A little bit tired of Civ development approach

stealth_nsk

Deity
Joined
Nov 28, 2005
Messages
5,519
Location
Novosibirsk, Russia
Got my BNW on Friday, played for some time. One thing catched my attention is the approach to problem solving in Civ 5 development (at least after Shafer left).

In Vanilla we had a problem with melee/ranged upgrades loosing promotions. This could be solved by improving promotion system, but in G&K we have different unit upgrades instead. Still no solution for Chariots and UU. Now in BNW we have Bazooka, but still no universal solution for Chariots and UU.

In Vanilla diplomatic victory was actually an economic victory in disguise. Not necessary a bad solution itself, but got a lot of negative from the fans. And that we have in G&K? Quests, designed to make diplomatic victory more, well, diplomatic. But it's still won by buying CS. And in BNW we get a lot of diplomatic stuff - world congress, ideologies, more CS quests. But you still just need to buy the CS. And Austria with Venice UA don't make the things any better.

I'm kinda miss the patches during Shafer times which tried to make existing things work instead of throwing lots of new features to the pile...
 
I'm not sure it has that much to do with the "approach" Firaxis and 2K have taken so much as the fact that G&K was a much more "complete" product on release than Vanilla was. Yes, things needed (and in some case still do need) tweaks and changes, but not to the huge scale that the game had upon initial release. As such, the changes made in patches to G&K have been far more subdued compared to vanilla.
 
Congratulations on buying your first ever expansion pack to a game!

You see, there's quite big difference. In BtS, for example, corporation reuse religion mechanic as much as possible, espionage reuse "slider" mechanic and rebuilds the initial espionage completely.

In BNW we have 3 types of trade (trade routes, city connections, agreement between civilizations) and 3 types of influence (city-state influence, religion and tourism). That's completely different thing.

I'm not sure it has that much to do with the "approach" Firaxis and 2K have taken so much as the fact that G&K was a much more "complete" product on release than Vanilla was. Yes, things needed (and in some case still do need) tweaks and changes, but not to the huge scale that the game had upon initial release. As such, the changes made in patches to G&K have been far more subdued compared to vanilla.

The completeness of the game is:
1. Subjective.
2. Dependent on the amount of resources the development team has.

The approach defines which things are being worked on. And G&K isn't that good as well. For example, with unit upgrade paths changed, a lot of old civs needed rebalancing, but they didn't receive it.
 
The completeness of the game is:
1. Subjective.
2. Dependent on the amount of resources the development team has.

The approach defines which things are being worked on. And G&K isn't that good as well. For example, with unit upgrade paths changed, a lot of old civs needed rebalancing, but they didn't receive it.

I'm talking about an objective "complete" which is why I included the scare quotes. (It's not necessarily the word I'm look for, either, but it gets my point across.) And I don't even mean it solely in a sense of balance. Rebalancing is one thing, but the original release of vanilla was nigh unplayable at times because of bugs and gameplay issues that had been completely overlooked, even months later when I finally got my hands on it.
 
Top Bottom