Beyond the Monument Episode 20 - Entering the Brave New World! (discussion thread)

New game feature: Science penalty for city to limit science runaway for very wide empires! :eek:
 
I tuned in right after that. What's the penalty?
 
Gamewizard said:
The majority of players don't play Diety, or even Immortal for that matter. Most players have a hard enough time beating Emperor on a regular basis. Firaxis should cater to the majority that want more features and a more engrossing game rather than catering to the few really good players who just want an AI that can win.
Click to expand...

i agree that firaxis should think about the majority of players (as well as the minority to a somewhat lesser extent). but i just wanted to point out that better AI does not necessarily cater only to people playing at hardest levels, nor does adding more features necessarily cater to people who don't. (i can see an argument for the opposite.) and players asking for more features, won't necessarily enjoy more feature. (when they say "more features" they might mean "better features" or "different features" for example.)

i think the designers should try to make the game as enjoyable as possible for most people, even if it contradicts what people say they want. "more engrossing" might be a better goal, but i think people are less likely to directly demand to be more engrossed.

kaspergm said:
New game feature: Science penalty for city to limit science runaway for very wide empires! :eek:
Click to expand...

wait, what? i missed that . . .
 
Louis XXIV said:
I tuned in right after that. What's the penalty?
Click to expand...
He didn't give us numbers, but he said it was "small", so that you could still go ICS if you wanted, but it was going to slow science down somewhat for wide empires.
 
Buccaneer said:
Pilgrim, I think they can achieve a better balance if they stop listening to those that want more and more features in the game, regardless if they fit or the AI knows how to use them. ;)

I agree that the AI needs to be much better at all of the victories, including beating you. But I guess they keep listening to the wrong people.
Click to expand...

QFT.

The game should be balanced at all levels, not just at the majority difficulty (which I presume is King, since it's incrementally above the median).

At the very least, it should be balanced on the difficulty below the hardest one, so through Immortal (there's something to be said for having a difficulty that requires breaking the game to beat).
 
m15a said:
i agree that firaxis should think about the majority of players (as well as the minority to a somewhat lesser extent). but i just wanted to point out that better AI does not necessarily cater only to people playing at hardest levels, nor does adding more features necessarily cater to people who don't. (i can see an argument for the opposite.) and players asking for more features, won't necessarily enjoy more feature. (when they say "more features" they might mean "better features" or "different features" for example.)

i think the designers should try to make the game as enjoyable as possible for most people, even if it contradicts what people say they want. "more engrossing" might be a better goal, but i think people are less likely to directly demand to be more engrossed.
Click to expand...

I agree. I used to play Civilization 4 with Karadoc's KMod that improved the AI to the point where you had to play on 1 difficulty level lower. Obviously it's more fun when there's a challenge because of a dynamic and smarter AI than when the AI plays stupid, but is challenging because of it's bonuses. I hope to see a similar mod like KMod one day for Civ 5.
 
Gamewizard said:
The majority of players don't play Diety, or even Immortal for that matter. Most players have a hard enough time beating Emperor on a regular basis. Firaxis should cater to the majority that want more features and a more engrossing game rather than catering to the few really good players who just want an AI that can win.
Click to expand...
In ideal world a more engrossing game with many features and good AI should not be mutually exclusive. In reality they are, because the more features you add, the more chances for the AI to mess everything up.

The main argument of infinite happiness haters was that they'd rather have better AI than cheaty AI. Nobody ever admitted said they want a less competent AI. :D So Firaxis caved to peer pressure and removed the 'cheat', but the AI has yet to show any signs of improvement. As a result they'll only get more hate. Gotta love the irony. Aiming to please everybody is very ungrateful task. They are trying very hard to find a balance between role players/builders etc and 'number crunchers' and deserved to get the credit for that, however, I do feel in BNW they took a concept of listening to fans' voice a bit too far. For the sake of the common good this voice needs filtering.
 
I was already excited for Scramble for Africa, but this just solidifies that - it looks really, really fun to play multiple times.
 
The Pilgrim said:
In ideal world a more engrossing game with many features and good AI should not be mutually exclusive. In reality they are, because the more features you add, the more chances for the AI to mess everything up.

The main argument of infinite happiness haters was that they'd rather have better AI than cheaty AI. Nobody ever admitted said they want a less competent AI. :D So Firaxis caved to peer pressure and removed the 'cheat', but the AI has yet to show any signs of improvement. As a result they'll only get more hate. Gotta love the irony. Aiming to please everybody is very ungrateful task. They are trying very hard to find a balance between role players/builders etc and 'number crunchers' and deserved to get the credit for that, however, I do feel in BNW they took a concept of listening to fans' voice a bit too far. For the sake of the common good this voice needs filtering.
Click to expand...

And you'll get through the filter, right? ;)
 
There was no way in hell Firaxis was going to fix the AI. They didn't even fix the CIV AI for BTS, that was a community mod they brought in. With the greatly increased complexity of 1upt developing AI was only going to take more time money and effort. Since Firaxis was in no way getting more money why would they go to that extra effort. And Buccaneer, if they don't add features they don't make money, and thus don't work on CIV at all. If you want a good Ai try to start or support an Ai mod. There is only the Fall Patch left for CiV and that will only be a slight fix.

They did a decent compromise with BNW. They fixed the lump sum exploit to no real adverse reaction. They reduced the opportunity cost for swords units. They tried to improve balance and remove player crutches to at least allow more strategies. Since they couldn't fix it, the best solution was to improve gameplay variety. Fixing the incredibly dull and restrictive culture victory, opening up the policy paths, and increasing the benefits of peace all helped that.
 
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