. Plus they are more of a simulation type game. Google grand strategy genre

[@sulphuric_glue4468]

That final statement was a tad silly. The vast majority of empires were trying to emulate or exceed the successes of previous empires. The Romans and Napoleon looked up to Alexander the Great, Justinian (being a Roman) looked up to the Romans before him, the Caliphates looked up to the other Caliphates before them, and almost every European empire has based its conquests off the Romans in some way.

[@battlemode]

I don't buy the core arguments made here. Faction-specific gameplay mechanics and elements of that strength go right back to the original Master of Orion, where each faction plays completely differently. The argument you've made for Endless Legend and the insect guys could just as easily be made for the Klackons in MoO or Master of Magic. I think you've perhaps not really looked too deeply into the genre, or maybe you bounced off some of the better examples. You're basically making a sweeping statement about a genre based around the comparisons of two fairly poor Civ clones with the Civ games themselves, which is hardly a representation sample of the genre. What about the Dominions series? Those are clearly a kind of 4x game but they really do epitomise this idea of gameplay mechanics diversity across factions (and that's before you add the endless Pretender variations in there). Age of Wonders is another franchise where the different factions and hero classes each play very differently. Alpha Centauri was a very Civ-like game that again played hugely differently dependent upon which faction you play. Fallen Enchantress also varies greatly dependent upon the focus of your faction or hero. Civlization HAS stood the test of time whereas Endless Legend and the other Endless games will be dead in a few years because they lack any real depth. I agree that Civ's mechanics might seem somewhat vanilla on the surface of things but the mechanics in Civ4 at least created a game that has yet to be beaten, and the statistics on Steam show that Civ is the most popular 4x game by a long way, and so it seems that formula works. And mate, Cleopatra was a legendary sexual tyrannosaur. There's nothing "weird" about it.

[@happydeux2254]

Civ is popular because of history yes but it's also accessible and pretty. The original civ had great graphics and the palace building bit was amazing. It was really only Civ 3 that didn't wow with it's interface and art. Stellaris takes sooooooo much more to learn and get into and is a giant left mouse button click generator. I haven't played the other game mentioned but it looks pretty cluttered compared with contemporary Civ, will definitely check it out though! Great thoughtful video.

[@Beastinvader]

I'm a fan of Civ5, though I've also played Endless Legend and I've tried Stellaris. I like Civ5 for the same you reason you dislike it: the similarity. I don't like the fact in Endless Legend that every faction is so unique. I WANT to play the same game. Endless Legend also bores me because there's no personality. Civ5's AI has a degree of randomness. Genghis could be less aggressive than usual, Alexander more competitive than usual... So I have a combination of having an idea of what he is probably aiming for while still being unsure who exactly my enemy is. I think that Civ has the best politics. Maybe not the most entertaining or even realistic politics (consider EUIV), but it has the most personality. And your choices are influenced but never determined by other factors. Where you spawn affects your resources, which effects your development and type of faith. Who spawns next to you influences how you settle and conduct Diplomacy. Whether you build an army or focus on wonders. The beauty of "small" benefit for civs is that it allows you to chose. In Endless Legend you are forced. As the Necrophage you HAVE to attack or die. As that trading faction you CANNOT wage war. This might make it more interesting. I grant that. But it pays for it in freedom.

[@Zlorfikable]

What really bugs me in Civ 6 at the least is that almost no leaders make use of their only thing that makes them different from other civs. I played a game with Norway as one of my enemies. He never declared war on anybody in the entire game. I mean, he is supposed to coastally raid. It's really sad. He just sat there, turn for turn doing nothing but a little bad city building. Civ really is just one AI that has recommendations, independant of civ it plays. There is plenty of personality in EL games. Not all factions are so dead focused on one thing like the necrophages. Factions do behave differently, depending on a lot of factors. As pointed out, EL has its downsides, something they really improved upon in ES2. The cravers are a rough copy of the necrophages and you usually play agressively with them. But guess what, if you play them peacefully and diplomatically, not only is it super strong, but it'll confuse the hell out of everybody since it is actually counter intuitive. Same goes for the Unfallen who are that defensive diplomatic faction. They make excellent warmongers if you do it right. Point is you are not forced to go one way and only one way. You can go other ways. They might have other strengths and weaknesses that are apparent like you can in the civ games. But in contrast to civ games, no matter what way you choose, it still is a unique way only for that faction. The starting location and region around you only sets you on a specific victory route, there's not really much else to it. So the game actually takes a decision from you instead of letting you do it yourself.

[@Mint4589]

I absolutely agree

[@Zlorfikable]

@Luke Griffiths any kind of 4X has an extreme luck of the draw with their starting position. I have restarted over 50 times on a map trying to play as inca in Civ V with all world setup options skewed in my favour until i even found a passable starting point. Stellaris, another 4X can literally throw you in a star system with only one way out which is blocked by a fallen empire or raiders. EL is no different there.

[@sammunroe6090]

"Make 4x great again" LOL!

[@ArchitectofGames]

High brow political satire, that's me.

[@Tubalcain422]

The problem is that 4X requires thought. Most video gamers today like less thought more reflexes. I think an interesting title would be a twitch 4X.

[@glennolson6505]

A 'Twitch 4x,' in my mind at least, would be something like a 4X game built around an RTS engine. So something like Sins of a Solar Empire, or maybe Star Ruler.

[@photonpattern]

Show me the throne building and throne room treasures of Civ 1 and I'll show you a cool feature they shouldn't have dropped. Show me the character depth of Alpha Centauri. Yes, later games have some cool mechanics but they are in a sense as soulless as the games they beat for soullessness. There is no gratuitous fun. It's all just mechanics. There's no surprise, no hidden 'cool OP strat'. I got a score of 170 on original Civ and it was a life changing game. Everything today is so well 'balanced' there is no way to get electricity before Jesus. Seriously, I did that in Civ 1. That was one defining moment in a lifelong love of tech and AI (and how to whip its a** and make it better).

[@MrKeotan]

Thank multiplayer for that. Any game that includes PvP can't have overpowered or wildly different strategies.

[@Kissamiess]

Yeah, I take quirky but unbalanced over fair but bland every time. I never play strategy games as MP. I save that for MMOs and shooters.

[@GmodPlusWoW]

It's a feature I miss from Civilization and Heroes of Might & Magic (I know it's not a 4X, but it had a similar aesthetic mechanic). Specifically, in HoMM 5 and 6, as you built up your cities, the buildings would appear in the city screen, making it really feel like your city was growing with that all-important flair. Endless Legend has that to an extent, as you set up Districts and the like, but it's not quite as distinct as seeing the kennels of an Inferno city. It honestly makes me wish that Ubisoft would lose the Might & Magic license, only for it to be snapped up by Amplitude. I would trust Amplitude to make a decent Heroes of Might & Magic game, and it would be an interesting experience for Jeff Spock. After all, he was one of the writers for Heroes of Might & Magic 5 AND Dark Messiah of Might & Magic.

[@Maren617]

Yes, I loved the throne room and wonder videos in Civ 2 so much, as well as the ability to easily calculate and minmax an OP strategy! Multiplayer has ruined that, I wish they made another purely single player Civ-like game. If anyone can recommend one, please tell me.

[@VittamarFasuthAkbin]

SMAC is so great, it really is unfair to compare modern games to it. There was not a single (unmodded) 4x game with that amount of depth.

[@PsychoMuffinSDM]

I always thought starcraft had the most interesting factions, as the three are different on many different levels, and can lead to some unique play styles.

[@EvilParagon4]

"War Driven faction" "Norwegians" HA Try Australia.

[@Rahul_G.G.]

stellaris is mix of grand strategy and 4x

[@argokarrus2731]

why does the xenophobe voice in stallaris sound like a space marine

[@Typhyr]

I love the political system in Stellaris, it gives an interesting flavour to the game, I do miss some things in it, like for example proxy wars.

[@katarzynadaniliszyn4475]

Daminica Typhyr yee agree I play endlles space 2 all parties fill the same and proxy wars are very intresting idea

[@thezebraherd8275]

To be fair civ did something like this with Venice and it was kind of bad

[@wavebuilder14udc75]

"Their a race of horrible bug monsters...." Thought this was Kurzgesagt for a second

[@Domter]

"sexualized Cleopatra"

[@jangibis1667]

Man I love Endless Legend. Can't wait to play Humankind! There might be a lot of potential for the genre in that game!

[@Nictator42]

Sword of the Stars does a good job making each race in the game extremely unique. They all have their own form of interstellar travel and have their own unique technologies, as well as having a wide variety of drastic modifiers and unique ship layouts that have different levels of innate durability and weapon locations

[@smonkey001]

It's only civ fanboys here.

[@Rototornik]

Did they ever fix the sequel?

[@Poctyk]

Nictator sadly, not really.

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

Or you can just go back to playing MULE. Game has all these unique races, Bonzoid, Spheroid, Legites, Golumers, Mechtrons (which the AI always uses) Flappers, but Humans start with less money. They considered too intelligent.

[@Fulano5321]

It's random tech tree mechanic is epic too, you don't know what your tech tree is going to look like until you start playing which forces you to play differently each round.

[@Bezzdor]

How could you disrespect our god king Ghandi! May he live forever and watch over us as we prisper abd my Ghandis ebemies ve baptised in holy nuclear fire

[@LividImp]

"No great empire has been formed by trying to replicate past glories" LOL, what? The Romans were kind of obsessed with replicating the Greek empire. Julius Caesar pined that he would never be as accomplished as Alexander the Great. You didn't think that one through. Speaking of which... I don't understand why you think that Endless Legends faction are better designed, they're not. The Necrophage are forced into one play style. You have to be at war. Whereas with other 4X, you can play a militaristic faction, but only use it for defense, or use it for iron fist diplomacy. You can also use a factions strengths to bolster its weaknesses. For instance, in SMAC you can use the huge armies of the Believers to extort tech from other factions and stay relatively peaceful for most of the game. I know, because I've done it on the hardest level. I played SMAC pretty regularly for about 10 years because of all the possibilities it offers. Endless Legend ended very quickly by comparison. (pun _endtended_)

[@toivosilvennoinen8540]

"I don't understand why you think that Endless Legends faction are better designed, they're not. The Necrophage are forced into one play style. You have to be at war." I guess this is one of those things that is going to be subject of taste. I LOVE the wildly differing playstyles offered by the different factions, and I find the most general (wild wankers and s/m witches) to be the most boring. I played through all factions at least once with their specific victory objective in mind and upped the difficulty every time I won. I got through Endless rather fast, so I kind of agree with you on that Endless Legend isn't so endless, but I enjoyed and appreciated the factions greatly. I can see myself playing it a lot more if any of my friends played it but alone I'm done with it already with "only" 208 hours (which, again, is rather short on 4x games imo). SMAC sounds like fun tho.

[@IcoKirov]

well technically (adjust nerdy glasses close to eyes) Endless in the title comes from the ancient civilization the Endless who used the planet to make experiments

[@ebolachanislove6072]

AHCKTUALLY

[@neuzvecis]

Just no

[@mikesnow285]

You can make custom factions in endless legends to do whatever you want, so your comment is invalid, no matter how many people just like your comment.

[@PrinceSilvermane]

The real problem is developers are kind of scared of doing any kind of asymmetrical gameplay. It tends to be harder to balance. My favorite example of asymmetrical factions in games is an RTS called Universe at War: Earth Assault. All of the factions played so radically different from each other. Alien invaders that create large walkers that produce units and act as gun platforms, a robot race that has cheap spammable units and a network that it can move around quickly in, and a magitek like race with two modes for units that let you deal more damage or slow enemies and give you armor.

[@mattmorehouse9685]

Damn straight, Universe at War is an awesome example of what you can get when you really take a faction's themes and run with them! The tech system was awesome too, you had three columns of four suites of tech. Each suite had multiple upgrades, but you could only have six suites researched at once. And the stuff the tech did! The walker guys could get artillery that healed their own units, the robots could make their networked buildings have 75% larger radius and the magitec guys could make their armor rebuild even in combat. That game needs a spiritual successor or something.

[@firstlast-cs6eg]

. One issue in this strategy of specialized races, it means whatever race you play, you have to use their way of winning. You lose flexibility in strategy, thus become somewhat predictable to human players. Also both these games are somewhat unrefined. I know this first hand from Endless Space 2, which is a predecessor several games removed., to Endless legend. Issues of GUI (graphical user interface, menus and stuff) where things take more work than they should messing with interface and other such issues. Stellaris has different issues apparently according to reviews.

[@Beastinvader]

Well said! Exactly as I thought. Both Endless Legend and Endless Space feels constricting. Like I HAVE TO play a certain type of way. In Civ the bonuses and environment are merely incentives. But you always have a choice. You could win a Zulu tourism victory or an Indian domination victory. It's not as effective, but you have the choice. It happens a lot that for whatever reason I cannot utilize my specific ability. Like Brazil spawning between two warmongers. So being able to choose another strategy is useful.

[@harbl99]

"No great empire has ever been formed by trying to replicate past glories." Erm, the HRE? A conscious attempt to revivify the old Greco-Roman ideal of an oecumene under a single divinely-favoured ruler.

[@ObviusRetard]

The HRE being a great empire, yeah nice one m8. That's why the modern state of Germany formed from the Austrians consolidating the HRE to stand up against the French threat in 1806 right? Oh wait

[@harbl99]

They did pretty well under the Ottonians, Salians and Hohenstaufen (900-1250AD). I mean, Otto III awarded regal crowns to the kings of Poland and Hungary, and saw the Danes (no pushovers in his day) and French Capetians bend the knee as vassal kings. Of course, travel times being what they were in the days of horse and sail, the French, Polish and Danish monarchs - much like the Italians, and any of the Germans out of immediate reach - basically did their own thing. However observed in the breach it may have been, the underlying theory which justified Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne as Emperor back in 800AD was always there: the emperor was something unique. He was the rightful universal monarch of Christendom, direct successor to Constantine, Heraclius, Charlemagne, etc. and something above and apart from a mere king. _Hausmacht_ (clout, power base), as king of the Germans, Burgundians and Lombards (and maybe the Sicilians, sometimes) was nice, but the imperial title was something else. Something almost numinous in its potency and associations. The kaiser was the only person who could get a semi-civil diplomatic response after referring to the eastern emperor at Constantinople as 'our dear cousin, the king of the Greeks'. If the western emperor went on crusade, the Saracens swallowed hard and thought about negotiations. If he appeared in Italy, the proud and prickly Italians suddenly developed a renewed respect for 'our Caesar'. If he bent the knee to the Pope (as at Canossa), entire schools of political thought had to be reconsidered overnight. During the messy days of the late medieval period (the 13th-14th century), when the crown was passed around like a hot potato, no one in Europe really argued that the imperial dignity was something to be sniffed at. Hell! as late as the days of Henry VIII the kings of England used to require undertakings from Imperial envoys that they weren't coming to the British Isles to assert the emperor's _rightful_ _primacy_ over the Rex Anglorum before they'd even let the diplomat's feet touch English soil. The later, Habsburg-dominated confederal empire, well, that's a whole other story. The Reformation, the rise of the Ottomans, Electoral intransigence, Habsburg empire-building outside the traditional imperial lands, and a couple of centuries of French and Papal machinations did a proper number on the empire, which became the slumbering giant of Central Europe for centuries after. (Sorry. Sorry. Pet subject. Suffice it to say, the HRE wasn't always the comic-opera punchline it eventually became.)

[@ObviusRetard]

That's the best response I could expect, free history lessons just for trying to nag someone. Thanks, it was very interesting! : )

[@respublica4373]

you could argue that the original roman empire itself was build on greek base

[@Beastinvader]

I believe the Babylonians pulled it off. As did the German empire. Napoleon destroyed the HRE, the first Reich, but Germany more than recovered as the second Reich. Also Russian empire building on Rome, a temporary Byzantine resurgance, maybe modern day China and India too

[@XfStef]

You're not wrong, but you aren't right either. Sure it gets stale to play the game the exact same way time and time again, from a single-player point of view, but in multiplayer Stellaris and Endless Legend just don't work as well as Civ 5 or even Civ 6. Doing things differently just because you're bored with the old recipe is sometimes necessary but doesn't really mean that you'll get better results. Have a look at Battle of Polytopia, which is arguably one of the most successful mobile 4X games, who doesn't really do much to diversify how you actually conquer the map. The game still thrives on the simple but effective old shool 4X formula. I've recently started work on a spiritual successor to Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and it definitely won't go completely off the leash of the original game's mechanics. There will be some faction and general skill differences but most of the time you'll play the game the same way: Explore, Expand, Extract, Exterminate.

[@petersteenkamp]

Best Civ game is Caveman2Cosmos, a mod for Civ 4. It adds so much content it becomes a new game. And despite being 10 years old, it still gets updated almost daily.

[@marlonyo]

civ 4 is the best because of the mods hate that to sell civs and scenarios all new games killed mods

[@sorcdk2880]

I would rather say that it was civ 5 moving away from the core of 4x that really made it go downhill. One unit per tile also gave a lot of other problems, but they are not as bad as the servere cripling of larger empires, which effectively made conquest victory uncompetitive for most settings. As a result we now have a ton of newer players who wants to overempathise building tall empires. It can be okay to have tall strategies be viable, but you need wide strategies to be viable for it to still be a true 4x game (since that playstyle kind of is the core 4x playstile, with all others being variations and deviations from there). The other consesting as best civ game is SMAC, though you might go for a technical fault, as it isnt historical or contains the civ name.

[@Rexor1980]

C2C is the best mod ever. Until you try to play it all the way through. I recently started a game with a gigantic map, with the default amount of AIs for that map size, and the weight of the game couldn't support itself past the renaissance. I kept running out of graphics memory. I went to the mod's forum for a solution and the only one that I got was "my save game is already dead". Apparently, I shouldn't play with more than 5 AIs and I should play on a smaller map size. That kind of turned me off from the mod, it'll be a while until I come back to it. Unless there's some breakthrough performance wise. At least there's Ashes of Erebus, which I'm enjoying greatly right now.

[@petersteenkamp]

+Toni Mutanen: when did that happen? There was a moment in its development when C2C became bloated but the modders pruned the memory use of the mod a lot. Nevertheless it is not recommended to play the biggest map size unless you have a beast of a desktop PC. With non-extreme settings and a good PC the game is quite playable all the way to the end.

[@tppcrpg6311]

C2C is good but it is a massive bloat that needs a very good computer to run.

[@favorius]

Civ 5 Vox Populi modpack is best civ experience as of 2018

[@subprogram32]

Oooh this is my fave vid so far! I really like how Endless Legend does things, it might make a faction more limited in it's options, but also it can increase engagement with your faction that much more because of those limitations.

[@legio1942]

Only some factions are really limited. Clans can't declare war, Forgotten can't research, Necro can't do peace, and cultists can't get more cities. Others have more limited penalties. I have all dlcs, but I don't recall what is the deal with new factions. Necros and Vaulters are same in Space, too.

[@Winterx69]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with actually better and working "civics" than any follow-up Civilization franchise game, as well as the playable Alien races was quite promising back then. Sadly, Meier estranged several of his developers amidst development of Civ 3 making them leave and thus killing off significant innovation as well as losing features that had already been ready for implementation. Civ 3 never overcame this and Civ 4 to 6 merely (and badly) copied civics and faction customization. Hell, even Civ 2 had had batch file support, connectable maps, scenario building and story event trigger support... never to return TO DATE.

[@mentaldissabledweeaboo91]

Civ 6 has scenarios, those were neat.

[@nathangamble125]

The civ series was strange and fractured in 1999, and we got some really cool mechanics out of it. Test of Time went into new universes with multi-layered maps, and explored systems of having different races or factions with completely different abilities. Call to Power completely overhauled the combat system, basing it around mixed armies rather than single units. Alpha Centauri gave us the unit workshop, psychological combat, and inspired the government system for Civ IV. I'd like to see more of these being worked back into Civ - really the only thing we got was Civ 4's government system, which I didn't think was well implemented anyway.

[@DCdabest]

Alpha was one of my favourite Civ games. It's a shame they never quite got that feel back. Beyond Earth just didn't cut it at all. And the other clones and knock off lack the appeal that the steady emerging transhuman future that Alpha's frame story carried with it.

[@Euquila]

SMAC/X is the best best 4x ever made. I'm waiting for something to top that. (Maybe Endless Legend 2?)

[@NilAthelion]

I would suggest Stellaris - I was/am a big fan of SMAC/X to the point where every time a new 4X came out, I would play it for a bit, and then wind up playing SMAC again. Stellaris is more of a galactic history simulator than a game, per se, but the way factions hate each other based on gameplay choices is the only time I've seen SMAC-style ideological clashes be replicated (and expanded) well. It also has a variety of background Sci-fi stories going on, similar to the "I will dissent" story being told through background events. Unfortunately, the latest iteration of Stellaris is a big buggy in AI empire expansion (they changed a bunch of core mechanics, and the AI's mismanagement of their economies means they can't support controlling a large territory), but it's a wonderful game that has largely displaced my 4X -> Play SMAC again habit. (Star Ruler II and Endless Legend both get honorable mentions as 4X games that didn't provoke me to play SMAC instead, but Stellaris is the one that out-did SMAC on its own terms.)

[@1996Pinocchio]

2:45 This is perfectly synced ^^

[@alecchristiaen4856]

The only faction that seems to actually be game changing in Civ is venice, and that's because they explicitly can't found or annex cities. The issue is that your only advantage to off-set it is a doubling of your trade-route limit, meaning you'll have an insane production of gold, which you can use to maintain relations with City-states. And then the council rolls around, the other players place an embargo on you and now you're dead in the water. There's also dipping into the honor tree, where eventually you'll get money for killing enemies. This allows you to sustain a large army without having a positive GPT income. But it's much easier to have a sparse military and invest heavily in your economy. This allows you to not only drastically increase military strength over night (I usually peak in Civ V when I get my hands on Landknechten) but it allows you to spend your vast wealth bribing city-states (granting various boons and later on votes in the council), sweetening deals with other factions (possibly helping them open up, icnreasing tourism for culture), or just buying buildings, meaning your architecture stays caught up with your science, allowing you to turn city production towards science for a break-neck pace of development. I play Civ, I start tradition, hunker down in a defendable and resourceful area, and I speedrun towards a science victory. No pvp interactions, no unique challenges or opportunities given by my chosen Civ, no meaningful choices for the majority of the game.

[@9365fall]

mechanical asymmetry that is balanced with other asymmetrical elements Stellaris doesn't have this, it has descriptive petty buffs, that don't change anything unless you stack your buffs. The reason why you're motivated to play a certain way as a faction in Stellaris is because you make that faction with that gameplay in mind.

[@Cythil]

You can play Stellaris is many different ways however. And the problem is that some games focus to much on the asymmetric gameplay. If a strategy game is a series of interesting choices, then it becomes a problem that the first choice you make in the game dictates all the rest. And I find this is often the case when you go towards the more extreme end in 4x games. As stellaris is more dynamic it can change with time. So you can end up with playing you empire quite differently from how you started. It is not perfect. But I find there quite a lot of strength to that.

[@9365fall]

In my experience the actual game play of stellaris is obfuscated by the long ass time it takes get from early to mid to late phases of the game, and it really boils down to expand or don't expand. Now, you don't even get an option of ftl, everyone has the same- sure you can have research buffs and racial traits, but they don't alter the way you play, they just make it slightly easier to do a certain thing that's dependent really on what you set yourself to doing in the early part of the game. You can't make an empire built on innovation, or control scarce resources to gain an advantage over others, or have a network of influence and spies, or an elite army of space warriors, everything boils down to having death masses, with a matter of when. You can explore, and that's fun, but it's the same texts on repeat- leading up to an event that usally will never fire because someone will claim the system you need to scan. Your not really play stellaris in different ways, it's essentially choosing if your going to start expanding from the start or later on.

[@noradseven]

A few things, Stellaris still has major balance issues (major one in single player games is the AI is way worse at playing after 100 years), but I feel like I have been able to very convincingly build strong gimmick nations that really focus on one thing or another. I have even tried shifting my strategy around midgame and the political fallout can be devastating, like try running a death machine with a bunch of fanatic pacifists/xenophiles, you straight up can't, even after you change your government you are in political turmoil for like 10-15 years. You can't make an empire built on innovation: What are you talking about? scarce resources to gain an advantage over others: This is a major part of mid/late game a network of influence and spies: Nope, but I'm sure it will get added in some patch to the horror of many. Elite army of space warriors: Haven't really delved into high level pvp in 2.0 yet but ground forces feel way stronger and more important than pretty much any other space 4X I have played. Death masses: Hey at least combat has RPS now for weapons and strategic sublight speed as another part of the equation. I too miss the other FTL methods wormhole was my boi, but I understand why they made them and I think they made an extremely bold move and in general the meta is way healthier now than it was in 1.9.

[@GmodPlusWoW]

That's one thing that Endless Space 2 has over Stellaris; the core of each Major Faction distinguishes it quite significantly from most of the others. For instance, while most of the factions have the classic formula of "send out Colonizers, set up Outpost on planet, feed Outpost until it turns into a Colony" in regards to settling and expansion, 4 of the current 9 factions turn the notion of colonization on its head. The Vodyani live on Arks, similar to the movable cities of the Roving Clans, so if their holy war goes awry, they can pack up a besieged colony and fly it to a new system. This also means that they cannot have non-Vodyani population onboard their Arks, and they cannot terraform planets. The Lumeris don't need to build Colonizers, as they can simply buy their Outposts with Dust. But the amount of Dust needed in order to buy an Outpost increases with every Colony you own, though since the Lumeris are good at generating Dust, this isn't as big a problem as it would be for a faction without such a heavy Dust focus. Admittedly, the Lumeris strike me as "beginner" in terms of faction complexity, not quite as distinct or intricate as some of my favourites from ES2. The Unfallen, the community-designed Hippie Groot faction, use their analogue of a Colonizer to Entwine systems with space vines, wherein they can instantly colonize a system once it's fully entwined. And the Vaulters, making their return in the first big DLC, have only one Colonizer that instantly establishes Colonies but has to recharge after each colonization. (you can get early colonizations shortly after the Argosy comes back online, but they will cost Dust and Strategic Resources, so it's usually wiser to wait until the Argosy reaches a high enough charge for the free colonization) Another example of distinct faction cores is how the Cravers not only deplete planets just by living on them, but they squeeze extra FIDS out of non-Craver populations at the cost of Approval. So not only is it advisable to keep expanding as you leave dead worlds behind you, but also to invest your Industry (and Strategic Resources) into improvements that generate Approval in order to pacify the slaves and maintain your Approval bonuses (in-system Approval governs Food and Influence output, while overall Empire-wide Approval governs Dust and Science yields)

[@Zlorfikable]

@@GmodPlusWoW Don't leave out that despite factions having an obvious route of playstyle, it is by far not the only way to go. Take the Unfallen for example. Making vines is painstalkingly slow. But taking over an enemy system in vine distance immediately creates a vine. Ships travel faster on the vine network. Conclusion? They make excellent warmongers since they can easily capture a system and bring in reinforcements at ease. Another example: Cravers. Yes they might have an incentive to expand, but do they really? All they need is as many non-Craver populations and as much Approval as they can get. You can intensively play around with the pop mechanics as cravers, sending craver pops to new planets/systems while filling up your depleted planets with one craver and the rest of other pops that have a synergy with a stat from the planet. So a craver can play very economically and going for Economists is actually quite a viable way for them to win any of science, wonder or economy victory. I think if Stellaris and Endless Space 2 had a baby, that would be the new standard to play. Also, sorry for bumping an old comment.

[@Slimurgical]

0:56 This isn't wierd. Cleopatra is literally infamous for being a bit of a promiscuous woman. She slept with two of the most famous romans in all of human history.

[@endersblade]

Stellaris has one key advantage over all others - its soundtrack. It's absolutely, mesmerizingly beautiful!

[@Shenaldrac]

I'm a little confused. You started out saying that one of the downfalls of the 4X genre was that all of the games played effectively the same because each tended to have very similar factions, and each faction ended up deciding for you how you played (military faction goes to war not being an interesting choice, was your example). But then you start talking about how in Civ 6, the factions... aren't completely different and don't change the core nature of how you play, they just nudge you in one direction where you have an advantage. So it sounds somewhat contradictory to me. You then bring up the Necrophage from Endless Legend... and everything you talk about them screams "this faction can play only one way" which, again, was a thing that you earlier said was bad. Honestly, I feel strongly the opposite to your stance, which seems to favor large differences between how each faction plays. My favorite RTS is Supreme Commander. The game has 4 factions, however they have relatively minor differences between them. Slight stat tweaks to units, minor differences in unit availability, etc. And yet, this allows for an astonishing amount of well-balanced gameplay, with no faction shoehorned into a single play strategy. So too do I feel this way about, say, Civ 5, the Civilization game I have the most experience with. I like that the leaders each have slight, but certainly noticeable, bonuses and abilities. I like that I can pick a leader who focuses on economic bonuses but still be warlike if I want. Or that I can play as Shaka Zulu and use my large armies, made more affordable due to his unit maintenance being lower, merely as a defensive force and expand primarily via settling cities rather than conquest. Meanwhile, Ncrophage: I go to war or I die because that is genuinely all I can do, I *cannot* be viable using any other playstyle. One of the earliest things you mentioned was Sid Meier's saying "a game is a series of interesting choices", and you saying that "a faction with war bonuses going to war isn't very interesting." But I feel that's a gross oversimplification. Yeah, you're going to war. That's something you probably know you're going to do when you pick a faction that gets benefits to its military. The interesting decision becomes, with who? Where? Over what? Who are your neighbors, and what resources do they have, and what is the terrain like? These all are variables, things that you take into consideration when deciding when and who, and even if, you go to war with. And they are going to be different every time you play a new game, even if you play the same leader with the same overall strategy ("be militarily expansionist") each time. All of this is even more important for multiplayer*, because AI in 4x games has never been truly amazing. If I encounter someone playing Necrophage in a multiplayer game of Endless Legend, I know. I *know.* That they are a threat, that they are going to sooner or later be at war with me, and that I gotta kill 'em, and it's almost certainly sooner, and by sooner I mean right now. Multiplayer Civ 5, I encounter someone playing Genghis Khan. While yes, he's probably militaristic, there does exist the possibility of peace between us, especially dependent on the distance between our territories and our mutual, and non-mutual, neighbors. This is very different from encountering the "Always War" faction in one of the Endless-series games. *Disclaimer: I've played Civ 5 multiplayer a half dozen times or so with friends, so all this is theoretical and I'm sure some people who play Civ 5 multiplayer competitively will be happy to tell me how I'm completely and utterly wrong here. I only ask that it be done so politely and constructively.

[@karry299]

Right. All the factions in Civ are a bit samey, so let's pick an example where all factions are exactly the same - Stellaris. Seriously, what ? If Stellaris is your proof of innovation in the genre - gaming industry is doomed. Stellaris is the biggest case of random meaningless and consequenceless feature creep in a decade.

[@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts]

Why compare other 4x games to civ? Because it is the most sucsessfull, profitable and long lasting 4x. Not all like it, but more like it than like any other 4x, meaning it makes the most money, allowing it to have the best graphics, marketing, support and other money based benefits, allowing it to go on longer, and thus build a more loyal customer base, all making it more profitable, and so on.

[@M33f3r]

Best soundtrack Stellaris.

[@turcanudan9386]

M33f3r eh, civ 6 has some pretty good soundtracks. Take Norway , Spain and Rome for examples

[@lololoershadow]

*Stellaris Audio Orgasm*

[@khatack]

It's "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate", the order is important.

[@DmGray]

"weirdly sexualised Cleopatra" really stood out to me as an odd description. Have you READ any history? She's been a romantic figure for a couple of thousand years, my friend. I mean, her sexuality was a subject of controversy when she was blood *alive* for goodness sake (whether it can be believed or is simply propaganda or titillating speculation is besides the point) Making her a sexy femme fatale is pretty much the standard trope by now and NOT doing it would be a very odd, possible even brave, design choice.

[@ethangray8527]

@L'Homme Éveillé Cleopatra was a real person, dumbass.

[@chalkskeleton3653]

I feel like it’s worth saying my idea, even though it might be bad, so here it is: What if civilizations (not talking about the game, just a clarification) start as a blank slate and could permanently decrease ability’s to increase others, such as mining efficiency, leading to other civilizations to judge each other on the resources they have, not who they are playing as which would be important to the game. I know this is close to stellaris, off world trading company, and civilization, but because it takes pieces and not whole games, I think it’s worth thinking about

[@TehAntares]

This problem reminds me nations in AoE2 and AoE3.

[@kseriousr]

Such an in-depth, well put analysis of a topic I never knew existed, and all people heard was the offhanded remark about a character being overly sexualized. KZbin.

[@HazhMcMoor]

Well, as far as tribes go, all civilisations are still human after all in civ. Fantasy and space genre 4x es have their own freedom of differences between species but humans are not inherently that different after all. if civilization touch 4x for specieses other than human, maybe the differencea will be more influential and looked.

[@Ethan-3369]

*cough* beyond earth *cough*

[@nathangamble125]

Civ II: Test of Time did that. It was basically 3 civ games in 1, all of which had multiple factions with different playstyles.:The "extended original" where you could fight aliens on Alpha Centauri after your spaceship arrives there, the Fantasy world where you could fight the stygians (undead), goblins, buteos (birdmen), elves and merfolk, and the Sci-Fi world where a group of Humans and Aliens (Specifically Klackons from Master of Orion) in the far future get stranded on a planet together.

[@pubcollize]

You could also argue that vikings weren't inherently stronger than other populations at the time. They just couldn't grow food well and were bad at breeding, so they relied on pillaging and raping to survive. Despite being completely human like any other humans, the Vikings modus operandi was more like the Necrophages the video talks about than the civ Vikings.

[@DolusVulpes]

hafizh makmur just because the civilizations are all human doesn't mean there's no room for them to differ from each other mechanically. In the real world, different civilizations have had to survive, grow, and expand under incredibly different circumstances, and this is part of why countries around the world have such different architecture, culture, and weaponry. As someone else mentioned, the Norse had very little in the way of proper farmland, as the terrain of their home nation just wasn't suited for it. So instead, they pillaged from other countries, not because they were trying to take their people or land, but because they needed their food. On another end of the world, the Mongols lived in an area that had exactly two types of terrain: large, open, and empty plains, and mountains. They had almost no crops to speak of, but what they did have was horses, and domestic animals such as cows and goats. So instead of settling in one location, they became nomadic and spent most of their lives on horseback. When they needed to stop somewhere, they set up tents, and other structures that were easy to put up and take down. They took their herds of domestic animals with them wherever they travelled. And because they were horseback nomads, whenever they invaded other people to conquer or pillage them, their armies were made almost exclusively of cavalry. And for a third civilization, let's look at Egypt. Egyptians faced the rather unique problem of living in the middle of a desert, with no other kind of terrain for miles around, save for a single river. Because of this, they settled all of their cities next to or around this river. All their buildings are made with sandstone, because it's the only stone available for miles around, and what little farmland they have is located directly around the river, which is also their main source of water. When they grew larger, their own resources started to not be enough for their population, so they started interacting with other civilizations, trading things unique to their nation to get things that they needed. Now tell me, do a few slight differences in resource gains or numbers sound like enough to do justice to the differences between these civilizations?

[@frankdelgrosso8297]

The fact that Civ has only human races is not what is relevant. The reson Civ lacks much deviation in the factions is deleberate. Back when it was Micro Prose they were more bold. But since MP became Firaxis they have consistantly streamlined everything they produce. Stelaris and Endless Legeneds were not afraid to be bold, they accepted that doing so would dramaticly reduce mass apeal. Games with more complexity and depth have too haigh a curve to be mainstream hits. In the early days of PC gaming all the players were dedicated gamers because the barrier to entry was so high (both in actual cash and knoledge needed). So nearly all game makers were basically indie, they were all trageting niche markets to make the kind of game they would love to play themselves. Now that PC gaming is mainstream most companies create simplified stramlined games which offer many options but little depth. Civ has become exactly that. 23 pleaysble factions....that are all for the most part the same thing. Tech tree with 382 unlockable techs....which all simply improve one of 4 things. Civ is not the only franchise to do this all the big ones do. Look at X-com, or Fallout, MMORPG's, etc. The formula is more stuff, better graphics, and easy barrier to entry. And this always means a reduction of depth and and diversity of play. I cannot even think of a mainstream game which has held my intrest for more than a few weeks. Lack of depth makes it eventually feel like I am just playing the same game over again. It took me months or years to feel that way about the original x-com or fallout. But Fallout 4 and the new x-com generated that feal in about 7-10 days and I stoped playing out of interest in under 2 months. We old school gamers are spoiled, we need depth to be happy. With no depth all the game becomes is a grind for the sake of winning repeating what you already know until you reach the finish line. For us old schoolers that is a job without a paycheck, no thank you.

[@xasanth4278]

sorry but even with Stellaris 1.0 you are completely wrong regarding the "few choices" to be most effective... with Stellaris 2.0 you can't be even more wrong...

[@Lexi.f]

No empire is made by past glories byzantium "laugh's in greek"

[@JackSheet]

Hey! Really nice video. Just a quick note: For someone who's barely touched these kinds of games, I would have appreciated if you included a text with the games you mentioned, or just show the cover art as you start to talk about them. It helps twits like me keep up!

[@islagkage15963]

it's strange isn't it? while it seems they tried to make every civ more unique in Civ VI compared to Civ V, i actually feel they got the opposite, the new civic system, while supposed to make for unique decisions more or less boils down to a few being the best, except a few that you swap in and out, and most of the civics feel lackluster. compared to (fully expanded) civ 5 where your choices in civics had a pretty big impact on what kind of game you would play, especially with ideology, as being the first gave you the most options, but later people to unlock might have to chose a different ideology, just to get more starting points. and civ V also had rather interesting civs, like venice or india that changed how you are supposed to play in few large cities, or germany where going after barbarians is encouraged and having a strong millitary, while also being able to be a production powerhouse. or Denmark which is truly a naval warmonger, and pretty much having to do a rush push, just to stay relevant later into the game, because if you don't get the jump on the other people by rushing barbarians it's gonna be an uphill battle as you have no other catchup mechanics. you literally only thrive if you push hard and fast. or Assyria who is a scientific warmongerer, being able to use millitary to catch up on science. in civ VI most of it is just numbers, or nudging you slightly on how to play, but any civ can pursue pretty much any victory.

[@RuiRuichi]

Wovaka Civics are an improvement in Civ 6. You can swap in any policy to suit your wants. In Civ 5 I always find myself following the same Tradition then Rationalism opening policies because the others especially piety are just garbage in higher difficulties. It was very limiting.

[@islagkage15963]

i get this bit, and they did try a lot to make it more even, but oh boy do i just find the civics kinda boring, like i usually end up using the same handful every playthrough, and they just feel like they lack the impact, yes tradition was always a bit on the strong side, it also meant that high culture meant more bonusses, compare that to civ vi where it's essentially just another tech tree, atleast i really loved the ideology system once you got that far, and yes in many games i too would go tradition, value point in honour. and then i would usually branch out, sometimes patronage, sometimes aestethics, sometimes comercialism and sometimes rationalism often just dipping into certain ones if the bonus seemed nice, i guess what i am saying is that some more constant, long term bonusses would be really nice

[@rostigerrolf4490]

There are overhaul mods for this though which also make wonders way more impactful. I also rarely changed civics in Civ6 since a lot of them just sucked.

[@a.dennis4835]

You could give the factions different goals. For example, the warrior faction would win if they encounter the entire map while the capitalist faction would win if they get enough money.

[@JonathanXLindqviust]

To be fair Stellaris plays the same way with any faction, you're painting it as if there's huge changes when there's not. A better example would be Galactic Civ II where if you're a trader/economic you can just pay others to wage war in your stead, or just go culture route and conquer the galaxy with just you shitty iPads and horrid burger-culture, it's the only "civ" game I've ever felt like I play differently and I've played all the ones you listed in this video and more. Albeit the Endless series is a close second

[@r00b]

Agreed, especially in the expansions where the tech tree was actually quite different for different races

[@andrewsigrist9981]

I find your point of view interesting. Endless Legend definitely has more variety between the different races, but I feel like this may actually lead to less complexity when making decisions in game. The race you described dont sound like they can do anything except for making war. This means that you always know what you're going to get when you face them or play them. Yes you're playing the game completely differently than the other races, but the game you're playing seems quite linear. Contrast that with Civ 6. Any of the races may be better or worse at a particular aspect of the game, but all of them have at least 2-3 win conditions that really fit their bonuses, which leads to more interesting decisions.

[@gargamellenoir8460]

Nice video, but it would have been better with a pretty interesting example about the faction system : Fall From Heaven 2. FFH 2 was a full conversion mod of the best Civilization game, Civ 4 Beyond The Sword. A full conversion to a dark medieval fantasy setting with a very fleshed and complex story, and more importantly *vastly* different factions! You had the vampire faction that improved its best warrior by eating the populace, the mountain dwarves that were as strong as their coffers were full (relative to their number of cities) which encouraged greed to the highest form, the doomsday cult that unlike other factions won if the apocalypse came (on their own terms), the surface dwarves that did everything with golems, etc, etc. Playing that incredible mod seriously underline how samey vanilla Civ is, and made it hard to go back to it.

[@Darkprosper]

I really liked FfH2 but let's be honest here, the balance on that thing is absolutely atrocious. Which is probably the very reason why Civ doesn't follow that road. It's a really cool mod, had a lot of fun with it, but it's definitely not a good example of 4X game design.

[@gargamellenoir8460]

Well the civ games tend to be unbalanced as well, but at least FFH had the decency to offer us vastly different experiences for it! And it was well worth it.

Couldn't agree more. Nothing has equalled FfH2 in terms of faction gameplay difference.

[@truro3439]

Endless Legend is boring though. Doesn't really matter if you have interesting factions when the base gameplay sucks

[@sithalo]

Why kick down Beyond Earth? It was a great game >.> Stelly is one of my favorite games but it needs way more fleshing out. Its ok now but its very bare

[@The_Azure_]

0:56 I know this is a bit nitpicky, but if anything, Cleopatra as depicted here is likely a tad more covered up than what she likely wore during her time.

[@Winnetou17]

Funny that you speak of more diverse and impactful faction differentiation. If I'm not mistaken, in Civ V, you can play as Venice which can only have 1 city. Like the cultists? from Endless Legend. So I can't say that they haven't tried. And really, while it's nice to have it, I don't think that this diversity is neccessary at all, for a game to be good, fun, balanced, deep and replayable. All in all I think you're right that there needs to be more games, with new ideas, but I don't think you got the best argument(s). Because, really, nobody knows exactly what should and what shouldn't a 4X game have, and not be like Civ.

[@transfermium3349]

I think Venice wasn't exactly the most popular civ in CiV, although I do like it. I'd also say that many fan-made civs for the Civ franchise are major innovators on the 'unique faction design' aspect.

[@LamiaDomina]

Cult were a clear ripoff of Venice, and the first step toward Endless Legend giving up its own identity and trying to become Civ. I don't know why people keep holding them up as a positive example. I would say that Civ 5 would have done a lot better if the religion and culture systems had been better developed, and better balanced so every run wasn't necessarily using the same no-brainer builds every time. I understand their intention was to give players the tools to differentiate themselves throughout the game rather than only through what faction they selected, but it seems like they got too timid about their ability to balance actually impactful gameplay features and so they reined a lot of them in to the point they didn't effect your playstyle enough to represent more than token customization. Endless Legend unfortunately shipped with faction customization incomplete and outright broken in several cases, but Endless Space before it actually did have significantly deeper faction customization and yet also far better balance than Civ 5 did. It's unfortunate that Endless devs neglected that in their next two games to focus on mostly under the hood mechanics that players largely didn't interact with.

[@MrKeotan]

Venice wasn't a faction, it was a gameplay challenge for the diehard fans. Overall playing Venice is just putting handicaps on yourself, they buffs don't offset the single city drawback. The cultists, on the other hand, a very much gameplay balanced, they are a safe pick in any situation.

[@9365fall]

You can only name Venice though, and even then Venice isn't done in a way that's really all that intresting...

[@LamiaDomina]

Exactly. It's defined by the options it removes, not by anything it adds.

[@jesontjowari9723]

Ah civ, the last time I stopped playing it because I tried single player with expert AI and that game lasted for 3 days.

[@oikophobe9164]

The problem was never factions, in my opinion, but the centralization problem. New designers seem to think much more centralised. Your capital is a very superpowered city. You have severe penalties to build city 5 compared to just keeping 4, that kinda thing. I think there's two reasons for this. First is how new designers have grown up viewing the world. I think public schools have pushed the big state idea more and more and as a result, these young designers look at the world as nations as strongly centralised organisations. Second is more organic and game driven. You want a variety of strategies to be viable to create interesting options and challenges instead of being forced to play the one and only way to win. And unless there's restraints on it, a civ-like game has a very premium on quick expansion. Every civ-like game has to has restraints on how many cities you can build. Alpha centauri gives broad happiness and efficiency (money/research) penalties for large number of cities. Civ 4 gave giant financial penalties. Civ 5 gave centralised happiness and growth penalties Civ 6 gave increasing building costs over time for districts, meaning you were losing opportunities by buildings settlers I think rather than these, they should try instead to go back to the primary way: area. Modern civ-like games barely have you compete over fertile/rich grounds. There's something counterintuitive to most restraints on expansion.

[@ebolachanislove6072]

good example of a game that kind of changed this up was actually flashed in this video(well series really but meh) galactic civilizations has no innate debuff for over expansion(i think maybe a really negligible approval hit but most of the time you arent even going to have enough planets for that to happen) the only downside to rappid expansion was slightly less developed worlds because construction is really slow and early on you only have so many credits to rush construction with the series also has a cool twist on diplomacy (ai still pretty stingy but at least they WILL trade unless they hate you) with the united planets council system where all races in the game unless they opt out of it vote on issues that will effect all races with each players influence in the UP determined by their influence(and pop too i think?)if you want to focus on diplomacy most of the tech trees even have options that unlock more impactful proposals for the UP

[@oikophobe9164]

Nice to see ebola making a comeback. Also, pretty good analysis.

[@jehovasabettor9080]

aow 3 has no penalties on expansion whatsoever, makes every game devolve into city spam quite quickly turning city building off and adding lots of neutral cities kinda fixes the problem, except randomly placed cities are never as good as hand-placed ones (e.g. the mythical upgrades dependent on local resources are often missed out) different factions get different bonuses from the same resources/city upgrades, which is nice; the bonuses mostly being unit enhancements (some even change unit role)... too bad cities hardly have mutually exclusive upgrades (mods can fix that) it feels like capping number of cities you can build does have its merits (e.g. forcing you to chose what resource you need more), although capping the number of cities you are allowed to have seems detrimental (conquest must be encouraged in a game about conquest) so-o, a hard cap on cities you are allowed to build (say, 3) and no detrimental effect from cities you can capture/buy/obtain in any other way might work pretty well; especially if your cities can't be all-rounder specialized

[@oikophobe9164]

That would be a very gimmicky solution. Like, I find it hard to think of any lampshade reason even why you wouldn't be able to build more settlers.

[@jehovasabettor9080]

Perhaps. But there isn't any reason given why you can't colonize more than, say, 3 planets in Stellaris, unless you count the "administration capabilities" that require civics to expand. If it is the explanation that bothers you, it could be made up on the same accounts: having some sort of emperor above you who sets the rules, aforementioned bureaucracy efficacy, some sort of natural/ecological reasons (say, you can have only so many floating cities until they will start colliding during storms) and so on.

[@ToxicBastard]

"No great empire was ever created by trying to replicate past glories" [ *Mussolini hated that* ]

[@semanticsamuel936]

I can't get into Civ V or Civ VI. I don't know why...they just haven't gripped me in the same way Civ IV did. You talk about barriers to entry: Civ is not an easy game to get into. I suspect one of the reasons I never got into V and VI is because I am so familiar with IV, being my second Civ game after II. I committed many hours to getting the hang of the game, so now I am comfortable and familiar with its mechanics. The changes made in V were fairly substantial, enough so that very little of my knowledge IV transferred, and I just didn't have the patience to learn it (because my time is finite) when I could be playing IV, which I enjoy. So that raises a question: is there a way of lowering the barrier of entry without sacrificing complexity? We enjoy the complexity in these games, but the fact of the matter is you often need to learn fifty different mechanics all at once just to have a serviceable experience and stand a chance of accomplishing anything. You'd never expect people to do this anywhere else - work, school, sport, music, etc. Tutorials are an option, but tutorials in 4x games I've played are uniformly dire: they're boring, slow and monotonous so you absorb very little of what you're supposed to be learning. Most of us who play 4x games are probably older and grew up with games like Civ. There's nothing wrong of course with having games that appeal to more mature audiences (not gore, nudity, profanity and the like, but mature in terms of sophistication and complexity), but you do need to attract new players too. Also, what about the Heroes of Might & Magic series? I've played the first four games, and III is easily the best. However, I prefer to play IV almost exclusively (with updated AI) because it features the caravan building and automatic resource gathering, which removes much of the tedium from the older games. Other Heroes players will know why. I'm keen to play the newer ones, but from what I've seen on KZbin it just doesn't appeal to me.

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

This is pretty weak. First in terms of history. Because you seem to think that Civilization was just one 4X amongst many in the genre's early days. But really, Civilization *created* the genre, for all intents and purposes. I can't recall if there was a game that had a similar feature set before the first civ, but Civilization 1 was one of the earliest, and it was certainly the most popular game even very early on, and it drove interest in both players and creators. Most variants and spin-offs on the core concept are just iterating off of what Sid Meier established in that very first game in one way or another. Next, yes, there's more orthoganality in a game like Endless Legend. And I agree, that it's probably better for it. But you're not really realizing the power that a lot of minor tweaks per civ can have in the meta of any entry in that series. Like, it can actually be kind of ridiculous with lots of civs if you play into their bonuses and stack others, and you'll often get a landscape of development on a civ that looks completely different from another even just based on a minor bonus. That's the actual hook in the series for mechanics - flexible minor, but stackable, options that lead to interesting combos and paths. But more importantly, the civ series has something of a handicap here, since at the end of the day, all of the civilizations are still humans. I mean there is no human tribe out there that can just eat sand instead of fruits, vegetables and meat. There are none that get to breathe underwater. Or figured out how to talk to the animals. We humans are, unfortunately for game designers, pretty similar, when you get right down to it. (And if and when you do the whole "different cultures get wildly different bonuses and styles, because 'everyone knows Asians are smarter and Africans are more athletic' . . . welcome to the controversial sector of game design that gets you in major trouble, and has gotten the Civ series in trouble on more than one occasion - the early games for example, didn't have enough differentiation between cultures for people, but the later games would get dinged for being insensitive or racist) Ultimately, sure, yeah, it's probably best to consider the Civ series a single point to launch away from. But that's exactly what happened in the past and a lot of the those games died off. It's also exactly what's happening right now with games like Stellaris and Endless Legend and others. But that doesn't mean pointing to the one constant in this genre and seeing what it does or doesn't do well as important. Ultimately, it's probably good to have Civ around to be the one game that acts as a model of what "vanilla" is for the genre. It lets variants define themselves more fully. I mean, you can't really understand why Guile is unique unless you have boring old Ryu, right?

[@scotteskridge7460]

Go look up the game Classic Empire that was originally for the apple released in 1977 www.wikiwand.com/en/Classic_Empire

[@iruleatgames]

You're nitpicking his examples because he wanted to keep it short and sweet. He easily could have gone into CK2, EU4, or HOI4. Saying Civ is handicapped for being based around humans is ridiculous. In Eu IV, try comparing a game as Austria to one as France, or one as Brandenburg, or one as Mali, or one as Ming, or one as Shimizu, or one as Bahamis. Seriously, they're extremely different. Or how about playing a pagan tribal vs a Spanish count in CK2. How about even UK and Germany in HOI4, the most simplistic of the games. The mechanics and angle you play these nations from are all completely different (don't even get into the ability to mod these games, civ gets absolutely shreked).

[@miot22]

Spencer Geller You really missed an opportunity to say “OBJECTION!!!”

[@marlonyo]

Fritz Miot i think the problem is three fold.one is how everything feeds on itself in civ. science mean better units more production means more units. More gold alows you to buy units to conquer cities to produce more gold science culture ect. Second you never have big setback by yourself. there are no civil wars that split your empire you never just loose stud. and because of that you must have the players start equaly you cannot start as a small city there is this big empire next door

[@iruleatgames]

Fritz Miot lol, when I do that, people don't get the reference

[@onatgz]

why is katibim playing on the background? 🤔

[@samj4820]

Stellar is isn’t a 4X, it’s a grand strategy

[@nikolamatasin3877]

I've started watching video and chanted "Endless Legend! Endless Legend! Endless Legend!" in my head, and then "The first of the game I wanna look at is..." :D

[@doctorstrange7768]

Civ 4 is still the best single civ ever.

[@thekingof300]

Paradox games > any other strategy game. They're by far the most rewarding, complex, and skill based strategy games on the market.

[@gu98marrafon174]

If you can buy the 200$ worth of dlc and patches, EU4 were horrible at launch

[@thekingof300]

​@@gu98marrafon174 Sure, but Civ has a ton of DLC too, and it gets republished every 4-5 years and it's basically always the same thing, and it still doesn't compare.