More Civ, Less Fanatic

Call it "faith in your fellow man."

What's funny is that when you want to be friendly, and express as much, there are people out there that have the sole motivation to get you to break that so they can call you a hypocrite.

 

Okay, Ricardo. I'm really warming up to you. You have an inherent wisdom that I really like.

 

waaay off topic (or maybe not?), but I cannot avoid feeling that this stupid Political Correctness virus is also responsible for some of the debacles here... someone recently said that "the virus of political correctness will kill Western Civilization", and I think that may become true... there was a time when people did not focus so much on what was insulting or not, and more on the central ideas, and that was the time when the best inventions came to life... now we are always discussing, and fighting over, what is insulting or not... who cares what "sounds" like insulting when the ideas may be worth talking (and even yelling) about?

Too much PC BS, in my opinion... hopefully I did not offend anyone

 

I think the issue is that people are insulting others INSTEAD of having valid conversation. Having a heated debate is fine as long as there is real discussion, but what seems to be happening is that threads are devolving to juvenile name-calling and flame wars without an actual point.

 

Yeah, I am sooooooo not politically correct. That's not what this thread was trying to highlight. Just basic civility and respect for your fellow human beings.

Too many people do not know how to express themselves or share differing opinions without first insulting something or someone first. For whatever reason. I suppose that it feels like validates their stance by belittling someone else first.

 

Yeah. I'm not saying we all have to be BFFs - obviously that's never gonna happen, and I might just have to de-friend Dexters on Facebook sometime soon but that's a rant for another thread. (KIDDING!) But you'd think just the basics of common courtesy wouldn't be THAT much to ask. Welp, turns out... yeah, it is too much to ask.

I mean, I know this is the internet, where anonymity means we're allowed (even encouraged) to treat each other like animals, but I guess I hoped for more from CFC. And, of course, it's someone else's fault that there's so much friction, because god forbid anyone actually hold themselves accountable and maybe - just ONCE - take some personal responsibility instead of acting like spoiled children? Crazy talk, I know. Where do I get such wild, irrational ideas?

See, I careen from hopeful naivete to resigned cynicism inside one afternoon. I hear there are meds for this kind of thing, but where's the fun in that?

 

LOL. I have often classified myself as a "cynical optimist" so I know exactly what you mean.

 

At the heart of every cynic is an idealist who has been burned one too many times.

 

Then its true that the Warmonger version has brought out the best in us.

 

I really don't want to get into it, but I could write pages about why 'political correctness' is not a problem, and is more important than people think it is. And why people who get upset about it are often not getting upset about actual political correctness and so on.

So I'll just say that the words you choose have a lot of influence on how you think, and how you feel about others, yourself, and all kinds of things, in ways that aren't immediately obvious, and using certain language invites, allows, or forgives certain things that shouldn't be.

I know it isn't cool or anything, but it is a big deal. But I'd have to get into a lot of political and sociological issues if I wanted to examine it, and a lot of people probably would really not be too happy about what I said, so this isn't really the place to delve into it.

I will just say, this is a good place to be civil. I will also say, there's currently a CFC Rules Discussion Group, including a smaller discussion for the Civ 5 forums, located here.

 

Indeed.

 

I came into this thread only to read the infractions and not the rest of the drivel. That what makes the General Discussions so entertaining, right? But alas, it got boring after it was re-opened.

Spoiled children? CFC??? That's crazy talk, SJ.

Seriously, there are many, many studies on the social interactions of anonymous bulletin boards. Fascinating topic but yet, there is always a regression to the mean; namely, purposely magnifying confrontations between side A and side B without much personal consequences because it is the perfect medium to do so.

 

Oh, thank you for pointing this out. No, I don't dislike Civ5 because its different from Civ4-I actually was *excited* about Unique Abilities, 1UPT & even social policies (up to a point). I just think they've done the whole thing in a hack-handed way that robs the game of the enormous potential it *clearly* has.

Aussie.

 

Possibly, but I'm not so sure.

For example, I invite everyone to go back and take a look at Sulla's first Civ4 walkthrough:
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4_walk_1.html

Now, Sulla might have been slightly biased towards Civ4 from the start, considering that he had been involved in the beta testing, but I think the walkthrough speaks for itself. Sure, there's a bit of lack of polish. The tile yields have an awkward spacing at times...culture bombing was arguably a wee-bit overpowered at the time...but at the core, it instantly comes across to me as a fun and interesting game that, furthermore, promised further levels of complexity and interest beyond what one would learn from the first game. Back then, I might have said that Civ4 needed such-and-such polish or balance tweaks, but the core mechanics would have looked sound from the very beginning.

In contrast, take a look at any of Sulla's Civ5 walkthroughs. The difference is obvious to me.

 

Given that Culture-bombing is now the *only* way to secure Foreign-owned tiles in Civ5, I'd say that mechanic has become *ludicrously* overpowered compared to Civ4. Aside from that, I largely agree with the points you're making.

Aussie.

 

Sulla's got anti Civ V bias all over his walkthrough. He proclaims it to be broken beyond repair, and that devs are basically clueless. Suffice it to say, we disagree.

The whole point I was making there was that Civ 3 released with less content and different mechanics than Civ 2 at the time. Civ 4 released with less content and different mechanics than Civ 3 at the time. Civ 5 released with less content and different mechanics than Civ 4 at the time. Civ 6 will release with less content and different mechanics than Civ 5 at the time. Ad nauseum.

 

Oh, so its "we" now is it Vandyr? Is that the royal we, or do you presume to speak for the entire forum?

For what its worth, you're *dead wrong*. First, Sullla isn't completely against Civ5-he simply points out very, very obvious flaws, using actual in-game examples (something you've failed to do so far to prove how *good* Civ5 is).

Second, actually Civ3 had far more content than Civ2-it implemented Culture; Civilization Traits; Unique Units; Golden Ages & resources-whilst keeping 99% of what was in Civ2-which resulted in a *net gain* in content.

Civ4 also had far more content, again, than Civ3-as it introduced religion; health; City Maintenance Costs; Rational Diplomacy; Civics; Great People; a Culture Slider; Tile Improvements & more diverse resources. It retained 99% of what was in Civ3-disposing only of things like "whack-a-mole" pollution & corruption.

By contrast, I'd say that Civ5 is the first game in the franchise that has actively removed *more* than it put in-with Religion, health, rational diplomacy & espionage being *completely* absent from this game. Resources have been streamlined almost out of existence, with bonus resources being almost totally useless; & trade routes are now almost completely useless too. The value of improving tiles has also been lost between Civ4 & Civ5. The only completely *new* feature is City-States, which has been poorly implemented & 1upt, which the AI still doesn't get. Unique abilities are really just a substitute for Civ traits (& still need a major rebalance); Social Policies are just a replacement for Civics & hexes are just a replacement for square tiles. This leaves Civ5 as the game with the smallest amount of *net gain in features* between any two versions of the franchise (even the shift from Civ1 to Civ2 had more of a net gain in features-nothing was really lost, but a few extra features were added in (like the Senate & better graphics)).

Once again I see your desperation to defend Civ5 has blinded you to a little thing called *facts*.

Aussie.

 

Everyone, please keep it civil. It's nice to have at least one sanctuary.

 

You are obviously overlooking the many threads, esp. in Strategy and Tips, where there are good intellectual discussions and debates going on about the strengths and weaknesses of the game. Given many peoples differing perception (and attacks/defenses) of the game, one has to clearly point out fallacies and misconceptions, as well as outright lies, in order to get more at the truths (e.g. Aussie's post is right on the money, imo). But other than that, there are many ideas being thrown around in a lot of threads, why don't you participate in some of those instead of babysitting this one?

 

We as in...me and him? How hard was that?