Geopolitics in Civilization VI (Part 1)

[Occred]

(Part 1 of 2) Part 2

Okay, so, prepare for a lengthy manifesto that a bored and spoiled gamer, not to mention dilettante of political science, is about to deliver. Tl;dr at the bottom for those of you who care but not enough to read the full thing. This is completely un-proofread, so brace yourself for potential grammar or spelling mistakes.

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This is about the concept of geopolitics and international relations in Civilization VI. I was really excited for civ 6 in this regard - the way they described the eurekas\inspirations, the casus belli system, the districts, the agendas - practically everything - gave me hope that this would be the first Civilization game where one's geographic situation actually helped dictate the nature of their polity in the international system, and that this international system could be maintained and not simply boiled down into a fiery slugfest.

Let me explain, in case you're not picking up what I'm putting down: geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography, human and physical, on international politics and relations. The idea behind it is that you can look at patterns of geography and how they relate to the world's nations and history, in order to induce various theories, which can then be used to induce further predictions or ideas about what various actors (be they nations, people, corporations, etc.) may due on the international stage or why they do things in the first place. Geopolitics is one lens that you can use to look at foreign policy and international relations.

I was hoping that, Civilization 6, would reflect the fact that various nations' cultures, ideas, ambitions, and fears all develop based on their geographical surroundings and how their populations cope with them.

For example: if you're an island nation, like Japan for example, with limited land for farming, you'll probably get a lot of your food (and other resources) from fishing and fight ferociously to protect your fishing rights and territorial waters from other nations. Civilization actually emulates something like this pretty well on a basic level. The eureka system actually helps a lot with this - if you found a city on a coast, you automatically get bonuses to researching Sailing; if you build more boats, you get bonuses to boat-related technologies. Basically, if you do something a lot, you're probably going to get better at it, and if you're doing it a lot in the first place, chances are that you started doing it out of necessity. Britain became a sea-based power out of the necessity of defending its island(s) from Continental invaders; likewise, America did much the same thing on a much larger scale, commanding two of the world's major oceans to ensure its own security.

Another example: Russia became excellent at land systems while neglecting its naval technology because it's been almost totally landlocked for most of its history and unable to field more than a handful of major ports that aren't at the mercy of other nations for access to the sea (St. Petersburg to the Nordics, Sevestapol to the Turks, etcetera), in addition to the fact that Russia is a massive country covered primarily by rolling plains in the west, which is exceptionally difficult to defend; this explains Russia's historic interest in holding Poland and other Eastern European countries, as northern Poland is where the Great European Plain is at its narrowest without encoraching into Germany, thus allowing the Russian's to defend much easier against enemy invasions than if the entire plain was open for invasion at once.

The eureka\inspiration system is cool - but I want it to do so much more. We need more, specialized technologies and civics that allow civilizations to further customize how they advance their people. I might even suggest some similar to Endless Space's four-way tech web, if it weren't such a radical (and probably unnecessary) divergence from the norm (and we know how poorly some fans deal with that). Basically, we need to make the geography and the actions of players matter more - you shouldn't be going out of your way to get a eureka, but instead getting a eureka by virtue of how you're choosing to play. There should be enough techs\civics and enough eurekas\inspirations that allow for a wide range of playstyles to be ushered along without the player going out of their way to try to get them. Additionally, in order to make districts actually worthwhile and to avoid an annoying meta of "spam commercial hubs and industrial districts", we need to either make districts easier\faster to build or significantly more worthwhile - I need a significant adjacency bonus much higher than five or eight (which I can only get if I throw away an economic\wildcard policy slot anyway), or the ability to build lots of diverse, powerful buildings in a district, to make up for the loss of, say, a hill tile that gives me five production and one food. What I'm trying to get at here is that there needs to be a system for demolishing the meta and forcing the player to adapt to their environment without it being tedious or silly, which I feel like the Civ 6 team was trying to do in the first place with this game. We need to abolish "playstyles" and make it so that people can just PLAY.

Speaking of playstyles, let's talk about wide and tall. With the arrival of Civ 6, there is no unique playstyle anymore. It's infinite-city-sprawl or bust, since there aren't any penalties to science or culture from number of cities anymore. I was an avid tall player in Civ 5, but I'm not exceptionally irked about this because of that. My issue with this is that it seems like a cheap ploy to encourage constant expansion and territory disputes. There needs to be some sort of balance struck, just like in Civ 5. We need some sort of way to encourage players to either stay within a certain geographic area (more, coherent, dense mountain ranges, attrition penalties in harsh terrain come to mind) or cease expanding after a certain point (possibly by bumping up the cost of settlers or districts for each new city?). There will be the outliers who continue expanding despite the penalties, definitely, but it will be minor and generally inadvisable until you reach the Renaissance or later, when it becomes easier to penetrate vast deserts and tundras or thick rainforests. That being said, what about civs that originated and thrive in such environments? Perhaps, if their city has a certain number of these types of tiles in their borders, or the civ has been registered by the game as simply 'founding' in that environment, that their units should be exempt from many of the penalties that would otherwise be forced upon them. This also helps to reflect the 'homecourt advantage' guerrilla groups such as the Viet Cong or Muhjahideenn used to oust foreign invaders from their country (with help from Russian and American supporters, respectively, of course).

As long as we're on the topic of invasions, let's talk casus bellis, war weariness, and warmonger penalties. As with eurekas, I really like the idea. The Civilization series has long needed something to change it from a mindless wargame to something befitting of human civilization - as Sasson Sofer puts it in The Courtiers of Civilization, “the good diplomat is the courtier of civilization by being a symbol of peace, a custodian of public virtues, and the flag bearer of the practices of a functional and civilized international society”. I realize that Civilization can't do everything; all I want is a representation of the fact that war isn't simply put off until you're able to steamroll people. There's an intricate web of social, diplomatic, economic, and personal relations that goes into each and every international relationship; this is reflected somewhat in Civ, whenever your economy takes a hit because a civ you attacked instantly cancels all trade routes with you, or when you get a bonus to tourism with another civ because of trade routes or sharing a religion, or when a civ likes you somewhat better because you share the same government type.

[Occred]

Geopolitics in Civilization VI (Part 2)

(Part 2 of 2) [Part 1]

As the game somewhat accurately reflects, international acotrs tend to dislike it when one of their own starts gobbling up territory and resources willy-nilly. What the game's AI doesn't accurately reflect is the tendency of the rest of those actors uniting to beat down the revisionist state and restore (or reclaim with overwhelming force) the balance of power. People on this forum seem angry that conquering an enemy civ - even an aggressor - gives them a warmonger penalty; this is partially true to life. Each time the Allies beat the living ♥♥♥♥ out of Germany, they didn't conquer it; they imposed a new government with certain expectations and rules onto it. There were some minor territorial changes, but they were usually either fueled by irredentism (France taking back Alsace-Lorraine) or fear/gratitude (Russia taking East Prussia). Whenever a country just gobbles up another nation or portions thereof, especially for no other reason that "she hit me first" or "I want it", other nations typically look upon it with hostility. We need a larger, more flexible casus belli system that still allows for fannagling in wars (guaranteeing independence or sending warnings, for example, to take a page from Paradox's book) while punishing irrational warmongering. The game's AI and the diplomatic system both need extreme fixes to acccount for coalition wars, more possibilities for enforcing demands at the end of a war, and giving the player profitable, beneficial options that don't involve annexing huge swaths of their enemy's country.

In terms of war weariness, I think it needs to be slightly buffed and altered. If you're waging an exceptionally bloody war for no other reason than expansion, with hundreds of thousands of your men dying on foreign soil, your citizens will probably be extremely angry about it. Evenn moreso if hundreds of thousands of your citizens are dying on YOUR OWN soil. I'm not 100% on how the current system works, but if I'm not mistaken war weariness indeed increases depending on how many of your units die and if they were in your land or on foreign soil. This should be buffed and be adjustable based on the casus belli - a holy war is likely to garner less weariness than a war of expansion; a mission to liberate your traditional homeland less than one to liberate some distant citystate 'ally'. In addition, your war weariness should also increase more slowly if you have a significant coalition behind you - the fact that you have other nations watching your back and struggling alongside you gives hope to your people, especially in more epochal conflicts. Also, as long as we're on the subject - let's do something to prevent massive pan\trans-continental wars before the Renaissance or Industrial Age. Maybe increase unit upkeep drastically while outside of friendly (your own or a friendly\allied nation's) territory, making it get lower as you discover certain techs or inspirations, or adopt certain governments. Hopefully these changes, along with making the AI less schizophrenic and inherently hostile, would make diplomacy an actually usable part of the game and create a better experience than just "conquer everything".

Oh, the AI, the AI...so much work to be done, from basic unit movement to diplomatic common sense. The agendas system needs to be completely reworked - either make civs value them less or make them less of a cheap ploy to force constant conflict. I can understand the logic and historical context behind most of the agendas - polities have competing interests and ambitions that frequently drive them to conflict with one another; but it simply doesn't work in the context of a game about human civilization. Instead of making China/Aztecs/Brazil invade you for simply playing the game (building wonders, getting luxuries, getting great people, etc), make it so that their agendas are actually meaningful and worthwhile. I'm not sure what good replacements would be off of the top of my head - maybe Qin Shi Huang, instead of hating you for building wonders, values stability and development, focusing on consolidating his holdings and building lots of infrastructure, liking civilizations who do the same; or Frederick Barbarossa, instead of hating you for something as simple as interacting with city-state or, god forbid, befriending them, could still try to subjugate and ally with city-states but also focus on forming strong webs of alliance between himself, city-states, and smaller nations. Basically, make their agendas something MORE, something that isn't just supposed to encourage people to kill each other. The random hidden agendas are already somewhat on this path - "Civilized", "Heavy Industry", and "Populous" are good ones; they give the AI a goal and a reason that shapes the way they build their empire without needlessly shoving conflict into the mix. The bonuses to having the same government TYPE (democracy, autocracy, oligarchy) should also be increased, with the penalty decreased, especially as you advance into later ages. Examples of completely different governments cooperating (European democracies, Russian communism, Chinese authoritarianism) with one another can be found throughout history, and the trend tends to increase the closer you get to modern times. Likewise, those with the same governments tend to stick together outside of very particular circucmstances (ie, Russia and China both squabbling over who gets to be the global leader of communism), especially as you go forward in history.

Oh, yeah, governments. I love the way they're going with this time around - feels a lot more alive than the policies to me. It's clear they're going for a pattern\system here - autocratic, oligarchic, and democratic governments; three of each, unlocked at roughly the same time. I don't completely like how these were implemented, though. I'd much prefer a system where, say, a vastly increased number of policies - many of which change depending on the era - determine what kind of government you have, instead of the other way around. Say you have two wildcard slots in Chiefdom instead of the one economic and one military slot; depending on which policies you use and in what ratio (military to economic to diplomatic to wildcard), it dynamically shapes what kind of government it evolves into along the same lines we have now - autocracies are more war focused, democracies for economics focused, oligarchies somewhere inbetween. There could\would be more than nine governments as well - maybe subsets of the different types that you choose and switch between; for example, if you have a mixture of economic and military policies and end up advancing to the second tier of governments with an oligarchy, you might get a monarchy and be able to choose between 'constitutional','absolute', or, I don't know, 'imperial', which focus on different areas. Instead of you choosing a government based on your needs, your government develops dynamically to address these needs; revolutions and radical changes in government (ie, from absolute monarchy to direct democracy) would still be possible, but require either significant amounts of anarchy or other costs (but may in and of themselves offer signficiant bonuses).

In conclusion, I think there's an excellent game here, as always. It's just a diamond in the rough that everybody is hating on at the moment because it's different and hasn't had the kinks worked out yet, AS ALWAYS. Firaxis is definitely trying to go for some basic emulation of geopolitics and international relations, but I don't think it can do that without introducing something along the lines of the various features\changes I've discussed here in later expansions.

TL;DR:

In order to be great, Civ 6 needs to make geography matter much more, make districts matter more, make diplomacy far more in depth, make it so that war is not an automatic option, make governments more flexible, make leader agendas more purposeful, and overall get rid of all the cheap ploys that just try to generate conflict in place of actual gameplay. Less pointless war, more actual empire-building that made me fall in love with Civ.

Just my two cents. Feel free to comment with your thoughts, your own suggestions\ideas, whatever. I may or may not slink around and take part in any discussion that happpens as a result of this. I was mostly bored today and thinking of why I wasn't playing Civ 6 much as of late, and it turned into me pouring all of my grievances and ideas for the game into one long stream-of-consciousness manifesto.

I suggest that any discussion be centralized in this second thread, for everybody's sanity.

Oh yeah, grumble grumble, bad\cartoony graphics for kids and girls, not a true Civ game, literally the worst thing since Hitler, Sid\Firaxis should kill themselves, whatever. There, did I pander to enough of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s in this forum? If you want to come in here and complain about how the game is ruined, or not a real Civ game, dumbed down, etcetera, this thread isn't that place. I don't have any power of speak of to keep you out, but I'll be ignoring you, at the very least.

Sincerely,

A Nobody/Idiot/♥♥♥/Kid/Whatever Names You Wanna Throw At Me.

But I prefer to go by Flowdab.

[Cyprus Hillbilly]

TLDR

[Occred]

Originally posted by The Hunger:

TLDR

Originally posted by flowdab_:

[Part 1]

TL;DR:

In order to be great, Civ 6 needs to make geography matter much more, make districts matter more, make diplomacy far more in depth, make it so that war is not an automatic option, make governments more flexible, make leader agendas more purposeful, and overall get rid of all the cheap ploys that just try to generate conflict in place of actual gameplay. Less pointless war, more actual empire-building that made me fall in love with Civ.

There. I highlighted it for those too lazy to Ctrl+F for "TL;DR".

[capn_chryssalid]

One third of the USA was aquired by warfare. Or all of it, if you could the NAs as proper nation-states and not tribes or tribal confederations. In CIV6 by your reasoning we'd be hated for this for 1000 years. Plenty of nations just plain take territory, and have throughout history. You're adopting a post WW2 (or at most post-Westphalia) mentality to all of human history.

No, the warmonger system in this game is rediculous. Modifications are the only answer.

[Occred]

Originally posted by capn_chryssalid:

One third of the USA was aquired by warfare. Or all of it, if you could the NAs as proper nation-states and not tribes or tribal confederations. In CIV6 by your reasoning we'd be hated for this for 1000 years. Plenty of nations just plain take territory, and have throughout history. You're adopting a post WW2 (or at most post-Westphalia) mentality to all of human history.

No, the warmonger system in this game is rediculous. Modifications are the only answer.

Obviously we can't really account for scenarios where nations overlook the conquest of peoples they consider subhuman - maybe with the colonial conquest casus belli. As for the rest of the US, there weren't many nations nearby who were particularly concerned about it, I imagine, besides the British, and even then only because it meant either a much weaker or much stronger US.

And I think you'll find that most societies, at least in the Eastern Hemisphere once you got past Antiquity, generally had some sort of system or tradition surrounding reasoning behind war. The whole casus belli system only really kicks in anyway once you get to that era and beyond; before then, sure - I see little issue with drastically reducing the warmongering penalty for eras before then, although we still need a seperate way to model other polities percieving you as a threat. We just need to make the AI less insane so that it's capable of making and keeping friends, as well as adequately responding to large threats.

[SamBC]

Merged your two threads together because there was no earthly reason for them to be two separate threads.

[Kaitos Mogh]

First of all: I like your ambition to put historic context into your ideas, but the extent was not necessary.(You were a little fast with your conclusions. Russia was at some point in the cold war actually leading in naval technology. I get the idea though, that geographic cicumstances can lead to specialized scientific progress. Though the more advanced technology got over history, i don't see how geographical cicumstances today are essential for technological development-levels. Example: Japan's culture is still relatively strongly connected to the sea, whilst seafaring has a minor cultural influence in Germany. Both countries' economies rely on machinery with a relatively strong emphesization on robotics. Germany is pretty advanced when it comes to smaller warships and submarines. Geography doesn't matter any more really.).

The gameplay-mechanics in Civilization are not based on realism to begin with. They are first and foremost supposed to give a fun gameplay experience instead.

I thought a little about your ideas. Having something like specialized tech-trees sounds interesting. I can't think of a recent strategy-game that i played, that doesn't punish technological specialization heavily, or even gives the opportunity to do so. Looking at Civilization, i think that kind of linear development is essential. The idea is, that everyone starts with more or less the same opportunities and then tries to slowly get an advantage, to in the end, achieve the chosen victory-condition. Those victory-conditions are what the player is supposed to specialze for. That is, in some ways, similar to your ideas. The chosen victory condition can be influenced by the development-opportunities the player has in his surroundings, but they are generally not decisive. A reason for that is, that Civilization is supposed to be competetive and for that, you need equal opportunities. I don't see a way, how a focus on - let's say - naval development can play into trying to get a cultural or science victory, without making it a different game, especially if you include something like seperate tech-trees. CIV Beyond Earth has this tech-web, which lets the player specialize, but that specialization always goes towards a victory-condition.

This is already getting too long, and i have only adressed your first point.

A stronger representation of how political, economical and generally cultural circumstances lead to war - and how that war in return influences the Civilization as a whole, including diplomacy? Sounds great, but without specific gameplay mechnics, i don't see a discussion here. Again: CIV is not at all ablout a realistic representation of what happens in the real world. It's a strategy game. It's, in it's core, a game; more complicated and influenced by the players decisions than a dice game, but a lot less than chess. History is only a theme which makes it more fun.

[Occred]

Originally posted by SamBC:

Merged your two threads together because there was no earthly reason for them to be two separate threads.

Sorry - I got an error when I tried to post it all in one thread. Suppose stupid me never considered just putting it in a second post in the same thread.

Originally posted by Leviathan:

Again: CIV is not at all ablout a realistic representation of what happens in the real world. It's a strategy game. It's, in it's core, a game; more complicated and influenced by the players decisions than a dice game, but a lot less than chess. History is only a theme which makes it more fun.

Of course not - my intent wasn't to preach about how it needs to be a highly accurate simulation of history. Sorry if it came off that way. I suppose I'm kind of the odd one out in that I rarely play towards any victory condition; I play Civ games mostly for the experience of empire-building and seeing how things develop over time, and that's the lens I was writing through.

Most of my points were intended to be a logical extension of eurekas and districts - everybody starts on a level playing field, but that field shifts and changes depending on the environment different civilizations find themselves in, forcing people to adapt and the game to adapt to them. That and a burning desire to make the game something better than a glorified wargame.

I see now how, in most cases, it wouldn't work out. People like to win, I guess.

[Twelvefield]

I like the way you think. Philosophically, I agree with much that you are saying, although from gameplay, I often enough see the opposite happening from what you expect.

For example, a radiating tech tree in a Civ game seems to be counterproductive. Look at the turd that was Beyond Earth. One reason that Crusader Kings endures is that the tech tree (at least in the vanilla game) is quite restricted on account of being stuck in the Dark Ages.

The Civ games, and especially Civ V all seem to nod towards Jared Diamond. Yet the more complex the games become the less those crucial guns-and-butter decisions seem to matter, since there's always a way out. In Civ 6, this is especially true: there's always a way to bootstrap. If you fall behind in science, spy your way to higher knowledge. If you are behind in commerce, you build traders. If you need more military, you instabuy armies with your treasury. It's almost always death, though, if your civ becomes too specialized, but this seems to me what you are calling for: Civs like the Minoans who fell into unique and precise circumstances based on their geography and cultural opportunities whose great power becomes steamrollered by fate or hsitory or bad chocies or whatever.

Maybe what would work best for your ideas would be Minoan-style scenarios, a sort of Empire Strikes Back feel (or Rogue One), where you know that your Civ will lose, but you have to strive enough to be able to at least pass on your inspirational spark to the civ that follows you, sort of like the transition that was alluded to but not seen between Civ V and Beyond Earth, a game that would have been awesome to play but you'd never win. Civ meets FTL.