Should I buy BTS?
- Thread starter hotstuffjsn
- Start date
Joeexplorer
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2002
- Messages
- 49
Absolutely, positively buy this game. I luv CIV. The most addictive game anywhere and of all time. When others peter out, this keeps on going. I agree with other post in that you gotta change your tacticts and develope new habbits. WHAT FUN!!!!!!!!
This from a 47 year old man. I give SID and CIV 100 thumbs up if I had that many.
This from a 47 year old man. I give SID and CIV 100 thumbs up if I had that many.
hotstuffjsn
Elizabeth
I heard that they removed Leonard Nimoy from the narration, is this true? I would be disapointed to see a talented actor removed out of the game, I thought he made the techs fun!
I personally don't think Sid Meir has much charisma in his voice.
I personally don't think Sid Meir has much charisma in his voice.
mustafathered
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2006
- Messages
- 103
You mean you don't have that many thumbs? Cthulhu can help with that.
I'll probably buy it in a month due to real-life budgetary concerns, but am enjoying the discussions.
Thanks!
Sealot
Warlord
Only the new technologies are by Sid Meier, old ones are still the same.
wicshade
crazy, militant farmer
if you enjoy vanilla civ you should deffinately enjoy bts, but even if you only like the mods you should consider buying bts, from what i understand bts is going to make moding more easy and i think there are going to be many good mods coming out within the year, i play Fall from heavan 2, and it is being upgraded to bts, i would have paid $50 for bts, just because it will allow me to play FFH2.
Molon Labe
I committed the faux pas.
I think I'm in agreement. I've only played three games through to the finish but corporations didn't ruin me in Epic speed.
I disagree with mrt144. It's not a matter of 'using them one way' only, it's a matter of understanding how they work. I use the mining co in my production cities, that makes sense. It wouldn't make sense to send it to every single city in my empire. That doesn't strike me as a one-trick pony but rather as a game mechanic that needs to be understood and played in the way that benefits from it.
It's like . .. .. .. .. .ing that building a 100+ Axeman army cripples your economy. "I should be able to pwn with these guys, but it bankrupts me!"
The one trick pony is spreading HAVING to spread them abroad to not cripple your own economy and the AI mishandling it themselves. When I play deeper on Friday night I will try to use a reasonable and judicious approach to spreading them myself but I am going to use every trick i can to hurt the AI and see if the AI has any recourse or retaliatory action to this. if i can exploit the AI in such a way and the AI has no clue on how to do the same to me i'd say there are some problems.
I am still not convinced that it is simply playing them correctly as "correctly" is still abstract and the alternatives achieve the same result for cheaper or faster and without the risk (as i showed with aelf's example in a particular thread).
corps:
risk - medium to high. overspreading causes foreign civs to clamp down and change civics, underspreading means you run domestic ones at a significant loss. forced UN civic change possible. the loss of courthouses via sabatoge very damaging. time factor for achieving maximal benefit weighed against increasing inflation for costs of achieving maximal benefit.
cost - variable but not low and requires active management. initial outlay costs of gold to spread, GP, execs. opportunity cost of using same outlay resources in other economies. cost increases over time and at a higher amount than alternatives.
reward - variable and situational. output of the culture can be awesome. the hammer production can be matched by simply buying hammers with gold. all benefits based on finite amount of resources and what you are able to trade for. receiving HQ gold for spread corporations.
non human factors:
AI doesn't utilize domestic corps intelligently by spreading them to human player
AI doesn't utilize foreign corps or prevent spread foreign corp spread and even actively spreads it against it's own interest (because as has been shown with other player's experience they will spam themselves with corps. this also goes against the first rule of judicious corp placement which a human player will do.)
Anti corp tactics the AI doesn't use (that the player can and should):
AI doesn't spread foreign corps back on the foreign owner thereby creating a pandora's box situation where providing the means to create and spread execs can be used against you.
AI doesn't sabotage courthouses or other corporate interests.
AI doesn't actively trade resources to maximize their benefits, nor maximize enemy costs.
state property:
risks: low. you arent getting maximal output of resources by ignoring corps. UN vulnerability.
costs: low. varies based on synergistic civic choices and upkeep
benefits: variable. obvious civic ones. immunity to destructive foreign corps. time factor for realizing benefits minimized.
corps are all about maximizing benefits that have a positive correlation to costs. the bet you are making is that your income and output can outpace cost and inflation while also mitigating the costs and risks through hedges and resource consumption and land expansion. (these are like hedge funds)
state property is all about minimizing costs while maximizing benefits that have almost no correlation to one another. the bet you are making is that through passive management your civic costs will grow along with benefits through acquisition of new lands. (these are like index funds)
i think this is a pretty fair assessment having only messed with corps in theory, with other people's screen shots (both pro and con) and now world builder a bit.
I am still not convinced that it is simply playing them correctly as "correctly" is still abstract and the alternatives achieve the same result for cheaper or faster and without the risk (as i showed with aelf's example in a particular thread).
corps:
risk - medium to high. overspreading causes foreign civs to clamp down and change civics, underspreading means you run domestic ones at a significant loss. forced UN civic change possible. the loss of courthouses via sabatoge very damaging. time factor for achieving maximal benefit weighed against increasing inflation for costs of achieving maximal benefit.
cost - variable but not low and requires active management. initial outlay costs of gold to spread, GP, execs. opportunity cost of using same outlay resources in other economies. cost increases over time and at a higher amount than alternatives.
reward - variable and situational. output of the culture can be awesome. the hammer production can be matched by simply buying hammers with gold. all benefits based on finite amount of resources and what you are able to trade for. receiving HQ gold for spread corporations.
non human factors:
AI doesn't utilize domestic corps intelligently by spreading them to human player
AI doesn't utilize foreign corps or prevent spread foreign corp spread and even actively spreads it against it's own interest (because as has been shown with other player's experience they will spam themselves with corps. this also goes against the first rule of judicious corp placement which a human player will do.)
Anti corp tactics the AI doesn't use (that the player can and should):
AI doesn't spread foreign corps back on the foreign owner thereby creating a pandora's box situation where providing the means to create and spread execs can be used against you.
AI doesn't sabotage courthouses or other corporate interests.
AI doesn't actively trade resources to maximize their benefits, nor maximize enemy costs.
state property:
risks: low. you arent getting maximal output of resources by ignoring corps. UN vulnerability.
costs: low. varies based on synergistic civic choices and upkeep
benefits: variable. obvious civic ones. immunity to destructive foreign corps. time factor for realizing benefits minimized.
corps are all about maximizing benefits that have a positive correlation to costs. the bet you are making is that your income and output can outpace cost and inflation while also mitigating the costs and risks through hedges and resource consumption and land expansion. (these are like hedge funds)
state property is all about minimizing costs while maximizing benefits that have almost no correlation to one another. the bet you are making is that through passive management your civic costs will grow along with benefits through acquisition of new lands. (these are like index funds)
i think this is a pretty fair assessment having only messed with corps in theory, with other people's screen shots (both pro and con) and now world builder a bit.
Molon Labe
I committed the faux pas.
You don't have to spread a corporation abroad to save your economy. I had Mining Co in three cities, generating me extra hammers at a cost of a bit of gold. The trade-off was well worth it and didn't cripple my economy.
If I'd spread it to every city then it would probably be a different story. That's why I didn't spread it to every city.
and i always ask this question...why wasnt the AI spreading their corps to your cities? were you running merc?
This is a long post.
To the OP, do buy the game, if not now then sometime in a few weeks or a couple of months. Once these issues are ironed out the game will be quite fun. Actually it already is fun but there are definitely issues at the moment which need addressing.
Show me how to use them then. At the same time show me that the AI knows how to use them in the same way.
As you said, since you haven't gotten to the late game yet how would you know? The problem is not that corps need to be used spread carefully or judiciously as many say, but that corps are not even worth founding for the small benefit they'd give if one only spreads them to a few domestic cities. Spreading them to AI is just exploiting the AI.
Many of the players engaging in the debate are far more experienced than you or I. They do know how to use the corps "properly" but this is what they don't like about them. Using them is against how they were designed by Firaxis and it is exploitative of the AI. See my comment to Joe Harker.
No that analogy is useless. Again, you say it's a matter of understanding how they work. It's the people who DO understand how they work who are complaining. In general it is the people who don't understand who are happy with them as is.
So you only had the corp in three cities. Honestly, I hardly see how using up a great engineer and paying for that maintenance each turn makes that corp worth it, for a few hammers each turn in 3 cities. Do you really think this was how corps were intended to work? So you're essentially using the rest of your empire to support the costs of these three cities, which presumably already have good production, so they can get a few more hammers each. I would be ineterested to see a savegame showing how much benefit this gives you, especially if you compare it with using State Property instead.
To the OP, do buy the game, if not now then sometime in a few weeks or a couple of months. Once these issues are ironed out the game will be quite fun. Actually it already is fun but there are definitely issues at the moment which need addressing.
Show me how to use them then. At the same time show me that the AI knows how to use them in the same way.
As you said, since you haven't gotten to the late game yet how would you know? The problem is not that corps need to be used spread carefully or judiciously as many say, but that corps are not even worth founding for the small benefit they'd give if one only spreads them to a few domestic cities. Spreading them to AI is just exploiting the AI.
Many of the players engaging in the debate are far more experienced than you or I. They do know how to use the corps "properly" but this is what they don't like about them. Using them is against how they were designed by Firaxis and it is exploitative of the AI. See my comment to Joe Harker.
No that analogy is useless. Again, you say it's a matter of understanding how they work. It's the people who DO understand how they work who are complaining. In general it is the people who don't understand who are happy with them as is.
So you only had the corp in three cities. Honestly, I hardly see how using up a great engineer and paying for that maintenance each turn makes that corp worth it, for a few hammers each turn in 3 cities. Do you really think this was how corps were intended to work? So you're essentially using the rest of your empire to support the costs of these three cities, which presumably already have good production, so they can get a few more hammers each. I would be ineterested to see a savegame showing how much benefit this gives you, especially if you compare it with using State Property instead.
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
Just put them in cities you want them to be in, for example, don't put standard ethanol in a city that won't need oil to build units. Same with the alumiuim corps, nothing particulary dirty about it, whether the AI knows how to use them is another matter.
I don't like corps that much (it's just my personally dislike for them).
So i only use them if i lack something (such as oil). Then i only spread it to my miltary city because that needs oil for MA!
You raise a good point, but rarely do I completely lack oil domestically or through potential trade. I just don't think the costs justify the benefit, especially the great person.
Anyway, you're on a different wavelength.
hotstuffjsn
Elizabeth
Well I have decided to buy it and for what it's worth, i'll give the coporations feature a try myself and decide whether it's more useful over state property. In any case, it should be more fun just having more things to do in the game to prevent bordem 
So is the concensus to spread the coporations to the AI, or build them all domestically? Nobody seems to agree one way or the other...
So is the concensus to spread the coporations to the AI, or build them all domestically? Nobody seems to agree one way or the other...
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
It was on Rhyes and fall of civilzation as the English and i couldn't be bothered to conquer aluminium so i just founded the corp in Manchester (my production city) and that was it. But yes, i often don't find myself in a situation where i lack oil.
Plus I love the State Property Civic so much (especially with caste system, damn emicaption for making my citizens angry!) that i don't use corps that much and i do agree that they are extremely strong, especially to new players (most of us then!)
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