Firaxis says there will be no rioting in Civ4. I WILL NOT BUY IT IF THIS IS TRUE.

Will you buy Civ4 if the underlined features are not included?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 36 37.9%
  • I would like them to be included, but I'd buy it anyway.

    Votes: 32 33.7%
  • No.

    Votes: 11 11.6%
  • Not sure.

    Votes: 16 16.8%

  • Total voters
    95
Have to disagree with you there, Guagle. Rioting is very controllable. Increase luxary spending, reduce population, get more luxarys, changing governments....it's very controllable.

Although sometimes it does seem like it sneaks up on you.
 
Yes Turner it is controllable, in most circumstances, but how do you really control a big new city that you just conquered? You have to starve people, increase lux as you said, bring military units, whatever you need to get the citizens content. You have to interact a lot to keep your citizens happy and to me that's good (though it can be tedious at times).
 
Or you can just raze the city and be done with it.

Yes, it's tedious (I loathe Micromanaging!) but the interaction can be rewarding. I think. Maybe. I dunno, really. Haven't experienced that yet. Mostly it becomes rewarding when I get those extra luxs or can build those new improvements.... but that's just me.
 
Trip said:
Atari?

Atari has nothing to do with Civ 4. Yet. :p

Fortunately. ;)

Masquerouge said:
In fact at the beginning I strongly agreed with those that said removing rioting, pollution and corruption would be a shame.
Then I read Soren's presentation.
And I wondered, what where the unfun elements taken from Civ2 ? Well, he put it there for me ! Remember how unit support was city-related ? And everytime an unit went out of his home city, one citizen would become unhappy ? Remember also the "Senate overrides your decision" thing ?
That was really annoying. And unfun.
So I say, if Civ4 is to Civ3 what civ3 is to civ2, then in fact I've got no problem with the unfun elements removed. And I'm sure while playing Civ4 we'll shake our heads wondering how we could abide with pollution and rioting, the same we do now by wondering how we could play (and really enjoy ! :) ) a game where your decisions were overriden and your army was not even supported nationwide...

That brings up a thought. In a way, that was like a decentralized democracy (I think?), since support was based per city. With Python (the scripting engine), you could make a new government (don't know what it would be called.) where you could have units affect their home city in some way.

Somehow, I get the feeling that a lot of these elements (even "unfun" ones if they're optional) will be part of the Python scripting engine.

That way, the GOTM could have more control of land, the demogame could have more 'role-play'-like elements (provinces, etc.), and the MP crowd could have a much harder AI for co-op games.
 
I find that these 'unfun' pieces would definitely make the game more fun if either removed (pollution) or changed (rioting). That said, they would have to overhaul the happiness system to remove rioting. I wouldn't mind it, but I would be interested to know what they planned if this is the case.

Rioting is more tedious than it is a strategic issue. If you pay attention, it doesn't happen. If not, it happens. What I really hope they change is the rioting after change of governments. I wouldn't mind seeing that go completely. THey could just have oustput decrease by up to 90% if they wanted, but a 7 turn riot just makes those 7 turns pretty boring for the most part and is too much a penalty for changing governments (that is, there should be something, but they have gone too far).

Other 'unfun' stuff is usually corruption for me. I've just decided to go into the editor and put it at whatever I feel like at the time. I usually reduce it about 50% and that makes for a fun game. I don't find it very fun without a change.
 
You people forget that the fun stuff in Civ 3 is conquering nations :lol:
If they leave that in(and my comp falls within recommended specs) I will buy it.

PS I voted yes, i can be done without riot /pollution /corruption. I prefer to plan where I am positioning my troops.
 
It all depends on the system to replace them. If 'pollution' as orange goo gobs was removed but instead had an effect on happiness or health or the growth of the town, that would be fine by me. If 'rioting' were removed and unhappy cities simply produced significantly less or didn't grow or something along those lines, where watching happiness was still important but didn't have such a definitive line, I'd be fine with that.

Currently, dealing with pollution, for example, is BAD. It's not strategic (usually by the time pollution becomes much of an issue, workers are plentiful and most ground is railroaded, so they can be anywhere). It's not a reason to not build factories/hospitals. But it requires time to move workers, time to re-assign citizens in the city to work that square, and adds tedium. Sounds like something that needs to be changed to me!

Note: Some of the others aren't as clear to me. For example, there are LOTS of ways to deal with riots (hire specialists, buy luxuries, increase luxury tax, connect to existing luxuries, etc. etc.) and which is correct at which time IS strategic and influences gameplay. So I'm not as sanguine about that one as I am about pollution. I don't doubt, though, that there will be a new system, hopefully at least as rich in terms of trade-offs and strategic options.

Arathorn
 
Trip said:
Originally Posted by Trip
Atari?

Atari has nothing to do with Civ 4. Yet.
Chieftess said:
Fortunately. ;)

Awww, c'mon, guys! I haven't been THAT bad, now, have I? :D

Suffice it to say that I have seen the Civ 4 prototype and it is awesome. All the discussion here is great -- but for every post that's dead-on, there are 4 or 5 that are misguided or jumping to conclusions. But you won't get any info out of me, I'm concentrating on some other projects right now (Buy Sid Meier's Pirates! (www.atari.com/pirates) and buy Civ Complete!)

Best,
Jeff Foley
Atari
 
Well, I would personally love for Civ4 to get rid of a few MM things like happiness, and checking for trades each turn. I presume that what they mean is that there will be a warning before a city riots, rather than taking rioting out entirely. I'll bet that they'll also include something like Ainwood's trade assist as a built-in feature.

@Jeff_ATARI: I personally like Atari a great deal, and would like to personally thank you for coming to CFC to help answer the questions of the civ community :).
 
@Arathorn

I agree 100% with you. The game should continue to increase strategic depth while minimizing or even automating mindless, repetitive tedium that does nothing for gameplay. But eliminating mindless tedium should NOT come at the expense of depth and it doesn't have to be.

Let us consider the "whack-a-mole" pollution. As everyone says it adds no strategic depth because no one avoid building hospitals and factories just to prevent pollution. Then when it comes, it is just tedium to move around workers and micromanage pollution elimination.

But is the answer necessarily just getting rid of pollution and thereby eliminating depth? Not necessarily.

Here is a very simple way to fix it (for example only. not the best solution but just to illustrate the point).

Keep pollution the more or less the way it is. But when a square becomes polluted make it so that on that very turn, the square acts as though it had a worker on it cleaning it up. Thus you suffer the effects of pollution on that square for a few turns but don't have to tediously move a worker there to clean it up, it is "self-cleaning" and you don't need to do anything.

So in this example, we see that the effects of pollution is retained but the tedium is not. So hopefully Firaxis is using this kind of thinking (not necessarily this particular example) by reducing tedium WITHOUT REDUCING DEPTH!
 
Turner_727 said:
No, but dealing with the effects of pollution can be bad gameplay....

I actually think that they can increase gameplay, as it makes you actually consider whether or not you should build a factory in a certian city. However, I think that it would be best for the game(and for Firaxis's wallet) if they made these features toggleable.
 
Sims2789 said:
I actually think that they can increase gameplay, as it makes you actually consider whether or not you should build a factory in a certian city. However, I think that it would be best for the game(and for Firaxis's wallet) if they made these features toggleable.
Not for me. I build Factories everywhere I can.

The only consideration is for what kind of thing the cities are building. If you're building 100 shield tanks, and with a Factory you make 52 SPT, whereas building a Coal Plant will take you up to 74, what's the point? It takes 2 turns to build either way. That's the only thing I consider when I decide whether to build the polluting structures or not. Pollution isn't something I even consider. I have enough Workers to simply ignore it.
 
I have to agree with Trip. It was always a no-brainer for me. (This means that it failed as a strategic option). I built the production and cleaned up afterwards. The shields were nearly always worth more than the nuisance of cleaning.
 
The big problem with a lot of these is that there isn't a strategic decision to be made just micromanagement and busywork. There should be tangible trade-offs that make for tough decisions. That to me is the point of a strategy game. Pollution as implemented in Civ3 is just micromanagement. Other than your choice of government there isn't much to think about in fighting corruption.

Tough decisions is the key to fun (at least for me).
 
Tough decisions are the key to strategy games... in fact, it's even in the genre description. ;)

There should be a trade-off to everything. Nothing should be the perfect choice (ala building Factories and ignoring pollution). If something ever reaches that point, it's a broken system.
 
Sorry to disagree so strongly with the person who began the tread, but I am much more likely to buy the game if pollution, rioting, corruption... are taken out.

I already use the editor to take out pollution (from production) and curruption.
 
I voted for "yes, buying" but agree with everyboday who says "wait and see, HOW they make it disappear!"
Pollution and rioting are necessary principles of a civilization game. But the current implementation is not exactly the best, one could think of.
 
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