Civ 5 Space Race

[LordRahl]

I remember reading article about civ 4, where the developer said something to the effect that a good game should make the player face choices. I completely agree, which is why I was disappointed after space-race was completely dumbed down in civ 4 (not sure what it was in civ 3).

I remember the good old days of Civ 1 and 2, where you didn't have to build all the components of the space-ship. As far as I remember, you basically had to slap an Inhabitation module and an engine together, and you could launch your spaceship. It was a much better implementation than the civ4 linear builds. Basically the more engines you added, the longer the production would take, but also your spaceship would reach the destination faster. Same goes for Inhabitation module. The more extras you added to it, the better the chance of survival your colonists had.

I urge devs to return to those additional choices, which made for much more exciting end-game.

[Thorburne]

Originally Posted by LordRahl

I remember reading article about civ 4, where the developer said something to the effect that a good game should make the player face choices. I completely agree, which is why I was disappointed after space-race was completely dumbed down in civ 4 (not sure what it was in civ 3).

I remember the good old days of Civ 1 and 2, where you didn't have to build all the components of the space-ship. As far as I remember, you basically had to slap an Inhabitation module and an engine together, and you could launch your spaceship. It was a much better implementation than the civ4 linear builds. Basically the more engines you added, the longer the production would take, but also your spaceship would reach the destination faster. Same goes for Inhabitation module. The more extras you added to it, the better the chance of survival your colonists had.

I urge devs to return to those additional choices, which made for much more exciting end-game.

I am not sure what you mean by dumbed down... Civ 4 didn't seem that way to me. The only problem that I saw was that all you had to do was launch the ship to when, but that was fixed with BtS. After that came out, you had to build the components and decide whether you wanted more engines to arrive at AC faster you less to get the ship launched ASAP.

[Danielos]

I think the space race should start in our own solar system. You should be able to build satellites that would be viewable when zoomed out far enough. When zoomed out even more, you would see the solar system in a kind of Gal Civ 2-map. You should then be able to have probes, manned expeditions, colonies, space stations and mining facilities in the solar system. Of course, your opponents will do the same, which would result in development of armor and arnament. The war will rage not only on Earth, but in space as well! The Alpha Centauri-expedition will come much later and follow more logically from a progressive space exploration and technological advancement.

[cyther]

Originally Posted by Danielos

I think the space race should start in our own solar system. You should be able to build satellites that would be viewable when zoomed out far enough. When zoomed out even more, you would see the solar system in a kind of Gal Civ 2-map. You should then be able to have probes, manned expeditions, colonies, space stations and mining facilities in the solar system. Of course, your opponents will do the same, which would result in development of armor and arnament. The war will rage not only on Earth, but in space as well! The Alpha Centauri-expedition will come much later and follow more logically from a progressive space exploration and technological advancement.

Interesting idea, but I don't think that it would be in the main game. The Civilization games are a Historical series. They don't deal with the future other than the fact that the game ends at turn 2050. Depending on the interest in things like this I could see a space race mod coming out.

[Civ Fuehrer]

Originally Posted by Danielos

I think the space race should start in our own solar system. You should be able to build satellites that would be viewable when zoomed out far enough. When zoomed out even more, you would see the solar system in a kind of Gal Civ 2-map. You should then be able to have probes, manned expeditions, colonies, space stations and mining facilities in the solar system. Of course, your opponents will do the same, which would result in development of armor and arnament. The war will rage not only on Earth, but in space as well! The Alpha Centauri-expedition will come much later and follow more logically from a progressive space exploration and technological advancement.

I have been working on something quite similar to this for Civ4, but the time required to make it versus the time when Civ5 comes out would overlap so Civ5 would come out before my mod would make it to beta stages. However I will be continuing work on it as a Civ5 mod. It's called The Ascent of Mankind, the only thing about the mod that I see no way of implementing which was described above was the zoomed out to see the solar system, otherwise it's pretty identical. In place of the second map I have a 'Spacepedia' that shows data and statistics about all the planets, stars, asteroid rings, etc. and gives you multiple options i.e. send a probe, build a factory, build an asteroid mining facility, make a Dyson Sphere, all that fun stuff. All this in the comfort of not having to have everything as a building in your city because I was constructing custom XML files that would implement these in a more anti-down-to-Earth way.