PolyCast Episode 164: "Not Completely Ridiculous"

[img=right]http://civcomm.civfanatics.com/polycast/images/polycast_logo.jpg[/img] Just a little bit. The one-hundred-and-sixty-fourth episode of PolyCast, "Not Completely Ridiculous", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with first-time guest co-host "SilentKnight13"; with a runtime of 59m59s, it launches the show's seventh season. The summary of topics is as follows:

- 00m57s | Open Mic
Responding to feedback on both the 2012 Christmas Special and Episode 163 of the show.
- 13m34s | Research Lab
Contemplating replacing the Worker system in the Civilization series, limiting the unit stack in context of CivIV (26m48s) and presenting an argument for a Colonist unit for future titles (36m43s).
- 46m26s | Miscellaneous
Consolidating the show's 2012 traffic summary and taking in the surprises, and not-so-surprises, of the show's feedback survey from last season.

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Togetherness, poignant pause and initiative for inclusion.

Recording live before a listening audience every other Saturday, PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production in an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on game strategy; listeners are encouraged to follow the show on Twitter, and check out the YouTube channel for caption capability. Sibling show RevCast focuses on Civilization: Revolution, ModCast on Civ modding, SCivCast on Civ social gaming and TurnCast on Civ multiplay.

I was hoping they'd discuss a public works system (like Call to Power) as an alternative to needing to micromange units. In a Public Works system, PW is accumulated (perhaps from production and/or gold) and spent to poof! improvements into existence over the a couple of turns.

A player is still must decide what to develop in a city (units/building/wonders/gold/science/PW).

One thing that the podcast articulate well was the fallacy of expecting an automated worker to know better than a human player which improvement to build where.

With PW empires grow based on human decisions without the micromanagement.

Perhaps we need pictures of girls playing Civ to prove they actually exists. (Without their eyes rolling)

Hey Dan, I was thinking it would be cool if you guys could do video podcasts. That might not be possible with the hosts in different cities, but maybe you could put the title of show segments in the video as they occur in the audio. Also, any time you quote a forum thread or you've written down some statistics, you can show those in the video. Anyways, thanks again for the podcasts.

jpaolini said:

I was hoping they'd discuss a public works system (like Call to Power) as an alternative to needing to micromange units. In a Public Works system, PW is accumulated (perhaps from production and/or gold) and spent to poof! improvements into existence over the a couple of turns.

A player is still must decide what to develop in a city (units/building/wonders/gold/science/PW).

One thing that the podcast articulate well was the fallacy of expecting an automated worker to know better than a human player which improvement to build where.

With PW empires grow based on human decisions without the micromanagement.

Click to expand...

I had in my notes to mention a post from the thread in question discussed noting Call to Power's Public Works system, but ultimately in focusing more on trying to work within the 'base' suggestion it didn't extend to that.

MacAttack said:

Perhaps we need pictures of girls playing Civ to prove they actually exists. (Without their eyes rolling)

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Thander said:

Hey Dan, I was thinking it would be cool if you guys could do video podcasts. That might not be possible with the hosts in different cities, but maybe you could put the title of show segments in the video as they occur in the audio. Also, any time you quote a forum thread or you've written down some statistics, you can show those in the video.

Click to expand...

Such elements have been considered before by myself and fellow regular panelists, most recently last fall. Given the the added post-production requirements on my part and lack of any expressed or even perceived interest in them from our audience, they were set aside for consideration. What did happen last year video-wise was being able to view episodes streaming for the purposes of automatic (albeit flawed) captions. It also serves as a backup should the show's website go offline, as had much been the case over the past four weeks.

Anyways, thanks again for the podcasts.

Click to expand...

DanQ said:

Such elements have been considered before by myself and fellow regular panelists, most recently last fall. Given the the added post-production requirements on my part and lack of any expressed or even perceived interest in them from our audience, they were set aside for consideration.

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Would this require a polycast news desk and a dress code?

colonelmustard said:

Would this require a polycast news desk and a dress code?

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Budget? Clothing? We only have one of those, Joel.

njoyable podcast guys! My thoughts:

Worker replacement:

This is an awful idea. One of the major things that sets Civ aside from other strategy games are the choices you have to make with workers and improving tiles. This is key to the deep strategy of the game. The real issue here is the lack of tutorials available to micro-managing cities. Micro-ing cities is so important and 90% of players don't know how to do this effectively. A better tutorial on this would help a lot of players to improve how they play the game. Connecting key resources has already been made easier from Civ 4 with the removal of having to road the resources to the city. I'd personally like to see that brought back in. I welcome the cost of roads in gold from Civ 4 but this could be tweaked for Civ 6.

Stacks and limited stacks:

The problem here is that you just bring back stacks and you make as many stacks as possible so we go backwards in terms of the strategy of war. Removal of stacks from Civ 4 was a major improvement in the war mechanics when fighting on hexes as opposed to squares. The real issue is the balance of range units / melee units. Up until the industrial/modern ages, range units reign supreme. Remove fortification for range units on hills and we would have far more balance. Also there is room to bring back the 'axeman' unit with 'copper' as the key resource.

GaelicWarrior said:

[E]njoyable podcast guys!

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Thank you for your additional comments -- I've noted to have them included for discussion on Episode 166.