As a game developer, I'm predicting that Civ 4 is not going to be successful as a game. It's designed to appeal to hardcore fans of the series, who on their own don't have a good view of what makes a game actually playable. Modding, as you can see from this forum, is going to result in little more than laundry lists of features that add little or nothing to the gameplay. The reason I'm posting this here, in the ideas forum, is that I hope someone, either the developer or enlightened modders, will realize that there's still hope for this game.

There are three main elements of Civ 4 that are going to make it an obscure, fans-only affair: linearity, determinism, and political correctness.

Linearity: The Civilization series has always differed from history in this important aspect. History is cyclical. History shows that anyone has a chance of winning in the end. In Civ 4, you're not going to see that. There's going to be 'permanent alliances', which will encourage worldwide dominance. In historical terms, the game needs some mechanism for an American Revolution or American Civil War in order to be consistent with how reality works. In gameplay terms, that very mechanism would encourage smart strategy and diplomacy. It would prevent a situation in which players that start out slow, or have a difficult early game, from having a hopeless, unenjoyable experience.

Determinism: Civ 4 is going to see an increase in the greatest weakness of the series. Whichever player starts out winning will inevitably win in the end. The same factors that lead to military dominance also lead to cultural and religious dominance. How exactly you win isn't really important: if you have the highest number of the most productive cities, you can churn out military units, cultural buildings, wonders, or missionaries. There's no chance for a weaker civilization from coming back from the brink of destruction and getting to the point where it might win.

Obviously, this point is closely related to linearity. In the real world, civilization began in the Iraq-Kuwait area. In Civ terms, you could call it the Babylonian civilization. What's happened in the Middle East for all this time? It's been conquered by a variety of other civilizations, but now it's asserting itself, and also has a high degree of wealth and power, due to trading a rare, strategic resource. In game terms, it just isn't possible for this to happen. Once a civ is conquered, it's gone forever. Not only that, but Civ 4 is going to balance resource allocation, making it essentially a meaningless feature, since there will be no rarity or strategy when dealing with resources.

Political Correctness: It's funny how game developers who try to act PC end up coming across as the most insensitive. I shouldn't even have to mention how successful GTA3 and The Sims 2 are, despite (or because of) having a high degree of offensive content. Firaxis has dropped the ball on two great features: religion and terrorism.

First, though, here's the thing with TRYING to be PC: it doesn't work. People talk about how it's such a big deal that Civ 4 is going to have slavery. Guess what? It was in Civ 3! What do you think it is when you capture someone's settlers? Gee, here's this unit that I captured with military power or blackmailed from my enemy diplomatically, I know it represents a chunk of population, and I'm going to make it work indefinitely, without pay. Not only is slavery in Civ 3, it's an extremely useful strategy, and every advanced player here knows that they've used it. Meanwhile, the only black civilization in the game is portrayed as the most primitive, complete with a dehumanizing Zerg rush strategy built-in.

Firaxis has decided to have a half-dozen religions in the game, each of which act identically, because they don't want to offend anyone. I guess all the other religions in the world, throughout history, don't really count as 'real' religions to them, since they aren't major modern religions. Each religious viewpoint is equally valid, as long as it's popular and current, right? A better idea than their off-hand misrepresentation of religion is to have the development of religion by category. You get animism, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism, and some others. When you develop the religion, then you get to choose the name. That way, each religion can have it's own effects, rather than just be a meaningless name.

Terrorism, on the other hand, is more than just about having respect in the representation for something important in human lives. Terrorism is a vital strategy for weaker nations to deal with dominant ones. Without it, the only way to compete is through raw power. See where I'm going with this? The game becomes more linear, and more deterministic. I'd have it so that, after the development of the UN, other nations can produce militant units. These units, acting like diplomats or missionaries (but with even more freedom of movement), would be able to attack cities in the same way that a diplomat can engage in espionage. A terrorist attack would create 'fearful' citizens (from happy citizens, on the way down), which would act as unhappy citizens, except that they could not be pacified except through the passage of time.

I've gone through most of the big problems of Civ 4, and the solutions aren't really that complicated. There needs to be a way for civilizations to split, so that smaller, less powerful civs can compete against huge empires. There also needs to be a way for completely conquered civilizations to exist, in order to allow them to assert themselves later (like real-world France, Germany, or Japan). Real history is ugly, and Firaxis needs to stop dodging it, or they'll just look like they're inconsiderate. Terrorism needs to be included. Religion needs to be handled with some dignity, instead of saying "yeah, this'll make the hardcore fans happy." As for other details, like overpopulation, concentration camps, and however they're bound to mishandle the expansion of slavery, I'm not yet conviced that, while they would enhance realism, they would enhance actual gameplay.

For some of these features, Firaxis will hopefully pay attention. For others, it's bound to be left up to modders. I hope that someday, Civ 4 will be a good game, that will be worthy of play.

Wow. Well said. I agree with all of your points. I think you go overboard when you say that civ4 will be a failure. I believe it would be a better, deeper game if it incorporated the issues you describe, but I don't think it will be bad. The developers know they have a legacy to live up to; I think they know that if they put out something mediocre, they're going to take a beating. It might not be perfect, but I'm confident it will be good. Besides, they have to leave something for civ5 ;-)

Which, actually, brings up an annoyance I have with civ (and other games). Why can't they release it like other types of software? i.e., instead of civ1, civ2, and civ3 released once every 5 years as ground-up rewrites, why can't they release an upgrade every year for like $15 that incrementally goes from civ3 to civ4 over the same period? One upgrade might switch from 2-D to 3-D. Another might add 8 new civs and traits. A third might rebalance strategic resources and upgrade the AI. The cynic in me says it's because they can sell us the same expansion pack for each version every time. The optimist in me hopes they'll realize that by pushing out fresh content every year, they'll keep people playing civ who might otherwise have forgotten about it in the 5-year gap between versions. The optimist in me hopes they would realize the reduced costs and increased productivity that comes with evolving a (well-designed) code base rather than rewriting a whole game from scratch every time.

As a game developer, I'm predicting that Civ 4 is not going to be successful as a game.

I'll bet you $50.00 point blank that your dead wrong. We could easilly do an entire pay pal account transer of the losers $50.00 to the winner, 6 months after the games release; I'm more then confident this game is gonna kick ass, and take the sales charts like the black plague hitting england.

Why would you care if the game does bad? Afterall they are in some way your competitors.

Have you even played Civ3? or anyother Civ game? From your post it seems like you have barely played it at all.

Guess what? It was in Civ 3! What do you think it is when you capture someone's settlers? Gee, here's this unit that I captured with military power or blackmailed from my enemy diplomatically, I know it represents a chunk of population, and I'm going to make it work indefinitely, without pay. Not only is slavery in Civ 3, it's an extremely useful strategy, and every advanced player here knows that they've used it.
Even if an advanced player uses slaves I'll guarentee most of their workforce is made up of their own workers. (at least up untill everything has been railroaded)

Also the game is not being designed for the hardcore civ fans. Otherwise Corruption, Eras, Pollution, and Stacks of Death would of still been in.

Again why do you care it will be a faliure? Are you about to realease another TBS game at around the same time an are afraid of it taking a large amount of your profit? I don't understand.

Even if it is a faliure I will buy it right after it comes out and have a hell of a lot of fun. :)

As a game developer, I think Civ4 will sell pretty well. Most likely, the best selling Civ game yet.

And even though I work for "the competition", I wish the guys at Firaxis the best of luck, because I want to see Civ4 succeeed for the most selfish of reasons, I want to play it.

Bluemethod raises a few good points that could make the game alot better (I really like your idea of adding terrorism in the game) but i have to agree with Xen on the game being successful. I think your standards are too high Bluemethod but who knows maybe you will be right.

Why can't they release it like other types of software? i.e., instead of civ1, civ2, and civ3 released once every 5 years as ground-up rewrites, why can't they release an upgrade every year for like $15 that incrementally goes from civ3 to civ4 over the same period?

Well, let's see.

Civ1 was designed by Sid and Bruce when they were at Microprose. Civ2 was designed by Brian when he was at Microprose. Civ3 was designed by a bunch of people (I'll narrow it down to Jeff as lead) at Firaxis, a different company than the one that made the previous. Civ4 is by Soren at Firaxis, but for a diffenet publisher.

BTW, other than sports titles which are released every year (and charge full price for each installation), what franchise follows the pattern you listed? I can't think of any.

To say it simply.

Looking at how successful previous Civ games have been, and looking at how Firaxis is good at keeping the tradition and studying their bad habits over time, I can say that Civ IV will be a very big success for Firaxis, and a very delightful product for its fans.

Not much more has to be said really, it is that simple.

I think that bluemethod needs to read Soren's power point tittled "Don't Blow it". If he really thinks that Firaxis is totally catering to us C3C veterns.

"The Point

Don’t be afraid to change your target audience

If you put something in, take something out

Good rule of thumb:1/3 old, 1/3 improved, 1/3 new” – Bing Gordon"

CS

Why would you care if the game does bad? Afterall they are in some way your competitors.



You are right. In fact, I have read the first post before anybody posted any answer, but I miss the part where he said he is a game developer (Yeah, I know, it is the first sentence, I skip it, pretty stupid). Although at the end of my reading I thought "Ummm... this post looks like one of these letters you find in cnet or other hardware/software review webpages that gives 0's to all categories and says something like "this milimoles brand cellphone is c.r.*.p. I'd better go for the micromoles brand"'
Then, you realize that the poster is really a micromoles sales representative or something like that and that he is advertising his product.

Now, I came back, and I read the replies, and I realized that he might be acting as a sales representative trying to discourage us from buying Civ IV. He didn't say anything about what game he develops, anyway. But it was his first post.

I have been advocating for a more realistic Civ in the expectation it would mirror the volatility, the imbalance, the unpredictability, the terrors, the fears, the hopes and the wonder and the glory of this planet.
But does anyone listen…

q (game, but not a developer of)

Determinism

I actually agree with the idea that there needs to be a way for civs to come up from behind late in the game. There needs to be a way to leap huge bounds forward, rather than the slow and steady race that Civ currently is. I'm not sure if I agree with the idea that terrorism is that feature, though. It's really more of a modern phenomenon. Civil war and seperatism makes sense from 4000 BC to 2000 AD and might offer more hope, but it could also be implemented horribly.

I've talked about it in a document I put together with some friends called "A Big Vision for Civ 4". There are still a lot of skeptics. I didn't explain how it would work, but some general goals to prevent it from sucking. I could probably write another document on how to make civil wars not suck, because it's such a tricky thing to implement.

Religion Had to be Inadequate in Some Way

As for religion, I never thought it sounded like a good feature. I've posted extensively before, but my main conclusion was that you could only implement religion in a few general ways:

1. realistically flexible, big impact, but too complex. (e.g.: religion is something completely different every single age)
2. simple, big impact, but deterministic and infantile (e.g.: religion always ends up in a nuclear crusade, one religion is always better for war)
3. simple, realistically flexible, but with almost no impact (e.g.: a few empty labels that do next to nothing)
4. no religion

An abstract model like you suggested (and I've seen suggested before) would be even more politically correct, but still runs into the same risks of choices 1-3.

It sounds to me like they picked number 3, which I think is the best choice next to #4. The idea that there could be 6 equal religions with missionaries flying around is much less infantile than making gross generalizations about a religion.

Will Civ 4 Suck?

When all is said and done, I really think your main comment is wrong. Civ 4 doesn't sound like it's being designed for hardcore fans in the least. Nor does it look like it will be a commercial flop. It sounds like they're trying to reach a little bit more into the broader strategy-game market.

It might not be everything you or I hoped, but that won't make it a failure.

It sounds to me like they've got something for everyone.

Civics and Religion for the loyal fanboys.
More detailed combat, better AI, and mod tools for the cynical gamers.
3D Graphics and Improved Interface and Fast Multiplayer for new fans.
And overall pollish that will make the game better for everyone.

I think the overall pollishing phase of the game is hugely underrated for Civ 4's pending success. They've allegedly been playing multiplayer games since a year and a half ago, and the game is yet to come out in half a year. That might not be as exciting as civil war or terrorism, but is guaranteed bigger results.

I don't think cIV will suck, I'm really hyped up (and have been for some time) and can't wait to get my hands on it.

I spent way too much of my college time playing Civ II, and bought Civ III right away. I remember how much I hated the game at first. I couldn't build Caravans, had to build seperate Settlers/Workers, couldn't heal my troops in enemy teritory, etc.

Once I finally figured it out, though, I realized all those changes made the game better. That is my only expectation with cIV, that I'll get my brains beaten in until I figure out all the changes that make it a completely new game.

November can't come soon enough!

Which, actually, brings up an annoyance I have with civ (and other games). Why can't they release it like other types of software? i.e., instead of civ1, civ2, and civ3 released once every 5 years as ground-up rewrites, why can't they release an upgrade every year for like $15 that incrementally goes from civ3 to civ4 over the same period? One upgrade might switch from 2-D to 3-D. Another might add 8 new civs and traits. A third might rebalance strategic resources and upgrade the AI. The cynic in me says it's because they can sell us the same expansion pack for each version every time. The optimist in me hopes they'll realize that by pushing out fresh content every year, they'll keep people playing civ who might otherwise have forgotten about it in the 5-year gap between versions. The optimist in me hopes they would realize the reduced costs and increased productivity that comes with evolving a (well-designed) code base rather than rewriting a whole game from scratch every time.
Switching from 2D to 3D is a huge project - in fact, it requires you start over from scratch. Which is what they did. ;) If they were ever going to make the jump over that gap then it can't be done through a $15 incremental boost. The other things you describe are what expansion packs do. If you ignore things like the graphics engine, then if you just keep adding and adding to a game eventually there will be more stuff than people will be able to keep up with. While many hardcore fans would love that the same isn't true of people who casually play Civ.

well... heck even with all religions being the same gamewise some people are still ticked off that their religion's promoters in the game are called missionaries... theres just no pleasing some people

It might not be everything you or I hoped, but that won't make it a failure.

It sounds to me like they've got something for everyone.

Civics and Religion for the loyal fanboys.
More detailed combat, better AI, and mod tools for the cynical gamers.
3D Graphics and Improved Interface and Fast Multiplayer for new fans.
And overall pollish that will make the game better for everyone.


I cannot possible agree more.

Civ IV how I see it now will be commercial success no doubt about it.
They must do some serious damage in order it not to succeed.

This doesn't mean it will be tasty treat for everyone, however it might be especially if the modding is easy and there will be people doing mods, then we are talking about major success.

I'm still sceptical whether it will satisfy my needs but as said above, modding can save a lot to even most critical hardcore fans. And there you go wrong.

Non-critical hardcore fans would probably buy any box of crap that has Sid Meier's name on it (I have seen some of them over here too) and the critical hardcore fans will wait for the results but eventually will wish that they can "tweak and tinker it" to be best in the series.
So both groups buy it, then even those that before were horrified because of the looks of the game will get it, not forgetting that RTS crowd that might consider to get one Turn-based strategy and Civ IV could be it.

How on earth you can even consider Civ IV to be failure?
Now that even the graphics are gone a notch better and there's actual music how you interpret it as failure?
And those things you mentioned:
Linearity, determinism and political correctness will make it playable for wider audience than adding complex strategy elements in free brutal world.
I'm fan of the latter but tell you the truth I believe most of the world want former.

Nobody wants Civ to be something like GTA.
As a history fan I would love to see game that would portray history as dirty as it can come but I know that Civ will never be the game unless we fans make it through some modding and that's were major Civ IV strength lies.

Replayability of self made mods.
Only heaven is the limit and your ability to "fly" of course.

I seem to be in maximum overdrive right now about how successfull Civ IV will be so I have to jus stop.............

Being designed for a fairly hardcore audience (and yet, by all signs one that's less hardcore than the audience CivIII was aimed at) doesn't mean a game is a failure. We all want a game to be polished and play smoothly, but at the same time everyone craves some "rough edges" in the games they play (OK, not everyone--but those that don't, just don't play games period). The level of tolerance varies from person to person, and hardcore gamers are much more accepting--indeed, even demanding--of game design "flaws". It boils down to a matter of taste--game design is not an objective science, and you cannot mathematically measure how many "fun units" a game will produce. I personally agree with the individual points you make about CivIV's gameplay, but there are plenty of hardcore fans who would happily argue you to death about them and would refuse to touch any Civ-like game that did not make these "mistakes"--it is pretentious to the extreme to say that the opinions of these players don't matter because "they don't know what's good for them". As far as commercail success goes, sure, maybe Firaxis could move more copies if they smoothed out the gameplay--but then, maybe not. Logic dictates that they have to be doing something right, as the Civilization series has always been a reasonable success despite being riddled with all the apparent defects you mentioned and many others besides. Aiming for a broader audience means competing in a larger market--there'd be greater potential there, yes, but also greater risk, as they would be losing their reliable niche market.

So, to recap:

1. Civilization's developers seem to be happy; they're making the game they want to make.
2. Civilization's players seem to be happy; they're playing the game they want to play.
3. Civilization's corporate backers seem to be happy; they're seeing a profit from the game.

Remind me again where the problem is?

Well, let's see.

Civ1 was designed by Sid and Bruce when they were at Microprose. Civ2 was designed by Brian when he was at Microprose. Civ3 was designed by a bunch of people (I'll narrow it down to Jeff as lead) at Firaxis, a different company than the one that made the previous. Civ4 is by Soren at Firaxis, but for a diffenet publisher.


Oh, I know that the civ series has been developed and published my multiple companies. That's kind of moot, though, because civ1, civ2, and civ3 were almost certainly not designed from the beginning to be expandable like that, and you have to plan on it from the beginning. Even if Sid and Bruce and Microprose was still running the franchise, they'd still be doing it as a series of one-offs. That strategy makes some sense when your distribution system has a high per-unit cost, as then you want each unit to have maximum revenue to amortize that cost. You do better selling one unit for $50 than you do selling 4 units for $15 if you have middleman costs eating up $5/unit before you see your money. In 1990 or 1995, that was definitely the case, as you could only distribute a game through physical stores. Nowadays, the Internet provides a distribution system that is much better suited for that. Furthermore, civ4 has been designed from the beginning to be modularly expandable. Hopefully, they did it from top to bottom so that they can pursue such a strategy.

I know I will buy Civ 4.0 in 2005 for $50. I also would buy a Civ 4.1 for $10 in 2006, a Civ 4.2 in 2007 for $10, etc. Developers and publishers should like that because they get steadier revenue in smaller chunks, as opposed to a big gulp every 4-5 years. Players would like it because they would have a steadily evolving and improving game, rather than one they burned out on after a year and then waited 3-4 years for a sequel.


BTW, other than sports titles which are released every year (and charge full price for each installation), what franchise follows the pattern you listed? I can't think of any.

Don't some MMPORGs go that way? Maybe not 100%, but they have more expansion packs that are more sizable? I can't think of any for games that do. I'm saying I can't think of any reason why they can't, and, given the reasons outlined above, that they should.

Switching from 2D to 3D is a huge project - in fact, it requires you start over from scratch. Which is what they did. ;) If they were ever going to make the jump over that gap then it can't be done through a $15 incremental boost. The other things you describe are what expansion packs do. If you ignore things like the graphics engine, then if you just keep adding and adding to a game eventually there will be more stuff than people will be able to keep up with. While many hardcore fans would love that the same isn't true of people who casually play Civ.

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how a change that is solely at a UI level should require a rewrite of the whole game, especially if you designed it well from the beginning.


So, to recap:

1. Civilization's developers seem to be happy; they're making the game they want to make.
2. Civilization's players seem to be happy; they're playing the game they want to play.
3. Civilization's corporate backers seem to be happy; they're seeing a profit from the game.

Remind me again where the problem is?


1. I think they're happy, but they could be happier. I'm sure that leaving out terrorism is annoying to them, but they're publishing a game to a world that seems to think that, if you don't mention bad things, they won't happen. I'm guessing that at least some of them want civil wars and revolutions in there for the same reasons that bluemethod does, but it's not in the game because... well, I'm not exactly sure ;-).

2. I think the players will also be happy, but they could be happier. And if they're happier, they're more profitable. I'm guessing a lot of people have gotten burned out on earlier versions of civ for some of the reasons bluemethod outlined (and for other reasons mentioned elsewhere in these forums). Those are buyers lost, which brings us to 3.

3. They want to see a profit from this game, but if they could see a bigger profit... Granted, most of the potential audience for Civ4 has already decided whether they will buy the game. Some of the people who have decided to pass might get brought back into the fold if they discovered Civ4 incorporated some of these deeper features. Furthermore, Civ4 is setting expectations for Civ 5. If Civ4 is good, but not great, some people won't buy Civ 5. Civilization is a franchise. The backers expect it to produce a consistent revenue stream with each iteration. That sets high expectations, and to meet those expectations, Civ4 has to be more than just good.

I have been playing civ III for more than two years and I am still enjoying it. I am looking forward to having civ IV now but I am not sure whether I would be as excited if they release one version per year. I think that you can enjoy Civ III for more than two years until you start to lose interest on the game. (Unless you don't do anything but playing Civ III in your spare time) One year seems too short to me.

The Civilization series has always differed from history in this important aspect. History is cyclical. History shows that anyone has a chance of winning in the end.

"History is cyclical"?

Human behavior has cyclical elements because we do not have a hive memory. Civilization (not the game) depends on the teaching of children, that collectively a society should pass on all its values, wisdom and lessons learned to the next generation. A single failure to do so can threaten to wipe out all the gains that any particular civilization has made.

This is why it is the height of folly to deliberately indoctrinate children with lies just to exploit them as unthinking soldiers in the cause of despots and zealots. Societies who care more about exploiting their children than loving them are not long for this world. Their ideologies are sickly and poorly rooted, and will not long survive when they clash with sturdier, more truthful concepts.

The cyclical aspect of history arises from when the chickens come home to roost. If a greater evil is allowed to take root and deliberately to destroy on a mass scale, then the hard work of countless individuals is wiped out and civilization itself takes a step backward. It then must rebuild and reclaim the lost ground, and the forward-backward tug-of-war often looks rather similar, one instance to the next.

Nevertheless, it is not cyclical in the strict sense. Time does not repeat itself. Time marches on.

All analogies ultimately break down and fail. Comparing something to something else that is similar can make gains, but it can also be a trap.


The Civilization series has always differed from history in this important aspect. History is cyclical. History shows that anyone has a chance of winning in the end.

Life is measured in human beings or humanity as a whole.

Human beings "win" if they live a meaningful life. What constitutes meaningful is up to each individual to interpret, as to whether, by the end of their life, their actions, thoughts, and lessons learned are something over which to be proud, or not.

Humanity as a species wins when it moves toward positive ideals: freedom, justice, cooperation, synergy, compassion, enlightenment.

Civilization (the game franchise) departed the land of reality from the first concept. The game is about a single consciousness controlling a nation for all of history. The game is about that single consciousness. Can that consciousness -- sentient or artificial -- maintain a continuous chain of control over a nation from birth to an arbitrary finish line?

This makes for a compelling game, but I think that you are overanalyzing it.

Civ is just a game, and it should play well as a game. One does not design a great game to render the first 80% of the game's duration as meaningless, that a player or faction who has been a loser all the way should suddenly be put back on even ground in the end game, arbitrarily. If that should be the case, then why play the early part of the game?


- Sirian

Civ is just a game, and it should play well as a game. One does not design a great game to render the first 80% of the game's duration as meaningless, that a player or faction who has been a loser all the way should suddenly be put back on even ground in the end game, arbitrarily. If that should be the case, then why play the early part of the game?


Perhaps, then, the game ought to do a better job of indicating to you how and why your civilization is immune to the normal historical pattern of birth, growth, consolidation, stagnation, and decline. Civil wars and revolutions would be one way of modeling this, in that playing well would avoid them and playing badly would suffer from them.

You do better selling one unit for $50 than you do selling 4 units for $15 if you have middleman costs eating up $5/unit before you see your money.

Your numbers are way out of whack. I'd be shocked if Firaxis gets $10 a copy. The way the system works is the Publisher gives a major advance (millions of dollars in the case of a game like Civ4) to Firaxis. (This is typically spread out through the duration of the project on completion of milestones). Then the developer has to "earn back" the advance money before they start seeing profit. The publisher gives them nothing till they pay back the advance at the royalty rate (call it 10-15 percent of the sale price). Once they pay it back (90% of games never get this far), then they start earning royalties.

"The way publishers recoup their advances is a long perpetuated industry scam. That’s because advances should not be repaid from the studio's royalty stream. This way of repaying advances severely punishes studios who are working for a lower royalty. Imagine a studio getting just a 1% royalty (unrealistic, but I'm making a point). Let’s say this studio got a $2.5 million advance to make a game. This game would need to sell a GTA-like 8.3 million copies before the studio saw a dime of royalties. (This assumes the publisher makes $30 per game, after COGs.) By the time this studio saw it’s first royalty check, the publisher has gotten gross revenues of $250 million, meaning they’re at least $220 million in the green!

Although this is an extreme case with an unrealistically low royalty percentage, there's an unfair lopsidedness that applies to royalties that are common in the industry, with studios not seeing a royalty check even though the publisher has made millions in pure profits.

The point I’m making is that there’s no connection between a publisher’s profit on a game and the current standard method currently used by publishers to recoup their advances. Publishers have gotten away with installing a recoupment system that on the surface makes sense, but doesn't make sense when you look closer.

This is why most independent studios live from game to game, and milestone paycheck to milestone paycheck. Rarely can a studio accumulate enough in the bank to break free from this deep rut." -- www.GameMatters.com

Bummer. I know nothing of the numbers involved (obviously). That system sounds a lot like the way most record companies work. It makes it sound pretty impossible to get the $5M-$10M it seems like a game like civ would require, at least in the current system. I will make the foolishly bold prediction that systems like this are not long for this world. Maybe they'll be able to do this for civ6.

@bluemethod,

Have to agree with you about the 'Linearity' issue, but obviously everyone does comprehend it and want to mod improvement.

I think CIV4's success will depend upon the aftermarket moding, like CIV3, but I bet it will do well.

Even re-releasing CIV3 with hyped graphics, a few rules tweaks, and broader advertisingl will at least turn a profit.

On Determinism---that would really just be a culture mod---to come back by city-flipping the weakest, most corrupt cities, without any power to do so. Or just alter the ethnic assimilation of captured cities-----lengthen the time needed for it to occur, and allow the civ whose citizens remain in the city to score points for that civ (kind of a diaspora---which who knows, maybe they get offered a new homeland).


I'm still looking forward to CIV4.

i am suspicious of this post - i do not beleive that the original poster is indeed a "programmer". Although i will have to remember that in future posts- because it is apprently very easy to get people to read ur stuff and beleive u if u just say something like "and i program" - people are alot more trusting
than I.....
He talks about why this game will be a failure and then kind of sneaks in a push for ...Civil War? .....that is the most talked about old idea of all time
- that said - there is one point made - and i agree - that the game is using all these hardcore fans to test-which is a bad idea - Civ needs fresh blood- these ol cantakorous "and the railroad needs ..zzzzz " yes and the formula to create a ....zzzz"
using a homogeneous group for ideas is not - ...a good idea- however-using a group that is in the age/race/income that has been projected to be the ones that will buy the game seems more sound and creative- i would dump all these know it all history book readers types that get all worked up- :goodjob:

The only issues on which I agree with the author of this thread are:

1) Linearity/Determinist. Anyone who is familiar with my posts knows how much I hate the dreaded snowball effect. Although I don't think they have completely solved it in Civ4-I think they have come a long way in reducing it. Having a diverse range of unit promotions, a diverse range of terrain improvements, a need to fund your culture, and an ability to specialise your cities much more will all help reduce this phenomenon. Additionally, the change to the corruption system will help a lot in this regard too, IMHO. If Civil war is in too (and we don't know it isn't yet), then I think the 'Snowball Effect' could be all but binned in this iteration.

2) Religion. I really had high hopes for this element-in spite of all of DH_Epics warnings :rolleyes: . Having generic, Realworld religions was always going to cause problems-no matter how generic you made them. However, now that Real World religions are in, I feel they truly dropped the ball in ensuring that they couldn't grow beyond their generic nature. Again, though, I am still reasonably hopeful that this element of religion can be improved either prior to release, or on the release of upcoming expansions.

That said, will the game do badly? I highly doubt it. Will these problems stop me from buying the game? Almost certainly not. In fact, I do believe this will be the most fun of all the Civ games to date!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I will make the foolishly bold prediction that systems like this are not long for this world.

We can only hope. More money in the developer's hands means more and better games (and hopefully more variety in them).

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how a change that is solely at a UI level should require a rewrite of the whole game, especially if you designed it well from the beginning.
Well, that's the trick - it's much more than UI. The graphics engine is such a major part of a project that many games have half their programmers working on that alone. Virtually everything except game 'logic' has to be re-written when you make the switch from 2D to 3D - and that 'everything else' is a pretty huge amount of stuff.

instead of civ1, civ2, and civ3 released once every 5 years as ground-up rewrites, why can't they release an upgrade every year for like $15 that incrementally goes from civ3 to civ4 over the same period?.
The simple reason is that by only addressing a single issue at a time (a necessity given the short time frame) you tend to lose the coherence of the game over a long period.

Secondly at some point it becomes necessary to do a ground-up reworking to streamline the game, design the whole thing solely with certain aims in mind, to prevent an overly cumbersome goliath being created.

Well, that's the trick - it's much more than UI. The graphics engine is such a major part of a project that many games have half their programmers working on that alone. Virtually everything except game 'logic' has to be re-written when you make the switch from 2D to 3D - and that 'everything else' is a pretty huge amount of stuff.

Many games like Doom 3, where they're pushing the technological envelope. I gather that civ4 is using an already-developed graphical engine. Granted, there need to be new models and art for that, but the game is just as 2-dimensional as it's always been; it's only the display that has changed. I figure that most of the investment in civ4 is in developing AI, creating art, and refining the rules (not expressed as a lot of code, but rather as a lot of play testing and code movement).

The simple reason is that by only addressing a single issue at a time (a necessity given the short time frame) you tend to lose the coherence of the game over a long period.


I think Photoshop is a perfectly coherent application, and it's been continuously and incrementally developed for a very long time. That said....


Secondly at some point it becomes necessary to do a ground-up reworking to streamline the game, design the whole thing solely with certain aims in mind, to prevent an overly cumbersome goliath being created.

I'm not saying they should never release a ground-up rewrite. I'm saying they should move the slider away from the one-off extreme. Expansion packs do that a little bit, but they can do it more.

Civ4 hasn't been released yet (from what I understand, it's not even in a beta stage at this point) but it's already a failure? Gadzooks! This is news to me! Forget about waiting for the game to be finished, we'd better make up our minds about not buying this game right now! ;)

Many games like Doom 3, where they're pushing the technological envelope. I gather that civ4 is using an already-developed graphical engine. Granted, there need to be new models and art for that, but the game is just as 2-dimensional as it's always been; it's only the display that has changed. I figure that most of the investment in civ4 is in developing AI, creating art, and refining the rules (not expressed as a lot of code, but rather as a lot of play testing and code movement).
You just hit the nail on the head here - Civ 4 is using an already-developed graphics engine. That means they have to build the rest of the game around that engine in order to make it work. It's not something you can simply swap in and out like parts of a computer. Their home-brewed 2d engine from Civ 3 is likely light years different from the new engine which another company developed- that's just how software works. It varies greatly from one developer to another, especially when the different developers focus on different things (graphics engines vs. games).

You just hit the nail on the head here - Civ 4 is using an already-developed graphics engine. That means they have to build the rest of the game around that engine in order to make it work. It's not something you can simply swap in and out like parts of a computer. Their home-brewed 2d engine from Civ 3 is likely light years different from the new engine which another company developed- that's just how software works. It varies greatly from one developer to another, especially when the different developers focus on different things (graphics engines vs. games).

You're attacking a point I'm not making. I'm not saying they should have made civ4 an incremental upgrade to civ3. They couldn't, because civ3 wasn't designed that way. It may have been developed with the strict dependencies that you describe, but that was almost certainly more for convenience than anything else. Had they adopted this strategy from the beginning, they could have done a lot to isolate the dependency on the graphics engine, quite possibly to the point that the main game code was not aware of the graphics component at all, or was only aware that there was some such component, but with no strict dependency on it. They may have done this with Civ4. Wouldn't it be nice if your favorite custom units, mods, additional civs, maps, etc. for civ4 automatically worked on civ5, or worked with only a bit of tweaking? If the developers do one-offs, everyone who builds on their work must do one-offs as well.

Hmmm...that flies in the face of the marketing principle of planned obsolesence.

Don't know apatheist if the idea of a modular civ game would please you where you can add/remove or enable/disable combinations of plug-ins like for example a crime plug-in where you would have an enhanced and more pronounced feature of (maybe even organised) crime displayed in the civ handling or a more complex religious model with varying characteristics and game effects for religion choices.
The problems with that always is getting the AI to cope with different game rules every time and not keeping a default style that can't adopt to or exploit modules with far reaching changes in game play.
If that can be fixed maybe it would be possible for Firaxis releasing a modular game and afterwards add-ons with new modules or game versions with added or refreshed interfaces in the core code to accept even more (complicated) rules plug-ins.

The problems of linearity and determinism that Bluemethod metions are real, but they've been in earlier iterations of Civ as well. Civ3 was a commercial success; thus, there's no reason not to think that Civ4 won't do at least as well. Civ4 should do better because, as others have mentioned, Firaxis is trying to broaden the audience - hence 3D and RTS-like features.

As for political correctness, I don't see very much of it in the game. PC might be the reason terrorism is out, and that is a deficeintcy. But as for the religions, I don't think htey should all be the same for PC reasons, they should all be the same for gameplay reasons. Religion is important vis-a-vis Civ4 because it establishes cultural affinities; different civs with the same religion are more likely to get along. I think people that want to see religious traits are too focused on the real world. Jadaism, Islam, etc. don't need to "look" the way they do in RL, they're just names to represent an overarching culture that transcends nationality.

Hmmm...that flies in the face of the marketing principle of planned obsolesence.

Yes, yes it does. But it flies, um, right out of the face of subscription-based revenue streams. It's not exactly a subscription, but it's pretty close to it. In addition, if they want a mod community to build up around Civilization, they have to start thinking of the game as a platform as well. People don't like to build on platforms where they have to throw their work away with every iteration. They'll do it, sure, but they'll do it a lot more if they're assured of some degree of forward-compatibility, easy migration paths, and so forth. Look at it this way: making the game moddable means giving away a revenue stream already. They're risking that someone else will put together an expansion like C3C but give it away for free. They're taking that risk in order to achieve the potential for an even greater benefit. The same principle applies to incremental updates.

You want small/weak civs to be able make a "comeback" then bring back the caravan/freight unit and the spy UNIT of civ2.

Those 2 units were the great balancers of civ2.

@Bluemethod: Your logic doesn't make any sense. What you are basically doing is blowing three areas that could be better dealt with out of proportion and claiming that they will bring it crashing down.

Wrong.

Firstly, Linearity. What you are saying is that this doesn't model real history and won't appease history buffs. BUT "It's designed to appeal to hardcore fans of the series", and if you've looked at some of the threads on this website you'd know that they are concerned with these kinds of matters. But we're all still gonna buy it. And let's be realistic - Joe Average probably won't even know enough about the Civil War to want to play it. So that area isn't gonna destroy the game.

Secondly, Determinism. I'd like to see it fixed, but then, is Civ really the only game that sports determinism? Pretty much every strategy game out there prohibits people from making a comeback. Has that ever stopped them from being sucesses? What you should be saying is that the determinism will hinder the enjoyment of multiplayer, as few people will be prepared to play a long game which they are clearly losing. But then again, maybe they will. But that won't really see sales plummet.

Thirdly, Political Correctness. You've been using the proof by reverse logic here - since politically incorrect games do so well, Civ should be to if it wants to sell well. Nonsense. GTA isn't the only game that sells well you know. Does Star Wars Episode 3 (the number 2 selling game overall for this month) have political incorrectness? I agree wholeheartedly that they shouldn't shy away from putting things like terrorism into the game, but seriously, how the heck will not having it bring sales down?!! "Oh Waah, there's no ability to build an Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist State. I'm gonna buy Postal 2 instead." Does that sound likely to you?

Incidentally, you said you were a developer. I get the feeling this is a bit of the tall poppies syndrome coming through here...

Wow, I never heard the term "tall poppy syndrome" before. Very interesting saying and history behind it.

Thirdly, Political Correctness. You've been using the proof by reverse logic here - since politically incorrect games do so well, Civ should be to if it wants to sell well. Nonsense. GTA isn't the only game that sells well you know. Does Star Wars Episode 3 (the number 2 selling game overall for this month) have political incorrectness? I agree wholeheartedly that they shouldn't shy away from putting things like terrorism into the game, but seriously, how the heck will not having it bring sales down?!! "Oh Waah, there's no ability to build an Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist State. I'm gonna buy Postal 2 instead."


That's a straw man argument. What will happen instead is that some people will play the game and feel like it's missing a certain essential something. They might not be able to put their fingers on what it is exactly, they'll just know it's not there. So they won't buy the expansion pack, because they'll figure it'll just be more of the same. And they won't buy civ5 because they won't know exactly why civ4 disappointed them, just that it did, and so they would expect civ5 to disappoint them as well.

Many people here LOVE Civ 3 because they saw culture and armies. In fact, I'd argue that Civ 3 was a flawed release and people here seemed to love it anyway. Civ 3 was grossly unbalanced and gameplay became horribly repetitive once you found some key exploits, and yet people still play it passionately today.

Only pessimists focus on what's missing. Optimists look at what they've gained.

A realist will call a spade a spade -- if a game is fun, it's fun. If it sucks, it sucks. It doesn't matter if the person says "my favorite feature X made it in" or "why didn't they implement feature X?"

I think there are a lot of optimists on these forums because they love Civ. And there's a good chance that the realists will be pleased too, since the devs have been play-testing Civilization 4 for what they claim to be as 18 months! If this means what I think it means, the jump from Civ 3 to Civ 4 will be VASTLY superior to the last jump from Civ 2 to Civ 3.

So they won't buy the expansion pack, because they'll figure it'll just be more of the same.

This too is a strawman. Roughly 75% of people who buy any game do not buy any expansions for it.

I think there are a lot of optimists on these forums because they love Civ.

I think there are more pesemists (forgive my spelling :crazyeye: ) then optimists on this forum judging by all the complaints. Even my "best thing about civ4" thread became a place to complain. And why do people have to be an optimist to enjoy civ3? Its not like it is a bad game, it just has some issues.

Anyway i haven't read this entire thread but i think that i have to say that Bluemethod is a pesemist himself.

It's designed to appeal to hardcore fans of the series, who on their own don't have a good view of what makes a game actually playable.

Read sorens powerpoint (you can find the link at civ rules thread, i cant be bothered adding it here). Judging from the screenies, the rts feel, the game speed and much much more i think that your above statement is one of the most uneducated on this forum. Of course it will be targeted at us but it is not like they are going in the flight simulator course and reducing the audience each time. Civ4 will have a larger audience! And whats "don't have a good view of what makes a game actually playable" suppose to mean! You are on your way to offending everyone on this forum.

To rebut your points on Linearity:

Almost every other stratagy game works this way. Whilst some changes would be nice I dont think that people will be turned of by it because what would be the alternative?

To rebut your points on Determinism:

Civ 4 is going to see an increase in the greatest weakness of the series. Whichever player starts out winning will inevitably win in the end.
How do you know this? Do you have a cristal ball or a spy within fraxis?? Civ4 looks to be a vastly different game to civ3. Yet again I wonder if you have even read civ rules post. I am sure that fraxis will make some sort of change to this and even if they dont the game will still be the same as any other stratagy game.

To rebut your points on Political Correctness:

Actually i have to agree that the PC is driving me crazy but do you really thing that that is going to make the game a failure? So they dont have hitler or religious benifits... will that kill the game?

To top off my arguements you must remember that fraxis has been playtesting this game to death. All in all I think this is more about pulling down Civ4 for no reason other than for personal benifit (you are after all working for a rival).

Once again, DH_Epic, you truly hit the nail on the head.
Fact is, the developers have taken the very nascent ideas of Civ3-namely Culture and Resources-and really given them a huge overhaul to make them much better. Culture, for instance, was a good concept, but still tended to favour the civ with the most cities, because it was entirely based on Improvements and Wonders. Now, though, you have to largely fund your cultural growth from your treasury-forcing the player to make occasionally tough choices between tech development and cultural development.
Resources too, will now have a greater impact on the game, as they will be required for the construction of terrain improvements too-not merely units and city improvements.
Governments, too, have been massively overhauled, and give players the chance to create much more nuanced governments.
What will really make this game sell, though-especially to hard-core gamers-is the almost unlimited modding. If this proves to be more than just hype, then there will never be anything truly missing from the game, as the player can merely add it in to his/her hearts content.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

This too is a strawman. Roughly 75% of people who buy any game do not buy any expansions for it.

Man, those straw man arguments are popping up like poppies. It's easy to accuse, but I don't think your point hits its target. Ok, so 75% of people don't buy the expansion, so what? 25% do. And publishers and developers make money off the 25% that do, otherwise they wouldn't do expansion packs. Surely they would want that 25% to be 26% so they can make more money. That 25% number is not carved in stone. The quality of the base game affects it. If the base game is worse, there will be fewer than 25% buying it. Conversely, if the base game is better, there will be more than 25% buying it. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, that means that because only a fraction of the potential game-buying public will actually buy civ4, quality doesn't matter. That's a ridiculous conclusion, because it's built on a flawed premise.

Many people here LOVE Civ 3 because they saw culture and armies. In fact, I'd argue that Civ 3 was a flawed release and people here seemed to love it anyway. Civ 3 was grossly unbalanced and gameplay became horribly repetitive once you found some key exploits, and yet people still play it passionately today.

Only pessimists focus on what's missing. Optimists look at what they've gained.

A realist will call a spade a spade -- if a game is fun, it's fun. If it sucks, it sucks. It doesn't matter if the person says "my favorite feature X made it in" or "why didn't they implement feature X?"


Why do people insist on looking at things in such binary terms? There's a middle ground between crushing the CD up into little pieces to send back to Maryland and building it a shrine as the One True Game. For every game, you'll find someone who loves it (well, except Daikatana), and you'll also find someone who hates it. The majority of people are in the wavering middle, and, thus, that's where the majority of the money is. Incremental improvements in the game lead to incremental increases in current and future revenue. Gamespot giving the game an 8.6 instead of an 8.5 will lead to slightly more sales. I think these features can do that. They won't make a 0 into a 10, but they might push an 8.5 to a 9.0. That's not a Nobel Peace Prize accomplishment, but it's something.


What will really make this game sell, though-especially to hard-core gamers-is the almost unlimited modding. If this proves to be more than just hype, then there will never be anything truly missing from the game, as the player can merely add it in to his/her hearts content.

That's a little too convenient an answer. I like that they're making it moddable, really I do. However, infinite configurability can lead to a lack of focus. Look at all of the instances of people on these forums saying, "they should make it an option." That's usually a cop-out for not really thinking about the problem and working hard to solve it the right way. If only 25% of players buy the official expansion pack, I'm guessing fewer than 25% will pay attention to mods. If the game requires a mod to fix some flaw, or to give it greater depth, well, some players would buy the game and then install that mod, but most potential customers just wouldn't buy the game or would buy it and not play it. Now, I am definitely not saying that civ4 will suffer from this. I am merely saying that extensibility is not a panacea.

By stating determinism, Bluemethod probably means to emphasize the game’s sensitivity to initial conditions.
So what; inequalities are part of life and the life of nations. In my view, problems will appear with balanced resource allocation, which is total - do you hear - total B.S.
Civ just underlines what we’ve known to be true for some time: geography is destiny.

q

My point, apatheist, if you had honestly tried to read my post in full is that, simply based on what little we already know (and it is a little) there is an enormous amount of new material to appeal to both novice and hard-core player alike, whilst the modding tools allow the truly hardcore to put in the things which they felt should have been included.
If you look at the threads in these forums, then you will see that this is a very smart route to take-ultimately-'cause if they truly tried to appeal to all the hard-core fans, then you would end up with a substandard game!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

determinism
im always determ to play the game even im losing in civ3, because there are infinite numbers of strategies.

if a big nation goes uneasy on you, you can bribe a few other nation, and form an alliance against it,
or try to trigger your GOLDEN AGE, thats the biggest thing for you to comeback from losing.
who knows what the combat might happen, everyone knows the "pikemen defeats tank" phenomenon
also there are different UU for different civs, for different ages. if one civ is strong in this age, you may counter him with your next age UU

Actually, Panzooka, that is yet another means by which they have reduced the Linearity and determinism of the Civ4. Rather than having a single Golden Age-often occuring when it is of little use to you-you can now store up Great People and 'sacrifice' them to produce one or more Golden Ages when it suits you. This can be a perfect way for a civ that is lagging a little behind to essentially Supercharge their economic and technological development.
What this proves, though, is that they have clearly listened to our complaints within the community, and improved an otherwise good idea accordingly. Hardly the behaviour of a company that is on the edge of economic ruin :rolleyes: !!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

My point, apatheist, if you had honestly tried to read my post in full is that, simply based on what little we already know (and it is a little) there is an enormous amount of new material to appeal to both novice and hard-core player alike, whilst the modding tools allow the truly hardcore to put in the things which they felt should have been included.


And had you read my post in full, you would have seen me temper my words with the statement that I don't believe they'll screw up civ4. My point was that moddability is not a panacea. Pointing to moddability does not resolve disagreement over a feature. You can respond to every single comment by saying "the game will be moddable, so you can do it yourself," but that doesn't solve the issue, nor does it allow people to collaboratively define the solution. By that logic, you're effectively saying there's no point in constructively criticizing the previous civ games and what we know of the upcoming ones. I'm interested in exploring ideas. I'm interested in hearing what others think. I'm interested in improving the base game. I'm interested in suggesting novel things that the Firaxians see and improve on and incorporate. It's nice to know that I can theoretically extend the game if I like, but with a job, a wife, a house, and a baby, it's not going to happen. There's a middle ground between "civ4 is perfect" and "if you don't like it, you can suck it."

My point was that moddability is not a panacea. Pointing to moddability does not resolve disagreement over a feature. You can respond to every single comment by saying "the game will be moddable, so you can do it yourself," but that doesn't solve the issue, nor does it allow people to collaboratively define the solution...

On this I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Though it is true that modabillity is not a Panacea, it is a reasonable way around the 'trying to please all the people, all the time' dilemma. As I said above, if this were done, then the game would look truly awful . Instead, they have built again with the broadest amount of fan and non-fan appeal, and offered the modding tools as a means to placate those who feel like they might have missed out. This is quite a sensible route to take, IMHO.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Though it is true that modabillity is not a Panacea, it is a reasonable way around the 'trying to please all the people, all the time' dilemma. As I said above, if this were done, then the game would look truly awful . Instead, they have built again with the broadest amount of fan and non-fan appeal, and offered the modding tools as a means to placate those who feel like they might have missed out. This is quite a sensible route to take, IMHO.


If there's no way to do it without displeasing some people, then yes, you'll always have a custom mod. I firmly believe, though, that they can accomplish a substantial part of the things that started this thread and have them be implemented in a way that's pleasing to many and satisfactory to almost all.

Well, I cannot agree with you I'm afraid. Though I feel that they have gone to great lengths to rein in both Linearity and Determinism, I think there is a limit to how far they go before they begin majorly ticking off some people in order to please others.
For instance, I believe Civil War/Secessions are the best bet for reducing Linearity/Determinism. However, I realise that a number of people seriously disagree with that being in the game. Same with Supply Lines and limits to early game exploration and expansion. So, do the game designers aim to keep the likes of me happy, or do they aim to please the other group? I suspect that they have aimed for the latter, whilst leaving the door open for people like myself to bring these elements into the game if I wish).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I definitely agree with you that it's rarely in the binary terms of "bad game / good game". Civ 2 was arguably superior to Civ 3, but even if you believe that it doesn't make Civ 3 a bad game. And even if you think Civ 3 a bad game, it didn't make it a commercial failure... quite the contrary, in fact.

I think all this talk of "failure" is grossly exaggerated. Probably so people can lament that their ideal feature didn't make it in.

See, I don't agree with that statement, DH_Epic. Though there were things from Civ2 which I missed in Civ3-namely Civil Wars, a more functional UN and Unit Trading-I felt that Civ3 was on the whole far superior to Civ2, especially when you consider the addition of a rudimentary Culture and Espionage system. If Civ3 had a problem, its that it failed to incorporate the best elements of its true predecessor, namely SMAC. Had Civics, Faction personalities, the UN High Council and the Improved Diplomacy of SMAC been retained by Civ3, then I think that people would have been utterly blown away by how much better-and different-Civ3 was compared to Civ2. To be fair on Firaxis, though, I don't think the decisions to exlude those SMAC features were their idea, but had more to do with the defection of the RoN guy (can't remember his name right now!).
Anyway, the main things which bother me about Civ4-from what I have heard-is a general trend towards being PC, which is unfortunate given how un-PC history is, and the fact that flaws in certain systems, like Espionage, caused them to throw the whole thing out-rather than simply try to improve it. Will these two gripes stop the game from being successful? Not likely. Will it stop me from buying it? See previous response ;)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

lurker

n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum;
one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the
group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed
is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in
`the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's
flamage-emitting regulars. When a lurker speaks up for the first
time, this is called `delurking'.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lurker

An odd nick you have chosen AL, rather an oxymoron for a Civer with 2,402 posts :-P

CS

Hey, the nickname made sense at the time and, by the time it didn't, I just became too lazy to change it ;)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

lurker

n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum;
one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the
group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed
is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in
`the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's
flamage-emitting regulars. When a lurker speaks up for the first
time, this is called `delurking'.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lurker

An odd nick you have chosen AL, rather an oxymoron for a Civer with 2,402 posts :-P

CS
And this has what to do with the topic?

Another way to increase the depth and dynamism of the game is to make it possible to have more strategies that are viable. Right now, the main viable strategy is a "get big fast" one. Land grabs all around, whether you're a builder or a warmonger. if you have a game that has gotten stagnant, the only way to get an interesting game is to start a new one. There should be ways to inject more drama and dynamism.

It should be possible for a civ to make deep investments that don't pay off for a long time, like the ant and the grasshopper. One strategy might be to forego immediate, short-term gains by investing in education and culture in the medieval era, which becomes an enormous advantage in the modern age. The down side of that is that you appear weak and stagnant to grasshoppers like the Mongols, and your investment in the future may come to naught because they swallow you up before you can cash in. On the other hand, maybe the "get big fast" strategy of the Mongols works in other situations, where you have many weak cities and obliterate your nearby rivals, giving yourself enough breathing room to make up for lost time. Then there's a middle-of-the-road strategy. No strategy should always win; it should depend on what civ you are, what civs you neighbor, the early game, and the map. The issue with civ3 is that it favors a "get big fast" strategy. It doesn't punish you (much) for getting too big; its only way of countering that is to have all the other AIs gang up on you, which doesn't necessarily work and gets boring really fast.

As far as mechanism goes, perhaps older institutions are more effective. You get extra culture from especially old improvements, after all. Oxford and Cambridge produce more good stuff than Podunk College, est. 1959. A University built in 1000 AD should be more valuable than one built in 1500 AD, all else being equal. Ditto for libraries, temples, marketplaces, etc. Education, wealth, and trade should have a greater significance in the game, and their significance should be long-lasting. Culture should also have greater significance, except this should be expressed through greater loyalty rather than larger borders. If you have a smaller civ with a well-developed culture, it should be really hard for some foreign civ to conquer you, because your people will keep rebelling against the invaders. If you have a large empire composed of three civs bolted together, on the other hand, you should be vulnerable because you don't have loyalty, you don't have common culture, and you spent all your time acquiring territory rather than building up the education of your people and establishing trade links, etc.

China and India spent the last 600 years in a sort of stagnant slumber, at least as far as world standing goes, but they have the advantage of large populations, a relatively cohesive culture, and a strong emphasis on education, and look at them coming on strong now. You could argue that the United States in the early 1900s and Germany in the late 1800s followed a similar trajectory.

While I understand the original poster's points on linearity and determinism, he's missing some basic gameplay reasoning here. Yes, if one looks at history, one can see the rise, fall, and occasional rise again of various great nations. However, how many people here would get frustrated and quit playing if the game was designed to regularly wreck a player's progress regardless of what he did, without giving him a chance to counter the game's mechanism, just to follow history?

There's a difference between wrecking your progress and just throwing a wrench in the works. Look at rebellions in real world history. Furthermore, most rebellions fail. They appear, take a couple cities, and then get the snot beaten out of them. If you run your civ well, that's the worst that will happen to you. Most of the ones that succeeded did so because of longstanding grievances against the government. They don't just appear out of nowhere, they appear because the rebels are oppressed, or discriminated against, the people are too heavily taxed to pay for unpopular wars, or their local governors are corrupt, etc.

Sheesh! The game isn't even released yet and people are saying it sucks on hearsay. Shades of civ 2 and 3!!! :eek:

ApAtheist: That's fine. I'm all for the occasional rebellion in the game, as long as the game provides the player with warning signs that it might occur and the tools necessary to prevent it (which Civ already does). The thing, though, is that once those tools are given, and the player understands how to use them, the original poster's cyclical game goes right out the window. The player will strive for linearity and determinism, because that should mean he's winning.

The original poster's statements read more along the lines of an inevitable collapse that could only be accepted and played through, and then forcing that concept on an unsuspecting player in a game.

Who here would enjoy watching the computer AI nation that's dead last suddenly rocket to first place for the win just because it used a "terrorist attack" option, or have their country be forced into being the world's whipping boy as a crumbling third world power even if their nation was just the previous turn rolling under a great economy and had a tech lead of a generation or so on his neighbors?

ApAtheist: That's fine. I'm all for the occasional rebellion in the game, as long as the game provides the player with warning signs that it might occur and the tools necessary to prevent it (which Civ already does). The thing, though, is that once those tools are given, and the player understands how to use them, the original poster's cyclical game goes right out the window. The player will strive for linearity and determinism, because that should mean he's winning.


That assumes that the formula for success is a simple one. It shouldn't be. It will depend on what your civ's (leader, in civ4) advantages are, what your map looks like, what the distribution of resources is, who your neighbors are, how various die rolls for wars and ship sinkings go, whether you make your third city an army builder or a cultural center, etc. Think butterfly effect. It's not random, but it's not completely deterministic either.


The original poster's statements read more along the lines of an inevitable collapse that could only be accepted and played through, and then forcing that concept on an unsuspecting player in a game.

Who here would enjoy watching the computer AI nation that's dead last suddenly rocket to first place for the win just because it used a "terrorist attack" option, or have their country be forced into being the world's whipping boy as a crumbling third world power even if their nation was just the previous turn rolling under a great economy and had a tech lead of a generation or so on his neighbors?


Yeah, that would suck. Collapses and meteoric rises should still be possible, but not randomly. It should be a consequence of your previous actions. I like the grasshopper and the ant metaphor. Some things pay off now. Other things pay off later. Choose wisely. If you pay too much attention to the future, you get eaten before you reap the benefits. If pay too much attention to the present, you get beaten by civs that kept the long view. It should be balanced so that sometimes you're best off as a warmonger, while others you're best off as a peaceful builder, while in others, a REXer, etc.

You have to be constantly evaluating your strategy and be ready to switch to a different one if conditions demand it. The punishment for expanding too slowly is obvious. Culture flips and guerillas are one way to punish expanding too fast. Focusing on some cities to the exclusion of others leads to rebellion. Ignoring technology turns you into a backwater with nothing to offer the big boys. Ignoring your military makes you a sitting duck. Ignoring your population makes your economy weak. There are many dimensions to a every civ, and making yours a successful one means tuning all of them to work in synchrony.

The problem is that the game has a very short memory. If I choose the wrong strategy for my environment in 1000 BC, it doesn't come back to haunt me in 1AD. In civ3, at least, you can apply the same basic strategy to every game and have a good chance of success. That's why it's important to have supply lines in the game. That's why it's important to have a trade model that really models trade. That's why it's important to have the potential for rebellion. That's why it's important to have random events. That's why it's important to have unique traits. Every game should be different. With civ3, they weren't.

As a game developer, I'm predicting that Civ 4 is not going to be successful as a game.

As a long time fan I'm predicting you're going to be sadly mistaken.

It's going to be their hugest success to date. Mark my words.

I'd like to clarify some things. First, I'm not trying to sabotage this game. I don't work for the competition. In any case, what's said here isn't going to convince anyone not to buy the game.

Secondly, I realize that one weakness of my post was the definition of 'failure'. I meant to say that Civ 4 will be a failure as a game. It'll sell commercially. Firaxis knows that hardcore gamers will buy Civ 4. All they have to do is slap on some new features, like religion and a change in the governmental system. Then they'll buy the expansion packs, the gold edition, etc. Meanwhile, by improving the graphics and dumbing down the gameplay, they can hope to get younger players. Naturally, they're not going to put anything controversial in this game, because they want a low ESRB rating.

Does that mean it will be successful, as a game? No. It doesn't mean that it will actually be fun to play. It'll be approachable for young gamers, who will eat up the marketing and buy it. Hardcore gamers will buy it and convince themselves that it's good in order to justify their purchase of the game. The game will be seen by the publisher as a cash cow, and Civ 5 will have even less creativity put into it. It will be a bad game.

History shows more flexibility in strategy (and less determinism) than the Civ games. When Germany lost WW1, was that the end for it? No, 20 years later, Nazi Germany almost conquered Europe (and arguably would have, if not for the two-front war and Pearl Harbor). After WW2, was that the end? No, 50 years later, Germany was a major economic power, with slightly better technology than America. You're not going to see that in Civ 4.

Secessions and civil wars would be great ways to balance the game. Firaxis doesn't want that. They want adolescent gamers to have a sense of accomplishment when they conquer one enemy with swordsmen, the continent with knights, and the rest of the world with cavalry. You get to see this one-color map, and that's satisfying. Setting up puppet states from your conquered enemies, losing half your territory in revolutions, etc., isn't satisfying to the adolescent gamer.

Supply lines are another good idea. I think it would complicate the game somewhat, but it would also add an element of real strategy. It will probably have to wait for a mod.

That brings up something important. I can't predict how well the modding will be in Civ 4. The game itself isn't going to be very good, but someone could make a mod like Counterstrike (in the sense of how well it uses the strengths of the engine). I think that without attracting normal gamers, there probably won't be much of a modding community, but I'll say that I'm at least hopeful that there will be a functioning modding community that is able to make something from this game. I want to play a good Civ 4 game. I liked Civ 1 and 3 (I didn't play 2), despite their flaws. However, I'm not going to sit here and worship Firaxis delusionally. I'm saying the truth: all the signs show that Civ 4 is going to fail as a game.

If only the hardcore players bought Civ4, it will have failed commercially, no matter how good a game it is. The hardcore Civ market isn't a lot bigger than the hardcore wargame market (which is roughly the same as the entire wargame market).

I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a very fun game. I have absolutely no need to justify my game purchases and convince myself of their quality. Since I buy every game I am remotely interested in, I do buy a lot of crap games (on the average one a week or so). They just get shelved with the rest. Those that I enjoy, I keep playing. I like where Firaxis is taking the series, and I doubt that I'll shelve it, but if it is crap it too will go on the shelf (and I'll have to have a long talk with Barry).

Secondly, I realize that one weakness of my post was the definition of 'failure'. I meant to say that Civ 4 will be a failure as a game. It'll sell commercially.

The game will be seen by the publisher as a cash cow, and Civ 5 will have even less creativity put into it. It will be a bad game..
Hmm...
I definately read you wrong at first time.

Partly you impress the same kind of thoughts and feelings I have. Thing is that I didn't really wait any of those earlier games as much as Civ IV and that is mainly because I hardly play any games nowadays and that is one game I would like to possible play.
The game industry has gone to direction where I never would have liked it to go. Someone here suggested something about annual remakes (or something like). I don't hate anything more than them. Seen enough in the sports games market where especially certain titles have gone every year to the direction that hardcoregamers wouldn't like to see them go. There have been some better years of course but I stopped couple years back buying them simply because it was getting out of hand.

And that is possibility with Civ IV that it goes to direction nobody of the hardcore fans, who want to play more complex strategy game rather than just rushing adventure, would like it to go

But unlike you I think there are certain things that show that they actually listen to also hardcorefans. Of course the fear is that as they listen everybody they don't really listen anyone.

I put my faith into the modding community that if the basic game fails it can be put together into condition it starts to be fun. But as someone already pointed out it should be the company that does it not the fans. IMHO you can wait the game have certain aspects ready in the game as optional before you start to play after all I hardly can imagine anyone want to play some kind of game that is just software editing kit with instructions how to maybe make it work.

But if the major crowd doesn't buy the game because it's too hardcore it can mean we won't see never another Civ...
So I think best chance is that it satisfies the large audience while at the sametime gives us "true fans" something to tinker with.

Personally I don't buy games much but now that I'm getting new comp I might take few to play with.
I'm careful in my purchases, not because I only spend money on those but also time and energy.

In overall we put way too much hope to the thing that one computer game is going to make big difference.
My advice, if you don't like it pick something else or stop playing.
For me it would be just another bad game in the market full of them.

That's my view, a view of gamer and tell you the truth if Civ IV fails like you predict and it is bad game, I might very well be an ex-gamer.

I don't think civ4 will fall flat on its ar$e. Why? Because civ2 and civ3 attracted a huge fan base, of CASUAL players, who don't read forums like this, mod the game, or worry about or even NOTICE bugs that drive hardcore fans nuts. This game will sell many copies, to those casual game buyers with extra cash to spend and to the RTS crowd who may be curious about civ4 and its new features and graphics. Those who will not buy it because of their experience with civ3 are a VERY small minority. Will civ4 ship complete? Probably not. Will it have bugs? Yes. Will there be a lot of nagging gameplay issues that pop up that were undiscovered in beta testing? Yes. Will some people avoid buying the game based on trouble with civ3? Yes. Will some delay purchasing the game, in order to get a more stable, complete version later on? Yes. (I'm one of them) But these things make no difference. With the marketing drive behind the game, and its legacy as a great series, it will sell, period.

i agree with u on every thing.

i do think it will sell beater then any other civ game, but that dosent mean it will be a good game.

I'm still not understanding this point of view. The clarification that Civ4 will be a bad game even if it sells well, that makes sense. But I'm failing to see exactly why bluemethod is so sure that Civ4 will fail as a game.

Meanwhile, by improving the graphics and dumbing down the gameplay, they can hope to get younger players. Naturally, they're not going to put anything controversial in this game, because they want a low ESRB rating.

"Dumbing down the gameplay" is a complete assertion here; unless bluemethod has been testing Civ4, there's no way to know about this one way or the other (and if he has been testing the game, please share some details with us :)). What is that based on? Looking at screenshots? I'll be the first one to criticize Civ4 if the gameplay falls flat (I was a beta tester for Conquests and I have a scathing editorial about it on my website), but it's ridiculous to hurl bland assertions like that around with no evidence one way or the other.

As for the second part of that - would being controversial make Civ4 a better game? If there were fountains of blood every time a swordsman killed a spear, and you got to oogle naked women in the palace view, would that actually make it a better game? I don't think the Civilization games have to be particularly "xxxtreme" to be successful. If the developers want to put terrorism in the game, ok, fine with me. But the Civilization games have never been about realism, only dressing up a strategy game with historical names and settings. I don't see how not including terrorism would make the game a failure.

Does that mean it will be successful, as a game? No. It doesn't mean that it will actually be fun to play. It'll be approachable for young gamers, who will eat up the marketing and buy it. Hardcore gamers will buy it and convince themselves that it's good in order to justify their purchase of the game. The game will be seen by the publisher as a cash cow, and Civ 5 will have even less creativity put into it. It will be a bad game.

Why do you think Civ4 is intended for young gamers? Because of the graphics? Seems like a lot to be reading out of nothing more than screenshots to me...

Secessions and civil wars would be great ways to balance the game. Firaxis doesn't want that. They want adolescent gamers to have a sense of accomplishment when they conquer one enemy with swordsmen, the continent with knights, and the rest of the world with cavalry. You get to see this one-color map, and that's satisfying. Setting up puppet states from your conquered enemies, losing half your territory in revolutions, etc., isn't satisfying to the adolescent gamer.

Again, the continued insistence that Civ4 is intended for adolescents... I'm not sure where that's coming from. We just DON'T KNOW what the gameplay will be like, so I for one am reserving judgement until I at least get a copy in my hands - I hope that sounds reasonable. :)

I'd also pose the question of whether civil wars are the only way to have game balance. Word is that city maintenance costs are going to do that; I'm a little dubious about that myself, but I'm going to wait and see before calling things one way or the other. One thing I will say is that culture flips weren't much fun in Civ3 - in fact, they were probably the single most hated thing in the Civ3 community. How much fun would it be to fight a long and grueling war conquering enemy territory, only to have it "secede" and form its own new civ shortly thereafter? I think there might be some ticked off purchasers of Civ4 if that were to happen. ;) There definitely has to be some way to reign in the bigger=better problem of Civilization, but I don't think that civil wars are the only possible solution. We'll have to wait and see how Civ4 does in this regard; if it's a total failure, I'd be more inclined to agree with your point of view.

That brings up something important. I can't predict how well the modding will be in Civ 4. The game itself isn't going to be very good,

On what grounds?! Aside from making some assumptions based on looking at screenshots, I've seen very little hard evidence to back this argument up.

I'm saying the truth: all the signs show that Civ 4 is going to fail as a game.

I don't know about that, unless you have some evidence that I'm not familiar with (and I watch the Civ4 news releases pretty closely). We're all free to disagree, but I'm going to hold off judgement until I can play Civ4 myself. If it does turn out to be an unplayable piece of garbage, you will have my sincere apologies. But from what I've read in this thread, I've seen very little but assertions with little behind them. If you repeat the same thing often enough, it sometimes is enough to convince others that it's a fact. Better for everyone to try and keep an open mind and come to conclusions of their own accord. :)

I'd also pose the question of whether civil wars are the only way to have game balance. Word is that city maintenance costs are going to do that; I'm a little dubious about that myself, but I'm going to wait and see before calling things one way or the other.


Civil wars are not the only way, nor should they be. No single thing should be the only way. Civil wars should be in there because it should be hard to hold things just as much as it's hard to acquire things. Moreso, even. Example: The United States invaded Iraq and defeated their military in less than 2 months. That was over 2 years ago. Then there's Britain and Ireland or India, Israel, and many more examples. It's not enough to occupy the land; you have to win the hearts and minds battle.

You see, the biggest problem in Bluemethod is that I think he has it '*ss backwards', so to speak. Far from making it a game only hardcore civers will buy, I think they have brought this game closer to the 'mainstream' market than in any previous iteration. Now, that should piss off hard-core civers, but largely hasn't. Why? Because (a) They have left enough of the best stuff from previous games to keep hard-core civers happy, (b) they have removed the bulk of the stuff that the majority of hard-core civers actually hated (pollution clean-up and corruption) and (c) they have finally made it so moddable that hard-core fans can mould the game into whatever best suits them.
I should point out though that, like Warpstorm, I tend to buy a lot of crap computer games-just so long as they are 'broad historical strategy'. My interest in those games, though, ultimately lasts about 1 month at most, at which point I return to Civ3. I doubt Civ4 will prove any different from Civ3 in that regard.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Does that mean it will be successful, as a game? No. It doesn't mean that it will actually be fun to play. It'll be approachable for young gamers, who will eat up the marketing and buy it. Hardcore gamers will buy it and convince themselves that it's good in order to justify their purchase of the game. The game will be seen by the publisher as a cash cow, and Civ 5 will have even less creativity put into it. It will be a bad game.

History shows more flexibility in strategy (and less determinism) than the Civ games. When Germany lost WW1, was that the end for it? No, 20 years later, Nazi Germany almost conquered Europe (and arguably would have, if not for the two-front war and Pearl Harbor). After WW2, was that the end? No, 50 years later, Germany was a major economic power, with slightly better technology than America. You're not going to see that in Civ 4.

Secessions and civil wars would be great ways to balance the game. Firaxis doesn't want that. They want adolescent gamers to have a sense of accomplishment when they conquer one enemy with swordsmen, the continent with knights, and the rest of the world with cavalry. You get to see this one-color map, and that's satisfying. Setting up puppet states from your conquered enemies, losing half your territory in revolutions, etc., isn't satisfying to the adolescent gamer.

Supply lines are another good idea. I think it would complicate the game somewhat, but it would also add an element of real strategy. It will probably have to wait for a mod.

That brings up something important. I can't predict how well the modding will be in Civ 4. The game itself isn't going to be very good, but someone could make a mod like Counterstrike (in the sense of how well it uses the strengths of the engine). I think that without attracting normal gamers, there probably won't be much of a modding community, but I'll say that I'm at least hopeful that there will be a functioning modding community that is able to make something from this game. I want to play a good Civ 4 game. I liked Civ 1 and 3 (I didn't play 2), despite their flaws. However, I'm not going to sit here and worship Firaxis delusionally. I'm saying the truth: all the signs show that Civ 4 is going to fail as a game.

If we all play it, and like it, than it is a success as a game. One person's opinion does not mean a game is a failure - although you are quite welcome to it. I mean, I personally think Counterstrike is a stupid game, but it must do something right because it is the most popular online game.

You keep sourcing a lot of your reasons for this failure to a lack of creativity. What a lot of people need to understand is that just because something doesn't add a whole lot of new stuff with each update, doesn't make it a bad game. It's good to be creative and try new things. BUT there is no reason why people shouldn't stick to tried and true methods. The idea that everything has to be new and creative is very post-modernist.

When I read through your post again, it basically seems to say 'Civ will be a failure unless it does this this and this." Effectively you're doing what the rest of us are doing - suggesting ideas - but in a much more aggresive manner. If it doesn't put them in, it won't be the end of the world. From what I've read so far there's a bucketload of new stuff that excites me and my friends, so we're prepared to give it a chance.

Given that you are a developer, I think you should be the person here who should be preaching to us about not pre-judging a game. Imagine if we all said your games were gonna be a failure. How would you feel then?

Terrorism - Yes - perfect for the underdog
Concentration Camps - Yes - perfect for resisting or unhappy citizen
Civil War - Yes - it seems to be a constant thing in the worldr
pollution - Yes - dead trees and infertile land... too bad this isnt going to be in cIV

MAybe its a memory issue to include these into IV, but it shouldnt be an issue for "hardcore players". I agree and Have opened many threads debating what bluemethod has strongly suggested.

Terrorism - Yes - perfect for the underdog
Concentration Camps - Yes - perfect for resisting or unhappy citizen
Civil War - Yes - it seems to be a constant thing in the worldr
pollution - Yes - dead trees and infertile land... too bad this isnt going to be in cIV

MAybe its a memory issue to include these into IV, but it shouldnt be an issue for "hardcore players". I agree and Have opened many threads debating what bluemethod has strongly suggested.

Including these is hardley going to take up any memory. The reason they are not in is that they are bad for gameplay (except maybe civil war - if it is done right (big IF)).

Do you really want a pesky small nation irritating you with terrorists. Considering the events of the last few days i am suprised that anyone would condone terrorists at the moment.

Do you really need concentration camps? Just starve them to death.

As for pollution... it is one of the most hatted aspects of civ 3.

:eek: You'd think BLUEMETHOD had started a thread, 'Yo' Mutha So Ugly..."

How many posts are actually from Firaxis employees? Anyway.

The fact is, Civ3 was a pretty hokey piece of programing - it might not be a complete farce, but :crazyeye: They even make up new bugs in the 3rd add-on, which was basically adding functionality that people were asking for from the start - compare the title to Civ2 and the only thing it could claim superior is is graphics.

Civ3 was a cynical marketing ploy - Firaxis sold the title with it's title, not it's quality - and the fact there remains little to no competition - thus, excellence, is entirely optional.

Now, HUZZAH :D Civ4 is on thew horizon, and, lo, it features such modding opportunity that those realists amongst us most surely suspect some further Civ3 skulldugery afoot - yes, Civ4 will be a game, but the modders will be the ones to make it worth playing.

"Customers pay for the pleasure of programming Civ4"

Now that is marketing.

Tell me 1 modern game with no bugs.
Also Tell me 1 fundamental reason why civ3 was not a good game. (fundamental reason i.e. corruption and the like doesn't count)

Tell me 1 modern game with no bugs.
Also Tell me 1 fundamental reason why civ3 was not a good game. (fundamental reason i.e. corruption and the like doesn't count)

Oh, please, how do you like your wisdom spoon fed to you?

1. Bugs. Many more than one, and so well documented - you're asking for examples? Quit wasting people's time.

2. Tell you one fundamental reason why Civ3 was not a good game?

a) Did I say it wasn't?
b) Did you feel my statements implied it wasn't?

If your answer is a) You need to reread the post, and quit wasting people's time.

If your answer is b) Then, obviously you have already been provided the answer to the question, so, quit wasting people's time.

My impression was that I most definately imply that Civ3 was not a good game - the reasons are legion - but the answer to your question was in the post, so, quit wasting people's time.

Finally, if we get to the point where we start pretending it's ok to spend $150 on a hokey piece of programming that promises excellence and delivers only mediocrity, then, well :nuke:

Ultimately, I think it could be said, Civ3 did well because:

a) It had virtually no competition.
b) After several years there was a healthy modding community working on the content that Firaxis never bothered providing.

I'll answer some questions in a different way: They promised fixes, and broke new things. They promised depth, where it is largely imagined only. They promised strategy, when it's simply a game of paper scissors rock, and bull-rush, dressed up in a frock.

:goodjob: I am, however, looking forward to buying Civ4, as, given the apparently increased opportunities for modding, there seems little that Firaxis can fumble that modders cannot mod.

Nowadays, it's not the game, it's the mod.

I am a little tired of this conversation. We know nothing about how the new game is going to be run, we only know what is going happen. Until we know how the new concepts will work, we can not evaluate how they will work with one another. (I know it appears we know alot about how the game works due to CivRules industrious work where he gathered every available detail about the game.)

Inspite of what we don't know, I'm exciting about what we do. I see Civ 4 as fixing many of the errors of Civ3.


How many posts are actually from Firaxis employees?I don't knnow of anyone of the forum (Who regularly posts) who is a Firaxis Employee or involved with the production of Civ4 (If you are SPEAK UP and tell us what you know), myself included.

The fact is, Civ3 was a pretty hokey piece of programing - it might not be a complete farce, but :crazyeye: They even make up new bugs in the 3rd add-on, which was basically adding functionality that people were asking for from the start - compare the title to Civ2 and the only thing it could claim superior is is graphics. Do a survey- see how people think Civ 3 was junk with only superior graphics?

"Customers pay for the pleasure of programming Civ4"
Now that is marketing.

You are just getting crazy now. People will buy a complete game of Civ 4 and be able to change the parts they don't like. Its called customization or personalization. There is no way to make everyone happy, so you make a game where you make as many people happy as possible and allow the rest to change it to their purposes.

Where have you been during this wave of Customization?
-City names and labels in Sim City
-Fly helicopter mission in the city you created in SimCity in SimCopter
-Combat Missions in Combat Flight Sims
-Create Players in Madden
-Create people in the Sims
etc

compare the title to Civ2 and the only thing it could claim superior is is graphics.

2. Tell you one fundamental reason why Civ3 was not a good game?

a) Did I say it wasn't?
b) Did you feel my statements implied it wasn't?

If your answer is a) You need to reread the post, and quit wasting people's time.

If your answer is b) Then, obviously you have already been provided the answer to the question, so, quit wasting people's time.

My impression was that I most definately imply that Civ3 was not a good game


Don't say someone didnt saything when everyone who can read can see you do. And then to make it worse, in your refutation, to repeat it. Choose one story and stick with it.

Don't say someone didnt saything when everyone who can read can see you do. And then to make it worse, in your refutation, to repeat it. Choose one story and stick with it.

:D As obvious as I was in pointing it out, I knew what I was doing and you choose this stick to beat me with?


The quesiton this thread has really raised for me is:

Why so many and so violent reactions to criticism of Civ3?

Unless a person worked on it, what could they have invested that criticism would provoke such adverse reaction?

Cue manipulative argument - belittle critique, belittle the person giving critique, expand question beyond original scope, and use that in order to belittle answers to the question.

The fact is, Civ3 was a pretty hokey piece of programing - it might not be a complete farce, but :crazyeye: They even make up new bugs in the 3rd add-on, which was basically adding functionality that people were asking for from the start - compare the title to Civ2 and the only thing it could claim superior is is graphics.

Civ3 was a cynical marketing ploy - Firaxis sold the title with it's title, not it's quality - and the fact there remains little to no competition - thus, excellence, is entirely optional.

Now, HUZZAH :D Civ4 is on thew horizon, and, lo, it features such modding opportunity that those realists amongst us most surely suspect some further Civ3 skulldugery afoot - yes, Civ4 will be a game, but the modders will be the ones to make it worth playing.

"Customers pay for the pleasure of programming Civ4"

Now that is marketing.
I have two problems with what you are saying:

1. You're just flounting your opinion here when you say they didn't sell it on quality. It's true that Civ 3 did sell for the Civ name, but I honestly was more excited about buying it when I heard about the resources, culture, graphics and other nice improvements. So were several people I know. Also, I am really puzzled by this logic: They were just 'basically adding functionality that people were asking for from the start'. How does that make it a bad game? If anything, it makes it a great game because it shows that Firaxis listens to the consumers and gives them what they want. Don't just try and make up things to get annoyed about.

2. It's extremely cynical to say that all mods are better than the games they are made for nowadays. You are in effect saying that the games developers suck totally and are only good at producing engines for people to mod.
Given that there is money involved in real games, it wouldn't be unfair to assume that they employ professionals and in most cases attempt to produce quality. Compare that to a lot of mods, which are badly optimised, buggy (much more buggy than Civ I might add - 1 patch and I never had any more issues), and you would claim that this is the real fun to be had. Also, has it escaped your notice that some of the best mod makers get offered jobs in the industry? eg Trauma Studios - if they aren't making mods anymore then by your logic the game they are making sucks. But hang on - aren't these the same people?

1. Bugs. Many more than one, and so well documented - you're asking for examples? Quit wasting people's time.
Perhaps you would like to stop procrastinating and indulge me ("spoon feed me wisdom")?
2. Tell you one fundamental reason why Civ3 was not a good game?

a) Did I say it wasn't?

You implied it. (and as searcheagle said - you then said out right)

b) Did you feel my statements implied it wasn't?
Yep, yet for no apparent reason. Maybe you would just answer the question instead of belitting the game.

I am not going to be critizised by someone who can't answer 2 simple questions and therefore feels he must attack me.
So, Rather than wasting peoples time, answer my questions and then maybe you would have some real points to base your argument on.
1) Name 1 MODERN game without bugs.
2) Name 1 FUNDAMENTAL thing that was wrong with civ3.
And this time try to answer the questions.
Cue manipulative argument - belittle critique, belittle the person giving critique, expand question beyond original scope, and use that in order to belittle answers to the question.
Wont work with me.

Why so many and so violent reactions to criticism of Civ3?
Its not so much critism of civ 3. There are many critisms of civ 3 that have widespread support. We just don't like criticism without valid reason.

If you don't like the game you just need to say you don't like it - you don't need to attack it as though its the worst bit of coding ever written.

I'd like to clarify some things. First, I'm not trying to sabotage this game. I don't work for the competition. In any case, what's said here isn't going to convince anyone not to buy the game.

I said that my impression was that you wanted to sabotage Civ IV. Now, by reading your second post, I have to apologize. I think you have very good points in this second post.

When Germany lost WW1, was that the end for it? No, 20 years later, Nazi Germany almost conquered Europe (and arguably would have, if not for the two-front war and Pearl Harbor). After WW2, was that the end? No, 50 years later, Germany was a major economic power, with slightly better technology than America. You're not going to see that in Civ 4.

Very good example, It is convincing. Maybe the only point against is that Germany didn't loose control of its territory in WW1. In civ III a civ can come back if it doesn't loose control of their cities. It is when you start conquering cities and keeping them when the civ cannot come back. Maybe the city flipping wasn't a bad idea, after all. And, yes, nowadays Germany is a mayor economic power, but not a militar power, AFAIK.


Secessions and civil wars would be great ways to balance the game. Firaxis doesn't want that. They want adolescent gamers to have a sense of accomplishment when they conquer one enemy with swordsmen, the continent with knights, and the rest of the world with cavalry. You get to see this one-color map, and that's satisfying. Setting up puppet states from your conquered enemies, losing half your territory in revolutions, etc., isn't satisfying to the adolescent gamer.

I am not sure about this. It could be nice to have something that balances your game when you are at the beggining of the industrial era and you have already conquered half of the world. When I achieve that, I usually think that is time to move up another level. And in the high levels of C3C that never happened to me. I know that I am not a superb player, anyway. But having to deal with a civil war when you are struggling to catch up technologically would be very dissapointing and fustrating. If that happens to me, I'll problably stop playing. Maybe I am not true hardcore player ;) But I agree with you that civil wars could be a nice way to balance the game when you are far too above the others.

There is something similar to secessions in Civ III, and is called city flipping. Many people hates it, but is a way to rebalance the game. So, I thing that Firaxis wanted to keep the game balanced, but just not your way. In fact, I think that C3C is far more balanced that SMAC, C3C does not have the huge snowball effect that SMAC have.

The game itself isn't going to be very good, but someone could make a mod like Counterstrike (in the sense of how well it uses the strengths of the engine).

I am not as pessimistic as you. Let's wait and see how good, or bad, CIV IV is and then, maybe, we can discuss about Civ V.

My apologies again. Have a nice day.

P.S. One question. When you say that you don't work for the competition, Are you saying that you work for Firaxis?