Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is a game developed by Firaxis Games (not Sid Meier) and published by 2K in 2016 on PC (although it is now available on all major platforms). It is an extremely complex game with several mechanics that all interact with each other at all times. When designing the core trading, bartering, and embezzlement system of our game, we took some inspiration from Civ VI’s trading system. Our system is still evolving of course, but there are already clear points to compare and contrast between them.
In Civ VI, players can trade with other players at any point during their turn, and this allows for sporadic in-the-moment deals in addition to a back-and-forth negotiation style. In a very similar way, our trading system also allows players to initiate trades at any point during the round (as all player turns are simultaneous) which also lends itself to in-the-moment deals and back-and-forth negotiations. However, unlike Civ VI, our game limits who you can trade with. In our game, you can only trade directly with the Emperor. This creates a natural power hierarchy that Civ VI does not have. Since you can trade with anyone in Civ VI, everyone is seen as an equal trading partner. Of course, your character’s relationship with other players means that not everyone remains an equal trading partner forever, but that is stepping outside the confines of the trading system. By limiting trading to be explicitly between Advisors and the Emperor in our game, it gives the Emperor much more power and allows them to control the flow of the trade negotiations. This very specific type of fun is one that the “Socializing” type of players seem to enjoy a lot in our early playtests.
Additionally, our trading system is overlaid with another mechanic that the “Killer” type of players appear to love: an embezzlement system that contrasts with the trading dynamics of Civ VI. In Civ VI, both players in a deal usually walk away happy and with some positive gain. Whether that be gold, an alliance, strategic resources, luxury resources, etc, each player tends to gain something in each trade. It is (usually) a very cooperative and mutually beneficial trading environment. In contrast, our trading system highly incentives ripping off the other person as much as possible. For Advisors, this is done through embezzlement. Advisors gain a significant amount of Victory Points from tricking the Emperor into giving them additional resources beyond what is required to fulfill their Emergency Objective. As such, Advisors are incentivised to exaggerate the gravity of their emergency in an attempt to take more resources from the Emperor. On the flip side, the Emperor understands that all of the Advisors are attempting to take advantage of them, so they have to constantly push back and sleuth out how many resources to actually give to each Advisor. This results in a very specific type of fun that fans of the Social Deception genre may enjoy a lot! Instead of figuring out if someone is lying, players must instead figure out how much someone is lying to them! In contrast with the typically mutually beneficial trades of Civ VI, the trades of our game are much more devious and one-sided. The fun comes from knowing this and doing everything possible to ensure that the deal ends up in your favor as much as possible.
