Diplomacy is getting a pretty major overhaul in Firaxis’ 4X sequel Civilization 7, set to launch later this month, but some balance changes were only approved because the game’s director hilariously got his butt handed to him by some fellow developers.
The tidbit comes via PC Gamer Magazine’s 405 issue where Civilization 7 director Ed Beach breaks down some of the sweeping changes coming to the diplomacy system. In past games, diplomacy between civilizations didn’t feel as ‘grand’ as you might expect – it essentially boiled down to trading resources in exchange for other stuff. In the iconic strategy series’ seventh mainline game, things are changing, though. You can sign treaties, join other civs on mutually beneficial initiatives, and spend ‘Influence’ to move the game in more dynamic ways than before.
“It is a little trickier to stay on the fringes now than it used to be,” Beach explains. “And I credit that pretty much to the new mechanical approach and rethink we’ve had on diplomacy. It used to be diplomacy and multiplayer was sort of a non-event at all. It was just what you could do in terms of inner-talk between the players to try to convince them to help you. But now there’s actually levers you can pull using the influence system that actually are actual, true game mechanics that are influencing how a multiplayer game is unfolding.”
“I’ve had multiplayer games where everyone decided that the war weariness system was overtuned,” Beach says about the match that saw his own developers turn on him. “And so as soon as I got into war, my whole design team all ganged up on me and put support to the other player in the way so that I would be crippled by how bad the war weariness was. And yes, I approved some changes to the balance of that afterwards.” Well, you’ve gotta make sure that can’t happen again, right?
