Akka
Moody old mage.
I live for the day this stupid pseudo-argument is laid to rest.
"I FOUND ONE POINT THAT ISN'T REALISTIC, SO OBVIOUSLY NOTHING IN THE WHOLE GAME HAS TO MAKE SENSE !!!!"
The very concept of bad faith and absurdity in reasoning...
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Civ4 or Civ5?
- Thread starter Ronan
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"I FOUND ONE POINT THAT ISN'T REALISTIC, SO OBVIOUSLY NOTHING IN THE WHOLE GAME HAS TO MAKE SENSE !!!!"
The very concept of bad faith and absurdity in reasoning...
Agreed. One or two leaders reinforced the history focus, and I’d like that focus expanded as much as possible. On the other hand, many think Civ V is dumbed down. Really, for better or for worse, the gameplay is just simplified, and the preoccupation with realism is less. The civilopedia is what’s been dumbed down. I mean: “Sheep: Sheep are extremely tasty creatures...” Geesh.
You know what, I actually agrees with you. The 1upt is the only feature in Civ5 that is controversial. Anything that's controversial is good. But I don't think I can say the same for the rest of Civ5 feature. Which kind of make the game a 1-trick pony.
Well, I firmly have that in mind when I play Civ5. And I didn't really expect it to behave like Civ4, I expected it to be better. Failing which, I just play it like I would any decent TBS game, like, idk, Age of wonder.
I treat civ series as an empire management game. By strategy I presume you mean TBS, because if we are talking about strategy game in general Civ is up against the RTS boys and in terms of strategic challenge, there's no match. But yes, in the TBS realm, Civ series is the only surviving series, which makes it the best by default.
No, but if they take risk and fail, and we still cheer them on, is that doing them any good? Shouldn't they relooked at the failing and rechart their course?
I actually like the patches they rolled out and the message behind, at least I get the sense that some people in the studio still cares about their product and is trying to improve it, that's why I still play with it.
Actually, I would go so far as saying, judging by its own merit, Civ5 is a decent game. Even a good game. But it didn't lived up to the expectation of the Civ franchise. That has always been my position. (That, and they released the product prematurely, but that's a thing of the past)
Are you insinuating that I don't play enough late game CivV combat to hold this discussion with you? Pray tell, which part of my reasoning is inconsistent with your late game experience?
By themselves they aren't game breakers, but if you can stack them without limit, they can break a game. Theoratically, if you can stack enough of them, no land unit can get close enough to your city to take it. Although in my case, enough is usually about 4~5 aircraft.
Erm... Are you sure artillery can bombard that 1-tile island city 6 tiles away from the mainland? Or that the artillery can relocate to another continent in 1 turn? Or that the artillery can provide a 6 tile sight radius regardless of terrain? Gee... seem like stacking is the only virtue of aircraft...
Anyway, since 1upt aircraft is just fine, so back to the question... Why break the rule arbitarily for aircraft?
At some point, you have to admit, it's just common sense at work. There's no gameplay imperative to do it.
zuraffo:
That bombers and aircraft are gamebreaking.
Aircraft sweeps
Antiaircraft units
Nuclear weapons
It makes the game more interesting. Aircraft's inherent weaknesses makes it safer to break the 1UPT rule with them without introducing something that breaks the combat game in half.
Battlecruisers can bombard island cities easily and better. Aircraft cannot locate to another continent in one turn all the time (an oversight? Did you not know this?). They have range limitations that frequently require Bombers and especially Fighters to have Carrier waypoints. Occasionally, it can take as many as three turns for aircraft to be strategically situated - this is not that much more advantageous if your have Commerce and English embarkation benefits.
Lastly, sight radius around a city is fantastic, but it's not something that can't be replicated by normal units, or that can't be placed as an ability on an otherwise normal unit.
In short, every advantage aircraft has isn't unique, except for stacking.
That bombers and aircraft are gamebreaking.
Aircraft sweeps
Antiaircraft units
Nuclear weapons
It makes the game more interesting. Aircraft's inherent weaknesses makes it safer to break the 1UPT rule with them without introducing something that breaks the combat game in half.
Battlecruisers can bombard island cities easily and better. Aircraft cannot locate to another continent in one turn all the time (an oversight? Did you not know this?). They have range limitations that frequently require Bombers and especially Fighters to have Carrier waypoints. Occasionally, it can take as many as three turns for aircraft to be strategically situated - this is not that much more advantageous if your have Commerce and English embarkation benefits.
Lastly, sight radius around a city is fantastic, but it's not something that can't be replicated by normal units, or that can't be placed as an ability on an otherwise normal unit.
In short, every advantage aircraft has isn't unique, except for stacking.
I remembered going up to 4, but beyond that, I can't confirmed.
chazzycat
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2010
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- 2,918
I can understand the strategic value of aircraft. However, you didn't address the question of why you can stack aircraft in a city but not other units. That makes zero sense and arbitrarily breaks the 1UPT rule for no good reason.
Great people stacking could easily be modified so you don't have problems with Great Generals. Stacking workers should be fine. Just don't have them be able to have more than one working in a single tile. Instead they stubbornly stick to the crappy mechanic of 1UPT yet still strangely violate with aircraft for some reason.
After a while, the suspension of disbelief just becomes too much with Civilization 5. I think it was teleporting resources that was the worst offender though.
I disagree air unit stacking is arbitrary. Ground units need space on the ground to maneuver. Air units fly through the air....where there is plenty of space. They only require land to land & take off, which is quite minimal in the grand scheme of things. This does not break the immersion for me, actually I think it works quite well.
I do actually agree with you on the non-combat units to some extent. To not be able to have a worker and a great general in the same tile is a little silly.
I didn't say bombers and aircraft are gamebreaking. I said the exception to be able to stack them (indefinitely) is game breaking.
Fighter sweeps can't take city for you. Any land units that try to get close, even the antiair units, will be killed before they are within striking range with enough bombers. Nuclear weapon, well, that's another game breaker because it has no counter, except strike first. But the game is usually decided before it comes to nuclear exchange.
I rearranged your post so that I can replay in a logical fashion.
It is true that sea units can do the bombardment better for island tiles, but I thought we were talking about aircraft being too much like artillery. Shifting goalpost? Not conducive for a healthy discussion.
I am aware that air units have a relocation range of 2x their operational range, but that's usually long enough to cross to another continent on a standard map. If far enough it can take two turns for my aircraft to reach front line on another continent, but that's still superior to any land artillery where embarkation both to and from water will eat up a turn. that's a minimum 3 turns to reach frontline, 1 of which the unit is vulnerable to naval units, and often more than that.
sight unobstructed by obstacle is only available to fighters (and gunships?), and sight range of 6 cannot be replicated with land units.
The truth is, even though it is theoratically game breaking, we as players seldom need to exploit aircraft stacking because often there is no need to. But that's not a good reason to excuse it.
I will wager that if we keep 1upt for aircraft the game will still be as "interesting" and aircraft will still be useful without being overpowered. So again, no real reason to break the rules for aircraft. Although it "make sense".
zuraffo:
If the units that stack aren't gamebreaking, then what basis do you have for saying that their inclusion in the game in those units are gamebreaking?
Fighter sweeps are for dealing with any interceptors you have. Then I'll bomb the city with Bombers until it doesn't have any more health, and attack it from 8 tiles away using a Tank you can't bomb, because you can't see it.
I've allowed AI to have 5 or more aircraft in a city in order to play the air combat game and it hasn't troubled me overmuch to take those cities. Your own cities will be invincible, of course, but that's got to do with player facility more than the fact that you're stacking bombers.
Your point is that a city with enough aircraft is invincible. It's not. That's the essentials of my counterpoint.
Clarification. My point is that the aircraft's other unique attributes could be assigned or performed by other units in a standard army - like artillery. Stacking is unique.
I meant that the promo could be given to any unit anyway.
I contend that we don't exploit it because it's only ever theoretically game breaking. In actuality, it's not.
You'll lose. Six sight around cities is useful, but not useful enough to tech to aircraft and make them. Without stacking, their offensive firepower is blunted to the point of uselessness, and their ability to deploy quickly is useless without a supporting land unit army anyway - even moreso when their offensive firepower is blunted to the point of uselessness.
I'd say that if aircraft were remodified to the point where they're strong enough to withstand a 1 UPT adjustment, that they would still be useful units, but the modern combat game as a whole would not be as interesting as it is. Not a whole lot of things makes sense about Civ in general and Civ combat in particular. I don't see why it would be invoked in stacking aircraft when it isn't invoked in stacking ground units.
If the units that stack aren't gamebreaking, then what basis do you have for saying that their inclusion in the game in those units are gamebreaking?
Fighter sweeps are for dealing with any interceptors you have. Then I'll bomb the city with Bombers until it doesn't have any more health, and attack it from 8 tiles away using a Tank you can't bomb, because you can't see it.
I've allowed AI to have 5 or more aircraft in a city in order to play the air combat game and it hasn't troubled me overmuch to take those cities. Your own cities will be invincible, of course, but that's got to do with player facility more than the fact that you're stacking bombers.
Your point is that a city with enough aircraft is invincible. It's not. That's the essentials of my counterpoint.
Clarification. My point is that the aircraft's other unique attributes could be assigned or performed by other units in a standard army - like artillery. Stacking is unique.
I meant that the promo could be given to any unit anyway.
I contend that we don't exploit it because it's only ever theoretically game breaking. In actuality, it's not.
You'll lose. Six sight around cities is useful, but not useful enough to tech to aircraft and make them. Without stacking, their offensive firepower is blunted to the point of uselessness, and their ability to deploy quickly is useless without a supporting land unit army anyway - even moreso when their offensive firepower is blunted to the point of uselessness.
I'd say that if aircraft were remodified to the point where they're strong enough to withstand a 1 UPT adjustment, that they would still be useful units, but the modern combat game as a whole would not be as interesting as it is. Not a whole lot of things makes sense about Civ in general and Civ combat in particular. I don't see why it would be invoked in stacking aircraft when it isn't invoked in stacking ground units.
I feel ya, between the overpowered terrain modifiers and the AI's strategy of attempting to kill my Civ by covering it with their dead bodies, I am losing interest and feel disappointed, to say the least.
I have been playing everything Sid Meier since RR Tycoon and I love this franchise. You would figure that with all of the advances in PC tech since Civ's inception, that it would be getting deeper, not just prettier. Granted, they got a LOT right in this - policies, culture, CSs and 1 UPT are awesome. And all completely overshadowed by an AI that looks like a ******ed person dealing with a grease fire when it comes to war.
It feels unfinished. Like the suits stormed in one day and yelled, "You get a rubber skirt on that ho and get her on the street, NOW!" As long as they had plenty of glitzy screenshots to hand over to their "media" and ensure the needed pre-sales, why bother? The best day of my Civ V life was the day I accidentally discovered the strategic view, which I have used exclusively ever since - so I realize that I am not part of the market segment they were making a priority.
I keep finding myself thinking about game mechanics and not like a leader of a Civ, it is too predictable. Once you see through something, it is hard to forget it:
"And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was merely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened too often to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much about the box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the machinery behind the scenes so well that the posing on the stage, and the laughter and the song, could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind. It doesn't pay to go behind the scenes and see the angel-voiced tenor beat his wife. " --- Jack London, John Barleycorn
My point was allowing stacking in an 1upt environ is game breaking, wit your own example below:
Then it became a competition of who has more interceptors and/or better promoted aircraft, and we're back to stack combat again, rendering the whole 1upt land unit design irrelevant. That's what I meant by game breaking. You allow a feature into a design which discard that feature in the first place, it breaks the design. Sometime it's subtle, but it's always there.
I'll contend that AI lost the air combat game because AI doesn't utilize the air units properly.
Actually, your example didn't serve as a counterpoint so much as a reinforcement of my point, because you solve the air stack with another air stack, in a design lauded for its 1upt concept.
Granted, I was wrong to say an air-force stacked city is unassailable, because as you have demonstrated, it can be taken by another air stack.
The game never really does what it claimed to theoretically do. Like A.I. playing to win.
But I'll concede that in actual game play, we seldom encounter an air stack big enough to disrupt the game. Human players don't use them, A.I. don't build them. I only ever get the general sense of Air units are OP.Actually, I think it'll make it more interesting. As it is, when I hit bomber my land army quickly became superflous except when taking cities. I definitely stop having to engage the enemy in a land battle. Stupid AI plays a part, but stacks of flyers are just too convenient.
When you have stacking land units, stacking air units is in accordance with the design, hence, it doesn't break the design. When you have 1upt everything else, stacking air units sort of become incompatible with the design, and thus breaking the design.
BTW, I kept saying stacking air units "make sense", because it does make common sense. It just break the whole 1upt fluff fluff.
zuraffo:
If you think that air combat is at all similar to Civ IV stack to stack combat, then I have to question your familiarity with stack combat in Civ IV as well.
At which point, I have to point you to where you said it was gamebreaking. If the AI lost because of X (it's stupid) then it didn't lose because of Y (air units are gamebreaking).
Not at all. I could also take it by nuclear strike, as I said before. Alternatively, I could just bare attack the city with enough Modern Armor to render air strikes unnecessary. For that matter, Rocket Artillery move fast enough to go inside the 6 tile vision of air units, weaken the city, and then take it by tanks.
Being human is what's OP. Air units are just okay. A stack of 10 Stealth Bombers is enough to take out any reasonable defense city on the highest difficulty, but that's because of their ridiculous promotions and raw power. Rocket Artillery of similar strength would have a similar effect.
It's less efficient to do it that way. It's definitely a lot more efficient to use Bombers to supplement, rather than replace, a conventional land army. I'll grant you that it's much more convenient until the AI shows up with flak units.
That's just a whole lot of theoretical hogwash, since you have, yourself, stated that actual air units the game has isn't gamebreaking. It should be, but the limitations of aircraft make it not so.
chazzycat:
I'm aware of it, but it seemed like a superfluous counterpoint.
If you think that air combat is at all similar to Civ IV stack to stack combat, then I have to question your familiarity with stack combat in Civ IV as well.
At which point, I have to point you to where you said it was gamebreaking. If the AI lost because of X (it's stupid) then it didn't lose because of Y (air units are gamebreaking).
Not at all. I could also take it by nuclear strike, as I said before. Alternatively, I could just bare attack the city with enough Modern Armor to render air strikes unnecessary. For that matter, Rocket Artillery move fast enough to go inside the 6 tile vision of air units, weaken the city, and then take it by tanks.
Being human is what's OP. Air units are just okay. A stack of 10 Stealth Bombers is enough to take out any reasonable defense city on the highest difficulty, but that's because of their ridiculous promotions and raw power. Rocket Artillery of similar strength would have a similar effect.
It's less efficient to do it that way. It's definitely a lot more efficient to use Bombers to supplement, rather than replace, a conventional land army. I'll grant you that it's much more convenient until the AI shows up with flak units.
That's just a whole lot of theoretical hogwash, since you have, yourself, stated that actual air units the game has isn't gamebreaking. It should be, but the limitations of aircraft make it not so.
chazzycat:
I'm aware of it, but it seemed like a superfluous counterpoint.
I find Civ V unplayable.
I am perhaps one of the best candidates to enjoy it, since I don't play multiplayer at all, and therefore don't mind its implementation (which by trustworthy reports is beyond broken, and is now such a shattered mess it cannot even be glued back together).
I like some aspects of it. The ranged combat system is interesting and it's always intriguing to have a "new" game with an entire different featureset to learn.
However, they seem to have removed not only quite a bit of content but have even wrecked the user interface. It takes longer to give workers orders, it takes longer to set up your cities' building queues, and it generally seems to take longer to do just about anything you can imagine.
More importantly, the game grinds to a halt quickly. I have a 4.6 ghz i5 with 8 gb of RAM, so I would very much welcome any advice as to what I should upgrade or otherwise improve so my turns advance at a reasonable rate and I don't have to quit the game once it's past the medieval era on a standard size map.
edit: Ancient might be hyperbolic, though it's difficult to pick the exact point at which play becomes grueling rather than enjoyable (unless you try to make some sort of war, at which point you're catapulted past that line).
I am perhaps one of the best candidates to enjoy it, since I don't play multiplayer at all, and therefore don't mind its implementation (which by trustworthy reports is beyond broken, and is now such a shattered mess it cannot even be glued back together).
I like some aspects of it. The ranged combat system is interesting and it's always intriguing to have a "new" game with an entire different featureset to learn.
However, they seem to have removed not only quite a bit of content but have even wrecked the user interface. It takes longer to give workers orders, it takes longer to set up your cities' building queues, and it generally seems to take longer to do just about anything you can imagine.
More importantly, the game grinds to a halt quickly. I have a 4.6 ghz i5 with 8 gb of RAM, so I would very much welcome any advice as to what I should upgrade or otherwise improve so my turns advance at a reasonable rate and I don't have to quit the game once it's past the medieval era on a standard size map.
edit: Ancient might be hyperbolic, though it's difficult to pick the exact point at which play becomes grueling rather than enjoyable (unless you try to make some sort of war, at which point you're catapulted past that line).
Go with Civ 4.
I've been going back and forth with 5, but the lack of deeper content and details just drops off the replayability.
Civ 4 seems to have so many different routes and details, I think Civ 5 needs a huge expansion that adds loads of stuff to make me come back. The patches have been good, but instead of new civilization and map packs it needs more choices.
When playing Civ 4, it's sometimes baffling how many good things were taken away from Civ 5, I'd say 'streamlined' has become a curse word for me...
I've been going back and forth with 5, but the lack of deeper content and details just drops off the replayability.
Civ 4 seems to have so many different routes and details, I think Civ 5 needs a huge expansion that adds loads of stuff to make me come back. The patches have been good, but instead of new civilization and map packs it needs more choices.
When playing Civ 4, it's sometimes baffling how many good things were taken away from Civ 5, I'd say 'streamlined' has become a curse word for me...
That's not the point of the argument, though. The point is that 'realism' on its own is not something that you should be searching for in the game. It's only a good thing where it doesn't compromise gameplay. You were saying that people only care about the 'gameplay gimmicks' at the cost of immersion. Gameplay isn't really a gimmick. It takes precedence over realism.
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