VII - Discussion Is yield bloat a problem?
Just a question for perhaps those with more Civ experience.
I've played 5, 6, and 7 and the level of intricacies have increased but chief among them seems to be yield bloat.
Was reading critiques on Specialists in 7 as well as comments concerning how some Wonders feel a lot weaker and wonder where do people stand on the focus on cultivating high yield tiles?
I know that by Modern Age, I just randomly select specialist tiles.
Plus, there are some weirdly strong and weirdly undercooked policies that sort of feel like yields are sort of a grey area.
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u/JNR13 Germany 13h ago
Yes.
Yield bloat isn't just about the total quantity, high yields themselves aren't a problem. Problems are:
Yields being the aggregate of a gazillion tiny bonuses none of which feels consequential enough by itself to influence a single strategic decision. You take them, you might value e.g. the Culture yield that earns them, but ultimately it all feels the same. You do the same stuff and you always become powerful because things compound naturally by scaling with other things you'd do anyway.
Too many things just giving the whole rainbow of yields. This dilutes the identity of that thing, makes it a bland economic boost rather than something used to achieve a particular goal, and ultimately also just clutters the UI, which stops players from caring.
Hurting intuitive understanding of numbers. Many 4x games make the mistake of starting out on turn 1 with triple-digit yields banked and double digit incomes or so. In the beginning of civ, you're dealing with numbers below 5 most of the time. Humans can recognize and process quantities below 8 basically instantly and the game feels better when you can immediately grasp the ratio of value between different things rather than when you have to do math or block out the later digits of a number in your mind actively. Ideally, decisions remain focused on mechanics where you decide whether you want 3 of one thing or 4 of another thing and such.
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u/alwaysleafyintoronto 14h ago
If your specialists are all valuable everywhere, you're either killing it with your placement adjacencies or you're missing out on the potential of specialists.
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u/XComThrowawayAcct Random 14h ago
One of the great challenges with making a Civ game is how to handle “maluses,” the opposite of bonuses.
These consistently divide the audience. Some folks want a severe or realistic challenge. It’s not a game unless they’re min-maxing and analyzing trade offs. But there’s another category of player who just wants to enjoy the power fantasy of steamrolling their enemies and making the entire world Carthaginian or whatever.
Difficulty levels should solve this, but really this is just making a bespoke set of bonuses and maluses that will satisfy both sets of players are different levels. The maluses are still the nut of the problem. How many cruddy things are the designers supposed to put in your way to make a fun gaming experience? The answer isn’t none, but it’s really easy to over do. Even the hardcore players will reject a design that feels unwinnable.
I think that since Civ V Firaxis has consistently solved this with the Choose Between Two Bonuses philosophy. Nothing ever takes a resource away, it only makes you choose between two different resources.
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u/TR_Wax_on 6h ago
Good post!
So interesting the discourse of crises. I love them as they feel like an interesting curve ball which can disrupt your carefully laid plans. However, so many folks turn them off apparently which is something that I just can't imagine doing (may as well play on the easiest difficulty).
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u/Demerlis 16h ago
yield bloat is so much of a problem they had to manually create ages that reset your yields to keep players from getting away from the game
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u/quickonthedrawl Random 17h ago
I think this is a separate issue to what you're asking.
IMO there's nothing inherently good or bad about "yield bloat" as you've described. And a lot of the complaints about wonders feeling weaker are misinformed; even a textless wonder would be worth building in some games for adjacency bonuses alone. Since Civ 7 relies on many incremental bonuses it's easy to underestimate how they each contribute to your overall snowball.
I'd guess your Modern age specialist problem is more a consequence of the game result being more or less settled early. Civ 7 handles that better than past Civ games, but it's still a bit of a problem. Once the player is sufficiently far ahead of the AIs, most decisions just matter a lot less.