"Civ 4 Sucks!" A vain attepmt to address the many complaints.

[warpstorm]

I wish there were game developers who cator to "hardcore" market for strategy games as well as RPG games.

There are. They either go out of business or scale production values (Artists, what are they? Our programmer can double as an artist -- okay that's bit unfair) back to meet the seriously decreased sales There isn't a huge hardcore market, a hardcore game is considered a run-away hit if it hits 50000 copies - this sounds like a lot but it a fast way to bankruptcy if you have more than a few people in your company.

Go to www.matrixgames.com, or www.battlefront.com, or www.shrapnelgames.com to see the dying breed. Buy something while you are there, you might help bring this genre back from extinction.

 

[yoshi]

Always? No. Sorry, not for me. Civ3 games on maps larger than the Large size take too long and consist of way too much busy work for my taste.

Okay, I generalized (as usual). However, most of the posts I have seen concerning map size (in all the forums) advocate bigger, rather than smaller maps.

But yes, I notice the workload when I play the vanilla game on very large maps:

I wouldn't blame tediousness of play on larger maps on the map size but rather on the inefficient macro and micro managment interface/features available in the previous releases.

From what I see, the Civ4 interface will be much more streamlined (in addition to the elimination of tedious features such as tile pollution and corruption).

One could also blame this in part on the design of the Civ3 vanilla game itself (i.e. could potentially be modded to minimize the number of units on the map at one time and the number of cities, etc., essentially simplification in order to place less of a micromanagement strain on the player).

Where (historical) modding is concerned, the bigger the map, the more geographical detail you can get into the scen, which is very good. Not as relevant as the vanilla game but still an important factor considering the efforts that have gone into making Civ4 as moddable as possible.

IMO, better graphics are only accpetable if the game loses none of its functionality (i.e. there should be no price to pay--taking today's software requirements into account). Clearly, Civ4 loses something in the deal. Although I will most likely be purchasing this product, I dislike the idea that performance will lag as a result of something that does little for actual gameplay.

But like I said I dig large maps and if the graphics engine made them alot smaller I will be a little bumed.

My comments really concerned the direction of the map size (i.e. they should be getting bigger, not smaller). Caudill says the maps will only be slightly smaller. I wouldn't worry about being limited to 20,000 squares or anything like that.

 

[oldStatesman]

I wish there were game developers who cator to "hardcore" market for strategy games as well as RPG games.

Do a google search for Harpoon 3 - it is an extremely well done hard core naval war simulation - a group of gamers led by one of the design team aquired the rights for the commercially released but financially (and technically) unsound Harpoon2, fixed a huge amount of bugs to make it playable, and now sell it over the web. It is more a simulation than a game - realism over gameplay, kept alive by the labor of love of dedicated fans. (Harpoon 4 was never released, so this group decided to fix Harpoon2 on their own.) They are developing it for hardcore gamers - in fact, I believe the Australian Navy has purchased a special version to use for training.

 

[RichardMNixon]

My problem with it is that everything just feels too much like call to power. I also don't like the looks of the one-number combat system and the unit promotions. It just feels like they're fundamentally changing too many aspects of the game at once.

 

[Skirmisher]

From what I see, the Civ4 interface will be much more streamlined (in addition to the elimination of tedious features such as tile pollution and corruption)

This made me think what exactly is the gameplay difference between corruption in CIV3 and the new expanded maintenence issue in CIV4? From what I understand the farther away from the central city, the more you will pay for maintaining buildings. So obviously one of the great micromanagement issues will be to lower maintenence as much as possible - or generating enough gold to pay for maintenence, which means moving citizens around the squares to maximise income. placing cities judiciously, and making the right improvements. The maintenence issue is made even more complicated by the fact that different givernments will have different maintenence costs, or give the ability to make specialists. And if there is no corruption, why is there still a "We Love The King Day"?

In short it seems the micromanangement issue has been moved from the production of shields to the production of gold. I could be wrong. I would add that I don't mind micromanagement.

 

[hclass]

Always? No. Sorry, not for me. Civ3 games on maps larger than the Large size take too long and consist of way too much busy work for my taste.

Ha, ha, that is illogical. Even if you will never play a huge map, but you should always want a Civ game which handles huge map very well, because if it can handle huge map, it sure will be able to handle smaller map even better.

 

[Japanrocks12]

"Civ 4 Sucks!" A vain attepmt to address the many complaints

Yes, a vain attepmt. Please stop trying to dissuade us, please.

 

[Commander Bello]

This made me think what exactly is the gameplay difference between corruption in CIV3 and the new expanded maintenence issue in CIV4? From what I understand the farther away from the central city, the more you will pay for maintaining buildings. So obviously one of the great micromanagement issues will be to lower maintenence as much as possible - or generating enough gold to pay for maintenence, which means moving citizens around the squares to maximise income. placing cities judiciously, and making the right improvements. The maintenence issue is made even more complicated by the fact that different givernments will have different maintenence costs, or give the ability to make specialists. And if there is no corruption, why is there still a "We Love The King Day"?

In short it seems the micromanangement issue has been moved from the production of shields to the production of gold. I could be wrong. I would add that I don't mind micromanagement.

With your last paragraph you seem to have hit the nail.
The main concern in Civ3 was about WASTE, although we all called it corruption.
Due to the fact that production could not be traded, a "corrupted" city (actually being a city with 90% waste) was almost useless except for claiming territory and maybe as some kind of military base.
Now, since gold is "trade-able", this might indeed become less an issue. As long as your nation at a whole prospers, you may cope with deficit running cities at the outer edges of your empire.

I do hope that there won't be production malus' for far away cities, again. As long as this wouldn't be the case, the shift from WASTE to some kind of MAINTENANCE (which seems to be just a different term for what seems to become similar to the "real" CORRUPTION) is fine with me.

 

[warpstorm]

Ha, ha, that is illogical. Even if you will never play a huge map, but you should always want a Civ game which handles huge map very well, because if it can handle huge map, it sure will be able to handle smaller map even better.

No. There is a certain term called "good enough". Once your time hits "good enough" more does not improve it. For example, if the game gets 60 frames a second on the size map I like to play, more performance does not help me because I am limited by my monitor speed. It is "good enough". There are other limits than refresh rate, but suffice it so say that more speed at huge maps does not always directly translate to better gameplay experience on smaller maps.

 

[wit>trope]

There are. They either go out of business or scale production values (Artists, what are they? Our programmer can double as an artist -- okay that's bit unfair) back to meet the seriously decreased sales There isn't a huge hardcore market, a hardcore game is considered a run-away hit if it hits 50000 copies - this sounds like a lot but it a fast way to bankruptcy if you have more than a few people in your company.

If publishers would spend money marketing the games, the market would be bigger. But publishers don't want to take risks.

Go to www.matrixgames.com, or www.battlefront.com, or www.shrapnelgames.com to see the dying breed. Buy something while you are there, you might help bring this genre back from extinction.

I knew about shrapnelgames. I am waiting for Dominion III or whatever it's called. Do you happen to know of any that develop RPG games? I already have Sirtech's game and I still play it even though the graphics are not too great. I wanted to get Temple of Elemental Evil but apparently it is very buggy.

If gamers only cared about graphical beauty, they could just watch a movie. It's the gameplay that makes the game. The graphics only help in the immersion and pleasantness. They can make a good game better but they can't make a bad game good. You'd agree no?

I think some of the new things in Civ 4 are great. But the few bad things are really bad. Maybe they will add back Attack and Defense values in one of the expansion packs

 

[hclass]

No. There is a certain term called "good enough".

Well, if you prefer "good enough", let it be the term, but logically it should be applied on huge map. I mean good enough for the biggest size of map Civ4 offers.

Once your time hits "good enough" more does not improve it.

It does, "able to handle bigger map" is an improvement over "only good enough to handle smaller map". Whether or not you enjoy or able to enjoy that improvement is another issue, it does not change the fact that there is an improvement.

suffice it so say that more speed at huge maps does not always directly translate to better gameplay experience on smaller maps.

But more speed at huge map definitely means even more speed at smaller map
Gameplay and game speed are 2 different things, so don't get confuse.

Simply put, given the same kind of gameplay, I prefer the game to be as speedy as possible and you want it be just fast enough. (to handle kind of your own need)

You sound like a Firaxis man trying to look for an early excuse knowing that the game performance is slow if user choose big map... Why don't just change the strategy, I mean, encourage everyone to get better video card or faster CPU...

Btw, before I forget, any exclusive clue?

 

[warpstorm]

But more speed at huge map definitely means even more speed at smaller map

No it doesn't. A game can be limited by many things. In the example I gave previously, there comes a point where any speed ups for the graphics engine do not matter since my monitor can only display 60 frames a second. If I can play at 60 fps on a Large map, I can not get any speed increase at all by playing on a smaller map, they too will be locked at the refresh rate of my monitor.

This is not to be confused with the between turns processing which will speed up because there is no limiter. The 3D engine has nothing to do with this time, though.

 

[oldStatesman]

This is not to be confused with the between turns processing which will speed up because there is no limiter. The 3D engine has nothing to do with this time, though.

Not quite sure I understand you here (i.e. I am reading what you are saying correctly.) Any process that uses cpu time slices will affect the performance of the overall system in some fashion. If this 3D engine does not use any cpu resources, it sounds like a virtual perpetual motion machine...if so ... and it works... you have something very valuable there...

Seriously, please explain...I am curious as to what you mean. Thanks!

 

[Gen]

I think warpstorm meant that CPU processing time is devoted mainly to execute in-game algorhitms and in between turns calculations while graphic cards processing unit does all the work needed for 3D/animations/antialiasing/light/whatever and generally all visual effects, hence main CPU work overhead is minimal.
The same is true for RAM memory on the mainboard and graphics card memory, respectively; first stores mainly program code and data while other holds bitmaps, scenes etc.
Specialization, to put it simply

 

[warpstorm]

Ah, you are correct, oldstatesman, it does take up an amount of time. I was not clear in what I was saying..

I was referring to the fact that the game turn processing (as opposed to the per animation frame processing) is not limited by the frame rate limitations of your monitor.

Having said that, a modern 3D engine can potentially use very little CPU time to render on a modern computer. Of course, the video card is working its butt off but that's its job.

 

[Zurai]

A 2d game would actually use more CPU for processing graphics than a 3d game. If a 3d game is programmed well, almost all of the processing is done by the graphics card - that's the whole point of having a graphics card. There aren't any graphics cards that really handle 2d stuff, though, which means the CPU has to handle where to put everything in addition to all of its other calculations.

 

[yoshi]

was referring to the fact that the game turn processing (as opposed to the per animation frame processing) is not limited by the frame rate limitations of your monitor.

Having said that, a modern 3D engine can potentially use very little CPU time to render on a modern computer. Of course, the video card is working its butt off but that's its job.

But isn't the map/performance ratio determined by both turn processing and frame processing? If a high-end GC will take on most of the work-load, why is 3D the reason for the smaller max size?

 

[oldStatesman]

Ah, you are correct, oldstatesman, it does take up an amount of time. I was not clear in what I was saying..

I was referring to the fact that the game turn processing (as opposed to the per animation frame processing) is not limited by the frame rate limitations of your monitor.

Having said that, a modern 3D engine can potentially use very little CPU time to render on a modern computer. Of course, the video card is working its butt off but that's its job.

Thanks - I thought that is what you really meant, but I wanted to be sure.

I agree 100% on the 3d cpu useage...but it meams having a kick ace video card, or the compromise which the average home system uses due to cost considerations - a card that passes of some of the load, essentially in the form of shared memory space, to handle this processing.

But isn't the map/performance ratio determined by both turn processing and frame processing? If a high-end GC will take on most of the work-load, why is 3D the reason for the smaller max size?

My of the cuff answer is to enable the use of lower power, lower cost cards to make the game avaiable to the most consumers; i.e. they don't want to force the average user to upgrade their hardware by making a game only high end dedicated gaming systems will run. Something had to give...more card or less card processing...

 

[warpstorm]

If a high-end GC will take on most of the work-load, why is 3D the reason for the smaller max size?

The big problem with GCs is Video RAM. You've only got so much and if you fill it up things get very slow indeed. Very, very, slow.

 

[yoshi]

So the smaller maps are due to taking consumers with ower cards (i.e. with less V-RAM) into account?

I'm not clear on how monitor frame-rate affects map size?