Has Firaxis finally learned to balance the game?

Can we put this (partially) to bed?

We do not know how these abilities will play out in game. We do not know the unique buildings and a few of the UUs, this can and will affect the power of these civs (since they are balanced around all 3 of their uniques, not just their abilities). To add my opinion, most of the civs that we know completely seem to stack up fairly well, especially when you compare it to the ridiculous levels of inequality in Civ 4 (Inca and Mali with Financial as the best trait, two great early UUs, and Inca with one of the best UBs. Compared to Japan or Germany).

Infiltrator said:

You're saying that Firaxis intentionally makes some civs weak while others strong based on history?

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The discussion was entertaining until you started twisting around what I said. Maybe I wasn't perfectly clear and you genuinely didn't understand my point, maybe you just want to argue, it doesn't matter but I'll stop now since I believe my opinion on the matter has been made pretty clear.

Starcraft and Starcraft II are inherently simple games. I lived in South Korea for 6 years where playing Starcraft is somewhat of a religion. They actually have TV channels devoted to people playing Starcraft. Now, South Koreans have it down to a science where if you misclick once in the first few seconds, the game is essentially over. You will lose to your opponent. At least for the competitive players. Doesn't sound like much fun to me but to each his own.

Now, Diablo 3 has been in development since Diablo 2 according to you. When did Diablo 2 debut? AFAIK it was 8-10 years ago. That's a pretty long development cycle. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of when Civ 3 came out.

Another game that I have immensely enjoyed has been Torchlight. It is somewhat of a Diablo clone that was very well done with the only knock against it being the lack of multiplayer. It debuted in October 2009. Multiplayer is coming for Torchlight 2 and will be available sometime in 2011. Seems to be taking a long time.

Multiplayer is inherently much more complex than Single player. That much is obvious. Even for relatively straightforward titles like Starcraft, Diablo and Torchlight. Civ is quite a bit more complex then these games. Unless you want to simplify Civ to the extent that it's Protos build this and Zerg rush that. *Yawn*

EDIT: Diablo II debuted in 2000. So, Diablo III has been in development for 10 years now and it isn't coming out any time soon.

Seven05 - I genuinely believe that was what you said.. that Firaxis made empires imbalanced based on historical events.. call me stupid but I've just read it again and that's the only thing I can deduct from your post.

Thormodr - Oh I know very well what SC is like in SKorea, although I haven't lived there. I talked with several korean pro gamers and yea, like you said, they got it down to science.

As for Diablo 3, I know that they've done the entire game/engine/models then scrapped it all at LEAST once, as for the source, I do not know if it was made public but I am one of the lucky individuals who have a friend working for blizzard who can provide me with info and early betas. That bit of info about starting from square 1 (at least) two times during the development was from him.

At any rate, Diablo's MP is a lot more prominent than civs, we're all aware of that. IMO diablo's MP is a LOT more difficult to balance out because of multiple different classes weapon combinations etc.. not to mention the fact that the games are totally different in execution. The only reason I ever mentioned diablo was because it had the same MP and SP and both were awesome.

I know civ5 is not going to have a MP as great as its SP but I'd like to see a step forward in comparison to civ4.

Infiltrator said:

Seven05 - I genuinely believe that was what you said.. that Firaxis made empires imbalanced based on historical events.. call me stupid but I've just read it again and that's the only thing I can deduct from your post.

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I don't run around calling people stupid.

To clarify look at Rome and America and imagine a starting point in the Industrial age. Historically speaking the Roman empire had ceased to exist by then and America was young. In the game under those conditions Rome would have no UUs while America would still have two, is it fair? Even if you start every game in the ancient era is it unfair if they end before your civ has any UUs that come into play? Is playing on a map with little water unfair to Great Britan even though they have an advantage on maps with a lot of water?

I'll leave it at that, take it as you may.

Hmmm, good point.

From a balance perspective (as I primarily MP) - all UUs should have a resource requirement so to limit their advantage.

wapamingo said:

Hmmm, good point.

From a balance perspective (as I primarily MP) - all UUs should have a resource requirement so to limit their advantage.

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Now, we can't know how balanced civ 5 units are. Many people were asking about how you can made only 5 legions for 1 iron, and you need ballistas too. Question for million dollars is: Has civ 5 tons of iron, oil, etc. on almost any part of map or is it in low quantities? Only one picture that maybe says something is when someone is requesting one-way open borders from Wu- Zen(whatever her name is) and that he wants 2 of 3 iron or something like that. Now, probably, that was some mediaval war, so, if she had an avarage empire of 6 cities and you captured some of her cities and make her to sue for peace, that means that she's left with 3-4 cities and she still has 3 iron?

From what I've seen UUs arent that strong to justify a resource req.

Infiltrator said:

From what I've seen UUs arent that strong to justify a resource req.

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Exactly, I agree.

Seven05 said:

I don't run around calling people stupid.

To clarify look at Rome and America and imagine a starting point in the Industrial age. Historically speaking the Roman empire had ceased to exist by then and America was young. In the game under those conditions Rome would have no UUs while America would still have two, is it fair? Even if you start every game in the ancient era is it unfair if they end before your civ has any UUs that come into play? Is playing on a map with little water unfair to Great Britan even though they have an advantage on maps with a lot of water?

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no, it is not fair

from a MP point of view, it would have been a lot wiser to place UU's and UB's in stub techs in the tech tree.

for example "Chivalry" would qualify for a stub tech, that allows to build knights. similarly "Bushido" is a stub tech, that allows to build samurais