Many Thank You's for the VP Team

[bahamut19]

I wanted to give many shout-outs and thank you's for the VP team. You have done an excellent job keeping Civ V relevant, fun, challenging, and well-balanced. With that said, I believe I'm going to keep my VP version at 4.16.2 along with the associated mod-mods with it. Civ VII is coming out and I feel it's going to be a great game with a huge modding potential with the new age dynamics, the separation of leaders, and the unique civics each Civ gets. I'm hoping I can contribute and in due time, the tools exist for a potential VP-style community can emerge for VII.

I'll keep both games installed when my wife and I want to scratch the VP itch. I remember when there was talk a few years ago of going "gold" but with the version 5.0 coming out in March along with a new roadmap, it seems the changes will continue to be rapid and hopefully fun for gameplay for all. Thank you, again! The VP team is sincerely the best!

 

[saamohod]

Civ VII is coming out and I feel it's going to be a great game

I feel the AI will be as crappy as it has always been with the Civ franchise.

 

[jaymrobinson]

I wanted to give many shout-outs and thank you's for the VP team. You have done an excellent job keeping Civ V relevant, fun, challenging, and well-balanced. With that said, I believe I'm going to keep my VP version at 4.16.2 along with the associated mod-mods with it. Civ VII is coming out and I feel it's going to be a great game with a huge modding potential with the new age dynamics, the separation of leaders, and the unique civics each Civ gets. I'm hoping I can contribute and in due time, the tools exist for a potential VP-style community can emerge for VII.

I'll keep both games installed when my wife and I want to scratch the VP itch. I remember when there was talk a few years ago of going "gold" but with the version 5.0 coming out in March along with a new roadmap, it seems the changes will continue to be rapid and hopefully fun for gameplay for all. Thank you, again! The VP team is sincerely the best!

Civ6 was crap for modding. Is there some info that Civ7 will be better? The only reason it was possible for VP to do this much is because the source code for the core logic of the game was released and could be modded in Civ5.

 

[Recursive]

Glad you had a good time with VP. Note that there will be a final 2UC release prior to 5.0.

I strongly doubt Firaxis will open Civ 7 to modding the way they did with 5, because they didn't and still haven't with 6.

 

[usadefcon1]

The only reason I bought the DLC for V is because of VP so there is an incentive for them to release the code.

 

[jaymrobinson]

Glad you had a good time with VP. Note that there will be a final 2UC release prior to 5.0.

I strongly doubt Firaxis will open Civ 7 to modding the way they did with 5, because they didn't and still haven't with 6.

Yeah, I think they are pretty disincentivized to release modding tools like this now. Normally you do this to keep the game alive and active past its normal shelf-life. But why do this when you are releasing content packs regularly and new versions every five years or so? I guess they figured they are just cannibalizing their own sales. At least compared to the effort required to make the game as moddable as it was in Civ 5.

 

[andersw]

I feel the AI will be as crappy as it has always been with the Civ franchise.

Yes from what I've seen so far it looks very exploitable.
While the preview youtubers are very careful about not saying anything negative I'd recommend the ones by Marbozir (if you dont mind game spoilers).

 

[jaymrobinson]

Yes from what I've seen so far it looks very exploitable.
While the preview youtubers are very careful about not saying anything negative I'd recommend the ones by Marbozir (if you dont mind game spoilers).

There was a Polish review of the pre-release that also said the AI was terrible. Probably copy and pasting the same code for that last few releases.

 

[Trumtram]

Yes from what I've seen so far it looks very exploitable.

The very first time I saw a preview of Civ7 I knew that I probably won't care for it that much, especially because of the AI. The AI has been super weak since Civ5. After all these years of working on Civ7, I suspected that Fireaxis were heavily addressing this huge flaw. But whatever they showed, there was practically no talk about the AI. That's when I knew it will be horsehockey again. Let's not forget that Civ7 adds a lot of new mechanics and systems to the gameplay. I highly doubt that the AI will be capable of navigating through those in a competent manner.
It still stands: The more complex the game, the horsehockeytier the AI and Civ7 will fall on its face in that department like the previous two installments.
And since I don't play the game in multiplayer, I don't see any appeal in paying that much money for a game that is not even complete at launch.

So, yeah, thanks to everyone involved with VP because you gave this game longevity beyond anything anyone would've ever imagined.

 

[Tekamthi]

i suspect 5's code was released cuz it was the end of the 32-bit era -- community could pour all the effort into it they want and still not compete directly with new firaxis release due to new tech.

there's no new tech underlying 7's release afaik, and firaxis doesnt wanna cannibalize sales of future versions by allowing the community to take over development of the series

 

[andersw]

The very first time I saw a preview of Civ7 I knew that I probably won't care for it that much, especially because of the AI. The AI has been super weak since Civ5. After all these years of working on Civ7, I suspected that Fireaxis were heavily addressing this huge flaw. But whatever they showed, there was practically no talk about the AI. That's when I knew it will be horsehockey again. Let's not forget that Civ7 adds a lot of new mechanics and systems to the gameplay. I highly doubt that the AI will be capable of navigating through those in a competent manner.
It still stands: The more complex the game, the horsehockeytier the AI and Civ7 will fall on its face in that department like the previous two installments.
And since I don't play the game in multiplayer, I don't see any appeal in paying that much money for a game that is not even complete at launch.

So, yeah, thanks to everyone involved with VP because you gave this game longevity beyond anything anyone would've ever imagined.

It can be fun to exploit AI and find solutions in different ways to break the game but the gimmicks fall flat pretty quick and hurts replayability for me in a similar way to editing in extra techs or op units for free.

 

[FinMc]

Civ 6's AI is so bad I don't understand how anyone plays it.

I don't know if my install broke but I was playing my second game if Civ6 on king/emperor (can't remember) and in ~medieval era once I had built a decent army I checked my neighbor, and they had ZERO military power. I checked another neighbor, also ZERO. A third neighbor had maybe 30% of my total.

I thought maybe it was a display bug, so I declared war on a zero military power AI, and then conquered them with 0 residence.

Turned the game off and haven't played since.

 

[ShadedSkies]

Civ 6's AI is so bad I don't understand how anyone plays it.

I don't know if my install broke but I was playing my second game if Civ6 on king/emperor (can't remember) and in ~medieval era once I had built a decent army I checked my neighbor, and they had ZERO military power. I checked another neighbor, also ZERO. A third neighbor had maybe 30% of my total.

I thought maybe it was a display bug, so I declared war on a zero military power AI, and then conquered them with 0 residence.

Turned the game off and haven't played since.

I've never had that happen, what difficulty were you playing on? Aside from Vox Populi, I can't think of any 4x game with good AI. At least on Deity the AI in 6 poses a threat early on with their warrior swarm and aggressive tendencies, not to mention horse barbs. Even once I have 3 archers (which I would NEVER consider rushing in any other 4x just to survive) they can still run away and snowball out of control. That being said, I stopped playing 6 because the AI being a dicetoss as if they will actually be a relevant threat bored me.
With 7, which I have not played yet, I hope the gimmicks like era transitions and navigable rivers will keep me interested even if the AI is not up to par. Just sim city with a bad UI until expansions or mods fix it.

 

[Zuizgond]

They don't want coders to be able to see their ugly spaghetti code.

 

[FinMc]

I've never had that happen, what difficulty were you playing on? Aside from Vox Populi, I can't think of any 4x game with good AI. At least on Deity the AI in 6 poses a threat early on with their warrior swarm and aggressive tendencies, not to mention horse barbs. Even once I have 3 archers (which I would NEVER consider rushing in any other 4x just to survive) they can still run away and snowball out of control. That being said, I stopped playing 6 because the AI being a dicetoss as if they will actually be a relevant threat bored me.
With 7, which I have not played yet, I hope the gimmicks like era transitions and navigable rivers will keep me interested even if the AI is not up to par. Just sim city with a bad UI until expansions or mods fix it.

It was king or emperor

I played a full game at Prince difficulty to learn the game, found it very boring and passive, and upped the difficulty a level or two

 

[HeroOfTheSword]

Yes from what I've seen so far it looks very exploitable.
While the preview youtubers are very careful about not saying anything negative I'd recommend the ones by Marbozir (if you dont mind game spoilers).

PotatoMcWhiskey on YouTube gives an excellent breakdown of the game too, both pros and cons.

He used to play a bit of VP a few years ago before fully immersing in civ VI so I think he knows his stuff.

 

[paul_soryu]

I imagine with how many new mechanics there is in Civ7, the balancing will be a hell, and it will be pretty much impossible to make an AI not crap. It makes sense from business standpoint to not care about the AI, as making it good takes too much time and effort for relatively minor gains in the eyes of an average casual player. It took me like 8 years to stop being a casual roleplayer doing random things in Civ5 and to start to actually think about and understand what I am doing short term and long term. Prior to this I was kinda simply reacting to what happens in the game. Some youtube guy who played a lot of multiplayer Civ5 helped me change my mindset. So, then I starter winning on immortal with 100% winrate with ease, I searched for mods and found Vox Populi in 2020, 10 years after Civ5 release.

I also don't know if I like new age mechanics, but I certainly do appreciate the intent to make Civ7 more multiplayer friendly (not as long for one game), which in turn could actually make bad AI not as big of a problem, if you could challenge yourself by playing against humans instead. Many good RTS games have crappy AI aswell, but singleplayer there is more of a tutorial for multiplayer, if you want a real challange. I still very much enjoy long single player games, so that's why I am thankful Vox Populi exists.

 

[Basilius]

Glad you had a good time with VP. Note that there will be a final 2UC release prior to 5.0.

I'm personally very excited to see a final release of 2UC (the legendary "gold" version) before seeing the mod continue on with 4UC.

Out of curiosity, what ever happened to Gazebo?

 

[andersw]

Out of curiosity, what ever happened to Gazebo?

Afaik it was nothing more than private life and other things he wanted to spend more time on.
Havent heard about any controversies.

 

[Tekamthi]

what ever happened to Gazebo?

Legend has it a firaxis GDR got him