Tag Archives: reviews

Yields, Hermetic Order, and Civ IV

I want to blog about Civilization VI again, and this time about yet another swing and a miss: the secret societies game mode.

Civ VI usually plays exactly how every other Civ game plays out, 6-12 randomly chosen civilizations are plopped down on a randomly generated map, and the player must “build a civilization that stands the test of time,” ie win the game with science/culture/diplomacy before the game ends in 2050. Why 2050? Well the game must end at some point, and when these games were coming out in the early 2000s, 2050 seemed to be so unimaginably far in the future as to be a good “end date.”

But Civ VI has a secret societies mode which shuffles this system around. This mode is built on the popular fiction trope of there being one or several secret societies which have guided human history from the very beggining. There are 4 societies here, and they’re each in perpetual conflict with each other all the way back to the Neolithic era:
The “Order of Blood” aka a secret society of Vampires (think of White Wolf’s Old World of Darkness)
The Hermetic Order aka a science-y magic secret society
The Voidsingers aka a Cthulhu Mythos secret society
The Owls of Minerva who seem ever so slightly Harry Potter themed, although maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, the Civ VI secret societies game mode adds these guys as players to the game. They don’t actually have any cities or units of their own, mind you. But in the early neolithic while the player is exploring the map, these societies will occassionally approach the player and invite the player’s civilization to join them. In exchange, they’ll give the player’s civ powerful abilities that will only increase as the game continues.

But this game mode is very unbalanced, and worse yet it isn’t very well thought out in places.

The order of Blood gives you a vampire unit and later lets you build Vampire castles. The vampire is as strong as the strongest melee unit you have, and if killed it shows back up in your capital needing to be healed rather than actually dying like a normal human unit. That’s neat.

The Owls of Minerva give you bonuses when you send a trade route to a city-state. This would be neato, except these bonuses also inadvertantly cause the city-state to acquire more and more territory, such that if the player picks the Owls as their patron, the city-states on the map will gobble up all the tiles that the actual Civs are supposed to use to build their empires. It’s a shame city-states can’t build empires of their own.

The Voidsingers give you a statue of the Old Gods, which seems to give minor bonuses to faith generation, but then later in the game they make 20% of your faith generation get added to your gold, science and culture generation also. The cult therefore ends up being the most powerful society by far just because of how much it powers up your entire empire, even though their bonuses seem by far the most mundane, almost lame.

The Hermetic Order though is… weird. To discuss them, I first have to tell you about yields and ajacencies.

So the map in Civ VI is divided into tiles, and each tile has a “yield” on it describing how much “stuff” that tile produces. A simple grassland tile produces 2 food. A plains tile produces 1 food/1 production. Yields can be altered by resources, improvements, and technology also. If we have a wheat resource on that plains tile, it jumps to 2 food/1 production. If we farm that wheat, it becomes 3 food/1 production. If that wheat farm has 2 other farms “adjacent” to it, it becomes 4 food/1 production. That last one is more than twice as good as a simple plains tile.

Cities work these tiles and use their yields. A city needs production to produce things and food to feed its citizens. Thus the main gameplay loop is acquiring high-yield tiles and improving them further with builders, technology, and so on. This lets your cities grow large, produce stuff, and have culture, science, and gold to boot.

Next adjacencies, we saw them briefly in the wheat-farm discussion. Civ VI has a system where certain things get bonuses if they are “adjacent” to other things. Nice and vague, but here’s some examples:
A campus gets a bonus to its science generation if it’s next to a mountain.
A commercial district gets a bonus to its money generation if it’s next to a river.
A theatre square gets a bonus to its culture if it’s next to a “wonder of the world,” whether that’s a natural wonder like Mount Everest or a man-made wonder like the Hanging Gardens.

So the other gameplay loop is planning where you’ll place your buildings, farms, and other things to maximize their adjacency bonuses as well.

So here’s where the Hermetic order comes in: the very first thing they give you is the ability to see “ley lines” on the map, which power up your adjacencies is you build buldings near to them. This is also where the problems begin: these ley lines might not be anywhere near where you want to build a city.

The other societies just give you a “thing” immediately, whether it’s a vampire or a statue to the Old Gods, but the Hermetic order demands you go out and not only find these ley lines, but also build your cities near them, because the ley lines are useless to you unless you actually build stuff near them for the adjacency bonus. But what if there’s no ley lines near your territory? What if on this map they’re all in the desert or tundra, far from fresh water, good land, or any kind of resources? Sucks to be you then, because now you’ve basically joined a secret society that gave you nothing in exchange.

People call it save-scumming, but whatever: when I want to join the Hermetic Order, I’ll first save the game, and then join them to reveal the ley lines. If I find out there’s no ley lines in reasonable locations from me, I’ll just reload the earlier save and join a different society instead. No other secret society is this dependent on random luck to make them useful. This is added to the fact that how you join the order is also a pain: you can’t join the Hermetic Order until you find a nature wonder, which are quite rare on the map, and again you may have absolutely none near you.

The other societies give you fairly simply joining requirements: find a tribal village, find a city-state, kill some barbarians. Villages, city-states, and barbarians virtually litter the map, but natural wonders are very very rare. So not only are the bonuses this society give you very hit or miss, but even joining them is a pain.

Later on in the game, the Hermetic Order will power up your ley lines by giving them yields based on how many Great People you’ve earned, but this is unfortunately a “win more” scenario, not an actual benefit.

What do I mean by “win more?” That’s a thing where the bonuses you receive don’t help you win, because you only get them if you’re already winning. Essentially they’re bonuses that don’t actually help make the difference between your winning and your losing, they just make you look stylish if you’re already winning.

See, getting Great People requires your nation to build a lot of buildings of the right type, and use faith and gold to entice the great people as well. This obviously means you already need lots of production, faith, and gold generation to get great people. So if you’re getting lots of great people, the Hermetic Order will rewards you by upgrading your ley lines with more… production, faith and gold.

This isn’t like Civ IV where you could focus on getting great people or focus on a non-great people economy instead. Every useful thing in Civ VI generates great people, so if you’re playing well and winning the game, you’ll get a lot of them. If you’re not playing well and struggling, you’ll get almost none. So if you’re winning, the Hermetic Order will help you win more, if you’re not winning, they won’t help you at all. Not a great system to be honest.

I think this is why this is the worst of the secret societies, even if mechanically they are by far the most interesting. The other societies all give you a very direct way to turn their bonuses into win conditions. The Voidsingers tell you to maximize your faith generation, and in return they’ll give you all the other stuff you need. The vampires tell you to maximize your military power, and that in turn powers up your vampires. The Owls of Minerva tell you to maximize your relations with city-states, and in return they’ll ensure those citystates remain utterly loyal and VERY powerful for you.

But the Order of Hermes demands that you get lucky enough to find a bunch of ley lines, and then also be winning enough to get a bunch of great people.

I’d prefer it vastly if instead of the ley lines being randomly generated, if the Order gave you a special unit that could *build* a couple of ley lines wherever you want them. Maybe give you a few more ley lines as the game progresses, like how the vampires give you extra vampires as the game progresses. Then they could actually feel like a pure benefit instead of a diceroll.

And instead of powering up ley lines based on how many great people you’ve recruited, maybe they could power up your great person recruitment for every building you build near them. Then instead of a “win more” condition, they’d actually help you come from behind and recruit great people if you haven’t already gotten some.

Anyway that’s my 2 cents. The devs have long moved on to Civ VII, but I think it’s unsurprising that game was so poorly received, when so much of Civ VI showed but flashes of brilliance with not enough thought put into them to make them truly stand the test of time.

Addendum: Factorio is getting worse as a game

I posted a while ago about how I loved Factorio but didn’t like Factorio: Space Age. The crux of my argument was that Factorio rewarded players creativity and expression, letting and encouraging the players to find their own solutions to problems and play “their way.” Space Age undid all that, the devs have decided that there is only 1 right way to solve each problem, find their way and do what they want you to do. There is no more player freedom and expression, no more playing “you way,” it’s the devs’ way or the high way.

I decided that Space Age was a bad expansion pack, but at least the base Factorio game was still untouched, right? Well no, Space Age’s “my way or the high way” ideology has also infected the base game. The game has certain achievements for completing it within certain constraints, and now the devs have decided that if you play “your way,” you are no longer eligible for their achievements.

Nefrums, a Factorio youtuber, used to have an amazing series of videos where he completed 100% of Factorio’s acheivements in a single base in a single session, a speedrunning achievement in which he held the world record many times. The only realistic way to complete this gargantuan task was to change the way the game was played to make them possible. The task was still monsterous of course, it wasn’t at all easy by any means, but it was possible since Nefrums was allowed to play “his” way.

Now an update has made playing the game Nefrum’s way no longer possible. When you start a new game, you can see all the little tweaks you can make to how the game is played. There is a warning next to *every single tweak* saying that if you change this setting, you disable some achievements. Obviously it’s no longer possible to play Nefrum’s way since he would change these setting but still get 100% of the achievements in a single base. But again, the devs don’t want you playing “your way,” it’s the devs’ way or the high way.

So now even the base game has decided that if you aren’t playing “correctly,” you need to be punished for your arrogance. The devs have become so insular that they are seemingly enraged by anyone playing “wrong,” so they need to change the game to “fix” them.

Achievements don’t harm the devs in any way, they are purely a motivational factor for the players. If Nefrums wants to get 100% of the achievements by changing the settings, that doesn’t hurt the devs and it doesn’t hurt any of the other Factorio players at all. So there is no reason to change things and disable those achievements except pure spite, pure spite that someone, somewhere might be playing the game “wrong” and getting achievements in the “wrong” way.

Such a shame that the devs I once thought were pinnacles of the video game world have become so spiteful and insular. I don’t think I’ll even play another game of theirs, I’ve been burned badly with how bad Space Age was relative to the Factorio base game, and now they’ve even gone back and changed the base game to make it worse.

Such is life.

Addendum, I’m sure fans and devs might be angry at my post, and attack me by saying Space Age is making hella bank and so I’m just a hater. But I think the evidence shows the wider community agrees with me. Factorio’s base game is rated “Overwelmingly Positive” by the Steam reviewers, a mark of excellence only a very few games achieve. Factorio: Space Age is rated at a mere “Very Positive,” and the recent reviews give it a “Mostly Positive,” meaning barely a majority of the reviewers gave it a thumbs up.

“Mostly Positive” is a very low bar to clear in Steam reviews, only the worse of the worst video games will ever score below “Mostly Positive”. So in grade scales we could say that the base game got an “A,” its expansion got a “B,” and the recent players of the expansion give it a “C,” a barely passing mark.

It’s pretty clear that many many players, not just me, think Space Age is a worse game than Factorio was. If you like it, I am glad, but I don’t like it, please don’t get angry at me for not liking a game you like.

Stardew Valley: Nitpicks and Wishes for more

To round out my series on Stardew Valley, I’d like to talk about where I *wished* the story had gone. I already spoiled the whole story in a prior post: the spoiler is that there isn’t really a story to spoil. Now I’ll talk more about the story I *wish* I could have spoiled.

I want to start by acknowledging that Stardew Valley was made by just 1 guy. All by himself. I know that he didn’t have the time or the resources to write a national epic. So I only want to talk about story beats which I feel could have been added in easily using the simple dialogue and cutscenes the game already uses.

To start: I wish the Jumino, Jojo Mart (aka Evil Walmart), and Mine plotlines were more interconnected. I wish Jojo Mart was more overtly corrupting the town, and the Juminos were fighting back. And I wish the monsters in the mine were set loose by the Jojo Mart mining operation.

To start, I think that Jojo Mart corrupting the town could have been gotten across in the few few dialogues with the townsfolk. On the first day you get a quest to introduce yourself around town, but while this is a great way to meet the neighbors they all have very generic greeting dialogue. Some might say “oh you’re that new farmer!” to let you know they’re friendly, and I think one says “why are you talking to me” to let you know he’s unfriendly, but more could be done with this.

Pam is the town bus driver, but her bus is broken down. I wish she’d complain about that when you first meet her: “I drive the bus to Pelican town, or I used to”. Shane works at Jojo Mart and seems to hate his job, I wish he said something about that: “do I like my job? Of course not, but what other choices do I have around here?” And a few people could complain about how you’re the first new face they’ve seen in ages, mostly people just move *away*. They could even connect that by saying that when Jojo Mart came they thought it would breathe life into the town, but instead the decline accelerated.

Not every character needs to say something like that, I’d say no more than 5 pieces of dialogue need to be written. But when you’re introducing yourself, this would at least give more of a hint that the town isn’t entirely happy-go-lucky, and that the conflict with the Evil Walmart is something the townsfolk take seriously. As it stands, only Pierre seems to care, and that’s only because he runs the General Store, which is the single solitary store that actually competes with Jojo Mart.

The conflict can still be generic and maybe not even outright stated. I’ve love if Jojo Mart were some secretive evil corp that knew about and was working against the Juminos. But it could be the simple hippy complaint of “ever since Walmart came to town, the jobs and happiness left,” which is a fine premise for conflict even if I disagree with its economics.

So once it’s better established that the Evil Walmart *is* Evil, then I think a lot of the game does a fine job with background storytelling about how the town is decaying and the Juminos want to fix it. The bus is broken, the Juminos fix it. The mine carts are broken, the Juminos fix it. The community center was once the life of the town, the Juminos can bring it back. And it would mean so much more to be able to kick out the Evil Walmart if they were actually established as a degrading influence in the first place.

From there, I wish the game actually did something with the mines. You get a quest early on to reach the bottom of the mines, and I assumed there’d be mystery and revalations down there. Instead all there is is some combat items and a key which unlocks a post-game infinite dungeon where you can fight in the mines forever. It’s fine as a gameplay reward, but really underwhelming overall.

I’d like it if every 30 floors of the mine, instead of just getting a combat item you got a diary page from the Jojo Mart expedition which caved in the mines in the first place (as seen at the start of the game). Chasing diary pages is hardly groundbreaking storytelling, but I would have appreciated it and it would have given a chance to let us Know Our Enemy, if indeed the game’s only plotline is working against Jojo Mart.

The diary could be generically evil, talking about strip mining for minerals and Digging Too Deep/Too Greedily. But it could also give some weight to the Juminos. Does Jojo Know about them? Are they working against them? Do the Juminos specifically hate Jojo Mart as a commercialization entity that’s destroying good old fashioned farming values? Or are they just sad that the town has lost touch with nature?

Finally, the diary could explain that it was Jojo that awakened the monsters in the mine, and that’s why its suddenly so dangerous. Now maybe this isn’t what the creator had in mind, I mean there’s an adventurer’s guild, maybe in his mind the mine has always been dangerous. But personally I thought it was a little weird that there’s these deadly creatures right outside town and no one seems to care. I’d be more willing to accept it if they only started being there recently.

Finally, I like that the Juminos don’t really say much, and mostly just emote happily at you. But I’d like to know just a bit more about *why* they were there, and I think the wizard from the beginning can be a good character for this.

I said earlier how I thought it was strange that in this otherwise modernish farming sim, you have to speak to a wizard who helps you translate the Jumino’s message. He becomes a character you can befriend after this, but otherwise I don’t think he has any story relevance, he’s just some guy. A nice guy, but just a guy.

I wish his friendship arc had him taking on more of a mentor role, telling you about the Juminos, about forest spirits, about how they protect the town and how the town lost its way. Again nothing groundbreaking, but it would at least satisfy my curiosity that there *is* an answer, because in the actual game I spent the whole game hoping to find an answer and getting nothing.

In fact, with regards to the wizard, the adventurers guild, and the Juminos, it feels overall weird that this game is set in present day. The Mayor has a car, you arrive to town on a bus, there’s TVs and electricity all over. And yet there’s a wizard, an adventurer’s guild, friendly forest spirits, and evil monsters in the mine. This could have been an attempt at modern fantasy, or magical realism, but a straight-up robes and wizard hat wizard still felt jarring to me when I first played. I wish the wizard had more to do with the story, because that jarring feeling could have meant something, I could have recalled that feeling as I reflected on how much I’d learned from the wizard over the course of the game. But instead it’s just a moment of “ok, this game is weird” before he starts acting like any other character.

Anyway that’s what I wish the story of the game was like. I wish there was more of a conflict with Jojo Mart, I wish the mines gave you nuggets of story, and I wish someone, preferably the wizard, told you more about the Juminos. The game is still incredibly, I’ve played through it multiple times, but I still wish the story was a little more than nothing at all.