Thorburne
Centurion
Balance is overated and for wimps!!! History was not balanced, why should Civilization?
You didn't push any buttons really. I don't agree with your position or your general snotty tone and the need to blow your own horn. You got sarcasm in response. Congrats.
As someone has previously stated, designing ciV for MP would leave a lot of interesting and fun elements out all for the sake of balance such as city states or barbarians. It would make the game a lot duller in SP. Plus the fact that you'd have to balance 30 odd Civilizations/Leaders. (As compared to how many in Starcraft II?)
You may think you know better than Firaxis/2K games but I think you are sadly mistaken. MP players make up a tiny minority of Civ players. They made the correct choice catering to the vast majority of Civ players who actually like an interesting and varied game experience. Randomness leads to unique game situations that make players want to play again and again, trying different Civs, approaches and strategies. MP seeks to get rid of the randomness all in order to level the playing field.
You might as well design a flat plain (so there are no geographical advantages) with each player in a corner with exactly the same resources. All the traits and UU would be totally generic. That sounds perfectly balanced to me. Then you would see who is the better Civ player.
Well, except for it not really being Civ anymore. Not a game I'd be interested in.
You're so cute when you post like this
If I "had the need" to brag about anything I would have done it 7 pages ago. You actually forced me say it by repeating the same thing over and over again. You're welcome to believe anything that makes you feel better of course.
And continuing the cycle you again point out arguments that someone else or I addressed several pages ago, more than once. So instead of making me quote older posts, do me a favor and read up the rest of the topic.
I don't really know if an improved mp would make them that much more money. TBS are naturally more SP then MP, and with civ making a map and some starting locations nautrally being better then others, it's hard to see Civ5 having a massive mp community like console games and RTSs.
And please lets return to a logical and polite debate here, there is no need to attack others personality, lets stick to debating ideas.
CS
In my opinion it is likely 2K that drove the move to Steamworks and it is the other way around, 2K would love to make money for their share holders( and make no mistake MP=Cash) and likely it is only the huge reputation that is Sid Meier that is defending the last PC game genre not to embrace MP.....but that is just my opinion.
CS
What is it about this developer that drives people to write this fanfiction defending them from the sin of liking Steam.
Indeed, although it is surprising. I figured that Steam was chosen from before coding work started as the base for any netcode to save time on trying to build their own APIs. Although, it is somewhat surprising that 2k would foot the bill for licensing two MP managers (GameSpy/Steam); surely those can't be cheap, although Steam probably saved money in the end.
I'm curious when the decision was made, since Steam integration has been known since Civ5 was announced.
Fair enough. Mea culpa.
I think it is 4:30 AM in Eastern Europe so I think Infiltrator has retired from the thread for a a little while so perhaps you can answer the question. Seeing what we have seen from ciV so far, what changes would have to be made to make it up to scratch MP wise? What would you cut out and what would you add?
Fair enough. Mea culpa.
I think it is 4:30 AM in Eastern Europe so I think Infiltrator has retired from the thread for a a little while so perhaps you can answer the question. Seeing what we have seen from ciV so far, what changes would have to be made to make it up to scratch MP wise? What would you cut out and what would you add?
Without seeing the entire game and how is it balanced now that is a tough question to speculate about. But Civ5 does seem to be the first Civ game to have Civs with traits specific to bonuses with AI parts of the game. Yes in the past Civ games some civs were definitely better in MP than others, but this is a whole new level of inbalance in civs for the MP players.
Now yes our solution will be modding, but if I was the developer and wanted to solve this, I think the best way would be to increase the number of special traits from 3 to 4 per civ. That way if 1/4 traits is AI related, that is not as game breaking for the MP player as 1/3 is. And especially if you made one of the traits strong in MP, say like a discounted production cost for a early UU, then that Civ would still be a viable choice despite having one other trait that was not useful at all.
CS
Wouldn't that lead to imbalance on the SP side, since you'd end up with civs with 2 relevant abilities? If the Greeks had a Hoplite/Companion discount on top of Hellenic League, it'd put them well above any other civ in the game, as they would have two relevant/powerful abilities instead of one. It may be fine for MP for the Greeks to dominate early wars, but for someone playing a long solo campaign, they'll have to handle an early military power and a diplomatic wizard. The only way I can see this being balanced for both sides would be to have an ability that's only useful in MP and irrelevant in SP, but unfortunately, I don't think one exists.
The obvious solution to this - make both abilities weaker - just brings us back to Civ4. Whether or not that's a good thing will vary between individuals, but Firaxis likes to take the game in new directions, so it's unlikely we'd see a rehash of Trait/Trait leaders again. Again, it's not an issue of whether one is better/worse, but just the design philosophy behind Civ games.
I'm still convinced that the best way to make the game balanced and, equally important, interesting for MP and SP is to have two sets of civ traits/UUs/UBs - one unique to SP, one, to MP - for the severely strong/irrelevant leaders. Furor Teutonicus may be worthless in MP, but Blood and Iron wouldn't - but it'd be a dull SP game if every leader had military traits, as huge aspects of the game would be left unexplored.
Yes I understand your opinion Rah, and yes there is skill in dealing with random elements. However, when we create a league with a glicko based ranking system like we have at CP, players don't want to know who is best at dealing with random game elements, they want to be fairly and equally compared to each other on a sliding scale. And it is that environment that I am framing my posts here with.
CS
I understand and highly respect that but still disagree.
Combat is random also. Games are won and lost in combat and the result does not always favor the most skilled player so it's my opinion that those comparisons you talk about may not be as fair and equal as you claim. And if its your argument that over time, combat results will wash, I will make the same claim on barbs, huts and events. (not as much on events )
Which is the main reason why I don't participate in those ranking systems.
I have yet to see a ranking system that takes everything into account.
The person that is highest ranked is just the best player IN THAT SYSTEM.
In my experiences, it also encourages people trying to cheat and some egos translate into really poor sportsmanship. (IV was much tighter on cheats than II was)
In IV, I've played with over a hundred different people without a strict scoring system and the people have a pretty good idea who the better players were.
Granted I'm on the older side so my ego doesn't need quite the stroking it did when I was younger. If civ had come out 20 years earlier, I'd probably have joined every competitive league available. And I do support your work in this area because I know what it means to the diehards.