Antmanbrooks
Prince
For me, the reason I can't get into CiV is because I've been spoilt by the wealth of extra features in Rise of Mankind (RoM). Since Saturday morning I have gone back to playing RoM 2.91 with the seafaring mod installed (stops early boats entering the ocean). I can ask only one thing of the people at Firaxis, take a look at this mod and learn from it. This is what the content of CiV should have been like. More, more, more.
So far, these are the things I have noticed that RoM excels at when compared to CiV.
Why Firaxis didn't take the lessons of RoM on board I do not know? The graphics, speed optimization (allegedly?) and hex maps of CiV combined with the balance and detail of RoM would be a wonder to behold and surely the game CiV should hav been. I can't wait for Zappara and Afforess and the rest of the modding community to turn CiV into RoM again, but can't for the life of me understand why Firaxis didn't do the majority of it on release?
So far, these are the things I have noticed that RoM excels at when compared to CiV.
- The RoM tech tree has many more techs and is far more convincing in it's coverage of the advancement through the ages. RoM has 288 techs which means playing on a slower speed is important, which suits my prefered game type anyway. I don't know if this would adversely effect quicker games?
- Resource trading is far more realistic and much greater depth is achieved with more resources to trade. You can trade anything with your neighbours. So that extra Cow, Fish or Sheep can be traded for Rice, Corn or Crabs that you lack, allowing you to build specialist buildings like a Butchery or improving the output of exsisting buildings like the Granary. These food resources also improve the speed of growth across your empire. I also like having to link up my resources to trade them, this adds nothing really other than it feels more realistic and can add a dimension to empire defence, guarding key roads can be important. A good trade infastructure has been of paramount importance to just about every Civilisation in the history of man. Without roads linking everything we would have nowhere near the standard of living we have today.
- Religion is still here and has been expanded on too, with more buildings, units and a few extra Religions to boot. I miss this BIG TIME. My entire game has been shaped by the Hindu armies of Carthage assaulting the coastal cities of my religious bretheren in the Khemetic (Egyption style religion) Malinese Empire. They captured the holy city and then an event pops up compelling me to liberate the Holy City! You have to work hard at keeping foreign religious states happy with you.
- Events are another thing I miss, they add a legitimate random feel to the game and add historical flavour. Plague breaks out in the midle ages, earthquakes and other natural disasters strike your cities and improvments.
- The Wonders, again expanded upon are much more balanced. There are no game breakers in my opinion and they all have a value beyond just another building.
- Stacks of units are great! I'm not buying the killer stack wins all argument. There are countless examples in my current game of RoM and many more in previous games where terrain, promotions, the right units and the right Civics and buildings have led to my stack being annihilated or me defending successfully against a much larger AI stack. Stacks are vulnerable if hit with the right counter. It's simple, more unit usually mean an advantage, whether stacked or not. Taking out stacks just means more micro management and longer, more boring turn times.
- Civics beat the new system in my opinion too, they just needed expanding upon like in RoM. I can create a despotic, intollerant, barter based slave society or a peace loving republic with free religion and proletariat society, they both have importance at certain stages of the game. These choices in CiV seem too dependant on culture rather than technology. It could be argued that the Aztecs had one of the most vibrant and unique cultures in history, yet they were hardly capable of a globe spanning mercantile network because they lacked the key technology. Yet on CiV that culture means they can quite easily neglect tech (to a degree) and still create a mercantile society. My point is, tech should influence civic choices, not culture.
- There are of course many more units, buildings, promotions, techs, resources etc.. just about everything has been expanded upon in RoM and yet it's still balanced. CiV seems to have been simplified and yet it's somehow wildly unbalanced?
- But the big thing for me that sets RoM apart from CiV is the revolutions mod included. This combined with all the extra features means empire management is now all important. You can't just rely on having the biggest Empire controlling more key resources, because if your Civics, army and economy isn't up to handling a large far flung empire it'll go the way of so many great and powerful empires of the past. To dust. It will disintegrate and fracture and new vibrant cultures will spring up in competition with you! This is what civilization is all about!
- Finally City states are handled much better, that barbarian unit that's been pestering your sheep will eventually get bored and set up a city of it's own and in time it will also consider itself a minor civilisation and if left alone will form a full blown civilization of it's own.
Why Firaxis didn't take the lessons of RoM on board I do not know? The graphics, speed optimization (allegedly?) and hex maps of CiV combined with the balance and detail of RoM would be a wonder to behold and surely the game CiV should hav been. I can't wait for Zappara and Afforess and the rest of the modding community to turn CiV into RoM again, but can't for the life of me understand why Firaxis didn't do the majority of it on release?
, even Zappara himself said we will not see RoM ciV till next year. My thought was that all the people here became members of this site since they loved complex civ game, and I thought the same, that's until I found RoM - A new Dawn (which I like better than base RoM). And I finally got the game which I wanted since I started to fully understand the concepts of Civilization.
