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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
But the problem is that Civ3 wasn't that deep of a game to begin with. He says he wants to keep is the same, but in the presentation he emphasizes the "Simplify!" message over and over and over again. Alone his messages seemingly mean nothing, yet when taken together and especialy given his association with Civ3 (and, indeed I missed the quote in there about keeping it the same level as Civ3, but that too is also quite concerning).
My concern is that it won't have any depth to the gameplay - it'll be just like every other game on the market. Civ3 dangerously approached this level (thus explaining its large rise in sales), and it seems by his comments that he thinks (perhaps rightly) that introducing more subtlies into the game will decrease sales.
If this is his guiding philosophy, then it will pop up in gameplay over and over again - simplifying diplomacy and the political system and economic system and cities and nations...Some might be good, but Civ3 went overboard and given his great emphasis on simplifying things....I'm just not as optimistic about Civ4.
Summary: He seems to be emphasising this heavily, and if this is his guiding ideal then Civ4 will be slightly or moderately more simplified than Civ3 (which itself was greatly simplified from...others in the series). Given Civ3, it seems likely Civ4 will follow the same path of oversimplification.
Really basic summary: See, "Deus Ex 2" |
I think you may be misunderstanding things.
There is a difference between simplifying things and destroying gameplay. Soren has targeted many things that will be removed: pollution, rioting, maintenance. Now, some may disagree, but I don't think those are vital parts of the Civ scheme - remove them and you get rid of much of the busy work, but that gives time for other things.
I don't know how much you've played, but one can spend an immense amount of time playing and planning games. Taking micromanagement to the max and the game can become very engaging - if monotonous. I believe Soren recognizes this and his goal is to move some of the time spent on those sorts of things and put them towards other more interesting things. I think that's what Soren means by maintaining the current level of complexity.
On the other hand, there is definitely more to the story. What this means is that if you're a fan of having 50 different diplomacy options, the SMAC unit workshop and the option to determine the government for every single one of your cities - then you're definitely going to be disappointed. Civ 4 will not be a game of a lot of "things." For those who enjoy "things," then yes, they will likely not enjoy the game as much as others.
But for those who enjoy gameplay more than "things" I believe they will enjoy the game more. Because "things" are removed does not mean interesting gameplay or depth must be sacrificed as well.
There is a fair amount of information already available about Civ 4, much of which is listed in this CFC thread. However, nobody can really decide whether or not they'll like the game until more is released or even until they play it. I didn't think I'd like Civ 3 much until I played it. There is certainly room for improvement, and I'm still optimistic. As a modder I'm more anxious about the ability to change things with greater power than ever before. Even if the base game is disappointing the ability to change things will open many new doors for modders and Civ-fans alike.
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Calvin Vu
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San Jose, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:36
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I'm among those Civ fans who felt disappointed with Civ 3 and spend more time playing Civ 2 than Civ 3 even now, when I want a spend a little fun time playing games (at emperor or deity level), mostly due to the "unfun" elements Soren was talking about. Design-wise, I think there are 3 levels of "challenges":
- Multi-solution challenges: A challenge which allows multiple paths to solve it. One example is the ability in Civ 2 to build up your empire almost entirely by clever tradings and using the gold for everything else; besides the solution of using the the shield production for units and improvements. Or the SMAC tech paths. Or the polution problem (clean it with workers or build an improvement ASAP). Or what to do next with a spare worker, or a spare camel.
- Single-solution challenge: A challenge which has only one reasonable way to solve it. There might be other ways but they are so much inferior that it makes no sense to follow those paths unless you just want to handicap yourself to break the monotony. An example is Civ 3 design where the easiest (and sometimes the only way to win) is to crush the neighbor civs early in the game to catch up with the starting advantages given to the AI civs.
- Debilitating challenge: A challenge designed not to have a real solution but more to handicap the human player so the AI can have an equal footing no matter how bad it does. Example of this kind is the corruption-plagued one-shield cities in Civ 3. No sane person would spend 200 turns to build the FP, and even then the effect of the FP got dumbed down also. 
So, just on Soren's promise to toss out the "unfun" elements I will buy Civ 4 the first day it comes out.
Other comments:
- on the "civics". I hope this is an improved concept for corruption. The level of corruption of a country depends on how civic-minded its citizens are. That will depends on fear factor, court system, governments and will change gradually with time. Using this concept, we can have interesting usages for governments. For example, communism can reduce corruption and provide a big boost to productivity right after you switch to it due to the sense of patriotism and the dream of socialism as well as the fear factor. But then the corruption will gradually increases with time due to the drop in morale and incentives. On the other hand, switching to democracy might not give you a big efficiency gain at first but the efficiency will improve with time after the people realize the mutual benefit and become more civic-minded.
- The corruption should depends more on the number of cities than the distance from the capitol. In trying to prevent ICS with the heavy-handed corruption, Civ 3 probably made it worse by forcing people to pack the cities near the capitol for maximum efficiency. It destroys the sense of being able to create a beautiful empire with nicely laid-out cities. If someone wants to have a second city 20 tiles away from the capitol due to whim or to necessity (because of the starting position), he should not be penalized too much for it, if iy all since he already penalize himself by walking those 20 turns before settling down.
- Please keep the riot as it is a part of the admin but just allow a flashing button at the end of the turn if there are going to be a riot if nothing is done. That flashing button should allow the user to cycle through all the impending rioting cities. Checking the F1 screen at the end of every turn is tedious and very unfun.
- Similarly, have a flashing button when there is a tech trade opportunity with the AI civs.
- Allow a useful "when all else fail, build this" unit (rather like the camel in Civ 2), or at the minimum, rebalancing the game such that the "Wealth" choice is more useful.
- Please keep the workers. I have more fun due to the choices of what to do with the workers and the camels than any single-purpose military units.
- Bring back the teraforming, please. That will reduce the effect of the random starting location and give my workers of more choices to do.
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JonahFalcon
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New York, NY USA
Nov 2000
time: 05:36
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XML files will allow universal modding, even the AI.
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Max Sinister
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? Wouldn't you have to use Python for that? I can imagine you can use XML to change parameters, but for more complicated things...
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dacole
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[QUOTE] Originally posted by Trip
I think you may be misunderstanding things.
There is a difference between simplifying things and destroying gameplay. Soren has targeted many things that will be removed: pollution, rioting, maintenance. Now, some may disagree, but I don't think those are vital parts of the Civ scheme - remove them and you get rid of much of the busy work, but that gives time for other things.
I don't know how much you've played, but one can spend an immense amount of time playing and planning games. Taking micromanagement to the max and the game can become very engaging - if monotonous. I believe Soren recognizes this and his goal is to move some of the time spent on those sorts of things and put them towards other more interesting things. I think that's what Soren means by maintaining the current level of complexity.
On the other hand, there is definitely more to the story. What this means is that if you're a fan of having 50 different diplomacy options, the SMAC unit workshop and the option to determine the government for every single one of your cities - then you're definitely going to be disappointed. Civ 4 will not be a game of a lot of "things." For those who enjoy "things," then yes, they will likely not enjoy the game as much as others.
But for those who enjoy gameplay more than "things" I believe they will enjoy the game more. Because "things" are removed does not mean interesting gameplay or depth must be sacrificed as well.
Wow I have to disagree, read my response to the pcgamer article didn't know this had been gone over so much already but the "things" as you call them are what make up the gameplay the immense amount of time spent planning was what made it a strategy game! Maintence was realistic and so should have been kept I can see that pollution was annoying so I won't miss that one to much. The things you diretly mentioned from SMAC were what made SMAC so great and are why it is a much better game than civ III or civ II. My hope was that in Civ IV more of these were going to be incorproated, it seems that hope was forlorn and so I may not be buying the game.
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Civrules
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Wixom, Michigan, U.S.A.
Dec 2003
time: 00:36
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I think that Dan Magaha is still working on Pirates! on the Xbox, and not on Civ IV yet.
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Locutus
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ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
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Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999
time: 06:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Solver
Well, it's an official statement on the corporate webpage... he could not fail to mention Sid there. |
It's the only place one the site where such a thing is posted. It's a company, of which Sid is an employee/shareholder, not a religious institution of which Sid is the god (though we'd often like to think otherwise  )
quote:
Besides, "working with Sid" is not really specific. It could mean Sid is closely following the development, or it could mean he takes a look at the current build every Friday for 20 minutes. |
When Soren says Firaxians are playing 4-hours MP games in their own time, this *could* mean that they only did this once, that the graphics were ASCII-based and the rules simpler than checkers. Using that attitude this fact list would be very, very short indeed...
quote:
Originally posted by CivR
I think that Dan Magaha is still working on Pirates! on the Xbox, and not on Civ IV yet. |
He's credited for CivIV on the Firaxis website as well. Can't imagine he's the producer (hence the question mark), but he's credited so he must be doing something for that game...
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bigvic
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Columbia, S.C.
Nov 2001
time: 00:36
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i, the lazy lurker, after reading almost the first 2 pages of this thread have just decided 2 skip down to here and blab my 2 cents, so if anything i say has been hashed out completely in the previous couple of pages, my apologies....
that said, here are a few of the elements i hope they borrow from other games....
1. either those resource sucker units from smac or the ctp2 increased ever growble city radius (or even both)
2. something more in line with ctp2's combat system. i think fewer units is better for gameplay, and preferable if handled right. civ3 kind of suffers on the tactical level and the ctp2 battle army with each unit representing different roles/capability provided just enough tactical element to work. plus, for its time it was cool eye candy - some kind of 3d eye candy with what they can do now would be fun, even i the old strategy curmudgeon must admit. i liked the unit stacking limits, the ability to just form armies w/o having to build freakin wonders,. i hate micromanaging a zillion freaking units when the same strategic purpose, and feel can be done with less individual units. does that make sense? i liked smac's ability to allow other faction units 2 go into allied cities too - why did they stop that? You know, come to think of it, the tactical combat system of civ3 is one of the games weakest features. i never got over the "kill 1 unit kill the whole stack" sin of early civs, which means i was an early convert to ctp (actually started there - does it show?), and through smac and civ3 the tactical combat situation has improved, but nonetheless i would like to see an overal improvement in this arena.
3. the global achievements of ctp2 were nice.
4. teleporting multilayer maps rock....(civ2tot, ctp1)
5. "please call off your vendetta against my friend, the..." smac had better diplomacy than civ3 imho, and gal civ with its multiple ai engines is good too, very strong in this area.
ok, now a few (very few) things i would like to see but either never have or almost never have seen in these games but am either doubtful or foggy about...i know that didn't quite make sense, but here goes...
1. civil wars - yeah u kind of had it in ctp, and u kind of have it a little more in galciv, but this could be incorporated into a kind of "webbing" of civs, alllowing a vast number of civs to be included but limiting how many exist at once. heck, u could even be given the choice of taking control of the newly spawned civ instead of your old one
2. along the vein of #1, above, i would really like to see the REAL next generation of this genre of games, one that incorporates more realism and workable, fun game mechanics (i swear it can be done, the three are not mutually exclusive!)
whew! for the lazy lurker that was one heck of a long post. (can u say "hell" around here anymore? i saw "ass" somewhere on another thread i think the 2 seem to have become commonly accepted as not quite 2 nasty and i would not want to offend anyone - not really) 
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
Doesn't this concern *anyone*? Most people here didn't like Civ3 because it was too "streamlined". Yes, simplifying unfun parts of a game can be a good thing and can even make the game a little deeper, however Civ3 taught us that too much is quite a bad thing, and I do not yet feel confident enough in trusting Firaxis not to botch the game |
I am not overly concerned about it, though I will certainly gather information before buying CivIV (i.e., not buying blindingly)
The mantra to "simplify simplify" may mean two things:
- reduce micromanagement, and have the player mostly take "big picture" decisions while restricting the tedious and repetitive work. This idea also suggests a simplification of the interface.
- reduce the complexity of the game so that it appeals to newbies that are completely clueless and will remain so.
The first idea was already present back when Brian Johnson designed SMAC. The Governors in SMAC and the automation of the formers were a fist step in reducing the repetitive tasks originally perfomed by the player. Civ3 considerably streamlined the interface of the game, and the new interface was a great success ; especially, the interface of diplomacy had the potential to be a simple interface for very complex diplomacy (in the end, Civ3's diplomacy was less complex than SMAC's, but Civ3's diplomatic interface would have allowed for even more)
I personally think Civ4 will strongly emphasize on the first idea. The old-style pollution is gone, and it was a typical example of boring repetitive work. Multi-weapons armies are encouraged, which means there will be far less individual units to move (you'll move the whole army, not one unit at a time).
Now, it is possible that many of SMAC options won't be back indeed. I fear they don't include "Please make peace with my friend" back, as well as unit-trading (I LOVE unit-trading, and its absence in Civ3 is probably my single most important beef with the game).
But I don't see Civ4 as a massive dumbing-down of the previous Civ titles. Some things will be gone indeed, and I can already hear some people saying "damn you Firaxis for removing corruption! You only sell to clueless newbies and leave us complex-minded fans in the cold!". Heck, maybe I'll even be one of those guys.
However, Civ4 also add new things. Religion is likely to spice up the culture model. Maybe it will even completely overhaul it  "Civics" will probably allow you to fine-tune your government better than in classical Civ - maybe it will be social engineering, maybe it'll be a few bonuses or maluses reflecting your "political" decisions, or maybe it will be something completely new.
These new areas of the game will offer complexity where the gone ones have left.
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26-12-2004 16:36
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