They sold an unfinished game. :(

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Urederra

Urederra

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OK, I have played CIV iV for some time, not as much as many people in these forums though, but I have also read many posts in these forums and my impression is that they sold us a game which is not finished yet.

I am not talking about bugs and the lack of throne chamber or palace view. I am talking about that one key feature of the series was INTENTIONALLY left unfinished. The warmongering.

If you look carefully you'll notice that. Here are some clues, I am sure that warmongers who played more than me can add some points to this list
  • Domination victories are usually more difficult than cultural or space race victories.
  • Many unit types are missing. Particularly siege weapons. You'll keep playing with catapults forever, until you upgrade them to cannons. Trebuchets are obviously missing in the game. But is not only that ones, there is only one type of missiles.
  • Naval and air warfare is dumbed down. There are also very few types of naval wessels.
  • Fewer world wonders to help the warmongering. No Great wall, no Leonardo's workshop (BTW, did it really exist in first place?)
  • As Tr1cky pointed out, (I think It was him) there is a always war option which is umplayable in many circumstances due to the war weariness.
  • EDIT: Added from post #17. GREAT LEADERS. One of the most succesful additions of Civ III, great leaders, is missing in CIV IV. How could they add great prophets, great artists, great scientists and great engineers and leave the original great leaders out?

You can add more points if you like, but I think you'll get the message.

The point is that they INTENTIONALLY left all those things out. Why? to sell the expansion. As Jesse Smith confessed in gamespot:

GS: When did you start thinking about the expansion, and when did work begin on it?

JS: We began the plan for the expansion prior to the release of Civ IV and design work began in earnest a couple of weeks after the release. Production of the art assets began in January.
Click to expand...

Bolding is mine. So, in my opinion, they sold an unfinished game. It is true that you can enjoy the game, have some cultural, space race or even domination victories, but, compared to the other iterations of the series, the game is not completed. It will be when they release Warlords.
 
*SIGH*


During the development cycle of a game, ANY GAME, there are lots of neat ideas that get tossed out because of time/expense/QA issues. All projects begin Expansive and end Organized or Dead. Anticipating an expansion on a wildly popular franchise with a known winning development team isn't an evil plot; it's a way to get most of that stuff that would've wound up completely on the cutting room floor otherwise. It also means they can tailor those additions to fit the new and interesting ways we Players can break the game. Now, on specific points...

  • Ease of Victory Condition is often in the strategy of the beholder. Any VC can be made easier or harder by adjusting your strategy and accepting a coresponding weakness.
  • I have a feeling the Siege Weapons were tough to balance appropriately. Thus, there are few in the game. It doesn't prove any conspiracy, just that QA is tough, really.
  • Air combat seems pretty well deveoped to me. It covers Recon, Strategic Bombing, and Tactical Bombing. It's only been a significant part of our military options for 60 years out of 6000.
  • Naval warfare and option are a bit more disappointing, but the fact that it is is probably more due to the weakness of the AI in large-scale naval warfare.
  • Beneficial Warmonging effects are moved out of the Wonders and into places like Civ Traits, Civics, and XPs.
  • AWE is supposed to be tough, it's an extreme condition. I think the WW Formulae could use some tweaking but I also think typical Player tactics (hordes of suicide Cats) have something to do with it.

Here's a question: if Firaxis/TT just left that stuff out to make money on an expansion, why make the game so modable?
 
Urederra said:
I am not talking about bugs and the lack of throne chamber or palace view. I am talking about that one key feature of the series was INTENTIONALLY left unfinished. The warmongering.
Click to expand...

Well, IMHO, I think warring is not the aim of the Civilization franchise but another component of the game such as terraforming or buildings.

If you would like a war game that combines buildings then you should try Empire Earth for instance.

But going back to civ, I think war is just another attribute for winning. Prior to Civ3 you only had Space Race or Total Annihilation. Alpha Centauri showed the way for Diplomacy and Civ3 added Cultural victory IIRC.

If it's harder to obtain Military victory must be because Civ4 has tried to emulate history of the world which has shown more or less powerful nations but noone dominating everyone... thanks for it we now have over 200 countries at the Un ;)

Myself I don't consider a warmonger and I have not achieved a military victory in Civ3 for instance. But I must say, though, that the military aspect in Civ4 does not look so polished as in previous Civ games.

If I do buy Warlords will be because of new leaders or nations and the vassalage option... not for more military units...

Anyway, my 2 cents of course... you do not have to agree

cheers
 
Urederra said:
OK, I have played CIV iV for some time, not as much as many people in these forums though, but I have also read many posts in these forums and my impression is that they sold us a game which is not finished yet.

I am not talking about bugs and the lack of throne chamber or palace view. I am talking about that one key feature of the series was INTENTIONALLY left unfinished. The warmongering.

If you look carefully you'll notice that. Here are some clues, I am sure that warmongers who played more than me can add some points to this list
  • Domination victories are usually more difficult than cultural or space race victories.
  • Many unit types are missing. Particularly siege weapons. You'll keep playing with catapults forever, until you upgrade them to cannons. Trebuchets are obviously missing in the game. But is not only that ones, there is only one type of missiles.
  • Naval and air warfare is dumbed down. There are also very few types of naval wessels.
  • Fewer world wonders to help the warmongering. No Great wall, no Leonardo's workshop (BTW, did it really exist in first place?)
  • As Tr1cky pointed out, (I think It was him) there is a always war option which is umplayable in many circumstances due to the war weariness.

You can add more points if you like, but I think you'll get the message.

The point is that they INTENTIONALLY left all those things out. Why? to sell the expansion. As Jesse Smith confessed in gamespot:



Bolding is mine. So, in my opinion, they sold an unfinished game. It is true that you can enjoy the game, have some cultural, space race or even domination victories, but, compared to the other iterations of the series, the game is not completed. It will be when they release Warlords.
Click to expand...

:goodjob:
Just to let you know i love civ IV and i still agree with your points.
I play on prince and may move up to monarch soon so im not just a noob speaker either.

The siege weapon point is true. However they are planning to add trebuchets in the expansion so this shouldnt be a big deal. And siege warfare in this game is unrealistic however it is balanced for gameplay.

Leonardos workshop should be in the game but as for the great wall. Chichen Itza pretty much does the same thing even if it doesnt give you a wall.

As for navel warfare and air combat i wont argue that one it has took a step down from civ3 just as diplomacy has took a step down from civ3. The only thing the AI did get better at in civ4 was overall intellegence, not diplomatic options.

You are exactly correct on the always war option. War weariness should be eliminated for that game option otherwise the game is simply unplayable is you say later in the game. And Police state cant even remedy that.
 
Catcher said:
Here's a question: if Firaxis/TT just left that stuff out to make money on an expansion, why make the game so modable?
Click to expand...
I 100% agree
 
I also want to note that in civ3 with electricity farms did not lose food without fresh water access.

They could obtain the full 4 food with a railroad running through it without fresh water and that seems realistic in the real world.

Its called plumbing. We dont need access to fresh water in modern times.
 
kokomo said:
I 100% agree
Click to expand...

I dont agree with certain things though.

They took diplomacy a step backwards. They could of covered up the exploits without dumbing down diplomacy.

It makes no sense i cant trade a technology for gpt. If they wanted to get rid of the exploit of declaring war right afterwards then they could of just made it so the AI would only agree if you gave them the technology and you got the gpt.
 
Xanikk999 said:
I dont agree with certain things though.
Click to expand...

don't get me wrong Xanikk, I only mentioned agreeing to the game being so modable. Not to the rest of the text... :rolleyes:
 
I can't claim to be an expert player, or have any special insight into Firaxis, but I am a producer at a major developer, and from my experience some of your arguments are probably unlikely.

First of all to address your coup-de-grace, if they weren't in pre-pro on the expansion before shipping, I'd think they were nuts. I don't buy the argument that by definition game-systems and content planned ahead of time for an expansion mean the base game is unfinished. Again, you don't just make a game and then wait for it to ship before you say "ok now what kind of stuff can we put into an add-on/exp".

You cite several examples of why the base game must be unfinished. I'm not arguing that Firaxis wasn't under pressure from T2 to deliver by a certain ship date--who knows-- but these aren't necessarily marks of a shoddy release:

"Domination victories are usually more difficult than cultural or space race victories."
" Fewer world wonders to help the warmongering."

I think you can mark both of those as design decisions. I have a feeling a lot of the guts of developing a Civ4 type game are probably on the Design end. Evaluating how wonders impact the game. If there's missing war-oriented wonders, my guess its not because the art pipeline or guy who scripts their functionality couldn't keep up, but because they didn't want those particular wonders.

"Many unit types are missing. Particularly siege weapons. You'll keep playing with catapults forever, until you upgrade them to cannons.
Trebuchets are obviously missing in the game. But is not only that ones, there is only one type of missiles."
"Naval and air warfare is dumbed down. There are also very few types of naval wessels."

This is a better argument. Sea combat is clearly not as well fleshed out as land combat in the game. Just guessing, but this was likely a production decision. I'd guess designers would've enjoyed having more time to tinker with naval game systems. Still, given games need to be made on certain budgets and in certain time frames, having to make choices about which areas to focus doesn't define a rushed/incomplete product either, in my opinion.

The War Weariness bit on Always War sounds like a design imbalance to me, nothing more.

Unfinished/incomplete at some point is just going to be semantics, if you can accept we don't live in a world of endless time and budgets. But if a game with Civ4's level of polish really does fall into the group of rushed to market games, we gamers have it good.
 
Urederra said:
The point is that they INTENTIONALLY left all those things out. Why? to sell the expansion. As Jesse Smith confessed in gamespot:
Click to expand...

He said they began the plan for the expansion. Sounds smart to me.

I hope they already have more plans as well. :goodjob:
 
Xanikk999 said:
Its called plumbing. We dont need access to fresh water in modern times.
Click to expand...

That's news to me. Reminds me of the guy who said "Farms are useless drains on the economy: I can get all my food from the grocery store!"
 
Catcher said:
Here's a question: if Firaxis/TT just left that stuff out to make money on an expansion, why make the game so modable?
Click to expand...
Easy. Past experience has shown them that modders will almost always mod for the latest version of the game. Therefore anybody who wants to use mods needs the latest version of the game.
 
I agree with the OP in the statement that they sold an unfinished game. I believe it was not as intentional as claimed though. I believe T2 pushed it out the door before it was ready. T2 sold an unfinished game. Firaxis did as they had to. There is no big plot here. T2 wanted to compete against AOE3 sales and released early. No more could be finished on the game as they had to scurry to get it as presentable as they could as fast as they could.

The game IS unfinished though and mostly in concern to warfare. Granted Civ is not ONLY about war but war no doubt plays a huge role of the game, just as importantly as wonders do. If there was no warfare in the game I bet this community would not be near as large as it is. It isnt hard to see that warfare has been almost just put in but not focused on. The system itself is is what got the attention. The tech tree wasn't finished IMO as well as more stuff I could name like unique destictions on civilizations (only touched by culture border colors), units ( I know this involves warfare but some do not.)
Basically, it isnt hard to see an unfinished product here when comparing it to previous version of civ w/o an expansion pack.

Civ vanilla is an understatement as to what we have, vanilla is a flavor. It should be called Civ plain. I will be waiting for the expansion price to drop quite a bit before I buy, not just because Take 2 owns it but also because I feel that the expansion pack is the missing part of the original game that I pre-ordered. We pre-orders got screwed IMHO.
 
Mewtarthio said:
That's news to me. Reminds me of the guy who said "Farms are useless drains on the economy: I can get all my food from the grocery store!"
Click to expand...

I meant direct access. Meaning you dont need to be next to a lake or river to have fresh water. :rolleyes:
 
Ops... I forgot one of the most important points... One of the most succesful additions of Civ III, great leaders, is not in CIV IV. Some people complained about that. There are great scientists, great prophets, great engineers, great artists, but great leaders are missing in CIV III. They saved them for warlords. I think they already stated that they will be in warlords. (renamed as warlords, I believe)

Catcher said:
Here's a question: if Firaxis/TT just left that stuff out to make money on an expansion, why make the game so modable?
Click to expand...

Very good question. I guess they also thought about that. If we made the game so modable, how are we going to be able to sell expansions? (I also asked that question in a previous thread) The answer: two steps. First, don't release the SKD straight away, so the modding options are reduced, and second, cripple the game so it won't be 'finished' until we sell the expansion. So, remove great leaders (I presume they are difficult to program even with the SKD available), remove certain units and wonders to make the warmongering part less enjoyable, then we can release the removed parts and and sell them in an expansion.

I am saying 'remove' but I cannot prove it, I know. That is my guess. How could they add great artists, prophets, scientists and engineers and not include the original great leaders from Civ III? Only the developers and maybe the beta testers could tell us whether they were great leaders and armies in the beta game, but they signed an agreement to keep they mouths closed.

Xanikk999 said:
:goodjob:
Just to let you know i love civ IV and i still agree with your points.
I play on prince and may move up to monarch soon so im not just a noob speaker either.
Click to expand...

Congrats, you get my point. I also like Civ IV, don't get me wrong, but I feel a bit like they cheated at me. If I want to play the game the way I think It should be, then I have to pay $100 in two installments.

You are exactly correct on the always war option. War weariness should be eliminated for that game option otherwise the game is simply unplayable is you say later in the game. And Police state cant even remedy that.
Click to expand...

My guess is Warlords will take care of that. It will be a prove that they did it intentionally so they would be able to sell the expansion. And the other points as well. Catcher question answered.

araxas said:
Unfinished/incomplete at some point is just going to be semantics, if you can accept we don't live in a world of endless time and budgets. But if a game with Civ4's level of polish really does fall into the group of rushed to market games, we gamers have it good.
Click to expand...

Agree on the semantics, I wasn't sure which word fits better with my argument, that is why I stated that I wasn't talking about bugs or things like the throne view, initially scheduled but not in the game. I know that they are under pressure, like everybody in their jobs. My point is that they had this 'leaving warmongering parts away from the game' strategy in order to be able to sell them afterwards in an expansion. It is not lack of time what I am seeing, is a strategy to sell it in installments.

Oggums said:
He said they began the plan for the expansion. Sounds smart to me.

I hope they already have more plans as well. :goodjob:
Click to expand...

Finally, somebody who got the point.
 
Xanikk999 said:
I meant direct access. Meaning you dont need to be next to a lake or river to have fresh water. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The cynic would claim that you still do... Or actually, probably the opposite.
 
Domination victories are usually more difficult than cultural or space race victories.
Click to expand...

And conquering 2/3 of the world is easy in real life?

Many unit types are missing. Particularly siege weapons. You'll keep playing with catapults forever, until you upgrade them to cannons. Trebuchets are obviously missing in the game. But is not only that ones, there is only one type of missiles.
Click to expand...

Trebuchets are known to be coming in Warlords. They weren't included in the original versions of Civ3 either.

Naval and air warfare is dumbed down. There are also very few types of naval wessels.
Click to expand...

How is naval and air warfared dumbed down? The new combat system, along with various promotions and collateral damage makes it seem much more complicated to me.

As for the number of naval vessels, it's the exact same as Civ3, except with no Aegis Cruiser or Nuclear Submarine.

Fewer world wonders to help the warmongering. No Great wall, no Leonardo's workshop (BTW, did it really exist in first place?)
Click to expand...

The Great Wall is once again coming in Warlords. Chicken Itza is effectively a version of the Conquests Great Wall in Civ4, so it would really be hard to argue that that feature is missing.

As Tr1cky pointed out, (I think It was him) there is a always war option which is umplayable in many circumstances due to the war weariness.
Click to expand...

The point of the always war option is that you will always be at war with all of the AIs. War weariness is not something that is only introduced in always war; on the contrary, it is actually less on always war. I play a ton of multiplayer games on always war, and it never seems like a problem to me.

It is simply ridiculous to think that the game was intentionally left unfinished. Just because Firaxis started work on the expansion before Civ4 was released doesn't mean that they left things out. Certain features can't be tested and balanced particularly quickly, and as we all know, Civ4 had a scheduled release date.

Many games have expansion packs that add new things to the game. One can argue that until the final expansion pack is released a game is not really complete, but that is clearly not what you are trying to say.
 
Xanikk999 said:
I also want to note that in civ3 with electricity farms did not lose food without fresh water access.

They could obtain the full 4 food with a railroad running through it without fresh water and that seems realistic in the real world.

Its called plumbing. We dont need access to fresh water in modern times.
Click to expand...
do you equate 'modern times' to be before or after Civil Service in the game? FWIW, consider the scale of Civ - a farm isnt really 'a farm', it's a huge area (say, 1000 sq. miles?) dominated by farming. Intensive irrigation isnt anything like watering your lawn, it requires massive amounts of fresh water and you aint getting it without a large source relatively nearby.

The game's equivalent of domestic plumbing is aqueducts.
 
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