Refactionizing 4x: The Civilization Problem
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ค. 2017
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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. - เกม
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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.
Stellaris avoids this somewhat by having endgame crises and fallen empires that awaken late game.
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.
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...
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.
@@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
This is why in CIV 5, Venice was always my favorite, because of the one city rule with puppets was super interesting to me
Do you think that the cultists of the eternal end maybe copied them?
Holy shit, I *have* to get Stellaris. I'm literally incapable of ~>not
Did you get it?
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)
I did and now I'm a huge Paradox fan in general.
Ahh the love of Stellaris
@Awalys
th-cam.com/video/O1CQ7Vwz8Eo/w-d-xo.html
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.
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.
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.
"...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.
Came for Civilization V, left with a copy of Endless Legends.
Few I know regret that decision.
yeah the game seems reaaaaally hard to get into. The UI is so exhausting to try to understand (at least for me).
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.
+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.
Pretty sure this video is made to sell Endless Legend. It even says "8 major parts you WILL be experiencing" :V
Meanwhile in Warhammer 40k Gladius:
-There's only one x...
...EXTERMINATUS!!!!
Letz figh' doze 'oomiez!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
0/10, no Chaos
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.
The Emperor Protects.
@ WE WILL DIE WITH THE LIGHT OF THE EMPEROR IN OUR EYES
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.
You don't seem to actually have a link to the Modes of Opperation's video, nor do you seem to give its name.
Just like games, content creators too improve over the course of time. Don't be so hard on yourself. :D
I enjoyed the video
Actually man far as i know cleopatra was pretty sexual
Do you also recall what the song playing at 2:00 is?
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
you left off nuclear gandhi
Indeed he did. How dare you.
FOOOLLL!!!!
I HAVE MANY WAR ELEPHANTS AND THEY ARE UNSTOPPABLE!!!!
xD
Nuclear Gandhi = Peace through Power xD
Nuclear Gandhi is a meme easter egg, there's no mechanical incentive to rush nukes as India that other factions don't have.
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'
Hornytown USA - population: Cleo
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.
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)
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.
Beastinvader there is a similar thing in CIV beyond earth
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
@@arandombard1197 I love democracy.
endless legend is so underrated. i think it has some of the best music in videogames ever
Venice in CIV V was a one city gameplay, but I belive it was the only civ that really changed the GAMEPLAY
There was also Germany's ability to recruit barbarian units by defeating them.
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)
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.
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.
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).
I miss strategy games like Age of Empires, Rise of nations and Empire Earth. Anyone remember those?
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
Age of Empires 2 still has a strong multiplayer community.
Spirit of the Law has a lot of videos on it
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.
@@neoshenlong Cus FPS are the real money makers yo.
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.
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.
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.
Adam Millard - The Architect of Games No you picked them because you wanted to straw-man the argument
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.
Interesting vid, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Civ 6's new expansion rise and fall in it's new mechanics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
+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.
"No great empire was ever created by trying to replicate past glories"
[ *Mussolini hated that* ]
"Their a race of horrible bug monsters...." Thought this was Kurzgesagt for a second
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.)
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.
"weirdly sexualized" Cleopatra? She was the most famous sexy lady in history!
Yeah, she is not weak or anything, but she definitely got it on with Anthony And Julius...
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.
And the fact she fathered sons with invaders...
She wasn't actually, look it up
That is a myth created by Shakespeare Cleopatra was known for her intelligence and wit, not her physical beauty.
This felt more of a sale pitch for Endless Legend than a video about problems in 4x games.
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.
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^^
I also did because of you Jonathan :)
Haha OK :]
lol, I've pitched Endless Legend in comments in the first minute of this video, not knowing he will bring it up.
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.
2:45 This is perfectly synced ^^
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.
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.
one nation that really feels different : "Venice", its so different that its basicly banned from multiplayer games.
"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.
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?
Well there's always the autoresolve thing.
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
It's only civ fanboys here.
Did they ever fix the sequel?
Nictator sadly, not really.
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.
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.
Cool videos, man. I'll be keeping an eye on your stuff!
Only 1.7k subs? You deserve much more!
Have you tried Europa Universalis 4 or Crusader Kings 2?
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
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.
They are not really 4x though, neither is Stellaris to be honest.
Wilczan Why not?
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
Paradox saved the genre for me (while i like grand strategy even more as 4x)
Loved Stellaris. Liked HOI4 but wasn't my thing.
looking at your videopart of stellaris just made me realise how much they changed over the year since this video.
How did I just now find your channel? This stuff is actual, well-thought-out reviews and and analysis instead of just hours of bland twtich stream footage with the same bland promotionalism of whatever is being played. Instant sub. Thanks for the work.
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).
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.
civ 4 is the best because of the mods hate that to sell civs and scenarios all new games killed mods
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.
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.
+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.
C2C is good but it is a massive bloat that needs a very good computer to run.
god damn well done, amazing video
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
"Make 4x great again" LOL!
High brow political satire, that's me.
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.
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.
Civ 5 Vox Populi modpack is best civ experience as of 2018
Great Video, Great Channel!
I found this video months ago while looking up something related to a Civ V playthrough I was doing. Your description of Endless Legend fascinated the fuck out of me and it's now one of my favorite strategy games. So thanks for that.
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.
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.
What an excellent video! This series has been a favorite of mine since a little kid, and is the sole reason I originally wanted to start learning how to code and program. I still don't know how to (but still would like to learn), but wanting to make games came, in large part, from Sid Meiers. I run a linux based distro on my desktop now, so another reason to learn how to code/program.
But videos about Sid Meie's are always going to be a must watch for me! More please! What if each victory type in Sid Meier's could only be achieved once?? Meaning, there can only be as many factions as there are victory types, and once you began the trek toward one type, you're locked into it. Something like that I bet would be interesting mechanically because it would drastically change early game decisions, no???
just started watching this man, you are great!
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.
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.
"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...
This reminds me of the games I used to play.
You vaguely hinted at Birth of the Federation, and while it's very simplistic in general, I did find a single feature made a huge difference. Because the factions are so well known and have such clearly established personalities...
How do you encourage players to run with that without it becoming a straight-jacket?
Well, BOTF went with a morale system that's significant enough to really cripple you if you fight it too hard, but not so strong as to be insurmountable.
It then tied morale bonuses to actions you could take in a way that encouraged playing in a manner consistent with the faction.
For instance, the federation gets a HUGE penalty to morale if it declares war, but not if someone else declares war on it.
They get a massive penalty for occupying a planet, but a bonus for liberating one.Thus, federation players are discouraged from starting constant conflicts, and being heavy-handed when they are fighting.
The Klingons get a bonus if they declare war, a penalty if they sign a peace treaty (but not for more elaborate treaties if you've already got one), but an even bigger penalty for breaking an existing treaty.
The Romulans get a morale bonus for signing a treaty, but they also get one for breaking a treaty. Which encourages backstabbing, but doesn't actively force it.
This isn't a particularly elaborate mechanic by any means, but I was always impressed with how such a minor thing served as such a strong encouragement to play in a style that fit the personality of the faction you were playing, but still left enough wiggle room to say, conquer the galaxy as the federation, and it didn't rely on technology.
Then there's the game I spent ages playing; a now defunct series called Stars!
It was going to get a 3rd iteration but the publisher pulled funding on it I believe.
Stars! is beyond primitive, graphically. It takes the 'playing a spreadsheet' style of game to a far more literal extreme than most I can think of, but it has a surprising amount of charm in spite of that.
There are no real factions to speak of, because they have very little meaningful identity, and you can custom-make them.
It's nothing ground-breaking (now). but it worked really well at the time.
Now, the game does suffer terribly from the fact that there is no AI to speak of.
Or rather, in an AI only game there is no diplomacy at all. None.
Everyone is trying to kill you, and that's it.
The 3rd game was trying to fix that, but of course, we never got to see that.
So... What made the 'races' tick?
Well, you had basically a few secondary traits, which gave some bonuses, or a unique tech or two.
Often with a trade-off. (such as a much faster engine at a much lower tech level, but at the cost of losing access to almost all of the ramscoop engines that in the late game let you travel at high speeds without using fuel.)
There was also the environmental conditions;
Each planet had a rating for gravity, temperature and radiation.
You could specify a range for each your species could deal with, with their growth rate on a given planet dependent on how close to the middle of the range they were. You could also choose to be immune to one or more of the ranges.
All of these traits of course have a point cost that you have to balance, so one thing may come at the expense of the other.
A race that's immune to all environmental conditions can colonise any planet and it's always at 'perfect' conditions.
Meanwhile a race with all 3 categories maximised can also colonise every planet, but most won't be ideal for them, and will lower the birth rate of the colonists.
The core of it was the race template though;
Which mostly affected the technology available, but also had some secondary effects usually.
Most of the technology overlapped, but each and every main trait had a set of unique technologies.
For instance, the hyper-expansionists, gained 4x the growth rate, but 1/4 the maximum population per planet, and gained a smaller colony ship and a better early game engine. you also can grow the population while they're on a colony ship if it still has empty space.
The mass driver specialists could build about a dozen extra mass driver designs, which were much more powerful, and had an innate bonus to catching mass packets, and a defensive bonus against them.
They also had mass packets that lost less mass over time. (mass drivers fling packets of matter - the 3 ingame resources at various speeds. This can be used to transport resources without using a ship, but it can also be used as a weapon, since the destination planet will take damage if it doesn't have a mass driver to catch the packet, or if the packet is travelling too quickly for the recieving mass driver to handle.)
Everyone can build at least 2 mass driver models, but they are nowhere near as good as the specialist's ones, and the specialists start with one from the beginning.
My favourite were the stargate specialists. Similar in concept to the mass driver specialists, but with stargates instead. Again everyone gets access to stargates, but the stargate specialists get about a dozen extra ones, and start with one.
Stargates have both range and mass limitations, and you use them to instantly transport a ship from one planet with a stargate to any other. But if you exceed the range limits or mass limits, the ship takes damage or could be destroyed.
The stargate specialists get 3 gates over time that have one or both categories set to infinite. The fully infinite one is an endgame tech of course, but the infinite distance one with a relatively low mass limit is fairly early in the game, and you can send small ships across the galaxy in a single turn. Mass limits are determined by both the source and destination gate, while range limits are only dictated by the source gate.
The best part, and what makes them my favourite, is that regardless of the type of gate in use, everyone else cannot take cargo through any stargate, but if you have this specialty, you can.
On top of that, you can jump using enemy gates, which nobody else can do either. Which means eventually you can get anywhere that anyone has built a stargate.
Anyway, there's a whole bunch of others, but the most interesting one by far is the 'alternate reality' trait.
Normally you colonise a planet and live on it, or you can remote mine uninhabited planets for resources.
If you want to add say a stargate or mass driver, or simply beef up a planet's defenses, you build a starbase.
Here's where the Alternate reality race gets interesting.
They don't live on planets, they live on their starbases. their colonists slowly die off each turn if you have them travelling through space. But the point being, they live on their starbase, and thus the population cap for a planet is based on the size of the starbase. (and unsurprisingly they can build a bigger starbase design than anyone else.)
this has a lot of implications, not least of which is that you have to defend your starbases, rather than your planets.
which is actually kind of hard. Normal populations are vulnerable to bombers, but regular combat ships can't hurt planets. AR players cannot be bombed (for obvious reasons), nor does a mass driver impact do anything to them. But if you destroy their starbase, their whole population dies with it.
As a side effect of living on a starbase, they can remote mine their own planets.
Anyway, the game has fully custom races, little in the way of graphics or narrative, and no diplomacy, so it's limited in what's possible...
But the amount of variety the tech provided in spite of that was fun.
Plus the game maps were huge. the largest maps were 2000x2000 lightyears with it being possible to have multiple planets within less than one lightyear of one another, and there were certainly thousands of planets in any given game.
Even endgame ships could only normally do warp 10 (which the game defined as 100 lightyears per turn)
So 2000 lightyears implies it would take a ship at least 20 turns to cross the galaxy.
(hence the advantage of stargates. XD)
It did a lot with relatively little, which was quite impressive.
I kind of miss the series. But it died a long time ago...
I also remember a really obscure 4x game (so obscure I forgot the name) that was trying some pretty weird things.
Very poorly implemented, but it was interesting.
The first thing it wanted to do was scale; A full size map was 50,000 lightyears across. - each star system on the map having multiple planets.
(no, really - and keep in mind this was made in the days of 486 and early pentium computers that still measured ram amounts in individual megabytes)
Another fascinating concept it had, (though again poorly implemented) is that you played as an 'emperor' or something equivalent and had an actual physical presence ingame, and thus could move yourself about.
You got a major penalty if you died (But you'd get a replacement at your home world.)
To go along with this, any orders you gave physically travelled from your specified location as emperor, out to a set distance (based on your tech level). Anything in this distance you could give instructions in a single turn. (unsurprisingly you could give rather complex instructions in one go)
Anything outside this range wouldn't respond to a change in instructions until x turns later. Where x is the multiple of the distance your tech level had defined.
You could extend this range by building a comm relay out in space somewhere.
Every comm relay within range of where the emperor was located extended the range you could give 'instant' commands by a distance based on the tech level of the relay.
Similarly, any events that your ships outside of 'instant' range encountered, took just as long to get back to your location before you'd hear about them.
So a distant ship could get in a fight, get destroyed, and you may not hear about it until 10 turns later.
You had no direct control over ships in battle, except if you decided to place the emperor on a ship. That ship, and any fleet it was with was under your direct control.
But of course, the risks for your 'emperor' dying were not trivial, so you had to decide if this was a good idea.
Plus, the management of the empire follows the emperor. Meaning the location to which messages from colonies and ships had to go shifted too, which could be an issue if you sent the emperor well outside of your established territory and comms network.
This locality extended to technology too.
Rather than a fixed tech tree, you created tech packs at individual planets.
A planet that had that tech pack could duplicate it, or use that technology to build things that used that technology.
Or, you could load the tech pack onto a starship and transport it somewhere else, but then you'd lose it from that planet, unless you had multiple copies of it.
This meant that technology wasn't evenly distributed across the empire. You couldn't just spam research, where you researched something had a bearing on what you could do with it, and if you wanted that specific tech elsewhere in the empire as well, you either had to research it a second time in a new location, or duplicate it and have the relevant tech kit shipped over.
Anyway, as I said that game had fascinating ideas and ambitions, but a very poor implementation and even worse UI, that made it rather unplayable, especially in light of the absolutely insane scale it was going for.
It needed a lot of work to be playable, but it definitely did some highly unique things that I can't say I've ever seen repeated...
You can play Botf now in a Stellaris Star Trek mod. Obviously not the same but you can the Star Trek vibe there again. They tried to give every faction their own mechanics which are build around what the base game has allready. Federation building is obviously in it allready as well as building mega structures in space (Borg). The Romulans can use spies via events and disrupt alliances or blow up enemy star ships for example.
One of the first 4X games to try its hand at asymmetry was Sword of the Stars. Each species was given its own, unique method of movement. Tarka has your run-of-the-mill warp drives. Liir had some wacky thing that was described as making small jumps in space, which got slower/shorter nearer to gravity wells. Humans had a node/lane based drive that allowed for fast movement between stars, but only along preexisting lanes, which made your empire’s growth unique in form to other species (and could help or hinder defense and offence during war). Hivers has no FTL travelling between systems the first time; they slow-boated their way to a new system then setup a gate, allowing for instant travel between other gates, making them the perfect slow-growth but turtling empire, and fighting against them was all about getting there fast and destroying the gate just as fast; quite hard to do). Morrigi moves faster in FTL the more ships were in the fleet (encouraging flocks of ships rather than small numbers of more powerful ones).
Strategically that changed things too. The only species with the option of intercepting other fleets outside of star systems (with any reasonable efficiency) were Tarka, Liir, and Morrigi. Humans were immune to such interception, and Hivers extremely vulnerable to it.
The differences carried over into the real-time combat portion of the game. Liir ships, being intertialess, we’re extremely maneuverable, for example. This differentiation was really effective, overall, in making each species pretty unique in how they played. (It’s too bad SotS 2 was a disaster at launch, and the original game is...an eyesore, by today’s standards, to say the least.)
I’d say changing how the different factions actually navigate the map is one of the most effective ways to differentiate them and encourage different playstyles for each, and it’s a shame we don’t see more of that.
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).
Thank multiplayer for that. Any game that includes PvP can't have overpowered or wildly different strategies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Daminica Typhyr yee agree I play endlles space 2 all parties fill the same and proxy wars are very intresting idea
I'm so happy that you referenced Endless Legend! Such a seemingly underrated game is still one of my favourites, behind Endless Space 2.
The roleplay aspect is what sells it for me, the fact that contrary to other games such as civ, your choices do have an impact aside from the first reaction. Say you choose to stuff the people and go for industry in a random event, your industrial ideology will increase and your leading ecologist party may lose the election. But that's the price you pay for that +3 production.
seeing stellaris gameplay from that far back in time gives me fucking whiplash man...
"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.
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
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.)
That's the best response I could expect, free history lessons just for trying to nag someone. Thanks, it was very interesting! : )
you could argue that the original roman empire itself was build on greek base
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
stellaris is mix of grand strategy and 4x
The music at the beginning is Üsküdar'a Gider İken" ("while going to Üsküdar"; is a Turkish folk song about a woman and her clerk traveling to Üsküdar. The tune is a famous Istanbul song from the old times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
@@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.
Man I love Endless Legend. Can't wait to play Humankind! There might be a lot of potential for the genre in that game!
Excellent video!!
Liked and subscribed, awesome channel! kudos for the interesting video.
Best soundtrack Stellaris.
M33f3r eh, civ 6 has some pretty good soundtracks. Take Norway , Spain and Rome for examples
*Stellaris Audio Orgasm*
"sexualized Cleopatra"
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
This Was an actually brilliant video! +1 sub
I think it is Explore, expand, exploit and exterminate (3&4 switched)!
Yes, because it typically happens in that order.
Yes, but the presenter said it in a different order. Daleks would most likely disagree I guess :)!
@modisp thats the correct 4x
When I play Civ's to me it Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend Xgirlfriend
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.
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.
Civ 6 has scenarios, those were neat.
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.
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.
SMAC/X is the best best 4x ever made. I'm waiting for something to top that. (Maybe Endless Legend 2?)
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.)
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.
i love the awesome topics and interesting content! this should be what gaming channels should be like! not just overstaying to the band wagon of recent games! keep it up mate!
This problem reminds me nations in AoE2 and AoE3.
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.
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.
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
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.
*Laughs in how different stellaris is now even though this video isn't even 2 years old*
Civilization IV had this fantastic fantasy mod called Fall from Heaven who also had this idea of factions that really played different.
To be fair civ did something like this with Venice and it was kind of bad
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.
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.
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.
Norway also gets the ability to sail deep ocean 2 eras earlier. That gives norway a ton of abilities for colonizing
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.
why does the xenophobe voice in stallaris sound like a space marine
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.
Yeah, no wonder in Starcraft 2 there's a quite distinct unit layout between Campaign an Multiplayer(s) !
Amazing video!
The whole change in how you play was why I loved playing as Venice in Civ 5, sad that back to to the uniformity among factions in Civ 6.
"War Driven faction"
"Norwegians"
HA
Try Australia.
Stellaris has one key advantage over all others - its soundtrack. It's absolutely, mesmerizingly beautiful!
Civ4's Fall From Heaven mod is really great for a few of the reasons you complimented Endless Legend, it makes all civilisations truly unique, adds extreme amounts of flavour and a world that feels much more alive. It is probably on of my top 3 mods for any game
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!
No empire is made by past glories byzantium "laugh's in greek"
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can only name Venice though, and even then Venice isn't done in a way that's really all that intresting...
Exactly. It's defined by the options it removes, not by anything it adds.
I feel like Sword of the Stars often gets overlooked in the 4x genre, both in its innovation in unique ftl systems for each species and as a spiritual predecessor to stellaris (having been published, though not produced by Stellaris' Paradox)
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.
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.
*cough* beyond earth *cough*
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Nice to see ebola making a comeback. Also, pretty good analysis.
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
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.
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.
Subscribed. I'm glad YT recommended you. Also, regarding 4X titles, would you consider the Mount and Blade games 4X? The pacing of the game fits the genre, but the strategy is more first hand than the grand kind we usually see.
A really great video! Particularly enjoyed the glimpses of Civilization through the years: I can fondly recall being engrossed by Civilization 2. And I still wish an Alpha Centauri sequel could be made....
Anyone else here miss Civ 3/4?
3td was the first one I played. And left nostalgia till now. Others were like ''meh''.
I loved the Civ4 scenario where you start at the dark ages and play on the real world map. Played that one with russia a lot. Sadly the hostility of the Bizantine Empire toward baby Russia was not negotiable.
How about Test of Time?
What I miss about Civ 4 is the modding. Base civ, be it 3, 4, 5 or 6 do not appeal to me that much. Since I think the games are a bit to similar to Civ 2 and Civ 1 was such a great refinement of Civ 1. So I would like to have that aspect back. Civ 4 had some great mods.
(I do think Civ 6 actually did a lot of interesting things. Even if I have not played it a lot. Partly due to there being a small Renaissance of 4x games with interesting mechanics.)
+Leslie Andrews
ToT is my favourite civ game. It did so much right...
"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.
@L'Homme Éveillé
Cleopatra was a real person, dumbass.
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.
Venice in Civ5 was the one faction that came with a drastic gameplay change and ended up being one of my favorite countries to play at.