Beyond, Beyond the sword

[Lemon Merchant]

but why does Civ 5 require more resources than GTA4??? That's just ridiculous. I don't have a gaming computer by any means, it's a fairly modest machine, and yet I can still run many beautiful games on it. I've played shooters on it many times, and yet Civ 5 is too much. What is with that

Bad development?

 

[plasmacannon]

I've never really gotten into Doctor Who. If it's on Netflix in Canada (not freaking likely ), perhaps I'll have a look. Who knows, maybe I'll like it better now that I'm older than the last time that I tried to watch it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you've never watched Doctor Who before, the first episode you should watch is Season 3's "Blink" of the new series. It was nominated for awards and is probably the most favorite one amongst anyone who has seen it. If it's not on Netflix Canada, then you can watch it on watchtvseries or another similar site.
http://watchseries.lt/episode/doctor_who_s3_e10.html

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you've never watched Doctor Who before, the first episode you should watch is Season 3's "Blink" of the new series. It was nominated for awards and is probably the most favorite one amongst anyone who has seen it. If it's not on Netflix Canada, then you can watch it on watchtvseries or another similar site.
http://watchseries.lt/episode/doctor_who_s3_e10.html

We're not allowed to watch things from other sites here in Canada. The government only allows us streaming services provided by the Canadian TV networks and Netflix. Everything else (like Hulu, for instance) is blocked unless you fake your IP address, and that can be problematic at best. There's no fines or anything, the content is just blocked.

 

[Drakarska]

We're not allowed to watch things from other sites here in Canada. The government only allows us streaming services provided by the Canadian TV networks and Netflix. Everything else (like Hulu, for instance) is blocked unless you fake your IP address, and that can be problematic at best. There's no fines or anything, the content is just blocked.

Which seems to be a little one sided, as I can pick up Canadian TV series here in Iowa. And I thought US censors were bad

 

[plasmacannon]

Wow! That's horrible!
That sounds like censorship conditions I'd hear about from places like China or Iran.
I'm surprised they'd do that is this day and age where people emigrate and like to watch programs from their home country.
Down here in Florida, we have many Spanish language TV stations or I can go online to watch a soccer game from Germany or Costa Rica.

Too bad I can't block some of the Canadian Artists. I'd start with Justin Bieber and bring back Nickelback. LOL!

 

[noto2]

I live in Toronto and I just torrent whatever I want... screw netflix. Also, if you're worried about legalities...I don't know where you live, but if you live in a city like Toronto, I just go to places with free wifi, like a Starbucks or w/e, and just torrent like mad there. I get 3 mbps at my local sbux. I go, read a book for 30 min and by that time I've downloaded an entire season of whatever TV show I want. No authorities will ever find me because it's Sbux's IP address lol.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wow! That's horrible!
That sounds like censorship conditions I'd hear about from places like China or Iran.
I'm surprised they'd do that is this day and age where people emigrate and like to watch programs from their home country.
Down here in Florida, we have many Spanish language TV stations or I can go online to watch a soccer game from Germany or Costa Rica.

Too bad I can't block some of the Canadian Artists. I'd start with Justin Bieber and bring back Nickelback. LOL!

It actually isn't censorship, it's economic protectionism...something the US would be well served to figure out flat quick.

 

[noto2]

Yeah, see, this is a big part of the problem for the US. China exports things like ipods and TV's, and chairs. You can't 'pirate' a chair. The US exports things like TV shows and music, which can be pirated, which contributes to the US trade deficit.

 

[plasmacannon]

You've both got a point. I think both parties would pounce on the other for pursuing any sort of protectionist agenda. You'd have questions like:
Just who decides what gets blocked and what doesn't?
Would another industry be hurt if we protected another?
Could these change when the opposition party got in power? (The current eaves dropping scandal is a good example)

In the end, I think people will find a way to get what they want. Borders are huge, not impenetrable and people are ingenuitive.

 

[Titan25]

Long time lurker and just joined today cause I was looking for a thread that I couldn't find.... anyway.... Loved CiV2 played it for years, CiV3 just didn't have that addictive one more turn feel that 2 had. So I played CiV2 till the my new computers operating system would support it anymore. Years later I bought CiV4, and this was after 5 was released but I read a lot of not so great reviews of it, and the old addiction came right back.

love the forums, they are great.

 

[vincentz]

Welcome to CFC

love the forums, they are great.

and this one gets you a second round

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No authorities will ever find me because it's Sbux's IP address lol.

They will MAC address you and catch you in the act!

It actually isn't censorship, it's economic protectionism...something the US would be well served to figure out flat quick.

Figure out as in use much less of it to its own detriment?

Yeah, see, this is a big part of the problem for the US. China exports things like ipods and TV's, and chairs. You can't 'pirate' a chair. The US exports things like TV shows and music, which can be pirated, which contributes to the US trade deficit.

Long ago we docked our firms on human rights issues by disallowing them to use cheap labor abroad, insisting that we use more expensive labor here, "keeping jobs here and not "abusing" the workers elsewhere". The end result is a kind of forced protectionism in countries that didn't want it (they wanted the investment to get the infrastructure and grow economically). It made it tough for our firms to compete, but also influenced what we could realistically produce and export. We have been "protecting" jobs and wages, although the end result is less of both.

The US knows nothing of free market capitalism. If there are any posters on this forum that were alive at a time when the US still did something resembling that, there a very few of them. Most of us were born long after that. I could double my age and not be old enough.

You've both got a point. I think both parties would pounce on the other for pursuing any sort of protectionist agenda

???

Both sides have been using them for a long time, and both sides have postured/complained diplomatically. Look into China's banking/monetary control practicies over the past 10-15 years and tell me they haven't been running control on that market .

Think the US is any better? We pay farmers to not grow crops and/or not sell them to keep prices reasonably high (IE easier for farmers to make a living)...an interesting kind of subsidy indeed.

Just who decides what gets blocked and what doesn't?

The answer to this in politics is: Never who you want it to be, and the power is never used in the way it's intended. Incentive structures in governance are some of the trickiest things to manage in human history; indeed no nation has ever found a 100% sustainable model.

Would another industry be hurt if we protected another?

You would be very, very hard pressed to find an instance of protectionism that doesn't hurt another domestic industry, and it of course guarantees you're hurting someone somewhere.

Essentially protectionism boils down to "trying to improve our own position, at the expense of overall wealth in all countries". However, governments aren't necessarily interested in overall wealth in all countries; they're interested in what their people want them to do or more accurately what keeps them in power.

Could these change when the opposition party got in power?

You'd be surprised how little things change between parties, despite the way they present issues up front.

 

[noto2]

Good post, Phil, you're points are good, yes the US distorts its agricultural exports and yes China manipulates its currency.

Free trade has many benefits and I'm not convinced we should become protectionist. It is true that American workers have suffered but hundreds of millions of Chinese have seen their incomes rocket up spectacularly. From a global perspective it's a net benefit.

The problem is that free trade has created winners and losers. Corporations have seen their profits boom, as have some workers in key industries, and as have Chinese workers, but many American workers have suffered. I think it was right to move from protectionism to free trade but it's not fair that the costs of free trade must all be born by American workers, while the fruits of it mainly go to large corporations and their shareholders.

How do you solve that? I'm not sure, but one thing that would help is if China stopped devaluing the Yuan, that just adds insult to injury, and the US definitely has grounds to impose tariffs. It was one thing when some place like Taiwan would devalue its currency to "steal" production from the US - the Taiwanese economy is so small that Americans didn't feel the impact. China really can't be doing that anymore, distorting its currency is having a drastic negative effect on America's economy, America simply can't afford it anymore.

 

[plasmacannon]

The part where I was referring to "both parties would pounce on the other for pursuing any sort of protectionist agenda ", I was thinking about how during one administration they'd create NAFTA, and during another they'd expand it to include Chile and others. Each trying to 1up the other on who was more for Free Trade Agreements.

 

[noto2]

Asking China to play by the rules is not being protectionist. The Chinese government prints yuan and uses them to buy US dollars and bonds. Like I said...many countries have done that in the past and some still do (pegging their currency to the US dollar) but most countries' economies are so small that deliberately devaluing their currency has a negligible impact on the US. China's economy is very big, though, and they devalue their currency to a fairly drastic degree, so the impact is very noticeable. They run about a 280 billion dollar trade surplus with the US annually. 280 billion dollars per year would create a lot of jobs in America.

 

[Drakarska]

Asking China to play by the rules is not being protectionist. The Chinese government prints yuan and uses them to buy US dollars and bonds. Like I said...many countries have done that in the past and some still do (pegging their currency to the US dollar) but most countries' economies are so small that deliberately devaluing their currency has a negligible impact on the US. China's economy is very big, though, and they devalue their currency to a fairly drastic degree, so the impact is very noticeable. They run about a 280 billion dollar trade surplus with the US annually. 280 billion dollars per year would create a lot of jobs in America.

Depending on how much of a cut the House and Senate gets for their own private agenda's not withstanding.

 

[plastiqe]

Hey look at all the Canadians posting in this thread eh. If they want Civ VI to be a success they should just make Canada a civ, but we don't come with the game it's a special DLC code you can only get from rolling up the rim to win.

I always thought the next logical step would be to have armies like in Total War, not stacks of individuals and not one unit per tile. Like you would mass your spears and horses and archers against the other guy and they'd fight it out all at once... with tactical options like your formation or when to retreat or send in the unit kept in reserve. But what do I know.

Funny I went back and looked at some of my old posts from the ideas for Civ 4 time and there I am calling out lazy programmers and developers to Jon Shafer, though who knew at the time lol.

 

[noto2]

Total War is really mostly a tactical battle game, though, so it's not really the same genre as Civ. It's like comparing chess to football. Both are about tactics and maneuvering but... they really have different appeals. I like both games but I don't think Civ should depend on tactical battles as being a main part of the game. I think the amount of work it would take to make good tactical battles would just take so much effort from the development team that it would necessarily detract from the overall macro strategic atmosphere of the game.

There are so many tactical games out there... far far more than turn based 4X games. All the command and conquer, warcraft, starcraft, Total war, star wars games... etc, etc, etc. Civ doesn't need to compete with those titles, we play civ for different reasons.

The two components do not work together. Imagine you were playing such a game and you were winning, you had an empire of 25 cities and your opponent had 5, same tech level. You have an army of 100 tank divisions and he has 40. You do battle and your friend is just a whiz at superfast Korean style APM clicking like he's having a seizure and wins the battle. It would just be stupid. There's a time and place for everything. Korean APM fests are fun to watch in Starcraft. I play RTS games and I like that competition too, but Civ should not come down to that. Winning in Civ should be more like winning in (non speed) chess: you win by carefuly planning and forethought, not fast fingers.

 

[AdamCrock]

Total War is really mostly a tactical battle game, though, so it's not really the same genre as Civ. It's like comparing chess to football. Both are about tactics and maneuvering but... they really have different appeals. I like both games but I don't think Civ should depend on tactical battles as being a main part of the game. I think the amount of work it would take to make good tactical battles would just take so much effort from the development team that it would necessarily detract from the overall macro strategic atmosphere of the game.

There are so many tactical games out there... far far more than turn based 4X games. All the command and conquer, warcraft, starcraft, Total war, star wars games... etc, etc, etc. Civ doesn't need to compete with those titles, we play civ for different reasons.

The two components do not work together. Imagine you were playing such a game and you were winning, you had an empire of 25 cities and your opponent had 5, same tech level. You have an army of 100 tank divisions and he has 40. You do battle and your friend is just a whiz at superfast Korean style APM clicking like he's having a seizure and wins the battle. It would just be stupid. There's a time and place for everything. Korean APM fests are fun to watch in Starcraft. I play RTS games and I like that competition too, but Civ should not come down to that. Winning in Civ should be more like winning in (non speed) chess: you win by carefuly planning and forethought, not fast fingers.

I couldn't agree more ! I don't like RTS for the APM reasons - to think that some korean jackass with puny force can beat Your carefully thought out and partially executed master plan in a jiffy just puts me off The RTS are just like some FPS, the guy with better reflex can take out better tactician any time of the day "A Strategy" in the name only

 

[noto2]

The funny thing is that in shooter games, yes, the 11 year old on a venti frappuccino has the advantage, but this isn't really the case in real life. Paintballing is one of my hobbies. It never ceases to amaze me how 50 year old men with beer bellies who do no exercise whatsoever, but are very patient and smart shooters who take their time to position themselves well and aim, do very well in paintball. Whenever there's a game of the junior NCO's vs the CO's (I'm in the military), the team with the guys who are 40-60 wins against the 19-30 year olds every time. It doesn't matter that we are faster and have better cardio - they just always manage to position themselves better, pin us down, etc. It's kind of funny actually.