Is it going to be dumbed down?

garric

Emperor
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
Messages
1,395
Location
Yay Area
I read about new features every week. Some features look awesome like religion, some features make me think "that's a great idea" like removing the advantages of the stack of doom, but many features make me think like they are dumbing the game down too much. I don't like how everything seems simplified, things like corruption, shields, resources. It seems they are taking away strategy, and making it more tactics based, and that's not a good thing!
 
I think it's great that many of these are being removed. Corruption made far-away cities useless, whereas now it will probably just cost more to keep them happy, rather than making them unproductive no matter what you did.

People are also making too much out of resources. I think that what Firaxis meant was that resources are being more balanced in their positioning. This means that no longer will the human end up with no strategic resources, whereas every AI ends up with them. I doubt that what they meant was that all civilizations would now have access to all resources, as they would then in essence become useless.

I don't believe that they are taking away strategy, just replacing some of the less-fun parts of the game that we have all become accostomed to.
 
Like Gogf said, they almost certainly aren't making resources irrelvant by having them be too abundant. You must admit the resources system civ3 needed improvement. It sounds like health is going to take the place of corruption, so things aren't getting any easier there per say. And what is being dumbed down about shields? All I heard is that they will be called hammers in civ4 but that's it.
 
Shields is being dumed down because hammers actually makes sense >.>
 
I'm wondering if people are just worrying too much. I'm loving all the news I'm getting on Civ4.
Saltylicious said:
Shields is being dumed down because hammers actually makes sense >.>
Not much actually. Can you actually visualise a building made entirely of hammers? :p
 
garric said:
It seems they are taking away strategy


Soren did say that they were removing these (not fun) elements, but at the same time adding a higher level of strategy, so I doubt that is an issue...
 
I think that Civ4 will be a simpler and easier game to play. Now we'll have to see if this is really gonna add to the fun or not.
 
Let's be honest, guys.
It was not corruption (or, to be more exact, it wasn't the waste) that made it so boring, it was the way in which it had been implemented.

The general idea of corruption and waste was a good one. There should have been more and better ways to fight both, and a more senseful cap on top of them.
 
Quentin said:
Not much actually. Can you actually visualise a building made entirely of hammers? :p

show me when a shield is used in construction. who makes a church with shields? you do however do the frame work with hammers, dont ya?

yeah...hammers are so worthless/nonsensical when it comes to construction doesnt it? shields makes more sense...because i see people building houses with tower shields and bucklers on a daily basis.
 
Hammer is an analogy for workforce, the same happen with gold and money. So, hammer does a better analogy than shield.

I understood the explanation found in Civilopedia for shield concept, but I always thought this word wasn't a good one, a better word should be chosen. Now using hammer I think it makes sense.
 
Hey I understand that hammers are better than shields. All I'm saying is they don't make complete sense because things are not made of hammers or even entirely with hammers.
 
garric said:
It seems they are taking away strategy, and making it more tactics based, and that's not a good thing!

Wow, this is a great sentence! Concisely and presicely describes what happen to Civ3 (from Civ2). IMO, except for "culture which expands borders" Civ3 is seriously spoiled in term of overall strategic play while many so call good features added to Civ3 are merely tactical. Your sentence should be pinned on the team's desktop...
 
second that...please DO NOT give us a game where tactics are all important and not strategy. Also, whoever hates the concept of MM, play easy levels and it won't matter. It is proper and skilled MM that makes a big difference to better players.

Want to play a fun and fast game without bogged down at MM? Yeah sure, but give other people a chance who want to have a much deeper, more engaging experience. That's what Civ is all about.
 
hclass said:
Wow, this is a great sentence! Concisely and presicely describes what happen to Civ3 (from Civ2). IMO, except for "culture which expands borders" Civ3 is seriously spoiled in term of overall strategic play while many so call good features added to Civ3 are merely tactical. Your sentence should be pinned on the team's desktop...
I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be sarcasm or not.
 
Oh, here we go, the old 'Micromanagement=Strategy' argument :rolleyes: . Seriously, Micromanaging your way to victory has nothing to do with Strategy IMO, and everything to do with being incredibly Anal. Personally, give me a game that focuses on broad strategic decision making, not a 'gee, if I move my worker here-instead of there-then I will get an extra turn of advantage' experience.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
Aussie_Lurker said:
Personally, give me a game that focuses on broad strategic decision making, not a 'gee, if I move my worker here-instead of there-then I will get an extra turn of advantage' experience.

I think both "broad and minute" strategic decision making are equally important in Civ. IMO, the "broad one" should basically determine whether one will win or loss and the "minute one" will determine the extend of winning or lossing.

The problem is many new features in Civ3 which have broad effect are poorly implemented, especially in "Diplomacy" area. IMO, most of the decision one made within the context of diplomacy are "broad decisions". The stupid thing is they force human player to guess into decision.

For example tech trade is a good idea, but due to the absent of "resell is not allowed" condition, it make tech trade something only enjoyed by those impulsive players. In this case, the effect is broad but the decision has nothing to do with the term strategy, it is simply a decision out of guessing!
 
I have to completely agree with Aussie_Lurker.
Micro-management in no way makes for the good player.
As micro-management simulates a micro-tactical decision, it even less makes for a good strategic player.

I will gladly admit that up to a certain level (not game level) it may be fun to tweak your little empire.
Nevertheless, the decision whether you irrigate first or do some mining in the surrounding hills is NOT a strategic decision. At best, it might be a tactical decision triggered by your strategical decision to have a city of a certain economical potential at a certain place.
 
Commander Bello said:
Let's be honest, guys.
It was not corruption (or, to be more exact, it wasn't the waste) that made it so boring, it was the way in which it had been implemented.

The general idea of corruption and waste was a good one. There should have been more and better ways to fight both, and a more senseful cap on top of them.


Corruption as a concept is good and i feel needed in the game but i agree it could/needs to be implemented better or prehaps is a totally different way. It represents more than just corruption i feel. The most obvioues historical refrence that springs to mind is in the British Empire Days in which they had a effective population of 500 million and a truely massive percentage of the worlds land mass. What coruption i feel represents here is the truley gargantuan task of managing all this land when your core is so far away form all this. Corruption in the game is highly frustrating but in some respects can explain how nations historically speaking can end up stagnating as each new city founded gets harder and harder to be maintained effectively. Like i just explained in the British Empire Days or going further back Rome would be a great example just to mention a couple.
 
Top Bottom