All Quiet on the Civ Front

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Yeah I'm going to have to very vehemently disagree here.

Cities Skylines is a game that SimCity can barely dream of ever being. Yes, there are similarities between the newest SimCity and Cities Skylines, but the quality of those two games is magnitudes of difference. The difference between Cities Skylines and the older SimCities (despite those games being better than their sequel) is even bigger, as all SimCity games before the last one use a grid.

As for Age of Wonders, I would kindly like to remind you that the first game was released in 1999, the same year in which HoMM 3 was released; the first (to my knowledge) to be a big hit. And even then, it already showed a depth in various aspects (in particular tactical combat and building unit stacks, but also things like diplomacy) which HoMM to my knowledge has never reached. On top of that, Triumph Studios has only been acquired by Paradox last year.

I'm not arguing quality - Age of Wonders is one of my favorite games and long ago took the mantle from HoMM. More that they aren't someone I'd expect significant genre innovations from.
 
The build id for this update is the same as the build id for the 2kqa_b update on Friday.

Not sure if that means anything, but maybe they have a different set of people besides the usual testers checking out the latest version now?

Or they grabbed the b build to send in for approval from 2K overlords or for regional localization or something like that.
 
While PDX games have a steep learning curve, they are somewhat related and knowing one helps at others. That said, I'm an ok EUIV player that sucks at CK2, so there is no guarantee and every game will need 100+ hours until you see how it really works. Imperator will be closer to EUIV than CK2 is though. A common misconception is that PDX games are hard (because the learning curve is so steep); this is definitely not the case, they are very forgiving once you know how the games work. I think more important than knowing a similar game is that you make sure you don't try to play civ or total war style with a game that isn't civ or total war.

When I tried out Stellaris, I never got around to liking the fact that the game should be played without specific winning goals, more like a simulation... Are Ck2 and EU4 in the same mold ? I'm willing to try one of them, probably more EU4, but I've pretty much defined that I need specific winning goals to really enjoy spending hundred
of hours learning to play a game properly
 
When I tried out Stellaris, I never got around to liking the fact that the game should be played without specific winning goals, more like a simulation... Are Ck2 and EU4 in the same mold ? I'm willing to try one of them, probably more EU4, but I've pretty much defined that I need specific winning goals to really enjoy spending hundred
of hours learning to play a game properly
Yeah, I think they are quite sandbox-y. You set your own goal.
 
Because they care much more about excellent gameplay than fancy graphics?
You say that as though the two are mutually exclusive. :rolleyes: Also, of the two Paradox titles I've played, Stellaris is both pretty and fun and CK2 is neither pretty nor fun. :p

Because you are used to the oversaturated civ VI style?
To be honest I don't like the saturation filter Civ6 uses in golden ages, either, but I feel like there's a whole lot of middle ground between even vanilla Civ6's bright palette and Paradox's/Civ5's "painted with mud" palette. :p
 
When I tried out Stellaris, I never got around to liking the fact that the game should be played without specific winning goals, more like a simulation... Are Ck2 and EU4 in the same mold ? I'm willing to try one of them, probably more EU4, but I've pretty much defined that I need specific winning goals to really enjoy spending hundred
of hours learning to play a game properly
That is my favourite part about Stellaris; for me it's an empire builder, and I have fun doing so. This is also how I play Civ; I build a pretty empire with districts and improvements placed for best efficiency and all it's only when I'm in the Information Era that I start to focus on a victory (because in terms of Tech; there is nothing new in the information era apart from computers; it's all military units...

This is my only downfall with CivBE: The Tech Web was a great idea but because there were 5 Victories; 4 of which were scientific, you could and would bee-line a victory condition and never really build an empire that mattered... (Well; I did always build a pretty empire; but then get so distracted by it that I would then realise that all of the AIs were near their victories.)
 
You say that as though the two are mutually exclusive. :rolleyes: Also, of the two Paradox titles I've played, Stellaris is both pretty and fun and CK2 is neither pretty nor fun. :p

In a way, they are. I know what you mean, they shouldn't be, but in this our "real" world of gaming, they usually are. Look at civ 6. Millions have gone to fancy (fun or silly?) graphics, yet the AI is hopeless, not even able to use the air force (one example).

As for PDX palette, are you sure you looked at the pictures of Imperator showcasing the new Jomini engine? That map, to me, looks fantastic, eons ahead of civ 6, and more realistic... and in that same map, I think I see something else to come... coupled with some elements of what they are doing in Stellaris. I certainly hope that my hunch becomes a reality, as Civilization is clearly in sore need of competition.
 
In a way, they are. I know what you mean, they shouldn't be, but in this our "real" world of gaming, they usually are.
Again, I don't agree at all. Sure, there are plenty of games that are nice to look at but aren't good games, as well as plenty of games that are graphically ugly but fun to play. But there are also plenty of games that are both beautiful to look at and fun to play. Take some of Daedalic's hand-painted point-and-clicks, for instance, like the Deponia trilogy or The Whispered World. Or Amplitude's 4X games (which IMO are better games than any iteration of Civilization).

Look at civ 6. Millions have gone to fancy (fun or silly?) graphics, yet the AI is hopeless, not even able to use the air force (one example).
I guess it depends on what you're looking for in a game. I play non-4X games for the story; I play 4X games to build an empire with the AI staying out of my way as much as possible. If I'm looking for a challenge, I'll play a puzzle game like Portal or The Talos Principle or (more rarely) a survival game like The Long Dark.

For me, Civ6 has flaws, but the AI is pretty near the bottom of my priorities of what needs to be fixed. I'd much rather see the mechanics refined and given better synergy.

more realistic...
"More realistic" isn't objectively better. Civ5 is "more realistic" than Civ6, but it's also an eyesore. I'm rather appreciative that the current trend in game design is away from realism and towards more stylization.
 
The problem with realism is that it becomes just how clearly bad they are, when compared a generation later. The styleizations graphically tend to last.
 
Civ5 is "more realistic" than Civ6, but it's also an eyesore.
I just want to state that I disagree with you on this and I like Civ V graphics better than Civ VI flashy art, especially the leaderscreens. I don't recall any toad-man or jerk with giant red nose in Civ V :p

But maybe a mix of both would be the best solution.
 
I just want to state that I disagree with you on this and I like Civ V graphics better than Civ VI flashy art, especially the leaderscreens. I don't recall any toad-man or jerk with giant red nose in Civ V :p
Civ5 has beautiful leader screens (though IMO in a way that is different rather than better than Civ6's), but the map is egregiously ugly.
 
But maybe a mix of both would be the best solution.
A game with Civ 6 maps, Civ 5 leader screens (but more animated), and Civ 4 gameplay for the win. :cool:
 
Cities Skylines is a game that SimCity can barely dream of ever being. Yes, there are similarities between the newest SimCity and Cities Skylines, but the quality of those two games is magnitudes of difference. The difference between Cities Skylines and the older SimCities (despite those games being better than their sequel) is even bigger, as all SimCity games before the last one use a grid.

I don't like how in Cities:Skylines it feels like you are painting your cities. I played for 3 months after launch and the only challenge I found was managing possible traffic jams. The game gives you goals to reach a certain population and I found that easy to complete.

What I liked about SimCity 2013 was that you had city specialization, where each city was different. The only thing that game did wrong was have small cities, the gameplay was good.
 
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I'm not arguing quality - Age of Wonders is one of my favorite games and long ago took the mantle from HoMM. More that they aren't someone I'd expect significant genre innovations from.

They're not a remake of a series that has the same lifespan though. Otherwise it would be equally valid to say that HoMM is a remake of Age of Wonders.

When I tried out Stellaris, I never got around to liking the fact that the game should be played without specific winning goals, more like a simulation... Are Ck2 and EU4 in the same mold ? I'm willing to try one of them, probably more EU4, but I've pretty much defined that I need specific winning goals to really enjoy spending hundred
of hours learning to play a game properly

CK2 doesn't have an actual win condition. The goal is what you set for yourself, and that can be a multitude of different things ranging from reforming an old empire (currently I'm trying to reform the Roman Empire in my game, for example) to conquering the entire world.

CK2 is neither pretty nor fun. :p

What? Heresy!

DEUS VULT!

I don't like how in Cities:Skylines it feels like you are painting your cities. I played for 3 months after launch and the only challenge I found was managing possible traffic jams. The game gives you goals to reach a certain population and I found that easy to complete.

True; it's a very sandbox-y game, with the main idea being to create a city that's beautiful, rather than overcoming a challenge. In the Mods file there's an option for a hard mode though, I don't know how much harder that makes the game, but it might be worth checking out. (also, the DLCs are worth checking out as well)
 
It will be interesting to see if this is more than just a patch in the works
 
I don't like how in Cities:Skylines it feels like you are painting your cities. I played for 3 months after launch and the only challenge I found was managing possible traffic jams. The game gives you goals to reach a certain population and I found that easy to complete.

What I liked about SimCity 2013 was that you had city specialization, where each city was different. The only thing that game did wrong was have small cities, the gameplay was good.
I played Skylines for quite a bit. It irritated me to no end how the cars would constantanly be doing U-Turns where a simple "no left turn" sign would have solved the issue perfectly. For all I know this was fixed in a patch though. But that one issue caused you to build ridiculous looping roads instead of reasonable realistic networks.

SC2013--just, no. No, I don't want to play online with my friends. I'm playing SC because I'm being antisocial.
 
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