March Patch Notes (formerly february)

[Valkrionn]

And what would you describe as 'implemented correctly', and what would be lost?

My own views would simply entail an AI that can handle it, and an actual unit cap. This would not remove anything of worth from the game, IMO, but I hated SoD. I may have gone with a more conservative xUPT instead of 1UPT, were I Shafer, but I still prefer it to SoD combat.

 

[Sneaks]

There is a lot of arm chair programming going on in this thread right now. To add my two cents: I found stacks of doom easily the most distasteful part of civ iv. It all at once felt absurd, uninteresting, gamey, and worst of all, unfun. A new system in v made me happy, though it's current form is hardly a show stopper. The reason stacks always sucked to me is it drastically dropped the importance of the individual and unique unit. 1upt addresses that for me.

 

[Valkrionn]

There is a lot of arm chair programming going on in this thread right now. To add my two cents: I found stacks of doom easily the most distasteful part of civ iv. It all at once felt absurd, uninteresting, gamey, and worst of all, unfun. A new system in v made me happy, though it's current form is hardly a show stopper. The reason stacks always sucked to me is it drastically dropped the importance of the individual and unique unit. 1upt addresses that for me.

Precisely my opinion on it.

 

[forty2j]

1UPT may be a good idea, but not for Civilization. You say it's poorly implented, but to implent it correctly would remove many things that people enjoy about Civilization.

Forgive my poor memory, but wasn't the original Civ 1UPT?

In fact, wasn't UUPT a uniquely Civ IV feature?

 

[joyous_gard]

They really really need to fix unit pathing. Someone needs to start a "Problems with unitpathing thread," to get it on the radar of the developers.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Forgive my poor memory, but wasn't the original Civ 1UPT?

In fact, wasn't UUPT a uniquely Civ IV feature?

Not at all, Civ 3 allowed for unlimited stacking as well...except the interface was incredibly crappy and moving units took up most of your time, not to mention you watched the animation for each!

I once sat for nearly 2.5 minutes watching Catherine move close to 40-50 Cossacks into my territory shortly after declaring war...after that, all the animations went off.

 

[Sneaks]

They really really need to fix unit pathing. Someone needs to start a "Problems with unitpathing thread," to get it on the radar of the developers.

They know about this. This is the BIGGEST problem with 1UPT right now in terms of AI idiocy in combat. It does not grasp well how to shuffle its troops around, or that if it moves unit a first, it will block unit b from doing anything. My guess is that it will be pretty high on the to do list after resolving most of the engine problems (slowdowns, crashes, etc)

 

[forty2j]

Not at all, Civ 3 allowed for unlimited stacking as well...except the interface was incredibly crappy and moving units took up most of your time, not to mention you watched the animation for each!

I once sat for nearly 2.5 minutes watching Catherine move close to 40-50 Cossacks into my territory shortly after declaring war...after that, all the animations went off.

I thought I remembered something in III that let you group units into "Armies" to move, but the size was limited.. and it was still 1 Army per tile..

Idk. I haven't played III since 1999, at latest.

 

[JohnnyW]

Like I said: Your solution relies on expanding maps [...] As things stand currently, many players experience crashes or slowdowns on huge maps [...] There is no such thing as ignoring performance issues [...]

So it comes down to wanting larger maps, to make 1upt 'fit'. This just doesn't work with the current engine.

So you say. I personally see absolutely no reason a workable AI could not be developed.

I personally see no reason why increasing performance on larger maps cannot happen.

I hope you see the inconsistency in your approaches to arguing on these matters. You argue against me saying it's possible but it's a bad idea because it's impractical. Yet you argue for 1UPT over SOD because it's possible that a working AI could be made for it. Well, practically speaking I don't see that happening for quite some time.

This points me back to my previous point: I feel like we agree on the issue but you're coming from a current practicality standpoint rather than an conceptual standpoint.

I completely disagree that it is the only way; I agree that it is one of the ways, but it is IMO non-viable for Civilization 5.

Could you describe some alternative ways?

I do, however, agree that a capability to change the number of workable tiles in a city would be nice. Doing so should cost next to nothing, as far as development time is concerned, and opens things to those players who wish to play around with it. It may well even be possible already; I honestly have not checked. It could just as easily turn out impossible given the engine; It was possible in Civ4 however, so odds are good it still is.

Please do check and let me know! This would probably bring me back to this game without any other change! If I could mod it immediately that is.

 

[forty2j]

I personally see no reason why increasing performance on larger maps cannot happen.

Earlier posts in this thread suggest performance on larger maps was dramatically improved by this latest patch.

 

[JohnnyW]

Earlier posts in this thread suggest performance on larger maps was dramatically improved by this latest patch.

That's precisely why I'm confused at Valkrionn's reasoning.

 

[Valkrionn]

I personally see no reason why increasing performance on larger maps cannot happen.

I hope you see the inconsistency in your approaches to arguing on these matters. You argue against me saying it's possible but it's a bad idea because it's impractical. Yet you argue for 1UPT over SOD because it's possible that a working AI could be made for it. Well, practically speaking I don't see that happening for quite some time.

This points me back to my previous point: I feel like we agree on the issue but you're coming from a current practicality standpoint rather than an conceptual standpoint.

You're completely right about the practicality vs conceptual part; In my opinion, a change of this nature would require much larger maps (which would be awesome), but that requires vast enhancements to the engine; I think they've done about as much as they can there, honestly.

An xpac or a new iteration of the game would be the only ones I see it being possible for, which is why I said I don't see it working in Civ5.

Could you describe some alternative ways?

To improve scaling? You could scale everything (undesirable for reasons related to gamespeed, but from a purely scale-oriented standpoint, it works), reintroduce stacks (xupt I like, personally, I just feel there are better ways to do it), introduce "sub-tiles" or some related system (reducing the size of units, rather than increasing that of cities), etc.

Ultimately it all comes back to those ratios you listed, but you can tweak them in other ways.

I don't see any of those happening in Civ5 though.

Please do check and let me know! This would probably bring me back to this game without any other change! If I could mod it immediately that is.

I'll try and check it out sometime tonight. Dead on my feet after a doubleshift (I was posting from work ), so I promise nothing.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I thought I remembered something in III that let you group units into "Armies" to move, but the size was limited.. and it was still 1 Army per tile..

Idk. I haven't played III since 1999, at latest.

A military leader could form an army, which could be loaded with individual units (up to 3 or 4, I believe) and fight as a single cohesive force. However, these could be stacked infinitely in a single tile just like every other unit in Civ3.

One of the expansions (Conquests if I remember correctly) introduced an interface mechanic of group moving units...why it wasn't in from the beginning I don't know.

 

[JohnnyW]

To improve scaling? You could scale everything, reintroduce stacks, introduce "sub-tiles" or some related system, etc.

Fair enough. I had already discarded those ideas because I thought mine was better. I definitely hate the sub-tile or tactical map ideas. IDK how I would feel about limited stacking as it would add an arbitrary rule unless someone could come up with a brilliant justification. I'm also not sure what you mean by "scale everything" unless you were just referring to the later examples you listed.

I'll try and check it out sometime tonight. Dead on my feet after a doubleshift (I was posting from work ), so I promise nothing.

That'd be awesome. I'm expecting to be disappointed by the news, but if it's currently moddable then I'd definitely be excited!

 

[oscogmo]

Where is the Hotseat ???????

what is the point of playing this game without hotseat.... ?

Hotseat is the only way to really enjoy Civ and without it i dont see the piont in anyone playing it !!!!

 

[AfterShafter]

Where is the Hotseat ???????

what is the point of playing this game without hotseat.... ?

Hotseat is the only way to really enjoy Civ and without it i dont see the piont in anyone playing it !!!!

I entirely agree they need to get such a long loved feature as the hotseat back in the game, but personally, I still enjoy playing it without. But yeah, hotseat should be a reasonbly high priority - a lot of old civvers did love it.

 

[Valkrionn]

Fair enough. I had already discarded those ideas because I thought mine was better. I definitely hate the sub-tile or tactical map ideas. IDK how I would feel about limited stacking as it would add an arbitrary rule unless someone could come up with a brilliant justification. I'm also not sure what you mean by "scale everything" unless you were just referring to the later examples you listed.


That'd be awesome. I'm expecting to be disappointed by the news, but if it's currently moddable then I'd definitely be excited!

By "scale everything", I meant production/movement/etc. Already discussed that one
though, and neither of us like it.

I don't like the "pure" subtile idea, where each hex is broken up into multiple smaller tiles which units are positioned on (scale becomes too small, have to zoom in to move, still move them all one unit at a time), and don't want to see the tactical map in Civ; It's too war-gamey, pushes the series away from an empire-builder.

My own preference, again, is armies; Army scale would be what Units are now, but within each army you could have 6 units, positioned how you wish (position them one time, things such as sticking an archer in the back of the army, polearms on the side, etc, and then ignore it until you want to change it). Again, it's the subtile idea, with FAR less micro involved.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

So basically, if you only ever run steam in offline mode, you're never forced to go into online mode and so never forced to update your game. Of course at any point you can choose the online option and then all bets are off as to whether your game will get updated or not.

Don't get me wrong, it *IS* actually useful in a sense that it allows smooth distribution on a large scale. It's even ingenious enough to monitor what, when & why we're accessing an executable on our PCs. Tracking DRM methods are necessary in this day & age of "Illegally" obtained products. We're all better served by such a layer of content management.
But it remains Spyware. Even if for good reasons.

The distinction is essential. I *MUST* use it as a sub-component that initially refused to install a game on my G: Drive and flooded my Internet folder in C:. It decided to handle an installation process in a tricky manner.

Sure, it's User Friendly.
Yes, it is on the PC.

Nowhere near the usual programming context and resources i *MUST* use to mod... i've been wasting Ms-Explorer style acrobatics for weeks just to synchronize DDS and their counterparts, LUA originals and currently editing indented reference codes.

While it could have been; G:\CiV, --- find the file, it's there.
Steam is an Internet device, it belongs in the utility category.
Not development context or areas with folders worth of tools.
OFF-Line or not.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I'm still getting denounced all the time by friendly civs just as much as by guarded, hostile civs...

I'm gonna give you a magic trick but you have to promise me to keep it for yourself;
if you do anything to upset the fragile exact balance of all and dare stepping into even the slightest figure above anyone's ranking on the Leader board - they'll *GANG* up to keep you at bay. They're negotiating behind your back but they also want to win against you.
Denouncing is just some fluke gimmick of a calculated opinion that fluctuates.
Be Peaceful, they'll crush you.
Be a threat, they'll stack up greater numbers.
While paying a visit in a Notification mode to mock around even the toughest of Humans.
It's like a virtual stockpile that you must evaluate. They're compiling exponentially faster than us.
Triggered by our behaviors.
"This means WAR!" by Denouncing methods beyond our control.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I found stacks of doom easily the most distasteful part of civ iv.

Always Peace; Checked.
Civ4/BTS is now gathering dust, Privateers were toooooo annoying.
Some times i lack the immersion of Espionage, Religion & Corporations.
Building an Empire is often more than just numbers.