2K Greg's recent posts on the 2K forums

[The_J]

There's a reasonable amount of recordings in the folder for each leader, and some of them I haven't noticed in the game, so I'm wondering if they've simply made the mistake of not utilising all of the available audio?

-> Music is sure bugged too >.<

 

[Buccaneer]

THIS explains EVERYTHING. I am serious. You just need to read Soren's epilogue of civ4's design vision (at the end of civ4 manual), and compare it to Shafer's vision. I am serious, not whining or anything.

You can pretty much understand what happened after comparing both visions. The first is a vision of grandeur, of a boy dreaming of building the ultimate empire building game... the latter is the vision of a boy building a wargame with some cities in between that serve as tank obstacles (if you reach that era with AI's left, that is).

The difference is immense, and is reflected in the game design.

That, and the fact that Soren graduated from Stanford... the other guy, well, as far as I know, is one of the top 10 of UoL (University of Life).

'Nough said.

I have said the same thing before, even pre-release. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Soren and have eagerly had read all of his writing (that I could find). I love the way he thinks about strategy games in general. Jon, on the other hand, was a Civ3 modder without that many years of experience. I think he did a commendable job given the challenges but there many things that were not thought through very well. That, imo, comes from inexperience.

 

[Buccaneer]

Pretty well dead on. There is a thread on 2K Games that talks about it. It toes the line a bit because if you have a thread critical about the game, it tends to get deleted by the mods.

Anyway, this thread talks about how Civs I through IV were designed with the god game principle in mind. Sort of like a god game sandbox. ciV is designed with a board game design. The series has been altered significantly and in my opinion, not for the better. That is why ciV has been so polarizing.

Here is the thread:

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1196145

A short snippet from it:



ciV is a war game at heart. That's what JS loves and tried to bring to us all. The problem is, the AI is so crappy it utterly fails at that.

Ok, now I have read further and I can't imagine a better analogy than the comparison between god games and board games. That is so obvious but it was brilliantly articulated. I knew there was something different but I never could grasp it and this did it for me.

 

[jjkrause84]

Can someone please post Soren's writing at the end of the Civ4 manual? I don't think I have mine any more...

 

[Venereus]

It's not really nitpicking when you're looking at the big picture. Sure I can turn the leader screens into a gray void, but that won't make me forget that this useless eye candy got the resources and development time the gameplay clearly didn't. That's my problem with them.

 

[hunhau]

Can someone please post Soren's writing at the end of the Civ4 manual? I don't think I have mine any more...

I think this should work for you, even if you don't own CIV on Steam...

http://storefront.steampowered.com/Manuals/3900/manual.pdf?l=english

You can read it near the end of the pdf.

 

[Venereus]

I think this should work for you, even if you don't own CIV on Steam...

http://storefront.steampowered.com/Manuals/3900/manual.pdf?l=english

You can read it near the end of the pdf.

Thank you. Man, this is a good read. The more I read, the more I think "why the duck did they ignore all these learned lessons from previous Civs"?

Simple example. Talking about how to fight ICS:

"Instead of tying maintenance to buildings - wich actually penalized more developed cities as opposed to the smaller, underdeveloped cities of a classic ICS strategy - we made maintenance a flat cost per city that went up based on empire size."

Streamlining my ass.

 

[Bad Brett]

THIS explains EVERYTHING. I am serious. You just need to read Soren's epilogue of civ4's design vision (at the end of civ4 manual), and compare it to Shafer's vision. I am serious, not whining or anything.

Where can I read Shafer's vision?

Edit:

Actually it made me rather sad to read Johnson's vision... He obviously put so much thought into the game, that now has gone to waste. For example:

The most important reason to be proactive in the spread of religion
is diplomacy.A problem that diplomacy suffered from in previous
Civ games was a lack of motive &#8211; it often felt quite arbitrary that
one civilization might like you while another hated you. Religion
provides a useful back-story to give diplomatic dealings more logic.
Choosing a different state religion than your neighbor may lead to
animosity and possibly war. However, some well-placed missionaries
in their largest cities could sway their people to your own religion,
winning a long-term ally.

So true. It gave the player options. There were several ways to defend yourself. You could build a lot of military units, you could build wonders (Great Wall, Citizen Idka), you coul bribe the AI, you could build the AP (in BTS) which had the power to end almost any war and return cities to their rightful owner and you could spread your religion. In Civ V, war is inevitable. And you know it, so you there's no reason to even bother being friends with the AI.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Agreed except for one thing. Civ4 had a much better sound when a civ went to war.

I can agree with that. The war horns of civ4 were awesome to hear. Perhaps those of us feeling nostalgic will find a way to mod them in to replace whatever the sound is now? By the way, some of the sounds in civ5 remind me of the ones used in combat from Final Frontier (the mod for BtS), which happens to be Shafer's creation too. Maybe it's because of that that I can't help shake the sci-fi vibe they give me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

"Instead of tying maintenance to buildings - wich actually penalized more developed cities as opposed to the smaller, underdeveloped cities of a classic ICS strategy - we made maintenance a flat cost per city that went up based on empire size."

Streamlining my ass.

Civ V has much better ways of limiting empire size - happiness, social policies cost and great persons cost. That's more than enough to add money maintenance.

What building maintenance does in Civ V is city specialization. And I think it does it well.

 

[charon2112]

Civ V has much better ways of limiting empire size - happiness

I totally agree with this, this is really the first Civ to solve this problem, and I like the solution.

 

[lschnarch]

Civ V has much better ways of limiting empire size - happiness, social policies cost and great persons cost. That's more than enough to add money maintenance.

What building maintenance does in Civ V is city specialization. And I think it does it well.

I totally agree with this, this is really the first Civ to solve this problem, and I like the solution.

I have to disagree with the both of you.

Ok, Civ4 was far from being perfect either. Yet, in Civ V the developers very obviously tried to punish the player for not following their ideas.

Above of the whole game there is a big neon sign floating: "You shall stay small! You shall stay small! Or else..."

I can understand and respect anybody who likes the smaller maps, who wants only to be bothered with say 5 cities and not more.

Yet, the experience from Civ4 already told us that there is at least a significant minority of players enjoying to play big, to create real empires.
These players are playing Civ V, too. Yet, what are they forced to do? They aren't allowed to create empires, but are forced to raze cities, to have isolated cities somewhere in the backwoods.
On larger maps, your socalled "empire" just looks weird. You're having a city here and there, next to luxuries and much unoccupied space in between.

And that is one of my main concerns with V: the player is not allowed but punished for wanting to play differently from the designer's preferred ways.

 

[Thormodr]

Where can I read Shafer's vision?

Edit:

Actually it made me rather sad to read Johnson's vision... He obviously put so much thought into the game, that now has gone to waste. For example:



So true. It gave the player options. There were several ways to defend yourself. You could build a lot of military units, you could build wonders (Great Wall, Citizen Idka), you coul bribe the AI, you could build the AP (in BTS) which had the power to end almost any war and return cities to their rightful owner and you could spread your religion. In Civ V, war is inevitable. And you know it, so you there's no reason to even bother being friends with the AI.

Nice observations.

Options are key I think. ciV limits your options to a great extent. Restricting the player isn't fun. It's frankly boring to get funneled into one strategy or another with little chance of any meaningful change.

That's why religion was so fun in cIV. It was another tool in your toolbox. You didn't have to use that tool if you didn't want to but it was there if you really needed it.

You could use it to make alliances, make money, as a victory condition or prevent wars. The versatility was excellent.

I miss Soren Johnson.

 

[Venereus]

Civ V has much better ways of limiting empire size - happiness, social policies cost and great persons cost. That's more than enough to add money maintenance.

What building maintenance does in Civ V is city specialization. And I think it does it well.

Except ICS is now on steroids thanks to "ignore happiness".

 

[Oneluv]

I totally agree with this, this is really the first Civ to solve this problem, and I like the solution.

I don't think this problem has been solved at all. I really enjoy playing on large maps with sprawling empires. Taking over cities and then having to burn them to the ground is just a bummer. Except Capitals, of course, as they don't burn. Capitals you just get saddled with.

I miss the flexibility of being able to try different styles. CiV just feels two dimensional and overly rigid, like a board game.

 

[Thormodr]

I don't think this problem has been solved at all. I really enjoy playing on large maps with sprawling empires. Taking over cities and then having to burn them to the ground is just a bummer. Except Capitals, of course, as they don't burn. Capitals you just get saddled with.

I miss the flexibility of being able to try different styles. CiV just feels two dimensional and overly rigid, like a board game.

Indeed. I found a poster on 2K forums who made the same comparison. It's now in this thread about ciV seeming like a board game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=389538

 

[Markstar]

I have to disagree with the both of you.

Ok, Civ4 was far from being perfect either. Yet, in Civ V the developers very obviously tried to punish the player for not following their ideas.

Above of the whole game there is a big neon sign floating: "You shall stay small! You shall stay small! Or else..."

...

/signed.

I think it's okay to make it difficult to have a large empire and I totally think that you should be also able to win with just a few or even one city, but Civ5 punishes you on so many levels that it's just not feasible and fun to expand, which many people (me included) really love.

 

[charon2112]

I don't think this problem has been solved at all. I really enjoy playing on large maps with sprawling empires. Taking over cities and then having to burn them to the ground is just a bummer. Except Capitals, of course, as they don't burn. Capitals you just get saddled with.

I miss the flexibility of being able to try different styles. CiV just feels two dimensional and overly rigid, like a board game.

It's totally flexible, you can have as huge an empire as you want, you'll have huge gold and production, but you better be prepared to handle the unhappiness. Or stay small and concentrate your culture, but at the expense of cash and hammers. Or anything in between. You can do anything you want.

It's just as flexible as Civ IV, but it's different. It's a change.

 

[dexters]

Where can I read Shafer's vision?

Edit:

Actually it made me rather sad to read Johnson's vision... He obviously put so much thought into the game, that now has gone to waste. For example:



So true. It gave the player options. There were several ways to defend yourself. You could build a lot of military units, you could build wonders (Great Wall, Citizen Idka), you coul bribe the AI, you could build the AP (in BTS) which had the power to end almost any war and return cities to their rightful owner and you could spread your religion. In Civ V, war is inevitable. And you know it, so you there's no reason to even bother being friends with the AI.

That sounded good in 2004/2005 when Soren wrote it but religion became a crutch in successive patches. Religion became even more central in Warlords and BTS as Soren's original 'bloc system' idea was dropped and AIs shifted towards more neutral attitudes toward everyone with religion playing a central and big attitude modifier. To the point where a lot of people could safely avoid getting attacked by switching to a safe religion.

There is no need to ascribe superficial motive to AI behavior. Narrative players like myself had no problem ascribing motive to AI behavior in Civ3, and that AI was cut throat

The only reason religion, kinda, sorta became the defacto reason for providing Civilizations a 'motive' to go to war, was that initially, diplomacy was designed as being 'bloc' based and Soren wanted, badly, to create an AI system whereby the world would sort itself out into two or more factions aligned against each other.

What ended up happening was players would start a game, discover they rolled a poor dice and was neighbours with a Civ who hated them and refused to trade w/ them for no particular reason. This then prevent any trades, include tech trades, and players simply fell behind for no reason. It created an inequity of opportunities (some Civs could trade, and some couldn't) which wasn't present in previous Civ games, and was completely removed from Civ:Warlords and BTS when it became clear the block system was a failure in practice. Religion was then overpowered to compensate for this and also to sort of revive the bloc system, as a religious war, whereby one patch of land under one religion would collectively war with another.

It was an idea that wasn't fleshed out. And as much as I respect Soren, religion/block system were two ideas that should have been cut.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Above of the whole game there is a big neon sign floating: "You shall stay small! You shall stay small! Or else..."

Wrong. I managed to build quite large empire on emperor. But that's not simple task - you should manage happiness as hell. And I found that really cool.

Moreover I could mirror that - in previous Civ there was a big sign "Expand!", since you can't win by being small.