The comment about the influence of Civilization Revolution in conjunction with ONLY one unit per tile, makes me wonder... will civ V have workers? In my opinion, not having workers comes as the greatest weakness of Civ Rev, and if civ V doesn't have workers I can't see it coming out as fun as civ I, II, or III (I haven't played IV). Can anyone else? How so?
IGN Offers Its First Civ5 Preview
- Thread starter Ginger_Ale
- Start date
brandonjm8
Chieftain
to have civilization is to have religions, every single culture in the world has some form of religion and/or god whether a personal god or popular god or spiritual. they need to tweak it alittle but to do away with it pushes it farther away from realism which is what they are trying to go for right? same with espionage, there are SPIES EVERYWHERE, even in the ancient world just not as numerous or so far abroad.
i for one would like to see the civ series continue to be more realistic, one step at a time like they have been. to stop that progress would keep me from playing civ5, honestly.
i for one would like to see the civ series continue to be more realistic, one step at a time like they have been. to stop that progress would keep me from playing civ5, honestly.
Jamesds
Great Scientist
Nice insight into Civ5, and I'm looking forward to their preview this week. I'm sure modders will be pleased to hear the game will be "even more moddable than Civ IV". So it's been basically confirmed that there will only be one unit in a city. I think with the city area able to extend to 3 tiles away this could definitely work - plenty of area in which to surround and defend the city, but I wonder how it'll work with coastal cities. Either way, I like the way the game is going.
Interesting point. Maybe workers are exempt from this rule (they are non-combat units after all). If not, then maybe cities will be able to build improvements that allow you to perform worker actions on its surrounding tiles, so each city takes responsibility for its own improvements. That would have several issues that would have to be ironed out first, however. At this point it's really just speculation.
cephalo
Deity
I curious about the 'in-game community'. I think it would be very difficult to do a better job of that than Civfanatics. The way this site is organized makes making and using mods so much easier. Without Civfanatics, I doubt we would have seen a tenth of the mod content for Civ4. It's been absolutely vital.
I hope that there's some collaboration here so that we don't dilute the community between one site that is well organized and of proven value, and another that is bare bones but has the advantage of being the 'official in-game' site. It has been so useful to all of us that everyone who plays or makes mods comes here!
I hope that there's some collaboration here so that we don't dilute the community between one site that is well organized and of proven value, and another that is bare bones but has the advantage of being the 'official in-game' site. It has been so useful to all of us that everyone who plays or makes mods comes here!
Retrospect
Warlord
"Firaxis will maintain a small bit of control over this and will rely on player flags to evaluate objectionable content"
This sends alarm bells ringing in my ears. What exactly constitutes as 'objectionable' content? How much control will they have?
Game changes aside, I for one do not like the sound of this one bit!
Hitler?
I already didn't like the sound of the software protection speculations (drm crap) and this does have the same noise.
Does this mean every mod needs a Firaxis acceptation before it can be played in the main game? (bad idea)
So, I'll follow with great interest the "extra's" which will come along with civ5.
Minor Annoyance
Deity
It that was true then they wouldn't need players to 'flag' content.
VirtualMark
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2006
- Messages
- 54
who is jon shafer? and why isn't there any mention of sid meier? is he having anything to do with civ 5?
not too sure i like the sound of these changes, no espionage or religion. seems like the game is taking a step back by cutting out things. i'll reserve judgement until i play it, just not getting that excited by what i'm reading.
not too sure i like the sound of these changes, no espionage or religion. seems like the game is taking a step back by cutting out things. i'll reserve judgement until i play it, just not getting that excited by what i'm reading.
salaminizer
Colorado Internacional
I suppose that if you want to share your mods in their portal, you'll likely need to comply with the rules (it makes sense), but I don't think they'll try to stop you from using mods that aren't in the portal.
Keroro
Dororo: Ninja Frog
CFC relies on moderators and members (reporting posts) to evaluate objectionable content. You're still here aren't you? What's the difference?
People have modded maked models as advisors in the past - I'd support Firaxis in flagging those particular modifications as inappropriate for younger players. Not a problem by me. If there are mods with gratuitous swearing then I've no problem with it being flagged for adult audiences only, though personally I might find it funny and clever. Everything on the internet has someone controlling it, and my experience is that if the control is too draconian then people will not join and support the site. With some very young players out there Firaxis are right to at least cast an eye across the content they are hosting, as would any website.
The FUNDAMENTAL difference is that CFC is not integral to the game. It is a community site. If CFC started to get extremely onerous in their restrictions (or someone wrote a mod that was objectionable but extremely great) we could go elsewhere and it would have no effect on the game.
Count me in with the group that is concerned about CIV 5 being "dumbed down" and less realistic than it's predecessors. While it may turn out to be a great game and have outstanding gameplay, the loss of realism (as being reported) it requires will be a major negative for me. Changes being discussed such as one unit per tile (on a strategic scale) and the loss of espionage and religion (both of which had major issues in CIV 4, but certainly can't be ignored in history) seem to me to be major steps backwards for the series.
One unit per tile has been discussed to death already so I won't say more about that, but here are the fundamental things I think could have been fixed about the other two that might have saved them:
Spying - a simple answer to all the spies floating around in CIV 4 would have been to assign a real negative effect to diplomatic relations from spies that are caught. A significant adjustment to the spied upon leaders attitude towards the spying nation would have been sufficient to drastically cut down on the amount of spying going on, and would have improved game realism. The effect should have been temporary instead of permanent (actually, all of the diplomacy effects should have been temporary - fixing the diplomacy system is one of the major positive hopes I have for CIV 5).
Religions - These were a great addition to CIV 4, but were hampered by a fundamental decision by the designers to have different religions automatically hate and distrust each other immediately upon creation, and also to have all religions distrust/hate each other equally (or close to equally - if there is a difference, I've never noticed it!). To really bring the point home - under the current system projected into the real world, Israel (for purposes of my point a "Jewish Civilization") would have the same diplomatic modifiers towards Christian civilizations as it does towards Muslim civilizations
While religous persecution and strife certainly has historical context, and there are some deep hatreds between certain members of different faiths, these things are based upon minimal initial distrust, magnified by years of history and sometimes mitigated by time and other events. For example, the Crusades and fights over the Holy Land have contributed to many Muslims distrust of Christians, while events such as 9/11 and terrorism have inflamed many in the West's distrust of Muslims. As an example going the other way, Jewish/Christian relations were sometimes very poor in history, but the two religions are generally friendly right now. The game needed to have some sort of historical context on the interactions each of the different religions, and take that into account when deciding the modifiers on diplomacy.
This improvement in realism would have also addressed everybody's prime gameplay concern about religion - it causes the game to be too predictable and breaks CIVs into blocks. The blocks would only form if there was a reason for them to, and would be variable every game based on the actions of the players or AI.
In my mind, both of these ideas are great examples of what I would see as a positive change for Civilization - improvement in gameplay in these cases would come as result of improving realism, not taking it away.
One unit per tile has been discussed to death already so I won't say more about that, but here are the fundamental things I think could have been fixed about the other two that might have saved them:
Spying - a simple answer to all the spies floating around in CIV 4 would have been to assign a real negative effect to diplomatic relations from spies that are caught. A significant adjustment to the spied upon leaders attitude towards the spying nation would have been sufficient to drastically cut down on the amount of spying going on, and would have improved game realism. The effect should have been temporary instead of permanent (actually, all of the diplomacy effects should have been temporary - fixing the diplomacy system is one of the major positive hopes I have for CIV 5).
Religions - These were a great addition to CIV 4, but were hampered by a fundamental decision by the designers to have different religions automatically hate and distrust each other immediately upon creation, and also to have all religions distrust/hate each other equally (or close to equally - if there is a difference, I've never noticed it!). To really bring the point home - under the current system projected into the real world, Israel (for purposes of my point a "Jewish Civilization") would have the same diplomatic modifiers towards Christian civilizations as it does towards Muslim civilizations
While religous persecution and strife certainly has historical context, and there are some deep hatreds between certain members of different faiths, these things are based upon minimal initial distrust, magnified by years of history and sometimes mitigated by time and other events. For example, the Crusades and fights over the Holy Land have contributed to many Muslims distrust of Christians, while events such as 9/11 and terrorism have inflamed many in the West's distrust of Muslims. As an example going the other way, Jewish/Christian relations were sometimes very poor in history, but the two religions are generally friendly right now. The game needed to have some sort of historical context on the interactions each of the different religions, and take that into account when deciding the modifiers on diplomacy.
This improvement in realism would have also addressed everybody's prime gameplay concern about religion - it causes the game to be too predictable and breaks CIVs into blocks. The blocks would only form if there was a reason for them to, and would be variable every game based on the actions of the players or AI.
In my mind, both of these ideas are great examples of what I would see as a positive change for Civilization - improvement in gameplay in these cases would come as result of improving realism, not taking it away.
Agreed - any attempt to bring this into the game shell itself brings some legal and ethical responsibilities for Firaxis. If they are planning to reasonably rate content and filter out extreme cases such as those you mention, I have no problem at all. If their real goal, however, is to stifle and control creativity, and/or force people to pay them for content that has historically been outside their control, the effort will be doomed to fail unless they somehow try to block modding except through their system. If they would do this (which I don't think they will) the loyal game community will be (rightly) up in arms and refuse to buy the game.
BtS lead designer, before he was a modder here.
He works on CivNetwork.
cephalo
Deity
I'm not so worried about censorship, even CFC has reasonable rules. What I'm worried about is that CFC was created for love of the game, while the Firaxis replacement is created for commercial reasons.
Due to unforseen business changes, it may not make financial sense in 2013 for the company to keep the site going. In the meantime, CFC will have been marginalized during that time and might not be around either. This double wammy could cause a fracture in the space-time continuum that might destroy the Earth, or we might all end up as being our own uncles or something weird.
Due to unforseen business changes, it may not make financial sense in 2013 for the company to keep the site going. In the meantime, CFC will have been marginalized during that time and might not be around either. This double wammy could cause a fracture in the space-time continuum that might destroy the Earth, or we might all end up as being our own uncles or something weird.
Minor Annoyance
Deity
A lot of people seem to forget that there are a lot of people who never come to these sites, thinking that we hear are the typical players when actually we're not the mainstream.
Right now FfH has 386612 downloads. It's the most popular so if we assume everyone who has played any mod has played that one then (ignoring repeat downloads) we could use that as the number of people who have played downloaded mods. Wikipedia says civ4 has sold over 3 million copies. That means only about 10% to 12% of civ4 players have played mods that weren't included with the game. Now if downloading mods was integrated into the game, where you can open an in-game menu click on a mod and it installs itself, then that number will be much higher.
So this means a much bigger audience for mods, but I assume boards think this will still be better suited for collaborative efforts and general experimentation. Where the games in-game service is the bigger marketplace, but this is where a lot of the work would happen.
Keroro
Dororo: Ninja Frog
If usable mods are limited to those approved by Firaxis, then I'll probably not buy the game on principle. I can't see them doing that though. I suppose this is all supposition at the moment anyway, we won't know exactly how it will all be set up until the game's out.
Quite. They know that the fan community is strong and they have no reason to try to stop that. I envisage the Firaxis channel existing as an additional resource for modders - people will develop mods at CFC or Apolyton or wherever they feel comfortable, then upload it to the Firaxis site for wider distribution to the worldwide audience who don't typically join fansites and play mods. As such, it would be a great addition. I hope that is how it will work personally.
CFC is not going to be abandoned en masse - it's a community. People stick around and post here even when they're not playing a whole lot of Civ. I have friends here. I can't imagine not checking in at least once a day. I am worried about the space-time continuum that might destroy the Earth though - it would cut down on my Civ time.
I think Firaxis has enough sense to not screw over the fansites. Hopefully. I figure the in game stuff will just be an alternate place modders can upload their mods. Maybe they will even work with the fan sites for the in game mod browser functions.
Mustakrakish
In 'Node' We Trust
Hear thy master cephalo's word! It is a rare opportunity to grasp some of his wisdom! Minor Annoyance
Deity
I hadn't thought of that before, but having religions with their own diplomatic relations level with each other would be cool. Too bad they've gone the other way.
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