Increasing historic and overall realism should be the focus
- Thread starter polypheus
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dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Dr. Broom said:
Yeah, I'm not even so much against it because it's unrealistic... I'm against it because it pretty much determines the outcome in the rest of the game. You can basically win or lose the game by 0 BC.
Yes the settler rush does ruin the game but also the game needs a much better economy and production model, not to mention that food should be able to be imported into your big cities. London doesn't grow its own food, it can't that would be ridiculous. Economy and production need to be generated inside the city somehow with the surrounding terrain having little to do with things. Maybe it shouldn't even depend on cities but instead depend on the cities' economic relations with each other. This would make it more realistic but also guarantee that it is still possible to have the world's largest economy but still be a small country, I feel this truely needs to be implemented to Civilization IV.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Dr. Broom said:
Damn. If Civ 4 made this possible, that would be a great achievement in gaming.
... and resolve the fact that the settler rush determines the winner of the game.
warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
I guess you've never played a OCC rules game in Civ3 then. The short version of those rules is that you are only allowed one city.
happy_Alex
Happiness set to 11
The public don't want Risk they want Civ, and that is where the ultimate appeal of the game is. In following the board-game route the potential of civ is being supremely reduced.
Why is the main contention of this thread being continually ignored? Stop talking about the minutia and look at the big picture. This is not about 'what settler did what' and 'who killed who'. It is about the rewing the Civilization franchise with a view to its original mandate and title.
Also, Civ does have a narrow fan base already. What is the male/ female ratio (95/5 %) of players, for example?
Why is the main contention of this thread being continually ignored? Stop talking about the minutia and look at the big picture. This is not about 'what settler did what' and 'who killed who'. It is about the rewing the Civilization franchise with a view to its original mandate and title.
Also, Civ does have a narrow fan base already. What is the male/ female ratio (95/5 %) of players, for example?
warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
Happy_Alex, the reason why Civ will most likely remain true to its turn-based board game style roots is simple. It has an established fan-base. Atari realizes that it has a guaranteed amount of sales if it stays reasonably close to the proven model. To rewrite the underlying game style "with a view to its original mandate and title" would risk losing the established (if somewhat narrow, in your words) fan base.
Could it tap into a new bigger fan base? Maybe, maybe not. If you had to spend invest a few million dollars of your stockholders' money on the next Civ game, what would you do? Go with the proven model that is pretty much guaranteed to turn a profit, or the risky? What would your stockholders say?
Someone could more easily sell a game in a new franchise that is kinda like Civ but different in a lot of major ways to a publisher, than Firaxis could sell the idea that they want to change a lot of the fundamental gameplay in the Civ franchise to Atari.
Plus, there is the fact that Firaxis likes that style of game play.
Could it tap into a new bigger fan base? Maybe, maybe not. If you had to spend invest a few million dollars of your stockholders' money on the next Civ game, what would you do? Go with the proven model that is pretty much guaranteed to turn a profit, or the risky? What would your stockholders say?
Someone could more easily sell a game in a new franchise that is kinda like Civ but different in a lot of major ways to a publisher, than Firaxis could sell the idea that they want to change a lot of the fundamental gameplay in the Civ franchise to Atari.
Plus, there is the fact that Firaxis likes that style of game play.
happy_Alex
Happiness set to 11
I see where you're coming from, and I'm not going to pretend to know the expenses and costs of developing a new game. However, it's probably fair to say that as a computer game company a fair chunk of their resources are devoted to research and development.
Maybe they should tear up the manual and approach the problem at a high level, if only in an exploratory way to overcome the limitations of the current paradigm. And there are limitations.
Let me give you an example. I am a secondary school teacher, and as part of an end of term activity I got group (10-16) of kids aged between 11 and 14, girls and boys, playing CIV TOT each day of this week. They could play individually or in multiplayer. They enjoyed it greatly, although it left virtually (if not totally) all the girls cold. And after a while I sensed they responded to its depth and gameplay. Yet when they see a fish Icon, do they connect it with a fish resource as a parallel to fish in the sea? I don't think so. They would ask "how do I eat that fish, sir?". when they see a settler on the land, do they see one or is it representative of 10,000. I think they see a guy in a park. Another thing a few of them asked was "when can I build bridges" and I would ask "why" and they would tell me they want to build a bridge over a "sea" between two land masses. I explained that that sea possibly represents the size of the english channel.
My point is this, while they enjoyed it and had a lot of fun, which as you rightly point out is what it is all about, their experience was still highly abstracted from what civilisation actually involves. And yes, I do have a problem with that.
I think a high level discussion on the aim of civ etc, is viable and necessary for the future sucess of the franchise.
Maybe they should tear up the manual and approach the problem at a high level, if only in an exploratory way to overcome the limitations of the current paradigm. And there are limitations.
Let me give you an example. I am a secondary school teacher, and as part of an end of term activity I got group (10-16) of kids aged between 11 and 14, girls and boys, playing CIV TOT each day of this week. They could play individually or in multiplayer. They enjoyed it greatly, although it left virtually (if not totally) all the girls cold. And after a while I sensed they responded to its depth and gameplay. Yet when they see a fish Icon, do they connect it with a fish resource as a parallel to fish in the sea? I don't think so. They would ask "how do I eat that fish, sir?". when they see a settler on the land, do they see one or is it representative of 10,000. I think they see a guy in a park. Another thing a few of them asked was "when can I build bridges" and I would ask "why" and they would tell me they want to build a bridge over a "sea" between two land masses. I explained that that sea possibly represents the size of the english channel.
My point is this, while they enjoyed it and had a lot of fun, which as you rightly point out is what it is all about, their experience was still highly abstracted from what civilisation actually involves. And yes, I do have a problem with that.
I think a high level discussion on the aim of civ etc, is viable and necessary for the future sucess of the franchise.
Damn man, I wish I could've been in that class we never did cool stuff like that at my middle school. In fact my middle school was like a minimum security prison there were always teachers patroliing everywhere and the place had a 3 meter tall fence around the perimeter. It sucked 
Bast
Protector of Cats
I think Conquests have addressed most of these problems.
For example,
The inability to trade maps so early in the game.
Resistance when you conquer a city.
I'm happy with the changes conquests made. If it's too realistic, it might be tedious.
For example,
The inability to trade maps so early in the game.
Resistance when you conquer a city.
I'm happy with the changes conquests made. If it's too realistic, it might be tedious.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
I agree that realism could actually take out some of the micromanagement and replace it with more sweeping strategic concepts.
I'd like to see Civ become have the strategy of a card game rather than a board game. A board game is almost always a race. A card game, you have to bluff, and decide when to play your ace (even if the temptation is to play it right away), and sometimes shoot for the moon.
Also, one of the top executives at EA (a really successful game company, I don't know if you've heard of them) said this about the key to a successful sequal:
1/3 new
1/3 improved
1/3 exactly the same
I don't hear many people talking about "new". Only improved (more units, more civs, new technologies, more governments). A really new game concept, to me, is key to making this game worth buying.
I'd like to see Civ become have the strategy of a card game rather than a board game. A board game is almost always a race. A card game, you have to bluff, and decide when to play your ace (even if the temptation is to play it right away), and sometimes shoot for the moon.
Also, one of the top executives at EA (a really successful game company, I don't know if you've heard of them) said this about the key to a successful sequal:
1/3 new
1/3 improved
1/3 exactly the same
I don't hear many people talking about "new". Only improved (more units, more civs, new technologies, more governments). A really new game concept, to me, is key to making this game worth buying.
warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
I know that Soren used that 1/3 slide in his GDC presentation. He also said that you have to cut out 1/3 of the old to get the 1/3 new...
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
And there's the scoop. Gotta cut out 1/3 of the old.
And I'm a HUGE fan of cutting out the micromanagement aspects of domination, and speeding it up ... and balancing this with the difficulty in creating a sustainable empire. So you can grow and dominate a lot faster, but also fall from grace a lot faster.
And I'm a HUGE fan of cutting out the micromanagement aspects of domination, and speeding it up ... and balancing this with the difficulty in creating a sustainable empire. So you can grow and dominate a lot faster, but also fall from grace a lot faster.
BassDude726
It's Just a Phase
I think cutting out micromanagement would be a mistake. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how difficult something like this would be, but I think it would make all parties happier to make micromanagement an option, like the governors in the cities. I usually never use them, but having the option there is nice. Like automation in the workers. I never use it, but it shows they were making an honest, if not particularly effective, attempt to give the player the option of reducing micromanagement. So maybe working to improve automation and governors would be a good solution. If you could set general parameters to what your governed cities built, like giving it priorities, then you could still have direction over what the governor was doing without having to check up on it every other turn. You could set the priorities like 1) Improvements, 2)Military Units, 3)Workers, 4)Settlers, 5) Wonders, or something like that.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I know you have the option of queueing units, but that doesn't eliminate the micromanagement, it only crams it into fewer turns.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I know you have the option of queueing units, but that doesn't eliminate the micromanagement, it only crams it into fewer turns.
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
For me, the micromanagement issue is all about OPTIONS!!! That is to say, if you are going to have ANY micromanagement in the game, then you must also have the option to palm it off to an AI governer, or its equivalent!
This especially applies to management of your economics and city growth and build priorities-so that you can focus more attention on tech advancement, diplomacy, warfare and law-making!
Of course, if you WANT to manage every little detail of your empire, then you should have that choice too!
As regards the 1/3 old being cut to add 1/3 new, I have to say that I still feel that this was biggest problem with the transistion from civ1 to civ2. They certainly cut out less than 1/3 of the old in that case. It felt to me that I was playing Civ1b, rather than civ2! SMAC was more of a genuine sequal to Civ1 than Civ2 was IMHO!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
This especially applies to management of your economics and city growth and build priorities-so that you can focus more attention on tech advancement, diplomacy, warfare and law-making!
Of course, if you WANT to manage every little detail of your empire, then you should have that choice too!
As regards the 1/3 old being cut to add 1/3 new, I have to say that I still feel that this was biggest problem with the transistion from civ1 to civ2. They certainly cut out less than 1/3 of the old in that case. It felt to me that I was playing Civ1b, rather than civ2! SMAC was more of a genuine sequal to Civ1 than Civ2 was IMHO!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
happy_Alex
Happiness set to 11
Also what about population growth??
If you look at a civ game the population at the end is always very small compared to the real world. The biggest I ever managed was 320 million in civ 2, I think.
There is a reason for this though. In civ the population growth is incremental whereas in reality it is exponential.
Surely a mechanism could be found which incorporates this basic fact?
If you look at a civ game the population at the end is always very small compared to the real world. The biggest I ever managed was 320 million in civ 2, I think.
There is a reason for this though. In civ the population growth is incremental whereas in reality it is exponential.
Surely a mechanism could be found which incorporates this basic fact?
Detlef Richter
The Pikeman
I think the only way to fix the realism and fun problem, is to split the game.
Means, it could be handled like a race game. You have the opportunity of arcade (warmongering) and realism (long plays).
Means, it could be handled like a race game. You have the opportunity of arcade (warmongering) and realism (long plays).
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