Current (SVN) development discussion thread
- Thread starter Leoreth
- Start date
The Diocletian
Fire Fly
It's OK, I can understand why you mistook my intentions, plus, this being the internet, and like you mentioned, me being new + lots of suggestions on here being rather... dubious at best, it's perfectly fine.
Yeah, my strategy for Dom is basically a beeline for Communism, Nationhood, and Fascism, then dominating with my awesome production and Infantry/Cannons.
SheaferDaDawg
Intelligent Canine
May I propose that there is a late game bonus activated with Communism/Fascism, or something else that arose during the late imperialistic period, which helps with stability due to lots of cities outside of core, but at the same time increases unhappiness for the population? While I confess that I haven't played the new versions much, it seems like the late game is the hardest period for large nations (which it arguably should be) and as such some kind of mixed blessing to them might be in order.
Lone Wolf
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
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- 9,908
To be fair, when Rhye first introduced the stability system, it was broken and bugged. There's a thread deep in the original RFC subforum (wasn't able to find it) which reports a game with Rome done in the first version of RFC with stability. I still remember that report. The player was in a constant state of collapse, so he could only do an OCC, while fighting against the barbarian hordes of other regularly collapsing civs. (this was still Vanilla RFC, so no Independents). Russia for some reason lasted for long, but when it collapsed, converted-to-Barbarian Cossacks were an even bigger threat to Rome then Russian ones. In the end, China respawned shortly before 2020 AD, and won a Time Victory.
This is stability mechanics as a whole in a nutshell
Some of the things Sid says are sort of patronizing, though.
This is stability mechanics as a whole in a nutshell
Some of the things Sid says are sort of patronizing, though.
Bonci
King
Not sure if someone already noticed it, but with the last revision I already had an oper borders agreement with a civ but I could get another ob agreement in the diplomacy screen...
(but not give it to the other civ)
(but not give it to the other civ)
Spoiler :
Barbuesque
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2011
- Messages
- 306
I think you're reading too much of this as gospel. These are tips to appeal to the mainstream. They do not necessarily apply to a niche game, which is what a modmod is.
Punishing mechanics are a good example of this. They can add flavor to a game and appeal to a specific crowd, but they will be ruled out when you design a game that appeal to the masses because they turn off most people. But niche games aren't about that.
An obvious example is vanilla civ vs Rhyes and fall. For people who played mmos, another very good example is Everquest vs World of warcraft. And I for one, enjoyed Everquest way more than WoW.
Bonci
King
I updated today. Yes I experienced a diplo crisis but it was not germany that deleted the open borders as far as I know...
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
Don't get me wrong, Sid said in that interview that he didn't much care for Demon's Souls, which I personally enjoyed quite a bit.
If you look at the success of games like FTL: Faster than Light or Dark Souls,
it's clear that there is still a healthy market for challenging games.
The one clear thing I really got out of his GDC talk was to not implement arbitrary penalties or just give penalties without providing a good reason.
If you look at the past of this subforum, this principle has definitely not been kept in mind from some suggestions.
I still remember when people wanted to implement a penalty just for moving units.
Or for your ships to randomly sink in the ocean while traveling.
And the still somewhat persistent belief that military units should not be able to be used as "scouts".
These are not good mechanics, even though they are punishing in the literal sense of the word.
That's what I'm getting at, and that's why I think people should read it before they make a suggestion.
I'm all for punishing mechanics.
But they should be a natural result of the player's own screw-ups, and that's a harder thing to encourage with the way the game is set up.
Stability and the threat of enemy civilization spawns that always set a bar for you to pass make it more difficult to accept a mistake for the player.
The dynamic stability of the new system, to me, looks like it will help change that, but remember that the game is still played as a timetable
and you're not going to just ignore the Turks when playing as the Byzantines.
The other problem is time investment.
In FTL, people can accept their ship getting blown up and losing.
Why? They can just jump back in try again.
With Civ and specifically DoC, the player invests more of themselves and the safety and prosperity of their civilization with the more time that passes.
If you lose, you lose all that progress and if you're playing a Medieval+ civ,
you have to wait 10-20 minutes to start up again, and that's if the player
even has the stomach or persistence to keep going.
Oregon Lee
Royal Tenenbaum
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
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- 2,748
So are nations collapsing only their core an intended effect?
I definitely agree with this. I haven't read this interview but I remember Meier (or was it Soren Johnson?) talking about his idea for dark ages which could hit your civ randomly and how people didn't like this. I've always found it weird that he concluded from this that people didn't like negative events when it was clearly the arbitrary nature that put them off much more.
I think that negative events or effects aren't problematic if a) their causes are clear and predictable and b) you're offered some options to deal with it (like how negative random events aren't bad because most offer you a choice to pick the area which is affected or sacrifice something else to soften the blow). I think the first was the initial problem with the new stability mechanics because the new way things play into each other hasn't sunk in with everyone and people get confused because they mistake the trigger for a crisis for the reason it can be triggered in the first place, etc.
This is understandable because everything is new, I never exhaustively explained everything and the interface feedback about this is still being worked on. I guess I should take this as a compliment for the usual degree of quality of my SVN commits but sometimes I get the impression that people forget that playing on the SVN version means being part of a development process. So the first iteration of a new feature is by no means the final iteration of this feature, but instead something to be tested and criticized constructively.
Which is why vague and generic descriptions of games in which supposedly everything was ruined by the new mechanics are very annoying to me because they don't help me in judging whether the system is actually flawed or you just can't handle it, or what the precise problem is.
It's not that hard to attach your last autosave.
I think that negative events or effects aren't problematic if a) their causes are clear and predictable and b) you're offered some options to deal with it (like how negative random events aren't bad because most offer you a choice to pick the area which is affected or sacrifice something else to soften the blow). I think the first was the initial problem with the new stability mechanics because the new way things play into each other hasn't sunk in with everyone and people get confused because they mistake the trigger for a crisis for the reason it can be triggered in the first place, etc.
This is understandable because everything is new, I never exhaustively explained everything and the interface feedback about this is still being worked on. I guess I should take this as a compliment for the usual degree of quality of my SVN commits but sometimes I get the impression that people forget that playing on the SVN version means being part of a development process. So the first iteration of a new feature is by no means the final iteration of this feature, but instead something to be tested and criticized constructively.
Which is why vague and generic descriptions of games in which supposedly everything was ruined by the new mechanics are very annoying to me because they don't help me in judging whether the system is actually flawed or you just can't handle it, or what the precise problem is.
It's not that hard to attach your last autosave.
No, I've checked the part of the code which might've been responsible for this but it is fine. You can guess what might help me figure this out. Just one try after the above tirade though
Oregon Lee
Royal Tenenbaum
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- 2,748
I'll work on producing one. I don't stockpile my autosaves.
Oregon Lee
Royal Tenenbaum
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
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- 2,748
Here we go! As soon as Germany declares war on Russia, the weird Core-only collapse happens. Simply go into world builder and make Germany war Russia, and it'll happen.
Also, take a gander at the map changes I've done! Particularly in Mexico, Alaska, Greenland, and Israel.
And my Pro-German side in the world war is interesting too. I renamed a lot of my cities.
Also, take a gander at the map changes I've done! Particularly in Mexico, Alaska, Greenland, and Israel.
And my Pro-German side in the world war is interesting too. I renamed a lot of my cities.
I think the other problem with the new stability mechanics is that they aren't so obvious, so there aren't really clear ways of how to deal with them.
Under the old mechanics, you would see your civ go from stable to shaky to unstable, and would recognise something was brewing. So you'd quickly stop expanding, build courthouses, get more happiness resources, choose better civics etc until you were stable again, then expand some more. But under the new mechanics, the stability check which shows you there's a problem also triggers the crisis, and it's often not clear how to avoid or address it.
I got a crisis as Germany after Cordoba DOWed on me for some reason whilst I was already at war with Arabia and my economy was slow to expand. Bang: -8 from economy and -8 stability from poor relations, and no obvious way to change that with both AIs refusing to talk to me, and no way to track economic growth. And with high scores in military, expansion and domestic, there was no obvious way to increase them more to compensate. So I'm left sitting there hoping that my next stability check will give better results, knowing I can't change military and cottaging like mad to hope that improves economy.
It's one of the reasons I think we need the expansion civics brought back (see suggestions here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12744664&postcount=61) and also need a system where we can see crises coming before they do.
Perhaps when a stability check comes back shaky or worse, that triggers stability checks for the next five turns, and only at the end of that period does a crisis happen if stability hasn't been improved? That way you can change civics, fiddle with the economy etc and try to stave off the crisis, or make it less severe. You won't be able to stop all of them, but if you see them coming, and what area they are likely to be in, you can at least prepare (pull units back to the core so they aren't in cities that secede, defend vulnerable cities if defences will be lost, part build more units if there's a desertion risk etc). If the crisis happens, the cycle starts again so you have another five turns to stave off a worse crisis.
Barbuesque
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2011
- Messages
- 306
blizzrd
Micromanager
+1
Well said. My less eloquent version in the stability feedback thread was "now stability just happens". Your post is better.
That's a very good idea. I agree that part of the problem now is that the stability check and the crises occur at the same time. I could imagine to change it so that after every check that would now trigger a crisis you instead receive a warning like "a [whatever] crisis is imminent!" and you'd have a certain number of turns to improve your stability.
blizzrd
Micromanager
Is it necessary to tie this to a specific number of turns, it's not like there is a lack of triggers for stability checks. Another would happen soon enough.
