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Drachasor
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Am I alone on this, or is it a little crazy everyone is arguing over the 3D interface with little or no heed paid to the potential elimination of pollution, riots, and corruption?
I haven't seen anything from Soren or others officials indicating that they plan on replacing the current models with better ones. Does someone have hard information on this, or is it just wishful thinking?
While how it is implemented isn't perfect, I for one would not want to play a Civ game that completely removed these 3 features (especially rioting). They could be changed/improved, but elimnated? I hope not.
Anyhow, am I just being unnecessarily fearful? Was something officially said other than the "elimination of unfun elements"? Thanks.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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True, pollution needs a lot of work to be really good, but I think I'd rather have the current model over nothing. Hopefully some sort of minor population issue, more significant happiness issue. I think there was another thread talking about this though.
Right now I am just more worried about the big "unfun" 3 being entirely eliminated. Everyone seems to be assuming a rewrite, but I haven't seen evidence to believe that.
-Drachasor
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Heresson
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of frogs
Jun 2000
time: 06:36
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quote:
* Soren plans to kill "unfun" elements: pollution ("whack-a-mole"), rioting, corruption, maintenance, etc. These will be replaced by more entertaining concepts that maintain game balance.
Expenditure of resources by units would be good to remove
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maintenance would be a great loss. It could be, and was at least by me, used as an important sometimes factor in civ2 scenarios.
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This is not Heroes of Might and Magic. Civ and RPG won't mix, mark my words. |
I think that introducing these ideas could be interesting
Anyway, veteran status IS a basic form of experience.
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Civics is a social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens. In Dutch: "burgerlijk recht" (or in a Civ context presumably "burgerrechten"). |
Thanks for translation.
It could be interesting, too
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Removal of pollution and such stuff seems great.
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And what will You do with engineers after You irrigate/mine/whatever everything?
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3D would hamper the moddability of the graphics, wouldn't it?
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Damn, you are right. I change my mind.
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rommelgain
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I think it is safe to say that everyone here reading the forums will be distinctly disappointed with Civ4. You are the 'hardcore' gamers they will not cater to. When you begin reading forums you cease being a casual gamer. Bet you didn't know that :-) The trend for these type games is to dumb them down, speed them up and generally make a piece of garbage. Actually this applies to all genres. Sad but true.
All the worry over 3D is silly...it won't necessarily change the viewpoint of the game at all...it just won't use the 'tiles' of the now antiquated system. It can only enhance the game to have a nice system of pan and zoom (within limits). It will also look better, much better.
Getting rid of 'un-fun' items is what kills most games. Take a look at the 'streamlining' done in MMORPG games. A game, like life, is a journey. If you don't have a little pain along the way it will be meaningless and unfulfilling. The key is to not get mired in the details, but to allow them to enhance the experience. There are ways to truly streamline the 'unpleasant' aspects of games without getting rid of them altogether.
For the majority of us Civ 4 will be like a new shirt. Nice when you first get it but in a week it's just something else to wear that's not any different from the rest of the crap in the closet. Firaxis will not take the necessary measures to make a truly great and innovative game. One because they fear losing some aspect of their potential market and Two because they don't have to...there is no competition in the TBS market. People will buy it because there is NOTHING else.
CTP2 was actually a much better foray into the Civ realm. Had the bugs been taken care of and it be allowed to mature into a CTP3...we would have had our best hope for a truly engaging game. CTP2 did several things that the Civ franchise needs to implement and there are a few others that neither did well:
1. get rid of those irritating and resource hogging workers. They only detract from the game. The public works model is greatly superior and with a few tweaks could make everyone happy.
2. There needs to be limits to expansion, not just an overriding desire to cover the map. There should be a great deal more 'open country' for a very long time.
3. Governments need much more variation and distinction.
4. No game has done resources right. Combine the Civ and CTP model and you may have something. Strategic resources need to be adjusted such that the lack of one will not end your game. Iron exists everywhere in the earth's crust. How bout getting some simply from mining? Large deposits would have the slick little icon that gives you a nice bonus :-) The more iron, the cheaper your units perhaps or they may build faster or just be a little better.
5. Any good game needs interesting things to do. Special units, diplomacy, spying...all these things need to be enhanced to a high degree. In history, more time has been spent on these than fighting or building wonders.
6. Motivations and caps need to be looked at. Real growth is not solely tied to food, especially later on. Wealth is not the end all of civ building either.
7. Along the lines of the above point...Gameplay should evolve over time to keep one from getting bored. Maybe food is important at first for you growth. In the modern era surely you have done well enough where this is not a concern. You should have more food than you can eat and your cities now grow due to economy, environment, leisure...If the US followed the Civ model everyone would live in Kansas and Nebraska where the wheat is and New York and LA would be languishing in corruption ;-) Realities change, the game should change too.
8. We MUST get away from having success be solely dependent on your population. Having everything so tied together makes the game utterly predictable. Together, China and India have TEN times the population of the US, yet the US has a MUCH stronger economy and and a more sophisticated military. We are small, yet powerful. Players should be allowed to evolve their empires differently. You should never be able to tell how powerful a Civ is simply by looking at the number of cities it has. Building new cities should not guarantee you a stronger nation.
9. Too many things have to be built. Most of your structures get built in every single city. Why bother? Many of these could be incorporated into a 'budget' style interface that builds up the strength of a given area, be that education, economic etc. This would allow structures to be more important and special when built and not just the next thing in the queue. This would further give character to your cities and eliminate a lot of unecessary redundant activity.
10. As one poster said...nationalize. You are in fact building a nation, not just a collection of cities (unless that is your govt model). Your nation needs an identity and a defined morality. What rights do you allow? What are your philosophies? What motivates your people? This adds richness to the experience and is vital to keeping a long game interesting and memorable.
I could go on...but this post is long enough. You get the idea. I'm sorry to say that Civ4 will likely disappoint, but thus far every game in the Civ/Ctp realm has been more disappointing than satisfying. Here's hoping I'm wrong..
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by rommelgain
Too much to quote. |
First off, 3d doesn't mean the end of tiles. In fact, Soren has already publically confirmed that CIV will have tiles and be turn-based.
Secondly, streamlining isn't always bad - depending on what you streamline. Do you really ENJOY cities rioting the turn you're about to finish a wonder, only to be beaten to it by the AI? I bet in that case most players will just reload the game. That's not an indicator of a good game mechanic. Do you ENJOY having to hunt down pollution every turn which can also delay a meticulously timed build?
Who's to say that these things (and others like maintenance which so many people are bent out of shape over) might be replaced with a system that is BETTER than the original? I know that I didn't like having to check every city every turn to make sure it wouldn't riot and lose all of it's production and commerce for a turn, especially on large maps with dozens/hundreds of cities!
Thirdly, I don't see why a lot of the things you suggest wouldnt'/couldn't be changed in CIV. While it's unlikely that things like Workers will be removed, I don't see why other things won't be included. Soren has announced that religion and civics will both be included in CIV. This fits the criteria of "new gameplay options" as well as "governments having more variation." Who can say what else has or has not been changed or improved besides those who are part of making the game so far?
I don't think such a pessimistic analysis is warranted, at least not until more is known about the game. If it was Firaxis' goal to dumb down the game completely, then they would not have allowed the use of Python, a rather powerful programming language, to be used to change a lot of the core game functions as well as the AI! Additionally, if they were trying to milk the series and get as much money as they could they wouldn't be adding MP from the start, but wait for an expansion pack as has ALWAYS been the case in the past!
So, to summarize, I don't think it's the end of the world as you announce. And even if a lot of the things you suggest aren't included, there's no reason to assume that they couldn't be added by modders and programmers after the game is released.
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Brent
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I think I'd be easier to please than a lot of the people here, and I seem to disagree with others on a lot, so maybe I wouldn't be so disappointed.
Streamlining had better not mean severe lack of options.
Right now Civ3 and GalCiv are the only computer games I play, so there isn't a lot of other crap in the closet.
2. I disagree. I don't want such limits to expansion. People who like to play the way I do should be allowed to. I don't want all that open country. There hasn't been so much open country in the real world for a long time.
3. Sounds very good.
4. Sounds very good, I was unable to build rails in a recent game.
5. Basically agreed. Caravans served this purpose for me in Civ2 in times of peace.
8. Agreed.
9. Could be good.
10. Sounds cool.
I've been satisfied with C1, 2, and 3, Col, and SMAC, but not CtP1. Haven't played CtP2 and don't expect to.
I never reload the game.
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rommelgain
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Wow, glad people are still reading this stuff :-)
Trip:
Tiles will still be there I'm sure. I pulled a Kerry by not 'splaining it very well ;-) haha I meant the usual terrain tiles...the dozen or two little pictures that repeat over and over across the land to comprise the world. 3D could allow more variation or those little tiles could just be rendered in 3D and be just as repetitive, just easier for the artists to create.
I love streamlining done right. Its just that usually some pretty interesting stuff gets smoothed over in the interest of making it more 'accessible' and promising 'non stop action' and a game you can play with your friends in a night, you know, those casual gamers you know and love. I don't want to finish a game in a night. I don't want to be slinging arrows at the French at 7:30 and rolling over the Germans with a tank by 9:00. I don't want to 'streamline' history just so I can finish a game quickly. TV shows last months and are divided into 22 episodes. I think the 'casual' gamer can take a game that lasts a week or two of playing nights and weekends. No, I don't love chasing down the pollution...but that's what happens when you get a bunch of left wingers makin' games :-p they overstate the pollution. I got things to build, what's a little acid rain? :-D
I agree that micromanaging needs tweaking. One reason that the rioting is so annoying is that it is so predictable. If it was that predictable in RL then we'd have never had a succesful rebellion in the history of the world.
"You know, Urdel...I've been getting really pissed off lately and I think everyone else is too...I think we should...huh? WHATS THAT?! DAMN! Another phalanx...Back to the fields for me in the morning. Maybe God is on the Emperor's side."
They may well add some depth, but remember the goal of Firaxis- Bring in new fans and don't make it overly complicated. In order to get these new features like civics and religion there may be other areas that me get gutted or cut altogether.
The only reason I'm pessimistic is that I've been playing games since 1982 and have seen a good deal of history as far the gaming industry is concerned. I've particualarly noted a trend over the last 5-10 years or so of making very disappointing sequels. There has also been hardly any innovation in the industry aside from graphics. There are so many more games now, but how many do you remember? I'm just betting on the trend here.
"Not everyone likes a thick juicy steak, garlic potatoes and sauteed asparagus with a green salad and homemade bread....Hmm...what do we do? Lets just serve them thin cheese pizza. Everybody eats that. Oh, better give'em some cheese and peppers, they *****ed about not having that last time."
In this political season I'd like to coin a term- Playin' to the base. Python and all that promised modding potential is just that. You can mod the hell outta the game and script like you're makin a phone book, but some things just have to be hard coded. This includes most really cool and innovative concepts. You won't be writing any scripts to add a whole new spying model with its own screen and interface that can add the depth you want and be usable by the AI. Adding units, governments, events, terrain etc., will only get you so far. Besides, are we buying a finished game or a construction set? I'm all for modding, but I just don't see it allowing any truly impressive features.
Brent:
Glad you agree on so many points :-)
2. All of my games of Civ3 found the world completely infested before Jesus came on the scene. If one spot opened up, every fool on the planet sent settlers hoofin for that spot, no matter where it was. This is just silly. Not limiting expansion puts everyone in the frenzied turmoil of cranking out settlers so that they can try to get the largest slice of the pie. A more measured expansion sounds better to me. It would also be cool to have far flung colonies in the middle ages. Forcing all the city building in the early game takes a good deal of the fun out for me. I like the potential of having a 'new world' to go to. Frenzied expansion also favors the computer and makes the usual cheating it does even worse. Not that it helps them, but it is annoying. Remember trading maps and seeing that one long blue streak leading from your opponent's lands straight to that island with the iron? Gee, it's like they KNEW it was there. Hmmm. Let's build about 10 or so cities...build up the empire a bit...build some more cities..rinse/repeat. I think CTP2 had a much better model than Civ in this respect. But that's just my opinion.
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Brent
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I want to be able to finish the smallest map size in a night, but the largest size is okay for much longer.
It is indeed annoying when my enemies go through my territory to fill a gap or settle on terrain like tundra that I passed over. I guess it would be nice if they expanded more uniformly. I don't like the AI knowing where everything is. I guess I don't want the AI civs to do the things that I like to do.
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rommelgain
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In order for a spherical globe map to work, the map would have to be fairly large. In prior Civ games, each city represents a very large geographical area. Actually, scale wise, the cities are much closer in scope to states or provinces. Now you could simply remove all data from the globe representation save for landmass, but this would be only for aesthetics. It would not serve any tactical, starategic or other purpose. It wouldn't even be that 'neat' because the cities would not be present. I would love to have a map large enough to display in a globe form, but Civ would have to be entirely re-worked from the ground up, with every system requiring major changes. I'm not opposed to that, either :-D Having a globe would solve the North/South movement problem...hmm...maybe I should retract my earlier statement. Zooming to a globe view for movement across the poles would take care of the incongruity of moving up a square and appearing many squares to the side, seemingly teleported from A to B. Perhaps there is a limited use for a globe. Just don't expect great detail.
As for day/night cycle...that would just be eye candy of course and again would be meaningless without a sufficiently large and detailed map. SimCity4 has a 24hr clock that is separate from its main game clock. It is purely aesthetic. Though it would be 'cool' to see all the cities glowing on the night side...there would be so many cities (remember they are much larger geographically than real cities) that it would just appear as a very low resolution black area with large white squares on it. Nothing amazing there.
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Brent
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Would there even be any scenarios with turns short enough for a daylight cycle to make sense?
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Shr3dZ
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quote:
Originally posted by Brent
Would there even be any scenarios with turns short enough for a daylight cycle to make sense? |
You never know, maybe the turn system will be reworked so there is, maybe it will stay the 'civ' way. Either way is fine by me, but if theyre hoping to add something new to the game here are a couple of interesting ways to make it so.
I think a globe could work nicely, yea it would have to be very large, and maybe for it to make sence the 'squares' will have to be upgraded to 'octogons' or something...
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dexters
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Vancouver, Canada
Nov 2001
time: 05:36
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quote:
Python and all that promised modding potential is just that. You can mod the hell outta the game and script like you're makin a phone book, but some things just have to be hard coded. This includes most really cool and innovative concepts. You won't be writing any scripts to add a whole new spying model with its own screen and interface that can add the depth you want and be usable by the AI. Adding units, governments, events, terrain etc., will only get you so far. Besides, are we buying a finished game or a construction set? I'm all for modding, but I just don't see it allowing any truly impressive features. |
I cannot agree more.
One of my biggest concerns is that the developers, and fans of Civ IV will take any sort of criticism, suggestion and request into a
"talk to the hand" type of exercise where we're told to use the editor feature to make the game ourselves.
I'd like to remind everyone that not all of us have the time, capacity or even have the desire to work with tools. Short of giving us a very user friendly set of tools, any sort of editing program tends to require steep learning curves and lots of time investments.
Ultimately, I want a game and 'official' patches that gives me a game I can play right out of the box. I don't want player made or community designed 'psudo fixes'.
If its a scenario, a modded government, or some units that require a whole new set of AI routines, I can understand. But if Firaxis bungles the AI coding somewhere, we shouldn't be expected to fix it.
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All of my games of Civ3 found the world completely infested before Jesus came on the scene. If one spot opened up, every fool on the planet sent settlers hoofin for that spot, no matter where it was. This is just silly. .... Frenzied expansion also favors the computer and makes the usual cheating it does even worse. |
I disagree somewhat here. I feel Civ3 AI's core competency lies in how well it expands. I was genuinely surprised at how well it did in Chieftan vs. the type of Civ II games I played where AI expansion was often stunted and slow.
That said, what Soren forgot in Civ3 when he made the AI good at exapsnion was that the culture/border system tend to work against the very thing the AI became good at.
There are advantages to have one unified landmass, and most human players tend to expand from the center out. One-off colonies (as in single cities or small clump of cities) are there but the expansion is made rationally with strategic objectives in mind and they more often than not becone fortified citadels.
AI empires, tend to expand irrationally for the sake of growth. Paraphrasing another poster, the AI is good at growing big. But this comes at a price. Sprawling empires that have cities in little pockets, and as is often the case, jumbled multinational islands which were the result of a rush to settle isolated uninhabited islands, is often the result of AI expansion in Civ3. This is all well and good if the AI could recognize how their Empire are configured, but these isolated pockets of cities tend to be run as if they are part of a larger mass. The 'limbs' of these AI empires thus become easy targets in any war and make for good pickings by a human player seeking a beachhead in a region or area.
What is needed (and I've suggested this elsewhere) is a revised set of priorities in terms of the AI's diplomacy and threat assesment routines that will govern who to attack, who to watch out for, and indirectly, where best to expand for the benefit of the empire. I'm not sure how doable this is for Civ4, but that's on my wishlist. As big a leap the Civ3 AI was on expanding in 2001, Its now 2004 and its old news. I want to see something better.
Last edited by dexters on 24-10-2004 at 00:58
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Brent
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PRex: we seem to agree.
Dexters: compared to Actually Playing the Game, would time really be a factor in using the Editor? The C3 Editor seems user friendly enough for me, but I wouldn't mind it being much more so. I do want plenty of scenarios playable right out of the box. And I don't think the Editor is a good excuse for basic flaws in the core of the game.
It is annoying to have those balkanized regions. All of that territory should be mine!
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dexters
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Vancouver, Canada
Nov 2001
time: 05:36
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quote:
Dexters: compared to Actually Playing the Game, would time really be a factor in using the Editor? The C3 Editor seems user friendly enough for me, but I wouldn't mind it being much more so. I do want plenty of scenarios playable right out of the box. And I don't think the Editor is a good excuse for basic flaws in the core of the game. |
The map editor is fine. Even then, the C3C editor aka the editor that should have been included in C3 vanilla already have a lot of things that require an experienced modder to understand, tweak and work on.
I can imagine what the Civ4 package migh look like if it allowed for even more customization.
The point though wasn't about the absolute reality of how much time you spend on the editor, but rather the idea that not everyone will want to spend the time to learn it.
The argument being made is basically that we don't want to have half a game released and have the developers, and the community who supports the developers fall back on "fix it yourself" whenever there is a bug with the AI or some problems that should be fixed.
I'm all for modding, new units, and patchable AI but those things should take the game beyond what is given to us out of the box, not to fix inadeqacies. In other words, I still expect patches to address gameplay issues, AI issues months after release.
I hope that's clear enough 
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Excelsior84
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Alabama
Jun 2002
time: 23:36
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quote:
Originally posted by rommelgain
I think it is safe to say that everyone here reading the forums will be distinctly disappointed with Civ4. You are the 'hardcore' gamers they will not cater to. When you begin reading forums you cease being a casual gamer. Bet you didn't know that :-) The trend for these type games is to dumb them down, speed them up and generally make a piece of garbage. Actually this applies to all genres. Sad but true.
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Alas, as much as I really wanted to be excited when I discovered that Civ4 s in the making, I have to agree with you. After MoO3 and Civ3, I'm not holding out great hope for Civ4... I hope I'm wrong, but after reading that power point presentation, it seems clear to me that, frankly, I am *not* the target audience. In fact, the *only* thing which excites me about Civ4 is the possibility of being able to mod the game using a real programming language (which means I could do something productive while wasting my time playing games...learning python!). The sad thing of it is, though, that I'll almost certainly buy this thing when it comes out, anyway.
Oh, well, at least Hearts of Iron 2 should be good, even if it's not an empire builder.
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27-06-2004 12:38
within 6 months of being released. I know where they can find beta testers!
).
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