The Rant of 50

Xanikk999 said:
Not all deserts are the same.

I agree you cant farm the sahara, but you can farm deserts in the U.S.
-still the deserts are only dotted with plantations

Oh and tundra is farmable. Small plants can grow in tundra. Just depends how far north you go. :p
-we all know life is obtainable in tundra; the question is if annual crop harvest could.
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I do have to ask, what happened to the entire "Must be at least 2 population", having your population decrease, and being able to dump settler into a different city type of thing to increase population that has been the norm in previous versions of civ. Also, weren't you able to Caravan Food to other cities in Civ 2 and 3 also? Why did they get rid of this? Was there an exploit of some type?
 
Carnage04 said:
I do have to ask, what happened to the entire "Must be at least 2 population", having your population decrease, and being able to dump settler into a different city type of thing to increase population that has been the norm in previous versions of civ. Also, weren't you able to Caravan Food to other cities in Civ 2 and 3 also? Why did they get rid of this? Was there an exploit of some type?
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No that was only civ 2.
 
King Flevance said:
All you would have to do is put a road and caravans could deliver the goods. And since there is no such thing as crime rate in civ, you don't have to worry about robbers. So a road or rail should allow building access to deserts and ice. I don't see anything good about terrain that adds no bonuses. To me, that is an "unfun factor". Considering that the only viable terrain is plains or grasslands now. Everything else sucks. Tundra is only usable if it has a hill or forest on it - and even then it sucks really. I hate having most of the terrain types be unuseable whatsoever. You can't even use terra-forming to make them useful.
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And that is why this is a strategy game, not a real-life-god-super-simulator. By complaining about things like that, better ask why castles can move in chess. It's all for the sake of balance -- Civ4 had multiplayer in mind, not simulating real life.

It's a game. Real life is unfair, and unfairness makes a game "unfun."

Postscript:

@people going on about desert farming
Personally, I think the two food produced at the city square adequately represents any small farms made in deserts nearby, as well as it could represent anything else -- it's abstraction for a strategy game.

@people complaining about Civ4
Following up on what i said earlier, Civ4 is not only a strategy game. It's a strategy game with multiplayer in mind (explicitly stated by the developers somewhere -- sorry, but citations aren't my thing). The game developers tried to balance the gameplay, which meant removing some exploitative features (some were realistic indeed, but unfair) of the earlier games that were meant solely for single player (the Civ3 Xpaks were sort of awkward jump points for multiplayer). They still haven't fixed the whole starting-in-the-middle-of-the-jungle mess, though; there are, however, mods that fix these issues.
 
Xanikk999 said:
Doesnt mean its necessary though. We already have plenty of strategy making in this game.

It baffles me that none of the civ4 fans can agree that anything in this game could be improved. :confused:
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something like deserts are so minimal an annoyance to me and have been rationalized the way i said by the devlopers. to have one sqaure being unworked doesnt ruin the game nor annoy me worth complaing about.

this is something that i dont get. the desire to have maximal exploitation of squares in the bfc even if terrain negates it that ability. get over it, you can win without 1 or 2 squares worked in your bfc.
 
@ Nooblet: I spotted some in Libya which was not a flood plains. Also, I am referring to 1 tiles of sand in the game. Not the Sahara anyways. I rarely see Sahara type deserts. Usually deserts in CIv consist of 1-5 tiles. These deserts would have as much dirt as sand in them. My main gripe is that there are only 2 out of 5 terrains that are actually able to be farmed from irrigation workshopped, or cottaged. And tundras are only useful sitting by a river or with a forest on them. So the terrain itself is useless without an outside factor coming in by luck of the draw with the map generator.

In regards to the US deserts - Look up the Desert Land Act. Issued by the US Government to sell US desert land for $1.25 an acre with the sole purpose of irrigating it. And the US has no flood plains.

flyingchiken said:
And that is why this is a strategy game, not a real-life-god-super-simulator. By complaining about things like that, better ask why castles can move in chess. It's all for the sake of balance -- Civ4 had multiplayer in mind, not simulating real life.

It's a game. Real life is unfair, and unfairness makes a game "unfun."
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I don't remember anyone complaining in previous versions of civ that the game was unbalanced because you could irrigate deserts. How in the world does being able to gain food from deserts in the modern age upsetting the balance? Someone with crappy land that actually lasted that long may actually gain 1 population in a few cities?
40% of the map is already unuseable due to water. Then add in an additional 20-30% of the map being unusable due to deserts, tundra, ice, and peaks. You find yourself only playing on a huge map but only using 30-40% of it. And the rest all sucks and is worthless. No techs will open them up later and there is no way to get any use out of any of them.

As to your last line I am arguing that this should open up more due to the fact that it IS a game. I am not arguing the whole "how it should model real life". That is nooblet. He is saying that the game DOES model real life. ANd it shouldn't abstract through exaggeration in any way. (Even though it does in many ways already)

My way makes the game more fun by not having someone get an entirely lame spot by being stuck in a massive amount of deserts around them. Or tundra. Its taking out this "unfun" element of 60-70% worthless terrain and actually making it apply somehow to the game.
 
Ah, but having wildcards is a part of a strategy game's balance. Having a bad starting location is just part of the game...

...Of course, I am just trying to defend my position in a very weak manner -- I concede to King Flevance, and agree completely. Irrigating deserts should be possible. Not even the AI can mess that up.
 
King Flevance said:
My way makes the game more fun by not having someone get an entirely lame spot by being stuck in a massive amount of deserts around them. Or tundra. Its taking out this "unfun" element of 60-70% worthless terrain and actually making it apply somehow to the game.
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so part of this is based off of past experience with other civs versions and the desire to exploit completely every square to give yourself more of an advantage. i just dont see how not being able to do detracts so much from the game its worth mentioning. what is preventing you from accepting it?
 
mrt144 said:
so part of this is based off of past experience with other civs versions and the desire to exploit completely every square to give yourself more of an advantage. i just dont see how not being able to do detracts so much from the game its worth mentioning. what is preventing you from accepting it?
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Well thats one way of looking at it, but I personally would like too see every tile workable given a correct technology. I mean I don't expect the desert to be workable in 4000 BC, but once you get to the modern age, whats would stop you from irrigating the desert?

And besides why would you include unusable tiles in the game (mountains/deserts), I think it is just that devs ran out of imagination of what to do with the terrain, or maybe they decided that the game was packed enough with the features as it is and that these extra features could be added later (at least I hope so).
 
mrt144 said:
so part of this is based off of past experience with other civs versions and the desire to exploit completely every square to give yourself more of an advantage.
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No, if I can do it so can the AI. I see noone gaining any advantage over someone else. Farming is exploiting now? It makes me wonder if alot of Civ 4 fans think any idea mentioned to improved the game is an exploit if not made by Firaxis themselves.
i just dont see how not being able to do detracts so much from the game its worth mentioning. what is preventing you from accepting it?
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The fact that it is a game board that's purpose is to be used. If you loaded a huge map, turned the grid on, and put a black box over every tile that was ocean, coastal, ice, desert, peak, and tundra. You would see two small blobs with black freckles and lakes of black in them. This would be all the usable terrain. which 1/3 would also have jungle coverage as an added bonus.

The maps are already very small even on huge. The last thing the game needs is the majority of the map being worthless terrain when it is already a small map.

Napalm102 said it best:
And besides why would you include unusable tiles in the game (mountains/deserts)
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Exactly. It like having the warrior never go obsolete. Or making 60% of the units Str 0, 0 movement, can't level, and gain no bonuses. Why put them in?
 
King Flevance said:
@ Nooblet: I spotted some in Libya which was not a flood plains. Also, I am referring to 1 tiles of sand in the game. Not the Sahara anyways. I rarely see Sahara type deserts. Usually deserts in CIv consist of 1-5 tiles. These deserts would have as much dirt as sand in them. My main gripe is that there are only 2 out of 5 terrains that are actually able to be farmed from irrigation workshopped, or cottaged. And tundras are only useful sitting by a river or with a forest on them. So the terrain itself is useless without an outside factor coming in by luck of the draw with the map generator.

In regards to the US deserts - Look up the Desert Land Act. Issued by the US Government to sell US desert land for $1.25 an acre with the sole purpose of irrigating it. And the US has no flood plains.
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Yes, I didn't say it was impossible, just highly improbable. The reason why the land is so cheap is because it's worthless and irrigating it would be expensive. I don't see why you have a gripe with accurate tiles. The only way I see this working is if construction on those tiles costed coin or turns.

Rhye said:
thenooblet22 said:
the mod Rhye's and Fall of Civilization has plagues using the religion coding
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this is false
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What? Care to explain? I thought the plagues operated like the spreading of religion, or at least it seemed that way. I didn't mean actually using the code, but it's basically a reenactment, right?
 
thenooblet22 said:
What? Care to explain? I thought the plagues operated like the spreading of religion, or at least it seemed that way. I didn't mean actually using the code, but it's basically a reenactment, right?
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it may seem that way, but plague appears, spreads and disappears following certain conditions in a piece of code I wrote from scratch.
It's very different from religions, which don't even disappear and have a holy city and other more. There's a mod made by someone else which is based on it instead (and in fact, his diseases have holy cities)
 
thenooblet22 said:
Yes, I didn't say it was impossible, just highly improbable. The reason why the land is so cheap is because it's worthless and irrigating it would be expensive. I don't see why you have a gripe with accurate tiles. The only way I see this working is if construction on those tiles costed coin or turns.
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My gripe isn't with "accurate" tiles but rather "useable" tiles. Considering that the opposition to my arguement was calling this bogus due to the fact it is unrealistic, I had to bring it in from a realistic point of view. Civ's Modern Age is far from where we are today. Plus, some parts of it is beyond reality already. To me making squares on a gameboard useable makes since. That is why they are there in the first place.
It wouldn't make it a good idea to settle in desert as this would only produce 2 food after biology for that tile. But then someone that gets pushed into desert can at least do something with that. Not alot, but something at least. I am also for allowing workshops and cottages on deserts and tundra along with farms. It still doesn't make it choice land whatsoever. But at least it can be utilized in a small fashion. Ice I have no problem with being dead weight land. As any city surrounded by ice is surely surrounded by tundra as well.
 
The reason for all of this is that its a game, not a minutely detailed historical simulation. Things work the way they do to make for balanced strategic decisions, not to make you feel like your immersed in an exact replica of the world for every possible time period, civilization, and detail of everyday life.

It's really not that complicated. I hope you were just bored or something, and not serious about seeing all these things addressed. you'd probably end up totally destroying the charm of the game.
 
Rhye said:
it may seem that way, but plague appears, spreads and disappears following certain conditions in a piece of code I wrote from scratch.
It's very different from religions, which don't even disappear and have a holy city and other more. There's a mod made by someone else which is based on it instead (and in fact, his diseases have holy cities)
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Aw yes, that is where I got confused. I recalled the early discussions about the addition of plagues and that mod. Sorry for the mix up.
King Flevance said:
My gripe isn't with "accurate" tiles but rather "useable" tiles. Considering that the opposition to my arguement was calling this bogus due to the fact it is unrealistic, I had to bring it in from a realistic point of view. Civ's Modern Age is far from where we are today. Plus, some parts of it is beyond reality already. To me making squares on a gameboard useable makes since. That is why they are there in the first place.
It wouldn't make it a good idea to settle in desert as this would only produce 2 food after biology for that tile. But then someone that gets pushed into desert can at least do something with that. Not alot, but something at least. I am also for allowing workshops and cottages on deserts and tundra along with farms. It still doesn't make it choice land whatsoever. But at least it can be utilized in a small fashion. Ice I have no problem with being dead weight land. As any city surrounded by ice is surely surrounded by tundra as well.
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I think its a dead arguement if we are just discussing whether there should be unuseable tiles or not.
 
King Flevance said:
No, if I can do it so can the AI. I see noone gaining any advantage over someone else. Farming is exploiting now? It makes me wonder if alot of Civ 4 fans think any idea mentioned to improved the game is an exploit if not made by Firaxis themselves.


The fact that it is a game board that's purpose is to be used. If you loaded a huge map, turned the grid on, and put a black box over every tile that was ocean, coastal, ice, desert, peak, and tundra. You would see two small blobs with black freckles and lakes of black in them. This would be all the usable terrain. which 1/3 would also have jungle coverage as an added bonus.

The maps are already very small even on huge. The last thing the game needs is the majority of the map being worthless terrain when it is already a small map.

Napalm102 said it best:

Exactly. It like having the warrior never go obsolete. Or making 60% of the units Str 0, 0 movement, can't level, and gain no bonuses. Why put them in?
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exploit is being interpreted the wrong way here. i mean exploit as in use the most possible resources under your control, not exploit as in cheat or abuse. not being able to exploit all terrain in the bfc is not that big of a deal, i believe. if you can do 18 out or 20 thats pretty good, if its 10 out of 20, why did you found your city there?
 
mrt144 said:
so part of this is based off past experience with other civs versions and the desire to use the most resources from every square to give yourself more of an advantage.
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So this is what you meant right ;) . I still don't see how it helps the player when the Ai can do the same with their tiles. You forgot to explain this part or rather tryed to explain what you really meant.

Why did you found your city there?
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Mybe it has to do with what he said about 'huge maps' not being very huge? or there already '60% unformatable tiles' and whatevers left is dotted with more.
Or MYBE a player looks to these lands because thats all thats left after he build his 5 cities
No sorry, your right. I just cant "grapple" with Civ4 cuz I played Civ3 before where as you havn't played any other format, so your a better judge of whats a "small thing" or not right? :lol:
I agree with King but really Im more interested in your motive for disagreeing? Are you so tightly wound with these Civ4 fan idiosyncrasys you actaully feel threatened when another points out flaw in its design?
You actaully cheer yourself when we don't repley. I guess with that link you've genuinly figured you ended all future debate on a wide subject with your usual two lines of pedigree fanbois :rolleyes:

Com'on man I know what you meant to say here. Its your favorite saying Remember? Areas in need of improvent but that are addressed by those who like CIv3 should be dismissed based on presumtion " the player can't/won't change his ways from the last game in the series so Civ4 is not flawed, he just can't adapt or "GRAPPLE" right" Sound familar? :D

Well it Seems to me that after laying down your 5 cities on real functioning real estate, the game progresses to who can avoid settling near the most dead zones!
Instead What you plan to settle next could be influenced by your current tech choices or by the global scientific standing youve acheived over others.
If your leading up to mountain mining your better able to make use of a city situated near a range of mountains. If you already have irrigation advancments then settle the desert tiles. Mybe the desert tiles offers less for your current situation,(plenty variables to consider) but the tech that teaches you better mountain tile managmnent (ex: mining > to explosives mining> to strip mining ) may come later in the tech tree so you have to decide what you want, small benifits sooner or large benifts later.

Sure a better idea of implementation could be proposed then what I just submitted hell, that took me the time you need to make 3 cheap quips on the very idea that inspired it (useless terrian modification) Imagine how others could improve you games play in just a days pay. Why waste time denying theres a problem when you can give suggestions or real reasons that contest other then" Its no big deal so stop complaining! I love civ4 " Thats a big question you need to ask, why you keep talking out your ass?


Your arguement includes , " its a strategic roadblock done on purpose;:) its small thing; :( let it go;:D your just a whiner;:lol: I don't understand you people;:crazyeye: you don't understand what I mean by the word;"
Have you every done anything but whine and complain over you favorite game ? Let us know?
 
One of the best posts in many moons. Full of insightful pith and a pleasure to read every well-considered concept.




Kudos from Kodos.
 
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