Dumbed down like Civ Rev?

[squadbroken]

I like how the OP associates "no gigantic stacks" with dumbing down, as if mass selecting a dozen or so axemen (and maybe some catapults!) and dragging them onto an enemy city is deep and compelling gameplay.

 

[mitsho]

I second squadbroken, no gigantic stacks and confusion due to too many "units" running aroun doesn't mean good. Having to go 1 minute each turn until you have given the building orders for each city of your empire doesn't mean interesting.

I agree that there should be a variety of options for you to chose from, a lot of playing styles and a variety of wonders and buildings, but this doesn't mean complex. Complexity is bad if it gets tedious as there is so much to learn before you can play...

I vote for dumbing it down, not in the sense of few options, but of a smooth gameplay.

 

[lordrune]

If they wanted to dumb this game down, they would not have gone with a hexagonal grid, and they would have stayed with Stack of Doom combat - which is about the most tactically devoid system imaginable.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about how combat will work, and I think I'm going to need to wait til I see a gameplay video before I really make any kind of comment - otherwise I'd just be pissing into the wind, as the saying down here goes.

 

[Takhisis]

I'd still rather have a unit cap to be set in an editor/XML script/Python/whatever, and to be able to garrison cities. Perhaps you coudl garrison a city based on its size, so a small city has one unit, but a medium city supports two, a large city three...

 

[Panzeh]

On the other hand if you can only garrison a city with one unit, there's more of an incentive for a defender to go and fight in the field.

 

[Takhisis]

Wrong. There's no incentive. There's simply no possibility of actually standing out a siege.

 

[Panzeh]

Wrong. There's no incentive. There's simply no possibility of actually standing out a siege.

How does this make sense? If you allow stacking in cities, first of all you make combat more complicated again, and second of all, you incentivize a defender to just stand in a city like in usual civ. If you don't, the defender will want to avoid letting the fight get to the city, instead trying to fight as far forward as possible, or, perhaps taking more risk by making the unit in the city a part of the defensive line, using the city's defense bonus.

Of course, this is assuming combat is not necessarily lethal for defeated units. If it is, as in normal civ, I think many of the benefits of this sort of combat is lost.

 

[Takhisis]

I'm assumign that it's like chess, and that whoever wins gets the tile. I thought it was so obvious that I didn't state it.

 

[Panzeh]

I'm assumign that it's like chess, and that whoever wins gets the tile. I thought it was so obvious that I didn't state it.

Well, there you go. With that chess-like combat system, it reduces the advantages of the one-unit-per-hex system considerably. If it takes several attacks no matter what to kill a unit, it is advantageous to try to get your unis on multiple hex-sides of an enemy unit. If one attacker win does it, it is only necessarily to clear a path.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes, if units were, as I said before in the other one-unit-per-hex thread, really 'regiments' or 'divisions', i.e. individual soldiers may be killed/wounded but the rest still stand, then a unit per tile would work. However... as units are produced by cities... where would your unit be spanwed after the city is already garrisoned?

 

[Panzeh]

Yes, if units were, as I said before in the other one-unit-per-hex thread, really 'regiments' or 'divisions', i.e. individual soldiers may be killed/wounded but the rest still stand, then a unit per tile would work. However... as units are produced by cities... where would your unit be spanwed after the city is already garrisoned?

In Panzer General, you can place built units in hexes next to the city.

 

[Takhisis]

But this is not Panzer General, as much as we'd like it to be, so I hope that Civ V comes out all right.

 

[Panzeh]

But this is not Panzer General, as much as we'd like it to be, so I hope that Civ V comes out all right.

I suspect if it is as I think it is, they'll have thought of that.

 

[Takhisis]

Both and were beta releases and should have been kept in the workbench for several more months. Lets hope they don't make the same mistake... again.

 

[vonSharma]

That is my ultimate fear, that the franchise goes the same direction as SimCity and tanks.

Also, I really don't like combat the way it is. I liked the idea of building armies in Civ3, I hate having to manage so many military units. I hate even more how on Emperor, the computer just has thousands of freaking rifleman and infantry by the time we get to the latter eras. In history, armies didn't last indefinitely... there either needs to be more maintainence to keep a division for centuries or just make it that much more expensive to maintain such large armies.

 

[mitsho]

That is my ultimate fear, that the franchise goes the same direction as SimCity and tanks.

Also, I really don't like combat the way it is. I liked the idea of building armies in Civ3, I hate having to manage so many military units. I hate even more how on Emperor, the computer just has thousands of freaking rifleman and infantry by the time we get to the latter eras. In history, armies didn't last indefinitely... there either needs to be more maintainence to keep a division for centuries or just make it that much more expensive to maintain such large armies.

QFT, I would welcome a move away from the "unit"-system. It's just a huge hazard

 

[Taalen]

No, it won't be dumbed down. Civ Rev was dumbed down simply because it was for a dumbed down market.

 

[@nthony]

I want massive armies and massive empires. Will they fulfil my dreams and add a y-component to tiles?

Could the Y component be smaller hexes within the bigger hex? A sort of sliding hex scale. That way you could still get one military unit per small hex (adding to the strategy) but have 5 different unit types in any big hex at any one time. And a city could be one big hex.

Just a suggestion I'd like to see.

 

[kiwitt]

I am worried about the Civ 5 ...

The TOTALWAR series went bad after Medieval. The next versions Rome, Medieval 2, and even Empire were dumbed down, while graphically superior

 

[Ataxerxes]

Both and were beta releases and should have been kept in the workbench for several more months. Lets hope they don't make the same mistake... again.

Unfortunately, I think they will. It isn't so much a mistake as a marketing ploy. You put the game out quickly for the initial rush of people who want it. Like the people on the CIV V webiste now? They then put out expansion packs as they iron it all out. There was Vanilla CIV IV, Warlords, then Beyond the Sword. Civ III had vanilla, Play the World, and Conquests. I think they'll hurry V up as well, even if they don't meet their timetable.