[ryanmcgarvey]

My biggest gripe about the Civ series is that it felt empty after a while. I love hearing the stories other players experience when playing, but there was never a good way to recreate and share those experiences.

What Civ needs is challenges and leaderboards. Pre-configure scenarios that everyone can play and compare their experiences together. Score each play on a number of criteria (cities built, fastest tech, army size, etc), and maybe even have custom achievements for that particular scenario - like how fast you fully explored the particular valley the scenario starts you in, or how quickly you defeated the aggressive city state that starts next to you.

Not only should randomly generated maps be shareable, but Sid Meier should have weekly scenarios that involve hand crafted challenges. Not just normal games with the AI trying to act like a human, but the AI existing as part of the map. Example: at turn 50, an aggressive hoard comes down off the mountain attacks your civ. When you reach the other side of the mountain, there will be a Civ with 4 cities and an advanced army. You have certain diplomatic options available (like a quest to fulfill) or you can try and challenge them. How you handle these various challenges will impact future scenarios.

The important thing is that the AI isn't trying to play the same game. It's just there as part of the map to give the player an interesting experience.

[Terretta]

> Civ series felt empty after a while

Want to replay your favorite old map from Civ 7? Sorry, the servers have been turned off, back to Civ 17 and the Season 3 Persons Wonders and Specialists pack for $79.95...

Not everything has to have "multiplayer elements".

Keep great single player games offline.

[Mezzie]

Agree.

And as an aficionado of sandboxes and software toys who's been playing Civ since Civ I, it would feel far emptier to me to turn Civ into yet another PvP/meta/challenge oriented snoozefest.

[ryanmcgarvey]

Forgive me, I may not have worded that correctly.

By empty, I simply meant that the game stopped being interesting after a while. The single player game was only so replay-able, and multi-player is a very different game that doesn't suit me.

What Civ has is a great community, but that community had no way to experience content together.

Hand crafted scenarios that people can play simultaneously and share their experiences isn't a multiplayer element, it's a community element.

[BlueTemplar]

But as a community element it already exists ?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-game-of-the-month...

[BlueTemplar]

P.S.: Actually, these are such good ideas that Brian Reynolds added them to Civ2 back in 1996, before you could even expect players to have Internet access !

https://www.filfre.net/2023/01/sequels-in-strategy-gaming-pa...

(And leaderboards might be even older, dating back to Civ1, considering how Sid Meier with Civ (and his other games) emphasized roleplaying and surviving to the end of the game rather than «winning», whatever that means ?)