Negative sides of this mod, and its parent game?

[Stormrage]

Allrighty then, I am getting bored with all the eye-candy games that have no soul these day. I am also getting bored with the Warhammer mod for Civ3. When you play something for more years than you can remember, you got yourself married.

So, I am ready to forgive Civ4`s horrible gfx engine (no offense guys, its not your fault) if the playability is good, and give this thing of yours a whirl (can rent the game and if I like the mod, may just buy it).

I have heard many bad things about Civ4 gameplay. I have also heard that BTS and FFH have really done wonders for it. Now, before anyone here runs to tell me how teh WH mod for Civ4 is kewl, I would like to point out that I need no reasurrance in its good parts.

What I want to hear about are the bad sides of Civ4 today, and how they mirror themselves on this mod.

I expect honesty from my friends kai and P_L, and anyone else who can chip in. I am a member of the team after all.. tho my title is a bit rusty, heh.

Edit - one thing I did have the chance to try out was the Soundtrack for this mod. And I didn`t like it. At all. Just my 2 cents. But then, maybe it shows a critical difference in our artistic views and tastes?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Yay! Stormrage

haha i knew Civ 4 would lure you away from the 2d world soon enough

(i still cant see whats bad about 3d i love making 3d stuff )

to answer your questions: i honetly dont have much against the gameplay of civ4 in general. possibly the worst aspects are worker automation, and the AIs almost complete lack of being able to use brand new mechanics first time around (ill talk more about this later).

(i apologise in advance if i talk abotu things that dont make sense stormrage, ive been away from civ 3 for too long to remember whats in it and whats new to civ 4, just ask and ill try clarify)

the worst things imho for the WH mod are (in no particular order):
the tech tree, ive ranted about this before and im sure ploep is sick of hearing it, but i dont like it much at all, it dosnt 'flow' and there are too many things that dont really make much sense. it has however gotten a lot better than it was before. another thing about the tech tree is that it is quite cluttered, but this is due mainly from civ specific technologies and cannot be avoided.

The sound track: now that you mention it the sound track really isnt fitting at all for warhammer. and the religion songs desperately need to be changed from the vanilla religions. however i know of no rally 'good' songs to replace it with, so: Stormrage, do you have any suggestions on this front?

The Magic System: the Ai dosnt use it. well not nearly as much as it should. it will take a lot of fancy codework to get the ai to actually use spells wisely.. this is also the case in FfH. also im still going through balancing current spells and implementing the others, so its currently half done. so there is still work to be done here.

The religions: need to be fleshed out a LOT to be of any use, right now they only serve to adjust diplomacy modifyers. i have high hopes for them eventually, but right now, they're kinda useless.

Civs: Quite a lot of the actual civs are still barely skeletons, and so dont stand much chance in the actual game. sylvania and ind for example. however some civs have been worked on a LOT primarily elves and greenskins at the moment. the empire is pretty good to.

New mechanics can be confusing for new players: Especially things like magic ("what the hell does Doombolt do? what does Sword of Rhuin do?" a lot of spells are unexplained, im working on this, slowly) and animosity (greenskins: "why did my warrior die and that one get expereince? holy . .. .. .. .! my goblin arrer mob turned barbarian on me!" this takes a bit of getting used to, but it is a VERY fun flavourful mechanic imho) as well as combat affected 'culture' (renamed to 'influence'for WH. "hey why did my culture retreat when i lost that combat? wow how did i get this island of culture?")

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well thats all the 'negative' aspects that i can really think of at the moment, i have purposly been harsh (even on my own work) but bear in mind its still a work in progress and is getting better each time.

to answer you question in short: AI actially stands for 'Amazing Idiocity' in Civ 4.

 

[kairob]

Stormrage?! Here?! Shock horror!!

Basically as far as I am conserned the worst thing about civ4 is the graphics. And that as its 3d its harder to make stuff for and so we have less graphics available.

I cant talk much about Vanilla gameplay though as I have only ever played it about twice and that was for multiplayer. The WH Mod is set to be good though the real weakness of it that I can see is that it is only half completed so pedia entries and icons are missin' as are some features and some civs really need fleshing out more.

Oh and the magic system need a bit of a revise. as does the Techs and (IMHO) Civics.

Also you can't fortify soldiers into a blockade to keep people out of or into an area, as units can share tiles, that anoys me, they should be able to stop people going past without declaring war if you want.

 

[Stormrage]

So, this is is basicly a Beta then?
I thought you guys had it finished, but I suppose the BtS expansion and the stuff from FfH made you do alot of work again.

Civ4 has not lured me away from 2D, I still detest the 3D in games like Civ4, Warhammer 3.. anyting that is low poly. I even think World or Warcraft looks horrible. That probably makes me a mental case, but there you go.

But, you guys have pretty much stated the same negatives, so lets revise:

1.Tech tree - never was quite happy with it in WH C3C, but I do not know enough about Civ4`s system, so I cannot judge as of yet.

2.Soundtrack - WH C3C doesn`t have one (there were some grand plans in the past), and I can live without one. As for my suggestion of making it better, I do have some music in some ancient lost folders, will have to go diggin.. I`ll let you know if I find them.

3.Magic System - WH C3C doesn`t use spells that often either, wizards are hardly useful, and are not able to carry spells as they were intended to. So, no big problem there.

4.Religions - don`t know enough about them, cannot comment.

5.Civs, Icons and Pedia entries - don`t like your answers there, I was hoping you had such a big part of the game done by now..

All in all, thank you for your honesty, I think I will let it grow a bit, before I try it out. Now if you will excuse me, aaglo just came back from a few weeks of absence, and I must concentrate on our 40k mod.

Cheers!


PS - can you guys use units from Mark of Chaos or Medieval 2 in modding Civ4?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

1.Tech tree - never was quite happy with it in WH C3C, but I do not know enough about Civ4`s system, so I cannot judge as of yet.

2.Soundtrack - WH C3C doesn`t have one (there were some grand plans in the past), and I can live without one. As for my suggestion of making it better, I do have some music in some ancient lost folders, will have to go diggin.. I`ll let you know if I find them.

3.Magic System - WH C3C doesn`t use spells that often either, wizards are hardly useful, and are not able to carry spells as they were intended to. So, no big problem there.

4.Religions - don`t know enough about them, cannot comment.

5.Civs, Icons and Pedia entries - don`t like your answers there, I was hoping you had such a big part of the game done by now..

2. if you find anything good please post it id lvoe to get decent sound for this mod.

3. Magic in this mod is brilliant for the player, and can be very powerful (however its currently quite confusing until i add in hints and explanations in the pedia etc) but like i say the AI only use a select few of the spells well.

5. we have actually rebuilt the mod from the ground up about 3 times due to changes in the base code (FFH, BTS etc) so its been very slow work. buttons are slowly getting fixed, there are now only a few that have 'replace me's' in them, but there is still work (easy work, just need to find decent material to use) to be done. Pedia entries are just so damn time consuming i find it one of my least favourte parts to implement. its not the writing out entries that bugs me, its the linking of entries to specific things and copy n pasting it for every language... dosnt sound like much but if you have hundreds (exaggeration used) of spells that need to have pedia entries, one gets very annoyed with it. as for civs, theyre all slowly getting worked on. there are a tonne of great ideas in this forum for most of them, and there are many mini mods out there we can just merge to implement new civ specific mechanics. once again its primarily lack of time that hinders us here. we are also only working on a couple of civs at a time, in 'scenarios' (ie The Kinstrife (adds HE and DE), Lustria (adds Lizardmen and Skaven), War of the Beard (adds WE and Dwarves) The Crusades (adds Brettonia, Araby and Estalia) etc etc)